Time seemed to slow down as I watched and waited for the envoy.
One t’erg. Two t’erg. Three t’erg. 

Then, without warning, my ship’s sensors picked up a high energy signature from the gate, and a quantum wake, as a few freighters appeared in procession.

I silenced Zero-Six’s blaring alarm and quickly began to back away from the gate.

Before they could complete a system scan, thereby discovering me, I switched Zero-Six to silent running, a mode in which the ship stops exhausting heat in order to reduce its thermal signature. My ship was a stealth ship, so thankfully its heat management was good enough that I wouldn’t overheat immediately, though, for the remaining time I was in silent running, I would need to be cautious so as to not put Zero-Six under too much stress. My ship, as mentioned previously, was a stealth ship, and so of course, the ship had a cloak, which I promptly activated immediately after.

Ship cloaks use a sort of localized gravity bubble to bend light in a way which enables the user to hide their presence, at least visually.

That, coupled with silent running, should keep me undetected for a little while.

There were seven ships in the envoy in total. None were particularly large, all of them being around Xi’vai-class, which, for reference, is a similar size to an average cruise ship back on Earth. Large by ocean standards, but not so much when dealing with spacecraft. Besides, my own ship was Xi’vax-class, which made these ships only slightly larger than mine.

“Initiate ship scan,” I ordered the computer.

A few beeps later, it responded.

“Scan complete, Captain. Seven Xi’vai-class medium transport barges confirmed.”

“How many biosignatures?”

“One-thousand-six-hundred and fifty-nine, Captain.”

Over a thousand living beings were on board those ships, and I needed to find just one of them specifically. This may have been slightly more difficult than anticipated. 

Wait, no, there was a way. If I infiltrated the leader ship, I could almost definitely use the ship’s computer, or perhaps interrogate the captain for answers on the location of the slave. I just needed to not blow up the envoy until I had retrieved them. That was my best shot.

“Which ship is the leader?”

After calculating for what seemed like an eternity, Zero-Six responded.

“I am sorry, Captain, I am unable to calculate that. However, by scanning through past data about this envoy, I have concluded that the second-to-last ship in line is most likely the leader.”

“Thanks.”

“I exist to serve you, Captain.”

Well, with that out of the way, I needed to think of a plan, and quickly, it wouldn’t be long before the envoy warped away, and attempting to follow them in silent running would result in a highly explosive demise for both me and Zero-Six.

I thought for a moment. I had a plan. I wasn’t entirely sure if it would work or not, but I’d even out the kinks when I got to them, there was only one way to find out, after all.

Being only slave-traders, the target ships had weaker shields and were far more sluggish than Zero-Six, which was designed for quick movements and capable in battle. This put our silver-eyed protagonist at an advantage, despite the fact that there was only one of him, and seven of them.

The plan was simple, and as Hollow made his final preparations, Zero-Six dropped out of silent running.

“Armored with white-carbon composite. It can take heavy impacts...” 

Uttering these words in remembrance of one of the final sentences spoken by the Kletoen that sold him the ship, Hollow rammed straight into the second-to-last ship in the envoy, the ‘leader’, and shoved it out of the way of the envoy. With this crash, not only was the freighter temporarily out of control, but its shield had been disabled, that being said, so had Hollow’s. Normally, ramming into another ship with your own would be suicidal, but with Zero-Six’s white-carbon plating, it had left not much more than a few dents and scratches on the ship.

Now, hurtling away from the rest of the envoy, Hollow maneuvered so as to be parallel to the freighter, and extended Zero-Six’s electromagnetic landing clamps, attaching himself to the side of the ship.

Step one was complete, now for step two.

Once again, throttling up to maximum, Hollow began accelerating, and using the now unbalanced weight under him in order to spin using Zero-Six’s side thrusters. Accelerating and spinning, almost like a missile, made Hollow nearly impossible to hit.

One, he was accelerating, making it difficult to line up a shot in the first place.

Two, his spin prevented others from boarding Zero-Six and also made it nearly impossible to avoid hitting the freighter he had attached himself to.

Put simply, he now held the envoy leader as a hostage.

After spinning for a while, he transmitted a message through system comms. A simple message, but one that got the point across quite clearly.

“Hello there, I humbly request that you unlock the airlocks of the ship I am currently attached to. If you choose not to, I will initiate a quantum jump, and this ship will be ripped to pieces by my quantum bubble.”

