Bluebird

by Ciel Pierlot

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

**SHORTLISTED for the COMPTON CROOK AWARD, 2023**

Lesbian gunslinger fights spies in space!

Three factions vie for control of the galaxy. Rig, a gunslinging, thieving, rebel with a cause, doesn’t give a damn about them and she hasn’t looked back since abandoning her faction three years ago. 
 
That is, until her former faction sends her a message: return what she stole from them, or they’ll kill her twin sister.
 
Rig embarks on a journey across the galaxy to save her sister – but for once she’s not alone. She has help from her network of resistance contacts, her taser-wielding librarian girlfriend, and a mysterious bounty hunter.
 
If Rig fails and her former faction finds what she stole from them, trillions of lives will be lost--including her sister's. But if she succeeds, she might just pull the whole damn faction system down around their ears. Either way, she’s going to do it with panache and pizzazz.

File Under: Science Fiction [ Independent Women | Robbing Hood | Keep Your Enemies Close | Guns Don’t Kill People ]

Release date: February 8, 2022

Publisher: Angry Robot

Print pages: 444

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

Red Dock

“Twenty kydis says you can’t hit that!” a patron yells over the raucous cheering.

Rig stands on top of a chair that’s leaning precariously against the bar, gun in one hand, mug of she’s-not-sure-what in the other.

The neon lights of Red Dock shine brightly through the haze. When Rig breathes in, her lungs are thick with a mix of crystal smoke and a colorful assortment of gases from the refineries built into the outer walls. In the packed atrium, the air presses in on the thousands of people milling about on this floor alone, to say nothing of the twelve other floors of the spaceport.

The dense shopping area is filled with the sounds of bargaining, gossiping, and drunken slurring, all in a cacophony of different languages beyond just Deit-Standard. Even from her stationary perch inside a publica, she can smell three different types of sweet pastry being fried up, one made with pickled Ascetic plums that have an almost sickly aroma.

Maybe she can bribe one of the many ludicrously drunk people around her into buying her one.

“You’re on!” she cries in response to the challenge. “Prepare to eat your words and also my cute blue ass!”

The crowd cheers. Half of them are so far into their cups they don’t even know what’s going on. They cheer simply because everyone else is. The beauty of drunken solidarity.

Her accuser is a hulking Oriate with what must be twice the usual number of spikes growing out of his skin. He crosses his arms menacingly. “Your mouth is writing a check your gun can’t cash!” he taunts. That’s not even how that phrase goes; yeesh, what an idiot. “Do it with both eyes closed and then I’ll pay you!”

Rig throws back her drink, tosses the mug over her shoulder – there’s another gleeful cheer as it smashes into something – and aims her weapon. The target is a can on a shelf at the other end of the crowded publica. Its patrons part faster than the wind.

Rig lines up the shot.

Closes her eyes.

Her gun is steady in her hands, familiar, a good weight. All it takes is a gentle squeeze of the trigger and…

Crack!

The excited cries hit her ears before she opens her eyes and sees that her bullet has pierced the can.

“Hah!” She points a finger at her accuser. “Eat that, you bastard!”

A frown curdles on his face. He grabs someone’s glass out of their hand and balances it on the top of his head, spreading his arms in triumph because he must surely think he’s called her bluff now.

“Double or nothing!” he declares.

A murmur runs through the crowd and Rig pauses.

“You know that’s risky, right? We’re talking insides on the outside, blood, murder, death, deathy-ness… deathing?” she asks. “Just pay up already and admit I’m fabulous.”

He laughs, clearly drunk off his ass. “You said you could hit anything! You a liar?”

Someone in the press of people yells, “Just pay up!”

“Come on!” he insists. “Do it!”

If she misses, she’s doubtful anyone in Red Dock will want her hide for it. This place isn’t exactly known for tight security or a desire to obey the law. Besides, she’s good at what she does. Or at least that’s her usual brag. She double-checks her grip, makes sure that she’s aiming steady, and scrunches up her face in concentration as she gauges how sober she is. Sober enough.

