The first thing I did was to pull up information on available ships within the solar system and when that only led to few results I noticed that I could extend the search radius up to 10 surrounding systems. So I adjusted the settings and got a better overview. The short version is that I was in for a nasty surprise and the impression I got from Ralgau about the worth of my money was confirmed.

Let’s say my 3k ICUs could buy me a drink or two but that was basically it. Either this was a blatant attempt of robbery or I needed to figure out how to make some serious money.

Ships came in several categories, much as I had expected, built to certain purposes: mining, transport and multi-purpose. All ships were classified by sizes: frigate, cruiser, battlecruiser, battleship and carrier, etc. There were a lot of subclasses but that was the gist of it. Rustbucket was apparently a civilian mining vessel which was the smallest size even smaller than a frigate. The next better mining ship was a frigate size and ran around 125k. A frigate size transport ran around 300k and a frigate size multi-purpose ship cost about 190k.

The big difference between the frigate size version and Rustbucket was that it had three of each component slot. So I could fit three mining lasers, three static and three internal components. Plus the ship itself had a 10% bonus to mining laser yield. While three lasers would improve the mining yield basically 50% plus the bonus, I wasn’t sure that this was the way for me to go. However, I could also mount weapons on the active component slots and then had a fighter in my hands.

I contemplated this for a moment but then compared the stats with the multi-purpose ship which came with one extra internal component slot and better defensive stats. So using the mining ship for anything non-mining didn’t make any sense.

By the way, it looked like I had gotten a bonus when they cut my contract short because ships similar to Rustbucket01 were offered at around 30k as well.

When it came to modules I only had a brief look over everything. Active module seemed to be mainly weapons, mining lasers, boosters, repair units and basically anything that would affect other ships and materials around me and there was a huge variety of them. I would have to get more familiar with them later. Static components had to do with armor, shields and propulsion. The name static came from the fact that once installed they couldn’t be swapped out anymore. And finally internal components were for fuel, cargo, sensors, coms, repair units and the like. Similar to static modules once installed there was no replacing them.

The fact that I was stuck with components that were installed and couldn’t replace them made choosing them carefully so much more important. And in my case it also sucked big time because there was no way I could just trade out ships quickly. At least not with the bankroll I had available at the moment.

Prices for these modules varied hugely. There were battleship sized beam cannons that went for as much as 75 million. And there were civilian modules like afterburners that went for as “low” as 13k. And yes, once again, I added the air quotes in my head.

Okay, so there was no way to upgrade my ship anytime soon without making serious money first. Plus how valuable would it be to upgrade my Digger type ship anyway. I had one static slot free. Once I filled that up it was done. There were some more efficient mining lasers on offer but the difference they would make was minute compared to the price tag.

No, I needed to make money!

I pulled up the contracts section of the bulletin board and started browsing. Again, as expected I saw patrol, transport and mining contracts being offered. But there were also some that I didn’t expect, like exploration or escort.

I read through some on each category. Patrol seemed okay’ish but there was a risk of running into a fight which was a no-go with my ship. For all the transport contracts I needed a much bigger cargo space or would have to make a multitude of trips and I wasn’t sure how that would work. Plus they would send me all over the place and even into other star systems which wasn’t an option in Rustbucket.

Upon realizing this I made a mental note to find out more about the universe and get some kind of map software as my ship was completely unequipped in that regard. I assume that the Quirt never expected their contact miners to finish out the contracts before spacing themselves or something like that. Or maybe they just wanted to make sure that miners stayed in the system and did their job so they simply withheld the way out.

This left me with mining missions. For one there were apparently many more types of ore and the Endrite I had mined so far was by far the cheapest. That kinda made sense from a skill perspective. All other minerals took higher skill levels than I had right now. So the only contracts I could accept were for Endrite and they would not make me rich.

But what the hell, I needed to start somewhere. Sitting here moping around didn’t help me. So I browsed the mining contracts for the only ore I could actually mine and some time later I had found one that made sense.

From: Solarwind Trading

We are contracted to deliver 200000 units Endrite to the Fyr system. We are still 15000 units short of that load. To reach full load we are offering a contract for said 15000 units. Our freighter will leave in 80 standard hours.The first available pilot to accept and fulfill this contract within 70 hours will be paid 0.85 ICU per unit. A bonus of 0.15 ICU per unit will be awarded for contract completion in under 30 hours.

An ore hauler will be provided for this contract.

Failure to meet the deadline will result in a breach of contract and fees of 25000 ICU.

Time to do some math. Let’s say I need about 5 hours to get to a good asteroid and 5 hours to get back. That left me with a total work time of about 60 hours. Assuming I could find a 10% asteroid, which shouldn’t be too hard considering my previous survey results I could mine about 240 Endrite per hour. That was 2400 Units in 10 hours. I would need 62.5 hours to complete the contract. Now I needed about an hour of setup time for the grid cutting which put me at a total of roughly 74 hours.

However, if I would find a deposit just 1% better, I could be done with the mining portion of it in a little over 56 hours. And that would put me right into the green zone. So my success completing this contract hinged on the ore density I could find within a reasonable amount of time.

Should I really roll the dice on this? The money was much better than going off mining on my own and getting paid 0.4 ICU per unit. I had a decent chance of finishing the contract on time and would be a lot better off financially after that. On the other hand, if I took too long, I would have to pay 25k penalty. That would mean my ship is gone.

FUCK! What to do, what to do?

On a whim I comm’ed the Solarwind contract office to discuss details. A robotic voice ran me through the details of contract and delivery. And then I heard the reason to accept this contract. It was not necessary for me to be back on station within the 70 hour time frame. The moment the 15k were picked up by the hauler my contract would be considered filled and I’d receive the payout.

Great, that gave me another 5 hours of security margin. Yeah baby! Rustbucked01 Mineral Excavation and it’s CEO Kade Wilson at your service.

Okay, let’s be honest, digging around in asteroid belts wasn’t what I wanted my online life to be but whatever. You gotta start somewhere.

I told the robot voice that I’d take the contract.

The next thing I did was com belt station security and registered myself with them to provide security for me for three days which ran me 500 ICU per standard day. Oh, I also figured out that there was a time measurement in place. It was called standard whatever… minute, hour, day, month and corresponded to earth’s 24 hour cycle.

The thing with time measurement is that this system makes somewhat sense on earth. And I say somewhat because who the hell came up with multiples of 6 as a base? But the way we measured time on earth was tied to the rotation of the planet around itself, the moon and the rotation around the sun. But different planets had different rotational cycles so everybody used standard or stan for short. Convenient, right?

I also contacted III or triple I or Interstellar Insurance Industries to get a quote for my ship. They informed me that they had 4 packages: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The price for bronze was 20% of the ship value for a one standard year contract which would pay out 70% of the insured ships value. Then it got up from there, each contract costing 2% more and offering 10% more payout.

After I submitted them the value of Rustbucket, they estimated the value to current standard market price of 28k. Which would mean that the bronze contract would already run me 5.6k. Since I didn’t have that money I thanked them and told them I would get back to them and then vowed to myself that I would not crash into any asteroids. I also knocked on the metal table top three times, yeah, no wood around so I hoped a brownish surface would do the trick.

Now down to 1700 ICU I waved to Ralgau as I left the Rambler and headed to my ship. There I comm’ed Belt Station asking for launch permissions, set up the autopilot to a dense concentration of asteroids about 4.5 hours out and headed off to my first adventure as a space faring entrepreneur.