The gruesome sight of Briggs murdering the Fajani so callously took my breath away. I stared at him, aghast.

"What?" He asked, looking around as if I were staring at something he hadn't noticed.

"How could you do that? How could you just kill her? It's like you have no morality at all."

His face went blank for a moment. "Let me guess, you're from Earth aren't you?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"Oh sweet summer child." He wiped a hand across his face. "Earth is a paradise planet. It's been carefully shielded from what life is like out here in space."

"Killing anyone in cavalier fashion? Is that what life is like out here?" I accused him

"Yes. Because if you don't, they will. Most of these aliens, they don't share your sense of morality. It's time to put on your big boy pants and grow up. Life isnt all rain and flowers. Out here, sometimes you need to stab your neighbor in the back to put food on your plate. Sometimes you need to do the hard things and do them to the innocent just to get by. Life out here is hard and precarious." Fire burned in his eyes as he spoke.

"Survival of the fittest and all that?"

"That includes the Starforce. They are not a force for good. The Starforce only cares about itself. They are bullies that take and take and take. You'll come to understand, if you live long enough that is."

A thought crossed my mind. "If you had known I was the only prisoner on that shuttle, would things have been different?"

He paused for a moment. "Things would have been very different." He made to move past me but I grabbed a cage bar for leverage and put my other hand on his chest, pushing him back a little. He sighed. "Kid, if I had any doubts about there being 2 passengers, the harpoon would have gone through the back instead of the front. I hate the Starforce but I'd have had two males for Padgidar."

I nodded my head with the affirmation and he rolled his eyes. "Look, kid. We don't have time for this. We need to get control of this ship. If they find out I killed her, we're both dead. They don't see us as anything more than pets. If your dog bites you it gets put down. That's how they see us. Don't expect any kind of pity or remorse from them. Now follow me and watch my back." He pushed past me and floated to the door.

Pressing a nob next to the door caused it to open. Outside was a guard with her back to the door. She turned her head just in time to catch a bullet through her temple. Briggs pulled her body into the room and beckoned for me to follow him. As I floated through the door he handed me the guards gun.

It was a large pistol and awkward to hold as it was designed for the larger hands of the Fajani. I had to grip the barrel with my left hand just to keep it steady. I looked at Briggs and noticed he was holding it with one hand but kept it couched against his shoulder. I copied him and found it easier to manage.

Closing the door, he turned back to me. Just follow me and watch my back. He kicked off the wall into the adjacent hallway and shot down it. I replicated the maneuver, admittedly in a more clumsy fashion. Two hallways later we came to a door and he motioned for me to take the left side. There was a sign above the door but I couldn't read the Fajani text. "Remember what I said. They won't hesitate to shoot you, don't give them the chance." Before I could even nod my head he'd opened the door and begun firing.

"Aaron Briggs" came a shout from within. I peaked my head around the corner and saw Fajani diving for cover around the medium sized bridge. A large screen at the front showed a pair of binary stars. There were three consoles with seats and an independent chair for the captain stood behind them. A dead Fajani sat in one of the consoles as the remaining aliens hid behind the various stations. I did my best to aim at one of the Fajani I saw peeking out from one of the consoles and fired.

Having never fired an energy weapon before, I was unprepared for the recoil as the gun kicked in my hand. I was able to keep hold of it but I was sent tumbling off to the side, away from the door. It probably saved my life as return fire peppered the door frame where I had just been. Briggs rolled his eyes at me while I attempted to recover and rejoin the fight. He leaned around the door and fired multiple shots. Just as I got a hold of a bar to stop my motion. A crash came from the bridge and the ship lurched as it dropped out of warp. I slammed into the wall and lost my grip. But with a kick i was quickly moving back towards the door.

Screaming erupted from the bridge and Briggs eyes went wide and his jaw fell open. I reached the door just in time to see a Fajani flailing as fire roared around her body. Puffs and streams of fire spread in all directions as sparks spewed from the console next to her. Behind her on the screen were the two stars and I realized we had dropped out of warp right next to them. The fire spread rapidly and Briggs slammed a fist on the door control, shutting it.

He put his forehead to the gun and closed his eyes. "Fuck." He yelled, then took a long deep breath and said. "Hey kid, you remember how to get to the shuttle they brought us over here with?"

