Sparkling wine dances on your lacerated tongue. Its notes of unpeeled Comice pears are characteristic of Fertilia’s wine output, while the dry, bitter aftertaste comes with the vintage. The planet’s naturally chalky soils, combined with the production’s multiple fermentation periods, preserve its natural carbonation. It’s a sought-after combination of naturally occurring weather and generations of selective breeding. An art cultivated by the dutiful medicants, sheltered within their chains of missionary stations stretching across the planet’s many rivers and deltas, operating vineyards and almshouses with both dutiful hands.

Or so claims the attendant doting at your side.

The lagomorph’s twin ears bob, a simple tuft of boyish silver hair bouncing along with the rest of her. Complimenting Mireio’s androgynous face is a monochromatic, wide-shouldered sanforized romper that hugs the curves of a creature genetically inclined to emphasize them herself. White fur stretches from her fingertips and around her body, immaculately groomed, without a hint of synthetics beyond the slight kohl application at the corner of her already jet-black anthropomorph eyes. The branding on her sternum is nondescript, nearly hidden, a confusing criss-cross of black, white, and blue barcode, an unknown and assuredly expensive symbolism.

She fiddles with your right hand, resewing closed a gash near your pinky, drawing the heated needle in and out of you. The hare pauses, feeling you flinch at the pain, and mechanically reaches for the metal tray at her feet. It’s filled with smokes, miniature alcohols, packets of spezie. Miscellaneous items of interest, the barest of necessities for a luxury liner like the Saint Andrew’s Feast.

“Cigarette?” Mireio asks in her professional tone.

Her mouth moves slowly, deliberately, whispering compared to the firm, honey-filled speech that emanates from the fashionable collar around her neck. Within the designer accessory is her auto-translator, silvered, which spits out her solicitations in a pleasing Provençal accent. You wave her suggestion away, opting for another swig of the expensive bubbly.

From the salon windows, rectangular viewing portals parallel at port and starboard, you watch the stars drift by in low-speed travel through Porfirio’s Belt. The continuous pitter-patter of rain has dissipated. Here in the wide open darkness of space, you’re nearly alone.

The vessel’s twin Denhaut-54 engines are silent, their deafening hum confined behind layers of practical blast shielding and intricately installed noise-deafening interior design, one of pleasing curves and jutting quadrilaterals. You infer from cursory glances that the fifty meters of luxury craft holds four cabins.

Although you haven’t investigated, you assume the bridge’s hand-carved oaken hatch is locked, possibly booby-trapped with security countermeasures.

Your hand, like the rest of you, is neatly patched. The continuous applications of bene-gel, combined with Mireio’s expert medical work, have brought you forth from a medically induced cycle-long coma and into her conscientious care.

Eight hours ago, you regained your ability to walk at her suggestion. Eight hours before that, you had been unconscious and under her knife. And, finally, eight before that, you had stumbled aboard the Saint Andrew’s Feast with the help of the hare and the old man, brushing past the rioting masses towards Fisher Spaceport, where the other embittered, marooned visitors had gathered after the day’s premature conclusion.

Alongside the extravagances are unfamiliar medical devices. Otherworldly pharmaceuticals that outshine any medicine, traditional, contemporary, or ancient, you’ve experienced. Surely better than Dyle’s haphazard montages and recycled medical manuals.

Mireio shoots you a smile, nodding towards your hand and nonverbally declaring her work complete.

“Whose ship is this?” You blurt into the silence, past your freshly installed dental bridge. It’s the fourth time you’ve asked. Each time, Mireio’s response is uniquely unhelpful.

“I’m from Sant-Sarnin, from the domes,” she muses. She packs away her faux-leather medical bag, emblazoned with her name, which stows neatly in a compartment of her over-the-neck tray. “Camelot-IV, specifically. You know, of all my nine litter-mates, I think I’m the luckiest. The Saint Andrew is like the domes, those big honeycombs in the mist. Clean, safe, quiet. When I was little, I would look outside at the radiation. It would always be sunny. Now, look at the stars. It’s always midnight. Have you been to Sant-Sarnin?”

“Who is this ship registered to?”

The attendant returns a soft smile. While genetically she’s incapable of expressing annoyance, her look is tiresome.

