The universe opened up before the wide canopy of the Aurora ES as the disorientating flurry of lights that was jump-space tore a hole in space back into reality. The small starship shuddered violently as it made the transition, and her pilot quickly put his hands back on the controls to stabilize the craft.
When the rocking finally stopped, the man inside the thick flight-suit let out a terse breath and leaned back in his seat as he gathered his senses and looked through the many displays before him. The jump had gone off without a hitch, and he had arrived safely in the system where New Pittsburgh was nestled. There, the cargo stored in the back of the Aurora was destined to be sold, and there the pilot could get a paycheck.
The flight to New Pittsburgh was uneventful, but as the Aurora approached the outermost limits of the planet's gravity, that peace was broken by the announcing beep of an incoming transmission. "Aurora ES, please identify yourself to Port Authority." The pilot hit the comms button and leaned into the microphone built into the panel.
"This is John Andrews, of the Wanderer." The pilot replied, a grin spreading across his face as he spoke. "Here to deliver cargo and get paid." Whoever was running Traffic Control wasn't so easily amused, however.
"Understood, Aurora." The man on the other end said flatly. "Your tags check out, you are cleared to land at hangar nine-seven. Welcome to New Pittsburgh." The line went dead, and John turned his attention back to the growing planet before him as he pushed the throttle forward a hair, the Wanderer rushing forward eagerly.
- - - - - - - -
The rattling of orbit entry shook the Aurora softly, but John held her steady on her course down toward the surface. The clouds met him at high altitude, thin and sparse in the arid environment of the mining world. As soon as the Wanderer cleared them, John got his first glimpse of the sprawling industry below.
Smog rose from factory after factory as heavy machinery worked hour after hour to process ore and raw materials into products to be sold throughout the Empire. In the distance, past the kilometers-high towers and smokestacks, cracks and scars in the earth stretched deep into the crust of New Pittsburgh as ore was pulled from the ground with brute force that shattered planets. It wasn't much in the way of a looker, John thought as he slowed the Wanderer's descent, but it certainly got the job done.
As the Aurora hurried to meet the smokestacks, John slowly leveled the starship out until she was flying almost level, diving slowly as the Wanderer's onboard navigational computer pointed toward Hangar 97. Rounding a large office building, John finally got visual on the tall star-port that was the hub of most off-world traffic. Hangar 97 lay before him, the Wanderer's HUD putting a small marker above the giant metal doors that led into the bay.
Slowing, John kicked in the Aurora's VTOL function, and felt the ship's auxiliary helicopter-like blades mounted inside of the outer frame of the Wanderer spool to life, their whir barely audible above the hum of the starship's systems and the roar of passing atmospheric vehicles. John waited until they were fully online before nosing the ship slightly forward, letting the craft approach the entrance, which slid open before him as sensors detected his arrival.
Carefully, the Wanderer maneuvered inside the tight space of the hangar while the HUD's altitude indicator changed into a measure of the distance between the floor plating and the landing gear that had automatically deployed from underneath the Aurora, moving and locking into position with a loud mechanical whine. One meter at a time, John let the Wanderer settle before finally the distance hit zero. The ship jolted as she made contact with the floor before resting against the hangar deck, and John began to turn the craft off.
As soon as the main engines powered down and the ship's computer began to shut down, John got out of his seat, sliding between it and the canopy window, and paced back to the cramped living quarters of the Wanderer. Hitting a release on his suit, the EVA suit disengaged around John and he began to remove it piece by piece before replacing high-tech protection with a olive green tee-shirt stamped with the word "NAVY" in gold and a pair of black utility pants. John himself was tall, just over six feet, with dark brown hair and chestnut eyes to match. Sliding his MobiGlas onto his wrist, John patted his hand against the inner hull of the Wanderer before putting it against the door lock. The mechanism hissed as the ship depressurized and the door slid open, a gust of fresh air blowing through the Aurora like a storm.
Climbing down the deployed ladder, John took some tentative steps on the deck before putting his hands in his pockets and grinned broadly. It was good to be planet-side once again.
