I swerved to the right, letting the kick swoosh harmlessly to my left. I had but a fraction of a second to counterattack, but I took a step back instead, bringing my hands up to receive the punch Private Rand threw my way.

Sergeant Dick twisted for another attack right after and I was forced to take another step back to escape the pincer.

This morning, the A300 company was working on melee combat. We had no weapons, just our hands and feet, and no protective gear either. Every hit would hurt, so I chose not to hurt my comrades and to be mostly passive in the two-on-one brawl I was facing.

I could easily tank their attacks and go on the offensive but that was not the purpose of this exercise. I was teaching them how to fight effectively as a team. The only punishing blows would come if one overextended in his attack.

“Good,” I called out after escaping the second barrage and lightly pivoted on my toes waiting for the next attempt.

“Amon, you monster, we didn’t even hit you once! What’s good about that?” Sergeant Dick rambled through rasping breaths squatting as he did so holding the ground with one hand for stability. A pained frown taunted the lines of his red face.

Private Rand fared a little better. He stood with his arms raised, yet pink cheeks cuddled his gaping heaving mouth. I wanted to continue but it seemed the exercise was at its end. I nodded to the Private in acknowledgement and the younger Marine brightened, opening his stance.

“You’ve improved nonetheless, old pal,” I said to the older man with a grin. “Maybe a little less oil burning and a lot more exercise could help you land that hit. You can’t let the young cohorts get the better of you,” I teased the white-bearded Sergeant Dick.

He scratched his sweaty balding head in his particular way, pushing the fingers in. As he had explained it to us, it was a light scalp massage to initiate hair growth. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a little too late for that to make a difference; more skin than hair decorated the top of his head.

“Let's wrap this up with some stretches and head for a shower. What do you say?” I said and immediately Private Rand went for it before a grumbling Sergeant Dick bent and attempted to reach his boots with his hands.

I did my stretches next to them paying mild attention to the rest of the company finishing up their bouts at about the same time.

Most mornings, like today, Commander Jin left me in charge of training the company.

It was in a way part of his plan to bring me up a step and build an unofficial ranking position. It was working out too. The A300 Marines had seen me take on several of them in bouts and win.

After all, leadership could be built on the belief of a strong leader, and among them, I was still undefeated.

If being the only first-generation Genome didn’t do the trick, my prowess would have to go the rest of the way. All that for the Commander’s plan that I was still not 100% on board with, even if Tommy thought it was a good idea to try.

Nevertheless, we added it to our plans. The Commander wouldn’t be happy when he realized we swiped half of the company from under him and disappeared like voidbeasts. He didn’t deserve it but I still grinned at the image of his startled face.

That was a long way away, however, in another galaxy, and before I could ever think about the end, I should first consider the journey.

After cleaning up and munching on a Taste the Stars mealbar closer to a dry-moldy-muck flavor than the marketed Aurora Spice, I secluded myself in one of the office rooms on the first floor of the A300 building.

A simple long industrial table greeted me, surrounded by chairs on two sides. I grabbed one and sat realizing almost immediately that this wouldn’t be a comfortable sitting. Why does no one cater to Genome bodies in this damned place?! I wondered aggravated at my repeated failures to find suitable seating arrangements for my rear.

Grumbling at the familiar inconvenience, I reached out and plucked one of the USB cords protruding limp from the table's center, feeding it into my tablet. The connection to the public SpaceNet server went through and I was online.

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Unfortunately hacking into the secure SFC mainframe from this port would be tough and easily traced back to this location, so I wasn’t here to regain access to the secrets held within its servers. The SpaceNet offered a ton of public information either way. It just happened that I didn’t want anyone to know what I was searching for since logging into the SpaceNet wirelessly with my HiRON5 civilian-model brainchip would leave so many datapackets behind I might as well shout out of the window what I was doing.

Concentrating on the task ahead I opened the Galactic map on the tablet. Immediately Cerberus Galaxy filled the screen and with a flick of a finger I zoomed out, and out, and out.

The Galactic supercluster was humongous. The void that filled the center had no particular name or form but was cataloged as a circle and classified as the central void superstructure for ease of understanding. No one that had approached close enough to see what it was had ever returned to inform on its nature.

Surrounding it were the four smallest Galaxies, locked in place and shaped in a spiral-elliptical form. Alimon, Bownce, Cerebrus, and Derkal. Each Galaxy, as I had painstakingly studied in my younger years, was the seat of power for House Fieldrich, the Fieldrich Senate, House Arthas, and House Orion respectively.

For millennia this political landscape has stood against the test of time, throughout the Post-Astro times, through wars and alien invasions, no matter the nature of the threats, the three pillars of power and the central Senate helped each other out.

