Deeper in.

Location - orbital asteroid belt, sector R4D79, quadrant 2

Vessel: Mining module 4

Pilot: Jack Soto

Current activity: Hiding

Time since begin of journey- 4 348 hours

Its been nearly an hour, and they havent heard from the captain, yet. They did what he ordered them to do, moved into the asteroid belt and maintained radio silence. Yet, something feels wrong.

"This is module 6 does anybody hear us?" Dalfens module approaches, but the voice in the comunicator belongs to someone else, Jack would recognise the voice anywhere.

"Dimo?! W-what are you doing in Dalfen's module?!" Jack asks shock and surprise clear in his voice.

"Keep it down, short range comunication only." Says Dimo, his low voice somewhat conveys the urgency of his request.

"Alright, alright." Jack says switching to short range comms, he's got many questions but sticks with the most important ones for now.

"Dimo we havent heard from captain, yet. What is happening, what's with the ship?"

Others also chime in with the same question.

Dimo doesnt respond for a couple of seconds and then says. "I'm... sorry to break it to you guys but... the ship is gone." He says, and his words come out painfully slow.

"What about the others?" Jack asks, the first revelation hasnt fully sinked in yet, so he continues to ask.

"Captain and the others tried to escape in the shuttle... they were shot down. I don't know what happened to Dalfen, but me and Max got trapped in the mining dock, so we climbed into his module and managed to slip away when the cargo jettisoned."

Jacks mind rushes as the news sink in, his hands are shaking and it somehow suddenly feels cold.

Arborat... is... is gone. Everyone else... is gone too. They're all alone.

Then something crosses his mind that luckily lets him take his mind off of the fact that they are in the worst possible situation that they could ever find themselves in.

"Wait, you got Max in there too?" Jack asks.

"Yeah, I'm here too." Say Max in the background.

"Are you okay Max?" Jack asks again.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Says Max calmly which is weird because the whole situation is what it is.

"Yeah, bullsh!t, he's still in shock." Say Dimo right after.

A little while later...

After making sure that everyone is in a state in which they can at the very least think straight.

There are more pressing matters than trying to figure out who or why they attacked the ship. Like, making sure that they dont all kick the bucket in those buckets that are called mining modules.

There are two key resources that they need to keep check of. One being the fuel and two the oxygen they have left.

Modules 1 to 5 have all launched roughly at the same time which means that they have less fuel than module 6, by roughly 2 and a half hour, which Dimo and Max used to escape.

However, module 6 will run out of oxygen twice as fast as everyone else, because they are two people in a module that is supposed to fit one. At add to that Dimo is a bear costplaying as a human which means that their oxygen consumption is even greater.

Max came up with an idea, he pointed out that all modules are equipment with a box of medical supplies among which are sedatives. Since he himself admited that he sucks at navigating and generaly everything about space flight, he said that he'll sedate himself to reduce the air comsumption at least by a little.

That left them with just thinking about a way out of this place. Kha'ro decided to speak up with that, his data pad has the map of the entire star system. Apparently he always likes to know where they are going.

After sending it everyone. They pondered over it for a little bit, and then it finally hit them. There was an often used trading route just on the other side of the belt, that meant merchant ships, cargo haulers use this belt to lay low and lose any potential tails, and if they got lucky maybe a patrol ship on the hunt for pirates.

With this being their last option left, the other ones either to stay here and slowly suffocate or be found by those who attacked the ship. They started to make their was deeper into the belt.

It was unclear if those who attacked Arborat were going to look for them, but they surely knew that there were survivors, after all... no mining transport ever flies without mining modules.