Alright then.

Let it never be said that she is a coward. Actually, many people have said that, but not today. She raises her gun again and takes as careful aim as she can manage.

Crack!

The can is blasted off the Oriate’s head and the publica descends into a roar of cheering and mindless noise.

With a sour expression, the Oriate pulls out his link and opens up a kydis transfer. Rig’s link is similarly mounted on her wrist, attached to her glove, and all it takes is push of a button to exchange the money.

Her link chimes as it goes through, and she tips an invisible hat at the Oriate. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

He just glares. She’ll take that as a compliment.

“Next round is on my good friend here!” she declares to the crowd before slipping off her makeshift throne and vanishing into the throng of people.

She slides into a stool on the far side of the bar, next to an older woman who’s sipping a glass of something that smells like a swamp mixed with silverite fumes. At her signal, the bartender passes Rig another round of whatever it was she had been drinking previously. She’d ordered an ale, but she doesn’t actually know her ales that well and she’d just pointed at the nearest tap without looking.

“You were quite loud,” the old woman next to her says, sniffing disdainfully into her glass.

Rig winces. “Sorry, ma’am.”

She gives Rig a long, stern glare before finally conceding, “But you are a good shot. What faction are you?”

“Er. Pyrite.” Formerly.

“Hrm. Do you know why you call yourselves Pyrite?”

“…Cause of the god? Cause pyrite crystals spark fire? Cause shiny things are cool?”

“Because you’re all fools digging for gold where there’s only dirt.” The woman gives her another hard look. “I’m from Ascetic. We could do with a shot like you, if you ever felt like joining up with a proper faction. You know, one that doesn’t spend all its time in spires, mindlessly tinkering.”

“Thank you for the offer, ma’am,” Rig replies, because although she’s got a blanket dislike of factions, this woman in particular hasn’t done anything worthy of rudeness. “But although I can’t defend Pyrite, tinkering as a whole can be quite respectable, if you do it with enough smart-assery. And I’m happy right where I am.”

Which is nowhere in particular.

Plus she’s got no desire to go back to any one of those three galaxy-conquering, warmongering, merry bands of bastards. Ascetic, Ossuary, and Pyrite. Lying bastards, terrifying bastards, and bastards out to get her. In that order. They’ve been cutting the galaxy up like a pie for ten thousand bloody years and she’s much happier kicking them in the shins whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The bartender scooches over and takes away Rig’s drink, instead passing her the tab. “Mohsin is ready for you, miss. Best not to make him wait.”

“Thank you very much, good sir.”

She transfers the proper amount of kydis, with a tip, before giving the old woman a casual salute. It’s no crisp, militaristic, proper factioned salute, but it’s good enough for a place like Red Dock.

The bartender jerks his thumb towards the back door.

Rig steps through and instantly finds herself in an elevator. She rockets up maybe five or six floors before stepping out.

This place has none of the clatter of the main publica, the noise replaced by softer music and a low buzz of less rowdy conversation. Wall-to-wall carpeting, hovering chandeliers, and the sound of cards being shuffled for gambling addicts, all dimly lit with red light fixtures. There’s a game of Ascetic roulette being played at a green velvet table to her left and a man setting up holo-pong to her right. A grin spreads across her face as her boots cross from the metal elevator floor to sink into the plush carpets like candyfloss.

She weaves her way through the fancy-shmancy super-secret back-upper room and takes a seat across from a man dressed in a brown leather duster.

“Heya, Mohsin,” she says. “Good to see your ugly mug again.”

He snorts in amusement. “I see you haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’ve gotten prettier.”

He snaps his fingers at the bodyguard standing by his side. The guard is a Zazra, sporting the distinctive pointed ears and black facial markings of that species. Makes sense. She’s seen Mohsin beat the crap out of enough people to know that he doesn’t need protection. But Zazra have other specialties.

