Cobalt Horizon

Greetings to everyone, the following story was inspired by the digital art of @xpilar, I invite you to visit his blog. The picture that motivated this story is the following.

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Source

Cobalt Horizon

The tiny red dwarf was beginning to emerge over the horizon when Boris, piloting the Goliath, one of the twelve transport ships that made the route between Kobold and the EPC230 Consortium's processing space station, maneuvered down the loading platform in the centre of the pit at Mine 88.

Kobold, the blue planet, was one of the Consortium's largest mining ventures in the new territories of the Arm of Norma, a cold, completely dry world with a very thin atmosphere, but with a surface made up almost entirely of cobalt ore, which gives it the peculiar characteristic of being a completely blue world.

The exploitation of cobalt in Kobold, consisted of 100 completely automated mines, directed from an orbiting space station, assisted by a network of thirty satellites, there was no living being on the surface of the planet, at least not permanently, only the pilots of the transport ships, which were approaching to load material, and occasionally to unload some equipment that should be taken to the surface.

The entire operation was carried out by robots that were in charge of exploring, extracting, transporting and loading the ore into the ships, which would then transport it to processing stations, such as the EPC230, located half a light year away.

The Goliath was in its second shipment this week. The journey from Kobold to one of the processing stations took Boris fifty hours each way, so he could make three shipments a week, so he was halfway through his week.

The mountains surrounding the circular excavation of the pit in mine 88 looked imposing and ghostly, like huge blue walls, against the black starry sky of the planet. Above the steep blue horizon, the red dwarf that was the center of the system loomed, barely brighter than the remaining stars in the celestial canopy.

The Goliath descended slowly, supported by its anti-gravity engine, precisely the origin of the need for the precious mineral, which was being exploited in Kobold. Cobalt was one of the main requirements for the manufacture of the anti-gravity reactors, on which the engines of all modern human ships were based.

At the bottom of the pit, ten thousand tons of the ore would be loaded into the ship, and then transported to the station, where the cobalt would be refined by nano processors, and then sent to the different factories that would use it in the production of the reactors and a variety of other parts used in the new generations of ships.

Once the ore was on board, Boris and the Goliath began the journey to EPC230, after which a new ship arrived to make its own journey, and was prepared to descend to the bottom of the pit to continue its own routine.

Text of @amart29 Barcelona, Venezuela, December 2019

Other stories from the Time and Space series

• The Horde
• The Phidias Mechanism
• Heliopolis
• The Garden of Rocks
• Under a Sky of Branches and Leaves
• Jaguars
• The Last Night of Palas
• Dragon Eggs
• Rediscovery
• The First
• In the Nothing
• The Mountains of Heaven
• The Garden of Eden
• The Dragons of Persephone
• Scrap City
• The Bay of Hydra
• Cobalt Horizon

I can only thank @xpilar for allowing me to use his digital art in my publication and for motivating my creation. Thank you very much @xpilar

Thank you all for visiting my publication, I hope your comments and I appreciate your support, until next time

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