Resource: R37.3122.a4 'Crackle'

So named due to the constant low level crackling noise the substance makes in the presence of carbon dioxide as it binds carbon and sheds unstable atomic clusters which then react with released oxygen. Thermal increase is minimal and no runaway reaction noted.

_ 'Crackle' is a heavy, semi-malleable molecule created in the core of gas giants. Extremely thermally unstable, can only be mined using sonic equipment in an environment kept below 200 degrees celsius. It is used as a precursor for the manufacture of high yield explosives, capital class torpedoes being the primary use. Once refined via sonic separators into 5 ton ingots (hexagonal in shape, 1 meter wide and 3 meters long) it is transported from the mining outpost to manufacturing centers that stabilize it with other materials._

_ It is extremely rare making it immensely valuable. Typically found in relatively trance quantities - a few hundred thousand tons throughout an entire asteroid ring created by the break up of a gas giant. The refinery is highly classified as it contains several million tons throughout the belt, several hundred thousand in a single asteroid 67km long by 23km wide. Only the mining corporation that maintains the site knows of its location in a nebular region that renders long range prospecting impossible, preserving its secrecy._

_ But there are always information leaks._

—

The Auditor

A Moreauverse Novella

Commander Jeyev rolled over at the rapid but subtle trill that was growing ever less subtle by the second. A high priority came penetrating his slumber and chasing away his dreams of wealth and power.

Particularly power over those he saw as less than human, which exerted with ever more imaginative methods.

With a grumble he reached out and flicked his hand over the comm unit near his bed. “What?" He snarled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and glancing at the chrono display hovering a few inches above the same device.

Three and a half hours, that was all he had been granted on his Z watch. Someone was going to feel the sting of his rebuke for the disturbance.

“Sir, we just received a high priority tight beam communication from a vessel identifying itself as the Stateroom. Eyes only. It is now squawking and we've located it half an AU from the station. Some sort of launch, probably thirty meters in length but no configuration I've ever seen. Database is turning up null, as well."

Jeyev blanched and sat up abruptly, blankets spilling to his naked waist and the form in the bed beside him stirred but remained silent. Best that she did, his mood went from irritated to a mix of panic and fury in the span of a heartbeat. “Transfer it to my ready room. Send a prospector out to scan whatever that vessel is, but keep it in asteroid shadow."

“Copy, commander." The tech sounded as rattled as Jeyev felt, probably moreso, having to disturb the commander during his down watch after discovering a trespasser well inside of their secure zone.

“You, out." Jeyev snapped at the conspicuously still form beside him. She immediately leaped up and scrambled from his bed, without even bothering to snatch up her discarded coverall as she darted for the exit, lush red tail flicking out of sight as she fled, probably glad to have escaped alive and relatively undamaged.

Rotating himself he put his feet to the floor, splaying his toes in the fur carpet that kept the icy chill of the polished stone floor from his unclad feet. Sleep utterly dashed from his system and forgotten he snatched up shirt and leggings, tugging them on while his feet sought out his custom-tailored leather boots. They had not been made from the same donor source as the fur carpet, but the general provenance was similar. Luckily the fabricators had been able to manage leather work as neatly as fabric and metals. He stomped quickly to the door and snatched the long fur coat from its hook, throwing it over his shoulders as he stepped out into the hallway.

The chill smacked him viscerally but he ignored it. The laborers could handle it far better than he and his command staff could, which was why he wore one of the former to keep the chill at bay. He hoped that the environmental specialist he ordered to replace the last one would arrive soon, before the heating in the command module failed entirely.

It was sheer luck that they had discovered and eliminated the damn raccoon before its sabotage had crippled the system completely, but the damage could not be repaired by the laborers he had left. At least the damn animal still had some use; keeping his floor warm, its glass eyed visage left staring at the star field of the chamber's main display since there were no external views on the station.

It was a short walk up, which was actually down gravitationally, toward the polar apex of the slowly rotating asteroid that was Elph Polaris, owned and operated by Convergent Molecular Industries, a corporation of the Yucatan Alliance. Due to the rotation of the asteroid gravity was toward the poles rather than the core, so to reach the command deck, which was nearest one pole, actually meant walking down, by the reckoning of his brain, rather than up. That was, thankfully, only one flight and he felt the subtle shift in gravity even over that short walk. Not enough to cause problems, barely enough to be viscerally detected; just enough to jar the inner ear and make it try to tell him he was accelerating.

