QUASAR

“Oh, thank the gods,” Quasar muttered, watching the chicken truck enter the stairwell. He’d been fully expecting for there to be some last-second fuckery. He shook his head. “That makes 203 people who’ve made it to the eleventh floor.” He looked down at the tablet. “Look at this. So far, 172 have taken deals, with a few more expected.”

“It’s insane,” Kiki said. His fellow attorney was about twelve drinks deep. She’d been parked at the attorney bar longer than he had. She snorted. “The deals all look to be the same offer as the one they were giving the folks at the end of the tenth. One season indenture as game guide, full medical, life stipend, gag order.” She let out a second snort and slapped the bar. “Another!”

In law school he’d been able to keep up with Kiki and her drinking, but he’d also been a lot younger. Plus, she was a dromedarian. He was pretty sure those humpbacked bitches were raised on distilled trivium. She turned to Quasar. She didn’t even seem drunk. “You better get your tie on. They’re gonna call you in at any moment.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Quasar said. His own drink had been sitting on the bar for an hour now, untouched, as he remained riveted to the display, watching the end of the floor.

Kiki and Quasar had been good friends for a long time. They seemed an unlikely duo from the outside, but the moment you thought about it, it made sense. He’d had to sue just to be allowed access to his school to get his degree. Up until that point, Nullians were “equal” with “equal-access rights,” but in practice, it was all bullshit.

This had been years and years ago, but the lawsuit to gain access to the school had caused a mini uproar on the net. A student suing a law school? What a story that had been, especially since he had won. The judge—Judge Victory—had caught some flak for dropping a decision in his favor.

Kiki was the daughter of one of the galaxy’s most notorious mob bosses. She’d been running her whole life from her past. Quasar, meanwhile, had been dragging his past with him the whole time, determined to make anyone who so much as looked at him acknowledge who he was, what he was, and know, fucking know, he was where he was despite all that bullshit prejudice that had been heaped upon him.

They’d met at orientation, and they’d been best friends ever since.

Other screens showed disaster after disaster unfolding across the galaxy. Random gods from the goddamned dungeon were popping up, wreaking havoc, and disappearing. The “attacks” were all the same. The gods would appear, usually within two light-seconds of a tunnel-node exit. Just the Plenty-built physical nodes and not the communication pinholes. They’d look around, confused, before disappearing again. Most of the visits didn’t last longer than two or three minutes. There were very few casualties so far, but the fact it was happening at all was causing mass panic. Those with access to the center system were all fleeing home. While the tunnel nodes all originated from there, it was clear the insane AI didn’t have access to anything the center system AI controlled.

Kiki waved a hand. “Don’t mind me. I’ll be sitting here, drowning my sorrows.” Her tablet beeped. “Oh wait, wait. . . . Yes. I just got the ruling. He’s been disqualified. Not dead. That’s good, at least.”

Quasar grinned at his friend as he pulled a tie from his satchel. Today’s tie was a new one. Something called a koala bear. It was an Earth animal. Their existence had gone completely viral after an earlier episode of Earth Beautiful where everyone learned about how sexually active the little STD-ridden creatures were. According to the program, the small mammals looked sweet and cuddly, but they were vicious carnivores, often dropping on unsuspecting hikers as they walked past on the wild, untamed continent of Australia. It was said they could devour a full-sized human in two minutes straight.

Shirts and ties with their likeness were everywhere. He’d just bought his niece a real pets companion one.

Kiki’s one surviving client was Daniel Bautista, who instead of taking a deal had gone with the other crawlers into the cleaner bots in that insane gambit to get off the playing field. Apparently, it worked, but they weren’t showing anything. Not even to their attorneys. Kiki would get a notification if he was dead, but would the AI even know at this point? The crawlers supposedly had some weird garden system that kept track, but Quasar had no idea how it worked.

