Plasma weapons happen to be extremely good at vaporizing things, as I had just proven by shooting the gelatinous thing that gave me the coords to the ship dealer in its ‘head’, which left a mostly empty space where its face once resided and snuffed out its life within an instant.
Apparently that strange look on its face was customary in its culture and actually meant something like ‘good luck’. Oh well, out here, when everyone around you is an outlaw, it’s kill or be killed. The general consensus was that not being killed was usually better and I agreed with that sentiment, to some extent at least.

I was in that same bar for ‘oxygen-breathers’, and the creature I had just put down unmercifully must have decided earlier, after I departed, to stay in the bar. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on who’s perspective you were judging from), this made it orders of magnitude easier for me to track it down after returning with my fancy new ship, Zero-Six. The galaxy was a big place after all and I had marginally more important things to do than travel thousands of light gret to find a weird creature which I didn’t particularly trust.

In any other place, I would immediately be turned in to authorities after blatantly committing murder out in the open in front of every sentient being in a bar, but this place was different. This was Haven, where most of the inhabitants had already killed so many others that murders were seen almost like some kind of fucked up sport. I mean, I’ve literally overheard some of the creatures here competing to find out which one had ended more lives or performed more acts of unnecessary terrorism, the list goes on.

Knowing this, I took no pains to ensure that they didn’t witness me vaporize what could be argued to be another member of society’s ‘head’. So, a brief moment passed where a couple of the other creatures in the bar stared at me, probably not entirely happy because of the loud, reverberating bang that echoed throughout the room after I pulled the trigger. After this brief moment, they all turned back and continued socializing and ingesting chemicals, or whatever sentient beings normally do in a bar, just as I expected.

Well, that was one ‘goal’ completed (it wasn’t really a goal, I just felt safer now that the semi-suspicious thing was dead). 

So far so good, at least in terms of life for a criminal on more than one most-wanted list goes after said criminal, that being me, escapes prison. I had obtained a ship, so now I needed to get someone to recruit me for a job. 

I glanced around. As little as they may have cared about the murder I had just committed, the others in this bar were unlikely to give me anything, well, that would be logical assuming that they had enough self-preservation instinct to know that at any point I may force them to go and join that slime-thing, and I don’t think there are many who would want to join the slime-thing.

So, in search for someone or something which would be willing to give me a job, I quickly bought a drink from the bartender, spending even more of the small amount of money I actually had, downed the whole thing in one go whilst hoping it wasn’t poison of some kind, and casually walked out of the bar.

That bar was just a tiny part of Haven because Haven itself was on a planetary scale, and from no place was this more apparent than from the inside of the looming, metallic tower itself. The center was empty, circled by an outer section, and wide enough to fit a medium-sized moon at the very least, allowing ample area for thousands of spacecraft to comfortably descend from the heavens into their respective docking bays and landing pads. This area was interlaced with thousands of pathways and roads, moving back and forth between the sides of the tower, forming what looked almost like a massive web, similar to the ones spiders spin on Earth.

Whilst some of these paths looked small, it was quite easy to forget that each one of these pathways was around as wide as a large city, some were even wider, each housing thousands of individual buildings of various types. 

The sheer scale of the structure only meant that it was plausible that I may not find a job immediately, so I wasted no time and began walking at a brisk pace towards my ship.

After traversing a narrow side-street and a few ramps, and awkwardly sliding past a group of about fifteen screeching, robotic organisms, which I think were being tortured in some unconventional way, I had made it to the hangar where my ship, Zero-Six, was waiting patiently for its commander to return. Not that it genuinely had ‘patience’ or any means of doing something other than waiting, being nothing more than an object.

As I approached closer to the shimmering black vessel, I noticed something, or rather, someone standing in front of it.
It certainly was a very aesthetically pleasing piece of machinery, being coated with a pure black finish so glossy it could be used as a glorified mirror, but I didn’t think it was so beautiful that someone would literally stop everything they may or may not be doing to gawk at the thing and nobody knew it was my ship either, at least, not as far as I knew…

“Hello,” I said, coolly greeting the thing staring up at my ship.

My ICD flickered briefly with a gentle blue light and began to translate what I had just said.
The thing standing in front of my ship turned around slowly and lowered its gaze to look at me, being close to one and a half times my height, around five k’nem.
It was only now that I had gotten a close look at it that I had confirmed what it was. A Lumrah.

