Jiru was running away for what must have been the fifth time this month. People on the streets would constantly nag her for money she didn’t have, but sometimes, some would get the bright idea of chasing after her. Unfortunately, one of those times was today. Today, of all days. She knew she should just take the maglev, but that would mean she’d need to spend money she couldn’t waste.

Turning right down an alleyway, she makes it a couple hundred feet until she reaches a locked gate that must have been ten feet tall. Frantically, she turns around to head back, but she’s greeted by the ugly snarl of the man trying to mug her. He was holding a menacing knife with a rusty but serrated edge that looked like it would still cut relatively cleanly. Darting her eyes between the gate and the mugger, she opens her arms out and lets her wings unfold. As if she weighed nothing, she flaps a few times and soars gracefully over the gate.

The man lets out another snarl and spits on the ground. He turns around and walks out of the alley. Jiru lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding and rests her hands against her knees. Sometimes it pays off to be a Jiwa on a human planet.

Thanks to the mugger, she was running late for her meeting with a not-quite-legal parts dealer. Everything about the deal is technically legal, but just more under the table than the standard deal. After all, Jiru can’t afford to go through the normal means of acquiring a spaceship. They can cost upwards of sixteen million dollars, which is certainly cheaper than how much they used to cost, or so people say. Jiru wants to become a galactic trader. She grew up hearing stories about the various people who started with nothing, but struck it rich with just a single cargo ship and a full cargo hold.

Since cargo ships are so expensive, she knew the only way for her to become a trader was to build her own ship from whatever parts she could get. She was getting close, but she still needed to get an FTL engine.

That engine is the reason why she ran into the mugger in the first place. Jiru lives in the City of Industry, a locality within Dickson, in the loft of a garage she is able to rent for a dirt cheap price, thanks to the fact the garage is right next to a factory. Where she lives is only marginally nicer than where she is right now: East Dickson. She doesn’t know for sure, but it might be more than just a coincidence East Dickson has the highest concentration of alien species in the entire Greater Dickson Metro Area. But, who was Jiru to judge? It’s not like the City of Industry is much better. The reason she is even in East Dickson is to meet up with her contact who says he has an FTL engine for sale. As soon as she gets the engine, she’s getting the hell out of Dodge.

Jiru finds herself at the door to an abandoned warehouse at the city limits of East Dickson. A number of the windows on the derelict building have long been broken. She’s careful to avoid stepping on the glass littering the ground, and what looks like rusty metal bits. The smog in the air was enough to make her eyes water.

Letting out a small cough, she opens the door to the building with more effort than she would have cared to admit. The inside of the building is in stark contrast to the outside in that it’s well lit and there are a number of throw rugs on the ground to provide some semblance of atmosphere to the gargantuan room. There are some shelves set up with various wares and trinkets. However, the thing that caught her eye was the item toward the back of the setup. It was a 2306 model Rolls Royce Tweed 0102 FTL engine. She can’t help but let out a low whistle.

A man she hadn’t noticed before, her contact, lifts his head up from his desk in the back at the sound. “Did something catch your eye, Jiru?” he asked smugly, knowing exactly what she saw.

She decides to play along. “Oh, I don’t know Marcus. Is that a sample of Ripper Class deck plating?” she said.

The glint in Marcus’ eyes dropped away with her reply. “Yeah that is. Don’t you already have your deck all situated and done with?”

Jiru lets out a giggle. “I think you and I both know I was looking at the FTL engine. What’ll it be, Marcus? You know I can’t afford much.”

He quickly regains his composure and stands up. “Well, you know there’s always the friends and family discount, but this baby was quite difficult to get. I can’t go lower than two million.”

Jiru’s eyes boggle at the number. “Two million? You know I don’t have that kind of money. I can do seven hundred and fifty thousand, no more.”

“Oh, come on Jiru. Let’s be reasonable here. I need to be able to pay the bills. One and a half million.”

“We both know you make more than enough for your bills. One million, final offer.”

Marcus lets out a grumble. “Fine. But, you better come back and visit me every so often when you’re a big shot trader, okay?”

“Deal.” she said, holding out her hand. Marcus grabs her hand and they share a firm handshake.

The funny, but common, misconception about FTL engines is that they are large behemoths of a structure. As technology has improved since the discovery of the engines, companies have managed to make them gradually smaller. While the original engines may have been larger than their traditional engine counterparts, today, they can be as small as a backpack. The model of FTL engine Jiru just bought happened to be closer to the latter size, which is why she brought a backpack with her.

She manages to stuff the engine inside her pack, and says her goodbyes to Marcus. Now that she has the engine, she will finally be able to finish her spaceship. She has been working on the ship since she turned twenty. Now, six years and many visits to Marcus later, she has every component needed to finalize her ship.

