“Primo stuff captain,” said Braden, now out of breath, as he approached Dar and held up a tablet, “With just what they already have stockpiled we’ll make a fortune. I haven’t seen juice this good in years. Are you sure we can’t work this play?”
“This ink-rock is going to be hard cargo until we can legitimize it at the exchange desk,” answered Dar as he shook his head and nodded back up the stairs, “Get everything on the stockyard ready for pickup, I want this planet tasting our after burn in the next two hours.”
Braden exhaled deeply and turned to walk back up the stairs.
“We just made fools of Ackerman and Jema on their own play, and the only reason we aren’t taking air to surface fire from the Etheria right now is that they don’t want to damage their own platform more than it already is,” explained Dar as he looked at an incredulous Samuel, gesturing his head towards the carnage on the first floor. “They’re making a bet that we’ll seize the haul and leave. Then they can hire a new crew and start where they left off. It will cost them for sure, but people are cheaper than structures and equipment. If they fight us now, they’ll lose more than they already have.”
“Better to let us go than to risk losing the entire compound, or word getting out to other prospectors that they can’t hold their own claim,” observed Samuel as he grimaced in pain taking the last few steps down onto the hard-packed surface of the planet. “Which is also why they won’t report this to any of the corporate authorities either. It was never the plan to work this play.”
“You picked up on that pretty fast for a Grotto man,” snorted Narek as he hauled himself up into the driver’s seat of the rover with his good arm. “We hit em hard, take what’s already been extracted, then get it to market with nobody the wiser. Exchange desk doesn’t care where the juice comes from if there’s nobody squawking, only that it arrives without a fuss.”
“We’ve made an enemy, sure as sure, but this is necrospace, and the times we live in, Samuel,” said Dar while he helped the marine get a still woozy Sura loaded into the rover, the captain noticing the grim look on the marine’s face. “The cost of staking and defending our own claim, especially on a planet where there’s a rival already drilling, would have been so much more than the cost of a raid. We risked big to do this, but the profit margin will be huge if we can get this to market before the next crash.”
“We’ve become pirates!” snapped Samuel, his temper getting the better of him before he could force himself to keep quiet. Anger flashed briefly across Dar’s face, but the captain maintained his calm.
“I told you the line was blurred, Samuel,” said Sura suddenly, reminding the men in the rover that she was still at least semi-conscious. “Not much different than Reapers on a hostile salvage is it?”
“There are rules of engagement for salvage, or at least in theory,” responded Samuel, his exasperation turning to exhaustion as the conversation continued. “And we killed everybody, no prisoners taken, just like pirates.”
“Real pirates would do all that and then strip the compound after emptying the stockpile, but we ’re leaving it intact,” the captain added while Narek fired up the rover’s engine and started backing the vehicle out so that they could get into an open landing zone for pickup. “Ackerman and Jema will have a new crew hired and be back into production in a few months, maybe even sooner. Though we’ve bloodied their nose, we didn’t completely ruin them. There’s at least some attention paid to sustainability here. Our own kind of trade war amongst prospectors.”
“Tell that to Michael or all those prospectors we just retired. The new crew will be walking onto a compound with no clue how bad it went for the first one. Management on both sides mark the lives lost on the balance sheet and the drill keeps drilling. You’re right captain,” growled Samuel from the back seat as he looked back at the battle site, “Just like a trade war.”
“I am losing my patience with your tone, Mister Hyst,” stated Dar as a way of rebuttal while he turned in the passenger seat to face the marine, his own voice growing menacingly flat in the wake of the Rig Halo’s engines as the prospecting vessel appeared over the mountains and began its descent near the rover. “You perform a much-needed function on this crew and have been a great help to Yanna during production. I would be greatly displeased to find myself inclined to re-evaluate the decision to bring you and your family aboard my ship.”
“Easy, Captain,” said Sura with a strained voice as she squeezed Dar’s shoulder and fought to remain conscious despite her desire to fall asleep, which she knew would be problematic given the high likelihood that she was suffering from a concussion. “You too, marine. This is the job, so let’s finish it, shall we? We can argue about the details another time.”
“Listen to the pretty lady, gentlemen,” cackled Narek in his low voice, the former trooper seeming to find much humor in the strained relationship between the three passengers in the rover. “Paycheck over personality, as we say on Cressida, though I like your ‘this is the job’ thing, it’s cute.”
Narek made another comment, though the sound of it was drowned out by the roar of engines as the Rig Halo made its landing.
Samuel was furious, though he took several deep breaths and calmed himself down. He’d already been part of the atrocity and knew there was no taking it back. Sura was right, the only thing to do now was push forward, see to fruition what they’d set in motion. He’d never earned pay in his life that wasn’t blood money of one sort or another, and though he yet wrestled with the brutal truth, it seemed unavoidable. The man who had once fought pirates had now become one himself.
5. ROCK LIFE
Samuel’s goggles auto-tinted as he turned his head slowly to scan the topmost platform. The twin suns of UEP26 were beginning to drop behind the low mountain range, giving the unexplored planet’s landscape a dull orange glow as the dusk light shone through the particle haze being ejected from the Rig.
The Halo hung in low orbit above the detached drilling compound, the silhouette of it looking almost more like a black beetle crawling across the atmosphere than a ship. Meridian had the vessel’s weapons array primed as he took the craft on a long picket in order to maintain the security of the compound. From his vantage point, the pilot could swoop down hard and fire upon any incoming hostiles that were already in atmosphere or could hold the line against any coming in from the deep black of space.
It had been several years since the bloody events on Osi 2216, and while violence on that scale had not occurred since, the time had not passed without the occasional scrape.
Samuel had learned quickly that Captain Dar was indeed right, and the life of a prospector involved much more gunplay than the marine would have thought common. Any time Braden found a suitable planet to make a drilling venture there was about a half and half chance that there would either be squatters or prospectors already working a play or claim jumpers would emerge and make a run at the score before the Rig Halo was able to wrap up.
Narek proved himself a capable leader, more so than Samuel had initially estimated, and though the two men were often still at odds when it came to personality and the past, the security team functioned tightly. The former battle trooper had sent to Cressida for Michael’s replacement, as well as another two shooters to bolster the ranks after the sudden departure of Jayce. The young merc had continued to show a particular lust for killing that eventually could not be ignored by the captain, though Samuel suspected it was Sura’s voice in the Dar’s ear that finally pushed him to cut the merc from the crew.