THIS STORY WAS MADE FROM THE GUYS YOU GUYS CAME UP WITH.
(If you could repost them here some day, that would be nice.)
Noss Bigger was physically a beast of a man: Six foot two with a healthy muscular build and dark skin, and shaved bald as the day he was born. This belied the fact that he was a very 'chill' soul. He wanted nothing more than to recline in the pilot's chair, or sleep out in the sun on the roof of his captain's ship, parked on a nice planet somewhere. He had ample skill with both the piloting controls and the long sniper rifle he kept by his side on those rooftop naps, waiting for his captain to get himself in trouble. Of course, the truth was that he was happiest when not using either. This was what was happening as his captain's ship, Boatmurderd, was docked with large outer ring of a space station locally known as 'The Wagon Wheel.' He could have joined the rest of the crew on the little shopping expedition, but was happiest taking a break and watching the flow of relatively active spacecraft activity dance in an out of docking ports. Later, he figured, he might take a nap. A little work thought finally intruded, and he clicked on the com, talking in his lazy deliberate tone.
“We fueled yet, Derek?”
A quick reply, as if strained for time, came back “Yeah, yeah, Noss. They're done. We're ready to go when the captain gets back.”
“Everybody else headin' home?”
“Alexander and the doctor walking into the docking ring now, if you want to take their word for it. Here comes the doc in fact, looks like he's in a huge hurry and...”
“Derek?”
There was a delay of three or four seconds.
“Shit, get ready Noss. I'm going to go heat up the core, looks like the station sensors caught a whiff of something large and Alliance heading this way.”
The big man was annoyed and sat up, lifting the chair's back upright.
“Ah hell, some reason we didn't catch it?”
“Little ship sensors ain't as good at casting around, I guess. And you can't read 'em for shit.”
“Watch it, shorty.” Noss growled, but he let it go at that. He really didn't understand sensors as well as his other piloting controls.
“Decker is on board, and they say the others are right behind 'em. We need to leave ASAP.”
“We're ready, just let me know.”
Noss watched as the traffic out his large view port became steadily more frantic, ships not waiting for clearance and darting out of ports, no new traffic docking, the occasional full burn of a pilot that desperate to get a million miles of clearance. He was relatively sure they could pass an Alliance inspection, they were between illicit cargoes, and didn't exactly have anything to hide. He knew his captain would never take the chance though, and indeed, inside of three minutes, Captain Isaac Hatch wheeled into the bay with a large two person ATV he hadn't owned this morning. Doc Decker shut the main hatch behind him, and as soon as somebody yelled to go over the intercom, Noss detached without clearance, noticing that the proximity alerts for alliance radio chatter were starting to go off. He wasn't sure if they were in patrol boat range yet, but not taking a chance, he blew a bunch of fresh fuel jumping instantly to full burn, Boatmurdered's rich orange flame coalesced behind the main rocket cone in the back for a minute before the pulse drive kicked in and the ship was rocketing off toward the moons on the far side of the system.
Calm and cruising again at last, he reclined again, before a thought struck him.
“One of you mind filling me in?” He finally asked, over the intercom.
---
Captain Isaac Hatch had been having a pretty good day, all things considered. Of course, he held such things close to his heart and kept a scowl up for everybody else's benefit. Even though he was spending the last of his cashey money, he had a job lined up and a boat still in the air. He'd learned you couldn't hope for much more without somebody come to take it all away, so when you had that, it was a good day. He and Alexander Kirosa, his 'stealth specialist' would have made a good match of unwillingness to say anything, but Alexander had opted to hang back and talk with the much more easygoing and happy Doc Decker, so Isaac was left to his own devices. Honestly, he'd already done all the shopping he needed to and had money for, but it wasn't every day you could get off your ship and just wander for an hour or two without worrying to heavily about who was planning to shoot you.
He was a little unnerved to find that Alexander had pulled up alongside him silently. Alexander, always impeccably dressed perfectly to blend in with a situation, was sporting a mix of spacer and rim world garb, and had put a twang into his normally crisp accent. It was with this voice that it became clear he had something to note.
“Hey cap'n, you see the activity in the sky box?” He asked, pointing up at the plexiglass and steel series of walkways and control stations of the visible overhead security station.
“No more'n usual.”
“Red light. Rear alert panel. They haven't said anything, but they're going to.”
He nodded, still not entirely sure where this was going “Decker, head back to the ship.”
The doc, dressed only in jeans and a tee shirt with a corporate logo in Mandarin characters, nodded. He still had a smile, but it was the worried nervous kind now.
Alexander prodded again “And we ain't runnin , cap'n? This sounds exactly like my kind of runnin away.”
“C'mon, crisis and opportunity are the same word after all.”
“That's such bullshit, Wei Ji started as just 'Danger.' Where did you learn your Chinese hist-” He stopped short: Of course the captain had no education on that sort of thing.
“Mmm” Isaac noted helpfully.
“Had your eye on something?” Alexander finally asked wearily.
“They left a sweet little cargo mule on display in front of a kiosk. Keys sittin on a nearby pedestal.”
“I'm not even gonna ask how you know they're real when you can't notice a damn alarm light above.”
