Free Rookie Privateer by Jamie McFarlane

said.
    That afternoon the doctor stopped by and talked to me briefly about my injury. It wasn't an unusual injury on a mining colony and while a basic prosthetic foot was a bit expensive they weren't hard to come by. The cap already on the stump was nearly finished knitting my flesh back together, but I wouldn't be able to fit a prosthetic for at least a week. The rapid healing brought on by the cuff would allow me to be released in a couple of days. All I needed to do was learn to walk with crutches. Just like the nurse, he was gone in less than ten minutes.
    I spent the next couple of days working with a physical therapist AI. I had thought it would be a person, but it turned out that people were in high demand. I arranged to stay with Nick on the station so I could make daily visits with the hospital staff. It was frustrating, spending hours at the hospital waiting for a five minute visit only to be told that things were progressing well.
    On the day that M-Cor was scheduled to arrive, I got into my ore sled and headed out to O-92 where Big Pete and Mom were working to get everything loaded. Working around the clock for the last five days, they had loaded five containers. The yield was almost entirely iron with just a bit of nickel and copper. Nothing close to the big payload we'd lost to the pirates. With the ingots at the refinery already and this load of iron, Big Pete would be able to keep the operation going, pay for repairs , and retire some of his debt. Any chance of getting ahead had disappeared with that pirate freighter.
    " It means a lot you coming out here, Liam." Now I knew Big Pete was tired. It was his second sentimental comment in as many weeks.
    " I came out so I could run loads back to P-1. M-Cor is twelve hours out," I informed them.
    " Liam, I need to be able to trust your answer. Shoot me straight on this. Can you make a run or would it be touch and go?" Big Pete wanted a look into my soul. He wasn't interested in me playing games of bravery, he wanted straight talk.
    " Fact is, flying an ore sled is about the only thing I can do and I gotta do something. Let me do this." I knew I had to lay it out plain, nothing extra.
    " Silver hasn't slept for over thirty hours," he replied. He didn't often use Mom's first name. It was all he was going to say on the matter, but he would accept my help.
    We attached the containers to my sled and I filled them in on my recovery. Mom had a lot of questions , but wasn't tracking my answers very well. She repeated several of them to the point that I was certain of her exhaustion. I arranged to have Jack meet me at P-1 to help unload the containers.
    I saw with satisfaction that as I took off for the refinery they had loaded into the other sled and were headed back to our habitat. It felt great to know that they trusted me with this responsibility.
    Jack and I finished off-loading the containers an hour before M-Cor's arrival. The refinery would turn our raw ore into ingots over the next twelve hours, which was in plenty of time to be sold to M-Cor. Pride welled up in my chest thinking about how my parents had risen to this challenge. I checked in with the habitat to assure myself that they were safe and snoozing at home. It was also a relief to have not been thinking about my leg and doing something else for a bit.
    Nick chirped my comm. "Heya, Liam, want to come over and check out the Control Center? It’s crazy."
    I met him next to the attack ship we had taken out. My mind flashed back to the stress of that evening and my leg throbbed sympathetically. I noticed with satisfaction that the ship's entry door had to be cut off and Nick's welds were still very evident. Nick told me that sheriff deputies cut the door off to extract the pirates who were trapped. They had given up pretty easily, having lived in their ship suits in vacuum for better than a day before anyone got to them.
    My eyes followed the tether up. A new platform was lashed to the gondola and control room.