Taking a Moment to Help Part 1
19 Jan 2018MMMMMalcolm
Personal Log: Commander Kay WantzI have to keep reminding myself Malcolm is not an experienced bounty hunter. He doesn’t have that sixth sense that warns you when a job is bad and you should probably not accept it. Case in point, this current job he accepted off the mission board he created on Galnet. There were a lot of red flags that would have caused me to pause.
First of all, this Kyndi woman, she doesn’t give a last name; just Kyndi. Kind of hard to track someone that screws you over when you don’t know their last name. That fact alone would have caused me to pass on the job. But I bit my tongue because she insisted we meet her in person to get the contract details.
Why, I don’t know. It wasn’t like there were a lot of details to get. And that brings me to my second point. It’s not good business to take on jobs where your chances of success are next to nil. This Kyndi woman wants us to find a wrecked Asp Explorer, but she doesn’t know the coordinates, she doesn’t know the planet or star closest to the wreck, she doesn’t even know the exact system. All she told us was the ship is an Asp Explorer, it was called ”Malmoneta”, and it was attacked in an uninhabited system near an unscoopable star in the Pegasi sector.
PEGASI?! Are you kidding me?! Pegasi is HUGE; that’s why they call it a SECTOR. With the information we were given, it would be easier to find a needle in a haystack. And it is filled with every type of criminal you could imagine. How are we supposed to look and watch our backs at the same time? That explains why this purple headed chick was hiring the job out instead of looking for herself. And it explains why the compensation was so low. No need throwing away credits on missions that are likely to fail. But this mission is worth half a million credits easy; each. Not the thirty five thousand total, that was offered. So I spoke to the client, woman to woman, and convinced her to raise the award to one hundred thousand; with a bonus one hundred thousand if we succeed within fourteen days. Drool monkey Malcolm would have done whatever she asked if I did not step in and negotiate for us.
Despite my objections, Malcolm insisted we help out a fellow pilot. More like pirate, and I said as much. I guess she didn’t like that too much since she went out of her way explaining the difference between a pirate and a smuggler. Tomato tomato if you ask me.
At least he listened when I suggested we take two ships. I jumped into my Fer De Lance, “Black Widow”, and Malcolm took his Imperial Courier “High Horse”. We have this fleet; we might as well use it. Besides, two scanners are better than one. Or so I thought, we’ve already been searching for two days and today’s results don’t look any better than yesterday.
My com-panel chirped; it was Malcolm.
“I know you didn’t want to take this job.” That was an understatement if I ever heard one. “And you really don’t want to stay in Pegasi any longer than you have to. But, there is an inhabited system with a decent sized star port nearby. What do you say we call it a night, get some real food, some real sleep, and a fresh start early tomorrow morning?”
“Malcolm, what part of Pegasi do you not understand? I thought my feelings were clear before we came out here? Seven days searching, six nights sleeping in space powered down in shifts; hidden when we can, out in the open when we can’t. Then one night we sleep at a station in a system outside of Pegasi to recharge before we start the cycle all over again. If we can’t find the Asp in twenty one days, then we contact the client and tell her we failed.”
“Crystal. But nervously sleeping in a cold ship, no matter how luxurious, isn’t helping my ability to search.”
“Neither would jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.”
“C’mon, there’s bound to be a restaurant or at least a bar near the docks. We can order take out. I’m tired of sleeping in my flight suit and my spacewalking suit. And if I’m nodding off, I’m not going to be any good as a look out either.”
I rolled my eyes. Honestly, sometimes I felt like I was babysitting. But he had a point; if we missed an approaching pirate or slept through our alarms, it would’ve been all bad.
“Ok,” I sighed. “I’m nav-locking my FSD. Lead the way.”
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Thanks to Matt for making me a part of his 'verse and allowing the use of his character.
Ship pic courtesy of Odinn-Mann