“You know, this is a pretty great pad,” Kelly compliments.

On the surface it’s a compliment, at least. It’s just that businesslike rapport he peddles, that casual nonchalance where the uninitiated may take him at face value. He’s hidden in that powerful gray area where a target doesn’t know they’re being sold to. And his compliments are effective—at least to those not yet immune to saccharine salesmanship, who agree with exaggerated nods and self-satisfied grins.

But, as Ginevra’s surmised—as most cynics assume—the sentiment goes deeper. Kelly’s admission of compliment is really a taunting superiority. When he says, ‘This is a pretty great pad,’ it’s an insulting lie, one meant to be offensive, to throw the listener off-kilter. Nearly Sant-Sarninian in its passive-aggression. It’s what draws the thin glares of fellow sharp-witted murderers and corpos, those with chips on their shoulders, those who have been fooled once and refuse to be fooled again.

However, Ginevra knows Kelly goes deeper than that. He’s too keen to play either above the board, or only just below it. Like those little steering wheel hand signals, his honest sentiments are hidden.

Ginevra sees it in the way he eyes the hangar’s rusted double-door gatehouse entry, the one guarded by the half-naked, shirtless pirate with an Adrian helmet platted on his head, snub-nose peeking from what were once military fatigues. At his mouth a half-spent cigarette, his shoulders straightened as if he were at attention before his commanding officer. That guard’s chest—scarred. Purposefully so, with curving cuts along musculature like calligraphy. And where there’s no scarring there’s tattoos. Nautically themed, with voluptuous Scyllic girlies dueling duet against francisque axe-wielding Sainte Barbe’s.

All this is interest-grabbing to Kelly, no doubt, like the game of rummy being played near the Cimarron’s cargo ramp, hands hands loudly slapping the plastic-wood barrel the pirates surround. Instinctually, Kelly wants to count cards at a distance, even though his subtle stares off-put the players. They pause their game, deliberately waiting until Ginevra and company exit from view, continuing their walk up into the Cimarron’s hold.

And Ginevra notices Kelly’s hand, the way it playfully touches the Cimarron’s bulkhead, finely clipped nails scraping only slightly, teasing for imperfections and grime and finding nothing but. It’s a decisive wipe of skin-on-metal as if his hand were caressing the Séance’s hood, petting it like a secretary’s exposed thigh beneath a boardroom table.

His teasing for imperfections is just that—playful, grateful teasing.

So there’s an ironic honesty in his compliment that Ginevra can’t help but feel is genuine. It’s some sort of humble cynicism only found in the hearts of those who live to work instead of those who work to live. From those like him who inhale overpriced tobacco and exhale their thoughts with a disarmingly plastic smile.

But the pirate captain at the other end of the negotiating table sticks to that second, cynical chain of thought and delves no further.

“Always good to hear a nice comment,” Sylvia muses. The chamois leans forward, pontificating her point with a few fingers’ tap atop the table. “And it’s not even from a point of duress. Means a lot, really,” she lies.

The pirate queen sits opposite Kelly and Ginevra, the Cimarron’s cargo bay transformed. Re-christened, promoted to stateroom. Barren, with its imperfectly patched flooring left uneven yet spit-shined, the various looted plastic-wood cargo containers stashed elsewhere. Like outside, where that barrel acts as an altar to the gods of rummy. Other ill-gotten loot must be hidden elsewhere, waiting to be stripped by hand and ditched in Hu Shih’s nearby scrapheaps for plausible deniability.

The table at which the three negotiators sit is short, both in height and length. Flimsy at its four thin legs. Made for nothing more dangerous than a card game. Unassumingly brittle.

Like Sylvia, the caprine captain herself.

