Heath and Copperfield unloaded the last crate onto a hover dolly, and then moved to the nearby pile of crates to repack the cargo bay. It was a well-choreographed dance after so many months of practice, and it took only about an hour to switch everything out.

  They met up with the others in the station’s only training hall for some practice outside of their own small training room. Sparring against Emerald and Copperfield reminded Heath, if he had somehow forgotten, that he was still not a great fighter. But Emerald had begun resorting to [Mage Hand] to trip him up, which was at least a sign of improvement.

  Poor Jenny Mae had become Ekaterina’s next target, when the Wizard declared they should all reach a base level in [Unarmed Combat] or a related Skill. The last weeks had seen their Administrator tossed to the ground hundreds of times. And after each she would pop right back up and ask for advice on how to improve. He and Copperfield had a bet going that it was another Skill she had earned and forgotten to mention. [Undauntable Pollyanna] or something to that effect.

  The evening was free time. Heath wandered the station, finding a job hall with a local band playing. They were so terrible that the music worked its way back around to being decent, and he settled in to listen, sending a message to the rest of the crew. He received three ‘no’s in mixed levels of politeness before Copperfield showed up to hang out and enjoy.

  After a comfortable night’s sleep in his bunk, they were back off. It was normal life on a cargo hauler and exactly what he had set out to do when he rescued the Loon.

  Heath was bored out of his fucking mind. In the weeks since they had made it back to the Rim proper and dropped off their cargo from the Edge – with a hefty bonus – they had returned to their normal schedule. That is to say, cargo jobs, mixed with the occasional rank one dungeon delve, and lots and lots and lots of Skill practice.

  It wasn’t even helping much anymore. His Skills had plateaued, his level had plateaued. His attitude had plateaued and started to sink. The more he pushed, the more the System mocked him when nothing changed.

  “Welcome to growing up, kid.” Emerald said when Heath brought up his concerns. “The last levels of any rank are a grind. Strong enough for the right stuff to be easy. Too weak for anything stronger. Just so happens you all have sprinted through the first rank like something was chasing you. Means the slowdown hits harder.”

  “That… makes a lot of sense. Damn.”

  “Don’t worry too much kid, you’ll get there when you get there.”

  No one in the history of the universe had ever stopped worrying just because they had been told to relax. Heath decided to take a different approach, and forced himself to get up early the next day to chat with Jenny Mae, before anything else could distract either of them.

  “Absolutely,” was her response. A manic smile spread across her face when Heath explained the details of his idea.

  **********

  “Woohoo!” Copperfield’s excited scream echoed through the comms as Heath urged the Loon faster. The mana tether was operating at max capacity, bleeding off the acceleration and momentum letting Copperfield ride on the ship’s hull without being flung off or snapped into pieces by the forces at play. Better him than Heath, he was quite happy safely ensconced in the Captain’s seat.

  Their run brought them close enough for a barrage from the Loon’s guns, as they blasted the last of the barrier apart. Mana polyps were a hated pest all across the Rim. Any ship or combat Classer could handle one of them with their eyes closed. Taking out a modest clump was easy enough. They were only dangerous when they got inside a ship and started multiplying without anyone noticing.

  Which meant nobody bothered to deal with it when a group popped up in the Acax system, after all it was hardly worth the time to stop and deal with it. Problem being, the little growths liked to spawn friends. Who brought even more friends to the party. Which resulted in a colony of the tiny nuisances that was large enough to divert shipping in the busy system.

  Another few blasts and the colony was gone. “Any more?”

  Emerald sent a scan to the view screen, where a hundred green dots were displayed, flying apart and bouncing around like gas molecules.

  “Copperfield, get to it.

  “Aye Captain!”

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  It quickly devolved into a game. Jenny Mae v Ekaterina v Copperfield, to see who could take out the most of the polyps. With the combination of [Sharpshooter] and [Navigation] in the Administrator’s kit, it wasn’t even close.

  Heath adjusted their course to do a flyby of the local station, to pick up the commission for handling the problem, and then onward to their next stop.

