<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #80BFFF"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;">Peter Halvardson</span><br/><span style="font-size: 120%; line-height: 116%;">'The Viking'</span></span></div><br/><br/><div style="text-align: justify;">Sirius-238, it sounded sparkling and brilliant, but looking out of the dust-covered large window in his office, Peter Halvardson, whom everybody only knew under the name 'Viking', saw only dark-grey dust covering every building of the mining town. Whoever had given this planet on its long way around Maliocrey-2, this dim sun far away, this promising name must have seen some sparkling star in his telescope. But what someone had seen 80 years ago and what it was in reality differed enormous. The Viking had been on a lot of planets in his job as a exploration engineer for the mining firm 'Universum Exploration', small ones, big ones, but never filthier ones. <br/><br/>The sun was a dim round plate nearly invisible through the dust clouds. It was bitter cold outside. Would there be some water on this planet, then it would have frozen into feet of ice crust, but all there was, was dust and wind. Wind in hurricane strength, constantly moving dust clouds over the bare rocks. Nothing lived on this planet, nothing else than 8000 miners and 100 engineers. Luckily nobody ever had to place one single foot outside of the buildings. The mining happened deep under the earth, the life was all taking place in the large, dirty buildings and the supply shuttle arrived every fortnight, which equivalented on month in earth time. Yes the days were long here, 48 hours, divided into four twelve hour shifts. The work was hard, forcing the men and women to their physical limits and like in every mining town the usual drugs helped to keep the people working. Diluxan, the stimulating one. Fenhil, the one that made you hallucinating. Arphaxam, the one preventing you to tire out. Officially they were all banned, but people knew where to get stuff like that. Every mining town had its supplier and on Sirius-238 it were two men known as Blackie and Samuel. But behind them was Peter Halvardson. He was organising the drugs, like he was organising everything else legal and illegal. The black market was his, had always been his on every planet he had been. But soon it would be enough. <br/><br/>He was 35 now, looking more like 45 with grey strains in his dirt-blonde hair. Towering at nearly 7", 300 lbs of muscles and bones, he was some impressive person. His physical strength had attracted the mining firm at first, but unlike others he had quickly shown that he was a brilliant mind too. And he had made career, officially and unofficially. There was a large sum stacked away on Phalar-45, where he owned a big estate. Phalar-45 was a lovely planet, not like this dirt hole here. But he had one last delivery to sell, before he could forget about his work and return to Phalar-45. His biggest delivery he ever got. Not only drugs this time, but something far more rare and expensive. Synthetic souls. The big mining machines were operated by the workers in the tiny cockpits by plugging themselves into the system. Every worker had an unique signature wave and it was telling the guards how much he had worked at anytime. But a syntetic soul was an artificial body, able to replicate any signature wave once parameterized. Originally only for military purpose, they were nearly impossible to get. And the miners were searching for them desperately. A synthetic soul would do your work, while you could lay in bed. A very tempting outlook.<br/><br/>And it happened that the Viking expected a delivery of 500 synthetic souls with the shuttle in 14 days. It would give him an incredible payday, when he sold those to the miners, especially as they were stolen goods and he got them cheap. The only problem was that the military was searching for their lost souls. And the message he had received from his contact person on board of the shuttle was troubling him. <br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">'Top half of your supply list critical to get. Check next shuttle if sanitary towels are on the freight list. Missing them here, maybe got into the delivery ahead. Otherwise inform me, then I order new ones.'</span><br/><br/>It looked totally innocent, but it wasn't if one knew the code. Top half stood for headquarter. Critical meant that they were on the right tracks. Check next shuttle meant exactly that, but not for sanitary towels but for a female investigator. She had been at the shipping port but caught the wrong shuttle. Not the one with the souls on board but one ahead. If he couldn't locate her after arrival of the shuttle, then he had to warn his contact on the other shuttle.<br/><br/>Sighing Peter Halvardson got up and slipped a baseball cap over his head. The shuttle today was expected in one hour. He would go down to the shuttle terminal and have a closer look on the passengers. It couldn't be a lot of them, only 40 female persons were on the passenger list. And she would probably not look at all like a miner. Female investigators from the military were a completely different type. Not big and bulky by synthetic muscles but sharp-witted and wiry. She would stand out like a sore thumb. Or like a gazelle in a group of elephants.</div>