Chapter 880 Star Thief
“Damn it! It’s not broken, is it?”
Not that the endless state church sermons, obituaries and technical security broadcasts are very exciting, but right now Jack Ma could see nothing but snowflakes, and even if he didn't understand mechanics, he probably knew what was going on.
Jackma tapped the volume meter and found that even if he turned the volume to the maximum, the silence would just turn into the faint, whisper-like hiss that occurs when disturbed.
Everything in life is really not going well, as if he has extra energy coins to call a technical servitor?
Jack let go of his hand without interest and let the remote control fall from his oily fingers. Soon it was broken in half and fell to the ground, and the battery pack fell off again.
Then he kicked hard at the wall of the empty living cabin, feeling that he was too tired to unfold the sofa into a bed position, so that he could sleep well in an increasingly meaningless life. The enjoyment of spending another meaningless day was ruined.
Is it worth it?
No, but "as long as" he survives another seven years, he will be able to save up enough to leave this damn star thieves gang and fly away forever, taking a shuttle to go somewhere else - to a place with less prospects. A gray place.
The so-called star pirates are actually an illegal organization in the empire that is similar to pirates, but the situation is slightly better. Their main livelihood is not robbery, but stealing various minerals.
Star thieves are often composed of bankrupt merchants, or some legal organizations will secretly form star thieves groups, such as business alliances or greedy hive nobles.
They usually look for remote places that are difficult to detect. Once high-value minerals are discovered, they will disguise themselves as the official mining team of the empire and carry out crazy mining-the empire monitors all kinds of minerals. Very strict, legal mining requires high taxes and is always subject to low-priced forced acquisitions from nearby forge worlds.
The profits of the Star Thief Gang mainly come from their tax evasion, and once discovered, all participants will face the death penalty!
Therefore, most people will not choose to take risks unless they have no choice.
But Jackma had no choice. If his miserable eyes could see even a tiny thing a hundred meters away, he would have signed up for the Astra Militarum long ago.
But they were a damn nearsighted pair, so he didn't sign up.
Of course, some people say that he was rejected by the recruitment office because he was too ugly and short.
But Jackma thinks this is nonsense. Although he has a long face and is indeed not handsome, and his height is only a little over 1.6 meters, he still has a lot of strength.
No matter what the reason was, now he had to work on that damn construction zone, sighing while doing a job that was considered too menial to bother programming a servitor. ——Even so, his salary is more than five times the salary of similar positions in the nest city.
The star thieves’ high profits determine that they can afford high prices when hiring people.
For money, I have to do it even if I lose my head.
And this star thief gang named Blue Ant seems to have quite a background. Not only are there veterans of the Astra Militarum, but also priests of the Mechanicus. It is also rumored that the bosses are also working with a certain foundry. The world is connected.
Even the place they chose was very smart. The Lenscher system is next to the Neisen system, where four battle groups of space warriors are stationed - although Jackma himself has never seen an interstellar space. Warriors, but he knew how powerful they were.
This kind of place is called darkness under the lamp as the saying goes.
Probably no one would have thought that someone would dare to steal minerals under the noses of the four battle groups, so they would basically not encounter the inspection fleet of the Ministry of Justice, and the Blue Ants themselves had made a certain disguise and set up a trick The fake exploration company proved that Space Marines passing by would only use the scanning system to scan it, but would never board it in person to inspect it.
In this way, they are equivalent to digging for minerals in a very safe environment and then transporting them to the black market to earn huge profits.
"How great would it be if this business was my own? I must be better than these people -" With beautiful fantasies, Jack Ma, who was extremely tired, slowly fell asleep.
But this time his sleep was not stable. The screen suddenly screamed, waking him up from his sleep. Then Jackma yelled a bunch of curses, grabbed the remote control and put out the battery. The group snaps back to its original position.
While turning down the volume, he used his other hand to check his ear to make sure there was no bleeding.
"Damn! What happened?"
Jackma glanced, and the electronic timer on the wall showed that he had only been asleep for less than twenty minutes.
No matter how hard he pushed the remote control, the screen still crackled, buzzed, banged, hissed—it had never screamed so much.
At this time, Jack Ma was really dying and had a splitting headache, but the sound was getting louder and louder, mixed with the sound of electric spark explosions, as if a tortured machine was whining and Raised to extremely high pitch.
But if you listen carefully, it is similar to the screams of hundreds of human beings dying, bringing some kind of invisible and toneless fatal cold.
It's both, it's neither.
Just as Jack Ma was making his final struggle with the damaged TV, the lighting ball above his head suddenly began to flash, and it was obvious that the power was going to be cut off again.
Power outages are not uncommon here.
Even at the best of times, this mining space station is just a run-down backwater trapped in the orbit of a dead world. To minimize the risk of discovery, supply transport ships arrive almost every six months. Come once, so power outages are natural due to lack of spare parts.
Three days have passed since the last time the technical team members restarted the lighting generator. This time the current can be maintained for three days. Jack Ma is already applauding the half-dead maintenance staff.
Of course, even if there is no lighting, the work will not stop. The production plan of each department must be met. The first priority of all electricity supply is the life support device, and the second priority supply is the production line. The lighting demand may be ranked second. Behind the charging of the comfort servitor
Jack Ma once worked continuously for twenty hours with only the light of a flashlight.
In that incident, more than a dozen servants lost limbs or fingers because they could not see clearly the mechanism. The obituaries that week were as long as the Saint's Day prayer scrolls, but everyone soon understood I forgot, there are new people joining every six months anyway.
So as soon as the lights went out, Jack Ma climbed up from the sofa, groped his way to the wall in the dark, and opened the emergency supply cabinet containing the light box.
In addition to the light box, there is also a batch of standard battery packs inside, which are the only rare and simple electrical appliances in the living rooms of ordinary workers like them.
It's just that it seems to have been used for decades, and it's a mystery whether it's still effective.
Jakema stuffed all eight palm-sized discs into his overalls pocket, worked on them in the flickering light of his handheld flashlight, then flopped back onto the couch, waiting for the inevitable call for them" "Behave as usual" warning notice, and the phrase "lights should be restored as soon as possible".
Throne, this life is so fucked up.
He really wanted something exciting——
(End of this chapter)