I scrambled back to my feet and pulled my flechette. What the fuck was wrong with him. I had him in my pistol’s sight as I slowly moved closer again. He never got out of position. I yelled at him over the com, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on but he just continued making his sounds.

After a few minutes of this, I had already stopped trying to get any answer out of him, he finally stopped with whatever he was doing. He got back up and walked towards Rustbucket. “Back!” he demanded.

At a loss I clambered into the cockpit and started the ship.

“What the fuck was that?” I demanded.

“You are too weak!” was all I got out of him. Nothing else. That was the only phrase he kept repeating to all questions, no matter how much I demanded or shouted. Too weak for what? What happened to him at the ship? What was going on? I needed answers and he was not forthcoming. No answers at all.

At the claim, instead of having any conversation, he walked to his shelter and disappeared inside. Something had his knickers in a twist and I had no clue what it was. Obviously something to do with the ship but there was no explanation.

Even Ralgau, when I prodded him during our next shift, had no ideas. My Sorren friend agreed with me that something must have rattled the insectoid. He told me that the Drak were somewhat mysterious and nobody could figure out their motives for doing anything. Apparently they were closely affiliated with the Circle of Lords where they would serve as combat groups, always on the frontlines of conflicts. Pushing themselves, always in the middle of the biggest and bloodiest battles. And then they would walk away from other engagements simply because they didn’t consider them worthwhile or because their leader lacked strength or conviction. Some kind of mercenaries that didn’t really adhere to a mercenary code. They could also be found across the other factions although there they would not engage in conflicts and would never show up in groups. Only individuals.

The people in the CoL happily made use of them when the Drak could be bothered but since they were ‘unreliable’ even they did not completely trust them. When I questioned why he brought one of them on the claim then, he told me that every single Drak he had met in his life always adhered to a code of honor. Once their word was given or they had committed to something, they never went back on that commitment and saw it through or died trying. So while he wasn’t sure what had happened, he still didn’t think there was a reason to distrust Ygglog. I wasn’t so sure but I also did not question it any further.

When we switched shifts, Brelic and Ygglog went back to work as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The insectoid acted towards me like before, which meant he went to work but didn’t further acknowledge me. And while I had questions burning under my nails, I didn’t push it either. In the end my goal had not changed: Make money with the claim and get the ship. So I focused on that.

* * * * *

Krn had managed to retain a broker on station via our com array. They had negotiated rates for the ore and when she shared them, I was rather happy. From what she told me, brokers normally got their hands on a load and then went directly to the big corps to sell it to them. Which meant whatever they got, they took a cut from the top and then passed the rest along. This normally was quite a bit better than what a miner could get because these brokers spent a lot of money and skill points on negotiation skills as well as improved faction standing. Both of which increased the prices they could get.

This particular agent though had their own small corporation set up though. And instead of just bringing the interested parties together and negotiating on their behalf, our broker would buy the ore from us directly and then resell it. This led to better prices as he would basically pick up contracts similar to what I had done space mining. Which made a lot of sense to me. Pick up a contract that is still fifty or hundred thousand Endrite short, fill them up and get paid the bonus because you can deliver within the required time. Now the contracts that I had seen on station were anywhere between 0.65 to 0.8 ICU per unit of Endrite. Additionally they came with 0.05 to 0.2 ICU bonus for early delivery. The broker offered us to buy the material at base price plus 10%.

Yes, there was something I had missed and Krn was happy to enlighten me. “You see there is a base price for basically all things in the universe. That price is a combination of item level, quality and raw materials used. For ore it is similar but of course in this case isn’t about the materials used to make it but what can be extracted during the refinement process. Since the refined metals and compounds are the building blocks of everything, it makes it fair and gives everyone a starting point to evaluate. Obviously that doesn’t hold up anymore when you add the normal variables like market conditions, skills, standings and so on. And if there are unusual market conditions, prices will further and further move away from the base price. So in a way the base price is arbitrary and nothing to get hung up on but it is good to understand that it is there.”

This was rather enlightening. And actually a pretty cool system in my book. Turns out that when you boil everything down to atomic component base prices, you could come up with a base price for everything. But while you could obviously account for the materials, you could not account for greed, supply and demand and other factors. The base price was basically the one unchanging factor. The base price for Endrite was 0.67 ICU by the way. So we would get 0.74 ICU per unit.

