"The Duchess' boobs in visual range," Santino announced through speakers to let us know. I was napping when his voice woke me up. I approached a console in my quarter and popped up a screen to look at the station. I saw a lot of traffic around the station.
"The place sure has changed," I said to myself. While I never visited the station, I passed by it numerous times. The reason why the station was called such was due to its shape. It had two doms next to each other with smaller structure on top of each dome, making it resemble nipples vaguely. It was probably, entirely, intentional. As far as I was aware, the Duchess’ boobs was the largest station in Rocksea with a capacity of a thousand. In spite of that, because it wasn’t built on an asteroid, it had absolutely no gravity. The Oreo station, which was far smaller than it, had 0.1 gravity still. The station appeared to have a decent amount of traffic, which was understandable given the nature of the place. Even so, I swear that it had more traffic than I remembered.
“Must be doing well,” I said to myself and then asked the mates over comm. "Have any of you visited here before?"
Rabinovich apparently had. Juno and Santino hadn't, which was expected. The station was very male-oriented from what I heard. Females would have no reason to visit Duchess' boobs in the first place unless, of course, they worked there as hookers. Initially, I thought all of us were going to enter but it turned out that none of them really wanted to enter.
"Hard to resist fucking beautiful bitches in here," Rabinovich explained. "I'd rather not go in. I will waste money."
Santino's reason was more or less the same as Rabinovich, and I didn't even bother asking Juno. Thus, I went in alone once we docked. The docking bay I was in was directly connected to its bar and the first impression of the bar was loud and blissfully colorful. The place, more like a hall, was packed to brim with people dancing their minds away. Something to note was that everyone was attached to the floor, meaning they had magnet boots because there was no gravity. Case in point, I was floating. I could see why. I mean, it wasn’t really possible to dance floating in mid air. Meanwhile, waitresses were skillfully flying around to serve drinks. Speaking of which, the waitresses were fully naked and fully shaved down there. Being fully shaved didn't surprise me since shaving is a recommended practice when living in space. Having to deal with hair from our heads was hard enough for air filters. Even on our Old Lady which had just four occupants, daily air filter change was recommended although we did it weekly. I couldn’t imagine how frequently they needed to change out the air filter on a station like this where hundreds were present.
Anyway…, seeing girls fully naked made my heart race and my dick erect. I started to see the point Rabinovich and Santino were making. If I would drink, I was pretty sure I'd end up waking up on a bed with some random girl next to me. A funny thing was that Juno was also a girl, and I had never had any kind of romantic feelings about her. She just didn’t give out any sensation that she was a female in spite of her huge boobs. I did like Yating, the dockyard officer, back on the Oreo station. She was a proper female. She was no match against Juno in the chest department, though.
Clearing my throat, I snapped myself out and swiftly moved onwards. Initially, I was going to float my way in but there was no floating sign all over the place except for staff, so I ditched that idea. Looking around, I found a small designated area where they had spare magnet boots. Grabbing and putting them on, I proceeded forward into the dancing crowd.
"Excuse me. Sorry, excuse me. Passing through. I am sorry. Sorry, Sorry!" Not gonna lie, while shoving my way in, I ended up touching a lot of inappropriate places. Shoving my way in wasn't that hard. The real ordeal was the girls, the half-naked ones, because some of them asked me to join gleefully.
"Sorry, girls, no, I am not here for...."
That was when one of the girls attempted to grab my thing. Out of reflex, I jumped and jumped too high. Before I knew it, I hit my head hard on a wall or ceiling and passed out.
I wasn't sure how much time passed but, when I woke up, I realized I was in a sickbay. There was no one in the sickbay though. But a voice sounded as soon as I raised my upper body.
"Vazken, yeah?" It was a female's voice.
"Yes, I am Vazken. Did I fly into a wall?"
"Sure did. It was lucky that you didn't crack your skull."
Whoever it was, she was monitoring me and was speaking through a speaker. I also found my lower body strapped to the bed, which was a reasonable choice since my body would have floated around without it.
"Sorry about that."
"Now, the blood test didn’t reveal any alcohol, meaning you had business at the station. What is it?"
