When Juliet woke, it was just after nine local time. Right away, she noticed her backpack sitting by the door. Bennet or Aya must have placed it inside her room at some point; she couldn’t remember if it had been there before she fell asleep. After showering and putting on a clean set of dark green leggings and a black microfiber athletic shirt, she gathered her weapons. This time she opted to bring her SMG along for the ride. She shrugged into her jacket, wearing it over her needler, but slung the MP5 on her shoulder, wearing it openly. “Maybe that’ll dissuade other troublemakers from messing with me. Angel,” she added, “do you have the specs for the rifle I got from the pirate?”

“I do. It’s a Smith-Keller seven-millimeter flechette rifle. The particular model is the Scorpion Mark Two.”

“Okay, ‘cause I want to buy some magazines and ammo, so the first stop is the gun store you found.”

“Would you like to contact Lemur?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Let’s schedule a meeting today at that coffee shop. Um, not in the morning, I think it’ll be too busy, and I want to try to use the lattice. Let’s say one o’clock?”

“That sounds good to me. I’ll see if he’ll accommodate.”

While Angel worked on that, Juliet walked to the mess and was pleased to smell coffee upon her arrival. Bennet and Shiro were sitting at the table, and they both looked up when she walked in. “Hey,” Bennet said, and Shiro simply met her eyes and nodded.

“Hey, boys. Some coffee left?”

“Yep. Glad I ran into you. We need to schedule some lifting time.” Bennet held up a large plastic mug filled with his usual thick protein sludge. “Don’t want to lose my gains.”

“Oh, God,” Juliet sighed, shaking her head. “Little chance of that!”

“Still, what do you say? Got any time today?”

“Um, this afternoon or evening, probably, but I won’t know for sure until a bit later. I have a meeting with someone, I hope, around noon.” Juliet poured herself a cup of coffee and then looked in the fridge for some creamer. Her favorite, the vanilla-flavored oat cream, was down to less than a splash, so she dipped into Bennet’s go-to—mocha-coconut with added aminos. “I’ll get some more creamer while I’m out.”

“Nah, Alice already put in an order. We’re getting stocked up. Anyway, can you message me when you know if you’ll be around?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Shiro said something about your interest in the gunship. That’s badass ‘cause we’re going to need a lot of dough to get it sorted.”

“Is that what I am to you, Bennet? A gullible bit-vault?” Juliet shook her head, a wry grin on her face as she sipped her coffee.

“Ah, gullible—the best kinds of bits.” He took a slurp of his shake and then said, “Wanna look inside the ship? It’s pretty cool, and we’ve got most of the dead-people smell out.”

“You certainly know how to sell it.” Juliet wrinkled her nose, then shrugged and added, “I guess I should get an idea of what we’re getting into, huh?” She hefted her mug and gestured toward the door. “Got time right now? I wanna get some shopping done this morning.”

“Yeah.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let me rinse this out.”

Juliet waited by the door, sipping her coffee and watching Bennet clean his big plastic cup. Shiro ignored them both, staring into space, clearly absorbed by something on his AUI. As Bennet walked briskly past, he said, “Let’s go. You sure you don’t want to get a pump in before you head out?”

“You’re obsessed.” She chuckled, following him down to the cargo bay. When they stepped inside, the sheer size of the gunship took Juliet off guard a little. She’d seen it when they loaded it, but only briefly, and her mind had grown used to the wide-open space of the cargo bay over the weeks of their voyage. Now, though, the bay felt small, cramped even, with the long, shark-shaped vessel wedged corner to corner, filling the area with its menacing, hulking silhouette. The lights were dim, and in the shadowy illumination, Juliet could imagine what it would look like if it weren’t a wreck, and she liked it.

The enormous VTOL thrusters seemed oversized for the ship, and she knew it must be fast and nimble when fully operational. She could just make out four big barrels jutting out of the hull on the starboard side, like enormous, vented pipes, and she pointed and asked, “Are those guns?”

“Yeah. Thirty-mil cannons. Four on this side, four on the other. I think they all work, but I won’t know for sure until I do some testing. The central rail gun is wrecked, though.”

“Is that the ‘nose gun’ you mentioned being all bent up?”

