The aisles of the cargo bay were cramped, even for someone not Chino’s size. His shoulders were brushing against the stacked boxes and a crushing sense of claustrophobia threatened to overtake him in the tight environment.

In front of him, Harper glanced back and forth, his nose twitching. His paws were clenched, a sure sign that he was agitated as well.

“It’s cold in here,” Chino said.

“No shit,” Harper said. “They barely heat it because it wastes energy. They toss stuff in here that’s supposed to be cold anyway, right?”

The overhead lighting flickered, drawing an involuntary gasp from Chino. A part of him expected the room to have been filled with guards, but as Harper had described, it was only ship’s supplies. Unless someone needed something specific from inside it, they wouldn’t even come in the bay. That made it ideal pickings for an enterprising pair looking for a few pharmaceuticals to slip in their luggage before landfall.

“I hate space travel,” Harper announced. “I don’t think I want to do it again.”

“Is this it?” Chino asked, interrupting Harper’s woolgathering. The elephant was tapping at a polymer box large enough to be a coffin. Harper glanced at the data tag strapped to the end and a wide grin split his muzzle.

“Even better,” he said, his voice in a whisper.

“What’s better than free drugs?” asked Chino.

“Free guns.”

Chino flipped the latches on the crate and popped open the cover. Inside, gleaming dully in the dim overhead light, rested two dozen of the short pump-action shotguns the ratings had been seen to carry. A separate section of the crate held a similar number of matte grey handguns.

“Holy shit,” Chino whispered.

“Promised land, baby,” Harper added. He slapped the big elephant on the back.

Carefully, he peeled away the data tag from the end of the crate and replaced it with one from within his jacket – a tag indicating it as personal belongings owned by Chino. He rolled the other into a thin tube and slipped it into his pocket for disposal. Bringing the parts for the printing machine along in their carry-on had been a wise investment.

“Now we find the ammo.”

It took a little time to make that discovery, and in the process a crate of assorted medical supplies, two boxes coded as ‘Emergency Survival Kit’, a case of personal hygiene items, and a large box filled with rechargeable batteries in standard sizes also got a special label reassignment. At long last they found boxes of ammunition for the weapons, and assigned a couple of those for redistribution as well.

“Think that’ll do it?” Harper asked. Chino nodded his big head.

“I can’t carry all of it,” he said. Harper held out his paws in a calming gesture. When he replied, his amusement was obvious by his tone.

“We don’t carry any of it at all,” he said. “Not one damn bit. Planetfall is in two days. We’ve got the whole ‘make sure all your shit is ready for drop’ speech to look forward to, and we can say that we’re missing some stuff. They know that some items got sent to ship’s stores for the cold storage, and they’ll check here. The Navy will move our shit for us, pal, and they’ll apologize for the trouble!”

“That’s a mighty fine plan you got there, pup,” declared a raspy voice from near the door. Harper and Chino whirled to find a scarred lion watching them, his mane shaggy and a black hat jammed on his head. A bottle of amber liquid was in his paw and a cigarette hung from the corner of his lips, although it was currently unlit.

“Who are you, pal?” Harper demanded. His paw itched for the knife in his back pocket, but he kept still as he awaited a response. If anything broke loose, it would be a race to see if he could get to it before Chino was swinging his crowbar anyway. For a giant that lumbered around as if he had no muscle control, the elephant was surprisingly quick on his feet when the occasion called for it.

“Just call me Jack,” the lion said.

“Yeah? Well, Jack, what do you want?”

“In.”

The simple answer caught Harper off guard for a second and then he grinned.

“In on what?”

“Don’t fuck with me, coyote. There’s crates and crates of free liquor here if you know where to look, and I know where everything is stored. Got a couple friends setting up a bar on planet and smuggling out a bottle or two at a time to boost their supply is a serious pain in the ass. Your system, though? Sounds like a quick way to get a little something for everybody with nobody but the Navy losing anything.”

“What’s in it for you?” Chino asked. He had taken a half-step away from Harper, increasing the space between them so the lion would have to choose a target if there was a fight.

“Free liquor,” Jack repeated, waving the bottle he held. “With ears that big, you’d think you could hear.”

“Fuck you, furball,” the elephant spat. “I heard your mom begging for more the other night.”

“Maybe if you’d been hung like anything bigger than a mouse she wouldn’t have had to beg for more.”

“Hold up,” Harper said, raising a paw to stop the argument before it could flare. “You say you know where everything is?”

“Spent a few nights in here,” Jack said with a tight nod. “Nothing to do but drink and read labels.”

“And these pals of yours, they wanna open a bar?”

“Yeah.”

Harper leaned close to Chino and whispered. “We can move a lot of goods through a bar.”

“Yeah. I just… He pisses me off.”

“Relationship of convenience,” Harper said. “When we get down to the surface we’ll need new channels to run products.”

Chino rubbed at a tusk and then nodded.

“Fine,” Harper said to the lion. “Let’s get back to the hab blocks, and then we can get started by you telling us what kinda shit is stored here that we missed. After that we’ll see about setting up some new labels. Five Folk in means we can divert even more.”

Jack grinned around massive teeth. “Now you’re talking.”

<<<END>>>