Chapter One

My name is Hunter Reed. I am a pirate. Please don’t picture an eyepatch and a hook—no, I don’t have any of those things. My ship, the "Dragon Crocodile," can cruise through the universe at sub-light speed and even perform space jumps that ordinary warships can’t accomplish. The universe has given me a space countless times vaster than the Age of Exploration. That’s right, I am an interstellar pirate!

It was my destiny to become a pirate. My old man was a pirate, and I have no mother. I don’t understand why, even in this era, my father still had such a strong desire to carry on the family line—he insisted on having a child. Unfortunately, not a single dancer was willing to have a pirate’s child, even though my father offered a high price of twenty thousand cosmic credits—a sum that was his life’s savings, enough for an ordinary person to live comfortably for five years. But would anyone trade one year for five years of comfort? If it were me, I definitely would, but I’m not a dancer, so they refused. I really can’t figure it out—isn’t it just having a child? When my father’s last attempt failed and he walked out of that bar—supposedly a place where anything could be solved—he happened to see an ad for a hospital. And so, I was born—a test-tube baby.

My father named me Hunter Reed because his surname was Lie, a very rare surname, but I happened to get it. Actually, that’s pretty good, because with such a rare surname, it’s convenient for the household registration system—there won’t be so many people with the same name. That’s what my father told me when I was little, and back then I thought it made sense. But when I grew up, I scoffed at this kind of trick adults play on kids—what pirate would register their identity with the government? But by then, my father had already "flown west with the cranes," dying in a raid, so I had no one left to question.

When my father died, I was only seven. Because he sacrificed himself to save everyone, taking the enemy gunner with him and stopping the enemy’s main cannon from firing one last time, he saved the whole pirate ship and everyone’s lives. So, at seven, I wasn’t thrown into the endless universe like other orphans, but continued living on the pirate ship until I was thirteen. At thirteen, I started raiding ships with everyone else. On my first mission, in the brutal battle, I was stunned by the flying beams and high-explosive bombs and nearly lost my life. It was Uncle Brandon who saved me. Uncle Brandon is a person of color, with a dark face and a strong, burly body. He was my father’s best friend and always looked after me on the ship. At that moment, a black gun barrel was pointed at me. I was wearing the cheapest, simplest light mech armor—if I got hit, I’d be dead for sure. At the critical moment, Uncle Brandon abandoned his own opponent and dove over to knock me aside. Uncle Brandon is highly respected on the ship because he’s the best fighter among us and is often the first to board enemy ships, so he always gets the biggest share of the loot. He’s a lifelong bachelor. All his money goes into upgrading his gear and drinking. His equipment is the best on the ship, second only to the captain’s: a thrice-upgraded reinforced mech suit covered with thick magnetized armor. At full speed, he’s as fast as a bullet. But even so, he was struck in the back by an opponent’s laser blade. The invincible laser blade cut through his armor, and he was seriously wounded.

In modern interstellar warfare, all fighters wear mech suits. Most mechs are amphibious—capable of operating on land, water, and in the air—but you need money to equip mechanical arms, weapons, and armor. Most pirate ships have their own mechanics. They don’t fight; they just upgrade the pirates’ gear. They’re the most relaxed people on the ship and make a lot of money, only responsible for designing and installing new mechanical arms, armor, and weapons, charging high fees. Compared to ordinary pirates, they’re not in much danger. At the same time, mechanics are very important to the whole pirate ship. With good equipment, you have a better chance of surviving in battle, and if the ship breaks down, you need a mechanic to fix it. So everyone respects them. For a while, my dream was to become a mechanic, but the tuition to apprentice with a good mechanic was too high, and I didn’t have that much money. So that dream was mercilessly crushed. Pirates aren’t regular soldiers; they can modify their own equipment however they want, as long as it suits them and they have the money. Regular military equipment is standardized—of course, it’s much more powerful than our stuff, but it’s not as well-suited to individual use as ours.

In interstellar pirate battles, after boarding the enemy ship, we usually use melee weapons like laser swords, composite material blades, boarding axes, and so on, because in those situations, ranged weapons like Gauss rifles and laser guns are likely to cause friendly fire, so they’re generally not used. But just like in the Age of Sail, when some pirates still used muskets, sometimes people still use them.