Chương 42: The First Extraction Sin

We broke camp with the overlay chirping its morning inventory, and Carl was two sentences into the day before I understood that the day had an agenda.

"The planet's geological layers contain energy reserves significantly larger than any individual site," he said.

"I have outlined the area in front of us on the overlay." I kept walking. My right hand was doing the thing again, climbing on its own, reaching for the specific area highlighted in the overlay now, a new color outline with a background hum in the gap between my palm and the air. The space was both in front of me and at a 90-degree angle from two higher dimensions to the left of that. The direction looked like the taste of blue raspberry pie and a first kiss at a county fair behind the dunk tanks.

"Not to worry you, but that Tracker bearing has also tightened since the Cemetery," Carl continued.

"Current growth rate requires three additional site-level harvests to reach additional capability that can be used to hide our signals better. Estimated time at our current rate, four to six days... we need to go faster since it seems to be getting stronger." He wasn't wrong. That was the problem with arguing against someone whose numbers were correct. Correctness has a tone, and the tone is smug. The scary thing was that I was excited.

The color, taste, and shape of what I could feel under the ground was intoxicating. It was a vein running through the heart of the planet itself.

"Well." Planet has veins. And my immediate reaction was: I should bite it. That is probably not a healthy thought for an engineer to have.

"This feels like the opening scene of someone else's villain origin story." I sighed.

"Fantastic." I looked down at the ground.

"You're proposing we vampire the planet."

"I don't believe that is an accepted engineering term."

"It is now."

"This vein running beneath our current path contains more harvestable energy than the Orchard, the Cemetery, and the Foundry combined. It is a literal gold mine of exotic particles. One focused extraction at that point. The jump would be significant. But if this is uncomfortable, there is also a smaller node four kilometers south. The yield is approximately twelve percent of this vein, and the particles are not of as strong a density. The ecological impact is approximately three percent.

The route is longer and riskier but has some neat features as well." If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I want the record to show that I heard the whole alternative. Twelve percent of the yield, three percent of the impact, four kilometers south, a longer route with neat features.

I ran the numbers the way I run all numbers, and the numbers were not close, and that is exactly the point at which an honest engineer slows down, because when the numbers are not close, the decision has usually been made somewhere upstream of the math, and the math has been hired to write the press release. I knew the correct answer.

The correct answer was the small node, the three-percent scar, the longer walk, the version of me who had once stood in a foundry and left four chambers sealed because the stress map said don't. That woman had made her call before the treasure was in front of her, which, I understood later, is the only time such calls can actually be made. Unfortunately, I'd stopped listening. My hand was already reaching toward the vein beneath my feet. It wasn't just energy. It was beautiful. Clean. Dense. Ordered.

It flowed beneath the rock like a buried river of gold. My pulse sped up. Oh. That wasn't a good sign. It looked like a gold vein to a prospector. Like fresh water to someone crossing the desert. Like... I stopped myself.

"No." The shimmer swung toward me.

"What?"

"I just compared planetary resources to an oasis."

"... Yes?"

"I don't like where my brain is taking this." I looked back at the glowing river beneath my feet.

"... I'm one dramatic cape away from calling this a delicious-looking planet." In the end, I said yes. It did not feel like a fall. That is the part worth the ink. It felt like a sequence of individually reasonable steps: the Tracker was tightening, the timeline was real, the capability gap was real, the vein was simply the correct engineering answer to the constraints as stated. Every rationalization arrived wearing a hard hat and carrying a clipboard. Not one of them looked like appetite.

That is what appetite looks like, when it has an engineering degree. To the vein. To the ridiculous pile of free energy sitting beneath my feet. Carl had dutifully explained the smaller node four kilometers south, the way flight attendants explain the emergency exits. Required. Audible. Entirely ignored by everyone already committed to the bad decision of taking their carry-on luggage off the burning plane. Why pan for gold when the nuggets were already dug? My hands moved before the Orchard's lesson could.

Before the Cemetery's. Before the part of my brain responsible for restraint could file an objection. The woman who had once declared I am not collapsing a working system because it is convenient was suddenly making a very different argument. Yes, but I need this one! Huh. That sounded... uncomfortably familiar. This was fine. Totally not the opening chapter of Engineers Anonymous. My name is Morgan, and I have a drinking problem. My drink of choice is planets. Free range. Oh no, was that a pun?

I let it through anyway. Beggars. Choosers. Rationalizations. The usual. V flashed across my vision without warning. Not a memory I reached for. More like a phone notification from an app I'd forgotten to uninstall. Remember grief? Wonderful. Always nice to multitask during a planetary heist. She would've loved this. She would've laughed at me calling an energy vein "free." A little anger surfaced with the thought. Wrong time. Gold first. Existential crisis later. I reached into the vein. The extraction began.

It tasted like the color silver trying on a mango costume.