“You know, every visitor is different, but you’re always nice. Little differences are good. They’re interesting. Take me and my siblings. You can never tell us apart. We all look a little too similar. Uncanny, some call it. Others say it’s beautiful,” the vamp pauses. Her body is at attention, her default position. Behind the saucer eyes, you can see the rewired nervous system, impulses tightly controlled and stapled into place. Her nose twitches, communicating some unknown Morse of hidden emotion, letting her voice dip with the most powerful drip of emotion she could muster. “Would you think so?”

You’re nauseous.

This feeling has been building. At first, it was silence all the way down, a deafening lack of internal communication. Foreign silence.

But at some point, as your body shook itself from unconsciousness, you heard it from oblivion once more. Strength came from its whispers, just out of earshot. It was the same familiar sensation as before, of the disconnected soul you’re strapped to, the only reason for a full recovery.

And now it rises in a foreign rage, one directed towards the hazy aura of a specifically lascivious attendant. Sensing a certain mare’s malicious presence, you turn towards your sister cabin. With a slap, the oaken sliding door flings open, and Ø’s shambling frame stumbles into polite society.

Her body is a mess.

Both arms are clad with linens, chest layered with gauze on the many gashes she’s sustained, her entire thigh wrapped with see-through bandages that show off her lack of dermis. The scar on her face pales compared to the cuts and contusions she’s sustained along her oblong skull and neck, her long jawline bulbous and swollen with an eye swelled shut, the lid trimmed slightly to afford vision. Her head jerks with the pain of a drained subdural hematoma, her skull sporting a single, small, stinging perforation that reverberates into your own cap like a bee’s sting. Anticonvulsants drip from the discarded tubes by her bedside, encouraging her dizzy saunter.

The lagomorphic attendant stands in resignation at the pathetic display.

Ø musters all the strength possible, pointing at Mireio, who oscillates and doubles in her concussed view. The mare’s digit is bound, coated in bene-gel, the tenth application that has occurred since boarding and reattachment. She wheezes through her punctured lungs, diaphragm fighting with every exhale.

“Answer him. Whose... Whose ship is this?”

With that, she’s winded. Her body shuts down at her hooves, bending at her knees, and leaving her stumbling for the chair nearest you, one of off-yellow faux-leather. The emotions she projects are coarse, nearly intangible, shooting off sparks and clattering together with the moving notes of a wind chime. Ø licks her lips, whitened and chapped from blood loss.

It’s a welcome sensation of dryness.

“You’re awake,” Mireio remarks. She retraces Ø’s steps, locking the cabin from which the mare has escaped. Inside the pod, the various wirings and medical equipment are strewn about, thrown into a whirlwind of revived confusion. The attendant stares blankly, knowing she’ll have to retake inventory. “You should rest. The injuries you’ve sustained are quite severe.”

“Tell me...” Ø groans, growling through the kaleidoscopic pain she’s projecting. “Whose ship...”

“Please, Miss Saturday. You need to rest. It’s a miracle you’re able to walk at all. Is there something I could get you? Coffee, espresso, cigarette?”

Ø lurches from her position, raising her arms in faded confusion, attempting to shuffle to her hooves. In her bandaged left fist, a single scalpel, disinfected titanium gripped to snapping. A predatory huff from her nostrils shoots out one of two nasal packings, coating the painstakingly installed, heated wooden floor with a lily of fresh crimson.

At a distance of a few meters, Mireio is unfazed. The same kind, immovable smile wipes across her alluring face. Your mare’s shuffling is too obtuse to be taken seriously, her movements too languid to be of any serious threat. Whatever embarrassment you’ve felt upon your most recent kidnapping is multiplied tenfold in Ø’s painkiller-addled mind. Yet another disrespect of many.

You bring the rim of the glass to your lips, content to let her fight this one out herself. It’s a fact she does not interpret.

Stirred by the commotion, the third of the salon’s five doors opens, revealing its occupant. It’s the same old man as before. Your chest twinges with pain at his very sight, remembering his aggressive medical practices on New Port Moresby.

Here he’s at ease.

Gone are the sport coats and expensive loafers. Now he wears his manicured silk dress shirt, pressed, suspenders relaxed. In the Saint Andrew’s low-gravity, he walks completely upright. Sans cane, nearly youthful in his step.

Against Ø’s repeated attempts to move forward, he sighs and turns to the cabin’s servant expectantly.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” she apologizes. “Your guests are a bit restless.”

