Maybe it was the fact that she saw the two men lifting their guns. Maybe it was a combination of the horrors she’d seen and imagined about a corp wanting to collect an “indentured” pregnant girl. Maybe it was just that she’d already shot a man, and her nerves were frayed. Whatever the excuse, Juliet didn’t hesitate. She pulled the trigger on her SMG and walked her spray of bullets across the torsos of both men. As her gun rapidly clicked and hissed with the explosive discharge of hot gas and DLC-coated lead, the two men also squeezed their triggers.

Juliet, or rather her body, remembered the training she’d received when she’d been with Grave. As she fired, she tucked her chin and turned her body to present a narrower target which also had the secondary effect of shifting Cel out of the primary line of fire. That said, one of the corpo-sec goons hit her helmet just above and to the right of her visor, and the other put two rounds into her, one that tore a groove in her cybernetic arm below the elbow and another into her vest, sending an eye-watering, piercing pain through her ribs.

When her gun stopped clicking, and the action stayed wide open, she finally released her death grip on the trigger and looked through the haze of spent gunpowder to see the EvoGen security officers were down, sprawled against the stuck-open door, more than a dozen holes in each of their vests and dark stains rapidly spreading through their pale green and khaki outfits. Juliet thumbed the button to eject her magazine. Then, awkwardly and gasping for breath, she wormed her left hand under Cel’s unconscious form to fish out a fresh one, jamming it into the MP5 and racking the slide.

She hurried through the door, stepping over the dead corpos, and then pounded down the concrete steps, adrenaline and her nanites helping her to ignore the throbbing pain in her ribs. The corpos’ weapons hadn’t been silenced, and she knew trouble was coming, so Juliet didn’t hesitate as she hit the bottom of the stairs, running as fast as she could without falling over toward the doorway leading out the back of the processing plant. When she crashed into the alley, she saw a chain link fence separating the plant from another industrial building and some workers in environmental suits spraying down the back of a tank truck. She quickly bolted to the right, turning up the alley and running for the sidewalk, Cel bouncing on her shoulder.

When she got to the edge of the building, she peered around the corner, looking for the van belonging to the two corpos. Sure enough, a pale green van with the EvoGen logo on the side was parked in front of the building, but no one was sitting in the driver’s seat. “Either they were the only two, or the driver went in to see what was happening.”

“Don’t leave yet,” Angel replied.

“Huh?”

“Your drone. I almost have it here. I was watching the stairwell from the open window. No one has gone up yet. I believe you might be clear.”

“Oh.” Juliet looked behind her to see the spider drone climbing down from the open window, then looked back around the corner, confirming the van was still empty. She glanced to the left, trying to see to the end of the block where Bennet was, hopefully, waiting in the cab he’d called.

“There he is,” she whispered, spying one of the boxy, silver Atlas Rides cabs alongside the curb. She also saw several people walking on the sidewalk and knew she’d raise some eyebrows while carrying Cel over her shoulder. “Oh well,” she sighed softly. When she looked down, her drone was at her feet, so she scooped it up, tucked it into her backpack pouch, grasped her gun, and started walking.

She moved quickly, stretching her long legs into wide strides, staring at factory workers through her dark visor until they looked away. No one challenged her. No one tried to intervene, assuming Cel might be in trouble, that she’d harmed her, or something like that. All in all, Juliet reflected, it was another sad statement on the lack of empathy that seemed to pervade the city. The side door slid open when she got to the cab, and Juliet handed Cel through to Bennet. Rissa broke into sobs, cradling the unconscious girl. Juliet climbed in as Bennet asked, “Anyone see you?”

“Yeah. I’ll explain when I can.” Juliet motioned toward the front of the cab, where a wide-angle camera sat. “Cab, please take us to the largest shopping center in New Atlas.”

“Beginning route to the New Atlas Shopping Center,” the cab’s AI announced, and then it pulled away from the curb.

“I need to connect to everyone’s PAI for a few seconds. I can’t explain why right now, but I will. Please trust me.”

“Um . . .” Bennet frowned, but then his eyes focused on Juliet’s black visor, and he nodded. “Right. In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?”

“Hmm?” Juliet frowned, shaking her head. “Haven’t heard that one, but I get the gist.” She pulled out her data cable and plugged it into Bennet’s data port at the nape of his neck.

“I assume you want me to install a daemon to hide their ID pings?” Angel asked.

“Right, and put their PAIs to sleep temporarily until you’re sure they don’t have corporate spyware. Also, please order a cab to the parking structure of the shopping center every couple of minutes while we’re en route. We’ll pick a random one to leave with.” While Angel worked on Bennet, Juliet selected a private channel with him on their comms and then subvocalized, knowing Angel would pass it on, “Something happened in there. I can’t say it out loud because I don’t trust the cab or everyone’s PAIs. After I’m done and we get back to the ship, I’ll explain.”