- - - - - - - -
Managing paperwork was the least fun part of being a private pilot, though it wasn't like that had been too much better back in the Navy. Port Authority had clamped down on cargo since smuggling operations had gone up in the last couple of years, and one could never be too sure about what was inside every crate of cargo. The digital documents that John scrawled through on his MobiGlas holographic display was consent papers, asking for Port Authority to search through the goods that John had transported to New Pittsburgh in exchange for it being delivered to its destination. Disagreeing with this was an easy way to catch the attention of the Advocacy, and that was trouble John had no attention of attracting.
Sighing as he sat down on the less-than-comfortable bench in a break room on the same level as Hangar 97, John flipped through the last few pages of data before finally seeing that glorious "accept button", which he pressed with as much energy as a bored pilot could manage. There was a pause as the paperwork was filed through the net before the screen changed to a checkmark, text floating above it confirming that the request had gone through. John grimaced when he saw the estimated waiting time for the cargo to be unloaded and processed: Five hours.
John leaned back in the bench as he thought through his options. Five whole hours was a lot of time to have, and it would do him no good to waste it, especially since that this delivery job was a one-off. He wasn't going to get employment, or least easily, from the same corporation that he had just finished this task for. He would have to go job hunting over the Spectrum that digitally connected all devices.
Scrolling through page after page of "Wanted" ads was a bore, John thought, but at least he didn't skip them because he was under-qualified. Having Citizenship was a hell of a boon, and it basically allowed him to get just about any transport job he wanted. The question that was on John's mind was two-fold. First, the job had to be legal. The quickest way to become the enemy of a lot of people was to traipse on the wrong side of the law, and John didn't have the contacts nor the experience to survive in the cut-throat world of crime. Second, and most importantly, was the destination. John was not keen on having to make multiple jumps to get from point A to point B, and the more systems one visited, the higher the chance of getting jumped.
As he was about to turn the fifteenth page he was on, John's eye caught on a small advertisement that he had almost missed. It was an unassuming contract, simple and straight-forward: Deliver some light supplies to the frontier colony at Min. It wouldn't take too long to get the job done, maybe half a week of flight round trip at least. John minimized the screen and opened up a new one, this time a holographic display of the known galaxy. John's eyes followed the route he'd have to take from New Pittsburgh to Min, looking for something that could spell trouble. Seeing nothing of any real alarm, John reopened the job application and scrolled down to the accept page, which he quickly hit. There was a pause as it went through the Spectrum, but a minute later the screen flashed back to that familiar green checkmark.
John grinned and got up from his bench, heading for the exit of the break room. He had to negotiate more paperwork by Port Authority to pick up the goods, but as soon as he was done, he'd be ready to take off and head out for Min.
- - - - - - - -
The hours went quickly now that John had a purpose. As the brutal desert sun began to sink against the horizon, John finally returned to Hangar 97, his Aurora waiting for him patiently. A small cargo container hung underneath her, loaded with the supplies for the colony. John smiled as he took in the sight of his starship: John never got tired of seeing his craft.
Walking up to the side of the Wanderer, John waited for the starship's exterior sensors to detect him. There was a pause as his bio-signature was confirmed, and a heartbeat later the ladder deployed and the side door opened with a hiss. John clambered onto and up the ladder before ducking his head inside the Aurora.
Putting his hand on the door panel, the entrance sealed shut behind him, and with a whisper of air, pressurized the starship. John fumbled with his clothing, sliding out of his day clothes and into his bulky white EVA suit. The RSI-licensed suit had come with the Aurora, and John hadn't had the heart, or the money, to upgrade. As soon as he was dressed, John slid on his helmet over his head until it met with the neck of his suit. A click announced that it had sealed, and as the internal suit systems booted up, John made his way up to the cockpit of the Aurora, squeezing between hull and seat before finally taking the chair.
Once he was well and sorted, John buckled himself in and started the Wanderer's systems, feeling the powerful computers that managed the starship hum to life in her innermost workings. The HUD and smart-panels flashed to life, displaying the simple but iconic logo for "RSI" as the last of the start process concluded. As options scrolled across their displays, John tapped his way through the engine start protocols he had memorized ages ago.
