While he could check everything from the controls around him, old habits die hard. To the annoyance of some of the newer members of his crew, he still insisted on someone visually double checking everything.
Those habits were formed over fifteen years of hauling. He knew it was less about safety now days and more about strengthening the discipline, the team needed when the shit hit the fan, which it often did.
He sensed Marr returning to the cockpit.
“Reactors two and three are running hot and fast,” she announced triumphantly as if she personally turned the massive crank needed to spin them up.
Another one of Dukk’s potential unnecessary precautions was to run all three reactors for the descent, even when one alone had sufficient power to guide them successfully into port.
He had been through too many situations when evasive action meant the difference between life and death. Which he also knew, wasn’t relevant.
It was true that he, Marr, and the rest of his crew were high on this place’s most wanted list. However, the rig he currently captained had more than it needed. They would easily slip in unnoticed by the EOs and their devoted followers.
Having a rig with these capabilities or being so highly sort after, hadn’t always been the case.
As the autopilot announced it was about to break orbit, Dukk reflected to his first descent at the helm into his home planet. A time when he knew little of the truth about the world, he called home. While it felt like a lifetime ago, it was less than two months since.
