I don't want to be a gangbanger anymore.

Only up here in microgravity did that feel safe to even think.

I wondered how Mom would react if she ever heard me say it. Me, Juno Bandersnatch, youngest daughter of the once-proudest gang family on our pitiful junkworld. But Mom wouldn't ever hear me say it, because she was gone.

I sighed. I had more important things to worry about, though; I was late. I was late for the junkrun, and it wasn't the first time. Betts was gonna be pissed. But it was her friggin' fault, since she had me go on this interplanetary errand for her, and still somehow expected me to get back in time for the junkrun.

I pedaled until my ankles ached. Gears cranked the ion thruster on my Diamondback-Astro to full speed. Only a wispy shell of force field flickered between me and the vacuum surrounding Beta Fornax II. The acrid, canned air piped into my face mask stung my eyes until they leaked.

Mom, gone. Dad, gone. Gone, along with all of my reasons for being in Bandersnatch. We used to be on the top of the leaderboard, back when we were 150 runners strong, now crippled down to eight. All I had left was Tilly―and the mission. Tucked inside the hidden pocket in my cargoes, Tilly’s icy steel casing pressed against my thigh. She made the occasional, comforting hum whenever she had new loot to tell me about. And the mission―for shiz, I wouldn't ever give that up, but I wished I could find a way to do it without digging through junk heaps to find the next thing to re-cool―to make hip. Hip. Ironic to think my peeps were wearing a tag so vintage that it used to be hurled as a joke, as fighting words against our ancestors back on Old Earth. “Hipsters,” the legends say, “were laughable in the early days; nobody guessed they would be indirectly responsible for human progress.” Well, clearly the Academics—the damned nerds—of my day must have forgotten that. They still thought we were a joke.

My attention snapped back to the planet stretching across my field of view as atmo came at me quick. The gears squealed, and I had to drop into first to avoid backfiring and melting the ion drive off of my frame tubes. The problem was the friggin' 'noughties aerogel shaft drive―re-cooled last week, but not able to give me the handling I needed for re-entry.

Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I absently turned up the force field so I didn't melt. I was reminded why we couldn't trust Hipstamatic anymore. The problem was that whatever magic algorithm it had to find the cultural relics that were the lowest on the popularity curve didn’t account for how functional those things were, but still insisted we use them, because if we didn’t use them, how could we re-cool them? Nobody else seemed to notice this problem, or ignored it if they did.

But functional didn’t get us paid unless it was also worth re-cooling. A lot of loot with history and culture was optimized for flash and sparkle, not always for function. And so long as the nerd worlds cared only about their fancy scientific research, it was up to us to keep the True Culture alive, even if it meant putting up with shoddy engineering. I’d been practicing this rant, could you tell?

The merchers who owned synth plants and comm stations, runners from other gangs, even some Academics not too afraid to be seen as freaks were willing to buy synth recipes for re-cooled pieces of history, no matter how shoddy the engineering was. I guess if all we had to do was find the stuff and make the recipes, it’d be fine. But no no, our place on the leaderboard required us to use it, show it off, preen with it. And hey, I like preening as much as the next gal, but not if it might get my ass killed.

Fortunately, my Diamondback-Astro was new enough to fly me safely between worlds, but old enough to be re-cooled by Hipstamatic within the last ten years, as per Bandersnatch tradition. Did I mention how sick of tradition I was? After losing so many of my besties, my heart wasn’t in it anymore: I didn’t want to do junkruns for the gang. I'd been carried on runs since I was sporting snipe-skivvies, for frig sake. Right then, careening down to the surface, looking at the junk-strewn expanses of wasteland―the only home I'd known for all of my 23 years―I was so done with this. But what else was there? I was a girl in search of a dream, but with no dream in sight.

I was so done with Betts, too. It was because of her that I was flying this little errand from BF-II to BF-IV and back. But she was our leader and the chain of command mattered or something. I rolled my eyes. These days, doing interplanetary runs was rarely worth the fuel, so it didn't happen much, but Betts had a favor to call in from an allied gang on BF-IV, and I was her errand girl today.

I breathed deep as I descended into the troposphere; my backpack pressurizer was feeding real air into my face mask now instead of the canned stuff. The force field buzzed off, making my skin tingle. Dust clouds stung my eyes as my tires made landfall. The air smelled of sulfur and sugar. I had tweaked my autonav to take me down by the edge of the Banyan Sea; a joke of a name, really, because there's not a drop of water there. It's just this big, empty stretch of dirt and dust that's surrounded by imported banyans―trees the gen-one spacers brought with them from Old Earth. Rumor has it the nerds had planned to turn this Sea into an actual jungle, but the trees never spread out beyond the original 500 klick ring, so the gangs had been using the barren center as a landing strip for as long as anyone remembered. It was littered with springs, hydraulics, tires, and a couple centuries worth of other astro-bike parts.

