I’ve heard it said that you can measure a man’s character by the quantity and quality of his enemies. Well, if that’s true, I’ve got an awful lot of character. And that’s the jump alarm. Looks like it’s time for me to build some more character…
Have you ever been to Arkadia? They were real powerful back in the old days, then the Ennead blew them away. Now they have the most unique world I’ve ever been to. Imagine a cloud of gas wrapped around a star. The real estate’s cheap. Drop an asteroid in solar orbit, plant a flag, and take a deep breath of fresh air. Smells like freedom. And a bit of solar wind.
Our war was was pretty easy compared to the last truly great war in these parts. In our war, we really only fought across three sectors, Terran, Peloran, and Arnam. During the war the Peloran remember? Try nine sectors. I’ve been out there, in the sectors the great fleets swept through. There’s just about no one to trade with out there now.
Betty’s my cyber. I’m her bio. We’re a team. We retired after the war, and now we do this. A little trading, a little smuggling, a little hunting, a little running. A little studying. The universe was so simple then. They wanted us dead or slaves. We disagreed. Now we find a universe far more wonderful than we ever imagined. And far more terrifying to some if they knew. We like it.
The cybers won the war for us. Our partnerships, we have the reaction times of a cybernetic intelligence with the pure randomness of a biological intelligence. No computer can predict us, and no flesh can react to us. Combat is an eye-blink’s dance between a laser and a missile head with a partner who knows when to lead and when to follow. It’s a real rush.