I wake up the next morning and discover my first death threat of the season. Surprising – not because I’d gotten a threat. Coaches get them all the time. I’m a little taken aback because I’ve received one before the season’s even started. I gauge how my team will perform by the frequency of threats and the method by which I’ll meet a sticky end. One threat a week means I have to fire somebody or ‘disappear’ a player to motivate everybody else. Conversely, if I get one a day and they all involve violent ends with power tools, we’ll win more than we lose. One an hour? Pack your bags, we’re going to the playoffs, baby!

But I’ve never gotten a threat before our first practice. Never hand-written and left on the floor outside my sleep tube. I know the note is for me before I even read it. Nailed through the paper is a Veeni mifi knife. They’d stabbed the metal floor with the powered monofilament blade and then removed the power cell, leaving it stuck there. This is an expensive threat. Mifi knives aren’t cheap.

Decorating the hilt are the clan colors of the bee I shot during the last game of my career. My ocular implants are designed to magnify tiny objects at long distances, namely spaceball players out in the middle of space. Reading a note on the floor isn’t difficult.

> Step into an arena and we will cleanse the universe of all you hold dear.

Veeni are big on threatening a victim’s friends and family. Just killing somebody is too easy. Even if they draw it out into something painful, even if it lasts hours or days, that isn’t good enough. Veeni feel that living the rest of your life with your loved ones’ deaths on your hands – that’s much, much worse. Trouble is, most everybody I care about died when the Edochians obliterated Earth. Oh, I suppose Laura is on the list, but I think I’d feel sorry for the dumb schmuck who goes after her. She can take care of herself.

I’m not about to touch the knife – could be poisoned – but I can’t just leave it in the floor plating, either. Somebody might come along and touch it and die and I’m not that much of an asshole. I’m still trying to figure out what to do when Pink Shirt comes around the corner. He’s Orange Shirt today, and he still has his macabre necklace on. He sees the knife in the floor and stops. “That for you?”

“Yep. First one of the season. I’m trying to figure out how to get it out of the floor. It might be poisoned, or something.”

“I can help you with this.”

“Really? Last night you would’ve thrown me out of your bar had I not left. Now you’re willing to help me with this? What gives?”

He shrugs. “Simple. You help me, I help you.”

“You’re wearing a necklace of teeth. What do you need me for?”

“You’re going to have two young women at your tryouts tomorrow. The tournament will be a great place for them to bury hatchet, so to speak. They should stop fighting. It’s getting in the way of business.”

“Well, spaceball is a great place to settle scores,” I say. “But one or both of them might not survive a single game, much less bury any kind of hatchet.”

Orange Shirt shrugs. “In the ground, in each other, doesn’t really matter.”

“Then why don’t you just kick them out of an airlock? Why go through the effort of having them play?”

He grunts. “And they call me cold.”

“I coach spaceball,” I say. “Players don’t have a monopoly on intelligence. Hell, some of them have trouble with regular utensils. Once in a while you get someone who thinks they’re better than they are. The arena usually takes care of that problem for you. If they’re reckless with the rest of your valuable talent, though, you have to take steps.”

“You’ve assassinated your own players?”

I give him a cold smile. I see the next myth about me forming in his eyes. This is more valuable than cleaning up a blood knife in the floor, more than making sure two yahoos get onto the team. This is fucking priceless. It’s not every day that you get to start a rumor about yourself, and the guy who’s going to spread it is someone of stature among the clan community. It’s like sprinkling the rumor with truth dust. By the end of the season, people are going to think I’d slaughtered an entire first string for playing grabass in the locker room.

“So why do I need to field them?” I ask.

Orange Shirt folds his arms across his chest and exhales through his mustache. “They are family.”

“What?”

“Nieces. From my brother. Can’t stand him. Family is everything, but I’d not be sorry if both of his whelps met, shall we say, unfortunate accident. Maybe take him down a notch. At least, there would be two new clanmasters, and I know the new ones would end the feud.”

“Two of the clanmasters are your nieces?”

“Those two, yes.”

“Those two. So you don’t just run a bar, do you?”

“Run it? No, Mr. Stern. I own it. And everything else on this Station.” He looks down at the knife in the floor. “So, how about it? I take care of this problem for you. You take care of mine. Deal?”

