After a painful but uneventful hike back across the glacier, Sanrah arrived at her craft, a year 2470 SpaceX model 330, double occupancy mu class interstellar cruiser, its subtle satin grey paint and sleek lines on the eight meter craft nevertheless standing in stark contrast to the barren surroundings. If not for the utter lack of life away from the spaceport, Sanrah would have been swiftly discovered upon landing. She let down the crate and brushed her glove against the hull.
"Miss me, baby? I'm sowwy I weft yoo awe awone she cooed lovingly. The sports sportscraft stood stoically. "Don't be so cold, you!" She joked, as she removed the weather tarps from the exhaust ports around the craft. Once done, she crumpled down the stiff and frozen sheets into their outboard compartment and entered her ship through the under hatch, pulling her prize behind her.
Inside the narrow capsule, she secured the crate and ran the startup diagnostic. It took several minutes for the power plant to warm up enough while she flipped through the inspection notes, mentally checking off items against the screen as she had hundreds of times before. As she activated the orbital launch sequence, Sanrah turned on her radio scanner. She imagined that it would yet be hours before the ruse was discovered, but it never hurt to be safe. As expected, all that came across was a steady stream of area reports from the mine and welfare check ins from various stations across both facilities. She fired up the craft as a road checkpoint radioed in asking for cigarettes. Sublimating ice into a sizable cloud from the ship's takeoff, Sanrah launched into the air and began the plane ascent into the upper atmosphere. Within minutes, she had reached 80,00 kilometers, the astral ascent horizon for the small world, and the intrastellar engines engaged with a soft hum inside the ship.
As Sanrah leaned back to admire the steadily warping horizon, a klaxon sounded from the scanner. She bolted back upright, causing her to fling her weightless self against the roof. The pilot swore over the alert message as she pulled herself back down and secured her restraints.
Over the increasing static, she heard the alert of her theft and the order for orbital interceptors to begin a search. "Damn it, I thought those idiots would take more time!" Continuing to rub her head, she scanned her instrument display. There were three vessels converging from a distance onto her location, and it would be yet another few minutes until the SpaceX was far enough from the planet to attempt a warp. The scanner crackled as an all-bandwidth hail reached her.
"Unidentified craft, this is a detachment of the United Human Corporate security forces. You are suspected of theft of proprietary equipment. Disarm your weaponry and submit to detainment."
Sanrah inspected the field map display. Their dots were approaching fast, even as she pushed the intrastellar drive to its limit. She may have a sportscraft, but they were clearly driving superior rigs. She eyed the planetary meter. A few hundred more kilometers to go.
"Unidentified vessel. Do not attempt to escape. Submit to our custody or face dire consequences. " The smuggler's eyes lit up. They were bluffing, no chance they would fire with the cargo that sat in the capsule behind her. Encouraged, she applied drag as the craft approached the secure warp. The interceptors were still several minutes away as she slowed to a crawl in the void.
"VESSEL! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WARP! WE WILL FIRE!"
A switch was flipped, and all twenty processors in the navigation system whirred to life, making the massive calculations required to place her at the preset destination. The nose of the craft opened like a rose, petals spiraling out to reveal the glassy convex lens of the tunneling boson emitter. The windscreen darkened.
"DO NOT--" the demand cut short by the EM interference as seizure-inducing flashes erupted from the craft. Sanrah's chair creaked as her bodyweight skyrocketed, and for an instant she was left breathless while her craft entered the darkness of the warp tunnel, and then relief swiftly came. She had begun the several hour transit, the particle trace of her transit decomposing instantly into exotic quarks and photons. To be continued.