Chapter 58: Diplomatic Privileges
Location: Dakarti Federation; Gendi System; VS Stargazer
S-57 calculated my jump coordinates so that I reappear in the middle of the Stargazer’s bridge. I’m informed by my Space Sense a second before, that almost everyone is waiting for me there, so it’s quite funny to see them all jump at my appearance. Thomas even throws up a Shield spell around my crew.
“Good reactions, Tom!” I smirk.
“God damn, you gave me a heart attack!” He complains but is now grinning as well. Then he notices my scowl and the grin slips away. “Sorry, I’ve been around a lot of swearing people those past six years. It’s hard not to adopt their habits.”
That response manages to release all the tension I accumulated during my meeting with the Captain and I laugh. “Shit Tom, my dislike for swearing is just a habit of me too, but keep it down, if possible, please?” I look at him innocently, knowing that I just swore as well. “Anyway, I’ve just started my acting career and told the Captain what he wanted to hear. So now we’ve got diplomatic codes and can do pretty much whatever we want here in the federation!”
“For real, everything?” Simon asks from the side, and I grin at him.
“Yeah, we’re exempt from any inspections, but we shouldn’t overuse this privilege. I say we get what we need in the next few systems, then leave for The Empire or whatever nations we have to cross before.”
“Ugh, you’re no fun,” Shay complains weakly.
I look around grinning when I see a few frowns on the other’s faces. “Chill guys. I don’t mean we won’t use the privilege at all! We still have a very much empty ship to fill and old tech to upgrade.”
Then suddenly Maja interjects as the voice of reason. “Don’t get too excited guys, while I can exchange our money at pretty much a one-to-one ratio, we still don’t have too much of it and I know Sara’s attitude toward stealing.”
That dampens our enthusiasm greatly. Meanwhile, the Tilda starts flying away from us and disappears in a purple flash soon after. We’re alone now and Alex starts powering up our engines again. “So, we head for the planet, and look what we can get?” She asks and I nod.
“Yeah, maybe everything is cheap here…” Not that I believe it myself.
Suddenly Greg jumps up. “Guys, I’ve got it!” Everyone turns to him, and he blushes, then he’s quick to continue. “Remember the introduction to magic back at the academy?” The five other Mages including me nod slowly, not knowing what he wants to tell us. “The instructor told us about the attacking spell that can be used to mine asteroids, right?”
Lucy nods. “Yes, but we’ve never learned it…”
Greg gins. “Yeah, but Sara, you said we have those magical guns, right?”
A big grin starts to form on my face as well. I think I get what he wants to suggest. “Brilliant idea Greg, you think you’re up to it?” Now I get the questioning looks and I point at Greg. “Your idea, you’re going to explain!”
He sighs. “Fine… So, imagine we use those guns and fire a weak pulse at a few asteroids. If it’s weak enough, say Novice power without much support from the batteries, it shouldn’t pulverize the asteroid right away and maybe if we get the right angle,” he glances at Maja and she nods, “we can simply crack the asteroid and collect the parts. If we get one with precious metals or a huge amount of tristanium, we can earn quite a bit of money.”
“Ooohh, nice!” Lucy exclaims. “But I want to test them first at full power.”
“Sure, sure. But let’s head for the planet first. Let’s see what we can buy with the money we have,” I have to break her enthusiasm a bit. “But then Maja can look for an uninhabited system that has little traffic, and we can shoot down a few asteroids.”
This time everyone agrees, and I slump down on the Captain’s chair that I had slowly floating over to me while talking. It’s been a long day. “How long till we arrive, Alex?”
“About seven hours with our current speed. I can speed up and make it in five if you want though.”
I shake my head. “Nah, seven is fine.”
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Location: Dakarti Federation; Gendi System; above Flipon; VS Stargazer
Sara, they want us to dock at the military space station above the planet for inspection and customs. Should we comply?”
Maja’s soft voice in my ear wakes me up a few hours after I laid down to sleep in my cabin. I yawn loudly, then reply. “No, send them our diplomatic codes… Time to enjoy the privileges. Let’s head for one of the commercial stations instead. Maybe you find one that sells holographic technology for starships at a reasonable price. I’ll be on the bridge in a few minutes as well, see you.”
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Now that I’m awake, I’m not able to sleep anymore, so I get up and take a quick shower. A trip to my wardrobe has me picking a new shipsuit that I make mostly transparent except for the obvious parts and grabbing a fancy-looking blue blouse and a black skirt to put on above. For footwear, I grab my trusted magnetic sneakers. I mean I’m an important Envoy of the Valterion Duchy now, so I have to look the part. I wonder if there are magnetic heels? I guess, I have to take the other girls out for a shopping trip soon. A glance into a nearby mirror has me smiling. I look Good! Only my light red hair is a bit unruly and hangs down my back in waves, where it stops about halfway down. Looks like a stop at a hairdresser is on the list as well.
Anyway, now fully clothed, I step out of my cabin and take the express lift to the bridge on my left. Maja greets me upon entering. Except for her and Greg who gives me a lazy wave, the bridge is currently empty. “Good morning, where are the others?”
Greg shrugs. “I guess they are still sleeping?”
“Most are, yes,” Maja answers. “But Thomas and Shay are already enjoying some breakfast.”
Uh-huh, Shay and Thomas. So they finally had their talk? “Okay, let them enjoy their meal, but send everyone else up here once they wake up. I don’t want anyone to disturb those two.”
