It's been a while since I've seen something other than the inside of a space-ship. I guess an orbital station doesn't technically count as a space-ship, but I lump that in with the same category. Cold metal, reinforced glass, and the endless void beyond. Sure, the view is sometimes graced with a planet, or in the case of the base of operations of the ship I'm on, an asteroid field caught in the gravity of a dense planetoid, but the void beyond isn't any less real for the beauty juxtapoised over it.

The ship I'm on isn't exactly a sight for sore eyes, either. The designers didn't account much aesthetic beauty to the cargo hold of the ship. And considering I'm a slave, well…

You could say I don't really like the view of whatever beauty could be derived from the chromalloy plating and purple paint, interrupted infrequently by burn marks, hull patches, and exposed wiring or control panels.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that I was one of the luckier people on the small colony world I used to say was home who was taken as a slave instead of being killed outright by the mantis Culling Ships. I watched a lot of my friends and family die that day, almost two years ago. I don't think about it often, but when something reminds me of that time, I shiver a little bit and am grateful to at least be alive, even if I am a slave.

I forfeited my freedom in favor of my life. I've been on slave ships or stations since then. Slaves don't usually stay in the system that long. Two-ish years is a long time to be a slave and not be sold. I've never seen my captors kill one of us needlessly, though. I'm not worried about my life being taken now. The only way I'd die is if another slave killed me in personal combat, back at the base station, or if this ship is destroyed. I suppose I could also be freed and killed for some sort of sadistic fun, if somebody had the scrap to spare for my life, but I doubt anybody actually does that. Slaves aren't that cheap.

I do well in the arena, too. Fatalities don't happen often, either, but I've never lost. I've done well for myself, fighting it out with other slaves. Granted, I've never had the poor fortune of going up against any mantis slaves, but I've even taken on a rockman slave and gotten off with the upper hand. I've got some scars, like when Cannibal Dan pulled a blade on me and carved me up a bit, or when Yorida the zoltan put a half-days charge straight through me. Both times, my masters dragged me to the station's Med-Bay to fix me up a bit. I loved it in there, the diagnosis virtual intelligence doesn't go easy on the anesthetics. And besides, it alleviated all the problems I got during the fight, and then some I had gotten just from my time in captivity. Of course, I wasn't allowed the linger long in the fuzzy, drug-induced warmth of the Med-Bay for long, but my captors provided me with the promised reward of extra rations for besting my foes.

Over time the combination of experience in the arena and extra food from the victories therein caused me to grow in a few ways: I gained more muscle than my peers, became much quieter than my peers, and stored away a few hand-to-hand fighting tricks to use on my peers, and maybe, someday, my captors. I was used by them to unload cargo and scrap, which helped me grow even stronger. The other slaves, both those from my home who knew me before captivity, while I remained in contact with them, and the newer slaves who didn't know me, learned to fear me for my prowess in the arena. Not that the slaves had much to say in the beginning, but I spoke very little and was replied to even less. Sometimes I feel a little bit lonely, being the slave that nobody speaks to, but I've never been part of any altercations, either in the holding areas at base station, or in the cargo-hold-turned-bunk-room on the slave ships.

Usually, the slave ships have about 8 bunks, although I was on a ship once that had 14, in rows along the cargo holds length, with scrap taking up the rest of the room that the bunks leave empty. The slave ships have additional cargo holds, to keep weapons and food away from us, but since we don't have any tools that can utilize the raw components of scrap, our slaver captors don't see any need to fill the other holds when the scrap can take up the rest of the room just fine. For slavers, they're generally courteous and kind, allowing us ample trips to the head (guarded and supervised, of course), and a lot of them have no qualms with talking and chatting with the slaves when there's downtime during a jump, or waiting for a potential client to consider a purchase. They've even taken me and some of their other slaves to see other areas of the ship like the engines, the weapons, or the helm. Some of the assorted slaves are taken back to quarters, depending on what the slaver is into and if the slaves agree. They might be involved in a life of crime, but the syndicate that all of the captains serve with is humane and do not allow rape or anything that isn't consensual. Still, some of the captains even were interested in slaves that one would not have deemed possible to see in that light. One particularly efficient human captainess herself asked the company of a rockman, who appeased her without a word. As far as I know, the interspecies relationships in space are not as friendly, which makes it all the stranger when these sort of interactions surface. There must be something about the slaver or the slave life that changes you.