They drew my blood while I passed out? Creepy to be honest.
"I've come to talk to the duke for a job. May I speak to him?"
"He is busy but you may talk to me instead."
"May I ask who you are? You know my name. It's only right that I should know yours." It was very easy to get one’s ID since all one had to do was bring a scanner toward the memory chip I had. Everyone had one.
There was a faint snicker from the speaker. "You've got manners for someone of your age. Very well, I will see you in person."
In probably less than 60 seconds, a woman appeared in the sickbay. She certainly wasn't pretty and, therefore, she couldn't have been one of the waitresses. She did have an okay body, though. She was a brunette with pony hair and was wearing a dark red cowl shirt and blue jeans. Approaching me at once, she folded her arms. "My name is Ehka. I am the Duke's wife, so you can talk to me."
I didn't know the Duke was married. But then I didn't know anything about him. I also did not have a reason not to trust the woman, either, so why not. It wasn't like my purpose was a top secret or anything. Therefore, I told her my reason for coming onto the station earnestly without a fuss. Once she heard my story, she blossomed a short laughter.
"I've seen many reasons for guys to come onto this station. I will say you are the first one with a noble cause," She said, holding her laugh.
"What's 'noble' about that?" I wasn't attacking her or anything. It was a genuine question.
"I meant no offense, really. Your cause is just the most normal I've heard in a very long time. Those who want jobs from me, they are always desperate and will do anything to get some credit on their hands so that they can satisfy their loan sharks and live another day to drink."
She, then, pulled a chair to her and sat down, crossing her legs. Seeing her do that, I realized that she spent most of her life under gravity. People who had been living under micro or zero gravity wouldn’t bother to sit down even. The mere act of trying to sit down was a habit under solid gravity.
"Alright, Mr Vazken, I am interested. What ship ya got?"
"LW class 2."
"I see. Default setup?"
"Yes, it's currently on a rent-to-own program."
"How many payments left?"
"11 out of 120."
Ehka whistled and told me, "I am impressed. Less than a year left on a 10-year program. Never missed a payment?"
"No, and we don't want to miss a payment. That's why we are here."
"How many are there in your group?"
"Four, including me."
"Gender ratio?"
"Three guys and one girl."
"Had sex with the girl?"
I shook my head at once. "None of us has." At least, I thought so.
She whistled again. "Jesus, you do know what you are doing. I am more than impressed. Normally, I just don't have any incentives to help people out but your case is different. Hard to turn down decent folks trying to make a step forward."
I wasn't entirely sure what she was going on about but I wasn't going to ruin her mood by speaking up further.
"Alright, mister, I do have a job for you. I am already assuming that smuggling and anything illegal is out of the pool."
I nodded at her.
Dangling her index finger slowly toward me, she grinned, "I think I have a perfect job for you."
The job was a hauling job. The cargo was nothing illegal or so I was told. The Old lady would be in a convoy escorted by four Badgers. The convoy would depart in four days, meaning we had four days of nothing-to-do. So, we decided to work on our ship. We had been kind of slacking on that part for a while. By the way, the Badger was a very old fighter design.
image [https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/7696/Qpmuei.png]
It was one of the most basic fighter designs available to the general public. It was also thousands of years old and was horribly outdated. However, because the design and construction was so simple, it was still widely used. It was easy and inexpensive to manufacture and hardly ever needed complicated maintenance. I mean, its hull was essentially an airtight hollow steel rectangle box. Hell, even I, who was an amateur mechanic with no formal training, could maintain it with ease. Even its circulatory system was so rudimentary that, as long as you knew the polarity of electronics, you could handle it.
Meanwhile, Rabinovich came up with a list of things to do on his tablet. He read out the list on the bridge where we were gathered, “We’ve got several deep scratches on the hull. Plating doesn’t need to be replaced but needs to be filled with the goo. And we might as well check thrusters as well. The console in Vazken’s room needs to be looked at. Anything new to add to the list?”
Santino raised his hand and spoke, “Well my shower has been acting as well but I guess that doesn’t need to be spoken about?”
“We will replace the whole pipes, so yeah, yours will be covered,” Rabinovich replied with a nod.