Lumrah are essentially what happens if a plant gains a movable body, a much-improved version of photosynthesis and sentience, along with a couple of thousand other things, but that doesn’t matter. Lumrah are very unique in the fact that they have an extremely long lifespan of multiple r’xere, many times longer than that of a human, and many times longer than that of most other living organisms in the galaxy. They are tall, as previously stated and can have anywhere between three and eight legs and an equivalent number of arms.
Instead of using regular photosynthesis, they have evolved to utilize a more developed form that will work with both carbon dioxide as well as oxygen, and produce more energy than regular photosynthesis either way. The chemicals used for this are also not green, but black, making their ‘skin’ black, with a slightly strange rubbery look to it. Though this chemical does have an official name, that name is not translated into English yet and is simply referred to as ‘black chlorophyll’ for the time being.
Despite the black chlorophyll, however, they still do not generate enough energy to be active beyond slowly moving around, and lack stamina to the point where their bodies can literally overload and die if they run too much. I’ve genuinely seen it happen.

Though, this also works to their advantage as their low energy consumption, coupled with the fact that they produce energy as long as they have access to starlight, is what enables them to survive for such a lengthy period of time. 

“Greetings, are you, by any chance, Hollow?” replied the creature in a strangely high-pitched voice.

I stopped and squinted at the creature, not that it would see, as I was wearing my exosuit, which included an opaque mask that covered the entirety of my face and head. It was also necessary for me to wear this mask in an area without a suitable atmosphere, considering that I didn’t want to suffocate and die. Or well, I suppose with me being in a vacuum, it was more likely that I’d be ‘depressurized’ rather than just suffocating. Taking off my exosuit would be equally deadly either way.

“I am. How do you know my name?”

“Well, Hollow,” the Lumrah said again, turning back to gaze intently at my ship, “I happen to have a job which is perfect for you.”

That didn’t answer my question, but, nevertheless, I was intrigued. After all, I was just looking for a job.

“What might that be?”

“Ei’ray, have you heard of it?” it replied quickly, without once breaking its gaze towards Zero-Six. It sure did love my ship, for whatever reason.

“That garbage dump of a planet? Planet with strangely human-like creatures, still believe in royalty, have a horrible and broken caste system? Yeah, I’ve certainly heard of it.”

“Excellent. Recently, there’s been an envoy of slave ships traveling from there to Zyxxeen space.”

Ei’ray was a planet unlike many others. Despite being sufficiently advanced to join the rest of the galactic community, they still held onto many beliefs from their ancient past. Slavery, a monarchy instead of a standard government-like structure and even certain religious beliefs were common and somehow survived throughout the multiple r’xere long history of Ei’ray and its inhabitants. Of course, the strangest thing of all was that the race occupying the planet looked incredibly similar to humans, albeit with a multitude of major differences in their anatomy.

Thus, the slave trade between Ei’ray and various illegal buyers in Zyxxeen space was relatively common.

“Go on,” I said in an attempt to have the Lumrah further the conversation at a slightly faster rate.

“Well, I need you to intercept the envoy and deliver a specific slave to me.”

“That’s all well and good,” I chimed in, “But do you have any idea how large the Zyxxeen Federation is?”

“Yes, approximately the greater part of two galactic arms. However, I do know that the route they would be taking is infested with pirates, and so they’re going to attempt using the Abyss Network.”

This caught me off guard.

The Abyss is the badly-translated-to-English term for the empty ‘abyss’ that exists between universes, an extradimensional realm in which physics does not apply, and all distances are both zero and infinity concurrently.
Due to this, the Abyss can be used to travel from any point in the universe to any other point instantly. It also happens to be nearly impossible to use, and so far, no currently living civilization has been able to do so without using the aforementioned ‘Abyss Network’.

The Abyss Network is many thousands of r’xere old, so old that it is difficult to deduce its actual age, built by an ancient civilization which, as far as current knowledge goes, disappeared all at once, leaving only these remnants. It consists of the Abyssal Gates. These are scattered all across the galaxy, and when accessed with a key, of which only a few still remain, will open. Once opened, and passed through, the gate will instantly teleport the user to another gate at random. It is possible to influence the exit location, though very few individuals are able to control this. In fact, it remains a mystery whether Abyssal Gates can be controlled fully at all. Even those who are able to successfully manipulate them are limited to merely adjusting the probability of arriving at certain other gates to a basic level.

As luck would have it, I just so happened to be one of these individuals.