From the corner of his eyes, Clarke could see two of the kids had grabbed taut chains from their pockets and were tying them up around their hands. Another had a cheap mono-knife. Mohawk’s hands were still in his pockets, which meant he was packing heat.
“And I bet you love beating up random people on the street because it’s your civic duty,” Clarke told Androgynous, voice dripping sarcasm, but his attention was on Mohawk. The kid had just made a mistake. Anxious to be the first to lay the beating on the old man, he was a couple steps further than the rest of his friends.
Well, no sense letting a good chance go to waste.
Androgynous began to say something angry and edgy when Clarke leaped into Mohawk’s chest like a cannonball. The kid managed to draw his plastic gun half-way before Clarke’s open palm connected with the kid’s throat. The strike made a dull sound and Mohawk gagged and stumbled backward while his friends roared and charged at Clarke.
He was already behind Mohawk, though. Clarke used both hands to twist Mohawk’s gun arm hard until the elbow made a crunching noise and dislocated. Mohawk screeched in agony and dropped the gun, right into Clarke’s open, waiting palm.
“Holy shit,” said Androgynous, when he was suddenly staring at the wrong end of the barrel.
“I’ll only say it once,” Clarke told him over the screams of Mohawk, whose arm Clarke was still twisting with his free hand, “fuck off. Go litter someone else’s level.”
Androgynous eyes’ flickered between the gun and Mohawk in such a way that almost let Clarke read his mind.
Don’t do it, kid, he thought. No one could out-run a bullet.
But was he really going to kill a kid over some stupid graffiti?
“Take him the fuck down,” Mohawk muttered through clenched teeth. Before Clarke could react, he kicked at Clarke’s knee, hard, before collapsing himself in the ground.
Pain jolted up through Clarke’s leg like an explosion, and he could feel his body clenching in agony. At the last instant, he managed to lift the gun away from Androgynous’ face and take his index finger away from the trigger.
Androgynous used that chance to jump at him, snarling like a feral dog, a mono-knife suddenly in his hands like a parlor trick.
Like many times before in his life, Clarke’s training saved his life. Instead of doubling over in pain like his body wanted, he kicked Mohawk into Androgynous path, making them stumble over each other while cursing loudly. The mono-knife probably did more damage to Androgynous himself than to anyone else.
Clarke stumbled his way back into the alley’s entrance, threatening the other three men with the plastic gun. The thing was a cheap knock-off of the gadgets that Metro Security Protocols used, only two bullets per cartridge—but untraceable, and easily built by anyone with access to a 3D printer and the Net.
Two bullets for three men. But who wanted to be the first?
The kids doubted themselves, halted, glanced at each other. Clarke knew the fight was over.
“Just fuck off,” he suggested, trying not to let his voice tremble from the pain of his knee. “Security is on their way already. Hurry and you may yet lose them.”
“This isn’t over,” said Androgynous. His forehead had a long, nasty gash that sprouted blood like a faucet. It had been dumb luck that the knife hadn’t cut all the way to the skull and further.
“Yeah, we’ll be seeing you around, old man,” Mohawk told him, nursing his broken arm. That was some heavy pain resistance right there. Clarke briefly wondered what cocktail of meds the kid was abusing.
The gang disappeared with the practiced ease of ones who have lost many fights and have lived to fight again, leaving Clarke alone, nursing a bruised knee.
When security did arrive, he was long gone.
THE EDGE’S lifeblood is the oryza. A rare mineral whose existence was first observed three hundred years ago by a lucky probe taking mineral samples from the Mariana Trench at Challenger Deep.
Non-treated oryza is similar to a grain of rice in both shape and size, and the untrained eye may confuse it for salt after close examination. The untrained eye would need immediate medical attention afterward because oryza is radioactive.
It’s also the only known natural generator of anti-hypertritons, particles of antimatter previously observed only in tiny quantities during particle acceleration experiments.
The Alcubierre Drive was the natural follow up to oryza’s discovery. Using the new mineral as a power source, the Alcubierre Drive generates a configurable energy-density ring around a spaceship. The ring contracts the space in front of the ship and expands the space behind it, allowing the ship to travel at an apparent speed much faster than the speed of light.
Humanity’s golden age had arrived. Space’s secrets—and riches—would no longer be hidden by distance and time.
Except that oryza exists only in faint traces across the entire solar system.
Thus, the first extra-solar mining colony project was set in motion. A promising star system was selected, one that had the necessary characteristics for an oryza-rich environment. At brutal expense in both oryza and normal resources, the first expedition was sent to star system Asherah, and a mining colony was set up on the surface of Asherah V, which the inhabitants named Jagal.
It would be the first colony of humanity’s growing extra-solar holds, an expansion of inter-connected star systems that would become known as the Edge. Rich in oryza and natural resources, the Edge sent back convoys which quickly gained Earth its investment many times over.
That ended very quickly once the Edge realized they didn’t need Earth’s support for much, if at all. As it turns out, it’s easy to win an independence war if the former colonies already control ninety nine percent of the resources that allow for big daddy Earth to reach them in the first place.
Thus, the Edge achieved independence, and the Systems Alliance was born. Relationships with Earth were strained for a hundred-and-thirty-six years, until a decade ago, when the dreadnought Mississippi, under the command of Commodore Terry, plopped into existence straight into Asherah System, bypassing in the process the entirety of the Systems Alliance fleet in the neighboring systems. The Mississippi used a new technology, it was said, one capable of creating wormholes using oryza, folds in space-time that made space travel almost instant. This hyperdrive tech was so beyond what the Systems Alliance corporations could achieve that the Mississippi’s appearance took the entire Edge by surprise.
Nevertheless, the in-system defenders scrambled into formation to give battle to the invader.
The Systems Alliance would know the carnage that followed as the Battle of Broken Sky, and it would learn a painful lesson: Don’t fuck with Earth’s fuel.
Since then, the dreadnought had stood watch over Jagal like a zealous God over His flock. The ship had never moved from the planet’s orbit. It had no need. How could the Edge’s forces oppose it, when the ship could level the planet (and the entire ruling class) with a couple barrages from its torpedo tubes?
Officially, the Second War for the Edge Independence had started when the Mississippi had entered Asherah System and ended when it reached Jagal and broke its garrison. Nowadays, its orbit served an enforcing duty, a grim reminder to the entire Edge not to bite the hand of that fed them.
It was under the watchful vigil of the UEF-SD Mississippi that Joseph Clarke returned home that night. Had the Mississippi’s crew been looking down from their sensors, they would’ve been able to see the ambush that waited for him inside his single room flat. Clarke himself, who lacked the near-omniscient sight of the ship, didn’t see them until it was already too late.