It's A Deadly Job, But Somebody's Gotta Do It

I could have looked at the vid-screen. A few simple clicks would have shown me where SO-3 was in relation to my current location. But the fact of the matter was, I didn't care.

Inside my mouth, the food cube was beginning to moisten. It wouldn't be long before it fell apart, providing my body with much needed nourishment and the taste of rotten garbage. I sighed, scrubbing my right hand against the day-old dark stubble on my chin.

The Czalor system was empty, devoid of indigenous life, had relatively small quantities of precious metals, and was far from any established Earth colonies. It was a worthless speck in an infinite universe, and no one would have paid it much attention, except for two very simple facts.

First, it was the center of the region known as 'the Contested Zone.' The FEDs claimed the Czalor system as part of its territory, but so did nearly every other known interstellar empire. Luckily, or unluckily if you happened to be assigned to SO-3 and SO-4, the FEDs was the first to establish a presence in the system.

In the grand scheme of politics and diplomacy, no one would have cared who occupied the Czalor system, except for reason number two.

Reason number two is this: the Czalor system has a very high concentration of trix. Trix is the extremely abbreviated name for a highly toxic, highly explosive, catalytic fuel source. Trix powers most of Earth's extensive interstellar empire, from the smallest home fusion generator to vast weapons platforms like Station Omicron 4. Even watches are now made with a trix fuel source, little more than a molecule or two, but the power supply for such a trinket is expected to last a billion years.

Which is good, since it would take a soldier like me nearly a billion years to pay for it.

The FEDs uses trix to fuel its spacecraft and power its weapon cells. Armies of molecular chemists worked tirelessly to develop special composite materials-lighter than aluminum, stronger than titanium-from trix derivatives.

A couple tons of trix and a little ingenuity can make a bomb powerful enough to wipe out a planet. And I don't mean by creating an artificial winter. I mean boom, no more planet.

To make matters worse, trix is the only substance that can power the NOVA drive, thus making pseudo-faster-than-light travel (2) possible.

Trix can't be synthesized. At least, not yet. Teams of scientists throughout the FEDs are working on the problem, but they're no closer to a solution now than when trix was first discovered. No doubt every other interstellar empire is trying to design its own trix substitute, but if they've cracked the code, I haven't heard about it yet.

Consequently, everyone wanted trix. High Command wanted it for military purposes; the FEDs wanted it for economic ones. Every citizen of the FEDs, from the Chancellor of the Interplanetary Council, to Grand Admiral Terraza, to the lowliest station maintenance engineer, would die to get their hands on a stockpile.

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(2) The NOVA drive, when powered by the substance trix, is capable of folding normal space-time*. Coupling the massive NOVA drive to a Kasparov Mk IV computer, or machine of equal processing power, allows for travel over great distances in relatively short periods of time. The development of the NOVA drive is the single most important advance in interstellar science.