Rylan Aylward currently felt like the unluckiest man in the entirety of the Coalition of Guilds. Why? Because he was presently flying his vessel, the Sarthach as he lovingly called it, away from very bloodthirsty mercenaries.
Why were very angry bloodthirsty mercs chasing down the poor sop? Well, some bumblefucks thought it would be a great idea to attempt a coup d'etat against the current mercenary guild master and otherly botched it.
Of course, Rylan hadn't joined in on it, but since he didn't assist in the Guild Masters defense he was being hunted like he was a part of the coup. The reason for this? This is to ensure that only the loyal, without question, remain in the guild.
In response to this Rylan Aylwards' first response was to? Get the hell out of there obviously. However, that's not as easy as it sounds. Rylan griped his stellarcrafts stick controls and diagonally angled himself to avoid a kinetic shot from one of the pursuing mercenaries.
"You missed you asshole!" Rylan shouted joyfully as the kinetic round barely skimmed past the underbelly of the Sarthach; however, he noticed that the Mercs projectile marred his ship's pristine dark grey paint job and yelled in anger "Oh now we're going to play!"
Rylan then did something the three mercs gunning after him didn't anticipate. He blipped into a black crystal, a jagged shard that shimmered with an eerie purple luminescence. They weren't exactly sure what it was, but in an instant, their prey vanished into it.
The mercenary who had scratched the Sarthaches paint job spoke to his compatriots through their comms "I'm not picking up the bastard on my radar, what about you two?"
All the man got was negatives from the other two mercs, leading him to sigh deeply. "Sweep the area we can't let a rouge merc get away, they're too dangerous. I've been wanting to get rid of them for a while, glad the Guildmaster finally agrees."
As soon as the merc said that his ship exploded out of nowhere, to the horror and dismay of his two allies Rylan had reappeared behind them in their radar blindspots and manually targeted the now-dead merc's ship. "Haha, you bastard that's what you get for harming my poor Sarthach!" The man exclaimed joyfully.
The other two mercs struck themselves from their stupors and with adrenaline pulsing through their veins they started blasting kinetic rounds at the celebrating fool, or so they thought he was.
Their shots were fired too close for him to maneuver out of and they felt confident that the damned idiot was about to kick the casket. "Die you curr!" one of the two remaining mercs yelled through comms in bloodlust and excitement.
Rylan's grin only grew wider as he didn't even attempt to dodge the devasting sluggers that would no doubt tear through his precious ship like a knife through butter.
When the kinetic round was right about to blast his shit to the next galaxy over, two more black jagged crystals pulsing with menacing energy appeared and swallowed them whole.
"Tic and Tak and fuck that!" Rylan joked as again, right in the merc's sensors blindspots, another set of two crystals appeared and regurgitated their attacks right back at them in point-blank range. Making the annoying taunt of their killer the last thing they ever got to hear.
Rylan then let out a sigh of relief as his skin paled and he threw up, luckily his flight helmet handled his bile easily enough, having inbuilt features to instantly cleanse all of it without any getting on Aylward's face.
Using the powers he just did, which are commonly referred to as Vortexes amongst the CoG's population, puts a heavy strain on his mind and heart. This also killed his adrenaline high making him think straight.
"No time to sit and wait, the Mercenary Guild will notice them missing in less than a minute." He said to himself as he inputted the coordinates for a certain system in his ship's command console. "Let's just hope this damned thing doesn't crash into something."
The Sarthach, like any other small to medium-large vessels, had a Slingdriver which is a kinetic-based technology that as their name suggests uses a gravitational pull to shoot their ships like slingshots at light speeds; however, they have nothing like forcefields or gravitational repulsion fields like larger vessels and gravitational transport rings do.
Meaning he could crash into something and die without even realizing that he had. While highly dangerous it is the only type of FTL a rouge mercenary with only a few years on the job could afford or even exists for vessels big enough to perform roles in fleets.
The technology to downsize the massive gravitational repulsion fields for smaller ships or otherwise simply does not exist.
Rylan took off his flight helm and breathed in the fresh filtered air from the Sarthaces' inbuilt life support system, as he stood up and stretched. "Well, that was eventful." He spoke to himself again, a bad habit he picked up a couple of years back.
He then walked out of the cockpit of his ship and into the main area which was surprisingly comfortable in appearance.
There was a nice red velvet couch stuffed into one corner, A TV mounted on a wall next to it, and even a kitchen area existed to the back half of the room. In the direct center was what looked to be a table with some chairs surrounding it.
Rylan walked to the table and pressed a few buttons on a keypad embedded into its plaster surface before a three-dimensional projection had appeared before him of a certain planet.
The table was not in fact what it seemed but instead a T.D.P.A pr Three-Dimensional Projection Array. Using multiple different methods beyond Rylan's basic knowledge of the tech it manipulated light particles to produce a 3d image of whatever was stored in its database or projected through it by cameras built into the TDPA.
The world Aylward was looking at was his homeworld, Silopth. Not only was it his homeworld but also the homeworld of the Mercenary Guild meaning there was no chance in hell he could go back there even if he wanted to. He scratched his head frustrated at the thought as he pressed more buttons on the TDPA's keypad.
While he didn't want to go back to his homeworld, Rylan was a free spirit, and he was never happy to be bared out of any location. Which may or may not have gotten him into some trouble when he was much younger after slipping into some adult places he was not meant to be in.
