That’s how it goes for five weeks. We win every game. No more blowouts, though. Seems like everybody wised up after the Joomits, and no one had ever done what Kissy did in the final few moments of the Bulldogs game – which makes it all the more surprising when she does it again three games later. It’s nice to be winning. But the entire time I’m nervous. I know that there’s a part of the universe that doesn’t like me. There’s a tiny spiteful bit of it, and there are consequences for me for winning. I just know it.

That consequence comes for me one evening as I’m standing on the observation deck of the Hercules, watching the stars and minding my own business. I hear the heavy footfalls of a person trying very hard not to sneak up on someone. I look over my shoulder and see a middle-aged man in a sharp suit. He comes up to the rail and joins me in star contemplation.

I look at him sideways. He’s clean-shaven and has that high and tight haircut that every military and law enforcement person gets upon entry to that club. “Who’re you?”

“Peter Henshaw,” he says. “Fleet Investigative Bureau.”

Bureaucracy is like a cockroach. It can survive anything, even losing its own planet. “What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me where you got your spaceball suits.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I can’t do that. I actually have no idea.”

“I think you’re lying.”

Well, it’s not a whole lie. “You are free to think whatever you want. Even if it’s wrong.”

He chuckles. “That’s a good one.”

“My mother said that to me all the time.”

“Your parents died on Earth?”

“Yes, but not during the Great Ambush. Before that.”

“From what?”

“Shuttle accident,” I say, remembering. I was supposed to be on that shuttle. I’d overslept that morning and missed the flight. I was nineteen, during my I’ll drink a lot all the time phase. They left to go on vacation without me as sort of a passive aggressive intervention. It worked. I still have the occasional nip, but I prefer not to dull my experience. I raised a mental glass and toasted, Live life like you stole it and they’re going to take it back at any moment. Thanks, Mom and Pops.

“I’m sorry,” Henshaw says.

“Ha! You didn’t even try to sound like you meant it.”

“It’s the thing to say.”

“Not if you don’t mean it. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. It’s okay to not say anything. Silence is better than bullshit.”

“Did your mother say that to you, too?”

“Nope, that’s all mine. So tell me, Peter Henshaw, what’s your interest in my spaceball suits?”

“Fleet Supply sold forty of them six weeks ago to one of Paul Chipper’s subsidiaries.”

“Sold them, eh?”

“Yes. They were to go to civilian law enforcement agencies across the Rim Colonies. They never made it to the Colonies, and your suits look remarkably like them. I’m here to determine if there was a breach of contract.”

“Wow, that’s some story. Hang on a second.” I call Laura, keeping our conversation in my head.

“Rick, I really don’t have time right now. I’m in the middle of a suit teardown and–”

“There’s a FIB here,” I interrupt her, “and he says the suits are stolen.” I relay what Henshaw told me.

“Where are you?” she asks.

“Observation deck.”

“I’ll be right up.”

I key off and turn back to Henshaw. “My suit expert is on her way. She’ll clear this up for you.”

“I doubt it,” he says. “Between you and me, this is just a formality. You’re in possession of military hardware that’s supposed to be out protecting settlements from the very raiders who are on your spaceball team. It’s disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Ah. He’s one of those. “Well, if that were true, wouldn’t that mean that the suits were doing their jobs? Keeping the raiders at bay?”

“I don’t follow.”

“The raiders are here, Pete. Not ravaging Rim Colonies. Mission accomplished, and nobody had to do anything.” I realize I might have accidentally admitted to something, so I add, “That’s assuming that the suits came from where you said, which I can’t say for certain.”

“I’m here to take those suits,” he says.

“Just you?”

“Just me.”

“Wow.”

“Wow, what?”

“I mean, it’s just been years since I’ve seen someone sent a merry goose chase as big as yours. Who did you piss off?”

“What?”

“Well, Pete, usually when someone is sent alone into a pit of vipers to get the shiny bauble, it’s because they fucked up and this is a last-ditch assignment. If you win, great, but you’re not expected to win. In fact, you’re expected to be never heard from again. So, what happened, Pete? You sleep with the boss’s wife? Sister? Wait, was it his daughter? Pete! You dog.”

He turns red on the last one. Maybe he did sleep with his boss’ daughter, or maybe the red face meant he’s really offended and I’m about to get punched. I also know that it’s entirely possible – no, probable – that he’s right and our spaceball suits were diverted from some other legitimate project to my playground. I’m okay with that. My own suit was set up to eviscerate people. I’m saving people I’ve never met from being torn in half. I should get a medal.

“Goose chase or not, I represent the Fleet and if I determine if you stole—”

I lean in. “Pete.”

“Yeah?”

“When you flew in, did you happen to notice the Edochian cruiser sitting off the port bow?”

He smiles at me. “That’s a fake.”

“Really?” I ask. “Looks convincing to me.”

“Have you been onboard that cruiser?”

“No.”

“Have you seen an Edochian from it?”

“Not in person, but one spoke to us when it arrived.”