The Aurora whined as the power generator in the center of the ship began to spool up to operational capacity. In the tail of the ship, the powerful thrusters that propelled the Wanderer through the black glowed to life, roaring as they engaged. All over the starship's hull, small micro-thrusters that maneuvered the craft through space as rudders and flaps would for a plane in atmosphere test-fired, hissing as they let out small jets of blue plasma.
Back in the cockpit, John grasped his left hand on the throttle while his other hand tapped through the smart-panels to activate the VTOL mode. John gave them a look to confirm they were working, as the safety flaps that hid them opened to reveal the helicopter blades. A few button presses more, and he connected a comm channel to Traffic Control. "This is John Andrews of the Wanderer, parked at Hanger Nine-Seven. Requesting clearance to launch, over."
"Aurora designate 'Wanderer', you are clear for departure." A different voice than the one that greeted him when John had entered the system responded. "Happy trails."
"Have a good one, Control." John said, smiling to hear a friendlier voice. Putting his hand on the joystick, John gave her a little throttle. The Wanderer shuddered softly as she slowly left the deck of the hangar. Pushing the stick slowly forward, the Aurora worked its way out as the hangar entrance slid open before her, revealing the night sky lit by pinpricks of lights stemming from a hundred fires.
As soon as she was clear, John turned off VTOL and opened the throttle. The Aurora responded like a dream, shooting forward like a missile as it screamed toward the skies. The spires of the factories, lit only by safety lights that flashed barely visibly against the red-lit smog that drifted away from them, streaked past as John let the Wanderer roar skyward. Gravity's best attempts to pull her back to the earth were futile, the ship imperceptibly shuddering as it conquered the force of nature. The sound of the winds whirling past the cockpit began to fade until there was nothing but silence.
It took some time for the Wanderer to finally clear the gravity field of New Pittsburgh proper, and even longer for her to navigate to the jump-point at the edge of the system. As the Aurora approached the edge of the wormhole, John activated the jump-drive with a single press of a button on the displays. He typed in his destination, some intermediary planet that was of no real concern to him, before returning his attention to piloting. John slowed the Aurora down as she approached the jump-point, and suddenly the universe stretched out into infinity before being supplanted by a bright blue tunnel into oblivion. The Wanderer shuddered as the wormhole bounced her about, strange energies pulling and pushing on the hull of the starship.
John checked the estimated time of arrival to the next system, which the panel displayed as about an hour. Tapping on the display, John brought up the navigation systems and began to plot in the course into the ship's auto-pilot. Once the route was plugged in, John tapped the "execute course" button on the display, before pushing the panels out of the way and unbuckling himself from his seat. It'd take twenty two and a quarter hours until the Wanderer reached the Min system, and spending that time in the cockpit would only drain John's energy and dull his senses, and neither of those were conductive to survival.
Standing up, John worked his way around the seat and to the small living compartment in the center of the ship. A small cot faced a porthole revealing the disorientating lights of the wormhole. Tapping a button on a small console adjacent to the window, the glass blackened until it was just a sheet, as did the window on the other side. The internal lights dimmed until the only light that brightened the cabin was the pinprick of light from the wall-panel and the faint blue lights of jump-space from the cockpit.
Sighing, John slowly got on the cot and nestled himself in. As he stared up at the darkened ceiling of the Wanderer, his mind drifted to what awaited him on Min and the route ahead, what dangerous he could encounter. He fell asleep soon enough, his ship continuing on as if he had never gone to bed.
- - - - - - - -
The twenty-two and a quarter hours passed quickly for two thirds of it, as John slept peacefully while the Wanderer continued on its path. By the time John woke up, there were only eight hours left. Those passed agonizingly slowly, as John read novels on his MobiGlas and looked over the ship's systems again and again. The latter was habit he had picked up back in the Navy, a form of ritualistic paranoia whenever a space-faring vessel left its port of call. A pilot was supposed to know all that ailed his craft before he went out, sure, but once you were out in the black all that mattered is a pilot's ability to monitor his ship.
