The introduction of money to the galaxy created winners and losers. Most people were winners. A few were losers.

The Ribbiths were the earliest species to discover FTL. They predated number two by tens of thousands of years. In the grand scale of the universe, it was not a very long time. In the scale of wealth accumulation, even without a functioning economy, it meant that they were able to develop and mount weapons on some of their spaceships just as the next species managed to start exploring the galaxy.

In the beginning, this relationship was tributary. The terms were simple: give us goods, or we blow the aggregate inherited wealth of the last dozen generations of your family into bits. For the kind of beings that manage to rise above the atmosphere, above billions of others of their own species, risking it all for a little bit of dignity was simply not a choice.

This worked very well for the Ribbiths, for a while.

And then more species got onto the scene. Rather than a problem, they correctly saw this as an opportunity. As planets began to trade goods with each other, the Ribbiths created a sham association, the Galactic Trader Guild, which created legitimacy and cover for their armed ships to extract wares from traders at will.

The Trader Guild didn't do much, except the bare minimum of introducing new traders into the galaxy, which was more for them to create extra opportunities for plunder. They made sure no one else was allowed to build armed spaceships, and they made it illegal for Ribbith families to sell their armed ships to other species.

The entire galaxy was their oyster.

This worked very well for the Ribbiths, for a while.

Shroggit was a 184th generation spaceship owner in her family. They had bought it from another spaceship family that had gotten too soft and not made enough goods off the other species of the galaxy to recoup the recurring costs of running the spaceship.

In her view, whoever sold it to them must have been idiots. It was so easy to get the wares to cover the costs of reactor fuel and parts replacement. She could probably do it in her sleep.

Today, she was poking and prodding at a particularly popular route between Gakrek and Bohor. She put her ship right above Bohor, right where traders from Gakrek would blink in, and then snare them.

Space was big, but they've had a lot of experience doing this.

Sure enough, she'd only been waiting for less than two hours when a large sized trader appeared on her radar. She linked her FTL blink drive to theirs, trained her targeting system on the poor target, and hit the transmit button with her long, webby manipulators.

"This is Shroggit, an association representative of the Galactic Trader Guild. I see you here on my ship dues list that you have not paid a protection fee for over 3 cycles. By Guild rules, you are required to surrender one tenth of your current cargo over to me."

"According to my ship scanners," she continued, almost bored and hoping the other ship would not comply, "that would be a total of one ton of fruit from Dirt, and two tons of steel composites from Gakrek. Please signal your compliance by cutting engines."

The other ship ceased power to engines and started drifting. Her scanners saw movement inside the ship around the cargo area where the poor trader was moving his confiscated cargo into the venting area. Good, she was dealing with a professional here.

Shroggit was in and out, managed to hit two other ships, and since she got lucky with the space traffic control at Ribb, she got home in time for dinner.

Zod wiped some bodily liquids flowing onto his forehead due to his nervousness. He had just been intercepted by a Guild representative. It was never fun to deal with those people, and he was not carrying any goods, so he wasn't sure how that was supposed to go.

"Why aren't you carrying any goods," complained the representative on the other end of the radio. It was Shroggit.

"I sell for money now! On this leg, I'm carrying nothing," Zod said, hoping that meant he wouldn't have to forfeit any goods on this interception, "so am I free to go?"

"No, it means that I have to impound your ship, you idiot," cursed Shroggit, "lock yourself in the cargo-"

"Wait wait, please no," Zod pleaded, "I can pay you in credits, I have a Terminal!"

As it happened, Shroggit did have a card, and she knew how to use it because she'd traded some of her totally legitimate salvage at a port to GC merchants. "Alright, I'll try this out, but if you try anything funny, I'll blow your spaceship into tiny bits."

"Yes, I can pay you one tenth what I have now," Zod said, not at all thinking of trying anything funny with his entire family's fortune on the line, "just read me your card number."

