The Kletoen hobbled along slowly, which wasn’t too much of an issue, as I couldn’t exactly move that much quicker with the gravity of the planet practically breaking my legs at every step.
It led me down a long walkway, to the shimmering black floor of the hangar, where it then proceeded to explain in detail to me about every ship on display.
After a few t’erg passed, I gradually grew disinterested, as none of the ships being shown-off were to my liking, until I glanced up and noticed one of the ships, unlike many of the others. 

Long, sleek and with a nose so sharp you’d think it may double as an oversized spearhead. It was about the same size as a superyacht back on Earth, perhaps slightly larger, with the majority of the top being smooth surface and colored a pure, glossy black, with a couple gray and white decorative elements.

What stood out most of all was a large circular ring towards the back of the ship, which left an empty space. Around the inner circumference of this ring was a smaller, more transparent ring, which glowed gently due to a strange, blue, luminescent substance, which flowed through the ring incredibly quickly, generating a pleasant hum. Finally, at the rear of the ship, were two large engines, separated into four sections, each section housing its own thruster, and a plethora of other maneuvering thrusters scattered in various places on the exterior.

What’s that ship?” I asked the salesman, or salescreature, I suppose, whilst gesturing towards the ship that had garnered my interest.
“That ship,” the Kletoen explained, “Is a unique model, designed mainly for combat, but can also be multipurpose if re-engineered correctly, it also boasts a class nine Q-drive, one of the largest available in a ship of its size, powered by a one-of-a-kind, wonderfully compact antimatter reactor,” it told me, looking towards the ring at the back of the ship. 

This subconsciously indicated for me that the ring was most likely an antimatter reaction chamber, which would also explain why it was so large and why it glowed and hummed as it did.
Walking over to the ship, and placing one of its two primary appendages on its surface, the Kletoen then continued. 

“The hull is mainly composed of standard lightened carbon-titanium alloy, but armored with a specialized white-carbon composite. It can take heavy impacts, and survive high-temperature conditions.”

White-carbon is a material rarely seen in use due to how difficult and slow the process of producing it can be, requiring complete reconstruction of the carbon atom. It is the current pinnacle of matter engineering, a very advanced subset of engineering and science, based around manipulating, destroying and reconstructing individual elements, something previously thought to be impossible. 

White-carbon is, in short, a greatly enhanced version of carbon, with a similar structure, however, it is able to form far stronger bonds in near-perfect circular arrangement, and, when built correctly, is remarkably strong, around a thousand times stronger than most military-grade steel alloys, extremely lightweight, and can survive exceptionally high temperatures which almost no other materials, natural and artificial alike, are capable of surviving, making it a perfect material for most ships. The name white-carbon comes from the fact that, interestingly enough, when enhanced in this way, this new version of carbon forms white composites, unlike regular carbon, with composites being a distinctly black and dark gray color.

This ship was black, so it was quite obviously painted, probably for stealth.

“Sounds like a great ship,” I replied.
The Kletoen produced a weird squeak as if to agree with me.
There was then a short moment of silence as I ran everything it had said over in my head.

It really was a good ship. Its sleekness and black color made me think it must have been designed as a stealth ship, so it would be fast, agile and maneuverable, but the added benefit of white-carbon armor made it all the more enticing, as it would have insane strength as well. Not to mention that it had an antimatter reactor within the form factor of a Xi’vax-class ship.
“I’ll take it then,” I said suddenly, much to the joy of the creature attempting to sell the spacecraft to me.
“Very well, that’ll be thirty-six million te’vrei,”
I knew well that I didn’t have that kind of money, so I’d decided to just steal it instead.

As I slowly approached the purchase terminal I kept an eye on the Kletoen.

It brought out a key, this was the perfect moment.
After confirming that the key was the one I was after, I drew my weapon in one fluid movement.
“How about a solid zero? It's a wonderful deal, trust me!”
The creature looked at me, terrified, perplexed and most likely too shocked to speak, and, with one quick shot, I sent the little creature’s now freshly plasma-grilled head on a short flight to the other side of the room. Unfortunately for the Kletoen, there were still things its resistance couldn’t save it from, a highly-charged plasma bolt from an energy rifle just so happened to be one of those things. Still, it was dead now, so at least it didn’t need money, and I didn’t need to pay it, making this a beneficial win-win scenario.

Now, it would have been very possible that that the creature was lying to me about the ship, and that judgment would be perfectly sound. After all, the strange behavior of the other entity that guided me here would indicate as much.

However, I knew for a fact that this ship would be in perfect working condition due to one important fact.

This fact was that Kletoens, amongst being great salesmen, and extremely robust, were also known for being unable to lie. For whatever reason, whether it be mental or otherwise, they were completely incapable of telling anything but the truth to anyone or anything. 

