Tanaka leaned over the control console, blood dripping from a dozen wounds. He was trying to work through the menu to open the cell doors, but as he stabbed his fingers at the controls, they weren’t doing exactly what he wanted. He gritted his teeth in frustration and leaned against the plasteel stand, gripping it tightly as another wave of darkness threatened to engulf him. As the shadowy walls receded and he refocused on the UI, remembering what he was doing, he shakily jabbed his finger onto the “Door Control” heading, but nothing happened.

Grunting in frustration, Tanaka bit his glove and, with an effort that seemed absurd, pulled it off. Another wave of darkness closed in, pushing his vision down to a pinpoint, and he had to lean over the console to keep from slumping down to the concrete floor. Part of his mind screamed at him to stop, to bind his wounds to help his nanites do their work, but he’d already used his belt to tourniquet his leg. Fred would warn him if they weren’t going to be able to keep him conscious, right? He wished he were more confident; he was still learning the extent of the new PAI’s capabilities.

“If you had let Selene install a data jack, I could open those for you!”

“Hai,” he grunted, too tired to argue with the PAI. In addition to not having a data jack, he’d also lost the specialized deck Kostas had given him; it had proven woefully unfit for blocking high-caliber rifle rounds. He finally drilled down to the “Open All Doors” command, and, after mashing the severed hand of a freshly killed security officer onto the biometric pad, the doors thunked loudly as their bolts unlocked, and they each began to swing open.

He braced himself on the console, trying to gather his strength to shout, his body too exhausted to feel excited at the prospect that Lucky and the others might step out of those cells at any moment. In the flashing red lights of the alarms, the first prisoner emerged, tentatively stepping out into the bloody, gore-splattered corridor. Tanaka felt his reserved, flickering hope begin to flare as he recognized Hawkins despite his buzzed hair and close-fitting yellow bodysuit. The mercenary lit up when he locked eyes with Tanaka, and he whooped, charging toward him.

“Hawkins,” he grunted as the man leaped up the short flight of steps and tried to grab him into a hug. He held out his left arm stiffly. “Don’t—my nanites are struggling to close some vessels. Let me stand still for a few minutes.”

“Shit, boss!” Hawkins looked him up and down, then turned back to the long corridor of slightly open doors. “I think Lee is in that one.” Without waiting for a response, he turned, jogged halfway down the corridor, and pulled open a door on the left. Tanaka watched and waited, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned Lucky. He shook his head. Something in his gut had told him it wouldn’t be this easy. They wouldn’t all be together. While he waited for Hawkins to reappear, several individuals he didn’t recognize emerged from other cells.

He stared at them as Fred said, “You’re out of the danger zone. The nanites have sealed off the major bleeders. You need medical care ASAP. We need to get you to Selene’s ship.”

Tanaka grunted. So, Fred had been worried. He supposed he was glad the PAI hadn’t been nagging him with warnings and alarms when there wasn’t much he could do about the situation. A half smile curled one side of his mouth as he saw Hawkins emerge from the cell holding Dora Lee’s hand. She looked much the same—her hair was always buzzed—but she’d never be caught dead in a yellow bodysuit like that. “Look who I found!” Hawkins cried, dragging her forward. She seemed a little dazed. Several other prisoners had already ducked back into their cells, but a few wandered closer, eyes wide at the carnage.

“Escape if you want,” Tanaka growled at the strangers. “The guards are dead.” He locked eyes with Hawkins and then shifted his gaze to Lee. “Where’s Lucky? Is Barns dead?”

“No idea about Lucky, boss. They never kept us with her. She was on a stretcher the last time we saw her. As for Barns, yeah, he went down in the raid. Took a bunch of the assholes with him, though.” His face fell, and Tanaka knew he wasn’t trying to be callous but didn’t know how else to speak.

Rutger regarded him, absorbing the bad news; it wasn’t hard because he’d been expecting it. Things were never that easy or clean. He looked at Dora, who had yet to utter a word. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head, blinking rapidly, and looked at him in confusion. Hawkins spoke for her: “They’ve been drugging us. I was unconscious for meal time, so I’m coming off it.”

“Unconscious?”

“Yeah, I tried to choke out the ‘counselor’ yesterday and caught myself a nice beating.” He shrugged.

Tanaka frowned but nodded, something like pride igniting in his chest. Hawkins was a good soldier. He looked back at Dora. “Can you move?”

She grunted. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Useless, but fine.” As she spoke, she reached up and prodded the back of her neck, scowling in frustration.

