When my ass hit the seat a message flared up on my hud.

You are unauthorized to take possession of

Civilian Shuttle Type “Interplanetary”

I-Tag: 5GCPKSE77DG238827

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Previous owner deceased

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Would you like to claim

Civilian Shuttle Type “Interplanetary”

I-Tag: 5GCPKSE77DG238827

?

“Yes, yes you hunk of junk. I need to fly this thing.” I yelled into my com.

Congratulations. You have successfully taken possession of

Civilian Shuttle Type “Interplanetary”

I-Tag: 5GCPKSE77DG238827

You can change your ship’s identification tag once. It will then be registered by that name. Any further changes of I-Tags are not allowed. Please be advised that flying under a stolen or false identification tag is a crime in Federation space.

I just swiped the message to the side. Mentally. I needed to get control over this thing and get back down to the planet. The turret sensors showed me that the dot of the ship had automatically changed color to blue. And the other red dot was still burning out of range. The lasers had nearly busted the shield but that was it.

Shelter Checker was still in the same spot and hopefully unaware that I was in control of the shuttle.

I familiarized myself with the controls. Very similar flight controls to what I was used to from Rustbucket. Autopilot seemed similar too but since I was a bit under pressure, I rather bring this thing down myself.

I pulled up the shuttle’s sensor display. Shit, even Rustbucket’s was better than this one. The fastest way would have been a flip, fire the main engines for a moment and then come down for a hard landing. Or something like that. Seemed logical. But not with my piloting skill. So instead I switched the display around until I found something that showed me the relative position to the asteroid and the spot I had marked to land. Then I flipped on the acceleration vector view which showed me in which direction the ship was moving by displaying arrows of various lengths.

I toggled the various thrusters until the arrows pointed AT the asteroid instead of away from it. It felt like it was taking forever and because I had the ship’s screen cluttered with information to fly the thing, I couldn’t pull up the feed of the gunfight. So instead I tried getting information the old fashioned way.

“Ralgau, talk to me.”

“Still alive, still shooting.” came the terse reply.

“I am in control of the ship and I am coming back down. Don’t shoot at the ship. I’ll come down behind and flank him. Hopefully our shooter will think that I am there for pickup.”

“Just hurry up. I’d rather catch a ride to the station than a plasma bolt.”

“Let me know if he is repositioning.”

The reply was a grunt but by now I had spent enough time with him to understand that it was an acknowledgment.

It took me another half a minute before I felt the hard clank of the ship touching down on the asteroid. Yeah, I wasn’t that careful but I didn’t want to take too long. I prefer having living friends with me instead of dead friends on station.

The moment that the shuttle was down I got up from the pilot seat and started shuffling in the direction of the door. A quick check of the sensor hud showed me one small red dot high tailing it in the direction of the shuttle. The blue dot of Ralgau was also moving in my direction although slower. Either more careful or more injured. The me-sized shooter just crossed the last meters to haul himself up into the hatch when I appeared in his way with a plasma pistol aimed at the center of his torso.

“Stop!” I shouted with my com set to local.

He looked up and started bringing up the rifle while his brain processed the situation.

Let me tell you something fun about plasma weapons. When you simply pull the trigger you shoot a standard bolt. However, when you only pull the trigger half, you get a charged shot. Meaning it will charge to one and a half times the destructive power and hold that charge there until you pull the trigger fully and let the powered up shot go. Now that is fun but apparently elementary according to Ralgau. What I found fun was that while you charge the shot, you have a strangely cool glow building up that gets brighter while the charging is happening.

And it worked just the way I hoped. While his body was still in the motion of bringing the rifle up, his brain had already processed that glow and before the weapon was fully pointed at me, he stopped his movement.

“Weapon on the ground and hands up above your head.” I commanded.

He didn’t even try. You know, bend down and pretend you put the weapon to the floor. He simply gave it a little push and the rifle dropped down to the asteroid.

“Got him.” I told Ralgau after switching my coms to direct.

A few seconds later and I saw my big friend walk-hopping in our direction. When he got there, he picked up the dropped rifle, making sure never to cross my firing line. I love working with professionals.

I switched my coms back to local: “Time for a chat.”

* * * * *

Ralgau was not only a professional when it came to firing lines. He also managed to tie up our ‘prisoner’ using some of the mining netting. I don’t know if that was a skill he picked up for a girlfriend or his former pirate buddies but I have to admit that the way he tied the Fell’s hands behind his back and hobbled his feet reminded me of some of the things I had seen in the adult sections of the Hub.

I winced when I dropped down on one of the storage boxes inside in front of the tied up guy.