The junk cities loomed beyond the banyans, piled so high they blotted out the weak red light of the Beta Fornax sunrise. My carbon-fiber tires were spinning so fast they cut ruts into the packed dust and stank from the friction. I squeezed my brakes a little too hard and got more dust in my face. Swatting it away with one hand, I looked ahead, trying to find the gap―the largest north-facing parting of the trees―so I could get around to the scrap heaps. Bandersnatch was waiting for me, no doubt, since by now I was late for the junkrun.

As if to remind me of that, Tilly beeped at me, buzzing against my hip. I stalled out, dropping both feet onto packed red dirt. She beeped again.

"Chill out, Tilly," I hissed. "Give me a sec."

I peeled off my face mask and tucked it into my backpack. Scanning the horizon carefully, I couldn't make out any other peeps, so I slid a hand into my waistband and pulled her out.

Her screen flashed on, as if anticipating my need for the intel she had. Tilly was jacked into Hipstamatic, and it told her which loot was now sufficiently unpopular for us to collect.

The coast was most def clear, so I swiped her into voice mode.

"Today's hot find," her smooth alto voice began, "Mickey Mouse beer cozy; origination date: Old Earth epoch, unknown; 204th re-cooling; suspected locations: Mons Amity, West Bodacious Junk City, Beta Fornax II; Fab Ridge, Michelson-Morley Starport,..."

I tapped to skip the rest. I didn't have time to scavenge that far away today. It wasn't just luck and mad skills that let me make such sweet finds. Tilly was a better feed than any of the unreliable frados most runners had to use. But I couldn't tell even my own 'Snatchers about Tilly. I slid her back in my pocket, and gave her a pat.

A chill breeze made me zip up my hoodie. I hopped back onto my bike and saw the Trifork in the distance. Worn from centuries of use by the Committee archivists, the three roads led out of the Banyan sea and into the junk cities. The dizzyingly high constructs stuffed with junk from more eras than I could trace my own roots back to made me blink as the sun gleamed off of the treated metal scaffolding, designed to resist corrosion until the universe ended.

I had a flash of memory to when Uncle Alec first took me around the Banyan Sea when I was a snipe, and he laughed and pointed at the archivists, saying, “Look at those junkbunnies, popping in and out of the junk piles, so nervous and shaky when they see hipsters, like we’re violent savages just waiting to eat them, or something!”

And the term stuck, and ever since, the gangs called them that: junkbunnies. He was right, though, they were scared, because they got little protection from other Academics, and were left to fend for themselves on our worlds. Junkbunnies had dreams, though, unlike me; they dreamed of moving up in the Academic world, becoming researchers or even professors, but really they were only a small step above us in the social order. But at least they were still upstanding citizens, unlike us.

Runners were much stealthier in our search for loot, because we had to be. If we didn’t scare the ‘bunnies enough, they were like as not to report us for “illegal salvage.” Junk was still officially the property of the Committee, even if they barely ever looked at most of it.

I must have been a few klicks from the Trifork, when I noticed some dark specks ahead of me. One large one and a couple smaller ones. The specks resolved into people―I squinted to make out if they were buds or rivals―no white lab coats, so not nerds. No beige jumpers, so not bunnies. No, they had way too much color on them―shiz, those were Random colors.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I wouldn't say Random were exactly our rivals, but they weren't allies of Bandersnatch neither. It was only one runner, though―and a couple of snipes! Looked like he was training the snipes on mini-bikes, teaching 'em tricks and shiz.

I shivered. Could he have seen me take out Tilly? It hadn't been too far back. Maybe he'd had a 'scope on me. I let my bike roll up real slow, giving him a chill nod, without smiling. Everyone had to go through the Trifork to get to the cities; it's not like I was special.

The runner popped a wheelie on his ride as I approached―he must have been Random's trixie―then nodded his black, slicked-back ‘do at me as he landed. His Floydian muffler was wrapped twice around his neck, coming almost up to his long sideburns. I couldn't read much in his dark eyes, but it looked like he was trying not to scowl.

"Didn't think anyone would be coming in from off-planet," he said, his eyes darting between the two snipes and behind me, “What with that big solar storm..."

I nodded, letting my eyelids droop lazily. "It cleared up this morning. No biggie.”

He looked me up and down. "You're a 'Snatcher, huh?"

I frowned. Was I? Maybe not, but to him, I had to be. I quickly corrected and flashed him my teeth. "Bandersnatch and proud," I purred. "And you're Random."