Too thin, Ginevra thinks. Fluffed and prissy, with her mouth of newly-installed incisors and dual black horns curved near their tips, sharpened for show. A stench of stale vanilla-lavender perfume (Jacobacci’s newest scent) wafts off her exposed neckline, where her coat’s recently been re-dyed to reinforce a natural brown-white two-tone. The alabaster pelt at her boyish chest is a blindingly pure and pleasing half-circle that draws up to her jutting clavicles. It pops against the rest of her light brown coat and dips lower, encircling a lopsided bust barely hidden by a tight-fitting satin blouse. It’s sheen, an obnoxious white-on-black hound’s-tooth with its thick collar left unbuttoned down to the center of her chest—a libertine flair to make up for the conservative cream ankle-length linen pants, ones rolled at her digitigrade ankles, and the single pair of men’s silver-rimmed Castellano sunglasses that dangle from her fourth button’s crease. Their shape is too straight to be perched comfortably on her oblong head, and when worn on her shirt like a brooch, they’re just another sleazy weight to add to her mid-chest button’s tension.

At this height, the table reveals Sylvia’s caprine thighs that stick to one another with a businesslike magnetism. Her posture never dips or sways, even as shoulders shimmy towards Ginevra—then to Kelly—back to Ginevra—giving and begging attention with a saleswoman’s pace. And her hands, too, punctuating each syllable, her black-brown-white fingers cutting circles through the air, caressing and choking clauses in an uncertain attention-grabbing cadence. And when she’s not talking, like now, she sits still. Staring. Refusing to break the silence.

After all, it’s business—(s)he who talks more loses.

“You know,” Kelly begins his next line of negotiations with an attack, “I’ve been thinking about leasing some new space. How much does this place put you back?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Sylvia replies. Her voice oscillates in tone. Skipping across some syllables and ignoring others, keeping her audience perpetually uncertain of what comes next. “The hangar’s not leased.”

“You purchased it outright? Really?”

“Now I wouldn’t say purchased,” she punctuates with an index finger. “Acquired. Why do you ask? Corpo’s wisdom know something I don’t about the real estate in this sector?”

“No, not at all. I think I’ve got a different sort of investing strategy, though.”

“Well,” she brays, all haughty, “it’s land, isn’t it? Not like the galaxy’s going to get any more of it. It’s a finite resource. After all, what’re they going to do? Is another paltry tuchan going to earmark his warlord treasure trove to up and build another Hu Shih?”

“Don’t think they’d want to?”

“Want? Sure. Can? Can’t. You know these warlords. These tuchans are two hundred years into their little self-government game and they can barely maintain the airlocks. Poor Hu Shih, all his tech lost with the empire. Now—let’s say reset the clocks a few hundred thousand cycles, maybe we’re blessed with the sort of industrious peace that cuts into the earning potential of pirates like moi. The stuffy, boring kind that lets faceless bureaucrats build powerful toys like this station. Well, then I’d see your point.”

“And the liquidity?” Kelly contends. “The Northern Edge? Wouldn’t say it’s a seller’s market.”

“There’s always a buyer if you wait long enough.” Sylvia swats away his points, sick of his line of questioning. “Besides, I’m not selling yet, am I? I couldn’t part with this little parcel—it came free with the old girl, after all.” She gives the floor two loving stomps, hooves echoing through the Cimarron’s nearly-empty hold.

“The name, too?” Ginevra croaks.

Sylvia tilts her head, shoulders filing towards the filly. Ginevra’s been silent, otherwise, with per lips perpetually pouting, ever-scowling. Her ears back, too, uneasy with her posture too formal. Uncomfortable on the cheap metal folding chair that creaks with each intermittent swat of her tail.

Sylvia’s fingers intertwine, her manicured nails digging onto furred palm folds. She’s sizing up Ginevra once more. The filly’s nearly perfect. As a copy, that is. She’s got the same imposing frame and hooded stare of her sister. Everyone else has noticed it, including the Cimarron’s crew. Ginevra’s wearing a silhouette that Sylvia’s attempted to avoid crossing twice. One she’s sought to eliminate with the help of killers like Kelly. It’s why he’s here, after all.

So she can’t help but overcompensate in the face of such intimidation.

“Of course,” Sylvia shrugs. “You can’t buy a reputation like this. You’ve got to acquire it.”

“Only acquire it?” Ginevra sneers.

“Even the legals?” Kelly pries. He’s interested, by the looks of it. Half leaning forward, one knee higher than the other. Talking shop, deconstructing a success story for its salvage value, depreciating it to its true utility with each new detail. “Trademarks and all?”

