Fetch!

It's still the dawn of the second millennia of space flight. Humanity has continued to survive numerous wars, hard singularities, several religious events and first contact with a vastly superior alien species and, despite all that, for better or worse it remains resolutely and bloody mindedly human.People have spread across a thousand star systems in a very loose federation of entirely disinterested worlds. Commerce flows thanks to kind of person who live, thanks to the vague nature of time in FTL travel, permanently out of step with the rest of humanity and trade in exotic wares; bringing unique experiences to the jaded populations of the inner systems and making a living, of sorts.But, as the weather forecast might say, the outlook is cloudy.Having survived their near-death experience at the alien death trap of Sirius, and avoided the grasp of the Tau Terraforming Corporation, Tim Symbles, barely solvent, functioning alcoholic, freighter captain and his crew is having some downtime on old Earth when a mysterious patron offers them the chance of a lifetime. An opportunity to find the long-lost Vanguard, the ship that made alien First-Contact and then vanished without a trace.The trouble is the signs point to the Liberty Cluster, a group of stars settled by the kind of people who didn't like a life of luxury and ease and wanted to prove something. It was going to be a Utopia, the trouble was, utopia came at a price and that price appeared to be medicine, good dentistry, and toilet paper. The entire experiment collapsed into the bloodiest war in human history and for centuries the Cluster has been a virtual no go zone.However, something ancient is stirring and it has grim implications for everybody, especially the crew of the trader Astra.Join Tim Symbles and the crew of the Astra in a new, even deadlier adventure, involving sentient bombs, a freedom crazed priesthood, organized crime and First Contact with a suspiciously familiar-looking kind of alien.Fetch - a comedy, space adventure in the tradition of Red Dwarf, Douglas Adams and Harry Harrison. Less space opera, more space parody.