Utopia Gone, Part 2
Maxwell Dent — Captain Maxwell Dent to the men he commanded — stood on the command deck of the United Enclaves of the North cutter class ship “UENN Wake Darmekus”. It was a shiny new vessel Captain Dent was more than happy to command, even if it was only just a system ship. He wished it had been named something more fearsome, but since it was honoring a mythical hero, he couldn’t complain too much. The name didn’t really matter to him in the end. All that mattered to Captain Maxwell Dent — Dentist when he and his wife were alone — was the Cause, the Mission, and his Men.
That’s what was bothering Dent at the moment. He had his Mission and his Men, but where was the Cause? Picking up a science experiment off one of the ultra-elite pleasure moons didn’t seem worthy of such a glorious ship and crew. Weren’t there ships in distress that needed saving, starving colonies that needed food dropped to them, or space pirates that needed captured? All of these he had done before, but now he was stuck with this corporate transport job. How did Nex-Delta get the UEN to dispatch us? he wondered, wishing he hadn’t drawn this assignment. Dent had it though, and he, along with his men, would do the job in record time and to the best of their combined abilities.
“This pleasure moon isn’t very big. Why is it taking so long to find the target?” he asked, a hint of frustration entering his voice. They had circled around the small moon several times, but had yet to see any sign of the subject. After a moment of thought, an idea occurred to him. “According to the briefing, there is no way this guy could have gotten off the rock, so he must be underground somewhere. That’s the only explanation for where he went. Set the equipment to probe under the surface. We could probably see through the whole damn rock, but that might return false positives. Set the resolution for a depth of twenty meters for the time being. See if that returns any results.”
The ship’s communications officer configured the equipment with the appropriate settings and the ship began making passes. After a brief time the officer hailed the captain and told him a lone figure had been found in a cave five meters below the surface. Dent was angry with himself for not performing the depth scan earlier. The guy had seen or heard the ship, gotten spooked, and run to the nearest cave to hide.
“Keep the scan going and let me know if he moves. Bring the ship in as quietly as possible so he won’t get more spooked than he already is. This guy has been up here by himself for a long time, so it will be a bit of a shock when he sees us. He is considered valuable data and is not to be damaged, even if he resists. Is that understood?” All the crew nodded and gave a hardy “Yes, sir,” in answer.
