Cian wasn’t very confident in the place when he walked in. It was a big, open cargo bay full of scrap. There was a window where he could see a huge net system stretched outside the station with a variety of junked ships and pieces of ships loosely tied and held to the outside of the station. A group of four rough looking Boralans who were covered in grease and dirt were in a heated argument off to the side. Three of them were heavily armed, but no one had drawn their weapons yet. No one else seemed to be here. There was a small waiting area with chairs and a questionable looking water dispenser, so Cian went and sat down and started looking at his other options via the station’s information network.

Suddenly a dozen turrets dropped from the ceiling and swiveled to target the arguing Boralans.

“OUT! Find another buyer if you don’t like my prices!” yelled one of the Boralans. He was the greasiest looking of the lot, and the only one who wasn’t armed.

The other three Boralans held up their hands as laser sights lit up their faces. One of them had apparently drawn their sidearm and was sheepishly putting it back in his holster. They turned and walked out.

The turrets all folded back into the ceiling once they had left.

Cian sat there, staring wide eyed at the whole thing.

The Boralan who apparently worked here walked over toward him. He was about 4’8” and dressed in a partial flight suit with no helmet or gloves and with a jetpack attached. He started yelling before he was in normal speaking range and kept yelling at the same volume as he walked closer. “Oi! Human! This is the Rusty Wrench! What you want?! I don’t buy stolen ships!” He stopped a few feet away and frowned at Cian, who was still staring and sitting in one of the chairs.

Cian snapped out of it and jumped up. “Uh. Hello. I’m looking to buy. I have a list of parts I need.”

The Boralan’s manner immediately changed at the word ‘buy.’ He smiled big and held out his hand to shake. “Great! I’m Rusty. I got the best stock of used parts in five systems!”

Cian shook his hand, getting a good coat of grease on his armored glove in the process. Rusty didn’t seem to care or notice that his hands were caked with grease and dirt.

Cian got out the list of parts that Bann had given him and showed it to Rusty. “Here’s a list of parts I was interested in.”

Rusty beamed at the long list of parts. “Great! Let me see. I know I have most of this. Hmm. I’ll have to see if I can pull a working one of these from that chunk o’ cruiser I got out back. You’re looking at least two million for most of this, more if I got it all. You got the money right?”

“My budget is closer to one and a half.” said Cian.

“Okay. We can talk. Gimme an hour to see what I have and put things together.” said Rusty. Suddenly he turned and yelled loud enough to make Cian’s ears ring. “BERNIE! GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE, WE GOT A CUSTOMER!”

A nine foot Yeegan in a flight suit with a jetpack ducked through a side door and lumbered into the room. “YEAH BOSS?”

Rusty jogged over to him, yelling all the way “I NEED YOU TO PULL THESE PARTS! I’M TRANSFERRING THE LIST OVER!”

“OKAY BOSS.” yelled Bernie. He looked over a display on his left forearm, then headed for the airlock.

Rusty jogged back over to Cian. “Sorry ‘bout the screaming. Ol’ Bernie can’t hear too good ever since he got his ears blown out in a salvage accident. I’ll meet you back here in an hour, yeah?”

“Okay. Thanks Rusty, see you in an hour.” said Cian. He walked out.

Maybe he should check on Jolan? Cian got on their private channel. “Hey Jolan. Everything okay?”

No answer.

“Jolan?” he sent again. He switched to the channel for their ship and sent again. “Jolan? Are you on the ship?”

Nothing came back.

Now he was worried. Cian enhanced his attributes and ran back toward the LT Flying Brick. People were giving him funny looks as he sprinted through the halls, but no one stopped him. He made it back to the ship in five minutes. No one was there. There was a message from the Yienna Exchange stating his cargo delivery would be arriving in forty minutes, dated for thirty minutes ago. He would have to accept delivery of that before leaving again.

Cian called Jolan again. “Hey man. I’m getting worried about you. Are you okay?”

No reply.

Cian sat in the bridge trying to figure out a way to find Jolan for the next ten minutes. He didn’t have any kind of tracking device on him, and his communicator wasn’t broadcasting so he couldn’t find him from the signal.

A message came in informing him his delivery was ready.

Cian opened the rear door. A trail of cargo containers were being pulled into the docking bay by a cargo truck or train thing with a bunch of cars attached. They were all in unmarked boxes. A team of six workers got out and began detaching the cars and pulling them one at a time into his ship.

One of the workers stopped to talk to him. “Delivery for Captain Kemp aboard the LT Flying Brick. Do you want it any certain way, or should we load balance it?”

“Load balance it, please.” said Cian.

