When I woke up, I checked the results of my mining operation and did a little happy dance. Of course I managed to bang my knee again in the cramped space and banged my elbow on the bulkhead edge but I guess that was to be expected by now. I cussed at the piece of junk that was my ship anyway.

By mining a deposit that had twice the density than what I had started with, I had doubled my output too. That resulted in mining level 16 and just under 2100 ore to go. In 6 hours I would set course to the space station and my new life will finally begin.

In the meantime I went back to the survey scanner and the hole in the asteroid and tried to make sense of the shape of things in there. But no matter how I turned and twisted my vision there was nothing to it but weirdly angled blue lines that should not be there and nothing else. And these lines were all sharp angles and curved lines, weirdly and for some reason it did not look natural.

I chuckled at my own thoughts. Yeah right, I am a specialist on asteroid belts now. I wasn’t really sure that they were not supposed to be there but considering patterns and all I “assumed” that they were not supposed to be there. Yes, again I did air quotes in my head. In the end, I was pretty certain that flying in a junk ship after being pressed into a labor gang already made me the butt of many jokes and I wasn’t taking any risks with by assuming.

That brought up another thought. You know when you have been by yourself for too long and without any other entertainment, when you start having whole conversations in your head and find yourself super hilarious. I was at the point where my wittiness cracked me up.

So, for entertainment, to occupy myself, and in an attempt to make the best of my remaining time, I dedicated myself to grinding my survey skill. Considering how I had boosted my productivity because of it I decided that it might come in handy in the future.

I mapped another 7 deposits and was awarded with an interface message notifying me that my survey skill was now 4. Zooming back to the hollow I was hoping that I could now understand a bit better what I was seeing but it still didn’t give me any more information. In the end, I closed the survey interface and was about to vent my frustration when I saw the blinking message light on my ship’s screen. It was Foreman Len-dren again, this time with an automated message.

“Miner Malcolm Solo, your contract volume of 10.000 Endrite has been delivered. Your contract is hereby closed out. A commendation for timely delivery has been added to your personnel file. Please proceed to Belt Station. Coordinates have been transferred into your nav computer and a course has been plotted.”

Oh, so my ship was hacked and would now deliver me to my evil overlords???

I quickly pulled the programmed course up on the monitor and scratched my chin. We would pass the hollow asteroid pretty closely. The problem was that the opening was on the other side. I really wanted to have a look at whatever was in that hole. Shrugging I punched the autopilot button.

Universe tremble, Malcolm Solo is coming!

The lights on the cockpit flashed to purple, I assumed that meant autopilot took over, and the ship started turning. Then it accelerated. Which meant that it passed slightly less slowly by the huge space rocks. When we were in the last stretches of the belt it banked sharply and the AI gunned it. In moments we were up to traveling speed which was a measly 2480 meter per second or roughly 9000 kilometer per hour or 5500 miles per hour. Yeah, when I did the math on that I realized that it wasn’t actually that measly. But you know, space is big. Like really, really big. With a capital B. So even though the ship went fast, it didn’t seem that way. And by the way, I did not do the math in my head. I think I could have but I was lazy and punched the formulas into the board computer.

I watched fascinated as asteroids of all shapes and sizes came into view. Some spinning faster, others slower. Some had slightly different shades and reflected light differently. Honestly I had been sitting in this belt for the last week or so and thought myself already a spacer. But seeing more than a few miles, speed-crawling by the asteroids, seeing the whole of the blue sun for the first time, glancing at millions of stars that may well hold my future… well, there were no words for it.

It was utterly humbling and a total thrill at the same time. My emotions were in turmoil and I wiped several tears away.

I set an alarm on the board computer to notify me when we would pass by the hollow asteroid and continued sightseeing. At some point I must have fallen asleep in the chair as the beeping of my proximity notification startled me awake.