The Zazra man holds out one of his hands. How polite of him. “May I read you?”

She nods and tugs her sleeve back, sticking her arm out. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Zazra hands are shaped the same as Rig’s basic five-fingered set-up, but the skin on the backs of their palms is black as the stripes on their faces, rough and leathery, designed to protect their sensitive palms.

This Zazra places his palm gently on her wrist.

His eyes flutter closed. There’s a soft brushing feeling in her mind as the Zazra uses his empathic abilities to read her emotions and see if she’s here to stab them in the back. Or he wants to know if she’s really as charming as she pretends. Six of one.

Damn those abilities are useful. All Rig gets from her Kashrini blood is blue skin and no hair. Not that she’s anything less than proud of her species, but abilities like the Zazra have would be appreciated. Mohsin is half Kashrini as well, and he shares similar sentiments. There’s a blue tint to his skin and he’s got the purple eyes to show for it, but his blonde hair is all human. Makes it easier for him to get contacts sometimes. A lot of humans are too stuck up to deal with anyone who isn’thuman. In their minds, human equals faction. Faction equals good.

Yeah, right.

“She’s clear,” the Zazra says, pulling back and letting her fix her sleeve.

“Are you really surprised?” she asks with a smile. “We’ve known each other how long?”

Mohsin relaxes ever so slightly in his seat. “I didn’t think so, but it never hurts to double check. Policy, and all. Drink?”

“You paying?” she asks. “If so, yes.”

There’s a decanter of Ascetic whiskey sitting on the table, and he pours out two small glasses, sliding one across the table to her. Not her favorite – too carbonated – but she’ll drink it. Honestly, why does Ascetic carbonate nearly everything? Highly unnecessary, in her opinion.

Mohsin sets his glass down and licks the last of the gold liquid from his lips. “So what do you have for me?”

She produces a thumb drive from her pocket and slides it across the table towards him. “As promised. One stolen freighter filled with refugees. Those are the coordinates right there. Should be easy for you to send someone to escort them out of the Dead Zone and to a safe moon somewhere.”

He snatches it up, holding it to the candle fixture on the table and getting a good look at it. With a wave of his hand, he dismisses the bodyguard, who goes back to lurking around their table and glaring at people who look like they might try and approach. “Are they safe?”

She nods. “Yeah. Last I checked in, anyways. Most of them are just refugees fleeing the war, but there’s a couple of kids that ran from a factioned agriworld.”

The Nightbirds, the group she and Mohsin work for, mostly work in people-moving. Getting refugees fleeing the ongoing war to safe planets. Helping former indentureds – like herself – smuggle themselves away from faction homeworlds and agriworlds. Hiding people from the law for as long as need be. When they’re not moving folk from one end of the galaxy to the other, they’re sabotaging every piece of faction tech they can get their hands on, stealing faction intel, breaking up faction bases. Just generally doing everything they can to slow the all-consuming, three-way war that so often puts their people – the Kashrini people – in the line of fire. Each member only has a handful of contacts so that if one of them gets caught they can’t bring down the whole network – a set up that works just fine for Rig, who always has a good deal of fun pretending to conveniently forget things.

The thumb drive disappears into Mohsin’s jacket pocket. “We can get some people to them as soon as possible. It should be secure, so long as we wait for any annoying patrols to calm down a bit first. If they’ve got kids with them, I don’t want to try anything before we know we can get them out safely. How many of them were indentured?”

“All of ’em. Twenty-one. We got their tracker chips out before we moved ’em onto the freighter, but Ascetic is going to be pissed at us.”

“It’s not like we’re taking more heat than normal here. Allthe factions are always pissed at us for freeing their indentured–”

“Or for sabotaging their supply trains,” Rig breaks in. “Or stealing their weapons. Or for coding a virus that got into Pyrite ship systems and made every sound speaker play ‘Rainbow Asteroid Party’ on repeat.”

