CHAPTER 28: COMBAT AND COMMERCE

Turns out the galaxy has no patent system. If you can rip off someone's tech and sell it, more power to you. The interstellar equivalent of finders keepers, with a healthy side of "what the authorities don't know won't get you executed in the vacuum of space."

Eli spent a week doing exactly that, stealing bits of neural implant tech and mixing it with their own design. He found it genuinely funny. Humanity finally reaches the stars only to discover their most protective corporate practices don't exist out here. Earth's intellectual property lawyers would be devastated.

He sat in the hotel's common area with holographic schematics floating around him, rearranging components with careful nudges of his fingers. The implant designs were coming together well, a blend of Earth ingenuity, Eden modifications, and borrowed alien architecture that would make them adaptable across species.

"Is this how humanity plans to make its mark on the galaxy? Through technological theft?" Sage's hologram materialized beside him, wearing that particular expression she reserved for moments when she wasn't quite disapproving but was definitely keeping score.

He glanced up from the schematic, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "We prefer 'adaptive research.' Besides, it's not theft if they're selling it in the open market. We're just..." He waved a hand through a floating diagram, scattering components into a new arrangement. "Improving upon existing concepts."

"A semantic distinction that would make lawyers proud," she said, though her tone carried more amusement than anything else.

The lobby hummed around them. A cluster of what appeared to be sentient gas clouds drifted past, each contained in a transparent bubble that let them navigate solid environments. They left faint trails of luminescence that faded after a few seconds. Beautiful, in a disconcerting sort of way.

"The template's ready," Eli said, collapsing the schematics and storing them in his neural interface. "We'll need the ship's fabricators to produce them. I could teleport there, but..."

"But randomly disappearing might trigger security protocols," Sage finished, with the ease of someone who'd been completing his sentences for centuries. "The orbital authorities might also have questions about unexplained energy signatures."

He drummed his fingers on the table, the faint metallic echo a small, constant reminder of what he was. "I might risk it using a false identity. Being arrested for trespassing on my own ship would be a new low, even for me."

"Your collection of lows is already quite impressive."

"I aim to excel in all things, including poor decisions." He stretched, more from psychological habit than any physical need. "Let's find out about this tournament first."

Research wasn't difficult. The hub's information network was built for accessibility regardless of species or technical sophistication. Sage interfaced with the public terminals and pulled data at speeds that would make most AI systems look sluggish.

They gathered in the suite later that afternoon, the others settling into modular furniture that somehow managed to be uncomfortable for every species equally. Emily worked the holographic display, scrolling through tournament entries stretching back thousands of years.

"Quite the event," she said. "Held once every hundred years, which gives combatants from across the galaxy enough time to reach the hub regardless of their FTL capabilities." Her brow furrowed as she kept reading. "There's a biological requirement. Participants must be at least fifty percent organic."

"Well, that's unfortunate," Clara said, glancing toward Eli with real concern. "You're fully synthetic, aren't you?"

He smiled, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy their confusion a little. "I was originally human, then fully synthetic. When I unlocked the Ascension System, it converted me into a biomechanical entity." He rapped his knuckles against his chest, a hollow metallic knock. "My profile lists me as 'Human, Biomechanical Variant.' Exactly 52.3% biological."

Their stunned expressions were worth every credit of the hotel bill.

"You're part biological?" Julia's business composure slipped for the first time since they'd left Eden. "You look exactly the same as when we departed."

"Appearances can be deceiving." He picked up a piece of fruit from the snack tray and took a bite. "The biological components are mostly internal: neural pathways, synthetic organs, specialized cellular structures. The external shell is still primarily mechanical for durability."

"That's why you sleep and eat," Emily said, her mind visibly connecting pieces. "I thought it was just habit."

"It's both," he admitted, examining the fruit. Tasted like kiwi crossed with bell pepper. Not unpleasant. Just odd. "I don't technically need to, but I've always been able to process food, even back when I was completely synthetic."

Clara's expression shifted as she turned back to the display, reading deeper into the tournament rules. "This isn't a simulation, Eli. It's actual combat."

