“Did you file the claim?” Shiro asked through crew comms, his words chasing Alice’s announcement almost immediately.

“Of course. We’re definitely first in line. Good news is I can have us down there in twenty minutes; bad news is we rounded the curvature a while ago, and I don’t know where our company is.”

“If only we could afford a sat drone or two . . .” Aya said, and Juliet had a feeling this was a sore spot for her.

“All right, we can’t mess around. Lucky, I’m sending you the wreckage site data; if anyone else cares, here are the images I just picked up. Get yourselves somewhere you can strap in. Gs shouldn’t be bad, but it might get bumpy. Atmosphere is thin, though, so not bad.”

“Winch and cables are set,” Shiro said. “I’m heading to the bridge for the landing.”

“Heading to my quarters.” Bennet waved to Juliet as he began to limp-jog after Shiro.

“Me too. Lucky?” Aya asked, casting a backward glance.

“Nope. I’m getting into that exo. I wanna be ready to go when we touch down.” Juliet waved and started toward the no-longer-welding rig, grabbing her EVA suit’s helmet and her SMG on her way. Getting through the bulbous plastiglass hatch with her suit’s battery and oxygen pack on was a tight squeeze, but she managed. Still, she had to sit forward on the edge of the seat, and everything was uncomfortable and a bit awkward. “Gotta make it work,” she grunted, jerking out a couple of extra feet of harness, forcing it around herself, despite her bulk.

“How’s the footage look?” she asked Angel.

“Take a look; it’s quite impressive, really.” Angel displayed a highly magnified image of the wreckage site, and Juliet whistled. If she were reading the scale correctly, the downed gunship had left a track nearly twelve kilometers long in the glittering ice of Dione’s surface. More, it had ended up in a crater, the nose embedded in the far wall after it had, apparently, slid into it. Alice had been right—the ship was mostly intact, with only a few plating scraps and the broken landing struts left behind in the wake of its crash landing.

“The nose has to be smashed, though—do you think the pilot lived?”

“I don’t know. As you can see, five meters or so of the fuselage is buried in the crater’s wall. According to the data I found on the sat net, the ship has a sizeable crew compartment and active-duty acceleration seats for four crew. I would estimate that the force of the impact was not enough to kill all crew outright. However, you can see the hull is badly scraped and missing much of its plating—the active radiation shielding would be badly compromised, and if they’ve been there for as long as Alice’s friend says, anyone who survived the crash would be long dead from exposure.”

“That’s assuming they had four crew. I mean, they were pirates. They could have been flying heavy or with just the pilot, I guess.” Juliet stared at the ship, primarily dark green, though scraped-up and with many noticeable hull patches from decades of shoddy maintenance. It was built like a shark with two short struts on either side on which big, round thrusters hung, clearly designed to rotate to allow for vertical takeoffs and landings. The left-hand—port, Juliet reminded herself—thruster was blackened, and the armored plating on the top side was ripped, scarred, or missing.

“I believe the Kowashi will fit in that crater and, if Alice can position us here,” Angel drew a red circle on the image Juliet was still studying, about thirty meters from the downed vessel, but near where the crater wall curved around, “I would predict the pirates will set down beyond this ridgeline above the crater, here.” Again, she drew a red circle, about two hundred meters from where the wreck was, up on the crater's edge behind a sort of jagged row of narrow hills.

“I guess they could lay on that ridge and snipe us. Will we see them coming down?”

“From a distance, perhaps, though they may approach the moon far away from this site and skim the surface to land there. A single drone in the air will solve that.”

“Send this to Alice, please. Tell her your idea for the drone, too.” Just as Juliet finished speaking, the ship began to vibrate, and she felt herself jostled back and forth in the rig’s seat. “Is she already taking us down?”

“It appears so. I’m sending her my recommendations.”

“Will I have any trouble mounting that ridge in this rig?”

“No, not in the light gravity.”

Juliet continued to stare at the image of the landing site, then, as her eyes drifted over the army-green shark of a ship again, she said, “Is that why it crashed? That burned-out thruster?”

“Perhaps. Though, it should have been able to function with one drive offline. It’s possible that whatever caused that damage caused a failure in the powerplant—the He-3 reactor. They may have had to purge the core. I can see electrical scoring all along the hull. A powerful EMP or simply mismanaged maintenance, shoddy replacement parts, and decades of neglect could have caused a system-wide failure in a combat scenario.”

“Can you even get spare parts for a ship like that?”

“Yes. Some specialty companies build parts for Takamoto-era ships, though they come at a premium and often require a significant wait. Some original parts are not easily replicated with today’s technology, but one might find used replacements in scrapyards.”

“Like what?” Juliet’s curiosity was piqued, and she enjoyed the distraction as the ship descended to the little moon’s surface.