He chuckles in a rare show of non-grumpiness.

“Hey, it was worth it. Anything to piss them off. Keep them distracted, keep them off their game.” If a Pyrite ship spends one hour pulling their hair out and trying to fix their broken communication systems, that’s one extra hour the Nightbirds have to evacuate a Kashrini settlement that’s about to become a war zone. Rig leans back in her chair. “So what’s my next job? You mentioned that I might actually get paid for this, and to be honest, I could seriously use the kydis.”

Her ship isn’t going to fix itself, after all. There are bad scrapes in the hull, the cannon is a bit roughed up, and the engines are running on nothing more than fumes and what little she can scrape out of the depleted fission chargers. The old girl has a couple more hops left in her, but unless Rig can fill her up soon, she’s going to end up dead in the black. No power means no heat, no oxygen circulation – a combination that makes one very dead Rig.

Fortunately for her, Mohsin isn’t the sort of person to leave her high and dry.

“I’ve got a job lined up for you,” he tells her. “It’s not quite the usual thing. Friend of a friend told me about it ’cause I mentioned you needed cash for ship upkeep. Crate full of merchandise needs to be shifted into Ascetic space.”

While she doesn’t like Ascetic, she has to admit that it’s the enemy territory she’s most comfortable in. She can get in easily, get out easily, and usually has a fun time while she’s there. “Where exactly in Ascetic space?”

“Heart of it. The Ascetic homeworld itself.”

“I know someone there. Haven’t seen her in two months.”

“So I’ve heard. I also heard this friend of yours,” he says with a wink, “has hooked you up with a nice set of clearance codes to get onto the homeworld. Figured you’d be the best bet for this job.”

“And this is… legit?”

“It’s solid. I know lawful work isn’t usually our cup of tea, but I heard your wallet was in a sad spot and thought you might make an exception for this.” He gives her a lazy smile. “I know artifact reclamation is a side project you dabble in.”

He’s right. When Rig has time, she frequently hunts down the bits and pieces that factions have stolen from the Kashrini over the millennia. Jewels that were plucked from the necks of corpses, statues pulled from every place of worship they used to know, all the precious things from stories and legends. She figured that since she’d managed to steal her own research three years ago, then she’d make a pretty good thief.

She’d been right.

She’d gotten a taste of reclaiming things from Pyrite three years ago, and she’s wanted more ever since. They tried to take everything from her, and they’re trying to take everything from the Kashrini. Stopping them, even in small ways like this, is an indescribable satisfaction.

“Where am I picking up the goods?” she asks.

“I can have one of my guys drop the crate off in your ship right now, if you want. I’ll assume you’ve changed the damn passcodes again?”

“You know me so well. Give me the info on who I’m taking this to, and I’ll give you the new codes.”

Mohsin has his link attached to his wrist, the small flash of metal almost hidden in the leather of his gloves. He presses it and a small holographic field pops up, displaying a series of coordinates and what looks to be a letter of introduction. “Transfer done.” He taps a key, and her own link vibrates. “No deadline, but don’t take too long or else he might get skittish and find someone else. You know how these types can be.”

“I’m not green around the ears, Mohsin.”

“It’s why I save all the best jobs for you.”

“Aw. You really do care.”

“You’re one of the best I know. You’ve proved that time and again over the years. It’s less caring and more… practicality?” He shrugs. “What can I say, you’re good at getting the job done.”

How sweet. “Do we need anything from Ascetic space that I can get while I’m there? You know me, I like to linger on that giant garden they call a homeworld.”

“Not that I–” Blood drains from his face as he stares at a point over Rig’s shoulder. His hand automatically reaches into his jacket, wrapping around the pistol he has holstered under his shoulder. Not drawing, just waiting. “Ah shit.”

Rig freezes. “Are we blown?”

“Yeah, and not in the fun way.” He lowers his hand. “Turn around, but slowly. Anyone you know?”

