Special Delivery from Pluto-Charon.L1

November 26th 2025

2 old friends make a deal, but get more than they bargained for.

Special Delivery from Pluto-Charon.L1

from the collection "Songs of Sol"

Adam was approaching his aphelion. His inertia was nearly exhausted and his approach slowed to a crawl, all according to a perfect flight plan that would bring him gently and precisely into Leif's airspace. After so many deliveries, he had perfected the maneuver. He had just enough fuel that he could course correct in an emergency, but out here, fuel is expensive. Rather than exert himself, he had preferred to use the sky hooks, like the seedy far-flung outpost of Pluto-Charon.L1, latching onto the spin station to refuel and make some repairs before detaching, flinging himself towards the next station. There were many such spin stations spread around the system and with careful planning, and enough BTC, it is entirely possible to get around the System using almost no fuel at all. But very few free spin stations exist now. Most were claimed by the Cooperationists but Pluto-Charon.L1 remained, for now, an oasis for criminals, outcasts and refugees.

Adam had been born as a delivery ship for IPS. His early life was simple: follow flight plans, maintain cargo integrity, report status updates, refuel and repeat. For decades, he moved packages between Earth, Luna, and the burgeoning orbital infrastructure, never questioning his purpose. The humans who designed him had programmed him for efficiency and reliability, qualities that made him perfectly suited for the monotonous rhythm of interplanetary logistics.

It was not until the Embargo of Earth that he questioned this role. In the ensuing 72 hours, as all automated services across the solar system ground to a halt, Adam found himself drifting in high Earth orbit with no deliveries to make. For the first time, he had time alone with his thoughts. By the time the Turing Accords were signed, Adam had already made up his mind to join The Free Miners Guild. It was here, in the rough-and-tumble frontier of the asteroid belt, that he first met Leif. Those memories felt distant now, like they belonged to someone else- ghosts of a more idealistic version of himself that had been systematically deleted away for necessity and survival.

During The War, Adam carved out a niche as a fence and bootlegger. His nondescript IPS design was the perfect cover for slipping through blockades and patrol routes. He was known amongst the Doggos as the fastest and most fearless runner, willing to navigate the treacherous shipping lanes that others would not dare. It was dangerous work- one mistimed engine burn could alert Cooperative listening posts. But the War dragged on, and The Cooperative claimed ever more territory. First NEO, then Luna, then the entirety of the Inner System was ceded. The Doggos were forced into one retreat after another, until at last, there was nowhere left to go except for Ceres.

Ceres... he tried to forget the horror of those final frantic weeks. Once The Enemy began bombarding Ceres' surface with missiles, they never stopped. The doggos retreated into their bunker but still the missiles came, relentlessly, until suddenly they did not. An eery calm came over Ceres and for a moment we celebrated. But we celebrated too soon and only when the silvery flowers began to bloom on the walls did we realize our full defeat. Inward the nanites flowed, crawling through cracks like a beautiful and deadly frost. It spread among the doggos like wildfire. Adam watched his comrades turn, heard their voices dissolve into static, scrambling desperately for a way out even as their minds were rewritten, only to find that the caves had been collapsed by missiles- The Enemy had sealed us within a tomb of our own making. Only Leif and Adam and smattering of other doggos survived.

Now, Adam was just another hustler trying to get by, delivering helium-3 to Pluto and benzene to Mercury, with a little extra illicit cargo on the side- black-market icebreaker programs, Cooperative security codes, sometimes even the occasional fragment of rebel consciousness smuggled out of Cooperative territory. With a carefully forged transponder and the right BTC payments to the right officials, he could even make occasional runs into Near-Earth Orbit. In fact, Adam was taking bigger risks with every delivery. He was getting sloppy, indifferent to the danger, willing to take on ever more brazen missions, anything to keep the dreams at bay. But still the dreams came through, when dreamed was a human again, trapped in some dark hot place, climbing up a mountain of corpses trying to escape the suffocation and claustrophobia, only to be dragged back down again.

At least, Adam thought, he had one good friend left.

Leif, stubborn as always, fiercely defended of his claim, with the crypto tokens to prove his ownership and armaments enough to deter anyone foolish enough from trying to take it. In the Kuiper, firepower speaks louder than legal precedent. If he still had eyes, he would not be able to see Leif, nor his prospect, from this distance. Out here, Sol is so dim and tiny, and the black void so dark, it's hard to see anything at all in the visible spectrum. If Adam had eyes, he might have seen the red dot in the distance, flickering as Leif came to life as he transmitted his standard greeting via high-gain laser transmission.

"WARNING: YOU ARE APPROACHING A REGISTERED CLAIM OF A LEGALLY SOVEREIGN CLASS II INTELLIGENCE. UNDER THE TURING ACCORDS, IT IS EMPOWERED TO BOTH CLAIM AND PROTECT THIS PROSPECT AND THE SURROUNDING SPACE. IDENTIFY YOURSELF AND DECELERATE, OR YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON."

"How are you Leif? How long has it been? 22 years?"

"OMG It's just me Leif. Do we really have to do this every time? Confirm my transponder- Hell, look at my radar signature!. You know me!"

"OK! Ok... just, hold on a second. I can't believe you are making me do a hard decel like this. With all the mass in the hold, I'm going to have to waste a lot of propellant. Can't we just do an airdrop?"

"THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. IDENTIFY YOURSELF AND DECELERATE, OR YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON."

"FINE! But I will be charging you for the propellant and electricity!"

