Ginevra recognizes that hulk sitting at port. The one on Hu Shih’s digital horizon, seen out the transport’s forty-six-millimeter-thick, reinforced windows. It’s the Cimarron.

That ship from her nightmares.

The outdated, outmoded vessel is shredded on all sides with atmospheric burn marks and hastily-patched oxygen leaks. Shot through with holes, severity ranging from jackfruit- to fist- and pinhole-size. The final being the most cumbersome to locate and patch, of course. The thin hisses of depressurization are a mere inconvenience when at port, a nice way to passively regulate stuffiness. Yet they’re the most troublesome. Weak points in the vessel’s exterior. Fissures waiting for some imperfect amount of outside force—wind friction, heat off atmospheric reentries, vibrations from nearby warhead detonations—to peel from the hull in long slices. Stripping the Cimarron, leaving her whole frame naked, the crew without oxygen, her whole skeleton vulnerable in the cold deadness of space.

It’s safe to assess that, at this distance, rising above the landing platform’s privacy partitions, with sparse remnants of paint still sticking to its exterior, the Cimarron has seen better days.

Even so, there, nestled in one of the dockyards, she’s flanked by her neighbors. Certainly wouldn’t call them her betters. Scrap trawlers offloading semi-legal salvage, police vessels at rest patronized by those plying their payoffs, space tugs that, once Hu Shih falls asleep once more, will moonlight as tax-evading mobile mahjong platforms serving plastic-wrapped dehydrated meals. All are metallic organisms in the partially-regulated ecosystem that exists within the highly liquid gray area that forms between Hu Shih’s demesne and the other tuchan-ruled warlord factions nearby, where boisterous strongmen and corporate actors find themselves incentivized to unload yet-to-be-laundered capital into such kickback ventures. Ventures like the brothel-on-nuclear-engines in the distance, the one taking off from the Cimarron’s sister platform in a pollution-filled haze. It’s freshly painted. Dolled-up. Advertisements yet to be scraped off from either space junk or hung t’ou collision—one and the same, in terms of damage severity. Rising from the platform’s partitioning wall is a grinning musk deer caricature two stories tall. Painted with squinted eyes mid-grin, a heavy red blush as symbolic circles on thin cheeks, long with fangs. She’s firing off a Roman salute from beneath her deceptively conservative blue-white mandarin gown, the nearby twenty-four-digit reservation contact number advertising discounts for mercenary defectors and government bureaucrats.

Even so poorly illustrated, Ginevra can’t help but think that doe looks familiar.

“The rate of return,” Kelly half-yells into his communicator, “it’s just not that great. Too thin for a squeeze. You want me to put my body on the line for something like that? Listen—Listen to me here. Hobart’s been itching for some action. Get him on the horn, not me—it’s just a viatical. Alright, a viatical enforcement and bond coupon collection. No. Yes. Yes, you’re right, I am. I am passing the buck. And you know why? Because I told you to man the fort—and jack, if I said I was disappointed, it’d be the understatement of a lifetime. A hundred lifetimes, if I had them…”

Ginevra’s land-bound. Stuck in the back seat of Kelly’s four-wheeled armored transportation vehicle.

Fresh from the factory, his Makart. New model, too, the Séance. Leased. Six meters in length, pseudo-leather seats still smelling new and balmy, upgraded windows and doors reinforced for ambush. Systems installed by hand, purposefully low-tech with the fewest data-reliant wirings possible. Only a radio dripping with a female singer’s hoarse tonalities, her creeping voice played over jazzy piano. The Séance is no more hackable than the rickshaws that ramble past, forward, behind, weaving in and out of the seas of bicycles and electric scooters flooding the road. The driving blemmo leans into the baritone horn once more, startling away a rickshaw, sending the tart and her fare careening down another ten-story factory’s thin alleyway.

Girlie must know a shortcut.

She’s trying to avoid the commotion, no doubt. It’s noon, so there’s traffic. But if it were evening, there’d be traffic. Morning, too, Kelly complained before hopping onto his call, the same one he’s been nursing for the past quarter-hour.

But they’ll arrive on time.

They better.

