Mining in space is a miserable job, most of the time; but a profitable one, and far easier than the sort of back-breaking work you do on an actual planet.
When you found a nice solid spot, one with tons of valuable ore, then would come the part where you needed to get in close, break the rocks apart, sometimes smelt it a bit to split out all the useless garbage; and then pack it up on a cargo ship for sale.
If you were one of the big companies, you might be doing this with a giant, armored, ship, controlling thousands of drones that planted explosives, fired lasers… but for Mike… it was just a bit more physical.
He watched his own reflection in his visor as sweat dripped down his face, shaking his head as the heat exchanger fell behind for the thousandth time… and leveled the mining laser back on the same spot. Tiny flecks of vaporized rock burst up into the void, and he hooked the laser up to his hip, before lifting out his line tool; and firing another grapple into the new hole.
He settled the core drill in place, mounted to the grapple to give it something to push against, and relaxed for a bit, just floating for the moment.
“Alright, Barb, what’s this one say?” He glanced back at the line. There were dozens of grapples planted in the rock, over a kilometer of line, to help him keep himself near the thing. Not enough metal for magnets, not enough mass for gravity… one solid push and he’d be on a one-way trip to the void if he wasn’t careful.
And didn’t have friends.
“I’m actually showing a bit of Platinum. Looks like this is another one that’s part of that same deposit. From the signs, there’s likely enough of that to make it worthwhile, and we might actually have a usable amount of Iridium.”
Mike nodded. It took time, and power, to melt down a rock this big. It would cost a crazy amount to haul the whole thing back to civilization, so either they melted down the whole thing, using insane amounts of power to generate some artificial gravity and spin it to split out the useful metals… or they did thousands of scans to find the most valuable parts and just melted down those bits.
The big operations used solar collectors and big-ass fusion plants, and threw every rock with enough value in it right into a smelter. They didn’t have that kind of power… they needed to find just the right rocks… or even just the right chunks of bigger rocks.
“How many is that? What’re our odds?”
“Pretty good, Mike. If you look about thirty meters to your right, there’s a good-sized pockmark where something hit it. Be a good place to drill in and grab a core sample.”
“On it.” He glanced over. His HUD had popped up, displaying the new spot, and he started gently floating in that direction, swapping back to the laser, to soften up a bit more rock to help the grapple adhere better.
A sudden burst of static.
“Holy… fuck. Mike, they’re back!”
He stopped. Froze in place. That…. No. Why? Why the hell would they come back again? Hadn’t they gotten everything worthwhile the first time?
“...Shit. Do they see us?”
“Not that I can tell. I just shut off everything but direct comms, so hopefully they don’t…. Shit.”
A video appeared on his HUD. It showed one of the domes; one of a handful of tiny mining colonies in the area, from an outside perspective; one of the sensor arrays outside it used to watch for incoming debris.
A shape; long, sleek, and black, swooped down over the barren rock. And a long wave of burning plasma washed over the whole thing. The last image the camera picked up was the dome bursting, airlocks failing, thousands of tiny fires glittering in the darkness, before the camera was melted down as well.
“...Pull me in. Dropping the line. We should get ready to run.”
“Did you see how fast that ship was? No running involved. We’re hiding. And praying. If its anything like last time, they’ll steal all the valuables, any processed ore, and just get the fuck out.”
“Three times. Why the hell would they come back three times?”
Mike shook his head. He was pulling on the line, heading back for the ship; the machines could pull him back on their own, but every fraction of a second might count.
He inhaled deeply, trying to control his heartbeat as he pulled away from the rock, moving on his tiny lifeline back to the ship. “Any idea where it is now?”
He could hear her breathing. Either she was too close to the mic, or she was about to have a panic attack. “Barb. We’ll be okay. We just stay quiet, and…”
“Wait! I see it again! Its….. its headed this way! Fuck! Mike, they’re coming for us!”
Mike could’ve sworn that it wasn’t a ship headed his way… but a monster. Long, serpentine….and rather than firing a weapon, it somehow spat out a long blue-white stream of plasma that melted Barb from existence only moments before it ended his own.