“That’s alright. It’s expected. Please, Miss Saturday, have a seat. Mireio is right. You shouldn’t overexert yourself.”

Your host glides along the floor, the lack of atmospheric pressure relieving what you assume are old bones.

“Please, take a seat,” he implores. A hand motions towards the hare, signaling her. With an air of high-class hospitality, Mireio’s manicured white forefoot slides into her tray of opulences.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

It returns with a firearm. A simple ‘Emerald’ pocket pistol. Meticulously cleaned, probably never fired. Small enough caliber for a pleasure slave like herself to wield. At this distance, its stopping power is enough to leave the both of you piteously bleeding on the floor of the luxury liner in clumsy, uncomfortable murders.

“Relax, Ø,” you nag. The metaphysical noose enraptures her at the crook of her neck, dragging her back to the seat next to yours, its organic vegetable-tan make straining once more under her uneven weight. Once more immobile, she drifts in and out of consciousness as your host orders himself a drink, which Mireio produces without hesitation, pre-poured and served at room temperature in anticipation of his arrival.

It’s a Zosimosic concoction. A glittery ambrosia of an ancient Newtonian alchemy. The slimy liquid, cupellated and pasteurized, comes in a less festive bottle than the wines. Nondescript with its markings, its design industrial, its taste similar to silphium. You’ve transported it before, so you know the rejuvenation liquid’s immense cost, its use in the most exhaustive of medical care for cryogenic survivors. Biologically or otherwise, inside or outside a tube, the old man must have years under his belt.

As he sits idly watching the stars coast, he leans forward as to invite conversation.

“I hope Mireio has been giving you some hospitality.”

“She has. Is this your ship?”

“Oh, no. Mireio, the ship, and the sciapode pilot are my benefactor’s.”

“And who’s that?”

“Cigar?” Mireio interjects. Her lithe form dips next to you, pistol still in hand. The metal nuzzles against your bruised neck, almost comforting in its touch. Your host once more waves the hare away, dismissing her and her goods.

“I can see why Mireio called for me. You’re putting the girl through the ringer, aren’t you?” He stops to check the two antique timepieces at his wrist. His lips contort as if to recognize a specific point in time, placing it within his timetable and become forcing impatience from his furrowed brow. He draws a sip from his glass, choking down the viscous liquid-substitute. “It’s not too interesting a fact. But, as I told you before, my benefactor is interested in your development. You and Miss Saturday have an uncanny ability, and my visit to New Port Moresby has confirmed that fact. And rather than discuss who he is, he’d rather I discuss hiring your services.”

“I don’t work for people I don’t know.”

“My research says you are a courier? I’m sure you’ve had no qualms delivering packages for strangers,” he laughs. “And after your help with our operation at the George Merrick, I’m inclined to say you would make fantastic assets, uninformed or otherwise.”

“Help? I don’t remember doing anything for you.”

“And you shouldn’t. Here, an explanation. A gesture of good faith.”

With another nod to Mireio, flashes before you are holographic displays. Accounts, funds, debts backed by papers and real assets. The holograms broadcast from the small port within the girl’s collar. She stands perfectly still, politely looking away from the information. A walking uplink terminal.

Documents, projections concerning the singular criminal syndicate that controls the amphitheater planetside. Familiar faces of digital Blue, corporate Red, and tribal Black. One of many consortia, the hundreds, thousands of them speckled across New Port Moresby, each alliance of crooks infinitesimally small and unimportant when viewed on a planetary scale.

Then the receipts for hooded assassins, poisonous aggravation accelerants, familiar cobalt-dentured courtesans paid paltry sums for hooliganism, all recorded and quantified for expense purposes. Profiles of each pawn, as insignificant as the last, maneuvered and placed for your counter. All factors commingling with the long-term effects of malnutrition, extreme stress, tendencies towards paranoia.

Finally, the reports. Write-ups on how a bonded pair of variables like you and your mare would react to such challenges with reasonable odds of certainty.

Probabilities of success and failure from project managers. Brief summaries and writeups of AI-generated plans of attack. Estimated times to blast through ancient limestone flooring. Combined weights of bearer-bonded paper-based debt instruments. Stress factors and melting points of alloy-based security countermeasures. Key performance indicators of how best to knock over The George Merrick with minimal economic impact, factoring in riot insurance payout rates and underwriting restrictions.

