“So, I then found a way to break the computer system even further, and disabled life-support in the rest of the ship and with everyone dead, I stole the Rezaiv and flew it here.”

I chugged down yet another mug filled with what these odd-looking aliens called ‘beer’. 

Though I could quite easily recognize it most likely wasn’t beer at all, that didn’t stop me from consuming it anyway.

After the incident that was me breaking out of the awfully-designed hyperprison Rezaiv, I fled to the safety of ‘Haven’, which was a bad English translation of the real name of a place in the Outer-rim, in the middle of nowhere, in deep space. The real name was a mixture of alien vowels so complex and ridiculous that my ICD felt the need to translate it for me based on the assumption that my underdeveloped and ‘inferior’ human tongue was unable to articulate in a manner that would allow me to pronounce the name. That assumption was one-hundred-percent correct. 

This was, therefore, one of the very few places which had its name translated into English for me by the ICD attached to my head.

Haven, in question, was a superstructure multiple k’nes in size that rested on one half of a dead planet, located in empty, unowned, and uncharted space. It was a breeding ground and, as implied by the name, a ‘safe-haven’ for criminals, outlaws, and rebellious children who disliked the government and wanted change so badly that they ‘escaped’ their old lives by traveling to a distant corner of the galaxy. Those children always end up being auctioned or sold off as slaves, or other things which were equally as screwed up as child-slaves, to some rich thief or an especially wicked whack-job because of their own stupidity, but that was a different matter.

Originally, before Haven was constructed, the planet was very much alive and orbited a red-giant star, which, in contrast, was as good as dead, rapidly nearing the end of its lifespan.
This planet was inhabited by a prosperous race of inventors and engineers who dreamed of the future and made constant developments in technology and science.
Their dreaming, however, was abruptly halted after they got a little too acquainted with anti-hydrogen, a powerful energy source, but also one of the deadliest substances in the universe.
They had hoped that antimatter would be the key to traveling beyond their own star system before their parent star died, making life impossible.
Well, long story short, they ended up obliterating most of their planet in a sudden and unplanned multi-teraton explosion, destroying the atmosphere, committing accidental global suicide. Without a home-planet and being unable to leave their star behind, the survivors eventually died out as well. Another few hundred r’xere passed before their star died in a vibrant and supposedly beautiful supernova. The remaining part of their now-dead planet which had not been totally annihilated was discovered drifting into infinity shortly after this and was repurposed as Haven, which led to the eventual assembly of the superstructure very few know of, and even fewer love, today.

I was sitting in a bar designed for ‘oxygen-breathers’, a derogatory term, which had no verifiable purpose when you took into consideration the fact that almost every carbon-based lifeform requires oxygen to survive. Still, most other lifeforms, for whatever reason, seemed to take offense when called an ‘oxygen-breather’, so it was generally considered bad manners to call anyone that.

“That explains how you arrived here in the Rezaiv, I suppose,” responded a sentient creature, who was half robot and half a blue gelatinous substance, scoffing at my underwhelming attempt at recounting the equally underwhelming story of my recent prison-break. 

I did try my best, there was only so much you could do without expressing any emotion.

“Hollow, you do realize that you’ve literally stolen one of the Zyxxeen Federation’s hyperprisons, right?” it asked, as I continued ingesting even more of the potentially harmful liquid, mislabeled as beer. 

This was probably my seventh or eighth drink so far, I had lost count.

The Zyxxeen Federation was a council, containing many of the major races in the galaxy. In terms of things that exist on Earth, it could be described as a sort of ‘United Nations’, but instead of a few hundred nations, there were four-hundred billion stars. The Zyxxeen Federation was by far the largest of the reigning authorities in the galaxy, also being the first organized ruling council that was ever formed and enforced an unnecessarily large number of laws in many parts of the galaxy. 

They were also a nuisance because they hated me. But I suppose that came hand-in-hand with me. Me, of course, being someone who regularly broke the laws they so tediously put together just to prevent people such as I from existing in the first place, so it made perfect sense, as much as it was a drag to have half a galaxy want to tear me to shreds every single time I put another sapient being into a forced sleep, which, as far as killing things goes, was pretty often.

“Of course.”

“They’re going to be after you unless you find a new ship and cover your trail. Fast.”
“I know that,” I replied again whilst turning back towards the repulsive thing conversing with me, “So, would you happen to have any suggestions as to how I could do that?”
The creature paused in thought for a bit, before a semi-mischievous expression crossed its ugly, seventeen-eyed face. 

I think it had seventeen eyes, anyway. I felt a little dizzy after drinking so much of the so-called ‘beer’. It definitely wasn’t beer, I knew that for sure now, but I still didn’t care.

“I do happen to know of a ship dealer who lives close by, I can transfer their coordinates to you if you wish,” said the thing suddenly.
I didn’t trust the creature’s tone, nor did I trust the expression on its unkempt and hideous face, but I accepted the offer anyway, figuring that I could very easily come back and vaporize its brain under the circumstance that it may be lying, or making any effort to deceive me.
The creature then produced a small holographic screen from a pouch on its body and awkwardly tapped several randomly arranged buttons with its slimy limbs.

These holographic screens were known as ‘MNID’s, or, ‘Multipurpose Navigation and Information Devices’, pronounced, at least by me and the system which translated it, as ‘M-Nid’. 

Like other things with overly complex names, this was a name badly translated by the ICD, from whatever strange language the name had originally come from, into English.
MNIDs were essential for doing almost anything, whether it be purchasing a product, mapping an area, or even communication over long distances. They could also be reconfigured to suit whatever you needed them for and so every species could use them efficiently.

