There’s something I gotta get off my chest, and I don’t care who in the Defense Federation hears it.
As you may or may not know, I’m the local Reeks-n-Wrecks contractor for this Galactic Resources District. Basically, that means I run a glorified dump for whatever the Defense Federation Forces decide is too crappy for them to fix but not quite lethal enough to justify the cost of orbiting it into a nearby star. I try to fix and sell what they ship my way or, failing that, resell the junk for scrap value. It’s a fairly good life, and I’m helping the DFF during the current Emergency, but the sheer brusqueness of the whole system amazes me. Imagine if your First Contact was with a vaguely glowing Altair ore freighter and a recorded message saying that from now on, you were Doing Your Part for the Duration! But that’s a thread for another day.
A few weeks ago, some lowlife dumped a dead core in my zone, square in the middle of the one otherwise good patch of dirt I had left. The whine of overstressed retros and the sickening crack of a fracturing entry shield is not something to make you joyous about the new day, especially if your mass detector is going mad about something that, by all laws of Curie and R’Tar, must be radioactive. Happily, my mass detector has no knowledge of the amazing properties of duralite. Focus on that thought: It’s the only good news to come of this whole mess.
For those of you whose knowledge of space travel ends with the Plutonium Teakettle making its Lunar flyby, a dead core is the remains of an overworked nuclear reactor. It’s composed of murderously radioactive molten slag (the remains of the fission core that labored unto death) encased in a single thickness of duralite. The duralite contains the radiation, with the exception of some long wave noise, and will protect the world from its noxious cargo from anything less than three hundred pounds of TNT hitting it dead-on. However, nothing can make the slag any lighter. Though a degree in hyperuranic physics would be required to know exactly how something the size of a Volkswagen Beetle can mass more than the Empire State Building, suffice it to say that nothing short of a Jovan-class engine is able to carry a dead core.
I got out of bed to see the sun glinting off of a shattered entry shield, illuminating four gaudily-colored retro rockets that would never retro-rocket again, and being sucked into the pitch blackness that is industrial-grade duralite. I saw that core, and I stared. I tried to comprehend the blatant farging zorking belgium that would dump a dead core on an inhabited world! AN INHABITED WORLD WITH PEOPLE ON IT!
There are rules we live under, us Reeks-n-Wrecks men. Rules that tell us how to dispose of different things. Laws that say which things we can chuck into a local lake and which things we must encase in concrete and bury in a god-forsaken piece of desert. Other beings are supposedly bound by those laws, or versions of them, though you’d never know it. Wherefore do I doubt? Because a dead core is a Schedule 0 Hazardous Waste. In a nutshell, that means it is:
[ul]
[li]Utterly worthless: Nothing can make use of a dead core. Those hungry for duralite won’t risk cutting into something full of deadly isotopes, and those hungry for radiation not only don’t need the hassle of cutting through duralite, but don’t want to refine something worthwhile out of the junk slag contained within.[/li][li]Hazardous: Remember when I mentioned how three hundred pounds of TNT could fragment the case, if it were placed directly on top of it? That, my friends, is a Doomsday Scenario. Fracturing the case would release enough radiation to parbroil the entire area, and enough dust and gas to severely cramp the style of anyone who uses the atmosphere for breathing. Of course, rains must fall and all streams lead to the ocean… You get the picture. Not a Nice Day.[/li][/ul]It means one more thing: It cannot be dumped on any planet that currently or may prospectively contain life. Since that is construed broadly enough to include all planets (including gas giants, which have shown to be all but sterile), the only legal way to dispose of a dead core is right into a black hole or a sufficiently large star.
Was I pissed? Sure I was pissed.
Did I call my local Resources Director? You bet I was on the horn the moment I verified what I had, and that I shot up my sensor logs along with a full and accurate report.
Did I wait for a vage non-solution cranked out by a moron with a template? Hell yeah!
Now, these weeks later, I got my response. In summary, I am to shift my shit into a collision orbit with the nearest Class G Main Sequence I can find. Well, our very own Sol is a Class G Main Sequence, so I guess I get the honors of tossing the first piece of trash into the same sun what keeps us alive. Oh, joy.
As for the problem of moving it: I think I’ve got it covered. Mostly. I used some connections in the spacecraft grey market (mods: I’m not saying how, I’m just saying what.) to wangle a Jovan-class hauler and a pilot rated with enough Orbital Mechanics to plot a safe collision orbit. It will only cost me a hundred grand.
:smack:
I might add more later on, though.