Hang in the held breath, and then drop like a stone and stop like you were hitting a wall. And then crawl along the floor at high speed. As soon as you get finally seen you open your eyes and you open fire.
You have been feeling the trip and describing it to yourself with your eyes closed. Now the trip has become the destination, and the destination is a battle. You knew this is how it would be, but that doesn’t make it any less of a bummer.
The people that are firing at you are people that you swindled last year, and people that you are honestly going to swindle again. You have a recognisable craft and that has been both a blessing and a curse.
If you didn’t have shiftskin suits by the dozen in the back then you might have to worry that after the landing you could never settle in for the long con, but you have them, and it is all part of the game. Dodge the fire for now and shoot back just enough to deter them. He was proud of his ship and its manoeuvrability: it got him out of all the scrapes that he got himself into.
Fireworks in and fireworks out, that was how he liked to term it. They were suckers, that was what they were there for.
The shell that caught him off guard gave no signature. Everything else that was zipping around could be mapped and followed. But this sneak little fucker got close enough to put a fucking great hole in the side of ship … and it was game over.
Ha, but it was never game over was it? Those who gave up just didn’t have any hustle in them.
After the ship crashed he was away from it quick as lightning, dressed head to toe in a shiftskin suit. When he found them looking for him he played it off as a totally different person. He conned them out of their scrap metal and their electronics and anything else they didn’t know how to fix, and the person who had laid claim to his ship got short-changed on it as much as anyone else. He fixed it up and he flew away and he decided he wouldn’t be back for a while.