A generous commission from  raven-2007 of my polycule of petty criminals involving the keywords: Suspicion, Embark, Hat Reason, Surprise

It isn't very often that I can find time to draw my own characters, and it was a lot of fun to fill the station with grime, invasive critters, and fellow travellers

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The Outren Moon Station was more of a pit stop than a destination. An unremarkable and inhospitable rock circling a small gas giant colonized by the Tieieal, its economy mostly depended on skimming fuel from the upper atmosphere and claiming the valuable offerings of the gas giant inhabitants.

The jellyfish-like people who had claimed the gas giant had no use for the moon station nor interest in interacting with its inhabitants, except that they would, at seemingly random intervals, gift resources from the planet to representatives of other species.

The station management was defensive of these resources and had a staff full of just about every sapient species to be found in order to capitalize on the Tieieal generosity, as well as a small fleet to defend their claim from outsystem visitors.

A tiny shuttle like theirs, unarmed and with hardly any cargo space, barely drew any notice from the station. “Security will be keeping its attention on that cargo hauler, not a tiny ship with 2 meters of storage space, so if Sion is right about the timing we can collect enough rare earth elements to sell off and live comfortably for a good while,” Miral had declared. Information on the timing and specifics of Tieieal gifts was scarse, but Sion had collected enough rumours and price tracking to make a solid guess at when the most valuable goods might be on offer.

It was, unfortunately, a little more complicated then simply popping into the system and going straight for the Tieieal structures. The suspicious and paranoid station was on guard for just those kinds of approaches. They would need to arrive early and wait on the station for their window, and then get into range of the Tieieal before Outren could catch them. The Tieieal wouldn’t tolerate hostilities too close to their structures, and Outren management didn’t dare antagonize them.

And that was why they were on the embarkation floor all together facing a nasty surprise.

“I was researching 20 other things, I forgot,” Chester grumbled.

“You forgot to check if you can set foot here without getting arrested?” Miral grumbled, setting herself directly before the security drone coming to check on them.

“I’ve never encountered anywhere with a direct extradition treaty with Ataraxia, usually they just allow bounty hunters at worse,” he muttered defensively and pulled his hat down further.

Sion intercepted another drone, offering their own information to pacify it. “We just need to keep you from getting scanned for 2 hours, how hard could it be?”