Ace in the Hole
16 Feb 2017Kyndi the Badass Space Chick
Of all the commodities I've dealt in, information and trust are the two most valuable. Information is fairly easy. Flash some credits, do a favor, maybe even show a little tit and it's all yours. It can be bought, sold, and leveraged. Simple, right?
Trust, however, isn't as straightforward. In my line of work, it's rarer than an A.I. Relic and ten times as valuable. And as irritating as the cliche is, it really is a fragile thing, forever broken by a single betrayal.
So when it comes down to whom a girl can trust to store a hold full of newly-banned o-head, things really do get complicated. Merchants and storage vendors were already nervous enough when it came to the legally grey narcotic- now they're pissing themselves in fear of the FIS. Even my range of red dot-dwelling black market contacts are telling me that the herb is too hot for them to be caught with.
And Dan and Monty? Hell. They run a nightclub, not a warehouse. They even told me so over a drink last night.
So where the hell am I supposed to stash this investment?
In order to stay in business, a pilot's got to take jobs. Some pilots are good at combat. Others happen to love being out of the bubble for months on end, scanning every hunk of rock in their path. I happen to be good at making sure that merchandise ends up exactly where the client thinks it should without a lot of hassle from local authority.
To do that, I need an empty cargo hold.
I don't have an empty cargo hold.
My teeth grit together as I sit in the pilot's lounge of Brooks Hold. It's an indy outpost in red dot space, but I can't trust the Feds to leave it alone for long. I can't afford to go too far, either- the o-head needs to be close enough that I can get it to the hottest market before the competition does. That's easy enough, but a girl's got to find work in the meantime. I've pulled up the public bulletin board of freelance jobs. None of them are particularly good.
Sign up to help a corporation silence dissidents? No thanks.
Take some egghead to survey a planetary ring that's twenty kylies away? The pay is good, but there's no way I could be cooped up in my ship with another human being for that long.
Deliver some data a system over for lunch money? Jesus. At least pull my hair.
My eyes narrow in frustration, until I see the final entry:
Investigate coordinates for lost ship.
Hmm. This could have possibilities. I select the job post, sipping some imitation Fujin tea as the holoscreen loads:
Wanted: a dependable freelancer to scout a specific deep-space grid coordinate. Last-known location of company vessel, ship suspected lost. One-thousand credit reward. No salvage rights if found.
My face twists in disgust. The posting itself is several months old- and with terms as shitty as those, its little wonder that no one has jumped at it.
Still...
The idea forms as I run my tongue along my teeth. No doubt the company just wants some newjack flunkie to confirm the ship's fate so that it can file a fat insurance claim. But if they don't have the resources to check for themselves, then they either can't pay a proper finder's fee or have no idea how the game works...
I sit up, finishing my tea and switching off the holoslate. In the end, it's irrelevant whether the firm is broke or incompetent.
They've got themselves a pilot.
Well, maybe it does matter if the client is incompetent.
I sigh in frustration and widen the sensor radius. I've been flying around the coordinates for nearly an hour, and I haven't detected jack. It's just me, the void, and the cargo hold of o-head that's costing me time and fuel. One thing I hate is having my time wasted, and on a job that drags on, a joint or two of o-head really helps pass the time...
No. Just because you're sitting on a pile of the shit doesn't mean you can smoke it all up.
The sensors query the area around the Cool Under Pressure. Still nothing.
Just stay cool and think of the money. Take some jobs, keep an ear out, and rake in the credits when the time is right.
There. It's a weak signal, but it's metallic- which is a hell of a lot better than all the nothing that I've been getting. I hit the throttle and speed towards the blip on my canopy glass.
It's only a rust-colored speck in the distance, but the sensors aren't fibbing: there's a derelict ship out here. The speck grows steadily larger as I approach, until it takes a familiar shape-
I narrow my eyes. A fatassed T-9. That's a big damn ship to just drag your feet on finding for so long.
Exhaling slowly, I fly a long, lazy loop around the floating hulk. The ship itself is done for, unsalvageable and basically scrap. But from its condition, I'd say that its been out here for way longer than three months...
