Tales from the Pandoran Age

...He thought on a News channel and information was flooding his mind in a confusing maelstrom of data. There had been a war! Crowds were roaring in plazas below him-cheering him as a brilliant tactician. He felt a sudden swell of pride and the desire to wave (his hand found itself raised in a victory signal to the crowd and he beamed with a flush of joy at the victory he still didn’t quite comprehend).

"He's here." the sheriff said bluntly.
Though separated from the hive mind for the sake of independent action, Bandor was able to utilize much of CC Cyborg faculties to his advantage. Information streams could be gotten when needed. He could see this sheriff had taken a determinedly long voyage pursuing his quarry. He also had a list of the man's fighting equipment. It appeared the sheriff had enhanced standard issue with some private upgrades. That was disconcerting.
This one's relishing this, Bandor thought uncomfortably. He ran data streams scanning base perimeter.
"I sense nothing. What makes you so certain?"
"I can feel him. He's here." Beneath the grey skin-suit, the sheriff’s head cocked to one side. "Have you read his files?"
"Some." Bandor lied. "But I don't see what biographical information on a loser con can matter. He'll be hydroponics fodder very shortly." Bandor said acidly.
"Perhaps." the sheriff adjusted his weapon.
Bandor grew more fretful by the minute with this sheriff’s presence on his base. The man was obsessed with his desire for Leavel’s throat. Like he was hunting tigers on Rigel Four.
Harry's in on this! I know it! Bandor felt his control in the scheme of things slipping away. First Harry, now this monster.
"You should really read your files, Mr. Bandor"...

When I rounded the last of the shattered unformed webs of nebula and neutron star derelicts that skirted the darkness at the edge of the galaxy, I came up upon the big Hercules cluster. I could see the final void of intergalactic space just past the Echo City mines and the alloy camps of Phlegra station. Into that labyrinth of red and black smelters and dark skeletal forms looming against
the void I shot. The casts then were nearly silent but for a maddening background of static and wailing signals like the ghosts of the Predecessors warning doom.
Empty casts, I knew what that would mean.
Corpses and busted shields, empty silver starships drifting in the charcoal wastes, in the cold and radiation.

It was a long nasty haul across the void...
The resurrected ship was ancient, designed before the Arcturian wars. Most of Vince's flight training didn't apply. He figured things out by trial and error while moving through Zero Space, fine tuning a MERGE piloting helmet as he went. There were the CC corpses he'd dispatched-they'd have been able to explain everything, but he couldn’t have risked even a questioning before he killed them.
In a fury he'd murdered them all, slashing riotously with his fathers mining lasers, spilling guts and entrails mixed with plastics and software from another era. Another era when they'd committed genocide against the ancestors of his people.
He careened alone through the darkness. Just him, the ship, and space that matched geologic time with an uncompromising perfection. He learned its ways, he waited.
Vince had his ship, and when the bitter irony wore off his twisted mad laughter, he found quiet sanity again. There were the hyper casts; he listened to the garble of a hundred civilizations. The inane claptrap of lonely freighter pilots, virtreal stations that offered to fry your brains with ugly pleasures, and occasionally a fresh cast off some glistening new Post light months away.
He pieced odds and ends of news together.
Seemed the king of the Pleiades was at war, and the Pleiades were his destination. A good place to show up with a warhorse star frigate in mint condition. So, he would begin his career as a mercenary.

Even the void had an end.

Tales From the Pandoran Age:

 The Pandoran War

 Anticipated release Halloween, 2010