Discovery part 7 by Ronald Faltus

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Not some vigilante out to stop the illicit artifact trade.

With each revision back into normal space, a fear that Sands might be there checking to see if was being trailed began to grow. Gareth half expected that as he was nursing his leg to look up and see an armed freighter bearing down on him. The Scry was a fairly sturdy ship, but was slow and sluggish, not really the sort of craft that you want to be in when the presumable illegally armed freighter piloted by an enraged criminal coming straight at you. The thought of being atomized by dual particle cannons while trying to wipe away the steaming stain sent a chill down his spine. Looking over to the ships scanner, he could tell that there was nothing within several kilometers.

But the thought was enough to convince Gareth that he was in way over his head. He had it with his philanthropic intentions. His headache wasn't subsiding, and the growing knot of tension in his stomach began to spasm quickly. It wasn't a hangover any more; it was the pure anxiety caused by this folly. His body was rebelling, making the stress manifest itself in physical pain. Good intentions or not, he could get killed. And while that might solve his unresolved guilt form the debacle on Vergos, Gareth really wasn't in the mood to go out in some heroic blaze of flame. Getting killed out here in the emptiness by Sands, left to drift for all eternity in the coldness of space would solve nothing. The risk was just too great. There would be other chances to pay up for his past, ones that weren't so perilous.

At the very least, he would still send an anonymous tip to the UAS about Sand's activities. It might take them a wile to catch up with him, but eventually they would. One can go for only so long before a corporation as large as the UAS would serve their retribution for wronging them. Ironically Gareth wondered if the same would eventually happen between him and Vent-Nor. Only given him a brief moment to ponder how much time he had left, he threw the damp paper on the cockpit floor, and began to run a scan for Sand's exit vector. He planned to add his last course as an attachment to his communiqué with UAS, listing it as his last know position. Maybe the UAS would be to search through it databanks for abandoned settlements and surmise were he was headed.

The process was relatively simple, easy enough for Gareth to pick up the basics. Every ship leaves at the very least a weak static distortion signature behind when it engages it's faster than light drives. Usually, it was a very subtle trail, barley registering on sensors even as sensitive as The Scry's. But thankfully, Sands wasn't too big on maintenance, or he might have locked down the coolant leak that made his path light up on the sensors with ease. Running a grid scan of the vicinity, Gareth tried pinpointing which direction he headed on the next leg of his journey. But as the scan extended out to its maximum range, nothing registered. There was no sign of an exit vector. A renewed panic set in with the realization that Sands hadn't warped way.