Juno added with glee, “Finally, I can take a shower and not worry about something going wrong.”
I replied to her, “A part of the problem is that you take a shower for too long. You take what, 45 minutes for a shower? What do you do there?”
She replied back fiercely, “It’s none of your bizwax, shut it, Vazken.”
Shrugging, I complied, “Fine, fine. Just pointing out the-”
“Shut it.”
So, I shut up. she wasn’t exactly a likable girl or even socially active but she was good to work with overall. Other than her shower, she never complained about anything else and would do any mining regardless how risky it was. She had shoulder length hair that was tied into a ponytail and was quite muscular, okay, very muscular. She was more muscular than pretty much any guy. If it wasn’t for her rather large boobs, she could easily be mistaken for a guy because she was a huge woman. I wasn’t sure her exact height but my loose guess was that her height was 200cm and my height was just 181cm. I was fairly certain that she could floor me with one hard punch in my face. It was something I’d never dare to try. To be quite frankly clear, I never lusted for her. She wasn’t my type to begin with and I wasn’t very sexually active, either, despite my young tender age of 20. You can’t be sexually active and work in space. Those two just don’t work out in the long term. Therefore, I understood exactly why Rabinovich refused to enter the Duchess' boobs. No need to re-awaken your sexual mojo. Am I asexual? I don’t think so. I mean, my dick responded to the girls at the bar and I do plan to settle down at one point with a nice girl. It was just that now was not the time to throw my sperm around.
Anyway, for the next three days, we casually worked on our ship repairs and we finally received the cargo crates by dockyard workers at 0500 on the fourth day. There were two 10-ton cubic meter crates which would barely fit into our ore cargo. We asked whether it was okay for us to check the content of the cargo crates, and they said they had no problem with that as long as we didn’t temper, so we checked out what was in there.
The four of us were gathered around a crate. The other was already in.
“What the hell are these?” Juno said. She was completely clueless.
What we were seeing was some sort of frozen organic creature. I had never seen anything like these, either. They were about the size of a forearm, and they looked like thousands of them frozen all together in a block.
“These look like some sort of frozen creatures,” Rabinovich remarked.
“I have no idea what these are,” Santino added.
We had to bring in a scanner to figure out what they were.
“Fishes, frozen fishes,” Juno said after scanning the frozen things. “Salmons? No fucking clue what they are.”
None of us had seen fishes before obviously. I mean, after all, we were space dwellers. Fish was a very expensive delicacy for planet dwellers. We would have nothing to do with them under normal circumstances.
“So, how much is this one crate?” I wondered out loud.
And it turned out that each crate was worth around 20 million credit. And I recalled that we’d be in a convoy. I told my concern to the mates.
“Guys, we will be in a convoy. Our ship alone carries a value of 40m credit. I am guessing the whole convoy will be worth around 100m,” I told them with a worried face.
“Probably, ” Rabinovich added with a slow nod.
I continued, “I think there is a real chance of us being hit by pirates.”
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We became quiet for a moment. My point was perfectly valid. The value of our cargo was too huge to simply ignore.
“Do we want to back out of this?” Juno inquired while closing the crate. The crate cover was huge but we were under zero gravity. As long as one was careful, he could lift almost anything unless it was way too big. I looked at the others; they didn’t seem to be too bothered. I wasn’t too bothered, either. I simply pointed out the possibility.
“No, we are going,” I replied to Juno to which she gave me a thumbs up and locked the crate. Ehka or whatever her name was didn’t lie to us at least. That was all that mattered. It wasn’t as if she was sending us alone, either. We were going to be a part of a convoy with escorts.
“Alright, let’s gather at the bridge,” Rabinovich told us. The bridge wasn’t actually located on the structure sticking out of the ship on top. That was actually an observation deck to check asteroids with bare eyes. The bridge was located in the heart of the ship, away from everything. This ensured that the bridge would be still intact even in the worst case scenario. I did know that ancient spaceship designs had exposed bridges with glass windows. That was long before holographic monitor technology was properly developed. A simple spaceship design like the Badger had an exposed glass cockpit as well simply because there was no other choice. I would feel extremely unsafe sitting behind a reinforced glass bridge that was exposed. That was asking to be killed in space.
