"It ain't much, but it's honest work" aka "The freelancer's woes"

[Demonic]

Finnean MacRory
Somewhere in Cambridge, piloting Highlander
10/21/833

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Finn cursed his luck. First, the minefield, then a police gunship caught them smuggling iridium to Dublin and then his brother came up with the brilliant idea of stuffing Finn into a small freighter and sending him off to the deep omicrons to deliver some biodome construction stuff to Pygar on extremely short notice. Finn wasn’t even sure who he was delivering the stuff to. He had to leave Ol’Reliable in Sheena’s hands and get on his way almost immediately after docking in New London’s orbit. At least his brother had the sense to get the freighter and the goods delivered to New London instead of making Finn go get it, and he added the channel he used to negotiate the contract to the freighter’s computer. Finn sighed. He was still in house space, riding a long trade lane in the Cambridge system, nothing the autopilot can’t handle, so Finn might as well check who the client is.

Turned out it was some small religious organisation. New Covenant Church, they were calling themselves. Finn remembered he saw some open broadcast from them, so he punched their name into the terminal. Sure enough, the broadcast came up, along with some press releases. Finn checked his NavMap, but he was still a decent way away from the point where he needed to leave the trade lane, so he played the broadcast. It was a speech of sorts. It didn’t give him much in terms of understanding who he was dealing with, so he pulled up the press releases. They were a bit more informative. What he saw gave him an impression of a small religious group, well, at least if you take the whole sector as a scale, with large goals, and possibly, though the jury was still divided about that, delusions of grandeur.

But the church also looked like they preferred diplomacy over guns, so all in all it looked like a customer who can potentially bring a lot of business, while the risks, at least in terms of not getting paid for the goods, were minimal.

His terminal beeped and Finn glanced at the NavMap. The waypoint he set up was approaching fast, so he closed all unrelated stuff, turned off the autopilot and about a minute later he disengaged the trade lane. A brief deceleration pushed him into the seat, and then he was free from the corridor. There were no ships on his scanners, so he engaged cruise and headed for his next checkpoint, a jump hole hidden in an ice cloud.

This trip might turn out to be one of the mind numbingly boring ones, but it might just open new trade opportunities in the deeper omicrons.

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