February 18, 2019. The Nomad. Lounge
Mereel was pacing around the holographic projection table, his hands moving frantically as he manipulated the glowing blueprint of the new Mule. He had been at it for two days straight, fueled entirely by espresso and the sheer joy of unrestrained engineering.
I leaned against the doorframe, watching the ship in the hologram grow. And grow. And grow.
"Mereel," I said slowly. "What happened to 'small, ugly workhorse'?"
He stopped rotating the model and looked at me, completely unapologetic. "It is a workhorse! I just realized that if we want to mine efficiently, a tiny cargo hold means we have to fly back and forth constantly. So, I expanded the chassis. Then, because it was heavier, I had to upgrade the RCS thrusters. And since the thrusters draw more power, I had to double the battery banks."
"What Mereel is attempting to hide behind his enthusiasm," Archi's voice cut in, sounding profoundly exasperated, "is a complete disregard for efficiency and mass limitations. He has taken a perfectly functional, lightweight shuttle design and bloated it into a flying brick the size of a commercial airliner."
"It has dual-articulated grappler arms and heavy-duty plasma cutters!" Mereel defended his creation. "It's beautiful!"
It wasn't beautiful. It looked like a brutalist shipping container that had mated with a bulldozer. But it looked tough.
"I like it," I admitted. "But what's the catch, Archi? Can we even build it?"
"Barely, Surgrim," Archi replied. "If we print three of these monstrosities, we will completely deplete our remaining reserves of refined titanium and carbon composite. The construction of the Anchor station will be on indefinite hold until you actually bring new raw materials back to the ship."
"That's the plan." I said. "Print three of them. SN Blue Whale, SN Bulldozer and SN Brick."
"What's SN standing for?" Mereel asked.
"Spaceships of Nomad" I replyed.
Command Deck.
An hour later, I walked onto the bridge. Judy was sitting at the communications console, looking incredibly satisfied with herself.
"I fixed our Earth problem," she announced without looking up.
"Did you vaporize Wall Street?" I asked, only half-joking.
"No. I built a website." She swiped the contents of her screen onto the main viewscreen.
It was a stark, minimalist webpage. Deep black background, white text. No ads, no flashy animations. At the top, the massive, blocky silhouette of the Nomad was visible.
NOMAD STATION - OFFICIAL LEDGER
"I used Archi to inject a permanent, cryptographically signed DNS override into the terrestrial internet backbone," Judy explained, adjusting her glasses. "You literally cannot take this site down. If any news outlet, government, or fake startup claims they are working with us, people can check the Ledger. If it's not on this site, it's a lie."
I read the latest entry. Date: Feb 18. Status: Pre-construction phase of L5 Anchor Station. Current Corporate Partnerships: ZERO. Current Terrestrial Investors: ZERO.
"Brilliant," I smiled. "Simple, transparent, and arrogant enough to keep Vance furious. Good job, Judy."
One Week Later. March 2019.
The Nomad drifted silently in the void of L5. There was no station yet, no shimmering blue forcefields. Just the massive black ship and the stars.
But the ventral cargo bay doors were open.
Sitting on magnetic launch clamps were three brand-new, perfectly ugly heavy lifters. They had no windows, no life support systems, and no airlocks. They were pure, unadulterated industrial muscle. Mereel had insisted on custom paint jobs to tell them apart on the visual feeds. The massive blue one on the left was mine: SN Blue Whale. In the middle sat Mereel's bright orange pride and joy: SN Bulldozer. And on the right was a bright yellow one. Judy had taken one look at its blocky geometry and affectionately christened it SN Brick.
Inside the Nomad's Lounge, the three of us were strapped into heavy, haptic sim-rigs we had cobbled together from old server racks and fresh nanite-printed servos. Holographic visors covered our eyes, feeding us the direct 360-degree sensor data from our respective Mules, while physical throttles and joysticks rested under our hands. We were remote-piloting them from the comfort of our living room.
"Pre-flight checks complete," Archi informed us through our headsets. "Blue Whale, Bulldozer, and Brick are green. Be advised: there is a small, natural cluster of L5 Trojan asteroids approximately four hundred kilometers from our current position. High concentrations of iron, nickel, and silicates."
