> Got a blaster in my holster
>
> And a rep I got to bolster, so …
>
> Fire off the engines, and get ready to … riiii-hee-yide!
>
> When this cowboy comes a gunnin'
>
> No, our guns ain't set for stunnin'
>
> Signal your surrender, cuz fighting us is … suicide!
Blaze crooned at the empty flight deck.
He slouched down low in the bucket seat bolted to the floor behind the main console. He had his boots up on the console's edge, and used his heel to swivel the seat from side to side. The console was right at the front of the raised deck behind the pilot's seat, its surface high enough to see over the headrest.
The pilot's seat was empty. The flight computer controlled their voyage now. Rsh had disappeared into the crew quarters, so he could squat in the common room and do his precious 'work'.
Beyond the canopy, the blueshifted stars crept towards the ship's nose.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Blaze gazed at the astral frontier, wondering what lay out there in the wild black yonder. What fantastic sights, never-before-seen by mankind, would Kestrel Mining discover?
The infinite called to him …
… and it was shouting 'yippie ki-yay!'
Craning his head, he glanced at the monitor mounted on the console. The ship's operating system was running a custom program Rsh had cobbled together from amateur astronomy software. Two dozen little windows showed live feeds from all of the ship's external cameras. They captured the starlight as the ship sailed past.
Scanning, scanning, endlessly scanning …
Hunting for rogue planets.
The galaxy was full of undiscovered and unknown worlds. Worlds without stars, which wandered freely through space. Charting their own course across the cosmos.
I can respect that, the freespirited Blaze thought.
Since rogue planets were basically invisible, the only way to spot one was to catch it when it passed in front of a star and warped its light.
Truth be told, hunting rogue planets by wandering outer space and hoping they'd stumble across one was like looking for a needle on a planet made entirely of haystacks. It didn't sound very efficient, and for good reason: it wasn't.
But the big dogs had already taken everything. Both planet barons and mining corporations had laid claim to every planet under the suns, no matter how worthless they seemed. If Kestrel Mining wanted to get ahead in life, they'd have to get crafty and take risks.
As the program continued to scan the stars, Blaze yawned.
Very, very boring risks.