Panshin's Inheritance, HIP 75862 5 D - 3307-11-27 16:44 GST
Clara Smith took a long drink from her beer as she listened to Mike Kerber and tried to act calm and collected. She was a little intimidated. Mike was an enforcer for Mob of HIP 75862 and he had a job for her. A quick courier run. It would square away her debt with them and then she'd owe nothing to anyone. She'd have her pilots federation license, an old, but lovingly repaired Sidewinder, and enough credits to cover her costs for a few weeks. It was her dream for all her life. It was her father's dream before he died. Soon she would achieve it, and the galaxy would be hers to explore. The downside was she had to do this job, and it was sounding sketchy.
"So all I need to do is go to Prytula Botanical Range and pick up a package and bring it back here?", Clara asked.
"Yeah! Take your Sidewinder to Prytula Botanical Range, talk to Marcie Roberts, and bring the package she gives you back to me."
"So why the big pay out? Wouldn't it be cheaper to have it come back on a supply transport or something?"
"Listen, I'll be honest here. This isn't without risk. Other factions have paid mercenaries to raid our settlements and research centers. They've even attacked the supply ships. I'm hoping that as a newly minted pilot, our enemies won't have heard of you. You could slip by unnoticed, where one of our regular couriers would draw too much attention. Besides, you owe us for your little Sidewinder. Do this and your debts to us are paid and on top of that I will owe you a favour, and, trust me, I am a good person to have owing you a favour."
"Alright! I'll do it. When will it be ready for collection?"
"Marcie has it with her right now. I'll tell her to expect you. The quicker you can get it back here, the better.""
"Cool! Cool! I'll go straight away", Clara said, as she slipped off her stool at the bar and started to walk towards the stairs to the elevators that the hangars.
"Clara, one more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Don't open the package! Under any circumstances! Are we clear?"
"Yeah! Package to be returned unopened. Gotcha!"
HIP 75862 3 E - 3307-11-27 17:14 GST
Clara's Sidewinder dropped out of orbital cruise just over ninety five kilometers from Prytula Botanical Range. The agricultural settlement and research center was just on the dark side of the moon's terminus. Clara ignored the sunset behind her. All her focus was on the settlement ahead. Pick up a package and bring it back to Mike. Easy peasy! Her heart was pounding. Since she left Panshin's Inheritance she'd been thinking of all the ways that this job could go wrong. Maybe Mike was double crossing the Mob. It was unlikely, but possible. If that was the case, then she was well and truly frakked: do the job and the Mob kills her, don't do it and Mike kills her. It would be better if she just assumed it was legitimate. Maybe Marcie had already sold the package and was planning on blaming its loss on Clara. Why did she take this job. A few months running cargo runs and she'd have paid off her debt. That would have been a lot safer. On the other hand, she got the feeling that she didn't really have a choice in the matter. The Mob needed something done and she was the one they picked to do it. At least she wasn't being asked to kill anyone.
The Sidewinder ended its glide about twenty kilometers from the settlement and about six kilometers above the surface of the moon. Clara pitched the nose down int o a steeper descent and turn on the night vision overlay. The gently rolling surface rose up to meet her ship. At two kilometers above the surface, she levelled out and started to slow her ship's descent. She liked to approach settlements under three hundred meters above the ground. She may be nervous as hell, but she could still try and enjoy flying her "new" ship. The settlement showed up on sensors ahead, as well as a few phantom contacts. Some day she'd be able to afford A rated sensors . For now, though, she'd have to put up with the flaky E rated ones that she had, phantom contacts and all. She was eight kilometers from the settlement and was preparing to ask for landing permission when she noticed two ships on the ground, powered down: a Cobra Mk III and a Mk IV Viper. Not her problem, though: she had a job, to do. She'd just make sure to leave the area on the opposite side of the settlement.