I talk with the guards a lot. I've never been approached by a captain, or any crew, for that matter, being a younger man, and most of the captains and crews I've served under have been hetereosexual men. I do get to spend a lot of time, comparatively, outside of the hold. Some of the crew who aren't guards, engineers and technicians, have given me a look around their work stations and even a few tips on how to run a ship. I wish I had been to the helm, although I've never actually seen the helm of any of the ships I've been on. I know slaves have been taken up there, but never I. When I was younger I fantasized being a ship captain, voyaging amongst the stars. When I was aquired by the slavers, I got a little closer, in a strange, grotesque way, to that dream, but I still have yet to realize it fully.

I woke amidst another dream that I was a captain, of my own ship, to the normal reality that I was still a slave, and not on my own ship. On another slave run, hopefully to get myself sold off somehow. I looked around the hold at the prisoners I called roommates.

5 bunks, including mine, were full. No different from when I had fallen asleep. The two women, a human and a zoltan, were the first to go. Women usually are. The engi next to me was still in sleep mode, as it was when it set itself down on the bunk to my right. I was in the corner, on the right aisle. On the left, a mantis, human, and rockman occupied the bunks opposite us. The slug who was the eighth slave was the first to go after the women, I presume due to his telepathic abilities, but I'll never be sure.

I sat up and asked the guard who I knew was listening on the other side of the doors if I could be escorted to the head. Within ten seconds, the door slid open and I raised my hands above my head to leave the room. We had been aspace for only a few days, but even if I was close with these guards, we all still play by the rules of slave and slaver.

The head had all the facilities required for a full cleaning for most species, save maybe the tough mineral growths that rockmen develop sometimes and the thick mucous that slugs secrete. A sonospray shower and cleaning for the body, and a vibratizing once-over for my teeth left me feeling clean and ready for another day to be not sold, as my luck went. Maybe if I stayed long enough in their inventory, the slavers would just recruit me to their crew.

I doubt it, but it beats thinking about being jettisoned since I've never even been asked about.

Back in the bunk room, the guard had set a ration pack on my bunk for me. They knew that most slaves took in nutrients after they woke, and so they dropped cables for the energy-reliant species, or left rations for the species that ate. I wolfed down my rations, both the palatable solid section and the less-appealing liquid section. I could have started a second if it had been offered, but since it hadn't been, I left the packaging in the waste basket by the door and lay down.

Our bunks are all outfitted with entertainment suites, to keep slaves pacified, and I whispered to the VI in my headrest to start a program on FTL drive theory. I had heard it before, but I was interested by the science and personality of the narrator, so I listen to it again, from time to time. I settled in for another play-through.

About a third of the way through the program, the lights in the hold dimmed briefly and flashed, and the VI shut down and stopped. The unmistakable drone of the shields changed tones from the passive shields that are normally kept on at all times to prevent space debris from damaging the ship, to the higher pitched whine of active combat shields, designed to mitigate damage from ship-mounted weaponry.

And after a few moments, the shields song was punctuated by the unmistakable roar of weapons firing- and projectiles impacting the hull.

So we were in combat, again. This has happened before, and while I don't like them, I find myself rooting for my captors. A klaxxon sounding in the hallway called the guards away to battle stations, and we slaves were left in the hull to ponder our fates.

I sighed and let my thoughts wander. Another period of combat we would triumph from, and life would go on. Nothing to do, but to ride it out.

The exchange hadn't been going as normal. I could hear the ship taking more hits than she normally does. For a while, I heard the FTL drive spooling, getting ready to jump, but an impact silenced that quickly enough. They must have disabled our engines and killed the engineer assigned to them, because we weren't jumping, and by now the captain should have jumped out of the system to prevent losses. True, we wouldn't know what's waiting for us at the next beacon, but we know the ship that is currently wrecking us isn't going to stop. At least the next ship we meet might be friendly, if we could jump.

But it doesn't seem likely at this point.

The guards have long since left us in the hold, doors locked, with the threat that if we killed each other, the survivor would be blasted out the airlocks. We occasionally heard yelling and the sound of personal weapons, but the slaves in the hold couldn't react to the battle at all. I assume we've been boarded, but I don't know for sure. I've heard rumors of electronic warfare suites that could turn your own ship against you, and psychological devices that can drive a loyal crew feral. Whatever was going on, I just hoped the 'enemy' wouldn't destroy the ship before they checked for survivors. Assuming I survive the battle.