  After his discussion with Emerald, Heath had thought for a moment about accepting the slowdown on the way to Level 50 and Rank 2. For about five minutes. Then he and Jenny Mae, also eager to keep up their pace, devised the most complex hauling schedule they could reasonably handle. Levels came from acting in line with their Classes, so it followed that to counteract the slowdown required pushing their classes to the absolute limit.

  They were hauling delicate cargo through dangerous trade routes, picking up mercenary work like the polyp infestation on the side, and diving into any dungeons for which they could beg, borrow, or steal a slot slot.

  No one was complaining as the levels kept coming in, if slower. Jenny Mae joined the rest of them in the level 40s, after which they went out to a local job hall and celebrated in proper Spacer fashion.

  As a gift to himself, Heath hauled his aching head out to the same job hall the next morning for a solid breakfast. The Loon had refused to tweak the chemical makeup of his usual sludge, citing consequences for one’s actions, and proper motivation to reach rank two as reasoning behind any attempt at a hangover cure.

  He spent the few moments while he waited for his food to arrive looking at his status.

  Slowing down might be normal, but that was for regular Classers living their lives and passively absorbing argo. With everything they’d been up to lately, it was only a matter of time. The satisfaction made the headache hurt a little bit less.

  Chowing down on a pile of synth bacon and local snake eggs, he almost missed when a Classer sat down opposite him.

  “Are you the Captain of the Wandering Loon?”

  Heath looked down at his stained coveralls and was acutely aware of a layer of patchy stubble and blood-shot eyes he’d seen in the mirror that morning. Especially when he contrasted the image he must present to the cleanly-pressed station uniform and meticulously-coiffed hair of the woman in front of him.

  “Yup!” Maybe enthusiasm would make up for representing the ship while looking like a slob.

  “I see. I’ve been sent to ask if you are taking commissions.”

  “Um, it depends, what are you looking for?”

  “We’ve heard about some of your recent runs on the news vids. One gate over, there is a subjugation mission on a large asteroid. Almost a small planetoid, really. The local fauna is resistant to mana-enhanced weaponry, so it’s slow going if they don’t want to turn the entire rock into slag. We have a few supplies we are looking to send, but our normal haulers aren’t interested, out of the way with a nontrivial risk factor.”

  Thinking of the Loon’s speed, and the hefty price he could charge for a direct commission, there was only one answer for Heath. “We can handle it. Let’s talk price.”

  A day later, they were streaking through a thin atmosphere, towards a signal beacon set only a few hundred meters away from a ground battle was in full swing. Gleaming lines of mech suits, tech-enhanced and without grafted dungeon loot like Betsy, were methodically hacking at the nearby rocks. When one of the rocks stood up to push back, Heath clocked them as the magic-resistant monsters in question.

  Per their instructions, they were not required to fully land. Heath took control and activated [Piloting], bringing them in to hover over the signal marker. In the cargo bay, Copperfield opened the hatch and activated the four supply crates. Designed for exactly these purposes, the crates were too expensive for normal cargo; Heath had never worked with them before.

  With little fanfare, their Swashbuckler tossed them over the side, where embedded magnetic thrusters brought them to a safe landing. Then the Loon was off again.

  “Why would anyone bother colonizing something like that?” Ekaterina asked.

  “Mana-resistant critters means the rocks are something special.” Emerald tweaked one last control and leaned back. “They only get that way if there’s a reason.”

  “I just found the survey,” Jenny Mae said. Their route back to the gate locked in, she had swan-dived into the local data streams. “Looks like confirmed veins of infused Titanium, and a prospector license was filed for hypsum.”

  A low whistle preceded Copperfield’s return to the bridge. “Damn. If they think they have a chance at a hypsum deposit no wonder they’re going all out.”

  On the viewscreen the battle was fading into the distance, but there was still enough resolution to see as one of the mech’s was savaged by the rock-creatures, forcing the operator to eject and retreat.

  “This is barbaric,” Ekateirna muttered. The sentiment was easily ignored by this point and Heath chose to take it as a bizarre expression of affection for the crew and the lifestyle, whatever the actual intention might be.

  The whole endeavor took a bit over a day out of their planned route. Heath was laughing all the way to his [Personal Bank] when he cashed the commission and shared it out as a bonus to the crew.