“Right. On the vid, where everything is real. Have you seen Edochian patrols, or other ships come and go from it? Have you seen it move, dump garbage, or otherwise act like a ship with thousands of people on it?”

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“Now that you mention it, no—”

A dart appears on Henshaw’s neck. His hand slaps on it and we both turn to see where it came from. Well, I turn. Henshaw never makes the full pivot. He topples over. I don’t catch him. He seems like a dick.

Laura puts her stun gun down and I won’t lie, I relax more than a tiny bit. She rolls her eyes and says, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rick, I’m not going to stun you, too. Does that sound like something I would do?”

“Uh, actually it sounds exactly like something you would do.”

She smiles as she comes over and hip-checks me. “You’re right, sweetie, I would. But—”

“Sweetie?”

“—I need your help. Grab his feet.”

“Sweetie?” I repeat.

“His feet, Rick!”

I grab Henshaw’s feet and we carry him from the room. “Where are we going with him?”

“Just up the corridor.”

I drop his feet, forcing Laura to stop. “There’s an airlock up there.”

She fixes me with one of her patented death-glares. “Richard Charles. Do you honestly think I would flush this man out of the airlock simply for asking questions?”

“It depends if he was asking about the Sandstorms game.”

Laura’s affront flashes to anger. “I swear to God, you talk about that one more—”

“I’m kidding! I’m kidding.”

“Yeah, well, his shuttle is still docked up here, numbnuts. Pick up his feet.”

We bring Henshaw to his shuttle, a Fleet-issue Gate Jumper. The things are deathtraps. They have a nasty habit of disintegrating on the fifteenth trip through a Gate. I don’t know why the number fifteen. Nobody does. But it happens so often that the shuttles have a big clock just inside the door that displays how many trips through the Gates the ship has taken. This one has thirteen jumps on it.

Gate Jumpers have three seats. We sit him in one of the passenger seats. “Strap him in,” Laura said. “I’ll take care of the flight plan.”

“Auto-pilot?” I ask.

“Well, I’m not flying it, dummy.”

“Where are you sending him?” I ask.

“Back to the Gate. He’ll be out for a couple more hours, long enough for him to sleep through the jump.”

“Which will end up where?”

Laura looks up from the controls. “I dunno, where should we send him?”

I point my thumb at the Jump Clock. “This will be the shuttle’s last Jump. How about somewhere relaxing? He’s too uptight. Maybe he needs a vacation.”

“Pronos it is,” Laura says.

“He can’t afford Pronos on a FIB salary.”

“I know,” Laura says. She gives the autopilot its instructions. “It’s all set, let’s go.”

We leave the shuttle and close the airlock. The shuttle automatically disengages from the docking collar and we go back to the observation deck to watch it leave the Hercules. I really hope this works. I don’t need Henshaw coming back and asking his questions in a firmer tone of voice.

The observation deck is still deserted. Even though we spend our time in different parts of the ship and rarely see each other, Laura and I pretty much have the Hercules to ourselves after practice finishes for the day. Everybody else heads over to Freehaven. The Gate is a tiny shiny dot in the distance. Henshaw’s shuttle zooms toward it.

“You know,” I say, “he was saying all sorts of interesting things before you tranq’ed him.”

“And some of them were the reason I shot him,” she says.

“Was he right?” I ask.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe means yes. So, the cruiser’s not real?”

Laura snorts. “What? No! I mean, yes! I was talking about the suits, Rick.”

“Are you sure? Because now that I think about it, the cruiser isn’t doing all the big ship things that big ships do.”

“It’s Edochian, you idiot. They’re not the same as humans. You’re not going to see garbage dumps, or shuttles back and forth to the Mall. You’re definitely not going to see patrols. Edochians don’t need them. Their sensor packages can detect incoming ships in the next galaxy.”

“How do you know that kind of thing? Seems a bit like insider technical data.”

“Because I’ve worked for Fleet, remember, and they know these things.”

“You were a civilian. They wouldn’t have told you.”

Laura smiled. “Fleet engineers are geeks. Geeks babble if there’s a pretty lady in the room.”

I smile at her. “That’s not a fair description of you.”

She frowns. “Why not?”

“Flowers are pretty. Fireworks are pretty. When pretty things see you, they despair because they will never achieve your kind of beautiful.”

Her eyes lit. “That was a good line.”

“Not a line, sweetheart.”

“Sweetheart?”

“Well, you did call me ‘sweetie’ just a bit ago.”

“And then numbnuts and dummy, so don’t get carried away.”

I step closer. “I know your tricks. Those are terms of endearment.”

“Those are–”

She stops when I rest my knuckles against her belly and lean in to kiss her. Time slows. She doesn’t pull away or turn her head. Her eyes lock with mine. Her lips part ever so slightly, and I touch mine to hers. Her lips are so soft. I close my eyes when she lifts her chin. Her frame swells and she kisses me back.

A flash of light flickers through my closed eyelids.

I open them. There’s a fireball where Henshaw’s shuttle is supposed to be.

Laura must have felt me tense, because she breaks off the kiss and looks up to my face. She turns and looks at the window as the shuttle’s bits and pieces float away from each other at high speed.

