She knew something was wrong before the alarms went off.

The jump began like all the thousands of others. She targeted the next system, engaged the drive, and opened a corridor into Witch-space, launching her ship trillions of kilometers through the void toward the distant stars. Then something in the vibration of the hull changed, and she knew she was fucked. Her ship screamed like a wounded animal, the drive passing through some resonance frequency that made the structure itself cry out in pain, and then her ship stopped and she didn't and her consciousness blinked out.

Everything hurt.

She awoke coughing, her body sucking in air as her ribs popped back into place and her organs crawled up off her spine. Her ship was still, or at least it wasn't accelerating, and blood drifted in tiny pearls around her head, congealing into long strands. Pain made the world too hazy and too sharp both, and a cascade of alarms was sounding somewhere far away.

She reached for the first aid kit with blood-slicked fingers, fumbling with the latch until it opened and she could draw out a slim injector. She jammed it into the port in her suit's wrist, the bright pain that blossomed there only a single note among a symphony.

The pain receded and her mind sharpened, the analgesic and amphetamines singing in her veins, and the rest of her world came crashing in. She pushed herself out of the pilot's seat, almost launching herself into the canopy. She had work to do.

She couldn't pick out the loss of atmosphere alarm among the discord, which meant the hull integrity warning that was sounding wasn't critical. She floated over to the systems panel and silenced it. Her reactor had vented its core of superheated hydrogen plasma somewhere in the space between stars, but it didn't seem to be breached or overloading - she put it into safe shutdown. One by one, she paged through status reports, diagnosing what she could, until she felt a little more in control and the warnings had died down. As she shut off the last warning, she heard a faint noise from her sleeping quarters. A faint, pitiful meow.

"Oh, shit."

She launched herself down the hall toward her quarters, slamming into the bulkhead as she tried to slow her momentum. A new spike of pain lanced through her shoulder, but she ignored it, hammering on the access panel to open the door. "No, no, no, no," she muttered. "Oh, fuck no." The door cycled open and she floated through.

Her quarters were a wreck. The cupboard hung open, and bent steel cups and plates drifted aimlessly in the null gravity, surrounded by the soil and roots of half a dozen plants she'd been growing to supplement the air purifiers. She was coming into the room opposite the usual relative orientation she adhered to, and she suffered a wave of nausea as her brain tried to figure out up and down without any gravity to orient it. She closed her eyes and swallowed the bile that bit at the back of her throat. That was when she heard it again - a small, pathetic mewling.

Mercifully, the catlike thing that had been traveling with her didn't look badly hurt. He was tangled with her bedspread in a corner, his claws sunk into the antispalling fabric that covered the walls. One of his back legs was swollen and twisted at a terrible angle, and he yowled again as she watched him.

She pushed herself up toward him - or was it down? - and steadied herself on the wall, tears sheeting over her eyes and blinding her. She offered the cat her hand, and he licked some of the blood off her fingers.

"Okay," she said. "Lets get you to the autodoc.

So far, so smoothly. I'm about 20k LY into this haul, traveling the outer edge of the galactic rim counterclockwise to the normal journey. As jaded as I am, I've seen some incredible things - crystals hanging in the void, built by microorganisms that can survive in the vacuum of space; glittering swathes of dust kicked up by my buggy and catching the light of three suns; the vast flow of light of the galaxy bent and distorted by the gravity of a black hole. I have to stop and fabricate new parts for the FSD every few thousand years I travel - the price of using a neutron highway. But the distances I'm traveling it's almost required.

My day has a comfortable routine now. I unstrap from my bed, print some food for Cat-Thing and myself, check on hydroponics and the fish tank, harvest the vat-grown meat if it's ready. I do my high-g exercises so my muscles don't atrophy and play with Cat-Thing so his don't either. It's pretty fun watching him chase around his little toy in zero-g. He's good at it - that tail of his is really good at turning him in midair. It won't change his vector, but it lets him rotate his position really quickly, which is cool.

Then I run the essential systems checks - air filters and recycling, water systems, fuel lines, integrity checks, cleaning if it needs doing. Sometimes I listen to history books, sometimes music. Sometimes I just listen to the ship and the reactor. It's peaceful out here, that's for sure. No need to worry about pirates or advertisements or running into a barge blaring the fucking Wedding March on all open frequencies.

After the maintenance is done I make myself some lunch with whatever I harvested from hydroponics and hop into the pilot's seat. I'm not beholden to anyone, not forced to fight or fly or die, not chained to market values. I'm free. I'm finally, finally free.

The Caelifera is as ready as I can make her. The frame shift drive and power plant took the longest - Qwent and Farseer do good work. The corporate wonk warmed up to me after a little coaxing - that was mostly Josie, I think. Qwent was all snobbish with them at first, and then Josie started talking about their plans to improve the laser-induced fusion reaction catalyzer and electromagnetic containment systems and Qwent was smitten. He even offered them an apprenticeship, fully furnished apartment and all. Josie accepted immediately. They made some calls back to Thompson and got the paperwork all squared up, so they'll be there for the next two years. It means they won't be coming out Beagle Point with me. Qwent is a better opportunity than being stuck on a ship with me for years. It's better this way, and at least they won't be lonely.

Felicity helped me with the rest of the modifications. Full of mystic bullshit she may be, the woman knows what she's doing. She tuned up my sensors, scanners, thrusters, everything. the best work she did was on the drive, though. She nearly doubled my range. It could shave months off the trip.

