What happened to my Asteroid? Section 49:

Commander Dickerson reviewed the few minutes around the explosion on transport 5 one more time then activated the radio link “Bay 1, lab 4.”

“Go ahead lab 4.” the operator was obviously annoyed.

“I need the preliminary report on what happened to transport 5,” She checked the mining crew rosters “And the status of the crews.”

“Sending it now Ma’am.” He tried to sound professional “But we have a real mess here right now.”

“Acknowledged.” She went into full command mode “We need to know as much as we can as soon as we can to prevent problems like this in the future.”

“Yes Ma’am, we’ll get all of the information to you as soon as we get it.  Would you like a live feed of the investigation?” That was clearly sarcastic, but it was a calculated risk.

“No, but I will need the full lab report of your next bowel movement.” She shot back.

“Excuse me?” He was definitely nervous now.

“Chill sailor.  I know you’ve got a lot on your hands but I am trying to prevent further problems and I need information quickly.” Her voice was calm and measured “And that means I need your help to do that.  Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He was relaxed now “We’ll get you what you need as soon as we have it.”

“Very Well, lab 4 out.” She couldn’t wait to get out of the space suit but the alert was still active.

She activated the link to Captain Stewart “Gwen have you figured out which bot we should send out?”

“Hi Kimmie.” She cheerfully responded “I think I found the perfect one.  It has all of the instruments we should need.  I’ll send the serial number to you.  We’ll need one of the transports to take it out there for us.”

“I’ll set that up.”  She called up the transport schedule “Any idea what happened to transport 5?”

“It looks like the oxidizer tank ruptured.” She sounded thoughtful.

“They got a lot of thrust for a simple tank leak.” Kim was skeptical.

“If the oxidizer tank exploded it could have caused a fuel leak that ignited.” Gwen speculated. “We need that investigation report to really be sure.”

“I’m grounding all transports until we have that report.” Kim determined.

“Good Idea.” Gwen checked the flight schedules. “So have we heard from our favorite love birds recently?”

“I was just about to get a status report.” Kim noticed the shuttle was approaching the second asteroid. “I’ll get back to you when I have their report.” And she switched off the link.

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