《Craven Cluster: Fugitive (Postponed)》 The Briefing The Briefing April 3, 2631 The foreman spoke to the anxious assembled prospectors. He mentioned the great opportunities provided by this exploration mission to an unclaimed system, the Remanus system within the Craven Cluster where riches surely abounded. Each of the indentured prospectors before him could strike it rich and could shorten the term of their contact. The foreman promised the company would pay great bonuses for minerals from the palladium group, for bountiful water and oxygen from a C-type asteroids, for precious metals, or for any other useful resources. The noobs believed every word they heard, but Michael knew the truth. This game of chance is heavily weighted toward the house. The formula the company uses to calculate pay for claims is complex, but a terse description of the formula is the prospector must be very lucky to break the endless debt cycle. Michael had been a noob, a poor son of a farmer from a impoverished colony world desperate for chance to escape from his birth world, just three years ago. His parents and his friends tried to persuade him that he was chasing fools gold. No deal was as good as the one the company promised. The Praxian Exploration company promised to train each new employee if the new employee signed a contract to repay the cost for the valuable training which included the Space Prospecting skill. The laws of the Empire restricted claims for space resource extraction allowing five annual claims per system for non-planet free solar bodies by an accredited Space Prospector. Companies were permitted to purchase claims from an accredited Space Prospector, but companies were not allowed to establish a claim. Just a short five year commitment to establish the skills required for lifetime employment as a Space Prospector, the deal was reasonable. Unfortunately, he did not read the fine print. The contract was actually an indentured servant debt contract with an average term of twenty five to forty years. One individual with existing basic skills managed to pay off their debt in 5 years, and the shameless company used this fact as their sales pitch. This successful deception occurred at colony worlds filled with plenty of fools. The Consumer Protection Bureau protected citizens at the heart of the empire, but the powerful bureau cared little for the peasants of the colonies.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Michael activated the skills screen from his heads up display, selected the Space Prospecting skill, and studied the details for the Novice level Space Prospecting skill including the sixteen required skills.
Skill: Space Prospector
Level: Novice 100%
The skill allows an individual to find and to identify valuable materials contained within solar bodies and allows the individual to register a claim for the resources. This skill increases the percentage chance of finding valuable minerals when using scanners.
Required Skills
Novice Prospecting Drone Control, Novice Drone Control, Novice Mining Drone Control, Novice Drone Pilot, Novice Pilot, Novice Space Mining, Novice Space Resource identification, Novice Mineral Identification, Novice Geology, Novice Space Survival, Novice Space Environment, Novice Electronics, Novice Scanners
Effects
+2% to find a C-type asteroid, +1% a S-type asteroid
The cost of all of these novice skills combined with the debt contract and the payout formula written into the contract formed a very clever trap. The upgrade from a novice level skill to a beginning level skill required expensive training. Praxian Exploration did not pay for indentured servants to upgrade their skills. The company only paid for one upgraded skill every 10 years as stipulated by law. The food, the board, the rental of a prospecting ship, the fuel, and the maintenance of the assigned rental ship exceeded the value of the revenue from prospecting when using the company''s payout formula. The rate of return for the combination of novice level skills listed above could not offset these expenditures. Once a prospector obtained two to four beginning level skills, the prospecting ROI increased enough to payoff the contract within 5 years. Again, the scheme is a very clever trap. He stopped daydreaming as the foreman finished with ¡°Go out there and make us proud!¡± Michael stood, moved toward the corridor, ready to board his ship like the rest of these fools except today he was going to escape or die trying. Training Training Begins April 2628 The trip from his home world to Amador Minor, the system hosting the training facility, tested his patience. The company booked passage for Michaelupon a drab, functional freighter transporting supplies tothe planet Punji. Michaelwas the only passenger, and there were no entertainment facilities on the starship. He was very happy to arrive at Punji, a jungle world, where the training facility was located. The hot, humid days of the jungle world weighed heavily on most of the trainees. The sweltering heat formed rivers of sweat on Michael¡¯s brow as he moved from his dorm to the skills training area. He barely noticed the heat on this very important day. He opened the door, dodged around the other trainees, sprinted up the steps, and finally skidded to a stop before his assigned full immersion VR pod. He quickly disrobed placing his clothes within the the provided cubby before leaping into the bed with no concern for his well being. The FIVR lid closed at a glacial pace as his racing heart pumped blood through his arteries and veins. How long does it take for this stupid lid to close! Once it finally closed, his vision stopped throwing Michael into the endless darkness which accompanied the difficult transition between the real world and the virtual world. The lack of any sensation brought him to the edge of abject terror before his nanites began to interface with the FIVR. Suddenly, Michael was floating a short distance from an asteroid. His heads up display (HUD) showed various information from the scanners built into the Prospecting drone. ¡°Michael, please classify the asteroid within your field of view.¡± The training program requested. Michael considered the dark asteroid with a spectral image consistent with a C-type asteroid which were composed of carboneous materials and other compounds including water deposits. He instructed the drone to compare the gravitic readings for the 100 meter by 350 meter by 90 meter asteroid with the expected readings for a typical C-type asteroid. The slightly higher than expected gravity hinted that there was more to the story of the dark beauty before him. Michael sent an electromagnetic pulse toward the center of the asteroid while monitoring for magnetic fluctuations or inductive effects from the pulse. An incredibly bright light and the destruction of his HUD announced his complete failure within thesimulation. "You triggered a stealthed mine within the asteroid. The company could get by without your worthless hide, but your equipment is expensive!" Screamed the instructor. "Always check for neutrino emissions and other passive indicators of trouble before sending active pulses! Load simulation Theta 5" the instructor mentioned to the training AI.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. ***** Michael sat on the edge of his bed within his room without making a sound. All of his thoughts focused upon memories ofthe simulation failure and his subpar performance during the follow up exercises. How could he have been so foolish, so careless, and so inattentive? His accomplishments during the training session,some progress toward activating his Space Minerals Identification skill, did not console him. All that occupied his mind were the derisive comments from his instructor. After deep sigh "Skills Summary" he vocalized. The screen displayed upon his HUD. Unskilled Skilled Even though Michael lived his entire life using the implant, a cybernetic system with various life management screens based upon the concepts introduced by MMO computer games from the twenty-first century; the system still amazed him. The implant tracked each and every accomplishment or achievment during a person''s life, and the skills listed within the Skill Summary screen were achievements requiring training. Skills were visible to and verifiable by the individual or the employers of the individual. The mental and physical changes acquired when skills activate occurred during activation as the nanites altered the the individual''s body and mind. The current configuration of the Skills Summary filtered the list to display only the skillsrequired for activating his Space Prospector skill; otherwise, there would be multiple pages of skills within the summary screen. The screen categorized skillsas either unskilled before the requirements to activate a skill were met or skilled once the skills were active. Any activated skill was qualified by a ranking and an associated percentage. Skills were ranked as Novice, Beginner, Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, or Deity. The base effect of a skill such as his Novice Electronics skill is defined by the rank of the skill. The percentage indicated improvements to the skill within the rank and the effects of the skill improved as the percentage increased. As Michaelglanced at all of the remaining requirements left to activate his skills, he promised himself to improve his performance.