“Hey!” Bennet said, eyes bugging out. “My PAI just went to sleep.”

“Trust me.” Juliet smiled, aware that her mouth was the only part of her face he could see. “Rissa, you’re next. We’ll get Cel some help soon, don’t worry.” She moved over to the seat next to the pregnant girl and gently reached up to pull the synth skin away from her data port.

“What you need with my port?”

“Need to make sure corpos aren’t listening.”

“Oh . . .” Rissa’s eyes went wide, then she nodded emphatically. Juliet plugged into her port and waited until Angel did her work. “You turned it off . . .” Rissa said, panic tinting her words with a hysterical edge.

“It’s okay, Rissa; I told you why. I promise we’ll either fix up the one you’ve got or install a new PAI soon.” As the girl nodded, still gently stroking Cel’s hair, Juliet pulled her data jack out and performed the same operation on the unconscious girl. As Angel finished, Juliet looked at her data deck, saw the battery was down to sixty-two percent, and frowned, not wanting to turn off the jammer. “I think it’ll last.”

When they arrived at the prominent parking structure for the New Atlas Mall, she had Angel choose one of the seven cabs she’d called and, as they were driving away, she said, “Cab, take us to the largest hospital in New Atlas.”

“Setting route to Janice Evans Memorial Hospital.”

“Is that so Cel can get some help?”

“No, we’ll switch cabs again there. We’ll get her some help back on our ship.”

“You’re bringing them to the ship?” Bennet’s scowl, present since she’d climbed into the first cab, deepened.

“Yeah. What else should I do?”

“Lucky,” Bennet hissed, leaning close. “Shiro ain’t gonna like this. We already have enough heat, don’t we? We still have to help your friend . . .”

Juliet glanced at Rissa and saw she had her eyes closed, Cel’s bloody, bruised face resting on her lap. She tried to imagine what it must be like, to have no one, the only person who cared about her bloodied and battered, unconscious. Rissa had no money, no connections, and a powerful corporation after her. It reminded her so much of herself, back when she’d first gotten Angel—only she’d had Angel, and what a difference that had made! She said, “I’m not dumping them. Not after what we did to get them out of there. I’ll pay Shiro or owe him one or something.”

Bennet didn’t say anything; he just rubbed at his short hair and blew out a pent-up breath, also looking at the two pathetic girls. Finally, he said, “He’s gonna throw a shit fit.”

It was nearly an hour later before they pulled up to the curb outside the docking tunnel that led to the Kowashi. Bennet carried Cel in his arms, and Juliet helped Rissa, limping barefoot, make her way to the ship. Halfway there, Angel said, “Your deck is down to five percent battery. You could turn it off; I still have control of the cameras in this area.”

“We’re almost there.” Juliet opted to leave the jammer on. It was also distorting sound, and she figured if someone said a name or mentioned EvoGen, she’d rather some bystander didn’t hear it. When they were safely inside the Kowashi’s airlock, Juliet finally sighed in relief but only briefly let herself relax; she had to get ready to argue her case with Shiro and Alice.

“I’ll take her to the autosurgeon and start a scan.”

“I want to go with!” Rissa said.

“Yeah, relax. We’ll all go. My PAI will run the autosurgeon.” Juliet gently guided Rissa as they walked through the ship’s corridors. She opened a comm channel to the crew and asked, “Shiro and Alice, are you on the ship?”

A few seconds passed before Alice replied, “Yeah. We’re on the bridge meeting with a broker. Talking about the Bumble.”

“What about the auction?” Bennet chimed in.

“We’re just talking. Getting us another option. What’s up, Lucky?”

“I need to talk to you guys.”

“Give us a few minutes to finish up here, and we’ll meet you. Where are you?” Shiro replied.

“I’ll be in the infirmary. We have some company on the ship; a couple of strays I’m helping out. You know, just so you don’t freak out when you see ‘em.”

“That’s what we need to talk about?” Alice asked, but then quickly said, “Never mind. Tell us when we get down there. We’re being rude to our guest.” Then her icon on the ship comms went gray as she turned on her privacy mode. Shiro’s did the same a couple of seconds later.

“Can you turn my PAI back on?” Bennet asked, correctly guessing Juliet had been speaking through comms.

“It’ll come on any second now; Angel set it up so it would reboot when we got to the ship.”

“Cool.” He pressed his hand to the bio lock on the infirmary door. It slid open, and he walked through, sideways to fit while carrying Cel, and then laid the battered girl on the autosurgeon bed.

