All That Glitters Ch. 00 - Prologue

"Miss?" She responded.

"Please come with me."

Liea looked around Ops Three as everyone looked back at her. Self consciously, she stood and moved to the entrance. The woman bowed to her and indicated the door. Shocked, it took Liea a moment to realize that a runner had actually bowed to her!!

Because of their position and role, runners tended to be rather arrogant of 'other' workers on station. They worked for the Station Director and Senior Management and bowed to no others. That a runner had bowed to her caused Liea a moments hesitation.

The two left Ops Three and turned to the inner core of the platform. Liea had only been to the inner core twice in the almost three years she had been on the platform. Liea noted with amusement the workers literally jumping out of the way of the two women, and the looks of surprise and curiosity they were giving her as she walked with the runner. She was sure they were thinking the worst for her.

They came to one of the core lifts restricted for senior personnel, and the runner placed her hand on a sensor. It took less than ten seconds for the door to open, a record for any lift on the platform. The two entered.

"Central Ops." The runner said, and the lift whisked them away only to come to a stop thirty seconds later. The door opened and for the first time ever, Liea looked directly out onto Central Ops. She immediately recognized the face of Fiona Marsh, Platform Director.

"Liea Samson, Miss Marsh." The runner murmured with a slight bow and then quickly withdrew.

"Miss Samson. I'm pleased to meet you. Have you had a chance to view any of the data on 35-9?" She asked, referring to the rock in question.

"Some Miss Marsh. I know that we found a seam of gold that will top out at over C240 million. I haven't yet had a chance to look at other data. Most of the other data was listed by mineral and quantity rather than value." Liea replied.

"For, you my name is Fiona. You will likely not be working on this platform much longer. Follow please." She said turning quickly and moving into a large conference room.

Liea stopped dead on entering the room. The entire side of the room was clear plasteel meaning she was looking directly out into space. She looked up into the upper right where she could see her rock in cage three. At only ten km distance, the rock was huge as it hung in space.

"Sit down, Liea. I hope you don't mind if I call you by your first name?" she Fiona asked.

"I suppose not, I guess we are on first name basis now." Liea quipped.

The two sat and a runner arrived with a selection of sandwiches and drinks. Several people came into the room not long afterwards. Liea recognized some of them as senior Ops personnel. She had never personally met them before and now she was being deferentially treated by these high-ranking people. It made her nervous.

"David?" Fiona asked as SOps took a seat.

"Numbers are firming up ma'am. It looks like our estimates will easily double by the end of the day. This rock will top out near to C100 billion, and that's not a detailed survey ma'am."

"Congratulations Liea," Fiona said with a smile. "You've just moved from being a multi-millionaire to becoming a multi-billionaire. Does anyone know where Raymond Clark is? I was expecting him some time ago."

"Sorry Miss Marsh, but Clark booked off after more than twenty-four hours straight flying time to get the rock here. He took downtime saying that it would take us the better part of a day to clarify the value of the rock anyway." The voice of John Smythe came through the intercom system from Ops.

"I want to see him as soon as he wakes. I need to know his intentions. He is a multi-millionaire from the rocks he has already brought in, but he has just jumped into a new level with this rock. I don't think he will likely remain on station after this." Fiona reasoned.

"We'll make sure to bring him here as soon as his head pops up ma'am." Smythe returned.

Fiona chatted with Liea as more information came in on the rock. The numbers just kept going up, making Liea light-headed with excitement.

Sometime later in the day, John Smythe came into the conference room and sat down with a somewhat pale look on his face.

"John?" Fiona probed.

"Ma'am. One of the sonic probes found a hollow stretch 500m in length and about 150m wide. The sound reverberated oddly so we took a second look. It's not hollow. It's filled with crystal. Diamond in fact and of quite large size. From what we can see from the sonics, they appear to be gem quality stone. Some of them as long as ten meters. I've never heard of gem quality diamonds ten meters in length!

