The Orbital Deposit
The cramped flight deck of a decommissioned Soyuz capsule repurposed as a private space taxi, currently 247 kilometers above the Indian Ocean with 11 minutes of oxygen margin.
A billionaire's estate sale accidentally listed a defunct communications satellite as a lot item, and Double bought it for 0.8 BTC thinking the onboard platinum components are worth 40x that. The satellite is tumbling at 3 RPM in low Earth orbit, and the freelance cosmonaut they hired says he can match rotation and clamp on — but only if they burn their reentry fuel reserve to reach it. Ground control in Vladivostok stopped responding nine minutes ago.
“We already paid for the ride AND the satellite. Leaving now is like walking out of a restaurant after ordering. Except the restaurant is space and the steak is platinum.”
“He wants to spend our ride home on a spinning hunk of metal that a dead billionaire's intern mispriced. We have eleven minutes of oxygen and the guy flying this thing learned English from action movies.”
The cosmonaut — who kept muttering 'I am fire, I am death' during the approach — matched the satellite's spin on the second attempt by slamming into it with the docking clamp at exactly the right angle. The platinum heat shields alone appraised at 31.4 BTC, and the reentry fuel situation resolved itself when the European Space Agency sent an emergency tug after detecting an 'unauthorized grapple event' on their tracking screens and physically dragged them home for free out of sheer bureaucratic panic.
The ESA guy who towed us kept calling it a 'rescue' but I prefer 'complimentary valet parking.'
We survived because a European government agency mistook us for a debris collision and I had to reenter the atmosphere sideways in a Soviet museum piece, but sure, the steak was platinum.