A Change of Plans

It started with a hologram.

Nothing important. A job request from a Federal Navy liaison. Fetch the 'black box' from the wreckage of a ship in the Potriti system.

• Locate the signal
• Swoop in, engage cargo scoop and grab the box
• Haul ass out of there before those that don't want the box discovered get a bead on me.¹

Routine stuff until I saw the cargo.

Imperial slave pens littered the wreckage. They were still intact and the life support was still functioning. My cargo bays were empty. I could save those poor people. Made the mistake of hailing the Navy and telling them this.

"No. Let them die. That's an order."

"Aye aye", I said, as I lowered the cargo scoop again. I wasn't disobeying orders per se. I simply sentenced them to death by natural causes on a station far outside of Federal jurisdiction.

The first order of business was dropping off the black box. Any delays of a, "Stop along the way and deliver the slaves to a underground railroad contact", variety would have been noticed.

This left getting past the Federal enforcement vessels guarding the station entrance. If their cargo scanners got a lock on me, it would be 'game over'.

• Returned to Eravate
• Radioed Cleve Hub control for landing clearance
• Rigged for silent running.
• Entered the station at suicidal speed.
• Rushed past the furious flight controllers and headed straight to the restroom.
• Blamed the episode on a bad burrito.
• Delivered the black box.
• Returned to the ship.
• Rigged it for silent running.
• Exited the station at suicidal speed.
• Radioed the once again furious flight controllers and told them, "Need more burritos".
• Warped the Hell out of there before the Federals could react.

On my way back from dropping the now ex-slaves off, I had some time to think.

It had been a little over thirty years since I landed in Cleve Hub station. I was fresh off a stint in the Federal Navy and anxious to start life's next chapter. Started doing odd jobs in the beat up old Zorgon Peterson hauler I was flying at the time. Something to keep me in food and drink until something more interesting came along.

All that came along was more jobs, more ships, and more people on my payroll. None of these things were "interesting".

The Navy ordering me to leave victims of human trafficking to die cold and horrible deaths was the kind of interesting I wanted no part of.

By the time I started my Cleve Hub approach, I had made up my mind. Interesting was not going to come to me. I was going to have to go to it.

Tomorrow, I go to the shipyard and talk to a Lakon Spaceways rep.