"We can't estimate it's value, but even a 'small' crystal a couple of meters in length would be worth hundreds of millions of credits, never mind those that are ten meters or more! We don't have a total these supersized diamonds, but from the count we have already made, were looking at twenty to thirty of the big ten-meter length diamonds! And we've only counted a portion of the hollow! We can 'see' the smaller diamonds indistinctly but have no way at the moment to count them. There are probably ten to twenty billion credits in the 'small' diamonds alone. We have no idea of the value of the larger ones. It could top out over C200 billion in value just for this hollow ma'am. And that's only a guesstimate.

"The surveyor probes have indicated that this is indeed core material, which means it's extremely dense. It will cost us more to process it, but we will get back many times the value for every square meter we mine. Normally, a lot of rock goes to waste. That won't be the case on this one.

Our current estimation on the rock now exceeds C300 billion in just the ferrous mineral, and we have only been able to penetrate 300m into the rock due to the density. Add in the precious minerals, the exotic minerals, and the diamonds and this rock will easily top C500 billion for the 300m we can penetrate. I've never heard of a rock of this calibre before!" John said in a rather subdued voice.

Liea looked at Fiona, and promptly fainted.

Fiona just laughed. If it hadn't been that she was in charge, she would probably have fainted too!

Liramor-23 Crew Quarters

Raymond Clark woke as he always did, instantly awake. Habits formed during his military career, brief as it was.

Clark was late of the Black Lightning Combat Engineers. An elite military engineering group that was shrouded in mystery and superstitious awe. The Black Lightning went where others could not. Completing tasks deemed impossible by any other group. Their single greatest accomplishment was the infiltration of the Coalition home world, Planet Emporium, during the Terrain Unification Wars. Thirty-six of their numbers went in, eight came out. But the destruction and mayhem they caused on a planetary scale, resulted in the complete disruption of communication systems, transportation systems, electrical distribution systems, the destruction of food stocks, medical supplies, and water distribution systems. The resulting damage made the Black Lightning members of the Most Wanted Lists the entire planet over. They were hunted ruthlessly by the authorities and executed when they were caught. The results of their work were such that when Union Ships appeared in the system, the planets population capitulated without a fight.

The remaining eight members of the team were given every medal for bravery and heroism available and promptly discharged at the end of the war, more out of fear of their capabilities than anything else.

Clark had needed a place of quiet solitude and had come to Liramor-23 because his superior and friend during the assault on Planet Emporium had been Stephane Liramor. Stephane had waxed lyrically over his friend Ray's skills and daring. When Raymond came to LMC, he was given his choice of postings. He chose to be a Rockhound for the solitude.

Being a combat engineer, he had a leg up on most of the surveyors and Rockhounds due to his ability to immediately understand the information being processed by the machines and his ability to build things out of a few pieces of wire, a couple of circuit boards and some paper clips. Yes, even in the year 2482, mankind still used paper clips. Good thing too. They helped people like Clark create miracles.

His initial post traumatic stress disorder left him in a position were others would not partner with him. Eventually, he managed to purchase his own Rockhound and, piloting it alone, he started making finds of significant quality.

His engineering background meant that he could make fairly accurate assessments of the rocks and choose the best to bring in. A process that took other teams much longer to complete, which meant more returns per cycle for Clark.

The station began to take notice of him.

Station members began to help stake him for his runs. He never disappointed, always bringing back rocks of good quality. Eventually, he had to reduce the number of stakeholders he dealt with, as the pickings on the rocks meant too many shareholders got too little return. His last run had only himself and Liea Samson as shareholders. He hadn't really needed Liea's share last time out, but he liked her and decided to let her take some of the cost. He had been pleasantly surprised at the amount she had been able to provide, giving them a sixty/forty split. She was going to be very happy he thought with a smile.

Getting up from the bed, he slipped into the sonic shower and quickly cleaned up. Staring at himself in the small mirror, steel-blue eyes noted the length of his light brown hair. He'd need to see the barber before he headed out again.

