Chapter 17: 17. Jackpot

I had my hand up shielding my eyes from the brilliant light but I still had to squint. Our captain was standing next to me and she was doing the same thing.

The two of us were at the front of the shuttle, with the pilot and copilot seats behind us. The remaining seats were all still folded and stowed so the rest of the small space was fairly open and empty, except for the large heavy safe at the back. And kneeling beside that was Sarah. She had a protective mask over her face and a heavy jacket and gloves on, while she used a portable cutting tool to slowly carve through the side of the safe.

She was working on the hinge side, cutting through the hardened alloy. It was slow going though, she'd been at it for the past fifteen minutes and she was barely halfway along the first cut. The safe was made out of a dense reinforced alloy, similar to the kind they used for making ship hulls.

"You two don't have to stand there watching you know," the engineer commented as she worked. "I'm sure it can't be that fascinating, not to mention the fumes probably aren't that pleasant."

She was right about that last point, the smell coming off the safe as she burned through the hardened metal was acrid and made my nose sting and eyes water.

Piper responded, "It's a safety thing. Ship's medic is here incase you get injured, ship's captain is here to take responsibility."

"Uh-huh," Sarah deadpanned as she continued working. "Sounds like a fancy way of saying you both just want to be here for the big reveal."

Our captain smiled but didn't respond.

"So what do you think's in there?" I asked.

Sarah replied, "My guess is nothing valuable, unfortunately. Probably sealed orders? A few encrypted data-crystals, stuff the Navy figured was too sensitive to transmit. Maybe some military secrets."

After a moment she added, "The intact computer core is probably a treasure-trove of military secrets, come to think of it. Assuming the buyer has someone who'd be interested in dumping and decrypting the data before they wipe it clean."

I glanced at Piper to see if she had any guesses on what we'd find in the safe, but she just shrugged and kept her ideas to herself.

I was confident she was expecting there to be something valuable inside, or she wouldn't have gone to the trouble of recovering it. And she wouldn't be standing around here breathing fumes if she thought it'd be empty.

She was dressed casual again, in the same colourful shorts she'd worn the last couple days and a tight pink t-shirt. I was still getting used to this new relaxed side to our captain. Not that I had any complaints, I was happier with a calm chill friendly boss than a stern stoic reticent one.

When Sarah finally finished the first cut she took a break and the three of us retired to the mess for some drinks. Meanwhile the shuttle's air purifier cleared the smoke and fumes out so we had a fresh start when Sarah got back to work.

All in all we probably spent over an hour in there, with me and the captain watching while the cute engineer did all the work. At long last Sarah got to her feet and moved out of the way to one side, then gave the safe door a kick.

The heavy door fell forward and hit the shuttle deck hard enough that I jumped slightly and my tail tucked between my legs. I was positive the door just dented the floor panels.

Piper moved forward immediately, and she had a satisfied smile on her face as she surveyed the contents.

There were five sturdy metal boxes stacked in the bottom of the safe, and on a small shelf at the top were three smaller metal cases.

"Strongboxes," Piper announced as she pulled two of the larger boxes from the bottom of the safe. She didn't seem surprised to find them, it actually sounded like she expected this.

She opened the first one then grinned. She revealed the contents to Sarah and I and announced, "Jackpot."

It was full of small bars of metal, each was about three inches long, an inch wide, and a half inch thick. They were shiny, the colour was somewhere between gold and silver, and each was engraved with some symbols I didn't recognize.

Piper pulled out the other three strongboxes and checked them, then announced, "Four full strongboxes, two hundred bars apiece. The fifth one's got...twenty-five bars in it. So that's eight hundred and twenty-five bars in total."

"What is it?" I asked. "Is it some kind of money?"

"Oh yeah," she nodded. The captain had a wide smile on her face as she straightened up. She was holding a couple of those metal bars, and handed one to me and one to Sarah. It was cool to the touch and a lot heavier than I expected.

Piper explained, "One bar is worth five thousand ecks. That's over four million ecks in total."

