Fine, I'll do This: Pilot's Log, #6
17 Sep 2015Michael Wolfe
M. LehmanPilot's Log #6
The good news: I had said goodbye to Goddamn Hell-Bitch forever, and was now piloting an Eagle.
The bad news: I had said goodbye to Goddamn Hell-Bitch forever, and was now piloting an Eagle.
Don’t get me wrong- The Green Salsa Avenger (long story) was a blast to fly. She turned, she accelerated, and she looked good doing it. She was small enough to be hard to hit, yet big enough to…
..um..
Ok, well, she was a pain in the ass to hit. So there’s that, right?
Despite winning my first-ever dogfight, I still didn’t feel like I was ready to kill strangers for money. I’ve met a few of those bounty hunter types, and there ain’t many who get old in that business.
So what the hell do you do?
Well, despite promising myself that I wouldn’t, I went back to running data. It paid for meals and gas, but not much else.
Then, there was the adjustment of trying to live in the thing. You see, Eagles weren’t made for long-term space travel- they started off as strictly military ships, which meant that the ones sold to indies like me had to be retrofitted to Pilot’s Federation specs. Part of this is the stuff people know about- fitting a frame-shift drive, for example, but some parts of it don’t occur to anyone except the engineer and the pilot.
For example, the bunk is actually right behind the pilot’s chair. Not comfy, but if you’re brave enough to land on a moon with no atmo to catch some shuteye, the view from the cockpit canopy is actually pretty sweet. Then there’s the fridge, which was a tiny box underneath the bunk and facing the pilot’s seat, and the sink… which was actually just a hose that you pull out of the wall and stuck back in its drainage tube when it wasn’t in use. I tried not to rely on it for water, since I didn’t fully trust the ship’s filter or the cleanliness of the plumbing.
Pilot waste facilities? Ain’t no such thing. You’ve got the retractable tube-on-cup vacuum jobby that comes standard in every ship, but most pilots I know will eat the tasteless no-poop deep space rations before they emergency shit in an Eagle.
As badly as I just wanted to get a room at whatever station or planet I landed on, I just couldn’t afford it. And dock knockers? I was a little embarrassed to take them onboard in such a cramped space. Besides, I couldn’t afford them, either.
All of these problems were secondary to cash flow. Running data just wasn’t cutting it.
My first escort mission, I had gotten lucky. Now, here I was, a newbie pilot in a fighter who didn’t want to fight. I *should* have been in a Hauler, flying little cargo loads all over civilized space. Instead, I had bought an Eagle on a whim.
I needed to make the most of it.
Escort missions were pretty rare, but just about every system was offering good credits to kill pirates. The terms were pretty generous- a straight up reward for a certain number dusted, plus the bounties on the pirates themselves. There were no specific people to kill, not usually- just a certain number of any ships that showed up as “wanted” in-system. That meant that I could look until I found the three easiest, dumbest, Sidewinder-driving desperados in the black, and just off them one by one as I found them.
Ok. That was do-able.
I just had to get right with the idea of killing for money.
I was doing a public service, right?
I’m sure that a lot of bounty hunters tell themselves that when they have trouble sleeping.
It turns out that not a lot of employers are willing to hire just anyone to do their dirty work for them. My Pilot’s Fed license let the whole galaxy know that I was “Harmless”, which wasn’t too far from the truth. I must have spoken to a dozen government and business reps that day- none of them wanted to hire some new-jack with a single kill on his record.
Well, I could always just go reaping- that’s when you head out on your own and kill whoever has a bounty warrant. No one is paying you, and you’re working to cash in the bounties. Lots of hunters make reaping their 9-to-5, and if someone wants to pay them extra for doing something they were going to do anyway, then they take the job.
Word is, if you hang around by nav beacons, someone is bound to pass through who has a price on his head. Lurking just outside a space station works, too. Criminals gotta eat and fuel too, right?
But if you want a payday, you head to an extraction site.
See, not everyone is cut out for a life of adventure. Some people are bright enough to get their Pilot’s Fed wings, but aren’t much for death, mayhem, and the unknown. Those people typically end up being miners.
Now, I’m not bagging on my ore-extracting brothers and sisters. What they do is plumb necessary. It’s just… dull. There’s not even much of an art to it anymore, not since those little helper drones hit the market. You just sit in your ship, drink your coffee, and let the drones do the work until your rock is tapped out. Then, it’s just moving on to the next one. Still, you can make some pretty good dough pulling that metal out from the belts. It just takes awhile, even with the drones.
Or, you can just wait until a miner’s hold is packed full of pure, shiny metal, and demand that he dump it if he wants to mine another day.
Lots of people find that #2 is way more money, for far less effort. Once enough folks turn to piracy, it becomes unsafe for average Joes to leave their homes, which can cause a whole system’s industry to dry up. No one wants to deliver supplies, and no one wants to mine. Authority sends the ships that it can spare, but there are seldom enough to keep everyone safe. So, freelancers in heavily-armed murderships show up, clean house in ways that
Authority legally can’t, and everybody is happier.
That’s why bounty hunters can get away with damn near anything.
So, reaping it was. Nice and easy.
As long as I didn't take on a damn Anaconda my first time, I was bound to be fine, right?
Wrong.
But that's a story for another time.