Most people think it's a quick way to make money, but asteroid mining needs a lot of patience. Most people get bored after a couple of weeks and give up, but not me. I'd been mining the same field in the Neo-Vega system for over twenty-five years, over fourteen years in the same rig.
The regular, low beat of the scanner, its rhythm guiding you to your target. The perfect tuning when you got the cutting cycle of the laser and the extraction rate of the tractor beam at exactly the right range. It was like playing a musical instrument. It was relaxing. When things were working at their best, they just sounded right, in harmony. After doing it for so long, in the same rig, you could almost feel your way around without looking. Me and the Mercury Star danced with the rocks. I played their tune.
It took something like the sound of the proximity alarm to bring me out of my trance. The rapid, shrill, piercing siren instantly quickened my heart-rate and jolted me wide awake. Our Gang always mined with a security ship on standby and that day it was Max. Both Dobbs and Trabe were away hauling ore back to the station. I checked where Max was even before I looked for what had triggered the alarm and saw that she was on the other side of the field.
"Wake up Max, we got a Bug incoming!" I shouted into the comm, but I knew that by the time she got here it would all be over, one way or the other.
I locked everything off, all the mining processors and the beam that pulled the debris into the storage container. Then I put the spare energy into my forward combat laser and boosted my shields. As the Bug came within range it began firing off speculative shots. From its approach I figured they probably wanted me to run and leave behind the container I'd been filling, which is what most of the lifelong miners usually did. Most didn't care to risk their lives in combat for the sake of a few chunks of rock, but I wasn't about to give up three hour's work to some taffer who'd never done an honest days work in their life.
So I waited for them to close in and fired off a volley. They immediately broke away, surprised at meeting a miner with a gun. They changed up their tactics from a straight-in approach and switched to an orbit. Now they were trying to keep themselves outside of my weapon's range while they whittled down my shields, but I wasn't about to fall for that old routine. I quickly calculated an intercept, at a point in their orbit where I knew they'd be in about twenty seconds.
The Mercury Star was pretty big, but she was fast. I got myself positioned perfectly and the Bug stuck to its circular path, convincing me that its nav was must've been on auto while the lone pilot managed the energy stacks and the weapons. I fired everything at them and struck lucky, punching a hole in their shields and hitting their control thrusters. Their cheap AutoNav obviously didn't have any recovery protocols and their ship started spiralling inward from its original orbit.
"Flying in circles ain't such a great idea in an asteroid field buddy," I said over the open comm channel, but there was no reply.
Instead of firing again, I held off and watched, gently nudging myself clear of a large roid which was drifting into the Bug's path. Whatever frantic efforts the pilot was making to correct their flight controls weren't effective, so in desperation they began pummelling the asteroid with every weapon they had, but all that got them was a practical demonstration in the difference between combat and mining lasers. It was a short lesson.
They slammed into the rock and exploded. The huge kinetic energy from the collision split it open and I watched the shockwave fragmenting the outer crust, revealing a core of a much harder substance. It looked like something I'd seen before, the gleaming silvery surface was unmistakable, but the size was all wrong.
For a moment all I could do was stare, knowing what I was seeing but unable to believe it. I pulled the Star in closer and flipped my geo scanner back on. The word on the readout was 'xendrium'. It was a naturally occurring alloy which usually only appeared in trace amounts. Sometimes, very rarely, it was found in fist sized lumps in the middle of larger asteroids, but this piece was big, and I mean BIG! This was practically a small moon.
I dared not take my eyes off it. I managed to launch a coded micro-tag into it and got a fix on its course and speed, in case we lost it. I called Max again. When she finally showed up I'd extracted a small sample with the mining laser and the beam and run an on-board analysis. Only when she'd checked out the readings I'd sent her, and called me back with her own conclusions, was I completely sure.
"Rellin! Look at the numbers on this," she shouted.
"Check the purity," I shouted back, "it's even cleaner than compressed xendrium."
"Have you looked up the latest prices?" She asked.
"First, make sure there's no more Bugs on the way in," I suggested, "then get every available ship over here."
"Wow, this whole asteroid's gotta be worth millions!" Yelled Max.
