I spent last three days in Cryosleep and had operate the ship so little while traveling, The distance is good since there's no distraction. But then I woke up in the darkness, confused. The ship seemed to stagger. All engines were down. The ship was shuddering, pitched violently like it had been struck a tremendous blow. I fell back onto my seat, stunned. My head spun and my ears rang; the cheeks burnt like it had been splashed with acid. Tasting blood. Darkness swirled around me, sucked at my consciousness, tried to pull me down. I fought against it. The cabin was dark, the display gone, most of the instruments off line. Debris tumbled listlessly through the vacuum. Through the ragged tear forward, I could see stars. The ship is spinning violently. The power is down due to lacks of uranium.
I quickly flipped the secondary power switch. The display flickered back to life. Incredibly, they were past the red indicator. But still well within range of its power. There's two cells of battery which lasts 30 minutes with all non-essential subsystems off, 5 minutes at full thrusts. I must find more fuel before it run out or I die. And the journey will be over.
It took a full minute of thruster to bring the ship to full stop and another two to get to the nearest asteroid. The first one was ,to my fear, filled with iron and cobalts and nothing else. So I took another risk and fly to the next. Relying on inertial dampener as much as possible to save fuel resulted in longer trip. It took almost three minute to get close enough for ore detector to do it's job. NONE. Nickel and Iron.. The battery dropped to two square out of five. I cannot afford to roll another dice. I limped on the chair looking out of the thin glass, looking for anything worth clinging my life to. Then I saw it. One small asteroid approximately two kilometres away. It is out of the detector range but I can see the black vein on it. Could be just a dark spot but It's the risk I am willing to take. I took spare oxgen bottle, got in the airlock, depressurize, left the ship and shut it down entirely to save power while I'm away. I hustled over as quickly as my suit would allow. Bingo! Its the uranium! I am going to take all of you. Every single gram of you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
It's the best drilling session ever. I literally exhausted that little asteroid...