"Are you kidding me?" Shroggit screeched, "that's a massive cybersecurity violation! Never broadcast your card number on an open frequency! Just vent your Terminal over and I'll swipe my card on it. I'm taking 15% this time for that idiotic comment!"

"Hmm we got a request from another user to revert a transaction on their account for this same reason again," Kathleen Bryce, GC head of counsel said.

"Another chargeback?" Asked Sarah.

"Yeah."

"What was the stated reason?"

"Services not rendered. Comment: I was not protected after paying my protection fee to the Trade Guild representative," replied Bryce with a hint of amusement in her voice.

"Well, he's technically not wrong. We processed the chargeback, right?"

"Yup, policy is to favor the buyer, in this case, poor Zod. He better hope he doesn't get caught by the same rep again, this… Shroggit froghead... Dear lord, she's been doing a whole lot of protecting out there."

"Ah making the galaxy a safer place, one helpless trader at a time," Sarah said sarcastically, "can we legally freeze her account?"

"Hmm… not a good idea. Technically, we can freeze it when we suspect there's illegal activity or money laundering. But if we start doing that, she's probably just going to start shooting anyone without cargo," Bryce said after a bit of thought.

"Wouldn't she start doing that anyway when she realizes that people can just chargeback all her protection fees?" Sarah asked.

"Probably, but not everyone will, so that might give those traders a bit of time while we figure out what to do about this Guild nonsense."

Shroggit was not happy.

Galactic Credits were very convenient. She'd gotten a lot of extra food and even a reclining chair upgrade for her ship just for profits the past few weeks. And she got herself a Mini Terminal so she can tell people to read their card numbers over the radio. It's not her problem if someone was passing by and heard the card number and pin codes.

But more and more traders had been getting out of paying for her protection by charging back the fees. Some low life trader snitch had told everyone how to do it, and Galactic Credit was more than happy to deprive her of her hard earned money.

Of course, she was still making far more profits than before, but loss aversion is a powerful motivator. Everyone wanted to avoid losing more than they wanted gains, and this can make people do some pretty irrational things.

In her case, in the private group on Traders Only for Ribbith representatives, she created a thread called "Known Chargebackers List: Detain or Destroy". It got hundreds of replies from other Ribbiths in days, and the list was still growing.

Today, as she put the card number into the search bar, she found a hit. This Aslae fellow had been caught charging back against a 48th generation representative from her home continent, a crime punishable by… whatever she felt like, and she was not in a charitable mood.

"Aslae, you are hereby ordered to relinquish control of your spaceship," Shroggit said gleefully over the radio, "lock yourself in the cargo hatch and unlock your exterior airlock doors. I will be boarding shortly."

Aslae was panicking. She had charged back one of the Guild members the other day, and she was right to do it! What these rent-seeker scums were doing was… wrong! On top of that, they were inhibiting the free trade of goods and currency, which all good and noble traders knew to be a sacrilege to the galactic trade economy!

She didn't say all that though, instead she tried begging, "w… wait please! I promise I won't do it to you! I didn't mean to do it to the other guy! Please!"

"You have two minutes to comply!" Shroggit shrieked over the radio, indifferent to her whining, already making a list of potential buyers for the impounded trade ship in her head.

Aslae was seeing dozens of generations of her family's hard work go down the drain. She would be grounded for life, with nothing left to even start anything. The thought was absolutely unbearable. Something snapped in her, and the combination of that fear and depression drove her to try the impossible.

She didn't try to fight with an unarmed ship; she's not THAT far gone. She tried to run. Aslae hit the blink button on her console. The planet of Yis'Meh disappeared from her side window, and it was replaced by the dirt brown of Gakrek. Her heart pounding, she maneuvered her ship towards the direction of the planet and put every bit of reactor juice into the rear thrusters. Maybe if she got into the atmosphere…

Her proximity radar blipped. She didn't have a powerful radar, but the angry Shroggit was close enough behind her that Aslae's ship could see her with even its outdated camera sensors. She pushed her ship reactor to the edge of its performance limit.

