The Gorinal Star Cluster is, in every meaningful sense, the armpit of the galaxy. And it was just my luck to get stranded there when shit hit the fan.
I didn’t know that at the time, of course. My ship, the Star Runner, was in pretty bad shape (Don’t ask.), and except for the fuel in my tank, I was broke. Desperate as I was for work—any kind of work—the lawless Gorinal Cluster was the only real option for a gunslinger like me.
The name’s Sam, by the way. Sam Kletchka, of New Texas. I spent a year at Earthfleet Academy before dropping out on my twenty-first birthday to seek my fortune among the stars.
Back in those days, Earthfleet was mostly just twentieth-century submarines and aircraft carriers, hastily repurposed and barely spaceworthy. Only three decades had passed since first contact with the galactics and we were still in a mad scramble to put as many colonies on the starmap as possible. With all of our resources tied up in the Gliese colonies, there was no boldly going for the class of ’39.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to seek out new life and new civilizations: they came to us. So, after dropping out of the Earthfleet Academy, I signed onto a Hyadean star freighter and never looked back.
Gunslinger to the Stars
Sam Kletchka here, freelance gunslinger and interstellar privateer. This, my friends, is how I went from being stranded in the armpit of the galaxy to becoming the luckiest human being in the universe.
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