The Retaliation is pristine, as it was before the valet’s intervention. The clean-up-crew passes Ginevra without fanfare as they exit, the platform’s storm momentarily subsiding, allowing for departures once more. The peons are goggled, their informal plastic-synthetic mechanic suits on display, carefully riding the edge of filthy and clean, presenting themselves as attractive yet attentive in their dull lead-plated protective gear.

Ginevra doesn’t tip, as is custom. But the filly makes no effort to do so, an unforgivable insult.

She’s preoccupied, stripping off her shielding, discarding heavy gloves, chest plate that forces her shoulders to sag—the Retaliation demands inspection.

Engineering is immaculate as she clip-clops. Terminals buzz with familiar radiation, blinking multicolored sensors flashing all systems normal. The metal flooring has been polished to mirroring. All six of her Summerlee R-12 engines have been refitted, parts replaced for efficiency, ‘compliments’ of The Great Hunt. They purr, oscillating at rest, effortlessly churning through the drizzle of airborne yellowcake as the life support twinkles with all-clear signs.

Ginevra’s quarters are cleaned. The whole wardrobe is laundered, sponged, pressed, and re-folded, smelling like artificial orchids. But the room remains spartan. Desk, walls bare, no signs of life or identity save for the multiple bottles of psycho-suppressants in the hidden compartment above the bed’s head. That, too, is spotless, every credit remaining stacked in its place, every milligram of addictive supplements accounted for.

She scarfs four more red tablets—because she’s stressed.

Her armory is untouched, as the help knows better. They never touch a hunter’s weapons.

Not just because it’s Sant-Sarnin, but conversely because visitors aren’t from there at all. In some cultures, touching a weapon is like touching a man’s woman. In others, a father’s son. For Ginevra, more important than touching a mother’s child. The intimate relationships between owners and objects are too diverse to be successfully navigated through translation collars—especially for the consciousness-stapled underlings that half-sleepwalk through their existences. Better to receive a demerit from a haughty supervisor for laziness than lose a hand from a visiting askari who feels insulted at your complimentary cleaning and demands recompense.

For the peons trudging back to the domes, at least, just barely better.

Ginevra finds no signs of misuse. No foreign scents, no looted or reorganized armaments. There, against the wall sits her Kanapaha-4. Theseus’s rifle, polished by her hands. Originally an anniversary gift—part of the limited Presentation Model series, measured exactly to the filly’s wingspan, resized to her body’s frame. Serial number one-four-three of one-thousand-one in the production series.

Except now gutted, retrofitted out of spite.

With a new Foreve-Center variable scope, anti-moisture, anti-radiation, atmospheric pressure resistant. Focustrigger system of ultralightweight alloy, crisper than its original factory model—in Ginevra’s opinion. Matchpoint Model #14 nuclear-powered illumination reticle. Custom jeweled bolt, the trigger guard and receiver refurbished, the original hand-carved swirling anemone flower detailing buffed out in favor of anonymity—the once-delicately chiseled inlay of A, G, and M as unrecognizable as the shaved serial number.

The Retaliation’s bridge is empty. There’s room for only one body—the pilot alone. Analog switchboard components line the ceiling, rows of them corresponding to the many targeting systems and engineering arrays. They flash green-red-blue, their skeletal structures jolting out seemingly at random, but in reality ergonomically designed with Ginevra’s body in mind, her seated form assaulted at all angles with binary switches and joysticks that may as well be her own joints—some hinged, others ball-in-socket—an invasive nervous system.

Her ship welcomes her back with a report, one that prints in paper from one of the many overhead systems, its output cutting through the holographic lime-green displays of ship diagnostics. Paper accordions down, dangling within centimeters of Ginevra’s face, its analog components an extra layer of cybersecurity in her hypertechnological world.

-- TWO MESSAGES REMAIN --

-- BEGIN --

-- SENDER: M. AUGO LAELAPS

-- LOCATION: SYSTEM BÉLÉNOS, SANT-SARNIN, CAMELOT-XII, DOME XXI

-- ATTACHED IS LIST OF RECOMMENDED HUNTERS

-- POSSIBLE PARTNERS

-- REACHED OUT AFTER YOUR BROADCAST

-- VETTED PERSONALLY

-- SEE YOU SOON

-- A & M

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-- END --

The descending papers are filled with familiar callsigns and symbols. Networks of killers and psychopaths with whom Ginevra has been introduced—by Augo, of course. Each one of them, their names curated, organized with for familiarity and safety in mind.

Konstantino Homados, Cynocephaloid male. An old dog, fifty-four years of age. Explosives specialist, forty years of both controlled and uncontrolled ad-hoc demolition experience. In reality, Marcello’s godfather, an unfamiliar second-cousin from Neo Venétiko. He smokes cigars, and his wife chides him for his habit. She’s probably boisterous as ever, stout like him, chittering malicious nonsense at all hours through her spitz’s snout, like she did in the chapel during the baptism, layering under her breath spite like thermite.

Ch’ao Hung-Yen, Tenghuang female. Forty-nine years of age. Single-hand blade instructor. Bronze Medal, Scherma All-Mare’s Eighth Quadrant 2XXX; Bronze Medal, Scherma All-Women’s Galactic 2XXX. Ginevra’s former trainer—only for a few months—whose choppy intonations were always detractions. Always chewing and spitting her nouns, verbs, adjectives of critique. A real Dutch Aunt, hating everyone equally from her vertically-challenged meter-and-a-half vantage. Here she is, arrived as she always does at Augo’s beck and call, payment in advance and on his dime.