"Try billions!" I said. "If we can get this thing back to the station, before anyone else finds out about it, we're all going to be extremely rich!"
Eventually the whole gang was out there mining and hauling the xendrium, with every kind of rig and transport they could find. Even with such a huge team, it took us over fifteen hours to mine it and bring it in. We knew that at any moment we could be discovered by more Bugs coming into the system, or other mining syndicates. Until we got it safely stored in our hangar on the station, the xendrium wasn't truly ours.
I was one of the last ones back to the hangar, by which time the celebrations were already in full swing. On the giant display above Max's office was our Ceru. Our great Lord and Master, Lea Solette. We didn't own the territory we mined, it belonged to Ceru Solette, but of course she couldn't mine it all herself. So as long as all the mining gangs paid the rent each year and defended her Proclate from anyone trying to take it over, whatever we found was ours. Still, the Ceru always kept a close eye on her territory, and on us.
When I walked in Solette was giving some speech congratulating Max and her gang on our find,
"May you be assured that your tireless efforts are appreciated and that such a great, momentous day as this," she blathered on. Everyone was ignoring her as their attention was on the electronic ticker just above the display reading off the xendrium unit price. It was slowly creeping up. Demand for this stuff was very high and it looked like nobody outside of our company had gotten a whiff of our find.
Dobbs bumped into me, swinging a bottle of cheap brew around and singing.
"Come on Rell, you're not drinking!" He said. I grabbed his arm and tried to talk to him.
"We should wait it out," I said, "sell the stockpile off slowly, so as not to attract attention." I wanted to hear Dobbs' opinion on the matter, he'd being doing this longer than any of us, but anything he may have said was drowned out by the noise.
"And here he is! The hero of the hour, our very own Roland," said Ceru Solette, not realising that the laughter coming from the Gang was at her getting my name completely wrong. The Ceru tried to join in with her own fake laugh, like she was one of us.
I was lifted up and carried around the hangar to raucous applause and cheers, but I didn't feel like celebrating. I knew such a vast quantity of a single commodity hitting the local markets could destabilise them. We could cause a crash, but all anyone could see was how much money we were sitting on and they wanted it now.
From my vantage point high on the shoulders of Dobbs and the others, I saw Max go into her office and log into the trading screen. Right then and there, she dumped the whole xendrium pile onto the market and we watched it get swallowed up by the trading computers within microseconds. One blink and it was gone, replaced by a long line of digits in our Gang's credit track. The number began with a fifteen and went on with another nine numbers after that. Over fifteen bill.
Max worked out everybody's shares, in accordance with the usual system. Hours multiplied by people so that folks who'd worked the longest bringing the haul in, like me, Max, Trabe and Dobbs, got the most shares. Latecomers got less, but still managed to make enough to retire on. I got bonus shares for finding the roid, even though I hadn't. At the end of the night, I'd worked out that I was worth over four billion credits.
Some time during the night I'd crept away to my ship, but despite being completely worn out, I couldn't sleep at all. As soon as my usual shift start time came around I went back to my pilot's seat and fired up my rig, like I had done every day for the last twenty-five years.
Outside the station I was greeted by a fleet of press ships, all bombarding me with messages and requests for interviews. I ignored them and muted the radio once I was out of the station control zone. Only when I was out in the calm of interplanetary space did I start thinking about all the money I had and how I should spend it.
I could get one of the new Yseyyri scanners, I thought. I could have the best retrieval beams, custom designed and made to my own specifications. I could build the perfect mining ship then hire mercenaries to protect me so I didn't have to rely on Max and the others.
Out of sheer habit, I found myself drifting back to the spot I'd been in the previous day. The press ships had followed me, but there were even more ships out here too. The asteroid field was a scene of complete chaos. There were hundreds of ships, from tiny shuttlecraft to great merchant cruisers, all desperately trying to avoid the moving rocks and each other. A few were at least kitted out for mining, but they were obviously complete noobs. Most of the ships were equipped with the wrong lasers. I guessed that all the local suppliers must have quickly sold out of mining gear.
