‘Friends,’ is a loose term. Silent partners, Ginevra may call them. Colluders, if she’s a cynic.

“Angel investors,” Kelly says instead. “Just throwing in some assets to help out with the hunt.”

Before the two hunters is a single pot of assets—paid up-front, for once. An added bonus to grease the wheel of fate. The hodgepodge of useful items has been pooled together by the long list of Ø’s enemies and laundered through the hunters’ shadowy employer’s elicit channels, and all delivered to Kelly’s hangar.

It’s a smattering:

From a familiar Captain Sylvia Garobbio—coordinates and fuel. Intelligence found purloined and coated with gore, wrenched from rigor mortis hands. It’s the last known whereabouts of a certain two-for-one bounty, Ø and You both, signed with the characteristic silky calligraphy of a pirate captain with elongated tails on triple-signed cursive, each letter perfectly level, evenly placed. The bio-coded data-pad is unloaded from the Séance, held in Bruto’s capable hands, to be unlocked in the safety of the Disagio where he’s already begun to lurk.

And from New Port Moresby’s Board of Galactic Tourism—those two crates worth of ammunition, both standard and surplus, nuclear-tipped and explosive-shelled. The twin plastic-wood boxes are a lopsided cubic meter each, dripping with humidity, bloated with wriggling timber-mauling larvae. Humming, at this distance of a few paces. Vibrating, if you were to touch their clammy exteriors. Hot air floods the hangar with a hiss of moisture as Bruto’s crowbar peels the box into strips, the crate no doubt carrying a host of infectious diseases the likes of which Hu Shih has never experienced.

Lastly, the single envelope Kelly cradles announces its presence with the gold-dyed crescent-moon hanko stamp of the Yugure Consortium. Its typography is almost as eye-grabbing as the courier who delivered it by three-fingered hand but a few minutes ago—the gangster’s flashy red-white higanbana-flower-printed shirt caked in sweat and unbuttoned to his gut. He just split, last seen cramming into a single rickshaw with two other visiting gangsters and a local-rented girlie, claims Kelly’s hangar attendant. The near toothless, grey-maned tsouyou recommended the tart, after all—and as such the tusk-lion received his referral bonus.

From inside the envelope, Kelly reveals the pair of cryptographically counterfeit digital passports ensuring expedited customs privileges.

Once in Ginevra’s hands, a counterfeit filly stares back from the semi-holographic passport. The picture’s outdated, stolen from previously used records instead of generated from scratch. Edited, slightly, with randomized digital haze, which implies some sort of database clerical error. The document’s authority relies on the fifteenth digital page, where Tiangong’s transit stamp is joined by an inked Yugure hanko symbol for bureaucratic intimidation. No doubt the threatening forgery is meant to be paired with some sort of bribe.

Because she’s seen better forgeries.

Clearly, that mare’s not Ginevra. It could be, to a customs officer with severe cataracts. It’s those familiar almond eyes stuck in oblong head staring into the camera, the diamond at the chest, the scowl. But it’s an image that’s too old. Eyelids too droopy with age, marred by narcotics. Ginevra realizes why it’s familiar. She recognizes the base image as OGS-139 “Subira – Jariya,” a copy she’s never met, but one she’s seen in the mirror before. Ginevra can smell her, all wrapped in see-through white pure-silk, her tailor-made and puffy indigo-dyed harem pants stuffy in a desert planet’s atmosphere. She’s just one of four hundred such jariya varying in species or age for a single moon’s sultan, languishing in harem, stinking of sandalwood and lime and jasmine and mimosa scents bottled specifically for her tastes—not to mention cigarettes and opium smuggled into her sanctuary proper. From that clone floods memories of a caged, bored existence.

That Subira, whoever she is, must not be needing any sort of identification anymore.

Whatever’s left of these hot items are to be split upon contract completion, Kelly claims. Sixty-forty in her favor, Ginevra imposes with a certain spite. But fifty-five and forty-five, she begrudgingly agrees, much to Kelly’s amusement.

