THE TEAM 49 MINING COMPANY

Blue Shift, led by Zeke 'Guts' Hetman [Mukul Patel]
Brown Shift, led by Artie 'Scarface' Klaw [Stephen Brown]
Green Shift, led by Clement 'Clem' Tyne [John Rutherford]

OFFICIAL REPORT by Clement Tyne The Forty-Niner Mining Company admits to having done nothing illegal. At all times we co-operated with the Station Authorities and obeyed Police instructions. Mr Tyne admits to having spoken to pirates by radio in an attempt to prevent them attacking our decks, which was successful. Talking to the pirates was never banned or even discouraged by the Authorities. While attempting to sabotage a pirate vessel, on the outside hull, we were attacked by a large number of pirates and forced to abandon a plasmatic borer, which we had tried to use as a weapon. We reported this loss to the Police. The pirates must have used it to cut into the Bank Vault. We deny utterly any involvement. We do not know why all surveillance camera records for Sectors 2 and 3 for the period of the pirate attack have vanished. It is a total mystery to us, as is what happened to the huge pile of cash in the Vault. You can prove nothing. I want my lawyer now.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED…well, with some poetic licence…

Hetman was in Sector 2 and had some pirate trouble, but Klaw and Tyne in Sector 3 made a deal with the local pirates [i.e. crew of SS Extreme Prejudice: White, Hardman, Rutherford Junior]. This was very fair, we thought. The pirates could help themselves to any property which was not ours. So all the local shop stock, personal belongings of non-miners, and gear belonging to SolMine – SolMine? Not Mine! was fair game.

Meanwhile, a germ of an idea was running through our heads…nobody had yet managed to nick the piles of cash sitting in the Bank Vault of  Sector 1. After all, we reasoned, there would never be a better time to nick it, as the cops were very busy and with luck the pirates would be blamed. Now my readers will know that Asteroid Miners are experts in extra-vehicular activity (=spacewalking,) rigging up pulleys, hawsers and plasma borers, and calculating orbits. All of these skills would prove useful, if only we had the bottle. [Pass the bottle! Glug glug]. By now it was past Turn Thirty and time was running short – could we do it before the pirates withdrew and the cops could put full security back in place? The plan was simple, and we put it into effect at once. We would take a couple of plasmatic borers and rig them up on a series of cables and hawsers from the external deck, so a hole could be cut into the side of the Bank Vault. So, the ten miners chosen for the Mission set off through the airlock…and something like this transpired:

TYNE: [gobsmacked] Oh, good morning constable. Lovely day for a stroll on the external hull surface. Fancy bumping into you and your SQUAD OF COPS!!!

CONSTABLE  KEMP: Hmmm. Hello, hello, hello. What are you lot doing out here with… let’s see…several coils of cable, power units, bolts and attachments and two plasmatic borers?

KLAW: [thinking quickly] We’re going to…attack the pirates. Our plan is to burn a hole in the hull of one of their ships and then attack them from behind.

TYNE: Brave and public-spirited of us, eh? Is that what you’re planning too?

KEMP: Er…well, OK. Must be off. Stay out of trouble. Mind how you go.

I can’t believe we got away with that! But we did. We then had a quick conference and decided that if the cops came back we would NOT fight them or kill anyone – and the same would apply if there were a guard inside the Vault. We would say ‘whoops’ and pretend it was a mistake…

But the cops never came back and we were left to rig up the plasmatic borer. The hole burned through on Turn 50 and we sent in a Survey Robot to check the coast was clear. It was; the alarms had been rigged to trip if the Vault Door was blown, not the wall…so we got the boxes of cash. Attaching radio beacons to the boxes, we carefully launched them with a push so that they would spin off and go into orbit of the nearby asteroid, so we could recover them later. One of the plasmatic borers, we pushed with more force; that was to be ‘lost’ permanently as part of our cover story.

On our return, we told the police [Constable Young] about the ‘lost’ borer; then there was but one loose end – covering our tracks by arranging for the destruction of all surveillance tapes for our sectors. Maybe this happened:

HETMAN: Why hello you lovely hunky communications tech…

TECHIE:You’re quite cute, but even when we’re both in spacesuits I can tell you’re not my type.

HETMAN Err.…how about I give you shedloads of cash - a thousand credits -  for the Sectors Two and Three tapes?

TECHIE: A thousand? You’re on! The download is on this tape…which I have just left on my console, unattended, while I go off to spend this grand. Haha!

POSTSCRIPT

The level of hassle from the Authorities, who never believed we were innocent though they could prove nothing, would have meant the Miner 49er company would move to a different star system fairly soon – which would also make it easier to spend the cash without attracting the wrong kind of attention! Until we heard about this movie deal…

‘PROSPERITY’S ELEVEN

– IN SPACE NOBODY CAN HEAR YOU STEAL!’

NOT A MAJOR FILM!
Starring:
GEORGE CLOONEY as Clem Tyne
BRAD PITT* as Artie Klaw
JULIA ROBERTS as Zeke Hetman**
ANDY GARCIA as Martian Official Reeve
CASEY AFFLECK as Constable Kemp
ELLIOTT GOULD as the Game Designer

*Stephen, for reasons of vanity, demanded to be played by the handsomest hunk.
**Sorry Mukul but we needed romantic interest for the chick demographic.

JIM9000 TECHNICAL DATABURST:  Asteroid miners often use 'ping transponders' for marking ore claims on asteroids.  These transmit only when 'pinged' by the owning company's secret code.  In this case, the miners could go looking later, provided they can do the sums on the orbit, and made sure they accurately noted the time they put each box ot of the hole).