Anyway, once we undocked, Ehka guided us to join up with a convoy. There were two Akabasa 1s and four Badgers. Akabasa 1 was a rudimentary freighter from the Red Plate shipyard. The Lightwave shipyard was from the Solar system, specifically Mars and then later Saturn due to Mars declaring unilateral independence back in 9599. The Red Plate shipyard was from the Podlezl system. Spaceships from the RPS were mostly low-tech and inexpensive whereas ships from the LWS were more advanced and expensive. Now Akabasa 1 was as basic as it could get. Essentially, it had a basic framework around a standard cargo crate. They attached an engine and thrusters onto the framework and called it a day after slapping a rudimentary bridge onto it.
image [https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/9312/Lh1zVI.png]
It was so rudimentary that the bridge console had mechanical buttons for control. Of course, being so basic meant that it was cheap, and the ship became popular among civilians with many opting to modify it extensively to make a home out of it, space RVing so to speak. Since the ship was built around a 10-ton cubic meter crate, it made a nice home for many indeed. In comparison, the Lightwave worker class 2, our Old Lady, was light years ahead in terms of technology. Yeah, it’s an old, aging, ship, but it had an impressive array of features which Akabasa could ever dream of. Well, it was a frigate after all. As a civilian vessel, it had no weapons of course.
“Forming a formation,” Rabinovich announced. Our ship sat in the middle. Ours was the largest ship, thus it was only logical to form a formation around the Old Lady. Once a formation was formed, Ehka spoke to us.
“The job’s simple in concept. You haul the cargo to New Earth. But I won’t lie to you. Your cargo has a lot of value and a chance to encounter pirates is rather high. Now, those four Badgers, they are all crewed by veterans. They know what they are doing. So, follow their instructions and you should be fine. Ehka out.”
The four of us were on the bridge of the Old lady. Juno, Santino, and I took stations and Rabinovich acted as a captain of the ship since he had the most experience. However, as much as we acted the part, our Old lady had no weapons whatsoever. Therefore, us sitting pretty on the bridge had no real meaning behind it other than being in the safest place. We sat pretty for maybe an hour or so. Eventually though, we all got back to our quarters to kill time because almost everything was automated. A single person was all the bridge needed. Hell, we didn’t need a person on the bridge unless needed.
From the heart of Rocksea to New Earth was about a 31 days long journey. The actual distance was a lot shorter but ships could not speed in Rocksea due to abundance of debris or loose rocks. Well, perhaps cruisers could speed since it’d have the armor as well as shields. However, for any ships with exposed bridges or cockpits with no shields, Rocksea was a rather dangerous place to speed in. A loose rock hitting a reinforced glass window of a bridge at a speed of 200,000km/s would mean instant death, to put it lightly. It’d take about 19 days to get out of Rocksea at much reasonable speed and then we could speed to New Earth. Now, our Old lady had shield arrays but the Akabasas and Badgers didn’t. A convoy was as fast as the slowest one.
“Those 19 days are the hard ones,” Rabinovich told us when we were on the bridge. “Rocksea is a lawless zone, so pirates could be anywhere. Once we are out of Rocksea, the rest of the route should be secure.”
It was true that Rocksea was a lawless zone. However, our Old lady had never been pirated. That was mostly because pirates didn’t tend to hit on miners. I heard that pirates factions agreed not to hit on miners because they were the ones at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Pirating miners would bring everything to go up in price or even make lives in Rocksea miserable due to lack of required materials. Life wasn’t all that easy in Rocksea to begin with. There was no need to make it harder. Even pirates knew this.
The journey was peaceful for about 10 days. We were, then, in the outskirts of Rocksea which was quite a dangerous zone. The heart of Rocksea where the Duchess' boobs and Station Oreo were patrolled by such stations and security was kept to a certain degree but there was none of that in the outskirts. And it was also my first time to venture this far. We were slacking on the bridge when Santino exclaimed.
"12 ships, Badgers, on a direct course to us, most likely hostiles," He urgently said out loudly.
