Author's notes: Okay, I'm not back, but I'm sort of back. I hope. I hate 2nd job, but It wasn't just 2nd job keeping me away. I built a deck, re-did 2 roofs, sided a house, and welcomed a new child into the world. I'm exhausted. I think I've got one more chapter recorded and 2 possible starts to a next book, though I'm leaning toward another sci-fi fantasy thingy. More on that later.

Zoia was poking at her tablet. Sam and I were playing a card game. In the background, X-Talia was busy cutting apart the hauler. I had already made plans with David to sell him the shield generator and its attached Power Core in exchange for one of the many shipboard mini factories. Much like the mini forge, it was a power hog and produced a lot of excess heat. The other Power Core, which had gracefully shut down, would be installed in our own hauler not too far away from the mini forge. With a little bit of automation, we'd be able to put cut-up pieces of broken spaceship into the mini forge, extrude them out as feedstock for the mini factory, and turn some of it into useful parts, mostly various shaped steel plates.

X-Talia and I were working on the third prototype of our fighter drone. One issue we had been having was the size of components. We kept taking Power Cores, Gravity Drives, gravitational field emitters, and all other components we could get our hands on from class B ships and then trying to make them into a class A ship. This left them rather big and bulky, though overpowered. It hurt my soul to think I was going to be exchanging large, expensive class B equipment for smaller, cheaper, and still likely used class A equipment, but it needed to be done. We were going to need a more compact drone system if we wanted to pack several of them into a freight container.

This brought up another project. X-Talia and I were working on the design for our new ship. We had gone through a lot of renditions and arguments over the best way to do that. The main problem was the frame. Initially I wanted to build the thing in modular components, starting essentially with boxes welded together for our bridge and galley and other systems and adding on from there. The issue was that it caused structural instability. Our final goal was a rather large vessel, and by the time we got to a class C size, all the original parts would have to be replaced with something more permanent, lest the ship break itself apart with us inside.

Sam's suggestion was to build a frame and just fill it in as we went. It sounded ridiculous, but it turned out to be the best idea. Essentially, we were going to build an exoskeleton, a solid structural framework that we could slowly fill out. Then we could put armor plating on top of that skeleton once the innards were done. It would likely look quite strange, like an angry shark with a bunch of teeth up front but all bones in the back until complete, with only a few runs of cabling and machinery down the center looking like visible entrails. As we slowly built out auxiliary power generators, distributors, and shield generators, we would be able to encase the whole thing in shields. We’d have essentially an armored hull and an interior airtight hull, and enough space in between where we could keep some type of repair drone system. We’d use standard freight containers as the basis for our hangar bays holding our drone fleet. Well, fighter corps. A fleet assumed other ships, much like our current hauler, which was being converted into a completely autonomous salvage reclamation drone. So, in a sense, we were indeed building a fleet.

Of course, the whole "we need an exoskeleton" thing caused its own problem. Primarily, we couldn't build it. We needed to order the thing, and we weren't currently making enough money. There also weren't any shipyards in the Rixa system that could use. So we were still left with having to get out of this system. We really needed to capture something that had an intact Rift Drive.

"So Grant, you want to explain your end of the story?" Zoia asked.

I looked up with a cocked eyebrow and she turned her tablet towards me to show my face, my list of crimes, and the bounty still on my head. Well, fuck. The bounty hunter had just found out I had a bounty on my head. The question was whether or not she knew that Sam also had a bounty. I let out a long sigh. "I used to fly a single-person freighter with no Rift Drive. Some pirates pulled me out of the Rift, I killed them, and took their ship which had a Rift Drive."

"Yeah, but that's just self-defense," Zoia countered as though my story didn't make sense. And it technically didn't when you excluded Sam's story.

"I killed all of them. That would be excessive. And then I basically kept the ship and ran away."

"Oh?" She cocked her eyebrow and continued, "Insurance fraud?"

I shrugged. "I'm not really sure." After that, we got chased by a bounty hunter and I ended up throwing a bunch of lead out the cargo hold in order to stop his AI-controlled ship. So basically, the other tacked-on offense is littering.

"Ok. That explains the easy one." Zoia swiped the screen of her tablet, looked at Sam, and said, "Human experimentation?"

Sam's crimson face went concerningly pale. "I worked for a pharmaceutical research company. I didn't know I was doing it," she squeaked.

Zoia shrugged and returned her attention back to her tablet. I was cursing myself for keeping my arc pistol in my bunk next to the hard suit. Sam and I exchanged glances. When I looked back towards Zoia, she was idly scrolling through her tablet like she had been for the previous hour.

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"Do you usually ask people with a bounty for their side of the story?"

Zoia looked up as if surprised that we were still talking about the subject.

"Oh, no. But I don't take sketchy contracts."