“Done, they have a message on their tablets or interfaces. Now, we’re about half an hour out from a commercial station that should have most of the things we need. I don’t know about the holotech though. Oh, and the military station came back to us, confirming that we’re exempt from the inspection.”
“Great,” I reply, then I notice the big grins on Maja’s and Greg’s faces. “There’s more?”
“Yup. They forwarded a message from Captain Rogers, here let me send it to you.”
A ping on my interface informs me of a new message and I tap the icon to open it. While reading my eyes go wide. “For real?”
“Yes, the Captain really left you one million Fed-Creds as an apology. I’ve put them on hold for now as there are issues with our Estriduros bank account. I told them I needed your approval to accept the money. That pleased them for now.”
“Holy smokes. He must have felt really sorry for indirectly insulting me. Not that I cared, but still, wow. So what do you mean with issues with the bank account?”
Maja points at a screen where a strange logo is displayed. “This is the Banking Union. Their secure blockchain connects a lot of nations together so that people don’t have any banking issues when they cross borders. The problem is that the Estriduros Republic isn’t part of this union while the Dakarti Federation and more importantly the Magicon Empire are. So you see our issue here. We claim to come from The Empire, but we don’t have an account with the Banking Union.”
“Shoot, can you fix this?”
Maja nods. “Yes, I’m already finished, but I need to finalize everything once we dock with the station. I’ll use the cover of MARA Deliveries again so if anyone asks, this is our account during this mission. I can’t simply set up an account under Sara Valterion, that would raise too many red flags.”
I sigh in relief. That would have been very bad… All my acting with the Captain would have been for nothing if we were caught upon banking issues. “Good, if they ask why you’ve put them on hold for so long, simply tell them that I’m sleeping of fatigue from emergency jumping through the republic or something.”
“Will do, we’re about to dock anyway. Then I should have everything set up in five minutes.”
Thirty minutes later, everything is done. We’re docked to the commercial station and Maja even managed to convert our Estriduros money to Fed-Creds. Including the million from the Captain, we now have quite the sum to spend.
Everyone gathers on the bridge again. It’s quite funny, originally, I thought the living room on deck 01 would be our go-to room for situations like this but we always end up on the bridge. “So there has been a new development,” I start and the others stop what they are doing to look at me. “We were gifted one million Fed-Creds from Captain Rogers, so does anyone have any urgent needs?”
Thomas raises his hand and I laugh at the action. “Tommy, there is no need for that, just tell us, we’re not in school anymore.”
He blushes and puts his hand in a smooth motion behind his head for a scratch before the others notice his mistake. From the smirks all around it was Very successful. “Well, you guys pretty much caught me with my pants down on the station. The clothes I wear are pretty much the only things I own right now…”
Oh shoot, he’s right! We stopped for everyone to buy some necessities, but we had to escape immediately after getting Thomas. “Right, sorry about that… I was planning a clothes-shopping trip anyway so you can join if you want.”
“Oh, gladly!” He replies.
“Me too!” Comes a shout from Lucy and Ronja, Maja, and Alex quickly voice their interest in joining as well. Looks like we’re doing a Girl’s trip with Thomas as the pack mule. I look at Shay, she’s the only one missing.
“What about you?”
“Nah,” she replies. “I’d rather go and look for some weapons… I’ll give Maja my measurements and you can get me a few things. But nothing pink or too fancy!”
“Alright, sure. You should be all linked to the MARA Deliveries account, so simply buy what you want. If you’re unsure about the sum, just call Maja.”
Everyone nods, then we head out. It’s quite a big station and there are lots of people. One thing immediately catches my eye: While there aren’t a lot of Mages, some of them use their magic openly without any care! A thin man has a coffee cup floating next to him, and a blonde woman simply waves a hand, and a whole stack of clothes she just bought begins floating next to her. Both are very obvious examples of Telekinesis, and a big smile finds a way to my face. I can do that too now!
Lucy notices my smile and asks. “What has you so excited?”
I point at the woman as the man already disappeared around a corner. “I can’t wait to float my own purchases around like this. This is so convenient!”
Lucy’s eyes go wide, and she covers her gaping mouth with a hand. “Oooohh, now I want a Utility core as well!” Then she looks at me innocently. “Are you going to carry my things as well, pretty please?” She even batters her eyelashes, and I can’t refuse.
“Sure, whatever you want. Just not too much, I mean we have Tom as the pack mule for a reason.” There is a loud groan emanating from Thomas and I laugh out loud. We’ve so needed this! The constant fear of being found out and caught in the republic is gone.
Turns out there are magnetic heels! Lucy and I both bought a few pairs and are very excited to try them out in zero gravity as soon as we are on our way. All in all, we’ve bought quite a lot of clothes, but now everyone should be ready for any occasion that may occur in the future. I floated almost all the things we bought around us while we were on the station, wearing a big smile on my face constantly.
Now that everyone is back on the ship, we all stow away our new things while Alex is readying the Stargazer for departure. Maja also found a supplier for shipwide holotech, but unfortunately, it’s out of our current price range. But she is hopeful that we earn enough, after selling the materials of a few asteroids, even if it’s mostly unrefined after our crude mining.
This is also our next stop. Maja found an almost empty star system along our route to The Empire. It’s another one of those refill-stop systems between two wormholes, so we can fly out a bit till we find suitable asteroids and can gun them down undisturbed.