"Four million, one hundred and twenty-five thousand, to be precise." Jenny interjected. She'd obviously been listening through the shuttle's comm system. "Based on five thousand ecks per bar."

I asked, "What are ecks?"

"Eck is slang for the most common currency in the sector," the captain responded. "Ecclestone's World is the de-facto economic capital of the whole sector, Ecclestonian Dinars are good just about anywhere. Every port in the sector takes them."

"Ok," I said with a frown as I looked at the heavy metal bar in my hand again. "So is four million a lot?"

Piper smiled widely and nodded, "My friends, we just won the lottery."

Sarah had been staring silently at the bar in her hands, but she finally spoke up. "Like I said a while back, some crew got local coin to spend on shore leave here? The exchange rate was two and a half credits per eck. That means this bar is worth twelve and a half thousand credits."

My eyes widened and my mouth went dry as I looked at the bar I was holding, then at the five strongboxes on the floor of the shuttle.

I gulped, "This bar's worth more than I earned the whole time I was assigned to the Hammersmith?"

If my math was right, five of these bars would equal my life savings in the Imperium. Seven of them would be about what I expected to have when my six-year term was up. That'd be enough to pay for a top quality transition in one of the best core medical facilities. Ten bars would cover the absolute best transition at the very best facility. And there were eight hundred and twenty-five of these bars at our feet.

"So um," Sarah asked awkwardly, "Do we get a cut of this? Is this cash considered part of the salvage, when it comes to sharing the profit?"

Piper smiled, "Yeah, it is. And yes, you do. Five percent of eight-twenty-five would be..."

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Before the captain could come up with the answer Sarah interjected, "Three and a third percent, isn't it? You said the crew's cut is ten percent, split evenly? Jenny's part of the crew now, so shouldn't she get a share?"

That led to a few moments of awkward silence, till the AI finally spoke up.

"I appreciate your generosity Sarah," Jenny stated through the shuttle's comm. "But I'm not sure I qualify for a percentage of your earnings. Technically I'm more part of the ship's hardware than one of its crew. And I'm certainly not in a position to take shore leave. I'm honestly unsure there's any way for me to actually spend money?"

Piper remained quiet for another few seconds, then finally said "Ok I need to think this over. I want to be fair to everyone, and this is a situation I've never even imagined before now. Nobody gets paid before we make port anyways, we'll have port fees to take care of and salvage to sell. So there's a few days yet before we figure out the profit on this stuff. I'll make a decision when the time comes. Until then, this money is part of the salvage."

I nodded quietly and handed back the bar I'd been holding. Sarah gave hers back as well, and the captain put them both away in the strongbox then closed it up.

"What the hell was the Hammersmith doing with all this cash in the first place?" Sarah asked. "It doesn't make any sense to me. The Imperium doesn't use cash, it's all credits, digital money."

I added, "You expected to find this, didn't you boss?"

Piper nodded to both of us, then told Sarah "The Imperium uses credits, but we're not in the Imperium. Navy ship or not, the Hammersmith would have to pay port fees, she might have needed to take on fuel or supplies. And any incidental expenses that came up. None of that could be handled with Imperium credits. So I knew she'd need a supply of local coin on board, to cover all of that and whatever else might have come up."

She added, "I didn't expect to find this much. This is about four times what I thought we'd find. I guess they wanted to be prepared though? Better to have too much then bring back the excess, than run out and get stranded because you can't afford fuel or something."

The engineer shook her head slightly, "Damn, I didn't even think of that. In Imperium space it's all just covered. Navy ships come and go as they please, dock where they want, take on fuel and supplies as required, without ever having to worry about paying for any of it."

Our captain responded, "Out here in the frontier she was just another big ship, she wouldn't get any special favours. In fact she probably got hit with extra taxes or paid higher rates than local vessels. The Imperium's not very popular outside its own borders."

Sarah and I both nodded quietly, I'd heard Piper mention that at least once before. And I couldn't speak for our engineer but I knew the Imperium wasn't especially popular even within its borders. Certainly there were folks on my home-world who didn't speak highly about it. They still told the stories after all, of how the Imperium more or less forced our world to join them at gunpoint.