Out of habit, Shroggit had linked her drive to Aslae's before she even opened a radio connection at Yis'Meh. Aslae never had a chance. Shroggit contemptuously locked onto the fleeing ship, savagery in her eyes. She waited until she heard the turret lock into place: a beep from the targeting computer confirmed it. Without thinking even twice, she squeezed the trigger.

A massive railgun in the belly of her ship charged, then roared.

A reinforced tungsten composite rod spat out at Aslae at twelve kilometers a second, relative to Shroggit's vector. It crossed the less than six kilometer distance between the two ships in about half a second.

The first module the projectile hit was the rear engines. The massive hole it blew in them immediately shut them down.

Oxygen started to vent out the rear of the hull where a hole was made.

The projectile went straight through without slowing, and hit the ship reactor, overloading the core. Safety shutdowns were initiated and the ship readied itself to eject the core to save the rest of the ship... but it would not nearly be in time.

None of those things mattered. The tungsten projectile was still going, barely perturbed by its passage through several layers of steel and hardened composites. It passed neatly through the pilot's cabin, superheating the oxygen in it into a ball of plasma and vaporizing Aslae instantly.

Then, it continued on a straight path. With its remaining energy and angle, it just barely had enough energy to enter Gakrek atmosphere. Luckily, its trajectory took it into the middle of a vast ocean, where it threw up a large water plume that ruined some seafood's day.

A trader spacecraft nearby caught the entire thing on its dashboard camera.

As did an imaging satellite from a certain payment company on a humanitarian mission.

Traders Only

New Thread [Locked]: Video of Ribbith Ship Murdering Space Trader

Comment: I don't know how anyone can defend this...

Comment: Her name is Shroggit! Here's a picture of her.

Comment: How does Shroggit even sleep at night? That's somebody's daughter!

Comment: Of course it's another dirty hecking Ribbith!

Comment: OMG! According to the Gakrek satellite tracker app, the humans had a satellite pointing right at it when it happened! GC! SHOW US THE VIDEO!

Comment: GC, release the video!

Comment: C'mon GC, release the evidence…

"Well?" Sarah demanded, "we can't do nothing! At the very least if we release it, it'll be used at her trial… or something! I've seen what we have. It's Hollywood production quality footage of the entire thing at high definition."

"Her trial?" head counsel Bryce snorted, "good luck with that. If you think the Ribbiths are going to allow a fair trial of one of their own, you're more naive than I thought. Statistically, you know this probably isn't the first time she's shot somebody, just the first time it was caught on camera right?"

Sarah knew she was right. With the Guild's unwillingness to help the Gaks in the middle of the famine, and now… this, she's had it with them.

"Is there any… literally ANY legal reason on Earth we can't release the footage?"

"No. No legal reason not to… not on Earth at least."

Traders Only

New Thread [Locked]: GC Leaked Satellite G-21A: Proof Shroggit Murdered Aslae HD

Comment: My ancestors...

Comment: What. The. F-

Comment: Her name was Aslae.

Comment: Every one of us they kill, we should kill ten Ribbiths!

The Ribbith High Court rejected the petition for justice due to lack of standing.

It was exactly one sentence long, they wrote:

Denied: aliens do not have a right to bring suit in the Ribbith justice system.

The opinion doused the flames, convinced everyone of Shroggit's innocence, and calmed the mob.

Just kidding. Of course not.

Shroggit was fuming. Her credits account was locked. Galactic Credit had bowed to galactic pressure and forced her to go back to using barter, like an unbanked peasant. It was degrading and humiliating.

Even worse, some bored individual on Earth had placed a bounty out on her head. It was worth three million credits, or four if there was video footage. This is very illegal in most countries on Earth. But it seemed that she was having trouble finding a local prosecutor who would agree to take action against him.