Obviously, I configured mine so it would mimic something like a normal PC or tablet back on Earth.

As the half-gelatinous blob creature started navigating the menu on its screen, I pulled up the MNID I kept fastened to my belt and received the coordinate transfer, my stellar-map was promptly updated with a waypoint in a nearby star system.
I took a moment to thank the strange entity who gave me the coordinates, and, after a slow journey to the Rezaiv, I nestled into a comfortable position on one of the seats in the control room, plotted a course for the waypoint and activated the prison’s Q-drive.

A Q-drive, or quantum-drive, is a mode of transportation that allows for travel at speeds many thousands of times faster than light. It was originally devised by a team of scientists who I never bothered to remember the names of and is a major improvement on an older, slower and far worse faster-than-light transportation system, the ‘negative engine’. The Q-drive operates by distorting space-time via various forms of exotic matter, which it obtains by utilizing the ‘quantum passage’, a seemingly infinite network of the aforementioned exotic matter that stretches throughout the universe and seems to exist in a higher dimension, but can be accessed through certain complicated principles, and also, as of yet, remains undiscovered by humans. Of course, this consumes vast amounts of energy, meaning that many ships are often equipped with very large and highly expensive reactors or power plants, usually fusion reactors, but others do exist.

After a brief charge sequence, a heavy vibration resonated throughout the Rezaiv, and before I knew it, the starship had begun the jump.

I descended an uncomfortably steep ramp into an expansive hangar-bay, at the front of which were three large open gates, extending out into the frozen wasteland outside.
I had landed on this planet with a small escape pod from the Rezaiv to avoid attention, however, it turned out that there wasn’t much in the way of civilization to notice me here either way. Known simply as Tekwyo, this planet was exceedingly large, its surface consisting of a mostly barren wasteland with no multicellular life to speak of, apart from the occasional settlement or base. Despite possessing plenty of water, oxygen, and countless other organic, carbon-based compounds, it was still incapable of supporting complex life, the only native life being a limited number of species of unremarkable bacteria. This was due to its freezing surface temperatures, caused by its distance from its parent star. In unwelcome addition, the planet also had gravity so high that it was genuinely painful to walk, at least for me, not to mention how slow I was, weighing about three or four times more than my body was accustomed to carrying, which was only made worse by the fact that not even my exosuit, which provided me the luxury of full-body temperature control among many other things, rescued me from the constant and excruciating sensation that I was about to freeze to death.

“Greetings,” said a stubby gray creature with four protrusions extending out from the sides of its head, two on either side, each with an almost rectangular ‘eye’ at the ends. I say eye, though they really were more just smooth black boxes sitting at the end of each protrusion, with a primary function that was receiving light as visual information.

Actually, nevermind, I just described an eye. 

Even when standing, it only reached up to my waist and hopped off the small platform it was standing on with barely any effort, seemingly unaffected by the relentless gravity and icy conditions of the planet we were on, as if it felt right at home here.

It was a Kletoen, of course, a race known for their aptitude in trading and salesmanship, distributing products far and wide, their species’ motto being to ‘distribute things to every seen and unseen corner of the galaxy’, though I suspect there was an issue in the English translation here, as I highly doubt that they haven’t realized that the galaxy has no corners. I also doubt that a species so much more intelligent than the average human would assign corners to something which is incapable of having any, (which is a strange property humans tend to have when speaking, for no discernible reason).

Regardless of this, their spectacular robustness was also of note, as it enabled them to survive amongst conditions a lot harsher than most other races were capable of with relative ease. Whether it be extreme temperature, weather, gravity or even radiation, they almost always ended up with all their pieces still attached, intact, and in perfectly usable condition, with minimal mutations, deadly or otherwise. 

This solidified their reputation as traders even more, with their natural gift to traverse even the most hostile of worlds and distribute their products even further and wider across the galaxy than previously stated. As such, their race’s home planet and respective star system alike were in what was essentially a perpetual state of economic boom, the latter of which was allied with nearly every sentient race which was capable of friendship, and even a few which weren’t capable of friendship - including me, for the most part.

I probably wasn’t identified as a race, however, as I was just one individual and so it didn’t particularly matter whether I was allied or not. In fact, I didn’t even know how common it was to find a Kletoen with knowledge of what a ‘human’ was, so while I considered myself an ally, I didn’t exactly follow the conventional rules of ‘being a good ally’, which included such pointless things as not killing your friends, not stealing from friends, not betraying friends, and who knows what else.

I was well aware that I was a pretty terrible ally to the Kletoen by everyone else’s standards, but that didn’t stop me from considering myself as one.

The Kletoen stood expectantly in front of a small trade terminal and eyed me with wonder in its ‘eyes’.
“I apologize if this is rude,” it spoke in a high-pitched voice, “But I have inquiries regarding the race you are part of.”
As if answering my previous thought, the Kletoen confirmed for me that it didn’t, in fact, know what a ‘human’ was.
“I’m a human,” I replied, confirming for the Kletoen what a ‘human’ was, as the creature stared back at me, clearly intrigued.

I was equally curious as to whether or not it was good judgment to trust this little creature. After all, the disgusting-looking thing that spoke to me earlier acted extremely conspicuously.

“Interesting, I’ve never seen a ‘human’ before. Come right this way, I will show you some of the ships here.”

I ended up deciding to follow it regardless.