Confessions of a Galactic Goon: In Space, No One Can Hear You Cha-Ching!
25 Oct 2020Crow9001
Crow's Rule #27 from Riches Beyond the Stars: 'Listen, if you aren't some rich princess flying around the universe on Mommy and Daddy's money, you will need some source of income. You gotta roll up your sleeves, and go to work. And in this galaxy, the less questions you ask, the more your job is going to pay. There are plenty of hotheads who can pilot a Viper in a CZ unscathed, but not many who know when to shut up about it.' 78 Ursae Majoris
Today I'm hauling Marine Equipment and Tea for the Alioth Independents from one side of this armpit of a solar system to the other, so I can get a permit for a restricted neighboring solar system just a few lightyears away, so I can visit good 'ole Bill Turner, who will trade me for some nice weapons, so I can kill some less than nice people... the kind of people who restrict people of my kind from flying in their solar systems.
And I'll level with you--this hauling worthless crap around the galaxy is even more boring than it sounds. But at least it's not as boring as mining. Turner says he'll give me the weapons if I bring him some Bromelite, so I worked a trade with East India for some, in exchange for some Tritium. The Bromelite-Tritium exchange rate is nothing short of robbery--which I respect, though I'm normally the one holding the gun. But I still have to get it there, so while East India is sourcing the order, I've gotta work this backwater cargo run.
My screen lights up: SCAN DETECTED. Who the #$%$#% has time for shipscans? Losers who don't know how to make money--that's who! So I pop hardpoints and burn into the station hot, even though I'm clean. I'm only hauling worthless tea. It's a big galaxy, so there could be a system where tea is illegal, but I've never heard of it. If such a place does exist, it would probably be a Thargoid planet, and I could care less about Thargoids, because they never have any money. I cross my fingers that no one is clogging up the mailslot as I burn in hot with my Imperial Cutter, but if the system janitors have to clean one or two sidewinders off the sides of the Coriolis, then chalk it up to survival of the fittest. The way I see it, if pilots want to fly complete garbage in garbage systems, they really should stick to Pilot Federation space.
The slot is clean somehow, and I coast to a stop to offload 720 tons of tea. East India had better Jolly-good come through with the Bromelite they promised me, or I'm going to walk over a lot of dead bodies on my way out of this station.