Absalom Station

Absalom station. It's always trivial to reach: The Starstone at the center acting as a super drift beacon… which also makes it THE trade hub. The station itself has a five mile diameter, and is surrounded by a cloud of starships: Visitors that want the protection that being near a peaceful and well-armed behemoth provides, but don't want to follow all the rules and regulations. There's ships with designs from Vesk, Eox, Zeres, the Azlanti Star Empire, and many others. Some ships are battle scarred and poorly repaired, others pristine. Ships as small as personal racers to as large as Ultranaughts… and all dwarfed by the station. We book adjacent berths, and meet up after… my companions having rather dour looks on their faces, and only Bob looking at me directly.

Which tells me roughly what they're going to say.

Bob starts it, “So… we had a meeting…” …that they didn't call me for. Okay, yes, I know where this is going.

“...and you really should have mentioned it was a divine curse sooner.” Frank still isn't looking at me, “I mean, seriously, how'd you tick off a deity?”

“And now that the mission is done and we're safe…” Gregory continues.

“Let me save you beating around the bush:” I take a breath, “you're wanting to cut ties because I come with too much baggage,” …and I haven't even gotten to the ‘I'm probably being hunted by the biggest baddest mortal around’ thing yet… “and splitting ways at a hub like Absalom Station doesn't feel like abandoning me, especially as I have my own ship… also, you can probably find another engineer here.”

“Ah… pretty much…” Frank cringes, ‘I mean, the sex is great, the milk is awesome, but… well, we already died once, and you're addictive and secretive and….”

I take a deep breath and interrupt, “It's fine,” I've kind of outgrown you anyway, “I'll be okay. Keep the gear.” I'll even leave you immortal and Mythic and keep granting spells, at least until I have need of the slots for someone else, but I have another nineteen Mythic slots and eight Immortal slots, and the magic is unlimited, so it's going to be a while.

“Great, umm….” Gregory takes a breath, “goodbye.” And then they leave.

And now I'm an independent contractor… that's fine. I go looking for work, using the computer embedded in my suit. I mean, I have a decent enough ship: It's fast and maneuverable, stealthy, and has a decent amount of firepower for the size. Not very durable… I should fix that at some point. Still… a good little ship. I go through some job boards… ah, someone's in a hurry to leave the station… well, I have a spare luxury suite on board. I put in an offer and get an immediate call.

“How soon can you leave?” No, Johnas Albright doesn't even introduce himself.

“Soon as I can get a launch window…” I say while typing on my personal comm unit to arrange one, “...got one: Is fifteen minutes OK?”

“It'll do. Which dock?” I can hear him cringing. Hopefully he's got someone on his tail worth some nice experience.

“Arm thirteen, level six, bay forty-two,” I answer quickly. Yes, there's enough ships parked here that they need that many numbers, “see you there shortly… got a picture?”

He sends me one… a blue-skinned humanoid, bald, tattooed… a Tryziarka. Double-jointed, gets a couple free Mystic spells from a magical ooze tattoo. They tend towards being tall - like ‘two meters is short’ levels of tall. This guy looks rich and scared… a fine combination, the money doesn't matter much to me, but it means he's probably running from someone.

“Greet you at the door,” I chat through the comm as I head that way myself.

I get there first (I wasn't exactly far), but don't have long to wait until the man shows up in a crown and a cape, “Let's go…” he brushes past me, stopping at the lock. “Well?”

“The half down?” I hold out my hand, palm up.

“Ugh, peasants…” he tosses me a credstick.

“You're not MY king, we have another ten minutes until we can leave anyway, and it'll only take two to warm up the engines,” I shrug as I have my comm confirm the amount on the stick. “We're good,” I open the door. No, I don't actually care about the credits. I can manufacture items worth 9,650 credits each in six seconds from nothing at-will, which then sell for 965 credits. I'd need to swap items to avoid flooding the market too badly, but at a trade hub like this, I can be a millionaire in a day… but purchase access is gated on trust, so I couldn't buy anything with it that I couldn't make via proxy anyway: There's no point in the exercise. However, if he thinks I'm motivated by money, he won't go looking for other reasons.

He shakes his head as he boards my craft, “come on then…”

I shake my own head as I board, connect to the Consciousness Upload Drive, and begin the various preparations: Coordinating with station control, warming up the engines, and otherwise preparing to leave….