Mining The Black

Sitting in a back water system, watching the local traffic scanner and keeping half an eye on the state of the mining crystals.  I would like to say it's an exciting life but mining for myself or the corporation is boring.  However if you are really unlucky it can suddenly become quite exciting in a horrible way. At the moment their is only three other pilots in system, mining, docked or running their own agendas I guess.  The names are familiar to me and I to them.  We will not be sending each other greetings Holo-Vids any time soon so they are comfortable tenants for this system.  I prefer to mine here as it is a few jumps away from my busy home base, where local numbers can spike at three hundred plus, but here if the local population reaches double figures it is an event.  So I mine into the hold, not really targeting any particular type of ore, just strip mining the belts as either myself or the corporation will need it all given enough time.  The rats in this system are small, and while I do have a full drone hold of combat drones they are rarely troubled from their electronic slumber. The hull of my mining ship, and the resistances of my shields make the local rats an annoyance only, usually I send out a combat drone when I am fed up with the constant pounding of the ineffectual attack on my ship, the rat is destroyed and I recall the drone, leaving me with the constant and hypnotic sounds of the strip miners and the activity in the hold when the ore is brought aboard.

The cargo hold is starting to fill up, soon it will be time to warp back to the station and deposit my ore.  I align the ship to the space station in readiness as the next complete mining cycle should fill the hold completely.  Aligning the ship in this circumstance is really just a small way to break the monotony, but a useful thing to know should my mining activities take me into a less secure system.  The hold is full and I start the warp sequence, noticing that local traffic has reached fifteen.

Keeping an eye on local space as the mining ship starts warping in case I'll have some visitors when I return, nothing appears and then I'm in the warp tunnel.  The warp journey is a shorter one, only 14AU or so and then the shuddering begins as the warp collapses as I hopefully approach the station.  There it is, the same old station, appearing the same old way.  I ask for docking clearance which is approved after a longer than usual delay, sometimes it's shorter than other times.  My suspicion for the delay is academic really, I think it's caused by docking controls intense boredom looking after such a quiet system with little traffic.

The docking control system brings the ship into my docking bay and the ore is dumped in my hanger bay for later refining or transport.  Checking local again the increased pilot numbers seem to have gone, it could have been an attack group or just a coincidence, hard to say.  I undock and warp back to the belt, ready to fill the hold again.