With a forced casual air, as if she’s only getting a look at the bar’s menu, she tilts her head at just the right angle to get a glimpse of the unwanted guests.

Two humans are loitering at the edge of the bar, armored and armed. Bounty hunters? No, they’re too – for lack of a better word – clean looking. Clean and shiny armor at that; they’re not worried about standing out. Her eyes narrow as she scans them, looking for a symbol. A flaming gear is emblazoned on their chest plates.

Shit.

“Pyrite,” she hisses under her breath.

Rig is longing to leap out of her seat, ready to draw her weapons and shoot when Mohsin gives her a stern look. It as good as glues her back to her chair.

He shakes his head. “Don’t.”

“Mohsin, if they’re after us–”

“Are they? And for the sake of the gods don’t draw attention to yourself. They might pass us by if we stay seated and careful,” he mutters.

“I wasn’t followed, okay?”

“I didn’t say you–” He curses under his breath. “How would you know if you were followed anyway? The whole point of someone successfully following you would be stealth. You wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Weren’t you just the one telling me all about how great at my job I am?”

“Yeah, when it benefited me to say it, sure!”

“Well yelling at me isn’t going to help any, now, is it?”

“Neither is yelling at me!”

“Okay then!”

“Okay!”

Their whispered shouts cut off as the music in the chattering bar slowly wells down. They weren’t the only ones to notice that Pyrite showed up. Funny how faction soldiers can really kill the mood.

She knows that if she can get behind some good cover, she can probably outshoot them. Pyrite armor has weak spots, and she knows them all. The real question is how much back up they’ve brought. Dealing with thugs is a whole different numbers game than dealing with one of the factions. Factions have armies. For all they know, Pyrite forces could have the entirety of Red Dock surrounded by now. She tries to run through scenarios in her head – how many can she take out, how does she best run from them, what’s the fastest way back to her ship?

“You shoot now, and you’ll get a hundred civilians caught in the crossfire,” Mohsin sternly reminds her. He jerks his head towards his Zazra bodyguard and says, “Give them the standard welcome greeting and see if you can find out who or what they’re here for. I’m getting her out of here before bullets start flying.”

“Good luck,” the Zazra replies before striding over towards the two enemies, drawing their attention.

The waiting is the worst part. Rig doesn’t turn around to look at the Pyrite soldiers again, she doesn’t want to attract their attention, so she just has to sit here. Like a stump. While Mohsin watches discreetly over her shoulder until his Zazra bodyguard has done a sufficiently good job of distracting the targets. She wants to sit perfectly still, but even that would be a tell, so she casually sips at her drink. The alcohol sours on her tongue.

Her mind unhelpfully dredges up memories of Pyrite torture instruments, and she has to kick the thought away before it makes her sick.

After an eternity, Mohsin slowly stands up, his posture forcefully relaxed. “I’m going to go ask my bodyguard what the trouble is,” he tells her, each word calm and deliberate. “Wait forty seconds after I leave before you head to the bar. Tell the bartender that I’m ordering a crystal shot and she’ll get you out of here.”

“Got it,” she replies, her hand so tight around her glass that one twitch of her fingers would shatter it into dust.

He leaves.

She counts down the seconds, resisting the urge to turn her head around and see what’s going on. Mohsin will be fine. The guy practically runs this place, he’s carved out a business for himself here over the years. Half the usual punters that come through here know who he is and would whip out a gun in his defense. There’s nothing unusual about him stopping a couple of Pyrites who’ve wandered into his bar.

She tries to tell herself that this is going to be fine.

Finally the allotted time passes. She grabs her glass and stands up, holding her head low so that her face isn’t easily visible.

She heads to the bar, making sure she doesn’t move like she’s in a hurry, that she keeps her steps nice and even. She doesn’t want to attract attention by appearing as though she’s running. She only glances over her shoulder once. It looks like the Zazra and Mohsin have successfully drawn the soldiers’ gaze towards a security monitor on the wall, as if they’re actually trying to help them. Knowing Mohsin, the monitor doesn’t actually work – or if it does, it’s rigged.