It’s not something I can refuse, not now that I know Mr. Orange Shirt is Erik Jager, the pirate equivalent of a mob boss. No, that’s not the right comparison. If mob bosses all reported to the same mob overlord, Jager would be that guy. I suddenly feel light-headed and hope he doesn’t notice my heart trying to escape my chest through my goddamn neck. Veeni mifi knives don’t scare me. Spaceball arenas don’t scare me. My own wife and her idiotic idea about what’s an acceptable punishment for a husband who wanders off the reservation because his brain involuntarily switches off at the sound of a Veeni song, that doesn’t scare me. This guy, with his bright shirts, big mustache, odd jewelry, and the absolute authority to have me disappeared into god knows where with the flick of his right pinky – that scares the shit out of me. I don’t know what’s more frightening – me standing here talking to him like jus’ folks, or the fact that he’s asking for something. Guys like him usually take, take, take, and expect you to accept your unmolested life as more than fair.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

I wonder how badly I’m going to take it in the ass for agreeing to this. But since I don’t want a brightly colored shirt and a handlebar mustache to be the last thing I see before death, I stick out my hand.

“Deal.”

***

I leave Jager alone with the knife before he asks me to do anything else and head out to the main concourse. My stomach rumbles at me and I look around for suitable food. I say suitable because while Freehaven offers a wide range of products to ingest, very few of them hold any nutritional value. Finding the odd shop that produces actual food, real edible matter that doesn’t cause random paralysis, sudden enlargement of various organs, or outright bleeding, is like a scavenger hunt where the reward is your continued good health. I know, sounds boring. Trust me, though, watch what you put into your mouth on Freehaven. It might be watching you back.

An incoming call light blinks in the corner of my vision.

“What’s up, Bucky?” I spot a vendor a few stalls down, hawking something green. Could be leafy!

“You didn’t tell me you recruited Crazy Eddie!” Bucky shouts in my head.

“I didn’t know you guys were friends.”

“Friends, my ass! He almost got me killed!”

I spot some green at the next shop and go check it out. Nope, not leafy green, pickled Andosian penis green. I gag and keep looking. “When? I don’t remember Eddie ever playing for you.”

“Well, it wasn’t in one of my games,” Bucky says. He sounds embarrassed all of a sudden.

Ah. Now I understand. “This was before the operation?”

Silence.

Yep, just as I thought. Bucky used to gamble. A lot. Some people are addicted to gambling. Bucky’s problem goes a bit further. He’ll gamble on anything. Bucky used to bet on the weather. Owed some nasty people a lot of money. But he had the operation, and now he’s fine. Sure, he twitches at the sound of rattling dice, but that’s better than death, right?

“I take it Crazy Eddie arrived?” I ask.

“Yes, he’s up in the Mall.”

“Doing?”

“I’m not his fuckin’ minder, Rick.”

“I take it he spoiled a bet for you. How much did you owe?”

“A lot. Over a hundred grand.”

“Jesus, Bucky.”

“Nearly lost both my arms to a shark named Milo.”

“He was going to take your arms?”

“Called it a fair exchange. I would’ve lost ‘em, too, if the cops didn’t show up.”

I pass a seller peddling secrets in earthen jars, and I don’t look back. Don’t trust anything in an earthen jar. Chances are it carries more critters than a microbiology laboratory. “Cops, Bucky? Usually they wait until after a crime.”

“They wanted him for something else. Now he’s serving fifty years for illegal organ trafficking, so I don’t have to worry about it. But I’m not happy about Eddie, Rick, not happy at all.”

“Can’t be helped,” I say. “He’s the best.”

“We haven’t even had tryouts yet. Speaking of tryouts, any word on the field?”

“I’m guessing it’ll get here sometime today.”

“So what are you doing now?”

“Now? I’m thinking food right now.” Ooo! I see fruit over there!

“What about Laura?”

“Thanks, Bucky, I was enjoying my morning right up until you brought her up. Can’t I go a few hours without you asking about my wife?”

“Well, it’s just that we still need suits. Can’t play much spaceball without suits.”

“They’re coming with the field. Was there anything else?”

“Nope. And can you not call me unless there’s an emergency?”

“You called me, but okay. Why?”

“Well, Janine’s got this look in her eye, and she’s not wearing any pants, so—”

“Goodbye, Bucky.”

I disconnect before I get a mental image that involves Bucky naked. No, wait – shit!

