Another boom, followed by the rending of metal above her head, forced Juliet to press herself to the concrete as her vision grayed out and brightened, showing the temperature of things around her in shades ranging from the bright yellow of her left hand to the cool blue of her plasteel arm. She edged up, peering through the broken, missing windows of the sedan, and scanned the far side of the street. A rapidly cooling form lay on the sidewalk, fading from orange to deep red, and two upright forms were moving in either direction from it, trying to flank the car she was hiding behind. It wasn’t difficult to see which one was firing the cannon at her. The big, orange figure had one arm that ended in a bright, yellow-white blur; the gun was hot!

Juliet slid to the left, trying to angle her gun under the car to get a shot at the figure, but the curb’s height made it hard. Instead, she kept sliding toward the rear of the vehicle. She peeked over the rear quarter panel, eyeing the other figure—taller, lankier, and leaving drops of orange in his wake. She must have hit him with the needler. Boom, boom! More holes appeared in the car near the front half where she’d been hiding seconds ago. “They don’t know where I am, but if he keeps poking holes, I’m a goner,” she subvocalized.

“I believe I hear him reloading,” Angel replied. Juliet looked at her own ammo counter, saw she had 23/30 rounds in the needler, and moved into a crouch. Crab-walking to the car’s rear bumper, she leaned to the left, the gun held close to her chest, and fired three shots at the lanky fellow before he could get around and flank her.

Her gun clicked more loudly with the shredders than with the botu-rounds, but it was still quiet—quiet enough to hear the man’s soft “Oof” as yellow-orange dots sprayed out from behind his silhouette, and he collapsed to the pavement.

“You fucked up, bitch. You know who you’re messing with?” the deep voice of the cannon wielder growled, but before Juliet could think of a response or stand up to shoot, she heard his rapidly retreating footsteps; he’d run for it. She crouched there for a few seconds, listening to the sound of his steps growing distant, and then she heard a distant siren rapidly approaching.

“Corpo-sec. Do I run for it?”

“The sound is coming from above. Drones. I don’t think running would be wise, not until we learn more about New Atlas corpo-sec response times, patterns, and persistence. You were acting in self-defense with a legal weapon and a license to use it. I have evidence of their assault on your person.”

“Right.” Juliet breathed in and out, trying to calm the rapid trembling of her knees as she stood up—adrenaline had her body ready to sprint, not stand around waiting for the cops.

“You should holster your weapon and keep your hands visible.” As Angel spoke, the siren grew very loud, and Juliet heard the buzzing of propeller blades as a large, spotlight-wielding drone descended on the scene, forcing Juliet to shield her eyes before Angel adjusted the brightness.

“Stand your ground, SOA operative XR713-004. Keep your hands empty and at your sides. Are you equipped with cybernetic vision enhancements?”

“Yes . . .”

“Have your PAI send footage of this incident to the open port on this drone. A patrol is en route to interview or detain you.” The voice coming from the drone was loud and synthetic sounding, like a machine was speaking, but it sounded like an operator was giving her the commands. She wondered if the voice was synthesized to sound intimidating because, if so, it was working.

“Go ahead, Angel,” she subvocalized, stepping away from the car that had provided her cover and standing in the middle of the sidewalk, hands at her sides.

“I have received your video file, and it is being reviewed. Maintain your current position while you wait for the patrol,” the harsh voice blared out of the drone’s speaker. Juliet stood still, hating how her knees were trembling from her jittery quads, still coursing with adrenaline.

“Can’t the nanites do something about all the adrenaline in my system?”

“They are. You should be feeling normal far more quickly than if you didn’t have them.”

“SOA operative XR713-004, you have been found compliant with New Atlas civil codes. Remain in your position until Officer Fitzpatrick, New Atlas Corporate Security license number 88712, arrives on the scene to secure your assailants. His ETA is seven minutes. Do you require any further assistance from this drone?"

“Um, no?” Juliet replied, finding it hard to believe she was being let off the hook so easily.