The maxim, at least as John had been taught it, was to check systems every two hours if you were in a fighter, and every hour if you were in anything bigger than that. Because he had been unconscious for the past fourteen, he ran fourteen systems checks in under two hours, making sure that nothing had gone wrong. A good pilot checked not for the obvious problems, which were also more rare, but the more common and pernicious ones that tended to fly under the radar. Stress fractures on the hull from exposure to gravitational fields and the wear-and-tear from jump-space was a major one to watch for. Another was any sign that power was being lost excessively as energy flowed from power generator to ship systems. A major drain could cost a pilot their life, but a minor drain was to be expected as systems burned energy just by being on. It took skill and experience to be able to tell the difference. The tests went off without a hitch, however, and over the remaining hours John lived a very monotonous life until finally the end of the final jump approached.
The Wanderer shuddered violently as the jump-drive aboard played with the powerful energies surrounding her. John, who had buckled himself in when he had started this last jump, gripped the seat as he braced for the shock of returning to real-space.
It felt like the hand of God snatched the Aurora and gave it one good hard rattle. The ship shook like a rag-doll as the swirling blue jump-space stretched out like it was being pulled until the blue faded into black and the pinpricks of stars appeared. As the Wanderer settled, aided by the micro-thrusters self-stabilizing the vessel, John loosened his grip on the stick and gave a sigh of relief. He quickly looked over the navigation display, which read to him that the ship had arrived safe and sound in the Min system.
"Alright, then." John muttered under his breath as he tapped the nav screen and selected the small world of Min II. A second later, the HUD changed, an arrow appearing pointing in the direction of the dustball of a planet. John slowly panned the Wanderer over, lightly adjusting the stick. A thousand years ago, space travel was a complicated mix of mathematics and physics. Today, with computers a thousand thousand times more powerful than those assisting those ancient space programs resting lightly on one's arm, it was as simple as pointing the starship the way you wanted to go and hit the gas. The engines on starships, even the smallest space-worthy ones, were capable of blowing through a gravitational field fairly easily, to put it simply. There was a more complicated science behind space-flight, especially around gravitational fields, but the layman could rely on his ship's computer systems to get him through without too much hassle.
It took a fair amount of time for the Wanderer to actually hit the gravitational field of Min II. This was a frontier world, and that meant you encountered frontier people, so John studied every contact that the Aurora's sensors had picked up. Unsurprisingly, there were some wanted smugglers, a bounty hunter or twelve, and plenty of cargo ships. However, nothing had been tagged as a pirate, though John knew better than to assume that there truly were no brigands. A few thousand credits, and suddenly your ship's ID has been swapped for an entirely new one, an easy way around UEE ID tagging.
A few ships, prowling around the northern hemisphere of the planet, had no tags at all, which put John on edge, but they seemed to be preoccupied. Three of them, John thought as he saved their contacts on his HUD; two Mustangs and a Freelancer. While John didn't stop monitoring the contacts when he started entering the main bulk of traffic heading for the planet's surface, he did relax a little. There were enough bounty hunters here, all of which had clean UEE tags, and a few with Citizenship, that would make trying to attack anyone in this area a quick way to be spaced.
Once the planet filled his cockpit, John tapped the comms panel and tried to raise traffic control. Unlike New Pittsburgh, which had extensive infrastructure in orbit around the planet, there was only a single unloading station for the bigger Hull-class vessels to dock at, as well as what had to be some form of militia outpost protecting it. Whoever was running things would be planetside, which didn't mean too much other than it'd take a few moments longer for his ship to be scanned. "Min Traffic Control, this is Aurora Wanderer, requesting permission to land, over." John said clearly. There was a chance that comms could be disrupted by the planet's atmosphere, even though the desert world before him likely had a thinner one, and being misheard was a quick way to get in trouble.
The pause between John's call and the response was longer than John liked, so he slowed the engines down so he wouldn't hit atmosphere before he got clearance. Finally, the comms panel beeped to announce an incoming transmission. "Wanderer, this is Traffic Control. ID is checked, please proceed to Hangar Five A." The woman running operations had a colonist's drawl, the kind of voice you hear from someone who has left the city behind long enough to forget what's proper to sound like. John had always been partial for that kind of voice, as it had always represented to him a form of free spirit that you didn't find on the mega-cities of Terra or Earth. "Welcome to Min, Aurora."
