If all goes well, you'll be set for life.
Smuggling. It's an illicit way of life, especially on this Base. It's also a true form of art. There are all sorts of places down in the mine tunnels to hide things, and all sorts of aliens come through the base ith short layovers. However, this place is pretty small and tight-nit.
You've smuggled the basics for a long time: drugs, a few small weapons, regulated cryptosmashers, even some contraband bio-ware. But you've never had a load quite like this one.
Drillies. Lots of 'em. 150 to be exact.
A Drilly is a small, rodent-like animal. About a half a foot in length, with smooth, pale, purple skin. Intelligent little buggers, too. Like Nyrellian Markels or EarthChimps. But that's not what makes them special. They're a narcotic. More specifically, their fluids are a strong narcotic to most humanoid races. Drillyjuice. It gets squeezed out of them in a big press, or juicer. And they have to be alive, or the stuff degrades. Nasty process, really.
So you've got 150 live Drillies, in special sealed life-cages, hidden down in tunnel 32c. Not only are they illegal trade under narcotics laws, but animals like that aren't even allowed on the Base, lest they get out. Plus, you're pretty sure a bunch of animal rights groups are after the Drilly trade. But that's what you expect in the smuggling business.
The real problem is that you're meeting the buyers today. Both buyers. That's the problem. You accidently offered to sell to 2 different buyers, both of whom want the full load. It's only partly your fault: the SmarlEgGian shipmen who delivered them to you had mixed up the status sheets. But that doesn't matter; it'll still be your heads on the block if one of the buyers goes sour.
The 2 buyers are Nilzar Tull, a Nyrellian whose been here a couple of days, and Riker smith, a human who just arrived. Both seem like the serious types, though Smith acts more like a rich playboy. Hopefully, you can either work out a deal to split the 150 Drillies between them, or one will just out-bid the other, in which case you hope the loser is a good loser.
Then there's Pauly. He's one of the Base's friendly Hologram Interfaces. A few months ago, you "updated" him with an override program that lets you control him somewhat. You've been using him for bookkeeping, and few other things. However, during the last couple of days, his override program has been acting buggy. Every 20 minutes or so, the program will shut off, and Pauly will revert to his stanard programming for a few minutes. The first time it happened, you nearly got arrested. So you'll have to deal with this, and be careful not to say or do anything incriminating while he's "switched over."
The only other thing you have to worry about is the recent crash. Of course, that's more than a small issue. Right after the last ship docked today, what appeared to be a few small shuttles slammed into the asteroid, causing quite a few tremors. As a result, the whole base has been on special alert for the last few hours, and some of the tunnels have caved in. because of this, you weren't able to retrieve the "sample" Drilly today before your meeting with the buyers. So one of you needs to go down, make it through the cave-ins, and get 1 Drilly out of the safe-cages without letting them all loose. You'll need Pauly to help navigate througth the cave-ins, so you should be extra careful when he switches over. Meanwhile, the other one of you should stay with the buyers and try to work out the deal (and stall them). You'd like to make as much profit as you can, and having 2 bidders shold help, but you don't want them fighting, or else you'll all get caught.
So all you need to do is deal with the cave-ins, don't let any Drillies loose, stall the buyers, keep the buyers form fighting, get as much money as you can from the buyers, and watch out for Pauly's glitches. And don't get caught. You certainly don't want that.
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