“Thank you, and have a pleasant evening.” With that, the drone’s flashing blue lights winked off, the spotlight disappeared from Juliet’s eyes, and its rotors whirred loudly as it sped away. Juliet stood, stunned, in the dark intersection where she’d almost been murdered, and looked at the two slumped figures—one in the middle of the street and one back at the sidewalk where the trio had first accosted her. She turned, staring in the direction of her destination, Nuts and Bolts, and also where the third gang member had fled. She saw movement down at the next intersection but nothing between. The street was dark and quiet.

“That was weird,” Juliet said softly, moving toward the thug lying in the street. It was the one who’d knocked her down; she could see that as she approached. “Will I get in trouble if I go through his things?”

“According to the letter of the law, you aren’t supposed to loot assailants. The drone has footage of the victims, and the patrol coming to interview you will likely look at the video, so it might be wise to leave the bodies as they are.”

“Mmhmm,” Juliet said, half listening to Angel as she studied the dead man. Her needler rounds had punched through his jacket, perforating his lungs and heart, then punched out through his back. “Shredders did a nasty job on him.”

“Yes. He was dead before he hit the ground.”

“Jeez, Angel.” Juliet knelt by the body, trying to get a better look at the gun that the man had fallen atop. “Looks like a shotgun or bolt thrower. I can’t see the barrel well enough, but there’re wires leading up from the battery in the stock.” She stood up and moved to the sidewalk where her first victim was sprawled.

Her initial volley of needler rounds had done a number on her—it looked like every one of her rapid shots, fired while she was sliding backward on the concrete, had hit her. The nice thing about needler rounds, it seemed, was that they did plenty of damage to kill someone but didn’t leave big messy holes; the woman’s body and clothing weren’t really all that damaged, at least the front side. She’d been wearing a denim jacket with her gang logo on the left breast, and it was stained, here and there, with little round blood stains, but that was it.

Her face was pale, and a pool of blood spread out beneath her form, but it was easy to imagine she might just be unconscious. Juliet frowned, looking at the weird vid screen in the woman’s forehead, still playing that absurd animation of an anime-style girl dancing on a stage. She wondered if the accompanying music still played in the woman’s auditory implants. “Kinda sad,” she muttered. “Well. It’s too bad, but they started this mess.”

“Yes, she displayed aggression before you did. I believe you escalated appropriately—if you hadn’t moved when you did, that man with the hand cannon would have killed you.”

“Yeah. I don’t really feel guilty about this, Angel. It’s just sad. I keep wondering what this woman’s parents or family are doing. Do they know what kind of life she’d gotten into? How will they react when they find out she was shot dead in the street?” Juliet sighed and turned toward the corner where she’d first seen the group of miscreants. It was empty, deserted. She looked at the buildings around her and saw dark windows, not a person in sight. “Shit,” she said, selecting her crew comms, “Hey, Alice, you there?”

“Hey, we’re almost there. Order me an IPA, will you?”

“Uh, I’m gonna be late. Some thugs jumped me, and I had to start shooting. I’m waiting for the corpo-sec patrol.”

“You good?” Shiro spoke up, interrupting Alice’s response.

“Yeah. I didn’t get hurt except for a bruised ass. I, uh, was already cleared by the corpo-sec drone that came to the scene, but it wants me to wait until . . .” Juliet paused, looking down the street where a white cruiser was fast approaching, a languidly flashing blue light in its front grill. “Here they come. I’ll see you guys in a few minutes, hopefully.”

“Right. Let us know if you need backup.”

“Roger.” Juliet cut the comms, then waited for the corpo-sec vehicle to pull up. When it did, a stocky, dark-skinned man with a flashy chrome left arm stepped out. He wore a pale blue uniform with red stripes that would have looked black in the dim light, but Juliet’s eyes were still dialed up, and she could see every stain and frayed thread on his shirt. It was tight, straining to contain his muscles and the ballistic vest he wore beneath it. He wore a utility belt and rested his hand on the handle of a large, serious-looking semiautomatic as he approached.

“Lucky?”

“Yeah. That’s me. Good old SOA operative XR713-004.”

“Heh, right.” He seemed to relax a bit but kept his hand on the pistol’s grip. He wore a darkly tinted visor obscuring any hint of the display it provided for his eyes. Beneath it, he had a wide nose and lips that seemed perpetually frowning. He stared at the woman’s body near Juliet momentarily, then turned his gaze on the dead man in the street. Juliet saw his throat bobbing and knew he was subvocalizing something into comms. She tried to hold still, keeping her hands clearly in view, open by her sides. “I’ve reviewed your footage of the encounter. We’re familiar with these two and the third who ran. He’s already got four warrants for his arrest, but we’ll add another. I’ve got a coroner van en route. Do you need anything before I release you?”

