Making the Cut
10 Jan 2018TheDarkLord
Gentil Hub, Harm. Gutamaya Imperial Cutter “TDL Hermes”.October 3302.
Strip lights flickered on, illuminating the hangar. The ship was simply enormous. Gleaming white and chrome, with blue accent lighting, it looked every metre the aspirational ship of choice. The Gutamaya representative, Bretislav, walked quietly alongside me as I contemplated the ship.
It took several minutes to circumnavigate the parked vessel. We paused at the stern, gawping at the massive thruster ports, before heading on forward, and climbing the front steps to enter. Inside, everything was massive and shiny and glowing. I had a variety of ships in my fleet, from the utilitarian Python to the luxurious Fer-de-Lance. Each remained compromised by a lack of space caused by a desire to reduce the overall ship volume. But this Imperial Cutter had gone the other way. It was huge. It was so large that it could have a bridge that was larger than my apartment, and not care.
On the one hand, it seemed quite daunting, but on the other it was just a shiny new utility vehicle. For some factions, an Imperial Cutter represented the flagship of a battle group, intended for high-ranking naval officers only. There was talk of billion-credit “Battle Cutters” noising up Conflict Zones, but I wasn’t interested in that. I was buying it as a transport vessel.
“What do you think?” Bretislav asked, after we’d sat in the stateroom for several minutes.
“I’ll take it,” was my simple reply. “Here’s the spec.” I touched my data slate to his, and the specification was transferred between the devices. Bretislav furrowed his brow.
“I think you mistake this vessel for a Type-9, no?”
“Show me a Type-9 with a 350m/s boost speed, 20Ly jump range and over 1000 MJ of shield, and maybe you’d be right.”
“Hmm. You sure you’ve got the rank for this?”
“I know you checked that out already.”
“SEVEN mine launchers?”
“I hear it’s the loadout du jour amongst the shipping classes,” I replied. That caused Bretislav to look up from his slate, arching his eyebrows. He smiled.
“Da, two hundred fifty two millions. You give me that now?”
I swiped my Pilots’ Federation license across the near field reader on his slate, and the credits were transferred.
“What will you call her?” Bretislav asked.
“TDL Hermes.”
“Ah, the Greek messenger. Good. She is yours. We repaint and complete outfitting for you in one day.” He stood to disembark. There was little for me to do, so I sold my taxi Hauler and went to the pub.
The next morning, I headed back down to the Gutamaya hangar to collect TDL Hermes. It took a couple of hours to complete the handover and configure the ship for single-handed operation. Once the process was complete, I shook hands with Bretislav.
Alone in the massive craft, I set course for Sothis. For a while at least, Hermes was going to join the ranks of the finest privately-ownable craft in the galaxy which were plying the space lanes quite literally shovelling shit. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was profitable.