Around ten days went by in the vast emptiness of space. Most of the time was spent somewhat angling the ship in the right direction and sending off bursts of propulsion. Every time he fell asleep, he'd wake up roughly eight hours later and then have to correct the ship's path while double-checking to make sure the ship hadn't hit or lost anything while he slept. When he woke up on the tenth day, he was within the solar system of his designated work area with the asteroid field just ahead of him. Although it was a bit of a scare to see the ship getting closer to massive space rocks that could smash it into pieces with no one at the controls, in reality, they were still around an hour's flight away. He corrected the angle one last time, gave a bit of thrust then walked over to eat some food and drink some water.
Water came straight through a straw with a valve. Proper drinking etiquette was putting your mouth on the straw, opening the valve, sucking until most of the straw-filled up with convenient markings showing how much is in the straw, and then closing the valve and drinking everything in the straw. Unlike the station, this small ship was a zero gravity environment. The fewer things floating around the better.
Food on the other hand was dispensed from a vending machine like device. Liquid or solid. The liquid option was a thick green fluid with the consistency of a milkshake. Solid was bite-sized pieces of indistinguishable brown masses that were dry yet chewy. Both came in a vacuum-packed clear wrapper with the liquid version having a straw and the solid version having a corner partially peeled to make it easy to unwrap. Solids were the preferred food choice as each brown mass had a slightly different flavor, presumably from different ratios of nutrients that balanced out in the end. However, it was considered bad luck to eat solid food with an empty cargo hold and Brighand wasn't one to reject tradition.
He absentmindedly sucked away at the liquid food while trying to trick his mind that he was eating the luxurious meal from yesterday. As the station had artificial gravity, those who were better off than others could eat normal food where you could tell each individual vegetable and know when you were eating meat, but not which kind. Ever since he got jailed and sold off to the scavengers, he had only eaten normal food twice. Yesterday and one year ago when he finished learning how to drive the ship and got treated by the previous captain.
He aimed the ship towards a patch of space debris best suited for his type of scavenging. Lots of small disconnected things with not too many asteroids to worry about nearby. He was hoping that such a good scavenge spot had just opened up from the shifting positions of asteroids and wasn't something picked clean years ago. As he got closer, he hoped to see light refractions of metal but only found the dull colors of rock and space dust. This didn't mean there wasn't anything of value, just meant he'd spend more time sifting than storing.
He stopped the ship and waited a few minutes, making sure that the ship would get caught in a favorable gravitation movement. Worst case scenario is that it veers off into an asteroid while he's obliviously changing into the spacesuit in the airlock. Windows that were structurally sound, filtered out harmful spectrums of light, and airtight were expensive and reserved only for the front of the ship to be viewed from the controls. Some ships even forgoed windows altogether in favor of cameras and live video feeds.
As the ship entered a stable orbit parallel to where he wanted to work, Brighand entered the airlock and put on the spacesuit. It was a tight-fitting design with a hose that doubled as a tether for bringing fresh air to the user. It prioritized ease of work over long-term survivability. The end of the hose was attached to the helmet but to prevent head yanking, it had anchor points along the back of the suit and wrapped around the waist once like a belt. With the touch of a button on the wrist of the suit or from a touchpad next to the airlock within the ship, the hose would retract and drag the person in the suit back onboard.
Once Brighand wore the suit, sealed it, and tested for air leaks, he hit a button to cycle the airlock to go outside. All the air drained from the small space and the only audible sound was his breathing. No more hum of the engine nor was the sound of the air pumps able to travel. Empty space was dead silent. He opened the outer door once a symbol appeared on the touchpad marking the cycle as complete and pushed off the ship while holding onto the hose. The anchor points on the suit would have a much smaller lifespan if yoinked on too often so it was good etiquette to divert any impacts with one's arm if they were free.
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His work comprised of drifting over to a grouping of space dust and rocks, using his hands to turn them over, and grabbing anything that looked metallic. With larger objects, he'd grab them with both hands and see if he could tear them apart into smaller pieces or brush off the surface to see if it was an intact piece or many smaller things bound together. When he had a find, he'd open a bag attached to his right thigh and slide them in. Objects too large for the bag would be carried in manually. Once filled, he would retract back to the ship and slide the bag into a larger container in the airlock and grab a new bag.
Once several bags were filled or there was nothing else to comb over, he would enter the airlock, cycle back to having pressure and air then empty all the bags into a bin on the main part of the ship. Typically, a second crewmember would comb through these finds with a brush and separate valuables from dust and rocks. Then the one on spacesuit duty would take back the bags and waste material to empty back out in space. As he had no other crewmembers and it would take a lot of time to take off the spacesuit and dig through his findings, Brighand skipped this step and simply went back into space with the emptied bags.
As he left the ship for the second time, he hit something and tumbled through space awkwardly until the hose had no slack and he was jerked to a stop. He couldn't help but frown as there was nothing in the space between him and the debris he was working on and he deliberately kept the spaceship a slight distance away to keep it from being pelted by small rocks and dust covering the glass. Eventually, he dismissed it as a small rock that he must've hit away or that he accidentally stepped on the loose hose when he stepped off.
His work pace was frustratingly slow compared to the past. In the other work areas, he could find a piece of metal for every five to six rocks. Now the pace was closer to fifty rocks to every piece of metal. The biggest find so far was a clump of wires that no doubt contained pure copper wiring underneath its melded and tangled rubber shell. Most of his finds were crumpled pieces of sheet metal and surprisingly intact nuts and bolts. While the outside of a ship needed to be as close to one piece as possible using molds and welds, the interior was free game for cheap materials held together by tiny pieces of metal or adhesives.
As he jumped out of his ship for the third time after depositing another haul, he noticed the sparkle of something metallic by a pile of things he had been ignoring as it looked to be just rocks. He grabbed the hose and used it for leverage and swung over to where he saw the shine. There he madly sieved through every rock looking for whatever made that shine. No stone was unturned yet he found not even a tiny piece of glass. As he steeled himself to go through every rock again, he noticed something odd.
Some of the rocks, after he let go of them, gained some momentum and drifted off to the side, where they hit something and changed direction. Whatever it was, it wasn't visible to the human eye and was arm's length away. He reached out as his breathing got heavier. Not out of fear of the unknown but pure unbridled excitement at finding something unique. In his mind, this was obviously some piece of technology that he could grab, bring into his ship, then sell back at the station for a big payday.
His hand touched it and just like he wished for, it was a piece of smooth, sleek metal. At his touch, it became visible. A beautiful and shiny black opaque metal. He felt his way along it, searching for an edge to grab it from, only to find that it just kept going. It wasn't until the hose attached to him went taut that he realized that this was no tiny piece of invisible metal, but something even bigger than his ship. As he feared it disappearing or being unable to find it again, he went back to feeling along the metal, looking for something to latch onto and attempt to pull it closer or leverage for him to pull his own ship closer to it.
Somewhere on the side, he accidentally hit a button of sorts, opening a door. Just looking at the door gave him a headache as the inside was visible yet the other side remained invisible, showing not the inner workings of the door but space on the other side of whatever this was. As he held the latch of the door and looked inside, he saw what appeared to be a ship airlock with vents lining every surface and several sets of spacesuits that were much bulkier than his current one. He had struck a veritable gold mine, every one of the suits would be worth one of his ships if not more. Not even taking the invisible metal or the fact there was a door leading deeper inside. This was an entire military-grade cloaking ship.