“Acquired them, sure,” Sylvia brags. “Came with the title, registration, crew.”

“Not bad,” he admits.

“Not good?” Sylvia flirts. “I think it’s great. Had the whole operation assessed just last month. From one professional to another—my balance sheet would knock your socks off.”

Kelly’s satisfied, his critiques rebuffed. These first few discussions before business are a pas de doux, after all. A give-and-take. He prefers bickering like this, as graceless as it is. No stuffy statistics-wielding scherma, nor bubbly equities-based foxtrots. For him, business is bareknuckle—scrappy and petty, fought in schoolyards as boys, in boardrooms as men. So he can’t help but smile as his fingers disappear beneath his jacket, revealing a single cigar. Sylvia, too, reacts in turn, her hands undoing the simple gold chain around her neck. She retrieves her gilded snuff box from her décolletage’s depths, one no bigger than a thimble, before dabbing her gums with a rosy tint of spezie found within.

Ginevra fidgets—the only narcotics she’s got are pharmaceutical. Hardly intimidating.

In a vain attempt to maintain her dignity, she looks elsewhere. Her legs open, planting at shoulder-width, then further, spread wide in a faux-comfort. Looking twice her size, acting as prey believes a predator may be intimidated. She looks around the hold, at the lingering pirates about their business.

Each blink of hers is a realization—a nightmarish déjà vu from inherited memories.

In the back, near the exit, there’s Estevão, several gold crucifixes hanging from his neck, a single additional bunched chain threaded around his left wrist. Before Ginevra can put a face to the ethereal haunting, she hears him. It’s a sneeze—recognizable and grating from his dry sinuses. Inside, his nasal cavities are caked with thin scabs, the intermittent nosebleeds brought on by years of mind-altering spezie abuse. Blood drips onto his upper lip, catching in that dead animal he calls a mustache. He’s grown it out, it’s thicker than before, when Ginevra—no, Ø—was at the helm, signing his checks, supporting his substance abuse.

And to Sylvia’s stage-left—Clelia Durando. She’s more haggard than usual when compared to her new she-goat captain. The girlie looks downright gout-prone and sickly with the Mocenigo break-action shotgun hanging at her forearm. Where was once the soft skin of a pleasure slave is burn scar and tattoos. Her mouth’s still lingering open at all times, pouting at the lips. Her eyes are squinting as usual, darting around the room in lieu of full-body movement. Conserving energy, the girlie’s muscle memory brought on by traumatic experiences that keep her in place. The other hand on her hip, she’s nursing the same unlit cigarette that’s been perched since the negotiations began, her shoulders sunk like a half-dead willow tree on a still day. She must be relapsing again.

“Heard there’ll be another war,” Kelly muses between cigar chews. “Corcyra.”

“Sure, if we’re lucky,” Sylvia blinks. Her nostrils flare, rectangular irises rolling upwards, nearly disappearing beneath her eyelids. The spezie has started to kick in, evidenced by the overtly impolite click-clicking of her lips. She begins to swallow more often, searching for moisture. “Commodity price spikes are good for my business,” she croaks. “Not to mention this old girl’s bonds will get even more valuable. I may even release a new issue if you want to recommend me an underwriter,” she snorts with vigor before sneering, “could be a killing.”

“You know,” he surmises, “I doubt you’ll get the chance. I think the war’s already priced in. Now—and this is just a little non-suggestion—I’m actually shorting just about anything related to the piracy business.”

“Oh really?” the goat brays with a coquettish lean, teeth jutting. “Betting on peace?”

“I think everyone has the right to be a little contrarian. A little positive cynicism never hurts, right?”

“After all, that little attitude is why you’re here. Always trying to make another buck, getting yourself over-leveraged,” she can’t help but give a wry, baritone laugh, “right?”

Ginevra focuses on the third guard. The filly lingers, even licks her lips with a certain carnivorism—a little side-effect of psycho-suppressant withdrawal.

