From ODS Halcyon to the ready ring was a cool five-hour float, barely worth remembering. He’d put himself in standby for the single-burn and only noticed in passing that Woojin was cheating at cards with Lingo.

Nothing egregious. Just a quick sleight of hand so well-practiced he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. The hand was insignificant compared to what they were about to get paid.

The burn had come and gone. Now they were dropping.

“You sure this piece of shit’s gonna get us there? Creaks like Lingo’s ma’s hips after a long night with yours truly.” Grim yelled over the cabin noise as plasma began building on the hull.

Niko watched it play out through the HUD of his helmet.

Woojin cocked her head and tapped the side of her helmet with a finger slicked in black sealant, instructing Grim to put his helmet on and wire up.

Grim looked at Niko. Just as thin as the next spacer, even with this smooth moisture guard layer, his head looked like it’d spent years in a helmet that was a size too small.

“Just think, Kid. Your mom was screaming my name as you were being born into the universe just like this. Explains the way you look at least.” His big stupid grin vanished into his flight helmet, while his fingers reached up for the comms jack.

Kid.

No one on the ship knew anyone’s real name, and he was no one’s kid. Grim had no idea what he looked like either. As far as Niko Dray cared, as long as these goons did their jobs and he got his split, they could call him whatever they wanted. Crack whatever jokes they wanted.

Bring it back or don’t come back, he told himself, and smiled as his overlay tagged Grim with a cartoonish purple monster on his shoulder. Pixelated, crass speech bubbles drifted up into the tight space over his head, each line berating Grim for his low-life insecurities.

[Check?]

[What is it, Grim? Kind of busy up here,] replied Woojin from the cockpit.

[Just wanted to see if I could get the stewardess to bring me one last bevie before we land.]

Woojin ignored him, her full attention was aimed at making the storm’s inversion window. Green-lined telemetry and glitching meteorological maps filled the screens Niko could see from his seat, as the dropship flipped over and a red pip illuminated the edge of his retinal overlay.

[Don’t worry, Kid. Everything’s fine. Ol’ Wooj can ride the leather off a Dellius stim-bull. She can handle a little wind.]

[The more you talk, Grim, the more I think you’re compensating for something other than your insecurities.]

[We’ll see about that, rookie. You just keep focused on getting us that data. I’d hate to do all the work and leave you explaining why you still deserve your share.]

[Shit, Grim. This is your first time too.] Niko watched the copilot twist back around to the front of the ship.

[Damnit, Lingo! I’m trying to make an impression on the Kid back here.]

[Some impression,] mocked Woojin.

The dropship shook like it was struck by something twice its size. Niko’s head jolted to the side and slapped the side of his jumpseat headrest. His vision flickered, as he shook his head. His fingers gripped the shoulder harness handles, for the little good it did him.

Three minutes later they punched through terminal descent.

[Cutting transponder now.] Lingo sounded exhausted. [Touchdown in two minutes. Keep your helmets on, but we can switch to secure satcom.]

Niko pulled the plug from the side of his helmet and watched his overlay shimmer with refreshed data feeds and location services.

[Coming around,] said Lingo.

Woojin wasted no time. [Alright, strap check. We’re on final to the platform. Surface winds are one-five knots variable, gusting two-five. Pressure is climbing—one-zero-one-eight and rising fast. Visibility about ten klicks through salt haze. Temperature four Celsius. Sea state looks calm but we’ve got a three-meter swell under it. Inversion window is open, but it’s a thin one. Best guess twenty-two minutes. I hope you girls brought your swimsuits, otherwise you’re going to be spending a month in Halcyon’s clinics.]

The line went dead and Woojin yanked the cable from the side of her helmet.

There were no windows, so Niko waited for the clap and grind of mag-cleats snapping to the rig’s metal deck. When they did, all of the inertia in his body slammed hard to his right. The shoulder harness flexed just enough to not snap a rib and then released.