The settlement lights were visible now up ahead. The settlement had two distinct clusters of buildings. At one end was research center and power building, a brightly lit complex of buildings connected together via service corridors. This was where the bulk of the settlement's inhabitants worked. At the other end were three concentric rings of grow houses, about eighty in total, surrounding some habitation buildings. The grow houses were opaque inflated demi-cylindrical buildings where crops were grown under lamps powered by the settlement's power plant. The two parts of the settlement were about three hundred meters apart and connected by a rough track that was illuminated by regularly spaced lamp posts. Clara requested landing permission and was directed to pad zero two. Clara groaned inwardly: that was beside the grow houses. Most likely she would have to walk to the main research complex. That would be a cold uncomfortable walk. Her suit, like her ship, was the best she could afford, and therefore not very good. The heating system in particular didn't work very well. It would do the job and keep her alive, but it definitely wouldn't be comfortable.
Clara's ship touched down gently. She'd practiced landing on simulators a lot. Being good at landings saved money on landing gear maintenance and repair, and until she was a famous explorer, every credit counted. She stood up from her pilot's chair, deployed her remlok helmet, and checked the seals on her flight suit. When she was satisfied that everything was in order, she walked aft to the airlock, cycled through it and climbed down the ladder to the ground. It was cold. There was orange glow on the horizon, but that was as much as this settlement would see of the system's star for the next few hours. Not that it warmed this moon much anyway, but it was something at least. Clara ran over to the maintenance building beside the pad. Her suit sensors, crappy as they were, noted that there was a settlement terminal inside. Inside the storage shed was as cold as outside, but at least it was well lit. Besides the terminal, there were a few shelves with cargo pods on them, and bracket on the wall holding some power cells. She helped herself to one. They wouldn't miss it and power cells never showed up as stolen on scans due to the fact that they were considered emergency equipment. Clara logged on to he terminal and brought up the staff directory. There were twenty two people in the directory, eight of which were security. The rest were technicians or researchers. She scrolled down the list of staff to find Marcie Roberts. Marcie was a scout. Clara downloaded the ID data to her suit and Marcie's location showed up on her helmet HUD. Behind her and not too far away. Marcie must be patrolling near the HAB buildings then. Clara left the storage shed and walked across the landing pad. She walked along the path towards the HAB buildings from the landing pad. It wasn't the direct route to her contact, but it was better to go that way than to accidentally creep up on a guard: they could be a bit jumpy and trigger happy, she'd heard. A few minutes walking and she was rounding the corner of a HAB building. She spotted her contact and walked over.
"Marcie Roberts?", Clara asked, "I believe you have a package for me.
"I might. What are you here to pick up?", Marcie replied.
"I have no frakking idea. Mike Kerber sent me and didn't say what it was. Told me not to open it. So, I assumed I wasn't meant to know and didn't ask. Do you have the package or not? Or do I need to go back to Mike empty handed."
"Alright! Alright! No need to be grumpy. You are not our regular courier, so I just wanted to be sure. It wouldn't do to hand off Mike's package to the wrong punk-assed kid. How old are you anyway?"
"Old enough to be professional doing a pick up job."
"Alright! Alright! Here you go. But you need to work on your attitude. Not everyone has my easy going nature. That sass will get you in trouble some day."
Marcie pulled a small white cylindrical container with a green handle from her backpack and handed it to Clara. Clara had just wrapped her fingers around the handle when a bolt of purple plasma slammed into the right side of Marcie's helmet. The face plate blacked on the inside instantly and Marcie keeled over to one side. Clara looked down in horror at the gaping charred hole in the scout's helmet. She stepped back reeling and in shock. A bolt of plasma flashed by in front of her face.
"Oh frak!", Clara said to herself.
