> “...2041 was the year mankind discovered they were not alone in the universe. On February 24th 2042, Tesla launched the first spacecraft (Phoenix-1) with the resources to colonize Mars. On May 12th 2042, Phoenix-1 touched down…”
>
> ~Brianna Musk
>
> The Colonisation of Mars: The Rise of Tesla and Mankind
2687-February-19 - Roddea System
I blasted the last piece of my assigned asteroid with the mining laser, pulverising the rock to clean up after my excavation of the rock. I know that most miners out here did not give a fuck about procedure and cleanup, however, I had nearly died two years ago because some fuckwit had left debris behind.
This particular asteroid had been disappointing, less than a hundred tons of low grade iron ore, barely enough to pay for Hoggart’s exorbitant rental fees. It would probably not cover getting the air recycled, the hydrogen tanks fuelled up, nor would there be any leftover to help pay next month’s rent and food, which was also exorbitantly expensive on Hoggart’s Hub.
Only the fact that there had been around forty kilos of low grade gemstones in the rock, made me able to pay for all of this trip’s expenses without using any of my savings. Doing a quick check of my credit stick told me I had saved up eight thousand credits plus change, and that would not cover the upcoming rent that was 12,000 for the month. Meaning the last two days were a loss. The next couple of outings had better pan out, or I would lose access to the mining craft.
My life might also be in danger. Hoggart was not known to let charity cases hang around his station, and it was cheaper to kill them than to send them away.
I had been a miner in this ass-end of the universe for the last seven years, ever since my father died in an “accident”. The accident was calling one of Hoggart’s pirates for a cheat at the card table. The pirate did not like that.
Being a thirteen year old with no other living relative, I only had one choice and that was to take over doing what my father did, renting a mining craft and mine some asteroids. Times had been hard, just enough money to pay for expenses.
Being hard strapped for creds meant that I had never gotten saved up enough to catch a ride out of the system on one of the traders. Not even as a crewmember. No one had wanted to take on a minor as crew, and those who wanted were even shadier than Hoggart and his men.
Sure the corporate freighters had no problems buying the spoils of my hard labour, the system was not incorporated into one of the civilizations, but taking me back to one of the civilized systems as part of the crew was out of the question. When I turned 18 I did not have the skills they wanted, and they rarely had an opening. Not many left their vessel in lawless systems.
Shaking my head to rid myself of unpleasant memories, I turned my attention back to my mining craft. I checked the scanner to see if I had missed any of the tagged pieces, not that I ever did, but it was on my checklist so I did it. Satisfied that I had not messed up, I moved the arms into a rest position and disabled the synced link between the craft and my suit. Next, I reengaged the forward shield emitters.
Finally able to move my arms without accidentally bashing the craft to pieces, I stretched as well as I could in the cramped cockpit. When the crick in my back cracked I immediately felt better. I grabbed the stick and engaged the manoeuvring thrusters to turn around. When I was pointing in the general direction of the station, I fired up for the engines.
Only to a fifth of the maximum thrust the little craft could manage though. I was not stupid enough to fly around at neck breaking speed in a fucking asteroid field. Too many hotshots and drunks dinged up their mining crafts, racking up debt with Hoggart. Those that did not pay, were invited to leave by the front door and walk to the next system. Without a suit.
I mean, it is not like the mining crafts are super fast, only able to achieve 0.0005c. It is not like it is the speed record set by the latest engine revealed by the Lokreian Hegemony at 0.005c. However, who in their right minds would voluntarily fly at speeds exceeding 1500 kilometres per second inside a freaking asteroid field? Too many things could go wrong, even if you had an enhanced reaction system.
Since I did not have an ERS installed, it was much more sensible to drift around inside the field at around 30 kilometres per second. With the scanner’s range that should afford me enough time to react to any anomalies that might pop up.
Since the asteroid I had bought the claim for had been in the outer edges of the field, I was able to get a clear path to the station in just fifteen minutes. I had to alter course a few times to get around the larger pieces of rock picked up by the scanner, while the shield shrugged off the debris left by other miners. Filth, the lot of them.
Clear of the asteroid field I cranked up the thrust and engaged the autopilot. I would have an hour and eighteen minutes before I would be hailed by flight control, so I leaned back in the seat and decided to take a nap. Had worked for the last thirty-two hours to finish the cheapskate of an asteroid, so some rest was definitely needed.
With a few thoughts, I ordered my Synaptic Computer to wake me in sixty minutes, or if any warnings in the mining craft went off. Next, I activated sleep mode and found myself getting more tired quickly. Within thirty seconds I was asleep.
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My SynC woke me up sixty minutes later as ordered and though I could have slept another ten hours with ease, the short nap did me good, I felt more alert. Almost bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as the old Earth saying went. With practiced ease, I set about getting ready for the final approach for Hoggart’s Hub.
