Excerpt of WIP - S.T.A.R

I thought I'd share an excerpt of my new sci-fi WIP, S.T.A.R. I am particularly excited about this one...

S.T.A.R is one of three WIPs I am currently practicing ignoring

Credit

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Eudico white-knuckled the armrests of their chair. Pain pulsed through their jaw and the muscles in their shoulders and neck twitched. Ezi had given up trying to comfort them a long time ago and had settled down to read something raunchy on her cerelink. Words flitted in front of her eyes and various expressions of joy and disgust chased over her reptilian features.

Eudico had been staring fixedly at the headrest in front of them for hours now, but had eventually relented and stiffly turned their head to look out the window at the fields of dreamless stars the Hummingbird drifted through.

Space was beautiful.

They hated it.

Aside from the winking lights around them, there wasn’t much else to see. They could read but that would definitely make them feel sick. If they really wanted to, they could listen to the belthos’ conversations, but having to sit through the static as their TECH decoded the chatter simply wasn’t worth the eavesdropping.

Now that they thought about it, there wasn’t much beltho static around them anymore. If they’d been brave enough to look around the ship, they may have seen the aliens playing games on the cerelinks, sleeping, or dissecting a piece of technology to make it worse. But looking around would mean moving their head, and if they did that, the ship would surely fall out of the sky and they’d crash onto a remote planet and die.

So, they contented themself with watching the stars.

The Hummingbird hadn’t jumped through the stargate yet. There was still that to look forward to. It was probably a few hours of travel still until they got there. A few more hours to sit and panic.

Eudico’s eyes unfocused and their mind began to wonder, just little bit.

They’d been working for the Drifter since they were 17 years old. They were 27 now. 10 years of being scared. Seven years of fearing for Charlie’s life.

Drifter liked to collect things. Odds and ends. Strange artefacts. Old, forgotten and abandoned technology of days past. Drifter had a particular love for beacons and whatever location the beacon was at. Eudico had lost count how many radioactive, isolated and abandoned locations they’d been in, just to retrieve a fucking beacon for Drifter. Whatever Drifter did with them, Eudico hoped it made them a lot of money.

Drifter had been this enigmatic being in the galaxy for centuries. No matter who you asked, no matter which alien race and no matter how old, everyone knew of Drifter; Collector of artefacts and broker of information. Drifter had a large reach and hold over the galaxy. No one really knew or understood how, just that if one of the agents dared disobey, loved ones would turn up maimed or deceased, houses would catch alight, cerelinks would combust, V.E.I.Ns would malfunction and poison the wearer. No one said no to Drifter. And only those desperate enough would ever say yes to being part of the network in the first place.