"Oh, shit," I blurted, "What do we do?!" I was actually really scared at this point. This would be the first time for me to have been pirated upon. I knew what to do on paper, but remaining calm wasn’t hard. I even felt cold sweats on my back.
"We do nothing, for now at least," Rabinovich instructed us to calm down.
A male voice sounded through speakers. His voice was calm and deep.
"This is Badger Alpha. We are detecting hostiles. The Old lady, you have shields, so you just keep going. Few shots won't harm you. The Akabasas, you two move into a shadow of a nearby rock. You haven't got shields and a lucky shot will take you down."
"How strong are our shields anyway?" I wondered.
"Well, I guess we will find out. The Old lady has never been hit on, yet," Santino replied.
Meanwhile, Juno was tightening herself onto a chair which we soon followed as well. You wouldn't want to bounce around in space. That could easily kill you.
"We have four. They have twelve. It doesn't look too good," Juno hastily said while controlling her breath.
Rabinovich told us, "We were told they were veterans. Let's see how good they are. If they are taken down, we are surrendering. We agree on that?"
"Yep," We all said in unison. Pirates had some sort of code generally. If surrendered early, they wouldn’t harm the occupants was what was known. Anyway, the escort Badgers fired first by using torpedoes which surprised me because I never saw such a thing.
"What the hell is that?" I asked with a surprised voice. Something small was actively flying toward the pirates. All I could see was its glimmering engine lights.
Rabinovich answered me, "A torpedo, basically a heavy payload missile."
"What is a missile?"
He glanced at me and answered me, "Well, not surprised that you don't know. 99% of people use lasers. It's physically delivering a shitload of explosives at a target. Won't do much to a cruiser but deadly to small ships like Badgers."
Just like he said, each torpedo took out a Badger with a large explosion and shockwaves.
"Holy shit, that looks awesome!" I shouted with excitement. The explosion looked spectacular on a holographic screen on the bridge. It looked better than what I saw in films. With those four pirate Badgers down, it became four versus eight. And, as soon as dog fights began, it became quite clear that the escort Badgers were simply far superior in skills. Within 60 seconds, two more pirates went down. And 5 minutes later, a single pirate Badger was fleeing the scene. The escorts suffered no loss. It was an overwhelming victory.
"Those do know what they are doing," Rabinovich remarked.
I was in awe. I didn't give much of a chance to the escorts. After all, it was four versus twelve. But they won, easily. Granted, they sort of cheated with those missiles, but the pirates had the option as well. I guess it was a matter of who was more prepared.
The male voice sounded on our bridge once again.
"This is Badger Alpha here. Hostiles taken care of, you can come out and join us Akabasas." His voice was cool as a cucumber.
"Man, that dude is a badass," I remarked in awe. The Badger alpha dude left a deep impression on me without me realizing. I wasn’t joking when I called him a badass. In a corner of my mind, I wanted to become someone like him rather than a no-name space miner. Anyway, from that point to the moment we left Rocksea, it was quiet. Once we were out of Rocksea, we could speed all we wanted. At our maximum speed, it was about 10-ish days to New Earth.
=image [https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/4889/i53FfW.png]
New Earth was the only terrestrial planet within the Podlezl system. The system was very interesting in the fact that the sun was a white dwarf, meaning no planet should have existed within its habitable zone. The reason being is that … Well, let’s give an example. The sun of the Solar system is a yellow dwarf, basically a young star with fuel, namely hydrogen, to burn in its core. Once it exhausts all fuel in its core, it would enlarge itself to become a red giant by a hundred to a thousand times in diameter. If any planets existed in its original habitable zone, it would have vaporized literally. Therefore, scholars theorized that a rogue planet was probably caught by the gravity of the white dwarf. And, by sheer luck, it was caught within the habitable zone of the second Sun as we called it. As if supporting the theory, there was a considerable distance between New Earth and its next planet which we named Creg, named after a guy who perished defending the planet from the Podlezl rebellion against United Sol about a thousand years ago. Creg wasn’t habitable on its own but it was terraformed and domes were constructed to house life. The gravity of Creg was 0.6, and anyone born on the planet would grow tall and become slender, making them look kind of elves. Their bones were so weak that a punch from someone like me who was born under 1.1G could break easily. Therefore, most, if not all, pregnant women traveled to New Earth during their pregnancy. In fact, the government had a program which allowed free fare for all pregnant women to be able to travel to New Earth during their pregnancy. The third planet of the system was a gas giant, named Keeb-G. This gas giant was the primary source of hydrogen and helium for the system. Its two small moons had mining outposts installed therefore. The final planet was a small rocky one that was almost identical to the size of Pluto but it was slightly larger to be classified as a proper planet. Its name was Ayse. With 0.2G, the distance from the sun, and the planet being a frozen gas planet, terraforming it was useless. All I knew about the planet was that a low orbit trading station was constructed due to its close distance with the subspace portal to the Solar system. I didn’t know anything more than that.
