For a first-time landing outside of the simulator, Jacob thought he did a damn good job. He was glad he had practiced ahead of time, however, because his first simulator flight ended with the entire ship breaking apart and bursting into a fireball. It was not his proudest moment.

  He was pretty sure Melody had exaggerated that portion of the simulation, but he couldn’t prove it.

  The exterior sensors pinged him before he could unbuckle himself, and he pulled up the alert. Someone was approaching the ship, and by the way they were dressed, likely some sort of official.

  He only had time to peruse the information that had been sent to him, and sort of stopped at his landing instructions because that was all the time he could spare.

  Landing a vessel by himself was not an easy task. The transport was designed for a crew of four to operate, and he was forced to take on all those roles because he couldn’t exactly ask anyone else for help.

  His situation wasn’t made any easier by the surprise landing pad. He had expected to land in a hangar, but instead he was greeted by a large disk on one end of the station and a slightly opaque dome. When the instructions told him to fly through the dome, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Once through, the sensors indicated a breathable atmosphere, gravity, and a slightly cooler atmosphere than he would find comfortable back on Earth.

  The wonder at landing at an alien station had distracted him just long enough to slide along the landing pad, but he quickly recovered. He hoped the grating of metal on metal was not nearly as loud as it was from inside the ship, but seeing the purposeful stride of the official, he assumed he was in some sort of trouble.

  Jacob quickly finished unbuckling himself and made his way to the cargo hold to greet the pers—alien.

  He couldn’t lie; he was a bit nervous. He was, after all, the first human to make contact with an alien species. At least he was the first human that he knew of. He was never one to believe in all the alien abduction nonsense until it actually happened to him, so maybe he wasn’t the first. Either way, as a representative of Earth and humankind, he wanted to make a decent impression. Melody and the station AI didn’t count as first contact as far as he was concerned.

  It took him less time than normal to reach the control room and lower the ramp, and he was glad to have gravity back once again.

  With a stilted gait, he made his way down the ramp to greet the waiting…woman? She appeared to have all the curves a normal human woman would have, but Jacob was more surprised by her eyes. They were pools of darkness, and it gave her a slightly disturbing appearance to his senses. Probably because it reminded him of the trope where human eyes turned black to represent them being the host of some form of evil, either demonic possession or a ghost.

  It was surprising to see, because the advertisements showed either cute members of their races when it came to the fluffy huggable types, or ones that would even be called attractive back on Earth, for the humanoid forms of aliens. Jacob didn’t have any experience with non-humanoid aliens to see if that selection for attractiveness carried over to those species, but the other advertisements seemed to hint at that possibility.

  Jacob shouldn’t be all that surprised; attractiveness was a pretty strong motivator when it came to mating, at least on Earth. Why wouldn’t it be similar for other species?

  That didn’t mean he was attracted to the aliens. He found most of them to tickle a primordial part of his mind that told him to run and hide.

  The individual in front of him didn’t quite trigger that response, but her pitch-black eyes certainly made him want to look away and maybe find some holy water.

  “Hello and welcome to Vorlos Station. My name is Sha’la, and I am the Port Liaison on duty. What brings you to our fine station, and will the rest of your crew be disembarking?”

  Based on the voice, he was almost sure Sha’la was a woman. He was pretty sure that was the case based on her figure, but it was always good to have other points of reference. “Oh, I’m alone,” Jacob replied before he could stop himself.

  He mentally kicked himself as Sha’la blinked slowly. Watching those black pools disappear behind pale grey eyelids sent a shudder down his electronic spine, and he couldn’t say why. Maybe it was her close resemblance to the ubiquitous Greys from science fiction. Although that comparison was really only true with the skin tone and eyes. Unlike the creepy aliens from stories, she had a head full of wavy dark hair, a nose, and was wearing actual clothes, which he was thankful for.

  The Port Liaison turned to look at the ship, then back to Jacob. “You flew this yourself?”

  “Yes?”

  Sha’la muttered something under her breath about him being an idiot as she tapped on her console. He probably wouldn’t have heard her words if not for his sensors, but he did his best to hide his embarrassment for being called out, which was much easier to do in a robot body surrounded by a spacesuit. When she was done, she looked back at him with an exasperated look. The reaction was so human that Jacob nearly laughed out loud.

