“Your ship has been confiscated by order of the Central Bank of Sagitta Prime.”

  The harbormaster at Fletcher Spaceport shoved a tablet under Jeridan Cook’s nose. A massive text of legalese apparently confirmed what the harbormaster had just said.

  Jeridan didn’t need to read it to know that. The payments were way past due.

  Jeridan glanced at the row of bank militia arrayed behind the harbormaster, blocking the gangway to the New Endeavor, the best ship Jeridan had ever almost owned. If it hadn’t been for that medikit delivery going bad, the ship would have been his by now. How was he to know the expiration dates had been changed?

  At least he got away from Beta Enari before the entire planet sued him for spreading a severe case of nanolice. The medikits were supposed to have cured that. Instead, they helped the damn things breed.

  “Sign there,” the harbormaster said, pointing to a fingerpad that would scan his print and take away his dreams forever.

  “I need to get my personal property out first,” Jeridan said.

  The harbormaster, a fat man whose tight uniform made him look like an overstuffed sausage, scowled over his jowls and jerked a thumb to his right.

  “Your buddy already got everything. We’ve been waiting for you for half an hour.”

  Jeridan’s gunner, Negasi Gao, stood glumly at the center of a circle of bank militia, their gleaming white armor and featureless face plates making them look like an arrangement of marble statues. Negasi’s Afro-Chinese features put him in stark contrast. The soldiers carried their flechette sprayers sloped, pointing at the ground, but ready to tear both Negasi and Jeridan apart if they made a wrong move. Jeridan had seen people hit by a spray of the hardened tungsten darts. It wasn’t pretty.

  And these heavies would do it too. They were allowed to under Section 3, Paragraph 6 of the contract, the section titled, “Termination Clause.”

  “You got everything?” Jeridan called over, nodding at the pile of crates and boxes around his copilot. He spotted MIRI inside her black box on top of the pile. Of course, Negasi had gotten MIRI first.

  “Yeah, everything,” Negasi said back. Poor guy looked glum. Jeridan would have to get him drunk later. He’d have to get himself drunk too.

  “Everything?” he asked with added emphasis.

  Negasi met his eye. “Yeah.”

  Jeridan let out a little sigh of relief. At least the whiskey was safe.

  He turned back to the harbormaster.

  “Now look. We told Mr. Farnsworth before, the payment got tied up in the interstellar transfer market—”

  “We checked. You’re lying.”

  “No, wait. Listen. I had to put the transfer under a different name and—”

  “There’s no transfer coming. You’re as broke as an algae farmer in dry season. Sign.”

  “I just need another three cycles and—”

  “Sign.”

  “I can give you an extra five percent. Now if you call Mr. Farnsworth, I’m sure he’d—”

  “SIGN!”

  Jeridan looked mournfully at the New Endeavor glinting under the harsh yellow sun of Sagitta Prime. The sleek lines of its bulkheads and the massive contours of its thrusters were as familiar to him as his own arms. It had been a joy to fly, with superior maneuverability and, at 1.98 light years per day, one of the fastest ships on the spaceways. At the helm of that ship, he could outrace pirates, raiders, and customs officials all without breaking a sweat.

  But he couldn’t outrun the obligations of his contract.

  “There’s no justice on this planet,” Jeridan sighed.

  “Then leave,” the harbormaster snapped. “You won’t be missed.”

  “I can’t leave. You just took my ship.” Jeridan jabbed his forefinger against the pad and a light on the corner turned from green to red. Another mass of legalese appeared on the screen as the communicator in his jumpsuit pocket buzzed. He’d just been sent a copy. All very neat and proper and legal.

  He slouched over to Negasi.

  “You all right?” Jeridan asked.

  “They didn’t try any rough stuff,” his copilot said with a shrug. “Help me with this. I already booked us two rooms at the Spaceport Inn.”

  “The Spaceport Inn? Seriously? That place is a dump.”

  “We’re short on credits, in case you haven’t noticed. Come on, let’s get off the launch pad before these grunts get trigger-happy.”

  Jeridan pulled out his communicator and summoned an autotruck. It arrived within thirty seconds, being released from some hidden garage beneath the surface of the launch pads, scooting at two hundred kilometers an hour between the orderly rows of spaceships, electric motor humming, to stop mere centimeters in front of them with mechanical precision. Jeridan and Negasi loaded their crates on the flatbed and got into the cab. Jeridan kept MIRI’s black box tucked under his arm.

  “Warehouse 463, Shed 27B,” Jeridan said.

  “Estimated time to arrival, 7 minutes, 25.7 seconds,” the autotruck replied in a chirpy female voice.

  The warehouse stood on the far fringes of the city, in a neighborhood where they didn’t ask questions.

  Inertia pressed Jeridan and Negasi back against their padded seats as the autotruck accelerated to two hundred kilometers an hour in less than two seconds. They shot out of the spaceport, leaving the massive steel hangars and broad concrete launchpads behind to zip along a straight road toward the distant spires of the city. The giant blue-green rectangles of algae pools lay to either side, interspersed by the occasional cluster of shacks that were home to the farmers. Soon the pools gave way to more shacks, then a shantytown, before they came to one of the city’s seedier districts.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  They pulled up in front of the warehouse, a long, low concrete building with a series of metal doors with numbers painted on them. Jeridan and Negasi looked around. On the other side of the street stood some light industrial units giving off a nasty chemical tang, and beyond that stretched a massive solar array. A couple of workers in blue jumpsuits and caps strolled past. No one else was in sight.

  “Keep an eye out,” Jeridan said.

  Negasi pulled a wrench out from the pile of junk in the back of the autotruck. Sagitta Prime was one of those worlds that had pretensions to civilization and respectability. Guns were illegal except for the army and corporate militias.

  Jeridan felt naked having his guns in government lockup, but considering how the Sagitta Primers acted after dark, he understood why the law was in place.

  He punched in the key code and the door slid up with a grinding rattle. A light flickered on to reveal several crates labeled “Sagitta Prime Whiskey”. The excise duty seal featured prominently on each crate. Those were fake, of course, but would fool an untrained eye. Sagitta Prime whiskey was the most prized drink in the local region of the galaxy and carried a heavy export tax. If they could get this stuff off planet without having to pay that tax, they’d be rich men.

  “How did you get it offloaded in time?” Jeridan asked.

  “Becca at customs gave me a tipoff.”

  “How much is that going to cost us?”

  “Two thousand credits. I’ve already paid her.”

  Jeridan winced. “Ouch.”

  “It would hurt more to lose it.”

  Jeridan nodded. As Negasi stood watch, he unloaded most of their baggage, leaving only MIRI and some spare clothing in the autotruck.

  After securing the door, they told the autotruck to take them to the Spaceport Inn.

  True to its name, the hotel stood as close to the spaceport as zoning restrictions would allow. Sagitta Prime was one of the busier worlds in this part of the Orion Arm. It even had its own jump gate back before the Galactic Civil War. Despite the collapse of most interstellar commerce after that idiotic conflict, the spaceport still saw a couple of ships taking off every hour.

  Which meant an all-shaking, eardrum-shattering sonic boom every thirty minutes or so.

  Which was why it was the cheapest hotel in town.

  At least the vending machine in the lobby sold extra-strength sleep meds.

  A ship shot into the sky just as the autotruck dropped them off in front of the hotel. With a flare of thrusters, it streaked over the watchtowers and communications array of the spaceport, followed by a roar that shook the autotruck, the road, the sidewalk, and everything on it.

  Negasi had just been trying to say something.

  “What?” Jeridan shouted.

  “I said I feel like punching somebody!” His copilot repeated, the words barely audible over the ringing in Jeridan’s ears.

  “So do I. MIRI deserves a show after losing her home.”

  Negasi stroked the side of the black box tucked under Jeridan’s arm and smiled. “Yeah, she looked cute in that dashboard, didn’t she? Let’s check in first.”

  The lobby of the Spaceport Inn didn’t look any different from the last time they had stayed there three years before. Then they had been hiding out—the inn didn’t ask for any type of ID that couldn’t be easily faked—and this was the sort of place where nobody saw anything. The lobby had faded carpet that crunched underfoot thanks to the regular trickle of grit coming off the concrete ceiling with every sonic boom. A few dusty plastic plants, a fuzzy vid screen, and a large poster of Earth were the only other decorations.

  A Zenobian Bat with a one-meter wingspan, one of the uglier sentient species in the galaxy, hovered by the vending machine. Negasi waved to it and it squeaked a reply.

  “Friend of yours?” Jeridan asked.

  “We played cards last night. I won.”