That third guard flanking the table is tall, just over two meters. Mustafa Fareed. Even with his skin left sun-starved in the artificial atmosphere, it remains a subtle tan. Wiry, with elbows and knees but skin and bone. Deep circles crease under his eyes, his messy bushel of curled brown hair. Nearly the same consistency as the caprine captain’s, curling every which way, except he’s oily with sweat. Sloppy in appearance as always with his simple stud earrings—haram but worn anyways. Those inclusion-matted diamonds were no doubt stolen off corpses or won over fixed dice games. With a hawkish cranial ridge, he’s dangerous at first glance.

But not for the reasons you’d think.

He’s got a passive danger. One often overlooked, that’s slow-killing and subconsciously effete. A poison wrapped in Anatolian pure-silk praises and childish shell-game psychology, substituting your critiques with praise, always wriggling himself out of punishment, pointing fingers in with cheap emotional sleight-of-hand. It’s a strangulatory sort of danger that Ginevra feels as her ears shoot straight up at the flood of memories.

Ginevra remembers that she hates him.

“Do you know why most captains in this pirating business are women?” Sylvia teases, focused solely on Kelly, ignoring Ginevra as she groans into a whisper. “Because we’re unpredictable.”

For Ginevra, it’s three years prior. Aboard the Yuan Shih-Kai. Ginevra was concerned with something else, something other than the ship she had just boarded, the long list of hostages she had taken. No, Ø was—Ø was concerned with the slaving ship’s cargo—concerned for a certain name found in the manifest. A sister, OGS-140 - “Samantha.” Another copy, another mare from Ginevra’s nightmares, one wheelchair-bound with muscles atrophied, deteriorating from athlete to ashes. The one Ø had left beneath a sisterhood’s cross, eyes sapped of life, staring across the empty plains of Aprilia, the convent-turned-hospice’s existence a forgettable blot on the frontier of the Mare Externus. Ø and Samantha were too busy holding hands—Ginevra makes three of them now—whispering in confusion, lamenting their situations in their own spiteful tones.

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Ø—not Ginevra, no matter how much she confuses herself in her psycho-suppressant withdrawal—hadn’t picked at the important detail while aboard the Yuan Shih-Kai. After all, her mind was elsewhere. She was more concerned with the mortal fear of death and the unfolding of her fate. But others, they had noticed.

Her crew, namely.

As they tallied the prize (gross salvage from theft minus expenses, divided by graduated share per stakeholder) the math was off. The take was skimmed, most likely. In greater numbers than usual. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, the theft of one or two baubles by greedy crew who may stuff greenbacks beneath shirts or lira between bootstraps. It’s always benign, at first. A credit here or there. They’re infractions that, when investigated properly, are rewarded with bloody nine-tail citations and group beatings carried out by spiteful crewmates. As Ginevra remembers—as Ø remembers—the skim grew, like the crew’s resentment at the continuously-thinned profit margins.

But those concerns were far outweighed by Ginevra’s—Ø’s—fears. She was more concerned with raiding genetic clinics. Wasting time, acting unprofessionally. To others, to the crew who skeptically viewed each outburst of misplaced anger, she was becoming a liability instead of a captain. Her operation’s profits too thin, loyalty be damned. The Cimarron wasn’t unprofitable, just…

Mismanaged. Looking for a buyer. All it took was a little corporate raiding to be followed by a more piratical type.

For Ginevra, her head swimming in Kelly’s cigar smoke and assaulted with Sylvia’s constant lip smacks, the flinching realization is a subconscious twang from beyond. It’s bouzouki mandolin improperly tuned, playing an octave too low. It’s the natural analysis of data collected through the eyes of Ø and organized by a younger sister who is decisively unmedicated.

Ginevra knows now that Mustafa’s to blame for losing the Cimarron. He had been skimming. Worst of all, he’s still skimming.

It’s the way he stands, so self-important with hands atop hips. Prideful yet half-asleep on the job, resting atop his laurels. So satisfied, especially for the person who was left in charge of the Cimarron while Ginevra was away—while Ø was away. At Sylvia’s side, second-in-command, he avoids the filly’s gaze. She must be too familiar for him. After all, Ø’s the one who gave him a job in the first place, who took a chance on the little urchin. It’s a clear sign of guilt on his part. A subconscious admission of betrayal. And if Ø were here, she’d kill him where he stands for such a betrayal.

But luckily for her, it’s like she is.