"Thanks, Control." John replied, smiling pleasantly enough. "Have a good one, out." John slowly edged the engines forward, and streaked toward the world before him.
- - - - - - - -
An hour later, John stood on the surface of Min, staring up at the blazing sun. The world was like New Pittsburgh was back when it was just being colonized. Sand was everywhere, crags and cliffs rising in the distance like the maw of the world. This particular world had rock spires that stretched toward the skies, formed by ancient oceans that had long since evaporated. It was a hell of a world, but people believed they could make their fortune here, and John was the last person who would disagree. There was opportunity to be found out here, at the edge of civilized space.
John had never been to Min before. It just hadn't been a place his career had taken him to. There was a mystery to this world, an air of danger and adventure that enthralled John. No matter how mundane his job could be, John never let himself be anything else but amazed to walk on some alien world. It was no surprise that as soon as the unloading process had begun, John began to poke around.
The colony was as bare-bones as they came. The star-port barely poked above the tops of the buildings surrounding it, the materials and traffic necessary to mandate a taller structure not yet present. The structures that made up the colony were pre-fabs, naturally, and while they were still relatively new, the sand had etched itself into each and every wall. The entire place looked like it had been recently dug-up, in fact. All that was missing was some ancient ruin or pyramid to seal the deal.
John smiled at the people on the streets as he passed them, though he could feel their stares bore in on the Navy shirt he wore. Out this far, one could run into all sorts of people, and not all of them were as big of fans of the UEE's military as those closer to Sol. However, John was ready for any eventuality.
Unlike New Pittsburgh, which banned personal weapons on the surface, Min had no such qualms over packing heat. As such, John carried his personal firearm strapped to his hip, attached by a magnetic grip between the weapon and micro-magnets stitched into his clothes. Technically, John could holster the pistol anywhere, but where it was served him fine: It made sure John could reach it at the quick, and it made sure that anyone who wanted to pick a fight knew that he had a reply.
The pistol itself was an LH-86, a pistol from Gemini. While there was much to be said for plasma-based weaponry, a combustion-based handgun like the '86 had a lot more punch, and couldn't be deflected or absorbed by shields like energy weapons could. However, it was also loud and had a hell of a kick. In John's eyes, though, the sound did a good job of intimidating any assaulters into backing off, and the kick was manageable. You only really needed to put one into someone to put them down. Add to that a thirteen-round magazine, of which John was carrying two, one of which was already loaded into the pistol, and you had a hell of a weapon.
John ran his fingers over the weapon, to make sure it was at the ready, as he continued walking further and further out from the star-port.
- - - - - - - -
There wasn't much in the way of a "plan" in John's mind. He was merely just going to go as far as he could, and once he hit the edge of the colony, he'd turn back around. It'd give him a taste of what Min had to offer, and John always appreciated a chance to stretch his legs. As the minutes passed, the buildings became more and more industrial in nature until John was walking through a sea of warehouses, and beyond them lay the desert of Min. "End of the line." John muttered to himself, the back of his mind wondering why he hadn't brought along a water bottle.
John was about to turn back around when a very strange, and very powerful, smell filled the air. It was instantly familiar to him, and an adrenaline kick made him shudder as he instinctively went for his '86. There, in the air, was the unmistakably acrid smell of burning ozone, and the horrid scent of melted flesh.
John turned to face the nearest warehouse, where the odor seemed to be stemming from. It didn't occur to John that he might be walking into something. The only thought in his mine was that someone had been shot, and he had to get to the bottom of this. His mind was racing, running through his recent memory. He hadn't heard a shot, meaning that whoever had been shot had been lying there for some time, before John had gotten in earshot. Given how relatively quiet it had been in the area, that the act could have been committed any time ago, although the fact that the smell came from inside a warehouse did mean that the blast might have been muffled.
Crawling up to the big metal door, John peered through a small hole where the door had been punctured somehow. It wasn't much larger than a keyhole, and it was dark inside the warehouse. There didn't seem to be anything moving, from what John's limited vision could tell, but there could be almost anything waiting inside. Going through the front door did not strike John as a smart idea, so he began to slink around the side, looking for another entrance.