“They pulled our PAIs,” Hawkins explained.

Tanaka nodded and turned toward the broken exit door and the four bodies arrayed in various pieces around it. A few other prisoners had already slipped through, gingerly progressing into the too-quiet facility. “Fred, any update from Leo and the others?”

“They’ve secured the upper level. The Lady Hawk has intercepted a troop transport out of New Galveston and forced them to land. It seems we’re free to—”

Tanaka hadn’t ever known Fred to cut himself off mid-sentence. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. One moment.”

“What’s going on, boss?” Hawkins was unaware of Tanaka’s private dialogue.

“Something. Just a minute.” He gestured to the dead guards. “Arm yourselves.” While they did so, he waited, still leaning on the control console, happy to give his nanites a little more time to patch up his wounds.

“Tanaka, I have good news,” Fred finally announced. “Lucky is alive and currently fighting to free herself. She’s on a ship in high orbit. We need to get to the Cherry Blossom and evac; Selene has to turn the Wing and direct her antenna at the ship to help Lucky, which means this base will soon have net access.”

Tanaka started forward, ignoring the pain in his knee where a bullet had done some serious tissue damage. “We have to move. Watch our six, Hawkins.” He wasn’t sure how to feel. Part of him was relieved to hear Lucky was all right. Another part was happy to see Hawkins and Lee were alive and, apparently, well. Still, he was frustrated—frustrated and exhausted. What kind of ship was Lucky on? Could it get away? Were they fleeing already? “Fred,” he asked as he limp-jogged to the bloodstained elevator, “what kind of ship is she on?”

“A very large one. I’m not sure even the Cherry Blossom could successfully assault it. Our best bet is that Selene can aid Lucky with some network intrusion. If Selene can help her subdue the ship’s AI, Lucky might get into the reactor room and stop it from the inside.”

#

“No,” Juliet shook her head. “I want to go to Montclair’s lab first.”

“Think it through—the lab and everything in it will be destroyed with the ship. Juliet, if we don’t hurry, this ship might soon be well beyond Athena’s reach. It may be beyond anyone’s reach! Athena thinks Apollyon is calculating a warp jump.”

“I can’t believe that!” Juliet shook her head, still climbing up another maintenance shaft. She’d been following the dotted line on her mini-map for nearly half an hour, somehow staying ahead of the ship’s corpo-sec response teams, who had to know she was in those narrow tunnels by now. Twice, she’d had to use her monoblade to cut through bulkhead door latches as Apollyon or his minions had tried to seal her into sections of the tunnel. She was surprised it had only happened twice—a testament to how busy Angel, Fido, and Daisy were keeping the malevolent AI.

“What can’t you believe?”

“That they already have a working warp drive. Have we even heard of companies testing them yet?”

“Something like this wouldn’t be announced until it was completed and the corporation that developed it was ready to defend the new tech.” As if sensing her desire to keep arguing, Angel added, “Juliet, if Apollyon got the data we leaked from Jupiter on day one, and I’m sure he did, it’s quite feasible that he cracked the tech by now. As for tests, who knows what WBD has been up to? Were you aware of their base on Mars? Were you aware they were building a dreadnought here? Did you know about their ship at Ceres? How about Ark Industries?”

“Okay, okay,” Juliet grunted, turning in a slow circle to get her bearings on the mini-map.

“What’s going on?” Kline asked, still on the ladder, waiting for her to move.

“Guess we need to get to the reactor room. We gotta bring this big boat down.”

“Are you fucking nuts? Let’s get to a shuttle and slip away in the chaos!”Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Juliet took a step back, giving him room to descend. He looked harried, wild-eyed. He still clutched the needler in a death grip, and it clattered against the ladder as he held on, keeping himself steady. “You know what, Kline? You can stay with me, and I’ll help you get clear of this mess, or you can head off on your own and try to catch a shuttle when the shit hits the fan. I mean, really hits it.” She gestured around at the still-flashing red lighting. “This is just the warm-up.”

“Yeah? Just ‘fuck off, Kline?’ That’s your answer?”

Juliet was tempted to send him another push to give him a morale boost and help him convince himself he’d done the right thing by helping her. She didn’t, though. She wanted to see what he’d do with his own feelings running the show. “You want to run back to Mommy Gentry and ask forgiveness?”

He scowled, and his lips curled in a snarl. “Fuck you! I burned everything helping you!”

