Star Hawk Rises

Based on the amount of food that had come to my room it had been roughly two weeks, though if you had told me it had been years, I would have believed you. I had spent what to me felt like forever, cataloguing and sorting everything that was inside this ring. Now that I had finally finished, I withdrew my mind from the ring and laid back on my bed. I was about to mentally go over the checklist when I realised someone had stuck a sticky note to my forehead.

"What the?" I asked before reading the note. "Your ship was cleared by the sect leader to participate in the race."

"Oh, cool." I said as I tossed the note, dismissing it completely, and sat up only to spot another sticky note on my wall. I rolled my eyes and got off the bed, walking over to read this new one.

"Watch race on TV here, place hand against wall and say activate television."

I shrugged my shoulders, thinking I had nothing to lose by doing so, and did as instructed. A second later, the entire wall lit up, and I stared amazed at it. I was not looking at a normal televisions' sort of depth, but an actual room. With a news anchor sitting at a desk talking directly to me. It appeared to be so real that I felt like I could just walk over and sit next to her. I even tried too, only to walk into the wall and bounce off it, falling onto my ass.

"Ouch" I whined as I looked back up at the woman who had lowered her eyes to continue staring into mine, but she didn't comment on what I had done, she just simply continued to report the news.

I slowly stood up, watching her track my eyes as she droned on, and slowly stepped back towards my bed. I was surprised to notice that the second I wasn't looking directly at her, she turned her head and continued on like she was talking to someone else.

"That's trippy" I mumbled as I stumbled over the edge of my bed, falling down on it, catching sight of the ring on my finger as I fell and remembering what was in it.

The sheer endless amount of peak grade herbs, perfectly preserved, along with beautiful pill furnaces, pestles and mortars, I had even noticed a library off in one corner. There were a few tables and chairs, a couple tea sets with various bags of what looked like tea leaves. And that was just the left side of the room. On the right side had been another library, a couple desks that leaned slightly with attached chairs. Stacks upon stacks of paper, ink, quills and numerous other things just lying about.

I of course hadn't spent all my time looking through the books and reading the labels, I had also been practicing my new techniques, well the ones that I could while inside my room. The flying one that my mentor had left me would need more space. However, I had been diligently training the movement and fighting techniques, learning to master them the best I could without anyone to tell me I had messed it up.

I glanced at the television wall before looking down at the space in the room. Knowing I would never fit that pill furnace in it, and had been upset that I couldn't start making pills. Not that that had stopped me from trying to read every single one of the books in my ring, trying to learn as much as I could. The problem was none of the books would open for me. I couldn't even get into any of the books on what I was assuming was the formations. Letting out a sigh, I turned my attention back to the wall, hoping it would hurry up and tell me about this race thing.

It took over an hour for her to get around to it, but I had been fascinated by the news of events happening around the ship. Getting to see all the areas and people in three dimensions, as I was told about what was happening, was amazing.

"And, now we go live to jackal, down in the hangars." she turned slightly, but the room seemed to pan with her so she was still facing me. "Jackal, I understand a special hangar has been put aside for the racers, and they have their own dry dock to prevent any funny business with competing engineers?"

"That's right, Tracy. We have some wonderful and quirky designs this year, as always there are a few engineers that have staked reputation on their designs and have used them to challenge each other. However, interesting enough, this is the first time an inner sect engineering disciple has come down into the much to challenge a nobody!"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Haha, you must be joking, Jackal! Why would an inner sect engineer have anything to prove against… a nobody? Care to elaborate on that?"

"Of course, Tracy. I have wandered around, and spoken to some of the pilots down here. As well as the engineers that are performing last minute adjustments, and the rumour floating around is that an inner Sect engineering department disciple by the name of Huang Jiehong. Has challenged the nobody mentee of a bridge core elder! No one seems to know what their name is, but they have submitted a design!"

"Ooh, sounds intriguing and mysterious. Do you happen to know which two designs these two have put up against each other, Jackal?"

"Yes and no, Tracy! You see, there were some accusations thrown around about the safety of a nobody designing their very first ship. This has led the Captain, also known as the sect leader of our sect ship, to place that ship in another hangar away from all the other participants. This, however, has also prevented us from getting a look at it or discovering any information about it as it has all been classified! Now, due to the hangar being a bit further away from this one, the pilot is going to have to move quickly to make up a bit of distance and catch up with the other participants! All the officials feel that this is an acceptable compromise to insure the safety of the other participants during launch. But enough about that, I know what you all really want to hear about, and that is the lucky or perhaps unlucky pilot! It is our one and only daring ace pilot! William Johnson! Who has taken up the terrifying task of piloting the unknown ship, he has chosen to use a clone body, of course."

