Kapitel 17: Freighter Captain Herman

It seemed like I gave her quite a heavy blow because that pirate stayed unconscious even after an entire day had passed.

Right now, I'm watching the transport ship dock with the station at one of the station's 'arms', the C Class Freighter coming to a stop as its docking hatch latched onto the station.

Marten and several of the miners were also with me, all of us watching the freighter completing its docking process while waiting behind the doors.

The docking bay doors cycled open and several people walked through the doors to enter the station.

No offence, but the guy at the front looked like some kind of hippie with a red bandana tied across his head and his dreadlocks flowing out from behind. He was even wearing some chains and wearing a loose sleeveless shirt with a jacket tied around his waist.

The ones following behind him were pushing along carts that had piles of boxes stacked on top of them.

Marten went up to greet the guy at the front with a smile, "Herman! You made it!"

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be? Same time as always, aren't I?"

Marten raised an eyebrow, "Don't you know about the pirates?"

"Pirates? What pirates?"

"Wait… Did corporate not even send you a message telling you about the pirate base here?"

"There's a pirate base here?!"

"You didn't know?!!"

The rest of us watched the exchange between the two men with mixed feelings.

Marten pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, "That bastard… It's to save his own skin huh… Fuck it, I'm definitely sending a report to the higher ups for this."

The Herman guy seemed to understand what was going on since he also spat out a curse, "Fucker. He would really just give us up like that huh? I don't get it, he's a handler isn't he? What does he get for doing this?"

Marten shook his head, "He gets paid a bonus for having a station under his surveillance and since he already knew that sending a Merc here was next to impossible… He would rather risk making things look like they were fine and swindle the extra money for a period of time before he has to deal with it…"

"Is it really worth it?"

"Apparently it was to him… Fuck."

"Well, then what should we do about the pirates? My freighter is only lightly armed. I can fight off one or two pirates at most but if they have a base here I can't do anything about that."

Marten laughed and beckoned to me, hinting me to go over to him.

I complied and he turned back to the freighter captain, "Herman, meet Tera. She's a Merc that single handedly wiped out the pirates here. Tera, this is Herman, he's the freighter captain in charge of resupplying our station and delivering the gas we mined."

He looked at me with wide eyes, "You took down the pirates all on your own? Hot damn, you're a Platinum Merc aren't you?"

"Err… What's a Platinum Merc?" I asked, this one being the second time I heard this.

Herman furrowed his brows but Marten came to my rescue, "She went through an anomaly and her memories were… Quite badly affected. She doesn't even remember where she came from."

"Ah… My condolences in that case. And I suppose I should also thank you for helping us get rid of the pirate problem, the galaxy is better with less of those scum around."

Marten clapped him on the shoulder, "Right, we're having a party for that later too. So let's just work on doing our work first before we get to that, eh?"

"Sounds good to me. Alright! Let's get to work boys and on the double! We're going to drink today!"

His crew let out a cheer before pushing the cart to the miners who took over carrying them into the station.

Herman looked at me, "So… I doubt you are staying in this station for long, are you? No offence, Marten."

Marten chuckled, "None taken and yes, she intends to head to Theeve Orbital Habitat. Maybe the Mercenary Guild there has her records that she can make use of to regain her memory."

I nodded, "There's also the archive that I want to peruse, plus… Well… I'm quite short on Credits at the moment and I have a pirate ship I want to sell and their boss who I hope has a bounty I can cash in on."

Herman raised an eyebrow at the station master, "No money? Are you not getting paid for getting rid of the pirate base?"

Marten scratched his beard, "Unfortunately… I will only be able to put forward the payment request when she's a registered Merc… Since she doesn't know her Merc credentials right now, I can't submit a request to HR to send the payment…"

The freighter captain nodded at me sympathetically, "I see… Well I can tell where this is going. I can bring you and your ship along with my freighter to make sure you can dock at the habitat without any problems. We're going to stop there for a quick resupply anyway so it's not a big problem for us."

"That would help a lot," I thanked him.

While I could travel to the station on my own, my travel speed would definitely be slower than a C Class ship's travel speed so if I was able to latch my ship onto his and piggyback off of his freighter, I could reach the station faster than if I were to travel there on my own.

"Speaking of which… Do you mind if I see your ship? I really like to look at ships you see…" Herman requested while rubbing his palms together.

I shrugged, "Sure, why not?"

Marten waved at me, "Well, you two have fun then. I'll have to go make sure those guys aren't slacking off."

We parted ways and Herman followed me towards the hangar, the hippie freighter captain looking especially excited to do so.

"Just curious, do you know the leader of the pirate base?" He asked.

"Ah… Someone called Holoface Yirfa I think?"

"Oh shit, that crazy bitch? Even I heard of her! I think her bounty was at half a million credits I think?"

"Is that… A lot of money?"

"What do you… Oh right, the memory loss thing. Err… I would say it's a substantial amount depending on you I guess? Definitely a lot for a miner but if you're a freighter captain like myself, I could probably make that amount of money in like half a year or so, give and take a few months. Not counting expenses of course."

"That… Doesn't really tell me anything," I pointed out.

"Shit, I guess not. Ermm… Ah! I guess beer prices are pretty much standard throughout the galaxy except for some places. You could probably get a beer for ten to fifteen credits if that helps. And resupplying my ship would cost me like three thousand credits or even up to six thousand if I was doing a long haul and needed more food and stuff for my crew, not including their pay and any other cost like docking fees and such."

Hmm… I think I could guess that ten credits is equivalent to a dollar?

"So that Yirfa is some big pirate I suppose?"

"Oh nah. If I'm not wrong, that bounty on her was because she stole some corp's secrets and they put a hit on her, only for her to make a fool out of them so they got really pissed. Otherwise, I'd say her bounty would probably be around ten times less than that."

That means I got pretty lucky didn't I? Well, you won't hear me complaining that's for sure.

We reached the hangar and I guided him to my ship, presenting it to him with a quick wave of my hand.

"That's the one, B Class Heavy Fighter Verlandi," I introduced, stating its model as well.

"Verlandi? I've never heard of that model! This is so cool! Which company is it from? Is it from StellarTech? Or maybe Nebula Dynamics? Oh! Oh! Galactic Armaments?!"

I blinked at him, "I… Don't know."

"Ah, sorry. I keep forgetting that you lost your memories. But this is cool! I know most of the ship manufacturers but I've never seen a ship like yours before! Oh wow! Is that a photon laser?! I never knew you could mount that on a heavy fighter! This ship must have cost a fortune for sure!"

It's… One of the starter ships that you could get in the game… So it's literally free… But of course I wasn't going to tell him that.

But I was more concerned about one thing…

"There aren't any other ships like this?"

"Well… Not that I know of. It's the first time I've seen this after all and I do take note of all the ships I've seen."

Ok… Now this is kind of confirming the possibility that I was in a completely new universe… This ship was quite common in the game so there's no way this would be the first time someone else has seen my ship model…

Just where the hell did I end up?