Chapter 43: Time For Another Hustle

I woke up to see Amber in the midst of pulling up her stockings while seated at the edge of the bed, my eyes immediately drawn to the fabric sliding up her smooth legs that I had been busy caressing the night before.

She noticed that I was awake almost immediately and smiled at me, "Good morning, lover. Did you sleep well last night? I know I did. Oh gods, that was so cheesy wasn't it?"

I giggled, "It's alright, you can be as cheesy as you want with me."

She actually blushed.

She cleared her throat, "Ahem… So what should we do today?"

I considered for a while, should we find the black market today?

"Just curious, how much is a stealth module on the black market?" I asked.

She tapped the side of her cheek with a finger, "Hmm… It kind of depends on where you're getting it from but I would say a safe estimate would be four million Credits? Maybe even twice of that if you're getting it from all the way out here."

Oh damn… I guess it makes sense that the things sold on the black market would be expensive.

I had plans on looking through the items sold there to figure out what I could buy and sell to make a quick profit but the main problem is having a capital to start off with.

Without enough starting capital, the risk compared to the reward just isn't worth it.

It's called the black market for a reason after all. Get caught trading in it and I'll most probably be branded as a criminal and I don't have plans to live as an outlaw right now.

If I could get enough money to start trading in some goods, I could probably double or triple my starting money.

At least… That's how it worked in the game.

I mean… In the game you didn't even need to worry about looking for the black market since it's accessed from a menu. But here you need to worry about finding the black marketers and then worry about getting scammed or getting caught in the act.

What's more, I don't have any guides to follow here and I'm completely clueless as to the market as well so I would probably have to do my own research.

I guess it doesn't hurt to at least take a look at the market first.

"Do you know where the black market is?" I asked.

Amber jerked slightly, "Eh? You want to trade there?"

I nodded, also getting out of bed to start putting on my own clothes.

"I believe that's the best place to make money quickly as compared to the normal channels. I don't suppose you do some trading on the side as well?"

She chuckled, "Tera, does my ship look like it has cargo space to do any trading?"

Oh yeah, that's true… Her ship doesn't even have any cargo space aside from some personal storage lockers.

I guess in her case, she went for the pure combat Mercenary build.

She slid to my side and wrapped her arm around mine, "You're really focused on making money I see."

"It's the most basic resource we need to get around the galaxy after all."

Amber turned to me, "Oh, you're looking to get yourself a higher class ship that can fly both of our ships in its hangar, aren't you?"

I admit that I wasn't really thinking of that but that's not a bad idea either.

We wouldn't need to keep worrying about docking our ships and having Amber move over to my ship every time we fly. Additionally, we could get better furnished quarters, more amenities and also more cargo space for trading.

"I would like that, yes."

Amber pulled out her personal terminal while leaning her head on my shoulder, opening the menu that showed the Mercenary jobs.

"Mmm… Seems like there aren't any good missions outside the station right now…"

I peeked at her screen to look at the mission list.

There were a few delivery missions and a few escort missions but all of them were paying in the ten thousand Credits range. I'm not sure if that was a lot for those jobs but I suppose it's considered relatively low for what we have been earning.

Even the new missions that were being replaced on the list were not any better than the ones that were present there.

Or maybe it's my sense of money that's skewed since I managed to get such well paying jobs from the start?

She turned to me, "Do you want to just sit around and see if any good jobs come up? Or maybe we can just fly out and hunt some pirates for their bounties?"

I grimaced, "What are the odds of a good job popping up?"

"Pretty low I would say. There aren't a lot of rich space farmers out here and the merchant ships travelling here don't need a lot of escorts since pirates aren't that numerous either. And I guess doing escort missions or going to another system is out of the question since we're also waiting for your mod."

"Ugh… Then what about going out to just hunt pirates?"

"We could do that too but… I don't think you know where we should start hunting them do you? Because I sure don't."

I suppose that's an obvious problem… It's not like we could just fly out into space and expect to just find a few pirates flying around waiting for us to hunt them. And neither do we know of another pirate base around here that we could attack like the last one I did.

I sighed, "So I guess there's nothing we could do?"

Amber paused, "Well… We could also do some hustles that are within the station if you're up for it? Since you've even bought yourself that new shotgun and I have my shield too."

Oh right, we don't actually need to fly out to do jobs, we could also be doing stuff inside the station too.

I nodded, "Yeah, why not? Let's see what kind of jobs they have for us."

She then waved her hand and the list changed, displaying a new list of missions on the screen.

Amber perked up, "Oh, this one looks good. It suits us perfectly too."

She pointed to one of the missions that was on the board which showed a completion reward of two million Creadits.

"What kind of mission is offering such a huge reward?" I blurted out.

"Seems like we're rescuing some daughter of a rich guy that got kidnapped by some thugs. The problem is that they aren't even asking for ransom so they're probably planning to do something to her or they were hired by people who hate this guy's guts. We'll most likely be going up against an entire crew if we're taking this job, wanna do it?"

"Can the two of us even do this?"

She shrugged, "Meh, we don't really need to wipe out the entire crew, we just need to escape with the girl and get her to a safe spot to count as hustle complete."

"Uh huh… I don't think I have anything that would help us do this stealthily though."

"Then I guess we'll just have to wipe them all out~ Easy."

I gave her a pointed look, "I remember someone being pinned down by a guy wearing power armour the last time you thought a job was going to be easy."

She then gestured to my new weapon that laid at the side, "Mmhmm~ But now you have a weapon that can punch through power armour right? So it'll be even easier than before~ Let's do it!"

Ugh… I guess she's right… And the money is pretty good too…

"But seriously, how many thugs are we looking at?"

"Probably fifty or so, should be around the same as the freighter hustle."

"But won't they be better equipped and prepared compared to those guys?"

"Most probably. But we get to scout them out first as well so we can plan our entry to save her."

I looked at the job listing again, "Do we know who took her?"

"Yep, a group called The Marauders. Lowlifes that would do anything for money so I'm pretty sure someone hired them to take this guy's kid. Should be easy for the two of us."

Hmm… Since Amber was so confident that we could do it, then let's take it.

Truth be told, I'm also itching to try out my new weapon in an actual fight as well.

I nodded and Amber tapped on the job before tapping on the 'Accept' button.

I received a 'ping' on my own Codex as well and I pulled it up to see that a window had popped up informing me about the job that Amber had just accepted.

She slipped away from me and grinned, "As much as I would enjoy spending the rest of the day ogling you, we should get dressed and ready to go~"

Amber then blew me a kiss before stepping out of my room.

I rolled my eyes and went ahead to finish putting on the rest of my clothes, meeting her outside my ship with all my gear.

Time to get to work.

CREATORS' THOUGHTS
Draekai

Captain's Log:

Not gonna lie, I wouldn't mind staying in bed all day with Amber either... But we still got to work for a living. I should get a ship with a bigger bed...

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