The Galaxies Greatest Jewel Thief: Stand and De-Liver
26 Sep 2019Kara waldeN
Narcolepsy was a new development for Kara.This time she crashed into the Red Dwarf of the Jadikinon system, and it wasn’t until her terrified passengers went from urgent banging on the bridge door to desperate screaming that she woke up.
The sparks and smoke from the console confused her and the high-pitched screaming flooded her memory with emotional images from her life before the long cryogenic sleep. Her life as a cloned soldier and the dark things she had been born to do. Kara found putting those thoughts behind her was as easy as wiping the sleep drool from her chin.
She looked out at the stellar maelstrom which was trying its best irradiate their atoms into obliteration while simultaneously roast them all alive.
“Ooh that’s pretty. Ship selfie time,” she pushed the button that activated the external cameras and only when she had caught the best angles, did she unlock the door.
The passengers spilled in and formed an expanding wave of objection as they rolled towards her
She processed their words but saw only the gaps in their defensive line, She smiled cheerfully at them as as she rehearsed their deaths in her mind.
“I am so sorry!” she lied. She wasn’t sorry in the least.
“I should probably tell you that I do occasionally suffer from teensy tiny little blackouts. It’s not a thing you need to worry about, yes I am really sorry you spilt your coffee all over your business data slate, no you aren’t going to die, well, you will die but you’re not dead yet, so there’s that. There is always an upside,"
Despite the many and evolving abnormal states of cognition Kara Walden lived with, the one thing she had always retained was the ability to talk her way into and out of most situations and it wasn’t long before the narrowly avoided premature deaths of her passengers had been smoothed over and she’d sold them on the concept of cocktails with cake in them. One of the passengers even suggested she stop off in another star system to pick up some fancy Rare booze. She thought about it for about a microsecond, but then decided that lying was the quickest way to get him off the bridge.
She made sure the door locked itself as they headed for the newly designated “Cocktail Lounge”.
“If they thought they were upset about crashing into a Star, wait till they find out I don’t drink and there isn’t any alcohol on board,” she muttered while she set up for a low wake back into supercruise.
“Friendship Drive charging!” she whooped and then checked for promising signal sources.
She cruised the system and honked the Discovery horn a couple of times out of boredom, but the Full Spectrum Scanner didn’t give her anything.
“This isn’t quite what I imagined being a self-employed Pirate would be like,” she admitted to herself.
“Supercruising around looking for some interstellar Butcher so I can steal his spare-ribs,” she drummed her fingers in frustration and muted the angry buzzing of the ship intercom coming from the Cocktail lounge.
She cycled through the contacts on her panel. A wing of System Authority ships kept their distance. Yet another Beluga Captain seemed to think it was ok to brag about the quality of ship on the local comms.
“If I had a credit for every liner that was in the top one percent, I would definitely have more than a hundred credits,” she mused and kept cycling.
A mining T9.
Nothing from the Animal Meat guy.
“Not a sausage,” she smirked.
She cycled back to the T9 with the mining lasers and the refinery. Their paths would intersect if it kept on its current course. She reminded herself that Jadikinon was a prosperous agricultural system with a high population. Currently enjoying a period of economic boom which meant the people around here had a lot of money to spend.
She drummed her fingers some more while she tried to ignore the banging on the door to the bridge.
“Stand and De-liver,” she joked then rolled her eyes in disgust at herself before opening the ship wide intercom.
“This is your Captain speaking, due to some unforeseen events we will be slightly delayed, please stand by for some turbulence,” she said as professionally as she could and without waiting for a response from the passengers she closed the comms and turned towards the miner.
“Interdiction in, five, four, three, two.”
As massive as the T9 was it was no match for her Cutter “Prokofiev” and within seconds the two ships were rolling around each other in real space while her manifest scanner probed the inside of the miners cargo bay. The result came back with a funny little noise.
“Jackpot!” she shouted.
The T9 was carrying over two hundred tons of low temperature diamonds.
She selected the ships drives and deployed hardpoints.
“If the passengers thought they were cross about the missing booze, imagine how upset those folks will be when they find out they are all criminals now,” she laughed and pulled the trigger.