Turning, he caught sight of himself in the unit's full-length mirror. Tall at 190cm, still fit despite his time in the Rockhound, he had no trouble finding bed partners when he wanted. The two-inch Black Lightning tattoo crossing his left breast with the Terran Union Engineering crest above it, helped a little there too. Truth be told though; most women didn't see that until he took them to bed. It was not something that he showed off regularly as everyone with a chip on their shoulder wanted to have a go at a member of the Lightnings. He was always in a mind to have it removed, but it was still there. Too much had happened to him as a member for him to simply erase it. He wondered how the others had fared after their release.

He slipped on a pair of clean working undergarments and a clean jumpsuit. He debated wearing the hull plate shoes but decided that soft deck shoes were okay on station. Ready, he packed and picked up his jump bag and headed into the gangway where he was immediately picked up by a station runner.

"Mr. Clark, the Director would like to see you in Conference Room One sir. If you would follow me, please."

"Do I have time for breakfast?" Clark asked.

"It will be provided, sir." The runner returned.

Raymond followed along behind the runner until he was introduced to Fiona Marsh in the conference room. He smiled and waved at Liea. Liea immediately ran around the table to throw herself at Raymond, hugging him hard.

Sputtering, she was almost completely incoherent as she tried to thank Clark for the rock he had brought in.

"Oh, that's nothing," he said. "You see how it looks cut off on the left-hand side of the rock?" he pointed out. "I had to cut it there in order to transport this portion in. There is at least twice as much rock still out there as is in the cage right now."

This time Fiona did faint.

**************************

Raymond Clark sat between Liea and Fiona with the other senior members of the station opposite them. They had been called in for his debrief.

"The rock in question is a portion of upper core that I found out there. I left my Rockhound for maintenance and I am sure that they had been requested to do a 'check' on the navigation system. You will by now have been informed that the system's memory core is missing." He reached down and pulled the memory core from his jump bag, placing it on the table. He touched his wrist bringing up his personal comp which floated in a 3d image in front of him. With precise movements he linked it to the conference room's vid displays calling up the images of the rock.

The images showed the rock now in cage three as a much larger rock. Skimming through the images showed how he had cut through the rock and placed the pulsar packs fore and aft and around the midpoint. Then they showed the firing of the aft pulsars to start the rock moving. He left them with an image of the larger rock left behind, mineral data beginning to fill the left-hand edge of the screen. The data was just as impressive as the portion of the rock now at the platform. And there was a hell of a lot more rock left behind.

"The rock I've brought in is not the better portion of the whole. But it is the portion that I alone was able to move with the equipment I had on hand. I will need much larger pulsar packs to move what was left behind, and you will have to determine how to break it up to place it in the cages. What's left behind will easily double what's out in the cage. By the way, have you made a determination of the value of 35-9?" he asked.

Ops One spoke: "Due to the density of the rock, we have only been able to penetrate and survey a portion of it. What we have surveyed tops out at over C500 billion. We won't know how much value the rock actually has until we finish processing it. We think it will take us five months to process."

"Thank-you Richard." Fiona interrupted. "Mr. Clark, you and Liea are now multi-billionaires and, from what you have just said, will just keep getting richer." She said with a smile. A smile for herself as well as she was entitled to two percent of all profits during her time on platform as director.

"I'm going to be much richer than you anticipate, and unfortunately for Liramor Mining Company, at their expense." Raymond returned.

"Sorry? What do you mean?" Fiona asked with suspicion.

"Other mining companies offer fifteen percent on finds, while LMC only offers five percent. No one can complain about this as it is written in company policies and all of us have signed off on that before coming here. However, Terran Union Regulatory Monitors have not been to this system, and if they had, you would have been forced to modify your contracts with your miners. That is about to change." Clark said. "You will be offering us that fifteen percent within the next forty-eight hours and making changes on this platform to assuage the RMs that will be arriving shortly."