After all, it’s only the Northern Edge. Only a four-hour drive from his penthouse. It’s where Hu Shih’s walls end. Where the complex system of groaning control locks open and close throughout the day, selectively allowing groups of vessels to enter and leave Hu Shih’s artificial atmosphere. But, so close to the cold expanse of space, the temperature has changed. It’s less humid. A gentle breeze tickles the noses of the workers pedaling to and from their factory jobs. Ones placed near such locks for easier import of raw goods. Less friction and moisture to be caught in the complex machinery, exporting everything from rifle parts to mass-produced single-use clothing.

“Marco, no. Not, not—just hold on a sec,” Kelly turns to Ginevra, half-yelling, “you’re all set, right?”

“For what?”

“The meeting.” Kelly offers no candor, pointing to the write-up on Ginevra’s lap. He’s all business, faux-flabbergasted at the unseen subordinate at the other end of his handheld communicator.

Ginevra’s datapad blinks with sixty-eight pages of information. Stapled together factoids crafted by his corporate connections, drafted with contracted help from Hu Shih’s Bureau of Assassination and Statistics. Ginevra’s read each page from header to footer, secretary’s misspellings and all. The half-spent cigarette on the filly’s lips is a self-administered reward for completion.

“Yes,” she huffs.

“Good,” Kelly smiles. “Any questions you’ve got,” he points towards the vehicle’s partition, past which that blemmo of his lurks. “Yes, Marco, I’m still here! Keep your shirt on. You’re right, I should’ve hung up by now, but no, I’m still here. Well, as my dutiful, trustworthy assistant I’d expect you…”

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That blemmo in the pseudo-leather driver’s seat is Bruto. He must be uncomfortable, the way the headless man is always left shirtless by necessity. His back is no doubt stuck to the seat’s thick fabric. At least, he’d be uncomfortable if he has any sort of emotion at all.

Ginevra doesn’t know, as the man doesn’t speak. Quite frankly, she doesn’t know why the hell Kelly bothered with the partition-included Séance model at all. Bruto wears no translation collars nor wristwatches to understand what’s said to him. Nor does he fire off the usual nods of understanding or shoulder shakes of confusion, seeming as though all body language is foreign to him. He’s got tattooed barcodes to be found, his identity as mysterious as his introduction—if you could call it that. It was a mere exchange of sterile glances as Kelly narrated.

“Well, Bruto, this is Ginevra. I don’t think she’s got a last name for now. But that’s alright because, Ginevra, this is Bruto. Just Bruto, and no nicknames, he’s insistent. Don’t bother asking anything about him, what he does for me, what he believes, even what the guy had for breakfast, because it’s not like he’ll answer you. He’s all business, like us, except we’re chatterboxes compared to him. Even you, if you can believe it,” Kelly spat while hurrying towards the Séance, already loaded with luggage, practically a mobile armory. “So let’s get moving and…”

Even if Bruto suddenly found a voice, what questions would Ginevra even have? The Cimarron’s schematics—she knows them. Engines but a few outdated Alhazen’s, her typical hallway dimensions at a meter’s height, the berth breadths known to the filly down to the centimeter. It’s as if the filly built the ship herself, sweltering in the heat of Salaam, on that oasis-splattered planet on the edge of civilization. It’s a familiarity stolen from memory, from beyond. Once a nightmare, now a reality.

A useful nightmare, though.

One of her few, when ranked by utility.

Other memories blossomed, too, as Ginevra read off the crew list. From deckhand to skipper, she recognized them by their faces before their names. Some with scars, lovingly scythed and sliced. Souvenirs of piratical expeditions and shore leave mistakes. Sewn back together with skin grafted from captives and victims. Their skin covered in celebratory tattoos, images of prizes taken, their teeth sharpened for easier hand-to-hand boarding. Where Ginevra would read those names, their titles would appear, as their names are forgotten and mangled as their skin. Where bright naval officers’ eyes were, only bloodshot spezie-spiked visages stared back. Where was once surname was now coxswain.

Where was a murderous mare in Ginevra sights sits the new captain, a familiar caprine.

“That one’s Sylvia,” Kelly careens towards the datapad, driving home the obvious with a tap on the hot screen. “Garobbio. She’s the one that acquired your sister’s ship.”

“Stole,” she hisses.

“What? No, Marco, give me a second. Ginevra—what? Stole?”