“Hit a nerve? How many evil things have you done to win that crazy woman’s approval, Kline? Look, you treated me all right. You could have been a lot worse, but you’re no saint. I’m not going to feel bad about helping you burn bridges with that woman or this soulless corporation! Do you know what she’s planning? Do you know about the warp drive? What kinds of surprises are they leaving behind? A few massive tungsten rods sliding through space that might happen to impact the competition? Collateral damage? Not your problem, right? What’s a little orbital bombardment among friends?”

Juliet’s voice had risen to a shout, and she’d grabbed Kline’s jacket, wadding it in her fist, as she yelled, and, to her surprise, he started to nod along with her words. When she finished and gave him a final shake before letting go, he reached up to tug the lapels of his bloody, torn suit jacket. “Well, the reactor room will be air-gapped, and I’m sure they’re bringing troops there to reinforce the security.”

Something about his futile gesture to salvage his fastidious appearance struck Juliet; the act seemed almost pitiful, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw determination—conviction. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel sorry for him, but she decided then and there that she could forgive him. She looked at him for a long second before nodding. Something made her want to reach out to reassure him, but she didn’t want to push any more feelings his way. Instead, she put her palm on his chest, smoothing the rumpled material, sharing a brief moment of humanity. “Thank you, Kline. I know you helped to capture me, but I’d hate to think how things could have gone if someone else had been in charge of that operation.”

He nodded and blew out a faintly wheezing breath. “I really wanted you to come work for us. I was . . .” He trailed off, and Juliet could fill in an adjective: stupid, naïve, brainwashed, prideful—the list was enormous.

“Okay. Well, we better hurry.” With that, she turned and started following Angel’s updated map.

“Athena’s in, Juliet. While you were speaking to Kline, she used the array I subverted, and now she’s secured the connection. She’s bringing the cameras back online and walling Apollyon off. She’s amazing!”

Juliet grunted in response, running too hard to want to talk. According to her mini-map, she had just a bit more than half a klick to cover, and it was the opposite of a straight shot. As she paused to descend a short access ladder, she asked, “Can’t she just, like, stop him?”

“No, he has more processing power. If he wasn’t devoting so many resources to whatever he’s doing near the bridge—”

“Come on, we know what he’s doing.” Juliet didn’t want to resist reality any longer. “Who’s with Athena? I feel like you’re holding something back. Is it Tanaka?”

“Well . . .”

“Come on, Angel!” Juliet growled, breaking into a run as the access tunnel straightened out.

“Tanaka, Leo, Frida, eight mercenary friends of Tanaka’s, and—”

“I swear to God, Angel—”

“The Kowashi crew.”

“What?” Juliet’s outcry was a near-shout.

“What?” Kline panted. “Something wrong?”

“Just a minute! Angel, the Kowashi is here?”

“No! The Cherry Blossom, Lady Hawk, and Furies’ Wing are, though.”

“Are you kidding me?” The idea that Aya and the others were mixed up in this calamitous mess was enough to drive rationality out of Juliet’s mind, and she stopped in her tracks. As Kline crashed into her, she barked, “Message them! Tell them to get the hell out of here! I don’t want them mixed up with this, Angel! They’re going to get killed! If they don’t, they’re going to have WBD as an enemy for the rest of—”

“Juliet! WBD has to be stopped. This is no time for bystanders. Now move! We have to hurry!” Angel’s voice was sharp and loud, and Juliet blinked several times as she faced the truth of the words. She started jogging again, her mind racing for a solution. Kline asked several more times what was happening, but she couldn’t formulate the words to respond to him or Angel. The idea that Aya might get killed trying to help her made her stomach sick. She couldn’t stop picturing it, no matter how much she tried to remind herself that Angel was right—everyone had an interest in stopping WBD, whether they knew it or not.

By the time she managed to mutter, “Keep them away from this ship, Angel. I don’t care what kind of message you have to send; you keep them away. We’re going to blow this thing up, no matter how they try to stop me.”

“I have camera access now. It’ll be faster if you exit this access tunnel. I’m rerouting you.” Angel’s non-acknowledgment of her demand was troubling, but Juliet had to focus. She rounded a tight corner and came to another closed and locked bulkhead. She started to draw her monoblade, but then the bolts clicked open, and Angel said, “Athena helped me access the emergency systems.”

As she yanked it open and dove through, sprinting for the highlighted door that would get her out of the cramped space, Kline panted, “Ruby says . . .” He grunted as he squeezed through the bulkhead. “Ruby says you got some outside help.”

“Yep.” Juliet nodded as she turned to pull the door open.