A few idiots were firing blindly at the asteroids, not even bothering to scan them first. They blasted off random pieces with high powered lasers, disintegrating good rock along with bad, leaving asteroids scorched. Some ships didn't even have scoops or tractor beams, or anything to collect the unprocessed ore with. None of them seemed to care, since the only thing they were looking for was xendrium.
Over the cacophony of comm chatter I heard arguments over territory they had no claim to anyway. When Max got out here and saw what was happening, she'd clear them out, but by then this section of the asteroid field would be totally shredded. It would take weeks for the debris to clear, but that wasn't my major worry. When the local pirate community got a sniff of all this fresh meat, these weak, unprotected ships would be almost as big a jackpot for them as my xendrium roid had been for me.
Someone must have spotted me, as there was another burst of signals hitting my communications board. A couple of smaller ships cut in front, hoping to get their eyeballs on the famous Rellin Suln, but they clearly had no idea how dangerous such manoeuvres were in an asteroid field. I had to dodge them and nearly collided with a couple of rocks spinning towards me as I struggled to maintain control.
There was no chance of me mining here today, or likely for the next week or more. I didn't want to go back to the station and I couldn't do my job. The only other place I could go was home.
My family live out in the ass-end of the third sub-division of the border worlds, a system called Reyt-Serril. I don't expect any of you to have heard of it. It isn't on the way to anywhere and the only people who ever visit it are traders selling over priced luxuries that nobody needs or touring troupes of opera singers and performance poets.
I parked the Mercury Star on one of the larger residential station platforms and registered my DNA sample to get a family parking permit. Then I hopped a shuttle down to Linden City. It'd been over ten years since I'd been back here. I'd sent messages to my parents in that time and they'd visited me on the station once, but I'd guessed they hadn't liked it much since they'd never been back.
After making a few enquiries I found out that my Father was at the theatre, directing his latest play. Mother was on holiday somewhere in the northern hemisphere, but was on speed-call if I needed to speak to her.
I went to the Royal Theatre House and found the stage door. I had to wait outside for my Father to come and meet me. When he came out, he looked flustered. He obviously didn't know why I was here and knowing him as I did, I knew he was expecting something to be wrong.
"Haven't you seen the news?" I said. He stared at me blankly.
"I haven't had time, I'm so wrapped up in these rehearsals."
"Ok, I'm fine by the way," I smiled. "Actually, much better than fine." I thought about how I was going to break the news to him.
He ushered me back inside the theatre and led me along the backstage maze. We passed lines of dancers and other performers.
"I'm a big celebrity now Dad," I said, "I'm surprised you haven't heard. Don't you pick up the galactic news feeds out here?" My Dad looked back at me with a puzzled expression.
"We open in two weeks, my leading lady has…" I didn't catch the last part as we entered a narrow doorway and went down a set of ancient stone steps. My Father's idea of news was opening night at the Futura City Dome or getting good reviews.
"Dad, listen, I found the biggest chunk of xendrium in history!" I said. We made a couple more tight turns and ended up at the rehearsal rooms buried beneath the main auditorium.
"Zen-what?" My Father repeated. "That's not that awful stuff they use to make those weapons with is it?" I took my HoloVid out of my pocket and tuned to one of the rolling news channels, but I was having trouble getting a signal down here.
We entered the rehearsal hall to see a small group of actors prancing up and down, holding old style scripts in their hands and reciting the same lines over and over.
"Er, you guys can go to lunch," my Dad called out. "Early lunch everybody. Meet you back here at one."
They didn't need telling twice and dispersed rapidly. A couple of them looked at me and asked my Father who I was. My Father, in his usual manner, explained that I had come to visit him from the Vachir cantons, where, he told them, I'd been touring in my own production of 'the Argent Guild'. It was obvious they didn't believe him.
"Dad, why do you have to make stuff up, just tell them who I am," I said, after the last of them had left the room.
"Come on," he said, we'll go and have lunch. I handed him the screen which was now playing a syndicated news feed.
In the broadcast Trabe was being interviewed. I could hardly recognise him as he'd been scrubbed clean and put into a new suit by somebody with a very advanced sense of humour.
"Look," I pointed, "he's one of my guys."
"We should go to this new place I've found," said my Father, "they do an amazing Ceedmash blend. The Chef's incredible." He watched Trabe for a few more seconds on the screen as he fumbled around with his coat. "He's got himself an agent," he said.
