Ralgau sat there for a while and just stared at me. His face all serious. And for all I prided myself in being able to read people, I had no idea if he was going to laugh, to punch me, to get up and walk away or agree to my proposal. So I did only thing appropriate in this situation and sat in silence with him, watching him right back.

“Why?”

“Because... ,” I trailed off. I had wanted to shoot a rapid answer out. But suddenly my gut reminded me to play straight with him. I learned long ago that when you are not just honest but transparent and vulnerable you got a lot further with people. Yes, when you tell that to someone they will always ask how you avoid people taking advantage of you with this mentality. Well, you don’t. But there are far fewer people out to get you than your imagination conjures up.

“Because I have a feeling that I will need you in the future. You are the one person that has been helpful without really having a reason to. Yes, you took some money for it but you still had no reason to. Because of my circumstance I know way less about the universe and the people in it than I would like to. I need help to get anywhere, otherwise I am relegated to sit out there and mine my ass off until I can get anything better going. And even then I have no idea if it really is something better.

“What’s more, I have a feeling in my bones… ever since I found the thing to salvage in that asteroid, I know that I will leave a Mark on the universe. Not sure if for better or worse but I have a feeling that there is money to be made and adventures to be had. And while the first is a lot easier with other people involved, the latter could turn bad in a second without someone to have my back.”

I leaned forwards and extended my hand across the table. “So what do you say, you in?”

His stern expression softened at my words. Then he took my hand and squeezed it. “I will not form a company with you. I will not trust you with my money without double checking. I will watch you and at the first sign of betrayal I will crush you. And most of all, I will not owe you anything. I will find more people and will set up the claim where I will work until I can get my tug back and have paid you off.”

After this half scary oath like speech his face lit up and we started chuckling with each other which then turned into a moment of silence where we finished our drinks and ordered more. And then we got into making plans.

I felt the anticipation of adventures unfolding. I love the feeling of sitting with someone and making plans, hashing things out, figuring out the next steps and the bigger goals. Yes, I have done my little to-do lists so far. But that is nothing compared to the energy you feel when you sit with someone and you have the feeling that you are pulling for the same goal.

So after a few more hours of that, I left the Tower in high spirits which turned out came not entirely from the conversation but also from the ale we consumed. When we left I passed the waiter and waved my arm over his station to pay our meal and then Ralgau walked and I swayed out of there and straight to Rustbucket. Where I made my way through the airlock and then immediately crashed out.

* * * * *

When I woke up eight hours later I noticed two things. Well, to be fair, I noticed a whole bunch of them. But the first two were that I did not have a hangover, which I am sadly prone to, no matter how little alcohol I consume and the second was that I had not received a well rested bonus. So the conclusion that both things might be connected seemed reasonable. If you get drunk the hangover and the buff will negate each other. After all, minus one plus one comes out to zero.

The next thing I noticed was that my com was frantically blinking and that the messages were from Ralgau.

“Hey man, just woke up. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just trying to get started. While you were having your beauty sleep I started pulling information together. So I have an initial estimate for setting up the claim plus, got the information to file the settlement of my personal case, contacted a few people if they want to start a claim with us, pulled a fel contracts...”

“Duuuuude. Which part about I just woke up didn’t you understand,” i interrupted his monologue. Honestly, his enthusiasm was overwhelming when you had just crawled out of bed. I needed a moment to restart my brain.

“Do you have something that could count as breakfast and coffee in this bar of yours?”

“Pfft, I do have breakfast but I don’t know what this coffee is. Get your Quirt behind in gear and come over. We can discuss when you are awake.”

“Mhmmm,” I yawned. “On my way.”

The way to the Rambler was a know one to me by now and I didn’t even bother putting it in my minimap. The place was refreshingly empty and quiet. I plopped down on one of the bar stools and gave Ralgau a challenging look. He in turn grinned, shook his head and then proceeded to put a bowl of something that could have passed as porridge in front of me. Which was then joined by a big cup that contained something hot and steaming… and green. Damn, what a tease.

Without actually speaking I started spooning the porridge in my mouth which was warm and creamy and had faint notes that could have passed as cinnamon. I gave it a mental six out of ten. I really, really wanted a coffee but I guess that was just not in the cards and the green drink needed to suffice. It tasted weirdly fishy. Which was just yucky in the morning. No more than a one point five out of ten. However, I noticed that the effects were similar to those of my cherished black gold. So I adjusted the rating to two of ten.

