Ghent Coirse: It started with a bang

[Outrunner]

February 8, 818A.S.
At least, that’s what it sounded like in my head. I was aware of my body being dragged by a heavy-handed thug across the grooved metal floor plates of the station’s hallway. Moments later, I was suddenly airborne, and the weightlessness of my flight tempted me to fall unconscious, the throbbing in the back of my recently battered head slipping away. Then, as quickly as it had begun, my flight ended, with the cold and rusty floor of this whack job’s blood-stained cargo bay. I rolled onto my back and sat up listlessly, blinking repeatedly to regain my vision as I attempted to gather my surroundings.

Yeah, it was a slaver cargo hold, there was no mistaking it. You shove a bunch of men and women into a rickety, cold, irradiated piece of crap floating and swiveling around in space for a good while and they’ll do whatever you say—so long as you get them out of that god forsaken hell hole. Of course, I had no plans to stick around, at least not for long. For me, getting tossed into the cargo bay was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me.

Prior to my current predicament, I should mention that I had intended on being captured all long. Now I’m not insane, but I wasn’t planning on tracking these guys back to their headquarters without a damned good escape plan, but I could at least scrap one of their trade ships. Rarely someone starts at the top, and even when they do, it’s likely they’ll fall and have to start from the bottom like the rest of us.

I had followed a Bactrian around the edges of New York until it finally slipped into the Badlands. They were doing a pick-up run, they had no cargo onboard. Chances were I had been tipped off correctly, so I followed the ship into the cloud and after some travel, docked at Buffalo base.