"Sketchy?"

Zoia shrugged. "You are not the only one here accused of piracy. One government's pirate is another government's privateer. You are also accused of insurance fraud and littering. Sam here is a little more up my alley, but If I had a handful of Sen for every corporate shit job I've seen, I'd be a rich woman. Jonathan there," she pointed towards the freezer, "human trafficking, murder, rape, the list goes on but oddly enough, piracy is not one of them."

"So you're not gonna try to capture us?" Sam asked, her voice quiet and hesitant.

For far too long, Zoia sat considering the question. "I am not sure it is worth it. It is like a month and a half in the Rift just to turn you in, and then I would likely be dead without you. You get tagged for something out here and then I will reconsider."

I didn't feel particularly great about that. She could just be lying. Then again, we did save her life, so she was likely grateful for that. Still, she was sitting on almost 50,000 credits, but if she knew we had prices on our heads, why would she have brought it up? I also had to remind myself that we were in a new sector. A new sector meant new rules and Rixa was the ass end of that sector. Our bounties hadn't changed despite the fact that we had stolen a mercenary group's gunboat. None of this shit made any real sense.

Zoia Rajirie was attractive, intelligent, and a bit intimidating. Her accent was starting to grow on me and yet, I was extraordinarily happy to see her go. The person who supposedly owed her a favor ran a rather large six-container freight hauler. I couldn't imagine the jump into Rixa being that profitable, which certainly lent credence to the claim that he owed her. I stood near the hatch to the galley, hand on my arc pistol, waiting for the tables to turn as Zoia gave Sam a tight hug. The woman disappeared into the lock, duffel bag slung over her shoulder. As soon as I heard the other ship disconnect, I turned my attention to X-Talia.

"Shields on?"

"Shields are on," X-Talia responded.

"Ready to rotate if they start firing."

"Ready to rotate and open fire," came the AI's response.

"I think we're fine," Sam said, glaring at me like it was my fault that I didn't trust a bounty hunter with people who had bounties. At least I didn't have to help move the body from the freezer. I watched on the screen as the larger freighter disappeared into the black, utter relief washing over me.

“We should move our operations.”

X-Talia nodded her assent. "Been packing up for a while now."

It would be slow going to move our drone freight hauler turned miniature salvage processing plant along with all its salvage it still had left to pull, but space was vast and even a few hours of one-G acceleration would pull the whole place thousands of kilometers. A couple of alterations in the course and we'd never be found.

Never be found. The thought struck me as we found something. A single miner tucked into the asteroid belt working away at some honey pot he’d found. We were just passing by, a slow-moving mass of metal and ships drifting spinward. The guy probably hadn't even noticed us. I'm surprised we noticed him. Without X-Talia, we probably wouldn't have. You generally knew where most of the miners were because they were broadcasting their transponder IDs. It allowed them to keep in contact with each other. But the ring around Azore was swarming with miners, some of them independents, some of them pirates, and who knew what else. Even the heavily populated rings with their unfathomable amount of material being mined by flocks of miners were mind-numbingly vast. Whoever this guy was, he wasn't broadcasting his transponder, and I wondered if he was somehow like us. Then I began to wonder about other things. Where were the pirates based out of? Was there a hidden outpost out here? Did they simply switch their transponder IDs over to the Sentinel Mercenary Group and dock at the station? What did the Sentinel Mercenary Group protect people from? Or was it just a racket? I wonder if we could eat them. Take out the pirates, then take the place of the mercenaries? Could that be a service?

"X-Talia, can you compile me a list of everything the Sentinel Mercenary Group does?"

"Sure, but that'll take some time. I'd have to make several queries on the local net."

"No hurry."

I stared at the screens, seemingly waiting for what, I wondered. I would get back to working on something once we arrived at whatever destination we were heading to. Probably could stop fairly soon. Maybe we should pull out of the Rings. A lot of mercenaries, pirates, and miners were in here, there's probably a lot more empty space just out of it. And what was a few more days' worth of hauling things back and forth?

"Hey, Grant?" said Samantha from somewhere behind me.

"Yes, Doctor?" I turned my head to look back at her. Sam was standing there, staring at me, eyes slightly wide and face slightly flushed. I was momentarily confused until I realized that I had called her Doctor. It didn't always trigger this reaction, but it did more often than not. She regained control of herself and cleared her throat.

"I was going to request putting the bed back the way it was. But now I have a slightly different idea."

I cocked an eyebrow and waited.

"Well, you know, on account of I'm the doctor, I think you probably need a thorough examination," a grin spread across her face.

I turned my head back to the screens and checked to make sure everything was working accordingly. I was gonna have to have a talk with Sam about our relationship. I wasn't exactly sure where we were, but for now, I think I was gonna do whatever the fuck she decided to tell me to.