Jed Calvert - "Jed's selfish decision" pt 1

Who: Captain Jed Calvert of the Cruiser "Myra Belle"
Where: Planet Baijing
When: Before the BD time-jumps
Jed had only been Captain of his new ship for a couple of weeks, and
knew that he only had so because the crew were desperate for
leadership. That's not to say that Jed was good at leadership, in fact
he was renowned for always making bad decisions, but at least he
looked like he knew what he was doing.
And at this moment he was doing what he did best. He stood with his
hands on his hips in the smouldering skeleton of a spacecraft that had
crashed on this planet. He was scavenging for anything that was worth…
anything. His ship had arrived seconds too late to save this ship from
being attacked by space pirates, but little did his shipmates know
that he actually wanted to scavenge the ship himself. They had watched
this ship crash land on planet Shanghai, and unfortunately the pirates
had got away with all the spoils.
Jed had a feeling though. He had some kind of sixth sense for this
type of thing, he knew that there was something of value still on this
ship, something that the pirates didn't know about and left behind.
The ship was a Mexican confederate ship, one of the survivors fleeing
from Earth. Jed could see it's logo on the burned hull fragments
laying around.
Jed picked his way through the sharp metal fragments into the belly of
the ship. It looked like a metal skeleton rib cage.
The ship was upside down, as it had landed when crashed. Jed searched
through every nook and cranny and useful hiding place. He pulled on a
piece of tether and a mangled, burned corpse dropped down from a seat
above where it had been caught. Anyone else would have jumped back in
shock or disgust, but Jed's first reaction was to punch it in the
face. He did so and instantly regretted doing so as the corpse's face
had been so badly burned that it was soft, and caved in around his
fist, making it stick to his hand.
He shook the skull off and it clattered against the side of the ship's
hull, making a hollow thud. This caught Jed's attention, as he
expected the certain section to be solid alloy. He tipped his cowboy
hat and walked over, and kicked the section with his strong boot until
it opened. It was a secret hatch.
"Ahh've found me some goddang secret treasure!" he praised himself. He
took off his cowboy hat, bent over and picked up a pure gold brick.
"Geezuz goddam H Christ!" he exclaimed. "The purest of pure gold!"
He bent over again and found another brick, and another. The soggy
screwed up fag-end in the corner of his mouth dropped as he realised
how rich he now was. All his life he had been in the pursuit of
wealth, through elaborate schemes, or through various cons or dodgey
deals, or even when he felt his most honest… through trading and
smuggling.
"I'm gonna have such a hootenanny on this! Yeehaw!" He said in pure
redneck.
As he was immersed in his dream of what to now spend the money on, a
shout came from outside the wreckage. It was the pilot from the
short-range shuttle he'd used to come down to the planet.
"Sir! We better get out of here, they know we're here!"
Jed gathered all the gold bricks he could muster and put them into a
dirty satchel he had hung around his neck and ran back to the pilot.
On the distance they could see three dune buggies driving across a dry
dessert towards them. They were on a planet of Chinese ruling, and
they hadn't got permission to land, as Jed seemed very adverse to
going through any proper official channels.
He knew the Chinese would be very pissed off about this if they found
out they were trespassing, and it turns out they were. Two
dragon-headed turrets popped up from the incoming jeeps and fired
several warning shots that exploded over Jed's head like Chinese
fireworks.
Jed and the pilot ran up a sand dune to their shuttle, the loose sand
and heavy gold bricks slowing Jed down, but his sheer determination
made him run faster than the pilot. He was used to this kind of thing
and enjoyed it, escaping against all odds with the bounty.
The Chinese immigration authority jeeps got closer, and Jed guessed he
could get rid of a little weight. He took a gold brick out of the bag
and lobbed it as hard as he could. It flew through the air down the
dune and smashed the first dune buggy's windscreen. There was a feint
yell of Chinese expletives and the buggy swerved and flipped.
Jed jumped into the shuttle as its engines whirred, whipping the loose
sand up into a fierce tornado.
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Who: Jed and his crew
Where: Back on the ship "Myra Belle"
Jed slammed one solitary brick onto a table in the ship's bridge. The
crewmembers looked at it in awe and amazement.
"This is enough to buy enough food for the ship for a month!" Jed said
proudly, as if it was his gift to the crew. People looked at him
fondly as if he was their hero, their saviour.
He then slammed another brick down on the table. "And this will buy us
enough grog and moonshine for a month! Yeehaw!"
There were cheers and the crew started to party.
Jed put his hands on his hips and looked proud. None of him even felt
guilty about the large bag of more bricks he'd stashed in his room. If
he'd shared that with the crew there's be enough to feed them for an
entire year. Jed didn't feel himself as selfish for keeping them for
himself, he just felt he had more use of them than everyone else.
Jed thought of himself a good trader, more like a rough-and-ready
businessman. He knew that if he really tried, he could do a really
good deal and get a lot more for the bricks than these muppets.
<to be continued...>