Chapter 1

Everyone said Zeke had eyes in the back of his head.

While cybernetic implants were prevalent in this day and age, being December 2097, they were not why Zeke had this ability.

As often as he was scanned, not a single electronic or mechanical enhancement was found in his body other the regulated implanted ID chip in his hand and an ear comm. He didn’t even have a ship interface implant, even though he owned and operated an old space freighter.

Zeke’s amazing ability to sniff out trouble and mostly avoid it was due to an ability that only a few Earthlings believed in. Zeke was a wizard. How he became a wizard is a tale in and of itself. One that only a few people, whom he trusted, knew, and they would never willingly tell without his permission.

Zeke’s abilities were going to be sorely tested this day. He had arrived at Morpheus Space Station to deliver his cargo of MC sheets (Martian crystalline sheets).

These crystals grew in multi-micro-layered sheets, deep underground on Mars. This process was only possible in the lighter gravity of Mars, not in the microgravity of orbit, nor in the full gravity of Earth.

Finding them was one of the powerful economic incentives behind the rush to colonize Mars back in 2072. At present, Zeke Walker, almost twenty-three years old, was the primary supplier of the highest quality MC sheets on the market.

Once treated, the crystals could be formed into very tough, ultra-thin, transparent flexible sheets. The sheets were used in the old minders and now newer versions called Mads (multi-application devices) to form the amazing wrap-around-the-wrist screens and flexipads (roughly 15cm by 25cm) that everyone used.

Zeke had just cycled the doors to enter the space station from his ship’s personnel airlock when he found a zapper aimed at his chest. The man holding the slim, gold-coloured, rectangular device had a malicious grin on his not so pleasant looking face.

Armid had the look of a brawler. His rather long beak of a nose had been broken more than once. He had scars in both his eyebrows and a long, white, jagged scar down his left cheek to his jaw that contrasted with his dark brown skin and eyes.

Armid’s 176cm tall, yet bulky frame showed that he hadn’t let himself go and exercised regularly. He wasn’t pleased to see the contempt displayed on Zeke’s mid-beige face and his sea-green eyes at being confronted by him.

Armid’s left cheek twitched at the memory of Zeke, relieving him of the ceramic knife that he had threatened Zeke with during a previous encounter a year ago. Zeke had scared Armid with the knife when Armid had tried to get it back.

It hadn’t been one of Armid’s finest moments. He still didn’t understand how the freighter boy had bested him. Armid was out for revenge, as well as the monetary gains he planned to obtain.

Zeke stood some 25cm taller than Armid. His lanky, triangular frame was deceptive as the younger man was much stronger than Armid had expected. Not all spacers took care to keep themselves fit and often ran their gravity units at low settings to save on costs at the expense of their bodies.

Armid also remembered the frightening speed that Zeke had displayed when they last fought. It still baffled him. Armid’s boss had not been happy to hear how Zeke had rejected the proposal that Armid had been sent to deliver.

As an independent haulier, Zeke wasn’t disposed to pay a joining fee and a percentage of his earnings to the Space Transport Union that controlled most of the freight docks on Morpheus Space Station. The station that orbited Earth. As far as Zeke was concerned, the Union was a front for organised crime.

Zeke had further frustrated the Union boss because he didn’t use Union people to load and unload his ship. Even ships with crews had to use the port’s cargo lifters. In fact, few knew for sure, how Zeke managed to shift his cargo from his ship to the warehouse he rented.

The union was further frustrated because Zeke always managed to leave Morpheus with his holds filled with the goods he had been commissioned to take back to Mars or onto Armstrong Space Station, the station that orbited Earth’s moon, Luna.

Cameras and scanning devices often went on the blink when Zeke was around. This baffled the Union and the local MPs, as Zeke was never found with a device that could affect them.

Zeke had been running between Morpheus and Mars since not long after he turned nineteen. During the nearly four years, he had resisted every attempt by the Union to bring him into the fold.

One reason the current boss of the Union, Simba Gordano, hadn’t pushed the issue with his usual force was that Zeke had some powerful friends in high places. However, the recent changing of the guards meant many of them were no longer on Morpheus.

Many of the experienced MPs had been shipped to Terra, the new planet that Earth started settling on at the start of 2096. Simba had managed to encourage more of the new guards to his way of thinking during the previous couple of months.