They worked quickly, moving the sleds full of crates in and unloading them to his hold. Cian checked them as they unloaded them and they secured them down. Each box was full to the top with various metal ingots. The rare earth metals were in small ingots while the more common metals and alloys were in large bricks. More cargo trucks arrived and more loads of boxes were unloaded. Cian hadn’t realized quite how much space all the tons of metal he had ordered would take up.

The whole process took nearly an hour. The worker helped Cian check off and verify delivery of the shipment, then had Cian sign off on delivery. There wasn’t much room left in the ship by the time it was all done. He secured the ship and walked out.

Cian called Jolan again. “Jolan, are you there? Listen, I have to finish this work. You need to answer your communicator.”

Still no answer. Did he even have the comm turned on?

By now it was past time to check on his parts order. Cian ran back to the Rusty Wrench.

Rusty and Bernie were waiting for him. A huge pile of parts were put together in the room, sorted by type. Many of them were bigger than Bernie.

“Hey. Sorry I’m late, I had to take another delivery at my ship. What all do you have for me?” said Cian.

Rusty smiled wide “Everything! Come, look. I was able to source every part on your list. All tested and working.”

Cian spent the next twenty minutes looking over all the parts. Everything on the list was there, although a few looked a bit worn. Rusty assured him they were fully functional, with a three month guarantee – not that the Heralds would be able to come back if anything broke. Then they got down to prices.

“Now, you have to admit this is a fine assortment of parts. I found everything on your list. I can’t let this go for anything less than three and a half million.” said Rusty.

“But I told you my budget was close to 1.5 when we started! And you said two!” said Cian.

“That was before I found everything on your list, some of these gems are high value items. Budgets are meant to be bent! I can’t let this lot go for less than 3.5.” said Rusty.

“Listen, I’m spending a client’s money here. I only have 1,671,500 left of it. Can’t you take that?” said Cian.

“No, no, I don’t like that number. We can start there, but you’ll have to throw in a lot more.”

“Maybe I can do without some of these expensive parts.” said Cian.

Rusty looked offended. “No! Package deal only! You gave me a list, I filled the list!”

Cian rubbed his head in thought for a moment before replying, “Okay. Fine. I’m spending my own money out of pocket, here. I don’t even know if they’ll compensate me. I might end up being the owner of some of this stuff. I’ll add in another 500k.” said Cian.

“No, no. That’s not close enough to 3.5. Add in another 1,250.” said Rusty.

“You’re killing me here. 750.” said Cian.

Rusty frowned and started yelling “Throw in a million to make it 2,671,500. Lowest I’ll take! Take it or leave it! If you don’t take it, I charge you a restocking fee!” A turret popped out of the ceiling, but didn’t directly target Cian.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Fine! You have to package this stuff and make it fit in my ship, though. And don’t threaten me!” said Cian.

Rusty’s demeanor immediately changed again. “Great!” he said, smiling. The turret popped back into the ceiling. He looked toward the back and yelled, “BERNIE! COME OUT HERE AND HELP ME BOX THIS CRAP UP!”

“Okay, so…” started Cian.

“No, you help too for this price. Big stuff we’ll load and strap on top. I got crates for the little stuff. Free of charge.” said Rusty.

“Oh. Uh. Okay.” said Cian.

It took them nearly an hour to sort all the parts into something that could be reasonably shipped. Rusty drove a cargo dolly out behind some junk in the back and they loaded everything onto a dozen sleds. Soon they were heading out into the halls. They had to clear the hall to get through. They drove to a cargo elevator that went straight to the docking bay that Cian’s ship was in. It took a few trips to get everything down and hooked back up.

They got back to the ship and Cian opened the door.

“The hells all this? You didn’t say we had to cram it in around a hundred tons of other boxes.” said Rusty.

“I said I took another delivery. It’s a big shipment.” said Cian.

“I GOT IT, BOSS” screamed Bernie.

The three of them pulled it all into the hold and found a spot for it. There wasn’t much room left to walk around by the end of it. Cian had managed to fill the entire Flying Brick, and only 10% over budget.

Cian paid a smiling Rusty, and Rusty and Bernie drove their cargo sleds back to the cargo elevator. Bernie stacked all the sleds and they went up in one trip.

“Dang, you got a lot of stuff.” said Jolan. He had walked up from behind Cian.

Cian turned. “Jolan! I was worried about you. What have you been doing for the last few hours? Whoa, what happened to your face?”

Jolan had two black eyes, cuts and scrapes all over his face, and it looked like his nose was probably broken. He looked despondent. “Don’t ask. Can you do something about this?”

An alarm started blaring. A voice came over the speakers. “Clear the deck! We have an incoming ship. Two minutes to depressurization.”

Everyone standing around moved to get into ships or step outside the docking area.

“Here, let’s go inside. I’ll heal your face if you tell me what happened.” said Cian.

