3 The Journey

With the sound of the FTL-Drives gone, the hopper Jayn was borrowing felt indescribably empty. She felt alone for the first time since she started working on Trino. But she had a mission. And right now, that mission was to pilot the ship to the space station that was now 999 units away.

Jayn took a deep breath, and put her hands back on the steering column. She pushed her VisTron and it immediately displayed the map The Captian had given her. She plugged the coordinates into the hopper's main computer.

For a while, she flew the craft herself, but after about a half hour, she got bored and set it to automatically pilot itself while she found some entertainment in the living area. At first, she played some of the games built into the hopper's computer, but then she found they were extremely easy and got bored with them.

She resorted to the games on her VisTron, which were much more difficult. They had been designed to work the part of her brain that processed mechanical movement, so they were right up her alley. After a while, she checked on the progress that she had made toward the space station. When she went into the cockpit, the holodisplay immediately lit up with all the information a pilot needs, including the distance to the destination (284 in-space units).

Jayn sat down once more and checked all of the ship's systems for any problems or malfunctions. She found that there was a small ping on her SDS, the ship detection system, but when she looked at it, it appeared friendly. The system had always tracked the ship ID of every ship on the SDS, so she checked that, and found something truly fascinating.

Apparently, the system stored IDs for ships she had passed while in anti-space. Among them, most were from either Sol, the system which Earth was contained, or Noh, the system in which Ivyn was contained. There was one, however, that interested her slightly. It was from Rinde.

The Pirate System.

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Jayn didn't think too much of it at first, but then she noticed its ID, "Megalomaniac13" which she recognized from her days as a gangster in the space between Sol and Rinde.

The megalomaniacs were 21 individuals with a technological gift. They had implants that allowed them to erase certain memories, objects, or even people from other peoples' brains. They were feared by all who could remember them, but they never resorted to violence as they deemed it "barbaric" in nature. Instead, they simply made people forget what they were doing or fighting for to make them give up.

Jayn hadn't forgotten. She even smiled. She had gotten so used to being a mechanical engineer that she forgot what it was like to be a gangster. She looked up.

There was a small, no, far away object that looked to be the space station she needed to go to in order to refuel. Jayn looked at her HUD. The fuel level had reached 3% and needed to be filled up again. Otherwise, Jayn would be reliant on the RCS thrusters that helped with maneuverability.

Jayn pointed the hopper toward the space station and increased the throttle control. She turned on the comms and tuned into landing support for the space station.

"Station 29-64 B, this is Jayn Hild in the Hopper Trigo-183H35 requesting permission to land at landing pad 13L," Jayn said aloud, hoping to get cleared immediately.

After a couple of seconds, a voice came over the comms in reply. "Jayn Hild, your request to land at landing pad 13L has been granted. Please proceed to the circular slow lane and taxi to straight slow lane 24, then continue to landing pad 13L."

"Proceeding to the circular slow lane, taxiing to straight slow lane 24, and continuing to landing pad 13L," Jayn repeated in order to clarify that those were, indeed, his instructions.

"Thank you for cooperating, and have a nice day, Jayn."

Jayn followed the landing control tower's instructions and set the hopper down. When the landing gear touched the floor, a retractable glass roof encased the landing pad and was immediately pressurized.

Jayn stepped out of the hopper for the first time in almost 4 and a half hours, pressed the refuel button outside, and went to the cafe next to her landing pad.