Smuggler's Run

You sat up in your cabin bed, occasionally glancing towards the door at the sound of someone walking by. In your line of work, you preferred to be careful. Sure, carrying illegal cargo was usually safer than mercenary work or **** contracts, but being robbed and left for dead was a very real consequence. Hence why you kept your hand firmly on your sidearm most of the time. The crew had you a bit jumpy, but they seemed to understand the idea of ‘get paid and don’t ask questions’.

Outside, the soft white lines of stars flittering past gradually pulled back into distant dots and spheres as the FTL engines came offline. You were knocked forward a bit by the sudden stop. On such an old ship, the gravitational field was sometimes a little weakened coming out of FTL. You managed to steady yourself on a metallic crate sitting on the desk space your cabin had. Not technically your luggage, it was rather something you were smuggling.

Looking out the window at the current stop, you gazed upon your faint reflection in the mirror. Human, yes, but born and raised on a space station. You would hardly call yourself a grizzled looking fellow, but that actually made things even easier. After all, who would suspect the short and meek looking boy was carrying an illegal item with him.

Beyond your reflection though, you were reminded off home. Just outside the window you could see a top-shaped space station, a full-sized city spreading out beneath faint blue **** fields. It stood out in the backdrop of the pale green and red gas giant it orbited.

“We need to refuel and resupply, lay over will be a couple hours, gents,” Came the voice of the lady captain over the intercom system. Almost as soon as she finished her announcement, a light thud echoed through the ship as it docked.

With a frustrated huff, you stood up. You knew there would be a hitch in the plan. Your client had a very specific timetable and at this rate you might not even be able to sell your merchandise. A series of beeps echoed through the room as you input the passcode into the metallic chest. There was a pressurized hiss, followed my a mechanical grind as the box opened up, allowing you to look at the item within.

“Who would even want this?” You ask yourself.

(What’s your cargo?)

-A slime-like symbiotic creature

-An illegal outer-worlds BDSM kit

-An alien artifact with a low-level psionic field