The Cinder Vault: Extraction and Test Station

How It Started

Cinder Vault started as a Talarq mining and test station cut into asteroid RX-922. The Range Authority approved it after Forge inspectors tested the first batch of heat-proof casings. The asteroid's ore held a rare thermite composite that fit Talarq furnace lines and reactor part testing. Ore could go straight to Mid foundries and Rim patch yards without long hauls. Keth charts called the surrounding belt stable but narrow, with small shear currents near the outer edge.

The station was built the plain Talarq way, with segmented armor, extra vents and simple, strong corridors tied to one tall refinery shaft. Every pipe and casing carried a Forge mark with its heat limit. A small fusion unit with big safety margins gave power. Crews worked six-day shifts, and one Range Authority inspector was always in command. The crew wrote down every ore pull, furnace run and pressure change. Before long it hit its targets. Passing convoys started making short stops at the docking arm for fuel cells and water.

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The Wake

The trouble started with a routine expansion. A drill team opened a new bore toward a dense pocket in the rock. The vibration graphs show a hollow space, then something heavy moving. The crew paused to foam the hole, then started drilling again at low speed. Minutes later, tremors hit sensors on three decks. Cameras caught dust columns rising inside closed tunnels. The first deaths came in the habitation block, when a corridor floor fell into a fresh shaft. The inspector stopped all work, locked the furnaces and called a roll.

The things in the dark kept coming. Six-legged animals climbed up from the bore, holding on to the metal with hooked claws. The small ones, later called wyrmlings, cut cables and suit lines. A big one slammed bulkheads and snapped braces. Power failed in the outer ring. The inspector locked the station down and split it into closed sections. The refinery burned when reactive gas hit a cracked heat exchanger. A second big one forced open the cargo bay doors and bent the docking arm. The last message was a short hazard call, then nothing.

The Range Authority arrived late. Its patrol logs list 47 dead or missing. After a short survey, the Authority closed the site as a living hazard. The Forge declared every part left inside untrustworthy. Keth charts added a warning about debris near the arm.

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Getting In

Cinder Vault is closed, but that has never stopped anyone on the Rim. Salvagers, Free Companies and syndicate scouts make short runs in when the belt is quiet. Honest buyers want a salvage notice and a contamination scan before they pay. Most crews skip that and sell to black-market buyers for cash. There is no Authority guard. Forge inspectors show up now and then to catch fake Forge marks coming out. When they arrive, stolen crates disappear into the belt.

Inside, power comes and goes in short trickles. Crews report intact storage in the office rooms, a half-collapsed refinery shaft, and a closed Command Hub full of burned consoles. Life support is dead. The docking arm is twisted and open to space. Some inner rooms still hold air behind heavy doors. The creatures are still there. Wyrmlings move in packs through the shafts and cable trays. The big wyrms guard the Refinery Core and the Extraction Bore Access and thump the floor to call the packs. No mother wyrm, called a matron, has been seen here. If one grew, it either dug deeper or died in the fire. Heat from the ore makes scans hard to read. The creatures eat the thermite veins and sometimes chew through wire coating to reach heat. They ignore empty rooms but go straight for tools, reactors, lamps and anything that shakes.

Crews get in with a short hop and a clamp on the outer spine, or by spacewalking through a vent split near the refinery mid-deck. Keth beacons around RX-922 play the standard hazard warning. By law, a crew must file a salvage notice first. Most file late, or never. Syndicate toll skiffs wait two or three jumps out, selling protection and charging lane fees. Crews who say no tend to find trackers on their hulls, or lose their radio in the wrong place.

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The Creatures

Cinder Wyrmlings. The station is full of wyrmlings. Each one is small, fast and quiet. They like low light and cling to metal. They track heat and movement through floor plates and rails. Their bite carries an acid that pits metal and eats soft material. One wyrmling is easy to handle, but they come in groups. They can strip a work suit in seconds if someone falls. They do not store food. They move, eat and move again. In low gravity they leap long gaps between ladders and broken beams.

Cinder Wyrms. The adults are bigger, armored and patient. They test bulkheads, push on braced doors and collapse weak ceilings to trap people. They hold ground around the Refinery Core and the bore and drive the wyrmlings ahead of them. Their acid spray eats through braces and grates. Their roar scrambles radios and knocks people off their feet. A wyrm will not chase far once a crew leaves its ground, but it will wait near a narrow spot and use its weight to crush.

Nests. With no matron, the creatures act as a set of linked packs. Wyrmlings lay egg clusters in hot cracks near the ore, then move on. The adults keep those spots fed by breaking open more passages. The old heat lines, the ore pockets and the burned refinery floor make perfect ground for them. Survey drones show regular patrol routes, with quiet gaps of one to two minutes when a crew can cross an open room.

What works. Bursts of light and heat draw them, so decoys work. Clean barriers that do not react slow them down. Foam plugs help for a while but melt under acid. Sound dampers on boots and tools help. Routes over live ore pockets are the worst, because the swarm defends those hard. Fire brings more of them, since burning ore makes the heat they want. Free Companies use silent sleds and magnetic crawlers to stay off the floor plates. Synthborn crews use cold frames and cutters that do not shake. Caraphex clades build trap doors and drop nets, then drag crates out on long lines.

After a run. Honest ports in this sector hold incoming crews for a spray-down and a suit check. Syndicate depots do not, and some Mid ports now turn away ships that stopped at those depots. The Forge rejects any part with acid pits unless it is retested at Tal or Scoria.

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Who Wants What

The Range Authority lists Cinder Vault as a closed hazard site but does not guard it. It posts casualty lists and hazard updates now and then. Its patrols put insured cargo lanes first, so help out here is slow. Crews caught inside without a salvage notice get fined and flagged, but most never see a patrol.

The Forge says the loss was not a Talarq failure, because nobody could have known what was in the rock. It still trusts Forge-marked stock that left before the disaster, and trusts nothing that stayed inside. It pays for test records, calibration tablets and any part that can show a test result. It hunts fake Forge marks hard. Its inspectors pay for tips and hire Free Companies for stings. A crew that brings out an untouched instrument rack with the right Forge mark gets real money.

Data brokers and the Keth. Data brokers sell current station maps, safe entry times and no-go zones. Keth crews keep the local beacons running and track drifting debris. A current map is worth the price, because cheap maps miss new collapses. Broker bulletins also say which ports buy what, and who actually pays for Cinder goods.

Syndicates run the tolls on the way in. They also buy acid-pitted parts, stamp fake Forge marks on them and sell them fast. Fake Forge parts blow up. Syndicates hire hunters to cut glands out of wyrmlings for the solvent market. Saying no to those jobs is smart unless you like losing fingers. Some syndicate crews stage spotlight fights in the refinery to draw out swarms and thin them. Most of those crews die young.

Free Companies and aid crews. Good crews work clean. They get in, pull the data and get out, then sell to the Forge or the insurers. Aid crews look for bodies and name plates so families can collect death payouts. Faith shelters in nearby ports keep a list of the dead. Bring back a name plate and they will feed you, no questions asked.