An unmedicated Ginevra feels Ø’s presence, as if she’s sat on the other corner of the card table, chewing lips, left hand on her Star and ready to shoot. Where once Ø stared at Mustafa through a murderous red haze, now so does her sister Ginevra. And how could she not? They’re sisters, after all. They share blood, they share memories.

May as well share grudges.

Estevão’s sudden blood-blotted sneeze is a starting pistol.

Ginevra lunges to her hooves. The table jolts, wobbling on its brittle legs. Before Estevão can even wipe his nose, the Bergeret is in the filly’s left hand, barrel straightened. Whatever confusion lurks beneath Mustafa’s bright green eyes is wiped away with two shots—on either side of his sternum—at point blank, too weak to exit his body fully, caught inside the ribcage, but deep enough to kill. Shells eject atop the card table, lazily bouncing to the uneven floor. Smoking, rolling against the pirate captain’s hooves. Seven shots spit in all, each pull of the trigger echoing through the cargo hold, more than enough for Ginevra to be sure of her murder. Kelly winces, bringing hands to ears with the most masculinity he can muster. They’ll be ringing for days, he knows.

As Ginevra finally relaxes, her Bergeret half-spent, Kelly can’t help but break the silence with a polite nod to Estevão in the back, half-yelling through a tinnitus-inducing ring:

“Bless you.”

“Obrigado,” Estevão responds.

He sniffles, attempting to stifle another sneeze. A thin strand of bloody snot sticks to his upper lip as his nose twitches. Both his hands are full, cradling the Américo rifle he’s slung from his back. Similar to Clelia, her mouth finally closed, shotgun pointed towards Kelly’s neck—she’s nervous, too. Both those pirates are afraid of what comes next.

All because they’ve flinched.

It’s Ginevra’s presence. That gravitas she carries is familiar. She’s got an unhinged weight that she lugs from atop her oblong head. Sylvia’s guards once took orders from such a filly—from a clone of that same filly—which makes the goat huff with displeasure at their subconscious insubordination.

“You know, I didn’t want to mention anything,” Sylvia sneers, her head giving a little shake of disgust, ears ringing. Her hoof tap-taps the uneven floor with drug-fueled anger, her businesslike composure close to faltering, attempting to match Kelly’s stoicism. “But there’s a reason why I steer clear of little fillies like yours.”

“Wouldn’t say she’s mine,” Kelly forces his joke against the dying man’s death rattle.

“Maybe she’s not yours,” Sylvia’s braying reaches new depths, sure to keep both her hands above the table, “but she’s your problem.”

“Now, I’m sure she had a good reason for plugging your man,” he bluffs.

“Me too,” she lies, “but I’d prefer to hear it, though,” she sneers, dragging a tongue across the flats of her teeth, the spezie-induced taste of apricot sponge cake on her taste buds, “straight from—oh, don’t make me say it—straight from the...”

“Your profit margins are thin,” Ginevra hoarsely boasts, voice cracking. She blinks. Ø’s gone, along with that unhinged vision of vengeance.

“What?” Sylvia can’t help but bleat.

“She means your financials,” Kelly corrects. “In the statements I saw, that most recent assessment of yours was a little,” he pauses with both hands in the air, as if cradling his point, “puzzling. At least what got published in a write-up I had thrown together by the Bureau.”

“The assessment? That’s the problem?” she hisses with as much business acumen as she can muster.

“That’s right,” Kelly bluffs for his life, following what he believes to be Ginevra’s unique tactic of negotiation. “Don’t believe me? You can ask the girl, yourself.”

“Well if you want stability, go into asteroid mining.” Sylvia spits. “Go space a foreman in cold blood.”

“They were thinner than usual,” Ginevra adds through a half-panicked snort. “The assessors said you took four Level II prizes just last quarter—”

“I took five, even with all the stability around here! If you were a shareholder, you’d be kissing my hooves and begging for a dividend!”

“If I were your shareholder, I’d want to know why you’ve got us sat at a card table in the middle of an empty cargo bay,” Ginevra finally screeches. “Estevão back there—he’s just a gun. Clelia, your navigatrix. They’re good choices. They’re unassuming, they keep their mouths shut,” she emphasizes with an angry click of teeth, “they’re loyal when rewarded—sometimes. Mustafa? Guessing you made that clown your purser.”

