Fool Me Once (Privateer Tales) Read Online Free Page A

place.
    The Open Air District was known throughout the solar system as a place where free trade took place. It had no taxation system beyond that which was paid to rent real estate. Goods and services weren't taxed by the Mars Protectorate or even by Puskar Stellar. If you couldn’t buy it here then it probably didn’t exist.
    Negotiate landing permission on Budget Park #1 .
    I had no idea which lot might be better, but ultimately I didn’t expect to keep the ship. Red Houzi would find it - and me - soon enough.
    My pad showed a confirmation of permission.
    Plot course to land at Budget Park #1 .
    My AI returned a positive chirp letting me know it had heard, understood, and would act accordingly.
    Mars continued to grow in my vision as I approached. It seemed impossibly large. I’d never been so close to an actual planet and the scale was incredible.
    Turre t lockdown permission required .
    I expected this. Many space stations required turrets be locked down and Puskar Stellar was no different.
    Accept .
    I would land by 1800 universal which translated to 0200 local time for Puskar Stellar. In space, everyone worked with universal time, but the planets used local time to help line up with when the Sun would shine on the surface. It was a weird concept to me. Out on mining colonies, the sun was a nice reference point, but it had nothing to do with the time of day. The good news was the Martian day was still about twenty-four hours, so once I lined my sleep pattern up with local time, I wouldn’t have to adjust to a different day length.
    Puskar Stellar was in a night cycle, so activity should have been at a minimum, but the number of ships landing and taking off was incredible. There were thousands and thousands of ships of all sizes going in all different directions. You couldn’t have convinced me to take the stick and fly manually, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to navigate. How these ships weren’t hitting each other was beyond me.
    The lights of Puskar Stellar were beautiful and numerous. They spread out for hundreds of kilometers in all directions. As the ship approached the landing site, I could make out buildings and colorful tent tops.

     
     
     
PUSKAR STELLAR
     
     
    At the bottom of my ship's ramp, a chubby little man dressed in a poorly fitting pair of jeans that weren't up to the task of covering his belly, met me. Without suspenders, his pants would never have been able to stay up. I hoped the stains on his white sleeveless shirt were just grease, but I didn’t know for certain.
    My face-shield was up, as was common practice when exiting a ship. It wasn’t until I noticed he wasn’t wearing a vac-suit at all that it occurred to me we were standing in a pressurized environment. Strike that. Mars wasn’t just pressurized, it had an oxygen-nitrogen mixture over its entire surface, as did Earth. It was just weird. It took some effort for me to lower the face-shield and allow my helmet to fall back between my shoulder blades.
    Having had no access to a suit cleaner or a shower for what felt like decades, I would never have bet against myself for “worst smell,” but I think this little guy could actually give me a run for my money.
    The man’s stare was unabashed as he looked me up and down, his eyes coming to rest somewhere below my chin. I took a little pride in this because, twelve days ago, I doubt even this man would have thought I was much to look at.
    “It’s two hundred a day, starting today, no matter how much of a day you use. Clamps are already locked so there’s no getting out of it. How many days you planning on being here, darling?” His voice was low and raspy, like he had swallowed sand.
    “At least a week,” I answered.
    “I couldn’t help but notice your ship’s not registered.” He finally raised his eyes to look at my face.
    Damn. That was the point of landing here, supposedly they didn’t check.
    “Is that going to be a problem?” I asked, pouting my lips.
    “I