“Wait!” Angel said, “Fifteen seconds, Juliet, for a patrol to pass.”

Kline had caught up and was leaning against the wall. “She says the other AI is retreating. That he’s doubling down, trying to speed up the ‘jump.’ Is this shit for real? I knew we were liquidating properties, but—”

“It’s a megacorp, Kline. I’m sure you were told exactly what Gentry thought you needed to know.” The timer Angel had provided hit zero, and Juliet yanked the door open and slipped into a blessedly wide corridor. She glanced at her mini-map and then started jogging again.

“Juliet.” Angel’s voice was a little tremulous. “Juliet, wait.”

Juliet looked at her mini-map; they were only ninety meters and two turns of the corridor from the reactor room. “What, Angel?”

“There were six combat synths outside the reactor room door, but Montclair arrived and sent them all inside. He’s sealing the doors with a plasma torch.”

Juliet’s blood went cold as a window opened on her AUI, and she saw exactly what Angel had described. Still wearing his black suit and tie, Montclair was operating a portable plasma torch, welding shut a pair of double-wide blast doors marked with reactor and radiation signage. “I . . . Can’t I just cut those?”

“You should be able to cut the welds, yes. He may not know you have a monoblade; we’ve limited Apollyon’s camera access since you made your break.”

Juliet nodded and started running, despite her nerves. Something about Montclair evoked a primal panic instinct in her. She wanted to run or lash out—her heart was racing, her mouth drying out, and her palms sweating. Part of it was due to her deep dive into Kline and experiencing Montclair through that perspective. Part of it was how he’d confronted her in Harriet’s lab. It didn’t matter where she’d gotten the impression—something in her deepest, primal instincts knew Montclair was wrong. He was Chen times ten. Still, she ran toward him.

When she reached the broad, abandoned stretch of corridor leading to the reactor room, Montclair stood before the doors, a simple metal rod in one hand. Angel zoomed in on the rod, and Juliet’s vision flickered briefly as she scanned it. “That’s a very dense polymer, Juliet. It may be resistant to your sword.” Juliet didn’t respond; she slowed her steps and stopped twenty meters from the creepy executive. Kline’s footfalls also stopped, and she felt him breathing heavily just behind and to the left.

“Kline, if you’d like to avoid having your body shaved down, millimeter by millimeter, until there’s nothing left but a head attached to a blood pump, then—” Montclair’s cliché of a villainous threat was cut short by a thunderous report as Juliet drew her Texan and fired a round at his face. Of course, Angel boosted her as she drew, so she was a little stunned to see Montclair step to the left and lift his baton. He moved smoothly; if Juliet hadn’t been disgusted by him, she might have called him graceful, even as he knocked her bullet to the side.

“That was rude!” Montclair chuckled and flipped his baton to his other hand, and while Juliet considered shooting at him again, he pulled his suit jacket wide, revealing a holstered pistol under his arm. “Shall we have an old-fashioned shootout, then?” Something about his mocking tone rankled Juliet, and she wanted to put him in his place. It felt stupid, but her pride was bristling, and her hatred of the man allowed it to run rampant. She smoothly holstered her pistol and stared at him. “Go on,” he teased. “You draw first.”

“Juliet,” Angel said, her voice tentative with worry, “be careful.”

Juliet didn’t respond. She knew Angel was with her, no matter what. She held her hand over her pistol’s grip, and as she moved to draw, one thought kept repeating in her mind: in all the best gunslinger stories, the good guy never drew first. The Texan ripped out of the holster like hot oil over glass, and Juliet jerked back, firing from the hip in a tiny fraction of a second. She saw the impact of her bullet in the center of Montclair’s chest. She saw him draw a full second after her, and she saw and heard his gun bark in response.

He didn’t fall but stumbled back one step, and Juliet didn’t feel any pain or pressure or anything; he’d missed. A smile spread on her face, and she had a couple of seconds to feel glee and even pride as she realized she’d beat him. She’d been faster. Then, a wheezing grunt and the unmistakable thud of a body hitting the decking startled her, and Juliet took two steps back, glancing to her left to see Kline on his butt, a hand in the middle of his chest with blood seeping out between his fingers. “J-Jesus,” he wheezed.

“Careless of me,” Montclair chuckled. “I seem to have missed and hit a poor bystander!”

Juliet squatted beside Kline and pressed her hand atop his. “What’s Ruby saying, Kline? Can your nanites handle this?”

“She—” he coughed a spray of foamy blood. “She says—” he coughed again, and Montclair laughed.

