RAW SOURCE: The Hauler's Gambit

URL: https://perryjones.medium.com/the-haulers-gambit-228f350d78f5 Published: Dec 4, 2024

Content (close paraphrase, unfiltered)

Cort and Marla Bannigan live a quiet life on Telovan IV — Marla runs a café, they own a small plot of land. At the outset of a galaxy-wide civil war, Cort convinces a reluctant Marla to sell everything and buy a used cargo freighter, a Farstar GX-11 they name The Long Shot, at Kila Vas. They refit it with plasma turrets, a scatter missile launcher, reinforced hull plating, Shield 3, and decoy drones. Around 2009 (story-internal), hauling medical supplies near a colony on the edge of the Milky Way, they're stopped by the pirate gang Razor's Reach — a scarred-faced leader demands to board. Cort stalls with a bluff about a contagion aboard while Marla quietly preps a hyperdrive jump; they launch decoy drones and escape. Later, delivering cryogenically frozen Sandrax Bison to an isolated research station in paranoid warlord General Kradok's territory, they avoid a full cargo inspection by deliberately thawing the aggressive animals inside the pods before the patrol boards. The story closes roughly four years into their hauling career, the Bannigans debating how much longer they can keep pushing their luck as the war escalates, with a joking aside about signing up with the Janastian Warhawks mercenary company (seen on a recruitment poster at Kila Vas) instead. Currency is referred to as "Kila Vas credits." Kila Vas is described as having orbital shipyards where they refit and later repair the ship.