Sable's Experiences

[Toaster]

July 21, 827 A.S.

Olivia looked out at the busy hangar bay from the relative quiet of her cockpit. Her ship shook gently as the engines spun down. A score of men and women hurried around the place, from one craft to another, carrying maintenance equipment, dragging fuel lines, pushing cargo carts. Olivia glanced to her left. Parked beside her was a freighter, a Dromedary. The markings on it coincided with the identifiers Pedro had given her. It was the courier's ship.

She unbuckled herself and crawled back into her cargo compartment, pressing the button to lower the exit ramp as she went. From within her quarters she grabbed the supposed toolbox and descended down the ramp onto the bay's deck. A man in dusty overalls approached her, a PDA in hand.

"Welcome to Ames," he spoke loudly over the din of activity. "Name and purpose, please?"

Olivia dug into a pocket on her flightsuit and drew out a plastic ID card, extending her arm for the foreman to see.

"Isabel Dines, just looking for work," she lied. It was an old alias, one she had used a dozen times in the past. She hoped it would still pass superficial scrutiny. The foreman glanced over the ID and typed the information into his tablet. He nodded to her and turned away without another word. Olivia released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding.




"One ale, please," Olivia said to the man behind the bar as she sat down on one of the stools at the long counter, turning to face the room. Like the hangars, it was quite busy. A dockworker had told her that an outcropping of the western dark matter cloud had passed across the trade lane junction earlier, forcing much of the through-traffic to dock at the research station. It seemed most of the pilots and crews had decided to wait the storm out here, getting drunk. The bartender placed a bottle of Liberty ale on the countertop behind Olivia before going back to polishing some silverware.

As Olivia observed the crowd, her thoughts went back to her previous inspection of the station. The hangars were all bustling with activity, which would make catching her target on the decks difficult. However, barely lit maintenance catwalks criss-crossed the ceilings, offering a perfect vantage point for a sniper. The habitation modules, meanwhile, were relatively calm. Finding an empty hallway to take her mark out in would be simple, hiding the body on the other hand would be a challenge. Most of the quarters were occupied, the doors kept locked by their inhabitants. That left the engineering decks as a third option. Rarely frequented, loud machinery, plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in. A perfect environment for a kill. Problem was, how to get her target down there. The courier had no business moving through the maintenance levels.

Olivia sighed. This would be more difficult than expected. Taking her eyes off the other patrons of the bar, she produced the PDA that Pedro had left with her from inside her flightsuit and went over the information on her target once again. Juan Pedro, twenty-five years old, of Cretan descent. Tall, athletic. Not someone she would necessarily want to take on in a fistfight. She glanced around the room again, scanning for the man's face in the masses. There were plenty of Hispanians around, most likely from Malta. None of them resembled her mark.

Olivia turned on her stool and placed the PDA on the bar. She stared at the bottle of ale before her for a moment, imagining breaking it over the countertop and ramming the jagged shards into Pedro's throat. Then she grabbed the bottle and raised it to her lips, allowing herself to enjoy the taste of beer before she would have to get to work.




A few hours later, Olivia found herself wandering around one of the habitats. As before, it was quiet, only a few of its inhabitants to be found in the corridors. Most of the doors were shut, a few sounds of conversation or neural net broadcasts to be heard through some of them. Olivia tightened her grip on her toolbox' handle. She wanted to get this job over with quickly. The sooner she could be done with it, the sooner she'd be rid of Pedro and back in Liberty.

Thinking about this, she nearly ran into two men rounding a corner in the hallways. They all stopped short, staring at each other in surprise and apologizing. Looking at them. it struck her. One of the two was Perno. He stood half a head taller than her and wore a simple grey jacket over a brown and yellow overall. Olivia quickly averted her gaze, fearing to be recognized in case he had ever seen her back during the days when she worked more frequently for Pedro. The recognition never came, however, as the two men excused themselves and continued past her. Olivia glanced back at them over her shoulder. The other man was shorter than her and a little plump, of Libertonian origin most likely.

She listened closely to what the two were discussing while they were still in earshot.

"Juan, look," the short man muttered, "my client's interested, but he wants to see the goods first."

"Fine, I get it," Perno replied, agitated. "But I can't exactly show off a crate full of artifacts here when it's so damn busy."

"Yes, yes, of course," the other said. "He's well aware of that. That's why he'll meet you on the lower decks, engineering, in two hours. Bring a sample and make sure you're..." The two men turned another corner and disappeared.

Olivia lingered a little longer, weighing this new information in her mind. The engineering decks. Technically the best place for her to take her target out. But there would be others, whoever this "client" of Perno's was. Nonetheless, her odds were better down there than they were in the hangars or here in the habitats. She nodded to herself and strode off towards the nearest elevator.

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Olivia Sable