“I owe you one, don’t I? For not cutting you in on a certain deal?” Kelly offers. He’s offended by her silence. “You know, the deal back with Garobbio? Remember that? It’s in your interest to care about being cut out of a business proposition.”

“I don’t care that you lost out on another side bet,” Ginevra lies. She’s not about to admit that Kelly got a one-over on her. She’d rather flaunt professionalism—or chastise a lack thereof. After all, it’s too late for her to take back her partnership. “I care about the hunt. You should, too.”

“Of course, I care,” he mewls. “But this thing we do, it’s a job. I’d rather come out ahead. And I’m not about to wind down anytime soon, but you’ve got to admit, business with both hands isn’t a bad life, is it? Who do you think pays for the Séance?”

“Your ‘network,’” she hisses. “You’re just in this for the business.”

“I can say the same about you. But for me, it’s business and pleasure. You don’t get this high up the ladder without enjoying your work, and part of enjoying your work is making sure you’re adequately compensated. Just try being cynical for the rest of your career—and even a fast filly like you won’t get you far.”

“How about I start lying like you?”

“Sure, I’d support it without question. After all, it’s always just little lies of omission. Business is full of them. But—and I mean this as the guy you’re hunting with—watch your margins. You don’t want to spill all this blood just to end up in the red yourself,” he’s quick to correct himself, marching towards the Disagio. “Financially speaking, I mean. Numbers are easier to control than the hunt, after all. But what am I going to do, harp all cycle?”

Up the Disagio’s gangplank, Ginevra sees that the vessel is nearly everything promised. The entryway is a semi-spacious multipurpose drawing room fitted with a drop-leaf biomorphic birch table and mirrored fainting couches (for entertaining). Then three doorways in total: one path to the bridge, one to the cargo, one for the berth, all arranged in a cross. But here in the drawing room, a built-in armory lies behind a hidden panel upon which a painting sits, the room’s focal point. Hidden is an overstatement—the compartment’s meant to be noticed. Just look at the painting atop it, the one by Félix dos Reis Domingos Reale—and it’s not just a reproduction. From his critics-proclaimed Perto da Janela period by the looks of it, all abstract with its set of semi-parallel quadrants painted and re-painted, looking chunky with globs of azul-celeste and preto colors meant to evoke some sort of volcanic beach. There’s a single centimeter-and-a-half tear from a small-caliber bullet in the lowermost quadrant, no doubt related to the piece’s acquisition.

Kelly doesn’t need to mention the cost of acquiring it, human or otherwise. Nor the cost of insuring it, like his expensive collection of Motoqua rifles, Catawba pistols, and Arminto and Strandquist shrapnel devices that fold from the armory as it opens—the collection making Ginevra’s Kanapaha and company look paltry in comparison. Each firearm comes with contracts that include full replacement cost and the all-important legal right of self-serviced punitive damages collection known to unlucky prey as the ‘tit-for-tat clause.’

They’re the boilerplate contractual stipulations for hunters who value their weaponry.

The berth’s heart cypress real-wood flooring has just been installed to match the rest of the vessel and is cut with centrally platted maroon-stained concrete. It’s all soft on Ginevra’s hooves, breathable for her frogs. There, in the center of the most spacious room on the Disagio, is Kelly’s bed. Another Lamanon N-12—just like the one on her Retaliation. Such a feature meets her expectations, at most. It hums, along with the engines, both sets of equipment turning over, coming to life.

“Got a full bar, too,” Kelly offers.

Ginevra watches as Bruto makes preparations for departure from the safety of the Disagio’s fainting couch. It’s another one of the Disagio’s expensive assets, a handmade Berlinchen­. It’s blocky looking at a distance, with its elongated u-shaped steel frame like a permanent smile and its bulbous black finto-­leather padding like lacquered teeth. It bends only slightly to Ginevra’s weight, nearly folding her into a ‘v’ at the waist. But she’ll suffer through it. She’s more interested in that little blemmo as he checks and double-checks the room by hand, shuffling in silence, disgustingly barefoot feet leaving no trace of mud nor Hu Shih’s industrial grime. Although he’s cut through the drawing room hundreds, millions of times, briefly hiding Kelly from her view, he’s walking with immaculate attention to posture.

