Pirates

I know they're out there, the Minds, all powerful, looking after the populations living on them. Orbitals, planets, doesn't make any difference, Steve thinks they're pets. I know they're not, maybe.

We made our own drive, in-system only, in the end, scrounging parts from here and there. We're not the only project, a few ground-pounders are trying to get off planet. Doing it first, though. That's something. We've spent years on the project, and further years building. Our local Mind, she's called Prim, wouldn't even give us artificial gravity. We've never been in space without it. Didn't know what it was gonna be like.

Nauseating, as it turns out.

She wouldn't stop us going into space, but she wouldn't help either. I thought that was the whole point f the Minds, they were supposed to help.

We got lucky. Or something, maybe they were watching.

An Iffens vessel drew alongside as we orbited the next planet out, looking for resources, and then an I'Drothen vessel. What an experience!

They enhanced nearly everything. And that's key, enhancement, they didn't replace anything with anything we couldn't understand. They said it would do us a disservice.

There were two exceptions; the gravity plates and inertial control. Without those, they said, we would never see even light speed with what we had. Heck, anything over 9g's would probably kill us.

Everything else, we build. Engineers and physicists have become our rock stars. They design and build and we set sail. But they want paying.

Pay.

We didn't know what economics entailed. It's a disaster, the dependencies begat poverty, even with the best models. Everyone needs money now, and money corrupts.

How quickly the money hoarding barons of industry, another word we'd forgotten, came about, using our ideas at scale to build and mine and conquer new worlds.

Conquer, that's a word we haven't used in so long, not with regard to this. There are factions and politics and power. There are people who seek to rule, and unfettered by the Minds, they do.

I'm not into that. I used to be an independent contractor, an asteroid miner, but then the big boys muscled in on our space, pushing us out with their inspections and "taxes". We used to be free. We used to wander amongst the stars. Now, despite our star drive, my crew and I haven't left our system for years.

Instead, we fight this internecine war for existence, moving in and striking, taking supplies and ore, selling it on the black market to make our existence bearable.

It is bearable, it's a big ship, but we spend a lot of time maintaining it. We know things now. It's a lot of work, we work for our living.

And now I have an artificial leg, because we have no nanobots. We have medics. I survive.

I'm always going to survive.

Maybe, maybe one day we'll leave the system, and go to paradise where we don't have to grind the surface of asteroids all day, and can party on, drinking cocktails.