Chapter 3: A New Ship

On paper the ship looked to be ideal for Varna's purposes - a heavily armed converted freighter that still retained a reasonable size hold. The downside was, being rather old, it needed five crew to run it. A pilot, navigator, engineer and two for weapons control. The navigator, co-pilot and second in command was Sisanna, an older, hard and vicious woman she had befriended after she pushed Minara away and transferred to a different brigade.

Varna wanted a reputation as a badass, and the best way to get it was to team up with someone notorious. Sisanna was a real nasty piece of work, but she suited Varna's purposes. At least Sisanna deserved her fate and filed teeth, having served time for beating up a friend who told her she would fail the Grojan selection ritual, which more or less guaranteed she would fail.

Varna's only fault was she had been rather lippy to the assessor, but he had provoked her. She found out afterwards it had been part of the stupid test. Having failed, her teeth had been filed, and she had been banished by her family.

Even though her failure had shamed her family, her father, who she had been close to, had taken her to one side, whispered to her that not all things were what they seemed and told her he had deposited a substantial amount of money into her account.

She would never admit that was where the money came from to purchase a ship. Her reputation would be in ruins even before she started if it were known her father's money had financed her. She had at the time wondered what he had meant by his comment, but as she would never be able to see or speak to her family again the question would forever remain unanswered.

"Are you telling me the ship's name is the Slexi Moon?" Sisanna was not impressed. "If it looks as good as it does on paper and you can negotiate a good deal then you will have to rename it Varna." She sniffed. "Slexi Moon? I ask you who thought up that name? It needs to be Predator or Destroyer or something like that."

"I'm sure I heard somewhere that renaming a ship was bad luck, Sisanna. Besides, I quite like it." Varna turned away from the taxi window and Sisanna raised an eyebrow at her. Varna shrugged then returned to looking out of the window.

The broker's yard soon came into view. As with most rim worlds, the place had a rundown look about it. A twinge of sadness gripped her; once, this world and its cities would have been bustling and vibrant, but now large areas were old, crumbling and deserted. The yard was no exception, ships sat in rows, old and rusting, some so ancient Varna hadn't a clue as to their class or function.

The taxi deposited them outside of the broker's office, and as they started up the steps the door opened and an old, balding shifty looking Grojani ran down the steps to great them. "Ladies, what can I help you with today?"

"I contacted you earlier about this ship you had available." Varna removed the folded paper from her pocket and showed it to him.

He squinted at it for a moment. "Ah yes, good choice, excellent ship, only three careful owners, and of course all the weapons systems have been recently upgraded." He walked down the steps past them. "Follow me, ladies, yes, follow me." He nodded as he walked along as if agreeing with everything he said. "I'm sure you won't be disappointed."