[Location: Central GRA]
The sun had slowly risen from the horizon, its warm rays gently hitting whatever obstructed its path.
Arwan had just escaped from his home using his usual path. He wasn't wearing a hoodie like he used to. He wore an engineer's work suit with its sleeves rolled up. Bandages completely covered his forearms.
The wind blew his white hair as he stood on a tall building with a travel bag placed on the floor, right beside his leg and a backpack made of some kind of metal in his hand.
He brought his wrist up to check the time.
'Let's do this.'
He wore the backpack and brought out goggles and a facemask from his travel bag and put them on. He lifted the bag and pressed a button on the strap of the backpack.
At the bottom of the backpack, two small thrusters emerged and prepared to ignite. Arwan jumped down the building, and the thrusters' ignition launched him forward.
He had left his hover bike in Rimora yesterday and decided to use a jetpack, mainly to escape easily in case Femi was really a good liar and actor whose main aim was to lower Arwan's guard. But that was very unlikely.
He had already done a thorough background check with the connections he had as soon as he got home yesterday.
Femi's background was quite normal. Femi had been taken to an adoption center at the age of five, was adopted at the age of seven by a former soldier of Earth, and was home-schooled. He had his first interplanetary travel the day after he turned 18 with the purpose of becoming a Galactic Wanderer.
The only odd thing was the fact that he didn't use his adopter's surname and used a surname that didn't seem to be linked to anyone in the whole galaxy. Even information about his birth parents and his life before he was five years old was deemed unavailable.
"Femi Noma..."
Arwan was sure his father didn't raise Femi. He had ways to know if his father was raising a secret spy or whatnot.
The journey from the GRA, which was at the center of the city, to the Junkyard at the edge of the city on a hover bike took about 25 minutes. But using a jetpack was faster, and excluding dodging skyscrapers which were now common, the journey was straightforward, and Arwan had already arrived at the warehouse eight minutes after he took off.
By the time Arwan got to the warehouse, Femi was already sitting beside the doors. Unlike Arwan, he didn't have a card to open the door, and the fence of the whole junkyard was very sturdy and tall, leaving Femi with no way of entry.
"Oiiii," the sound of Arwan's thrusters was enough to tell Femi that he had arrived.
"Hoho.... Can I ride that?" Femi pointed at the jetpack.
"We don't have time for that. We leave as soon as possible."
"For someone who didn't think of escaping yesterday, you're quite in a hurry," Femi chuckled.
"I always had thoughts of escaping, but like I said, I can't operate Rimora alone. You're an opportunity I saw and grabbed," Arwan retorted immediately.
"Are all of those foods?" Changing the topic, Arwan pointed at a metallic box beside Femi's leg.
"Yes, lots of 'em," Femi confirmed with his chest pumped.
"I see… Carry your things, let's go inside."
They headed straight to the hangar where Rimora was.
Unlike yesterday, Rimora was outside the hangar. She was currently standing on four support legs that extended from underneath her body.
"It must have taken you a while to carry all the piles here. Ehhh, are you a sleeper build type of person? Just acting all weak and all to deceive," Femi teased.
"Tch, I deeply wish..." Arwan pointed at a human-shaped vehicle around the corner. "There are lots of mechas that can help with this kind of stuff nowadays."
Arwan walked underneath Rimora and pressed some buttons on his wristbands. A ramp came down from the ship, opening a path that led into Rimora.
"Let's go."
The first room they walked into was very big.
"This is the cargo bay."
The cargo bay was the main storage of the ship. It was used to hold mechas and vehicles. Arwan's hover bike and a similar bike were currently parked in the cargo bay. The cargo bay could also be used to store non-weapons equipment and non-food-related stuff like refined creature materials, mined Tether stones, etcetera.
The cargo had two stairs that both led to a double door. Under that double door and in between the stairs was another double door.
The upper door led to the upper deck, which had an arc-shaped corridor.
Walking down the corridor, on the left side, there were two doors, one after another, the engineering room and the research room. While on the right, there were another two doors placed directly opposite the ones on the left. The doors on the right led to the armory room and the training room.
At the end of the corridor was the door to the spacecraft's bridge, and right before the door, on both sides of the corridor, were a total of eight escape pods.
The lower door led to the lower deck, which also had an arc-shaped corridor. On the left were four doors, each being the crew quarters. On the right, there were two doors, one for the kitchen and the other for the mess room.
At the end of the corridor was an elevator that led straight to the bridge.