“Don’t worry about Kline. I’ll be sure to salvage his brain and that little bitch of a personality in that chip.” Juliet could see him move closer in her peripheral vision and turned to face him as Kline’s hot blood began to creep out between her fingers. Suddenly, she experienced something she’d only ever heard about anecdotally. Her vision darkened with a tint of crimson rage as her vision tunneled. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears and was aware of Angel speaking but couldn’t make out the words.

Juliet stood and ripped her monoblade out of its scabbard with a clarion ring, the blade flickering with red, holographic starbursts as it sang its freedom. Montclair’s mouth moved as he taunted her, but Juliet didn’t have ears for him. All she heard was the sound of her blood. All she felt was the bone-deep primal need to see him reduced to warm, wet meat. She strode toward him, the distance gone in a blink, and then, to the song of her rushing blood, began to dance.

Despite her blinding rage and the need to hack like a brute, Juliet knew better—or, better put, her instincts and muscle memory knew better. Montclair seemed to be game; he dropped his gun to the decking and hefted his cudgel. She avoided his wickedly fast hack, weaving her blade around his weapon like it was another monoblade. She let the length of her sword gently caress the bludgeon with the breeze of its passage, slipping along it to flick toward Montclair’s chest, aiming to impale and then rip him in half. He was fast, though, and shifted away, his long, pale face fixed with a rictus grin.

They moved around each other, feinting, shifting, dodging, and ducking faster than a normal eye could track. Juliet’s sword ripped the air in high-pitched, buzzing snaps while Montclair's cudgel replied with deeper whooshes. He was fast, and if she’d been thinking at all, Juliet might have wondered if she could keep up with him. She wasn’t, though; she wanted his blood to spray, wanted to see his smug, evil smile tumble away on his severed head. So, she gave herself to the dance and relied on what she’d learned and perfected from Tanaka to see her through.

Juliet nearly killed Montclair a dozen times. He nearly did the same to her at least twice with his wicked bludgeon. He swung that dense rod of metal so hard that once, when she ducked a blow meant to cave in her head, he ripped a gouge out of the plasteel wall paneling. Back and forth they went, and a nearly automatic part of Juliet’s mind began to learn and predict Montclair’s moves.

Learning patterns had been a big part of her training. She’d practiced it for hundreds of hours in the many long, high-speed sparring sessions she’d had with Tanaka. He always told her that fighting was more than reacting, more than going through the motions, no matter how perfectly you could perform them. Fighting opponents with skill was a matter of learning what they would do, knowing their movement patterns, and thinking ahead of them.

Montclair was deft and quick and, so far, had done an admirable job of mixing up his style. It wasn’t until the fifth time that Juliet feinted low that she realized he always responded one of two ways, either stepping back with his left foot with a thrust at her face or aggressively circling to the right and hacking the bludgeon at her hip. She didn’t want to take a blow from that cudgel, but she’d failed to end the fight quickly, and she didn’t know if she could maintain her speed as long as he could. If it were anyone else, she might have tried to outlast him, but for all she knew, Montclair was more machine than man, with the endurance to match.

So, she moved around him, dodging and maneuvering, and then, just as she’d backed him up to the wall, she feinted at his legs. He couldn’t step back, so he circled to his right and hacked at her hip. This time, Juliet didn’t backstep, avoiding the blow. She lifted her left leg and took it on the top of her shin, just below her knee. As the heavy bludgeon smashed into her bone, Juliet turned her sword and lifted that invisibly fine edge up, catching him in the groin and splitting him all the way to the neck before he recoiled, falling away.

Montclair’s arms windmilled as his grin turned into an “O” of surprise. He fell against the wall, his two legs splitting further and further apart. His torso slowly peeled apart at the center, spilling glistening guts, plastic, and wires in a shower of gasses, blood, and white fluid.

Juliet carefully lowered her leg, unsure if it would hold her weight. The pain of the impact had been blinding, but only for a fraction of a second before Angel and her nanites had blocked it. Had her reinforced bones held up to the blow? As she pressed her foot onto the plasteel and gingerly flexed her weight onto the limb, she sighed with relief when she didn’t collapse. “Should’ve just blocked one of his blows sooner.”

Montclair’s arms were still flailing, and his mouth was working in weird gasping, word sounds. Juliet darted forward and bisected his head, splitting it down the middle to ensure she also cut his PAI chip in half. “No final words for you, asshole.”

“Juliet!” Angel cried, “The reactor! Kline!”