Orbital Express - The Robigo Story
24 Jan 2024CMDR honorguardcz
We all have that one friend, which is poor as hell, but always "knows" how to invest your money to have more money... Well. My friend is Commander Aykira. Poor as hell, but always say "yeah man, If I have money like you, I would do this, and this, and more and more money...". He is mostly drunk when talks about money. Anyway...This story starts on my favourite bar, on Gazarka Base fleet carrier. I and Aykira always meet there after few weeks. We was sittin and chattin. Almost always when Aykira is drunk, he is always repeating same story. "Yeah maan, one day, when I will have enought money to start, I will be famous antixeno pilot. Whole galaxy will now me. Women will have tattooed my name on place where star light does not reach. They will cry when I kiss another woman. They will keep messaging me to battlefield, promising me having kids, giving me everything, making them my sexual slaves man... One day... One day...". It's even more money, because he didn't even started to build his own xeno hunting ship. He is just talking about it.
Anyway, he knew one thing about me. I need to finish engineering my ship to return to Colonia - my home. Suddenly, out of nowhere Aykira said "eeyyh... By the way I have brilliant idea where to get money and materials you are looking for".
"Yea, I know your ideas. Your last idea was to purchase Anaconda for transfering cargo. I had to borrow money for it and I owed squadron a lot of money. I had to do some dirty job because of you... Anaconda for cargo, I'm such stupid, maybe more than you. Next time, I will rather ask nearest security guard at starport to give me life changing advices" I replied.
"But this is jackpot, trust me man!" Continued Aykira. "I Heard that there is one specific touristic beacon, called Sirius Atmospherics. Some time back, federation and Sirius decided to terraform one planet by some chemical proccesses. Well, it didn't went as they expected, but this beacon is now center of local tourism. There is NOTHING close to this beacon. No touristic stations, and everything is far away. It's basically mining edge of the bubble. So... There is system called Robigo. People here are hungry for some touristic sh*t, but there is NOTHING. So where do they travel? To this beacon! Everybody needs to see it. Milions of people every year visits it. They pay a lot. And part which is most interesting for you - they also pay in materials, like biotech conductors or exquisite focus crystals! You are still crying about shortage of this kind of materials. Now there is your chance! And best way - their previous provider of touristic services quit, so if you will be quick, this gold mine is yours!"
"Why you don¨t fullfill this mission, when it's so good for your wallet?" I asked.
"Well, I don't have money... you know..." Replied Aykira. Of course he does not. What did I expect.
"By the way, why did previous provider of touristic services quit?" I asked curiosly.
"Actualy... it's not that easy... He died..". Aykira's reply first took me by surprise, but people are dying, that's life.
"Did he died of age?" Aykira exploded in laughing. "No... He took some VIP tour for Robigo drug cartel, system defense scanned his ship, found wanted criminals on it and he died with all his crew and few bodyguards and criminal mastermind on his vessel."
"OH GOD, WHY THE HELL I EVEN BOTHER ASKING!!!"
We both took few sips of our favourite rum and we were silent for a moment"
"I know that you are thinking about it, but I haven't told you everything" Aykira continued. "You will need new ship".
"Oh god, why the hell always when I speak with you I'm leaving bar with order to new ship!? Can't I just use Soulseller (Anaconda) or Fatty (Type 9)!?" I started to be very upset.
"No. Both of those ships are quite big. You need medium ship. Previous owner had Python"
"God damn it! You know how much I hate Python!" I'm pretty sure he knew it.
Aykira replied, that it's perfect ship for this job, because it can take a lot of passengers and still lands on medium landing pads.
"One last thing" Started Aykira. I didn't even respond, just watched him with hate in my eyes. "You should do it without shields. If you remove shield generator, you can take one more bussiness class passenger cabin, which means 16 more passengers and 16 more tickets".
"Well... Ok... Perfect idea, since previous tour provider died because of being shot by sysdef forces. Ok. I'm in. But I have one condition. You are going with me. You will be main guide and you will serve on board". Aykira just smiled and nods.
So I landed on my closest star port - Solovyov port and registered new company - Orbit Express LLC. Purchased some second-hand Python, which was actually great, because it had some kind of synth-wave colorfull paintjob with palms on it perfectly fitting ship new purpose. We installed tourist cabins, and traveled to Robigo. Here I managed to get the job and second day we started our first tour.
I was standing next to the ship in captain cap, with Aykira next to me. People started onboarding. Some mom with small kid, boy, maybe 7 years old was standing in the line.
"Mom, where is shield? This ship does not have shiled generator! Why?"
Aykira, standing next to me, was trying to save the situation, so he kneels in front of him and said "Why should we have shields? We will die like real men, don't we? Hahahahaha!!!!" and then messed up kids hair. That small boy started crying.
"Are you F*cking kidding me!?" I screamed. This time boys mother didn't react well. They turn around and left starport. I don't have to tell you, I had very cool, heartwarming call with starport ticket selling services after this incident.
After onboarding we started. We was maybe 2 minutes in the space, still able to see Robigo Mines station, when Aykira entered pilot's cockpit and said "Captain, we have a problem".
"Don't you say!? I expected it one minute earlier. What kind of adventure with you it would be if we would not have problem every three minutes!?" I screamed. I was really mad in that moment.
"Do you remember that bald guy in the line, which asked you how much your python can jump? Well... He revealed to me, that his ID was fake. He is actually wanted member of cartel... and worse thing is, that he has hitman behind his back. He asked, if you can destroy any hostile ship if we meet some, it would make great service to him and his cartel."
I didn't even know how to react. I had ship, without shields, without weapons, wanted man on board, and hitman behind my back. What a great first day in the job!