“Okay.” said Jolan sheepishly, his eyes downcast.

They walked in and sat in the mess. Cian channeled Mend. He bottomed out his Willpower again by the time Jolan’s nose was fixed.

“Okay, so how did your face get turned into meatloaf? And why didn’t you answer any of my calls? I tried to contact you repeatedly.” asked Cian.

Jolan held up a broken communicator. “Well. It got smashed. You were right about those women. We drank for a while and they had some desserts and then we danced. They invited me to their room across the street. Then they demanded money. They wanted 200k! Each! I tried to explain that I didn’t realize they were working and that I didn’t have the money and I tried to leave. Then that big alligator guy who was in the corner of the bar came in and he didn’t like me trying to leave without paying. I left my sword here so the guy beat the crap out of me. He had to be like eight hundred pounds! Then I had to pay the girls 25k each for their time and another 10k to the asshole who beat me up for his time. And I had already paid 5k for the bar tab for all the drinks and desserts we had.” said Jolan.

Cian started laughing.

“Dude, not cool. I’m out 65k credits! That was most of my money! And I got beat up by a damn talking alligator!” said Jolan.

Cian calmed himself down, stifling a few chortles as he spoke, “I’m sorry, man. You paying two working girls and their escort to beat you up is funny. You got yourself into that crap. I tried to warn you. You were supposed to stay at the ship and help me with all this cargo stuff. You made me do all the work. I sold the ship and bought all the metals and had to rush down here and take delivery of the metals and then run back to negotiate with a crazy scrap dealer. I had to pay him an extra million out of our money to cover the parts we needed. He had turrets in his ceiling. Then I had to help drag it all down here and load it into our ship. I could have used your help several different times.” said Cian.

“Wait, what? Dude! You spent a million of our money? I’m broke now, I needed that money!” asked Jolan.

Cian gave Jolan a stern look before speaking, the irritation obvious in his voice, “No. You don’t get to comment on that one. You’re lucky I’m still splitting the money with you. I’m sure Bann will compensate us, it was for his supplies. We need to get loaded up and head back before we attract any more attention. Hopefully we can make it back to the jump without another pirate boarding us. I don’t know who might be watching this docking bay, we took on a lot of cargo and I’m sure someone noticed.”

“Hey, maybe we can capture another ship. That was badass.” Jolan said. He started miming actions as he continued, “Boom, bam. Ting, ting, STAB! We kicked their asses. Then I hacked it and you sold it and we made a bunch of money.”

“We have eleven million worth of cargo onboard now. This kind of haul could attract way more attention than even we can handle. Let’s just finish this mission without getting killed. Vanna might be awake by now.” said Cian.

“You’re really into her, huh? Is her species, like, compatible?” said Jolan. He made an obscene gesture with his finger and his other hand.

“Don’t start with that. We’re friends, we’ve been in battle together and we’ve saved one another plenty of times. I’d throw your dumb ass out the airlock to save her.” said Cian.

“Aw, dude! Bros before…” started Jolan.

Cian smacked him upside the head. “Don’t finish that sentence if you want to survive the trip back. Let’s get out of here.”

Jolan stared back in shock, rubbing his head. Cian had backhanded Jolan with his armored glove on.

Cian walked to the bridge and called the station. “LT Flying Brick requesting clearance to launch.”

A reply came back after a few moments, “LT Flying Brick, this is Yang Station Control. You are in line to launch once the LT Kingfisher has finished landing. ETA two minutes.”

Jolan came in and sat in the copilot seat. “Do I get more pilot lessons on the way back?”

“No.” said Cian.

“Aww, come on. I did good landing.” said Jolan.

“That remains to be seen. One of our landing gear is showing a mechanical malfunction.” said Cian.

“Eh, it’s just flashing yellow. I’m sure it’s fine.” said Jolan.

“LT Flying Brick, this is Yang Station Control. You are clear to launch. Disengaging local gravity now.”

Cian disengaged the landing gear. The one flashing yellow had to be cycled three times to retract and made a horrible grinding noise when it did. Cian gave Jolan a look, then engaged the thrusters to turn the ship. He slowly maneuvered around to face the open bay doors, then pushed the throttle a bit and eased out of the docking bay. It lurched to the side a bit and Cian had to adjust his trajectory to compensate. The ship’s lousy maneuvering lived up to its name, especially with all of the cargo onboard.

The station sent a final message as they departed, “Thanks for visiting Yang Station. We hope you enjoyed your stay. Have a safe trip. Use code RI78954Q for 10% off refueling on your next visit!”

“Crap. I should have refueled before we left. Bann didn’t mention it, but they’re probably short on fuel too.” said Cian.

“We have enough to get back, right?” said Jolan.

