Commander Altsain has something of a history with mining. Her initial efforts were not amazingly spectacular, but she persisted, and the Credits (along with an awful lot of Painite) began to flow.

Her steed for most of this time was a trusty Type-7, the Antimony Sun. It was a good ship, and most certainly looked the part of a mining and refining ship, but it did have some issues.

First off, while the Type-7 was surprisingly agile, it was slow. When the commander needed to relocate to another asteroid, it took a long time to get there. Also, while it had a decent cargo hold, it could only mount the smallest of mining lasers, and had serious trouble keeping three of those running simultaneously.

Finally, the commander broke down and bought herself a brand new mining ship, an Imperial Clipper called the Ruby in the Rough.

To the commander’s way of thinking, the Ruby in the Rough would be super nimble within an asteroid field and its lower cargo capacity would be made up by simply getting a mining run done quicker.

Unfortunately, it did not really work out that way.

The lower cargo capacity might have been worth living with but the commander soon found out that an Imperial Clipper, while having a decent jump range, also had a tiny fuel tank. Not Fer-de-Lance tiny, but enough to necessitate a fuel scoop – which the Ruby in the Rough simply did not have space for without sacrificing more of its cargo hold than the commander was willing to give up.

For a while, she used a reconfigured Pachyderm, a Type-9 that had some of its cargo holds replaced with mining equipment.

It worked, sure. In fact, it might have worked a bit too well, as the commander was now able to spend four hours at a stretch within a planetary ring before running out of limpets and that was, whichever way she looked at it, too long.

Also, the Type-9 did nothing to solve the original issue of getting from one rock to another with some haste. In fact, it was a complete backward step (though if mining in deep, unexplored/undiscovered space becomes more profitable, the Type-9 might well become the perfect ship for it).

What the commander needed was a medium or large-sized ship with a big cargo hold, the ability to carry medium mining lasers, and enough fuel capacity to travel long distances without refuelling (actual jump range was less important than total distance possible).

Well… that is a Python, isn’t it?

So, going against her dislike of ‘multirole’ ships, the commander laid down the Credits for a second Python (the first being the Felicia Forever, a Python dedicated to doing the work of Ms. Winters). However, she mollified herself by getting an extremely good deal on a beat up Python that had clearly seen better days.

She decided to call it the Rockicker.

Despite its looks (it certainly has it where it counts), the Rockicker is proving itself to be the supreme mining vessel.

It has the same cargo capacity as the Type-7 Antimony Sun and while its pitch and yaw are a little woeful, its overall speed more than makes up for it. Best of all, it can mount medium-sized mining lasers.

During discussions with other commanders in starport bars, Commander Altsain had been advised to only mount two medium mining lasers, as any more would be difficult for the power distributor to keep up with and, at any rate, two was more than enough to occupy a swarm of collector limpets.

However, the commander is all about the road less travelled, so she visited The Dweller on Wyrd who tuned her power distributor to perfection, and then went ahead with three medium mining lasers.

The results? Well, it is true that three will eventually drain even a tuned power distributor dry but, by that time, even the largest of rocks have been well and truly pulverised. The commander is running five collector limpets from the Rockicker, and yes, they are overworked when trying to pick up the debris from three lasers, but that just gives her more time to select the next rock.

With the Rockicker, the commander believes she has found the perfect mining vessel, and her time among asteroids has taken a definite up turn.