"Delilah" broke away from the lower cargo lock with practiced grace. The well-loved Sampson II STO flickered her maneuvering jets, leaving faint blue ion trails dispersing rapidly in the black.
She was a whale of a space plane, a 40 meter long vessel with her broad delta wings blending into the body. Built to last and able to carry 60 tonnes of cargo, she was a hauler's best friend.
Today she was loaded to the gills, but in micro-gravity that meant next to nothing. Her main drives spat out irradiated particles as she sped away from the larger ship. From here, Rich took a good look at his ship. Glory Days was a medium sized cargo vessel. She was about 220 meters long, and her sides swelled out to accommodate the cargo bays and shuttle hangar. She could hold one more like Delilah, and two Spencer class shuttles besides. The setting sun mural down her side was chipped and faded, slowly boiling away in the vacuum of space. He would need to have it redone next time they were any where near a ship yard. She was gone from view only a few seconds later as the STO shuttle accelerated along her own course.
Trace moved her into their landing orbit and roller her over. Belly to the black, Richard and the others now had their first natural-eyes view of Parzifal. Not as blue as Earth, and the greens were slightly off. Still, it was beautiful to watch the planet roll by overhead.
The Glory Days orbit was designed to make this an easy trip, but atmospheric entry could never be taken lightly. Atmosphere was a very different medium than empty space, and had a lot more weather.
Trace called in their final approach to Landing City, the main hub of Parzifal's limited commercial activity, and rolled the ship back onto her heat-shielded belly as the first wisps of atmosphere started to stream around her. A few choppy moments later and Delilah was over the shining sea, the largest one on Parzifal, and headed east towards the city.
"Sweet Lords, so much water," Elliot spoke reverently. He was form Gliese, which had more water then almost any other planet, but all of it frozen solid. "Why do they need vapor condensers again?" he asked.
Richard smiled. "They don't have very much inland surface water, and the local ecosystem is fragile. They have an easier time with vapor collection than with wells once you get away from the rivers." Richard kept to himself that the reports on this place showed that the UN had specifically banned water mining and heavy river use. The reports claimed that this was due to the ecosystem, but this was well out of proportion to the UN normal new colony water usage laws. It was one way to force commerce.
Trace brought Delilah in for a text book landing, setting her down vertically in the painted square that was "slip" 16. The locals only had a 4x4 divided grid to serve as their landing port. The Tarmac was really just large area of laser-fused dirt, black and hard as concrete.
Richard took in the view from the the cabin window. Not much to see. Landing city was mostly prefab structures, the tallest where 4 stories tall, and the city got progressively shorter as you worked your way out from the center.
The tarmac they had landed on was a laser scar from a UN destroyer that had escorted the original colony train here, the last and only favor the UN did the colonists before it dropped a monitor satellite and left.
As He looked over the traffic control tower and warehouses the lined the landing field a pick up truck rolled off the local roads, and headed directly out across the tarmac. The locals were already driving out to meet them.
Richard made his way down from the STO while Elliot, Trace, and Doo Min gave the poor thing it's post flight shake down. He looked over his 4 passangers and he left the command deck, and cut through the main cabin, such as it was.
They had picked up a group of at Alpha Centuari, a university researcher, two of his students, and a settle named Jerron. Passengers were a rare and precious cargo. They took up little space, paid 4 times as much as the same cargo mass could yield and were usually fun to spend time with on the journey out. Especially the scientist's intern, Molly.
He dropped the cargo ramp, and took a deep breath. It had been 7 months since his last trip down to a planet.The air was clear, and a bit cool, 16.7 C was the reading on his Dattoo. The sun had a slightly blue glare that took him a while to get used to, and made everything seem a bit too real.
The locals rolled up, and clambered down from their cargo truck, a small one of the fuel drinking variety. Richard liked those, they always felt like they had more power than electrics. They walked over and their boss, Richard presumed, offered his hand.
"Mighty nice to have you down here, it's been a while since the UN sent us a supply run" the man said. "I'm Hoyce Guerra, deputy mayor of Landing City." He had a firm hand shake and a weathered face. This man had been here since the beginning, Rich guessed.
"Hello Mr. Guerra," Richard smiled, "I'm glad to be here, but I'm not with the UN, though. We're just a tramp hauler out of Gliese, come to buy food stuffs." Rich released the man's hand, waving back towards Delilah's registration number. He was already on his game, trying to sort out if this guy was an asshole, or just poorly informed about how to read ship registries.
"You're not with Pathfinder?" Hoyce was either a great actor or genuinely confused. "We were expecting a UN frigate any day now." Hoyce had taken on a defensive attitude, but Rich answered un-phased.
"We're with the Gliese registered hauler Glory Days; we just made orbit three hours ago." Rich was still not sure if this guy had a game, or was telling the truth. "Sorry to hear your scheduled frigate is lagging behind," he offered with genuine sympathy. "It's good that I'm here then."
"So you really don't have any official word for us?" Hoyce's face changed as he asked the question. The man must have been joking, as now he looked grave rather than challenging.
"I checked in with the UN at Proxima station before heading here. There were no government loads for the colony, other than the generic ones about Earth events," Rich provided. Hoyce was rubbing his chin, not tryign to conceal his irritation. There was not much Rich could do. "I'll wave my normal charge for data transit, if you want to send a load for the UN with me when I fold out of here." That was the best Rich had for Hoyce right now. He had too much invested to give any more than that away for free.
"Well, I hope you got some good deals for us, mister, 'cause we got less then usual around here." Hoyce had a smirk, seeming to enjoy what he was saying. "Crops have been light, and animal food has been a bit scarce." He planted his hands behind his head and stretched. "I don't want to sound rude, but didn't the colonial office give you our last Comm load? We're reported our problems more than once."
"Comms said you folks were having trouble with wildlife, listed some property damage, and noted it was unsafe to be in the country side after dark..." Rich was going off his memory of the reading, and started to bring it up on his data tattoo.
"Unsafe? Boy, it's suicide to be out after dark in the countryside!" Hoyce was clearly angry, though he did not raise his voice, there was venom in it. Rich offered him the highlighted section of the reading. Hoyce scowled over it. "No wonder we ain't seen more help. This is down played by half at least. Unsafe." Hoyce stepped back and spat. "Look, y'all only have an hour or so before the sun sets. Dig in for the night at the lodge there, and make sure your lander is secure. The fence will keep most of the wildlife out the airfield, but it never pays to take chances."
Hoyce walked back over to his runnabout, and was already exchanging words with his men as he drove away.
"What the hell?" Rich wondered aloud as he turned back to his crew. It was gonna be a long night.
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