She thumbed on her suit's shield and ran back to the corner of the HAB building for cover. Another plasma bolt hummed across her shoulder. Clara paused for a second to consider her options. She couldn't stay where she was. Running up the path directly to the ship wouldn't work either: she'd be picked off by the sniper, for sure. The HAB building themselves would be a trap. That left hiding amongst the grow houses. She turned off her suit's lights and scampered in the dark towards the grow houses as quietly as she could. The settlement alarms were active now. In the distance, at the main settlement complex, she could see laser fire. Clara took cover behind a transport sack filled with rocks and dirt. A figure in combat armour was approaching where she was hiding. The figure had a plasma rifle pointing in front of them and was scanning the ground looking for footprints. In a few more steps his suit sensors would pick her up. She sat there panicking, trying to decide when the best time to run was. The figure dropped to one knee and swung the rifle around behind them and fired a shot. Fire from an assault rifle and a laser pistol came back in response. The figure's shields flared, but held. They reloaded and fired three shots back. This time the response was pair of grenades. One was aimed well, but the other was thrown too long. It was going to land right on her. She scrambled to her feet and started to run. The explosion behind her knocked her off her feet and took down her shields. She picked her self back up again, marvelling at the fact that she was still alive and unhurt. She retrieved the cannister, which she had dropped during the blast. It had a piece of shrapnel embedded in it, but otherwise looked okay. She'd worry about the damage later. For now, she had to get to her ship. She sprinted towards the landing pad, no longer trying to be stealthy. She hoped the firefight would capture everyone else's attention. She reached the landing pad. Thirty meters without any cover at all lay between her and her ship. Heart pounding and lungs burning she continued her sprint. Her legs burned and all thoughts of the cold were forgotten. She reached her ship without being shot in the back and clambered up the ladder to the airlock entrance. She did an emergency cycle of the airlock. It wasted air, and therefor cost money, but credits were little use to her if she was dead. Once in the cockpit she stowed the cannister in the webbing beside the user manual and strapped herself in. She woke the ship up, requested launch clearance, and bypassed preflight checks. Clearance was granted automatically and the Sidewinder rose into the air. Clara banked the ship in a turn so that she would be flying directly away from the ships she had spotted earlier. A bolt from a plasma rifle slammed into the ship's shields reducing it to fifty percent strength. Clara distributed the power evenly between shields and engines and triggered an engine boost. She hugged the terrain for a few kilometers and then pitched the nose up to gain altitude to allow her to use her frame shift drive. At two kilometers above the surface she engaged the FSD. It counted down from five and engaged. The little Sidewinder whined as it climbed out of the moon's gravity well. Clara checked the sensors for ships following, all the while willing her ship to climb faster. After what felt like an age the Sidewinder left orbital cruise and started accelerating. She'd escaped.
With the immediate threat dealt with, Clara looked at the cannister and the ugly chunk of metal stuck in its side. She would need to do something about that. She doubted that Mike would be pleased receiving his package in that state. She'd need to remove the shrapnel and patch it up a bit, and hope he wouldn't notice. Doing it while in supercruise wouldn't do as she'd be a sitting duck. She couldn't make the repair after she landed in Panshin's Inheritance, as Mike would expect delivery straight away. Landing at another port or station would be suspect. However, laying low in the rings of the gas giant would look like a sensible option. In fact, it was a sensible option. She headed for the rings. She picked a spot on the dark side of the planet well away from any marked resource extraction site.
Clara's Sidewinder dropped out of supercruise about one kilometer above the ring. She piloted the ship into the rings and brought it to a stop near some huge slowly tumbling tumbling rocks. Aside from the rocks, the sensor display was clear. When she was certain that the Sidewinder was in no danger of suffering a collision, she stowed her remlok helmet and extracted the precious cannister from the webbing along with a small toolkit. She held the cannister between her knees and hunched over it to get a better look at the damage. The piece of shrapnel wasn't very big, but it was embedded deeply in the cannister side, filling a diamond shaped hole about a centimeter long and half a centimeter wide. The hole was edged with an ice like solid which was starting to melt and fizz in the relative warmth of the Sidewinder cockpit.
"Frak! Good job I stopped to fix this. Mike would not have been happy if this crap had evaporated away.", Clara said to herself.
