Wayde covers his nose and mouth with a bandana, then uses the ship's intercom.
"I believe I've found a solution to our financial woes. Join me in the cargo bay, won't you? Bring a respirator and one for me. Oh, Captain...I think you may want to alter our course. I'm thinking whoever's spice this is will probably be looking for it..."
He then looks at Erit,
"You better watch yourself, Spice ain't something you wanna stand too close to. I've been on enough inspection details to tell you that this amount will get you many lifetimes in an Imperial detention facility."
Not having much to do at the moment in the autoblaster cage, Jileeza is happy to respond to Wayde's summons. After all, she gets bored easily, and she was getting dangerously close...
Grabbing a couple of breathers on her way down, she presents the extra to Wayde when she arrives. 'Za looks down at the contents of the crate, and a big smile grows on her face. "Spice! Excellent!" Obviously, she has no problem with the ethics of the situation. "That should net us a fair profit. Now we just have to decide what to spend it on. I guess the real question is whether we want to have the option of getting more jobs from Gulgo. If so, we buy tibanna and take it to him. If not, we load up on weapons and wipe him out. I'm good either way," she says with a casual gesture of dismissal.
"Hey, I've long since been on the straight and narrow path of right/wrong, but the sooner we get the Spice offloaded, the better I'd feel. I have know on occasion for Imperial interdictors to pull Spice smugglers out of hyperspace and use them as target practice..."
"...target practice..." is the first thing Aurelia hears as she wanders down to the cargo area.
"This would explain the capital ship class security systems on this crate. The weapons systems *should* be working, but they're nowhere near stable enough to try overpowering. If the Imperials catch us with a hold full of spice, we're not going to be able to shoot our way out. I'm with Wayde, we need to offload this as soon as we can."
"I've never run spice before, and I was hoping never to start. Let's get this over with. All hands, brace for lightspeed."
Arnae pulls back on the hyperspace lever, and the newly-rechristened Second Chance charges into the ether between the stars, then slips into that great, mysterious tunnel of blue. He programs the ship to throw some zags into their route to Bespin, delaying them by a few hours, but hurting the chance that they would be intercepted.
Reyes walks into the room, only adding to the overcrowding problem. "Well, I might be able to make a call to a fence that'll handle spice. If we find a safe place to stop for a few hours, I could set up a secure transmission to him and see what he can do with it."
"Tattooine sound good? It's not quite on the way, but we can make it that way. I wouldn't exactly call it a safe place, but I think we'll be able to manage, and if your fence doesn't come through, then Tattooine's as good a spot as any in the neighborhood to try and convert our contraband to cash, a currency that is accepted in circles larger than the criminal one. Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything more common than crime...
"Ah hell, enough of me waxing philosophical. Wayde, make the course adjustments. I'll be in the captain's quarters, seeing if he left anything to drink onboard."
*cue theme music as the Second Chance jumps into that bright blue yonder*
The captain did indeed keep a stash of fine Corellian ale in his quarters - and a hold-out blaster under the pillow.
---
Tatooine traffic is, as always, light to non-existent. The Chance sets down at Mos Eisley spaceport without any problems. Reyes sets up the ship's transmitters to bounce a coded transmission off of the spaceport's powerful array, piggybacking the signal all the way to his fence on Corellia. A few seconds later, the display console flickers to life with a pale blue image of a rugged human male.
"Good to see you - I trust we're not being monitored?"
"Well," Reyes says, "there's always the chance that they can read my heavily encrypted, fragmented, and hidden transmission hidden inside their spaceport beacon, but since I'm probably sharing this channel with 12 others, let's make this short and sweet." He's talking about a lightyear a minute. "I've got a load of spice I came across that I need to unload fast, four good sized crates of the stuff. Can you handle it? I mean, if you can't, I'm sure there's a lot of other fences who wouldn't mind the commission that a load like this would bring in, especially at 35%..."
Dieter
