No Easy Day

[Jane Hartman]

No Easy Day

Commander HARTMAN, Jane
Liberty Logistics Corps
Ames Research Station

Thirteen years was a long time to keep a secret. Jane Hartman's hands skittered across the Rhino's control panel, guiding the battered freighter into the welcoming darkness of Ames station's waiting docking bay. The station was much as she remembered it, generation-old solar panels hanging off hull panels still gleaming from the factory. The care the Zoners took to maintain the sub-par docking wing seemed borderline obsessive when she compared to the excesses of core space. They were excesses, though. Years between landings hadn't been long enough to forget that.

She stole a glance at the man buckled in beside her. A veteran pilot, and plenty else besides, Reginald Lewis was a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. Today, he sat at the Rhino's secondary controls, guiding the freighter into the bay as she responded to the station's hails. It was an old ship by core standards, a remnant from her days as a Midshipman that she had never quite found the time to replace. Compared to some of the junk heaps crouching in Ames though, the ship may as well have been brand new. Fifty year old mining ships, micro-meteor dents dotting their hulls, sat alongside the newest Renzu fighters.

"You know, my grandfather always said you could spot a Zoner base." Hartman fiddled with the control panel, locking awkward landing struts in place. Sound hit the ship like a wave as the bays clanked closed, atmosphere pouring back into the waiting hangar. For the first time in the hour-long hop, external noise drowned out the droning engine. "Only damn consistent thing was the inconsistency."

No customs workers greeted the pair as they stepped off the Rhino's loading ramp. A solitary docking work tapped their arrival into a datapad and gave them a cursory weapons scan before moving down the row to where the next ship, a battered Eagle that looked to be made up of various bits of other ships, was already touching down. Hartman regarded the lax security with a mixture of bemusement and despair. Military bases would have scanned her half a dozen times with at least as many different instruments before she so much as stepped off the ship. Here, they got one exhausted worker and a tick in a box. Surely it hadn't always been that bad. She thanked God that she wasn't staying on-station that night. Granting docking clearance to everyone had the unfortunate side effect of dragging people who were out to kill one another into the same room, neutral station or no. At least she didn't have her uniform on.

"Hold down the fort for a moment. There's something I need to collect." She caught the question in Lewis' gaze. "Old transponder ID. I stored it here a long time ago, before I re-enlisted. We'll need it later." She raised a hand, fully preparing for a storm of queries. "I'll tell you once we're back aboard. I ain't planning on taking a holiday out here if I can help it, so if you want to stretch your legs this'd be the time to do it." She waved over a docking attendant and, after a quick exchange of credits, a fuel hose found its way to the itinerant Rhino's underside.

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