Almost There!
06 Jul 2020Korzhakov
"Wake up baby, time to get ready" I say to Jean. She groans slightly and rolls out of bed and drags herself to the bathroom to get ready. I go to the kitchen, and make her a mug of coffee to go. "Ok I'm up and dressed, I can't believe I agreed to go mining with you, what was I thinking?" she says as she walks out of the bedroom dressed in her RemLok flight suit. I pause for the second, taking in how that suit hugs her every curve like her own skin, and it's an impressive sight. I hand her the mug of coffee and she takes a big draw from it. I set my cup on the table and sit down.
"Here, sit down for a minute and eat breakfast, let the coffee kick in" I tell her. She sits next to me at the table and we eat some eggs, bacon and sausage that I cooked right after waking her up.
We walk to our hangar and greet my ground crew, "She's all ready Korz" Randy my crew chief tells me. "How many limpets this time?" I ask, "180 this time around, I know were still tweaking the number to get it in the right zone, but you'll get there" he says as he closes up the cargo hatch.
We board the vette and get settled into the bridge as Astra works through the preflight checks. "Same destination as the previous trips Commander?" Astra asks, "Yes please" I say back to the AI. "All systems check out, everything is in the green Commander" "Send departure request to flight control please" I say.
The hangar doors open and the vette rises to the flight deck. "Hadley's Hope, you are cleared for departure, traffic at your 2-o-clock, high, a python on approach, and a hauler low at your 7-o-clock transiting port to starboard below the carrier, have a good flight boss" Yumi says to us. "Thank you Archangel control, cleared for departure, traffic high at 2 and low at 7, Hadley's Hope clear of the pad, have a great day Yumi" I call out as the vette lifts off and we make the turn towards the star and our jump point.
Jean is looking less than thrilled, but she has coffee so she will be ok once it kicks in. "4,3,2,1 engage" the AI announces as we jump the short distance to the mining system. We exit hyperspace and make the quick run to the mining site. I pick my entry angle and drop out of super cruise right at 400 kilometres from the center of the hotspot. "What the !! oh god!!" Jean exclaims, apparently she's never exited super cruise into a ring system, the giant asteroids suddenly appearing in the windscreen seems to have startled her. I think she's fully awake now.
I start the pulse wave analyser and we set about mining for the first of what will be three runs today. I start off with a bang by finding a double subsurface deposit, and my luck doesn't run out for the rest of the day. Each trip back I load up the hold with 384 tonnes of low temp diamonds. I am working towards my self imposed goal of loading up 4500 tonnes of them before I am ready to sell. While waiting for the prices to come back up I can continue to fill the carriers cargo holds with the ltd's that will fund our operations for many years to come. Don't get me wrong, mining is fun and all, but I've been at it for a few weeks now and would like a nice long break from it.
After the second run back to the carrier, Jean and I head forward to Finnegan's for lunch. It's going to be a short while before the ship is ready to head back to mining. Randy want's to do some checks as I had a piece come loose on my flight controls and although not dangerous, it's something he wants to check out thoroughly. Jean informs me that after two mining runs, she's going back to our quarters for a nap and she will have dinner ready when I get back from the third run.
When I return the third time. I am full to the gills, all 384 tonnes in the hold and all 10 hoppers full for 394 tonnes in total. I am close, 4101 tonnes on board out of the 4500 that I want. It will take one full trip then just 6 more tonnes and were set, but I know me, I will make both runs as full runs and go well over the 4500 tonnes goal that I set. But that's ok, it' just means more credits for us. I make my way to our quarters and Jean is there with a beautiful stuffed meatloaf for dinner. I get out of my RemLok and into some pants and a shirt. Dinner done and I update Jean on the day's progress. " we will be fully loaded soon, one day, maybe two at most and we will jump back home for a while before heading out" I tell my fiance.
"We will talk about the expedition I want to do after we get back home" I say to Jean, "That sounds like a lot of fun but maybe slightly scary, but having the carrier will make it feel a lot safer I suppose" she replies.