“Back off. We aren’t here for you.”

​

They never listened.

​

A bottle smashed over Altan’s helmet. He blinked at the impact. The man before him snarled in fear, his hand going to his lower back. Altan punched a dent into his skull. Servos whirred happily in his dragonskin as blood began to soak into asphalt. A knife fell from the man’s hand – not even powered. He couldn’t have hurt Altan if he’d tried.

​

“Get that door open,” grunted Cal.

​

Altan stepped over the body to the door behind it. He raised his left wrist to the latch unit and squeezed his glove trigger. A double impact pulsed through his arm, absorbed by the dragonskin. The door slid open on filthy composite tiles, blood-red ceiling lights, and an acidic tang that made it through Altan’s filters to sting his nose. Nebula.

​

“Marcus Hail!” Cal bellowed, speakers crunching and amplifying his voice. “Find us Marcus and we’ll leave!”

​

Dazed faces rose from booths and bartops, turning blue-hazed eyes towards the fresh air. Altan strode inside and felt glass crunch under his boot. His visor display picked out identities one by one, discarding each with a blink of red. His new eye ached at the flashing. The nerve linkage was healing well, but it wasn’t safe to tweak sensitivities yet.

 

“Marcus Hail!” Cal shouted again, stepping in behind Altan. “We know he’s here, you slugs.”

​

Faces blinked confusedly. A man at the bar managed two indistinct syllables. Altan swept the room again, without the facial scanner this time. There – a tall man in a coat, sagging against the far wall. His eyes flicked towards a corner when Altan’s face plate turned away. He wished they’d make this difficult at least once.

​

With a nod, Altan beckoned Cal to the far corner, where an oddly clean line of tile gleamed from under a trash bin.

 

“Good one,” Cal said. “Don’t know how you do it.”

 

Altan moved the trash bin carefully aside – there would be enough of a mess. Cal’s boot cracked the floor like a gunshot, drawing yells of displeasure from the drug-soaked patrons. Altan knelt, wedged a hand in the crack, and ripped a trap door off its sliding track with a buzz of servos. A dark chute of a tunnel greeted him, walled with Heartbreak’s dense, damp soil. Cal nudged him.

​

“You first, kid.”

​

The tunnel was several degrees cooler than the surface. Altan’s eye ached again, but he kept it on as his boots hit dirt. In the dim light his filtered vision showed him barrels, drums, crates, all unlabeled. Drinks, mostly, and likely enough illicit Nebula for a few life sentences. Cal landed behind him with a thud.

​

“Whoa,” he said. “Think we can -”

​

Altan waved him forward silently. Cal stepped away from the hazy bar light, then Altan sprang past him and knocked Marcus Hail to the ground with a shoulder as he made for the exit. He was short, pale, and bore Nebula’s telltale blue veins under his eyes. He gaped up at Altan, shaking hands scrabbling at the floor.

​

“Hey,” he blurted. “I can pay, I swear. I just need – let me have – haven’t been –”

​

Altan’s hand wrapped around the hilt at his waist.

​

“Do it,” Cal barked. “I want a drink.”

​

The dragon’s tooth flickered, hissed, and fell silent. Marcus’s head hit the ground, followed shortly by his body. More blood on Heartbreak today.

​

“Good work, kid. Let’s go.” Cal kicked the body aside and placed a hand on a rung in the tunnel wall. Altan moved to follow, but something flickered in the corner of his display. An empty bottle fell from one barrel and clinked against another.

​

“Just another patchhead,” said Cal. “Leave it.”

​

Something didn’t feel right. Altan stepped across the small room, shifted a barrel, and felt his stomach turn. A tiny girl, crouched in the dust, hands wrapped around a steel pipe that clanged off Altan’s plated legs. She glared up at him, dark eyes harder than they had any right to be, and swung again. Altan shifted his leg and the pipe bounced free.

 

“Leave me alone!” the girl spat, backing herself against a crate. She produced a thin blade from somewhere, holding it low and ready in a stance Altan had seen in a dozen dark alleys. She couldn’t have been more than ten.

​

Altan raised his empty hands. “I won’t hurt you.”

​

“Leave it,” Cal said irritably. “She’ll be fine.”

​

“In a Nebula pit?”

​

“Not our problem.”

​

With his filters, Altan clearly saw the girl’s tattered clothes, scraped knees, and shoes made from plastic packaging. His new eye ached. He’d worn shoes like that once.

​

“We aren’t animals, Cal.” Slowly, he lowered himself to one knee and extended a hand. The girl swiped at it with bared teeth, her blade sliding off the carbon weave of his fingers.

​

“Did you know him?” Altan asked.

​

“Leave me alone!” The girl lunged at him and Altan snapped his head back reflexively as the knife skated off his visor. He grabbed her as she leapt past, pinning her arms to her sides. She squirmed and kicked furiously, jabbing at his wrist with the knife. She’d left a scratch on his graphene-coated visor. That was impressive.

​

“I won’t hurt you,” Altan repeated. “Do you have a place to go? A home?”

​

She hesitated. Altan saw her eyes flick to the body by the tunnel.

​

“No.”

​

“I have a home,” Altan said. “A ship that travels through the stars. We have food and clothes and beds. Do you want to stay there?”

​

“Shard!” barked Cal. Altan ignored him. The girl’s brow wrinkled, and she stopped struggling.

​

“Why do you care about me?”

​

It was his turn to hesitate. He remembered cold nights under plastic and brutal fights in alleys. One of those fights cost him an eye, but it cost the other boy worse.

​

“I’m not sure,” Altan said honestly. He released the girl’s arms, and she remained standing in front of him.

 

“You have beds?”

​

Altan carefully lowered his arms. “Foam pads with sheets. Synthsilk, I think. You could have one to yourself.” Considering what he was actually proposing, he quickly made an addition. “You’d have to help us with our work, though.”

​

She tilted her head. She looked wary, but her anger seemed to be draining fast. “What kind of work?”

 

“Just… some cleaning,” Altan said, rapidly composing what he’d say to the captain. “Our armor gets dirty sometimes. And our… tools.”

​

“Like that?” She pointed at his right hand. Altan grimaced. The glow of his helmet spikes illuminated a light spray of blood and a bone fragment stuck to his plated knuckle.

​

“Yes. Our captain likes to keep things nice.”

​

The girl’s head tilted the other way. “I know how to clean.” She glanced at the body for an instant, then back at Altan. Behind him, Cal shouted something and clambered out of the tunnel. The girl bit her lip for a moment, seeming to think hard.

​

“I’ll come with you,” she said. “But only if I like it.”

​

Altan exhaled. “Sounds like we have a deal, my friend.”