***
Kyle didn’t look too unusual. An ordinary, albeit a bit slim, young man with the pale skin typical of folks with a normal biology who spent too much time in space. Dark hair, green eyes… he wouldn’t stand out from a crowd, with or without the black bodysuit he wore; the usual you’d expect on a space station. Slim, sleek, and with an obvious pouch behind the neck for an emergency face-cover in the event something went terribly wrong.
There were a fair number of odd metal ports on the suit; attachment points for equipment.
Granted, at the moment, he was the only one in the corridor; one of numerous salvage yards in a star system that was the collective dumping ground of wrecked and ruined ships, anything that might be worth putting back together, for hundreds of light years.
He leaned against the glass, staring at the hull he’d spent so much time on. She was a mis-matched bag of parts from at least four different ships; the core launch bay of a Pegasus-class corvette from the second galactic war era. The core fabricator bay from a colony ship. The power plant from some Directorate vessel. All of it neatly packaged into a cylinder formed of hull plates from at least three of the same model of Independent vessel, studded with no less than sixteen defensive pulse laser turrets.
He’d spent over a month rearranging parts, welding them into place, smoothing this bit there, that one over here… and made her superficially look like a live cargo hauler with a few extra guns strapped to her.
He’d had no less than six different ideas as he made her… a Q-ship to make pirates think she was helpless, then spill out missiles and drones from a hundred hidden hatches. Just a generic exploration ship, with all the tools he’d need for wandering the galaxy, and the capacity to make anything he could imagine.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The reality was… the only reason it wasn’t an insanely expensive abomination was that he’d used salvaged parts for over ninety percent of her. Only the life support was brand new.
…And it was probably a mistake.
She looked fine, from the outside. But that pretty-looking cylinder was just a shell around a horrible-looking mess. The words ‘Feature Creep’ came to mind. The two extendable blast shields on either side were retracted, at present. She looked fairly smooth. But once they opened up so it could lay mines, or deploy drones?
Ooof.
She was heavy for her size. Made a decent mine-layer. A mediocre missile boat. Not a single actually heavy weapon on her, aside from the missiles; she couldn’t stand head-to-head with any other ship of her class.
There were, however, a couple of good things about her. Not only was she so well automated that she could fly with just a pilot, and able to make all sorts of crazy things if he had the materials and parts….
She was his. Free and clear. He was nineteen. He’d just graduated from the academy at Ash. And thanks to his family, he didn’t need to take out any loans to get himself started.
But… that did come with some problems. It was time to name her, and head out. But… there was something he needed to take care of, first.
He gently pushed away from the window, drifting across the hallway; smoothly grabbing a hand-hold on the airlock on the opposite side. He pressed the button, watching as it hissed open… and stared at the skeletal metal frame on the other side, remaining upright without anyone inside.
He hated it. No matter how long he’d worn it, it filled him with a sense of… revulsion… when he first put it on.
Shaking his head, he put the tiny metal connector on his right wrist into place… and gently rolled back into it, letting it connect along his spine, his elbows, the back of his knees, his ankles….
When the last connection was in place, there was an audible buzz… and he could feel it. His limbs were no longer obeying his commands. Limited. Secured against him doing something that might break a bone, or tear a muscle.
He sighed… and shut the inner airlock. Time for one last argument. One he was unfortunately likely to lose.
***
When the screen first popped up, the image of an oversized bone-white animal skull framed around an armored helmet appeared… before being abruptly pulled out of frame, replaced by his mother… a beautiful dark-haired woman who didn’t look to be any older than himself and with an extremely similar face; especially the nose.
He wished, not for the first time, he’d taken more after his father.
“Well. All the tests are done, I’m ready to take her out. I figure I’ll go on a bit of a shakedown cruise, visit a few different systems, make sure everything’s working properly… then maybe take a job somewhere out in the Independent sectors.”
She glowered at him for a moment. “Oh really. And with what captain?”
“With me. Why would I need anyone else?”
“Kyle. You’re still in Dub space. Operating a ‘ship’ with a Dub code. Which means you need a certified captain aboard to do anything more than system tests.”
Kyle stared at her. “And we both know I’m qualified. I’ve met every single requirement, most of them a dozen times over; the last one was filled when I graduated last week. The only way I wouldn’t get that license is if someone lied to the review board.”
She grimaced. “... failing to submit a document isn’t the same thing as lying.”
