Rocksea was the name of the region. It was on the outskirts of the Podlezl system and it was basically a gigantic asteroid belt, very much similar to the Kuiper belt in Sol. It was originally simply called "asteroid sea" and, at one point, the name "Rocksea" was given. I reckon Rocksea may not be its legit name but who cares. Everyone in the region called this belt Rocksea. It was sparsely populated. The region was home to mostly small-time miners. During the colonization phase about two thousand years ago, tens of outposts were constructed to satisfy the need for an immense amount of ferocious metals. Once such rapid developments were done, the outposts were eventually abandoned and random people moved in, making their little home here and there in Rocksea. Now, what is the Podlezl system you ask? It is a solar system-like cluster that is exactly 1,001 light years away from legendary Earth. It was named after the guy who found it. It was very similar to the solar system, thus it was chosen to be colonized by mankind thousands years ago. Exactly when, I have no clue. What I do know is that it took thousands of years for colonization due to the distance. The first wave of settlers were placed in cryogenic chambers, and their ships were set on autopilot, hoping that the automated system wouldn’t crash. If the records are to be believed, the first wave of settlers never made it to the Podlezl system. They were simply lost. It was the second wave of settlers who made it there after sleeping through for 1,300 years. Ironically, by the time they arrived, subspace travel was invented, making the trip an hour at the most. However, a subspace beacon was required to maintain a portal. Otherwise, they would need to make a blind subspace travel which wasn’t too accurate and could exit to dangerous parts of the universe which kept on shrinking as well as expanding in some parts, meaning a subspace coordinate was always changing. A subspace beacon would update this information on fly, thus the initial settlers didn’t entirely waste their thousand-year old slumber for nothing because they were able to construct a beacon to establish a permanent portal without having to experiment with coordinates and potentially lose people to accidents. Granted, it took them an additional 1,300 years for them to receive the message as well as a blueprint for the beacon, but that's besides the point. At the same time, by the time they received the message, they had the capacity to build the beacon.
"ETA two hours to Oreo," A high-pitched voice cracked up through a speaker. It was my own room on a spaceship, which was nothing more than a glorified aluminum box with a simple strap on a wall to secure myself during sleep, a console, and a simple projector for a holographic screen. There was no reason for a proper bed in zero gravity, but one had to make sure that he was secured, hence the strap. Bouncing around in a metal box was lethal. Bruise was the least of your problems since you could easily crack your skull often.
"About fucking time," I muttered, "I so need a shower."
Traditional shower with flowing water was not possible in zero gravity. Therefore, an alternative form of shower was utilized which was steam shower. It got the job done but it didn’t have the feeling of being thoroughly cleansed. Over a long voyage, steam showers proved to be lacking but it was better than nothing.
"Oh, God. Don't remind me."
In my whole life, Rocksea has been my backyard. I was born and raised here and, even before I hit puberty, I was sailing a ship and mining random stuff off some rocks. When I hit 12, I began to work for real credit on a loaned Lightwave worker class 1 and eventually managed to purchase it when I hit 20. That was when I found like-minded fellows and formed a small mining gang. We, four, eventually pooled our credit and loaned a badly tattered Lightwave worker class 2 which was a frigate.
That was about a decade ago.
"This girl is falling apart, literally. Did I tell you that my console came off the floor, literally last night? I could have cracked my skull open if it hit me straight on my head," I spoke through a speaker on my console in front of me. It was essentially a physical keyboard with its monitor being a hologram.
The feminine voice shouted through the speaker. "Must I fucking remind you that my shower system dumped poo all over me last night?!"
Yep, indeed, ouchie, indeed. Then it hit me.
"Juno, we haven't had running water since that incident. How did you clean yourself up?"
After a moment of silence, she bellowed at me, "I HAVEN'T, YOU DORK!"
I facepalmed myself and said to myself, "Ouchie."
Our business part was doing alright. We were making decent profits and jobs were coming in at a steady rate that we were busy enough.