“Yeah. It’s quite a piece. No way we’ll find a replacement, but we might be able to get new barrels fabricated. Maybe, just a tiny possibility, mind you, but maybe we can find some in scrapyards.”

“More than one?”

“Yep, three. They rotate, so it can fire more rapidly without melting ‘em.”

While he spoke, Juliet began to walk around the ship, hugging the cargo bay walls as she approached the nose where it was chained to the decking in the corner. Sure enough, pointing upward, clearly bent, was a cluster of three two-meter barrels. They jutted out of the ship’s chin and only protruded about half a meter from the nose, but it had been enough to wreck them in the crash. “Can’t straighten ‘em?”

“Nah, the specs on those things are way too finicky, and the alloy they’re made of isn’t forgiving. I suppose if we find a foundry with the right equipment, we might have them melted down and recast. Something to think about. Let me show you the inside, huh?” Bennet gestured for Juliet to follow him around the back of the ship, and she did, noting that the pools of leaky fluids were all gone, cleaned at some point by Bennet or Aya.

“You already stopped the leaks?”

“Yep. It was while I was doing that I realized the ship wasn’t really a wreck, just beat up. I got to thinking about how cool it would be to fix it up and then wondered what a legitimate business might do with a decent Hector-class gunship, and some lightbulbs went off in my head.”

“I like it when you’ve got lightbulbs going off in your head,” Juliet said, giving his shoulder a solid pat while they walked up the ramp into the ship’s open airlock—it felt like slapping her hand against a block wall. The airlock was small and compact but looked like it could accommodate three or five people if they stood close together. Bennet didn’t pause but walked right into the rear cavity of the ship. The walls of that room, about ten meters by five, were bare plasteel, and Juliet could see wiring, tubes, and pipes running vertically and horizontally between the ship’s frame.

“It’s been worked on a lot. A lot of the work was shitty, and you can see they didn’t always bother to put the panels back on the walls. Probably ‘cause they were constantly having to fix the bad wiring, the leaking pipes, etcetera.”

“But you can get it fixed properly, right?” Juliet frowned, starting to wonder if she’d signed on for more than she’d bargained for.

“Sure. With time and money,” he grinned and winked at her. “This is kind of a little cargo space, meant for carrying supplies or ordinance, or, I guess, loot if you’re a pirate. Come on,” he said, moving toward a hatchway and a narrow corridor. “Through here is the crew space. You’ve got a central kitchen, then two crew quarters port and aft, each with a bathroom and shower. I mean, they’re small, but it’s not bad, having your own facilities, you know?”

Juliet followed him through the cramped corridor, again noticing all the missing wall panels, exposed wires, and pipes. Then they stepped into the kitchen or, as spacers liked to call it, the mess. It wasn’t much smaller than the Bumble’s. A bolted-down table and cabinets filled the right side of the space, and on the left were more plasteel cabinets, a sink, and an autostove, or so it proclaimed in blocky chrome letters along the top edge.

“Autostove?”

“Yeah, I was messing with it this morning. It’s sort of a bigger, two-compartment microwave that’s a bit smarter than a middle schooler. Kinda cool, really.”

“Huh. Neat,” Juliet nodded, looking left and right at the two hatches. “Two crew only?”

“Nah! Those are the grunt quarters. You’ve got two officer cabins near the cockpit, but before that, there’s a space about this big where you can load and maintain the guns. Below us, accessed through the gun room, is the reactor.”

“What about the drives?”

“The two big VTOL drives are external maintenance only. There’s a third, though, above the rear hatch. Did you notice it?” Juliet shook her head, and he shrugged, “Anyway, you can work on that from a crawl space above us, also accessed from the gun room.”

“Can this thing fly with just the rear drive?”

“Yep, but it’s offline. Totally. Like, I don’t think it was working before these assholes crashed on Dione.”

“Oh? So, it’s not one, but two drives we need to get working?” Juliet sighed, imagining the bits bleeding out of her vault, bits she hadn’t even been paid yet.

“Well, yeah, but hold on, don’t get all stressed out. We don’t even know what’s wrong with the rear drive; it might not need a full refit. Might just be a few parts here and there that need fixing.” He gestured to the corridor leading toward the nose and said, “Check it out.”

