The next four days passed in a flying crawl. Or a crawling fly. I am not sure. I had watched trids about wars IRL. And one of the expressions that was often used was that a battle usually consisted of hours of waiting with minutes of frenetic activity. If that was truly the case then I was in a huge battle for the last few days. However my high activity periods consisted of trying to make the grid cutting faster and more efficient when it happened and then wait around for hours while the actual mining happened.

This time I then used to read through the huge amount of information that I grabbed before heading out. Educational. Although I have to admit I grabbed two novels just because. By now I had made it halfway through the first one.

I had also visited the CLON office before leaving the station as I really didn’t want to end up running into some kind of permadeath issue. However after investigating the prices, I abandoned that endeavour and had rather spent 2.5k on another five days of system security coverage.

The way the CLON system was set up was very interesting. You would go in, specify the amount of skill points you wanted to cover, then a scan was done and you paid your due. Apparently during the scan, the system connected to the n-link which would then update their database in the moment of death. The best thing was that the assured connection range was 15 light years. So even if there wasn’t a CLON office or satellite in the system, as long as the closest one was within 15 LY, the company guaranteed revival.

And from what the customer service AI told me, it could even go further but the signal clarity would degrade so badly that it was hard to actually to assure the latest information. Which meant that they would then take the latest saved record as a template and update whatever information they could receive. So there was no assurance that your skills or memories would actually be up to date.

However, there were a few downsides. The first one was, that death needed to be confirmed by the system. In case where it wasn’t 100% certain that the former body was dead, a new one wouldn’t be printed. So traveling further than 25 LY away from the closest receiver was not a good idea because the system might not realize you just died and no confirmation, no re-printing.

The next downside was the price. A general re-print without skill preservation, which meant you would be re-printed with one skill point in any of the skills you possessed during the initial scan cost “only” 5k. But as soon as you wanted skills preserved things quickly became really expensive. Currently I had 42 skill points across the board. The price for that re-print would be 29.2k. At 50 points it would be up to 31.2k. However it really became expensive from 100 points on.

To be honest, I had no idea how I was supposed to handle that. On the other hand, from a game design perspective, it made sense. For one, it was a major money sink and would go a long way to prevent hyperinflation. And it would keep people more focused to not spread their skills to far around. Leveling a skill from one to ten was fast. Picking up ten different skills and you would already have 100 points to protect. So specialisation to save money didn’t seem like a bad idea.

Anyway, the third downside was that implants were considered proprietary information and the CLON printers did not have the necessary licenses to reprint them. So while you would save the skills, there was no saving the implants. Although I guess you could always try to find your own corpse, drag it to a medical facility and then have a doctor transfer them between bodies. I tagged that idea as “something to keep in mind”.

After that it was an autopilot trip to the asteroid, firing up my trusty square cutting and mining script and leaning back. Or rather read a lot about asteroid claims, business, security, mercantilism and industry. I even picked up a text titled “Running A Mining Co-Op for Dummies”.

Anyway, it didn’t take me long to get my first mining skill up and by the time both contracts were finished, my skill was sitting pretty at 32 points and my account at 35934 ICU. I had also unlocked Pyzite as a mineable mineral. However, I could no survey it because my survey skill was still below ten, which I tried rectifying by surveying for Saronite ever since the message popped up but I was only able to get it up to nine. And let me tell you, trying to grind it while your ship is in autopilot to the station is a bad idea… violent sickness included.

Besides that, it seemed that Saronite ran more or less in parallel with Endrite. Asteroids that I had previously surveyed showed that when they had high concentrations of Endrite, the Saronite concentration was in the same ballpark. In the limited sample size I had, I had not found one rock where the density differences were bigger than three percent.

Apart from that I had spoken a few times with Ralgau and we had refined our plans. He also told me that he found 4 people that wanted to join the claim and were ready to meet me when I got back. Apparently 11% Endrite wasn’t as much of a deterrent as I had thought. The only problem was the money side of the whole operation and we would have to discuss that further in person.

So now, four and a half days later I was relieved when I heard the clonk and hiss of the airlock connection at Belt Station. I had fun mining and making money and all. But sitting for so long cooped up in what basically amounted to a sardine can was not exactly in my definition of fun. As I cycled the airlock I was excited to metaphorically stretch my legs and meet the new folks.

* * * * *

I whistled to myself as I crossed through the loading dock. It was basically a big hall with crates and containers in stacks of various sizes. This one was used by eight docking stations. However, before I could exit into the hallway on the other side, two thugs stepped into my path.

Yes, I called them thugs in my mind because it seems that thuggi’ness (I totally made that word up on the spot) is universal. Even though I was standing in front of a Fell and a Sorren who were both wearing a vac suit with their helmets retracted, I could tell that they were the folks that wouldn’t help an old lady across the air tracs.

“Hello there,” the Fell started while his Sorren buddy assumed the most looming posture that I could have imagined. To be fair, it was so overdone, there was a comedic quality to it. However, I didn’t feel like laughing or smiling. Having dealt with guys like this before, I knew that it would only set them off and I did NOT have a CLON contract or any self defense skill. Which really brought one thing into focus. Having a Small Arms skill but not carrying a small arm on you was totally stupid.

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, you see…” the Fell cleared his throat. “... it is more what we can do for you. Or will do. My colleague and I are representatives of the Red Moon Group. We are in the assurance business and we heard that you are interested in starting a mining claim. So we thought it only prudent to approach you beforehand and present our business to you.”

“You mean insurance?”

I had a feeling where this conversation was going and I was absolutely certain I did not like it.

“No, no, assurance.”

“And if I may ask, what does this business of yours entail?”

“You see, in a way we are similar to an insurance and yet so much more. More effective for one. You could even go so far and say preventative.”

“...” I decided to go with staying silent and waiting for him to go on even though he clearly wanted a reaction from me. Small victories.

“Let’s assume you take out an insurance for your claim. Then you will have to pay a fee and then the insurance doesn’t care anymore about you. Only should something happen to the claim will they become active again and even then they will try to not live up to their promises. Not so with us. We always care and we always live up to our promises. See, we assure you. When you pay your fee with us, we will assure that nothing bad happens to your claim in the first place. However, should you not want to take out a contract with our Group, we also assure you…”

He let the last words hang in the air. Implied threat. Yep, I had been spot on. For a moment, when he talked about business, I had actually doubted my own intuition. But nope, no dice.

“Thank you very much for the offer. I will definitely keep you in mind for future business. However, I have a meeting now that I should not be late to.”

“Yes, yes. Absolutely. We are all businessmen after all. Just let me state once more that you should really keep us in mind.”

I nodded and then walked by them on my way to the bar. I had to force myself not to flinch and look back once I had passed them. I really don’t like turning my back to folks like that. But the Fell didn’t give me any sign that he was more than a sleazy lawyer type. And his big buddy didn’t do anything else but continue looming. Plus the fact that I had been approached in this very public space with other people milling about gave me some ‘assurance’.

Yeah, I know, I am hilarious. But to be honest, my nerves were about as relaxed a guitar strings in the beginning of a rock concert. Being annoyingly punny was my way of dealing with it.

I turned the corner of the corridor and made my way to the Rambler. I pondered for a moment how these guys had found out about the claim but why there were about a thousand possibilities, I didn’t actually know. So I shrugged and compartmentalized and walked into the Rambler.