“Weirdest job Varangian’s ever done?”
“Yeah, what is hands-down the weirdest thing you’ve ever been asked to do. On-duty, I mean, I know about that whole brothel incident on Terra with Tol and the ‘quack’ thing in the middle of the street.”
“Heh, yeah, that one was legendary. Let’s see… on duty? Got a good one- about a year ago we were contracted by a wealthy-as-feck client waaaay the hell out on Cassel in the Goss system to do a priority high-value transport. I mean, yeah, we’re mercs, we’ll do just about anything that isn’t too stupid or violates our code of ethics if the pay is right, but this guy slapped down a seven figure payout and compensation for expenses contract that made our accountant need a post-happy-time cigarette after reading it.”
“What was the cargo?”
“Hold your Nox, kid, I’m getting to that. So this guy’s people contact us and send us to a pick-up point on Earth in the East Asia sector. The route we have to go through to get to Goss is a bitch, plus you have all sorts of ballsy pirate gangs hanging around in the Pool risking the gravity wells there that will jump non-touristy ships now and then, so we loaded up with most of our heavy stuff- a Perseus with two Hammerheads for point defense, two dozen marines, a Liberator as pocket carrier, and a Gladius, Super-Hornet, and some Sabers as escort. We landed the Perseus to do the pickup, and they load this big-ass container weighing something in the order of fifty tonnes, filled the whole damned cargo bay with barely enough room to squeeze around it. I looked at the cargo manifest and had to verify with the loadmaster what it said. We scanned the shit out of that container six ways from Sunday, because there was no way any sane person was going to shell out eight mil cred on what it claimed was in there.”
“What did it turn out to be?”
“Water. I shit you not, H-two-feckin’-oh. Not even pure water, either, there was all sorts of dirt, debris, organic bits, tannic acid, you name it in there. It was straight up non-filtered no-shit river water.”
“You’re having me on, now, aren’t you?”
“Nope, we even cracked the case to run a sampling probe in it just in case, and it was exactly what it claimed to be- murky ass river water.”
“What the fu…”
“Yeah, that was pretty much my response. So, anyway, we confirm that there’s no contraband in the water or the casing, even cleared it for auto-reassembly nanites just in case they’d deconstructed something molecularly, and lift off. Well, word got out, apparently, because we got jumped halfway through the trip. Guess someone figured with the kind of firepower we were tossing around to protect this mystery box it must be worth a fortune, right? They threw everything and the damned kitchen sink at us, even brought their own pair of Hammerheads to the party. We cut one in half with ol’ Percy right out of the gate, which made an impression, apparently, because they got REAL cautious right about then. Buuuut, they had a ballsy Inferno pilot that managed to do a strafe down our flank and blow off about eighty thousand cred in armour plating and peripheral systems nodes. Even burned through the cowling of the Number Two engine, but didn’t punch through to the core, thank Odin.”
“Who were they? Nine Tails?”
“Nah, some low-budget group with the usual look-at-us-we’re-scary-badasses names like Death Hunters or Pyro-Maniacs or some stupid shyte like that. They had decent ships, but no real skill. Hell, their Hawk pilot was a complete idiot and popped his EMP in a panic when Tol was shoving a missile up his ass and fried the targeting and engines on their surviving Hammerhead. EVAed a boarding team over to it and took that bastard in less than five minutes. Bunch of pansies on board, surrendered after the first grenade barrage turned their counter-boarders into chutney. So, we came away from that fight with about a hundred-K in damages, but a salvaged corvette and another Vanguard that Legal managed to browbeat the UEE navy into letting us keep.”
“Shit, not bad. And all this for friggin’ water? Seriously?”
“Yeah, about that. So we FINALLY get to Goss, QT over to Cassel to avoid any more bullshit from pirates, get directed straight to this guy’s pleasure palace on the edge of some tropical resort island or something, and land on his personal STO pad. Now, you have to realize this place is a resort world full of tourists, and here we come in this fleet of arctic camo warships with obvious battle damage, landing one of them at this rich guy’s pad while the others fly *** overhead. The locals are freaked the feck out, lemme tell ya. His guys come out all resplendent in this gold-and-white-silk finery with turbans loaded up with more jewels than I’ve ever seen outside of a Turisian courtesan’s nightstand- long story, don’t ask- and check out the cargo. They seem satisfied and gravlev the thing off the elevator and off to his pleasure palace. So, I’m curious as you can imagine, and after I see that fat paycheck hit our bank account I turn to the head turban guy and asked what the big deal with the cargo was…”
“Oh screw you, MacAlistair, you aren’t leaving me hanging like that. Spill!”
“Another Wingman’s Hangover and I’ll consider it.”
“Dick. Fine, Brant! Another liver-casualty-causer for the colonel here. Alright, Mike, spill, damn it!”
“Go riabh maith agat, a chara*. Alright, so the guy explains it to me. You won’t believe this shit- their boss, they called him the Rajah, needed water from the river Ganges to bathe in. No, don’t give me that look, I’m not having you on. The guy covered a quarter of the cost of damages, all expendables- which is a lot, considering how missile-happy Tol tends to be- and a base eight million cred payout… so he could take a bath in river water from Earth.”
“No friggin’ way.”
“Dead serious, light years across space through a battle with pirates so a guy could have a bath in dirty Earth water. Fecked if I know why, but hey, a job’s a job, so I’m not bitching.”
“Rich people are crazy, man, but at least they pay well.”
“Amen to that.”


* Irish, “Thanks my friend”