I was born the second child of Ra'lka, Timon, and Marlin Jazz in the early summer months of '78.

My mother, Ra'lka was an ex Imperial pilot and had spent much of her life in the Navy before deserting successfully in the late 3250's. My two fathers, Timon and Marlin, grew up in Raman as miners.

I grew up aboard the family asp as my parents spent their days transporting extracted materials all over the sector for Higgins Colony, a small mining installation on the tiny moon Raman A 6 C. They worked as part of an independent cooperative with the other colonists, and while I spent very little time at Higgins, I recognized it as home. Life was simple and good.

Everything changed when the Natural Raman Dominion laid siege upon the colony. I was 7 years old at the time, we had no official military to defend us. Ra'lka and the other pilots fitted their ships to battle and took on the powerful dictatorship. I was told they fought valiantly. Several weeks later war vessels of the Dominion touched down and their leader appeared on video screens all throughout the installation. The Higgins militia had been completely wiped out. The Higgins cooperative administration was to be turned over to the Dominion and they would assume control as the ruling body of the colony. Nobody was left to challenge them.

Losing my mother was difficult. A deep depression gripped my two remaining parents as they struggled to make ends meet under the abject rule of the Dominion. For my family's role in the resistance, we were separated. My brother and I were stationed in a minor facility 30 km away from Higgins. My daily task was monitoring and maintaining the auto extractors set up all over the adjacent mountain range. Every day, one of us would fly out in the manned skimmer to do routine checks and maintenance while the other stayed back to manage the computer systems. This was work a robot could do, but, being unpaid, we were the cheaper option. My only relief from the drudgery of this new life was bi-weekly visits to Higgins colony, where I would be able to spend a day collecting provisions needed for the coming weeks, and steal away from my imposed schedule to meet with old friends.

The rule of the Dominion was totalitarian and severe. Those who disobeyed were jailed. Those who broke the law were sold into slavery and never seen again. Those who tried to revolt were killed outright. The Dominion decided on every aspect of our lives and kept all but faction officials to a tight curfew. Only the oligarchs, the police, and the slavers had any pull in Higgins, and the abuses were daily.

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During this time I fell in with a crew of smugglers and thieves. Having no starships of our own, we instead stowed away on cargo canisters on Dominion vessels. Many slavers who could not afford cry-pods would instead use NuroCyn - an injected compound that put the body in a kind of stasis - allowing them to survive the cold and radiation present in a standard cargo hold - for a while. Using small doses and a respirator, we would knock ourselves out just long enough to wake up as the ship docked and get out of sight. Once aboard the stations, we would trade for or steal supplies needed for the colony. We could never be gone for too long, or else the curfew implants would paralyze us and send for the Dominion.

The more jobs I did, the more NueroCryn I needed to make the same trips. Nonetheless, the pay was good, and any opportunity to break the endless drudgery that life had become was well desired. Years rolled by with this smuggling racket. In April of 3300, my luck finally ran out. Everything went off well with the break in, made it to the canister okay, but I just slightly miscalculated my dose. I awoke on the examination table of the Dominion vessel I had stowed away on - arms restrained, surrounded by Dominion centurions.

The procedure of "trial" went by pretty quickly. My charges were a long list of words to the effect of "broke the rules". I was stripped of all Dominion proprietary implants and transferred into a faction storehouse for human capitol. It didn't take long before I was sold and transferred to the medlab for preparation. I found myself tied to the chair of the examination room, a Dominion medical officer arguing with someone over comms about pricing of the cryopods. It appears the Dominion was intent on charging my buyer - an arrangement they were none too pleased about. Within minutes a short man with red, scraggly hair appeared, jammed a needle into my arm, and it all went black.
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Life support systems don't typically pump much oxygen and heat into the cargo hold unless specifically designed to do so. Residual heat seeping in from the rest of the ship's modules and poor heat venting warm most holds, as such they are often well below freezing. As frostbite sets in, a sharp tingling can be felt, as the brain struggles in vain to send any warming impulse into the extremities. It was this tingling that I first registered as the NeuroCyn began to wear off and my bodily functions slowly returned.

