E-378-Oliver: Merchant Freighter Spanial / Zarg’s World Highport
Galley
Jennie cocks an eyebrow at Oliver’s beverage and begins to prepare some sort of protein shake for herself.
“You must need sweetening.”
Shopping
Oliver tries to contact the local agent for Horton’s, the Hopper’s manufacturer, and is confronted with a wall of bureaucracy that seems to frustrate the person he’s dealing with just as much as it does him and ends in a referral to the Industrial Bureau.
“The operating system is supplied under licence from the Industrial Bureau and you’ll need to go through them for a replacement; we just assemble the vehicle.”
However, he can dig out a small hole-in-the wall vendor; literally – he’s in a section of the Highport that’s been excavated from the moonlet’s surface, and this vendor is situated in what looks like an extension to the original space that’s been dug out and the bare rock has been sprayed with some sort of sealant coating. It looks like a cave made safe for kids to play in or something.
Inside are a man and a woman of about the same age as Oliver that look similar enough that Oliver guesses them to be siblings.
They seem to sell a variety of hardware and software for a variety of spacer applications, the shop a mix of neat order and contained chaos.
He says, “yeah, I think we might have some modules to suit a Horton Model 7. The main module is ʄ3,000, add-ons are ʄ1,500 each.”
She says, “Original software prices are steep, aren’t they?”
Galley:
He takes another sip. “Maybe… seems to help.”
Shopping:
“Sure are.” Oliver sighs at the prices and does some internal thinking. Rolling 11 v 13 on his miserliness he decides he can probably charge this to some form of expenses later, either through the vizierate or to Karmen.
“What do the add-ons provide, specifically?”