Eighteen minutes after my wakeup call, I got hailed on the craft’s comm array. “Mining Craft Delta-Alpha-Niner-One-Papa, this is Controller Five at Hoggart’s Hub, welcome home. We’re transmitting nav points, please follow them to docking bay Beta. You’ve been assigned berth Six-Echo.”
The nav points flashed in over the comms, and I transferred them to the autopilot. Immediately, the speed of the craft slowed as power to the engines were reduced and the retro thrusters engaged to slow down the craft. The hotshots would often take their crafts in manually, performing insane maneuvers at stupidly fast speeds, just to earn some extra bragging points.
“Controller Five, this is Delta-Alpha-Niner-One-Papa nav points received, auto-pilot engaged, berth Six-Echo is understood,” I replied with the required response. “And thank you, I’m looking forward to stretching my legs.”
Despite having slowed down, I was still flying at one hundred kilometres per second as the space station grew closer.
The station was big and ugly. It was a mess for several reasons. Unlike normal space stations where there was science and aesthetics put into the building, this station was slapped together with modules and old spaceship hulls meant for different stations.
When the station expanded, the expansions were just haphazardly put down wherever there was room, no forethought, or any thought at all, was put into placement. Because Hoggart’s men were lazy, it was also run down, breaking apart in non-essential areas. Only the bare necessary maintenance was done, often the life support system would break down for hours at a time.
When I was a thousand klicks from the station, the speed was reduced further to five kilometres per second. The speed was further turned down when we hit the last hundred klicks. As I drifted into docking bay Beta we were only doing ten kilometres per hour all speed delivered by manoeuvring thrusters.
The autopilot took me into berth 6E, where the docking arms caught the craft, and the giant steel doors closed behind me. A bit of jostling, as the docking clamps engaged and moved me into the right position.
The lighting in the berth was red, indicating that there was no atmosphere. I waited for two minutes before the light turned normal and I got a message on my SynC telling me that the atmosphere had been established and normalized in the berth. A green lamp across from the cockpit lit up as well.
After disconnecting the sanitation line from my suit and taking off my helmet, I opened the cockpit and started to clamber out. Halfway down, I heard the sound of the airlock opening, most likely to admit a Berth Attendant, the polite word for Hoggart’s Thugs coming to shake you down. Looking over my shoulders I had to quickly hide a frown. ‘Fuck me. Lady Luck really hates me today.’
It seemed my lack of luck had followed me home. The Berth Attendant, which should really be called the Extortionist instead, today was the worst of Hoggart’s lackeys: Liam “Fucking Leprechaun” O’Keefe.
He grifted an extra ten percent for himself on both what we were given for the resources we hauled in, and what we had to pay. That meant the last of my savings would be gone. More importantly, he was on the top of the list of people I would like to kill. My only thought was, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’
“Ah, if it isn’t Beanpole,” Liam said with a gleeful grin. “So what do you have for us today?”
The red-haired midget took out a holographic datapad. Behind me, I heard the crane move into position to remove the cargo module. I heard the clunk when the crane made the connection with the 5 by 2 by 3 metres module.
“Tsk tsk, only around nineteen cubic metres after so many hours of work, how disappointing that must be,” he said with obvious fake sympathy. “And most of it is low grade iron ore. You know, the prices are a little lower than what it says on the Stationnet. I can only offer you four hundred and forty-eight creds per ton.”
I quickly sent a query and was returned with a price list that was updated just three minutes ago. The price was listed at 508 credit per ton. Fucking bastard. I checked the price for assorted low-grade gemstones as well, which was 84 credits per kilo.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“For the gemstone, also low grade, I can offer you seventy-five creds per kilo,” he said with a fake apologetic smile. “So sorry, the back-office is a little slow sometimes.”
I really wanted to kick the midget in the nuts. Even though I was close to a metre taller than him, he outweighed me, and all of it was muscles, so it would in all likelihood end up badly for me. He had been born on a high-gravity planet so he had a squat build. He was around 129 centimetres tall and almost as wide across the shoulders. He had killed more than one miner objecting to his grifting or cheating at cards. My father was one of them.
“Sounds good, Mister O’Keefe,” I said trying to unclench my teeth and hands, plastering a fake smile on my face. He had also killed someone for not calling him Mister. Hoggart’s Hub was a dangerous place to live.
He started listing the charges, “Good, so rental for yesterday and today comes to fifty thousand credits.”
‘No, it’s only forty-five thousand,’ I thought but did not object in fear of being taught an object lesson.
“Another five hundred and fifty for recycling air and emptying sanitation.”
‘Five hundred,’ I corrected mentally.