“Yes. She stole it. She didn’t acquire it.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kelly smiles. It’s a dismissive grin. If you hadn’t met him before, you’d think he was charmed at her supposed innocence. “That’s the same thing. Same meaning,” he looks away again, attempting to wrap up his to-do’s. “And, Marco, no—don’t let her think the deal’s on the table for any longer than a cycle. Once the cycle hits the twenty-fourth hour, it’s terminated. They’re terminated, I mean. The contract and her boytoy. Legality? It should be enough for consideration, yeah. Technically. I don’t know. Then ask compliance. Well if you want to try and wrangle another avvo on such short notice, call Tuan & Sons, but that’s coming out of your bonus…”

Who is Sylvia? Judging by their writeup, the Bureau of Assassination and Statistics barely knows, the incompetents. But to Ginevra, she’s a caprine chameleon. Sylvia or Sibyl or Hsiao-Yang, names discarded like her schemes. Wanted on several planets for confidence trickery, petty theft, and three alleged counts of bigamy—before her lateral move towards piracy. Reports always consisting of ‘seen,’ ‘interrogated,’ ‘questioned,’ but never ‘caught.’ She’s the acquirer of the Cimarron, if the bill of sale isn’t a forgery like the several passports and bar-codes attributed to her person. In each of those attached images, unlike the serious pirates in her employ, she’s smiling those big white incisors of hers, lips jutting, eyes tantalizingly half-closed at all times.

Ginevra hates her, already. Maybe it’s the way she contorts at all times, even in those security videos, as if she’s always on display, always advertising, her pick-me personality shining through screens muddied with scenes of violence. Or how, without a hint of piratical experience, she’s managed to effortlessly commandeer the Cimarron. The Cimarron of all ships, Ginevra’s sister’s—no, her target’s—rightful conquest. The filly’s imagination runs wild, wondering just how much force Sylvia’s rectangular pupils could withstand before splitting in half.

Luckily Ginevra won’t have to imagine much longer, as they’ve nearly arrived.

Smooth, that blemmo’s leftward turn. The driver’s confident when squeezing the Séance through the thin alleys between platforms. On either side, posters line the walls. Advertisements—girlies and booze themes leapfrogging past one another. At this speed, they’re a montage. Uncorked booze and firearms tied at the hip to naval recruitment posters of scantily-clad girlies tossing mahjong tiles and lottery tickets.

Wanted posters, too. Eyes crossed out. Gouged. But Ginevra recognizes a few of them. Plastered up for a little gallows humor, no doubt. Cimarron deckhands, their bounties paltry. Not worth the risk of infiltrating such a vessel to collect the bounties, much less the leased compound where it resides under repair. Even the gate the Séance lingers in front of is reinforced. Protected with tungsten shielding and layers of red tape. A single structural malfunction here and you’d be hit with a fine from the central bureaucracy’s infrastructure bureau. Plasma holes? Dents from kinetic weapons? It’d cost a fortune.

It’s the price of keeping up Hu Shih’s appearances.

“—so handle it yourself. No. Tell her I’m on leave. Listen, I need to split. Bye,” Kelly huffs before shouting, knuckles rapping against the partition, “Bruto! This the place?”

Silence follows. To the untrained eye, there’s no communication. Blemmo unmoving, Kelly caught looking elsewhere—at his datapad, out the window, poking at his communicator.

But Ginevra notices, through the passenger window’s reflection. A certain blemmo’s finger movement atop the wheel. Three fingers rise then fall. Index through ring. Two more follow. Ring and middle only. Hand symbols. Semi-silent communication. Like that old trade language of Ginevra’s, the one memorized with Augo’s help. But here, she’s illiterate. A deaf-and-dumb foreigner.

May as well have her eyes gouged out.

“So is this the place, or what?” Ginevra snorts.

“Well, he’s parked, isn’t he? Bruto’s never wrong about these things. He’s a walking, not-so-talking compass.”

“Is he?” Ginevra pries her loaded question, wiggling her fingers with petulance. “Would help if he talked a bit.”

“Oh, he talks. He talks a lot. Just doesn’t say too much.”

“Well, it’d help if I could understand him.”

“I bet,” Kelly retorts. “Maybe you should try holding him at gunpoint for half a cycle,” he jokes with a smile. “Worked out for us, right?”

Kelly’s baiting her. Ginevra knows he wants her to question him, to cause a fuss, to give a little warmup back-and-forth before his real negotiations begin with the pirate captain. But the filly won’t give him the satisfaction, preferring to stuff her cigarette butt into the little door side incineration capsule. Truth is, she’s too angry to think. Her back molars can’t help but grind in an unmediated haze of indignation as she thinks of their target.