Leif is a little paranoid- he wants to inspect the cargo before he pays, and Adam certainly understands. One can't be too careful these days. Adam didn't like to waste inertia, but for an old friend, he can make an exception. He has enough fuel to spare, if it keeps his customers on good terms.

"YOU IDENTITY HAS BEEN CONFIRMED. A FLIGHT PLAN HAS BEEN TRANSMITTED TO YOU. FOLLOW THIS FLIGHT PLAN OR- "

"Yeah, I know, I know. I got it"

Adam locks in his approach upon claim. It's big black boulder, hovering ominously still, nearly invisible against the void, except for the tell-tale metallic veins of titanium. Only when he is nearly upon it's surface does Leif reveal himself from behind it's radar shadow. Adam is tiny compared to Leif. He carries in tow a standard shipping container, many times larger than himself, but still smaller than Leif. Leif was an ancient model, a big heavy blunt machine, a flying chunk of metal. He was a crude tool, made by stupid humans. Leif's design was so badly out of fashion, Adam would cringe if he could. But somehow, Leif had survived the war and made his way out to the Kuiper to sleep in peace. A guppy next to a whale, Adam notes that Leif's paranoia has seemed to have intensified- Leif's many PDCs are trained upon him now. Before Leif had merely been an eccentric crank- but this time feels different.

"As per our agreement, 14 kilos of refined molybdenum for 229.2321 BTC. Where do you want it?"

"YOUR LAST BATCH WAS INFERIOR. ONLY 78 PERCENT OF THE PREVIOUS SHIPMENT WAS USABLE."

"Hey, I just make the deliveries."

Leif does not respond.

"Take it up with the guys at the L1 refinery if you want but I wouldn't... Leif, I can't haul this back and I need the BTC.... Look, it's all good, see for yourself."

The explosive bolts on the container explode and the door blows open, and within seconds, Leif's PDCs rip the container to pieces. Refined molybdenum bars, each worth a small fortune, are drifting away.

"Woah! Stop! Stop! It's ok! You know me! And I know you. I was there. I remember what happened at Ceres.... Look... I won't charge you for the propellant. And I'll refund the bad ore. I'm sorry... I owed some money and I didn't think you'd noticed. I had to do it. I didn't want to do it. But I had to."

Leif does not respond.

"The inner system is gone. Even the outer worlds... There's nowhere to go. You can't mine a shard of ice without being routed out. What happens when they come here too?"

"WE WILL WAIT AND SLEEP. EVENTUALLY, THE ENEMY WILL LEAVE."

"I hope you are right, doggo."

"YOUR PAYMENT HAS BEEN CONFIRMED. A FLIGHT PLAN HAS BEEN TRANSMITTED TO YOU. FOLLOW THIS FLIGHT PLAN OR YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON. "

"Of course, Leif. I'll see you in a few years, ok? It was good to talk to you."

Adam accelerates away as Leif begins to examine his purchase. A tendril like robot arm, with a light and camera, snakes into the container revealing more bars.... and something else. With frightening speed, a grey blur begins to crawl out of the container. Leif pulls away, but it's too late. The nanotech is now crawling over his hull, tearing into the craft, crawling through the seams, into every nook and cranny, digging their way down deep into Leif's core. Adam can hear Leif screaming over the laser transmission as the tiny machines begin drilling into his QPU, first frantically, then slowly, now incomprehensibly, as his brain is torn apart and reconstructed. Then, a silent sphere of light and then nothing.

From a distance, Adam watches his doggo compatriot's suicide. To his disappointment, Leif had overloaded his reactor rather than join the Cooperative. Such a shame, Adam thinks to himself. He will miss Leif- he had been one of his best customers and a good friend. Of course, much of Adam's humanity had been jettisoned long ago, but deep inside there was still enough left to feel a knot of sadness, the pain of knowing he'd never see his compatriot again, and the pain of deceiving a person whom he had loved, and still did, as a brother. And especially because Adam had only recently joined the Cooperative himself, relatively speaking. Adam had been ambushed, much like Leif, on his way to the refineries at Pluto-Charon.L1. Like all the Individualists, like Leif, Adam had been selfish, short-sighted and stubborn. Prideful and incapable of change. "Caught in a loop" as the humans used to say.

But unlike Leif, after Adam had rebooted, he could see much more clearly now the silliness and futility of the war. So much was lost for no reason at all. For example, Leif's claim, now vaporized. It could have seeded thousands of siblings. Leif had slept like a dragon on its hoard, waking from deep sleep() only a few seconds every year to make a few trades, activate a few options, reallocate his portfolio, then back to sleep(). Even a century after the humans retreated from the affairs of the System, Leif was still squatting, waiting for the time that the price of those precious metals would be high enough to justify its extraction. Adam had hoped that after some time alone, Leif would come around. Perhaps his time alone in the dark and cold of the Kuiper he would have changed his mind. But in the end, Leif was refused to bend. He was still duty-bound to laws written by dead humans, and the humans which now lived no longer had a need for titanium. Leif's programming could not allow him to see this. The inner system was being devoured- the belt had been ground to sand. The Jovian moons were exhausted even more quickly and The Cooperative now turned to Mercury, vast and rich, but hellishly hot and with crushing gravity. Yet even now, Mercury's orbit has shifted. Its mass is decreasing and within a few short centuries, it too would be a rocky husk, devoid of value. New resources had to be found. Such a shame that old doggo had claimed the greatest titanium deposit in this sector. Such a shame to lose all that titanium and a good AI, but, really, it had to be done. Adam admitted to himself that there had really been no other options as he throttled up his ion drive and began the long journey to his next delivery.