  A lumpy sofa was taken up by three gaunt travelers, their blue and green robes showing they were on the pilgrimage to Earth. Jeridan overheard something about getting discount tickets on the Interstellar Bus.

  Jeridan shuddered. He’d ridden in one of those as a kid. You got a half-meter wide pad that served as your seat, bed, and cabin. Every twelve hours, you got fifteen minutes out of your pad for exercise and two five-minute bathroom breaks. Otherwise, you stayed where you were, with nothing to look at but the hundreds of other identical pads suspended in the shipping container. His parents had dosed them all with tranquilizers. That worked for the first two weeks, until the tranquilizers ran out.

  Then it had gotten ugly.

  Some people went insane in the weeks it took to travel from one star to the other. He hoped those pilgrims had plenty of drugs, otherwise by the time they got to Earth a few years from now, they’d be gibbering wrecks.

  As they walked to the reception computer, they noticed the vidscreen was playing a news program. A stone-faced announcer spoke to the camera.

  “The latest report from the Tyrul system says the invaders are approaching Tyrul Beta and Sigma. Long-range images show the ships to be the same design as those that have captured the worlds on the outer rim.”

  The screen changed from the announcer’s face to a pixilated video of strange ships of a design Jeridan had never seen before, with several bulbous hulls connected by large, girder-like constructions.

  “The Tyrulian Navy has already engaged with the alien vessels and suffered a defeat,” the announcer went on. “No other details are available. We will update you on this breaking story when and if we receive more comm probes from the Tyrulian government or citizenry.”

  “Cack,” Negasi muttered. “That’s the fifth system they’ve attacked. Nothing seems to stop them.”

  “Don’t worry about that. They’re way far away and we got our own troubles right here,” Jeridan replied.

  “Yeah. Your trouble is going to be my fist implanting itself into your face.”

  “Dream on.”

  Jeridan and Negasi got their key codes from the computer at reception, ordered some sleep meds from the vending machine after the bat had flown off with a packet of freeze-dried insects, and dumped their stuff in their rooms.

  Jeridan looked around his room in disgust. At five square meters with plain concrete walls, it wasn’t much better than the Interstellar Bus, but at least it offered privacy, a bed, a sink, and free access to a shower at the end of the hall. Pretty soon, those pilgrims would dream of a room like this.

  Jeridan piled his things on the bed, carefully setting MIRI’s black box on the wafer-thin pillow, and used the narrow space between the bed and sink to limber up. He stretched, did fifty pushups, some deep knee bends, and ran in place for a few minutes. Then he put on his boxing wraps, grabbed his gloves and MIRI, and went into the hallway.

  Negasi had already stripped down to his shorts and had his gloves on.

  “I reserved Holocabin Three,” his friend said. “Now I’m going to beat the crap out of you in front of MIRI.”

  “In your dreams,” Jeridan grumbled, walking down the hall with him.

  The holocabin was in the basement to reduce the noise of the launching ships. They could still hear the low rumble as one of the larger ships took off, a deep resonance they felt in their guts.

  They entered a bare padded room ten meters to a side. A niche in the wall took MIRI, who had been listening in on their conversation and already knew what to do.

  “Hello, boys,” a sultry female voice came out of nowhere. “You’ve had a stressful day.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jeridan said, stripping to the waist and putting on his gloves.

  “He lost our ship, MIRI,” Negasi said. “Some captain he turned out to be.”

  “I lost it?” Jeridan sputtered. “If you hadn’t made us take that course close to the pulsar, that research team wouldn’t have spotted us and reported us to the cops.”

  “If you had paid the cops off properly, they wouldn’t have responded to the call,” Negasi shot back.

  “How was I supposed to know I had the wrong contact?”

  “You’re captain. You’re supposed to know who to bribe.”

  “Boys?” MIRI said. “Are you going to shout at each other all day, or are we going to get this thing started?”

  “Get it started, MIRI,” Jeridan and Negasi said in unison.

  “Program starting,” MIRI said.

  Suddenly, the room transformed into a boxing ring. A crowd of spectators in evening dress stood beyond the ropes, cheering and holding up their martini glasses to toast them. To one side was a small table with a chessboard and a pair of timers.

  A referee in a white shirt and black pants appeared between them.

  “Gentlemen, I want a clean fight. No punching below the belt. Rounds last three minutes. Now return to your corners and come out fighting.”

  Jeridan and Negasi touched gloves and backed into their corners. The bell rang and the crowd roared.