"Really?" I replied, doubtfully.
"Yeah, must have. He'll milk it for all its worth if he's got any sense. Interviews, story-grid deals, BioSims."
"Why would he bother with all that, he's already a billionaire," I said.
"Oh, just because you're rich doesn't mean you stop making money. Has he got kids?" My Dad asked.
"Two," I said.
"Well, there you go. He needs to leave them with a steady income after he's gone. An agent will sort all that out."
We walked back up the stairway and followed the same route out.
"So how much did you make?" My Father asked. I told him that my cut of the haul came to about four billion credits. He stopped and looked at me. "Oh my," he said, then started walking again. "What ever will you do with all that?"
We got out onto the street and I was relieved to see that it was clear of reporters or holographers. In this system at least, nobody knew who I was.
"I know a few productions that could use the money," he said as we walked. "There's a producer I know who's trying to get Blakney's 'the Claw and the Eye' put on in Inverrdo. You could make a good investment there."
"I hadn't thought about it. I was thinking maybe I could hire some more people, start my own company," I said. "I could even afford to buy my own asteroid field or a dead planet and strip mine it." I described all of this as though I had actually planned any of it, which I hadn't.
We crossed over a major roadway and climbed another level, then we were outside the restaurant.
"Why mining?," he said, with the frustration clear in his voice. It was a question he'd asked me twenty-five years ago when I'd left home to go and do my training. "You know your Brother just opened up another infraction office. You could go into partnership with him. There's a lot of good money in law.
We entered the restaurant and were seated immediately. The place was smart but minimalist. Every wall was mirrored as if to allow its patrons to see how wonderful they looked as they ate. I felt decidedly underdressed. Even though it didn't look it, I could tell the food was going to be expensive because they had human waiters in place of the usual serving-bots.
"So, you're going to carry on with the mining?"
"I enjoy it," I said. "It's good to know that what I'm doing is useful, vital even. You know without us, there'd be none of this," I waved my hand in the general direction of everything. My father ignored me and proceeded with the wine order before turning back to me.
"Well, as long as you're happy," he said.
I still had a small chunk of xendrium in my pocket. I had kept it as a souvenir with the intention of having it made into something. Something nice, something tasteful. I wrapped my hand around it and ran my thumb over its smooth, cold surface.
"Are you staying over?" My Father asked.
"Yes," I said, "well, maybe, if there's time. I have a lot of things to do here. I'd like to find a bank, buy a few things. I'll let you know." I said.
The food arrived and I ate it without really noticing what it was.
"I can have Carter sent up to your ship to get your things if you want," he said.
"Oh, no that's ok. The Star's a bit of a mess at the moment. I doubt he'd be able to find anything. And I really ought to contact my crew and let them know when I'll be coming back. I left in a bit of a hurry," I added, gulping the wine down a little too quickly.
After we left the restaurant my Father returned to the theatre and I found myself roaming the streets where I'd grown up. Every place I passed seemed to hold some long forgotten memory. The Sens-R-Cade where I'd gone with my first date. The park where we'd had family picnics in the summer and played games. I roamed the city for most of the afternoon, then somehow found myself at Bradshawes.
I'd walked past this place hundreds of times but had never been in. I knew they were the best shipbuilders on the planet. They built the ships for the Laqu royal family, and I began to wonder what sort of vessel I could have made. But I didn't want to wait for months while it was designed, built, tested then finally approved. For now I could settle for something off the shelf. The problem wasn't money, the problem was I didn't really know what I wanted a ship for.
The salesman approached me and asked if I was interested in anything in particular. I told him I didn't know and he showed me some of their demonstration displays. After a couple of hours of serious consideration I settled on a modestly sized cruiser. It was big, but not excessive, and it was the largest ship I could get which didn't require a crew. It's configuration was modular, so I could easily change its function later.
I gave them the lump of xendrium and had them incorporate it into the instrument panels and the arm rests of the commander's chair. They told me the customisations would take a few hours to fabricate, but the ship would be ready the next day. When the final bill was tallied it came in at over twelve million credits. I authorised the order and told them to deliver it to the station at Neo-Vega.