[Let’s go! Let’s go! We’re on the clock,] announced Grim, already on his feet and slipping the side door back.

The wind wasted no time in spraying the inside of the dropship with salt water. Niko followed Grim outside and adjusted his optics to the low light.

[Fuck me. You seeing this?] The words slipped out of his mouth.

Grim didn’t answer. He was staring at the horizon too.

The storm lines reached ten, maybe fifteen klicks high. Thick stratiform layers slicing through the pale sun—the hard bite of wind that rolled unbroken from the Furious Fifties. Niko’s overlay told him it was early afternoon, but the sky was slate gray over black water.

A fist punched him in the shoulder and then pointed to a violent purple sign at the far side of the landing pad. Before he had time to read it or see who’d hit him, he was pushed towards the entrance.

[Get going!]

It was Lingo just behind him.

Niko turned and was surprised to see the echo with a rifle slung on his shoulder.

[The hell are you going to do with that?] asked Grim.

Lingo pointed off the platform, sighting past the ice-crusted guardrail, salt frozen in pale veins along the windward rail.

[Bird hunting. Target practice.]

The group stared out into the edge of the storm. Niko could just make out a cloud of faint black specks riding the currents. He looked at Grim.

No time to waste.

Grim was at his side when they reached the door—he hit it hard, recoiled, and Niko started working the digital lock.

Less than a second.

The handle turned, and the door blew open.

Niko pushed Grim through first and then slammed the door behind them.

He found the light on his flight helmet and watched Grim slide down the stair railing in front of him.

[Careful. You tear that weatherproofing and it’s going to cost you most of your cut, Grim.]

[Worry about your damn self, Kid,] he retorted. [Now where’s the damn light switch for this place?]

He wasn’t going to waste his time with looking. Niko pulled up the stolen blueprints for the rig and let his eye align the schematic. Kinetic energy pumps. Desalination vats. Evaporate scrapers. Niko was off running before the lights came on.

He needed to get to the hatch on the other side of the abandoned crew quarters.

[Can you believe they dropped this beast here? Same way we came in. The stones it took to build something like this and then just drop in from LEO.]

Light flickering, Niko turned the corner and pushed his way through the tight gap in the bunks. Salt-stiffened cord talismans still hung next to the curtains—tide-knots the Kincepts left when the last crew rotated out.

[Someone made the call to abandon it too, Grim.]

He swung his hip out from between the last bunks and turned the corner. The hatch was already open. Niko retightened the straps on his gloves and rode the ladder straight to the server farm deck, below.

[Wooj. Lingo. I’m in.]

[You better hurry. Wind is picking up out here, and those walls are getting a hell of a lot closer.]

Niko turned around. The data farm was massive. The lowest level of the energy rig was filled wall-to-wall in server stacks. Blue lights blinked in the dim like optics coming online for the first time. First access. First addiction.

[I need row AG. D… E… F…] He turned right and sprinted. [Stack 115, 125, 135—]

[Hey, Kid, count to yourself. I’m working here too.]

He could hear Grim’s heavy boots stomping across the room’s metal deck plates too.

Got you!

Niko popped the door on the stack and pulled the jack from the side of his neck. He jacked into the server and started downloading everything from the stack’s storage array. Transaction logs. Communication scripts. Sign-offs. Write-offs. And then bingo he found them. Employment records.

[Time check?]

[You have it?] asked Lingo.

[Time check!] he asked again.

There was a momentary delay and then the words came back with a little static. [Eight and a half minutes.]

Niko pulled the hardline and was about to stab the next server, when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. A blinking light—one that didn’t fit the pattern of the server farm. He stood up and walked over to it.

It was a grisly thing. Decomposed, its arms and legs had shrunk to pale paper-wrapped sticks. Its organs had liquified and then dried until they were barely a flaking stain on the floor.

Niko grabbed the corpse unit’s head. The skull was mostly intact, but he found a plate on its left temporal lobe.

