Scott Tortorice
Senior Member
"Oh, sure, yah new mining laser is good to go. Works fine. Tested it myself," he replied. But I knew there was a catch as that damnably smug smile of his never left his craggy, gray-bearded face.
"So, what do I owe...." He cut me off before I could finish.
"...'Course, there is no point having such a piece if you have nowhere to drop the ore you mine." He paused to hook his thumbs on the pockets of his grimy, red coveralls. "Then you need something to collect the ore. You don't wanna be chasin' that stuff yourself. No, don't want that. Madness lies there." Again, with that damnable grin of his.
I felt a deep tiredness suffuse through my body. This was supposed to be a quick mining gig but was quickly turning into a waking nightmare of escalating costs. The mission seemed so easy on the jobs board:
Tens of thousands of credits later andGildawas finally kitted out and ready to go. But where? Where do I find Bromamalidine...or whatever that stuff was called? There probably was a lot of the stuff to go around, right? I mean, just a dozen units being requested would suggest a minor shortage in the supply closet. Right?
I did some research and discovered Brystalite was found in icy rings. With that in mind I called up my nav display and plotted a course to the nearest such ring, Guei 11, located conveniently next door:
Then reality hit me square on the jaw.
This stuff I was looking for, this bromidetite, was nowhere to be found. Ice cube after ice cube, all I was getting was every other imaginable compound ever spawned by the laws of nature and nature's god. Where was the easy money?
This was annoying. VERY annoying. With all that equipment I had shoehorned into Gilda, wasn't there a single piece that pointed out where the good deposits were? Did I really need to just keep blasting chunks off of random 'bergs in the hope of getting lucky?!
I persisted. I admit it was still a bit relaxing watching the limpets doing their work in this dark field. It was also a bit creepy being out there alone with Old Man Black.
When I had awakened, my hold held four units. FOUR UNITS! I was ready to put my fist through the deck when my comms chirped with an incoming message. Way out here? I thought to myself.
I accepted the mission and headed to Haraka.
Upon arriving my contact immediately hailed me to follow him. But here's the thing about this glorious age of space travel that we live in: it is a big mystery as to which ship on your sensor display is doing the hailing because the transmitting ship isn't tagged. Weird, no? So, with a dozen or so ships milling about the central star, I had no idea who my contact was. Already being frustrated by my torturous mining experience, I threw up my hands and headed to the nearest ice ring in this system, leaving Mr. Auckland to find me again. If his mission was important I trusted he would.
Sure enough,as I approached the hopefully resource-rich ring of Haraka 2, Mr. Aukland hailed me again:
With a tip of my hat, I set course to the backwater post known as Pawelczyk City.
All by its lonesome. Not surprised. It is the nature of these dark runs.
I ultimately had no cause for complaining. It was a quick and easy mission. Prospect Jasper Michael gave me my payment without issue. Deal done.
Upon arriving at the gas giant I saw that there was a high resource extraction sight available for plundering.
I exited supercruise and was greeted with a breathtaking sight:
I got back to my routine of mining and collecting, while listening to the news on Radio Sidewinder. Weird stuff going on in the Bubble these days. I blame the progressives.
I awoke some days later in a station medbay, bruised and spitting mad. All that work gone. A trip for biscuits. Nothing to show for it.
It took a few days for the insurance to pay out and for the shipyard to fabricate a new Gilda, so I had time to think about my first foray into the world of mining. First lesson: AVOID HIGH RES! The way that pirate took me apart in mere seconds made that quite clear, thank you very much. Second lesson: focus on the target mineral. In retrospect, I realized that I wasted a lot of time mining asteroids that didn't have the Bromellite I was looking for. Yeah, those minerals would have added some nice scratch to the till, but it also slowed me down considerably. Going forward, I needed to strictly focus on my mission goal. If the first sample chunk didn't contain any traces of Brunhildeite, move on to the next ice field. Lastly, KEEP YOUR EYES GLUED TO YOUR SENSORS. Trouble can come out of nowhere and you need to be prepared to fight or flee at all times.
Lessons learned, I was on my way again, this time to the nerdy-sounding system of BD+24 1451, Planet 5. Perhaps I would finally find my motherlode.
My target "icy body" was a pretty as the rest: