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I opened my eyes to see the familiar red face of Sam staring back at me.

"You need more exercise," she said.

Well, that was a change in tactics. "Exercise?"

"Exercise. If you're gonna become a vegetable all the time, you should at least counteract it with some physical activity."

"Sure thing, doctor," I said as I pulled the Neuro helmet off. I watched as her eyes tensed and her breath caught. Still hadn't figured out what was up with the doctor thing and I probably shouldn't be poking Sam's control panel, so to speak.

"Good. Then you'll join me for yoga tomorrow at 7 a.m."

"Yoga? What the hell is yoga?"

She stood up straight. “Stretching. You can handle it."

I got out of my chair and made my way to the head as usual and then we all made it to the bridge where we fell out of the Rift and into real space. The system I had chosen wasn't anything special, it was inhabited and in a completely different sector of space. We weren't sticking around, we weren't even looking for cargo and stopping at the port to refill. Sam had done a great job filling our supplies and the last three weeks hadn't depleted us too much. We were gonna make it another two easy, three if we stretched it. Nothing mechanical was going wrong. We were just in here to connect to the net, make some more plans, and choose which direction we were heading.

We plotted a course that would let us take a quick break at an anarchy system. I figured anarchy meant lawless, and that might help us out on the whole being criminals thing, but I wanted to hit a station in one of them and see how the place functioned before I went all the way to the end of human space and tried to live in one.

We downloaded navigation updates, bounty hunter updates, a very interesting HAZ-NAV, and presumably Sam got an update to her archive of pornography.

"There's a whole system that's got a HAZ-NAV on it," I said.

X-Talia popped up a screen from the bounty hunter database which, in a weird way, gave us more information, but also left us with more questions.

"15,000 for anybody to get into the system and get out with actual information," Sam said, summarizing.

"I'm really tempted, but if nobody else has gotten any information and got out of the system, I highly doubt we are in this ship," I remarked.

"Yeah, I'm going to agree on that. Maybe some other time with some other ship," X-Talia added.

We all agreed to avoid the system and headed to our first anarchy system. They had a station that seemed relatively infamous for this part of the galaxy: Liberty Station. According to all the sources, it wasn't actually a station, but a derelict ship turned into a station. Honestly, I just wanted to see the damn thing and apparently so did a bunch of other people because while it was supposedly a station in a lawless sector of space, it was also a tourist attraction.

Our days settled into routine with the whole same old, same old. In the morning, I'd wake up, get cleaned up, and go check on the bridge. Sam would cook breakfast and we'd all sit and eat. Then I'd do VSI and any scheduled maintenance. We'd have lunch, I'd play a game with X-Talia, then use the Neuro headset. After dinner, I'd play some random board game with Sam. Sometimes it was possible to play with both Sam and X-Talia, though we often had to move the pieces for her. Little plastic colored robots and a plastic board with hexagonal tiles that changed every time, so no two games were exactly the same. Sam was in the midst of creating another board game but seemed to have trouble understanding the rules. Then usually another dive into the Neuro headset before bed.

Then Sam introduced me to yoga. Yoga was deceptively easy-looking. It basically consisted of stretches, different poses that you held, and a few breathing exercises. I partially didn't know if this was actually to get me to exercise or if Sam was somehow trying to activate my stupid male brain with her tight shorts, sports bra, and a lot of positions that put her ass up in the air. Apparently, she did this every other day and despite the fact that it looked simple, there were poses where my body straight up didn't bend that way and holding them took considerable muscle endurance. I spent most of my time with limbs wobbling like noodles and sweat pouring from my forehead while simultaneously trying to hide my man parts, which were happy to see Sam. It was bullshit. She finished off the stretching exercises with squats, push-ups, and sit-ups. Now I know why her ass looks so good.

To be fair, two weeks of that shit, and I was almost able to keep up with Sam. Though, I still think there was something sexual to do with it. I kept catching her looking at a certain bulge, and I'd swear she was hinting that she wanted to take a shower together at the end of every session. There was always this long, uncomfortable pause after each workout when she told me she was gonna go take a shower, and then she waited for my reply as though she was hoping I'd ask if I could come with. Maybe she was, maybe there was a whole lot more to the succubus thing than just the looks. Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe I actually kind of like the girl and I didn't know how to fucking deal with it. At this point, I was pretty confident in calling her my friend, my only friend, well, other than X-Talia, so my only human friend, ignoring the fact that she was a splicer with red skin, a tail, and horns.

We fell out of the Rift into the Otaro system and made our way for Liberty Station. It actually was a fucking ship. I wondered if the base ship that made up Liberty Station had once been a warship. The thing was huge, more station-looking habitation modules and docking arms sprouted out from the thing like the ship had been impaled in some great battle, its corpse left on the field. The thing was cool just to look at. I sent the docking request and received the berthing assignment from the automated system, but there was no docking computer handshake. That was odd.

"Um, Flight control? My docking computer is not picking up any instructions."

The same cool female voice from the automated system returned with a surprising message. "Automated docking is extended for the price of five Sen."

I looked at Sam. "What's a Sen?"

She shrugged. "Can you look up a conversion rate?"

"Conversion rate is 1.62 credits per Sen," said X-Talia helpfully.

So they named their space credits?"

“Space credits?” Sam asked.

X-Talia grinned. "Calling fiat-based credit systems 'space credits' goes way back to pre-interstellar civilization. The term is based on the fact that the credits are literally based on nothing other than the body who manages them."

"That makes it sound like money is not real," Sam replied.

"It kind of isn't," I said, "but beyond the barbaric practice of naming their space credits, they trust random people to dock."

X-Talia shrugged, and when I looked back at Sam, she gave me the same gesture.

"I can dock us if you want," said X-Talia.

"No, I'll do it. I'm just surprised."

As I approached our assigned berth, I noticed another ship coming in far too quickly and quite honestly, stopping far too quickly. The damn ship was smaller than the Res-a-tesseract and appeared to be using an archaic gas-based reaction control system. This really was the backwater of humanity.

I took us in on a much slower course to our berth, lining up the Res-a-tesseract correctly so that the gravities would match and the lock would connect without an issue. It was kind of neat that I got to do it myself. As we grew ever closer to the dock, I had to wonder just how long had I been on the Res-a-tesseract. It felt like months. Come to think of it, it technically was months. A lot of that time was spent in the Rift. Hell, the bounty hunter had chased us for over a month. I didn't know the exact amount of time we've spent together, just me, Sam, and X-Talia, but despite the fact that it kind of flew by in basic routine tasks, it had indeed been months.

"Do you wanna come with?" Sam looked in between me and X-Talia before focusing back on me, pointing a finger at her chest and asking, "Me?"

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I shrugged. "Yeah. Different sector, in an anarchy station, in an anarchy system, on a station called Liberty. Not sure there's anywhere else you can come out."

She seemed to consider it for a few moments before shaking her head. "I'm not taking it on faith."

I shrugged. "Well, I guess I'm gonna go see what the lawless side of things looks like."

We made a bit of a procession down to the cargo bay. That was an absurd thought. A procession of me, Sam, and X-Talia existing on a tablet.

"Good luck," Sam said, though it sounded a lot more like a question.

I gave her a nod and cycled the lock. I held my breath as the door in front of me opened and I got my first sight of a station docking arm from a system listed as anarchy.

I have no idea why I expected the docking arm to look different. I'm not even sure how I expected it to look different. Maybe trash everywhere, maybe painted murals, maybe armed thugs. A docking arm that looked like every other docking arm I've ever encountered just kind of wasn't what I was expecting. I rounded the corner into the main passage until I reached what was not an O-deck. Being as all this was attached to a ship, it made sense that it wasn't built with the whole O-deck system, instead the docking arms connected into something of a concourse. A few helpful signs pointed out where various things were: residential sector, business sector, restaurants, hotels, and a line for visiting spacers. I assumed I was a visiting spacer, so I went that way where I found myself checking in at a kiosk for a visitor's visa. How strange. I wasn't the only person here, but despite the fact that a couple of people were armed, this looked like any other place where people were trying to book passage. Of course, we weren't booking passage; we were getting into the station. I plugged in some credentials, thumbed my tab, and for 25 Sen, I had a two-day visa and a map of the station that told me where I was and was not allowed to visit.

I followed the line of people as well as the map and decided to walk into the first bar I came across, mostly because it was the first actual business I came across. I figured why not a bar? I could go get a drink, talk to somebody who knew more about the system and the rules in an anarchy. I made it through the lock. I found it strange that a bar needed a lock, but when the inner door opened and I took a few steps in, realization hit me like a ton of lead blocks drifting in the vacuum of space, or more accurately, like a room full of tobacco smoke so thick I couldn't breathe. My eyes went wide, and as I started choking, I stumbled back into the lock. I had to get out of here. Stumbling out of the lock, I almost crashed into a couple who had been waiting at the other side.

"Huh? First time in Liberty Station?" The man asked.

I looked up at him, "Yeah," I said hoarsely, trying not to cough in his face.

He tapped a yellow sign on the side of the lock that had a picture of a lit cigarette and a yellow caution tag that generally represented a hazardous atmosphere. "Try Tony's Place. Fourth door to the left."

I choked out a thanks as they disappeared into the lock. I got a couple of people chuckling at my plight, and I made my way further into the habitation module attached to the ship. I found Tony's Place, a certainly more inviting-looking establishment, mostly because it had windows into the passage and an open door. It wasn't deserted, but I certainly wasn't here during rush hour. I had no idea what station time was. Being as it was a ship, it might have been on Earth standard. That would have made it sometime in the morning. I sat down at the bar, and a short man with light tanned skin and an apron made his way to me.

"Morning, spacer."

"Morning," I choked out.

He laughed. "First time on Liberty Station?"

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

He chuckled again. "You ain't the first guy to walk into the first bar you saw, then come crawling to me."

I had to laugh as well.

"What’ll you have?"

"Honestly, something to scrape out my throat would be great."

“Beer or Soda if you want carbonation. Hard liquor if you want to burn it out.”

“Mmm, got a cherry soda?”

He nodded, grabbed a plastic cup, and put it under a machine to dispense some ice and a fizzy red liquid.

"Anything to eat with it?"

"What do you serve?"

"Burgers primarily, but I can throw a fried egg on one if you want.”

“Sounds good. With the egg please. Two of them, one in a take out container if I can?"

The bartender nodded, wrote down the order, handed it to a guy through a window, and then moved on to serve a refill for another guy.

I sat back and waited for the food, letting the sugary fizzy drink scrub away the taste of toxic chemicals. What kind of fucked up person smokes? What kind of fucked up establishment makes a bar where everybody can smoke? They had to go through tons of filters.

"Need a refill?"

I looked down at my half-empty cherry soda and shrugged. "Why not?" I said, pushing the glass towards him. He took it back to the machine.

"I got a question if you don't mind."

"Shoot."

"What is it like living in an anarchy system?"

He set the cup back down in front of me and shrugged. "Anarchy just means there isn't one government for the whole system. Liberty Station's run by Carl Mathers. Punishments for most crimes are exile. It's pretty easy to keep tabs on who comes and goes when you only run a station. Other than that, I suppose it's much like everywhere else."

That actually didn't help me much. "What about people coming in from a different sector who are wanted for something?"

"You got a bounty on your head?" He asked with a suspicious squint, but the friendly grin he gave me had me thinking he was just teasing.

"Quite literally asking for a friend. One of those things where they got conned into doing something illegal and now they spend their entire lives on a single station, bored to death and keeping their head down."

The bartender nodded to a guy, acknowledging that he'd go give him a refill of whatever he was drinking as soon as he was done speaking to me. "A crime somewhere else isn't necessarily a crime here. Let's say your friend murdered somebody in, oh, I don't know, Abilene. They show up here, get a job, and live a normal life. Station authorities don't have a problem with them because they’re not a problem on station. However, nothing stops a bounty hunter from collecting the bounty, and station authorities ain't gonna protect them, and because a lot of people think they can come out to some anarchical system to hide from what they've done, there's a lot of bounty hunters out here."

