Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

"What the hell?! Where'd that little sh*t go?!"

"I don't know, he just disappeared. All that's left are his decoy beacons."

"Keep searching, he isn't a ghost that can just vanish into thin air. He has to be out here somewhere."

"Um, we're in the middle of open space. There's no air here, thin or otherwise."

"Oh, shut up and find that stupid buzzard already!"

The space pirates spread out and checked on all of their sensors for Avery's ship, but the only sign of it was the decoy beacons left behind. It truly was as if he had just vanished.

"Guess we must have turned him into space debris with a lucky shot while we were blinded. Let's get back to work or else the boss will have our heads for slacking off." One of the pirates said after searching for around fifteen minutes without any success.

Luckily, the other pirates agreed and the four of them turned around and headed back towards where the destroyed mining operation was located.

Avery was not able to see their departure, however. His ship was completely powered down, leaving him no means of knowing what was going on outside other than looking through the view screen and assessing things with his own eyes.

Nevertheless, he did not dare power up his ship and activate its sensors just yet. If the pirates were still in the vicinity, they would notice him the moment he turned his ship's generator back on.

"Better put on my hostile environment suit." Avery mumbled as he rubbed his arms with his hands for warmth.

The temperature in the cockpit was dropping rapidly, and soon enough it would become cold enough to be a threat to his life if he did not do anything about it.

Then there was his dwindling air supply. If the cold did not get him, suffocation would.

Fortunately, he had a suit meant for use in space and other environments that a person could not survive in normally.

This suit would both keep him warm and give him a steady supply of oxygen for an entire day. He figured if he waited around half that long the pirates would almost certainly have given up by then.

Once he had the suit on, Avery let out a relived sigh as he was enveloped by its warmth.

"Guess I'll get some sleep. If they find me at this point, I'm going to end up dead anyway. I've used up pretty much all my tricks, so all I can do is wait and hope nothing else happens."

The extreme fatigue of the long day and near-death run-in with space pirates left Avery with little strength left to stay awake.

After setting an alarm for ten hours from now on his portable terminal, Avery let sleep overtake him. He knew if he forced himself to stay awake, all he would be awarded with was a never-ending sense of dread.

…

"Beep! Beep! Beep!"

Avery shot awake when he heard the blaring tone of his terminal over the comms within his environmental suit.

He had slept without interruption for the full ten hours and felt quite a bit better than he had before.

Still, sleeping in a not particularly comfortable suit strapped to the chair in his cockpit had left him sore all over.

What he really wanted to do was get out of his environmental suit and take a hot bath, but that would not be possible for multiple reasons.

"If they haven't found me at this point, I should be in the clear." Avery said to reassure himself.

Tentatively he reached over to his control panel and eventually worked up the nerve to power up his ship.

Immediately once power had been restored, he turned his ships sensors on and checked for any other vessels that were around.

"Thank my lucky stars." Avery sighed in relief when nothing showed up on his sensors.

The comet's path had taken him quite a distance away from where he had tangled with the space pirates, and for as far as his sensors could search, there was nothing else out here with him.

Feeling elated to have survived, Avery powered on his thrusters and entered the command to retract his landing gear, but his ship did not budge.

Certainly, it shook forcefully as it tried to bring in the landing gear and fly off, but it did not leave its current location.

"No, no, no, no!"

Avery could tell he was only moments away from ripping his ship apart and shut down the thrusters and stopped the command to retract the landing gear.

He then ran a diagnostic program to see what was wrong, though he already had a pretty good idea.

When the diagnostic had finished, it confirmed that his landing gear was locked in place. His escape plan to hitch a ride on the comet had worked but now his ship was solidly frozen to the mass of ice and rock.

"I should have known something like this would happen. I may have gotten away, but now I've just got more trouble to deal with." Avery lamented.

At the very least, this would be easier to deal with than space pirates.

While the ship did not have enough power to break free of the ice that had frozen his landing gear to the comet, he had a laser pistol that should be able to get the job done.

This meant that he would have to exit the ship and carefully clear away the ice without damaging his ship.

"I suppose it's a good thing I didn't already take off my environmental suit." Avery grumbled as he grabbed his laser pistol.

He did not really ever use this weapon other than for a form of protection when traversing less than safe areas on trading colonies. Just having the gun visible served as a deterrent, and so far, it had worked well to keep unsavory types off his back.

Exhaling a deep sigh, Avery entered the air lock and attached a tether to his suit before depressurizing the room.

Once there was not any air left, he opened the door and looked out into the abyss of space.

'Let's make this quick.' Avery thought as he felt a cold shiver up his spine.

It was one thing to traverse the endless expanse within the confines of a ship, and another to walk out with only a thin suit to protect himself.

With a bit of difficulty, he managed to set foot on the comet and get to work.

Aiming his laser pistol carefully, Avery fired it in long bursts to cut away the ice that engulfed his landing gear.

The work was long and momentaneous, but eventually, he cleared away his front landing gear.

Except, when he moved towards the back, he spotted something a couple kilometers away lodged into the comet.

"I wonder if that's some module from a station, or maybe some jettisoned cargo."

While most of the object had been consumed by ice, a small portion of it was still uncovered.

The surface was clearly something manufactured, and it appeared to be in decent condition despite having crashed into this comet at some point.

Avery's motivation to free his ship soared at the sight of potential loot.

Things may have gone sour at the wrecked mining operation, but perhaps to balance that out, the universe was awarding Avery with some good luck.

"Okay, that should be enough." Avery said, his excitement rising.

He had blasted away most of the ice clinging to his landing gear, leaving only enough to keep it from being dislodged from the comet and flying off into space. The last thing he wanted to do was end up being yanked around by his ship while it was floating off into the distance.

Climbing back onto his ship, Avery started up the thrusters and broke free from the remaining ice attached to his landing gear.

There was a bit of shaking, but he finally escaped the surface of the comet and was flying under his ship's own prolusion again.

"Now, time to see what else ended up on this giant ice cube."

Slowly, Avery linked his ship with the comet's movement and lined up directly above the object that had caught his attention.

He immediately started scanning it but received almost no useful information back. His sensors were not powerful enough to penetrate the ice, and whatever protections the object possessed.

"I may have really stumbled across the jackpot. I wonder what is so valuable that someone went through the trouble of building this thing to block sensors."

A gleeful grin on his face, Avery booted up the control panel for the single pulse laser equipped to his ship.

Allowing the targeting program to do most of the work for him, Avery opened fire with his weapon.

Large chunks of ice were blown away by the first blast and revealed a bit more of the object.

Giddily he continued to blast away and uncover his lucky find.

At one point his aim was a bit off and directly hit the object, but his weak pulse laser failed to so much a singe the outside of whatever this was.

"Woah. That is some sturdy armor. I know my weapons pretty unimpressive, but still. What is this thing? Some sort of special vault for a top-of-the-line merchant vessel."

Avery gulped when he realized just how sturdy the object he had found was. No matter what, even just the outer plating was likely worth more than everything he currently owned.

Eventually he had cleared away enough ice to make out what he had found truly was. It was not a durable cargo vault as he had thought, but an intact ship.