“You okay?” Ralgau asked over direct.

“Yeah. Got hit hard by a piece of rock when I was running for the shuttle. I thought the leg was broken at first. But better know. Still hurts though.”

“Suit okay?”

“Would I still be breathing if it weren't?”

I swear, I get better at interpreting Ralgau’s answering grunts. This one was an eye-roll grunt.

“Run a diagnostic anyway. You could have micro tears in the material. Or a weakness that could rip at any time.”

He had a point and I hadn’t thought of it. So I mentally started the diagnostic before turning my attention back to our captured shooter.

“Name?” I asked via local, the pistol still in my hand, resting on my leg pointing in his direction. I would never fire it that way but it would be quick to bring it up.

“Yellen.” he answered.

“Are you Red Moon?”

“I can’t answer that,” he responded with a shaky voice.

“Are you sure?” I turned my head towards the pistol and then back to him. Damn face plates. There goes the subtlety of eye movements.

“Yes, if I tell you anything they kill me.”

“Uhm, pretty sure that if you don’t tell us, we can accelerate that.” I said, lifting the pistol slightly and playing with the charge function.

“Yeah, you can kill me but you will let my family live.”

“What has your family to do with anything?” I was confused.

“They… they forced us. They came to us and first they wanted money. Then they took more and more and when we couldn’t pay they had a ‘job’ for us. Once we did the first, we had to keep going because they were threatening to give evidence to system security. In the end they used our ships for their business because we had a clean license.”

Ah shit. So another story of people being used by criminals. I had seen those quite a few times. People were at the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly they were neck deep in the shit. I groaned. I didn’t have time or patience for this shit. The adrenaline was wearing off, my leg was hurting and my health was still down. At least my suit diagnostic had come back clean. No issues there.

I was startled when Ralgau kicked the Fell quite literally out of his chair. A big ass front kick right to the dude’s shoulder. The ‘prisoner’ tumbled out of the chair and his face plate smacked into the rocky floor. Before he could do anything more than yell in surprise, Ralgau had followed him, kicked him onto his back and put his foot on the guy's torso.

“You. Are. Full. Of. Grelic. Excrement.” he enunciated every word, accompanied by growls. “Who is the ship registered to?”

“My brother.” the Fell squeaked.

“And he is where?”

“Home. With my family.”

Ah, I finally saw where he was going with that.

“You realize who landed the shuttle, right?” I asked.

“Oh…”

“Yep, oh. Is the brain catching up?”

“The void take you!” he cursed while struggling under Ralgau’s foot. I did not know what the guys strength or agility scores were but they were definitely not enough to get out from under a Sorren’s heel.

Ralgau pointed his rifle in the guy’s face and let a charge build up. “You must be thinking that you get out of this alive. Believe me, you are not. No matter which way this is going. Either I kill you, system security kills you or the Red Moon kills you. You are already dead.”

“No reason for me to tell you anything then.”

Ralgau held his hand out to me.

“Flechette,” he demanded.

I don’t know why, I just handed it to him. I would never torture someone, never brutalize someone who is not fighting back. It’s… wrong. But I was so caught up in everything that I didn’t pay any attention and just handed it to him. He took it with his left hand and aimed at the guy’s leg.

“You better hold very still now.”

Before the Fell could say anything else, the flechette had already nailed into his upper thigh.

“Looks like you have a vac suit problem. You have twenty seconds or so to tell us what’s what and we fix the leak. Or you die right now, right here. Suffocating and freezing. Horrible death from what I hear.”

The Fell lay still as a rock.

“Fix it.” I pleaded between shallow breaths.

“Eighteen seconds.” Ralgau responded.

“Please! Fix it!”

“Sixteen seconds.”

“Yes, I am with the Red Moon. We stole the shuttles from a salvage company and used them to tow a small rock into a crash course.”

“Hold still.” Ralgau answered. Then he stepped away and picked up a bottle of sealant. We had used it to fix mining bags that broke but I guess it worked just was well on a busted vac suit. He sprayed it over the leg as he pulled out the flechette darts. He was fast with it too. Like he had done this before. I needed to hear more about his story.

When he was done, he shoved the guy back onto his makeshift seat.

What followed then was a much more productive conversation. The Fell gave us information on the structure of the Red Moon organisation in this system, the ships they had available as far as he knew, other claims that they were running their ‘assurance’ racket on, numbers of people that he was aware of. All kinds of useful information although I had a hard time following it in the end.

Exhausted

After an extended period of high stress you are exhausted.

All stats decreased by 10% until you rest.

Ah, that’s why.