With that, he left me to go take care of the other customers. A minute later, my food came out, and I was happy to take the break to eat. It was delicious, and it wasn't Sam's cooking, not that Sam was a bad cook, but it was nice to have something different.

***

"And because of that, there actually tends to be a lot of bounty hunters out here," I told Sam. She unhappily glared at her burger. After I had eaten, I took a walk around some of the shops and art galleries for a little while before growing bored and annoyed with all the people. I am not a people person. I did three things on Liberty Station: I got some basic information on what an anarcho system was like. I lined up some cargo to be delivered to a station closer to where we are heading because we needed money. And I purchased a mining laser. There was some childish part of me that loved the thought that I had a freaking laser. The adult part of me looked at the safety instructions and sighed, but if we were gonna try mining, I needed tools to do it. The mining laser was the lowest form of tool, which meant the cheapest. I had come back, but not managed to actually get Sam her burger breakfast before people were ready to deliver cargo. Said cargo was about 10 crates of beer because apparently that's what a derelict starship turned space station exported: beer.

News about large numbers of bounty hunters wasn't exactly promising for our current plans, but as long as we laid low, I was hopeful that things would be fine for at least a little while.

"Is your bounty higher now?" Sam asked after swallowing a mouthful of burger.

"Hells, I hope not." I looked towards the tablet. "X-Talia?"

The avatar got a faraway look and made a "hmm" sound, which did not fill me with hope. The screen changed to display my face and the price on my head.

"Damn," Sam said. "20K."

"How the heck is that fair?" I grabbed hold of the tablet and started reading over the data. Apparently, the former bounty hunter, now organic debris heading towards a sun, had told the station authorities at the last station who was flying the ship. I was now being charged for malicious intent to cause harm by dropping a bunch of lead blocks in a shipping lane. That was unfair. 20K. Between me and Sam, we were about 50K. add the ship and X-Talia, even for almost scrap, it might be a whole 100K. We were basically the next bounty hunter’s payday. I put my head to the table and muttered, "Son of a bitch." Sam reached over and patted me on the back. I kept my head down for another solid minute or two before X-Talia returned to her place on the screen and informed me that it was now time to enter the Rift. At least there was that.

"Come on," Sam said once we fell in and were surrounded by the brilliant colors, which seemed oddly more colorful today, but I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing.

"Where?" I asked.

"Just come on." She grabbed me by the arm and pulled. I followed somewhat reluctantly down into the cargo bay.

"X-Talia, can you find 'Injured by Pretty Group’ off my tablet and play it over the ship comms?"

X-Talia didn't reply, but she must have heard because music started playing. It was fairly calm considering what Sam usually listened to, a bit upbeat. I wasn't really a music guy, and I was just as confused as to why I was standing in the cargo bay listening to music as I was mystified at the band's name.

"What are we doing?" I asked, as Sam grabbed one arm, placed herself in front of me, and entangled her other arm in mine.

"Dancing," she replied cheerfully.

"Dancing?" I repeated, puzzled.

"Yeah. We made it to a station without getting attacked. I thought we could do something fun to celebrate."

"And dancing is fun?" It seemed weird to me. Seemed like a girl thing to me. I'm not sure any guy ever thought dancing was fun. There had to be somebody, but it wasn't me.

"Just come on and let me lead," Sam said as she started moving.

I stared down into Samantha Draken's glowing ember eyes while standing in a cargo bay, being literally pushed around by the girl. How long have we been together? It had been at least two months, two or more months, and now we were dancing together in the cargo bay. Was she trying to woo me? Or was it just because she was lonely? I guess those weren't mutually exclusive. After a couple more songs, all of which I had never heard before, she leaned in and gave me a tight hug.

"Thank you for breakfast and dancing," she said as she pulled back, looked at me, and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "Go on, go play your damn game."

I had a laugh. We split ways at the top of the ladder. Four days until we were in the next system.