There were so many free worlds to conquer, terraform, and develop in each galaxy, and so many resources to mine and trade for, that galactic wars fought between the factions were mainly for pride and politics rather than acquiring new territories. They rarely intensified to the extent that a faction would lose its grip in their home galaxy. And that was still a small part of the galactic supercluster.

Further outward and linearly orbiting the central void, ten times larger than the first four, the wild outer galactic zone, as many liked to call the ring of the four outer galaxies, completed the map I was looking over.

I rubbed the screen with my finger between Alimon and Bownce, right on top of where the Zith Galaxy, named after the alien Zith race, was located. Only a rough outline was displayed on the screen if I was being entirely honest. It had so far only been observed by robotic probes from outside its borders, as no manned expedition dared enter and explore its unknown infested worlds.

I moved on to the next, on top of Alimon and Derkan, the Hatt Galaxy heavy with nebulas appeared mostly as a solid object. House Fieldrich’s backyard, if by backyard I meant the wild tangle of danger that was this mess of a galaxy. Hatt was an amalgamation of alien species and resource-bountiful worlds. The wild outer galactic zone wasn’t tamed by any means, it was just…wild.

Next to us and Derkal, the Tilgar galaxy had densely descriptive data scribed on stars and habitable planets. After all, the Helion Syndicate roamed its expansive star systems and House Arthas' extensive intelligence arm focused heavily on their main competitor.

But that was the other way from where we were going. The SFC main hub was on the outer border of Cerebrus near Derkal and Tilgar, and we would be crossing the intergalactic spiral from one side to the other, to find Bownce overlooking the Milky Way. The old home galaxy of the human race.

I downloaded the map to my tablet and then saved the file on my HiRON5. I needed this information within easy reach. Then I brought up all the relevant data I could find on the Milky Way, factions, wars, persons of interest, etc. Everything was saved in the folder.

Star stations, satellites, moons, I now had a galaxy’s worth of coordinates and contact addresses for every little backwater outpost my search returned results. Even if it took me countless days to organize all this data I wasn't going to find myself operating blind.

—-

We stood at parade’s rest before the open hangar on the left side of Concordia GG. The Dreadnaught was parked in a vast docking platform on the outside of the hub’s ring, overlooking the darkness of open space.

The artificial gravity and the active AMAF field on the docking station had us wearing the simple black and grey SFC uniforms instead of our biosuits, and carrying bags of heavy equipment in each hand that we left to rest on the station's floor in anticipation of the prolonged wait.

Bored from standing still for so long, I zoomed in at the battleship’s bow looking over the crews coating it with a thixotropic compound that would offer some temporary protections for the journey ahead.

The long arduous journey to the Milky Way. We would be crossing Cerebrus on a hyperspeed spaceway or hyperway for short, to reach the other side of the galaxy and then cross the void until we hit the Milky Way where we would finally slow down and reenter realspace.

We were waiting for orders to embark, as another Dreadnaught awaited its clearance above us, a rather complicated affair. Traveling through the hyperway had to be pre-approved and cleared by House Arthas galactic traffic control, and that could take some time for the bureaucracy to move its cogs in our favor.

There were beacons placed on the two sides of the hyperway delimiting the spaceway we could travel into about 2 parsecs. It was little more than the length of a habitable planet but with our speeds, it only took a slight trajectory micro adjustment to get ourselves out of its pre-arranged pathing.

These beacons were not solely present to help us navigate but also to inform the traveling ship’s bridge of what was ahead in case any debris spilled over the side. They were equipped with sensors and scanners powerful enough to spot any incoming body and stocked with automated drones that could repel it if deemed necessary.

It wasn’t strictly necessary to travel on these hyperways since our forward deflector shields could divert minor bodies but what if it was a meteor or another spaceship? You certainly didn’t want to collide with anything with that kind of mass. If that were to happen, the fireworks would surely look pretty to those who followed after our ship.

Only once the spaceship reached the necessary speed and as a bioproduct the necessary mass to tear through the universe’s spacetime fabric would we be able to shed some of the more mundane dangers of the journey.

So safety parameters for hyperway travel limited each vessel to a minimum of 12 standard hours between entries. For the 6 Dreadnaughts undergoing this journey, ιt meant three days of waiting for the last battleship to leave the main hub.

We were second in line and only once Recovery which floated listlessly in the distance above was approved to commence its journey would we be able to start our preparations and embark. Twelve hours to get comfortable in our new home before the engine drives lit up.

It would take a week by Terran Chronometry Standard to arrive at the entry point of the closest hyperway and then a month to reach the required post-light speeds.

The Marines standing around me suddenly jerked when without warning Recovery’s engine drives flared with plasma, blue cones of power pushing the battleship forward. Thrusters on its sides lit up adjusting the trajectory and she was off.

“There she goes,” Tommy muttered beside me. “Void take us,” he whispered and I pretended not to have heard him.

It was pretty, I thought as Recovery became a speck in the universe's horizon. We were next.