“That’s it? Don’t need a statement?”

“Well, I’d like to know how you dodged all those shots. You’re either lucky as hell, or you’ve been through a lot more firefights than I have.” He frowned for a second, then his frown turned up, and his mouth opened, revealing startlingly white teeth. “Shit. Lucky. I get it now.”

“That’s right,” Juliet chuckled. “I’m good if you are. I have some people I need to meet. You think I’ll get jumped again between here and Nuts and Bolts?”

“Nah, you should be good. Any dipshits like these will have scattered when the drone flew in. Just go up to the next intersection and hang a right. It’s about two blocks.”

“Right. Thanks, um, officer.”

“Fitzpatrick. Hey, sending you my contact info in case something comes up regarding this situation. Or, you know, anything else you might need help with.” He smiled again, and Juliet had to admit he really changed the mood of that dark, corpse-strewn intersection with that big grin.

“Got it. Thank you, Officer Fitzpatrick.” Juliet waved, offering a smile of her own, and he watched her, his gaze unwavering, as she turned and walked away down the block.

“I believe that officer liked you, Juliet.”

“Yeah, I believe so, too. I guess it’s good to have a connection with corpo-sec, but I don’t trust anyone that works as muscle for the corpos.”

“Probably wise, considering the corruption with the Luna City Constabulary.”

“For sure,” Juliet nodded. When she was half a block away from Officer Fitzpatrick, she pulled out her needler and swapped the magazine for the spare she carried in the shoulder holster. She checked to ensure a round was in the chamber and then reholstered it. After turning the corner, she could see the lights of the bar up ahead and began to pass other night goers on the sidewalk. Nobody else messed with her, and in another five minutes, she was approaching the bar. It wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty, either.

The bouncer slash doorman gave her a long look, his glittering silvery eyes pausing for a while as he stared at her jacket. He frowned for a second but then said, “Operator?” He must have pinged Angel. At Juliet’s nod, he continued, “Don’t start any trouble inside, all right? You’re not here to serve a warrant or something, right?”

“Nah, just meeting friends.” Juliet looked past him into the table section of the bar and saw Shiro and Alice at a booth on the far wall. “I can see them there. The mean-looking guy with the salt and pepper hair and the pretty redhead.”

“All right.” He waved her through, and Juliet hurried past the people in the bar and over to Shiro and Alice’s table.

“Hey, Lucky!” Alice said, motioning for Juliet to sit. “That was faster than we expected.”

“Glad you didn’t get arrested,” Shiro added.

“Heh, thanks. The, uh, corpo-sec response to my rather violent encounter was a bit eye-opening. There must be a lot of crime in this city.”

“It’s a pretty common news story—New Atlas’s growth has snowballed faster than the corporate-run civil services can keep up with.”

“Yeah,” Alice added. “Where there’s money to be made, people will find a way to pile in. Most of the gold rushers came too late to get in on the harvesting and refining startups, so they end up working in lower-echelon jobs or resorting to crime. There are a hundred million people in this city and its burbs.”

“That’s wild,” Juliet breathed. “I didn’t realize New Atlas was so big.” She had a hard time wrapping her head around how many people there were on Earth, let alone in the solar system. Saturn wasn’t even the most populous planetary system. “I’d figured a few million.”

“Many are natives—born here from the families of the earlier settlers, but thousands are still arriving every day on transports, looking for easier money than they were making back on Earth,” Alice spoke like this was a very familiar topic, her elbows leaning on the table, her hand slowly turning her beer glass in half circles, playing with the condensation puddle around the bottom.

“But it’s so damn expensive to travel commercially . . .”

“We’re talking refugee transports—a few thousand credits and a months-long transport in a stinking, crowded hold at way less than a G of acceleration.” Alice shook her head, and Juliet could hear the disgust in her voice.

“You know someone who traveled that way?”

