After an hour of waiting, Hiwi finally showed up. Brighand was just about to turn off the engine and go look for her. She knocked on the side of the airlock while dragging along a large box with one hand. It was held in the air by one of the magnetized arms that helped dock and undock ships. There were ten more boxes held up by ten more arms behind her. That was the reason she took so long.
“Are those all full of fissile materials? Are the boxes lead lined?” asked Brighand as he walked over and helped bring the box aboard the ship before the magnet disengaged.
The box was incredibly heavy and he had to push it with all his strength to barely scrape it one inch further into the ship. Hiwi had to come over and operate her personal robotic arm to push it into a corner with an awful screeching sound. She smiled and took off the lid to show him what was inside. Metal ingots, marked with their weights and elements, filling the box to the brim. A box that was three quarters of Brighand’s height and if he laid down, the same length as him. Most of them were marked Fe, pure iron. But there was everything from zinc to aluminum to silver and platinum in there as well.
“These are the materials I’ll need to repair with. Far more convenient to make replacement parts than to bring parts that are likely incompatible. Besides, metals make for a good universal currency and trade good so we can sell what we don’t need. As for the fissile materials, they’re in this next crate here which is lead lined. Stack it right there by the engine. Stack the rest of these crates wherever they fit as long as they don’t block access to the engine, the control console, or the entrance of course. I’ll lend you this robotic arm,” said Hiwi as she shoved the controls and arm into his hands and started leaving.
“Where are you going?” asked Brighand.
“There’s a ship docked a few blocks this way from a bigger team of scavengers. They’re the ones who found the military ship that released this virus. Even though they didn’t do it on purpose, they were the ones to bring the virus here,” said Hiwi with a bright smile.
Brighand couldn’t help but wonder if she was truly cured of the virus. Her response to almost everything after she injected the cure was violence. She took way more than just the nuclear materials they needed. And now, she was off to do who knows what to his fellow scavengers. Kill them, injure them, sabotage their ship, steal from them, or who knows what. Perhaps that there were aftereffects from the virus even after being cured or this was always how she was.
All he knew was that these crates probably contained supplies that could save his life in the future and that he should just obediently load them into the ship. The personal robotic arm was something like a metal plate strapped to the chest or back with a small remote control. It could also be controlled with the mind or nerve endings but that’d require an implant in the spinal column, brain, or arm. In the case of the arm, it would mimic the movements of the arm while the other two would let you control it like a third limb.
He got used to the controls and maneuvered each of the crates inside the ship. The ceiling was just high enough that two of them could be stacked in one spot. The cramped space became even more cramped than before as the introduction of these boxes left only a tiny gap from the console to the airlocks and the engine. Even the front window necessary for steering the ship once out in space was blocked. Not that he’d actually need it. The plan was to just fly straight ahead until they were away from the port’s sensors before the stealthed ship would make it dock.
Out of curiosity and because Hiwi was not back yet, he used the robotic arm to tilt up the lid of one of the crates to peek inside. One of them contained food, entirely packaged solid foods filled up to the brim. Another contained air tanks. Two of them were filled to the brim with kegs full of liquid, he recognized some of them to be water but couldn’t tell what the others were. Obviously not oil since you didn’t want to mix the two in the same container. When he was about to open one more container, he heard a knock at the front entrance.
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“You think that just because I got shot that you could steal so much from me?” asked the quartermaster, leaning on the wall of the airlock while holding a gun.
“Quartermaster, or is it Mr. Ledger, I thought she was just gonna get the fissile materials you sold me properly instead of the fake stuff. I had no clue she’d take more,” said Brighand as he raised his hands.
“I don’t care. You idiots left the gun on the guy who shot me outside my office and robbed me blind while I was recovering from these wounds. Now you just expect to leave? Unload all these crates now. Or I’ll shoot you. And my wounds are making me a bit woozy, who knows if I’ll hit your head or an arm. Even if I miss, I bet your ship will take some decent damage. Can’t drive a ship without a console to operate it. Actually no, your new buddy could probably pull it off. She must’ve been stealing from me for years to know exactly how to open my storage and even my real name,” said the Quartermaster.
Just then an explosion rang off in the distance, shaking the entire ship and almost making one of the crates fall down. Brighand managed to push it back into place with the robot arm then rushed the quartermaster who fell down. He pulled out and aimed his pistol at him while putting his foot on the rifle.
“Can’t catch a break this month, can I? Doc says I’m infected despite all my measures so I can’t run away. My best mechanic went crazy, gunned down people, and hid in the service tunnels. All my contacts are refusing to buy anything we’ve found. There’s no money left and no rescue coming. Now I’ve got three bullet holes and I couldn’t even properly threaten the guy who simultaneously saved my life and robbed me blind. Just end me now, hot plasma to the brain, so fast I don’t feel anything,” said the quartermaster.
Instead of shooting, Brighand flicked on the safety on the rifle and tossed it further inside then motioned for him to leave with his pistol. He picked himself up and put his hand over one of his wounds that started bleeding around the gel.
“Find someone else to kill you. You’re already a dead man walking with that virus in you. Maybe I would’ve considered helping cure you if not for the fact you shafted me with fuel twice and just aimed a gun at me. I’m not dumb enough to help you twice after that. Nor do I want your death in my hands. I’ve never killed a man before and if I do, I’d much prefer to do it in a situation where I had to,” said Brighand as he walked back towards his office slowly.
“You handled that quite well,” said Hiwi, suddenly appearing on the ship.
“How long have you been here?” asked Brighand.
“I was just returning when I saw him walking up with a rifle. I’m the one who defused the situation with the explosion back then. While I don’t appreciate you trying to throw blame solely on me, it was an effective way to get Mr. Ledger there to lower his guard. He has this bad habit of lifting up one leg while talking, making it super easy to knock him over,” said Hiwi as she climbed aboard and closed the outer airlock.
She sat down at the console and began the undocking procedure manually. No calling it over the radio and waiting for a response. Halfway through, they were stopped and put into a locked state, but she simply typed in a password and they resumed.
“How do you know the password? Or Mr. Ledger’s real name. He implied that he never told you it,” said Brighand.
“Oh yeah, he lost his original last name as he started off as a criminal scavenger like you. However, he keeps a diary with all sorts of juicy tidbits and I slapped a keylogger on his keyboard not even a month after being hired on. It’s how I found out about being blacklisted and a lot of the truths about this virus rather than what the Custodial Union spouted on about. Bit of a backdoor virus on his computer for when I want to take a look around at things like shipping manifests and sales that get copied over directly rather than typed in. Nothing special but Mr. Ledger has a paranoia about anti-viruses putting viruses on peoples’ computers to stay in business. So my backdoor and logger never got found and I’ve worked here for years,” said Hiwi.