Late the following morning, the “star of Zeus” appeared behind a cloud of debris as we arrived at the entrance of an iron desert. Under our feet, rivers of molten metals had frozen in contact with the void, forming long black scars. There was nothing exciting for tens of miles. Except for a new warning from Cassidy at a sparse crater’s entryway. Besides the head of a different deputy, it was then the cyborg’s mount that floated a few centimeters from the ground littered with olive gravel despite the weight of its hooves. It had broken a radius inside one of the cracks trapping the unstable terrain.

The bounty-hunter android scanned the landlocked plain with thermal binoculars plugged to his wrist, but detected no threat. However, if Plague had continued on foot, he couldn’t be very far.

Within the crater, white stalagmites surrounded abandoned terraforming drills. As we kept moving, these twisted spikes of sodium sulfate became wider and exponentially higher. In the distance, on the outskirts of the circus, they formed a real mountain range unpassable on horseback.

“We are soon at the Caverns of Laplace,” our guide said. “We will have to be very careful.”

“Roger that,” Ali declared as a cruiser-sized boulder wafted slowly into the dark sky.

Right after, my human startled, making me turn around. I thought she had caught a cold in the floating rock’s shadow. But when vermilion beads began to escape from her suit, I understood something dreadful had just happened. “MarKus!” I shouted through the radio before our companion came back.

“What is goin—” A spark immediately appeared on the robot’s shoulder. Then a second silent impact ricocheted on his right forearm’s steel plate. “A marksman! Let’s get the mounts out of the way.”

As Ali’s body was falling to the ground, the steeds’ heads exploded one after the other; frozen brown plasma floated in the void. Moving fast despite the lack of gravity, MarKus jumped to my partner and caught her just before she hit the black ground. We quickly took cover as he firmly kept his fingers on her wound.

“Is she okay?” I asked, terrified.

“Before your associate almost chewed gravel, a 5.56 mm projectile severed the sternohyoid muscle overhanging her clavicle,” MarKus explained. “Fragments of depleted uranium nailed the carotid artery.”

“This is bad!” I cried before new projectiles polished the surface of the collapsed stalagmite behind which we had taken shelter. The hazardous gravity caused the sodium dust to fly around the cover barely wide enough for the three of us. “What can we do?”

While pinching Ali’s suit, MarKus snooped into a compartment behind his left thigh. From his paramilitary medical kit, he pulled out two encapsulated shots and a needleless injector. “This one is to dissolve the uranium,” he explained to me by applying the medi-shot equipped with the first green vial to my human’s neck’s base. “The second—the red one—is for pain.”

The opioids took effect in less than a heartbeat. “That—that ain’t so bad…” Ali stammered through the red mist that condensed on her visor. Her trembling hand had gripped my right hind leg.

“Cassidy made his Jack,” the robot said as I tried to help him by pressing on the pink space suit’s leak but the hole caused by the bullet was too wide. The air was escaping and my copilot started to choke. “He must think you’re dead after such a shot.” After brushing away the floating blood pearls and the thermal liquid’s turquoise fumes, he frantically searched another compartment behind his right leg. After a few seconds, which seemed like a hundred, he ultimately found what he was looking for. “Sorry. It is really sorry.”

The MK violently applied his soldering iron against Ali’s throat, who howled in pain through her microphone. The layers of molten thermoplastic mingled with the burnt flesh to seal the leak. The suffering must have been immeasurable. Yet my human held on. I saw her face again once her visor had been cleaned. The light in her eyes was duller than usual. She had not passed very far from death.

“By the 79 moons of Jupiter, MarKus! It was cl—”

But the robot hushed me up because the killer had hacked his way through our communication channel: “Tell mah, MarKus? Did the babe’s head take off from the rest of her bod’? Aah think Aah’m seein’ somethin’ floatin’ near your shoulder.” MarKus was right; Plague Cassidy was definitely convinced of having shot my organic partner. “You ain’t gonna hide behind this rock forever, y’know. This crater is highly magnetic. You’ll end up losin’ the bytes of your hard drive one by one… Goin’ cuckoo before goin’ dark ain’t funny, amigo.”

“Negative. It is fine where It is,” MarKus replied. “And It doesn’t need oxygen as you do, cracking-up bad egg.”

Cassidy snickered. “Look where you are, flannel mouth,” he then gibed. “You ain’t gonna light a shuck from there!”

Plague was right. We were in the middle of a mineral clearing. The only possible cover was the one we already had. We had nowhere to run.

After the canal sizzled anew, we heard the cyborg rearm his rifle before the android encrypted the comms to drive out the vile visitor. “What a despicable character,” MarKus said, eventually using words I could understand without an Oregon Trail translator before his Ganymedean accent caught him up again: “It wonders what the hoosegow is going to do with it.”