After a few minutes of browsing the mountainous and desert planets' projections, he found what he was looking for and pressed the call function on the TDPA keypad. After it rang with his favorite idol group's song from a few years ago, he suddenly remembered why he never used the function anymore.
He would change it if he could but the last time he had company over and they called him he near damn broke the thing from embarrassment to shut it off.
Which disabled the function to alter his ringtone and he had no idea how to fix it, so he normally just uses his phone, but phones can't make a call when you're flying at light speed in the middle of space with no cell service.
Soon the embarrassing music blaring from his TDPA halted and a new 3D light projection in the form of a human male took the place of Silopth. The man was towering 6'2 (187cm) tall with murky brown hair, like Rylan had, and Hazel eyes.
The man had a light tan and was fit but not to the point of being bulky with an annoyed look in his eyes at the man who had called him. "Rylan Aylward." he sneered in anger saying Rylan's full name like a parent about to scold their errant child. "Do you know how much trouble you've caused you idiot?"
Rylan simply smiled and waved "Nice to see you too bro."
The man in the projection just let out a frustrated sigh before talking to Rylan in a stern voice. "So you didn't help the Guild Master defend himself from the coup, then destroyed three mercenary ships, killed the mercs on board in the process, and stole the ship you're currently in? Isn't that thing still on loan?"
Rylan simply whistled innocently at the last part he said about the Sarthach. "Well yeah, I gotta lay low huh Cler?"
The man, Cler, yelled at Rylan like he was a parent who had gotten a bad grade report. "You better you dumbass! The Mercenaries aren't going to stop hunting the rouges throughout all of core Coalition space for at the very least a year.
I told you that you should have joined a safer guild like the merchants, but no my little brother decided it was a great idea to make his family worry about him! Damned adrenaline junkie."
Rylan didn't respond to his brother's scolding and just nodded. He knew Cler was right, but what was he to do about it?
Rylan needed a buzz and killing pirates and criminals as a merc was the best way to get it, even if it got him into some messy waters. Rylan sighed before asking his elder brother a question.
"So anywhere in mind I can hide out in? I may go out to the frontiers to deal with pirates and other scum but I'm not too well versed in it honestly. I usually just go to wherever the missions I take are through the Sarthaches navigation systems."
Cler Aylward face palmed, clearly exhausted with his brothers' tendencies to not think ahead. "You can't go to Aigun since you are an Ex-Merc, that place is filled with the worst scum in the galaxy and will gun you down even if they didn't know you were pretty much the equivalent of a space cop bounty hunter. The only other place I can think of that is even slightly safe for you is Lausgaiegüse."
Rylan looked blankly at Cler for a second where he asked inquisitively. "The hell is that?"
Cler gave his brother another stern and frustrated look. "Lausgaiegüse was the first Ecumenopolis ever constructed by the CoG; however, after a bunch of pirates conquered it and then a slave rebellion took place it's been out of the hands of the Guilds for one hundred and forty years.
It's run by a bunch of crime organizations with some loose sense of a moral code and unspoken laws. Perfect for an errant idiot to find some work off the radar of the guilds, if you can survive the rampant gang violence that is."
Rylan nodded his head in agreement with his brother "Sounds like it, might be fun even."
"Not as fun as you think. Your life will be constantly, more so than usual, in danger. Not just because of gang wars but if you slip on their customs and laws you're going to be facing some horrific retaliation.
They don't have prison there but they certainly have torture rooms and they do every single kind imaginable to anyone who breaks their taboos, and I mean everything especially ironic punishments." Cler warned his younger brother thoroughly about the dangers of offending the people of Lausgaiegüse.
"Right, I'll do some research before getting there then, right now in fact. By bro!" Rylan replied before his brother could get another word in and shut the coms off. "I thought he was going to scold me forever yeesh."
Rylan then began doing some research on Lausgaiegüse, which he had already set a course for before, as it was the closest planet he could sling to far enough away from the more developed parts of the Coalition.
"Lausgaiegüse, The city of Ambiton" He reads aloud. "The planet was found two hundred and fifty years ago, forty-six years after the Coalition of Guilds formed, by the Expedition Guild, where the Ecumenopolis was fully constructed fifty years later, or 200 years ago.
By the 35th year of Lausgaiegüse's conception, it was conquered by the pirates of Aigun with them being overthrown by a slave rebellion twenty-five years later."
Rylan continued to read the information page his brother had so graciously sent him, though with an angry message attached that contained more than a few profanities.
"However, after the rebellion was over, the many disenfranchised free slaves spread across the world had their unique agendas and this eventually led to gang violence across the streets of Lausgaiegüse until its current society had formed.
Now the gangs rule the planet without a centralized government and a lack of the means to form one. They, however, are a lot more moral than most criminals, if you could call them that in a near-lawless world. They enforce the 'laws' of the world and its taboos fiercely and deadly, with certain crimes being punished more cruelly than a painful death."
"That was too much information, my head hurts," Rylan complained as he grabbed his head and now had a splitting migraine. His adrenaline had fully left his bloodstream and the effects of using his power, especially on the scale he had, finally came crashing down on him. With the massive chunk of history, he just read up on only exasperating the issue.
Rylan threw himself onto his couch and decided to take a nap, not like he could do much while he was quite literally being shot through space, and if he died from it oh well not like he could do anything to stop it.
Even his Vortrex isn't able to prevent light-speed collisions.
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Edited the paragraphs to make them feel a bit more concise, with some minor edits, and better spacing.