"Of course. What about Huang Jiehong's ship?"

"Huang Jiehong's ship is a thing of beauty" Jackal began as he started walking across the deck. I watched silently with an eyebrow raised until his ship came into view.

"Here it is Tracy, Huang Jiehong has gone all out on designing this, he was heard early today saying he didn't do it to compete against the nobody dog but did it to push himself and showcase what he was really capable of. We have of course done our research and discovered that he used blueprints from the inner sect department's archives to base his designs off of. He submitted his blueprint for testing, and now proudly claims it came back as a peak inner sect design. Certainly a design to be proud of."

"I would have to agree with you on that, Jackal. And now it's time for the weather on the planet below that most of the race will take place. However, please stay tuned while we take a short break to hear from the sponsors of this year's race!"

I let out a groan as I rolled my eyes, thinking this shit was the same no matter where you went. I called out to the wall to turn the TV off before laying down on my bed, I glanced at the clock to see it was about seven pm and rolled over deciding to get some sleep.

*******

Eloana Twiddles was sitting in the captain's seat of her frigate as she furiously glared at her HUD. She had just gotten a letter from a high ranking officer in the galactic navy, informing her that the Galactic Navy could not file for a war zone request on that upstart little shit, Kenna's property because it had been declared part of an inheritance settlement. Apparently Kenna Mackenzie had been lost by the system, and the offices of ownership had decided she was dead. They had begun collecting all the ownership paperwork on her estate, and now no one could touch any of it unless they were already there and working for her, this would last until the inheritance was settled.

"This is bullshit! How the hell is that upstart bitch so god-damn lucky! Every time I turn to shove a stick up her ass, she wriggles free! Like a fucken ghost dancing in bloody smoke!"

Her XO looked at her out of the side of his eye silently, and she noticed the slight turn of his head so he could see her properly. Causing her to let out a frustrated sigh and nod her head at him.

"I know, I know" she whined before letting out another sigh to help centre herself before continuing. "Alright, fine! Since the little twerps entire property is not considered an inheritance, we can't touch it anymore, start withdrawing the clones from that planet in her home system we can put them to better use in other places. Then call Jason Twiddles and tell him to stop mining the planet and hunker down, pretend he isn't there for a while, then when the inheritance is settled he can file a claim for ownership of the planet based on hermit rights or however that works."

"Right away, my Lady!" he replied as he gave a half bow.

*******

Jason Twiddles was staring at his own HUD with a soured look on his face as he watched the clones around him shutting down the factories and filing back into the clone tanks to decommission the clone bodies. As he read and reread the letter from Eloana Twiddles the little uppity shit that had just pulled the plug on his entire operation.

"First, she denies my request for fricken aid! Then she tells me I have to stay here and build a forward operating bloody base. And now she is telling me to stick my head in the fricken sand and pretend I'm not here! What the hell is in that bitches head? Is she planning to have me die on this forsaken rock!" he screamed as he threw a spanner, hitting some clone in the head with it and watching the guy fall over the railing to his death.

"Aah, frack all of this!" he screamed as her turned away and moved down the gangway to get a look at the new looking drop-ship that they had repaired and fixed up in the event, it would be needed to actually get something out of that Washington fool.

"Why the hell shouldn't I just take this ship and go to earth, I could have a decent vacation, lay on a beach with beautiful women for a while instead of this cesspit of an engineering nightmare"

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea, and was quickly descending to the ship, giving commands to his HUD to have everything here shut down or go into standby mode. He quickly boarded the ship and began flight checks, and grinned happily to himself as he muttered.

"Screw Eloana, I'm not going to hide here on this dump of a rock, I am going to sandy beaches with cocktails and beautiful girls!" he laughed for a bit before continuing. "When I get bored with that. I could, maybe, start to sow some discourse amongst the population to turn them against the Mackenzie's, maybe a few riots here and there after that a nice shuttle ride up to the station, for my own safety of course. Then I can start it all over again there. Who knows, maybe when this inheritance settles I'll be in charge of that station!"