Day 2: Another day, another Credit Somehow, this never gets old. Having a view through those panorama windows, no matter which station you are getting up on. Even if it presents just a void of orange dust and a thousand shapes of dark rocks floating through it, like on HUR L3. Some stars sparkling, the shadows of other arms of the station giving you a sense of depth and distance, ships approaching, with their own pilots and souls and stories and business ideas and dreams aboard. Space. Some say, it’s sort of a final frontier. Maybe. If we weren’t restrained to this system by some tech failure, piracy, prowling aliens or fate. Or all of those. Well, one day we ought to get lucky, there HAVE to be people working on asomething like a rescue plan from the outside. In the meantime, Stanton is all we got. Emptying my cup and heading down to Hangars & Habs, I thought I liked that smaller place, HUR L3. Shorter roads, shorter departure times. It’s also closer to those smalltime bounty hunting jobs, I was hoping to make a few Credits with. Which then indeed worked out quite well, for a few encounters. Though there is the feeling, those fights had been somewhat easier before, regarding number of incoming missiles and quality of evasive maneuvers on the target side. Practice would do the trick, as with all things. My mood was brightening up a bit. Coming across a Fines & Citations Payment terminal, a few trips later, I found that I was still indebted with 4k for trespassing. Crap. That yesterday’s incident on Aberdeen kept following me. No matter. I decided to polish my mood by adding another pair of Lasers to the extra slots in that Aurora’s wings. But, before I could pursue that idea, I noticed some pilot calling for help in global communications. Needed to be picked up, due to ship loss on Yela (Crusader), he said, no beacon attached. There it was again. What are you doing to loose a ship on Yela and need rescue after, my man? And again, I cast further doubts aside, let my shopping plans be and moved my tiny medical support ass to the lobby. Day 2: A blast of a rescue Fast and sleek 315p was the ship of choice for that occasion. Found another piece of art there, laying on the bed. Have I been an arts dealer? The painting showed a scene of a ship falling apart above a planet, astronauts scattered amoungst the debris. Great! Couldn’t it just had been happy smiling people? I set course and informed the stranded pilot that I accepted his call and was on my way. Announcing my arrival above Yela, my friend in distress spoke of new problems „they“ had. When asked, what he meant, he said he accidently shot his friend and had a crime stat now. And that they now were maybe hunted. Funny. Fishy. Exciting. Now there were two of them! AND they were hunted. Why, with that kind of revelations, I keep sticking to my assignments, I can’t explain. Only quality in there coming to my mind, is that I am holding true to my word. That must be worth something around. Probably, it’s just a very dumb notion. Three Kilometers below, I found my two guys running and hiding behind some grey-white icy dunes, clad in armor, rifles on their back. Here goes nothing. „He’s near“, they shouted through comms. And I knew, they weren’t talking about me. I landed and kept an eye on the radar. And didn’t bother to turn around, when I heard the 315’s door opening. „Are you in?“ I asked. „Yes“, came the answer, „let’s go!“ That’s when I got the signal of a missile lock. I lifted off and gave full throttle, also firing both counter measures for lack of knowing (or better, of taking the time to figure out) what kind of missiles were coming in. They missed, as did the few shots of red lasers. Within a few seconds we made clear of the atmosphere, Grim Hex in my crosshair, Quantum drive charged. At the point I jumped, I realized three things: first, I didn’t explode into a ball of wreckage above Yela, second, my two passengers haven’t shot me yet, third, I won’t yet be safe at the exit point of that jump. Arriving amidst the asteroids of that belt, made me suddenly remember some more fragments of a past life. And gave me a strange feeling of returning home. Not regarding Grim Hex per se, but more looking at all the rocks of different sorts tumbling by. Movement behind me brought me back to the present needs. I still got Grim Hex in front of me and made a haste to accelerate, weighing three upcoming problems in my mind: asteroids to navigate around in full speed, the need of asking for a place to land on arrival, and the time I would need to circle around that big rock and find my hangar for a safe touch down. Turned out, that we heard or saw nothing from our pursuer until we circled GH and were gliding towards the open hangar. I wondered why not more of those laser shots were hitting us, why we wouldn’t shake, why no warnings about shield loss were uttered. Maybe we just had a rookie pilot behind us. Like myself. Who also was out of missiles. Or maybe just as nervous as me. You see, I still was much too excited (in a bad way) to calmly check out radars and maybe get a picture of our adversary, to think of what else I could do while entering the hangar, besides only hoping for the best. Cooler pilots would have turned around, faced the enemy and retaliated fire while flying and landing backwards. But, I was in panic. The bare me. A girl that’s maybe not made for the job she chose to get into. And then it all was over. I had landed, the hangar gates closed, the shots incoming disappeared. We did it! When I got up, my two passengers had already left. I found them outside in the hangar. They thanked me and asked what they could do for me. I wonder what they thought, seeing me stand there in just a thin jumpsuit, with two medpens attached, squishy, red cheeks, shaking. They gave me 7k Credits each. Which was a third of what they got, they said. And wished me to fly save. A fine motto. Guess I will stick to it. Bought me those new Lasers, I spoke of. Distortion repeaters. Now I am shooting red and blue things. Cool colour mix. Especially in a cloud of orange dust and dark shapes of floating rocks.