She also heard reports that spaceports on Earth had started mysteriously running out of dashboard cameras and spacecraft armor upgrades...

So now she also had to worry about some idiot trader getting bad ideas when she told them to drop their cargo. Every time she asked for a protection fee now, she was on edge, thinking about what would happen if they did something as stupid as ram their ships into her… or something.

The humans really did know how to make everything worse.

It was Sarah's turn to go to Olgix this time. She didn't mind it; it was a nice time of the year, and a good opportunity to go see what's happening on the ground.

The peace there between the Olgs and Gak refugee community had been kept by a constant shipment of goods. The logic goes, if beings have high standards of living, they wouldn't be incentivized to risk it all for some petty grievances.

The logic worked, sometimes. Other times, it didn't. But it was better than nothing, and she certainly didn't think that they were going to fix the problem of ethnic violence by shooting their way out of it. And that was exactly what she was thinking aloud...

"Do you think it's even possible to get the two species to stop fighting each other? She asked the other passengers, almost rhetorically.

Jackson, who she'd hired off the Space Force with an impossible to refuse offer, waited to see no one answering her question, then said, "it's not entirely impossible. Your way might still work. Or we could just occupy the area around every Gak refugee community with a massive amount of troops, make them go through metal detectors, checkpoints. Raid the bomb makers at night et cetera. That might eventually work too."

"Yeah, then they'd start shooting at us," chuckled Reese, "not that that's not what they-

"Folks, we've got incoming," the pilot, Anika, interrupted, "there's an armed ship coming straight towards us at 200 kilometers, closing rate... half a klick a second and accelerating."

"Everyone, seal your helmets. Pilot, blink out," Jackson calmly said into his headset. He was the one who was in command in situations like this, with the most tactical and military experience. They all obeyed wordlessly.

With a button press from Anika, the stars on the external view screens changed.

Then, a blip on the radar.

"They followed us," Anika said, her face stony, "bogey has closed to 160 klicks. It's... still closing, one a second."

"Can you identify her? Is she a known trader at an Earth spaceport?" Jackson asked.

"Identified. It's a registered Ribbith ship. No known alias on file yet."

"Match their vector, the Terra Two has good sublight engines. We can try to outrun her to a distance and then get out," said Jackson as he weighed his logical options. He had a VIP on board and was probably faster than the other guy. Running was the only correct choice.

"Bogey falling behind to 170 klicks."

Shroggit was downright pissed. First, people are denying her the rightful fees of her protection. And now this. Somehow a ship she had her eyes on had seen her coming from far away. It had blinked out, and then started running.

And not only was it running, it was just a bit faster than she was.

Zooming her cameras in at the ship, she saw no weapons on it. It clearly wasn't a warship, why does it even have a radar with the range to see her this far out?

She can't give up. This was clearly a valuable ship hauling contraband. She was weighing her options when the ship blinked.

"Ok, that should be far enough, now blink to Earth. We'll get back into our security umbrella and drive her off there," Jackson directed.

Momentarily, the external view cameras showed Earth at a distance.

Then, radar contact again.

"They followed again. Bogey emerged closer to Earth than we did. 150 klicks and closing again. Should I match vector and burn? It'll take us further away from our own security ships," Anika inquired, ready to make the burn.

"Ok, if it comes to it, no other ship in the galaxy has the reactor fuel to match our range, and we're on a full tank," said Jackson, cursing internally that he didn't think about the possibility that the bogey would cut them off using blink. His tactical options were being limited, and now eliminated one by one.

Shroggit followed the running ship at a distance, and fumed. She couldn't get any closer to them no matter what she did, and if they just ran for a while, they'd be out of range of her blink drive lock, and they'd get away.

She contemplated her options. There was just one. She would normally never consider this for how wasteful it was, but Shroggit was not thinking straight. This was going to be a lucrative ship and cargo. She just had to get in range to threaten them, and they would surrender. After all, everyone saw the video of her killing that Aslae creature; they would have no choice.

