Good thing that my distance gauging skills in space suck. It took nearly an hour from waking up until I was actually near enough the hollow asteroid to disable the autopilot. That was a good thing because it allowed me to come fully awake and drink something that I wished could have been coffee and munch on a meal bar. Berry flavour this time.

When I finally disrupted the autopilot, my cockpit lost its purple light and went back to the normal amber color. Then I slowly and painstakingly moved closer and around the nearly 60 kilometer diameter asteroid. I actually did all of this manually but really really slowly because my last attempts of manual maneuvering and what it did to my ship were still fresh in my mind. Plus my board computer tried to be helpful. In fact so much so, that the flood of proximity alerts and warnings about this and that started to become so much that I had the hardest time concentrating on flying. The thing is that I did not yet have enough experience to disable some of them.

Only 3 hours later I had circled around the huge rock (yeah, not a space racer yet) and my ship was holding steady with what turned out to be a cave rather than a hollow. How survey scanners can skew your perception. I inched closer and closer and closer to the opening, compensating with the ship’s thrusters for the asteroids rotation.

The problem was that by doing so I blocked the little light that was there and could see nothing but blackness before me. I wished that Rustbucket would have come equipped with a searchlight. Even a flashlight that I could shine out of the window would help. But during my mining time I had not discovered anything that could serve that purpose.

Pulling up the 3d map I had created during my scanning visits I got busy on my monitor. I wrote a short script that would switch the mining laser’s teleport function off. It also overrode the basic “aim for ore” command that the lasers had. Then I set up 2 aim points. One to the top of the shape and one to left of it.

By now I was familiar enough with these things that I estimated I would have about a minute before enough rock would melt to cause any trouble. I halved that time in my mind, committed to err on the side of caution. Then I flipped the switch.

And was instantly disappointed. I had hoped that the light I had seen when I had watched the lasers at work before would give me some visibility. But nothing. I still saw the yellow beams shoot out from my ship and hit the rock where I had aimed them but the cave remained just as dark. The only illumination came from the spots on the wall where the rock started to glow.

And then I slapped my head. Because I remembered my physics classes. You know how in sci-fi shows the lasers shooting around are red or yellow or purple? Well, I had an old physics teacher that used to go on and on about how they do it wrong in the movies and trids just for effect. And then he explained that a laser is basically light that goes into one direction. You can only see that when it passes through something that disturbs the the beam and some of the photons start bouncing and reflecting. Basically you see a laser in space only when it hits the target or passes through a gas cloud or space dust. Or something like that. It’s been a long time since my physics class.

So that means that the yellow laser beams I am seeing are some kind of helpful tech overlay on my screen so I have an easier time to aim and all that. Visual confirmation help. But that did not help me here.

Annoyed with modern tech I switched one of the lasers off. The other I slowly moved closer to one of the edges I had seen in blue during my surveys. Bit by bit I came closer. The rock retaining a light glow for about 10 seconds before cooling down again. I also activated the automatic log recording everything I did.

Finally I was close enough to the edge that I could see the glowing rock reflect on a surface. But that was all I could make out. I spent the next 1.5 hours tracing the outline of whatever it was that I had found my log recording it all.

And then I made a mistake. I slipped on the controls ever so slightly and the laser hit the surface of the object instead of the rock. Immediately a blue shimmer ran over the entire surface of the thing and for a moment I could see a metallic shape. It looked organic but then again not. There were sharp edges and corners that did not fit with plant or animal life. And at the same time it had curves that were the very core of organic life.

“OMG!” I exclaimed as the realization hit home. It must be some kind of derelict ship. It looked nothing like Rustbucket or even anything that I had seen game designers put together before. It was waaayyy bigger than my current ship. The whole thing was simply incredible.

I vowed to myself that I would come back for it in the hopes that nobody else came for it first. I wondered what its history was, what happened to the owners and what I would do if I go my hands on it. And what kind of salvage rights applied here. And all kinds of other stuff. You know, Space Treasure Hunter. Yes, that sounded more like it. Forget mining.

Incredibly excited and bummed that I could do nothing about it right now I backed my tiny old mining ship up and once I cleared the hole and then the asteroid I reactivated the autopilot to resume curse to the station. Then I leaned back in the chair and let my thoughts drift. What if I really could get my hands on that ship?