Zirydian Heat

Zirydian Heat

Chapter 1

Durc

I was standing in command center on mining space station Lexia, my crew of eight on the visual comms.  Each of them were dispersed throughout our purchased sector of space, mainly along this particular asteroid belt that was suitably profitable at the moment. 

The Lexia was built into the side and top of an asteroid.  Seven floors high with the command deck, terrarium, and personnel quarters on the top floor.  Storage for living essentials were on the next floor down.  Maintence, generators, powers cores, heating and cooling, water tanks and purifiers were on the three floors below that.  The bottom two floors were warehouses and docking bays, as well as the hanger.

The rest of the team, not on the station, were on their own smaller ships, a drilling and collection craft that worked alongside a storage and processing vessel.  Once the processing vessel was at capacity they would return to the space station and reload it onto a freighter and ship it off to a trading hub.  The trading hub would then divide it up and send it off-road the appropriate buyers throughout the galaxy. 

They were asteroid miners, focused primarily on two minerals, talc which was a metal, and velumin which was a light weight material as well as this particular galaxy's main energy source.  There were many other minerals to mine and profit from in this sector, but those two had the bigger contracts to pick up.

All nine of us, once either slaves or rebel fighters now lived off the profits of the mining venture far away from civilization so as to be left alone, retired or escaped as we were.  They were from an enslaved raced called the Zirydians.  Some of us were used as fighters, some as laborers, and some were even carnally used.  Our freedom meant everything to us.

I looked over to the map of their sector, a sphere of asteroids and other debris in a blue 3D lit display that took up the center of the room.  Within the map were blinking lights that revealed the location of each team member.  Xal was the furthest away, mining talc.  Boveris, or Bov, was the next closest also mining mining talc.  Zin was next, mining velium, along with Kan nearby.  Gerv was also mining velium but in the lower part of the sphere, a larger cache they had just found, and Rowek was assisting.  Howlen was in the upper sphere mining talc and Roz was not so far away after the same thing.

Each crew member usually stuck to their mineral as their ships were outfitted to drill for specific types.  Otherwise, it was labor intensive to change it up at the station.

"Alright, I have the invoices and we are so far on schedule, except for the Buldurians putting a rush on their velium order.  So you know what that means, add a couple hours to your daily shifts for the next six cycles and we should be good."  I said, and then continued, "The freighter just left for the hub so we will see that big payment for the talc in three cycles and that should be enough to get docking bay 3 back up and running and repair the matter recycler bots so we can get some new shit around here.  I know your boots are trash and have been for a while.  I've made the bots a priority with this credit transfer."

Zin spoke up then, "We still have an issue with Maltix.  He's constantly poaching in on our sector.  He's convinced asteroid gx1621 is his."

"He's an idiot.  I don't know what map he's looking at.  It's clearly zoned to us.  We've talked.  I've sent him site parameters.  At this point he's stealing and knows it.  If you see him there again, we are within our rights.  Blow up the ship."  I said with finality.  His slitted pupils pulsing with his frustration.

"No problem." Zin replied gleefully, and the others erupted in plans of attack and defensive measures.

A hail suddenly chimed over the comms, and I frowned.  The other males fell silent.  I met the gaze of each team member but each was just as bewildered as myself.  Nobody was expecting communications from an outside source.