Another Day, Another Credit Part Three.
02 Dec 2024Borderreiver
The ship dropped in to V886 CENTAURI.Buford my crewman was straight on the comms.
"Captain, shields are back at 67% heatsinks are low power while the shields continue to charge. Rescue ship Cornwallis is on the scope."
"Thanks Buford, engaging supercruise assist and we'll be there before we know it. That Scythe took the shield down but we got out with 88% hull. I have a few passenger messages. Those folks can really gripe, even when we are getting their asses out of the fire."
there was a momentary pause and I heard Buford take a deep breath. Something was coming.
"About our passengers Captain. What about the nine we have, so to say, taken under our wing?"
"We let them get on their way on Cornwallis and get back to work."
"What about the fast mover who will likely be on their way out of Lincoln? They may even be ahead of us in a transit right now."
"Go on."
"You, I mean we, really trod on someone's toes back there and if they even get one person on Cornwallis those nine will likely be back in compulsion bracelets within the hour."
"We won't have helped them at all. Nine families will not get a happy ending."
"Eight families."
"Eight families Buford?"
"Eight, yes Captain, we have a pair of identical twins, red haired with green eyes."
"They have taken your attention, how cute Buford."
"My stepmother Tiggist was Amhara from Ethiopia on Earth and those twins are like no Amhara I ever met at a family gathering. Those gatherings could be big."
"In what way are they like no other Amhara?"
"I already said, red hair and green eyes, plus they are rather tall and slender, or rather more so than most."
"Tell the nine not to disembark, ask them where they want to go. We will work something out."
I checked the HUD. Rescue ship Cornwallis was coming up, marked ahead of the rings surrounding the looming planet.
"Captain, we could take them back to the FC. Mauria would look after them and we could close down landing access."
"That sounds like exchanging one prison situation for another to me. Why would they trust us? The authorities on Cornwallis are likely able to handle this."
"Trust us because we are the good guys?"
"I would not be so sure we exactly fit that description, to them we might be just another set of predators."
"So why not keep the compulsion bracelets on them?"
"There is that."
"As for the authorities, it will be chaos on there and all those nine are DWD. None have documentation or even embedded chips, they do not officially exist."
"What? How did they even get on to the hangar at Lincoln? Who screwed up the boarding checks?"
"Screwed up in the chaos there or paid off to bypass the boarding checks."
I let that sink in as we dropped out of supercruise, boosted inwards and applied for landing clearance.
"I may have made a mistake giving my comms details to that despatcher. Go see them Buford, tell them why they should not disembark and ask them where they want to go next."
"On it."
"Buford, and bear in mind we will be in the files as leaving with one hundred and nine pax at Lincoln while disembarking only one hundred at Cornwallis. That is not going to take a genius to work out that answers to that will mean a conversation after being traced."
Once we landed, the one hundred refugees disembarked quickly and I endorsed the docket with the hangar despatcher.
"This says that you still have nine onboard. Where are they going?"
"We have a request from them to drop them off in LHS 450, private contract."
"That was en-route, why did you not do that already?"
The lie then came to my lips so easily.
"They did not tell us until we dropped in system here. They did not know where we were, at first plus we had a tussle with a Scythe on the way."
Well, at least that last part was true.
"Give me clearance to launch for LHS 450."
"No problem Captain, we need every pad here turned over as quickly as possible, keep up the good work"
Once back in the cockpit chair I set auto launch active and the ship leapt from the landing pad. I let her get out of mass lock and low waked, engaging supercruise overcharge right from the off. If anyone was paying attention they may have wondered about that, but I wanted to get out of line of sight before high waking out. No need to leave an easily accessible signature for anyone to scan.
"We will do the first jump towards LHS 450 and after the first jump we will divert to the FC. We will hang around scooping to make sure no-one drops in behind us. Once we get to the FC I'll jump the FC further out from SOL to make the search radius larger for any unwelcome advances."
This was already becoming more complicated than I anticipated. No good deed goes unpunished.