“…what you’ve got is a fairly ungainly machine, the COIL Mobile Mining Rig is especially difficult to move around with any precision. It was originally a tracked vehicle, but we stripped it once the grit made it more of an issue to maintain. Moves at about twenty klicks an hour, fully loaded. We’ve found it seems easier if the chemical tanks are transported separately, and it keeps the strain off the deployment elevators in transit – the thing would be useless if it arrived at its destination with a warped or bowed elevator strut…”
“…automate the test burn of the COIL from the ad-hoc interface, and maintain safety protocol. Things have gone wrong with the COIL modules, so err on the side of caution. Once tested, vent the modules, deploy and connect a standard A44-10 module. Keep it on 4x scan, check it every fifteen or so. Keep it synced to your comms and store the packets on one of the drives in the modules hard disk. Commence forty-five minute bursts then wait for cool-off.”
“…remember to check and double-check the cleats and lining joins in the maintenance suit. Ensure every article has been inspected and cleared before use and before stowage. Also ensure the COIL module is deactivated, sluiced and syphoned from the main tank before any maintenance is completed on the rig. Watch your partner, keep an eye on the pressure and exhaust dials and keep the A44-10 cyclic to give you the heads-up if you’re about to hit something you shouldn’t…”
We kicked off mining ops at planetfall plus forty eight. That’s Solar days, of course, because no one had worked out a calendar for the crazy days Fram lived through this side of the barycenter. The first COIL MMR – we brought two – was set up east of Alpha-4, in the base of a crater named Yom Kippur where the regolith had been fused into a basalt sheet and, just ten meters beneath the surface, seismological surveys had found sublimated bedrock, fractured by the impact which created the crater. Core samples showed up lots of magnesium, aluminium, scraps of iron, and lots of fused oxygen: exactly what we needed.
It was nearly seven weeks after planetfall – two weeks since the massive operation to relocate Alpha-2 had wrapped up, and just over a month until the supply ship arrived in orbit.
The COIL was supposed to move twenty klicks an hour; Yom Kippur was only seven klicks from Alpha-4, but of course, the regolith completely frammed the caterpillar system. It ended up taking us two days to get the rig in place, including the time to strip the tracks, and to set up the refinery.
The rig was kicked off just after Alpha A had set – the only object in the sky was Alpha B, growing brighter by the week as Fram drew closer. A wind slowly kicked up after A-set. This would become more of a problem as Fram reached the extremes of its orbit: one star, whether it be B now or A in eighty years, would heat one face of the planet while the other star was too distant to heat the other. The wind was the result, great pressure systems the size of continents, as excited air particles moved from hot to cold.
Gaseous chlorine was mixed with molecular iodine and an aqueous mixture of hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide. These chemicals were injected from the massive tanks, enclosed by gantries, which formed the superstructure of the rig. There was a burst of heat.
The laser burst itself was invisible, operating on infrared wavelengths. But we could see the results with each pulse: the regolith under the resonator was blown away, or fused into the basalt. With each burst, the products of the chemical reaction were separated by the rig: oxygen, water, and potassium salts were pumped away into tanks stacked at the far end of the rig, furthest from the refinery. These would be collected by the haulers and transported to the Outposts, to slowly open up the closed-loop life-support (CLLS) systems.
Slowly, the COIL rig made progress: there would be a supersonic pulse of laser energy, a blast of energy and heat, and then robotic arms would remove and sort the debris. It moved the slag off to the side, to be used later for construction of the carbon highways between the Outposts, mines, and spaceport, and the material to be processed was fed onto conveyor belts and moved down the length of the rig to the refinery.
A lot of people were standing around. It seemed as if all the e-suits in Alpha-4 were here, used by whoever could find a bureaucratic reason to be present for the deployment and firing of the Colony’s first mine. Many were searching the sky, looking for the supply ship or looking for Sol or simply enjoying the alien sky.
One of the rig’s maintenance teams had set up a sign on the upper gantry enclosing the chlorine stack; now that the rig had been firing for several minutes, a floodlight flickered on an lit up the sign. It said simply:
COIL MMR-001
brought to you by the
Engineering Corps of Alpha-4
“Keep HOPE Alive”
It was a pun – Human Outer Planetary Exploration was the over-arching term used to colonise the planets and moons of Sol in the heady days the species expanded from its homeworld. We were smiling, privately, unreadable to one another by the faceplates of our e-suits; and we all hoped the double-meaning would reach every colonist on Fram…
