Detour
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 20910
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The only theory I could come up with was that they had something on board
which they were not prepared to abandon, whatever the risk. Be that as it
may, my appropriate response was fairly obvious: "My ship's not atomic-powered. I might be able to get you some fuel from Ragan IV, though - at a price." "No time for that," the man radioed back. "If you could tow us to the nearest space-station we would reimburse you for your troubles." "The nearest space-station is more than 48 hours away, the same distance as Ragan IV, and I have places to go and business to take care of," I replied. "I'll want 25,000 credits upfront, and another 50,000 when we arrive at the station...""Yes, yes, that's fine! Please hurry, though!" The man was beginning to sound stressed. "We were attacked by pirates, they were able to cripple us but we managed to elude them. They might return at any moment..." There was definantly more to the story than that. This freighter was showing all of the obvious signs of being a pirate ship. It lacked a registration number and name, for one thing. The way they were acting was very suspicous as well. They obviously didn't want anything to do with Ragan IV, even though they had told me they could limp back there with a little fuel. They wanted to get out of the region in a hurry, meaning whatever had attacked them was probably still pursuing them, and that was a little troubling. The Astra's sensors showed no sign of any other spacecraft in the region...but anything could happen out here. However, I finally decided the detour of towing this huge, damaged freighter was worth the extra credits. The Princess Astra could handle the extra load, no problem.The nearest space-station was a good distance away, located on the more frequented intersteller shipping lanes (which I generally avoided). The Dealer on Weston II would have to wait a few extra days for the shipment to arrive. The extra time would give me an opportunity to unscramble Glen's message, so that was a plus.
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Ib
10/26/2002 7:54:06 AM
Extending Enabled
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