He gave me a curt nod. "I saw you come in for a landing, before. I guess only runners in important gangs like Bandersnatch are doing off world gigs, lately, huh?"

My shoulders tightened. Shiz, maybe he had seen Tilly! Maybe not, but that was a slick taunt he pulled, I had to give him cred—he almost got me to bitch about Betts and how I thought she was wasting precious resources to send me to BF-IV, but I couldn't say that to a runner from another gang. Most def not in front of his little ones. The snipes didn't take their eyes off of me, even as they meandered in little circles on their mini-Astros. It was kinda unnerving.

"Naw, it's a regular thing we do; we have some allies on BF-IV. You've probably heard of Betts, our leader―she likes to make sure we keep up those ties, since the only thing that'll get any of us through these lean times are allies."

He grunted, hardly able to disagree with that. "You had a shiny thing you were talking to, right after you landed. The sun was hitting it just right, so that I had to pull on my shades. It looked kinda familiar."

I didn’t notice my hands clenching into fists until they were halfway up to my shoulders. I made a conscious effort to unclench them and drop them to my sides.

"Training the snipes in the Banyan Sea, huh? There was a time that'd be real unsafe, what with all the traffic. Nowadays, all you have to worry about is running into rivals," I made a big deal of looking all around to accentuate the nobody-at-all nearby. "And with no back-up, even."

I stared one of the snipes in the eyes, daring him to try to win this contest. He flinched, looking away, and changed course so his bike stayed at a greater distance from me.

"Look, look," he said, putting up his palms. "I don't want any trouble. I'm sure you were just calling your mom or something―"

I ground my teeth together. "You don't know anything about my mom. Now your mom," I said with a smirk. "I bagged her yesterday."

He snickered. "Touché, touché. Look, I think you and yours might want to know: there's a bunch of white-coats running around lately, if you weren't aware."

I frowned. That was weird. "Professors? Actual scientists? Why come here when they can just send their junkbunnies to do the grunt work?"

He shrugged. "Dunno, must be something so important that they needed the upper brass, huh? So, you might want to stay out of their way. I saw one start poking around just near one of our territories. I'm not keen on crossing them. We like where we live, we don't want to get on their list for Relocation Plans, you grok?"

I was surprised to feel my lips curl into a smile. This Randomer wasn't such a fin cronkite, after all.

"Totes." I had one foot on a pedal when my comm pinged at me. Shiz, it was Betts.

"Juno, where the frig are you? You were supposed to meet the rest of us at the usual rally spot forty minutes ago."

"Hey Betts, sorry, got held up―took some time getting back from that little PR gig you had me on what with the, uh―," I winked at the Randomer, "―solar storm and all. I'm on my way."

I looked up from my wrist comm, watching the snipes as they got into formation on either side of the runner. "Thanks for the tip, bud. Gotta roll."

Tilly buzzed my hip just as the breeze whipped through my hair. I could just make out the Trifork ahead, as I dodged ancient bike debris like I was running an asteroid field.

The roads spread apart and disappeared among broad metal scaffoldings constructed for the sole purpose of supporting the scrap's climb into the sky. It was a motley mixture of massive and tiny artifacts: gen-five hyperdrive turbines, chained like broken minarets at jaunty angles to the corners of the structures; pallets of plastic boxes filled with disarrayed, yellowing documents; crates overflowing with bizarre appliances right out of an heirloom fic-vid; and the whole of human history in between.

As an eighth-gen runner, I had learned where to look for stuff; the junk wasn’t intentionally well-ordered, but you started to see patterns. Frig, I needed to catch my breath, after rushing to make this junkrun. My belly rumbled at me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten. I anchored my bike to a girder, leaning up against a hyperdrive turbine. Digging through my worn pleather satchel, I found a nutribar and took a bite. Despite the gross flavor, it felt good filling my belly. Nutribars were disgusting, but cheap; our warren hadn't been topping the leaderboard lately, so cash was tight. The gangs that had deals with comm or transit barons could get hard cash in exchange for re-cooled finds.

I was still so jittery from that little run-in with the Randomer that I dropped my nutribar. When I leaned over to pick it up, I heard a rustling in a pile of junk nearby, and before I could turn around to see what it was, a throbbing pain shot through my shoulder. I bounced back up to see the left hook that had delivered it.

"Ya damn chipper, you wanna get fingered by the junkbunnies? Standing here's a good way to do it," Rambo said.

His face was red and tight behind thick, lensless vanity frames.

I rolled my eyes. "Dumb-ass frado. It's barely past sunrise, and no 'bunnies hang around right by the sea anyway. But your concern is touching," I replied, launching my own uppercut, then pulling it at the last second. I flashed my Trouble Grin at Rambo's flinch. His shoulders shrugged coyly beneath a plaid-patterned royal blue vest with silver buttons.

