There was this gal I ran into on MacLaren's Drift a few time. It was a while back on Thursday Trader's Night at Bootlegger's on Mac. But there was another time on Prosperity while I was talking to Gabe and JJ, while I saw the mayor Moonshine for the first time. Although she dressed kind of nightclubby, she said how she was having troubles with cattle thieves. Nothing much came of it.
Recently we took a small job of transporting some feeder cattle to be sold or transhipped on Eavesdown. The loading was done for me and it was only two shipping containers of 20 cows each, so I didn't think I needed to hire crew for such a small job. One of the containers broke open on the tarmac and 20 cows broke out onto the streets of Eavesdown Docks. Luckily Doc Spargel was a good sport and helped me wrangle (I just learned the word) the cattle down the streets of Eavesdown over to the Customs and Clearing Warehouse. They seemed content to lounge about at the "Unlikely Shipping" landing pad.
As the cattle was in sealed cargo containers, I didn't bother to take a good look at them. But as wrangling is a slow laborious process, I got to spend more time looking at the backside of heifers than I ever expected to. The brand looked odd to me, never saw one before. When I got a closer look, someone had used a hot brand to rebrand over the cold brand of the original ranchers. These were stolen cattle.
I made up a report and was ready to file it, then I realized that it would go nowhere. I was talking to reese, who was showing me the mods he made to his firefly. A fancy Aught-Three, not a simple gal like my no frills Aught-Two mini. We hatched a plan to rescue the stolen livestock and maybe return them to their rightful owners, or at least get the owner's the market price. Just deduct the usual fees for transport 10 per live healthy head.
Doc Spargel said he would come along to help. Good to have an ag doc on hand.
I ran across LilyBell while she was doing some improbable combat testing.
That happens to me quite often.
We talked about the usual kinds of things. Boots, chest fur on boys, bathing. She talked about Willie Fatih. I was not sure if she meant TeeTopWillie now Commander William Faith or if she meant his alleged brother with the same name, Willie. I mentioned how Faith's home on Al Raqis is right next to the new Zenobian Embassy. Intriqued, Lily agreed to come with me on my run to Al Raqis.
Once on the ground, LilyBell ran around. No one was about and she wanted to get into everthing. I wished she would be more careful, curiosity killed the...nevermind. I showed her how Podwangler, Valiant Vukovnic (Tri-V), Cortex, CoolLuke, the companions and other familiar names had offices, shops, residences or ships on the landing pad. Lilybell of course obsessed on the Faith Warehouse and his offices. Quality security devices kept LilyBell busy for quite a while. Of course, we can just look thru the several windows to see what was inside. Palletloads of crates with the BlueSun Logo crossed out.
Trying to run around with lilybell is like trying to herd ca...nevermind.
In all of this, I never got to show LilyBell the new Zenobian embassy, but she had her own agenda. She told me later that she had a run in with the slaver Barbosa from Botany Bay. I remember him from when I went looking for AuroraBlue when she was kidnapped from Caliban. She also left a book there where if you put a special coin in it, does something in Sanskrit.
We talked about indian food, briani, suggee and Tamarind Punch. She ditched me for Chicken Masala.
Lily reminded me that Starstrucks is reopening with barista service and that we will be delivering coffee there again. Leia will be working there, but it is automated when not.
...and last but not least:
WHODAT?
Messed up hair, bruises and runny mascara from crying.
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