Sandra Roberts, human female. Toxicology specialist, bubbly, always chittering, speaking faster than she can think, missing two fingers on her left hand and self-conscious about it still. Dr. Shukra Dahal, android male. Surgeon and spezie abuser, still overweight, still complaining about his lousy habits, about how he can never find shoes that fit properly for gout-riddled feet. Sven Jakobsen, human male. Hand-to-hand, hand-to-mouth, slow on the draw with his slackjawed smile and malapropic musings volunteered when none are required.

Every line contains more—throngs of killers she recognizes from Augo’s rolodex.

Names from congratulatory letters. Former groomsmen and nursemaids. Surviving dinner party acquaintances. Authors of happy notices of marriage and birth sent through physical mailings with personally-licked envelopes. Producers of past firm handshakes and familial hugs on intermittent holidays. Whisperers of motherly advice saved for a lonesome filly like her, trapped with the rest of the women as they prepare dinners or dine in separation from the menfolk—as tradition normally dictates.

Names that—Oh, how they chit-chittered at her wedding. Listen, they’d paw, they’ll always be at Ginevra’s beck and call should she need help—not just for Augo anymore, but for her, too. If the little filly still doesn’t know how to cook, if she’s more used to targeted kneecapping than child rearing, and should she ever wake up beneath an artificial dome, alone in the dark, ripping at the bedside in a vain search for antipsychotics…

But look at her, they sang. How could she need help? After all, look at how much she’s grown since Augo’s purchased her. Not to mention the gown she wears, how it goes with the sidearm at her hip, the brand-new hammerless Bergeret semi-automatic pistol, it’s steely shine complimenting the off-alabaster puresilk wedding dress that costs more than a whole day on Fontvieille. Radiant—Ginevra’s natural scowl slathered with blushes and lipsticks and hidden beneath veil.

So here the ladies are, once more at Ginevra’s call—on paper. Gallivanting crowds of Augo’s collection. Former enemies and future allies, graciously offered as substitutions for her own professionalism.

A leg-up that holds her in place and impedes her own development.

The printing contentious its obnoxious sawing, growing louder and louder.

Ginevra rips the registry from the printer’s mouth, making the device screech with pain. Ink spits like an artery severed. The Retaliation’s system receives her analog hint and ceases, cutting the message short. The filly balls up the thermal paper, its black ink staining her palms like monochromatic pomegranate juice. Thick paper cuts her palm as she stuffs it into the nearby incineration hatch, contorting a petulant hoof to kick it down the small tube.

Augo—always helpful in the most controlling of ways.

And as Ginevra shifts in her seat, she feels it. At her hip is that little pack of cigarettes, its purple packaging reflecting the sunlight from above. A reminder of guilt pick-pocketed onto her person by a familiar former suitor, of a certain child’s toothless smile, one unseen for months if not a year.

That, too, goes into the hatch.

Spitting through the Summerlee R-12’s and into the radioactive air is the economic equivalent of three weeks of work for the attendant that once more gives Ginevra the impatient all-clear for departure—lest the window close as the next storm trundles through the dusty plain.

-- ONE MESSAGE REMAINS --

-- BEGIN --

-- SENDER: //WITHHELD//

-- LOCATION: //WITHHELD//

-- YOUR PARTNER

-- FIND IN HIS YU SYSTEM

-- HU SHIH COMMERCE STATION

-- PERFORM WELL, MORE WORK

-- END --

The following résumé is short. Like the rest, curated. Yet simpler—only a curriculum vitae of death.

Kelly Scott, human male. Forty-two years of age. Corporate specialist. A seventeen-year veteran of two firm breakaways, preferred stockholder of multiple pharmacist-oriented ventures, including a familiar SpiritCorp.

The man’s face is plastic. Only a thin veneer of grafted skin covers his scars. Deep-set wounds that criss-cross cheeks, neck, nose. Memories of second-degree burns suffered during an unsuccessful forced subsidiary spinoff that claimed the lives of five D-level staff and seventeen support workers.

He looks cold to the touch. Handsome in a pharmacological, two-dimensional sort of way. The way his hair curls against his ears, held in place by a slew of wonder products, combed and greasy in the three-fourths formal headshot, chin atop fist, leaning forward, nearly falling into the viewer. On his shoulders drapes a pseudo-wool blue suit jacket, the out-of-style Ralston’s notched lapels signaling his experience, and beneath the half-Windsor—red, patterned with gold bezants—a padded, shrapnel-proof vest, its outer shell satinet. Waterproof and easily laundered. Difficult to stain.

He’s scowling, too.

The landing gear disengages. The Retaliation’s anchor finally separates from the platform. Engines kick up the surface dust into chalky clouds that radiate from beneath the vessel. Such clouds are geometric, nearly perfect copies of the vessel’s tapered nose—bulbous midship, rear-heavy engines spitting further radiation into the atmosphere.

Takeoff is clean, and Ginevra ignores the customary bon voyage from the surface traffic control towers.

Her cockpit’s air is sterile, and the pressure drops as she rises, dampening the noise of atmospheric exit, cascades of oranges and blues giving way to an impressive darkness, leaving her alone at the edge of space. In the distance, along the ochre surface, the domes are perfect beauty marks. The electrical rod spires stab the air with flashes of light. The filly says goodbye to Sant-Sarnin and its inhabitant, something she’s wanted to do since arrival.

After all, Ginevra’s on the hunt—she doesn’t have a moment to waste.