Boss Shishito had indeed gifted you a ship for departure. It was outdated, unneeded in the Yugure Consortium’s fleet: an out-dated solar-sailer in dire need of a new paintjob, its bright orange finish scraped and decayed with time, windows pecked with dust, retrieved from storage where out there, beneath the wastes, it had been mothballed for years.

The name on the side read Kinnara IV in dull black paint—barely visible to the naked eye.

It had only one cockpit seat. A single sleeping room, three bunks atop one another, analog beds that, if used, had no headroom. Limited cargo space, too, ceilings a bit too low for comfort, too tall for a dust-covered mare. And a single Hayakawa M4 engine. One that blasts too loud during the sail's intermittent disuse while in transit, when out too far from catchable energy, where the stars become too dim, celestial bodies just pinpricks on the x-y-z horizons. Registered, of course, to the Yugure Consortium’s above-board business ventures in the asteroid belts off Tiangong, complete with an extensive semi-legal registration history before its purchase for the sole purpose of laundering cash.

Yet bugged and booby-trapped, no doubt.

So you sold the vessel without even a first look, pawning the keys—at discount, underpriced—to a local mechanic and congee vendor near the Above landing platforms, his small shop’s back office billowing with gummy burning incense sticks in the sweaty evening, loose ink-stained paperwork jutting from rusted filing cabinets, his canteen and quadrotor shop manned by his two sons who performed the heavy lifting, both of them strong and near-silent, exchanging hand symbols of discussion rather than communication that could be understood by a possible mark.

And in exchange for the Kinnara, most of the credits in cash; rubber-banded stacks of standard galactic credits, piaster, soldino bills, kurus, out-of-circulation gold lira with filed serial numbers, a key chain of silver knife currency, a kilo and a half of raw synthetic spezie, and for storage, a crossbody, semi-authentic, “designer” falseleather over-the-shoulder sling backpack, designer tag misspelled as “L’ALTIINUM” with thin stitching that’s already falling apart under the weight, stuffed further inside of Ø’s faux-alligator-skin tote you’ve strapped to your back.

Then came your own laundering.

First for ammunition, the nuclear-tipped rounds for your Star and 415 purchased in bulk, stuffed into pockets alongside plastic-tasting chewable gumdrop rations, tasting stale like balsawood and providing enough crucial minerals for an entire cycle’s worth of sustenance—at the risk of vitamin overdose if not careful, which the stressed mare ignored, stuffing three into her maw in one go. The dangerous levels of caffeine and zinc she consumed kept Ø’s teeth chittering through the evening, left hand twitching with energy as she reloaded her sidearm in the back of the nondescript rickshaw, its plasticwood overhang wilting with rotted red paint and jingling yellow charms, wheel spokes threatening to splinter under your combined weight.

Left grip jittering mid-seizure through your bumpy trip, the mare cursed out loud at your retreat, tail between her thighs, bitching ceaselessly to the driver she held at gunpoint, to whom you assured would receive his fare at your destination—one far from the Yugure Compound where you’ve fled.

“And you know what he did, that jagoff? After all this? After everything I’ve done for him and his two-bit ‘Family’? He double-crossed me. Me! When I kept him alive, all through his miserable—”

From the travel office’s hazy blast-proof windows—eight centimeters thick and plastered with seventeen-digit-long communication numbers advertising discretion above all else—you watched the coolie split. His waraji sandals, soleless from use, made wholly of plastic wiring stolen from electronic terminals, split reeds revealing the worthless copper-conductive-substitutes within, slapped along the tungsten street, cutting lines into his gnarled garbage-soaked feet of dead black toenails and pus-popped blisters.

No doubt he was headed back to the nearest koban station where a lone Settlement Police officer would be either sleeping on his late shift or leafing through another four-dimensional paper doujinshi purchased while on break, both hands hidden beneath chipped plastic desk and rifling maliciously.

“—and you know, I should have killed him. Then and there. In front of his little girlie-boy Ke—with his big eyes shaking like a cornered meat—but you know what? That’d be too good for the ‘bossman,’ for that backstabbing, ungrateful—”

The chain smoking travel agent—one of ten salespeople on staff at all hours, barcoded face plump—hissed through her buck-teeth, the overweight tanuki slow to respond behind fingerprint stamped lenses, claiming translator malfunction during both price estimations and the mare’s constant rambling.

