Money aint the reason for flying

The crew have been helping Pod out a lot lately. I'm not complaining, regular runs - that is to say safe, low profile and poor paying runs, have all but dried up recently.

The downside of working with Pod is that his contacts feed him hits that are just about as far from the sort of work I normally go for as you can get. I mean to say a little Alliance interest after they stumble across us pulling a job they might take exception to is to be expected; and so far I've been able to put off those two Feds who came asking questions about a firefly class ship and the crew who fired (back) on Alliance troops.

However with Podwangler it's never the mundane. Never a case of running a herd 'tween the worlds cause them that's buying can't afford official Alliance livestock prices and them that's selling make more profit if they avoid official tariffs and cover the cost of hiring a ship that will avoid unnecessary Alliance complications - even if they do sell at a lower price per head.

Started with some side action Shalimar had running. Something about a datapad and rare looking stone she recovered from crashed courier shuttle she learned about through a local contact she made on Hale's Moon. Now as I was running some more of our... if not strictly legit, I'll call it more... mainstream work at the time so I left it to her to follow up and if'n it came to anything we'd look into it. Last I heard of it till Pod casually asks me if I was ready and willing to break into an alliance security post to decipher the contents of this datapad. Seems Shalimar had arranged it with him.

I got but a few rules and don't take kindly to any of my crew breaking them.

Still, I didn't beach her.

Next I heard of the whole business Shalimar, Lily, Ben and Pod are all pinned down by 'lliance regulars and are in sore need of a back door. Soon as Raivenn's landing struts are down I found myself exchanging fire with them purplebellies long enough for us all to mount up and get the hell outta the world. Fortunately I been having this intermittent problem with Raivenn’s locator beacon transponder, I can only guess it was this that prevented the Feds getting a positive ident of my boat and chasing us all the way back to Serenity Station.

I’ll have to get that fixed one of these fine days.

Now any sane person would be forgiven for thinking that the more risk and trouble a job draws, the better the payout. Tell the truth this job would’ve been no different. Turns out the datapad had copies of research from the Alliance station on Ariel, next generation laser weapons design. The sort of score a body could only hope to come up with once in a lifetime, the sort of thing some folk out there would pay, really pay, to get their hands on.

‘Cept them same people, likes of Niska or the Shang-Hui syndicate would be the ones that’d grow so strong that there’d be no place in the verse for folks like us. Caught between the heel of the alliance and the grip of crime lords aint no place I’d like to see anyone stranded. I guess the money we would have made might have dulled the sting of that thought; my cut alone might have been enough to buy me my own little moon somewhere out of the way... but there’s more to being able to stand tall than coin.

Podwangler understood; destroyed the datapad right there and then. Not too sure all the others did, but I suppose that’s the perk of being Captain of your own boat – you don’t need to explain yourself.