Kris, the pilot, landed the ship smoothly into the port. I was glad he’d slept well last night. It scared me when Kris was sleeping at the helm, and I didn’t have a whole lot of money to spare on repairs to the Rebellion. I barely had the money to keep her flying in the first place.
“What now?” Kris asked in his cockney accent that I always seemed to admire. It was a cool accent, I had to admit.
“Now, we wait. You know the drill.” I smiled.
Kris nodded. “Aye.” He sat back in the chair, proud of his landing.
When he’d first joined, I was sketchy about letting him fly. Sure, he had gone to a school that specialized in training pilots, but he’d failed to stay long enough to learn to fly a ship of the Rebellion’s size. She was a moderately sized ship, but in comparison to the small, two person shuttles he had learned to fly with, the size difference was immense. Besides, I had always felt sure of Vance’s ability to fly the ship.
However, Kris did prove to be a fast learner, so I let him fly more and more as Vance decided he didn’t want to fly the ship when there was someone else capable of doing so onboard. Now, he was flying full time, and Vance never had to touch Helm Control, which pleased him.
“Cap’n?” Kris asked suddenly.
“What is it?” I turned to him.
“There’s your signal.” He pointed to the radar on his screen. A blinking, red dot had appeared near the center.
“Good. Open the doors.” I instructed, and headed toward the cargo bay.
Vance was waiting for me when I arrived, and was staring coldly at the guest. It was the older man from the night before: Monty. He had ruddy hair and blue eyes, standing tall with his arms crossed.
“Hello, Captain Wolfe.” He spoke in a raspy voice. “You got me shipment?” He had a light Irish accent, suggesting his origins from the Homeworld.
“Yeah, I do. You got my money?” I asked, taking an air of importance. Vance shadowed me from a distance. That was his job. Normally, he was pretty talkative, but in front of contacts, he could be a bit unnerving to some people. I sensed this contact had that very reaction.
“I do. Now, let’s make the trade and be on with it.” He replied curtly.
I nodded, and the trade proceeded as normal: half the money, followed by and inspection of the goods, followed by a trade of the remainder of the money for the shipment. This shipment was medicine, no doubt expensive, so it was a fairly good profit. Ten thousand credits. That would keep us in the air for another month or so, depending on what surprises the Rebellion had in store for us in the near future.
After the trade completed, Monty handed over a data disk to me. I looked it over carefully. Monty was a long-time customer, but that didn’t mean I trusted him. Not by a long shot. For all I knew, the data disk was rigged to blow at any second. It seemed to be trustworthy though, but I wasn’t going to drop my guard.
“There’s the next job. I want an answer by t’night, clear?” He asked.
I nodded, and he left. As soon as he was out of earshot, I radioed Kris on the bridge. “Take us up.” I told him. “But keep us in a stable orbit just out of Atmo.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!” was the response through the radio’s static.
I turned to Vance, holding up the small, circular disk. “Shall we?” I asked.
He nodded, and we headed toward the bridge.
From the disk, the next mission seemed simple enough. There was a base just outside Polaris’s border that remained neutral and independent from Neo-Earth. This particular base held a top secret development in its data logs that Monty wanted a copy of. The pay was high, thirty thousand, so I figured it was going to be harder than it looked.
When I had Raquel come to the bridge to pull up schematics, I soon discovered I was right. The base was well guarded and had state-of-the art security systems. I looked over the base. It looked familiar. I double checked the coordinates, since the disk hadn’t included a name. They matched. Most bases were probably built similar to one another, so I figured that would be the reason I thought I recognized it.
“Wow. Talk about well guarded. It’s okay, we’ve taken worse before.” Raquel said. “I’ll just find a way to bypass the security system.”
I noticed something on the blueprints, and I almost groaned. “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about the security systems.” I said in a dread-filled voice.
“What? Why not?” Kris asked, looking over our shoulders.
I pointed to the schematic’s corner. “Enlarge those words.” I instructed Raquel.
She obeyed, and read them. “Oh no…”
“‘Oh no’ is right.” I nodded.
There were two words in that corner, and those two words: Errol Base.