"I think so." I said.

"Good. Get over there and try to prep it to launch. I need to grab something. And be fast. We don't have long till were too far inside the gravity well of the stars to break free." He quickly kicked off the wall and shot over to a nearby door, he opened it and dropped down a chute to a lower deck. Behind me the multiple screams behind the door were fading and I realized the room was probably running out of air as the fire engulfed everything.

Pushing it from my head I propelled myself down the hallway. Two lefts and a right brought me to two doors. The right was the hanger and I was pretty sure the left was the control room for the hanger. I opened the door to the control room and a Fajani whirled to face me. I held the gun trained on her and she froze, eyes narrowing. "I don't want to hurt you, but I need to take one of the shuttles." I said to her. "Start launch prep on it."

She didn't move, but her hand was very close to her gun. When I broke eye contact she quickly made a grab for it, but I was faster. I was braced against the wall as i fired and the bolt strucker on the left side of the face. The hit tore her loose of the deck and she floated away, not moving. I had just killed someone. The realization would have rocked me on my feet if I had been standing. I closed my eyes for a moment and cursed Briggs and the Starforce for putting me in this situation. But a moment was all I gave myself.

Realizing that time was short I quickly floated over to the consoles in the room. At first glance everything seemed so alien. The writing was gibberish and the layout made no sense. But as I studied the consoles it all suddenly clicked. I just understood what did what. I had always been really good with tech, but this astonished me. Wilke's words about my father came back to me, is this the type of talent he was talking about? I started launch prep and used the adjacent door to access the hanger.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Once in the shuttle I finished prepping it. As with the control room, after a few seconds I understood how the helm and navigational controls worked. I finished prepping the shuttle in only a couple minutes. The engines were humming in low power and I was just considering leaving Briggs when he appeared through the door pulling something large. His coat was tied around one leg and as he got close I could see the grimace of pain on his face.

I reached a hand through the shuttle door and pulled him aboard. We strapped the object into a seat and he tried to take the helm. But I pushed him away and forced him into the seat behind mine. He tried to fight me but he was really weak. He must have lost a lot of blood. "Kid, I need to fly it."

"I've got it, now strap in." I said as I hit the button to close the shuttle door. I wrapped the oversized safety belt around me and checked on Briggs, he was good to go so I punched the button for the hanger door on the communications panel. Bright light flared into the room as the door opened and when there was enough clearance I tapped the magnetic release and we floated free a moment before I slammed the throttle forward. We rocketed out of the hanger and I pulled the stick back to angle us away from the stars.

I tapped a few buttons on the navigation console to my right and dread curdled my stomach. We were caught in the gravity well of the binary pair. A large red giant sat behind a smaller white dwarf with a stream of material being pulled from one to the other. Despite the size difference, the white dwarf was actually the heavier star and was slowly consuming its neighbor. I tried plotting a number of routes but it was no use. Even at full burn we were being pulled in, albeit slower.

"We're stuck." I said to Briggs

"Try plotting a slingshot." He said

"I did. It's no good. System Is uninhabited too."

"Then what's that?" He asked and pointed to a large black dot positioned between the stars, almost touching the flow of material from large to small.

I tapped it on the main screen, blew it up and both our jaws dropped. It was a very small rocky moon, just large enough to have a spherical shape, and it looked like the top had been shaved off. From this angle we could see into the hole on the top and it was hollow with a tower of some kind protruding. It was obviously not a natural phenomenon so I immediately plotted a course to it.

We arced up and away from the white dwarf to come in on the back side. As we neared the structure we could see grooves, no, massive mile long grills running the entire length of the outer metal grey shell. Once we reached the rim I curved the shuttle inside. The tower was truly amazing; several miles long, covered in docking ports and landing platforms for large ships. After a few minutes of looking around I found a port that worked for us and docked.

Briggs just raised an eyebrow at me. "You have the craziest luck." He said "How did you learn to fly Fajani tech?"

"I've always been good with tech, any tech. We're not out of this yet though" I said with a grimace. "This place looks abandoned". I opened the door into the airlock and the inner door automatically cycled open. We entered the port slowly, Briggs pulling the object with him. "What is that anyway?" I asked

"Its the main shield generator module from their ship. The Fajani are the only race with shield tech and they plan on keeping it that way. They traded us one that was four hundred years out of date, and even that was highly illegal for them. This baby", he gently tapped the shield generator "is priceless. If I went to sell it I could buy my own moon just from the profit and retire in style."