With a pliers in her right hand and a can of sealant foam in her left, Clara mentally prepared herself to repair the cannister. She was feeling reasonably calm, all things considered. This could have gone a lot worse. Just get the shrapnel out of the cannister, spray sealing foam over the hole, smooth it down a little and everything would be fine. Clara seized the piece of shrapnel with the pliers and tugged. It took a little bit of wiggling, but it soon came free. A small jet of vapour escaped before the sealant plugged the hole. Clara's eyes and nasal passages stung a little bit, but beyond that Clara didn't notice any ill effects. In fact she felt pretty good. Just a run to Panshin's Inheritance and her new life could begin. She spent a little time smoothing the foam down to a small bump and checking that the seal was still good. After that, she stowed the cannister back in the webbing and got her ship underway. She used the engine boost a few times, enjoying the thrill of weaving between the rocks of the planetary ring. After a few minutes of that, she yanked the joystick back sharply to climb far enough above the rocks to engage the ship's FSD. The ship leapt into supercruise.
The journey in supercruise felt like it took an age to Clara. She felt the ship was crawling. She angled it into a steep descent in orbital cruise, right on the edge of what was safe. That would get her on the ground quicker. She was excited to be about to finish this important job. She could hardly contain herself. She felt like she could run a marathon, that she could achieve anything. In a few short minutes she'd have the freedom to try whatever she decided on. The Sidewinder exited orbital cruise and started the glide phase. Clara angled the ship so that it would exit glide a few kilometers short of the surface port. This would give her the space to line up with a pad properly and cut the time she needed to complete her landing. The glide phase ended. Clara engaged the engine boost. At seven kilometers from the port, she requested a landing pad. She was in luck: it was straight ahead of her. She boosted again, as the ground rose towards her ship. The port flight control sent a terrain alert and advised her to pull up. She ignored it. She was a good pilot and was more than capable of flying her ship low to the surface. No! She wasn't a good pilot: she was a great pilot. She had just made a pick up in a combat zone and didn't have a mark on her ship to show for it. She was too good to be an explorer, she thought. Maybe she should become a mercenary?
Clara's Sidewinder had levelled out at about five meters above surface and two kilometers from the port, when its left side clipped a particularly large rock. The impact took down the shields and caused the ship to flip. It tumbled across the landing pad and exploded a few hundred meters beyond it. The escape pod didn't deploy.
Panshin's Inheritance, HIP 75862 5 D - 3307-11-28 11:04 GST
Mike Kerber walked into a small bistro and made his way to the small table at the back. Sitting at the table was Anthony Palmeri. He had a small cup of coffee as well as a small plate in front of him. The plate held the remains of a large slice of fruit pie. Anthony scooped up the last bite with his spoon as Mike sat down. He wiped his lips with a napkin and nodded to the server before he spoke.
"Hey, Mikey. Good to see you. How are you doing? You look a bit tired. You doing okay?"
"Hey boss. I'm fine. Didn't get a lot of sleep, on account of the Prytula Botanical Range situation."
"Yeah! Most regrettable. A bad situation for the most part."
"I'll make it right, Tony.", said Mike, a note of fear in his voice. "We can recreate the sample at another site. In a few weeks we'll be back on track."
"Mikey, forget about it. That's not why I asked you to come."
"But the new product test...", Mike began. A cup of coffee arrived in front of him.
"I said, forget about it. That's all in hand. We recovered the black box from your courier's ship along with the encrypted memory chip embedded in the sample cannister. The chip has all the researchers notes on how the product should be made. The black box showed that the container was leaking from the moment it was brought on board the ship, probably damaged in the firefight. The courier's bio-signs recorded by the black box suggest that she was affected. Her reckless and overconfident landing attempt suggest the same. So we got our first field test. Add to that, that we had part ownership of the ship, and we actually made a bit of money from the insurance. You did good Mikey."
"So the product is good?"
"Looks that way. We'll need to test it on a few addicts, but it looks like we have a winner. We're calling it Hopper."
Mikey took a sip of his coffee and nodded. "So, what do you need me to do?"
"We got a lead on the frakkers that wiped out Prytula Botanical Range. Some dude named Bond, working for a group called The Data Brokers, has been throwing cash around in system recently, hiring mercs. Look into it, and, if he's involved, take care of him."
"Sure thing!", said Mike.