“And just how would you know any of that?”

“Doesn’t matter how she knows,” Kelly smiles. He’s impressed. Ginevra must have read the write-up. Top to bottom, didn’t even skim it. And then she must have… Guessed the rest, or something. Maybe she’s got some kind of intuition for these things. In short, he shrugs, “She knows.”

“The Montezuma and Tonquin were Level III when they left port, as far as taxes go. But when the assessor showed up, they were relegated down to Level II.”

“She’s right, Sylvia.”

“Mustafa probably recommended that old friend of his, the sheikh who handled everything for a cheap price. Right?” Ginevra huffs. “Did he give you the ‘he saved my life once’ story, or the ‘we were two guys fighting over the same girlie’ one? He was a pisspoor liar—he only had those two in his pocket, anyways.”

“And I’m supposed to thank you for shooting a member of my crew because you think he was part of some low-rent skimming scheme?”

“Yes,” Ginevra growls, running out of justifications, rapidly approaching the limit of conversation. “Look at yourself! He was making you… Over-leveraged, vulnerable for another takeover—”

“Oh, that’s telling, coming from the girlie who just shot my purser! Learn that word just last cycle?”

Ginevra pivots, stamping her feet upon the Cimarron’s metal, causing the two guards to flinch once more. The Bergeret stares down at Sylvia with its single eye. Clelia chews at her unlit cigarette and bites clear through the filter at an all-too-familiar filly’s shriek, “Shut up, already!”

“Get that gun out of my face,” Sylvia spits. “It’s no way to make friends, is it?”

“It’s what she does,” Kelly smiles.

“I just saved you an eventual mutiny!” Ginevra boasts. “You think he didn’t deserve to get spaced after everything he’s done?”

“And now you’re threatening to shoot me?”

“She hasn’t,” Kelly effortlessly forces his laugh. “Not yet, at least. But she can, if she wants.”

“And you don’t want to call her off?” Sylvia chides. “Your problem, after all.”

“Want? Sure,” he teases. “Can? Well, that’s the tough part, there, because I really can’t. Because when she—this little filly here, the assassin-on-hooves—gets a-hunting, she just doesn’t stop. So if you don’t get us the coordinates to her sister, our mutual target, and I want to emphasize mutual, for all three of us, then it’ll be a problem. Not for me, no, I’m alright any-which-way, so don’t even worry about me or that contract we’ve got going. I don’t need to sign up with you for anything at all. But,” he pauses with that little bit of charm—that little bit that makes Ginevra smell fresh racetrack grass and orange-juice-dipped nicotine, “I’m not the one holding you at gunpoint. Worst part is, she can do this stick-up game all night, too. It’s just obnoxious.”

“Well, I’ve got half a mind to cancel our deal, you know that? All those greenbacks, just—whoosh.”

“What cash?” Ginevra demands. “We’re here for coordinates.”

“Oh,” Sylvia laughs. “He didn’t tell you! See, Kelly and I, we’ve got a little side bet going, all concerning who specifically spaces that big sister of yours. Normally it’s a flat fee, a little bonus for the team of hunters once they bring back one of your sister’s ears or teeth. Prorated, if they’ve got her whole ugly head. But Kelly here—at least what he said a week ago when he gave me a buzz—said he’ll take the contract tripled, but only if he’s the one to kill her. Triple or nothing for him! Nothing for the rest of his little hunting team, though. It probably would’ve worked better if you weren’t told, though. If he was able to stamp a few documents and be on his way like he intended. If you don’t believe me, go ahead. Ask him.”

Kelly’s stoic, hands atop the table. There’s no shrug, no witticism. Just a certain plastic silence—which is clearer than any confession he could invent. He’s always looking to improve his bottom line, isn’t he?

“No. When I kill her,” Ginevra demands, “I get the cash instead.”

