It was not my day
23 Sep 2019Don Samen
Finally back at a station. Not my home, but after days out in the belt any civilization is welcome. All days spent with the monotone sound from the pulse wave analyzer, hoping to see a bright shining asteroid. Landing in the center of a painite hotspot was supposed to be the sure thing, CR in the bank. But no painite in sight, just the regular silver and gold, and some osmium. That should still give a huge profit, but what can I do when technology seems to have an agenda - to ruin my day. For days the collectors refused to cooperate. Those collectors have one job, collect a fragment and drop it in the cargo bay. But no... No dropping of fragments. As soon as that collector tried to enter the cargo door the system crashed, the fragment was dropped and the computer had to reboot. How can a collector crash the ships computer?
After arguing with Core Dynamics for days trying to make them understand that this is my job. My beloved "Drilling Boomer" has given me huge profits back in the days. But not now, not a single canister of precious metals in the cargo. Days waiting out in the belt, trying different settings, tweaking, adjusting the power with the same result. I could have left the belt earlier, but my faith in Core Dynamics was after all there. And after four days of waiting they had a fix, a small adjustment. They wouldn't tell me what the fix was, I was on the edge of starting yelling at them. But then I realized, I don't care what the problem was.
And there, after days of waiting I fired up the engines again, made sure that the refinery had sufficient power and headed for the brightest asteroid that the pulse wave could find. I found a asteroid with Serendibite core, but nothing of value on surface. But core mining, that's the best part of mining. When all charges are set and the indicators are all blue you push the detonation button. There is probably some sort of safety distance when detonating the charges, but I don't care. I like to sit there just some hundred meters from the blast. The feeling when the 'vette starts shaking and the instruments blinks - that's how you know you're alive. But that was the only core I was able to mine, nothing else. Just the regular surface stuff. And in the end, not a great profit and all the limpets spent on trying to fix the darn collecting.
After five days out in the dark I just hit the wall, I just needed to talk to someone else than the computer, have a meal of fresh food. The worst part was all the prospecting limpets used, and no painite...