“Yeah. We still have plenty. They didn’t even send us with a full tank, but this has been a pretty short trip. Yang Station is supposed to be the cheapest refueling station in the region, though. Setting course for our jump. We’re just over four and a half hours out.” said Cian.

“Why’s it taking longer on the way back?” asked Jolan.

“We can’t accelerate as fast with all the extra mass. This cargo is heavy.” said Cian.

“Oh. So, uh. Can you transfer my half of the money we got so far?” asked Jolan.

“Why? So you can log out and blow it on virtual booze and partying?” asked Cian.

“Come on man, it’s my money. You agreed to split it with me.” said Jolan.

“You have a problem, man. I think you’re an alcoholic. Don’t you want to save up the money and buy something useful?” asked Cian.

“Cut me some slack, man. I just found out my whole life is a lie, my girlfriend of four years is fake, and the world I grew up on may or may not exist. It hasn’t even been a week yet, man.” said Jolan.

“Fine. It’s your money, and I agreed to split it.” said Cian.

“I get 2 mil, right? I didn’t agree to spend the extra million on the mission.” said Jolan.

“Fine. I’ll transfer you the 2 million and figure out my part with Bann when we get back there, but I’m not splitting whatever reward I get even if he pays me more than the extra million I spent. If we go on another mission I am not doing 50/50. If you just want the responsibility of a grunt and fight when we’re boarded and go party when we dock, we need to settle on a pay split that agrees with the division of labor.” said Cian.

“Yeah, okay. I don’t want to do captainy stuff. I’m not good at it. Point me at the bad guy and I’ll stab them. Put me in front of you if you’re getting shot at. I’m good with that. You’re good at leading. You need to get a crew, anyway. You can’t pay all your crew half the cut, there’s not enough halves. Just give me crew wages or whatever.” said Jolan.

“Alright. I guess we should have discussed expectations before we did this mission. Where do you want the 2 million? You should really make a separate bank account. I don’t know how secure your player account is. I only keep a little bit in mine.” said Cian.

“Meh. I haven’t lost any money from it yet. Your account seems like a lot of hassle.” said Jolan.

“It’s secure, though.” said Cian.

“Too much work.” said Jolan.

“Fine. I’ll set up the transfer and you accept it I guess. I still don’t know how to send it direct to you.” said Cian. He worked on his tablet and set up a transfer of 2 million, then went to the destination section and set it for a biometric scan and held it out for Jolan.

Jolan put his hand print on the device and the transfer went through.

“Huh. So that’s how it works.” said Cian, looking down at his hand.

“Sweet, two mil. What?” said Jolan.

“Apparently, your bank info is encoded in your hand print. I guess mine probably is, too. The biometric scan picked up both bank info and verified your identity using the rest of your print. I wonder if other banks use this technology or if they’re just doing it for the humans.” said Cian.

“You look too deep into this stuff, man. It works, it’s easy, I’m happy with that. I’m gonna go log out. See you in three days and change?” said Jolan.

“Alright, I guess. I’m not picking up any ships between us and our jump. If you get an email in the next few hours you gotta log back in immediately though, okay? That would mean that we’re being intercepted by someone and I need your help.” said Cian.

“Okay. I’ll stay near my pod and get back in ASAP if you email me.” said Jolan.

“Good enough, I guess. Have fun. Try not to blow all your money, we probably won’t get another easy payday like that for a while and I’m not giving you a loan.” said Cian.

Jolan gave Cian a thumbs up and walked back to the bunks.

Cian looked over his finances while he waited for the ship to reach their jump point. He had 1,418,100 in his primary account and 136,325 in his player account. Did he really want to work for 36 hours at the hospital to potentially make another 27k or so? In his interface, Cian saw that the exchange rate had gotten a bit worse – now it was 96 credits per dollar. That made it worth slightly less. Jolan kept telling him to live a little. Maybe just not trying to maximize his income at the expense of his sanity could be his form of that.

On an impulse, Cian connected to Yang Station and paid 100 credits to download a bunch of old movies from the Heritage Project. The data burst came with hundreds of thousands of old movies and shows, from the first black and white movies to movies that Cian was pretty sure weren’t even out yet if he logged out. The two dimensional movies that played on a flat screen were considered an old and outdated form of entertainment, but it was Cian’s normal. They were all ones that the creators of the project had thought to include in the time capsule, so some of them must be decent. Maybe it was time to binge some television. If only he had thought to try and source some popcorn before he left.

When the Flying Brick made it to the jump point, Cian was on his eighth half-hour episode of a fantasy series. He had improvised with the snacks and dug out some sweet, freeze dried foods like watermelon and something blue that tasted like peaches called koba fruit. He didn’t have popcorn, but he had the candy part down. He calculated the jump without even even pausing his show, and soon they were off to WL-1026.