1 Chapter One - The Sun Scutter

Lazily extending a hooked limb over a cable, I gently lean towards the nearby star, letting the solar winds push me and my solar skiff, the Sun Scutter, closer the plasma surface. Gritting my mandibles as I feel the heat of the approaching star ionize the surface of my sear suit, I quickly get to work, reaching out with the scoop and scraping off a thick stream of super-heated matter.

Strictly speaking, what I'm doing is fairly illegal in Fahd space. Stars that are high energy enough to produce the most delicious spices - Krik'tla, Tlami, and my personal favorite, something a shmuck on the street would just call Juice - are uncommon, and the harvesting methods and levels are heavily controlled by sector Elders. Supposedly, harvesting is limited to preserve the natural beauty of our space and to allow future generations to enjoy the sights that Fahd space has to offer. Personally, I don't buy it. I've seen the enthusiasm that licensed Fahdi star skimmers rip a star down to a red dwarf at the order of sector Elders firsthand. The hypocrites. This far out in neutral space though, I am unlikely to run in the enforcer drones local authorities have set up to find unlicensed star skimmers like me.

I raise the scoop back into the hull of the Sun Scutter, the heat of the plasma causing a pleasant warming sensation in my abdomen. This was a good haul, certainly enough to take back to my hideout. Tugging a few more cables into their catch points, I let the tension out of the sail and feel myself accelerating away, happy to feel the heat lessening on my carapace. Although Fahd are significantly more heat resistant than the rest of the civilized races, a star will still chew us up and spit us out like yesterday's aphid stew - thus the scorch suit.

I think I must have been the first one to find this particular star. It has none of the skim scars you find further hubward, and the color - a vibrant blue - indicates that the rich spice cashes circulating within the star are still fresh. If I were licensed, I would have had to go through far too many layers of Fahdi bureaucracy - something I had a great deal of experience in and no desire to return to.

As I build up speed to break orbital velocity, I reference my internal star map, slowly plotting my course back to the Drevin Asteroid system. Fahd of the wayfinder cast all have their internal starmap and slowly build on it throughout their lives. Passed down House Elder to Spawn, these can become quite extensive. Most wayfinders have a limited number of coordinates they can record, leading to most maps becoming splintered over time. This makes Fahd who hold complete maps of Fahd space - or newly charted space - extremely valuable. Fahdi with high capacity and advanced starmaps are often captured - ahm, I mean, gainfully employed - by the Major Houses to steer the massive hive ships. No desire to go back there, really.

After about thirty minutes, I have spooled up enough energy to take both myself and the Sun Scutter on the first leg of my journey home. This is, to say the very least, exhausting. Most times, Fahd ships rely on teams of wayfinders working in tandem to spool up and warp their ships across light years of space. Only my own high energy reserves and the relative low mass of the Sun Scutter allow me to make this trip solo.

Time to jump! No matter how many times I do this, I still hate the feeling. It is as if your mass is being expanded to the size of a supergiant and then sucked through a straw. It gives me terrible gas and makes me want to wretch up my nutriskin breakfast. Still, by far the quickest way to travel, and while it may have taken me a while to find this star, it looks like there's a gravity tunnel that will take me all the way home.

The Drevin Asteroid system is one of these reclusive, tucked away locations that only a few have bothered to record into their maps. Among those that have, even fewer visit. Why would they? The best this place has to offer are low-level minerals and ice. Plenty of that elsewhere. This makes it a perfect place to construct my own comfy nest and refinery system. Out here in the sticks, solar winds are at perpetual low ebb, so I switch to the outboard sublight engine I've got on back. Vibrations run up my carapace and jiggle my vision as the engine starts and chuggs to life. I'm going to have to go in to port pretty soon. I'm running low on fuel, and no one wants to be stuck out here having to rely of whatever solar blasts might come their way to get them out of the local grav field.

I smell home before I see it. The waste from spice refining is both noxious and very distinctive. This is the real reason I'm so far out. Any brain-dead worker drone would report me as soon as the smell hit their scent glands if I were any closer to civilization. I scuttle around the Sun Scutter, folding the delicate sail membranes in preparation for docking. Maker be, I can not wait to get out of this scorch suit. Lashing the Sun Scutter to the dock and connecting the unloading pipes, I quickly dash inside. As I enter my home sweet home, I smell the raw aggression in the filtered air.

"Welcome back, Reeve Waar".