The Briefing

April 3, 2631

The foreman spoke to the anxious assembled prospectors. He mentioned the great opportunities provided by this exploration mission to an unclaimed system, the Remanus system within the Craven Cluster where riches surely abounded. Each of the indentured prospectors before him could strike it rich and could shorten the term of their contact. The foreman promised the company would pay great bonuses for minerals from the palladium group, for bountiful water and oxygen from a C-type asteroids, for precious metals, or for any other useful resources.

The noobs believed every word they heard, but Michael knew the truth. This game of chance is heavily weighted toward the house. The formula the company uses to calculate pay for claims is complex, but a terse description of the formula is the prospector must be very lucky to break the endless debt cycle.

Michael had been a noob, a poor son of a farmer from a impoverished colony world desperate for chance to escape from his birth world, just three years ago. His parents and his friends tried to persuade him that he was chasing fools gold. No deal was as good as the one the company promised.

The Praxian Exploration company promised to train each new employee if the new employee signed a contract to repay the cost for the valuable training which included the Space Prospecting skill. The laws of the Empire restricted claims for space resource extraction allowing five annual claims per system for non-planet free solar bodies by an accredited Space Prospector. Companies were permitted to purchase claims from an accredited Space Prospector, but companies were not allowed to establish a claim. Just a short five year commitment to establish the skills required for lifetime employment as a Space Prospector, the deal was reasonable.

Unfortunately, he did not read the fine print. The contract was actually an indentured servant debt contract with an average term of twenty five to forty years. One individual with existing basic skills managed to pay off their debt in 5 years, and the shameless company used this fact as their sales pitch. This successful deception occurred at colony worlds filled with plenty of fools. The Consumer Protection Bureau protected citizens at the heart of the empire, but the powerful bureau cared little for the peasants of the colonies.

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Michael activated the skills screen from his heads up display, selected the Space Prospecting skill, and studied the details for the Novice level Space Prospecting skill including the sixteen required skills.

Skill:  Space Prospector Level: Novice 100% The skill allows an individual to find and to identify valuable materials contained within solar bodies and allows the individual to register a claim for the resources. This skill increases the percentage chance of finding valuable minerals when using scanners. Required Skills Novice Prospecting Drone Control, Novice Drone Control, Novice Mining Drone Control, Novice Drone Pilot, Novice Pilot, Novice Space Mining, Novice Space Resource identification, Novice Mineral Identification, Novice Geology, Novice Space Survival, Novice Space Environment, Novice Electronics, Novice Scanners Effects +2% to find a C-type asteroid, +1% a S-type asteroid

The cost of all of these novice skills combined with the debt contract and the payout formula written into the contract formed a very clever trap. The upgrade from a novice level skill to a beginning level skill required expensive training. Praxian Exploration did not pay for indentured servants to upgrade their skills. The company only paid for one upgraded skill every 10 years as stipulated by law. The food, the board, the rental of a prospecting ship, the fuel, and the maintenance of the assigned rental ship exceeded the value of the revenue from prospecting when using the company's payout formula. The rate of return for the combination of novice level skills listed above could not offset these expenditures. Once a prospector obtained two to four beginning level skills, the prospecting ROI increased enough to payoff the contract within 5 years. Again, the scheme is a very clever trap.

He stopped daydreaming as the foreman finished with “Go out there and make us proud!”

Michael stood, moved toward the corridor, ready to board his ship like the rest of these fools except today he was going to escape or die trying.