"Who's going to be seeing New Earth for the first time?" Rabinovich asked us.
I replied, "Me since this is the first time leaving Rocksea."
Juno replied as well, "Same here."
"So, for you two, the planet will be the first colorful one you are going to see, eh."
"Like Earth, right?"
"Yeah, I guess. Never been to Earth but they say they look similar."
Ever since the Podlezl rebellion and they became independent, no one from the Podlezl republic was able to enter the Solar system. From what I knew, the government was going to destroy the subspace portal in retaliation for not being recognized as an independent state even after emerging victorious in the rebellion. If they did destroy it, it’d take 1,300 years to travel one way, and communication between the two clusters would have been equally unfeasible as well. This was when the legendary ESP, the Asperger, entered the negotiation table for both nations. As the most powerful ESP known to men, he was able to teleport between the two clusters in a blink of an eye and brought the two nations onto the negotiation table once more. Now, there weren't many official records about the negotiation itself. Both nations wanted to conceal the details weirdly. The bottom line was that the subspace portal was spared, and United Sol recognized the Podlezl republic officially.
“Hey, guys, know anything about the Asperger?” I grew an urge to ask.
“The esper from Venus?” Rabinovich was the first one to answer.
“The most powerful esper known to men, is all I know,” Juno said with a shrug. “Who cares.”
“I heard that he’s a gay,” Santino said with a snort. “Have you looked at him? He looks like a girl.”
I actually hadn’t looked at how he looked. “What’s your opinion about him?”
“You don’t mess with someone like that,” Rabinovich was the first to answer. He sounded very rational as if he experienced something I did not.
“Mind telling me?” I urged because I was very curious.
“Look dude,” he replied with a sigh. “Regardless of his appearance, if you meet him in real life, you’d bow. That guy …, he is something else.” He had a distant look in his eyes. Something told me that he did meet the Asperger in person.
The short journey between the end of Rocksea and New Earth was, well, short. We began to see navy ships patrolling soon after we left Rocksea behind and the whole route was very secure. A navy patrol fleet did check up on us but our papers were properly in order. They did even scan our cargo as well, but it looked like there was no issue at all. I mean, they were frozen fishes, food basically.
When we arrived at New Earth at last, a scenery that I had never seen before in my life unfolded before my eyes. I saw a planet for the first time and it was a white planet. Additionally, the vicinity of the planet was full of traffic. It looked as if tiny bugs were crawling around the planet. The planet, New Earth, was an ice planet. The second sun was a white dwarf and it simply did not have enough radiation to keep the planet warm enough.
image [https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/9797/GB7YeJ.png]
However, the average temperature was still minus 15 Celsius which was certainly bearable. It had a greenish atmosphere in spite of the second sun being slightly blue.
"There it is, New Earth," Rabinovich announced to us, pointing at a holographic screen displaying the planet. “A hundred million lives on that icy rock. Most of them are immigrants from the Solar system.”
Neither Juno nor I displayed much joy after seeing the planet for the first time. Quite frankly, I couldn't care less how a planet looked. Yes, it was beautiful and unique, but that was as far as my feelings went.
"Do you think I could survive on that planet? It’s 1.1G, no?" I asked the others. For my whole life, the highest G I experienced was 0.1. Well, I suppose I did experience 1.1G in my mom’s womb.
