Reborn as a Spaceship

The call didn't come from Madeye Merc, as I half-expected. It came from higher up, from one of the three big factions Wayfarer had flagged in his relationship mapping. "Three-Three," he'd told me. "And call them that. Not thirty-three. They're particular."

Three-Three weren't racers. They ran things. Smuggling, contracts, and, most pertinently, the betting ring that funded half the station. They were the house behind the gauntlet.

The comms alert blinked amber. I accepted.

A calm, polished face filled the screen: a lanky and thin humanoid, but unnervingly symmetrical. Eyes too steady and too large for his face, voice too practised. A man used to control. "Arbiter Lazarus," he said, smiling like a merchant who already owned everything in the store. "Congratulations on your heat win. Your crew showed… initiative."

I inclined my avatar's head. "We do our best."

"The rules of the Gauntlet are famously flexible," he continued. "And it seems you've understood Rule One quite well. But there's more to it than wording. There's intent. Balance. Reputation. Knowing when to show strength, and when not to."

Ah. The warning.

I smiled back, all warmth gone. "Is this where you tell me I've broken some unspoken etiquette?"

He chuckled politely. "Not broken. Not yet. But consider this a reminder. The Gauntlet has an ecosystem. Betting odds. Power structures. Patterns. Unexpected variables… complicate things."

"And I assume I'm one of those variables?"

He leaned forward slightly, the smile still in place, but with sharp edges now. "Your victory shifted several high-stakes brackets. Some investors aren't pleased. And let me be very clear—no one here cares that you're a Judge. Your title has no value in this system."

"That depends," I said calmly. "Titles don't matter. Outcomes do. And I assure you, we're planning to win the final."

That smile turned predatory for a heartbeat. "Then I'll adjust the odds. Carefully."

He ended the call with a polite nod, as though he hadn't just threatened me.

I turned off the holo-feed and let the silence sit for a moment. Then I pinged the hangar.

"Stewie," I said over internal comms, "nice flying."

His face appeared on the lounge monitor, flushed from exertion and still riding the high. "Sorry, Laz. I might've shown off a little too much with the burst and the drone net. Should've held back."

"Don't be," I replied. "They needed to believe we're dangerous. You did the job, and you did it well."

Mira leaned into view beside him, grinning. "He earned a celebration. I baked cookies."

I panned the view down slightly to show a tray of dark, crisp-edged sweets cooling on the table. Mira's talent for coaxing decent flavour out of synthetic protein stocks bordered on divine.

"They look… exceptional," I said sincerely, watching the others grab them two at a time.

Mira laughed. "That sounded almost wistful, Mr Lazarus."

"It was," I admitted. "Moments like this make me wish I still had taste buds."

Wayfarer rumbled in our shared space. You have memory taste. Simulate it.

It's not the same, I sent back, and Wayfarer, amused, drifted away again.

We had enemies now. Real ones. But we also had momentum. Plus it was time to play a little dirty.

I wasn't just sitting still, despite the relaxed posture I maintained on the bridge. The warning from Three-Three had been thinly veiled, but the threat was real. And I didn't intend to wait for someone else to make the first move. I had already been making moves. I needed to show that we had teeth.

Not to provoke a war as we weren't ready for that but to spark enough disruption that they'd remember we weren't just tourists with a shiny ship and clever drones. We needed respect, and sometimes, respect came from carefully curated chaos. The balance was the key, too much and we risked becoming a problem that needed to be eliminated.

Over the past few days, under Laia's coordination, we'd been scattering stealth jump buoys across the system. We nested them behind asteroids, tucked into ship graveyards, folded quietly into orbital lanes. At the same time, Wayfarer had been running silent tagging ops: microtargeting drones seeded on vessels belonging to the smaller factions. They weren't dangerous on their own, just silent watchers, gathering movement patterns and fleet data, painting a web across the underworld. They also gave us a target lock to dimensional shift mines to.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Most of the lesser crews had no idea we were watching them. But the big players? The top-tier syndicates? We couldn't even get close. Their ships bristled with stealth detection arrays, layered AI firewalls, and sensor countermeasures sharp enough to catch a whisper of intrusion.

So instead of sneaking around, I reached out.

I told Wayfarer to open a direct channel to one of them. He paused, his usual presence in our shared space dark and brooding.

Are you sure? he asked.

"Yes," I replied. "We've stirred the lower tiers. Time to knock on the gates of the king."

"Their leader is called Seckh of Blackgrass," he warned. "Ruthless. Known to airlock his own lieutenants for wasting time. He isn't like other Xzte he doesn't believe in bartering only Telk"

"Noted."

When the call connected, I was met with a dim chamber illuminated only by the pale blue glow of Telk crystals, mountains of them. And Seckh.

