A call from Jie shortly after we'd walked out Tash's meeting zone almost derailed our night. We'd had a discussion around it, whether it was better to let Jie drag us around the city or risk getting under her skin.

Frankly I didn't know the right answer, but I knew I was done getting shoved into firefights for the night. One had been a favour; walking back to Jie now was just giving up any control I was pretending to have on Station 26. Not the best way to make progress.

We'd lied and said that I still needed medical attention. Jie left it there, but I didn't know if she was ignorant to the truth or if she preferred to hold it against me rather than calling me on it.

Hard to know with her.

Either way, I'd brought Victoria out of the Pent, out of the spider's web and into the mess of the lofts. Station 26 was split into three parts. The Pent was the spires at the top of the station where all the money filtered to; the lofts were the living quarters for everyone who could afford half a life on the place; the furnace was the smoke-choked industrial quarters where people went to die.

The furnace, of course, was also the only place you could afford in the city if you didn't make it big mining or didn't come here with money in the first place. Getting caught in the cycle of the furnace was a quick way to die from being poor; you'd just choke on the fumes of melting rock until you needed to spend all your savings fixing your lungs, then you'd be too poor to go anywhere else.

All of that was by design. All of that had been what we'd talked about tearing down when we shot up the damned place. Of course, it was all still here; I don't know why I thought it would be different but-

I don't know; maybe I'd hoped I couldn't walk into part of my past from years ago as if I'd never left. I held up hope that we'd changed something back then and-

Not that it mattered now.

The Tordivan Shooting Gallery was a mainstay for mercs on Station 26; nice enough that everyone respected the spirit of the rules, but dirty enough that you weren't going to run into a client there or get reported for asking tips on how to modify a weapon. Last time I'd been there, the place had been packed full, but it didn't have the same energy these days.

And the tables certainly still needed to be replaced.

"You know I used to be on that leaderboard," I pointed out a rusted set of nameplates on the wall, "I was proud of that."

"You're not anymore?" Victoria turned around to see it. She'd sneered at everything on the way in here for a good reason; even with nostalgia, I understood that it defined a dive with the added smell of gunpowder. At least nobody would come looking for her here.

"Nah."

"So they beat you?"

I stared up at the leaderboard and tried to read the scores, but it wasn't in a format that I understood. "Different game, I think."

"You gonna try?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't need a game to prove I can shoot," I pointed out.

"Are you worried you're going to embarrass yourself?"

Victoria had already gotten me to take this job by appealing to my pride, but we were getting to the point where I knew her well enough to counter that strategy.

"What if I tried?"

"I thought you didn't like guns?"

"You keep handing them to me. Might as well see how good I am."

"It's to keep you safe."

"That's what I'm paying you for."

I sighed in response to that. There wasn't a point in admitting that I was in over my head, Victoria understood that the second the hunters arrived. She kept needing to be armed because having someone solo wasn't good enough protection, but adding someone else to our pairing was just begging to open ourselves up to a bribe.

As far as she knew, I was still open to bribes. I knew better.

"So, should I try?"

"Sure." I nodded toward the walls of the shooting gallery. The thing that had made Tordivan stand out in the lofts was that it was on the only shooting gallery that didn't use virtual targets and shot extrapolation technology. Sure, it meant you could only use a handful of guns here, but it meant that you got to feel that visceral energy of a rifle in your hands in a situation where you weren't busy trying to win a firefight.

"So how do I do that? Do I just go up to the counter and-"

"I'll take care of it," I pushed out of my chair.

"Because-"

"Might know the guy at the counter," I admitted. I'd been there on opening day when Tordivan left the merc game and started up the shooting range with the gun collection he'd built up over the years. Maybe I could swing a discount.

Maybe I could convince him to tell me how scoring worked. Not that I was supposed to care.

I was only halfway to the counter when it was clear that Tordivan was not the person behind the counter, nor was it any other employee that I half remembered. Instead, there was a young girl who was too young to be working in a shooting range. She was busy using a paint scraper to tear the serial number off a gun.

She looked up once I was close enough, "Need a booth?"

"Renting," I corrected.

"You're renting? You ain't got anything in that bag of yours?"

"Nothing that's allowed."

"Try me," she said. Her voice was high, almost a squeak, even when she was trying for defiance.

"Hammerhead."

"Fair enough, banned."

"Nurse."

"That's fine."

"It's modded, so no, it's not."

Her eyes lit up, "What kinda mods you got on that thing?"

It took me longer than it should have to recall what I'd set up, "Removed the two chokes in the main barrel, and I replaced the dampener with… I think it's a PLK8? I know it's Ovishir."

She whistled, "Nice. That's all you brought?"

"I have an Overmaster on the ship," I offered. That offer was more about impressing her than it was about being helpful. If I returned to the ship I could grab anything from the armoury.

