Nick grabbed the cushion of his seat as the ship shuddered, then froze. For a single moment, everything went silent, suspended in time like a bubble about to pop. Nick couldn’t breath as the moment stretched longer. It was less than a second. Just as Nick grew worried, a thought expressed more in the twisting of his stomach than words in his mind, that something might have gone wrong, the ship shuddered again, and all was normal.

Nick let out a gasp of air. “What was that?”

Damian looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “You good? Jumping to hyperspace can do weird things to a person, and the first time’s always the worst.”

“I’m fine,” Nick said. His breathing returned to normal and the feeling of being socked in the gut faded, just leaving a bitter taste in his mouth that was easier ignored than commented on. “Was that it?”

Damian nodded. “We’ll jump back to realspace in about twenty minutes, then it’s almost thirty to our destination.”

“Destination?” Nick asked. It was the first he’d heard of it.

“That’s the call I got yesterday,” Damian explained. “I’m going to visit an old friend. She said she had a job for me.”

Nick’s eyes lit up. This smelled like his first shot at adventure. “Sounds awesome.”

Almost an hour later, after spending time in the common room, listening to RX-9 explain the research papers she was reviewing, from the trade of mulloskoid-based dyes along the Destn strip to the retrofitting of aqua-formed habitats onto Creemar-built trade vessels, Nick returned to the bridge to watch Triskar and Uncle Damian land the ship.

“What is that?” Nick asked when he stepped onto the bridge. The main screen was taken up by a view from space, this time focused onto a jury-rigged monstrosity of a space station, which looked like something built by a tribe of giant space-beavers if they were given an endless supply of aluminum cans and junked cars. Nick counted more than a dozen distinct sections of the station, some of which looked like giant versions of the Stargazer, welded into into one labyrinthine mass.

“Qeltan-one,” Damian said.“It’s a piece of garbage welded together from a bunch of barely space-worthy junker ships and left to float around a cold blue star. It has nothing you’d recognize as a functioning government and operates mostly on a ‘mind your own beeswax’ system, encouraged by the fact that every sophant on the station is highly armed at all times. Few people stay there long, and those that do are uniformly tough as nails.”

“You love it,” Triskar accused.

“I really do.” Damian grinned.

“That sounds awesome,” Nick said.

“Not another one,” Triskar said sadly. Damian ignored him. 

It took almost another half hour for the pair to negotiate Qeltan-one’s “outdated garbage fire” of an air traffic system, which seemed to be mostly based on individuals who owned docking space shouting orders at customers trying to fly in without accidentally adding their own ships to the station walls.

When the ship was finally secured to the dock, Nick followed Damian and Triskar out of the ship and into Qeltan station. They found themselves standing in what probably used to be a freighter ship, now tilted onto its side. The cargo hold of the ship formed a huge cavern, with rickety scaffolding leading up to holes cut into the ‘walls,’ like the one where their ship was.

“Woah,” Nick said. “What is this place?”

Damian shrugged. “Based on that,” he pointed across the room to the large gash on the metal that had been sloppily welded shut, “I’d say ‘a really beat up cargo ship.’”

Triskar glared at the weld and muttered something about hard vacuum. 

Nick looked around from the top of the scaffold. Most of the airlocks in the room looked empty, but there were still a half-dozen or so ships docked, enough for there to be a steady stream of people going through the hangar. 

“Nick, let’s go.” Damian and Triskar were already halfway down the ladder when Damain’s voice snapped Nick out of his thoughts. Nick hurried down the ladder and joined them on the ground.

“What’s that?” Nick asked, pointing to what looked like a tarp covering the entire floor, used to be wall, of the hangar. 

“It’s covering a sheet of Venlite,” Damian explained. “Artificial gravity stuff. Cargo ship like this probably didn’t have one originally, so they had to add it in when they added it to the station.”

“Cool,” Nick said. 

Damian led the way out of the hangar, deeper into the station. They passed through at least three different areas of the station, two of which looked like they used to be ships. It looked like the whole station was thrown together out of whatever kind of scrap was available. It didn’t sound, nor look, completely safe, and Triskar grimaced whenever they passed a sloppy spot-weld or a tangle of lose wires, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone on the station. The people they passed kept to themselves, making eye contact only to glare suspiciously at each other then go their separate ways. Everyone looked dirty, no one was welcoming, and just about everyone seemed to be heavily armed. Nick looked around as much as he could, trying to drink in every moment of being on a space station, but he drew a lot of angry looks that way, and so he tried to look less conspicuous.

Triskar got a few odd looks from some of the passersby, but Nick and Damian seemed to blend in. As a matter of fact…

“Damian, are there other humans on this station?” Nick asked.

“Hmm?” Damian followed Nick’s eye, shaking his head. “Oh, no. Davimites and Crestrians are both like humans. Well, Davimites have two vocal cords and Crestrians are deathly allergic to cilantro, among other differences, but to look at someone, you can’t tell them apart. And Davi and Crestaria were both major hubs during the empire, so you see them all over the place. You and I won’t get a second glance.”

“Is it normal for three species to look so similar?” Nick asked. 

Damian shrugged. “It’s a big galaxy, and most intelligent races are humanoid, at least. It’s not that weird. There’s a species on Shivan that look just like the females of Fleith’s species.”

“Except they’re not intelligent and they’re extremely carnivorous,” Triskar said. 

“That is true,” Damian agreed. “Do not mix them up.”

Damian chuckled while Triskan rolled his eyes.

The three of them walked further into the station, passing through more salvaged space ships, at one point crouching to squeeze through a four foot tube of metal with the rigidity of a slinky. At the other end of the slinky-tube, Nick asked another question.

“You said this friend had a job for you, right?” he asked. “What kind of jobs do you do?”

“A little of this, a little of that,” Damian said. “We wander all over in the Stargazer. I sometimes take on odd jobs for cash. Finding things, breaking things, shipping things…”

“Shipping?” Nick asked. “Where? There’s not much space on the Stargazer.”

“It’s the kind of shipping that’s supposed to go unnoticed,” Triskar said.

“Oh.” Nick’s eyes widened. “You mean smuggling.”

“Is that a problem?” Damian asked.

Nick shrugged. “That sounds pretty cool, actually.”

“Han Solo is a terrible influence.” Damian grinned. Triskar sighed dramatically.

They stopped in front of a vaguely square hole in the wall with a door frame roughly attached. Damian opened the door and went in, followed by Nick, Triskar last.