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Our expedition was not going well. We hadn’t found anything that could help with the rain crisis, we had lost the ROC, and we had almost killed ourselves. Friedrich was also worried about pirates. We tried to remain undetected, but Xine knew our position and someone named Trüffelschwein was looking for information about our plans.

We decided to leave the moon Fairo and fly to the moon Ignis. A new secret base camp and a new chance to find the minerals we needed. Friedrich, Brubacker, and Hermieoth flew ahead, while I made my way to Gaslight Station to look for a new ROC.

After days in a spaceship and on a moon surface, it was a strange feeling to enter a space station and be surrounded by strangers. The station was run-down, neglected, and there were piles of trash everywhere. The smells and sounds were different, too. The whispering of secret conversations hung in the air, and the fiery, pungent smell of grilled rats hit my nose as I entered the lobby.

Gaslight didn’t have a shop that sold vehicles. So I tried my luck at the bar first. When I entered the bar, the guests jumped up, ran out, or hid in a corner. The bartender pulled out a gun and pointed it at me. Frightened, I raised my hands and shouted.

“Stop! Hold on! I haven’t done anything and I just want a Rust. Uh… and I’m looking for a ROC.”

“What kind of commotion are you causing here?” I heard a voice from a dark corner.

“Do you think they’re upset because of me?”

“Everything was relaxed here until you came in. Come on, let’s get out of here before something worse happens.”

I left the bar with the stranger.

“So you’re looking for a ROC,” he asked me in a dark corner.

“Yes. Do you have one?”

“It’s a bit run-down, it took me a long time to get it up and running with the few spare parts here at the station, but yes, I have a ROC.”

It turned out that the stranger’s name was Pike, he was from the planet Hurston, and he had joined an expedition to escape his simple, dreary life as a worker. However, he had been left behind on Gaslight by the others. He didn’t have his own spaceship and had been stuck at the station for six months.

A refugee from Hurston, no friend of the megacorporation Hurston Dynamics, and not a Citizen, that made him likable. He needed help and had something I needed. I offered him the chance to join our expedition with his ROC. On the condition that we would take him to the Stanton system later, he agreed.

A little later, we landed on the moon Ignis with the Starlancer Max. Brubacker, Hermieoth, and Friedrich came on board and were not exactly thrilled.

“Who did you bring with you now?” Friedrich asked angrily.

“I found a ROC. And a driver to go with it. This is Pike.”

“And where did Pike come from?” Brubacker asked with a groan.

At that moment, another person entered the Starlancer’s mess hall. He was wearing a helmet. Confused, I looked at the stranger and asked.

“And who did you bring with you?”

“Alaska,” Brubacker replied. “You know him from the investigation of the settlements of the first settlers of Stanton. We met him by chance while mining.”

Alaska took off his helmet and we greeted each other joyfully. Then Pike told his story, which he had already told me.

“And are you going to stay with us and help us, or are you going to leave right away?” Brubacker asked.

“I’m broke, I don’t have a spaceship, so where am I supposed to go?” Pike replied flippantly.

Friedrich interrupted the conversation and explained the plan for the next steps. Before we set off to search for minerals, Hermieoth took me aside. He told me about a vision he had in the jump tunnel to Pyro. He felt fire and burning. It seemed so real to him that he screamed until he was back in normal space.

I couldn’t really make sense of it, but I was worried. We had experienced one misfortune after another, and now one of the expedition members had had a horror vision. The parallels to the legend of the prophet of Pyro could not be dismissed. The miners back then had heard voices, but they were prophecies of the demise of the mining companies. Were we facing something similar?

When we reached the spot Friedrich had scouted out, we soon found the first cluster of minerals. We set to work. Pike dismantled the ROC, Brubacker tried his hand at an ATLS GEO. I climbed onto the second GEO.

I had just reached a rock and activated the laser when there was a loud bang. First there was a blinding flash, then everything went black. My whole body ached, and I heard Brubacker’s moans and the excited voices of the others on the radio. Slowly, I opened my eyes. Something was wrong. I saw the GEO from below. My head was lying between the steel green legs of the mech.

Someone administered a medpen to me. My vision cleared. Slowly, I struggled to my feet. The explosion had thrown me out of the GEO. Brubacker had suffered a similar fate. Hermieoth scolded us for not being more careful. He was right. Fortunately, the GEOs were still functioning.

I was pretty sure that Bru had triggered the explosion. After climbing back into my GEO, I trudged as far away from Brubacker as I could. I was just about to activate the laser when there was another loud bang. This time it was much louder than the first. The shock wave tore me out of my seat and threw me hard onto the ground. Then I lost consciousness.

When I came to, my body felt as if a herd of Quasi Grazers had trampled over me. My arm was broken. Debris was scattered around me, and chaos reigned.

“The ROC’s hull is torn off,” said Pike.

“The Knox and the Cyclone are also wrecked,” Friedrich noted.

“Brubacker was thrown several dozen meters away. I’m going to help him,” Hermieoth called out.

“How are you?” I heard Alaska’s voice next to me.

I looked at him and said quietly, “My arm is broken.”

“There’s a Medical Piscis on board my C2. Come with me, we’ll treat it.”

After the treatment, we met the others on board the Starlancer. Brubacker was back on his feet too. A heated discussion broke out.

“This moon is cursed. The whole expedition is cursed. These are the prophecies of the prophet,” I said.

“Which prophet?” Alaska asked, irritated.

“These aren’t prophecies,” Hermieoth grumbled. “This is incompetence!”

“The Starlancer has also been damaged. There are sparks flying from the engines. And both GEOs are scrap,” Pike noted.

“We can’t go on like this,” said Friedrich, half angry, half demanding. “We can abort the expedition here. I wouldn’t blame anyone for deciding to do so. For my part, I want to continue. But we need to coordinate our actions better.”

“Exactly,” Hermieoth confirmed. “And we need to learn the art of mining. We can’t just fire a laser at a rock amateurishly. You have to know what you’re doing. Zero, you have experience in mining. It would be best if you explained how it works and coordinated everything.”

I looked at Hermieoth in confusion. He was right, I did have experience in mining. But acting as an instructor and coordinator? That was foreign to me. Besides, what could I do against a prophecy?

“Friedrich is the expedition leader,” I said laconically.

“Let’s take a break and let everything sink in,” Friedrich suggested.

“Maybe in the meantime I can make one of the two defective GEOs halfway functional,” Hermieoth concluded.

Then everyone retired to their spaceships.

I sat down at the Starlancer bar and drank a few more cans of Rust. Could it go on like this? Did I want to continue down this path? The setbacks, Hermieoth’s vision, all of it made me believe more and more in the legends of the Prophet of Pyro. Pyro didn’t want us to mine. I wasn’t actually a superstitious person.

I had to admit to myself that I was out of balance. A longing for solitude in the desert spread through me. I seriously considered leaving the expedition and retreating to Monox. There, in the desert, I could find my balance and peace again.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)