Tales of the Stars

Chapter 2 - Luna

The Hopeful Stargazer gracefully fell towards the lunar surface, its vertical thrusters burning fuel to slow its descent until it touched down silently on the landing pad. Inside the ship, captain Dorian Axis entered the main cargo hold along with his crewmate Gira Blanc. The two of them donned their helmets as Gira pressed a button which caused the vents to suck all the oxygen out of the room. The humming sound of the ship's systems went silent as the room entered a vacuum state.

"Maybe we'll be able to afford better suits after this job," Dorian said as he pulled the lever that opened up the cargo ramp at the rear of the ship. The opening door granted the two astronauts a view of the lunar surface outside, interrupted by a single visible paved road leading to the vast, metallic metropolis of Elon City.

"The payout is about 5 mil and we've barely paid 500 thousand for this job," stated Gira. "We're making bank."

Dorian looked back at the cargo hangar behind him. Off to the side near the back was a single rover which was only occasionally used, as well as multiple computer terminals. In the center of the hangar were several large crates, similar in design to the shipping crates used on earth. Inside these crates were over 50 thousand kilograms of unrefined tungsten. They had purchased the ore from the mining station at the Excalibur asteroid, which was conveniently passing close to earth. The trip had taken a full 3 weeks to complete and they had filled their ship with as much as they could manage so they could sell it on Luna.

Dorian walked down the ramp and stepped onto the lunar surface. To the right there were several other ships resting on landing pads. The other ships were Sparrow-class moon hoppers, relatively small ships designed for cargo transport around Luna. The Hopeful Stargazer, Dorian's ship, was a Robin-class low-G cargo hauler, which was designed for more long-range flights. After graduating flight school at the Martian colonies, where Dorian was born and raised, he had been given the ship by his father, who had captained it before him. After that, he brought his ship and its new crew to work in the Democracy of Luna, where business was booming.

A truck pulling several empty transport platforms behind it started driving down the road towards the Hopeful Stargazer. The front vehicle looked like a combination of the rovers from the old days of lunar colonization, and a common semi truck from earth. The vehicle was towing its empty cargo platforms towards the ship at a slow and methodical pace, as going too fast could send it sprawling in the low gravity. Once the truck reached the ship, parking parallel to the cargo ramp, three men disembarked and approached Dorian and Gira. Everyone set their suits' radios to an open channel, so they could hear each other properly.

"Welcome to Elon city," the man in front said. His voice had just a hint of a southern accent. He looked up at their cargo bay, before looking directly at Dorian. "I see you have the cargo, you must be the captain."

"That I am," he replied, "Dorian Axis, at your service."

One of the other men produced a digital clipboard and handed it to Dorian while a second began fiddling with a panel on the side of the truck. Dorian and Gira both looked over the details of the transaction before using a stylus to sign their names on the touch screen. The first man, who seemed to be in charge of the group, took one last look at his documents detailing their ship and declared cargo.

"Well, everything checks out," he declared. "Let's load it up."

At the rear of the truck, two light grey robots unfolded from the sides. The drones were relatively humanoid looking, with four arms ending in clamps for hands, an orb with camera lenses pointing in all directions for a head, and a lower body consisting of four legs ending in spherical wheels. The robots drove up the cargo ramp and began unloading the first container. While they did this, Dorian used his suit's heads-up display to confirm that the adequate funding had been transferred to his account and began re-distributing it between himself and the rest of the crew. Business was good.

"It's a good thing you delivered that tungsten when you did," said the man in charge of unloading the cargo. "Luna's ships are going to need it for a lot more ammo pretty soon."

"Why would you need more ammo?" asked Gira. Dorian was wondering the same thing.

"You haven't heard?" the man asked. "Humanity is at war."

"With who?" asked Dorian. There had been some conflict between planets in the past, but nothing big enough to warrant all out war.

"Aliens," the man replied. "We are at war with god damn aliens."