Nesrin wasn’t sure what would happen when she walked into a biker bar, but she’d assumed it’d work like the movies - either everyone would shoot her or they’d crap themselves. What actually happened was a disappointing shade of grey - they ignored her, which irritated her slightly. There was something uncanny about not being the most interesting thing in the room.
Blackport 66. She sniffed, wiping her nasal canals against a three inch knuckle. She’d only been breathing the moribund atmospherics for an hour and she’d already caught something noxious - which was a startling in the ass considering her differently normal RNA made infections practically impossible. Even the germs made no sense in this place. The gravity field was so inconsistent she’d been at point seven gee at one end of the hall and two at the far end - the gym was dialled down to point three, which made her chuckle. These guys aren’t so tough, she bravadoed.
It had taken her a good thirty minutes to find the ‘Rod hangar, even though she’d scanned out the station plan before she’d docked up, the ‘Port was like maze in the height of tourist season with a broken down exit - it was so packed with other people as lost as herself it took a martyrdom of willpower to refrain from carving holes through the pressure walls until she fell into the right compartment.Allah reward me. Nesrin groaned, as she lent against the heat-marked ceramic walls of the hot rod’s hangar. But there was the prize.
A sleek, bronze crescent, trailing wires and maintenance cables, her service hatches open, her port side discoloured, her star shield cracked, her engine bay sliced open. Nesrin was surprised - she expected it to be trashed.
Pretty good, Sunny. Remind me to treat you as a man of your word. Mind if I dig around inside? The guys at DockSec did their job properly and didn't trust me with the DefLock codes.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)