Negotiations took eight minutes in total.

It began first with questions of feigned levity and customary lied-about nothings as all Tiangong business begins—how’s the family, have you eaten yet tonight, does the girlie still put out—then finger-pointing vitriol, haggling performed with the mare whipping cigarette trays against thin cubicle walls and shouting, price-making spat through fatty nicotine-stained tanuki gums and price-taking completed at the brandishing of a familiar Star, two rounds fired into the ceiling for emphasis, trajectory shredding through three stories, bullet embedding into a fourth-story laundromat’s nonfunctioning sink where a pile of forgotten drip-drying fundoshi undergarments now stink of gunpowder.

At the conclusion of discussion, you now pile into a rented plasticwood palanquin. Arms, legs enraptured, your two bodies atop the uncaring flat surface, no ottoman in sight and floor stained with urine, the compartment is designed for one passenger at most. The mare’s stained vee-neck sticks against your clammy face, her grimy haunches in your lap, pinning you, her nicotine-laced saliva dripping atop your head. It’s an uncomfortable, reeking intimacy, the both of you laying low, out of sight and off the streets.

Your incognito transit is at the cost of anything below your waist, your groin losing feeling, crushed under the mare’s weight as usual.

In this near yab-yum state, ported by four children from Below old enough to work—but not legally—you, too, scarf down another gumdrop with stress. For energy, you claim. Both sets of your teeth, those plastic and those real, begin to feel loose. At your mouth, the goopy sensation of blood, the taste of it too, your heart palpitating faster than the suns can rise.

And in your hand, tickets. A chartered flight. Shared—which is alright, beggars and choosers and whatnot—within four hours, the soonest they could sell, to the Alta Floridia Spaceport. Only a week’s transit away, where Ø claims, neck craning atop yours, through dilated pupils to ‘know a guy.’

“—what, again? Do you ever shut up—do you ever shut that stupid head up or does it always go on and on and on about those two pieces of tail? You know, when you think it, I hear it, and you know what? I’m sick of it, sick and tired of it! Who cares about them! A pair of low-rent girlies—ones you kept ogling, you jagoff. That vixen couldn’t even hold a pistol without her little wrist breaking and crying, and the fat one, that fat bitch, with her empty eyes always staring all the damn time, and you know, you know, I bet they’re dead as fuckin’ doornails, so who cares about their little—”

The mare contends that there’s no time to stop by and see Huhu and Kathi at whatever apothecary they’ve fled to. Even if they’re alive, in the physical sense, Boss Shishito’s guards are no doubt posted nearby. Slumped, hungover reeking of Hankow in this midnight morning, chuffing opium-laced cigarettes alongside the Settlement Police’s officers on duty behind chickenwire fencing, both groups sitting in collusion, laughing—networking—playing rummy with stacked decks.

And you think of plucky Lieutenant Fairsykes, sunburned and spiteful, slathered in white moisturizing herbs at a real wood mahogany desk dotted with unknown yet dutifully earned commendations, red peeling face covered like shiroi. He’ll file you both away as another pair of criminals on the run. Two—allegedly—gruesome murderers, party to multiple cases unsolved in the sands of Tiangong’s wasteland.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Holier-than-thou, breaking an officer’s statutes out of misplaced and malodorous ‘civic duty,’ he’ll post your current location on bounty hunting airwaves, the broadcasts received by regular suspects—the hunters and the pirates looking for a quick dead-or-alive cash injection—and your long list of enemies, who now include the Yugure Consortium. Not to mention locally. To those Tiangong denizens Above and Below, like the quadruple sun-hatted coolies ferrying your palanquin, who may get overconfident, filled with big ideas, thinking your narcotics-spiked mare is an easy target.

Each uneven step of the underage coolies is excruciating.

Because elsewhere, rokoku water clocks chime, gongs hit at wake-up times, projected through split-wire rusted public amplifiers Above and Below like calls to prayer. As Tiangong’s molting continues, night shedding back to day, the tungsten streets will be filled anew with sobered-up gangsters, Yugure Consortium henchmen no doubt ready to execute their bossman’s wishes, miscellaneous wannabe tough-guys acting upon rumors—malicious ones—that a certain visiting duo is now without protection, credit bounty ticking higher with each trickle of rokoku waterfall.

