First Reply Space Truckin'

[Yaeger Sularen]

LOCATION⠀|	Deep Space, Corellian Run
OBJECTIVE⠀|	Sleepin' on the job

Yaeger had been tasked with picking up a crate on Christophsis. Why? He didn't ask. What? Also didn't ask. All he cared about was that he was getting a hefty bonus for this.

Feet on the console, he had set the autopilot as he approached the planet. Easy job. Show up, load up without asking questions, move on, get paid.

What's the worst that could happen?

Open

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[Amea Virou]

Yaeger Sularen

Last night's party was today's headache. After a period of relative bad payouts it would seem that Amea and Evelyn had finally struck a good deal with a local scrap dealer. Granted, they didn't really need to do all this work given the inherited wealth that was still amassing them a heap of wealth, but that was completely besides the point.

Amea rubbed a tired hand against her forehead and picked up her pad to start going through her messages. Most of it was, of course, nothing big, but one message in particular stood out. A message for a package being picked up? She blinked for a moment. What?

"Hey Ev!" She called out. "You remember ordering an Impossibly Large, Very Big Rock yesterday?"

Amea raised her eyebrow. It seemed like something she would do. Or perhaps more accurately something that Drunk Her would do to annoy her sober self. Evelyn shrugged and shook her head.

"Weird…" The fixer said and slowly began to pull at the threads to see what she could learn about this unfolding story.

Meanwhile at the docks, once he had landed, Yaeger would find a trolley approaching his ship.

"Are you a, uhhh…" The dockworker drawled as he flipped through the paperworks. "Mr. Delivery Man, blonde if you can?"

 

[Yaeger Sularen]

LOCATION⠀|	Christophsis Docks
OBJECTIVE⠀|	Load 'Er Up

"That's me!" Yaeger gave the dockworker that classic Yaeger smile, and a thumbs up to boot. Easy Peasy. "Just load 'er up and we'll be good to go. I got a schedule to keep after all. You know how it is!"

The shining cities of Christophsis always put Yaeger off. He didn't want to stay here long, but he knew better than to rush a loader. Bad things happen when you rush a loader.

Bad things to your ship. And Old Glory was Yaeger's pride and joy. Well, it was that, and also where he lived. He didn't want anything to happen to his house.

Amea Virou

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[Amea Virou]

Yaeger Sularen

“Right, wells…” The dockworker grunted and let out an exasperated sigh. “We had a lots a problems gettin’ the damn thing here, so… Just signs the papers, please.”

The first signs of problems came no sooner than the papers were signed. A loud scraping sound could be heard from over by Yaeger’s ship. The dockworker quickly looked over, his anger immediate.

“Ey Pat! What I say about checking for clearance first?!”
“Sorry, boss! It’s like the rock’s alive or somethin’. I swear I did a double check and all.”

The dockworker with the papers let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed his fingers against his forehead.

“Sorry about, sirs. We are naturally going to cover the costs of repairs for that ones given the natures of the damage.”

“Ey boss!”
“What?!”
“The rock don’t fit, man.”

The foreman began to angrily flip through his notes.

“You’s said your ship fit the cargo.” He said and angrily held out the specifications of the rock. According to the papers, Yaeger would have plenty room in his cargo space to fit the rock. And yet here they were. “You tryin’ to pull somethin’ here, misters?”

 

[Yaeger Sularen]

LOCATION⠀|	Christophsis Docks
OBJECTIVE⠀|	Don't break my ship pls

"What are you tryin' to pull!? Don't hurt my baby!" Yaeger called out, looking to the loader. "You're doin' it all wrong. You gotta load 'er sideways. My ship is designed to handle stuff like this, I tell ya."

He always had this problem. People not knowing how to do their jobs. He had signed the papers, and dotted his i's, but now he had a massive scrape across his ship.

"Just...ugh, let me do it! It's my ship!"

He had to do everything, he swore.

Amea Virou

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[Amea Virou]

Yaeger Sularen

"I ain't try'n pull nothin'!" The foreman exchanged bitterly with the trucker. "Now maybe if—"

Yaeger took charge and Pat cautiously stepped out of the way for the captain of the ship. In part because he knew better than to get between a captain and his ship, and also because at the very least then any damages to the ship wouldn't be on him.

The foreman marched up behind the captain to continue giving him his piece.

"You thinks you knows better than my mens? My men ares highly traineds pros! They—"

The foreman stopped, his head tilting to the side as he looked upon the rock again.

"Did thats just shrink to yous?" He asked almost dumbfounded. Sure enough, the rock seemed to be getting smaller as the captain slowly pushed it into the cargo hold. However as more eyes fell upon the piece, it seemed to expand again, pinning the hovercraft used to get in on-board to the floor.

"That ain't normals. What kindsa rock is this, misters?"

 

[Yaeger Sularen]

LOCATION⠀|	Christophsis Docks
OBJECTIVE⠀|	Weird rock

"No idea. They payin' me enough where I ain't askin'." Yaeger blinked. "But she's loaded, and for me, that's all that matters."

Don't ask questions. That was Yaeger's business model. You ask questions, you lose a contract. You lose a contract, you lose Old Glory.

