Chapter 2

The receptionist had a couple of last minute data drives, so we performed the verification ritual once again. Hilde came out, a bit more calm, but still overly energetic. She signed the last of her paperwork performed the authentication ritual herself, only much more slowly. Once that was completed bid the receptionist goodbye, and she grunted at us.

“Oh. My. Gosh,” gushed the new girl all in a rush. “I have sooooo many questions! Are we going to the ship now? Is it a big crew? What do I get to do? Omigosh is it, like, SO amazing to travel at warp speed? Have you met many non-humans? Will there be pirates?”

I rolled my eyes, and took a deep breath during her last question, so I could jump in. “No, no, I dunno, meh, a few, and probably.”

She stopped speaking for a moment, trying to piece together what I’d said, and I had what I would come to realize was a brief and rare opportunity to collect my thoughts. I took advantage of the moment to consider her.

Five-foot-six, skinny, blonde, no tits to speak of, and no ass. Her face was kinda pretty, but still too much baby fat. She was…not my taste, I decided, which was good because it meant I probably wouldn’t be distracted by her appearance... just her incessant talking.

Anyway I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be attracted to a paunchy, balding, forty-something, smoking an electronic stogie. Where her brand new uniform was a crisp baby-blue with a red and orange stripe up one side, my own uniform was a faded sky blue, covered in stains, and the stripe had faded to pink and peach.

“We’re not going to the ship now? Where are we going?” she asked, only slightly disappointed.

“To pick up the food order I placed when I got here. If you want any real food this is your last chance before we get to Stewart-4.”

She gasped. “Omigosh, no, I can’t wait to try the food on the ship, real honest to goodness space food.”

I started running a mental tally of the number of times she said ‘Oh my gosh’ on our way back to the ship. That last one had made three so far.

I shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’ll get sick of it by the end of the first day.”

“Omigosh,” (four) “what do we carry for the courier service? Food? Supplies? Clothes?”

“Data,” I said quickly, before she could get any momentum. “Just information, messages, videos, music, neuro-sims, and probably a huge portion of that is duplicate data too, just for different destinations. But if I had to guess, I’d say sixty to seventy percent of it is probably porn.”

Her eyes widened, and a very slight expression of disgust showed up on her face. “Oh my gosh, really?” (Five.)

I shrugged. “No idea. We have zero access to the data we transport. It’s all heavily encrypted, and it would take our ship’s computer months to decrypt even a single message. We just sign for it, pick it up, drop it off, and sign for it again, so there’s a solid paper trail. While we travel it’s all on a hermetically sealed and shielded drive system, completely cut off from any of the ship’s systems.”

“Wooooooooooow….” she said, her blue eyes the size of dinner plates. “Oh my gosh, we’re totally being trusted with some really serious stuff, aren’t we?” (Six.)

I shrugged. “I dunno. I still think it’s probably mostly porn.”

Her stream of questions continued as we gathered the food, and headed toward the ship, ranging from questions about the ship itself, and the warp drive and reactionless thrusters, which - as the ship’s mechanic - I was qualified to answer, to the crew, which I declined to talk about because we had a standing agreement to each make our own first impressions without being colored by what someone else might say about us.

The ‘Oh My Gosh’ total rose to twelve.

We were at the crowded station hub which connected all the different ports, and thronged with beings of several different races, when they approached us. There were two of them, their uniforms crisp and pressed, and their weapons in full view. They spotted our courier uniforms, and made a beeline toward us. One was a human, bulky and serious looking. The other was humanoid with blue skin, wiry and fast looking, a race called the Rhest.

They stopped directly in front of us.

“Sir, ma’am, I’m afraid you two will need to come with us,” said the human.

I narrowed my eyes at them and gave a little chuckling huff. “Sorry, we’re already behind schedule,” I said trying to push between them.

They stepped closer together blocking my path.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that. You were given a package. We’ve been sent to retrieve it,” explained the human leaning in threateningly.

I sighed. “Okay Hilde,” I said wearily, taking a half step back to get a better look at the pair. "Here’s your first real lesson. How to identify station security. It’s the same all over the galaxy. First, the uniforms. Station security wears navy blue uniforms with a gold braid, and emit a smell for olfactory oriented races that smells something like freshly melted chocolate. There are other ways of identifying them for races with other senses, but we only need to worry about those, being only human.” I gestured vaguely to the armed men. “What color are their uniforms?”

She looked at them, eyes wide, and said in a slightly surprised voice, “Light grey, with silver braid thingies.”

“And what do they smell like?”

She sniffed delicately at the air, and announced, “Uh… B.O. and propane?”

I smiled and nodded. “Next lesson is the weapons. Station security carries non-lethal shock sticks. What are they carrying?”

She hesitated for a moment. “Uuuuuh… some kind of gun thingie? Like a machine gun or something?”

“RG-28 Plasma Rifles,” I corrected her. “Definitely lethal. All this means…” I said, leading her.

“That… they aren’t station security?” she ventured.

“Yep,” said smirking at them. “Which means they can’t tell us what to do. So…”

I started to walk around them. The human snarled and shoved me back with the butt of his gun.

“You’re going to give us that package right now,” he said in a low menacing voice. “Or we’re going to-”

“What?” I said. “Shoot us? In the middle of this crowd?”

“Try us,” growled the human.

Suddenly Hilde gasped loudly, “OH MY GOSH! Are you Space Pirates!?” (Thirteen)

They both looked at her in bewilderment, and I used the distraction to use an ancient courier fighting technique handed down to couriers throughout the generations, going back to ancient times when the first marathon runner was waylaid by bandits.

I kicked the human square in the nuts. Hard.

He crumpled to the ground, and I grabbed his gun, which slid out of his grasp with no resistance.

Rhest evolved on a world with much lighter gravity than earth. This allows them to be much lighter, quicker, and more agile than humans, but, also makes their bones more brittle. I swung the butt of the gun at the hand and wrist of the Rhest as he swung his gun up toward me. I heard a crunch of bones, and he dropped the weapon, his fingers unable to support its weight. He glared at us and turned to run away.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” said Hilde in a panic. (Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.) “What do we do now!?”

I looked at her as if she’d just asked me why she couldn’t push open a door marked pull.

“We head back to the ship.” I said, leaving out the implied, ‘Duh.’ “We’re already behind schedule.”

I stepped over the human, moaning and crying on the ground, and gestured for her to follow.