“You know more than you’re telling me, don’t you?”

Niko crushed the bone at the edge of the plate and picked the lip of the plate out. It didn’t take much. The plate fell away, and just like he’d expected he was staring at a memory core. An old one, but it was in good shape. No corrosion.

A quick tap and a twist and it was sitting in the palm of his hand.

[On my way out!] yelled Grim. [Let’s go, Kid! Time’s running out.]

[Right behind you.] echoed Niko.

Up the ladder and through the bunks, he could feel the rig starting to sway as the winds picked up outside. He imagined the calm ocean starting to swell and checked the clock in the corner of his overlay.

He pushed himself to move faster. The timer in his HUD ticked down. Fifteen minutes until inversion collapse.

Wind vectors were already spiking. Takeoff probability dropping by the second. Static thresholds climbing.
It wasn’t something he wanted to experience.

He turned the corner and saw Grim’s back out in front of him. He was catching up to the thin man, as he watched him stumble at the base of the stairs.

[Careful, Grim.]

[Ah, my overlay is acting all weird,] he grabbed his head like it hurt and stomped up the steps to the outer door.

Niko was just behind him. He was just about to say he hadn’t noticed anything wrong with his overlay, when the low-light optical settings reset. He threw a hand out and caught himself on the rail before the next step took his teeth.

The stairs were dark again, as if the lights had been turned down. He made the last couple steps and caught the heavy metal door with his forearm, as Grim let go of it. It slammed into his shoulder, and then he needed to hold on to it. The wind swirled around him. Instantly he felt cold, all the warmth in his body had been ripped out of him.

[Where are they?]

Grim’s words seemed distant, as Niko focused on shutting the door and making sure he wasn’t pushed off his feet.

[Where’s who?]

[The flight team. Woojin. Lingo. I see the dropship, but— Shit, man, I can’t fly that thing.]

Looking around the top of the rig, Niko didn’t see the other two either. He leaned into the wind and looked around the corners of the platform, while Grim checked the other side of the dropship.

[Did they go over?]

They looked over the edge of the rig. It was possible, but the weather didn’t seem that bad yet. Still, maybe it was possible a larger swell or gust had caught them unexpectedly.

[You’ve gotta be joking!] yelled Grim, forgetting that he was still wearing his helmet and raising his voice wasn’t needed. [Ahhh!]

Niko turned and watched Grim drop to his knees. His head in his hands, he was punching the side of his helmet.

[Ahhhh!]

[Grim, what’s the ma— Ahhhh!] he dropped to his knees, as searing pain shot through the back of his eyes. [What— the— hell— is— that?]

Everything went black. All he could hear was both of them fighting back the pain, and then all he could hear was his own voice.

His sight returned with a simple system reboot notification across the center of his vision. The helmet’s internal HUD struggled to make sense of missing inputs while his retinal display came back online and tried to reconnect to satcom.

At least the pain stopped. Niko took a moment to spool down his nerves. Once his personal diagnostics were back up, he dosed himself with anti-cortisol and told his onboard programs to run anti-viral sweeps.

Reloaded, his optics came back online. Ugly white font, opaque modals, and default interface attacked his expectations. It’d been years since he’d flashed his eyes with his implant’s safe mode, instead of using an overlay skin.

He tried to turn down to the whites, but they seemed unresponsive.

It made the weather look even darker than before.

[Kid.] Grim’s voice was steady. [Hey, Kid, stand up. Look.]

Eyes watering, he blinked away the reflexive wash of optic glide-gel and looked to his right. He found Grim standing upright, facing Woojin, Lingo, and someone he’d never seen before.

The old man stood with authority but waited patiently for Niko to collect himself. Meanwhile, Woojin stood behind him to the side, while Lingo was still looking down the scope of his rifle out into the storm.

[Did you—] he started to ask.

Crrrack!

