Static cracked between the two big sort of metal pole things with a bauble on top, sort of like a butterfly net for lightning, I think. Drunk on hubris, the lone scientist cackled into the gloaming dark of the lab, his throat tearing with mad delight. The monster arose from the table, a gruesome palimpsest of other people’s parts; impossible life coursing through dead flesh, courtesy of… lightning, probably. And maybe some green stuff in a test tube.

This starship was too old to make a five light year jump and the crew knew it. The asteroid-pocked hull groaned under the mounting energy charge building in the Quantum Coil Zapper Mechanism (QCZM). Five enemy barges closed in around the ancient starship, each a finger on the finely gloved hand of the galactic confederation. A hand that was closing around their throats. They had to make the jump—now. Luckily, the QCZM poked a little hole in the fascia of spacetime, most likely using some kind of laser, and the starship matter-phased into galaxy 3-B-io5 just in the nick of time.

It was the invention of the ages. A thousand, thousand wars, a hundred million lives lost; poems gone unwritten, chaste kisses never shared, gardens left untended, all to wrest control of the energy source of the galaxy from one hand to another. And now, this: a clean, perpetually renewing source of free power, and an end to the small-minded asset snatching of nations that had robbed the galaxy of dignity and peace for millennia. I called it The Black Hole Basket. It was like that wishing well bucket thing where whatever you put into it, double comes out. You know, so if you put one AA battery in then you get two AA batteries out, which is ideal really since most things need at least two AA batteries and you always have that lone spare one rattling around in your cutlery drawer don’t you.

The planet was barren. What life could thrive here? Nothing we’d want to meet, that’s for sure. Anything evolving in the roiling flatulence of a methane giant like Colonica Centuri, inured to the formaldehyde rains and massive ion storms… we shuddered to think of it. Barren, the report had said, 98% chance. I clung to that number as I led my Surface Surveillance team from the ship onto the crusted scab of the planet’s surface. But look! What was that? An alien! And like I said, because of evolving in a predominantly methane and formaldehyde environment riddled with supercharged ions, it was really… weird. So we left and went home.

Blinking lights flashed up at Niëp from the dashboard in a dazzling array. An engineering internship on the lunarfarm fleet had been their dream for more moonyears than they could count. And now here they were: steel appendage covers clipped securely on, multitools installed, and literally no idea what any of these buttons did. Definitely Niëp, the protagonist, not me, the author—I’ve personally seen loads of buttons and totally know all about them. Anyway, Niëp had never seen so many buttons. The lunarfarm fleet was the living, trading, and dying place for 170,000 sapients, all in need of differing oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and blooptonium concentrations in their respective living quarters, so, of course there would be a lot of buttons to control all that. All little round plastic blisters equidistantly spaced over a ship’s dashboard the size of an Earth country, and all flashing. But some of them were green, so that must be good, right? Niëp used the multitool to call their careers councilor to discuss a placement swap. For plot reasons. No other reason.

The hull of the craft needed repairing, and it needed repairing now. Everything was out to get you in the vacuum of space, and asteroid belts were no joke. The main decompression air lock had been almost obliterated when the Salazar-90 passed through the Oort Cloud, and Jelena was on shift with the exo crew to sort things out before the entire craft lost integrity. Space walking had never been her thing, it made her squeamish and canned air always tasted metallic inside the suits. But, this is what her crew needed. This was her job. Final checks made, she hit the evac button and felt the familiar tug of gravity evaporating as she exited the ship in nothing but her suit. The endless mouth of space swallowed her tiny body; it was like stepping into the pupil of a God, she thought. Jelena reached for her favourite high tech tool to get the hull repaired; a really important spanner. It didn’t just have a little crab claw shaped bit at one end, it had it on both. It was so good at repairing spaceships.