It’s a complete plan of robbery and employee acquisition in tandem, signed off by some corporate higher-up based on a shortened executive summary. One file of many. No doubt just as unimportant as the miniature Algonquin hidden within the planet’s holographic surface that shoots from the attendant’s neck.

“I regret having to dispatch Old Blue in such a fashion. He’s quite the machine, if a bit too cold. Hospitable for such antique coding. His head’s not always in the game. Can’t factor in the unexpected variables like yourselves. But I’m sure he’ll regroup and reset as always. Institutional men, or machines like men, don’t just disappear,” your host muses, no doubt retracing the absurd steps that have brought forth his success.

“We were just distractions for a rip-off?”

“Exceptional ones. I subcontracted others as bait, targets, assistants. But as you can tell, you’ve done most of the heavy lifting. And you did a remarkable job.”

“You used us.”

“Job?” Ø slurs, trying her best to keep up through her dizziness, to the disappointment of your host. “What’s the pay?”

“Of course,” he continues unabated. “We all know I’ve shown you hospitality, but I understand your apprehension. I’ve already budgeted a take for the both of you, sans expenses incurred during the project. Mireio, could you fetch it for them?”

“How much?” Ø belts, her teeth brittle from their recent re-insertion.

“Half a percent. A bit of a finder’s fee. Net, after expenses, which I’m sure you can understand. Of that amount, the majority placed in a pensionary account under my benefactor’s discretion, with the remaining ten percent of it in physical currency for current expenses...”

Mireio’s triumphant return includes only a single item.

Stuffed to bursting, the marine blue shoulder bag is accentuated with a single gold ring. The spongy wood and lesser gravity cushions its dull thud on the floor. Ø rolls to her side, digging her bandaged digits into the bag’s mouth, peeling away its petals and revealing treasure within. Stacks, blocks of credits, carefully arranged, their linen reeking with the distant smell of endless monsoon rains.

“Only a portion. But enough for you to live comfortably job-to-job.”

“And that’s what you’ll give us for future work...” you mumble. It must be a mirage, you think, letting your dry fingers caress a stack of bills.

“Yes. You two are valuable. My benefactor had the privilege of reviewing security footage from Nuovo Portolago and believes you both are quite the investment.”

“Don’t see much use in two wanted criminals,” you trail. It’s more credits than you’ve ever seen. You shut your eyes, allowing the sultry ones-and-zeros to blow you kisses.

“You don’t need to. Value is ascertained by others. Others like my benefactor.”

“And I assume he pays a premium for secrecy?”

“Sure, you’re thumbing through it. Consider it yet another gesture of goodwill. An advance for further cooperation.”

The old man hasn’t sought to detail his gifts. You speculate on the credit figure of the medical supplies, the life-saving transplants and transfusions that have pumped through your two corpses. These two wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of reviving you had they wanted you dead. The number of times your guard has dropped since boarding the Saint Andrew, where Mireio could have gracelessly spaced you both without a second thought, gives you a migraine.

How much for the bottle of bubbly, too?

Your hosts are disinterested, almost pitying. Mireio, a mere fixture aboard the ship, smiles while holding you at gunpoint. The other, the old man, has eyes of an accountant, a consultant, a middle-manager. He doesn’t need to tell you that your combined market value is less than that of the amenities and medical supplies you’ve both consumed. A lack of chastising is just another act of charity, another intangible that, with effort, he could quantify as some monetary figure.

“So,” you begin, letting your words fall limply against the credits you cradle with both hands.

“So, we will be in transit for another cycle or two. Once we arrive at Meropide, you’ll disembark and regain your freedom of transit. We’ll be in touch when you’re needed.”

His eyes watch your mare, drugged and vulnerable. The bills slip through her fingers, escaping their clean stacks and crumpling individually. Her heart skips as her bandaged fingers reach the purse’s floor. They prod with confusion, fumbling against a familiar paperboard pack of Keowee’s.

Ø’s cheeks flush at the realization, nearly to sobbing.

“And I hope you understand that I’ll be upping her dosage for the time being.”

“Sure, sure,” you accept your fate. The worldly pleasures only a request away, the promises of an absurd subcontracted freedom, are too much to digest at the moment. You’ll have a cycle or two to regret compliance, and you assume after touchdown, a few days of chastising at Ø’s hands.