"Hm."

"So I'm renting."

"Want something special?" she asked.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"No, no, it's for her," I pointed back at Victoria.

"She doesn't strike me as the shooting type."

"She's not but-" I shrugged.

"Well, if she's asking, I can get her a- Seredia and some ammo for it."

I didn't catch myself before I scoffed.

"Alright, so you want a beginner gun, but you have opinions about it," she said, trying to sound annoyed, but her voice just couldn't manifest it. "How about an OVC7."

I nodded; that was an Ovishir rifle and probably responsible for the most murders in the damned Galaxy. The gun was ubiquitous enough that most species' governments made their own model of it.

"Name's Enzie, I'll get it for you."

"Kingston," I offered. Maybe I shouldn't have given my real name, but being back here felt like I was coming home, so lying felt out of place.

"Alright, Kingston, do you need me to give her the talk or-"

"I'll tell her to keep it down range."

"And-"

"Stop doesn't mean one more shot."

"And?"

"Neither of us are drunk, Enzie. We're not going to walk out into the range.

"Good. I'll get the stuff."

Enzie had already dropped everything off by the time I got Victoria from the table and convinced her that she should follow through on what she said she was going to do. Less than a minute of preamble after and she was already snapping at me for trying to correct her.

"This is how I did it on Mythellion."

"Don't keep your legs together."

"It worked then."

"Ottinio are big targets," I pointed out, "and we shouldn't shoot any more of them. Single planet population and all that."

Victoria sighed and put one leg back. I matched her stance and showed her how to correct it. After another moment, to walk around and check how she was holding the gun. I nodded. "You're good."

One shot. One hit.

"I got it!" if I didn't know Victoria better than that, I almost would have said she was squealing.

"One down," I pointed out, "now try and hit it twice."

Two shots. Two hits.

"I thought this would be harder. Why am I paying you?"

"Try four."

Four shots, three missed and the last one almost hit the ceiling. I caught a glare from Enzie for using her range to prove a point. "See?" I asked.

"What was that?"

"Did you hold down the trigger? Or did you press it?"

"I just pulled the trigger like the other times," she protested. She turned the gun over in her hands but, following the rules didn't point it anywhere other than down range.

"You can't just pull the trigger," I explained, "there is a rhythm to every gun's dampening system. If you don't follow that rhythm, then it will stop controlling the recoil for you."

"It is recoiling."

"That's it with the dampener," I pointed out, "you don't want to try and shoot a gun without one."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Yes," I admitted.

Victoria looked at the gun for another moment, scrutinizing it before raising it back to her shoulder. She took half a breath and then fired four times again. Mostly missed. She hissed.

"Was that fast or slow?" I asked.

"How do I know?"

"You overshot the dampener, so it was fast. If you were slow, you could hit your target, but it'd be inefficient. You wouldn't be getting off shots as fast as you should."

"I'll just go slow then," she narrowed her eyes and lined up the shot again; this time I spoke up before she shot.

"If you shoot slow, their shield has time to regenerate, and it won't matter how many times you hit them. Don't take a shortcut, learn the rhythm."

"Show me."

I looked down at the gun in her hands as she turned it to me. "Really?"

"If you're so good, show me."

I nodded and took her place at the station. It had been a while since I'd gone to a range. It always felt like a waste of time. I was supposed to practice but I got my practice in the field. That and shooting didn't carry the same excitement it used to. Now it was just something I had to do to save my skin sometimes.

But I had a point to prove, and she clearly was planning on learning only if I proved I could do it.

I took a deep breath before adjusting the target, then the sights. The first thing I needed to do was show that I could be on target.

"Tell me when."

"Go."

There was almost a musical rhythm to firing a weapon outside of a firefight. Once you were used to it, the cadence of different weapons was a set of metronomes in your fingertips and ears, ticking away from the moment you pulled the trigger. The OVC7 had a fast rhythm, almost like it always told you to rush, so you could get one more shot in. It needed to, it was a low-powered gun.

Ten seconds later, I was done, and I'd drawn a clean X over the target's metal in a quickly fading molten red. Victoria stared down range, then at me. "Just like that, then?"

"Just like that."

"Just like that," she whispered to herself as she took the gun back from me and braced it back against her shoulder. She took an extended blink, widening her stance and bracing her shoulder. "Just like that," and then, almost so quiet that it didn't exist, "Come on Victoria.";

The fast pace of the OVC7 looked different when you weren't behind the gun, if I didn't know better, I would have assumed it was simply an automatic rifle, a shield tickler that lacked the firepower to do anything other than annoy civilians.

More importantly, in the moment, Victoria might not have drawn an X on the target, but she certainly put most of the shots there and on a pace that, if I was being judgemental, was just a hair under the perfect fire pattern for the gun.