The fruit vendor I spotted is actually selling fruit. I even ask.

“Yes, this is real, honest-to-something fruit,” the woman replies.

“Where did you grow it?”

“I didn’t.” She has apples in a basket behind her. Big, red apples. Green ones, too.

“So, you bought them from somebody,” I say. “How much for two apples and a couple bananas?”

“No, I didn’t buy them from someone. Ten credits.”

“Ten credits it is.” She drops my purchases into a small bag with a logo that says Fast Fruit, franchise opportunities available and hands it to me. I reach in and grab an apple from the bag. I shine it on my shirt. Can’t eat an apple unless you shine it on your shirt. It’s in the rules. “So, if you didn’t grow them and you didn’t buy them, where did they come from?”

“They’re the newest in bio-mechanical nano-agriculture. Real fruit constructed on demand using standard micro-manufacturing pods available everywhere. Are you interested in buying a franchise?”

My teeth press into the apple’s skin just as the rest of my body freezes in horror, the muscles in my back and upper neck seizing like an old combustion engine that’s run out of oil.

“You can keep going,” the woman says. “It’s real.”

I yank the apple away from my lips. “It’s not real. This didn’t come from a tree.”

“It’s an exact copy of one that did. If apples could think, it would remember coming from a tree.” She reaches her hand out. “May I?”

I give her the fake apple.

She puts it on the table and slices it open with a knife lying nearby. The two halves rock away from each other, just like a real apple. “See? It’s got seeds, and if you planted these in the ground, you’d get apple trees. Fake fruit doesn’t have seeds.” She picks up half and bites into it. It snaps like a real apple, and juice sprays just like a real apple.

“Huh,” I say. My stomach rumbles and this is the most palatable thing I’ve seen so far. Cloned fruit it is. I take my bag of fake fruit and wander away from the stall. I try a banana. It’s amazing.

The concourse has this huge observation window that offers a panoramic view of the stars. I’ve never understood giant windows on space stations. Like we need to know that we’re surrounded by emptiness and if there’s a problem we’re absolutely on our own. That said, I do like looking at the stars when I don’t want to be thinking, because I usually end up trying to count them. There isn’t room enough in my head for anything else but counting when there’s so many.

So, I happen to be looking out the window when an Edochian cruiser appears. It doesn’t approach all easy-like from 10,000 kilometers out. No periodic announcements over the station’s vids warning everyone that this is okay, and nobody should panic. The massive vessel jumps into normal space less than a spaceball field away from Freehaven. You might think that a kilometer is really far, but the ship is twice that in diameter and ten times as long. One kilometer is too close. If you’re sharing a star system with an Edochian cruiser, you’re too damn close.

The ship is huge and gray and awful and shaped like a submarine sandwich. I can see the vents along the bowline, the launch points for swarms of remotely piloted starfighters. Hundreds of cannons and missile pods litter the sides at seemingly random locations. Most ominous is the huge cannon situated beneath the nose. This cannon delivers energy bursts capable of cutting a Fleet cruiser in half. It happened a bunch of times at the fall of Earth.

That cannon is pointing right at me. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but it seems like a bit of orange is glowing at the far end of the cannon’s darkness. I’m looking right down into the sleeping maw of Hell. If they fire it, I’ll be ash. I won’t even get a chance to have a last thought.

People around me hold their breath for one moment too long.

Someone screams.

Pandemonium. Everyone running, shoving, tripping and falling. All trying to get anywhere other than right here. I’m really good at stiff-arming a path with this fake limb. I fight my way to the side of the room, all the while managing to keep a grip on my fruit bag.

There’s a garbled hiss on the station’s general communications grid, and then we all see an Edochian on the public vids. The fact that the alien is wearing one of those funny berets lets everyone know three things. First, that this particular Edochian belongs to the First Consortium, their warrior caste. Second, because of the first reason, this fellow has no sense of humor whatsoever. And third, perhaps most important of all, is that it would love nothing better than erasing every human from the universe. It and the rest of its Consortium are the jolly lot who blew up Earth.

“In the spirit of our truce, we are here to provide security for the Chipper Clippers’ tryouts,” it says. Its mouth moves forming words in its own language as the station AI translates. “We will vaporize anyone trying to harm the practice field or those who occupy it. This is your only warning.”

The head and the voice disappear.

Say whatever you want about Chippers. The man has connections.