Prologue

Prologue

 

SOMETHING TICKLED my nose, and warmth began to envelope me as I awoke. My still-sleepy brain, reluctant to leave its peaceful state, didn’t bother to send movement signals to the rest of my body. Someone was clinging to me, and something soft was pressed against my chest. This must be heaven.

But as soon as my brain registered the situation, it woke up all at once. When I opened my eyes, I found light-brown hair covering my face; it was the nose-tickling culprit. A girl was using my arm as a pillow, her face buried in my chest. She was naked. That’s just our relationship, after all.

What do I do, then? I’d feel bad waking her up, but I need to take a shower and use the bathroom. I don’t know what time it is, but I don’t feel sleep-deprived, so it can’t be too early. Okay, I’ll just wake her up as gently as possible.

Relenting, I stroked her hair, gently waking her. Before long, she moaned and opened her eyes, smiling sleepily up at me.

“Morning, Mimi,” I said.

“Good morning, Master Hiro.”

 

***

 

The next destination for our motley crew was the Cierra System.

It was about four hyperlanes away from the Arein System. These lanes spread throughout the universe like intergalactic highways, transporting travelers anywhere from tens to hundreds of times the speed of light.

After all the excitement in the Arein System, we chose the Cierra System partially because it was a resort system, where citizens without landowner rights, mercenaries like me who were never citizens, and even foreigners could set down their ships and relax. We could check out the ocean, enjoy nature on a mountainside, go hunting, or have a barbecue. According to the system’s brochure, we could expect to enjoy such natural phenomena as gorgeous sunrises, dazzling sunsets, blue skies, fluffy clouds, breathtaking starry night skies, and even the occasional shooting star.

“It sounds magnificent, doesn’t it?” Mimi was beaming as she read the brochure on her tablet.

“Yeah,” Elma said with a smile of her own. “When you’re born and raised in a colony, you don’t get to see stuff like that.”

Once Mimi and I had finally gotten out of bed this morning, we’d taken a bath together and met up with Elma. Even after finishing our breakfast, all three of us hung around in the cafeteria chatting about our hopes for our next destination.

“Hmm…” I said. What Mimi called “magnificent” was all just normal stuff to me. Maybe people who lived in colonies never got to see sunrises, beaches, or mountains. Those things didn’t seem unusual or special to me, but I was still excited to get to experience a nice blue sky and girls in swimsuits. Very much so, might I add. After all the work we’d been doing lately, we all deserved a little vacation.

Anyway, I digress. Hopefully, the Cierra System would deliver. Even there, we’d find a few colonies, as people still had to work and live in the system. Sometimes people had to wait on a colony before going to one of the resorts. The colonies also served as export hubs for the high-quality raw materials from the resort planets and as markets for those goods.

Unfortunately, all that beauty came at a high cost. So high, in fact, that some people used virtual reality to experience the resorts instead of paying the outrageous docking costs. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the point?

That about sums it up. Now, you might be wondering how mercenaries fit into all this. Well, it wouldn’t be all play and no work.

The Cierra System got a lot of visitors. That meant plenty of passenger cruises—and all of them needed guards. Plus, all that luxury meant lots of shipments from other systems and lots of merchants. All of this made it a tempting target for space pirates. Even the guests themselves, many of whom were quite wealthy, lured in pirates, who wanted to kidnap them for ransom, personal “enjoyment,” or to sell as slaves.

It was an ugly situation, just like any other time pirates got involved. Even if they didn’t get people, they could pilfer the merchant and supply ships for food, alcohol, everyday items, and luxuries. That meant the Cierra System needed to hire mercenaries and others to defend the ships. The space pirates retaliated by bolstering their forces, roaming in bands of twenty to thirty ships. In response, mercenaries also moved in groups here, forming parties through Cierra Prime’s guild. Mercs were on bodyguard duty just as often as pirate-hunting duty, it seemed.

“Hiro?” Elma said, bringing me back to Earth—er, the ship.

“Hm? What’s up?”

“You just shut down out of nowhere. What’s the deal?”

“I was just thinking about how we can make money in the Cierra System.”

“I’m surprised you’re such a hard worker. Why are you thinking about business instead of vacationing right now?”

“You’re surprised?” Jeez. After all the hard work I’d done for this crew, she still saw me as a lazy jerk. “I’m not sure what to say about that… I guess it’s in my nature to work hard.” More likely, it was a cultural habit. I was still Japanese at heart, after all. Leave us alone, and we’d work ourselves into the ground. “Anyway, should we start with the Cierra Prime colony?”

“I think so,” Mimi said. “It’s important to go through the necessary procedures before we can enjoy our resort vacation.”

“Okay. When we leave hyperspace, let’s go there right away. How much longer are we here for?”

“About an hour and a half,” Elma told me.

“Then I’ll have time to clean the sweat off after my workout.”

“What a hard worker you are,” the space elf said wryly.

“Sound body, sound mind,” I quipped back.

“Mm-hmm. Whatever you say.”

“Jeez, how rude can you get? You’re lucky to have a nice guy like me.”

Elma leveled a flat stare at me. “No idea how you can say that about yourself.”

I can’t help it! This universe’s video games just don’t jive with me. There wasn’t much to do during a long inter-system trip. My only ways of killing time were reading e-books, working out, or retreating to the bedroom with Mimi or Elma. I really need a hobby.

“I’ll come with you to train,” Mimi said.

“Really?” I said. “Awesome. Let’s go.”

“Fiiine,” Elma cut in. “I’ll go too.”

“You sure?” I asked.

They followed me to the training room. It was a little cramped with all of us trying to do our thing, but whatever. I focused on working up a sweat with strength training, Mimi prioritized endurance, and Elma mixed flexibility and that terrifying explosive power of hers.

“Ow, ow, ouch!” I said.

“Ugh, you’re too stiff,” Elma griped. “You really need to think about flexibility and not just muscle mass.”

“Argh, ouch! That’s not supposed to bend that far!”

“Yes, it is. C’mon. One, two, three, go!”

“Aaagh?!”

Elma dragged me into her flexibility training, mercilessly contorting my stiff body. I felt like I was about to burst at the seams. I’m dying…

“Does it hurt that much?” Mimi asked.

“Not for you. You’re much more flexible, Mimi,” Elma said.

“Hee hee, thank you! I’m quite confident in that area.”

“Urgh…” It’s great that you’re having a nice chat and all, but you’re literally folding me in on myself! You’re going to make me cry. By the time we finished our training, Elma and Mimi skipped out, refreshed and feeling good, while I hobbled along behind them with sore muscles I didn’t even know I had.

Do I need to go to the medical pod? Elma’s gonna break me one of these days.