“Thanks, Bennet.” Juliet motioned to an empty chair near the foot of the bed. “Sit down there, Rissa. We’ll check you out when we’ve got Cel stabilized.” As the girl complied, Juliet plugged into the autosurgeon.

“Initiating a full scan,” Angel announced, and the autosurgeon’s decades-old chrome arms sprang into life, one of them operating a palm-sized terahertz imaging device, another taking rapid blood samples, and a third arm applying monitoring electrodes to several parts of Cel’s body, precisely and mercilessly cutting away her clothing where necessary. “You don’t have to stay plugged in, Juliet. I have wireless access to this autosurgeon now, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Juliet pulled out her cable and then, sighing heavily with exhaustion, stood next to Rissa, leaning back against the wall. She shifted uncomfortably, trying to relieve some pressure on her sore ribs. After a frustrated minute, unable to find a comfortable position, she decided to loosen her vest. As she unpeeled the many velcro straps, a flattened lead bullet fell to the plasteel floor with a clatter. “Huh,” she said, leaning over to pick it up with a pained grunt. When she’d straightened, Bennet was staring at her.

“You got shot?”

“Couple of times,” she replied, showing him the new, deep groove on her plasteel arm. She pocketed the round, then reached up and, with a groan of pleasure, pulled her sweaty helmet off her head, almost crying with relief as blood rushed into her scalp beneath her braids where the helmet’s pressure had long ago rendered her flesh numb. She turned the helmet, looking above the visor near the curve where it rounded over her forehead, and, sure enough, found a six-centimeter scar where the bullet meant for her forehead had been deflected. “Really drives home the value of body armor, you know?”

“You wanna tell me what happened?” Bennet asked, and Juliet got the impression he was very stressed out, pacing back and forth next to the autosurgeon, frowning, clasping, and unclasping his fists.

“I have an initial assessment,” Angel said before Juliet could answer.

“Sec, Bennet. I got a report from the autosurgeon. I’ll have my PAI send it to you, too.”

Bennet looked ready to yell at her, clearly tired of being put off, but he muttered something and looked away. Juliet squinted at him for a minute, almost asking him what he’d said, but she shook her head and studied the readout Angel had put into a new window on her AUI. Cel had a fractured skull, a fractured orbital bone, a hemorrhage placing pressure on her brain, four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and a laundry list of contusions and lacerations. After the injury readout, her bloodwork was listed with one deficiency after another, highlighted in colors from yellow to orange to red. “Angel, can you direct the autosurgeon on what to do?”

“Yes, I’ve established a care protocol. Shall I start?”

“Yes.”

“Those guys were animals,” Bennet said, his eyes refocusing on reality, clearly having just read the same report. He looked at the autosurgeon as it started working on Cel. It applied a tiny drill to one of its arms and rotated into position above her head, and he looked away, adding, “Tell me what happened.”

“Redbot reached for a gun, so I shot him. I took the other guy’s PAI, then, on my way out, I took the first guy’s PAI ‘cause I forgot to have Angel remove any cached images of you.”

“Shit! Thanks, I guess. I wouldn’t have thought of that either!”

“No worries; I didn’t want anything to blow back on you. Anyway, when I was finishing up with that, two EvoGen corpo-sec came through the door. They had guns out, so, well, I shot them.” She pointed to the deep scar on her plasteel arm and added, “And they shot me!”

“Right.” He still wore a scowl but stopped pacing and said, “So that’s why we did the little musical cab trick.”

“Yeah.”

“But EvoGen’s gonna go to the authorities. They’ll have images of these girls. They’ll want to run them against security cam footage, especially at the ports, so they can’t leave the moon. Shit, Lucky! They could be here any second!”

“First of all, the girls kept their heads down, and I doubt EvoGen thinks they have the means to go off-moon. Second of all, I own Port Security’s network! I broke into it a couple of days ago to get ready for when we rescue my friend . . .”

“You what?” Shiro asked from the doorway, startling Juliet into silence. He glared around the small room, his perpetual scowl heavier than ever, and saw Rissa sitting against the wall, her eyelids drooping, her bony arms resting on her taut belly. He stared at the autosurgeon, watching it work on Cel for a few seconds, then he backed into the corridor and said, “Come out here.”

Juliet and Bennet followed him out, and then Shiro closed the door. “Where’s Alice?” Juliet asked.

“Coming. She’s escorting the broker off the ship.”

Bennet groaned. “Shiro, just wait for the auction!”

“We will. He didn’t make a good offer.” Juliet opened her mouth to say something, but Shiro held up a finger. “Wait. Alice is coming. She should hear this story.”

“Boss, you should know . . .” Bennet tried to say.