However, our Lightwave worker class 2, which we aptly named "The Old Lady", was showing its age. This was a frigate class spaceship that was specifically designed for deep space mining. It had no mining capacity of its own. Instead, it relied on Lightwave worker class 1s to mine. Its docking bay could house up to four worker class 1s. It did have an ore processing unit to grind up rocks into finer fragments. Its crew capacity was something like 20 but, in our case, only four rooms were occupied.
image [https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/3306/8YOgiE.png]
According to the ship's mainframe log, the first time she booted up was in the year 9230, which would make her about 400 years old.
Now in this era, that was not too bad. I mean the navy used ships that were over a thousand years old. However, in order to prolong a machine's lifespan, regular maintenance had to be done. Our Old lady didn't look like it had been taken care of when we loaned it 10 years ago and everything was falling apart. We had been jerryrigging it but that wasn't enough. It needed proper repairs in a shipyard or at least in a proper docking bay with proper tools & parts. The issue was money and time; we lacked both, especially the latter. We had to take on jobs non-stop. If the Old Lady was to go under maintenance, it was going to take tens of days if not upwards to a three-digit number. We could not afford such a forced vacation. We had to work to make our ends meet and pay off our loan. More importantly, here was the kicker. The ship’s crucial parts were all functioning fine. It was just parts related to quality of life that were breaking down, further hindering us from making the big decision to ground the Old Lady and repair her.
Two hours later, we arrived at Oreo which was a tiny outpost in the middle of Rocksea. The Oreo station had been our base of operations for some years now. Its location was prime for mining and their rates on ore were very good. The outpost was built on an asteroid like all other outposts in Rocksea. The reason for this was simple: Building on an asteroid would grant some form of gravity as well as a protection from radiation. It was normally 0.1 or 0.2 at the best but any form of gravity was a huge benefit in the long term. As for radiation, the radiation level within Rocksea was reasonable, and humans had become hardened against it over thousands of years. Having natural protection against it meant less materials needed to insulate a base, thus cheaper. The station had a single circular structure in the middle of the asteroid with a ducking door located on its bottom. It was guarded by just a pair of laser turrets, which was probably enough to deter small-time pirates. Any station in Rocksea would have their own defense fleet of some sort meanwhile. Turrets were just there to do something while a fleet could undock. Either way, communicating with the station wasn’t my job at the moment, so I sat in my quarters and waited for it to duck, which was as easy as pressing a pre-programmed button. Every station offered an auto-pilot program to use. Oreo was no exception.
image [https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/3561/oceABD.png]
When we docked at the station, I finally got to see Juno covered in dried feces. She somehow managed to clean her face but everywhere else was covered in now-dried feces. I had to resist really hard not to laugh at her. My mates were in the same situation as well. Walking past us, she glanced fiercely at us. She didn't say a word, but we knew that she was pissed as hell. I mean who wouldn’t be? As she slowly paced off, bits of dried poo were falling away from her, floating away slowly due to the microgravity of the station.
As we watched her disappear, one of my mates, Rabinovich remarked.
"On a serious note, The Old lady is really falling apart."
He was a Slavic man with an unkept face and hair which was crudely shaved. Shaving in zero gravity was a luxury, so not many men would do it. Men’s hair was usually cut with a simple clipper. Anything else required extensive work and it was just not worth the time and effort. The thing was that longer hair was better to float around and get caught in air filters than tiny bits of hair somehow bypassing filters or worse, like getting stuck in our lungs. This applied even to females but they preferred to have short hair instead of cleanly shaven. Essentially, the dude looked like a caveman at this point. I wasn’t faring much better in that department, but I kept my hair longer and I didn’t have much facial hair, so I was looking infinitely better.
Shrugging, I replied to him, "Yeah, but amazingly its essential parts are working no problem."
Rabinovich put his hands on his waist and looked back at the Old lady. "She's the only gal in our team. We might really want to fix the plumbing on priority. I don't want all dudes-team."
That much I agreed. It's just better to have a female in a team instead of just dudes. If she was a flirtatious type, we would have kicked her out already, but she was cool as a cucumber. He spoke truly that none of the dudes wanted her to leave.
"I've looked at the plumbing before," Santino, another member of the team, told us. "I had no idea what was wrong." He was also a Slavic man although he was a lot broader. He, too, looked like a caveman at this point. Actually, he looked more like a dwarf whereas Rabinovich was a caveman.
