Tales From The Vacuum

I still wake up in a cold sweat most nights. It's like a movie that never truly ends. The images have gotten less vivid sure, but in some ways that only makes it worse... I had received the case from the company KVAT back then they were a small start up from Dedoria. I remember them always being anxious about whether one of their employees would go AWOL and steal a ship, I suppose a single lost ship could have been enough to send them spiraling down into bankruptcy in the early days, unlike now where they couldn't give a toss about whether you were planning on stealing one of their ships or stranded in the depths of space with no chance of survival. My best guess is that the price of a single ship doesn't really matter when you've gotten money to burn, and lots of it. In fact right through 2301 to 2305 (the year this story takes place) most of my cases detailed a missing ship, usually I found 3 or 4 rookies who had broken off their communications receiver during a ...

I started my journey about 3 years ago now, I had just reached the minimum age to commandeer a full sized space vessel (I had flew smaller flying machines as a child, although none had the ability to leave my home planet's atmosphere) when I enlisted to become a 'Planet Surveyor'. It sounds fancy I know, but in reality the job was quite low level compared to other positions one could acquire. When I first started flying, the company I worked for (KVAT Industries) instructed me to simply find habitable planets that they could transform into large scale factories and warehouses to later sell on to other buyers. However after 2 years of watching beautiful planets being carved into huge metal meshes I took the plunge and decided to quit. I thanked my boss and bid farewell to my colleagues before sitting in my 'KVAT' branded ship one last time. It was a difficult goodbye but after paying for a taxi to the nearest civilian orbital dock I was excited by the possibili...

Samuel Thompson and the Fastest Ship In The Galaxy Plums of smoke billowed out of the young explorer's mouth as the cigar's final embers of light were crushed into the aluminium ash tray. Dedoria V had always confused Samuel. It was first colonized in the late 23rd century and had quickly became a retreat for the mega rich, somewhere in which the trillionaires of the cosmos could take a break from having to keep up appearances, yet from Samuel's comfortable spot on a park bench it seemed like every passerby was intent on looking just as flashy if not more than usual. People walked by inspecting each others every article of clothing or possession. It would be fair to say that most sneered at Samuel's humble steel-leather jacket and flex-fiber jeans combo. Admittedly it was somewhat outdated compared to the titanium exo-suits worn by most civilians nowadays. He climbed to his feet the night slowly drawing in as the huge raging red giant slowly moved out of s...