I wasn't fully awake, but knew what was happening. The recognition that I had mere minutes to do something - if it weren't too late - ripped me from the fog of the drugs after effects. I fumbled around in the black canister until my frozen limps landed on a release latch and I pulled with my waning strength. The cargo canister opened and I pushed myself into a tiny hold. I pushed against another canister towards what seemed to be a ladder and pulled myself up. The pangs in my otherwise numb arms and legs flared as I strained against the release hatch, finally opening into to the room above with a sharp hiss. I drifted upward into the cramped pilots' quarters of a sidewinder.

The room was mostly empty of personal effects despite a scattering of trash and unworn clothing. Whoever currently sat at the helm of this vessel clearly did not call this ship "home". I floated in place for several minutes as I dethawed. How long had I been out? I had never stowed longer than an hour or so, but we could have been flying for days!

I knew very little about space travel, but had heard of the brand new Frame Shift Drive. Vessels could cross hundreds of lightyears in days, even hours now. And as much, If I did not move fast the ship would dock, and likely armed men will come to collect me. I steeled myself for what came next and opened the door to the cockpit.

Just a few steps before me was the scraggly haired pilot I saw in the infirmary - crooning around in his seat. The hiss of the door opening must have alerted him, as we immediately locked eyes. He disconnected from the chair and pushed toward me, hand landing on a sidearm attached to his flight suit. As I leapt to the side in a panic and my hand landed on a small chef unit. I swung it with all my might.

A childhood in the underworld served me well in this instance, as I was much faster than my captor. The chef unit slammed hard into the man's temple and his laser pistol went off, sending a pulse directly into the console behind me. His body jerked back, limp in the weightlessness. Warning signals flared over the ships speakers and the internal maintenance quickly extinguished the smoldering console.

Now what?

I pushed the lifeless body of the pilot back into the cargo latch and tried to get my bearings. The control panel of the sidewinder wasn't TOO different from the skimmers I flew back in Raman. Every attempt to control the ship or access a panel, however, fed back the same message:

"Input Denied - Pilot's Federation biometrics not recognized"
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For several days I survived on slightly deformed food from the dented chef unit as I attempted - in vain - to circumvent the computers systems. The sidewinder was drifting through interstellar space and I could control anything. Only a matter of time now before the fuel runs out and this cramped cabin becomes my tomb. Every few hours, the hum of the ship's powerplant would grow quieter, as modules auto-shutoff to conserve energy.

A warning bell from the damaged console was the first sound to break the steady hum. I floated over to see the message "Warning, auxiliary life support disengaged, failing life signs detected - cargo rack 2" on the display. Cargo rack 2? It would only figure there were more captives aboard the ship, a fact I had not considered until now. They would soon suffocate in the cargo hold, as the little oxygen down there was being diverted to the cabin. It only seemed fair that I release them - not that it would make much of a difference. Still, I drifted down into hold and found the only other canister below.

Ice crystals were already forming on all the metal, and it took several tries to pry open the release latch. A body drifted out, and I dragged it to the cabin before nestling them into the warm sleeping pad. Ice chunks in peppery grey hair slowly melted, rolling small beads of water along their dark, wrinkled skin. Their eyes suddenly popped open. One cybernetic pupil rolled in a circle scanning the room while the other focused squarely on me. After a few moments of silence, they said a simple thank you before drifting off to sleep. I decided to leave them alone.

I awoke to my companion shuffling around with the wiring behind one of the ship's panels.

"This is completely fucked, but I've worked with worse" They said. "There'd be no way to stop the ship without the Pilot's credentials, we're gonna have to jailbreak the biometrics in his I.D. and reconfigure them to recognize somebody else." They stopped, coughing fiercely for a moment before looking at me, noting the confused look on my face.

"Ugh, I'm really not interested in formalities, is that what you want? I'm Xarsa. We could sit over tea and have a long chat if you'd like but we have about an hour before the oxygen shuts off." I shook my head. Xarsa's frail body was not matched by their attitude. They were clearly a spacer, and if I wanted any hope of surviving this ordeal I needed to be on their good side. I've only met two spacers in my adult life - and I killed the other one.