  “Reason for visit?”

  Her friendly demeanor had vanished, and she was all business now. Jacob wasn’t sure if it was because of his statement, but he figured he had done something to piss her off.

  So much for good first impressions.

  “Um, trade?”

  She gave him a look, and despite them being two different species, he distinctly understood that it meant ‘duh.’

  “I have power cores to trade.”

  Her frosty demeanor softened slightly at that information.

  “Well…”

  “Just Jacob.”

  “Well, Just Jacob—”

  “No, my name is Jacob.”

  “I know,” she said with a tired sigh, “it was a joke.”

  “…Oh. Hehe, good one,” he replied awkwardly.

  She just shook her head, and Jacob decided to keep his thoughts to himself before he screwed up the interaction any more than he already had.

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  “Well, Jacob, you’re in luck. The station has a standing order to buy power cores. I can either offer to purchase them from you, or you can try selling them on the local exchange. I’ll be honest, you’ll get less by selling directly to the station, but you’ll save time.”

  “What about trade instead?” Jacob asked.

  He had no clue what the items were worth, so even if he sold them on that exchange she mentioned, he doubted he would get top dollar for them. And he didn’t really care too. The only thing he cared about was getting as many materials as he could to fix Melody. Hopefully, he had brought enough cores to fill the cargo hold at least halfway. It would only be a drop in the bucket when it came to repairs, but every bit would help.

  “What sort of materials?” she asked.

  Jacob opened a pocket on his spacesuit and pulled out a small tablet that had converted into the common language of the station. Jacob could read it and converse with Sha’la because he had stored their language in a database aboard the repair station and used it to study and learn the language himself, rather than having it force-fed into his mind. The process hadn’t been nearly as bad as he had feared. Forcing both AIs to speak to him using the trade-common language, as it was called, made picking it up much easier.

  It didn’t make him as fluent as he would have liked, but he found the trade-off of not losing more memories worth it. He wasn’t sure if it actually helped, but he hadn’t come across anything he had forgotten recently. Then again, would he even know if he had?

  She took the offered tablet and looked at it quizzically, turning it over a few times before staring at the screen.

  “Is something wrong?” Jacob asked.

  “No, just haven’t seen a tablet this old before.”

  She probably wasn’t wrong there. It had been sitting in one of the rooms aboard the station for the last eight hundred years.

  It didn’t take her long to figure out the interface and flip through it. Jacob was glad he had insisted on designing a more streamlined interface, like the ones human smartphones used. It was head and shoulders above the clunky Concord interface, which was just there in case the member races couldn’t interface directly with the device.

  Seeing her navigate the little tablet with ease did seem to convey a lack of machine/mind interfacing. He wondered if that was due to the war or some other factor.

  “The station has most of these items, but the quantities you are asking for are going to be extremely pricy. Are you sure you have enough power cores to trade?”

  “I’m not sure. You can take a look if you wish.” Jacob made an awkward gesture toward the open ramp.

  Sha’la gave the open hold a single glance, then turned back to him. “I’ll wait here if that’s all the same to you.”

  “I-I’ll be right back.”

  ***

  Sha’la watched the odd alien meander up the ramp before she walked off to the side and placed a beacon on the side. Everything about this individual was odd, and the attempt to get her onboard felt like an awkward attempt at kidnapping. It could just be their species, but she doubted it. She had met plenty of bipedal species, and unless something was seriously wrong with this individual, he didn’t walk like any she had ever seen.

  She didn’t have any personal enemies that she knew of, but there were criminals and privateers throughout known space. This Jacob character may just be one. Flying alone, wearing a full spacesuit with the faceplate set to reflective, it was all rather suspicious. The tracking beacon she had set on the ship would allow her contact to verify if Jacob was indeed a criminal and arrest him if needed. She preferred to be overly cautious; she had seen what happened when people looked the other way on suspicious activity. It was why she was so thorough with her duties.

  Before the individual came back down the ramp pushing a crate, Sha’la was back in front of the ramp, waiting. She even had time to procure a power tester from the office.

  Even if this individual was a criminal or privateer, if he had actual power cores to sell, Sha’la had a job to do. She hadn’t been lying when she said the station had an open order to purchase them. It was never easy getting new power cores shipped to their little station. Not many people liked travelling near the edge of the dead zone.

