The 'new rep' was starting to look a bit nervous. Now be a good girl and send it on down the line.' Neal was smiling again. 'Tack on the shipping orders so they get an idea of how 'little' cargo that is.' 'Tell them that if I don't speak with Snowfall, their cargo will have to be shipped by someone else,' Neal replied. 'The receptionist says shi's in a meeting and can't be disturbed,' Tess reported. By now they should know that playing their games just cost them more to get him to ship their cargo. Thinking back to the past attempts to get him working for them under their terms, Neal wondered why they kept trying. Let's see what shi knows about this.' He smiled as he added, 'I wonder how many heads we can make roll this time?' Neal looked back at the 'rep' still standing just outside the pod’s main doors, 'Patch me through to Snowfall, voice only.

'Maybe so,' Tess replied, 'but what are you going to do about it?' 'They must’ve had another management shuffle the new idiots thinking they can do something the last five sets couldn't manage!' 'Great! They’re back to their old tricks again,' Neal groused. Halfway down in all the fine print is an employment contract, if you sign any of the pages in this stack, you become their newest, cheapest, wage slave for the next 25 years.' He was halfway down the stack when he heard the tone from his comm badge. 'Smart-assed computer,' Neal hissed with a half smile as he flipped through the sheets, letting the scanner in his glasses get a good shot, then moving on to the next. 'Two jars in the lunchroom cooler, four more in the back of the break-room cabinet three.' ' ‘Something’ is so fishy I think I’m going to need tarter sauce,' Neal whispered back. 'You expecting a problem, boss?' a female voice replied. Walking back to his fold out desk, Neal tapped his comm badge, 'Tess, a quick scan of these docs please. 'I’m your new rep,' the guy said with a smirk, as he handed Neal the shipping orders, 'Bill Stalk.' 'Where’s Snowfall?' he asked the man coming up to him. Not seeing the fur he was used to dealing with, Neal's curiosity went up a notch.

The emblems on the doors showed that they belonged to Raynor Inc., one of the larger companies that used him to move their goods across the space lanes. Just as he was smiling again thinking about last night, a small fleet of heavily loaded trucks pulled up.

Staring back at the grin his old friend was giving him, he could only shake his head in return, 'Take back your curse, you old furball!' he said with a smile of his own, 'I really don't need something like that hanging over my head.' The old foxtaur had just laughed as Neal left his shop. He had just stood there at the door not quite believing his ears. It was just as he was getting ready to leave that the old proprietor had placed the curse on him. The shotgun in question was still sitting behind his chair in case they came back, the ammo changed out to something that would make a bit more of a dent if they were in need of another hint.Īfter dinner the night before, Neal had visited an old coffee shop he had been going to for over thirty years, the shop offering a mellow tea he enjoyed.

Funny how they had seemed to be in such a big hurry to leave when some seemingly half-crazed red-haired human had started using what looked like an old pump shotgun to pelt them with a painful concoction of large birdshot and rock salt. A group of ' Humans First' idiots had been chasing and trying to beat up any furs they came across. Pumps onboard pulled in air, compressed, chilled, and stored what he needed, unwanted gasses were vented back into the atmosphere, saving a little of the 'high cost of doing business in space'. This way his ship was out of the way in high orbit, and with his own shuttle on the ground, he could leave when he was ready, knowing exactly what was loaded where, with no 'missing' packages when he got to his destination.Īnother 'little' advantage of having his shuttle on the ground was the fresh air. It would of course have been much easier to just pick up the loads already in carriers at one of the space stations, but that would have entailed paying others to get the cargo into orbit, never mind the extra expenses of the docking/storage fees. Once in orbit, the pod would be reconnected to the ship, the carriers would then be shifted to the main cargo holds, or moved to other pods to be dropped where the larger vessel couldn't go. Forklifts moved pallets and crates from trucks into transport carriers, which would then be transferred to his cargo pod, and then the overpowered shuttle attached to the pod would lift the whole mess skyward. The cool morning breeze felt good tousling his dark red hair, as Neal half watched, half supervised the loading.

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