Tac

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Mikara
Posts: 76
Joined: Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:29 pm

Tac

Post by Mikara »

Nali sprung from her bed at the sound of a violently jiggling door handle. The night was dying softly, bleeding red sunlight through the crack of her shuttered window. Exasperated that her dream of laying in a meadow with her favorite meal had been interrupted, she yelled for the person at the door to stop trying to enter and that she would come out in a minute once dressed.

Nali angirly robed herself in her usual work attire of black and grey, before finally removing the chair that kept the door at bay. The door swung open, with a man dressed in a grey hazard suit, only remembering to remove his mask when Nali appeared.

"What do you want so early, work isn't for another hour. Besides aren't you still supposed to be on shift?" said Nali irritatedly, causing the man to rub the back of his head with a guilty smile.

"Well I finished early, the load was smaller than usual, so I came to rouse you in hopes that maybe we could get breakfast together for once." The news that they had less ore, meant less pay causing her to sigh annoyedly.

"So you are waking me up early AND with bad news?" she huffed. "Fine. But you are buying," she said crossing her arms.

The man grinned widely and bowed exaggeratedly. "It would be my pleasure madame."

He laughed at this and twirled off without a second thought heading to the mess hall, before Nali yelled at him, "Are you really going to eat in that suit?" causing him to pause.

"Oh right, that. Yes, yes I'll meet you there after I get changed." An exhausting man as ever, she thought to herself.

After fidgeting with her watch waiting at a mess table, her partner, Jun, came to the table with two plates of nutrient gruel and a delicacy of sliced bacon which Nali promptly snatched off Jun's plate. "And this is for making me wait so long because you thought to bother me about food before changing," she said before savoring the first piece of bacon in her mouth. Jun frowned for a moment before distracting himself with what was left of his meal, noting to buy another slice after Nali left for her shift to process the ore he had sorted.

Nali was about to bite into the last slice, thinking better of it and offering it to Jun who shook his head at the offer, causing her to shrug and devour it. With her in an apparently better mood Jun managed to muster the courage to finally tell her the other reason for inviting her to breakfast. "I think we should... I think we need to leave."

Nali stopped midbite into her gruel and looked at Jun strangely, staring at him before remembering to set down her spork. "Why... Don't we still have another few years on our contract?"

Jun shifted abit, checking to see if anyone was paying attention before he whispered in a more serious tone, "I've been running extra scans off my shift. The loads have been steadily declining for the past quarter and audit is coming soon. It hasn't been noticed yet by anyone else because I... may have been stockpiling on our better months for exactly this reason. Everyone else is too afraid to handle the slag so I've been able to store ore in the warehouse without too much fuss...."

"You've been running extra scans AND been breaking contract by holding out material... Jun what the hell have you been DOING," Nali said, unsettled that he hadn't told her this before. "What is so important as to risk getting us KILLED?" she whispered with venom in her voice.

"You know what happens if we can't make contract. We would get killed either way! Just listen. I started noticing a long time ago that something wasn't right about our quarry. About four months ago, I thought maybe it was just natural rock variation, but when I took a closer look at the Slags composition, it started coming up with traces of Tac. Normally, we send in ferrofluid to get rid of most accelerants anyway and so there isn't really a problem. But when the ore count started getting lower and lower... Well. I ran a scan on Jarvie's computer when he left it open one day and--"

"Ok. You are so dead and I have half a mind to report you to save my own hide from your idiocy but I'll save my judgement for now. Continue." Nali noticed Jun's hand shaking more nervously than she had ever seen, taking it to calm him. The touch relaxed his hand but his face was still filled with tension and worry.

Jun continued glancing at Nali's watch seeing there was not time left in her breakfast. "S-so I ran a master scan of all quarries and it turns out every single quarry has been experiencing this, gradually increasing in Tac composition over the past month. I ran a sesmic scan of underneath the entire facility and... we are sitting undeneath the largest resivore of Tac I've ever seen. I think it goes down at least a square kilometer. I didn't get to run a tests to check if it was any bigger because Jarvie came back, but I do know that in about a month all quarries are scheduled to hit the Tac resivoire."

"That doesn't make sense. If it was as big as you said then why would they even build a quarry here. That much Tac could take out every settlement here. Not only that, but I ran a scan just yesterday and didn't get any readings of Tac at all. I don't know Jun... What are we even supposed to do. If that much Tac explodes, we won't be able to get out far enough, let alone without getting caught, in that amount of time." The two stared at each other, this time Nali squeezing Jun's hand tightly to settle her own shaking.

"If we steal Jarvies IMU... we might be able to make it, staying here is a death sentence though..." Jun looked at his now cold untouched gruel and sighed.

Nali's head was flooded with stewing thoughts, finally rising as she noticed she would be late for work if she did not head out now. "No... I know how they choose quarries. It doesn't make sense for them to pick a quarry they know will explode."

"Maybe it won't," said Jun somberly. "Maybe they WANT the Tac." he noticed his voice had risen past a whisper causing him to promptly kiss Nali on the forehead and fetch more bacon.

Nali watched him go back to the food line and gathered herself, stumbling out of the cafeteria into the cement corridors of the settlement complex. Her feet remembered the path to her IMU for her as her thoughts swarmed with Jun's revelations. Once in her mecha she sat there, not bothering to activate the unit fully just yet as the feeling of Hell being meters below her feet seeped in her conciousness.

Tac mining is banned by both national and international law due to its sheer destructive power. The ferrofluids equipped to IMUs was enough to keep small amounts of the substance from combusting on the spot, but everyone knew Tac was far too difficult to mine without risking the lives of the entire settlement. The combustion of it was too volatile to be of any real use other than as a weapon, and if the world's scars from the ancient's wars would have any lesson at all it was that such a thing only lead to everyone's loss. In short, at least in Nali's opinion, nothing good came from Tac.

Still lost in thought, but noting work needed to be done, she began to work filtering through the toxic slag for any missed Galium or Uranium. As she sifted noting that there was, indeed, a lot more Tac in the slag than she was used to. After a bit of sifting, her mecha was brought to a sudden halt as the amount of Tac in the filter triggered an automatic lock of her IMU until a techniction came to remove it. After a few moments in complete silence she finally realized why a settlement would be built underneath such a dangerous obstacle. War. No other side would see it coming. She cringed as images of what another War with Tac would mean.

As the technician finally let her out of the IMU she went back to her corridors, for the mech would be down for the rest of the day. When she opened her door, she saw Jun with a look of death on his face, clutching a red manager's id card in his hand. "What...What is wrong Jun?"

"I was off by a month."
User avatar
Gohar
Posts: 119
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2012 7:01 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Tac

Post by Gohar »

Well sis heres my review:
I incredibally enjoyed the style and the lack of information led to amazing suspense. Oh and I really enjoyed the ending too, now this needs a sequel also cuz I wanna see what happens :)
also idk why but Jarvie reminded me of Jesra and then the Iron man Jarvis AI
Overall : 10/10

Errors:
Now just to make thing better I'll just type down the corrections needed
1) abit (para 12) make it "a bit" (with a space)
2) techniction (third last para) make it "technician"
[10:37] < ri> his name is gohar
[10:37] < ri> cause he go hard
[10:37] < ri> playing discard
[10:37] < ri> no holds barred
[10:37] < ri> got that killa deck
[10:37] < ri> ya'll hit the deck
[10:37] < ri> but before you check
[10:37] < ri> it's way too late
[10:37] < ri> you already lost, mate
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