The Xzte leader moved with unsettling grace for something so physically imposing. Six legs supported a low, thick body. Its head loomed, wide and flat, four eyes glinting like polished stone. No teeth—just layers of inner grinding plates, now slowly chewing something that looked like crushed violet grass.

His trunk-like appendages curled from either side of its skull. They moved independently, picking up vials, adjusting environmental controls, flipping through open data panels like fingers plucking strings.

"Arbiter Lazarus," it said. Its voice was low and textured, like rock grinding against metal. "Curiosity alone brings me to answer. Your kind doesn't usually crawl into places like this."

"I came looking for power," I answered without preamble.

That made one of its head-trunks twitch, the equivalent of a raised eyebrow, perhaps. "Power is earned through merit. Claimed through consequence. You've done neither."

"I intend to win the Gauntlet final," I said evenly.

Another pause. "A pittance. A distraction for those too weak to claim anything real. No one with influence here cares about drone races. Not even Three-Three."

"Then what matters?" I asked. "What would earn your attention?"

The answer came without hesitation. "Nothing. You and your crew are naïve, clean, eager you have no place in this system. The underworld has no use for creatures who still think reputation grows from performance." A pause. "Leave. You've already disrupted more than you understand."

The call terminated abruptly.

Wayfarer's avatar appeared beside mine. "That went about as expected," he said dryly.

I nodded, not disappointed. "He's not wrong."

"Then why reach out?"

"To give him a chance to see us," I replied. "And to make sure he's looking the other way when it goes off. He will think we aren't worth the time anymore"

Wayfarer didn't speak, but I felt the approval in the pulse of gravity behind his presence.

Because this was always part of the plan. While the Gauntlet consumed attention, while bets flowed and egos clashed in the drone race, we were busy. Feeding snippets of intercepted data to rival factions, seeding carefully curated evidence of betrayal, leaked comm logs, and mirrored transponder codes. This world relies on trusting in the protection of those bigger than you. I plan to remove that trust.

Laia handled the infiltration with surgical elegance. Wayfarer, by contrast, approached the chaos like a cartographer of conflict he had mapped the tension and distrust across the system as if tracing fault lines in tectonic plates. Between the two of them, we had a good view of the system.

They both joined me on the bridge, their avatars taking form beside the main display table. A projection of the system unfolded before us with pinpricks of light for ships, swirling orbital paths, and glimmering signal traces. We had buoys placed in key locations, cloaked and silent, feeding back a steady stream of data. Every major player was marked each coded in distinct hues to show their affiliations. Red for Three-Three. Green for Blackgrass. Blue for the Pzetc.

"Laia," I prompted.

She extended a hand into the map, and a new layer unfolded showing ships she had successfully infiltrated. Pings of soft violet dotted the map. Some clustered in vulnerable fleets, others floating alone, looking innocuous. They weren't. Each was a seed planted, waiting to be watered by paranoia.

"Five minor crews have been compromised," she reported. "Two already show signs of tension with their parent syndicates. I've forged some fake cargo receipts, rerouted cargo to other ships, and introduced false sensor logs into three vessels' archives. They are starting to think their bosses are ripping them off"

Beside her, Wayfarer pulsed dark blue. "Watch here," he said, one arm of his planetary form gesturing toward a cluster of vessels hovering near a broken asteroid ring. "This corridor belongs to Blackgrass, but Three-Three patrols cross it regularly. Watching the patterns the next 'coincidence' will not be viewed as such."

The map rotated. New vectors appeared with arrows predicting retaliations, engagements, and territorial shifts. Fleet movements are rendered as cold math, the language of strategic entropy. And through it all, a web of predictions glowed faint gold. If we intervene we should be able to pick a winner.

I nodded, not sure which side I wanted to pick yet.

"And the Pzetc?" I asked.

Wayfarer dimmed slightly. "Omitted from simulation parameters. Their movements are sparse. Their vessels are rarely seen, but always obeyed. No one crosses them. No one speaks of them. That silence… is intentional."

"Then we don't poke that bear," I said. "Not yet."

Laia gestured again, zooming into a fleet parked near the race circuit's secondary moon. "Blackgrass assets," she noted. "Armed with high-energy comm jammers, likely to interfere with race frequencies. They've received falsified orders suggesting Three-Three intends to sabotage their betting records."

"They'll retaliate," I said.

"They're already moving," Wayfarer replied. "Subtle, for now. Once the Gauntlet final starts, they'll need no excuse."

I leaned over the projection, watching the pieces align. So many ships, so many egos and vendettas dressed as strategy. We weren't powerful enough to win this system by force. But we could seed just enough chaos to tilt the board.

The Gauntlet was our distraction.

The real game was still in motion.

And if we played it right, by the time the final race launched, half the system would be too busy chasing shadows and scapegoats to realise the puppet strings had already tightened around their throats. And then I will offer my services as a mediator.