So, with a dumb smile, he looked over to the ship. "Alright, alright, whatever this thing is, let's make sure it's secure. I don't want this thing shrinkin' halfway through a hyperspace trip and drifting away."

Mind you, they paid in advance, so if it did...

Amea Virou

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[Amea Virou]

Yaeger Sularen

The look on Mr. Foreman's face said it all, he was utterly perplexed by whatever was going on in this moment. A rock that grew when you didn't look at it? Was that even a rock in the first place then? He raised his clipboard to scratch his head with one of its edges before he lowered it again and shrugged.

"Well, the papers are alls signed for." He grumbled. "That loader's prolly dead too."

"We'll sends the papers to the address in the manifest for the damages. You, errrr… You takes care now, ya hear?"

The foreman let out a small befuddled grunt and departed the scene to go harass some other worker at some other dock. The rock was secured in place in the cargo hold, and for the time being it seemed that it was going smooth.

Although given the difficulties getting it on board…

… Perhaps it was going a little too smooth?

 

[Yaeger Sularen]

LOCATION⠀|	Christophsis Docks
OBJECTIVE⠀|	Gettin' 'er done!

Smooth was nice. Yaeger didn't question it.

Instead, he shrugged, walked over to his freighter's loading bay, and made sure the rock was secure.

Very secure.

Why did this ship have so many tractor beams? Because of chit like this.

And then, back into his ship. Who wanted a giant rock? Who could possibly use such a weird object?

Yaeger didn't ask, but he sure wondered. This is why he usually asked for his cargo to be sealed. If he didn't see it, he wasn't left making assumptions. It was easier that way.

Amea Virou

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[Amea Virou]

Yaeger Sularen

The rock clung to the air, fluctuating ever so slightly in size at a constant interval as Yaeger put the tractor beams to work. Once stuck there it was fair to assume the situation had been handled fully. The dockworker Pat did one final sweep of the cargo bay before he pulled out the broken loader with great effort.

"Be seein' ya!" He shouted over at Yaeger as the trucker finished his preparations.

Meanwhile Amea was stumped. She was an information broker, and a damned good one at that with shared resources across the whole galaxy through an organization known to few. This Impossibly Big, Very Large Rock had literally not a single hit in her network which really begged the question how the hell she even found it.

She ran the numbers and followed their trail. The company she got it from was legit, but there was nothing about the product that she had gotten. Criminal front maybe? Had she accidentally stumbled upon some sort of hidden inventory when she was drunk?

The headache continued and she stood up to hunch over the pad of information.

What the hell was this?

 

[Yaeger Sularen]

LOCATION⠀|	Christophsis Docks
OBJECTIVE⠀|	Take off, please

Yaeger on the other hand, was satisfied. Big rock, take to place, get paid. Simple as.

As he climbed into his ship, Old Glory seemed to shift. Damn rock kept changing size, he swore.

Flicking a bunch of switches, he prepped for take off. Another shift. This was gonna keep him up all night, wasn't it?

Yaeger grumbled, and grabbed his fuzzy ear muffs. The ship practically flew itself, and he needed to be able to hear the air control tower, at least.

Amea Virou

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[Amea Virou]

Yaeger Sularen

The balance was a bit off but it was most likely just due to the local gravity. Once the ship hit space it would undoubtedly change its tone into something a bit more stable. Sure enough, once the air traffic control was cleared and the space breached atmo it was as if the rock wasn't even there.

Of course, if Yaeger turned on his cargo cams he would see the way the rock kept growing and shrinking in place as if it was going out of style. First a pea, then a boulder, then a kernel of corn, then a shed, the sizes shifted and changed. Something seemed to really make the thing freak out.

Amea looked at the pad and downed her second decaf tea mug. The whole thing was getting to her. Impossibly large, very big rock? What did that mean? ILVBR. She tapped her chin with the stylus of her pad in deep thought.

I-L-V-B-R.

Wait.

It wasn't actually a VBRI, was it? Amea jolted awake. Could it be a Vibes Based Reality Indicator? Amea squinted at the screen when a notification popped up on the screen. "CRAZY ROCK, YOU WON'T BELIEVE."

Great, her agents were having a field day in memes chat again. She would have muted it if it wasn't because some of them were just genuinely funny when they actually tried to be. She shuffled the thought to the back of her mind.

On Yaeger's end things were surprisingly quiet. For the time being it would seem that life was alright. Good tunes on the radio, hoots and hollers on the short range radio, and nothing but the open road. Well, technically so at aleast given there were no actual roads in space.

 

[Yaeger Sularen]

LOCATION⠀|	Christophsis Orbit
OBJECTIVE⠀|	Catch up with an old friend

Whoever wanted this weird rock, was gonna have to pay double, plus the extra fee for the scratched paint job. Poor Old Glory, he'd have to repaint her again.

The cargo cam had been set to auto-record as he prepped for his next destination. Who had wanted this damn thing? Apparently some Geonosian. Yaeger hadn't asked much.

He was too busy turning up the radio, and listening over the Ham frequencies.

"Breaker Breaker, we've got Old Glory exiting atmo. How ya doin' old buddy?"

Oh chit it was Jimbo.

"73 Elmer, I hear ya. How's it going? Just headed off to Geo, weird cargo today. You hear about Larry? I heard he went Silent Key last week."

Amea Virou

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