“And you used a lot of hydrogen fuel, so that’ll be another one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four credits.”
‘Whatever, you fucking weasel,’ I thought, resisting the urge to kill the bastard that had just fleeced me for a little over eleven thousand credits. However, there was no one to complain to. Not out here. Hoggart was the law, and Hoggart liked Liam. Had laughed and slapped him on the back the last time he had killed someone complaining about him. That is what you get for living on a station run by a “former” pirate lord.
“So you owe the station—” he started.
“Five thousand six hundred and twenty-eight creds, yes I can count,” I said with a bit more venom than was wise. However, I could not help myself.
His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. However, I did not get shanked then and there. Instead, he pulled out a credstick. “Time to pay the piper.”
‘The Leprechaun,’ I mentally corrected. With a shrug, I pulled out my credstick and paid the invoice he had sent me.
A beep from the datapad, which was superfluous in the first place, made the man smile. “Thank you for using Hoggart’s Mining Emporium.”
‘Not like I have any fucking choice,’ I thought sourly.
With that, he turned around and sauntered out of the berth. I had to stay for a moment to collect myself. Also to make sure that he got a good head start. Did not want to run into him again today. Instead of wasting the time while waiting, I put a call through to the Mining Union. It was not a real union, just what everyone called it. It was a custom.
My SynC high-jacked the signal from my left eye and replaced it with the feed from the call. An old haggard looking human female answered, “Union, what ya want?”
“I’d like to mark a claim for an asteroid,” I replied to Mussenil Bramlin, the most cantankerous of the workers at the Union office.
“Size?”
I really wanted to say ‘giant’ or ‘huge’, but because of a lack of credits, I ended up saying, “Large.”
“One kay,”
My SynC displayed the invoice, and with a heavy heart, I paid the one thousand credits. Leaving me with just 1,431 credits. The call ended abruptly, being replaced by a map of the eleven asteroid belts in the system. I had mined in the main one, the closest one, because it was a long time to get to the others and work on them. Upwards of five days to get there, and the same to get back.
With that long a trip, you would need to use the full sanitation equipment, which was exceedingly uncomfortable and yucky. You could forgo using everything on the shorter trips, because the SynC could only delay bowel movement for two to three standard days. However, you would still be very uncomfortable, just not as much.
The other problem was that with the travel time to the other fields the yield had to be very good. With only thirty to a hundred cubic metres of cargo space, it would be hard to justify the expense, because it would be at least twelve hours and twelve hours back. That was 22,500 creds, not including fuel, and that was just to get there and back.
With a sigh, I zoomed in on the main field, I could see where the other miners had already staked claims. You could only claim one asteroid at a time, and it was only yours for 72 hours. Anyone jumping a claim would be dealt with by one of the two roaming patrols. As would anyone mining an asteroid without having a valid claim. At least on this point, Hoggart upheld the law.
I moved away from the more popular area of the asteroid field. It would add another half-hour travel each way for me, but staying away from the knuckleheads was the safest. You never knew whenever a dullard would fuck up and damage your craft, and then you were paying out your nose for that. Happened to me twice.
I found one that was just on the verge of being considered huge instead of large. I almost picked that one, but another one nearby, a smaller one caught my attention. At first, I thought it was the shadows from the other asteroids playing a trick, but it looked like the new asteroid had an opening in it. It piqued my interest. It might have been mined in the past by the Primogenitors before they disappeared.
If it had, there would most likely be nothing of worth left. However, besides the two Hyperlane Gates, there had been no signs of the Primogenitors in Roddea System. No battle sites, no former inhabited planet, no terraforming, no nothing. However interesting it was, it was still one of the smaller asteroids in the large category.
I turned my attention back to the almost huge asteroid and was about to select it. Better to go with volume than mildly mysterious and interesting. Nevertheless, I stopped myself several times from locking in my selection. In the end, I gave a sad shake of my head and selected the mysterious asteroid and almost confirmed it without thinking.
‘You’re too much of a dreamer, Xan,’ I thought derisively, and selected the almost huge asteroid again and this time I followed through. My financial freedom, if not my life, was depending on the selection being a good one. I had to make sound logical decisions if I wanted to keep on living. There was no room for dreams, not on Hoggart’s Hub.
With heavy footsteps, I made my way out through the airlock and into the base proper. The walk home was familiar and dreadfully boring. Not even the corpse lying in a dark side-corridor at the edge of the market hub was any surprise. A few people were standing around talking.
“—fake credstick,” I heard a Minnesian say, or rather click. The insectoid’s mandibles clicking was translated by my SynC. I did not recognize him or her, but then again the ant-like aliens all looked alike. With the wings folded, I could not see the pattern on them, which was the only thing that made it possible to tell them apart. Even then it was freaking difficult to distinguish them.