“How many recorded hours of piloting do I have?”
“....I’m not going to answer that one.”
“Because you don’t want me to use a recording of you for the board?”
“....Definitely not answering that one, either.”
He sighed. “I can get the hours I need logged without the files or corroboration. Its just going to mean I’m stuck here for another year, paying someone to hang out while I do what I’ve known how to do since I was six. What do I have to do to get you to actually do what you’re supposed to?”
She studied him for a moment on her screen. “Don’t do it alone. I’m worried that you’re going to make a mistake. Run into an ion storm and short out your restrictor suit, break something. Get stranded with something you can’t fix and never come home. Promise me you’ll bring some friends with you, or hire a crew.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Something I can’t fix. I built the whole damn ship from scrap in between classes. The whole point of all the automation, the drones, was not to need a crew. And you know full well I don’t have any friends… anymore. I can go fine without the suit for a while, long enough to fix it if I have to.”
She frowned. “Take at least one mission with an existing captain. Hire on a crew. Get all the kinks worked out. Prove to them that the ship works, enough for them to be willing to ride it with you. You do that, I’ll sign off that you flew enough hours that the mission pushed you over the edge.”
“...I want that in writing before we leave. I don’t want you stringing me along for just one more mission forever, or I’ll just berth the ship for a while and fly shuttle hops til I can go.”
“Done. You send me the mission profile, I’ll write the affidavit for however many hours you need, and supply enough recordings of your past flight time, to make up the difference.”
Kyle sighed. “Whats the point to all of this?”
“After you fly with a crew for a while, I doubt you’ll want to do it on your own anymore. Even if you don’t end up seeing combat, living and working beside people all day has a way of changing your attitude.”
“Fine. I’ll find a job, something with a listed threat range of Gunship, or lower, that won’t take too long.”
She gave a firm nod. “Perfectly fine. I’ve seen the specs on that ship of yours, and I wouldn’t want you taking it into a fight against another corvette anyway. Even if it does mass more than any other corvette I’ve ever seen.”
***
Kyle stared down the jobs board. The Ash system served as a training ground and a hub for thousands of mercenaries in this half of the galaxy. People trained here would go on to join anything from the larger organizations like the one his uncle ran down to their own personal smaller crews, and everything in between.
The number of available missions was staggering, with time estimates ranging from days to months to years, and threat assessments from fighter or squad level up to army and fleet level.
The biggest client, by far, was Border Security and Exploration. They sent out hundreds of colony fleets every year, often crewed by the unwanted detritus from heavily populated worlds, or the cheapest slaves from Alliance ones, and scattered them out in the dark in the hopes of finding something either to exploit themselves or sell to one of the nations out there.
They had no less than seventeen missions that fit the profile he wanted. ETA less than 6 months, threat at gunship level or below.
He selected one fairly quickly; a pirate gunship was stalking this one specific BSE system that had half a dozen mining colonies scattered across it. The ship would hop in inside the asteroid belt so it wouldn’t be noticed, use a plasma beamer that was fairly impressive for a gunship but garbage for a corvette to wipe out one of the domes, steal any valuable metals, and leave.
It had done it three times so far. They didn’t have many details on it; only knew that it was too small to be a corvette or frigate based on the heat signature, had only used the one weapon, and it either had a backup cargo ship following it, or was primary a cargo ship with a gunship-scale weapon tacked on to fight civilians.
The three times thing was also telling. If the place was too valuable, there would be on-site security. No core material for making drives here, just stuff of more moderate value like gold and platinum. So anyone who would keep robbing such a cheap place…
Had to be broke, and local.
This was going to be an easy job. Trivial. He could hide a few mines outside of each colony, damage the ship on its way in, and then chase it down to finish it off.
He considered whether any of the other people who had recordings of him flying would be willing to sign the affidavit for the board… or whether he could just quietly slip out of the system to some independent world that didn’t bother with such things….
But no. His mother undoubtedly had someone watching him. And everyone who had seen him fly either worked for her, or his uncle.
For at least this one mission, he’d have to put up with a crew.
He slapped the ‘Accept’ button… and then started looking for crew. All he honestly needed was a Captain. But he’d grab another couple, just in case. And make sure he secured the ship, just in case they tried to screw him over later.
