Boarded

A Westonian Navy Officer trooped in, looking extremely professional and serious in his immaculate dark-gray uniform.

I put on my most innocent and ingratiating smile. "Hello, sir. Welcome aboard the Princess Astra. What can I do for you?"

He merely scowled and grunted in response. A couple more Navy guys stepped out of the airlock after him. Then a couple more. Then a couple more. It was beginning to get pretty crowded in here.

And then they started bringing in the scanning equipment.

Shit, shit, shit. This was it. Game over. They obviously had something on me, although how they'd found out about the whiskey, I'd no idea. Maybe someone back on Ragan had talked, though I couldn't imagine who.

"Search the ship," said the fellow in charge, a Space Colonel, if I was reading his braid right. And search they did, with a thoroughness even I've never seen before, and I've been subject to more searches than GalacticWeb Google.

With the kind of high-tech scanning equipment they'd brought aboard, they were bound to locate the secret compartments sooner or later, and as it happened it was sooner. Curtly, the Colonel ordered me to open them up. Not seeing that I had a lot of choice in the matter, I deactivated the security systems, opened up the cleverly concealed hatches, and, prompted by a nasty glare from the Colonel, popped open the crates to reveal the whiskey bottles in all their gleaming glory.

The Naval officer stared at my illegal cargo for a moment, gave a disdainful sniff... and turned away. His men kept right on searching the ship.

OK. Now, I was really worried.

What in the name of the motherworld had I stumbled my way into?

1. Eventually they concluded their search, apparently without having found whatever it was they were looking for.
2. A few minutes later, I heard a voice say, "Colonel, look at this!" I turned around to see one of the men holding the pressure suit I'd slipped into on the lifeboat.

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