Still, your mind lingers on the two girlies, same as Ø’s on Bossman Shishito. Huhu’s malicious giggling and Kathis’s docile expression carry undue amounts of significance in this early morning. You see them in the outfits the mare left behind—clothed in something new, for once.

A pitiful musing.

“—and who cares whether they’re alive or not, and whoever cared before you, and most importantly who asked you to care—it’s a choice, you should know, when you get it through your thick head—do you want to sit around and start caring about everyone we space, each stooge, clowns who—?”

Your mare assures you from a place of petulance that their eventual outcomes will not matter. They’re uninteresting footnotes that will be quickly forgotten, like plastic-wrapped corpses lined from head-to-toe along scrapmetal walls, stuffed between stapled-together rafters, skin and bone carved with bodhisattva symbolism and stinking of formaldehyde that ruins your appetite.

And the worst part is that she’s right—it’s not like Tiangong’s going to miss a couple girlies, at least.

“—and you want something to be sad about? To miss? My fuckin’ Kanapaha back at the compound,” Ø pulls at her mane with nervous agitation, ripping a clump of fur, dust shaking loose atop your head as she bucks with anger, giving the plasticwood palanquin wall a punch, nearly striking straight through, “all those Fontvieille threads, with the pearls and the—I’m gonna kill him, turn this thing around, I’m gonna kill him this time—my D’Valay’s, the real ones, not the ones he foisted on me, the real ones! And all we’ve got to show for it, the only little thing, that stupid little box that Soonyeong girlie gave you, with the sutras,” she sneers, “or whatever—just paper, not even credits or gold! She was useless! Why’d you let me agree to that deal? Half our pay is a girlie visit? Why would I agree—I mean why wouldn’t do something? Mister Talkative, all the time. You’re the one who let me make that call—”

The coolies tire. They shift at bare feet. Concerned for police activity, blue-blazing sirens intermittent in the morning twilight, air hazy with pollution, vision reduced to twenty meters ahead and dropping in the plastic lantern-lit streets, they end your fare prematurely. While Ø prepares to deliver a pistol-whipping to each trembling youth, you hurry them away, your pupils dilated, the fifth of an inch of credits you reward them a sloppy over-paid fare as they scatter into alleyways, towards elevators beginning to fill to overcapacity.

And as you both hustle through Tiangong’s alleyways, main streets and boulevards metamorphosing from night to day—neon bar signs dimming for energy rationing, girlies returning to their starting lines in the clothes they’ve worn the night before, nocturnal laborers burrowing back Below a la elevator to sleep in lean-to’s of packed radioactive dirt, repurposed aluminum, and plastic garbage bags—the mare refuses to reflect on her stablemate—her friend—Bossman Shishito.

She’s never consciously thought of him as such, no, but you know better. After all, he’s still alive. Less can be said about most of the other contacts you’ve made throughout your relationship.

And no wonder.

“—it’s too hot I said. Don’t you listen? Too hot, I’m burning up! Everything’s still itchy, and you know what it is, it was that palan-quinn! I told you those kids couldn’t keep it up. Must’ve had lice, bugs, roaches, I don’t know, my skin’s fuckin’ crawling—”

She’d never be able to kill him, Bossman Shishito.

The sediment would grind in her molars, moreso than the off-yellow clay that stains her shredded pair of jeans. It’s Agapito’s dirt still that’s still on him, within him, caught between his muscle groups as he matured like gnarled bonsai roots growing around boulders. If she were to dig in, bite through bone marrow as she usually does, her teeth would crack to the roots. She’d wail.

Maybe even cry.

Because of the smell that’d waft off little Shishi’s corpse, hanten shredded, stained with sake and urine before her coup de grâce could even be delivered—robbing her of satisfaction—it’s an overpowering stench. Like that formaldehyde in the meat house. One that dissuades her from hunger.

Not in a physical sense, but an emotional one. An excuse for weakness. Like the excuse she used between the silver Fontvieille menhir, a One-Armed Man still breathing somewhere, a foreshadowed enemy to ricochet back into your intertwined lives. Or in the hours previous, on the dusty wasteland plain, the heat-stricken Lieutenant Fairsykes prone, clutching his busted groin, possibly even willing to die—just from the shame alone.

