Episode 1 Starring Wendell E. Boyd, Nicole Chavez, and Isaiah Moreno

        What can I say about Sector G? It’s not as bad as some of the Sectors here on Gliese, worse than others. Crime is average, at least the crime you know about, and you can walk the streets without fear of being robbed most of the time. Unemployment is average; there are jobs for those who want to work. We’ve got rich neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, and everything in between. So, I guess what I’m trying to convey here is that, as Sectors go, G is a solid “middle-of-of-the-road”.

             We’ve got a spaceport that is the central hub of the Sector. We get ships from every planet you can imagine. We’ve got the egg-shaped spaceliners from the Groombridge system and the quad-winged transports from the Leonis system. We even get the behemoth cargo haulers from Teegarden’s Star.

             The races that arrive on Gliese get more diverse every day. The inner and outer system trade lanes make Gliese a perfect weigh station, cargo dock and travel hub world for businesses throughout the known universe. Some of the smarter business individuals, but less technically advanced, take their smaller intrasystem capable ships and book them as freight aboard the gargantuan hyper system cargo vessels. They can live aboard their own ships and then land on never before visited worlds to ply their wares when the cargo vessels stop for deliveries.

             I own The White Queen, a bar in. Name’s Jake Cutter. I had a lot of careers before I decided to buy the place and serve drinks into my retiring years. I’ve been a soldier, a bodyguard, a smuggler, a miner, a merc, a duelist and a sector cop. It’s the latter that made me notice the bar.

             As a former sector cop I always knew what was going on, who was into what. I would pass The White Queen on my patrol route; see the riff raff come in and out. It was mostly minor offense recidivists who were guilty of trading in bootleg off-world alcohol, exo crystallization vape tubes (ECVs for short), and the smuggling of the oddball artifact (or supposed artifact) from somewhere in the unexplored regions. Dyrzheg, an old asteroid miner and the previous owner, ran a tight ship; knowing who to let get away with what and when to call the sector cops. He also made a lot of money. You didn’t cause trouble in The White Queen and you didn’t cut a deal without giving him a piece.

             Sector Police are not as stupid as the underworld would like to believe or as hard-nosed as the general public believes. They’re cops, plain and simple. They deal with society’s cast offs, the rich who feel they’re above the law, the scumbags who feel that anything they want to take is fair game, and everything in between. And they’re still expected to keep a smile when some ass monkey vomits all over the interior of their patrol vehicle.

             Are there bad Sector Cops? Sure. But there are more good than bad. Do they ignore crimes? It depends on the crime. If you dine and dash at one of the hash stands that totals a whopping two credits, you’re likely not high up on the radar. If you rob the hash stand, then you have a little more attention.

  The jobs I had before becoming a sector cop were all just jobs, something to get me from paycheck to paycheck. Well, I can’t say all the jobs were that way. When I was a Duelist, I was paid quite well. I ranked number one, undefeated, for almost two years before I decided to hang it up. The sport was was entertaining and my face was plastered everywhere; holo trading cards, action figures, toy gun endorsements. The money was good, don’t get me wrong, but it got old. Everywhere I went fans wanted to see me draw a gun, or get their picture with me, or even worse. There were those idiots who wanted to challenge me. Sometimes they were drunk, sometimes they were stupid, and sometimes, on occasion, they were downright serious. You could see it in their eyes. They didn’t fear death, no, they welcomed it; emotionless, steely-eyed, hands ready to draw.

This was why I gave it up, quit while I was still on top. I still had my fair share of challengers when I became a cop, my name was still worth something. But most of the time, if I ran into a perp with a gun and they recognized me, nine times out of ten they just gave up.

I was a sector cop for fifteen years. You learn a lot in that time, a lot about people. I’m not talking about the human race, I mean people. I don’t care what the species, people are people. Everyone has good and bad in them, but how they choose to use it is up to them. Being a sector cop you deal with mostly the bad. So I took early retirement.

             As the owner of the bar I only have one rule: Don’t do anything illegal in my bar unless you check with me first. If you don’t check first, and it’s really illegal, the sector cops come in to take a report and haul away your body. If you check and I approve, I get five percent.

Around here, everyone has a story about disbelief, unemployment, and being a secret agent. What’s your story?