Blue Star Enterprises

After completing the deal with Paresh, Vitor knew going to the new ship alone would be a bad idea. If they had space suits, he could have just undocked the Fox and floated over there, but that wasn't an option, and most smaller ships only had one airlock, which meant entering through a cargo ramp. That was assuming someone inside the station didn't try to use the station guns to take a shot at them because they thought they were trying to steal the ship. Despite the dangers, it would still be safer to go to the airlock and release the security lockout on the docking clamps than to try boarding the ship any other way.

He quickly returned to the Fox and filled Kaela and his crew in on what was going on.

"I told you it was a dumb idea to trust him," Kaela commented.

"I'm aware," Vitor sighed, "but I didn't have any other choice. Not unless you knew some other sleazy merchant in this system that I could trust."

The woman laughed. "You can't even cover the fee for me bringing you here, can you?"

Vitor shook his head. "Not at the moment," he confirmed.

"You better hope this secretive employer you are spending so much time and effort to get to is worth it."

Vitor hoped so too. He had seen some of what Kane was up to and picked up even more rumors while they were on Eden's End. If even half of them were true, the potential was high for Blue Star Enterprises to become a major player in the next decade.

That day was a long way off though, and there were plenty of hurdles in Kane's way, but Vitor saw something on Eden's End that he hadn't witnessed in a long time, progress unimpeded by corporate or political bullshit.

"It'll be worth it," he replied before looking at the rest of his crew. "Did any of you bring weapons?"

Half the crew shook their heads while the other half pulled out differing items. The Marine had a modified pulse rifle. It seemed the man had hidden the weapon in his luggage. Vitor would have preferred something a bit more lethal, but he would take what he could get.

Three more of his people produced stun sticks.

Vitor nodded at them and raised his shirt to show he had a weapon as well. "Not the most ideal, but we can make it work," he said. Other than his flechette pistol, all the other weapons were legal. Not that a station owned by criminals was big on enforcing STO laws about weapons.

He turned to Kaela. "I guess this is goodbye."

The woman snorted. "You're an even bigger idiot than I thought if you think I'm sitting this fight out." She reached over to a cabinet and pulled out a CQB rifle.

Vitor's eyes went wide at that.

"What?" she laughed. "You think I'm setting foot on this cesspool of a station with a little popgun like yours or a pulse rifle? Hell no. I'm sure there are more than a few people on this station who are associated with people I've rounded up or killed over the years. I'm taking the biggest weapon that's safe to use without worrying about punching holes into space and wearing armor. Speaking of, you lot are a bit underdressed. Grab a set of armor from the locker over there. I'll just add it to your Captain's tab."

The plate carriers didn't offer much protection, but it was infinitely better than none.

"Thank you," Vitor said as his people pulled out the vests stuffed with armor plates. Parson handed him a set as well. His words felt a bit inadequate considering everything Kaela had done for him and his crew, but he had nothing else to give her at the moment.

"You can thank me by paying me. To do that, you need to survive. So, let's hurry up and get this show on the road."

Their group made good time as they swiftly moved through the ring. They could have saved a lot of time by going through the station, but there were far more eyes there, and far more places for people to set up ambushes.

A few people watched their group as they passed, but most scurried into hiding when they saw the weapons on full display.

Vitor highly doubted anyone on this station walked around unarmed, but most hid their weapons. A naked weapon meant something was about to go down, and the smart people went for cover.

They soon neared the end of the docking ring where his new ship was parked. The area had grown quiet and devoid of people as they got closer.

"Heads on a swivel," Vitor spoke quietly.

Most of the crew who decided to come with him were not combat-trained. Vitor and the lone Marine were the exception. With Kaela tagging along, they had three trained combatants. That didn't mean the rest of his crew were helpless. They had trained to repel boarding operations.

The group stopped well short of an intersection that opened into the station. Whoever was lying in wait wasn't simply gathered there to confront them, but the lack of pedestrian traffic spoke volumes.