“Okay,” Juliet said, walking forward, shaking her head at all the missing wall panels and a wide gap in the plasteel floor where someone had cut through to access some component or another. When she got to the “gun room,” she was impressed by the militaristic simplicity of the layout. Racks and shelves lined the walls, clearly meant to contain ammunition, and she could see the labeled gun access hatches from “G1” to “G8” and on the floor, another hatch that read, “Main Gun.”

Juliet was surprised to see two narrow acceleration couches in the rear corners of the space, but she figured it made sense; this was where the non-flight crew would be during maneuvers, ready to load or service the guns during a lull in combat. As Bennet had described, she found, in a recess on the port-side wall, a metal ladder leading up and down with arrows labeled on the wall “Reactor” and “Main Drive.” Bennet was lurking back in the hatchway, watching her, so she asked, “Those knuckleheads were pirating without a main drive? I thought it was just an auxiliary drive or something.”

“No, it’s a big one. Its shape is deceptive, but yeah, it’s designed to put out about one-point-five times what the VTOL drives do. Well, I mean, if it were working.” He chuckled, shrugging sheepishly at Juliet.

“Right,” she said, dragging out the word as she continued toward the front end of the ship. Again, she passed a short corridor with two hatches and paused, realizing each section of the gunship had hatches like that. “Why so many hatches?”

“In case one section gets breached. The hatches close, and not everyone dies.”

“Sobering thought,” Juliet said, nodding. “Makes sense, though; a ship designed for war probably expects to get shot.”

“Sure, but lots of ships have redundancies like that. Even the Kowashi, big and boxy as she is, has airtight hatches between the major sections.”

Juliet thought about his words, picturing the corridors of the Kowashi, and realized he was right. There were airtight doors, perpetually open, so she’d hardly registered them, here and there, on the big salvage ship. Nodding, she stepped into another short corridor with starboard and port hatches and said, “The officer cabins?”

“Yep. Look in the one on the left, they’re the same, but the one on the right is full of shit; I haven’t gotten to it yet.” Bennet followed close behind her, and Juliet could smell the banana flavoring of his shake on his breath, so she hurried through the port on the left and glanced back at him.

“You’re in my bubble, big guy,” she said, grinning to soften the words.

He shrank back and shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry, I’m just excited. It’s gonna be so damn fun working on this bird. Check out the cockpit when you’re done in there. I’ll take a load of trash out of the other room.”

“Roger.” Juliet turned to look around the officer’s cabin. It was spacious, big enough to walk around in and probably to set up a table and chairs. A bed-shaped acceleration couch, similar to the one in her cabin of the Kowashi, but a bit larger and sturdier, lined one wall, and faux but realistic wooden shelves and a desk were built into the wall on the left. She saw a doorway and, stepping through, found a decent-sized bathroom, complete with a shower. “Jeez, Angel,” she subvocalized, “I could see myself living in here. It’s nicer than my old apartment in Tucson.”

“This ship likely cost as much as several levels of the Helios Arcology to manufacture, so it’s not surprising that it’s well-appointed.”

“When it was new, maybe. This thing’s a relic. Do you really think Bennet can fix it up?” She left the room and turned left, walking up the corridor toward the cockpit.

“I don’t know. He seems competent, and his knowledge of drive and reactor mechanics was well displayed on the voyage from Luna to Dione. What he doesn’t know, he could probably hire out, though that will eat away at the budget for repairs . . .” Angel kept speaking, but Juliet had tuned her out. The cockpit of the gunship differed significantly from the Kowashi’s or the Bumble’s, and her mind had drifted into fantasy as soon as she took it in.

In general principle, it was the same, a pilot seat at the front with a co-pilot or navigator seat behind and to the left, big—cracked—viewscreens lining the front of the curved space, and lots of components and panels lining the rear third of the walls. Still, something was different; something about the aggressive slope of the roof and the big, powerful-looking acceleration couches with their beat-up, but clearly, high-end controls screamed serious business to Juliet.

