Space is Vast

Chapter 8 - A Secret Delivery

Adam wasn’t sure what was going on. Last he knew he had been sipping his coffee in the break room, and now he could of sworn he had been having tea with a large banana. Adam was staring at Scipio who was strapped into his seat. He groggily tried to rise from his feet. 

“Hey Scip What’s going on? Vida didn’t knock me out again did she?”

Scipio looked at Adam startled, “Uh, no not this time. Turns out that this sugar we got, isn’t so sweet.” Scipio retold Adam the previous events. And as he got further into the story, Adams eyes became larger and larger. When Scipio had finished retelling the story Adam sat for a second. Then turned to shout at Jones.

“Jones! Did you really fly TheShepard into a building?” Jones turned his head, and nodded at Adam.

“Uh, yeah I did, but I think we have a bigger proble-” 

Adam interrupted Scipio.

“Was that really Moon Sugar?” 

Jones sighed, “Yes, it was, but look here, we go-”

Adam interrupted him again.

“Did I really call Vida pretty?” Scipio laughed as Vida swiveled in her chair and shot Adam her dirtiest look yet.

“Well,” she began. “If you had been conscious for the past five minutes, you would have seen the giant gun pointing at our ship.”

She smirked.

“But instead you were having tea with a giant banana!”

“Hey, he was friendly, and filled with sweet, sweet fruit.” Adam’s voice seemed to trail off at the thought of the banana.

“Adam, Adam, look… look here.” Scipio snapped his fingers in front of Adam. 

“Right, sorry about that. So…. What about this giant gun?”

Vida turned to Adam again.

“Well, why don’t you come and have a look.” 

Adam made his way to the co-pilots seat. He sat down and swiveled it around. He sat there for a few seconds. None of the crew could see his face. Slowly the chair swiveled around again. Adam’s eye was twitching, and his face had gone pale. 

“tha… tha…. Tha…” Adam stuttered. 

“That’s… that’s a big fucking gun.”

“We know.” Scipio gave a half heartened grin.

Vida walked to the co-pilots seat and gently lifted Adam out. She handed him to Scipio.

“Lay him on the floor.” She gave him a meaningful look. I’m gonna try talking to them.”

Vida turned to the radio console. 

“Uh hello?”

There was silence as the crew waited.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” the sudden answer had them all jumping.

Vida was the first to recover, she always was. She spoke again into the radio.

“We…. We were sent here to deliver some crates.”

The crew waited. They were half expecting to be blown to pieces. 

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. We thought you were undercover police. You must be the third party Rodriguez sent.” The voice had completely changed. It had gone from being deep and booming, to a simple nasally whining.

Vida spoke again. “Yeah, so well just transport the goods, and if you could also send us our payment?”

Again a moment of silence lapsed.

“Of course, 250,000 credits. Thank you for doing business. We’ll teleport the goods straight from your cargo hold.” Before Vida could protest the Mammoth had disappeared into the stars. Vida turned around, and leaned on the control console. 

“250?” She sounded exasperated. “We were supposed to get 500! What are we gonna do?”

Scipio jumped up. “What? They just gypped us!” Scipio ran to his station. Seconds later a lance of bright light streaked off into space.

“You bastards! Get back here and give us our money!” Adam who had by now recovered placed a hand on Scipio’s shoulder.

“It’s too late Scip, they’re gone.” 

Scipio slumped in his chair. He turned his head to look at Adam.

“Where the hell are we gonna get 250 thousand more credits?”

Adam shrugged his shoulders.

“Maybe we weren’t supposed to goto Erandor.” Adam thought aloud. Then his voice became quite. “Maybe I was never supposed to find her…..”