No Sky for Young Men

Your feet pounded against the grass and dirt as you raced towards the ship at full speed. This animal was hot on your tail, and if you shot it, you would alert the sentinels.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Three beeps sound rapidly from inside your helmet.

'What was that?' Your eyes dart to the top right of the HUD installed in your helmet, only reading that your thermal protection has dropped to ten percent.  'Oh great, I'm going to freeze out here while being chased by an overgrown kitten,' you think to yourself as you speed towards the ship located on your mini-map.

You steal a quick glance behind you just as the creature pounces onto your back. Both of you tumble to the ground, the creature landing a few feet away from you. It sort of reminded you of a lion back home on Earth, but it had larger teeth, and enough fur to make an expensive winter parka.

Super slowly Quickly, you fumble for your multi-tool, ready to end the shenanigans, but you find that it has disappeared. The mini-map doesn't seem to be showing anything, but then again, it never did show wildlife. You take stock of your surroundings, you're standing in a frozen forest, barren trees and frozen plants covering the land. Oh how you'd wish to settle down on a cold planet sometime. Maybe you could live a life of isolation and research, but nerdy stuff was for the Korvax, and you weren't a nerd.

You nearly take a step before you feel something rub against your leg. Looking down after holstering your weapon, you find the suspect to be the creature from earlier that was about to kill you that was totally chasing you for fun. The thing feline burrowed it's furry side against your calf and shin. 'How cute, it acts just like a house cat. It'll chase you, but it will do it in the name of love.'

Cautiously, you rub the space between it's ears, causing a small low pitched purr to erupt from it's throat, followed by a 'meow' that was too adorable for it's own good. It pushed it's head into your hand, and you smiled at the friendly gesture.

"Oh you just wanted some lovey dubbies, didn't you?" you say as if it wasn't just chasing you to your death a second ago.

You pull yourself up as the creature speeds off suddenly, and you begin to hike it back to the ship as well. You were just in time too, your thermal protection gave up completely as you neared the ship, and you could feel the iciness of -16 degrees Celsius billow against your body.

Quickly, you popped open the hatch and jumped into your ship, making your way to an Atlas. That's what you thought they were called, at least. Atlases were these strange red diamond structures that floated in the skies of planets, letting you use them for uploading your discoveries to the galactic network. Nobody at the space stations knew where they came from, but they were everywhere. On every single planet you have visited, every single moon, every star system, every space station. They were everywhere. They made things loads easier though.

You turned on the ship's engines. They whirred up silently before a low glow of blue erupted from the back, and you were off, speeding out of the atmosphere of the planet you named "Hell's Opposite". All it consisted of was ice, ice, furry kittens of death, and more ice. Oh, and snow. It was alright though, the worst thing that could have happened was your form being frozen into a human icicle. You passed the last layer of the atmosphere, and in seconds you were travelling through space, flying off towards the space station.

The space stations were another thing that confused you. In nearly every system of the galaxy that you have explored, there is a space station. They're all inhabited by strange aliens, but they're friendly. Friendly, strange wonderful aliens. Maybe they colonized space early? Even if they did, why did they plan to make crude space stations and not beautiful utopias? You ponder over the ideas of living in a utopia versus doing your job. Yeah, your job sounded better. Now you can see why they chose space stations. But why not make them safer?

Sighing, you gave up at thinking and went into warp mode.

"Eighteen quintillion planets, and I can only explore a lifetime's worth of them." The stars shot past on your ship's screen as you searched through the choices for your next destination. You felt like something a little less violent, more green, and only one planet. You typed what you wanted into the computer, and it displayed only three systems in the range of 100 light years.

"Heyo, lets not do a whole hundred. Little at a time, alright?" You spoke to your ship as you lowered the range to 50 light years, and only one system displayed. "Better."

You looked at the big, red, flashing button on your dashboard. The smile on your face made you grow giddy. 'Man, I love my job,' you think to yourself before you bring your hand up above your head. Dramatically, you bring your hand down, your finger smashing the button down as if it would make the warp go any faster and or make it more exciting.

You are lurched back into your seat as the warp initiates, and your ship is propelled through space at a million times break-neck speed towards the destined star system. Your cheers are drowned by the whining of the warp-drive, the bright lights of stars racing past the view of your cockpit. Suddenly the warp starts to slow, and the bubble of space time around your ship dissipates. It seemed a bit quick for a warp, but you are okay with it. It's why you shortened the range. Sort of.

As your destined star system comes into view, alarms sounded off in your head, and in your ship. You landed in an asteroid field, and your ship caught a bit of space rock, causing your cockpit to gain a small crack, but noticeable. You reached for your can of 'Insta-Join', a small concoction you brewed together on a small jungle-biomed planet you named Tarzan III. Your 'Insta-Join' was made from some type of acidic plant that melted things into place, kind of like a welder, but this worked for anything, and it was more expensive. You sold vast quantities on the market, you even had a factory on that planet.

Quickly, you sprayed the substance onto the cracked glass, and the crack disappeared. You gave a content sigh, and put the can back down before taking stock of your current predicament. The asteroid field was quite thick, you were fortunate to be alive.

Yes, you were lucky, but not everyone is.

Ships... Ships were everywhere. All of them were destroyed, floating this way and that. It looked like a fleet of freighters, but they were just... dead. Unmoving. Vacant. It was a big fleet as well. Your ship propelled forward as you pushed your way towards the bigger ships. There were no dents on them to signify being knocked up by deadly space rocks. The faint orange glow of heated metal on the port side of one of the cargo ships shouted at you that these ships were attacked by pirates, and you just missed them as well.

You pulled away from the field of rocks, and headed towards the planet, but not before a bright light covered your cockpit's view. Alarms, again, sounded in your ship. After dimming the view, you looked at the planet. As well as the sun orbiting around it. You look to your screen on the console, a bunch of red flashing lights telling you that something is wrong.

"Collision  imminent, prepare for immediate warp," the ship's AI spoke in it's cold tone. Displaying on the computer screen was the sun, orbiting around the planet. The sun was going to engulf you, but not before your ship warped out of the collision course. Blinking, you sigh in relief as the alarms stop.

And started up again as you realized that you've ended up in the planet's atmosphere.

"Heat shield disintegrating, atmospheric entry too steep," the AI spoke without a care in the world. You barely had time to register what it said before you heard the wonderful noise of a fried engine, the distinct whining against the sound of flames fit perfectly into your situation. And if things couldn't get any worse, another crack adorned it's righteous place in your cockpit's glass canopy.

Sighing, you come to the realization that you are doomed, your fate set before you in the image of fire, the ground, and what looks like a ruined castle surrounded by a forever expanding forest.

You close your eyes as the ground comes up to meet you.