I honestly didn’t understand why he would spring for that much but when I asked, Krn just sounded very satisfied about it and Mrk told me that the Broker had underestimated his wife’s business capabilities and her skill in negotiations and mercantilism. I was really curious to see her character sheet but as Ralgau had told me, that was something people didn’t share unless they had to and asking for it was considered extremely rude unless you definitely needed to. I recalled that even Nirazera had not asked me for access to my sheet. Instead she had simply stated the requirements and had me figure out if I could do it.

Anyway, with our new broker, we were definitely sitting pretty. We had a total of 820k of Endrite, 370k of Soldrite, 54k of Pyzite and the 88 units of Quitalite sitting in our containers. After some math, that equated to… hold on to something… just over one million ICU. Yeah baby! Split through the six people here, that was 176k each.

Sure, it wasn’t like crazy rich but it was definitely a step in the right direction. And it would allow me to upgrade my CLON contract and pay off a huge chunk of my credit. The thing was that the CLON contract I had taken out for Ralgau and me were the 0 skill security ones. They were cheap and would make sure you would come back in case of death. But they would not preserve skill points. I checked my status.

Name

Malcolm Solo

Callsign

n/a

Faction Allegiance

Free Worlds Alliance

Current Scenarios

Quirt Starting Scenario

Current Wealth

2654 ICU

Current Credit

101600 ICU, 20% interest, 1 year duration

Personal Statistics

Strength

3

Raw physical strength

Constitution

3

Endurance, Resistance to damage

Intelligence

5

Complex problem solving skill, Logic, Comprehension

Charisma

5

Attractiveness to others

Perception

5

Awareness through senses

Willpower

4

Ability to make decisions and override impulses

Memory

5

Ability to recall information and experiences

Implants and Enhancements

Neural Link

Gen 7

Allows direct neural interaction and learning

Skills

Small Arms

4 / 100

Piloting

5 / 100

Coordination

3 / 100

Team work

4 / 100

Basic Space Mining

32 / 100

Survey

9 / 100

Asteroid Mining

15 / 100

CLON Contract

0 Skill points

Standings

Solarwind Trading Consortium: 1%

I had gathered a total of 74 skill points now and I was sure the next ten or twenty would come pretty soon because I had gathered a bunch of skills on a relatively low level. Which means they were quick to level to ten or fifteen points. They would not have world breaking effects but I would hate to lose any of them. Even if I never needed asteroid mining ever again, it was progress I had made and I did not want to take the risk of losing it. However, prices on the CLON contracts were not linear. When I researched the contracts and had taken out the basic ones for Ralgau and me, I had compiled a list and now I pulled it up on my HUD.

Skill points protected

Price

0

5.000

50

31.250

100

100.000

500

1.500.000

1000

5.500.000*

5000

127.500.000*

10000

505.000.000**

* contracts valid for 1 standard year

** contracts valid for 5 standard years

So, as you can see, it got ridiculous quite fast there. I mean 100 skill points would already cost you 100k. Which is, I guess fair enough. The problem was the speed at which I was gaining them and how that would mean I needed to upgrade my contracts regularly. If I would focus on specific skills and only work on them, I could get away with a lower price as the skill increase would slow down. However, if I kept spreading out, it would get expensive fast.

And in a way that is what I had heard from the people here when talking to them. They would focus very much on three to five skills and then get them as high as they could. Which cut down the cost of the CLON contracts significantly. So a miner like Mrk would have maybe 250 points with the majority in three or 4 skills and maybe a few random ones that he picked up on the way.

I also heard that people engaged in skill resetting. One, that was a service that was offered although only in the more ‘affluent’ regions of space. Actually, let me rephrase that: Only in the affluent regions was it practiced legally and safely. You could always find someone that jammed some weird tech into your link if you let them.

And then there was the more drastic reset method: Take out a CLON contract and off yourself. According to Ralgau, that one was widely used in pirate and forced military circles in a similar way: Take out a basic contract and kill the person. To protect people from that being abused you needed to appear in front of a CLON official when you previously had contracts covering more than 1k skill points so they could be sure that it was really you that wanted to take out a zero point contract.

I wondered for a while what the point of the whole ordeal was. I mean why reset someone’s skill points forcibly. Just shoot them and don’t take out a contract on them. But apparently there was a grey zone in galactic law: If there is a CLON contract, it wasn’t murder. Obviously there were nuances but that was the jist of it. Let me tell you, my mind was boggled once again.