I do not own Outlaw star... ok enough with the disclaimers

Gene flipped a deck of cards between his fingers, a bored expression of his face. He was sitting in the pilot seat of the Outlaw Star with his feet up. The endless reaches of space just a few meters in front of him, separated by a single pane of glass. The other seats around him, including the navigation tank Melfina usually floated in were empty. Everyone else was somewhere else on the ship doing something or other. Business had been somewhat slow and without any regular source on income, they were forced to sit her waiting till someone answered their add call. Money was so scare that Gene was even considering calling Fred Luo to make some kind of deal. Picking out the ace of spade, Gene stared at it for a while, before placing it back in the pack. Yawning loudly, he folded his arms behind his head and leaned back against the chair. In a few more hours it would be Jim's turn to man the phones "so the speak" so until then he could catch a little shut eye. He was just starting to drift off when the Ship computer's voice came down from the speaker on the ceiling.

"Gene?" Starwind groaned loudly, opening one eye.

"What is it Gilliam?" He asked, a hint of frustration in his voice.

"I have an object on long range sensors, amongst a fleetingly small asteroid field." Gene opened the other eye, finally looking interested. He sat up, he hands on the edge of his arm rests.

"Another ship?" He asked.

"No, I am detecting no engine signal. I do detect traces of metals such as Copper, steal and magnesium however." Gene scratched the side of his chin. "It may be something salvageable." Gene liked that idea. Salvaging something worth any value would help their financial problems decline.

"Gilliam, your starting to think more like me." He announced with a wide smile, he didn't hear the computer mutter…

"Heaven forbid."

"Ok, bring it in. Have Aisha and Jim meet me down in the loading bay will ya?" In a circle of meteorites floated a strange round object, different from the others in many ways. As the red ship drifted closer to the object, the light coming from the ships windows highlighted it. A sphere about the size of a small car, encrusted with asteroid debris. The surface of the metallic ball had carvings on it, rune like scriptures that covered the shining surface. Unbeknownst to anyone, the ball had been floating in that dark abyss for time beyond time. As the Outlaw Star passed by, one of it's large articulate arms reached out and snatched it. It smashed against a few steroids a few times, but eventually it was brought on board. As the arm retracted into the ship with it's prize, the hanger doors on the under ship of the ship closed behind it.

"Ok, let's see what we have here." Jim Hawking said to himself, approaching the strange object. The arm had let go of it and had placed the ball directly in the centre of the cargo hold. Brushing a few strands of blond hair out of the way of his eyes, Jim encircled the ball studying the details carefully. "Hey Aisha, these runes could be of C'tral C'tral origin. Can you take a look?" He asked as studying a select group of in scriptures in depth and recognising a few C'tral C'tral symbols. The cat girl was watching the ball with a suspicious eye. Eventually, he pushed herself away from the wall and went over, the bell around her neck making a soft jingle. Jim pointed out the runes in question and she bent down to take a better look. Her eyes scanned the almost gothic looking cravings carefully.

"Ok Jimmy boy, sure, these are definitely C'tral C'tral." She said, finally picking up enough to be sure. "But I'm not sure of the dialect." She added. Gene was around the other side, scanning the orb to see how much metal it contained and how much they could sell it for on the market. He began scrapping away the thick crust of rock that was covering a part of it he wanted to scan. It was almost a thick curved slab of rock that fell away when he applied a little force.

"Er…Jim…" He said almost absently, looking at the picture he had uncovered. Jim and Aisha came around to his side to see what he was looking at. Under the crust of rock had been a large symbol, not a rune but more of a picture. It showed a humanoid figure with ankles and wrists tied to a encircling ring. The figure had a pair of wings sprouting out of his back. In place of a mouth it had a beck, and a plume of feathers sprouted out of the top of it's head. As soon as she laid eyes of it, Aisha gasped out load and backed away.