After about 15 minute of silence Ralgau looked at me expectantly. “Ready to talk now?”

“Not yet but if you speak slowly I am ready to listen.” I gave him my best award winning smile to which his reaction was another snort.

“Okay. As I was saying before, I pulled information together on setting up a claim. It should be no problem to get it approved but we need initial equipment which neither of us have. So that is something we need to buy or rent. I also pulled all the information together to get my personal case settled and paid off. I reached out to three different people about joining us in forming a co-op on our claim. And I dug through the bulletins to find some well paying contracts to get some money together.”

“Sounds good,”I nodded. “What’s the damage on the equipment going to be?”

“If we buy used, all together about 60k. If we buy new, about double that.”

“And renting?”

“About 350 per day.”

“What now?” That seemed like robbery to me. I mean, it would be cheaper in the beginning but after half a year or so you would be paying more. The difference was between starting earlier or later. The problem was that we needed to provide 800 units of ore for the claim and then we had to pay another 350 ICU on top of that to get the equipment to work the claim.

“Plus the 25k for your settlement,” I added. “How much can you contribute financially to this endeavour?”

“I have roughly 3500 ICU available,” Ralgau replied making a face.

I had to admit, that this was really a bad result considering that he needed to get a total of 75k together just to get himself and his ship released.

“I have about 14.5k…” On a whim I checked my character sheet and my account balance showed as 13.484 ICU. Daaaaamn. Nearly a grand on our outing yesterday. “Nevermind, I have 13.5k available but some of that needs to go towards security and I really want to check on the CLON contracts. I guess the latter might have time until we head to the claim but I am not flying around out there without system security keeping and eye out for me.”

He nodded. “In that case I have two contracts here that might catch your interest. One is paying 0.9 ICU for 5.5k Endrite and the other pays 0.8 plus another 0.1 if you deliver within a 45 hour deadline for 25k Endrite.”

I pulled up my interface and quickly did the math: 0.8 times 25k plus another 0.9 times 5.5k came out to 24.950 ICU. If I could make the deadline, I would get a bonus of 2.500 ICU. All in all not bad on the money side.

“Would you do me a favor and check if there are any survey maps for sale and if so, how much they cost. I only need Endrite and density percentages.”

Yeah, I suck. I could have checked myself. But I would have to walk over to the bulletins and manually go through them. Ralgau could query them through his connector. So he had it a lot easier. Also his eyes had already unfocused, which meant he was already checking and he hadn’t complained about it. So he didn’t mind. That line of reasoning led to me only feeling slightly bad about asking him to check. And then I decided that I would hold off on spending all the cash on a connector since I had a walking connector that was voice activated. Yay me.

“There are some. 11.5k for the cheapest but it only has a 34% coverage of the belt.”

“Nevermind that then.”

Which means my option was the 13.5% one I had mined for the Solarwind contract. Which meant five and a half hours to get there, then 320 ore per hour for a total of 79ish hours for the deadline contract. Yeah, no extra money for me. Plus another 17ish hours for the other contract. Plus another 5.5 hours back here. Damn, 106 hours or roughly four and a half days to make 25k credits. A long time.

But, add to that out current account balances and we could get out to the claim and the ship in around five or six days. For that I was willing to suffer through the boredom of sitting in the belt. Speaking of which…

“Hey, how would I go about doing an info dump about anything claim and asteroid mining and salvaging related into my ships computer?”

“Just pull up the information on the bulletins and then save them to the ship computer via com request. It’s a lot more convenient and safe if you have a connector but anybody can do it from the bulletins as long as the ship is in com range.”

“Could you?”

“Nope,” he shook his head. “Only official crew can do it. And since your vessel is a one-man boat, you can’t add me to the crew manifest. You could hand ownership over but then the impound order would extend to your ship and you would be serving drinks next to me.”

Yeah, not going to happen. Guess I have to do it the manual way.

“Okay, flick me the contract info and I am going to get out there. I’ll contact you when I am sitting in the belt being bored. Or when I have questions. And if you have any news, send a com request my way. And let’s get the claim registered in our names, starting in 6 days. We should be good to go then.”

“So you want to go with the equipment rental?”

I nodded. “Makes the most sense. I want to get out there. If you knew what is waiting on that rock, you would be too.”

“Looking forward to finding out but looking even more forward to get out of this bar,” he smiled excitedly.