Chaytok (shay’tok) Larrin ran through all the checks on his starship for a third time while he was waiting for lift off clearance at the Narovian Starport on the outskirts of Narov. It was a busy day at the Starport which was adjacent to the city airport. There were about two dozen starships waiting in the queue. Chaytok’s was number fourteen with about one lift off per hour since dawn.
He’d already waited months, a few more hours would make little difference. All that mattered that he was leaving finally.
Chaytok had returned to Narova after serving in the United Alliance of Planets combined military defense force. Outsiders had tried to take over one of the colonies in the Alliance had been terraforming for a thousand years. Colonists from the Alliance were already in route with a small fleet of settlers.
The terraforming had cost so much and had taken so long, the Alliance was not just going to hand it over to some alien faction. They had taken a barren planet in a yellow dwarf system and made habitable for humans and humanoids of various species. The Alliance had offered to compromise and allow the aliens to settle there as well if they would join the Alliance and abide by their laws.
Instead, the Efargans attacked the landing parties that were comprised of construction crews. Their lightly armed security teams were no match for heavily armed cyborg warriors. Two-thirds of the crews had been slaughtered by the time the Alliance battle cruisers arrived with the special ground forces.
Chaytok was one of that elite regiment, also a trained shuttle pilot. They were not cyborgs but wore state of the art, enhanced armor that put them on better than equal ground with the Efargan cyborgs. They fought hard and won, but the cost in casualties was high. Chaytok had been one of them. If not for his cousin Jecklin Fantis who dragged him back to the escape shuttle, Chaytok Larrin would be dead.
Six months recovery time on his home world Narova was more than enough to make him restless to get back in space. While modern medicine had returned him back to physical fitness to perform his duties, it also gave him the opportunity to opt out of the service, that and the number of combat time he’d accumulated.
He was ready to make a new life for himself, but the six months he’d been back on Narova showed him clearly that it was no place for him. It was way too civilized a man like Chaytok after the things he had seen and done. The most important thing for him to do all day was to entertain himself. The family farm and business were primarily automated.
On Narova, Chaytok Larrin was just was just another wealthy feline heir with a huge trust fund. After his return from service in the Defense Force, he received full control of it and bought a ship with part of the funds. The rest saved to buy land on one of the more recently opened colonial worlds and begin a family of his own.
So far, the Narovian Matchmaking Agency had not found his meomee---his fated mate or true mate. Chaytok was of a feline humanoid race that evolved on Narova before homo sapiens had been seeded there by a far older race. The Narovian Matchmaking Agency find mates for felines by DNA matching for complementary subjects. It is the opposite of familial matching. The service seeks a mate that will produce offspring with the best genes from each parent. Testing is voluntary, though most Narovians participate, because meomee matches with feline guarantee a lifelong monogamous, loving relationship.
The Narovian agency was processing DNA from Earthers under the guise of ancestral evaluation, but again if was voluntary and somewhat costly for ordinary working people. Participation was random, so Chaytok was not surprised that no match was found.
His parents weren’t meomee so he didn’t consider it necessary to make a family. He was more concerned about building a home to shelter the family before making one.
But first, he had to get off Narova. Finally, his turn to lift off came. His ship was an older model, retrofitted with newer technology. It saved him funds he would need for land and a dwelling on Vesta Three. All systems were in working order according to the ship’s AI and his manual checks. He wasted no time giving the AI the lift off order. Within minutes he was in space and heading toward Vesta Three to make his new home.
This was new territory for Chaytok. He was a good pilot and navigator in familiar sectors, but he was in unfamiliar territory. About two weeks into the trip he discovered he was off course and there was a part failing in his star drive. The glitches weren’t directly related. There had been a power surge to the AI that caused the incorrect course and the part in his star drive had been deemed in good condition during the rebuild. That’s what he for cutting corners. But his reasoning was sound. Now he wished he’s waited for a passenger freighter. That would have saved even more money than buying his own meager little ship.
Chaytok weighed that factor in, too. Getting a direct transport to Vesta Three was a longshot. He could have been stranded somewhere even hard to find transport to an outlying colony. Nor could he have brought the amount of cargo he now carried on his own ship.
When he found his trajectory would take him close to the Earth-Sol system, he was partly relieved because the Alliance had a large base on Mars. He gave up hope of landing there when he found how far Mars orbit was in relationship to Earth’s. He would need to go to Earth, close to his last choice. At least there was an Alliance presence there, and his cloaking tech was working.