"These were officially re-cooled last night, so enjoy!" Betts said as we sat, gathered around the Hive, gnawing at the Pabst nutribars. It was too chewy to get through in less than ten minutes, but you could sort of juice the synthed flavors and nutrients from it; a mix of fermented hops, meat, and something vaguely fruity. I looked at the gathered Bandersnatch cyclers; oh good, it wasn't just me wearing the, "I'm too hip to let my face show how utterly disgusting this is," expression. But they were def disgusting in a different and interesting way from the usual nutribars.

Tomahawk sat on the floor across from me, his wax-spiked hair waggling around as he gnawed. He wore a pin-striped vest and a bow-tie. Next to him, dumb ol' Rambo sat with his legs stretched in front of him. He was polishing his black lensless frames. Lise was sitting in Calvin's lap; they wore their usual matching plaid mufflers, even though the waste heat from the comms generator was getting pumped into the warren at full blast. Gallagher's shit-kickers gleamed with fresh polish as he sat with his arms tight around his knees; he'd been smart enough to toss the nutribar aside by now. He clearly didn't give a frig what Betts thought; that made me feel warm and fuzzy. I had Fred on one side of me and Betts on the other, so I wasn't as brave as Gal about trashing my breakfast.

That was all of us.

Betts swiped a data pad and it projected a holo map of the Barrow District. One section was surrounded by a dotted line: the target territory claimed by Random.

"So here’s what we have to do," Betts said, pointing at scattered patches marked with red circles. She stabbed a spot in the largest patch with her finger. "Here, there's known to be some prime loot, still not even fully explored by Random, but claimed by them. Well, we're going to go in and start doing some claiming of our own. They're not gonna be happy about that, so we'll have to be ready for a fight."

Gallagher scowled under his breath.

"Old man, you got something to say?" Betts's eyes narrowed at him.

"Nope," he began, "Not a thing. I've got nothin' to say about how outmuscled we'll be. I've also got nothin' to say about how Bandersnatch is weak and ought to be lookin' to build alliances, not incite schisms. You're not gonna hear any of that from me."

The room was stunned to silence. Attempts to chew through the nutribars, nervous tics, and even breathing seemed to stop completely.

Her jaw clenched, Betts looked ready to rip him a new one. She nodded slowly. "Ok, you think I can't handle the truth in your words. You think I'm just gonna lash out and assert control, but I'll say it true: you're right that we're weak, that much I'll give you. But I didn't want to have to put it this frank: We're so weak, nobody's gonna ally with us right now. We've got too little to offer. So either we win a fight, or we find stuff good enough to make us worthy of our name, or we might as well all just go be junkbunnies. Hell, that's the closest we could get to a legit purpose, right?"

In that moment, for the first time, I found―in the filthy, stinking, refuse of my regard for Betts―I found a tiny nugget of respect. I even felt pumped up, like, willing to fight for her, for Bandersnatch, despite my sagging enthusiasm for the whole lifestyle. I saw glimmers in the eyes of my comrades that told me they felt it, too. But I scowled at her suggestion that it was either this or be junkbunnies. There had to be something better.

She went over her plan. We listened, asked questions. I fessed up about my bike mods, without mentioning that they'd been copped from Hipstamatic's list; she gave me props for the tactical boost they would give us and factored them into the plan of attack. It was simple: we had 8. Random had 20. We couldn't out-muscle 'em in a full head-to-head, and we didn't want to anyways. We just wanted to be able to do some digging in their prime spot without disruption. Turns out, the corner of the Barrow was a four-story junkscraper enclosing a courtyard. It had only one way in, and stood next to an Academy-managed 'scraper that ran electro-scattering fields which extended over the entire Random prime spot. Apparently after some digging, Betts had found out that the Academy presence had only recently increased at that ‘scraper neighboring the Barrow.

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Random laid claim to a patchwork of small spots in a few districts, so it seemed unlikely they would have all their forces in the Barrow. If we could get in there and control the area, we could take a lot of stuff and get out before Random runners could make it over from one of their other territories.

For as much as Betts laid it on us that we were weak, that wasn't common knowledge to other gangs. Yet. Oh sure, everyone knew our numbers were much lower, but our legacy propped us up; we could tell by the way runners from other gangs would make way for us at speakeasies. We just had to push in strong before they could alert back-up, set a guard at the entrance, put a sniper on the roof to discourage Randos from sticking around, and have the rest of us dig up loot. The scattering fields prevented any of us from trying to fly our bikes in from above; this was mostly to protect the neighboring junk that was under active excavation by the Academies―it was rare for Academies to claim entire junkscrapers, so I assumed the increased presence there was related to the report of white-coats that the Rando in the Banyan Sea was talking about. The spillover happened to work nicely for protecting the Barrow from fly-in interference, as long as we got in quick enough on wheels to secure it.

Tomahawk and Lise were the recon team. They spent the morning scouting out the Barrow district while keeping a low profile. The Shop was a flurry of activity as Bandersnatch gathered equipment, modded bikes, dusted off our finest fedoras, boas, and R-Me boots; we weren't just going to raid this territory, we were going to raid it in style.

Calvin and Betts were excitedly talking smack about Random.

"Those Randos are so fin, even the chippers give them the frigidaire," Calvin guffawed.

Betts grinned. Even her smiles looked contemptuous. "For shiz, they haven't had a juicer in their number since the last of their tassels disappeared."

Rambo was asking Gallagher's advice on fashion which was kind of ridic, though for a punk, Gallagher's taste wasn't so bad. He was always a tight bud of Uncle Alec, so he felt more like family than anyone else, here, other than Fred.

Fred was intently polishing the chrome on his ride, so that left me sitting in the corner pretending to adjust my new mods. Every so often, I'd get up and walk around and try to get in on a conversation, but it never really worked. I always went back to my corner and touched my shoulder, thinking of my lost besties in the ink, there. I walked over to a polished sheet of steel bolted into the wall, looking at my reflection. Carrion Carrie smiled at me from my tat, making lewd gestures at me with her tongue, and talking smack. There wasn't any audio on it, but I still remembered one thing she said when we were playing around making bio vids of everyone: "You'll always be my favorite, Juno, as favorite as any tassel who warms my bed from time to time could ever be. Always remember when you ride, don't just ride, show off. Be epic. Other gangs won't respect you unless you are epic."

I grinned thinking of her words. So if I was going to run this raid, I had to ride epic. I owed it to Carrie to be. I looked over at my 'Snatcher buds, all excited and talking to each other, none of them even glancing at me. My besties were all gone. Only in my tat, now. And those left of us couldn't give a frig what I did for Bandersnatch anymore.

"Check it, check it," Lise shouted, sauntering into the Shop. Tomahawk followed behind her. "We got some prime intel on the Rando's territory, so listen up."

Everyone quieted down from their psyched up chattering, and turned toward our recon team.

Tomahawk threw his head back and cackled. "Fellas fellas, this is gonna be a friggin' cake walk. They got almost no presence there, and we did some radio scanning thanks to Fred's cryptohacking, and were able to overhear some Random convos about junkrun plans for the week."

Lise high-fived Tomahawk, and then took over. "For shiz, it sounds like they'll have a token band just doing a little bit of digging tomorrow, so it's perfect timing."

I forced a smile while everyone else hollered and cheered. Well hell, at least maybe nobody would have to die on this raid.

I turned back to my corner, not able to look at them. My eye's stung. I was just glad I had no more besties to lose.