"Aisha, what's the mater?" Jim asked, looking puzzled. The C'tral C'tral didn't answer, she just kept staring at the symbol in horror. Without warning, she screamed in terror…

"Before the formation of the C'tral C'tral empire, there were two races that warred with each other for dominance of our home world." Aisha explained once the entire crew of the Outlaw Star were assembled. Aisha looked shattered, her hand on her face, her fingers clenched around her silver hair. Her long ears laid almost directly against the side of her head. She was still shivering as she recovered from shock. Melfina had a hand on her shoulder, Jim was starting to feel a little nervous about the thing they had here. There had been little in the past to get Aisha this shock up. "One was obviously my race, the other was a species of winged and feathered creatures that called themselves Gungen."

"A Ctral home world civil war?" Suzuka muttered, looking a little confused. She had been circling the orb carefully, paying special detail to the symbol that had gotten Aisha so scared. On her travels, her mis-adventures with the pirates, her job as the infamous assassin "Twilight Suzuka" she'd never seen anything quite like this. It seemed strange to her that she hadn't come across something similar.

"I've never even heard of that." Gene put in, scratching the side of his chin. "How about you Jim?" The blond haired boy shock his head.

"No, I had no idea."

"We won naturally, but in the process we accidentally wiped out most of their race." Aisha continued, regaining some control over her shivering. "Only one of them remained, one of their best and most powerful war lords, who we simply couldn't kill."

"Who was he?" Melfina asked, putting both hands on her shoulders in an efforts to try and reassure her better.

"I don't know, no body remembers his name, it was so long ago." She said after a long hesitating pause.

"Well, whoever he was, he seems to scare the hell out of you." Gene commented with a crude smile. Aisha looked up at him angrily.

"I'm not scared, just a little cautious that's all." She said, trying to sound affirmative but failed miserably. "He was simply too strong to take down or capture, so we used other means to get rid of him." She looked over toward the ball again, her eyes locked onto the symbol as if entranced by it. "We had to use an untested form of teleportation technology to transport him into a prison orb and eject it into space." Upon finishing her story, Aisha went uncharacteristically quiet. Gene stared at her with dumfounded looked on his face.

"You made that up." He said eventually. Aisha roared up, her eyes narrowing into little silts.

"Listen here you pathetic human, AISHA CLAN CLAN DOSE NOT LIE!" Gene backed of, hands held out in front.

"If it makes you feel more secure Miss Clan Clan." Gilliam's voice drifted down from the ceiling, one of his coke can sized robots passing on a rail overhead. "I'll have the security camera monitor the object until we offload it at the nearest port. Aisha folded her arms, looking stubborn.

"What would make me," He paused to alter her voice to sound like Gilliam's, "Feel secure, is if we dumped that thing back into space."

"WOAH, hold on there." Gene said, jumping in front of her. "This things carrying metals worth a truck load of money, we can't simply drop it back in the asteroid field and forget we found it."

"I'm with Gene on this one," Jim muttered. "As hard as that is to believe."

"Fine." Aisha said out the corner of her mouth, sulking like a spoilt child. "But if something goes terribly wrong, I told you so." With that, she turned on her heal and stormed away, shoulders held upward in a famous irritated cat type of body language. A few minutes passed in silence, the only sound coming from Gilliam's wires and clicks.

"You know Gene," Jim began. "I'm not found of the idea of a crazed alien bent on revenge coming out of that pod." Starwind sighed loudly, putting both hands to his forehead.

"You didn't really believe any of that did you?" He asked with a superior smirk on his face.

"I thought she was telling the truth." Melfina said distantly, looking at the pod with an innocent expression. Gene managed to subdue a chuckle.

"I've heard some wild tales in my time, but that one.." He laughed out load. "The biggest load of crap I've ever heard." he ran his fingers through his hair, his laughing subsiding into a sigh.

"Well, if this "Gungen" or whatever it is comes out of there, I'll make short work of it." Suzuka said with a menacing tone of voice, both hands on her wooden sword.

The door slammed behind them all, and the lights turned off instantly. The only source of illumination coming from a shaft of light that highlighted the strange metallic orb. The scriptures carved on it's surface now made by shadows. Gilliam's robots crossed the ceiling, scanning the object every time they entered the room.

A singular consciousness, undetectable by any electronic means was felling restless. For the first time in centuries it had come into close proximity with other sentient life forms. It saw it's change to break free and it was not going to let the opportunity pass it by.

First Outlaw Star fic, not bad considering I don't watch the anime too much. I'd like at least five reviews for I add the next chapter.