I’d never been up into space in my life. I just did cargo runs across the surface of my homeworld. It was a dusty old thing. It felt like a sand pit, pulling me down, down, down. Then there was the Race. Calling high speed racers from around the world shouted the vids. Now my cargo runner was clunky, old, and smelled of spices. And not the good ones. But I figured I’d try my luck anyway. As expected, the professional speeders crushed me. But there was a moment in the final lap where it looked like I might pull ahead with some fancy flying. It didn’t work in the end, but I guess it caught somebody’s attention.

When I got accepted into the Pilots Federation, I felt every nerve in my body light up like crazy. I ran outside and looked up into the sky, and I didn’t care that I couldn’t see a damn thing up there because it was midday. Because if it’s midday, that means the sun is out. And that sun is a star, a big ball of fire sitting in the sky, churning and burning and who knows what else it’s doing. And my entire view of everything changed in an instant. Because I knew that pretty soon, I could go there. Go anywhere. Suddenly my brain had to cope with immense numbers. 400 billion stars. 6,000 degrees Kelvin. 100,000 light years. Part of me will never get my head around those numbers. But the rest of me wants to try anyway. And so I waited for the transport, not getting a wink of sleep but feeling more awake than I had in my entire life. The bulky thing carried me away, and I felt a pang of regret as I saw the world I’ve spent my entire life on fade away. But then, as I saw that monster, that seemingly inescapable mass of rock and dust and metal and people fade away, I saw what was around it. The universe. And I was still only seeing a fraction of what’s out there. Then before I knew it (who knew supercruise was actually that fast?) I was at a training station. I put my feet down on the station floor, and I heard the pilot chuckle as I stumbled along in the artificial gravity. Training was a long, arduous process of missed mailslots and failing shields. The training ships were leagues ahead of my old junker back home, but they still felt like they were missing something. I told people as much, but I could never put my finger on what the problem was. Eventually I got better, and I managed to graduate. And then they shipped me off. After training in the heart of civilization, the backwater system of LHS 3447 felt almost like an insult. But then I saw her. A Sidewinder. The other Feds laughed as my eyes lit up at the sight of the ship. I strapped into the cockpit, and the ship came alive at my fingertips. It’s what was missing. It hummed, it whirred, the ship spoke to me, like no cargo runner or training ship could. And I’m not talking about Verity. I did my pre-flight check, finding all the buttons and displays and anything else I might need. With my stomach fluttering, I pressed that button. LAUNCH. I lurched forward as my ship did the same, moving along the landing pad. It rose up and I saw the stars again, those pinpricks of light against the darkness, that vast darkness packed with planets, and stations, and ships, and who knows how many other incredible things.

The galaxy is a big place. So let’s get started.

--CMDR SWORDSRUS