The biggest change from my last voyage was the cargo bay. It took a couple months, but we turned most of it into a fully functional hydroponics bay. There's a rack where I can grow some decent meat, and even a little self-contained fish tank with some salmon swimming around. It played hell with my water estimates, but if worst comes to worst I should be able to find some ice pure enough that I can melt it down and add it to the recycling systems. I spent some cash on a fabricator that can print simple drones from the materials I pick up off planets, and I'm confident I can patch anything the auto-maintenance kit can't. At this point I could take most of the Callie apart piece by piece and put her back together, and I've got the blueprints for the rest of it. The auto-doc and pharmaceutical printer have enough stock for a decade, and they're programmed to handle both me and Cat-Thing.

So, everything's ready, looks like. I've said my farewells. It's time to head out into the black.

The center of operations of the most powerful corporation in human civilization is a rat hive.

Oh, it looks shiny. It's clean and sleek and controlled. But underneath that it's as vicious as a trapped animal, as uncaring and destructive as a solar flare. It reminds me of where I grew up, in a lot of ways. All the cutthroat politics would be right at home in the Empire.

Josie loves it. I don't think they see what I see. They came with me to meet this Qwent fella, and we spent a few days on Patterson Enterprise eating gourmet food, experiencing life as the elite of the galaxy might. It was alright. Josie has a talent for finding the best places on a station - the best restaurants, the best lounges and hookah bars, the hotels where they don't treat you like dirt. I bought them some new clothes that looked ridiculous in the catalog but that look really nice on them. Something about the way they carry themselves.

I hate the Bubble. There's so many people here, all of them chattering about some fucking celebrity or fad. Did I hear about the Lakon Spaceways crash? How about the quarantine in Arcturus? Did I see what Elvi Okoye wore to the Laconian State Ball? No, no, and why the fuck would I care? All the chatter and noise makes me cranky. It's too loud, damn it.

Somehow it doesn't matter so much when it's Josie. They can prattle on and on about Golgo and microbrews and Novo Noir cinematographic techniques and I could listen to them all day. Working elbows-deep in the Callie's hold, balancing soil microbe levels and listening to them lecture me on Canonn politics and water pH levels for the fish tank I'm going to install is as close to heaven as I can get. They still won't join me, though. I guess I can't blame them - three year minimum round trip's a big commitment, especially when your only company's a misanthropic veteran and a weird fluffy cat thing. It's not like there's an asteroid station I can drop them off at. Still, they're one of the only people I give a damn about anymore. It's hard to think about leaving them, but I'm not the type to settle down.

Still, it was good to be back at Thompson Dock. It's nice to have something to come back to...someone. And I missed that noodle place on Level 6. I might have to buy a pallet of their special recipe.

Elvira's coffee was more pleasant than she was. She can make the drive modifications I'll need for the trip out to Beagle Point, but she needs materials I don't have. Felicity's a better bet for those, I'd guess, and I know her better. It's been at least a year since I've seen her, and I half miss the old bitch and her mystic pretensions.

At least Elvira's mechanics fixed the Callie without a fuss. Their team lead saw me slam my ship into the surface of Kuhn 5 right next to the landing pad hard enough to crack my cargo hatch, and laughed so hard she gave me a discount and a pack of smokes. She even showed me the footage. I have to admit it was pretty funny. It's been so long since I've landed on a planet that I forgot how gravity works. Luckily my cat-thing wasn't hurt. He's not happy with me, though. I have to be careful, remember that I'm not the only one on this ship anymore. It made me reconsider taking him out to Beagle Point. If he gets hurt thousands of light-years from a vet he's fucked. Maybe I'll leave him with Josie, or ask them if there's an auto-doc for cat-things.

I miss Josie.

I started running into the wrecks about a hundred light-years outside of Kuhn. Shattered ceramic and twisted titanium, drifting in kilometer-wide fields of choking debris. Creepy as hell, and with any clues as to their demise already racing away, ready to arrive a hundred years too late for anyone to help them. I keep hoping I'll find survivors, but if I'm there it's too late for survivors.

Plans for the cargo hold are going well, but I want Josie to take a look at them once I get back to Thompson Dock. I've been learning what I can about hydroponics and vat-grown meats, but I'm not an expert, and with the lockdown at Sadr Logistics I didn't have much access to the station's cache. Nothing that could be stolen by radicals and turned against the Initiative that rules there. It was all I could do to convince them to repair my damn ship. Hopefully Kuhn will have more hospitable shipyards. And hopefully I won't get blown up by overidealistic crusaders before I get there.

My old Imperial captain would call this cowardice. I am planning on running away from this weird alien bullshit until I run out of stars, and turning the Caelifera into a truly self-sustaining craft, so that if society's been absorbed into some Thargoid collective and my few friends have been turned into starship fuel by the time I get back I can die in comfort, with fresh vegetables that I grew myself. Truth is I just want to look out at the void, and see if the answer drives me mad. Might be I am a coward, and Captain Klencorey was onto something. But she was a bitch, and I'm disinclined to agree with anything she might say.

Gotta say, this weird cat thing I picked up out in Barnard's Loop is growing on me. The gravity on the station there made him long and lanky, but he reminds me of the housecats the Congressman had at his estate on Achenar. Whatever he is, he's big, orange, fluffy, and purrs like a chaingun, and he seems to like me. Despite how much fur he has he doesn't seem to shed that much. Hopefully the air recyclers can handle the load. Don't want to wake up choking on carbon dioxide because of a furball.