Now leaving Fist

"Mr. Edgerson," said Nathan, "perhaps I was remiss in not warning you about the Hudson twin's penchant for touring local correctional facilities."

"I'm sorry about all this, Captain," said Lloyd.

"As far as I can tell, this wasn't really your fault. Just please try and avoid mysterious young women throwing themselves at you in the future?"

"Yes sir."

"And as for you two," said Nathan to the twins, "I should just hire two new gunners right here and now! I don't need this kind of trouble. Pull any stunts like this out there and they might decide to hold me responsible. I won't stand for it!"

"There was a fellow crew member in trouble and we rescued him," said Jake.

"He didn't need rescuing!" yelled Nathan, "They asked him a few questions and were letting him go when you two clowns decided to play commando!"

"We also rescued the victim of an undeclared trade war kidnapping," said Sam.

"And now I have to worry that Korashi LTD will decide to undeclare a war against me."

"They won't do that, Captain," said Jake. "Korashi has SuSAG breathing down their neck and, quite frankly, one freelance trader is the least of their worries now."

"You should've contacted me."

"Shore leave is shore leave," said Sam. "We're off-duty and responsible to no one but ourselves. You don't want us manning the guns, it's your right to hire someone else. We'll manage."

"Who else is going to be dumb enough to hire two loose cannons like you? You've been bouncing around from one UFTA ship to another, always causing trouble. You'd been cooling your heels for months when I looked you up. No one would deal with you. The only reason I hired you on was because I still owe you one and because when you two are doing your jobs, you're both damn good at it. But this isn't the UFTA, where you can get easily transferred because your old captain was anxious to foist you off on someone else. This time, there's only the Option and if you screw it up, you're out. Is that clear?"

The twins nodded.

"Good. While you lot were being hosted by the local government, we got the ship fully loaded. Lot of cargo headed to Iilgan that was just sitting around waiting to be picked up. Got a full slate of passengers too. So get back on the ship and get ready for liftoff, we're leaving as soon as Lloyd gets our route planned."

***

Later, Nathan threw himself down in the co-pilot's chair muttering to himself.

"I see we got our little jailbirds back," said Ed.

"I don't really want to talk about it," growled Nathan, "Did our jump drives get their timers reset?"

"Yes. We're good for another three months or until we hit Pandora, whichever comes first."

"All right, let's get out of here."