"Hey there, partner."

Seated at the counter of a rundown bar on a rundown world, Dravin Blastburn paused. His shot glass, full of Kruknupp whiskey, hovered near his mouth. Although he was not old, his face had been chiseled by his years as a cowboy. Sculpted by experience into the stoniest stare in the galaxy. Shrewdly, he glanced to his left. Despite having a sneer that could hit harder than a blaster bolt, his rocklike features cracked into a wry smile.

"What can I do for you, little peach?" he asked.

The blonde woman batted her eyes. Her glistening lips were slightly parted, the upper one raised in a sultry curve. The mouth between them was dark, yet inviting. She breathed slow and hard. With her rouged cheeks, it seemed like she was worn out from an hourlong bout of incredible sex. Her abs were as hard as a tree trunk, and her muscled arms were as robust as its branches. He'd called her a 'peach', but the succulent fruits hanging off her chest looked more like melons. They seemed big enough to have their own gravity wells. Every time a lusty breath passed through her lips, they bounced like they were going to fall right out of her extremely short belly shirt.

"Y'see …" The woman inched closer, planted her hands on the counter, and leaned toward him. Her upper arms subtly squeezed her giant breasts together. "… I'm in a bit of a bind. I got to get this cargo shipped off to Vallemar III, but …" She gulped. Worry lines creased her soft, tender face. "This no-good, lousy scoundrel's made off with my ship, and I'm running out of time. You think you can help me out of this jam, hotshot?"

Blastburn stared right into her pale gray eyes. She met his shrewd stare, while curling her lower lip up into her mouth and chewing on it like a little girl. Then he turned back to the bar, downed his shot glass, and slammed it on the bartop. Leaning his elbow easily on the counter, he gave her a smirk.

"I reckon I can."

She beamed like a star at him. "Oh, you're a life-saver, you are! Just sit there for one sec while I go make a call, y'hear?"

"Sure thing."

The blonde woman raced off to the corner and yanked her omnitablet out. She gave Blastburn a smile from across the room, but once she turned away the emotion melted off her face. With a cold stare, she spoke into her tablet.

"Hey, boss? I found us a sucker."

With a resounding boom, the image cut to black. Then, as the words Blastburn: Faster Than Light burned into the screen, the rousing, jaunty theme song began to whistle out of the main console's speakers.

Blaze leaned back in the bucket seat and upended the cardboard box into his mouth. The last of the crackers sprinkled down the plastic bag. Most landed in his mouth, but a few bounced off his lips and hit his chin and cheeks.

Of course, Blastburn had spotted the holes in her story. The freshly-applied makeup, the Gudono powder under her fingernails, the faint smell of Abbub dung she'd covered up with perfume. His eagle eyes pierced through her fakery almost instantly. But he went along with it anyway. Waiting for a chance to get the drop on her, and come out on top. Double-cross the crooks and make off with their loot.

It was kind of strange watching that episode, though. On its own, it was fine. But the year afterwards, they brought her back and tacked on a sympathetic backstory that let Blastburn win her over. She'd go on to become his main love interest. But it didn't really fit with the cold, brutal way she'd acted in this episode. If anything, her 'real' personality became more like the fake act she used to seduce him.

Ah, whatever. Given how gorgeous Kendrix Caul is, I don't care.

Sometimes you gotta wing it, just like Blastburn himself.

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Blaze tossed the empty box aside. It landed on the floor, the plastic bag inside crinkling crisply. He wiped the stray crumbs away, then slammed his finger on the mechanical keyboard built into the main console. The video on the display screen froze. He switched over to the rogue planet monitoring program. It hadn't sounded an alert, but he scanned the log just to make sure.

Fifty-six microlensing events, but all of them were stars passing in front of other stars. The program ignored those.

Nothing, he thought.

Blaze reached out to start the video again, but his finger hovered over the keyboard. This is my favorite show, but … I've seen it a million times already.

He imagined Rsh barking at him to study the tutorials, which went over how to fly the ship.

I don't need no tutorials. I fly by my gut, not because some computer told me how to do it.

His eyes drifted over to the stack of PMDs sitting on the console. A Portable Media Drive was a card with digital video files encoded on it. Although it was trivial to rip them onto the ship's OS, Blaze liked having something he could hold in his hand. If the OS failed, then it wouldn't get wiped out in an instant.

Of course, if the OS fails we'll probably have bigger things to worry about, but … it's the principle of the thing.

He picked a half-dozen PMDs up and fanned them out like he was playing a poker game.

Aside from Blastburn: Faster Than Light, he had some cheapo PMDs stuffed full of ancient films. A single PMD could hold thousands of hours of video, and a lot of classical films were in the public domain, so they often filled up bargain bins. He picked one at random and swapped his Blastburn PMD for it. But when he went down the list of films, his eyes glazed over.

'Star … Wars'? Wow, that's not a generic title at all! he thought sarcastically.

He yanked the PMD out of its slot and tossed it back onto the pile.

I don't feel like hunting for something decent to watch.

He dropped his hand of cards onto the console like he was folding, slouched in the bucket seat, and gazed at the blue-tinted stars.

Still kind of hungry, though.

Blaze got up and walked out of the flight deck. He passed through the locker room and entered the main hub of the crew quarters, in the center of the ship's main body. It was an octagonal room with gunmetal gray walls and bright light strips. Right behind the locker room door, a ladder led down into the cargo bay. He circled it and strode across the hub to the common room. Its door was on the aft bulkhead, offset towards the ship's port side.

The common room was tucked inside the ship's stern. The ceiling curved downward, following the shape of the hull. High up on the fuselage, a wide, thin window wrapping around the stern showed the redshifted stars drifting away in their wake. Underneath the window, a large display screen was up on the starboard bulkhead. A couch was built into the port bulkhead facing it. The entrance door was offset to port to make room for the small kitchen to Blaze's left. One-quarter of a table and two benches were built into the starboard corner. Everything was fastened in place and securely locked down, to avoid anything coming loose and flying around mid-flight.

Rsh sat at the table, poking at a touchscreen that swung out from the bulkhead.

Edging past him, Blaze opened the cabinet and pulled out another box of crackers. The cabinet was full of them — they were cheap enough to buy in bulk. He pulled the top open and dug in while he glanced down at the serious look on Rsh's face.

"How's work coming?" he asked, his mouth full.

Rsh grumbled. "Not well."

Drawing his mouth up into the most mocking grin he could, Blaze said, "Hmm, you kick me out, and then you get stuck with writer's block? Ironic, huh?"

"Get out."

Blaze swallowed his mouthful of crackers. He walked to the door, cackling loudly just to annoy Rsh. Then, as he passed through the doorway, he shoveled another handful of crackers into his mouth and chowed down on them.