"How do we do that?" I stammered.

"Fetch the body from below and bring it here, grab the emergency maintenance kit as well. I can't move too well thanks to this damn virus - don't worry it's not contagious." They replied, followed by another fit of coughing. "I'm gonna need you to do this for me if you want to live. We'll trick the computer to recognize you as the pilot."

I followed their instructions. Xarsa searched them and quickly produced a pilot's federation I.D. and connected a small interface to it. I watched helplessly as they began to take apart the I.D and tweak with its wiring. After a moment, I decided to break the ice and ask them how they got here.

"I spent my life as a commander in the Pilots Federation," Xarsa spoke as they worked. "Fell in with some people calling themselves the Dark Wheel - I'm sure you've heard the stories - learned a thing or two about messing their proprietary devices while working with psycho-cyber technology. You wouldn't believe the things these people get do in the name of 'directing humanity'. The stuff they had me working on... really could have changed humanity, for the better you know? But they wanted it for themselves. I decided to take off with my data and get my crew away from those people."

Xarsa stopped and wordlessly pricked my finger with a sensor of some kind. "Should have known they'd catch up with me, spread some sort of engineered virus on my ship that rapidly breaks down our nervous system. As my crew lay in the infirmaries dying, they came and destroyed everything we had left - well, mostly everything." Xarsa finished, leaving only more questions. "Go on, try to activate the terminal now."

Xarsa handed the mess of wires and metal that made up the jailbroken pilots federation I.D. The flashing, glitched interface read "Commander JIMI JAZZ" I prodded the ship's console with my finger and it immediately responded.

"Biometrics recognized, welcome, Commander". The gravity of what had happened set in. Did they just... forge a pilots federation license? I knew very little of the Pilots Federation, but if what Xarsa was telling me is true of this Dark Wheel then what kind of risk did I just take? Not that I every had much of a say in the matter. I took a deep breath and sat down in the pilots seat - it instantly adjusted to fit my posture perfectly.

The sidewinder was in terrible condition. Drifting in super cruise for days had dramatically degraded the ship's integrity. The blaster shot right into the systems management computer made it struggle to manage the correct inputs. Nonetheless, she flew.

Xarsa floated behind me, instructing me on the basics of star ship operation and system navigation. Within a few short minutes, I had charged the hyperdrive and found myself tearing through the mystical realm known as witch space. We fueled the ship, and, as per Xarsa's instruction, set course for a friendly port. It took two days to reach the desired star system. By that time I had gotten the hang of operating the vessel.

Finally, the sidewinder dropped out over the star of the Luhman 16 system. I throttled down and detached myself from the seat. The port we were going to was unmarked so I needed Xarsa to direct from here. I drifted into the cabin to find them dead in the sleeper pod. The disease they had been infected with finally claimed their life. My heart dropped, I had only known them a short time, but they had become like a mentor to me.

I recognized a small data chip left on the table beside Xarsa along with a handwritten note.

'I will not be able to hold on much longer. I've written the coordinates to my contact below, they will help you get the documents you need to keep off of Pilots Federation audit books for a longtime. Take this data chip and show nobody. Trust nobody. The information here contains the keys to unlocking an incredible power within humanity and many will stop at nothing to snuff it out. Never let them find you.'

I tucked the data chip into my pocket and looked out into the cockpit of the sidewinder. I felt paralyzed for a moment.

Now what?!?

Solar flares reached in massive arcs just beyond the canopy. Beyond that was the star-marked blackness of space. I knew that I would have to eventually get back to Raman, save my family, but how? What was I supposed to do with this data chip that held some "incredible power"? What do I do if these "Dark Wheel" people ever find me? I forced myself away from such thought and drifted over to the pilots seat. I've spent the last week in space, not knowing what to do and I was tired of it.

'There was one thing I DO know' I thought to myself. 'I need to get rid of these bodies'.