"Contact!" the Marine, Sergeant Galloway, yelled. He was the first to raise his weapon and fire as a man stuck his head out from the corridor. The man must have heard their group approaching.

The pulse rifle blast took the man square in the face, jerking his head to the side. He fell into the ring, clearly unconscious from the pulse blast to the face.

All hell broke out as weapons were fired down the ring toward their group. The hail of tiny metal darts and blasts of sound turned the corridor into a no-go zone and his people scrambled to take cover along the inner wall. Their attackers hadn't bothered to expose themselves but they also wasted ammo as they didn't even check to see if they were hitting their targets.

The only person who seemed to be enjoying themselves was Kaela. The woman had donned a fully armored vac suit and hadn't left her position as she ripped off long strings of darts from her automatic weapon while laughing.

The incoming fire was so inaccurate that she had only been hit a few times by flechettes that were fired wildly toward them, and her armor was more than up to the challenge of shrugging the few projectiles off.

It didn't seem like the people hiding in the intersection were as lucky. Screams echoed out as her rounds found targets. It was likely only from ricochets, but it was enough to cause the volume of fire coming their way to lessen quite a bit.

Vitor gave Galloway a forward chopping motion and the man nodded. With Kaela, Galloway, and him leading the charge, they were able to slowly push toward the intersection and push the criminals out.

Kaela ducked her head around the corner but quickly pulled it back as a series of pulse blasts nearly hit her in the head. "Missed me fuckers!" she yelled happily.

A few slurs and nasty comments were thrown back her way by the attackers, but they only made the woman laugh harder.

"Captain, we need to get past this intersection, we can't stay here," Galloway said as he checked back the way they had come.

Vitor agreed, it wouldn't take long for this group to come up behind them and pin them in.

He turned to the laughing bounty hunter. "Kaela, did you pack a stun grenade by any chance?"

Without taking her eyes or gun off of the corridor, she reached behind her back and pulled something out of a pouch. She tossed it to him. "I'll add–"

"–It to my tab, yeah, yeah," he finished for her, earning a smile of approval.

Vitor inched up and handed the grenade to the Marine. Galloway would be far more proficient with the weapon than he would.

"Wait five after it goes off," he said quietly. Then he pulled the pin, waited a few seconds, and hurled it down the hallway intersection.

A bright flash followed by a loud bang drowned out sight and noise, even beyond the edge of the intersection. It only took a second for his sight to return to normal, but his ears were still ringing. Galloway was waving his hand to get their attention as his fingers counted down.

Vitor hadn't done much urban or station combat when he was in Black Ops, most of their targets never saw his team coming, so he was glad he had Galloway to rely on. It was clear why the man had given the warning to wait. The criminals who were attempting to stop them had hosed the intersection with fire, even though they couldn't see or hear. The man was already at four but the enemy still hadn't stopped firing into the hallway. He was about to ask them to wait a few more seconds when the fire suddenly ceased.

As a group they rushed across the intersection, firing down the corridor as they passed. A few wild shots came their way, but other than one of his people taking a glancing blow by a pulse blast and a few ricochets hitting their armor, they managed to make it across the deadly opening. The ship's airlock was only a hundred feet farther down and Vitor rushed toward the hatch and pressed his finger to the scanner. It beeped green and the door flicked open.

He let out a sigh of relief. For a moment, Vitor worried that Paresh might have screwed him by not registering his identity in the station's airlock for the ship.

The group quickly hurried aboard and he locked the airlock behind him. It was only then that he noticed Kaela had tagged along.

"You're not heading back to your ship?"

"Did you think I was just going to run back through that mess by myself?"

Honestly, he thought that was exactly what she would do. It wouldn't have been the first time he had seen her do something that crazy. Luckily she didn't wait for a response.

"The Kyuubi No Kitsune undocked shortly after we left. It's waiting at a preappointed destination for you to drop me off, assuming this rust heap can even fly."