Time passes slowly, when you're waiting for that final impact before you die. I don't know how extensive the damage is on the rest of the ship, but the area I'm in hasn't been touched. Still, I wouldn't know if we were just holding on by a thread, or if we were certainly victorious, and just shooting the cripples. The only definite conclusion would be one of two endings: Silence that falls, but the ship remaining intact, or one last jarring detonation as a key structure someone along the bow of the ship gives out, and the ship ruptures violently, killing all of us if we're lucky, and letting us drift endlessly into space without oxygen if we're not.

One can hold one's breath for only so long, both while waiting to die, and while waiting for the verdict to be passed down. The initial shock and adrenaline rush that the beginning of the conflict sparked died quickly, and now each shot causes the heart to skip a beat, but I find myself wondering how long it's been and how I'm going to amuse myself if it goes on much longer. The other slaves are as I am, on our bunks, but very much awake in the dimmed lights. Even the engi next to me has re-activated and is monitoring the situation carefully. The mantis chitters softly when the battle intensifies, an evolutionary leftover that signifies the continuing presence of his hive-mentality. The other man and the rockman are silent.

We all felt the ship's momentum change as the pilot and engineer(while he was active, or alive) worked together to avoid incoming fire. Though there's planet below us to give us a reference point, we felt the relative speed we were traveling at increase and decrease violently. Sometimes the maneuvering was successful, because of the lack of an impact. Sometimes, it was followed or even stopped by one. Piloting, from what I've learned about it, is a bit of a chance game. You're trying to outsmart the other guy's targeting computers, which is a hit-or-miss business. Literally.

The beginning of the conflict had started so suddenly, and now, it was almost monotonous. We fired regularly, they returned the offer, and so it went, all the while to the crackle and snap of the shields straining to keep everything out of our little bubble of safe space.

And then, everything stopped. There was no jarring impact, no smiling guard. No fiery end.

Not immediately, anyway.

Our guns stopped, and a few final impacts sounded. One major one hit very near to us, maybe even on the hull that was our wall. I assume it was close, because I can hear the atmosphere hissing away. A hull breach!

I thought quickly. The doors hadn't been opened. We were going to be suffocated, or asphyxiated, or smothered, or whatever term the coroner is going to use on us! I turned my eyes around the hold to find any hope of survival.

The other slaves were still on their bunks. They heard the hissing too. They resigned to die. I wasn't going to let myself go so easily.

I turned my gaze to the walls. There was a vent just above shoulder level, and I got up to examine it more closely. There isn't much space in it, but it looks to continue, and I felt a faint air current, which means there's probably still air wherever it leads. I grabbed the nearest big piece of scrap off the floor, a pipe length about a foot and a half in diameter, and maybe 12 feet long. I rammed it into the grating over the vent twice before a satisfying ping signified the end of it's structural integrity. Had any guards been alive, they would have stopped me in an instant. But they were dead.

The air is getting thin. I'm beginning to feel light-headed. The hold isn't safe anymore. I thrust the pipe aside and boosted myself off the nearest bunk, into the vent.

My mind returned to me as I gulped down the precious air rushing past me. It smelled bad, like dust, and electrical smoke, but it was air nonetheless. I lay where I was, my feet still in the hold, breathing for a moment, before I began dragging myself forward on my elbows and knees. I pushed myself for a few feet before I had to stop and take another breather.

I listened to the sounds of the ship around me. The sigh of the artificial breeze around me, and a dull roar ahead of me. A fire, which would explain the wisps of smoke rushing past me as well as the greasy taste in the air. Still, I'll take burning to death over suffocating, and there's a possibility the fire is contained, or I can get out of it in time to maybe hail the ship that attacked us.

I pulled myself along again. My elbows and knees protested, but survival instincts kicked in and I kept pulling along the line. I rounded a corner, to the right, and then to the left, and from there I got a view of the vent to the next room. I paused again.

Another sound. A voluminous hiss, not like the fire or a hull breach. It was erratic too, changing in pitch slightly, and volume, as though the source was moving around in the room ahead. Curiosity jump started me again and I continued pushing.

As I neared the vent I realized I didn't have much of a plan of getting through the grating, but that problem solved itself. The area immediately around the vent was coated in ash and the vent itself was scorched. Testing a cautious tap to determine if it was still hot, I pressed one finger against it. Warm, uncomfortably so, but not hot. I rested for a moment and tried to look through the cracks in the grating, but the smoke was affecting my eyes so heavily that I could only make out blurs and dull shadows. I clawed out with my hands to see how much give the vent might have, but at the slightest pressure the grating fell forward and clattered onto the deck. I stretched my arms out into the room and pulled myself out so my head just cleared the vent.

