“I explained to you before that we should have bought a Rifter but you wouldn’t listen.” Fletcher glared at Moriarity across the table.  Moriarity stared down at his glass. It looked half empty, it didn’t seem to matter much either way. Fletcher was always moaning, it was a complete mystery why he remained with the ship.

The situation was desperate.  They had just failed to turn in their latest commission and would have to sell everything to be able to pay for this Rifter.  They had some parts from the scrap they had looted from the wrecks in previous missions but altogether it was not looking good.

“Okay Fletcher we will buy a Rifter.  Do you have any suggestions about how to fit it?”

Fletcher looked up his data pad and handed it over to Moriarity.  “This is the cookie cutter fit.  They rave about it – you can even do level II’s in this boat.”

Moriarity took the pad, he knew before he looked much further than the Tech II guns that the fit was not going to work.  “Well for a start we can’t afford it, and secondly it will be impossible with my skills.  We would be waiting three months for the training.”

“Ahh  I forgot we are flying with a noob!”

“Yes and that means you might, for a change, try thinking out of the box.”  Moriarity hated it when Fletcher got to him.

Fletcher looked at Moriarity “OK then the way I see it we should go for artillery, you have a shit tank and the best thing we can do is keep the RATS at range.”

“We will not be able to fit the full range of guns and our DPS is going to be poor.”

“Then you better keep us at range or we are gonna be toast!”

“We can do that at least.”

“Lets drink to that then!” Fletcher got up and walked off to the bar.  Moriarity’s eyes followed him across the smoke filled room.

“Don’t worry about him, he is wound up a bit tight.” Cerbus smiled.  “Mind you I have never seen a wrench bounce so far off a pod before!  That was some funny shit.”

“He certainly knows his stuff when it comes to ship loadouts. But he hasn’t got a clue how it ‘feels’ to try and control it.”

Cerbus just smiled and did not commit to anything, like there was more to be said but she was avoiding some sort of issue.

“What I am trying to say is that it is really difficult to squeeze that extra juice out of a boat.  Sure it looks like it can take this or that loadout but when you put it all together it just doesn’t work.”

“I know, look its alright. Fletcher will sort us out once he gets a feel for what you can handle.”

Fletcher returned with three drinks in his hands.  “That bitch at the bar is a bit crabby.  All I said was she looked a bit fat and she refused to serve me til everyone else was served.”

Cerbus groaned. “I see you are inflicting your charms on the locals again.”

“I do my best.” He grinned.

“Well we might as well settle in at this station folks because we could be here for a while.”  Moriarity smiled.

“I’ll get busy with the spare parts and we will see what we can fit to a Rifter chassis with your current skills Mori. Don’t worry lad we will have something workable in the next day or so.  Then we can start earning some real ISK.”

“I can drink to that.” Moriarity raised his glass.

It took less than six seconds for three glasses  to clink.  That was three seconds more than it took to agree a deal that would see ‘The Intrepid’ repackaged and sold for a fraction of its price. What price is history?