“You? You want the same little three-for-one gambling privileges?” Sylvia smiles. “No dice, girlie. That contract’s already written. And my purser—you may have already guessed it—isn’t around to sign off on any new contracts, now is he? Now I could always get an avvo in here, maybe one of those Tuan & Sons clowns, but it’d just be too formal. We’d need to get rid of a certain corpse. Then I’d want to get the floors scrubbed—oh and you’re right, the cargo bay’s no stateroom, is it? So I’d want to do a little refurbishing, a little interior work on the old girl. You know, switch a few rooms around. But,” she teases, pontificating her point with a cock of her head, “if you want, you can just kill Kelly for his payout once he gets it—if he gets it.”

Sylvia’s legs cross. Her eyes are bloodshot. Her gesticulations are wild, shoulders violently popping, hands cutting the air as if she were pitching fastballs. Who knew she’d have to deal with two of the same murderous mare in the same lifetime?

“Or—or, how about this one,” the goat stifles a maddened giggle, spezie’s saffron-gunpowder taste caught at the back of her throat, beaten away with a snort. “Listen, this is a good one. How about this: you kill Kelly here, and you take over his contract in totality. Now, for that, I’d certainly be willing to call up Tuan & Sons. Maybe their avvo would even get rid of these corpses too since they’ll do just about anything for those billable hours.

“Because you two—you and Kelly—you’re a partnership after all, right? Judging by that little yesterday’s-outfit flair you’ve got, you must be. So you’re right! You’ve got a semi-legal claim to the original document! Or maybe you aren’t, and Kelly here’s just a client of yours. Maybe you’ve got some tart cards to pass out for the rest of the crew? You’re even act just like their old captain—thoughtless, and looking all beat up. I’m sure the experience would be a fantasy for a few of them, at least.”

Ginevra’s decline is silent. It’s ubiquitous, in the way her jaw locks in place, nostrils flaring. The way her left hand trembles at the wrist with anger.

“Now, one girlie to another, are you sure you don’t want to just space him? It’s a real boon. I mean, I’ve seen you on the broadcasts, spilling your guts for those blipvert residuals. You’re probably hurting for cash, aren’t you? It’s alright, you can tell me. Or better yet, shoot him already. He deserves it, doesn’t he? For dragging you out here to the Northern Edge, trying to undercut your earnings?”

Ginevra can only think about pulling the trigger. But not on Kelly—but on that backstabbing goat of a woman. She’s still sat there, semi-bare chest rising and falling erratically, that mouth of bleached teeth sucking down air to the point of hyperventilating. But Sylvia’s not scared. She’s angry, she’s spiked, she’s high out of her horns. Anything but scared. After all, she’s safe—she’s a hostage at gunpoint. If Ginevra pulls the trigger, it’s adieu for the little filly who’s overplayed her hand.

And once more, as she has done to Ø, the Cimarron ejects a certain clone from the premises.

“Well, Kelly, I guess there’s nothing else to say. It’s been a pleasure! Pitiful that you’ve got to go,” Sylvia half-shouts, slapping a datapad chock-full of coordinates onto the table. “I’m sorry we weren’t able to get that contract of ours notarized, but c’est la guerre,” her declaration is accompanied by both her and Kelly’s rise from their chairs.

“Real shame,” he smiles. “I always hate to see a deal die on the vine.”

“Wouldn’t say it died on the vine,” Sylvia corrects with a single digit, one that waggles with impudence. “‘Murder’ is a little more clear-cut cause. And, of course, you’ll be hearing from this old girl’s counsel,” her stomps are vicious against the Cimarron’s floor, her charge delivered through gritted teeth, each syllable sneered. “For damages rendered.”

“Now, I wouldn’t say you’re that old,” Kelly flirts in return.

Sylvia can’t help but smile. She’s salivating, biting the insides of her lips and sucking her own tongue in a painless high. Kelly’s words are raspberry-rhubarb strudels baked as big as her fists in her spezie haze. She exhales, approaching him at last, her oblong face centimeters from his.

“You know, once you’ve completed this job, it’d be nice to work together. Some other cycle, maybe?”

“I look forward to it,” he nods. “Really, I do. You’ve got a pretty great pad, after all.”

“Happy hunting.”