She stopped and finally took a breath alongside another extended blink. "Just like that," she whispered to herself again. Once she opened her eyes she was looking directly at me. "You're impressed."

Damn, I was caught. "You did pretty well."

"Pretty well?"

"Pretty good," I confirmed.

"I think I was better than that."

"Don't get cocky with a gun," I pointed out, "that gets a lot of people shot." I paused but then continued, "You said you never shot a gun before Mythellion?"

"Never really held one."

"You were out on the rim."

"I probably shouldn't have been," she admitted, "the more you talk about it the more I realize that I might have just been getting by because people assumed I was-"

"Because you were a Fotuan."

"Yeah."

"Fair enough," I surveyed the fading red on the target. She certainly hadn't hit it every time, but most of the shots were at least center of mass, which was the point. "Okay, consider me impressed with the shooting."

"Told you."

"As a starting point," I added to try and keep her under the control of gravity.

"I'll take it."

Honestly, it was just nice to see her acting how she did in private again instead of putting up appearances like she had in the Pent. Almost brought a smile to my face.

"So what's good then?"' she asked, "so I can copy that?"

"I'm good," I answered, letting my ego get in the way for a moment.

"Then show me what good is like," she held out the gun to me again, "not just an example."

"Hm," was all I offered before reaching for the intercom. "Enzie, can you bring over a Mako, please."

"You're changing guns?"

"Making a point," I answered just before a robotic arm dropped a sleek assault rifle on the counter in front of Victoria. It had been a long time since I'd seen a factory fresh Mako. The brilliant white of the standard paint was sleek and honestly, I missed it, but I'd repainted mine black so it didn't stick out in a crowd. "Let me."

Victoria conceded the spot and I adjusted the target again, this time telling the system to drop several down over the course of my shooting. The old game I was on the leaderboard for.

The score I'd put up with a Mako.

After all, if Victoria asked me to show off, I would show off.

I took a deep breath in front of the target range and closed my eyes, trying to turn my attention inward to read my beating heart. Mom had always told me that Ovishir were good shots because they slowed down when cold, and Dvall proved it to me.

Mom's words had led me on a journey of learning to slow down my breathing and heart in the seconds before shooting a target. It had always been out of reach in combat, but collateral damage guns like the Hammerhead were my favorite in a pinch either way. Course, one day I'd be in a firefight around people I didn't want to hit again.

Maybe with Victo-

No. She was learning to shoot, she wasn't about to join me on the front. This wasn't what she was supposed to be doing.

I snapped the Mako up to my shoulder and trained it where the first target would drop as I counted down in whispers.

Three.

Two.

O-

I pulled the trigger in a fraction of a moment before the target dropped and started ringing shots off of it before it had even loaded into place. Each shot hit the same spot, slamming into their shield in the middle of the chest over and over until it would break there.

The Mako stuttered, and I took a breath as I let it vent coolant out the side, unlocking then locking the mechanism back in place with the exact timing the gun needed. A practiced motion I'd perfect behind cover upstairs in the Pent.

The second target dropped, and my shots crashed into it. Each one would be hard enough to stagger the person behind the shield. They'd cover their eyes out of instinct, and as long as I kept up the pace of fire, nothing stopped me from getting them out of the way.

Click. Breathe in. Vent. Breathe out. Click.

The third target was downed almost before it had even dropped. Like it hadn't been paying attention and I'd pulled the trigger instead of offering the chance to surrender.

I didn't have to breathe before the fourth. I could count the shots. I almost couldn't hear them over the music we'd blast during a tear through the loft to hide where the gunshots were coming from.

Vent.

There was a trick with the Mako that most people modified away. A stutter-like pattern in the music of its firing pace. If you caught in on the end of the dampener's energy, you could get four more shots out without needing to give it time to breathe before-

I let go of the front grip of the Mako as I overloaded the dampener, and it shot downward, swinging along its strap down to my side. I snapped up the Hammerhead out of habit.

There wasn't a sixth target. Not a full Songlai combo. I wasn't in the middle of- I took a deep breath.

"That was wild!" Victoria stepped up to me before I'd lowered the Hammerhead. "You were in the zone there."

I took a steadying breath and felt the weight of the Mako at my side. I took the strap off my neck and laid the gun down on the counter. How long had it been since I'd used one?

"How many times have you done this? It's like you knew where the targets were going to be."

"There's a pattern," I explained, just a touch too quiet for conversation.

"You should try to put up a score again; you said you used to be up there."

I was still staring at the Mako, the last crystals of frost from the coolant were melting away. "No, I shouldn't," I answered, "I'm done. You can go."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," I answered, stepping out of the way instead of elaborating. I wouldn't explain it, but I'd played target practice enough with flesh and blood for a lifetime.

Victoria took my place and smiled as she picked up the Mako.