1. 'Call me Sharan'

Well once we'd got rested up dirtside the locals asked us to help guard
their convoy, which suited me as it was getting me closer to getting off
this damn dirtball.

They were the jumpiest lot I'd every seen. Starting at their own
shadows. A haphazard crew that I'd as soon not have anything to do with.
Not only were they nervy but they were one of the most indisciplined
bunch of little girls I've ever had the misfortune to be teamed up with.

At any rate I was proved right. A few hours into the drive the guy in
the lead vehicle fell asleep and caused a pile up. The rest of the
locals panicked and started shooting up the tree line and yelling about
an ambush. Given that there was no incoming fire this made no sense. The
guy next to me was drawing a lot of attention by firing the SCA3 mounted
on the vehicle and wouldn't listen to reason. So I persuaded him using
other means to have a rest.

Me and Ritchie (who was also in the vehicle with me) covered both ways
just in case there was an ambush. But after a few seconds scanning the
horizon it was clear that it was all in the minds of the locals (who
were still hosing down the scenery).

Attempts to get them to take cover and check firing met with no success.
Even getting down and walking amongst them didn't really help, not even
when I gave a few of them an incentive to stop firing.

It was clear that we had to dump this bunch of schmucks and make our own
way off the planet. They were more a liability than a help. So we played
on the fact that they thought that they were being ambushed and gave
them exactly what they were expecting, but not from the quarter they
thought it would come.

One of the brighter locals twigged what was going on before we managed
to complete the job. He shot Giles, although he wasn't wounded too
badly. Ritchie put him down with the SCA3. A bit messy but very
effective. We were now the proud owners of three large crates.

There was a crate of small arms, another with heavy stuff, including a
supercharge and a third marked 'Biohazard'. I was a bit wary of the
last, because nasty things come marked that way. However I agreed that
we would blow it open to find out what was in it. I rigged up the charge
and we retired to a safe distance to light the blue touch paper.

After it went bang we sent Dibbler in to look at it with Cpok. They both
came back baffled clutching bubble wrap circuit boards. Quite clearly
the crate was mislabelled, deliberately I would expect. A close
inspection revealed them to be like Bright Slave class chips, but not
labelled up. My best guess was that they were AI components, that was
the only reason that they would be concealed and unmarked, at least in
the way they were.

Anyway, we packed up and after making sure the locals were all out of it
we carried on down the road. A bit further along we come across an
ambush site. Looks like two vehicles are burning on the road, so me,
Ritchie and Dibbler go ahead to look. When we get closer it turns out
that there was only one vehicle. It has taken SCA and MG hits from the
front and there is one dead guy with the wreck.

We decide to move on in bounds to limit the impact of bumping into
whoever ambushed this vehicle. Not long after a couple of COP Gunships
turned up as we were moving cross country. Looks like someone talked
about where we were.

We weren't able to make cover before the helos caught up with us. So we
pulled over as we'd decided that shooting down the COPs would only cause
us more aggro in the long run. I got out the wagon and had a brief chat
with the two COPs that approached us. They both saw sense immediately
and didn't ask many questions when shown some universal documentation in the shape of some 100 cred notes...

Yehudi Sharan
Ships Systems Technician - currently for hire

2. A tall tale from Ape Praxis

Date ce 3230

An old man sits on log looking out over the rolling hills on some dogball planet out in sector 13, holding a rapidly draining a bottle of cider with three empties at his feet. A bunch kids from the local two horse town loaf around him. One pipes up " Hey ape why don't you give us the run on what happened next on Beelezub, you know right after you came out of the sky a in packing case!"

"Hmm yeah why not? ok get me a another cider an its a deal, and listen on I swear on mothers grave what I'm telling you is the way it happened no shit, no hype, no twist, just the plain unvarnished TRUTH."

"It was a real scream coming in that packing case i'm telling I was scared, more scared, than when I faced down three Imperial stormtroopers, have I told you that story yet? No. Well another time. Now I woke nursing a sore head in some run down shack on the edge of clearing in a Raptor infested forest. I looked around and what did I see, a familar sight but ghastly The Dibbler was stuffing his fat face, man that guy had an appetite big enough to eat all the rice in China. Check out it he had ten MREs (Meals ready to eat) at one sitting no kidding, the guy didn't pause. Woe betide the fool that got between the The Dibbler and meal. Anyways the rest of the gang had our fill of food and looked around outside the shack.

