Grey Skies

Chapter One

I stood outside the rather shiny cathouse, dust swirling around me. I cursed. Meeting the captain of my ride while covered in the loose soil of this lonely shithole was going to ruin the carefully cultivated image that I tried to maintain.

At the time, I was a courier, with a pretty solid reputation to uphold. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Due to what Petaline and the other residents of the Heart of Gold had told me, I had almost expected a ship of shining white with a crew of only the most pure-hearted bastards in the solar system.

As it turned out, the ship was a bit battered and worn. Grey and cold, the bird descended from on high like and aged, but still graceful dancer. She wasn’t in the best of shape, but there was an elegance to her.

“An elegant piece-o-shit.” I thought, and smiled to myself. Serenity, the working girls had called her, as if it was the name of God. Or his wife. Their opinion of most regular, straight men wasn’t something that ought to be repeated in front of children, and considering their experiences, I could hardly blame them.

Their more than slightly glowing recommendation of Serenity and her crew was enough for me. The girls (and guys) had played fair in our one small business dealing, and they didn’t seem like the type to bother lying about much of anything, if they didn’t have to.

As the transport touched dirt, I began walking toward the door of the cargo bay. The ramp lowered slowly, revealing a man who I guessed to be in his thirties. Short brown hair, Caucasian, thumbs hooked on his suspenders where they met his jeans. He practically screamed salt of the gorram Earth-that-was.

Beside, and little bit behind him was a tall-ish woman of African descent. She was, in a word, fierce. I made a mental note to avoid crossing her.

On the captain’s other side, and I was pretty sure that the man in front was indeed the captain, was a tall man with a beard, and a gun so huge that I instantly labeled it “The Compensator”. He als