Two figures in armored exo-suits stared at me. One was crouching over some debris and the other was holding a cannister of what looked like fire suppressant. Their suits were scarred by combat, but still quite functional and the wearers seemed to be plenty fit to take me as I was, wedged in a vent. The gleam of weapons strapped to the chest and waist of both figures aside, I wasn't really in a place to argue, being a slave. Very likely, these were members of a rival syndicate, come to increase their profit margin.

The crouching figure was an engi. It chittered to itself, exchanged a few words I didn't catch with it's man companion, and continued. The man looked at me, at the engi, and then back at me again. He set the fire extinguisher down and sauntered over to me. The blaze he had presumably just put out still hung in the air, and I began wheezing and coughing. Still, the air in this room was better than the vacuum of the last, no matter who these fellows in the grey and orange suits are.

"Put your arms out, and I'll pull your through." I did as commanded, even as I fought the black wisps of quenched flame. He gave me a smooth pull and I clattered onto the deck, and rolled over. He stood over me.

"Can't believe you survived, son. We figured you all would die when we accidentally breached the hull."

I wanted to reply but I hadn't gotten my lungs under control quite yet, so I just wheezed and nodded.

"You got a name?"

I swallowed a cough and rasped out "Bryon" but exerted myself too much and fell back into a fit.

"Well, you're a lucky man, Bryon. Thank whatever god you believe in, but everything else that was in this system before we jumped in is dead now. That makes you a free man." He extended a hand to pull me up off the deck.

I took it and rose, although I doubled over and breathed a raggedly, but managed to ask "Who are you folks?"

He pointed at the engi "That's Tomas. I'm Diedrick."

I pointed at his chest and the logo, or seal that was emblazoned on one of the armor plates there. "I mean, who are you working for? I don't think I've ever seen that uniform before." I managed to utter quickly and without a cough.

He looked down and then looked back up at me. "You've never seen a Federation soldier before?" He looked a little incredulous.

"No, where- where I'm from, we di-didn't have much conta-acht with spacers." I put my hand over my mouth and cleared my throat.

"Oh. Well, we used to be the legal government stemming from Terra, spread out into the stars. But a rebellion movement has caused significant turmoil and now the Federation is a shadow of what it used to be. The ship I'm on is on the run from the rebels with some significant intelligence that could possibly turn the tide, if we make it to the end."

"Sounds exciting. What'd you attack this ship for? If it's that vital, you should have just jumped away instead of hailing them."

"They hailed us. They demanded one of our crewmen. We declined. There's only five of us to operate the ship as it is, and plus, we're all Federation soldiers just trying to serve our government, we would never betray each other like that. So they fired on us when we refused, and we attacked back." He gestured at the ship around him, still smoking from the battle. "We disabled the weapons on this boat before we sent a team over to see if we could eliminate the slavers and free you folks. We didn't mean to pierce the hull and kill all- all but one of you."

"Oh. What happens now?"

"That depends. We can drop you off at the nearest station and let you try your hand in space. We can take you home, if it's in the direction we're going. Or-" He paused and looked me up and down for a moment before he continued. "Or you can sign on with the Federation and cast your lot in with us." He took a step back to beckon at the viewport to space outside, which showed the hull of the adjacent ship. The Federation ship.

"I'll side with you guys." He thrust out his hand and I took it, pumped once, and he snapped to a salute.

"Welcome to the Federation, private Bryon." I saluted him.

Once on the ship, I was given a uniform and shown the ship. We finished stripping the slaver vessel of useful scrap, and I was brought to the bridge to be formally sworn into the Federation Space Navy and Armed Forces. My voice read the words that scrolled down a wall in front of me before Captain Diedrick.

"I, Bryon Murphy, do solemnly swear upon my life as a human man to support the Federation Space Navy and Armed Forces to the best of my ability, both in war, and in peace. In glory, and in disgrace. In life, and in death. I pledge to carry out my duties as assigned with the courage required of Federation Soldier, knowing the lives of innocent beings rely on my dedication and strength. I will be a beacon of hope in dim space, and the scales of justice on the fields of war. I will not yield to the tempetings of hate and the ease of prejudice. All beings are equal to the Federation. And, above all, I will, if asked, give my life in the line of duty, for my comrades, for my command, and for the common being of the Federation."

The crew assembled on the bridge saluted me as I fell in line with them. Captain Diedrick simply stated, "Battle stations. Time to jump." We rushed to our places, mine being in the sensor suite to pick targets and monitor enemy activity, and awaited the jarring ring of the FTL drive engaging.

And my heart has never beat faster.