Koji had left earlier than me, just at the beginning of the mid-cycle.
I had had nothing to do but loiter around the compound, watching the other slaves toiling their ass off while I waited for the late cycle
I did not feel good about it, but I could hardly stay inside the entire day.
it however gave me time to learn the upper levels of the syndicate compound well enough.
Now at least I could understand why the enforcers had previously treated us with hostility.
They must have had their own preferred replacement, people who already understood the nature of their work.
That's why the assistant boss had been so willing to suggest older slaves to take the new positions.
At almost sunset I was called into the handler's office and there I received my first instruction for my first run in Ordmantel.
I did not feel relieved.
Even with just Hato's run to make,I knew there would be challenges. But now I also had his enforcers stolen spices to deliver.
Even worse, when they were done instructing me, I realized that I would be thankful when this day came to an end... That is if I would be alive at all.
Their client was in Corporate District for fuck's sake...I looked at them trying to figure whether they were intentionally planning to get me killed.
It couldn't be far from their plans.Maybe they still wanted to replace me.
How the fuck would they send me in the Corporate District when boss himself never run product there?
Corporate District was absolutely, completely, utterly black sun uncontrolled...no fucking neutral zones and no options for shadow tax either, Not to mention every square of it was covered in holocams and security droids.
Everything that went on there was monitored.
Maybe even my first day exploring the city had been covered. And I was supposed to return there to run spices, spices that I knew very well Black Sun ran because it was a common spice in the galaxy.
That would mean I was running a product that was directly competing with theirs. Of course there wasn't even talk there.
Black Sun made the Hutt gang seem like a pious lot from what I had seen in Star Wars media.
Still, refusing here would be going directly against the assistant boss and his nikto enforcer, And just like he had said, with boss gone he held my life at his mercy.
Anytime he wished he could find a good excuse to trigger the kill switch.
The second I walked on the the syndicate speeder landing pad, I turned again to stare at the enforcer who was escorting me questioningly.
Before me was the exact speeder that I had lost yesterday.
It was the same one that was my ride for the day.
"But this is the same speeder... The speeder that I was made to pay for."
He looked at me like he couldn't see my point
"And?"
"And eight thousand credits were added into my debt for Something I didn't do."
The enforcers just sneered
"Well, you might want to get going. Hand over runs are time sensitive. Or maybe you would want me to call chief so that you may ask the same to him."
I was ready to tell him to call the man but I remembered his warning. He would treat us like crap that we were in front of other enforcers. And that man was no good, I knew.
Publicly he would humiliate and potentially beat me.
Plus I also knew that Hato knew what he was doing by adding my debt.
I mean how the fuck would their speeder disappear from a paid landing pad? Maybe it had been in collaboration with the wookie
I begrudgingly sat myself on top of the speeder and keyed in the ignition.
Today the sensation of the hovering speeder did not feel weird. And soon I swooshed away from the compound.
Bosse's run wasn't supposed to be complicated. At least from the instruction that I had received. It was a handover.
What I would do was drive the speeder to the next drop before picking another one that I would drive back. I did not ask any question but I knew that maybe it had hidden compartments with payments or the spices.
I did not care to know.
There was a timer on the speeder's tiny display and at exactly 20 minutes I arrived at the wookie's landing pad.
When I approached his landing pad He stood as if to show me away but then he stopped.
I had been wrong.
They had not been cooperating with this dude to steal the speeder....Hato's enforcers had repossessed the speeder back.
The wookie's face was full of what looked like fresh wounds and swollen bums like someone who has received a serious pounding .
In fact from the way he limped I could swear that is what exactly had happened. Which to me, was a little bit surprising seeing the size of him.
Whoever had fought him probably had sustained even worse injuries.
Then again they might have not.
Hato's syndicate might be small but they were still a syndicate and syndicate had even bigger enforcers
One of the rules in the galaxy I realise,was that however dangerous you were there was someone worse than you. The same went for cunning and street smart.
Rule of thumb is to operate without assuming anything.
I landed on the pad and without him talking I counted six credits from my day's budget which had been made to 200 credits.
I did not pause to think much. My instruction was to switch to the immediate speeder on the right.
Leave mine, take that, don't look back. I was to leave the keys inside also.
I jumped onto the next speeder and the wookie cowerd back as I kicked off his landing pad.
Serves him right for the rudeness and humiliation he subjected me to yesterday. Plus he was the very reason that I had added more credits to my debt.
There was no room for pity.
20 minutes later I landed back to the syndicate compound with the speeder. Simple as that.
Honestly I was beginning to think that people were exaggerating the danger of doing these runs.
Maybe they weren't that bad after all.
I did not have time to linger around after delivering the speeder. I was almost immediately supposed to do my second run.
A thick yellow jacket was waiting for me perched on the opposite gate wall. That was supposed to be my second delivery into the corporate industry.
It didn't feel quite heavy but at least I could feel there was some weight on it. Though it was well distributed.
I slipped it on and walked out of the syndicate compound.
The hours between the early mid cycle and now, I had spent them memorizing the routes I was supposed to take.
Unlike yesterday, today I knew where the industrial mag train station would be
Still it wasn't easy to access it because unlike the market district which was well populated with people but which had some sort of order though only little, industrial district was exactly the opposite.
It was littered with buildings, canteens, shady food stalls that stank instead of having good aromas and speeder lanes that cut and crisscrossed everywhere. Even with the map imprinted in your mind it was easy to lose focus and get lost.
But I stuck to the general idea northeast of the compound was the terminal I wanted .
It did not matter where I would cross even if I would have to cut in across active lanes to get there.
You might think that that was exaggerating but that is exactly what people were doing.
Nobody seemed to care that bikes were scurrying around in hellish speed as if they were freaking ghost riders. There were even tiny hovercraft descending into various docks that were scattered around and nobody seemed to care.
Everybody minded their own business and so did I. Soon enough I arrived at the train station.
The terminal itself was worse.
It was Worn down and Seemed more like a mini scrapyard and the passengers gathered around waiting for their train Looked like scrap scavengers who were waiting for a pay.
Actually that might not be far from truth some of them lived fully on that.
Already I could see the yesterday's behavior beginning to reflect.
Since the mid cycle was dying the prices were beginning to hike up and now the fare just to the next market district the cheapest one was 10 credits already. Late cycle was already here.
I paid 40 since I wasn't going to the market district.
My delivery was to the corporate district. I felt something tighten at the pit of my stomach.
This was it.
Today I was directly running in a rival syndicate zone and not just any other syndicate. The worst of them.
Black sun.
The train blizzed across the various districts like a wind and soon enough all the shady surroundings began to fade into the classy building and atmosphere that indicated the corporate district.
For the second time since arriving here I smelled fresh air on the apex of Ord Mantel.
I stepped off at terminal 30.
Today I had everything crammed at the back of my head.
After here I was supposed to stick to the speeder lane leading to the central business district and then I was to veer off where the sign pointed at the apparel corner. It was supposed to be sub-district 14.