Because, the truth is, with Shishi, she’d just flinch like before.

Like a scared little girlie.

“—so don’t even think I’ve softened up,” she hisses between stalls of rhinestone hanbok and lasciviously-cut pleated schoolgirl outfits, pointing a finger with frayed fur, nervously chewing lips as you scramble for disguises at the clothing market, “I’ll smarten you up if—”

Broadways have crowded. Stalls have appeared as usual in total darkness, blocking traffic at set intervals, cardboard-upon-plasticwood hutches unfolding, cheap clothing on display. Another pop-up marketplace selling plastic-molded utensils that break after a manufacturer’s set amount of uses. Or whole outfits of kimono and three-piece suits improperly sized, tags ripped off to avoid identification, their appearance at the stalls mysterious—from auto-factory bulk shipments ripped-off above orbit, cargo resold for fraction of the cost, finally reaching Tiangong’s denizens through hawking vendors who will ply their business for a set few hours before disappearing, never being held to the shoddiness of their wares, but always sure to pay off the local gangsters who linger, snub-noses at waistbands, collecting protection fares like import duties.

Fabric between your calloused fingers is weightless. It’s intentionally designed for the lowest quality wearer, the most destitute of coolies. But you can’t discern the make. It’s too loud to think, eardrums splitting, your heartbeat a taiko drum beat whipping with every blink of bloodshot eyes. You know the button-up isn’t puresilk—it can’t be, sold at this price, in this part of the arcology—but you can’t tell which type of plastic—which type of carcinogenic fabric it truly is.

It’s a knock-off, it must be. Falsely passed as something else.

Ersatz and done-up like everything else on Tiangong, mere replications of reproductions to save face from the embarrassing truth—like nearby gingered girlies hiding injection scars, or their gangster pimps, muscles for show, the arcology’s veneer of civility only a centimeter deep, bushido performances hiding childish backstabbing. Shanty-towns filled with corpses and future fertilizers. The whole arcology—a knock-off of civilization that exists atop bamboo scaffolding drawing from the planet’s diseased surface, propped in the air in an inversion of the natural order.

“—so start hurrying, because I’m not waiting around for you to window shop. You want a gunfight, with all these stooges lurking around? They’re lookin’ for us, they gotta be,” Ø slurs her words, ripping a plastic brassiere from a cheap hangar, accidentally breaking it in half, swearing, kicking the plywood refuse under a nearby rack of clothing, “look at the way they’re lookin’, at me, not you, me, and I’m not wrong, I’m never wrong about this—”

In your over-stimulated haze, vibrations edging through your vision, Ø’s a mess. Muzzle’s lips downturned at the corners, eyebrows sunken. Affected. Emotionally, for once.

Sure, you’ve made some bad calls. Look at you—it’s expected. But you can’t forget them; gutted thieves pitted like peaches, crowned cats stuck in the looney bin, Casino bets gone bust. You got people killed, even. Screwed up for both you and your more, caused problems that were met with Ø’s wisdom of “I told you so.”

And in this darkness, spotted through counterfeit clothing clutches, sparkling like dewdrops at the corners of her almond-colored eyes, you could swear there’s tears. It’s the gravity she feels between caffeine seizing, her chest a pit beneath barcode and diamond, ribcage ripped open and replaced with silver. Her lower jaw heavy, lacquered, like a jindo’s. Neck momentary frail like a vixen’s, thin enough to break under the stress and fall downcast towards her hooves.

She’s dreading it—the “I told you so” you’ll rattle off. And if you don’t rattle it off as she would, it would be justified nonetheless. She’s already imagined the self-abuse, already placed it in your orgones, put the blame on you, negativity cascading like erhu yowls belting between cardboard clothing racks, refracting off nearby D’Valay aviators on display—cheap knock-offs—as worthless as how she feels, for once.

It’s like she’s back aboard the Chang Tsung-ch’ang again, furred digits exiting her owner’s brain, letting the corpse fall to her hooves, panicking ever-so-slightly, trying to buck away from rash gut decisions.

“Hey! Hey! Did you hear me?” she brays, the stall’s vendor perking up from behind an unfolded bok choy emblazoned hand-fan, the old woman’s wrinkled face barely lit in the first crest of blinding sunrise, “Smarten up! I said hurry, already! Come on!”