Both corridors were wide enough for three people to walk side by side.
The whole ship had a color theme of white with shades of blue. Most of the lights were also blue. It made one wonder: How much did Arwan like white and blue?
Arwan led Femi to the crew quarters while explaining the layout of the ship and the place he shouldn't enter to play. That was the main engine room. The door to the main engine room was in the cargo, and only Arwan, who was the ship's engineer, could go there.
About to enter their quarters to offload their belongings, Arwan called Femi back.
"This is your uniform." Arwan threw a bag to Femi. "Use me well." Arwan said with a grin.
Femi caught the bag and sent a grin back at Arwan.
'I guess he considered joining the crew. That's a success then!' Femi thought. Everyone knew the galaxy was dangerous. The dangers that came with solo travels were high, which was why most people stuck to creating groups.
But Femi's reason for having Arwan as a crewmate was different. When he said he wanted to use Arwan as a tool, he meant every bit of that.
Femi grinned, "You don't have to tell me twice."
"See you at the bridge," Arwan said as he went into his quarters.
Shortly after settling his things, Femi met Arwan at the bridge.
"This uniform is not so comfortable," Femi expressed with a sore look as he walked out of the elevator.
Seating on the pilot's chair, Arwan replied:
"You'll get used to it. It's important to wear it when in a spacecraft. It comes with protective gear and all. The shoe, for example, helps you move around in zero gravity areas, and it comes with a mask that helps you breathe in space. It has other features, but you get the gist," "To be honest, it looks great on you."
The uniform perfectly fitted Femi's body. He wore a white bodysuit that came with a hood. The bodysuit was completely plain white; the boots were black, though. The suit was designed with little hidden wires here and there.
Femi also had a mask designed with white and blue colors attached to his thighs.
Similarly, Arwan wore the same bodysuit, but he wore an engineer's work suit on top of his bodysuit. He had the sleeves of the work suit rolled up, and it wasn't completely buttoned up. He had his mask with the same color as Femi's but with a different design attached to his thighs too.
"You really like white and blue, huh?" Femi couldn't help but ask.
"Is there a problem with that? I need you to sit in that chair; you'll be handling monitoring the coordinates and navigation." Being a little embarrassed, he changed the topic immediately.
The bridge was quite spacious. There was a long dashboard mounted under the viewport screens. The dashboard had different buttons, holographic screens, and other relevant panels.
In front of the dashboard were five chairs. Arwan was sitting in the chair that was in the middle of the five chairs; it was the chair in front of the steering wheel and steering-related panels.
The chair Arwan told Femi to sit in was the first chair to his left, the panel in front of the said chair related to coordinates and maps.
"I want that chair. The captain's chair. It's not like I understand how to work with the panels anyway. Still, it looks cool!"
The captain's panel was a big chair mounted in the middle of the bridge. It had a small dashboard surrounding it too.
"Fine!" Arwan grunted. He then realized that Femi didn't actually have knowledge of operating the ship, and he didn't seem to want to know how.
Arwan stood from his seat and walked towards the coordination panel. After pressing different inputs, a holographic screen popped up. He immediately touched the screen and shifted it to be closer to the steering panels where he sat.
He had told Femi he couldn't operate the ship alone, but that was a lie. He could manage steering and navigation alone to at least be able to leave the planet, but he didn't have the guts to do so.
Although he had always wanted to leave his so-called hellish cage—which was Mars—he never brought himself to leave, even after gaining enough resources and developing secret connections to leave easily.
But now, with the help of Femi and his determination to leave the planet, he was a few steps from leaving that cage.
Because of his newly gained "freedom," his trust for Femi at that moment had subconsciously broken the scale. Deep in his heart, he saw Femi as a savior.
Without Femi, he was sure he would never have been motivated to even wear the bodysuit, much less steer an actual spacecraft. He also wanted to be someone free, someone who could explore the various technologies the galaxy had to offer. That freedom was now at the tip of his fingers.
"Take off!!" Femi, who was sitting in the captain's chair, yelled, snapping Arwan out of his thoughts of freedom.
"Hope you're not forgetting anything because we're not coming back anytime soon," Arwan said with a voice filled with arrogance.
Arwan's lips curled as he started operating the ship. Rimora started hovering above the height of a three-floor building. The air from the ship blew the stacked junk piles around the junkyard.
"Fuck you later, Father!"
After reaching a height that was very distant from the ground, the ship shot upwards, eventually breaking out of Mars' atmosphere.