"When was that?" I asked.
He replied, "About 15 days ago. Juno was complaining about water flow not being steady, so I cleaned out some goo from pipes. Saw nothing too unusual."
I crossed my arms and delivered my verdict. "Meaning we need a real pro to have a look at it."
We glanced at each other because we all knew what that meant.
"Can we even afford a pro?" Rabinovich wondered aloud.
I replied, "We probably can. Might have to skip on the payment though for this period though."
Rocksea was a more or less lawless zone. Even so, a loan was a loan. In fact, the punishment and penalties for not keeping up with a loan was far hashier here because your life wouldn’t be at risk even if you defaulted on your loan on a civilized planet. In Rocksea? You’d better not undock at all if your loan was in collections. We were on a rent-to-own program with our frigate. After a decade, we were 11 payments short of completing it. Missing out on a payment wasn't a huge deal. They would understand if we informed them beforehand but we simply didn't want to miss a payment because we were quite proud of ourselves that we never missed a payment.
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"Well, let's get the crates out and cash them." Pointing backwards with his thumb, Santino changed the subject. Nodding, we got to it, silently agreeing that not missing out on the payment was on a higher priority. She’d understand, probably.
"Mr Vazken, here is your payment. I am sending you the receipt to your memory implant right now."
I was in a dockyard office. After handing over ore crates we mined, a girl named Yating was progressing and calculating on how much we'd be paid.
As she sent data to my memory implant, I injected the data into my optic nerve. I was basically reading it from the inside of my eyeball. Usually, a memory implant was installed within one of your ears. The location was chosen because it was an easier way to access one’s brain without a more complicated surgery. The memory implant, which was basically a self-contained and insulated chip, was powered by blood sugar and its role was to translate ones and zeros into a language our brains could understand. It consumed about 100 calories daily and had a nice side benefit of being able to store other information you didn’t want to forget. Of course, with any computing chip, hacking was an issue. Thankfully, it can go into a read-only mode where only its host can access.
"Sounds good. I accept."
"Alright, the payment is being sent right now."
"Got it."
"Good, we thank you for your business."
Not that I had been to many dockyard offices to begin with but she was one of the most polite dockyard officers I had met. She wasn't bad looking, either. Most importantly, she looked like a proper woman. Juno was ... badly muscular. If there was a female version of the hulk, she was one. If it wasn't for her oversized boobs, I would see her as a guy totally. She was much taller than me as well, and I wasn’t a short guy. I was slightly above average in height. Anyway, I split the payment in four and sent the three to the mates. Then I was off for several days. We took at least ten days off between jobs during which we took care of personal needs and businesses.
Either way, I made my way to the cafeteria casually. I knew the basic layout of this station well since I had been to this place for years. I was pretty much a permanent resident at this point although I didn’t have the clearance to enter more secured zones. Oreo was a small station. Its permanent residents were just 40-something. However, it had a fair amount of frequent visitors, like us. I think the overall number of residents was somewhere around 100 to 150 at any given time. A charming point for this station was the unusually higher level of gravity which was 0.1. All other stations I had been to had microgravity, which was something like 0.01g. Apparently, the rock the station was sitting on was composed of really dense stuff. For those who had never been to a planet, such as myself, they really dug the sensation of being pulled down, however weak it was. For me especially, I could really feel 0.1 gravity although, even at that gravity, sleeping on a bed wasn’t an option. I always wondered what it’d feel like sleeping on a bed. The mere act of being able to lay down was just an unrealistic dream.
"Yo, dude." It was Rabinovich who approached me in the cafeteria. It took me a moment to recognize him because he was cleanly shaven bar his mustache. Yes, I had seen his clean face before…, not very often, though. It was hard to see with caveman-like facial hairs before, but his bare face revealed a tired and emaciated man. I could question his eating habits, but it wasn’t really my business. We were adults after all. Food in space was often bland unless it was station food. What we consumed when out working was just powdered meals which you mixed with water when eating. “Bland” was probably sugarcoating it because it had no taste at all literally. Eating it for a prolonged period would cause appetite to simply drop off. Oreo station cafeteria menu wasn’t that much better, but they had a taste at least.
