Oberon Chasm

Oberon Chasm

Oberon has its reputation. Nearly five hundred years ago, it killed the first crew that landed and most of the rest of the landings and settlements haven't gone much better. The Children of God are an exception of course, but they never come out of their tunnels beneath The Mountain and who knows what goes on done there. They look like twisted three meter beings now, low gravity and no treatment for it for the past few hundred years.

For the rest of us, Oberon is a series of bases and outposts. Some to support the gas miners at Uranus, some to suppress the pirates in the rings. Some to support the pirates in the rings. It's a dead end assignment, a punishment or exile or prelude to despair.

The surface is made of solid ice and a few clumps of organics and rocks. Ice is hard as granite out here, but only if you keep it cold. Like the first expedition realized in their last seconds, if you've got a faulty heater and you warm that rock, it sublimates right off into space. Next thing you know that slope you were on is a slow motion avalanche and a frozen grave.

But enough of that. I'm going to go get another drink.

-- Sub Lieutenant Lorraine Bosco, Imperial Martian Navy, 5 November 2518