She entered the target coordinates manually into her blink drive, and then hit the blink button.

"Bogey blinked closer to us! Eighty klicks to our rear! Taking evasive action!" Anika yelled into her microphone.

Well that short blink thing is a new trick, Sarah thought, I guess that makes sense you could do that with how advanced some of the Ribbith FTL engines are.

"Dump all non-reserve oxygen," Jackson said, not even bothering to contemplate the possibility of running out of reserves. He'd seen some classified tests of what space weapons could do, and if they were gonna get hit, they didn't want to get hit with the highly flammable gas still filling the hull, "pilot, identify the weapons on that ship."

Oxygen vented out of the Terra Two. Everything suddenly got a lot quieter, the only sounds coming from inside their helmets, the ship's audio system, and contact with the spacecraft. Sarah could hear her breath strain against the acceleration of the spacecraft as it maneuvered

"Single ventral railgun, no other visible weaponry. It's a Ribbith-class, 34th generation configuration," Anika grunted as she weaved the ship into a random pattern. The constant dodging was making her impossible to hit, but it was also slowly allowing the bogey to get closer. And then she noticed a flashing light on her dashboard, and swallowed with some difficulty, "we've got an incoming communication request."

"Put it on speaker," Sarah ordered.

"This is Shroggit, representative of the Galactic Trader Guild! You are evading justice and resisting arrest! Cease your engines and surrender your ship immediately to avoid lethal action," the grating voice of the insane murderess came through the ship's audio system.

"It's Shroggit! That monster!" Sarah actually hissed, "we do have weapons on this ship right?"

"Mam, please, sit back and let us handle this. She's sixty kilometers out. Her railgun can't even hit us at this range, " said Jackson with now maddening calmness, "please, we know what we're doing, we can keep you safe and get away from her. Even if she gets much closer, the explosive reactive plates on our hull will be able to survive a couple hits."

"I don't want to run away from her! I can see my home through that window," Sarah gritted her teeth, "put me through to her."

"Yes mam," Anika complied.

"Shroggit, you asshole! You're in the Sol system, which is under human control as per the bylaws of the Galactic Trader Guild. I demand you surrender your ship to Earth authorities immediately!"

"Earth has no authority over me! I am a representative of the Guild!" Came the psycho's reply.

"This is your last chance, Shroggit!"

Shroggit looked again through her sensors screen at the target. Despite being one of the more reckless members of her species, risk aversion ran strong among people who had a long climb to the stars.

There were no weapons on that ship. No rail guns, not even a turret mount. Nothing.

A while back, she'd heard whispers that Earth might have been developing some laser weaponry, but she put that out of her mind. After all, she would just need to move around a bit and even if they had a laser, it wouldn't be able to focus on a spot and burn through her hull so far out.

She contemplated her choices, and chose the worst possible option.

The proximity alarm blared across the ship's audio system at its occupants in their helmets, "TOO CLOSE," said the voice recording of a calm man, followed by two urgent whoops.

"She just shot something at us. The radar approximates the round's velocity at twelve kilometers a second," Anika, all emotion draining out of her voice, only professionalism now.

The alarm blared again, "TOO CLOSE whoop whoop".

"Rate of fire: about twenty rpm. She's at forty klicks out."

"Can we fight back?" Sarah asked.

"Mam, she still can't hit us yet. As long as our thrusters are firing, she's gonna keep missing at this range. Her rounds take three seconds just to close-" Jackson started to explain.

"I know she can't hit us YET! I can do math in my head too, thank you very much." Sarah said impatiently into her helmet.

TOO CLOSE whoop whoop.

"Ok, I've seen enough of this clown," said Sarah, replacing the anger in her voice with frosty steel, "Anika, do you have a lock on her?"

