Free Forsaken Skies by D. Nolan Clark

Lanoe’s face spoke volumes.
    â€œAre you sure that’s who you met with?” Lanoe asked. “Your Sector Warden?”
    â€œWe had vital business with him. He was very kind to meet us at all.”
    Valk pinged the computers in traffic control with a simple query. Then he took a minder from a pocket in his suit and unrolled it. Displayed on its front was an image of a Naval officer, one Lieutenant Auster Maggs. Short black hair, dashing good looks, knowing sneer. “This was the man?”
    It was clearly so from the elder’s expression.
    â€œElder,” Lanoe said, “I’m sorry. But I think you’re mistaken as to this man’s identity. Your Sector Warden—none of the Sector Wardens—ever leave Earth. They’re considered too important to risk letting them travel about.”
    The calm look on the elder’s face rippled, as the surface of a pond might when struck by a very large rock. Valk could see her attempting to regain control.
    Roan, on the other hand, looked as if her jaw might actually drop off her skull.
    â€œThe money!” she said.

Chapter Five
    M aggs forced himself not to reach into his pocket and touch the development chits again. They were real and they weren’t going anywhere. They were the solution to a very thorny problem and the promise of moving forward.
    He would still have to deal with the fact that he had deserted his post. The Navy would have something to say about that. And there were plenty of other difficulties on the road forward. At least there
was
a road forward.
    He walked as casually as he could manage over to the nearest train station and up to the platform. A civilian pilot in a paper jumpsuit leaned against the railing, looking down the tracks. He turned to give Maggs the once-over and a little trickle of fear like cold water went down Maggs’s spine, but he put a bored expression on his face and the pilot looked away again. When the train came, Maggs stepped aboard, avoiding the car reserved for Naval personnel. No need to run into some old chum now, someone who might remember seeing him here.
    He had to get off the Hexus now, and sharpish. At the docks he would buy passage on the next liner out, headed anywhere. Of course he couldn’t say as much to the ticket vendors. He took out his minder—jostling the chits in the process, good, they were still there—and looked up the departure schedule. It looked like a second-class cabin was available on a ship headed to Rarohenga. The gravity there was a bit heavy to his taste but it would do. The place was at least civilized enough that he could cash in the chits at a properly discreet bank.
    The train pulled out of the station and he grabbed a hanging strap. Movement caught his eye and he turned to look. The various compartments of the train were separated by sliding glass doors. He could see into the Navy car from where he stood. It looked like a marine had tackled a Navy enlisted to the floor of the car and was beating him bloody with gloved fists. Other marines stood over the two of them, cheering and taking bets. All good fun, Maggs supposed, for the kind of psychopath who would make a career of fighting ground battles. As an officer he ought to intervene, he supposed, but that would be foolish.
    â€œSavages.”
    Maggs glanced over and saw a civilian with full body tattoos and not much in the way of clothing sitting by the door. The woman had been reading her minder but now she stared at the fistfight with unveiled antipathy.
    She looked up at Maggs, her mouth twisted in disgust. “Can’t turn it off, can you? Teach a man to fight and that’s all he ever does.”
    A witty retort leapt to mind, but Maggs was quite aware he was in the wrong car. The straphangers around him were all civilians. He was not, in other words, among friends. A gentler reply was in order, perhaps
. Downgrade your mix, Maggsy,
he thought.
Don’t run so rich
. His