The grip of her all-business handshake is strong. Each individual digit pulsates while her shoulder rotates into a short piston movement. Their shared smile is subconscious, as if photos would be taken to commemorate the historic adieu. Finally releasing, the captain turns to Ginevra, the filly across the table who holds her at gunpoint, the two girls flashing gritted teeth.

“Vaffanculo,” Sylvia brays, throwing her hands forward, shooing Ginevra away, backwards, down the ramp. “If I see you—or any other brenna like you, any of your worthless sisters—no quarter. Now go on, vai!”

At the base of the Cimarron is an arms trade fair.

Snub-noses and modified rifles, scopes and shoulder holsters on display, aimed right at Ginevra and Kelly. Parker-Hale’s and Kanapaha’s, some with future-wood finishes, others bio-coded to their wielders for theft prevention. Some loaded, some unloaded, cleaned or left filthy. By their stances, some of the pirates are discharged soldiers or former officers, chasseurs cradling grips with both hands, legs at their shoulder-width behind cover, too formal. Others are criminals, their postures slouched, lazily toying with their triggers, subconsciously wondering whether they’ve already pawned their ammunition for spezie and girlies. Some overcompensate for their lack of experience, tilting their wrists sideways, sights dialed incorrectly, their eyebrows furrowed or bouncing, attempting to look threatening at a distance, looking confused when seen up close.

The only person who’s unarmed is that shirtless gate guard with the Adrian helmet, the one on his knees but fifty meters away, his gnarled fingers interlocked behind his head, held at gunpoint by a certain headless man. At his height, Bruto’s center-of-his-chest face is almost hidden behind his hostage’s headgear. His arm is contorted, holding his pistol vertically, pointed downwards, into the gate guard’s clavicle crevice. The trajectory would rip through his ribcage from above, stabbing through organs at angles only the finest medical professionals could stitch—expertise that the Adrian-hatted hostage obviously can’t afford.

Their exit isn’t hurried. It’s a leisurely standoff. The three of them, Kelly and the two girlies, keep a calm gait back to the Séance. For most onlookers, they assume it’s the last time they’ll seen their former captain. The last time Ø—or a perfect copy of her—will murder a member of the crew on a cold-blooded, psychotic hunch.

Or, those backstabbers hope it’s the last time.

As Ginevra stares at the Cimarron from within the Séance’s reinforced frame, she’s entranced. All those faces—familiar. They watch her exit. Some with fear like Estevão. Others like Clelia, wearing a subtle admiration, as if a far-flung daydream of a triumphant return of a familiar mare almost became a reality.

They’re emotions that Ginevra has never stirred in others. Her cheeks are flush with envy, at least until Kelly muses at a volume just above a whisper, just loud enough for Ginevra to hear.

“I wouldn’t worry, I don’t think Sylvia’ll try and stop us from leaving. You didn’t start your negotiations too good, but, hey, you finished strong. You see that look in her eyes? Past the spezie, in those little rectangles she’s got, you see that? She was grateful,” he says with confidence, gripping Ginevra’s knee, protectively patting her thigh. His eyes, a simple brown, brighter than the off-black dyed seats, shimmering unlike the tinted windows. One of the two cigarettes between his fingers is an offer to the filly, an unspoken gesture of pride—even in the face of failure. It’s something Ginevra’s never received. “Because you shaved her expenses by so much from spacing that guy, I mean, jack, she owes you a consultant’s fee.”

The Séance turns over. In the driver’s seat, beyond the partition, is Bruto. One foot on the pedal, a hand on the wheel. His free hand still holds the pistol to that Adrian-hatted guard he holds hostage. The hangar’s folded bamboo-aluminum shutter gate folds upwards, allowing for exit. The gate guard smiles, his top-left fang missing, nodding with a wry grin as he’s released. After all, it’s just business. He’d even shake hands if he could, just to be polite. But he can’t, so as the driver-side window rolls up, he smiles and says,

“Au revoir, c’était un plaisir.”

Bruto returns the sentiment with a mannerly nod before leaving the Cimarron in the rear-view. He’s headed out the gate, back into those thin alleyways, gaining distance as quickly as the Séance can tear. They’re off to resume their hunt, coordinates in hand—off to Kelly’s hangar where the Disagio lies at rest four blocks away.