Which, in short fact of scientific accuracy, he was.

He passed down the short sally port from the bottom of the stairwell, two guards in their station behind a thick dyplast screen giving him crisp salutes as he did, and cycled through the airlock onto the command floor. Everyone stood and snapped to attention, though their eyes remained mostly on their displays. There were only three currently on duty in the vast room. Without a word he turned and stalked into his ready room, closing the heavy bulkhead door behind him. Only then would they be allowed to relax back to their duty posts.

He loved that power; silent but absolute.

He had only had it for seven months, but it was absolutely addictive. And what he could do with that power was even more addictive, evidenced by his satiated cock that had not even stirred when he was abruptly awakened. Circling the huge desk, acquired after the removal of the previous station commander, he dropped into the plush leather chair and waved a hand over the computer interface.

It had read his biometrics three times from the door to the desk; first his eyes the moment he entered, then his physical characteristics, and finally his entire hand in the quarter second it passed through the sensor beam.

“One priority message recording on alpha secure channel, in queue and holding, Commander Jeyev, nine minutes thirty-seven seconds." The computer announced in a voice lost somewhere between male and female.

“Format?"

“Holographic, pre-recorded. Three minutes forty-three point two one second transmission delay." Far, far less than half an AU, then. Either the incoming vessel was moving at stupidly dangerous speeds or he had not been told exactly how close it had gotten before detection. He turned toward the small holographic display at one side of the desk.

“Display transmitted holographic image and hold."

A half-meter cubic holograph appeared above the emitter inset on the desk surface. It showed a pale skinned human whose face was badly scarred by some mishap, probably recent judging by the regrowth coloration, no more than a year. Why he had not undergone reconstructive medicine was worrisome; perhaps there was a message in that, alone.

Was the man so destitute he could not afford even the most basic medical procedures, or was that some sort of message to whomever he interacted with? Arrogance or intimidation?

His hair was pale brown streaked with white here and there, evidence of scarring beneath as well and the neckline of his severe black dress uniform hid anything below his neck. There was an arrogance to the man's face and a cold, shark-like emptiness to his eyes.

A dangerous man.

“Resume playback." The hologram began moving, the flat voice of the man, somewhere between tenor and baritone, emerging into the room.

“I am the Auditor, on behalf of the Chairmen of Convergent Molecular Industries, henceforth referred to as CMI. I have been dispatched from the Boardroom to conduct a review of all records pertaining to the operation of the Elph Polaris station. I am currently on approach at a distance of one half AU with my transponder active, classification Stateroom." The man's voice was cold, flat, almost bored but the ramrod posture showed not a whit of compromise toward whomever he was speaking. “This is an alpha priority communication for the current commander of the installation. Upon arrival I will require berthing for a sub-corvette class in a bay with direct access to the command levels, full access to all facility electronic and analog records, and access to all labor assets and employees of CMI.

“Failure to comply will result in an Omega protocol override shutdown of facility operations and remanding of all noncompliant staff to quarters or available detention facilities. This is not a request; you are being Audited. I will establish a direct communication channel at one light second. This is the Auditor, out."

“Message repeats. All Authentication parameters verified. Subchannel commands have frozen all data management systems." The computer stated in that androgynous voice that seemed more compassionate than the man in the hologram.

“Access personnel data on this Auditor person."

The computer made a short blaat of denial, “Insufficient privilege level."

“Public net citizen data."

Again the short buzz, “Numerous publicly recognized identities conforming to query in currently available Alliance archival records on station."

“News articles conforming to current actions?"

“Seventy-three in current station public data archives pertaining to person or persons identifying themselves by the professional name 'Auditor'."

“With image files of the person?"

“Twelve. Seven human, various nationalities. Five non-human, various species templates." Obediently seven images scrolled up a two-dimensional image pane that appeared above the surface of the desk. Four were too dark, one was female, one had black hair and the eyes were clearly augmented. Only one had brown hair and was, generally, a fit for the hologram without the scars. It was the eyes that sold it; cold as a shark and looking into the middle distance. Even from the tens of meters removed that the image had been captured that much was evident. Jeyev stabbed the image and it shifted to the center, the other six fading away.

“Access all records pertaining to this individual."