"And why would Terran Union Regulatory Monitors be coming to this out of the way platform, when they have other more prominent platforms to check much closer to Terra?" Fiona asked with a suspicious and hardening voice.

Clark called up an image and flicked it to the monitors. There wasn't a sound in the conference room as the shocked members took in what they saw.

"Is this real?" asked the SLO.

"Yes." Clark replied.

On screen was something that humanity had been expected for the more than 400 years that humankind had been in space. Humanity had spread out in a rough circle approximately 150 light years in radius from Terra. Most of that exploration taking place after the invention of Faster Than Light Drives (FTL) in the year 2350. But in the time that humanity had been in space, they had never encountered other intelligent life. Mankind now squatted on 54 planets, through 160 known star systems, none of which had life that had risen above the most primitive animal level. The most intelligent creatures out there were roughly equivalent to the dogs of Terra.

But the image on the screen was anything but primitive and was unequivocally intelligent. And it was dead. In fact, it looked like it was entombed.

Information on the left of the screen made the object two and a half meters in height, definitely taller than most humans. If looked vaguely female in that it appeared to have breasts. The body was shrouded in a blue sheath of material liberally sprinkled with precious metals in unusual patterns, leaving the greenish-gold coloured skin of the hands and head exposed.

The fingers were long and graceful looking. The hands were crossed over its chest and held a filigreed rod. Probably a mark of office or status. The head held white hair that could be the natural colour or a sign of age. The face was serene with a wide mouth and large eyes, now closed forever. The entire body was covered in a crystalline material allowing viewing but protecting the body from space.

Clark flicked his fingers and another image appeared, this one showing several similar tombs, and markers for what was obvious other internments.

"From data I took from several core samples, I've been able to determine that the destruction of the planet occurred approximately 24,000 years ago. Some of these internments date back to that time and before. But the majority of the crystalline tombs are much more modern. The last of them was less than 360 years ago. That means the original inhabitants of this planet likely survived and are have returned to place their most revered dead on 'home' soil on repeated occasions." Clark reported.

"But that's not all." Once more Raymond flicked his fingers and a new image appeared. Immediately, everyone in the room sat up straighter. He tapped his pad several more times, bringing the view of the image closer to the watchers in the room.

"Is that a mining platform?" asked Ops One.

That was the question on everyone's mind. It was possible to see that this was probably a mining station, but there were issues with it that did not make its purpose immediately clear. For one, it was rectangular vice shaped like Liramor-23's top-like shape. Also, there was just a wrongness about it that left the question hanging.

Clark pulled something out of his jump bag and placed it on the table. Its alien properties were immediately apparent. Firstly, it was just too large to comfortably fit a human. Secondly, its shape was never meant to be held by human hands, as was apparent when Clark placed it on the table.

"I have no idea what its purpose is nor even how it is powered. There is nothing here that is familiar to me. And considering my wartime experience, that is saying much." Clark stated.

He flicked his fingers again and everyone looked up to another shock. There on the screen was a second alien species completely different from the first.

The images showed a greyish-bluish coloured body floating just off the deck of, presumably, the mining station that they had been approaching in the images. Data markers that appeared in the image showed that the body was three meters long, and vaguely insect like. It had a segmented body in three parts. The large oblong lower part had six legs. The legs were hefty in appearance unlike the spindly legs of insects from Terra.

The middle segment was almost as long as the lower section, but much thinner around. It had several belts equipped with oddly shaped tools, with two long arms extending from the upper portion of this segment. The smaller segment at the top was obviously the head. It had smallish looking mandibles similar to those found on Terran ants in the lower part and four blackened eyes, two larger ones in front and one smaller one on each side. The arms and the head were badly damaged. The legs were twisted, as if they had been subjected to extreme force.

The body was floating in front of a wall that had lines of odd symbols on it, probably writing. The colours of the symbols were 'odd' to human eyesight. More images followed of other bodies, each showing damage that many of those in the room were familiar with. At least those that had been through the Terran Unification Wars.