The woman tending bar gives her a smile as she steps up. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Yeah.” Rig sets the empty glass down on the counter and hopes that this works. “I need a crystal shot for Mohsin.”

“Sure thing.”

With a professional smile, the woman steps aside to let Rig behind the bar. She presses a button hidden on the underside of the countertop and a hidden hatch on the floor slides open, revealing a ladder.

“Thank you,” Rig tells the bartender, slipping a few kydis into the woman’s hand. “For your troubles.”

Then she jumps down onto the ladder.

The hatch above her head is closed again and her world is plunged into darkness.

Only after her eyes adjust can she see the dim light fixtures built into the sides of the vertical tunnel. Her footsteps on the ladder rungs echo in the metal corridor as she descends, keeping her eyes firmly on her hands to avoid slipping. She doesn’t know how long this tunnel is or where it leads, and if she falls she very well could die. Still, better a fall to her death than the slow tortures Pyrite will come up with. They have no moral boundaries, no scruples when it comes to violence, and no shortage of fancy devices to play around with.

She knows better than anyone what they’re capable of.

All their overclocked guns, clever bombs, doomsday buttons – she had a hand in all of them at some point or another.

Relief floods through her when her feet finally hit solid ground and she can step off the ladder. Short-lived relief, however. She’s not out of the asteroid field yet.

Noise and lights flicker in from ventilation grates set into the floor. This tunnel must be in the airways. She pries open one of the panels to let herself pass through, putting the sheet of metal back in place once she’s crossed through into a separate ventilation shaft.

She’s pretty sure she’s nearing the starboard lifts; all she has to do is keeping heading in that direction and then she can start making her way down towards her ship.

The noise of people talking and moving about fades as she moves through a more cramped section of air vent. Good news for her. It’ll be better to drop down from the ceiling in a relatively deserted part of the spacedock than land on top of some poor folk who didn’t sign up to have a random Kashrini woman hit their faces with her boots.

She reaches down and starts prying open the grate beneath her feet. It’s stubborn, but she gets it all the way off, shifting it to the side and looking down to make sure the area below is clear.

She drops down.

She lands in the middle of a quiet section of the spacedock. Only a few people are milling about; they quickly look the other way and pretend as though they don’t see her spontaneously appearing in their midst. In a place like Red Dock, most just want to mind their own business and ignore what isn’t either profitable or hilarious.

The elevators are nearby, and she gets on the next one heading to the lower levels.

Every second she’s in the elevator is a second at which she’s convinced those Pyrite soldiers are going to jam its controls and it’s going to stop and she’s going to be trapped in this because it’s such an obvious kill box – she takes a deep breath.

She hits level five with her palm on one of her guns, the cold grip of the semi-auto pistol pressed so tightly into her hand that it’ll leave a pattern imprinted on her skin.

No one’s here – not for her, at least. It’s packed to the next galaxy and back, of course, just with tourists and criminals and the standard bunch of ne’er-do-wells. No sign of the two soldiers from Mohsin’s bar, and as she scans the throngs of people, she can’t see anyone else wearing unusually clean armor or the Pyrite symbol.

Her heart pounds.

As she walks through the crowded atrium again, she does another check of her body language – still relaxed, still inconspicuous. She tugs her headscarf up, just a little bit. Enough to make it difficult to get a closer look at her face, but not so much that she looks like she’s actively trying to hide her appearance. It’s an art form, one that she is usually better at. She pinches herself. Freaking out isn’t going to help her. What will help is keeping her cool and staying focused.

All she needs to do is get to her ship without incident. Then she’s in the clear.

Pyrite has sent people after her before, she reminds herself. They’ve never managed to stay on her tail for very long. She’s got a dozen friends with safe houses and hidey holes scattered across the galaxy. They’ll never pin her down and they’ll never take her back. She can make it.

