Dusters SIX

Today was the day; One would do a full sweep of Mars through 2 orbits. It won’t be enough to clean up all of the ever revolving travel lanes, but it will give them a good idea of more realistic operating durations and the ship’s true effectiveness.

Dinah was going to go aboard for the all day trip, but Gildo asked her for some guidance on an assembler problem and she missed the test launch, which “would not be delayed”. Dinah had time to help Gildo and get back to analyze the data coming in when the ship activated it’s fields.

Gildo’s problem was a minor misinterpretation by the assembler, quick tweak to the data, and she suspected he might just want to spend more time with her. That made her smile as she jogged out of the Chaffee’s bay.

“See you tomorrow Gildo.” And waived behind her back on her way to the Control Room.

She jogged to the Control Room and settled into the monitoring station next to Aidyn to watch.
“Where are we?” she asked.

“Setting up the orbit now, all set to start it up.” Aidyn mumbled blandly.

Deogh’s voice crackled over the radio, “The Dusters’ ready, we got the go?”

“Go One”, Dinah replied, before Aidyn could key his microphone, he was confused.

“Duster?” he said out loud.

Dinah tapped his arm and told him “It’s what he calls them; we talked a few times last week. I kind of like it. A Duster.”

Deogh spoke next, “Engaging now, hold on everyone, 50 percent.” Then silence.

Alan and Angel repeated in succession, “Stable here”.

Deogh’s voice came again a few moments later, “All stable, going to 100 percent.” He didn’t sound as confident as a minute ago.

Dinah watched the long range visual scanner and saw One slip between them and Mars. The communications and telemetry still flowed. They were picking up more than the expected amount of debris and successfully evading the larger potentially dangerous bits.

The field was designed to not suck in anything that could damage the collectors, so they adjust automatically to expel anything larger than a basketball.

She watched the data and told Aidyn “It’s working perfectly, damn perfectly, or better.”

A few minutes later, One emerged from behind Mars and the scanner picked it up, the black section of their screens came back in focus and they could see One covered in soot and residue. It wasn’t shiny anymore, it was almost black.

“Still 100 percent, seeing fluctuations in arrays 23 and 35. You getting that?” Deogh asked.

“I see it” Dinah answered. She squinted at the readouts and said “It’s within parameters, no problem.”

“Ok, setting orbit adjustment for second pass.” Deogh quipped.

A few minutes later, the engines fired for the course adjustment. As One picked up more debris and mass, it had to make slight orbit adjustments to keep the orbit locked in.

“Spot on course” Bethany chimed in.


One was much closer to the Chaffee now and the optical scanner had a great picture locked in. The debris was clearly getting thicker.

Angel reported “That fluctuation on 23 and 35 is getting worse. I think we need to address this?”

“It’s within parameters.” Aidyn said back. “It’s probably just some debris getting into a place it shouldn’t. We’ll sort it out after the second orbit.”

Dinah saw the fluctuations spike a few seconds later and looked at the visual just as the back half of the ship began twisting counter clockwise, two full rotations plus. “Aidyn” she said.

He was watching now and they saw the forward section of the ship start to bend upward and loop back towards the aft end of the ship. It was getting thinner like when you stretch a rubber band.

Deogh came over the radio, “We are seeing field fluctuations spreading to other arrays, it’s resonating and the ship is humming. All’s ok besides that.”

Aidyn looked at Dinah and off mic asked, “What the hell?”


On board One, everything appeared normal, whatever was happening was un-noticed from their perspective.


“Cut off the arrays Deogh” Dinah asked flatly.

For a second, there was silence. Several screams came next as the field dropped and then, nothing more.