"Yo, sup," I replied casually with my eyes fixed outside through a wall window. The cafeteria was almost empty. It was just us, two, and another small group further away. A rectangular window dominated its outer wall where a full view of Rocksea was displayed. This was a real window, meaning radiation was coming in. It didn’t matter, though. The inhabitants in Rocksea were hardened against radiation, and any illness from it could easily be treated with ease. A cold was more serious than any radiation sickness at this point. Cancer? It wasn’t even considered an illness in this era.
"Mind if I sit?"
I showed him a stool in the opposite direction of me. "Feel free."
Having sat down, he ordered a cup of coffee. I was having a cup of coffee as well. Oh, how I missed the taste and the aroma. Then we were silent for a moment. He was sipping his coffee, and I was simply looking at the space. At one point, he told me.
"I talked to Juno. She is not leaving."
"Good news. Hard to find girl miners."
"There are far easier jobs for'em."
"Indeed."
We became silent once again but he broke the silence once more after a few minutes. I was just staring out into space, enjoying the view. That was why I was in the cafeteria in the first place.
"My last team sucked major balls."
Yeah, he told me that before. He didn't give me any details though.
"It was the same frigate, the class 2. I mean what else is there on the cheap?"
I snickered in response. Yeah, Lightwave shipyard class 2 was the most widely used mining frigate because it had been around for hundreds of years. Red Plate shipyard had a few mining ships but they hadn't been around long enough for cheap, second hand, loanable ships to be found in Rocksea.
He continued, "There were five, four guys and one girl. Just like this team but one more dude."
According to him, the girl turned out to be a whore and a party breaker. Apparently, she had been doing it for fun. What she basically did was sexually entice the guys and made them pay for sexual favors. Whoever bid the highest would have her for a night or something like that. That eventually created too much friction between the guys and one dude eventually snapped, ending up murdering another. Having realized that things got out of hand, the girl fled and the murderer ran away as well after having drained the team bank account.
"Shit story, man. Shit story," I told him while shaking my head slowly.
I wasn’t there and I hadn’t experienced such. I mean, I was too young to have experienced it. This was my first big gig as a miner. Therefore, my words were hollow. I didn’t really understand it, and my response was merely systematic.
"But this is a good team and a good team is hard to find," He said assuringly. "I want to keep the original crew as long as possible."
The Old lady was my first multi crew ship, so I didn't have any past experience to draw upon. But my dad used to tell me that it was always important to keep a certain rhythm or harmony in a team. My parents were both space miners like myself. If their words were true, they met on the job. My mum told me that she stayed on New Earth while she had me in her womb so that I could grow without an issue, but who knows whether that’s true. The distance between Rocksea and New Earth was at least 30 days at maximum speed. She would have to have left very quickly as soon as she found out she was pregnant. It was understood that a fetus needed to be under reasonable gravity before bone formation. Any babies born under 1.0G tended to have weak bones. Likewise any babies born above 1.0G tended to have stronger bones. But there was a trade-off. Anyone born on planets above 1.0G was shorter and more broad. Santino may be such a case. It was understood that 0.8 to 1.2G was the recommended gravity range for any fetus. New Earth, the only naturally terrestrial planet within the Podlezl system, had 1.1G, almost identical to legendary Earth. Anyway -
"Agreed. And that brings up the plumbing," I told him. "We all know Juno wants to get it fixed. We can ignore it and she may snap one day and just leave."
Rabinovich sighed deeply and sagged his shoulders. He gestured his fingers in front of his lips as if he was smoking something. It was clearly a habit. Smoking was strictly prohibited in space since air quality was far more important than anything. If anyone was caught smoking, they were outright expelled in almost any space station.
"I will get a quote. That's the first step,” he replied with a sigh.
"Yeah, can I leave that to you?"
"Sure thing." Having agreed, he stood up and tapped my shoulder before leaving.
Then I got back to enjoying the gravity and space scenery. Rabinovich was a 106 year-old guy. Yes, one hundred six years old. People in this era lived up to four hundred easily. He had far more experience, thus I let him be the leader. Santino was also much older than me but younger than Rabinovich. I didn’t know how old Juno was, however. Women tended to hide their ages, so we really didn’t bother asking.