I rolled my eyes and looked around the concourse we found ourselves in. Nearly all of the lights were out and a few emergency lights cast a red glow across the area. In the distance I could make out a bright light. "It's human tech?" Briggs said in astonishment. I followed his eyes and saw a banner painted on a low wall that said 'Welcome to Dawnstar Station" in perfect english.

"This place is old though, you can smell how stale the air is." I slowly came to realize there was also gravity, but not enough to make a discernible difference. If I pushed off the ground it took quite a while before I would start coming down.

The bright light came from the inside of an elevator car apparently and I entered it, looking around there was a touch screen panel to the side but it was dark at the moment. Briggs followed me in and was looking at the panel when the doors closed and we started moving.

"What did you touch?"

"Nothing, what did you do?"

The lift stopped and before we could argue any further the doors opened. We were standing in a lobby that was just as dark and silent as the concourse earlier. A single bright white light at the end of a hallway to the right drew me in that direction and upon reaching it, I could see another down a hallway to my left. We were being led somewhere. The chain of lights ended at a door labled 'Operations'.

The door opened automatically at our approach and the inside was dark as well. A single light sat illuminated above a touch screen console with a green outline of a human hand on it. Briggs and I exchanged looks before he shrugged and put his hand on the screen where the outline was. A bar of green swept down the length of the screen, scanning his hand. The interface flashed red for a moment and a male voice came through the speakers in the room. "Access denied." He removed his hand and stepped back. Curious, I stepped up and tried it. My hand was scanned and the light flashed green. "Access granted."

Lights all over the room turned on and, to our shock, so did the gravity. Briggs cried out in pain as he was forced to put weight on his injured leg. As the gravity ramped up, he collapsed to the floor. "This place has artificial gravity?" He asked "That's impossible, none of the races have artificial gravity."

"James Malaki did, if you believe the stories."

"James Malaki? Did you knock a few screws loose kid. James Malaki was around six to seven hundred years ago."

"A bit longer than that actually." I smiled to myself thinking of Christian. I took a deep breath as the air became cleaner, taking on an almost sweet scent.

"Greetings, how may I help you?" The voice was the same male voice as earlier. Definitely human, but it had a hollow and slightly metallic texture, like someone was speaking through a hollow metal tube.

"Who's there?" Briggs asked from his seat on the floor. The voice didn't reply, so I tried.

"Who is speaking?" I asked

"I am Zeveriah, A.I. caretaker and operations manager for the Dawnstar station. May I please inquire your name so I may properly address you?"

"Jonathan Kaine. And he is Aaron Briggs."

"Thank you Jonathan. I will keep a record of your access. How may I help you?"

"What is this place?"

"The Dawnstar Station was originally a shipyard designed and built by James Malaki in the Sol System. However, in the year 2098 political conflicts between James Malaki and several earth based governmental military groups reached a point of impasse. James Malaki redesigned the Dawnstar into a mobile platform and transferred it here to this system. Under instruction, I spent the better part of one hundred and fifty years hollowing out the moon of the first planet to transform the Dawnstar into a Starforge. Once it was moved to its current position I was able to scoop stellar matter flowing between the stars and use it to build ships as needed for the Templar. I did so for over three hundred years until James Malaki put me into standby."

"James Malaki is still alive?" Briggs asked bug eyed, but Zeveriah ignored him.

"Is James Malaki still alive?"

"To my knowledge, yes. However, I have been shut down for," He paused for a moment "two hundred and thirty eight years. So my information is long out of date."

"Why are you only replying to me?" I asked him. "You keep ignoring Aaron."

"Because you have authorization to access this facility, he does not."

"Why do I have authorization?"

"Because you are a Blood Heir. A direct descendent of James Malaki. Perhaps ten or twelve generations down the line. When you placed your hand on the scanner I also evaluated your DNA. Genetic markers in your blood show an accuracy greater than 98.9489 percent. Your blood also contains progenitor nanites, something uniquely exclusive to James Malaki and his direct descendents."

My world came to a stand still. Time seemed to freeze for a moment as the shock of the statement hit me and I barely heard Briggs's "Holy Shit".