Leaving the warehouse and heading back out onto the streets of East Dickson, Jiru starts the long walk back to her garage. As she is walking along the sidewalk, careful to avoid the holes and roots of mangled and warped trees, she hears footsteps running up behind her. Instinctively, she wraps her arms around the straps of her backpack tighter. The engine is something she does not want to lose today. However, her efforts are deemed futile when the person behind suddenly snatches her pack with surprising ease and runs away from her. It’s the same guy as before. It appears as though he did not learn his lesson from earlier in the day.

“Get back here you piece of shit!” she yelled, picking up her pace to catch up to the mugger.

“Get away from me, bitch.” he said back while running faster.

Eager to not let him get away with her engine, she unfurls her wings for the second time today. The long hairs on them grow taught as she prepares to launch herself forward. One evolutionary advantage the Jiwa have is they evolved to be able to thrust themselves forward with a burst of speed to catch up to their prey, which in this case, is the man who stole her pack. She launches up to the man and rams into him, causing him to fall on his face. In the midst of his fall, Jiru slips her arm around her backpack to protect it from falling. She gracefully slides it around her other arm and secures it to her back. Not even bothering to make sure the man was okay, she vaults her way home. She didn’t want to leave him like that; she hates hurting others, especially humans. In this case though, she needed to ensure she wouldn’t lose her FTL engine again. Her time on Gaia was coming to a close, and she would be able to leave the planet behind soon.

Other than the run-in with the mugger, the rest of her journey back home went without any hiccups. After an hour or so, Jiru made it back to her garage and typed in her secret passcode to the door, 0321 - her birthday in Earth Standard Time. Making her way inside, she sets her bag down and looks up at her ship, which takes up most of the floorspace of the building. All of the structural work is done, as is almost everything else, except for the FTL engine, which would go beside the reactor. The engine manufacturers have tried to reduce the power consumption of the FTL engines, but they couldn’t fully stop them from being energy guzzlers. In fact, the reason ships needed such productive fusion reactors was because of the FTL engines.

Jiru has read so much and spent so much time practicing her mechanic skills that all of this has become second nature to her. Spaceships were her life and she devoted everything she had to them. She would consistently work seventy or eighty hours each week, thanks to Gaia’s twenty-seven hour day just to pay for parts.

Now, all of her time and work spent on the ship was finally coming to completion. As soon as she was able to put the FTL engine in and finish up the other things, she was free.

She goes over to the side of the garage where her tools are, and grabs her toolbox and the cables she will need. She heads back over to her bag and pulls out the engine. Making her way up and into the ship, she is mindful to avoid the hanging wires. She climbs down into the engine bay and sets her tools down. She puts the FTL engine in its compartment and bolts it into place. Then, she runs the assorted cables from it to the reactor and the rest of the ship. After spending an hour fiddling with it to make sure everything was done correctly, she gets up and stares around the room. It’s done. There are just a few more bits and bobs to take care of, like the hanging wires, making sure the electrical systems are all connected, and to double check the helium-3 storage. The last thing she needs is to run out of fuel for the reactor while in space. She would die long before anyone would be able to rescue her. Jiru shivered and shook her head at the thought and went about finishing up the last of the small projects left to do on the ship.

A few hours later, Jiru was doing her final check around the ship. Before she is able to start carrying any goods, she will need to get registered with the authorities in New Portland, which will just be a few minutes away now with her ship. Had she not had a ship, the journey would have taken a couple of hours by high speed rail.

She had given her landlord her month’s notice a few weeks ago because Marcus had told her about the engine then, and she knew he wouldn’t cheat her. All that was left for her to do was pack up the small amount of things she had and take off. Butterflies started to permeate throughout her stomach.

“Oh fuck. I can’t believe this is finally happening,” she said to no one in particular.

She grabbed her possessions and piled them into the ship. With that, she settled into her seat and turned the engines on.

“Crap. I forgot I needed to bring the ship out of the garage.”

Cursing at herself for her stupidity, she shut the ship down and went outside. She opened the large garage door and set about moving the ship out of the building. She couldn’t afford to get motors for her wheels, so she had to push the ship ungracefully from behind with her little electric cart. It wasn’t the fastest method of moving a ship by any means, but it was enough to slowly but surely get the ship outside.

With the ship finally outside, she shut the garage door for what would be the last time. That chapter of her life was now over. Making her way back inside the ship, she sat down again in her seat and powered the ship up. Since she didn’t want to scorch the street, although it wouldn’t have made it any worse off than it already was, she decided to do a quick jump up to 85,000 feet, which should be high enough to avoid being pulled into Gaia’s gravity without having the chance to fire the engines up. Of course, because she didn’t want to crash into anyone, she listened in on the communications for the region of airspace above her, and only when there was no incoming traffic did she make the jump with a thwoomp. And just like that, she was in space.

Her radio went off. “Attention, you are in ship airspace. Please copy and identify yourself.”

“Shit. I didn’t come up with a name for the ship. Maybe I should go for something that sounds Jiwaren?” Jiru turns on her mic. “Hi yes, sorry. This is a new ship. I’m about to head to New Portland to get registered.”

The voice takes a moment to respond. “Okay, does your ship have a name?”

“Yes. Stardancer.”