But it’s your decision, the first in a long time, and you don’t have a counter-offer for the pair of hosts.

“Before you go, if you don’t mind me asking,” your host cuts you off before you can continue, unfriendly for the first time all flight.

“I’m sorry, but I do. I may not be like Mireio, but you won’t find any answers with me. Just our business, I’m afraid. Now yours, too.”

“I understand, but this treatment you’re giving us isn’t normal, is it?”

“No, anything but.”

“How many... Contractors do you have, like us? All Shanghaied and whatnot.”

“Couldn’t say,” he chuffs. The man tilts his head, staring into you. Familiar eyes like his are scarce. In the uncaring, vibrationless edges of space, paternal gazes are currencies without estimation. And somehow, the way the lagomorph twitches her whiskers, combined with the subtle rise and fall of your host’s chest beneath his milli-cotton shirt, projects some sort of safety. A professional malaise that wraps back around to comfort. He nods to your mare, whose shaking hands attempt to light the cigarette at her lips, guided by a benignant Mireio. “But you should celebrate your good luck. At least your better half is willing to.”

“I’m sure you understand my hesitation.”

“Of course. Reversals of fortune are rare, but they should be enjoyed nonetheless. Even if you don’t believe them fully.”

“But, your interest...”

“My benefactor’s, you mean?”

“Yes, whomever that may be.”

“It’s a vested one.” He pauses, finally commanding to Mireio to stow her sidearm as Ø slips completely into unconsciousness, ash depositing on the arm of the designer chair. In her stupor, she threatens to slither onto the floor. “It’s lucrative and stable compared to your previous work.”

“And what about yours?”

“My interest?”

“Sure. Who are you to all this?”

“Well, I’ve a job. I perform, and if I do well, I receive more work. Same as you now.”

“And you just take down the orders? No cutting and running? I don’t think Mireio would have a fuss if you disappeared.”

“She shouldn’t, not on my account.” Behind a withered face, he gives off the polite air of considering your question with a full mind. But he knows the answer already. He’s memorized it. It’s confident, and he almost convinces you he believes it. “Some things you can’t run away from. And rarely do you have the chance to run towards your problems, rather than away as you’ve been doing. I suggest you appreciate this opportunity.”

He doesn’t expect a reply. Your nameless host stands and gives you a nonverbal acknowledgment, an implicit signal that the conversation has met its predetermined end. Without another word, he exits towards the bridge, his gnarled hand easily bypassing the oaken door to the cockpit. Turns out it’s been unlocked.

Mireio stirs beside you, helping Ø to a more comfortable position on her ottoman, the mare babbling and cursing between her second cigarette.

“Before you return to your cabin, your host wanted me to pass on another gift.”

The lagomorph finally approaches, careful to adjust her orbit out of Ø’s new reach should she produce a second impromptu weapon. She dips to your height and reaches once more beneath her tray. Out comes your 418 sidearm. Newly polished. Months of caked-on mud cleaned with what you assume is elbow grease.

“I apologize, but it will have to remain unloaded while in transit,” she whispers. “But our host wanted me to assure you that after you disembark, we will happily provide you with ammunition.”

You inspect the familiar weight in your hand and exhale, finally relaxed. Dry tobacco shoots from Ø’s nostrils, the familiar taste dancing between the two of your psyches. Then comes the bubbling nonsense, whispered telepathically. The subconscious waveforms that amount to a singularly tied psyche.

Disjointed thoughts. Insults. Reluctant admissions of contentment. Maybe even an apology or two. Learned emotions you’ve struggled to implant in your partner, ones forgotten in the stressful storms of New Port Moresby. Then requests for luxuries, like spezie and an ashtray. Then for base desires, like a loaded gun and more cigarettes.

You signal the attendant for another glass of bubbly, sighing.

“Well, I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“No, you do not.”

The lagomorph smiles. Her hamstrung emotions project through her eyes, devoid of light like the vibrationless space throttling on either side of the Saint Andrew’s Feast. Her beautiful face is set in stone. It’s affixed with a permanent visage of hospitality that she, too, will never have the choice of changing. Barring some unfathomable chain of events, of course. By definition, one guided by forces beyond her mortal control.

And yet you choose to believe the smile she wears is genuine.