Seen, not heard, is right.

But Ginevra’s grateful when Bruto finally disappears, leaving Kelly to fiddle with the bar’s paneling, inspecting half-full bottles alongside explosive munitions.

“I’d rather keep drinking than start from scratch,” Kelly muses. “Unless you want to dip into some other, stronger vice. I’ve got spezie, khat, caffeine injections, the whole nine yards.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“I don’t want anything,” Ginevra declines, more interested in her surroundings. There’s a glint through the open cargo bay door, something she hasn’t yet noticed. A cylinder of sorts, almost purposefully hidden in the low-light. It’s humming, she notices, like the fainting couch’s frame fighting against her weighty splay.

Kelly’s clinking of drinks comes to a close. At Ginevra’s hand comes a concoction of herby chartreuse and gin. It’s opaque, the same strength as Kelly’s. His sigh of contentment begets his question.

“Want to meet him?” he nods towards the cargo. “Or do you just like staring?”

“What?”

“Come on,” he guides Ginevra by the shoulder, drink in free hand.

The cargo cabin is cramped, filled to stuffing with medical supplies. Sterilized, specifically organized, color-coded bottles of toxins and cures have their metal bottoms affixed to their places with magnetism, standing like soldiers on see-through shelving. The whole place looks self-cleaning. It makes Ginevra’s snout wrinkle. It wafts from the small faucets lining the area, readying for another aerosolized mist of (non-drinkable) alcoholic agents to populate the air once the door is sealed.

But in the cargo bay’s center is that cylinder. A complex machine by the looks of it. Sure, it may seem archaic, with its scrapmetal exterior, multicolor blinking lights, and the single-door entry hatch misshapen as if it were hammered in place. Not to mention the tendril-like hydraulic tubes that gyrate through the air like a clutch of those New Port Moresby larvae thrown into zero gravity.

It’s a machine, one that Ginevra can’t help but be reminded of that Saracen castle where she was cloned, the same growth cylinder she used to call home as a filly.

“Ginevra, meet my good friend, Dr. Bennie,” Kelly’s introduction is informal. “He talks just as much as Bruto, so don’t try to get chatty with him, either. He’s a Rush-M1. You won’t recognize the brand, the make, or anything else about him. Or at least you shouldn’t if you’re not in my field. Model number one of only two—a limited series from a very limited and costly spinoff attempt,” he points to his plastic face. “You see, I just don’t trust doctors, real flesh-and-blood ones, with the important procedures. Experience with the medical field will do that to you. Come to think of it, pharmacists, too,” he chides. “And bankers, and underwriters, and wholesalers, especially internals—they’re the real stooges…”

Kelly’s hand grasps one of the many tendrils of the technological abomination, the slinking tubes no larger than two fingers tied together. The platinum appendage coils at the touch, forming into a serpentine handshake that wraps itself up to Kelly’s forearm. The Dr. Bennie squeezes, gauging blood pressure, scratching Kelly’s skin with some light injections, some for detoxifying, others for life prolonging. The machine vibrates, absorbing his biometric information, matching it against baselines, digesting it within cloudlike data storage—one interlocked in an intergalactic web of check variable, recheck variable commands.

“He’s good at what he does. Advanced enough to re-attach limbs, can give you a full-body transfusion, can even, as you may have expected, prevent a complete facial e-va-por-a-tion,” Kelly punctuates before pausing, as if remembering some failed lateral move, holding back an all-business chuckle to process traumatic injury. “Still wouldn’t recommend it, though. Don’t worry, he won’t get you—as long as you’re up to date with your shots.”

He says that because of Ginevra’s stance. One leg in front of the other. Half-turned. As if she were about to sprint right back into the drawing room, clip-clopping all the way back to her Retaliation in the next hangar over.

