As Jerry maneuvered the element scanner across the surface of the asteroid, he was rewarded with several spikes. He stopped and ran it back again just to make sure. Grinning at the display, he called out to his partner over his suit-to-suit link, "Hey, Sam! Come check this out!" When Sam didn't reply, Jerry looked back over his shoulder just in time to see his buddy's body crumple to the ground. "What the drek!" He took in the three black-clad interlopers with weapons cradled in their arms and belatedly realized that they were being attacked by pirates.
He didn't know if Sam was dead or not, but he had to get off a call for help. He was already working in a slight depression and he dropped down into a crouch, hoping that he hadn't been seen. He used his suit-to-ship link to activate the emergency beacon, but no confirmation occurred. Great. They're jamming our signals. He assumed the worst and counted backwards from ten to relax himself. They never leave witnesses! echoed in his head from the countless news alerts. Jerry quickly determined that he only had two choices. Stay on this asteroid and die, or leave it to go somewhere else. Leaving was easy. Getting somewhere useful before his air ran out was a separate problem.
Jerry brought up the map on his HUD. Ah-ha! He smiled. There was a first-aid station only 535 kilometers behind them in orbit. If he had any chance at all, he was going to have to make the journey using only his suit thrusters. A number of documented stories of stranded miners had proven that it was possible. I've got my suit with four hours of air. He convinced himself that it could be done.
Jerry ran the calculations through his suit computer. He needed the air for breathing but also for propulsion. He settled on 350 kilometers per hour which would get him there in an hour-and-a-half while still leaving him twenty minutes of extra air for maneuvering. There were two bodies in the way that would have to be navigated around.
He carefully crabbed away from the pirates until he was well below the horizon and knew they couldn't possibly see him. The map in his HUD guided him to a point where the station was directly overhead. He squatted down with his legs bent and then jumped straight upwards as hard as he could. He left the feeble gravity of the asteroid at a pretty good clip, headed nearly dead-on for the outpost.
Jerry waited a full ten minutes before engaging the thrusters on his suit. He wanted to make sure that he was clear of the asteroid without attracting attention. He watched as the velocity indicator climbed toward 350 as his air supply dwindled slowly to just under two hours. It was going to be close, but it looked like he was going to make it.
An hour-and-a-half later, he was nearly within hailing range of the first-aid station when he was pinged from behind. He groaned as he saw that the pirates were coming after him. "FAS 42, this is Jerry Thorne requesting immediate sanctuary from attacking pirates." He glanced at the HUD. "I have two missiles closing in about a minute behind me."
He gave a big sigh of relief when a reply came back. "I have you on radar and will intercept you in thirty seconds." As he watched the missiles drawing nearer, he felt the tractor beam latch onto him and saw the force bubble appear around the station. Several seconds later, the missiles detonated harmlessly about thirty meters behind him. By the time the tractor beam dragged him inside, the pirate ship had shown up and was proceeding to blast a continuous stream of green fire at the force field.
Once inside, Jerry unlatched his helmet and removed it. He pushed back the hood part of the thermal hoodie he wore underneath his suit and was greeted by a young woman in uniform. "Welcome aboard, Mister Thorne. My name is Ensign Klover." She looked over his shoulder. "You seemed to have really pissed off your friends."
Jerry laughed. "Not my friends. They killed my partner and now they want to kill me." He shook his head. "You too, I'm afraid."
"Don't worry. We're perfectly safe in here. As soon as I turned on the force field, I alerted Enforcement." She pointed to a small screen on the wall. "They'll be here in thirty-one minutes."
Jerry studied the pirate ship as it continued to blast the force field. "I wonder what they hope to achieve with that? They know that nothing can penetrate it."
As if in answer to his question, a robotic voice intoned over the speaker system. "Fifteen minutes to shield failure."
"Correction! Nothing can penetrate it while it has power." He started laughing somewhat hysterically. "Fifteen minutes to being atomized. Thirty minutes until help arrives." He looked at the ensign. "I'm really sorry I got you involved."
They stood in silence and watched the assault.
"The suits!" Klover suddenly exclaimed. "We swap out one of your empties and I put on my own suit."
"What good does that do? The suits won't protect us from that cannon they've got."
"No, but I can turn off power to everything but the force field."
"Including life support," Jerry nodded. "Great idea!"
After Klover shut down the station, the estimated time of failure went from ten-minutes to thirty-five. They sat in the darkened room that was lit by the flickering emerald light and waited to be rescued.
"Once we get this all sorted, how about I buy you a drink somewhere?" asked Jerry.
"I think I'd like that," replied Ensign Klover.
Jerry knew it was a bit soon to be thinking of another partner, but Sam would've understood. It takes two miners to work a claim and he would be needing another one. He asked Klover, "Have you ever thought about becoming a miner?"