“You’d need to go G-training,” Santino replied. “Spend 30 days on 0.2 and then 0.5 and so forth.”
Juno added, “As long as you were born under 1.0G-ish, you can train it. What G were you born in?”
“1.1G, New Earth,” I replied.
“The same for me,” Juno replied.
Really? Given her size, I thought it would have been different, but what the hell do I know?
“I am not from around here,” Rabinovich said weakly. “Let’s just keep it that way.”
“I am from Creg,” said Santino which made all of us look at him rather fiercely. The dude was stocky and broad. He couldn’t have been born on that planet which had 0.6G. But then no known habitable planet had more than 1.1G. No one dared ask the golden question of, “why are you so short then?”
“Let’s get on with the job, shall we?” Rabinovich said, clearly not wanting to talk further on his birth planet.
The planet had two orbital exchange stations where we docked at and unloaded our cargo crates. We thought our job was done then and expected to be paid. However -
Badger Alpha told us through comm, "Ehka will pay you, meaning you need to go back to the Duchess' boobs. Now, since you will be going back, she has an optional job for everyone else."
Apparently, she wanted us to haul some water.
"I can see the point," Rabinovich explained. "Water is dirt cheap here from what I can see."
Of course, that was because New Earth was an ice planet. From what I understood, more than 80% of its surface was sea. The sea on New Earth wasn’t salty. Therefore, -15 Celsius was cold enough to keep it perpetually frozen. Meanwhile, water wasn't exactly hard to come by in Rocksea but it wasn't that common, either. Water was very easy to recycle, but it wasn't 100%. I could also see the point of hauling back some water if I was making the trip back anyway.
We asked Badger Alpha whether he was willing to escort us. He replied that he was going back and we were welcome to tag along. However, he made a point that he wouldn't be escorting us exactly.
He explained to us, "My duty ended when we reached New Earth. You can tag along and our presence will likely deter pirates but, if they do attack, we are not going to defend you."
I did feel that he was being a dick a little but the ball was in his court. We agreed that it was better than nothing and used our own credit to purchase the goods and headed our way. The reason we weren't too concerned about security was that water wasn't something that was pirated upon. It was a low value commodity and there was a general rule of not pirating essential commodities among pirates at least in Rocksea. Of course, there were always some who refused to follow such a rule but such were rare.
Fast forward 32 days, we made it back to Duchess' boobs safely. The Badgers, our Old lady, and the two Akabasas all made it back in one piece. Although I failed to grasp it at that moment, it was the perfect result for a back-to-back hauling job. Ehka was on comm to greet us soon enough.
"Well, done, flawless I would say. No casualties, goods delivered both ways," She said gleefully. I could imagine her rubbing or clapping her hands. None of us had anything to say to her though, so we remained quiet.
"Moving on," She said, "Since you've done the optional job, the overall payment amounts to 500,000c. Transferring right now."
We looked at each other with our eyes wide open. It was way, way, more than we expected. Additionally, it was an amount we'd never see via mining at once.
"Fucking half a mil!" Juno exclaimed joyfully with her fists up in the air. Santino robbed his face and slapped himself once as if he was making sure he wasn't dreaming. Rabinovich was more rational and asked if she was giving us extra for being first timers and such.
"Nope, I am in the business of making a profit, so I don't give out payments that weren't warranted. I can break down the payment. The original trading run was 300k alone. The optional run was 100k. The extra 100k is a bonus for not having encountered or caused any troubles."
He was still skeptical, so Ehka told us the total value of the cargo the convoy carried. It was apparently 80 million which confirmed our assumption before we started this job. On such a scale, our payment of half a mil was really a pocket change. We weren’t getting even 1% of the total value of our cargo.
With smiles on my faces, we traveled back to the Oreo station. We were satisfied and happy. The Old lady would have her plumbing replaced and Juno would be able to have her showers. Even after deducting the repair cost, we still had 325k to spare. Once divided, we got approximately 80k per person. In order for me to earn 80k, it'd take ... about ten mining trips or about a whole year.
Little did I know that this credit would eventually break this group apart.