Color flashes in the corner of her eyes, the red and blue of Pyrite’s symbol.

She freezes in her steps, her hand a moment away from drawing her weapon, cursing herself for letting them get so close–

Click.

A rifle is pointed at her head.

“You are under arrest.”

Even her lungs seem to stop moving. Her eyes dart to the man pointing a weapon at her and she can see the shiny red armor underneath a civilian coat. They’re hiding in the crowd; of course she didn’t notice. Why couldn’t she use her brain for one minute and realize that’s what they’d be doing? It’s what she’d do, after all. After so long chasing her, she should have expected that they’d pick up on a few of her tricks. Half her usual kit would take civilians out in a burst of fire, and she refuses to drag a bunch of innocent people in her mess. All she’s really got are her guns.

What can she do?

Two thoughts filter to the surface. Firstly, that they are going to take her alive. If she’s dead, she can’t give them the research – her research – that they want. And second, that there are more than just this one.

“I understand,” she tells the soldier.

Deep breath in.

She flashes her left arm up and wraps it around his wrist, digging into the soft spots between his armor until she hears something snap and the gun drops. Her right hand goes for one of her guns. She spins on the balls of her feet, pushing the man to his knees and yanking his arm back until the slightest movement by him would cause it to dislocate.

She puts her gun to the back of his head.

“Shoot me, and your friend dies!” she calls out. They’re listening. She knows they are. “I’m not messing around!”

A scream goes out through the atrium and people begin to panic.

“Stand down,” a new voice says.

Three more Pyrite soldiers emerge from the crowd, weapons in hand and aimed straight at her. The crowd scatters like a school of fish facing a shark, but there’s nowhere to go. The atrium isn’t designed for mass evacuation. There’s no flashing sign marked ‘exit.’ The crowd parts away from the confrontation, sure enough, but they can’t get far.

One of the Pyrite soldiers reaches out and snatches a civilian.

Fuck.

He holds the woman in one arm, and with the other puts a pistol to her temple. “Release our comrade and stand down. Or else we’ll kill her. You’re opposed to civilian casualties, are you not? We were told you no longer have the… taste for that sort of thing.”

Rig’s hand is shaking.

The civilian woman opens her mouth. Rig braces for her scream, but instead the only sound that comes out is a calm:

“I suggest you release me.”

Rig blinks.

The Pyrite soldiers glance down at the woman, their helmeted faces reflecting her dispassionate features. The roar of the crowd quiets. Everything seems to fade away as if the galaxy is focusing on the unfamiliar woman. Does she not know what sort of things Pyrite will do?

The woman – a Zazra, like Mohsin’s bodyguard – looks down at the arm across her neck with apathetic disdain. “I won’t ask again.”

She glances between the soldiers, one eyebrow arched in a silent question. Their blank helmets turn to look at one another and Rig can only imagine that the confusion on their faces is a mirror of her own.

When none of them reply, the Zazra lets out an exasperated sigh.

“Fine.”

She moves.

Her body is almost a blur as she grabs the soldier’s arm, drops to one knee, and throws the large man over her body like a sack of feathers. His back smacks against the ground with the sort of bone deep crack that would have made Rig wince if she weren’t staring, slack-jawed, as the woman brings her boot down on the man’s helmet. There’s a metallic groan of the helmet giving way and then a wet squelch that makes Rig gag.

The Zazra turns to the other two soldiers.

One shoots – she’s already dodged before he pulls the trigger. She twists around his gun to grab the barrel and then uses it to yank the soldier towards her, letting him fall into her fist. The chest plating caves into his solar plexus with a sickening crunch beneath her hands. She spins around, using the body she’s holding to block the rain of bullets that the last soldier unleashes upon her, and then she tosses the corpse onto the remaining soldier.

He throws his dead comrade to the side – just in time to get a spinning kick to the head.

The man goes down.

Blood as red as his armor splatters the ground beneath his shattered helmet. ...