As you dig through the piles upon piles of files, you reach one conclusion. I need a vacation. But, as the Edel of these lands, you simply can just take a couple of weeks off and then call it a day. No, you must be smart about this.

Taking a stand and walking about your room back and forth for a few moments, you look through the window and murmur to yourself as you regard the serene lake before you, and most specifically, the small outcroppings of personal residences that also appeared and continue to appear at an ever increasing rate. To reach them, you would need to take a boat, at least, that’s the fastest way.

With a hum, you murmur to yourself: “I have a cunning plan.”

Jumping to work with those words, you look through the various reports, more specifically, the reports for Stellan’s neutronium storage, your own resource reserves, and map charts of the local stars.

“Gotch.” You say hitting your intercom.

“Yes, my Edel ?”

“Could you call Ashwin and Stellan to my office ?”

“Right away.”

Clicking off the intercom, you lean back in your chair. It is all coming together.
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“This is exceptionally unwise, but we do not have a better choice.” Ashwin instantly dashes your hopes, only to partially rekindle them.

“How come ?” You ask.

“Well, first of all, we only have enough fuel to go one way, and then we have to pray and hope that wherever we get have means and the desire to refuel us !” Stellan immediately jumps in.

“Yes, that’s the first issue.” Ashwin nods, quickly working diverting the conversation his way again. “But not only that. Our existence is, fragile, to put it diplomatically. In order to presume we don’t get shot at the moment we show up, we need to establish that we would be difficult to kill, not impossible, unfortunately. And we require to have a sufficient number of gifts for the journey.”

“You mean bribes ?”

“Less diplomatically put, yes.”

“And if they don’t like our bribes ?”

“It will be a very short expedition. Though a question remains what about the pirates ?”

“Well, if what our merchant friend said was true, chances are some pirates hit a military convoy or something, or another, got turned into atoms, repeat that enough and it becomes clear that harassing convoys is a bad idea. It is true though, that there are probably privateers out there, but if they strike, they would do it under some other nation’s banner, and well, who knows.” Stellan interjects, having been a close associate to plenty of ne’er-do-wells’ groups.

“Well, hopefully we will be waylaid on our journey. There are a few questions we do need to address as of right now, however.” Ashwin continues, his voice weaker than it was yesterday, you note. “First, how large is to be the, uh, bribe, as you had put it so succinctly, sir. Second, where will you be going, and who will be going, alongside what size of the escort you will be taking.”