"Besides, you look way more re-cooled than me," I said, ogling his vest, which was clearly a new find. "If anyone's gonna get fingered for being a runner, it's you."

Rambo was always skittish. I couldn't blame him; he'd had some bad luck and been caught scavenging without a permit. He was nabbed by a Professor―and got a taste of Relocation. He was shipped off to some backwater junkworld in the Einstein Domain and forced to spend 10 months doing hard labor as a junkbunny slave—“bonded archivists,” is what the nerds called them—forced to look like a tool of the Academies in front of unfriendly gangs.

"What, this?" Rambo's beady eyes twitched as he hooked his thumbs under the vest. He ducked around so he was in the shade between the hyperdrive turbine and the steel struts straining to hold the thing up. From the shadows, he smirked, and in a low mumble he said, "It's pretty rad, isn't it?"

"Not rad enough to feed us, cronkite," I grumbled, turning back to my bike.

"If it wasn't for PickupStix selling out to Betts, we'd have a friggin' fat hoard of cash to spend on some fine meals," he shot back.

I froze. My hand went to my shoulder, covering the tattoo there, as if I could shield the good name of PickupStix by touching his image. I could feel the tat buzz as the image changed to the next of my nine fallen buds embedded in it.

My eyes stung, and my heart picked up speed like a turbo-charged Specialized. I turned around real slowly, hoping Rambo didn't dare try to run; if he was going to talk smack about the dead―about my 'Stix, him whose image had the longest pause in the rotation―he had to know he wasn't leaving.

"So Rambo, I could stand here defending 'Stix," I said through gritted teeth, "and I could pick apart all the things wrong with your little attempt at verbal suicide, there, but I can't imagine you'd say such a thing without being in the mood for a real, live beating."

His smirk vanished and his eyes went wide, looking like a snipe caught eating mom's special Fernet nutribar.

I was on him, pounding my fists into his chest. I hooked a foot behind his left knee and shifted my weight, and he was down. He was bigger and heavier than me, but I had leverage, and knew how to use it.

"This is for Lefty," I spat, "Who taught me how to fight big frados like you."

I swung to backhand him in the face, but he caught my wrist, and tried to lean forward to push me off of him.

"I was just speakin' true, and you know it," he whined, using all his strength to hold my hand away from his face. "We'd never have had to bend the knee to Betts if 'Stix had accepted leadership. But she gave him some prime feeds and he rolled over and got out of her way. And you know he would’ve been the better leader for us."

I hesitated, then put all my weight into the wrist he was holding back and forced his arm smack against the dusty ground. This trick made me lose my balance and fall off of him, though.

I jumped up, backed away a few strides, and got into the fisticuffs ready stance.

"Oh come on, admit it―you just want to feel some girl flesh, even if it leaves you bloody."

He turned sun red and stood up, breathing hard.

Then he rushed me.

I stepped carefully aside, leaving my foot in his way, tripping him. He fell on his face, and I jumped on his back, pounding him on the shoulders.

"And this is for Netzach, and Carrion, and Sharpie, and Gerb, and Vander, and Yelp, and my parents, who were the greatest 'Snatchers ever. All them who were better runners than you'll ever be. And you're just sore about that. Show some respect for ‘Stix, and I'll stop bashing you!"

He had some kind of burst of primal energy, because he pushed himself up hard, throwing me off of him. He spun around and looked at me, covered in crimson dust, leaning on my elbows. All of the determination had drained from his face.

He put up his palms. In a tiny, tiny voice he said, "You promised―you promised to help me get better at making sweet finds, but I don't know where you've been. And I―I been freakin' out, because Betts says I may not last much longer, says I'm not pulling my weight, and I don't know what other gang would take me. But you―you don't hang with us anymore, nobody knows what's up with you. Not since―"

My cheeks felt hot. I realized he had a point. Even my buds noticed that I wasn’t as fully in the game anymore.

I touched my shoulder again. My hand slid off and gripped the smooth coldness of Tilly through my pocket. Them in the tat were just ghosts, but she was still real. She buzzed reassuringly.

“Ok Rambo. I get it. I’m uh—we’re cool, ok?”

We both just looked at each other and then I remembered the junkrun.

"Weren't we supposed to meet the others at that bar—the Velvet Paw?"

"Oh frig. Yeah."

"I don't know about you, but I'd rather not shove any more grease bugs up Betts's butt right now, so I think I'm gonna head over there."

I got up, brushed myself off, and untethered my bike from the girder.

I rode off. I heard Rambo yell, "I'll see you there."

Sure you will, Rambo.