What is it that your corporate asses haven't been telling me? No one just neglects an asset like that.
Nothing about the ship even registers as a ship- its identification beacon is fried, and so are its manifests. I have no idea what's in there, be it rotting corpses or virgin painite. It wasn't the job to go snooping around in the bowels of some ghost ship, but-
A grin lifts the sides of my mouth. But if there's something worth my while in the cargo hold, who am I to pass on a bonus?
The good news is that there aren't any floating stiffs.
The bad news is that there isn't anything else, either.
In fact, the whole damn cargo bay is empty. There's nothing around me except an enormous black chasm of cold, rusting metal. Lifeless cargo-sorting arms sit in place, never to do their job again. And the crew?
I run my gloved fingers along the frosty bulkhead, the lights from my suit illuminating the empty escape pod tubes. They bugged out, alright- but it had been months ago, and if they haven't been picked up by now...
Poor bastards. All you wanted was to dock and get paid.
There isn't any clear idea of what happened to the ship. It could have been anything- reactor failure, pirating, maybe even a doublecross by the crew itself. The outer hull is beat to hell, and the bridge totally blown.
But none of that is my problem.
No, my problem is something far more immediate: that even in zero-g space, hard physical labor can make you feel gross.
But damn, will it be worth it when the time comes!
Well, all done. Twenty canisters of pure Panem leaf, in a place that only I know about.
The cargo containers are floating in the mainly-empty bay, taking up pitifully little of the available space- but it didn't matter. I officially have my ace in the hole, my private stash of goodies that would only grow in value as the Federation's war on o-head dragged on. With a last, satisfied glance, I seal the cargo bay and float through the corridors of the mammoth ship. As many times as I've embarked on freelance scavving jobs, being alone in the pitch-black corridors of a derelict hulk always make me a little uneasy.
I can't tell if the ship is slowly drifting through space or not, so I affix a homing beacon to the hull. It's an encrypted signal that only I can home in on- a little bit of black market craftiness, courtesy of knowing people who know people. I don't want to rely on a set of deep-space coordinates again; better to be able to fly straight to the source without any hassle.
I gently float through the ruptured canopy, firing my suit's maneuvering jets to get back to the Cool Under Pressure. The airlock seals behind me, and I step into the utility area and strip off the space suit. It had been hours of tedious back-and-forth from the Pressure's cargo bay to the T-9s, but I had done it: manually moving every single container of o-head to someplace safe. And now? Now it was time to take a step back and plot my next move.
A smile curls my mouth as I finish undressing and step into the shower. I may have kept a bit of the puff for myself, after all...
But first, a little bit of relaxation. It's been a long day.
I reach out and light up an onionhead joint, both the herb and the hot water carrying me away. I'm safe. The loot is safe. And now I've got a job to finish.
My eyes close as I indulge in another long drag, the smoke and the steam mixing around me.
Yeah, time to fly back and play the clueless rookie one more time...
Hello again, mister!
Sure, I'd like a drink. That's really nice of you.
Sothis Select. Total shit.
Oh. The coordinates? Well, uh-
Nope. Nothing. Flew around for hours. I still get paid, right?
Whew! A thousand credits is a lot when you fly a Sidewinder! Thanks for that!
Fucking cheapskate.
So, uh... you don't seem all that sad that I didn't find anything. May I ask what's going on?
Oh. The insurance claim. Right. You needed to prove a good-faith effort to find the ship. And you get to deduct its value from your company's taxes?
But- what about the crew?
No life insurance payouts on someone not confirmed dead, huh?
And you're saying that as a boast. You fucking piece of corporate filth...
Me? What am I doing later?
Anything but looking at your smug corporate face ever again. And speaking of not looking at faces...
Up here, hotshot. Yeah, a button busted open. Yeah, the nice pilot chick has tits. Glad you noticed.
And yeah, those are the edges of a tattoo.
What do you mean, I'm not what I seemed like? What do think Pilot's Fed does between jobs, help old ladies across the street?
Jesus. You don't give up, do you?
Sorry, pal- it's all about information and trust. As in, I've got all the information I need to never, ever trust you.
And that's worth more than all the credits in the 'verse.
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