<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #80BFFF"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;">Peter Halvardson</span><br/><span style="font-size: 120%; line-height: 116%;">'The Viking'</span></span></div><br/><br/><div style="text-align: justify;">He listened to her history. So she was a miner kid? That was funny, as he wasn't. But in the end he ended up as a miner and she ended up as a MP. Life sometimes goes down strange roads. When she ended her story, Peter laughed.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"Not really, you are too much of a tough cookie to come out of the golden crib. I knew that you must have had some hard background to be like you are. You're some impressive woman, Alice. No, the one coming out of the golden crib is me."</span><br/><br/>He got up and walked over to his case and dug two more nutrition packs and two bottles out of it, then he sat down opposite of her and handed her one of each.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"My father was an executive director in a trading firm, my mom had died after giving birth to me and me and my older sister grew up with a myriad of nannies and servants. We both tried to escape it. I went to highschool and excelled in sports and to anger my father I slacked in business education. But I got the lessons and I learned them well, I just never showed that I understood them. I had no intention to ever work in the trading business, funny, huh? My sister searched another way to get out of the prison we called home. She went down into the city and bought drugs. She died when I was sixteen by an overdose. As I already said, I could have gone into professional powerball, I had been the All-Star of our school and the league in two consecutive years. But Universum Exploration approached me and offered me an engineering job with them. The money was huge, but what was more tempting was the fact that it would shock my father to see that I decided to go into the mining industry. And indeed he never spoke to me again after I made that decision."</span> <br/><br/>He grinned and took a sip of his bottle, then he continued with a serious face.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"The first two years were fun. I had nearly the same body at that time and we had been a group of youngsters, all full of enthusiasm and idealism. We all believed that our next fifteen years would be like the first two. Entertainment centers, girls, parties and not enough time to spend all the money. Yeah, I think a high IQ doesn't prevent you from being an idiot. Reality got to us pretty hard once we signed the long contract. The only one still alive from that group besides me, you already met. Bull had started this job with me and that we ended now on Sirius-238 together looks like irony. But be careful around him. He lost two brothers on Darquel, where they had been deplored for drug abuse...and I don't have to tell you that they had been miners like Bull and me."</span><br/><br/>He thought for a moment and then he decided to drop his defenses a little.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"You asked me why I am doing this, the trade stuff and it all. It is not about the money, Alice, it had never been about the money. I give a damn about that money, if you survive seventeen years as a mining engineer you have enough money to retire in state. It is all about the people here. They are all great people, they have all survived this hell and they all deserve to reach retirement. I cannot change the policy of UE, I can't force them to treat us not like replaceable pieces of meat, but there is something I can do. And I am doing it since fourteen years now. I can manipulate the game, I can improve the chances of these people here and I can turn around the policy of UE back on them. Unfortunately I am at the total wrong position, Alice, I should be the one sitting in the UE tower, the one calling the shots. I promise you, UE would soar under me, the output would be twice as high as it is now and there wouldn't be any need for double shifts to achieve that. I can even prove what I am promising you by hard facts. Maybe I show you tomorrow, maybe I wait some more days, until you are less bristly to the truth. But I show you."</span></div>