“What’s wrong, you never work with a guy like him?”

Her silence is enough of a response for him.

“Good. They’re know-it-all’s. Haven’t seen him give a wrong diagnosis yet,” Kelly brags. “You know, he would’ve done a number if that spinoff went through. I’m talking medical gel brokers throwing themselves out of airlocks. Would’ve changed the entire galactic military-medical-industrial complex. Can you imagine one of these on every ship, standard-issue? Between the subscription fees and data mining… What could’ve been, you know?”

Ginevra’s still staring. But she’s not stupefied, in awe at the supposed medical wonder. Nor is she collating her internal financial statements, longing like Kelly for some financial phantom limb, some nearly-fatal windfall that never was.

If anything, she’s drowning—in one of the only memories she can confidently say is hers.

That Dr. Bennie’s too familiar. Too much like that tank of hers from her synthetic childhood. Ginevra remembers that red ooze that coated her body, piped through youthful throat, stinging her eyelids as she would open them, thrashing in pain as she’d subconsciously eject tubing and reject vat-grown organs. The liquid, the sloshing—the noise she hates, that tenses her shoulders to a hunch—that comes from the cylinder sounds just like that awful memory.

“You can hook yourself up if—”

“No,” Ginevra flinches.

“… If you want,” Kelly adds. “The Doctor would just need a few minutes of your time like any other house call. Grabs the blood type, sets a few baselines, even says scans for any sort of mental baseline variations—which even I’ll admit was useful,” he emphasizes. But he breaks, shrugging shoulders, taking another sip from his glass. “But that’s all on you. Just know it’d be easier to plug in now and get some baselines, than when one hand is preoccupied keeping the bleeding hole in your trachea shut.”

“That a threat?”

“No, it’s personal experience. But it could be a threat,” he jokes. “Let me get back to you after a couple more drinks. But like I said, if you want, I could leave you two alone for a minute if—”

Ginevra’s not willing to linger further. Her forceful storming back to the drawing room is awkward as she maneuvers her oblong head back through the doorway. The filly’s graceless as always, especially when compared to Bruto there, the blemmo standing at the foot of the cockpit’s real-wood staircase. He’s already got that chain around his ankle, the one that keeps him within a lunge of his captain’s chair. It’ll keep him confined to this area of the ship for the next four cycles, to guarantee efficiency, to prevent any scuttling of such an expensive vessel—standard for most highly-specialized help.

“Oh captain!” Kelly hails. It’s a mock delivered with a smile—one Bruto returns with his usual no-nonsense silence. “What’s the damage? How far’s our prey?”

Bruto stands still. Nearly still, at least. He’d be statuesque if not for a brief tilt of his shoulders and taps against his thighs, his fingers scissoring like analog telegraph keys. Ginevra waits through the silence, taking the first drag of her forgotten chartreuse mix. It’s still too herbaceous. Too alcoholic to be enjoyable.

“Four stinking cycles?” Kelly asks his subordinate with a huff. In response to Bruto’s further flinching, Kelly declares, “Four stinking cycles. And that’s the hunt. It doesn’t get any simpler than that, now does it? That’s why I make sure to have the full bar.”

Kelly can see Ginevra’s disappointment. Even past her face, twisted with disgust at the drink, finishing it with jutting teeth, he can see it. All the Disagio’s amenities can’t change their operational limitations.

“Hey,” Kelly interjects. It’s a salesman’s tone, but softer. Like his musing when he first saw the Cimarron. Honesty-adjacent, as if there was some other emotion escaping his plastic face. “Three fingers up.” He flashes index through ring fingers with a wiggle. “Three fingers up means, ‘yes.’ One, two, three. See what I mean? That’s what Bruto’s on about.”

Ginevra’s deep swallow is followed by a disdainful confusion. Kelly’s translating, explaining that trade language of his. She thinks it’s the first true faux pas he’s committed—revealing codes like this.