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, studying the scrolling text. The rules were clear enough: physical combat, minimal armor, limited weapons. Traditional forms only. No ranged energy weapons, no explosive devices.

"The Evaruun have put you in a terrible position," she continued, and her concern sounded genuine rather than performative. "Either you risk your life or you let humanity down by refusing a challenge they explicitly issued."

"Thanks for that uplifting assessment." No real edge to it. He'd faced worse odds more times than he could easily count. "Fighting enormous monsters with more teeth than sense isn't exactly new. Been doing it for decades on Eden."

He nodded toward the display. "Besides, contestants can surrender. Your opponent has to stop if it's possible or risk disqualification."

Privately, he found himself reconsidering his attribute allocation. More points in Durability or Agility might've been useful right about now. Then again, short-term thinking had gotten him into trouble more times than he cared to count. Intelligence served multiple purposes: tactical advantage, teleportation precision, better planning. Still. A bit harder to kill would've been nice.

Julia sat straighter, business instincts surfacing. "Want to place bets on yourself? The odds should be fantastic. Humans are completely unknown in competitive combat."

"I've got about 475,000 credits between me and Sage," he said, running the numbers. "Might as well bet everything. If I lose, money will be the least of my problems. Hard to spend credits when you're scattered across an arena floor."

Sage's hologram stilled. Her expression shifted into something quieter and more serious than he was used to seeing. "You shouldn't do this just for humanity, Eli. You're not human anymore, not entirely." Her voice softened. "I know you still consider yourself one of them. But is it worth risking your life? And if you die..." She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. If he died, she'd be permanently integrated into the ship.

The room went quiet. The others found sudden interest in their drinks or the floor patterns, giving them space without actually leaving.

He met her gaze, synthetic to holographic. Two consciousnesses in completely different states, sharing centuries of accumulated weight between them. "If you truly don't want me to do this, say the word and I won't."

Sage made a sound he'd never heard from her before. A groan, short and raw and surprisingly human, carrying frustration and worry and something that sounded very much like resignation.

"No," she said finally. "I know you'd resent me if I stood in the way of humanity's future for my own sake."

She was right. Fair or not, he would. It would push them to the edges of human society, leave them spending eternity among people he couldn't see as his own. She was smart enough to know what that would do to them over time.

But he meant what he said. If she asked, he wouldn't go.

"Let's get everyone settled," he said, breaking the silence before it calcified into something harder. "I need to get to the ship, but I'd rather leave you somewhere secure first. The last thing I need is explaining to the council why I lost half of Eden's first diplomatic team to alien muggers."

They found a hotel with real security, which was rarer than it should've been in a hub where most species handled their own protection. The lobby used environmental controls that automatically adjusted to each species' preferences, creating localized pockets of comfort throughout the space. Genuinely impressive engineering, dressed up as hospitality.

Once everyone was settled, Eli used False Identity to take on an alien appearance, just in case he tripped any alarms. If something flagged, it could be blamed on a non-existent being. Then he fixed the coordinates of the Afterlife's fabrication bay in his mind and let the disorientation of teleportation pull him through.

The ship's interior came together around him, sterile and efficient, military design stripped of anything unnecessary. A sharp contrast to the sensory overload of the trade hub. He set the fabricators to produce 100,000 neural implants from their hybrid design and watched as the machines hummed to life, tiny components moving through assembly fields and coming together into devices no larger than his thumbnail.

Sage appeared on the ship's projection system. "I've found a company that services all Assembly territory," she reported, her hologram expanding to show detailed business information. "They warehouse products and list them on the galactic marketplace for a fee. One of the largest operations in existence."

"If we'd known about them before we arrived, we could've shipped everything directly to the ship," he said, watching the fabricators work. "Would've saved us some trouble."

"Yes, but then you'd have missed seeing the hub firsthand." A small pause. "I know that matters to you, even when it's uncomfortable."

The fabrication took several hours. He used the time to run a full ship diagnostic. The Afterlife was in perfect shape, its systems holding steady despite a week on automated protocols. He felt a quiet satisfaction at that.

When the fabricators finished, he teleported back to the hotel with the implants stored away in dimensional storage and gathered the crew to explain the plan.