I returned to the dingy mess that was my quarters on the Mercury Star and was thankful that I wouldn't have to suffer them much longer. I found a message from my Father saying that he'd arranged some grand dinner back at the house. He'd dragged my Brother and his awful wife over from the other side of the planet and had my Mother's vid-screen put at the end of the table so she could pretend like she was there with us.
I wanted to send a reply, but I kept scrubbing out every first line I wrote. I could have called, but something stopped me opening the channel. I felt bad about not wanting to go to the meal, but I couldn't face it, and I couldn't figure out why. Finally I set my nav mode to Neo-Vega and pulled the Mercury Star away from the dock.
As I arrived in the system I caught up to all the messages that had been chasing after me through the lospace bands at sub-light speed. The filterware sorted through and deleted most of them, but there were two at the top of the list. One was from Max and the other was from Ceru Lea Solette. They were both marked 'URGENT: WAR-DEC!' The declaration of war had arrived just after I'd left.
The message from Max began;
"Attention All: Ceru Tiabee of the Kequla Proclates has declared war on us. All of you must return to the safety of the station immediately, where you'll equip your ships for combat and form part of our defence militia. As of now, the following rules are in effect;
1. No travelling solo in system under ANY circumstances!
2. All non-combat ships must report to the station and remain docked for the duration of the war, unless ordered otherwise by me personally.
3. All gang members shall equip a combat ship and report to their section head for training.
4. Anyone disregarding these orders will be fired upon and destroyed.
5. Anyone caught mining will be dealt with in a similar manner.
The warnings were pretty stark. I checked my sensors but there were no unidentified ships in system. I considered calling in for an escort to come out and meet me, but I thought I'd be safe enough from here to the station.
I docked and walked up to our offices. Max was sitting behind her desk, studying some schematics. She didn't look up.
"Hey Rellin, have you seen these new MX-14s? I've ordered a dozen for our fleet. We'll have them fitted to your new ship in the next few hours."
"You knew I'd ordered a new ship?" I said.
"Everyone's ordered a new ship," she replied, smugly.
She pointed to a screen with my stat file on it.
"Your training's behind. You need another three hours on the sim and four or five of live combat training logged. Shall I put you down for this afternoon?"
"What about Dobbs," I replied, "he said he'd train me up." She sneered at me.
"What about Dobbs?" She said.
"Where is he?" I asked, innocently.
"Disappeared," said Max. "Bought himself the best cloaking device he could find then left the station. Now nobody can find him."
"You think maybe he could have been attacked?" I said.
"Hope for his sake he was, because if he's run away," she trailed off.
"Run away?"
"Rumours." She fixed me with accusing eyes. "In fact, until you walked through that door I thought maybe you'd run away."
"I just went home, to see my folks. Get a few things sorted," I said.
Max stood up and walked around the front of the desk. Even with her flight boots on, she still only came up to my chest, but I knew she could easily floor me if she wanted to. I'd seen her take down people who'd disagreed with her, or disobeyed her orders. Big guys at that, miners, engineers, mercs. She didn't enjoy doing it and usually made sure it was over quickly.
"Don't you think you've all done pretty well out of us over the years? I mean, twenty-five years of mining, making a good living and enjoying all the benefits of our little company?" She didn't wait for an answer. "And now, when we ask for something in return, what do we get? Complaints, disobedience, betrayal, desertion."
"Hang on a minute," I said, "who said anything about desertion?"
"Do any of you want to fight? No. It's become obvious over the last two days that not one member of this gang will fulfil their duty and fight for this territory. Oh, you'll fight for yourselves, but not for our Ceru." Having made her point she returned to her chair behind the desk. "Get a ship, find someone with the guts to fly with you and start patrolling. When the enemy gets here, I want us to be ready."
I went down to the dock where my new ship had been delivered and called up maintenance. I had the 'Xendrium Crown', as I'd decided to call it, fitted with all the scanning equipment I could get hold of at short notice. Enough sensor packs, probes and hywave monitors to find a cloaked ship. I had the money for the best, but the station didn't stock everything I wanted and there wasn't time to have it fab'ed. I even managed to get the mechs fitting my gear to tell me what new ship and cloak system Dobbs had bought.