The clearing was full of people in camos running around loading stuff onto a convoy of crawlers, ignoring us. They were a splinter group of the anti-Imperailist DAFT, loading up supplies and stuff for some spectaular or what not. Seems these DAFT guys hated perfects, no bad thing if ya ask me.
Perfects are the bane of the bloody universe and pirates life. Always pissing on us normals, we had a couple of perfects with us, I reckoned if we ever got in deep shit with with DAFT I could always sell them out. What? that wouldn't be fair?, I TELL you whats bloody fair, them knicking all the top jobs, pushing us around, knowing whats best for us hell kill them all I say.....yeah ok so its a sore spot......... back to the story yeah right..where was I.

Anyway we was miles from anywhere in the middle of that god forsaken jungle with raptors lurking somewhere close. The gang didn't know what to do? So I goes over to the head honcho pulling myself up, an' sucking the tum in, The guy's obvoiusly impressed with me and hires us to ride shotgun on the convoy, to get it past past the raptors bandits and the Esteller Special Delta Force.

So there we were riding shotgun on a convoy of crawlers with a couple technicals outfront, in the pitch dark cause we didn't want to attract attention from the natives, human and otherwise. I go into the back of crawler and try see what these DAFT guys are lugging, and then WHAM and then all hell breaks loose, there's shooting and screaming and stuff, got to say dont really know what happened except I sees Isreal in the crawler behind doing a number on one the DAFT guys straight into the guys head. Man, after all these years I still see the brains and blood hitting the crawler's windscreen, real ugly, anyway it looks like the gang are trying hijack the convoy like they'd been mutttering about back at the DAFT camp, so I opens up as well and apoor sod literally gets torn in half. After that the rest the gang wraps up the poor DAFT saps. I'm still shaking from all of this, killing a man its well I don't know how to describe it, was I grateful for the downer the Mad Cpok sold me.

* Belch *

Anyway while I coming down the rest of the gang was seeing what this damn god cursed convoy was carrying. Boy was it big shit, it was hauling 2 tons of frigging highly quality Machine Brains, Brianic class totally illegal, and enough to start a goddamn war, like i said real big shit........ AI parts, but on the sunny side, mega expensive stuff i we could make deal or fence with intereseted parties.

Now you all rember The Dibbler, Now one thing I never mentioned before mainly 'cos we all didn't know up till that time was that the Dibbler was a honest to goodness straight up High class pyscho. Whilst we'd been checking the crawler cargo and patching Giles, Dibbler he'd been at the DAFT prisoners. Those still living, well I guess they wished they werent 'cos he hacked out their tounges and they ended up dead, then walks back to us licking his lips with blood from the tounges seeping out of his pockets. The rest of us all looked at each other and I don't thow what others thought I ain't ever falling asleep near that freak.

Anyway after a bit we the convoy straightend out and got it rolling again, sitting in the middle of ther forest with all those tongueless corpes and Dibbler whispering into black got us all moving.

After a while with sunrise we came across of an ambush site. Looked like an earlier DAFT convoy had ended up for someones plaything. The bodies were wrecked half them missing and the like, some big shit weapon had done this, and the only people carrying weapons like that were the well orgnaised and rich, like the Government. We were all getting a bit jumpy espcailly Ritchie pleading to dump the AI computer bits and just back to being simple criminals. Well what Ritchie didn't know was that it aint always your choice when the big time calls, and when were in the big time. Godsakes we was in the big time and bloody truely, a near dozen DAFT toungless back in raptor
forest, a bunch of ruthless marines somewhere out ahead of us, and a couple crawlers with stuffed full of AI kit worth a squz-illion amount of credits, nope you cant walk away from that dance.

We carried on.

We decided to head for lonely country and avoid the locals so we cut across country. And then out of the East sky we two two birds, metal birds, bloody hell Police Gunships. Giles goes nutso and starts trying to dig out some heavy weapons, bazokkas or wahtever fuck it me and the others only just manage to sit on top of him, whilst Saharn plays the part of convoy boss, a simple bribe does the job, the pigs in the sky, fly way.

Got any more cider, burp, no ah well no matter i'm about ready to pass out
anyways. Come back again and I'll tell you the rest of the tale.

..ZZZzzzzzzzz....

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