The Things We Do For Money
23 May 2018Roober the Stroober
When you move around in the bubble, you hear things - the latest scam, the hottest tactics, the choice rewards. When you hear about it once, file it away under "whatever." When you hear it from three or four different pilots from a couple of distant systems, you start to notice.Such was the case with the latest civil war brewing in the Orion Spur. The Mussche Clan decided it wasn't happy with staying in their own system so they decided to try and horn in on a corporate operation in the next system over. Now, I don't normally get mixed up in such things however, when the Mooshies start hassling passenger liners and tour vessels, I figure it's time to let "Old Painless" out of the hangar. Besides, the controlling faction at the corporate facility has big contracts with the Federation military to protect so they'll pay big bucks to put an end to their trouble.
So I arranged with UC to table my current survey mission and a contact in the Federation got me a quiet gig as a "test pilot" for the latest experimental Vulture from their Skunkworks division. They rigged it up for ground strike work with reactive this, and overcharged that. I've got plenty of hours in a regular Vulture (actually there is nothing regular about these sweet rides.), so when I slipped out of the Core Dynamics "playground" hangar - let's just say that this thing re-defines "heavy fighter." It's a heavyweight sure enough, but it's very light on its feet. I couldn't wait to try her out...
The folks paying the bill wanted someone that would be discrete and not talk too much, at least until the hot war made the news. Yeah, it didn't take long. The local systems are all abuzz over the strange, blackbird that took out a Mooshie security facility and all of it's security vessels single-handed.
My Fed contact is also keeping the details with the Security guys on the down-low so that they won't put two and two together regarding the hunk of alienware they have squirreled away at their own secret R&D facility. He's almost got a line on where it's at.
That may be my next stop after I cash in on this gig...