Marten slammed his fist on the console, "Fucking corporate bastards!! I knew they never gave two shits about us!"
The other guy in the room was looking at him worriedly, "What… What do we do now, boss?"
"Fuck… At this rate, we might need to abandon the station… When the supply transport arrives, we'll leave with it. Let the pirates have the place."
"But… Won't the company penalise us for this?"
"We can pay back the Credits eventually, but if we die here, forget about being penalised, you won't even have a chance to whine about being penalised."
"Ugh… I'm going to have to relocate my family…"
"You'll be fine, don't worry about it."
I raised my hand, "You know… How about I go take care of those pirates?"
Marten swivelled his head around and stared at me with wide eyes, "Are you serious, Tera? I mean… I've seen how easily you've dealt with those four pirates and I have full confidence in your flying skills… But how are you planning to take on an entire pirate base on your own?"
I thought about it for a moment, "I mean… I could just go there and recon the place first… I don't think there would be a lot of pirates there right? There's nothing of value for them to rob around here after all so I reckon the base should be on the small side as well? If I find out that their base is bigger than I thought, I will send a message to you and you can go ahead with your original plan of evacuating."
Marten and the other guy looked at each other for a moment before turning back to me.
"If I may be so bold to ask, Tera… Why are you willing to go so far for us?"
I shrugged, "I don't think it's that big of a favour though? Plus, you helped me out and even let me into the station even when you didn't have to either so perhaps you can just think of this as me returning the favour?"
"But… Anyone could have done what I did… You're risking your own life for this right now!"
"I'll be fine," I assured him. "I can outrun them as well if I need to. I still have the map data that I've downloaded from you after all."
"Hmm… Good thing that Jerry isn't here to make more noise… I wouldn't be able to stand another round of his ramblings…"
I gave him a wry smile, "Well… There's no need to let everyone on the station know about this for now. I'll just give the excuse that I'm going to check out the debris left there for salvage and patrol around the area to see if there's any more pirates in the meantime."
Marten gave me a serious look, "If you manage to destroy the pirate base, Tera… I'll do everything in my power to make sure you are paid at least the market price for what a Merc would charge for this. I swear on it."
I chuckled, "You're a good man, Marten. Well then, just let me resupply my ship and I'll be off."
"Then by my right as station master, I authorise you to resupply your ship free of charge until the pirates are dealt with."
"I appreciate that."
I left the room but I heard the other guy whisper to Marten, "Do you think… She'll make it?"
"I… Don't know… Just get everything ready in case we need to abandon station, but not until we get the message from her to do so."
"Alright, boss…"
Right, the fate of thirty or so miners rest in my hands right now, no pressure.
Returning to my hangar, I went to the docking bay console and tapped on the screen to begin the automatic resupply process.
Mechanical arms latched onto my ship and a large pipe connected itself to the bottom of my ship, starting the charging process for my engines and my weapons..
True to his word, I could see that the price for the resupply stayed at zero throughout the process. He must have already done the necessary procedures for me on my way to the hangar.
With the resupply complete, I ascended the ramp and sat at my cockpit, doing the final checks before take off.
I tapped on the screen to request for takeoff clearance and once I was given the green light, I fired up my engines and my ship slowly propelled itself out of the hangar bay and into open space.
I noticed a few other ships were also in the midst of leaving the station, all of them heading in the direction of the planet below. No doubt those were the miners heading out for their shifts.
For my first stop, I stayed true to my word and went towards where the pirate derelict were.
Hey, that's free loot drops right there, ain't no way I was going to leave that there without at least trying to find something worthwhile there!
For salvaging, I had three salvage drones that could help me with that while my scanners would pick up any notable objects in the debris field.
Since I don't exactly have a lot of cargo space, I can't just take anything I find and if I find anything too heavy for my salvage drones to move, I would have to put on a suit and float out myself to deal with it.
A quick scan with my scanners showed that the only thing of value in the field of broken space parts was a few energy cells and some spare ship parts.
I decided those weren't worth my limited cargo space to pick up so I just ignored them.
I did a few more scans but those also came up empty.
Bummer.
Seeing that there was nothing worth my attention, I fired up my engines and sped away in the direction of the pirate base.
Even with the travel drives engaged, it would take me about a day or so for me to reach there at this speed.
Welp… I guess this is the time for me to look at the map data I've downloaded from Marten. So many things have happened in such a short time that I didn't even have time to look at it properly.
Plugging my Codex into my ship's computer, I let it update my ship's map systems to display the new map.
When the screen loaded, I found myself looking at a map consisting of several systems linked together by lines connecting in between them.
I'm guessing that if I want to head to those systems, I have to travel by those lines?
Also, there's only a few systems here, so I'm assuming this isn't a complete map either. Perhaps there was no need for a mining station like that to have a full map system?
That reminds me… How does inter-system travel work in this universe?
I tapped on my screen and went to my power management systems, only to find one specific part of my ship missing.
Where's my warp drive?
In the game, every ship had a warp drive and was capable of jumping to other systems using that. Of course the distance you could jump and the charge time varied depending on the warp drive and the size of your ship but it was present in all but the smallest A Class ships.
So it's not a case of my ship not having one but it was removed entirely.
To make sure, I even went through every single window in my console to double check if the menu for the warp drive was moved elsewhere due to this being a new universe but to no avail.
That's not good… How am I supposed to get out of the system then?
I zoomed the map into my current system, which seemed to be named "K-3Y-E5" system on the map.
That was when I noticed that there was something new reflected on the system.
In between the second and third planet, there was an additional station there. When I saw the name of the station, I realised what kind of travel method this universe uses.
"K-3Y-E5 Warp Gate"
I see…
So to travel from one system to another, you need to use Warp Gates to jump…
Well, that's not really ideal since it meant that I would need to travel to these Warp Gates before I could travel out of the system, making them perfect ambush points. Are there no warp drives in this universe?
Oh whatever, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
I tried to search where Theeve Orbital Habitat Station was, the station that Marten told me was the closest place that had an archive.
Unsurprisingly, it was located in the next system which had only two planets, both of them also uninhabitable.
The map doesn't show any other information aside from that so I'm not sure what was that system's specialty nor why an orbital station was even set up there.
I suppose I'll find out when I get there… Assuming that I actually manage to deal with this pirate base that I'm currently travelling towards right now…
My plan was simple, really.
Go there, estimate how big their forces are, if they are manageable, start bombing the fuck out of them. Then they would definitely launch a defence and I'll shoot down any pirate ship that comes out from their hangar like fish in a barrel.
Easy.
Here's to hoping my plan works out as I hope…