Some encounters are mysterious and this was one of them. The guy sitting across from me had a feather tattooed on his face. His gaze was penetrating and focused me like a bird of prey focuses on its prey. He said he was an independent Miner. But there was more, something I couldn’t grasp. I could grasp his problem. He was exporting ore from the Stanton System and the UEE wanted to put an end to the export. At least that’s what he told me.

There was a box he desperately needed. Agents from the UEE were also looking for the crate. And this box I was supposed to recover. This all seemed very familiar to me. The guy said the situation was very dangerous and he could not do it himself because he was being shadowed. But he had a spaceship for me that would help me to stay undiscovered. When I came to the landing pad my mouth was open. It was a Prowler. The replica of the Stealth Dropship of the alien race Tevarin. 

During the quantum flight to the given coordinates I couldn’t get rid of the thought that the export thing was not the whole truth. Did it have something to do with the activists? I had already recovered boxes of information for the activist network. But why didn’t he say so then? There had to be more behind it. I feared more than I could ever hope for.

When I arrived at the target coordinates, the whole thing became completely mysterious. I was at the shipping hub Gundo. A déjà vu.  Right here I had salvaged the first crate for the activists and met Brubacker. The thoughts in my head crunched like an old millstone. I tried to make a connection. I did not succeed. The loose ends of the information lay before me like a pile of spaghetti. 

I maneuvered the Prowler to the entrance of the destroyed space station. And I almost didn’t see it crashed into the debris. It was not the debris of the station, but the remains of a spaceship. Adrenalin shot into my veins and sharpened my senses. There had been a fight here. The station was not safe, an ambush was not impossible.

After I opened one of the side doors I checked the situation from cover. Now I felt like a bird of prey looking for prey. It was almost as if the spirit of the Tevarin had passed over to me. 

As if controlled by a ghostly hand I left the spaceship and floated focused and determined into the station. I was like in a trance. I held my weapon in front of me, like an eagle with its claws reaching forward to grab its prey.

My prey I had found quickly. I grabbed the crate and floated back to the spaceship. No time to lose. Quick in and quick out before anyone noticed anything. When I was back in the ship I started to have doubts. Was that it already? Could it really be that simple?

Some time later I reached the emergency shelter where I was supposed to hand over the box to my client. A Prospector stood in front of the entrance. The guy had come with a mining ship. Was he a Miner after all? I was confused and had a headache from all the thoughts that were spinning in my head.

I couldn’t see anyone in the outpost at first. Then the guy suddenly and silently came out of a shadow. He took the box, thanked me and told me that he was delivering ores to the Tevarin. Some important people had a problem with that. But it would be about much more than exporting ores. He didn’t want to tell me what it was, only that it was about the Tevarin. He said that I would carry the true spirit of honor in me and gave me a helmet. It was a replica of a Tevarin helmet.

The guy had long gone and it was getting light outside. I was still sitting in the shelter and brooding. The Tevarin were a destroyed and oppressed race. After losing the war against the humans 300 years ago, they were assimilated into the UEE. They did not get support from the UEE, nor did my people. The thought of injustice did not let me go. It was like a seed that was planted and slowly began to sprout.