When I launched, the press ships outside didn't notice me. I began carefully probing for Dobbs' signal, trying to find even the slightest trace of his cloak. I got lucky for the second time that week. I found a spike in the local hyspace field density. I studied the monitor for a few minutes trying to figure out what it was, then realised it was a mass transfer from the upper dimensions of hyspace into the lower dimensions of lospace. Or, to put it more simply, it was the wake of a ship dropping out of jump. I worked backwards and calculated the mass transfer that had created the spike, like measuring the size of a stone from the ripples it made on a pond. It was exactly the right mass for Dobbs' new ship. I headed towards the spot where he'd dropped into system and hoped I didn't accidentally crash into him.
I set up our old private channel, the same one we always used when we wanted to talk about Max instead of to her. I spoke into the silence. A distorted voice came through the speakers, then the system adapted to the signals being warped through the cloak and it was like he was here in the cabin with me.
"Max sent you?" He asked
"No, I was worried about you," I replied. "Where have you been?"
"Out to see Ceru Tiabee, try and work out some sort of agreement with him," he said. "I've been through too many wars to want another one."
"It's all my fault," I said. "If I hadn't found that stupid rock."
"Maybe it's Max's fault. If she'd been there that Bug wouldn't have hit the asteroid and made us all billionaires."
"Of all the lousy breaks huh?" I said.
"Who knows, maybe you'd have found it ten minutes later. Maybe somebody else would have found it. Same result. Most of life is random, consequences almost always unintended. I wouldn't worry about having any control over the universe, it's not really an option."
"So what did Tiabee say?" I asked.
"He said 'he couldn't allow Ceru Solette to be in control of that much xendrium. The danger of it being used to threaten the surrounding proclates was too great."
"So we're going to have a war to keep the peace," I concluded.
"I'm not going back," said Dobbs. "Tell Max whatever you like. That I'm dead or I defected to the other side or I joined a monastery."
"She'll give out the order to kill you," I told him.
"Fine, let her do that then," he said.
"Where will you go?" I asked.
"Anywhere. I have a cloaked ship. I could go into the Expanse, explore the Parshani Belt. Or what was that place you always told me about? That planet you grew up on might be nice," he said.
"They'll send bounty hunters after you, Max and Solette," I warned him.
"Yeah, and I'll send bounty hunters after the bounty hunters, and after Max and the Ceru. I've got more money than I could ever spend anyway. All I want to do is settle down somewhere and do something normal. What about you?" He asked.
"Haven't thought about it," I said. "Fight? With all the new equipment and ships we've been able to buy, we actually stand a pretty good chance of winning."
"And then what?" He said.
"What?" I said back.
"After the war's been won? Solette will have even greater domain and gain more power. Max might even get to be a Ceru of her own proclate. That's what she really wanted all this time."
"Well, if you do go to Reyt-Serril, look for my family," I said. "When I'm next back there we can meet up. You look after yourself," I said. "Be careful."
"You too." He said, then clicked off the comm channel. Then there was silence.
Being unfamiliar with the new kit, I didn't realise that for a minute or so the channel I'd been speaking to Dobbs on was still open. I could hear a faint fizzing noise, a fading signal, the echo of a voice. I put the frequency through some of the analysers and it located the source. A thin, indistinct sound gradually emerged from the aural fog, and it continued to grow louder until I could hear it calling,
"Angelfire Six, form up," then an instant later someone else said, "Begin attack pattern Aleph-Seven."
Then the ether was alive with signals, growing stronger, suppressing all other communications. It was a fleet of ships moving through the system. I was learning to use these new, highly advanced, instruments as I went along. I looked up some of the readings in the quick reference guide and figured out that they were transmitting a blocking signal.
I tried to scan the station but couldn't get a lock, nor was the planet showing, or the main star. These were jamming ships, the first wave of an invasion force. Even a vessel wanting to jump out of the system wouldn't be able to get enough of a reading to calculate a trajectory.
Then six Angelfire assault ships appeared about ten kilometres behind me, between me and the station. They ignored me and carried on towards their target. I doubted the station had noticed the incoming fleet, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn't even call and warn them.