“Don’t tell me you still don’t want to shoot him down?”

“He doesn’t kill, Lee. Leave him alone.”

My human’s voice was weak and the robot asked her to remain silent until further notice. He then drew his pistol for the first time: a .50 caliber Desert Eagle like Ali’s—but with five barrels!

“Are you kidding me? And with that customized... monstrosity, you refuse to kill?” I protested. “How is that even possible? A single salvo would turn a whole elephant into patties!”

First silent, the android inserted a bullet with bluish heavy static charges casings—special ammunition for cyborgs—into each of the chambers. As a precaution, he also loaded Ali’s caliber with those before placing it on her chest. “Let’s try to get out,” he ultimately said, cocking his hammer with both thumbs.

Unfortunately, all attempts to exit had resulted in a shower of uranium lead. At the end of a Jovian half-revolution, we still didn’t know where the target of the Ganymede contract was hiding.

“I won’t have enough oxygen left for the return,” announced Ali, whose neck wound had turned into a swollen pink star.

“The options are dwindling,” MarKus pointed out. The MK had sustained significant damage to his armor during its last exit. The shoulder suspensions were hit and our partner’s right arm immobilized. His heart had also suffered dangerous impacts. When he touched the partly-exposed core to extract a fragment of uranium, the processor sizzled. “Talk about a hair in the butter!”

Unfortunately, the worst has yet to come. Ali’s wrist computer issued a disturbing alert. The radiation rate was skyrocketing: a solar storm was approaching Ganymede. Already, rainbow-colored auroras glowed in the black firmament.

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“Impossible! We are protected by Jupiter!” I shouted from my spotter position.

“This one’s pretty rough,” explained Ali, while watching the weather report flashing in red. “How are you holding up, Markus?”

His eye wandering beyond the mountain range, the android was lost in his calculations. Or maybe he was admiring the cosmos for the last time. Because his decision was made: “It’s gonna get him out. Be ready to retaliate.”

The robot then tried to stand up, but my partner stopped him immediately. “Are you fucking mental? He will blow your heart out!”

The automaton gently removed Ali’s hand from his metal thigh before tapping with his fingertips the needle indicating the suit’s oxygen level on the graduated dial. “Affirmative. But Plague will only approach once he’s 100% sure that It will be out to steal your air. Y’all will be able to take him by surprise, and arrest him for good.”

“Don’t do that!” I pleaded. “We can try something else! Ali’s getting better! And I have some air to spare in my tiny tank!”

“Negative. It is badly hurt too. The probability of both being killed is too great,” MarKus explained. “And It can’t risk being turned off by the solar storm. If It doesn’t act now, she’s gonna die of asphyxiation.” Ali protested, but MarKus was already leaping out of our cover. “Farewell, Kitty. Y’all were decent people and very nice to It.”

I roared: “No! Don’t you—”

The head of the MK tilted back. His single eye broken by a special static charge, his sternum no longer shone. The lifeless body of the metallic bounty hunter slowly fell to the ground before disappearing into a black and white cloud. Above us, the sky sparkled with mauve before the solar winds turned it into a frenzied veil of rust.

“Fuck!” Ali cursed, gradually straightening against the stalagmite despite her face being as white as snow. “Fucking fuck! I had enough of this fucking shit! Where is this fucker?”

“Understandable profanities, partner,” I said as she slowly got back on her feet after snatching MarKus’s thermal glasses. “There’s movement near a ridge at 0100. Check it out.”

My copilot remained very weak from the drugs and the blood lost and could barely lean against the rocky formation. Breathing heavily, she spotted Plague who had just left his last hiding place. Apparently, he was skidding on a white sulfate slide before disappearing into the dust as his arrival caused an avalanche. Suspecting a low blow, the cyborg then advanced with the rifle pointed at our ultimate bastion.

Ali took cover. “We can only afford a single shot,” she stuttered while recovering her caliber from the tip of her right foot.

“Let’s not miss it.”

“Did—did I ever?” she coughed, spitting blood all over her visor before she collapsed to the ground.

“Ali!”

“I—I’m fine,” she faltered. “I can’t stay put. Just—just be a rad FO—and tell when—and where to shoot.”

Hidden under a thick cloak of mineral sediment, I watched the coming of the murderer. I relayed back to my sapiens Plague’s every step, posture and progression. He was soon at a decent range and we could attempt something—or die trying. “You won’t be able to aim for the head,” I advised Ali. “He’s protected by his rifle scope.”

“Gotta shoot the sternum then.”