After nine days of rest, we were back at a docking bay where our Old lady was. It was there that Rabinovich made a small announcement. He stood in front of us and said, "Guys, I had the station dockyard have a look at Old lady's plumbing. They basically said the entire plumbing pipes around the ship were crapping out."
To sum it up, the pipes were never looked at for 400 years and they had corroded to a point that the pipe was basically paper thin and was full of corroded junk inside. Interestingly, the corroded junk was what was keeping the pipes together. In other words, if the pipes were cleaned out, they’d break. Talk about irony. Anyway, he got to the most important part, the cost.
"The Oreo dockyard has quoted us 170,000c for full repair," He said with his eyes moving away from us. “And it would take 50 days minimum.”
It was high but wasn't as high as I feared it'd be. But that was an amount that'd force us to skip a payment or two on the Old lady. Of course, there was an option of using personal wealth as a sort of a bridge loan to make this happen but this was frowned upon by all miners. I was taught to keep my personal credit apart from business and I am sure that they were taught the same. For us, miners, it was crucial to keep a clear line between personal and business. Mixing both, especially credit, was seen as a sure step to bankruptcy. The reason was well… Listen, our life span is 400 years, give or take 10%. We have to save up. We simply must. While we do not age much physically, we must earn while we are still enthusiastic about it. The golden rule is that you save up to a point that you can live without working for at least 50 years. Then you retire at an age of 350 or so and live your goddamn life at your leisure. We, miners, are taught this at a very early age. I suppose not all miners get to learn this but I certainly was. I was positive that the four of us knew this golden rule and that was exactly why this group was working so well.
Juno carefully raised her hand as she spoke, "Guys, it doesn't need to be repaired right away."
At this point, Rabinovich glanced at me as if asking me to speak up. I wasn't sure what to say though. Was he asking me whether it was okay to skip the payment? Was he asking me to go along with Juno? What exactly did he want? I gave it a quick series of options and something hit me.
"The duke?" Santino and Juno responded in unison as I explained a plan that might just work. Meanwhile, Rabinovich looked away subtly.
"He runs the Duchess' boobs. I am sure you've all heard about the place at least once."
"Yeah, that's the largest bar slash brothel in Rocksea," Santino replied. "What about him?"
I explained, "My dad told me once that, whenever he needed some extra dough, the Duke usually had some unusual jobs for extra credit. We could visit the Duchess' boobs and inquire about a job."
Looking clearly skeptical, Rabinovich asked, "What kind of a job would that be?"
"It can't be legit work," Juno added, siding with him.
That wasn't something I was going to deny, either. Shrugging, I told them, "Could well be. But we don't know at this point. It's only some days away from here. Might be worth checking out. It's certainly an option we shouldn't overlook."
Santino was with me on this one. It was 2 and 2 but Juno clearly wanted a new shower system, so she eventually folded. However, she added a condition.
She barked at me while pointing her index finger at my face, "I am not going to smuggle anything, you hear? I am not turning into a criminal, you hear?"
She towered over me. At my eye level, all I could see was her gigantic boobs. With her muscles, I was fairly certain that she could floor me with one powerful punch. Anyway, I had no intention to become a criminal, either. Thus, I agreed along with everyone else. I was sure that Rabinovich was aware of the place due to his reaction. Santino was also aware but hadn’t visited the place. As a woman, Juno obviously had no reason to go. I understood the Duchess’ boobs as a place only adults or troublemakers go to. At least, that was how my parents brainwashed me. I’ve generally avoided going to the place as a result. My father’s advice to me was a bit of a weird one, though. Either way, I was an adult and had no reason to avoid the place.
“We going then?” I asked casually, looking at Rabinovich and looking clearly not intimidated by her. He was the unofficial leader of the team.
Taking a deep breath, he replied reluctantly, “Yeah, why not.” He looked a bit dejected, however. The dude didn’t want to go clearly. In hindsight, I should have called it off at that point. If I had done that…, I wouldn’t have gone through the troubles later. Do I regret the decision, though? It’s hard to tell. In some ways, I ended up better than being a space miner. In some ways, I do miss the old, peaceful, and quiet days.