She stepped around the rear seat to the side of the pilot’s station. After looking at the synthetic fabric, ensuring no dead pirate bits were left behind, she climbed in. She had to lift one leg over the central console with the yoke, and when she sat down, one hand on that worn but still sturdy stick and the other on the form-fitting grip of the throttle, she sank into the gel of the acceleration couch, but it didn’t move to hug her. “It’s not powered up, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. This couch is far more advanced than the ones you’re used to. At a basic level, it operates just as those in the other ships, but if you had a compatible suit and implants, you’d find it a great deal more capable of helping you function inside extreme gravity forces. Assuming it works.”

“Right. I guess I can’t even turn the power on if the reactor’s dead.” Juliet sat back and imagined flying the gunship, all three engines working, eight cannons and a railgun at her fingertips, and a crew to back her up. “Pretty damn cool, Angel. Well, that’s a dream for another day. We’ve got work to do.” With a long, wistful sigh, Juliet hopped up from the couch and made her way back toward the tail of the ship. She caught up to Bennet, his arms full of dirty rags, trash bags, and a big broken plastic contraption, near the “cargo” section.

“What did you think?” he asked as they descended the ramp, and Juliet recovered her coffee mug from the crate she’d set it on.

“It’s something else. I can see why you didn’t think it was just scrap, though. Sure, it’s beaten up, missing a lot of parts, and probably a crazy money pit, but I think it’s a dream worth pursuing. Thanks for the tour, Bennet.”

“Yeah! Keep that enthusiasm when you get your payout for the Bumble and the bounties.” He slapped her on the shoulder, and Juliet stumbled into the crate, sloshing a splash of coffee onto the decking. While she sputtered and frowned at him, Bennet grinned good-naturedly and said, “Seriously, though, keep your expectations realistic. It’s going to be a while before we get this thing looking pretty. I’ll put calls out to some friends in the salvage business looking for parts, but I’m still a week away from knowing what all we need. Shit, maybe more like two or three weeks. The big pieces, though, I’ll know about those within a week.”

Having just salvaged the last few sips of her coffee, Juliet swallowed, leaned against the cargo hold wall near the bottom of the gunship’s ramp, and looked Bennet in the eyes, “So, how much time? We talking a month? Two? Six? Years?”

“Before it can run missions or fly escort?”

“Yeah.”

“Six months minimum, I’d say. Maybe faster if we get really lucky with some spare parts.” He frowned and rubbed his chin. “Shit. I didn’t just blow the deal for you, did I? Should I have sugar-coated it? I’m not that kind of guy. Never could sell anything. Lost my first job because the manager was trying to get me to upsell his protein supplement in the smoothies. I don’t do that.”

“Are you kidding me?” Juliet asked, flabbergasted, “You’re constantly trying to push protein supplements on me!”

“Hey, those are free! I’m sharing, not selling!”

“Oh, brother!” Juliet laughed, shaking her head, but when she looked up and met his gaze again, she smiled and said, “Thanks for the honesty, Bennet. You didn’t ruin anything. It’s probably good for me if this takes a while; I’ve got a lot to do in the meantime.”

Bennet’s silly expression faded, and he narrowed his eyes, nodding. “Starting with your kidnapped friend, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah, starting with her.”

“Right, so, is the guy you’re meeting today connected? Let me come with you.”

“No . . .” Juliet started to refuse, but the more she thought about it, the more she figured it might be nice to have some backup or at least a pair of eyes that this Lemur fellow wouldn’t know about. “Wait, actually, maybe I could use a hand. Maybe you could meet with this guy for me, at least at first, while I do some checking into him. Would you be willing to do that? Sit at a café table and pretend you’re the one interested in rescuing my friend?”

“Not a problem. In fact, I wouldn’t be pretending; I do want to help your friend.”

“Right.” Juliet smiled, feeling a warm spot in her chest—how did she keep getting so lucky, meeting people willing to bend over backward to help her? “Right,” she said again, nodding and gesturing toward the bay door. “Wanna go with me, then? I have a couple of stops to make first.”

“Sure. Let me get my pistol and change my shirt. Meet you at the docking collar?”

“Sounds good, partner. See you at the docking collar.” Juliet offered a lazy salute, one that would have gotten her two hours of PT if Commander Gordon had seen it. She was halfway to the door, Bennet behind her, when her smile fell away, and her eyes went distant, dark thoughts intruding on a happy moment as she remembered the commander and what he’d done . . . and what she’d done to him.