"Copy that, Archi," I said, wrapping my hands around the flight sticks of the Blue Whale. "You two ready?"
"Born ready," Mereel's voice crackled over the comms. "Last one to the biggest rock has to clean the hydroponics filters for a month!"
"Oh, you are both going down," Judy shot back calmly.
Before I could even reply, Judy's yellow SN Brick shot off the launch clamps, its heavy thrusters leaving a trail of blue plasma.
"Hey, no false starts!" Mereel yelled, slamming the throttle of his Bulldozer forward. I followed immediately.
The virtual acceleration pushed back against the haptic feedback of my rig. We shot out into the silent void. The Mules handled exactly as they looked: heavy, robust, and completely overpowered. It wasn't a graceful flight; it was a brawl against physics.
We wove through the empty space, closing in on the small cluster of floating space debris. Mereel tried to cut me off, firing his lateral thrusters to drift his massive orange ship sideways, but I flipped the Blue Whale 180 degrees, hit the retro-rockets, and let momentum carry me right past him. I was just about to snap my grappler arms onto a house-sized chunk of iron when a yellow blur slammed into the rock right next to it, claiming the largest prize.
"Touchdown," Judy said smoothly over the comms. "I prefer lemon-scented soap for the hydroponics filters, by the way."
"Beginner's luck," I laughed, latching the Blue Whale onto my own rock. "Alright, let's get to work. Archi, spooling up the plasma cutters."
Thick, blindingly bright beams of industrial energy shot from the front of our Mules, slicing deep into the ancient stone and metal. My rig vibrated with the simulated feedback of the tools. We cut massive chunks loose, letting them float freely between our drones.
"Alright, the rocks are prepped," I said, flipping a switch on my virtual console. "Archi, deploy the Type-2 swarm."
"Deploying mining nanites now," Archi confirmed.
From small specialized vents on the front of our Mules, a silver, shimmering mist shot out into the vacuum. It wasn't just millions of nanites. It was trillions. A localized, controlled swarm of microscopic machines designed specifically for deep-space resource extraction.
The silver mist enveloped the loose asteroid chunks. It was mesmerizing to watch through the sensors. The nanites literally ate the rock, breaking it down at a molecular level. They separated the useless rocky slag—which drifted away as fine dust—and bonded with the pure iron and titanium, carrying it back into the Mules' magnetic cargo bays like an army of microscopic ants carrying leaves.
"Inflow of refined materials is optimal," Archi noted, sounding almost pleased. "At this rate, we will have enough mass to begin printing the Anchor's central spine by tomorrow morning."
Two Hours Later.
The heavy clanking of the magnetic clamps echoed through the Nomad's hull as the fully loaded Mules docked. In the Lounge, the three of us pulled off our holographic visors and stretched.
"Not bad for a first run," Mereel grinned, rubbing his neck. "Those thrusters hold up perfectly under full load."
"It was actually quite relaxing," Judy admitted, stepping out of her sim-rig. "Like a very expensive, very destructive video game."
I walked over to the coffee machine, feeling the adrenaline slowly fade. "Alright, the joyride is over. We know the hardware works, the nanite swarm deployed flawlessly, and the cargo bays hold pressure. Archi, save our flight data as a baseline."
"I have already done so, Surgrim," Archi replied, his tone laced with mild amusement. "And I have immediately generated an automated macro. With all due respect, while your manual piloting was... entertaining to observe, your trajectory calculations were highly inefficient. I will now assume direct control of the Mule fleet."
"Go for it," I said, taking a sip of coffee. "We can't scale this operation if we have to pull night shifts playing asteroid trucker. Set them to a 24/7 automated mining loop. Wake us up if a rock fights back."
"Automated protocol initiated," Archi confirmed. "The drones are currently discharging their cargo and recharging their batteries. They will depart for their next cycle autonomously in exactly twelve minutes."
"Perfect," Mereel said, collapsing onto the sofa. "Let the machines do the heavy lifting."
"Speaking of heavy lifting," I said, looking at the main screen. "Archi, how are the refined material reserves looking now?"
The main screen in the lounge flickered to life, displaying a bar graph that was rapidly filling into the green zone.
"Reserves are at 14 percent of the required minimum for Phase One of the Anchor," Archi reported.