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CHAPTER ONE

Retirement is great. I say this because when you begin to contemplate it, there is no end to the line of people who want to tell you otherwise. You'll be bored, they'll say. You'll wish you were still working so you'll have a purpose. So that you'll have people to talk to.

Lies.

Bored? Please. There are an infinite number of entertainment options available, streaming to any number of possible devices, and more books than one could ever possibly read. So many books. There are endless places in the galaxy for travel, though being the recluse that I am, that thought isn't particularly appealing to me. And people? I can live without them. I've got Mac and a few other local friends, and that's all I need.

I don't know where the lies came from. Maybe it's a conspiracy among people who are still working to trick you into being as miserable as they are. Maybe it's the leftover propaganda of some long-dead capitalist who needed a workforce. But no matter. Not working beats working every day of the week.

I'd gotten pretty good at it.

It had been two years since I'd last been dragged into action, and I preferred to keep it that way, living back on my modest parcel of land on Ridia 2. The military never called again, and if they had, I wouldn't have answered. I didn't miss any of that stuff. I know I've said that before, but this time I meant it. Anything I possibly owed them, I'd paid in full multiple times over. I still talked to General Serata once in a while, but not about official things. We might chat about a show we both liked, or some sporting event, but never anything important. Neither of us wanted that. I had no illusions that the military had forgotten about me—they hadn't, and they wouldn't. Couldn't. I knew too much. I assumed they monitored everything about me that they could, which didn't bother me, as long as they did it from a distance.

Mac had a tougher time with his transition, though some of that might have been because he hadn't had as long to come to grips with it. His retirement came pretty suddenly, and I think he missed the life. Unlike me, he hadn't been looking forward to being done with the military. Still, he was finding ways to compensate. He enjoyed socializing more than I did, so he often hung out with a group of veterans who called Ridia 2 home—a lot of us settled on the out-of-the-way planet because the relatively low cost of living made a military pension go further.

But Mac spent most of his time at the gym/dojo that he ran with another guy. I worked out there twice a week, because when you're old like I am, you have to lift some weights or you waste away to nothing. Mac approved and made sure that I had a good routine. There are benefits to knowing the owner. Technically, he also worked for me, providing for my security needs. I didn't think I needed much. He disagreed, and I acquiesced. Either way, I liked having him around, and I happily covered his costs.

About that. The money. I'm not really allowed to talk about it— nondisclosure agreements and all that—but let's just say that after my time on Eccasis, Caliber worked out an arrangement with the government to pay me for my troubles in order to avoid even more lawsuits than they were already facing. Which meant I got money.

A lot of money.

And given that I was pretty much set before it ever happened, well, now I had the kind of money where you do what you want and don't really think about it. For me, that meant large college funds for my grandkids, subscriptions to every streaming entertainment service I could find, and a nice garden in a backwater part of a backwater planet. What can I say? I'm pretty simple.

Speaking of Caliber, I'd like to tell you that Zentas paid for his crimes, but if I had money, he had stupid money, and the truly rich rarely suffer consequences. On the surface he took some hits. He pulled back from the public eye and put someone else in charge of the company, at least nominally. Most important, for me at least, he never fucked with Carl Butler again. I didn't for a minute think he'd forgiven me for messing up his plan, but as long as he stayed away from me, I'd be okay. And so would he.

Mostly I tried to stick to a routine, and Wednesday afternoon around four that routine involved meeting Mac at Moop's for drinks. Moop's was our local tavern, a sturdy log building that had a dumb name but good beer. I stole that line from Moop, the guy who ran the place along with his wife, Martha. There weren't many people there yet when I arrived—maybe three or four tables occupied—on account of it only being four, which goes back to that whole thing about not working being better than working. Mac was already waiting in our booth.