Quasar was just glad that his butt was sitting well outside the tunnel system. They still had real-time communication now thanks to the repeaters, but his system was on the ass end of the Franciscan arm. If he wanted to physically get to one of the transfer nodes, he would need to get on a transport and travel for a few days to jump into one of the old Borant gates.

He slipped the tie over his neck and started looking for an available tunnel booth. Most were still occupied, but there was a free one at the end. He started moving toward it.

His tablet beeped. He lifted it, fully expecting to receive the deal memo, but he was surprised to see his niece staring back at him.

“Tempest?” Quasar asked. “Listen, kid, I’m a little busy. I’m about to . . .” But he paused, seeing the panicked look on her face. Was that blood on her temple? “What’s wrong?”

“Help! Help!” Tempest called. “Uncle Quasar! Dad’s hurt! These guys came. Taurins. They were looking for you and dad told them to fuck themselves, and⁠—”

“There you are you little bitch” came the voice just off the screen. Tempest turned and shrieked, and then the screen went fuzzy.

“Tempest! Tempest!” Quasar called.

The massive head of a Taurin suddenly appeared on the screen. The large creature grinned. “Hey, friend,” the Taurin said. “Look, I’m sorry to do this. I really am. But here’s the thing. I took a contract with your client’s wife, and that’s all there is to it. I hear you’re a stand-up guy, so I’ll give you a choice. You come to me, and your brother and this sweet little piece of Nullian ass don’t need to get⁠—”

Blam!

The Taurin’s head exploded. He slumped over, dead. Another Taurin rushed onto the screen, and he, too, exploded.

“Holy tiddy nipples!” Quasar exclaimed. “Tempest!”

“Uncle Quasar,” Tempest said, her crying face appearing back on the screen. She had the blaster he’d given her in her hand. The very illegal blaster. Already, law enforcement sniffers were pasting little exclamation marks over the gun. He quickly clicked This is an attorney call.

Funny how they didn’t tag the dude’s head fucking exploding, but the moment a tax-regulated item appeared . . .

“Is that all of them?” he asked.

“I . . . I think so.”

He took a hit from his vape. “Okay. This is what you’re going to do. Go check on your dad. I’m going to send someone to your house. You’re going to go with her. I have a thing in a minute, but I will be right behind her.”

You have a new incoming call. You have been summoned.

Fuck, fuck. He only had a minute before Carl was assigned to someone else, and he couldn’t let that happen. He clicked Accept.

“I think he’s okay,” Tempest said, crying, as she started to run to the next room. “I hear him screaming. He sounds more mad than hurt.” Relief flooded Quasar. His brother was an idiot, but he was his idiot.

Quasar looked over his shoulder. “Kiki! I need you!” He swiped twice in her direction. The first swipe sent a single credit to her account. A retainer. The second brought her into the call.

“What’s up?” Kiki asked. Even though she was literally sitting a few meters away, her face was big on his interface. She was chewing on an Earth cherry. Those things were now just as popular as the koala bears.

“I just hired you. I need your help.”

“Like, legal help?” Her eyes went big at the sight of Tempest, and she instantly turned dead serious. Kiki put a finger gun to her head. “Or, like, help?”

I took a contract with your client’s wife.

Princess Chandra. Donut’s lawyer. The Naga bitch had disappeared the moment Donut had put the “hit” on her, but she was still out there, still tossing filings out into the void left and right. Quasar was scheduled to argue against her in a hearing in a few days regarding the legality of the marriage certificate. He was going to lose, but the filing had put a pause button on a lot of her other actions.

She had sent people after his family. His family.

He’d spent how many years working his ass off, clawing his way out of the slums, only to move from one mudhole to the next? He’d been so careful, so careful, to play by the rules. People were always just waiting for him to fuck up and get dragged back into the muck just so they could say, See? We should never have let his kind mix with our kind.

And now that he was finally one step up, he had to deal with this shit? This snake princess was playing a very dangerous game. She was going to go after his family? This bitch who thought she’d had it rough? She didn’t know who she was messing with.

“Both,” he said to Kiki. “Fucking both.”