"You can come with me or stay in your rooms," he told them. "But don't leave the hotel until I'm back."

They all chose to stay, which was a relief. He'd grown fond of them during the journey, and the thought of any of them coming to harm in this place, vast and strange and indifferent, sat worse with him than he'd expected.

The company Sage had found occupied a structure that made Earth's most impressive buildings look like architectural sketches. The main atrium rose at least a kilometer overhead, with transportation platforms moving between levels in patterns that looked chaotic until you recognized the mathematics underneath.

The representative, a being with eye stalks and chitinous plates where skin should've been, barely reacted when Eli pulled 100,000 neural implants out of dimensional storage. Just a slight tremor of those stalks before it slapped labels on the container and moved on with business.

"Product description required," it said, in translation that somehow conveyed meaning despite an entirely alien mouth.

Eli wrote up a detailed explanation, provided demonstration videos, and paid an additional 100,000 credits for advertising. They priced each implant at 10,000 credits, the market average, which after fees and overhead could potentially net them around 850 million credits.

"That's enough to buy a battleship," he said as he left the facility, credit balance reduced but future earnings looking considerably healthier. "Though who knows how long it'll take to sell that many, if they sell at all."

"Try a little optimism. We've got the best product in our price range," Sage said, her hologram keeping pace beside him in the crowded thoroughfare. "Most products take decades to gain real traction. A little patience won't kill you."

"Maybe I'll start a trend. Humans: the galaxy's new neural fashion icons."

"You should also look at weapons while you're at it," she said. "Something better than that sword you made on the Eternis."

"The Eternis blade was decent for something I forged from scrap metal while going slowly mad with boredom." He pulled up the digital marketplace on his tablet as he walked. Most of the listings looked decorative, the kind of thing tourists buy to hang on walls. But a few looked legitimate, in styles he'd never encountered on Earth.

One caught his eye. Thin like a katana, similar hilt, but double-edged and without a curve. The specs listed vibro-tech capable of cutting through any known hull metal. Twenty thousand credits. Not cheap, but neither was dying in an alien tournament because your blade gave out at the wrong moment.

"Purchase confirmed," he said. "Now I just need to decide between the railgun and a particle beam rifle."

"The railgun would be unexpected," Sage offered, steering around a cluster of tall, spindly beings locked in what appeared to be a heated commercial disagreement. "Everyone will be prepared for standard particle weapons."

He nodded, thinking through the angle. "True. And I'd love to use Seeker's Bolt, but letting a stadium full of aliens watch me use what looks like magic would be idiotic."

"Could you disguise it somehow? Integrated into a weapon housing?"

He nearly walked into a floating orb carrying a gelatinous being inside it. He sidestepped at the last second. "Too risky. Not until Eden's strong enough that no one can try to take what we have by force. I'll stick to conventional weapons, conventional by galactic standards."

A small delivery bot waited at his door when he got back to the hotel, hovering with a long package suspended in its manipulation field.

"That was fast," he said, accepting the sword. It must have been warehoused nearby.

He unwrapped it carefully. The blade caught the light with an almost unnatural sheen, the metal unlike anything he'd worked with before. He gave it an experimental swing and felt the vibro-tech hum faintly as it cut the air.

"Fits like it was made for me," he said.

"A tool is only as effective as its wielder," Sage observed.

He sheathed the blade and set it down. "Then let's hope the wielder is up to the task."

"You've faced worse odds," she said, and there was something in her voice that went beyond reassurance. Not blind faith. The specific certainty that comes from watching someone survive the impossible, again and again, across centuries.

"True," he agreed. "But usually I'm not doing it in front of a stadium full of aliens trying to decide if humanity is worth knowing."

"No pressure," Sage said, dry as dust. "Just the future standing of our entire species."

"Just another Tuesday." He looked out the window at the city stretching away in every direction, millions of beings going about their lives with no idea that humanity's reputation in the cosmos might soon hinge on one man in a combat ring. "Seven days," he said quietly. "Better make them count."

Sage's hologram moved to stand beside him, looking out at the same view. "We will," she said simply.

Somehow, that was enough.