“Sure. Plenty of the people we’ve met here, or in the Jovian system, even out on Mars. Always the same old story—people promised amazing jobs spending all their savings on a transport and then getting stuck in a factory, a refinery, or even down in some mines, making just a little more than they were on Earth.”

“I mean, I probably could have ended up that way. I’ve always wanted to get into space, and back when I worked as a welder, I thought about trying to work on one of the moons. I guess I’m glad things worked out differently. The Kowashi’s a lot better than what you describe.”

“We’re glad you’re happy,” Alice said, looking sideways at Shiro and then back across at Juliet. “We’ve enjoyed working with you, too. You’ve gone above and beyond our expectations. Bennet would be dead if not for you, and we’d either be dead or near broke without your . . . heroics on Dione.”

“She’s trying to say we want to share what we got with you, and we don’t want you to feel cheated. We want to be fair, but we also want you to know we have many business expenses to consider.” Shiro added, grinning and drinking his beer. “Are you thirsty? Put an order in; the bar’s broadcasting for PAIs.”

“Well, thanks for the compliments,” Juliet said to Alice, then to Shiro, “and the blunt honesty. Hang on a sec.” She looked over at the bar, zooming in on the taps, reading the labels, then said, “Order me a Belter’s Amber, Angel.”

“Sounds good.” Alice nodded, smiling. “So, do you want to hear our proposal?”

“I have a feeling you’re planning to sell the Bumble, right? It was fun fantasizing about having my own ship while I was flying it over here, but I know I probably don’t want the headache of trying to maintain and supply a ship like that. I don’t even know if I could afford to refuel the reactor . . .”

“Yeah. It’s expensive, but I don’t want to come off as fake or have you learn something later and think I’m a scammer; you could probably afford it with your skillset. Still, what we’re hearing from Bennet is that the Bumble is looking like a real money pit. The reactor’s got a slow leak, the drives’ service schedule hasn’t been reset in almost ten thousand hours of operation, and there are about a thousand other little things on that ship that need fixing. It’s just not a great vehicle to support our operation or, I would think, a solo operator’s.”

“Okay.” Juliet nodded, waiting for the next part of Alice’s speech.

“So, we want to sell it and split the proceeds with you. Fifty-fifty. We feel like it’s a fair way to handle things, considering it’s not really salvage, and we wouldn’t have that ship without you. Still, you used our exo rig, we ate the expense of flying out there, and you were working for us at the time, etcetera, etcetera. What do you think?”

“Fifty for me and fifty for the whole Kowashi crew?”

“That’s right. Bennet thinks we should be able to pull between five and eight hundred thousand for it, depending on demand and on how thoroughly the buyer inspects it.” Alice took another drink, and Juliet glanced to the bar in time to see a young woman with a dark black mohawk walking over with her beer.

“Amber ale?” she asked, approaching the table.

“Me.” Juliet held up her red plasteel hand, and the waitress passed her the cold glass. “Thanks,” she said, slurping the foam off the top. As the waitress walked away, she turned back to Alice and asked, “What about the bounties?”

“Uh, we were thinking you should get the full bounties for the pirates you fought, and we’ll cut you in for twenty percent of the ones in the gunship.”

“That’s . . .” Juliet frowned, doing the math in her head. With five crew, twenty percent was perfectly fair, and they weren’t trying to get anything for the three she’d killed. “Really fair.”

“We’re glad you think so,” Alice glanced at Shiro again, then back to Juliet and continued, “because you might not like this next part.”

“Ugh.” Juliet took a big drink of her beer, savoring the malty, almost toasty flavor of the crisp, cold brew. “I should’ve known another shoe was going to drop.”

“Well, it’s the gunship. It’s too damn nice to sell as scrap. We want to put it in a rented hangar and work on it. Bennet’s convinced we can get it back in working shape with only a few hundred k, and, if we play our cards right, we can either sell it for ten times as much, or we can start using it to take on a whole new level of job. Anyway, it’s kind of a long-term project, which means your four percent of whatever we end up doing might not be coming to you for a while.”

“Really?” Juliet asked, her imagination already running away with the idea. “A Takamoto-era gunship? Fixed up and ready to rock and roll?” She grinned, took another long pull of her beer, then, after she’d swallowed, asked, “That means you’re going to need another pilot, right?”