There´s a stain on my hands
13 Jan 2020DrPillman
Sure, there was before. I guess I sent pilots for a drift in their escape pod (at least that´s what we all like to believe when we watch the fireballs aka "target effect"...) about as often as I was picked up by medevac myself.
But this is different.
Taking part in a skirmish is kind of easy on the soul. You know what´s up, you know the other guy knows, we all get paid, it´s hardly ever getting personal, and well, its kinda honest, really.
It´s not what we did today. Ok, here´s the story, and it´s not pretty:
We just did some boom-deliveries for the Workers, milkruns, really. Groundcrew was hauling crates of fish and tea off our cargo bay, I was having a godawful cup of wannabe-coffee-surrogate, when my second mate jammed his PDA into my face crying "look at that! We have to! I don´t care who it is!" I squinted to get the wiggling display in focus. Someone was willing to pay 29M for an urgent delivery of merely 1200t of Bismut. Woah. That´s gotta be really urgent, I thought. Especially as we just passed a convenient place where we knew we gould pick the stuff up, loads of it, and just around the corner. Contract was from some obscure Patronate, but hey, if they are throwing money around, better take it from the shady guys, and sell cheap to the decent folks, eh?
Or so we thought.
We hauled the last load, and I idly checked the message board while the vessel was unloaded, only to find a bunch of rather desperate mission offers by a small democracy. Black box salvages, urgent intel, courier trips, assassinations, massacre bounties, the works.
There was a frigging war going on against them, and it was their home system, so they had nowhere to run or retreat.
And guess who....
I got sick right then and there.
1200t of Bismut. Hell knows how many devilish contraptions will be cooked up, warheads build, how many guidance systems fitted. This wasn´t about some mercenaries slugging it out in some neatly designated engagement zones. This was trashed homes, missing family members, refugee camps, misery.
We flew home in silence.
We got hammered in silence.
The credit chips felt slick, cold, sticky. Like dead skin. So this is what war profiteering feels like. Bloody awful.
When I knew my name again the next morning, I went mining, far, far away. It didn´t help. I hit a really nice ore belt, cashed in roughly 5M from 2 hauls. When I split asteroids, I thought I saw furniture parts flying. I delivered food to some outlying, well-meaning cooperatives. From the people, to the people. Heartfelt thanks, big eyed children, smiling in anticipation of the first decent supper in weeks. It didn´t help. When they onloaded crates of meat, I had to stay in the cockpit. I couldn´t watch it. Smell it. I switched off the lights so I wouldn´t see my reflection in the cockpit window.
You kind of know what the galaxy is like, that Alliance folks, too, are not born angels. Hell, no. But when it hits home, it can be a real bummer.
Only thing I can do, is put a sticky note up on my comms panel and swear to all five fundamental forces to check out the frigging systems I am going to.
Last run of the shift was an urgent courier trip for the Workers to some other workers cooperative. So they finally got some decent friends? The friends had me pick up some letters of their own for my trip back. They were for our sworn enemies. Everyone was so thankful, and glad that I made it in time, and how much I helped their efforts.
Figures.
Suits me right.
P.S.: Do not stash cargo behind the stations reactor because you couldn´t land a large ship on a small outpost. The janitors aka security patrol are awfully attentive...