Very science fictiony. How dorky can I get…?
The old spacer was a relic from the past. He had a cybernetic hand when he could have had a regrowth done at any clinic for next to nothing. He talked with an Old World accent, and was constantly dropping back into Oldspeech. He looked old — which showed that he rejected modern cosmetics as well as regrowth. I figured he must be about 200 G-standard years or about 240 Earth-standard years old.
I met him at a centaurion outpost, somewhere near the Center, (‘Deleev possibly) — and I tore him away from his thoughts with a small mind-touch, and got him talking about “the good old days.”
At first he looked at me like “why the Core can’t you leave an old man be?” — but I eventually convinced him that I was sincerely interested, and he loosened up after I bought him a bottle of Gallelian brandy.
I figured he had his pet story, which would be very unbelievable and would probably feature him as the hero — but when he started on his story, I could tell by its lack of polish that it would probably be true.
“Way back in the 80’s,” he began “the twenty-one eighties that is, I was commissioned on board the J. Edgar Hoover — which then was just being used as a routine exploratory vessel out around the West End until that fateful year 2189.”
The West End is the traders’ name for the opposite edge of the galaxy from Sol. And every red-blooded citizen of the Galaxy knows what happened to the J. Edgar Hoover in 2189 when, under the command of Captain James R. F. McKinna, they single-handedly drove off the Relva Invasion. With all the publicity that incident got, J. Edgar Hoover is probably more famous today than when he lived way back in the 20th century.
The old spacer continued:
…