I finally decided to change the subject, and pointed to the three small metal boxes on the shelf at the top of the safe. "What do you figure's in there? More valuables?"

"Orders," Piper replied as she pulled the three small rectangular boxes out.

Each was about five inches by three inches, by an inch thick. They had military markings across the front, and an obvious seam where they were meant to open, but I couldn't see any way to actually open them.

"Sealed orders," Sarah elaborated. "Stuff that'd be considered too sensitive to transmit. Each of those probably contains an encrypted data-crystal, with some prepared orders for the Hammersmith to carry out under certain pre-determined circumstances."

The captain took over, "If the Navy decided to issue the orders, they'd send instructions to the ship's captain. Probably encoded, but he'd be told which of the three to access. He'd open the desired case, the crystal would be decrypted, and then he'd have the ship and crew carry out those orders."

I looked at Sarah and said, "So military secrets, like you figured."

She nodded, "Yeah, pretty much. I don't know if it'd be worth anything? I suppose that depends what's inside, what the actual orders are. Assuming we could decrypt the crystals. And that's assuming we could get the cases open without destroying the data-crystals in the first place. Those boxes are usually designed to shatter the contents if they're forced open."

Piper shrugged, "I know a guy, he can get the cases open and probably crack the encryption. It's low priority though, but we'll hang onto these just in case."

That was it for the safe and its contents. We hauled the five strongboxes down to the secondary hold and stowed them on a shelf next to the ammunition, then Piper took the three little sealed cases and stashed them in her cabin.

And that was pretty much it for inventorying the salvage. We'd checked everything, Piper had her notes and knew what she wanted to sell at our next stop, what we'd be hanging on to for sale later. And what we'd keep for ourselves. About the only thing that was still undecided was what to do about the grav sled.

The last thing we did was open up the container with the e-suits, to remove the ones we were keeping. Sarah and I both fit in the small size, while Piper needed a medium. We also took the last small, another medium, and one large for spares. That left three extra-large, two large, and one medium suit to be sold with the rest of the salvage.

"I can't believe I fit a small suit," the engineer said with a blushy grin as we carried the six suits up to the main deck. "Last time I had to squeeze into one of these things on the Hammersmith I barely fit an extra-large."

I felt a momentary pang of worry, before I realized she was bragging rather than complaining.

"Same," I replied with a smile of my own. "I needed a large when I did my e-suit training."

The suit that was to be modified for me and two of the spares were all left in the starboard crew cabin for now, while Piper's and Sarah's new suits along with the large spare were all loaded into the equipment locker in the starboard airlock.

Despite it only being about mid-day that was the end of our work for the moment. We had just over eighty hours remaining in transit before we were due to reach our destination, but for the moment we got ourselves some drinks then settled around the table in the ship's mess.

"Is that it for now?" I asked. "Nothing more to do until we reach our next stop?"

Sarah had a gulp of her drink then added, "Piper you said it was normally nine days to your next scheduled stop. What in the world did you do to pass the time? I can't imagine nine days alone on a ship with nothing to do."

The captain had a slight smile on her face as she sipped her drink. After keeping me and Sarah waiting for a few moments she responded, "Never mind what I did to pass the time by myself. Now I have you two to keep me occupied, and there's lots of things to teach the pair of you. We'll take the rest of today off, but tomorrow after breakfast all three of us will be in the cockpit for more training."

While I was actually eager to learn more about my new job and new ship, Piper's tone and that little smile on her face made me question if the lessons she had planned would be a lot more trying than I hoped.

Then Sarah spoke up, and from her tone I knew to brace myself for teasing.

"Since we have the rest of the day off," the cute engineer asked with a smirk, "It's as good a time to ask as any. Me and Amanda were wondering, what's the ship's policy on inter-crew dating and relationships?"

My face went bright red and I stared at Sarah with wide eyes, while the mischievous blonde broke up into giggles.

Piper rolled her eyes but smiled, "It's fine. Just keep it out of the cockpit."