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"Ladies and Gentleman, cyborg and everything in between, on today's show let me entertain you about my heroic deeds from Earth! Yes, you heard it right..."
Jackie the space dustman or the correct term would be stardustman, was idly speaking over his radio on the bridge of Denying Impossibility, Creating Kindness, or for short D.I.C.K, blasting his rusty voice out from the little spaceship right into the endless space.
"We are en-route to Omega-City, a base for pirates and radical organisations, cults you might even say." - One of the reasons was of course, that in cities like Omega City which were built on small moons and covered the entirety of the landmass you could sell things without questions being asked. The second more pressing reason was that half of the spaceship was missing, from a recent endeavour and Jackie wasn't really keen about it.
"Ah, why do I even do this job..."-Jackie contemplated for a moment before checking his bank account "How could I forget...because money obviously! HAHAHA!"
And so he continued to delightfully travel in space, until he ran into, of course, pirate ships, three of them to be exact.
'Just my luck, though not so surprising considering Omega-City is just around the corner' - he thought, as he was only three light-years away from Omega-city. Yes light travel became possible in the 2050s and since then Humanity advanced far and trough. The marvellous invention was the Retaér drive which manipulated light with light so you could transcend what was thought to be impossible. That is why every spaceship glowed white like stars when they used it.
"Stop there FVX-11 light spaceship, codename D.I.C.K...anyway, hand over your goods or be blasted to atoms!" - One of the pirate ships announced in a distorted voice through comms.
"Look, kind Sirs, I can't give you what I don't have, please just let this poor passerby go on with his sad life" - Jack answered best to his acting abilities.
"Oh...well you do look kinda shit, should we let him go boys?" - One of the pirate ships asked.
"Don't be an idiot! He obviously looks like that because he has something and others wanted a bite of it! Commence!" - another one said and so the glass-laser guns started charging up, heating the glass and plastic as they couldn't afford pure glass.
"Well crap" - Jackie muttered to himself, it was time to get serious.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Rebeka, what is the Retaér's drive condition?" "46% and dropping, The supleoid liquid may be leaking. To your safety please don't use the drive under 80% as..."
"So it functions." - Jackie concluded - "Fire it up Rebeka destination is CTZ-674"
"Affirmative" - sounded the AI's voice.
"Until it starts up, let me entertain our guests" - said Jackie and pushed his remaining thruster to 100%.
"Also put in some good ol' AC/DC"
"Now playing Rock or Bust"
"Perfect, let's get to it then." - And Jackie's ship shot out. The pirates, of course, estimated this would happen, and quickly caught up with him. With a hard right and a twist, Jackie managed to evade some of the shots, but the rest had to be absorbed by the shield generator.
The shield generator was an essential part of every spaceship and space station, not only did it protect those unlucky enough to be ambushed by pirates and such, it passively protected every passenger onboard from cosmic radiation, thus not dying of cancer after just 10 years in space, which would be quite a limiting factor in exploration. This happened by the shield generator producing radio and other waves that the radiation just bounced off, naturally, it was more complicated than that but that did not matter at the heat of time.
After pressing some buttons, Jackie hermetically sealed the bridge from the rest of the ship, and seatbelts popped out, confining him to the chair. With a sudden movement, Jackie dropped the thrusters to 0% and used the space-brakes, essentially slowing down to 0km/hours from his ships maximum speed of 150000km/hour, in a matter of seconds. Now you don't need these precautions if you travel on normal speed, because space, but Jackie was about to jump into light-travel. Before jumping into light travel Jackie transmitted over a friendly "Goodbye suckers!" to the pirates and pulled the lever. Then he pulled it again, then again, then again, yet nothing happened.
"Rebeka, what is happening?" - Jackie asked worriedly while glancing at the pirate's ships that slowly started to realise what was happening.
"Error"
"I figured as much, I meant what is broken?"
"CTZ-674 not found, reconfiguring, new destination XKP-001"
"Wait what! Don't! Stop now! STOP!"
"Entering light-travell....______---------______.....______---------______.....______---------______.....
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This is just an introductory chapter. Expect the following chapters to be longer.