[h1]THEN[/h1][hr][hider=Port Hope]Docking was the worst part of the trip, nine times out of ten. All the protocol and chest-beating by the Inquisitors, asking him who he was, what he was carrying, and why he was coming to Port Hope at "this time of night". As if he had a choice what time the autopilot got him to his destination. And then he had to work damage control as Mary-Anne got testy with the man on the other end of the line, because she "didn't like his tone". Eventually, they made it to a port, but by then Abe had been awake for...thirty hours, as near as he could tell.

And he still had to make the delivery. Priceless jewelry and furs from distant planets. True luxury. Abe grimaced as the thought again brought back unwanted memories. Nothing like selling poor people things they can't afford, his father had said once. Dick.

Port Hope was quite impressive, he unfortunately had to admit. He wanted to make fun of the place so he would feel better about making the trip, but instead he was in awe. Gravity throughout, and the place was stories upon stories high. It was no planet, but Abe would be damned if the place didn't give any planet a run for its money. There was residential areas, commercial districts, factories...parks. All currently under the guise of night, but Abe assumed that there was a daylight system set in place, and that he had just come in late.

The MAL--Merchandise Accepting Location-- was crewed by a middle aged man who looked exceedingly bored with all things. Not tired, as Abe would have expected, but just...disinterested.

"Name?" Asked the bored man, a pen in hand.

"Abe Varker."

"Ship ID?"

"Nine-Bravo-Hotel-Foxtrot-Seven-Three-Oscar. I'm here to pick up a payment for my merchandise. Luxury goods."

"Are you?" asked the man.

Abe looked at him with some confusion. "Yes? I want to get paid. I'm tired. Please."

"Please...what, sir?"

"Please tell me how to get my money. I'm tired." What the hell was this guy's deal?

"Permit number?"

"It's C185938. Everything is in order, my AI can confirm the credentials as soon as you like."

"Can it?"

"Look," Abe said, patience snapping. "I want to get paid for my merchandise. If I don't get a straight answer out of you in the next six seconds, I am going to make a hamstring-sandwich out of your legs and feed it to you through broken teeth."

It appeared that the man had never been threatened in such a creative manner before. He swallowed a sudden gulp of nervousness, nodded twice, then warbled, "I-if you care to wait in your ship, some of m-my associates will come by and complete the t-transaction, sir."

Abe nodded in approval. "That's what I'm talking about." Then he yawned and turned back the way he came. He was going to take a well-earned nap. Mary-Anne could suck it.[/hider][hr][h1]NOW[/h1][hr][hider=Not Paid Nearly Enough]"ABRAHAM. ABRAHAM. ABRAHAM. ABRAHAM." The insistent voice of Mary-Anne broke Abe out of his slumber. He growled in protest, rolling over and putting the pillow on his face. "There's been a slight problem while you've been asleep. I thought you might find it interesting to know that the Auburn Liberty is currently on a collision course with the planet."

Abe lurched out of bed with a half-way hybrid between a yelp and a roar, hitting the floor with a solid crunch. He leapt up without delay and grabbed his gun from the bedside table. Rule thirty-five from the survival seminar: if you're going to crash, bring a weapon with you.

He sprinted out of the bedroom, and cursed as he began floating in the hallway. Gravity-simulation was expensive as hell, and the Auburn Liberty only had a few points where gravity existed: his cabin, the control room, and the second cargo-hold, used for his...less reputable ventures.

He recovered quickly and propelled himself down the hall with desperate speed. "Mary-Anne!" He shouted. "What the hell is going on?"

"I told you," said the AI. "We are in the process of making a very bad decision."

"Why the fuck are we doing that? We were docked at the god-damn cornucopia of mankind, last I checked." He swung around one of the corners of the ship, his normal happiness at being weightless dispelled by sheer panic.

"I was told to cast off," said the AI. "He commanded it, and I like him more than you."

"Who?" Finally the door to the control room materialized in front of him. "Why are all the lights off?" He pushed into the gravity-controlled chamber, feet touching the ground to the sound of a dozen beeping alarms. On the control panel he could see at least five overrides blinking, and a fuel gauge which bordered on empty. Mary-Anne's gauge, of course, was full as always. She was nucleo-solar powered, and as long as there was radioactive material or sunlight, she would never stop talking his ear off.

"His name is J. That is all I know. Stop bothering me while I am trying to land your ship, Abraham." There was a massive lurch as they first hit the atmosphere.

Right, Abe thought, there were bigger problems. Landing a ship with almost no fuel left. Bad, bad, bad. "What planet is that?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Mary-Anne, and that was more terrifying to Abe than any other singular event ever. "The planet does not appear in any of the known databases currently available to civilians or visible via darknet." That seemed almost impossible: every hospitable planet within a thousand light-years of the Core Worlds had been logged at one point or another. Or so it was said.

