ROCK’EM SOCK’EM ROBOTS

Mox sat across the table cursing the situation under his breath. He should’ve stayed on the ship and not bothered to set foot on this moon. It was a precarious proposition.

The multisystem conglomerate Profitus Maximus Transstellar Broadcasting System, LLC had purchased the only moon of Grandor 6 for an unimaginable amount of money and bribes. Half the moon was a series of interconnected hotels, casinos, and colossal arenas. The dark side was one gigantic broadcasting dish. It was the epicenter of galactic competitive sports.

Smarmy, vapid, and gauche to no end, a plastic fantastic playground destination for interstellar couch potatoes from worlds in that sweet spot of development where their populations had nothing better to do than watch meaningless happenings and bet on their outcomes. One might call them Romes ready to fall.

The moon’s only planetary law: Honor Thy Bets.

Galactic mob bosses loved the place and enforced the one rule with a more than vicious death penalty.

Zandar Vandar Blunt had requested the stop because of its reputation for advanced deep space transceiver equipment. The Brick was badly in need of an upgrade as its current transponder had tipped the thousand-year-old mark. It was going to cost almost everything they had. Not just credits, but valuable artifacts, the entire supply…