A few moments passed before a reply came in, a panicked voice.

“The ship has been unlocked.”

Perfect.

Hollow donned his exosuit, attaching some smoke bombs to the soles of his feet and equipping himself with some weapons. It was time to shed some blood, that is, not his own, and not blood per se, but whatever equivalent to blood the crew aboard this particular ship possessed.

Dropping out of the airlock, Hollow carefully crawled along the side of his ship and towards the nearest airlock of the other. He was tethered, of course, or else the spinning of the ships would send him flying out into the void.

Grabbing firmly onto the outside of the airlock, Hollow pulled it open and dropped inside, the gravity well of the ship slamming him into the ground.

As Hollow removed his face from the cold metallic floor of the airlock, he severed the wire attaching him to his ship, and shut the airlock’s outer door, and opened the inner one.

A sudden burst of gas filled the airlock, and various lights flickered as the large mechanical doors creaked and slid open.

Hollow readied his weapon and waited. 

Sure enough, on the other side of the door were guards. They were waiting much like Hollow, not to run inside, but rather to prevent him from doing so.

What they didn’t consider, rather unfortunately, was that Hollow was prepared for this eventuality. A look of dread covered their ‘faces’, though not for long, as the grenade Hollow threw at their feet through the partially open door had already detonated, resulting in glorious red fireworks that painted the walls and floor.

The door was now fully open, and Hollow dashed in, his pulse rifle readied. Hopping over the remains of the guards, he noticed another standing in the hallway, his weapon raised.

Judging by the direction this new guard was coming from, Hollow figured that he was moving towards the control room. A helpful observation.

Of course, before the guard had a chance to speak again, its head was promptly vaporized.

Hollow might have thanked the guard to its face for inadvertently showing him the way, though its ‘face’ was no longer a face, and so Hollow continued onward without facing the faceless dead guard.

Hallway after hallway, Hollow kept running, and guard after guard, Hollow kept giving out free passes to an eternity of non-existence, which was honestly quite generous of him. Non-existence, of course, refers to death.

Eventually, he stopped in his tracks. He had ended up in a room, relatively large, some cages complete with metal bars outlined the walls, though some were broken. A small figure awkwardly moved towards Hollow, tugging on his arm. Behind it were more creatures of similar type.

“Will you save us?” it asked, as what were arguably tears streamed from its large ‘eyes’.

Hollow, reflexively activating his exosuit flashlight due to the darkness, examined the small creature. A number was written across its neck, it was probably the offspring of a slave which the owner decided to sell off.

Three-nine-eleven.

How cruelly coincidental, cruel for the creature anyway, that this slave was just one number off from the one Hollow was searching for, three-nine-twelve.

He then examined the rest of the creatures. None of them were three-nine-twelve.

“Not my job,” Hollow replied coldly, with the newly acquired information that this was not, in fact, the one he was after, and nor were the others.

“But...” it begged.

Hollow tried to shake it off, but it wouldn’t let go. A bad mistake on the creature’s part, as Hollow blew its head to smithereens, leaving its writhing body on the ground as its slave colleagues looked on while screeching and howling wildly. 

Oh well, in a way, he was saving them. Hollow planned on destroying this ship after he was done, and if those things were dead, they would be free at the very least, free in the loosest definition of the term, of course. There’s only so much you can do when you’re dead, that being absolutely nothing, because in this hypothetical scenario, you’re dead.

Hollow continued on. Just how large was this ship? Hollow knew it was large, of course, but it had been a few t’erg and it felt as though no progress had been made.

Just as he began to question whether he really was going the correct way, Hollow noticed a large sign.

“Bridge.”

Hollow glanced around to ensure he wasn’t being followed, and sprinted for it.

Arriving at the bridge, however, he was met with an unwelcome surprise.

Multiple guards surrounded him, much more heavily armed than the others. Standing in the center, looking him directly in the eye, was a being that appeared to be part of the same species as the guards. From his position, Hollow came to the conclusion that this one was the captain. An expression of some sort crept over its face as it stared intently, Hollow assumed this expression to be of somewhat similar meaning to a human smirk.

“Greetings, Hollow, we meet at last.”

Hollow stood dead still, and thought for a moment before responding. He needed to play his cards right, or his journey would end very abruptly.