  Jacob pushed the crate to a stop just past the ramp and set another odd box on top of it.

  “What’s that?” she asked, motioning to the second box.

  “Charging cradle. Figured you might need it.”

  It looked like a standard power core configuration, but she wouldn’t say no to another charging cradle. She opened the box and inspected the items tightly packed inside. She pulled one of the units out and saw that another layer sat below. If that was the case, there were thirty-two devices per crate.

  The units looked brand new, which was a good sign, but didn’t mean much of anything until the test was completed. She couldn’t remember how many times traders had tried to pass off used cores as new, especially on Vorlos Station. If she had been in charge of the station and they weren’t so hard up for power cores constantly, she would have blacklisted every one of those merchants.

  Sha’la placed the power core on the tester and pressed the start button. A good cell could measure around ten on the meter. Anything below seven was junk because they would not hold a charge for more than a few hours, but the station would take an eight at a reduced price.

  When the tester passed the ten mark, she gave it a confused look. It stopped around fifteen. She took the core out and set it on top of the crate, giving it and her testing device a funny look.

  “Hold on a moment, I think this tester might be faulty.”

  “Oh, okay,” Jacob replied.

  Sha’la hurried back to the office and pulled out the backup tester. It was brand new in the box, no way it could be faulty.

  When she got back and tested the same core, the new tester gave the same result. She kept her expression flat as she looked at the box of thirty-two Xalos cores, because they couldn’t be anything else. Not with that high a reading. “How many crates do you have, and are they all like this?” she asked.

  “Sixteen and yes. You can inspect them if you’d like.”

  She nodded slowly, but inside, she was giddy with excitement. She was also wondering how the hell this individual got hold of sixteen crates full of Xalos power cores. As far as she knew, no other company had been able to produce a power core that was as energy-dense as the ones coming from the Xalos corporation. Because of that, Xalos cores normally went straight to military and government applications, but she had seen a few used ones over the years, and those still matched the best civilian cores on the market when tested, even after years of use.

  Jacob had to have stolen them from somewhere. There was no other way he could have gotten hold of such advanced cores. Any doubt she had about placing the tracker vanished, but what did she do about the cores?

  Passing up a chance to purchase one crate of the cores would have been a monumentally stupid thing to do, but Jacob had sixteen crates. She would be checking them all to verify their authenticity, but if even half of them were legit, they would more than pay for his requested supplies and then some.

  She wasn’t authorized to pay for anything other than the standard rate for power cores, but she didn’t want to cheat the guy, even if he was a criminal or privateer. Especially if he was one. That sounded like a good way to get abducted for real.

  “Do you have anything else you might need to trade for?” she asked, hoping he would say yes. Then she added something she wished she could keep to herself. “The trade value of your cores is worth more than your list of trade goods.”

  “It is?” Jacob asked in surprise. “Um…I’m not sure. Can we double that list?”

  “I’ll need to see the cargo capacity of your vessel first.”

  After a bit of time, she was able to determine that no, he did not have enough space to store twice the amount of material he wanted. Not even close. She told him as much.

  “Hmm. Can I just get the rest in local currency?”

  Local currency? Was Jacob from a newly inducted species? It would explain his lack of knowledge and the ancient ship, but not the cores. She decided to leave that to her contact to figure out.

  With the additional material outside of his original request, she was now much closer to the standard rate, but still not quite there. “I’ll be honest, Jacob, you’ll still be losing out on the deal. You may want to take some of the crates and sell them on the exchange instead.” She hated to say that, but it was the truth.

  “Oh…um, thank you for being so transparent. I’ll be honest as well. I would rather just sell them all to you and lose a bit if it’ll save me time.”

  Sha’la’s eyes widened fractionally at that statement, but she quickly caught herself and agreed to the deal. If he were a criminal and was in a hurry to offload his illicit cargo, who was she to argue? After their initial awkwardness, he turned out to be a decent enough guy, but now she felt bad. Hopefully, her bounty hunter contact learned that Jacob was a legitimate salvager instead of a privateer. If Jacob ever returned to the station, the conversation would be awkward, but it was better than letting a possible criminal run rampant, especially one running around stealing from Xalos.

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