That entrance presented itself in the form of a heavy door, left partially unclosed. In the back of John's mind, he wondered if whoever had fired a shot had gone out this way. Going prone, John peered through the slit just large enough to accommodate his body. Like the peephole, there wasn't anything to really see... Aside from an odd shape lying against the far wall. John aimed his pistol at it, and quickly rolled under the gate.
Once he was through, John got back to his feet and slid behind cover, in case the unknown figure decided that it was, understandably, not very keen on unexpected visitors. But after a few minutes of absolute silence, John realized that he was the only living thing in this warehouse. The smell was stronger now, almost overpowering. It was hard for John to avoid gagging on it, but he swallowed his disgust down and got out from his cover.
Slowly, John. approached the form slumped against the wall, It was sitting there, absolutely motionless. As he got closer, he could begin to make out more and more of its form, but the detail was still gone. He stopped in his tracks, and tapped a small button on the side of his MobiGlas. A beam of light instantly flicked on, and suddenly John could see everything..
Lying there, abandoned, was what was once a man. He had been tall, well over six feet tall, and in his thirties of forties. There were tattoos on his face which John recognized instantly as marking allegiance to some pirate gang. The man had worn to his death rather meager clothes, ripped and torn in some kind of struggle, though they had been shoddily made to begin with, faint red and greens on both shirt and pants. The man's left arm lay useless on the floor, and his right lay clutched over a horrific wound, cradling it where he had when he died in some desperate attempt to stave off death.
John moved closer to the body, and noticed that on its right arm was a MobiGlas. A small white light was flashing on the device faintly. Tentatively, he reached out to touch it, but before he got halfway the air in front of him exploded in light. Instinctively, John jumped back as he tried to catch his bearings. A voice filled the air, halting and pained, and suddenly John understood what this was. Projected holographically by the MobiGlas was the dead man, staring out at the pilot.
"If you are seeing this, then my Glas didn't recognize you as one of my... 'friends'." The holographic man spoke, his face a twisted mix of physical pain and the reaving of betrayal. John slowly moved back to where he was, staring into the eyes of the hologram intently.
"What is this, then?" John muttered under his breath. He'd heard of this sort of 'last will and testament' thing, but he'd never been unfortunate enough to encounter it.
"My name is Trey Galet, and I am-" The hologram of Trey paused as he took a ragged breath. "-was a member of the Tiger's Claw, the best damn gang in the galaxy." John thought that the tattoos had looked vaguely familiar, but now that he had a name to put to them, he had put the two together. The Tiger's Claw was a gang that John had only heard about, but they were supposed to be extremely brutal raiders of frontier colonies. "Our leader is a man named Mercer, and he's been good to us." There was a long pause as Trey winced as the pain temporarily overwhelmed him. "But something changed."
"Changed?" John repeated under his breath. "The hell does that mean?"
"While you're watching this, my MobiGlas has been automatically downloading an encrypted file to your device." Trey said through gritted teeth. Immediately, John checked his Glas, and sure enough, a new data packet had been downloaded unto his device.
"Shit." He hissed. This development was all sorts of bad. "You just had to drag someone else into this, you pirate asshole, didn't you?" John muttered, his hand tightening around his LH-86.
"Get the packet to someone who can decrypt it. Whatever you do, don't let Mercer get a hold of it!" Trey began to shudder as the plasma did butcher's work. "We found-" With that, the video suddenly cut out, and the MobiGlas on the body of Trey flicked off like someone had yanked a power cord.
"What happened?" John asked out loud, surprised. Suddenly, a dreadful possibility came to surface in John's mind: Trey had said that the video was only playing because it didn't recognize John. That implied that if someone else were to walk in, someone that it did recognize were to stand in front of it...
Behind John's head, the sound of a plasma pistol charging whined.
- - - - - - - -
Next: John must escape from a pirate dragnet as he carries a mysterious file that holds secrets beyond his darkest fears. An adventure begins, next on Farflung Wanderer...