She whirls back and grabs both my arms. “That was NOT me!”

“I know,” I say.

“You do?”

“Yeah, self-destructs make a lot of noise when you turn them on,” I say. “So you have ample warning to turn them back off again. I didn’t hear any of that.”

“I could have removed the engine shielding,” Laura says. “You wouldn’t have seen me do it while you were strapping in Henshaw.”

“But you would have made it so he’d already passed through the Gate, so I wouldn’t ask questions.”

“Engine shielding is tricky, and Jumpers aren’t all that stable.”

“Um, I’m convincing myself that you didn’t do it, so please stop ruining it.”

Laura smiles at me and taps me on the chin. “Maybe it was you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You could have planted a bomb or something on Henshaw. I was programming the navigation computer. I wouldn’t have seen you.”

“Right. I carry bombs like that in my pocket just in case.”

Laura puts her hand on my chest. “I think you’re being nice to me because you want to go back to the kissing.”

“Guilty.” I lean in and she lifts her head to better meet mine and then I stop.

“What is it?” she asks.

“How did you know who he was?” I ask. “He only said his name was Henshaw once, and that was before I called you.”

Laura blinks. “You told me what it was.”

“No, I didn’t.” I stare at her. No way. NO. WAY. I can’t believe it. “You! You did! You did blow him up!”

Her expression is mutinous. “Yeah, and I’d do it again! Let me tell you about Peter Henshaw. His nice guy routine is an act. Do you know why he’s out here on his own? Because six years ago he murdered three civilians and two children, who didn’t know they were carrying military hardware on their cargo ship. A ‘friend’ was using them to smuggle. The details of what happened were murky enough for him to get shit assignments and not court-martialed. Murky, my ass, he had connections protecting him. No, before you ask, I didn’t know any of the civvies. I was doing the universe a favor. It’s better without him in it.”

I do a quick ‘Net search and confirm it, Three merchant sailors killed, including two children, FIB agent Peter Henshaw under investigation. “Okay, but—”

“Look, if I didn’t do it, someone else would, and it would’ve been a lot messier. No, I can’t tell you who. Besides, Rick, he already figured out where our suits came from, and he already knew we were going to tell him to fuck off. He’d come back with reinforcements, or he’d complain to the League that we were using military hardware, and then who knows who would start poking around.”

“Laura, I’m fine with what you did to Henshaw, I really am! But what happens when Fleet sends someone else?”

“It’ll be weeks. And if they do, hopefully they’ll be in another Gate Jumper with crappy reactor shielding.”

“You can’t kill everybody, Laura! And they’re just suits. Chippers has gobs of money. He’d have gotten us more suits!”

“Not these suits! They’re diff—” she cuts off and turns away.

She almost said something right there. I saw it, and she knew I saw it. I want to know it, but coaxing it out of her is going to be trouble. But something even worse happens. Part of me, the deep dark part that suspects everyone of everything, whispers that her kiss was just another deception to keep me occupied.

No. Fuck off. That was real.

You just wish it was real. She’s playing you.

Well, you weren’t the one kissing her, it felt real to me.

You want it to be real. You need it to be real. So, what are you willing to overlook to keep that illusion?

Everything.

Shit. We’re fucked.

That’s right, so keep your dark ideas in that dark hole where there’s no kissing and no touching and no good sensations and go fuck yourself.

“Laura,” I say. She still has her back to me. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and fuck everything up, but the suspicions rocketing around in my head will no longer stay silent. I can play the doofus for a long time, but I have some scratch in this now. Time to see if I’m as hip deep in the shit as I think. I try to make my voice sound calm. “I’m guessing that the suits might have been Fleet issue at one point, probably when we got them, but they’re not anymore? You’ve done something to them?”

Laura nods.

“Does it have to do with the delivery you got? The one I wasn’t supposed to know about?”

Another nod.

“Something is going to happen, isn’t it? Something that Henshaw wasn’t allowed to know about?”

A long pause. A nod.

“And this something will probably happen during the Championship game? When the whole universe is watching?”

She turns around, stunned fear etched on her face.

Not hip deep. Neck deep. I hold up one hand. “I won’t ask what that is, because I know you can’t tell me.”

Laura closes her mouth. Her expression relaxes. “Don’t think that by saying you won’t ask, that I won’t tell you what I said I wouldn’t tell you because I think you’re being nice to me.”

I squint at her. “Your logic is unassailable when you speak with quadruple negatives.”

She smiles a small, quiet smile, and then kisses me. I did not expect it, though I do expect her to now dance away when I reach up to hold her.

I’m completely blown away when she doesn’t do that, either.

When we stop for a breather, I can’t help but ask, “Why now?”

Tears form in her eyes. “Because now I know you trust me.”

“I love you,” I say, “and you love me back. Trust comes with territory.”

“This is different.”

I squint at her. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with being complicit in a man’s death, would it?”

She nips my neck. “Would it creep you out if it did?”

“Not if you keep doing that, it wouldn’t.”