2954-07-22 – Tales from the Inbox: At Prospect's End 

"Mr. Tsiklauri, I presume?" The wizened man at the opposite end of the long conference table stood creakily, pressing his hands together and dipping his head incrementally. 

Zeph mimicked the gesture as best he could, making sure to bow his head much lower than the old man. The Hyadean greeting had a lot of unspoken protocol built into it. Business would go ill for him if he violated any of it. "At your service. Am I correct in guessing you are Mr. Simon?" 

"You are." The man smiled thinly. "Please sit." 

There were several other chair scattered around the table, and Zeph took one about a third of the way down, pulled it out, and lowered himself into it, keeping his eye on Roger Simon. He'd only interacted with the man – and before that, his functionaries – in datasphere text missives, and had been able to find precious little in his research en route. Simon was well connected on Braunweiss – in fact, his cousin was the system administration's economic minister – and owned a number of business ventures, but it wasn't really clear from public records where he'd gotten the fortune he used to invest in these enterprises. 

Zeph had been led to expect a meeting with the magnate directly, of course, but he had never come up with any good reason why this should be the case. The asteroid mining firm he was nominally arranging to work for had its own official president; Mr. Simon was nominally the majority investor in the company, but not an official decision maker. 

"I will admit, I was surprised to see someone like you applying to a job like this." Mr. Simon sat back down and pressed his fingertips together. "Your reputation is rather specific, and prospecting claims seem out of your normal expertise." 

"Even assuming that rep was well earned, I would have a death wish if I spent all my time hunting syndicate goons for pittance bounties." Zeph sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Eventually, luck runs out." 

"You don't think your reputation well earned, then?" 

Zeph chuckled. "I've paid for it, sure. If that's the same thing as earning it, then that settles it." He paused, wondering what this had to do with an asteroid-babysitting job. "I never set out to be a bounty hunter. The bounties just sort of... chose me." 

Simon smiled mirthlessly. "You also have a reputation as a very honest man, Mr. Tsiklauri. Honest, one might say, to a fault. It is this, not your fast gun-hand, which I value." 

Zeph nodded. This was a reputation he was far prouder of. "The listing was pretty vague. Obviously I can see why that might be. What do I need to do?" 

"Hopefully very little." Simon tapped his wristcuff with one long finger, and the holo-display in the middle of the table came to life, showing a map of the Braunweiss system. "A prospector in my employ has discovered several mineral-rich asteroids in the outer part of this system. Vanadium, platinum, some uranium, trace rare metals." A hazy white orb appeared in the display. "The company has a mining platform on the way, but it will take some three weeks before it is in place." 

"You need someone to sit on it until the mining ship arrives." 

"Someone is, as you say, already sitting. But the craft is unarmed." A wireframe of a small starship appeared near the map. Zeph recognized it as an old PCS Moth shuttle, a ubiquitous, nearly century-old multi-purpose rig. "Four times in the last week, small vessels have attempted to approach the claimed asteroids. Drone interception and comms warnings were sufficient so far, but if they press the issue, my pilot on station is powerless." 

"How much are these minerals worth?" 

Mr. Simon hesitated a long moment, as if wondering whether it was wise to answer. "Somewhere between fifteen and sixty million credits, to anyone with the machinery to mine it." 

Zeph whistled. "Even a small piece of that is the score of a lifetime." 

"Hence the, ah, moral hazard to the local independent spacers. Word of the claim is already circulating through Braunweiss's less savory spacers. I fear there will be a determined attempt to violate the claim before the miners arrive." 

"I can't fight off half a dozen scavengers on my own, Mr. Simon. " Zeph pressed his hands on the table, feigning the intention to get up, even though he knew there was more to the contract – there would have to be. 

"I don't expect you to do this alone." The old man tapped his wristcuff again, and the wireframes of about thirty strike-scale spacecraft replaced the star map. "There are dozens of other small independently owned, armed spacecraft currently docked at this station and at the ground-side spaceport. You have forty-eight hours to put together a squadron of pilots you think can be trusted. I will ensure everyone you bring on board is paid handsomely." 

Zeph normally worked alone, of course, but he nodded. "I suppose I'm responsible for keeping my choices in line?" 

Simon again smiled without any trace of humor. "Naturally, Mr. Tsiklauri." He changed the display again, this time to a chart showing various monetary values. "Here is the pay scale for this job, botth for you and for your chosen subcontractors. Do you find this acceptable?" 

Zeph took a moment to take in the chart. The job listing he'd initially seen had contained a pay range, of course, but it seemed that this range was that of Mr. Simon's intended pay for the two to five secondary mercenary hires he was permitted. The lead role's pay values were all twenty to thirty percent higher. 

There were red flags all over this, of course, but that was the nature of the game. Zeph wasn't afraid of fighting off a few frontier opportunists; it was selecting his own allies and then trusting them (and keeping them in line) that would be the challenging part. "Very acceptable, Mr. Simon. I'll get started picking my helpers right away." 

Though it is not relevant to this particular account, I thought it worth mentioning here that the ground campaign on Håkøya appears to be wrapping up. There haven't been many accounts from this campaign, which is surprising – Håkøya is a place that seems to have more than its share of strange happenings worthy of this text feed, even without a war being fought across its surface.