The mining troubles of Mitch Namar

Mitch Namar was a small time space miner, on a small time family run timerean. The only reason Mitch bothered to run the asteroids at all was to fund his research, his research into time travel. Mitch was not an unsightly man, but stood at a stout six foot two. His unkempt black hair did nothing to hide the lines of struggle deeply engrained into his face. His face was unsymmetrical, with one blue eye slightly higher than the other.

Everyday his family went through a struggle to find enough raw materials to buy the food, water and spare parts to keep their small timerean running. Every day they would race from asteroid to asteroid, hoping they would get to it before some big corporation. All night Mitch would work on his time travel all night. It was a hard life, but the only one they had.

Every day, the family went from asteroid to asteroid, blasting them, and recovering what minerals they could. Once they were finished, it was a race to the nearest space town Xian, for food water and parts. The best thing, for Mitch anyway was there was an endless supply of shianem, the explosive substance he suspected was so powerful it could rip a hole in the fabric of time.

One night, the family was having a troublesome day, and it was about to get worse. They were mining there last asteroid of the day, without much luck, when suddenly one of the small time, vulture company’s ships drifted into view. They had no decency and no regard for human life, a thing more and more companies seemed to have in common these days. Mitch saw them coming from miles out and immediately called his family in.

"Defense stations” cried Mitch! Mitch’s three oldest sons, Jim, Frank, and Mikey manned the three small laser turrets they had managed to scrape together from spare parts. Once the vulture came into range and the boys blasted away… Except… They didn’t work. The whole cabin exploded in a ball of fire. As the Realization dawned on Mitch that he had single handedly killed his whole family, he slowly lost consciousness.

When he woke up hours later he was devastated. All he had left was his work on time travel, which had thankfully been saved with him in the secluded cockpit. “Hmmmm” Mitch thought. Time travel. I can still get my family back! The thought exploded through his head. Mitch’s mind immediately turned to time travel. No. Wait. He thought. First I have to get back to civilization. Working with scrap, Mitch was able to scrape together enough wire and metal to make some wings. Firing the jets, just enough to maneuver the small ship, he made his way back to Xian.

Finally Mitch’s mind could turn to time travel. Mitch knew the shianem could rip a hole through time he just didn’t know how to control the increments of time. Over the course of the next year, Mitch experimented with the amount of shianem he used; he would send a mug through the hole, and see how much time it took before it reappeared. The base amount for time travel to the future (to go to the future and not the past), was 57 pounds as it would way on Earth. One pound of shianem seemed to be about a year’s worth of time travel, so using 56 pounds of shianem, Mitch would soon be ready to go back in time to rescue his family.

While Mitch was ready to travel back in time he still didn’t have a plan for taking down the vulture. So using the money he had recently gained from his father’s death, he bought a small decoy ship, and loaded it with high explosive. Once he made it back, he would deploy the decoy ship right at the vulture. Once the vulture blasted it to smithereens, the explosive would power chunks of the small ship straight into the vulture leaving it inoperable. Finally, he bought two, top of the line turrets that should aid hid family in the future.

Finally, he was ready to travel back in time. Taking the turrets and the ship with him, he made a hole in time. As space opened up in front of him, he felt the first joy he’d had in 12 months. He was getting his family back. Mitch immediately saw the vulture ship, and launched the decoy ship. Mitch watched in fierce anticipation. As he suspected, the ship was quickly destroyed. As the vulture ship was ripped, into ribbons, Mitch felt a fiery pain roaring, roaring like a lion, a pain equal to no other, in his abdomen. He looked down and saw a quarter sized whole in him. With his final, gasping breaths, Mitch saw his family getting away, and smiled. The younger, happier him would have a better life.