Challenge #02423-F233: The Hubris Initiative

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting, "All the Gods are Bastards!" ~ Also by Terry Pratchett -- Anon Guest

There's inviting trouble to your door, and then there's stalking it for apparent fun and alleged profit. Inviting trouble is asking questions with obviously painful and demonstrative answers from the cosmos, like: "What else can go wrong?" or, "So what's the big deal?" or, "How can we possibly fail?" Stalking trouble... well, to do that, you would have to be Fenris Pole.

Human Fen was one of those people who don't react to trouble, they go actively seeking it out in order to punch it in the nose. They drew a conclusion from a standing start and leaped straight to it with weapons drawn. Frankly, it was amazing that they survived to adulthood, let alone Human middle age.

When facing a system potentially threatened by an apophis-class asteroid, Human Fen would fly out to the rock in question, analyse it, and devise seven different plans to stop it being so much of a threat, most usually steering it into the closest convenient gas giant or, if one wasn't available, the sun. On rare occasions, Human Fen would simply bust out the mining equipment and profit off the molecular contents. It all depended on the makeup of the asteroid in question.

Then there was the time that the asteroid was actually a stalking horse for a host of Vorax Raiders who were trying a few new tactics against the Galactic Alliance. A fact that Human Fen found out when the tactic of steering it towards certain demise repeatedly failed through naturally unlikely course corrections by the asteroid in question.

That was the true near-disaster that almost killed Human Fen, the crew of the Investigator -Fen's ship at the time- and possibly the planet they were trying to save.

Human Fen attached a fission explosive to an automated borer, and rigged it to go off when the bore stopped encountering resistance. The Vorax Raiders didn't stand a chance. The Investigator barely escaped by the skin of its metaphorical teeth. Human Fen was dangerously close to the explosion.

In fact, they were presumed lost in the effort until they turned up with a net full of asteroid and Vorax ship remains... and a minor case of radiation poisoning.

It was a miracle that Human Fen managed to die of old age, all things considered.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / innovari]

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