Anomalous Cargo - Chapter 1

[Fhg#1893]

Anomalous Cargo - Chapter 1

The occasional excitement that Tred craved was all too infrequent for his liking.

It was three wozuras ago, Tred Decker found himself at what he considered his lowest point, ferrying angry, impatient passengers for minimal pay.

On that particular tazura, Tred was resolving that there was exactly one thing worse than doing boring taxi service for very low pay, and that was doing boring taxi service for very low pay, with a killer hangover.

Shortly after the battle of Omicron Lyrae, the courier business had quickly turned from reasonably profitable, exciting, and generally pleasant, to dangerous, boring, and worst of all extremely low low-paying.

The chaos and destruction of the Khaak invasion had either killed or bankrupted many of the wealthy clients that Tred would normally rely on to pay the bills. It also produced many poor refugees, who couldn't afford much, but flooded the transport market, all trying to get out of the war-zone. Of course, the problem with the Khaak was that the war-zone was pretty much everywhere. They were tired, stressed, and most of all poor, much like the Boron who was now sat in Tred's converted passenger hold, and annoyed him to no end.

Tred seriously thought about spacing the creature, but a reliable source of credits was hard to come by, and Tred had made damn sure that this Boron had the necessary credits to pay him before allowing the... thing to bored what was still his ship.

'Let the confused squid-calamari thing try to welch on transport, and I get to enjoy spacing it! On second thought, maybe I'll make a detour to Rhonkar's Clouds and sell it into slavery... or maybe lunch.'

For a moment Tred thought of a vaguely remembered conversation where he thought that he'd heard that boiled Boron was a rare and expensive
delicacy among some of the more wealthy Split. Tred found the thought of that annoying beast being messily devoured by some wealthy Split patriarch so appealing, he momentarily forgot about the Spacefly eggs that seemed to be hatching in his skull.

Only to be rudely reminded of it, the moment his mic chimed, and that creature in what Tred had determined to be its most irritating and patronizing tone demanded, "Pilot, this compartment has no windows, is rather unpleasant looking, and I simply must arrive in Kingdom End as soon as possible, because the cabin has no food, or windows, and I'm very bored, how much longer now?"

The courier business was about delayed gratification, but at the moment, Tred wasn't sure just how much delay he could endure before he would seriously start to consider slavery, or perhaps food delivery as a more appealing line of business.

Many independent couriers had fallen, and fallen hard. Tred considered himself one of those.

Tred reluctantly keyed his mic, "We're still about 40 mizuras away. I'll let you know when we start to get close." Tred muted the mic before the Boron could respond and steeled his resolve against his more base urges which were by this point screaming for him to do something very unpleasant to the alien. These tazuras, reputation was everything, and Tred knew that he couldn't withstand a tainted one, no matter how much pleasure it might give him.

Forty five mizuras later, Tred barely even noticed that the irritating creature had in fact, paid him the agreed price; he wasn't even really happy to be rid of the thing because he was reasonably confident that the thing would very likely end up breeding at some point, and sooner or later,
Tred would encounter the thing's descendants. Somehow, this thought was more terrifying to Tred than the threats of both the Xenon and Khaak combined.

He shook his head, and realized quickly this was the sort of experience that could only be properly rationalized through the pleasant haze induced by large quantities of alcohol. And given the Mazura that Tred was having, the less he could remember of that wretched Boron, the better.

Unfortunately for Tred, he was docked at the trading station in Kingdom End, and Borons weren't well-known for producing alcohol. Fortunately for Tred, the Three Worlds system was only one jump away, and Argons were widely considered the undisputed masters of alcohol.

Of course, when the Teladi had learned of the Argon's seemingly limitless thirst for alcohol, they spent vast numbers of credits trying to find a way to ferment sunrise flowers into something comparable to Argon ale, or better yet, Space fuel, but with rather limited success. The end-product was known as Teladi sulstrop, which had a very strong aroma somewhere between rotten eggs, and burnt insulation, and once the smell got in, it was almost impossible to get out, though the taste was actually rather bland and unremarkable. Ultimately, the Teladi gave up trying to perfect sulstrop, though it's still occasionally ordered by thrill seeking Argon youths looking to experience the infamous odor of sulstrop while on layover in Teladi space. For most, and for companions unfortunate enough to be traveling with such brash youth, once is more than enough, and they usually spend the next wozura deeply regretting that they'd ever heard the name sulstrop.

At the moment, Tred seriously considered asking around the station to see if the boron had stocked anything alcoholic, even sulstrop.

But after a moment's reflection, Tred decided that even in his current state, he wasn't quite that desperate... yet. Besides, he knew a great bar on the trading station in Three Worlds.

Tred suddenly found himself staring at his account balance, and set off, trying very hard not to think about the most recent deposit.

[Syndrome]

Good start. I read the prolouge as well. One thing, maybe I missed it but what ship is Tred flying? I'm guessing a converted TS.

There's a new story being started up every week nowadays. I don't know how I'll keep up with them all

[SOTS]

lol Who cares about keeping up with all of them? When they're this well-written, you only need to keep up with a couple of them. Like this one.

Yes, that *does* make sense.

Keep it up It's nice to see a story that involves a relatively peaceful plot, that deals with the deeper aspects of a war, rather than a militaristic story about blowing stuff up. lol Even though I'm guilty of writing just such a blowing-stuff-up story