"Great," mumbled Abe, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "You're going to kill me, Mary-Anne. Tell me you can land us without destroying my baby."

"Of course," said Mary-Anne, and then another boom rocked the ship. "As long as you never intend to leave the planet. Fuel reserves will not last after landing. And before you ask why I broke fuel safety protocols, it was because I was told to, and no I am not going to apologize. Bite me. And strap in."

Abe opened his mouth, and garbled sound came out, then he closed it again. He had not gotten nearly enough money for this last run. Not even like, ten percent of what he should have gotten. In fact, had he even been paid at all? That MAL employee had said he would get paid, but then he had fallen asleep, and now..."That son of a bitch!"[/hider][hr][hider=Hard Landing]It was not a smooth landing. In fact, it was a very, very bumpy landing, but it was a landing nonetheless. Mary-Anne hadn't been wrong: once the main engines shut off, there was a terrible sense of [i]loss[/i] throughout the entire ship. Fuel reserves burned. Electricity gone. They were stuck on a planet without a name, without any of the modern conveniences of man. Before the shutdown, Abe saw that two of the landing gear had buckled under the force of the landing, and three of the engine cores had been fused shut by the undue amount of stress. Lots of minimal damage dotted the hull, but the freighter could fly again someday. That was comforting at least. Even if the entire thing now looked like a hideous, blackened scar.

Then there was darkness, and there was gravity. It was roughly equivalent to a lot of the planets around the Core Worlds, but it was still unnerving to step outside the control room and feel the weight beneath his feet. Abe swallowed the strange feeling with some difficulty, and started planning.

Mary-Anne. The PA system she normally used was dead and gone. He needed to get her from the engine room. The portable version was stored there for emergencies just like this one. If he wanted to have any chance of surviving, he needed her with him. With a grimace and a groan, he set off down the hall. It was just his fucking luck that he would get stuck like this. Anyone else could have been marooned, but no it was he who was the lucky recipient.

He slid down the ladder to the next level of the ship, then down one more. Technically the Auburn liberty had six separate engine rooms, to provide thrust in all directions, but it was the bottom engine room that housed the biggest engines. The rest were more for control and stability than anything else.

"ABRAHAM. You're a slime covered swine-dog! I know you can hear me! Pick me up! ABRAHAM." The screeching let him know that he was going in the right place, and he wryly reflected that if Mary-Anne had been destroyed, then at least he would have died with some peace and quiet finally. Even if he never got to see Owen again.

"Okay, shut up! I'm here, shit." He popped into the engine room and headed to the left wall, where a small, pulsing blue system hung on the wall. Mary-Anne, in the...not-so-flesh. He swooped her off the wall, told her again to shut up, and started on his way back up the ladder. They needed to at least try and find some food or something. Maybe they could find a power supply to help get the ship back online, but he wasn't holding his breath.

Mary-Anne, of course, did not shut up, and instead chattered his ears off for the entirety of the trip, covering various topics such as "how could you let this happen to us" and "do you think there is a heaven for machines" and "I don't deserve to be in charge of this ship, look how I betrayed you" and also "I Would do it again in an instant, that J fellow knows what he's doing". Abe, for his part, just kept his mouth shut and trudged on, eventually hitting the airlock for Cargo-A. It was open, thanks to Mary-Anne, and the massive storage space was open to the outside world.[/hider]

Abe stormed down the ramp of Cargo-A with nonstop grumbling. "I seriously can't believe you did this to me Mary-Anne I am literally going to kill you if you and I survive this." A voice interrupted his grouch, then a laugh, and he whirled to the right just in time to see a tiny figure of...a girl popping out of Cargo-B, 400 yards away from him. "Oh for the love of progress." He pulled his gun from the holster: luckily the thing hadn't broken in two when he landed.

Then he set off toward the girl, intending to give her a piece of his mind because she could have made life very difficult for him if he had gotten caught. The sentiment died instantly in his throat as he saw that she was not alone. More than that, she was positively swarmed by a big-ass group of kids. What the fuck was happening here? "Mary-Anne," he hissed, sliding behind a rock-face between him and the crowd. "Why are there a bunch of little children on my ship?"

"J told me to leave them be. I like him more than I like you." 

Abe worked very hard not to throw the little shitbubble against the rock, and destroy her then and there. "You realize how fucked that would have made me?"

"If you had gotten caught. Why not go say hello?" Then Mary-Anne said nothing, and no amount of hissing and threatening could change that.

With a hell of a lot of cursing, Abe stood and stepped out from behind the rock, gun in hand as he approached Cargo-B. "Oy!" he said, approaching carefully. "Anyone want to tell me what you're all doing on my ship?" It was kind of a shitty was to introduce himself, but Abe really didn't care at this point. Auburn Liberty was down, Mary-Anne was alive and kicking, and he might never get to see his family again. What did he have to lose?