There were only a few dozen of them onboard, a fellow pirate crew that had joined up with Hoggart. Not a lot of aliens out in this particular ass-end of nowhere. The most direct routes all went through the Holy Terran Empire, a xenophobic collection of the finest human assholes anywhere in the universe. Any ship carrying aliens entering their systems did so, would either be shot down or the crew enslaved. Their closest outpost was just three jumps away.
“Always some dumbasses who has to try it every few years, you would think they had learned after five hundred years of suicide by stupidity,” the human next to the Minnesian said. Even without them saying anything, I would be able to deduce what had happened. The way that the hand was held out as if paying with a credstick, and the distinct wounds and smell was familiar to anyone in the universe.
The credsticks were created by the mysterious and unseen Caretakers at the hyperlane-gates, left behind by the Primogenitors, what most people called the benevolent race of unknown aliens that had transferred all that technology hundreds of years ago.
‘Stop zoning out,’ I scolded myself in my mind. I took a last look at the corpse before moving on.
Anyone trying to transfer credits from a fake stick to a real one would get fried by an unknown energy, which was strong enough to fry ten blue whales. There was never any collateral damage, and despite the many deaths over the centuries, there was always some asshole trying to do it every once in a while. It would probably be a few years before anyone tried on Hoggart’s Hub again, though
‘With the idiots around this pigsty, it might be much sooner,’ I thought with a snort. There were no other surprises or abnormalities on the way home.
When I opened the door I saw that the holoscreen was on, set to one of the educational channels. History to be precise. It was the favourite of my roommate and the love of my life, Nova. I saw her curled up on the bed, lazily watching the show. It was an old one, celebrating the six hundred anniversary of the Revelation, when the Primogenitors had given humanity the ability to leave our solar system, without dying of old age enroute.
“Hey sweetie, I’m home,” I said in my usual greeting. I got a half-hearted answer and an accusatory stare in return. Chuckling, I said, “I know sweetie, but it took me longer than expected. Let me just get out of this suit and freshen up.”
I walked through the small apartment, actually more accurately a cabin since my apartment was in an old repurposed starship hull that was added to the space station. The cabin was only big enough for the bed against the wall, the holoscreen on the opposite side, and my recliner. Past the recliner, I made my way into the kitchenette, where an old NutriMaker took up the right side, some cupboards above them. Across from it was the door into the Sanitation Unit.
The SanU was barely large enough for me to get out of the suit. The catheter hurt almost as much taking it out as it did putting in. I felt great relief when it was finally out. Once I had shimmied out of the suit, and relieved my bladder, I took some Freshener Wipes and wiped down my body. The Fipes took care of all the sweat, stink, and grime that had accumulated under the suit, even in the cold deep dark of space.
I wish I could afford a shower, but a hundred creds a minute for a warm shower was not something I wished to pay. Water was a precious resource out in the deep dark, especially when on a station run by greedy “former” pirates. I remember when I was young and my mom and dad used to take me to the public bathhouse every second day. It had never been that expensive back then.
Thinking about my mom reminded me of the horrible day twelve years ago when Hoggart and his men attacked Androste Station. Mom had been at work, working in flight control. Hoggart and his men had killed everyone in the command module, including my mom. Just another injustice I one day hoped to repay.
I angrily threw the wipes in the disposal, took a few deep breaths to calm myself. Being calm, I became aware of the coldness of the metal deck beneath my feet, so I quickly opened the auto-washer and hung up the suit. I pulled a pair of shorts out of the washer, slipped them on and stepped into a pair of flip flops. My cabin was warm enough, it was only the deck that was cold because there was nothing between it and the Deep Dark.
I stepped out of the SanU and saw Nova sitting in the bed, waiting with an expectant look on her face. I chuckled again and sat down in the recliner. My butt had barely hit the seat before she was in my lap, pressing into me as I stroked her back.
I reclined in the chair, bringing up the leg support, and Nova immediately capitalized on it. Soon her face was in mine. I could not help but say, “God, I missed you so much.”
I got an enthusiastic “Meow”, and then she licked my nose. I reached up and started petting the grey and white cat that had been the only thing keeping me sane for the last few standard years. Or well maybe not sane, but at least preventing me from doing something terminally stupid like the guy I had seen earlier.
For the next fifteen minutes, I poured all my love into the little furball that was purring along on my chest. Petting, scratching, tickling. She was lapping up every second. However, I had other things I needed to take care of. Like removing the block on hunger pains, restarting my bowel movements, and getting something to eat, if you could call a grey tasteless cube for food.
I was not living a glamorous life, but it was mine and I was debt-free. As long as I had Nova to keep me company, life was just fine.