Incidentally, this made them trust almost everyone for no reason whatsoever, which was why I was so easily able to walk in with a gun in my possession, and why I was so easily able to walk in and toast the creature's head.

How convenient.

I snatched up the key from its corpse, and the ship instantly registered me as its new owner.

Great. Now I just needed to disappear before the authorities caught me, which would probably result in me being sent to another idiotically designed prison.

Luckily, this new ship would likely make that an easy enough process to carry out.
I lowered the boarding ramp after installing the key’s data onto my MNID and hastily clambered on board, taking little time to get acquainted with my new partner in crime, since my only concern was to get to the bridge as quickly as possible. Racing through a few short corridors as fast as was allowed by the less than ideal gravity of this world, I managed to find it, a room with monitors, panels, view screens, and a slightly strange flight interface.

The interface wasn’t in a ‘human’ style, or even a standard galactic style, despite this, I was lucky enough to be able to fly this style of ship with decent proficiency as well, though arguably not as well as the other two styles.

This style, known simply as the ‘Retniv control method’, was one of the least popular flight control methods currently in use. It involved the user inserting one limb or appendage into a strange metal frame, which then closed around that limb. The ship was then to be controlled using the muscle contractions and movement of the limb.

It was smart but almost impossible to get the hang of.

However, a very long time ago, I had been forced to fly a ship or two with this exact control method in far more dangerous conditions, which taught me to fly Retniv-style ships through the threat of imminent death and, as stupid as it was to risk my own life for no reason, for all intents and purposes, it worked.

I thrust my right arm into the frame, and the ship acknowledged that I was its new ‘commander’, ignoring the fact that I had stolen it, and I managed to initiate the takeoff sequence.

A major flaw, which made it easy to steal ships like this, was that they were always left fully-fueled. I never understood why anyone would do this, but it did make my life easier, so I couldn’t care less.

The engines burst to life, roaring fiercely, as the ship quickly but steadily rose into the air, its docking clamps retracting.
It didn’t struggle in the slightest with the gravity of the planet, meaning that this ship clearly had some serious kick behind its engines and, as a direct result, should be very fast.
I tested this theory by setting my throttle to the maximum, which caused the ship to lurch forward with nearly no delay, as it shot out of the hangar with incredible speed, breaking the sound barrier almost immediately, accelerating at such a rate that it nearly made me go unconscious. 

Pulling back with just enough strength to lift the nose of the ship upwards, I started a direct ascent out of the atmosphere and the ship continued to accelerate.
I had punched through the atmosphere in just a little under two t’erg, which was an insanely short amount of time for me to be able to escape from the atmosphere of a planet with this kind of gravitational strength. 

Patiently waiting in orbit, was the Rezaiv, which, in preparation, had been rigged with numerous explosive devices, all linked to my MNID.
With a few nimble button presses, I had begun the detonation sequence of the Rezaiv and activated the Q-drive of my new ship. 

“Quantum drive at maximum exotic matter capacity, initiating warp...”
With this announcement from the ship’s computer, a deep rumble, and a deafening screech, my ship vanished into the black, accompanied by the soundless flash of a Xi’vaixee supercruiser being shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces.

Now that I was equipped with my new ship, which I had lovingly not named, but numbered ‘Zero-six’ after the number of ships I had been fortunate enough to have previously owned, I would probably head back over to Haven and search for a job or something that might net me some extra money. Stealing things all the time was a surefire way of getting everyone to hate you, it seemed, though everyone hated me already, so it wouldn’t make too much of a difference either way.

But there was still the fact that buying things was normally more convenient than stealing them when provided with sufficient quantities of money, so there was still some merit in me earning it, even if it wasn’t too substantial.

I had also just now recalled again the expression on that slimy creature’s face, if this hadn’t been a scam, it must’ve been planning something else. 

I came to the conclusion that I would kill it for good measure, despite the fact that it hadn’t actually done anything to me yet. It was possible that it was a normal expression wherever the creature came from, but better safe than sorry, or maybe ‘better safe than dead’ in my situation, you never knew with outlaws and criminals. It almost always ended up as kill or be killed, and I generally preferred being the one who came out of the battle not killed.

That thing was most likely sitting back in Haven too, so I could kill two birds with one stone here, well, one of the ‘birds’ here would be killed with an energy rifle, not a stone, and the other would, ideally, not be killed, unless that was part of the task I was given, of course.

It would all work out somehow, I needed to get to Haven first.
Zero-six and I were out to accomplish my next mission together, and probably my next few missions after that, at the very least.

Not ‘our missions’ as many would say, Zero-six was an inanimate object, so they were still my missions.

Whatever, I was getting distracted.

It didn’t matter in the least whether they were my missions or somehow the ship’s missions, the point was that I was heading back to Haven, I would murder the slime-thing, and hopefully get a few tasks to complete, preferably with money as a reward.