“I said wait,” Shiro grunted. So they waited. Standing awkwardly in silence, Shiro shrewdly examined Juliet, from the helmet she held under her arm, to her oddly pointy pointer finger, to the disheveled, sweaty state of her hair and face. Several minutes ticked by, and finally out of patience, Shiro blew out an explosive breath. “She must still be talking to him. Go ahead. What’s going on in there?” He gestured to the infirmary door.

Juliet opened her mouth to answer, but he shook his head. “Wait. On second thought, start with Port Security.”

“Well, all right. Do you remember when you asked if you could help with my friend, and I said she’d need a ride back to Luna?”

“Hai.” Shiro nodded.

“You said to make sure an angry kidnapper didn’t come down on you, so I did what was necessary to make sure that wouldn’t happen. I infiltrated Port Security to get access to their network. I can make sure no video record exists that shows us bringing anyone onto this ship. That includes the girls I have in there right now.”

“Those girls? Isn’t one of them your friend? The one you needed to rescue?” Shiro frowned, clearly confused.

“No. I was doing recon last night and ran into them. They were in a bad way, Shiro. One of them is pregnant, and the corp she worked for was trying to force her to give up the baby. They’re a biomedical research company called EvoGen. I offered to help pay for new IDs and figured I was done with the matter. Problem is, the guy they went to for the IDs was a creep, and he beat the hell out of Cel, the one on the table, and then tried to extort me—said he’d turn ‘em over to EvoGen if I didn’t pay up.”

“So you rescued them and brought them here?” Shiro didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look too upset, either.

“Yeah. I guess that’s the short version.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, Lucky. I know I owe you my life, but he deserves to know the rest. About the corpo-sec guys?”

“Corpo-sec?” Shiro growled.

Juliet looked at Bennet, unable to be annoyed by his honesty. He was right; Shiro deserved to know. “Two EvoGen goons showed up, and we got into a firefight. I killed them.”

“Are you kidding me, Lucky?” Shiro cried, slapping his hands to his head, grasping his stiff, short hair, and turning to walk away. It seemed like he felt he had to act, to do something, but he didn’t know what. He turned on his heel and stomped back, practically screaming, “You fucked us! We have to turn you over.” Shiro nodded as though he’d just run the possibilities through his mind and was confirming with himself. “It’s our only chance. We’ll lose the ship if we don’t. We’ll get locked away. You went too far!”

“Hold on a sec, boss,” Bennet said, and it was his turn to sound a little panicked. He looked at Juliet, clearly torn between loyalties.

“They’re not coming!” Juliet said, holding up her hands. “I made sure of it! There’s no video record of us at the scene, we switched cabs a bunch of times, and I turned off everyone’s ID pings. The only chance someone might have picked us up on video is here in the port district when we walked from the cab, but, as I said, I have control of those cameras!”

“This is too much,” Shiro sighed, his hands still clutching his head, his gray-flecked black hair sticking out between his fingers. “Who does that? Who murders people for strangers? Who brings strangers to their home, risking everything? Who are you?”

Juliet felt some heat rising in her neck and cheeks, and she realized it was anger, not embarrassment or shame. She stood up straight, looked Shiro square in the eyes, and said, “I’m someone who can’t stand to see a couple of kids getting used and ruined by a faceless corporation. I’m someone who can’t just turn a cheek and walk away when someone like that pregnant girl falls into my path. Maybe I’m soft, maybe I’m stupid, but I feel like I have to do what I can. I’m not a murderer! I don’t kill people for fun or on a whim; those men I shot today were a threat. I’d be dead or worse if I’d rolled over for them.”

“Millions,” Shiro said, shaking his head.

“Huh?” Bennet asked, saving Juliet the trouble.

“There are probably millions of people who need help in this city. You think you make a difference?” The question was directed at Juliet.

“I made a difference to those two.” Juliet jerked her thumb at the closed infirmary door.

He frowned, but Juliet saw something click behind his eyes, perhaps a little understanding. “They can stay,” he nodded.

“Thank you . . .” Juliet started, but he wasn’t finished.

“They can stay, but you need to go. It’s too much, Lucky. You’re too much. We’ll drop the girls on Luna when we get back, assuming we really are free and clear from EvoGen.”

“Hey, hold up, boss,” Bennet said again, but Shiro whirled on him.

“You be quiet! You’re just as much to blame for this. Why would you allow her to bring this kind of trouble to the ship? Why . . .” Shiro’s tirade was cut short as the ever-present pale-yellow lighting switched to a darker red tone and began to flash.

An alarm tone rang out through the PA system, and the ship’s rarely-heard system AI announced in a calm, oddly-accented, genderless voice, “Alert! Intruders have boarded the ship. Alert! Intruders have boarded the ship.”

“Alice!” Shiro said, reaching a hand to his belt but coming up empty; he wasn’t wearing his pistol.