Prisoners
11 Jul 2017Phelbore
As it turned out, no one had complained about me gouging the refugees, the cops weren't investigating me... they wanted to hire me. They'd heard I'd never lost a passenger and had a certain talent for high-risk jobs. Next thing I know, my ship's full of prisoners to haul to Matthews Keep. Every single run some joker was out to try and rescue his buddies. I put a few down, but it was cutting into my profits so I wound up dodging most of them.I have to admit, I made more money than was good for me, at least if the Type-7 named "Cattle Hauler" I woke up to in my hangar was any indication. Still can't remember buying it, but the warden loved the name. He said I shouldn't have bothered with the cells, he was fine with the prisoners in the hold, but the cells did make me feel better. Well, when I got back and loaded up the next group, there was a load of protesters trying to make me feel bad, saying that prison's a death sentence, yadda yadda yadda. Long story short? I sold them tickets to go protest over there! Fools and their money, right? Soon I had a thriving business being paid by the station to haul prisoners of war to Matthews, protesters were paying me to take them there, hell, even charities were paying me to take aid workers there! They didn't pay a lot, but I figured it was too funny to pass up. Hell, even took a few refugees! Now, how badly have you screwed up to leave a booming mining station to go move to a prison camp? Not my problem, their money was good! Now, I figure it must have been bad, there were prison riots most days I was landing and I never took anyone out of there except a few guards needing a vacation.
Now, I was making good money, even upgraded to an Orca (kept the Cattle Hauler just in case), but prisoners were running out. Thankfully, war broke out again. Seems one of the smaller factions wanted the money from running the prison. They were paying me to take prisoners they captured while trying to take the prison to that same prison! And before they captured it too! No idea how they took control, but eventually they did.
Eventually, the bulk passenger trade dried up. I changed out the cells for nicer quarters and started hauling rich tourists. Twice as demanding for the same price? Count me out, I had 120 million in the bank and twice that in assets (the blackout ship purchases happened a few more times...) so I could afford to be picky! My favorite passengers? I snuck some rebel leaders and warlords and their very heavily armed "friends" into stations far away. Those were fun times, life was good, but I was getting bored.