“Eighteen archived news articles across various business, financial, and academic works. In none has the individual been directly named, the earliest merely refers to the profession of the individual as an auditor. The latest eleven refer to the person, directly, as The Auditor. No new information as of seven months five days, the last news article dated three years and five months prior to local datalink termination."

“Corporate affiliation?"

“None. The indicated individual works purely under a contract basis."

Jeyev winced and frowned, gnashing his teeth. It was one thing to work with internal auditors; they, at least, could be bribed, blackmailed, or intimidated. Third party contractors were almost always inviolate, which was the reason they got contracts in the first place. A contractor who could be bribed was not worth the data bits that comprised their contract.

He thrust a finger at the channel icon in the bottom of the display. “Massey."

The response was immediate, “Commander?"

“I want the freighters in the loading bays fueled and on ready standby. What's the ETA on our unscheduled visitor?"

“Four and a half hours, he's coming in reckless fast. If he slows for the tailing field maybe a couple hours more?"

“We got any better resolution on his launch?"

“Yeah, gimme a sec." A moment later the image from the news article withdrew and another slipped forward to replace it, of a ship the likes of which Jeyev had never seen before. It was an ovoid roughly the shape of a flattened egg or almond thirty-five meters long, twenty at its widest point where massive drive nacelles bulged from its taper about two thirds its length toward the tapered tail and fifteen from keel to spine. It was as smooth as an egg, with no visible view screen for a command deck, and no immediately apparent weapons pods flawed the smooth curve.

No ship he knew of in the Commonwealth followed such a simple organic design; it was clearly purpose built for, or perhaps even by, a single corporation.

“We got a mass variance out about sixty AU, as well, pretty bright albedo." A smaller sub-screen appeared showing a dot in space that shifted, ever so slightly, against the backdrop of stars. “Gravity shift indicates at least a couple million tons displacement. How much of that is their drive core I've got no way to tell and getting a prospecting drone out that far for imaging will take days. It's on approach, too, closing at point two two C."

Which meant the smaller transport had some sort of FTL drive, then, sufficient for short hops at least. Otherwise it would have taken almost a week to cross such a distance. The only thing that would've kept it from dropping in on them within a light second, considering the small mass of the mining outpost, was the asteroid field itself. They would've had to drop in at its fringes and navigate in under sublight drive.

The bigger ship would take about fifty hours to get to the edges of the field, more than long enough for an escape if it came to that. If it truly was the Boardroom, the flagship of Convergent Molecular where, supposedly, the entire board of directors lived in awe-inspiring opulence, then escape was probably his only option. Rumor had it that the Boardroom massed as much as, if not more than, a military capital ship or super freighter.

“You want me to activate the defensive countermeasures, Commander?" Gun batteries, stealthily hidden among the asteroids, were intended to deter, by overwhelming firepower, any would-be claim jumpers.

Jeyev scoffed. “With the Boardroom hulking out there with its escort group? Are you insane or just stupid?" He snarled and shook his head though his subordinate had no way of seeing that. “As soon as the targeting sensors went online they'd send an override command to shut them down, or turn them on us, and then we'd be looking at a kill squad, not a ledger sniffer."

“The albedo from that object out there does not indicate an escort group. They would have enough standoff distance to be resolved individually, even from this distance." Massey pointed out helpfully. “If the ship you're talking about is as big as that thing is it would have escort ships almost as large; too big to dock with it."

“Let's go with the assumption of escorts, Massey. See to the freighters."

“Yes, commander. And the others?"

“Spread the word, quietly. Tell them to be ready to ditch this rock within fifteen minutes of the go order."

“Copy that. And the visitor?"

“Nothing to do but let him do what he's coming here to do." Which meant waiting another four hours, on the short side. “Play clueless but be ready for anything." With that he terminated the comm channel and then, inputting several authorization codes, accessed another.

It took several achingly long minutes for the channel to activate since the deep space comm array had been shut down months previously due to 'damage caused by asteroidal debris'. He knew that lie would eventually get noticed, but would have expected a maintenance lighter, not the entire bloody corporate leadership.

Without waiting for a confirmation ping, which he knew he would not get, he spoke. “I believe the time for that transfer of ownership to be implemented. Navigation coordinates appended." He shut down the channel without waiting for an acknowledgement and killed the deep space array.