Lalsan was high above the surface now, accelerating on his way to space, on board the most boring freighter in existence. It didn’t matter. He’d had enough, for the moment at least, of dodging explosions and gunfire and existing on the bare edge of survival. Moving boxes from one place to another was the calmest thing he’d ever done. Now he had finally worked his way up to the stars.
He began to feel a strange sense of being at home among shelves and boxes. The orderly rows and neatly stacked containers were a sharp contrast to the chaos of most of his life. The sounds of the ship’s engines humming through space, distant footsteps down metallic corridors, the occasional bleep of a passing warehouse droid, were nearly as comforting to him now as a sparrow’s song by a babbling brook.
Lalslan was just getting accustomed to his life, with its austere peace, when the shaking began.
At first he thought it was his imagination, mere exhaustion from moving-seventy eight heavy processors from one from one room to another by hand because the lifting machine was down (again).
After the third thunderous crash shook him off his feet and sent boxes tumbling from the shelves, Lalslan realized the trouble he was in. Those were explosions. The ship he was working on was being attacked. Judging by the violence of the shudders wracking the vessel, this was a serious attack by pirates or worse.
Lalslan picked up a couple of box cutters and a med-pack and leapt back into his old life.
