Live and Learn... Barely
08 Feb 2020Mythyc
Looking out of the window of the station I call home, I looked across the beautiful rings that my home sits just above. And I realized that there had to be immense riches in those rings, just not immense beauty. So I go and purchase myself a Keelback and fit her out for mining after stops at a few different station and into the rings I go. I play around and laze a few asteroids with and with the help of my prospector and collector limpets I head back to the station with a hold full of metals and minerals. Not bad for my first trip and now I have a couple million more credits to play with so I further upgrade my ships with seismic charge launchers and head back out to try again. Those time I find a very bright yellow asteroid on my scanner and after plopping a prospector limpet on it I see that it has Void Opals on it... Man how lucky can I get on my first try, easy credits I'm think so I start placing my charges... and don't charge them up enough, made some pretty flashes but I get nothing from my experience except for a small meteor shower bouncing off my hull.... Well shit. I play round with the launcher a bit and figure out how to charge the, well charges, and after heading back to the port for more limpets and ammo I figure I got this.
So here I go, round 3, and off I go back into the rings and after carving up a few asteroids and with a few tons of Palladium in my hold my scanner catches a glint of yellow. Oh boy here we go, and off I go racing through the asteroid field after a loaded asteroid, only to discover it has nothing but a few sub surface deposits of Silver and Bertrandite. After 2 more trips back to the station a few million more credits in my account I'm starting to settle in with just how rare core filled asteroids are and now I'm just taking what I can find. And then it happens.
Once again I spy yellow on my scanner but this time its a lot of very bright yellow and red. I threw a prospector limpet at it and I see this baby has a Monazite core. Its not Void Opals but it will still help fill my credit accounts if I can get them out. So I'm a lot more careful with my charges placing them correctly and I back way off and watch them blow. And man is it beautiful watching and asteroid crack open laying bare its riches. So I swoop in as much as I can my flying brick of a spaceship and clean the place out, 15 Monazite, great haul. So I decide to head back to the station and right as I'm leaving the ring I hit the scanner again and almost directly in my path is another bright yellow asteroid on my scanner. Aww hell why not, lets go see what it has for me.
Eureka, another Monazite core asteroid, man I'm feeling myself now, time to rake in the credits. I place the charges like before and fly off and sit and wait. You know the biggest killer in the black isn't idiots in other ship or the unexpected. Its overconfidence based on "I've done this before I can handle it". And I was very nearly about to learn this lesson the hard way. I'm sitting in my ship watching the timer count down, arrogant to the point that I'm gonna get myself some pictures of the explosion. And then it blows. And it nearly blew me up too. By the time I crawl back into the pilots seat I see my ship pointed in an entirely new direction
and my hull integrity down to 9% and by the time I actually get my ship under control, after bouncing off another asteroid, Its sitting at 3%. So very slowly and gently I maneuver my war around the crack asteroid while my limpets collect the scattered pieces and limp my way back to port. Prying the whole way that some idiot in a rented sidewinder doesn't ram into me on my way through the mail slot.
But now here I sit with drink in hand toasting to the 5 million credits I made on the last run into the asteroid field, with my keelback in drydock getting some rather extensive repairs. Thinking about being arrogant nearly killed me, not to mention causing me to ruin a rather good flight suit. (come on would you really want to wear it again when you just made more than enough to buy a new one) but hey you live and learn. Or I guess it would be more correct if it was learn and live. So here's the lesson of the day for any of you reading this. No matter how few or many time you may have cracked and asteroid, always give your explosives plenty of room to do their work, because if you don't, they will work on you.