"Yes mam, we've had the lock since our radar first spot-"

TOO CLOSE whoop whoop.

"Can we hit her from here?"

"Yes mam. We have all-aspect off-boresight capabilities, mam. She's way inside the minimum abort range and we are comfortably inside the WEZ as well, are you sure…"

TOO CLOSE whoop whoop.

"Goodbye, Shroggit," Sarah said coldly into her transmitting microphone, and then terminated the connection, "fire."

The letters in AIM-120 stand for Air Intercept Missile. The space version, the SIM-120, was almost an exact copy, except it was programmed to take advantage of the lack of drag and the microgravity in the vacuum of space.

President Dwight Eisenhower had once famously said, "every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

In a twist of fate and irony, the aliens would innately understand the essence of that message far more than humans ever could.

The price tag of a SIM-120 is two million US Dollars.

Terra Corp gets them at a slight bargain because… they used to make licensed copies of them. The only way they could get more vertically integrated is if they started the wars themselves, and the jury is still out on that one...

$2 million before the human's introduction of credits would roughly be the accumulated value of four to five generations of successful trading in the broken galactic economy.

Even with humanity's credits and the Terra Corp discount, this was still the combined price of 600 tons of apples, or 75,000 pairs of new shoes, or 300,000 pre-printed t-shirts of losing sports teams on Gakrek.

No alien in the galaxy would ever, EVER, in a thousand lifetimes, think of using something like that as an expendable munition.

The Terra Two's "Executive Security" package came with four and a very nice bottle of champagne.

This particular spacecraft, carrying one of the most important individuals of Earth and therefore the galaxy, had a classified custom payload that went far beyond mere consumer upgrades.

On trigger press, a hidden weapons bay on the dorsal of the Terra Two opened for a split second and a SIM-120 silently detached itself from the spacecraft.

After a quarter second, judging the area clear, it fired its thrusters to align itself at the juicy radar target marked by Anika right behind the ship, and accelerated at 70 Gs. In just under 10 seconds, it parked itself at what its onboard computer calculated to be the perfect kill box, and detonated.

At a closing rate of 7 kilometers per second at its peak, Shroggit's chance of dodging it was precisely zero, if she had even seen it on her radar at all.

The explosive charge on the SIM-120 wasn't big. It's not meant to be. The air variant was designed to put holes in fragile aircraft that would tear up in the Earth's atmosphere with drag.

Here, uninhibited by air resistance, the warhead discharged forty pounds of carbon-chromium steel fragments at Shroggit's spacecraft.

After Action Review determined that roughly 35% of the pieces made thousands of dime sized holes in the cargo hull, and then ignited the oxygen venting out. The remaining 65% shredded the frontal profile of the pilot's cockpit with molten bits of metal, killing Shroggit instantly.

"She's still alive!" Sarah exclaimed, squinting at the intact spaceship on screen, "should we fire again?"

"No mam, it was a direct front hit. The cockpit is... gone. There's a fire in the pressurized cargo bay. The hull is just floating together on inertia," Anika was shocked at the horrific image, but kept it out of her voice; this was her first ever space kill, and she'd never had to see her kills on a high fidelity sensor camera before.

It was the first real space battle in the history of the galaxy where both sides were armed.

"Good wo- thanks, guys. Sorry for overriding you in the middle of battle earlier, Jackson," Sarah apologized, her bloodlust had drained suddenly, leaving her with only a cocktail of guilt that she kept barely under control.

"No, I would have done that too if I were you. And I would probably have ordered that outcome in a few seconds anyway. That's why I even let you take over," Jackson said grimly, his eyes still transfixed on the view monitor focusing on the broken spacecraft, the out of control oxygen blaze finally reaching the reactor.

And then, after everything else on the spacecraft had burnt down, the reactor core meltdown protocol activated and safely ejected out the rear, leaving behind just a charred black husk, settling the account on 184 lifetimes of bad karma.