The ship wasn't great. It was packed with boxes topped with garbage and looked like it had been home to a hoarder or multiple ones. It was no wonder Paresh hadn't gotten it cleaned out. The man probably didn't want to deal with the headache or expense.

Beyond the smell, which was truly eye-watering, they had to push through thin aisles with stacks upon stacks of boxes and other unidentifiable items. When they reached the main cabin, it was clear what happened to the sole member of the crew. The smell and disgusting brown stain in the shape of a body on the old moldy mattress told an entire story all its own.

People passing away aboard their ships was not an uncommon phenomenon. The ship likely failed to respond to a hail and was boarded by the STO or some other security force. They would have removed the body and auctioned off the ship if no next of kin was located.

Vitor sealed the room. They would need to purge the ventilation system at least three times before the air in there was safe to breathe again.

Without further ado, the group moved to the bridge. Unlike the Fox, this ship had an actual bridge. He still couldn't tell what type of ship it was though. It was either a very strange small hauler, or it had been converted from something else.

The only signs that someone had been on the ship recently, had been the ones going to the transponder. It was clear that Paresh's people had modified it, which was good.

As the rest of his crew trickled into the bridge, they walked over to the terminal, both covered in dust and stacks of more items.

"Did this Captain ever flush the environmental systems," he heard someone complain.

It didn't take too long to clear the boxes from the terminals, but they had to be stacked up near the wall because there wasn't room anywhere else in the ship for them.

Surprisingly, the uncovered terminals still had their plastic covers on them from when they were brand new. The seats were equally in pristine condition and covered.

Vitor wished he could say the same about the captain's seat. It seemed like the former owner had transferred all the controls to the one console. There was a layer of dirt around the screen that made him shudder, and he refused to sit in the chair.

"Parson, you're with me. The rest of you, try to get the controls transferred back, I'm going to go get the reactor going."

They nodded and quickly got to work.

"It's not the cleanest," Parson said, "but the reaction chamber is in decent enough shape. I would say it has a few years left on it at most though."

"Good enough," Vitor replied before he pushed the activation crystal into the slot.

It would take time for the reactor to power up, but he wasn't in as much of a hurry now. Nobody would be dumb enough to attack their ship inside the system. The STO had spy satellites all over the place, and the criminals knew it.

After an hour, the Blue Bell, which turned out to be the ship's name, left the station. Not long after that, they met up with Kaela Voss's ship. The woman wished them luck before leaving.

As Vitor looked around at the mess he was saddled with, he decided he needed more than a bit of luck.

***

Three months later, the Blue Bell exited FTL at its final destination. The trip to Eden's End had not been a smooth one. The ship had been forced to stop on more than one occasion to make repairs, and just for the sake of fresh air. Even after spacing the bedding from the main cabin, the smell seemed to linger.

He wanted to space the boxes and boxes of stuff piled up inside the ship as well, but after a more in-depth examination of what lay under the actual junk, he changed his mind.

Vitor wasn't sure who the former owner of the ship had been, or where they had gotten the many boxes of electronics, but that didn't matter. Even if these didn't look like the ones he was used to, Vitor was certain he could sell them. There were other items he wasn't sure about, but maybe Kane could figure out what they did.

If Kane didn't want them, he was certain he could find some buyer and maybe recoup some of the money he spent on this ship.

"Blue Bell, this is Eden's End Traffic Control. State your business in this system."

"Eden's End, my name is Vitor Krieger, I believe Alexander Kane had a job offer for me."

The line was quiet for a bit before the person responded. "Welcome to Eden's End, Captain Krieger. Blue Bell is cleared to land. A ship will scan you as you approach, maintain speed, and do not deviate from your path or you will be boarded. EETC out."

It seemed quite a bit had changed since Vitor had last been here. He was glad to see that as it was confirmation that he had made the right choice.