I started the Xendrium Crown moving, and pointed it towards the asteroid field. I didn't need the nav, I simply lined up the same stars with my cockpit window as I had every day for the past quarter century. When I met the edge of the field, I turned in. To most people, an asteroid field looked random, but to me it had a texture. The rocks changed by the minute, but the pattern was always the same.
Some of the amateur miners were still here. I drew in closer to one of them. It was a small ship, firing its puny laser at one of the rocks, so weak that it was barely scratching the surface layer, let alone cutting anything away.
I aimed a basic communication laser at their line-of-sight dish, unaffected by the jamming signal, and sent a vid feed to them.
"Hi, my name's Rellin Suln!" They recognised me instantly.
"Wow, it really is you isn't it."
"Yes," I said. "I used to mine out here,"
"Heh, yeah, we know. You're the reason we came out here. We came to make our fortune, just like you did. Can you give us any advice?" They asked.
"Like what?" I said.
"Like, how do we find the big one?" I laughed at that.
"Stay out here for twenty-five years and you've got the same chance of finding it as I did," I said. "I got lucky, that's all. In the end, those years of experience counted for nothing."
"So maybe there's hope for us then?"
There was some shuffling in the background, then I heard him shout,
"Hey, Loran, come up here and say hi to Rellin Suln." A woman appeared before the camera, holding a baby in her arms and with another child tugging at her to be lifted up to see the screen. This idiot had brought his whole family out here. Didn't he know how dangerous mining was? And this place was about to become a war zone! If I'd warned them there was nothing they could do to avoid it anyway, no ship could jump out now. Hopefully the attackers would concentrate on the station and leave the asteroid field for a few days.
"Maybe there is something I could do for you," I said. The guy's mouth hung open expectantly. "Look, I made a lot of money out here. I mean a lot! I'd just like to spread it around the mining community." I explained.
"Wow, really?" He looked at his wife for approval and she seemed to give it. "Sure, ok. You want my deposit number?" He eagerly tapped in his code and it appeared on my screen. It was a safe way to transfer money, since the number accepted deposits only and couldn't be hacked. I keyed in the account info, then filled in the transfer amount with a four, followed by nine zeros. Four billion credits.
I left myself a couple of hundred million, which I figured I could live on for a good while. Then, before I had time to think about it too much, I hit the send button. The funds disappeared into the stranger's bank account and out of my life.
"I hope it brings you lots of luck," I said, and closed the channel to a choking, coughing sound.
I pulled the ship away and dove it deeper into the asteroid belt. The sun and stars receded behind me and were eventually blocked out almost completely as I continued toward the middle of the field. I sensed the pull of gravity created by the combined mass of all the scattered material. Towards the centre the asteroids were huge. They moved slower and orbited in a somewhat more regular, stable pattern.
Looking out, all you could see was asteroids. There were only the occasional tiny gaps to glimpse the stars beyond. I pulled in closer to the more massive roids, looking for one that was just right. After circling one planetoid a couple of times, I found a fissure big enough to fit the ship inside. I fired off a fixed probe into the outer surface and flew the Crown into the gaping hole. As the ship made its way along the inside of the tunnel, I trailed a fibre hardline connection back to the probe. This would be my only link with the rest of the galaxy, for however long I decided to stay in here.
I'd studied rocks like this over the years. They had interiors made of soft, fissile material and sometimes water-ice. The caverns inside could be stable structures, leaving enough room to park a ship, maybe even construct some sort of sealed habitable area. Some folks chose to live inside these asteroids. Spacers knew them as Rock Hermits.
I landed on the flattest area I could find and shut down the Crown's engines. I had enough basic rations for a few months and one of the latest food synths. My water purifier had a one-hundred year guarantee and everything else I needed would come from the fusion reactor and the steady supply of rock minerals in the roid. I had everything I needed.
I could listen to the universe without it ever knowing I was here. The radio waves and hywave signals from a trillion star systems would trickle through these asteroids, and my computers and analysers would collect them all. I would sit and listen to the regular, low beat of the galaxy, its rhythm like music. And I could mine again, not rocks this time, but data.