“Index and middle modify. Up and down. Once. ‘Unsure.’ Twice. ‘For sure.’ But only in rapid succession. See? The bouncing? There’s a cadence to it. An accent, almost. So you’ve got to pay attention.

“Doesn’t seem useful on a hunt,” she brays.

“Sure it’s suited for the boardroom more than anything else, but it’s just as good as whatever language you’ve got memorized.”

“I doubt it.”

“Doubt all you want—I’m not hearing you suggest a way of working together efficiently,” the drink at his lips is emptied. “Be grateful. I’m giving out trade secrets. On the house, no less. I’d say that it’s because I owe you, at least if you weren’t getting an extra five percent off the leftover supplies. So just consider this—I don’t know, consider it a gift for not pulling the trigger on me just yet. Be honest—I’m sure the idea’s crossed your mind.”

He’s smiling again as he grabs her empty glass. Next is another round of gin, made tart with the fresh lemon he wrings, fetched from the wall-mount between the Catawba and the Kanapaha. The drink will be too strong. Too searing to her youthful throat. The only benefit she’ll receive is that her eventual hangover will be batted away for another few hours—a piper she’ll pay eventually.

Truthfully, she doesn’t care about the consequences, physical or otherwise, because she’s too focused on Kelly. She knows he’s right in his assessment. It’s the way he stands over there, shoulders squared away from her. He’s a perfect target, perfectly placid on the takeoff, perfectly juggling glasses and bottles. She could plug him from this distance with no difficulty, to finally stop the deluge of alcoholic drinks. Either maim or kill depending on how she feels.

But as she spies his smile from his profile, from the glint in the Motoqua’s polished stock, she wonders if she’d ever want to.

“Didn’t think you were the trusting type,” Ginevra’s sarcasm drips.

“I’m not, and especially not with partners like you. But you cost me a big side bet due to your lack of businesslike communication. Threatening Garobbio on her own ship was the wrong play—you had good composure under pressure, but it was the wrong play. So like I said, this is for the boardroom. For the next time we’re stuck making a few deals.”

Kelly’s posture across from her is comfortable. He loosens his sleeves and pulls at his collar. He’s settling in, it seems.

“Anticipating another lie of omission?” Ginevra chides between sips of her newly filled glass. Its lemon taste is lost, masked. There’s orange in here. And cigarettes. Olivewood at her hooves. It’s like the Disagio’s vibration as it exits Hu Shih’s artificial atmosphere, teasing the backs of her ears, down her spine, ending at the base of her tail. It dips from the backless, smiling loveseat.

Ginevra can’t but sigh—four stinking cycles to go.

Kelly doesn’t stop moving, seeming to ignore her comment. Kelly’s hands wipe through graying hair. They fiddle with the cross-chest holster of his, adjusting for comfort. They pick up his drink, put it down, pick it back up. But Ginevra notices the shift of his shoulders and a right hand’s nonchalant tap of three fingers against his thigh. Once, twice—an unexpected three times.

“What’s three?” she pries.

“Three what?”

“Three bounces of the hand?” Ginevra hisses, rap-tapping her own thigh. “‘Yes,’ and then what?”

“Oh. I don’t know. Just boredom, I guess,” Kelly smiles. “But we’ve got four cycles to make something up, don’t we?”

“I think I know what it could mean,” Ginevra muses, languidly tapping her thigh three more times. Then three more. Slowly. Like it’s an accent, something like a whisper.

“Now that’s a pretty good suggestion,” Kelly nods, returning Ginevra’s taps. His are quicker. Never losing pace, never slowing, always pressing the offense. “Truth be told, I don’t know how I didn’t think of this first.”

“Something tells me the idea crossed your mind.”

“Sure it did. But what kind of guy do you think I am?” her partner smiles, finally loosening his collar. “I wouldn’t say something so vulgar out loud.”

“But you’d think it?”

“Listen,” he can’t help but laugh, “just warn me before you start reading my mind, alright?”