economy

Trade brought us to the mines on Noxxe 47, a cluster of dead moons and asteroids delved by one of the mining corporations. They’re not worth terraforming, but shiploads of men are dumped there to dig. Mostly men from the slums of Earth, too poor to settle anywhere else. Depending on the company, there can be decent money made and usually sent back to earthbound families, who lack in money but not in, say, sunlight or air. Some companies pay wages of water and protein tabs, and their workers spend whats left on enough chemicals to keep them blissfully unaware.
Shipping businesses can make a neat profit with contracts to miners, though corporations tend to deal exclusively with big shippers, there is always a place for independents. There are family rigships, always living at the border of legitimacy. Some hold there own, some are squeezed out, some fall ungloriously into Running. Luckily, most corps don’t pay much attention to who is supplying them as long as the price is low and the mining output is steady.
Noxxe 47 is held in a bolthold by its suppliers, the only way to make a profit is to smuggle. We found a connection, a boss in a company who managed to organize his crew to pool together what they’ve stolen from work. He’s gotten a nice load of refined ore. Raw ore floats free in space, but refined ore is a Runner’s pillow—that is, what we make our dreams on.
A previous deal must have gotten him a Comweb pad, though personal connections are banned in the system. Ice found the line on Raceweb, the subpage where encoded messages are posted and picked up by Runners. Its risky, but the line seemed secure and Caban went for it.
Caban is one of those shippers that seems to have fallen into the game through a series of accidents and profitable, illegal deals. I wouldn’t have picked him as a criminal, he’s different than most. Talented, but…innocent, in a way. Its an innocence that makes him daring, almost like he doesn’t know enough to be cautious. He can think of things that wouldn’t occur to practiced, bitter old rusters like me or Ice. Its my job to feed practicality into his plans, Ice is there as backup but she’ll do whatever the shakes she wants no matter what.

The poor wretches on Noxxe 47 plunged this spacedarkened heart into throes of pity. They don’t need the ore, they don’t care about it, they’ll exchange it for water, alcohol, medicine, news…anything other than what they have.

I don’t like mines. They are full of nightmares.

The look in Caban’s eyes when we left Noxxe 47 told me everything I need to know on how he feels about those mines. If we hadn’t rusted our bolts getting here, he might have supplied them for free. I might have done the same, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They’re dead men anyway. Such a beautiful world we’ve made out here.