Lingo’s rifle split the howl of the wind, and he casually loaded another round into the chamber.

[Yes. I was able to deactivate your retinal overlays.] The man wasn’t wearing a helmet but was still tapped into their comms channel.

Niko stood up and stared at the man’s face. Hard lines creased his face from the corners of his mouth down to his jaw. A direct contrast to the angry red scars traversing his right temple and what was left of his ear. Dark hair, darker eyes. There was the faintest shimmer of something around his head, something protecting him from the moisture—perhaps more. Blue digital light flickered across his pupils, programs running in constant dialogue with the subnet.

[You can call me Kiyose.] He paused briefly, as if giving them a moment to ask a question that never came. [I will need to see the data you’ve collected for me.]

[For you? This is your op?]

The old man closed his eyes, his patience wearing thin. [Yes.]

Grim looked at Woojin. She nodded once.

[Fine. If it gets us out of here.]

Grim sent the files to Kiyose through the group’s wireless.

Niko could see the old man download the files from their channel on a small bone white rectangle. He pushed the pane into the edge of his overlay and waited.

[This is all of it?] asked Kiyose, the blue light in his eye still flickering, working overtime.

[Yeah, that’s it. Like you asked.]

The wind swept the space between them. Salt water mist sprayed them from the left, and it was then that Niko could see Grim’s weatherproof coating had been damaged under each of his arms.

Every second the other man was out in the water, the greater the chance of his body being ruined. He told himself, Grim had to know.

Crrrack!

Lingo’s rifle shot again and made Niko jump.

He looked out into the storm, trying to see whatever the copilot was aiming for.

There was a zipp in the air. Grim’s body collapsed on the landing pad.

Niko’s first instinct was to try to check on the other man, but Woojin’s voice pulled him out of his thoughtless reaction.

[He’s dead, Kid. Nothing you can do for him now.]

He stepped back and looked out at the storm in the direction Lingo had shot his rifle. He could still see the cloud of black specks and started to wonder if they were birds at all.

[Show me what you’ve collected.] Kiyose’s stare told him he wasn’t going to be asked again.

He knew they were running out of time, which meant the others did too.

Niko sent his data files over through the wireless and watched the old man pull down the data. It was good data. The employment records alone were worth a small fortune.

[Is this everything?]

Niko was about to nod, but then he watched Woojin’s eyes drift down for a split second. He remembered he had the memory core wrapped tightly in his fist.

His grip was so tight.

He held his hand out and opened his fingers, careful not to let the wind sweep the small cylinder from his grip.

Kiyose stepped forward and held out his gloved hand, the leather palm embossed with a symbol—a logo he was only barely familiar with.

[Give it to me. We’re running out of time,] said the old man.

Niko placed the implant in the glove and watched it disappear into the man’s long fingers.

Kiyose looked down at his fist, pleased with himself but not so simple as to show it.

[I’ll give you a choice. You can stay here. Or you can get on the dropship and come with me.] The old man turned around and started walking back to the transport. [Don’t take too long deciding.]

He watched Woojin and Lingo fall in behind the old man. The wind was picking up speed, and he could hear it scream as it crossed the open barrel of Lingo’s shouldered rifle.

Grim was dead.

There was nothing he could do about that.

Looking back at the purple sign hung over the heavy door, Niko remembered the wasted corpse in the server farm below. Whatever its last days had been like, half-death hadn’t saved it from a useless end.

Niko could see Woojin and Lingo spinning up the sluice jets. Black fluid byproducts pumped from the fusion engines, igniting as they cycled back through the intake.

He ran forward, grabbed the sliding side hatch, and slammed it shut behind him. He sat down and pulled the shoulder harness down over his head.

He couldn’t see Grim’s body anymore, but he knew it was a matter of moments before it was washed away.

The mag-clamps released from the rig. The thrusters pressed him tight against the back of his jumpseat, as a devilish purple monster laughed at him from the floor at his feet.