“Plague’s a cyborg, he must have a heavy plate to preserve his rotten heart.” It was preferable to provide a lethal shot. However, I felt that my human yearned to grant MarKus his last wish by taking Cassidy alive. I just hoped the special bullets bequeathed by the latter—even stopped by stainless steel—would put the cyborg down. “Target at 21 meters sharp and 3,072 rad from your position,” I announced. “His sternum is 1.61 meters from the ground.”

Ali swore and sprang up, surrounded by olive dust. Plague fired by reflex, but his shot got lost over the horizon. The Desert Eagle bullet hit him in the torso and he flew about ten meters back despite his weighted boots.

I ran towards Cassidy as my partner hobbled behind me, the gun still pointed at the cyborg. The latter tried to get up but another shot in the right knee, which bent backwards on impact, nailed him to the ground. Once close to him, Ali opened the communication channel before putting her foot on the first leak she had created in the madman’s space suit. The convict grunted and struggled in vain to grab a knife from his belt.

“Just don’t…” Ali said, holding him at gunpoint with both her gun and MarKus’. “I don’t want to break your other leg and carry you all the way back to Ganyville. Plus, if I dig another hole in your suit, you won’t have enough oxygen to begin with...”

Plague burst out laughing. “Mah body hardly needs oxygen, meat bag! Only mah head, spinal cord and mah ass are organic!”

I saw my human raise an eyebrow. “Thanks for the tip, moron.”

“Whaddya mean, rawheel?” Cassidy asked.

I knew which twisted plan had taken seed in Ali’s mind. She always showed a great deal of imagination when it involved pain. “Just tell us if it hurts so we can take our time,” I concluded.

Under MarKus’ wishes, the cyborg was not executed. Instead, his remaining trunk and head were displayed, floating like a balloon, at Ganyville’s entrance. Sheriff Park promised to keep him alive as long as she could find out-of-date nutrigel drips.

The MK-III had died near the Caverns of Laplace as his core, hit during the shoot-out, was beyond repair. Bullet impacts had damaged the sockets, fusing them into their delicate frame and making it impossible for the inexperienced Ganymedean engineers to reintegrate the hardware into another body.

“It would have taken a miracle to get it back on his feet again,” Sheriff Park had told us. She was more affected by the android’s loss than by the demise of her own deputies.

The cyborg’s bounty covered MarKus’ burial. The MK was raised to the rank of local hero after a vigilante existence without stains or smudges. To this day he must have been one of the few auxiliaries to be honored. And the only robot to have a statue in the whole solar system.

But this dark tomb dug in the gray dust of Ganymede did not suit the insatiable Ali…

“This is a silly idea! We will get caught!” I complained before positioning the Kitty on a 96th generation Voyager probe’s trajectory.

“It’s not a big deal. The geeks from the Space Agency won’t notice. They are too busy jerking off about Planet Nine anyway,” grunted my partner behind me. “Stop caterwauling!”

I turned back to look daggers at her. “What did we agree on? No cowboy slang outside of Ganymede!”

“Okay, you wobblin’ jaw!” she pouted.

“Ali!”

The probe in sight, I managed to catch it. The Swallow’s turbine had reached its limits and the operation appeared to be highly delicate. The last generation Voyager probes were draped with extremely fragile solar sails of several kilometers which could be damaged by our ship’s electronic equipment and artillery. And this Australopithecus wanted to jump in!

The Kitty’s magnetic hooks clamped one of the probe’s photopolarimeters. The airlock telltale turned green, and my human dived into the void.

“Are you okay?” I asked through the radio. “The veil is bending, and I fear the worst! Time’s running out—what you’re trying to accomplish is impossible!”

“Nothing’s impossible when you’re dumb enough to do it anyway,” she answered thought the static.

“That—that doesn’t make any sense!”

However, the operation was a success. We could quickly release the probe before it took off for distant exoplanets.

“How’s your wound?” I asked with a look at my partner’s sutures when she came back to the cockpit. The new scar was added to the one inherited on Yaan-ze’s asteroid. Their merging resembled a five-pointed star.

“A miracle to be above snakes after such an experience…”

Ignoring her innovative attempt to irk me with her slangs, I carried on: “So? Tell me! When you connected the core with my special upgrade to one of the probe inputs—did the purple diodes turn on?

Sitting in the copilot’s seat, Ali watched the luminous spot disappearing among the stars. She then turned on the Blaupunkt and we stepped upon Rhinestone Cowboy. “Yeah.... weakly. I overclocked your whole workaround like you advised me to. Satori would be proud. The sockets could miraculously pump enough juice,” she replied. “Do you think it worked? Is MarKus going to see some stars?”

I smiled. “Trust me, our friend’s gonna have a hog-killin’ time.”

Back to business!