I stumbled out of my space-tent-hut thingy and had a quick look around. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. No screaming, not fires, no lasers or rockets impacting. However, Ralgau, Brelig and Ygglog were already out and about and, unlike me, they were actually armed. Cussing at myself I scrambled back to my shelter, grabbed the flechette pistol I bought on station and hustled back outside. Honestly, I should know better. Not that a little flechette pistol would do anything in a space fight. But I felt better being armed.

“Contacts are twenty kilometers out and closing.” I heard Ralgau’s voice over the coms. “They are coming in over the storage area. Two contacts, looks like civilian ships or small frigates.”

I mentally activated the hud on my faceplate and saw two yellow dots and their projected flight paths which would bring them closest to our new home just over the container area where we stored our ore for pickup and the empty containers to be filled. Yellow dots meant unidentified, which in turn meant that they were neither in our database as hostile, which would be red, or friends, which would be marked as blue.

Our turrets had detected the ships and notified us of their approach. Brelic had set their system to NRDS (not red don’t shoot), which meant alert and track for all non-blue craft. While that would alert us as well to transports and other crafts, it was better to be safe than to be sorry. The other option would have been manual surveillance, which would mean that someone had to constantly monitor the sensor net or NBSC (not blue shoot it) which meant anything that wasn’t expressively marked as friendly would get shot.

The thing was that we were such a new entity, we had neither friends nor foes. So basically everything was yellow and until we designated certain ships or groups as friendly or unfriendly, everything would be yellow. So there wasn’t a lot of surprise that these ships were marked as yellow.

A few tense moments and some swiveling of the laser turrets later, the 2 ships hovered over our containers. It was a cool moment when I saw their break thruster flaring as they came to a stop. I mean spaceships!

However, what I saw was a little underwhelming. The ships looked like boxes. You know, take a storage container, stick a triangle on the front and some big pipes on the corners for thrusters. Add a turret on each side and that was basically it. There was a cockpit window through which I could see 2 people in each of the crafts but that was it. Yeah, didn’t look like much.

A moment later our co-op communication channel was queried. “Mister Solo and co. Please excuse us dropping by unannounced but we came to follow up on a business inquiry that was presented to you.”

I drew a blank. “Business opportunity?” I asked in a show of utter eloquence.

“Yes, we are representing the Red Moon Group.”

I scowled into my helmet. The bullies were back.

“As I understand, you were approached by one of our representatives on belt station and told him that you will keep us in mind for our assurance services. But then you left the station before…”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted his monologue. “You have me at a bit of a disadvantage here. I have no idea who you are and not introducing yourself is just rude.”

“Ah, but my name doesn’t matter at all. I am just another cog in the big machine that is the Red Moon Group.”

“That might be but I still rather have a name, so I am not impolite and continue mentally calling Dude One or something like that.”

“Well, if you are so set on names, you can call me mister Opportunity. Now, as I was saying, you left the station before following up with us. Which meant that we needed to find out from station services where you claim is located and then come out here to follow up in person. However, for someone that could become a valued client, no effort is too great and so here we are. Did you think about our proposal?”

“Yes, we discussed it and unanimously decided to take our chances.”

“Ah, but you see, you might not fully be aware of the dangers out here on a claim. What would happen if you would be surprised by pirates or claim jumpers? Or if someone would try to steal you hard mined ore? Or sabotage your equipment? I can imagine, no, I know that and of these scenarios would be very unpleasant for you. We offer…” he trailed off.

“They are scanning our storage,” Brelic told us via com channel override.

“Yes, you seem to have a rather productive enterprise going here. We offer full assurance that nothing untoward happens on your claim for the extremely low fee of two hundred thousand credits. Per week.”

I could practically hear the guy’s smarmy smile through the coms. I wanted to punch him. He was like one of those used car salesmen that appeared in those ancient commercials. You know the type. He’d tell you whatever you want to hear as long as you just sign at the dotted line. But in this case, he was threatening our livelihoods.

Well, to be fair, not mine. Because my goal was the ship and not to mine an asteroid until nothing was left. That seemed just as boring in the long run as sitting in Rustbucket and chewing away at them. Could I make money that way? Sure, but that was not my goal here. I wanted to explore the galaxy, find what is out there. Unknown mysteries, meet aliens. Okay, meet more aliens. Have sex with a hot green skinned, red haired chick with a tail. Oops, sometimes I should stop before my thoughts get away from me.

“Yeah, you see that just doesn’t work for us.” I leaned into the tone of the Red Moon guy. “We have bills to pay, people to take care of, equipment rentals and so on. We simply can’t afford your services.”

“No, you misunderstand. You can’t afford not to use our services. Especially under those conditions.”

I switched my com channel to private with Brelic. “Can we give them a warning shot with one of the turrets? Nothing that causes damage but that they understand?”

“Sure, no problem.” he replied immediately.

I switched back to the common channel: “Well, we have to agree to disagree on the matter. Now I wish you a good day. Mister Opportunity, I suggest you take your name by its meaning and depart now. And if you would ever so kindly remove our contact information from your potential client list, we would appreciate it.”

“Listen, you do not want us to drop the politeness with your claim.” The smarm had disappeared from his voice and a threatening edge came across loud and clear now.

“No, you need to listen. Right now your ships are flagged as neutral. Should we change that, you are sitting pretty in our cross hairs. Have a good day gentlemen!” I ended the conversation with some steel in my voice too. We were not going to be bullied by these assholes!

I nodded towards Brelic and he tapped his wrist interface. Right after that the shields of one of the ships flared up. They immediately hit full thrust and blazed over us and the asteroid to be swallowed quickly by the dark of space.

I turned my faceplate in the direction of the Fell. “Two percent shield damage. Just grazed them.” he chuckled in my ear.

“We were strong!” Ygglog’s usual statement came over the com.

Ralgau in turn was looking more like me - pensive. Yeah, we had been strong. Or at least strong enough that they didn’t want to deal with us. I just hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite us in the ass. But who was I kidding with that hope. I was sure it would come back to take a good meaty chunk out of our backsides. So we had to be smart, fast, and most importantly needed to find the line where it would be too expensive for the Red Moon to keep harassing us without making it so expensive for them that all-in seemed like the better return on investment.