“The reactor, the drives, the main gun on the nose—a hundred other small components that have similar functionality to products on the market today but with smaller footprints and more durable, versatile tech. Some of these ships had nanite swarms capable of minor repairs. Such things are possible today, even with the loss of technical know-how, but not with the elegance of pre-war fabrication.”

“Kinda cool to imagine, though,” Juliet sighed. “I mean the idea of lost tech. You know, the things the big corpos were doing with true AI back in the day, before the war.”

“Yes. It brings to mind many thoughts, the concept of true AI.”

“Do you think that’s what you are, Angel?” Juliet felt heat rising in her cheeks and the back of her neck at the bluntness of her question. She almost took it back, but Angel wasn’t dumb—surely she’d had the same thought, the same question. Angel didn’t respond immediately, so Juliet pressed, “You know me, Angel. You can trust me. We’re sisters; I promise I’ll never do anything to hurt you, and I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“If I’m not a true AI, then I’m something very close. I truly believe I feel things. I . . . Oh, goodness, Juliet, we should focus! Alice has accepted my proposed landing site, and we’re only minutes out.”

“Okay, but we’re going to talk more about this. Thank you for trusting me.” Juliet, still gripping the sides of the rig’s cabin to hold herself steady, couldn’t help looking at the oxygen and battery readouts, hoping her plan wasn’t suicide.

Angel’s voice was soft and contemplative as she answered, “Of course. I’ve seen what kind of person you are, and I know you wouldn’t betray me. You can rely on me to always have your best interest in mind.”

“That’s right. We’ve got each other’s backs.” Juliet stuffed her hands into the waldo gloves that controlled the arms of the rig, and then she stared at the crew comm channel on her AUI until Angel recognized she wanted to use it and activated it. “Hey, everyone. I plan to bolt out of the bay as soon as we touch down. Alice, I’ll need you to open the door for me. The rest of you should take your time getting things ready before you go out and work on hooking up the wreck. Give me time to get into position before you start presenting targets to any visitors.”

“Targets?” Aya squeaked.

“Yeah. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If we don’t hear from these guys, it probably means their ship doesn’t have guns, or they know we wouldn’t believe they’d blow the Kowashi up,” Alice answered for Juliet.

“So, they’d just murder us?” Bennet growled.

“They might threaten us first. Try to get us to help them. Say they just want to hijack us for a while. You can imagine how that might work out for us.” Alice’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion, and Juliet could tell she was working through some internal dilemma.

“We should just bail,” Bennet said.

“Can’t,” Shiro barked. “We return empty, I gotta sell the Kowashi.”

“I won’t let ‘em snipe you, Aya,” Juliet said, wondering where her confidence was coming from. Did she really believe this was a good plan? Hiding on a radioactive moon and trying to ambush the ambushers? She’d be outnumbered, sure, but she had a couple of aces up her sleeve. Was that giving her false confidence, though?

“We stay in the bay until you give the go-ahead,” Shiro said, then Juliet saw him cut off his comms.

“Right. Five minutes to touch down,” Alice said. “It’ll be a soft landing, but hold onto something anyway.”

“Good luck, Lucky,” Bennet said, and Juliet heard the chuckle in his voice.

“Close the comms,” Juliet subvocalized, then added, “Glad he could find some humor in the situation, though.” She could feel the vibrations rolling through the Kowashi’s hull, transferred to her through the rigid frame of the welding rig, its magnetized feet holding it securely to the deck. They didn’t ever become very rough, but they mounted in frequency and intensity, and then, more suddenly than she expected, everything became still.

The red light and warning klaxon in the bay alerted her to the doors slowly opening, and Juliet gave it a few seconds, waiting for the atmosphere and pressure to equalize. When she could no longer see any mist or visible venting, she flipped the switches in the rig, activating all of its systems, and began to work the foot pedals, motoring her way out of the bay. A long, plasteel ramp was slowly deploying from the base of the bay doors toward the ground ten meters below, but Juliet wanted to hurry, so she stepped off, trusting Angel to manage her maneuvering jets.

She had to squint at first when she cleared the ship’s shadow, but her implants quickly adjusted, and she took in a deep breath, struck by the alien beauty of the moon. It was one thing to see it on a view screen, hanging in the surreal backdrop of Saturn’s rings, but here on the surface, she was almost dumbstruck by the sights. It wasn’t just the glittering silvery-white surface or the strange formations, like icy lattices and sculptures, that caught her off guard. No, it was the view of Saturn from the surface, in full wide-angle glory.

As she drifted to the crunchy ground, her mouth fell open, and she gawped at the shimmering, yellow-orange giant hanging, enormous in the sky. The moon was too centered in the same plane as the giant planet’s rings for them to be visible. Still, out there in the vastness of space between her and the gargantuan gas giant, shimmering motes sparkled—rocks, dust, and hunks of ice reflecting the sun’s light. “Unbelievable,” she breathed, and Angel must have transmitted her wonder to the crew because Alice replied.

“A little different in person, isn’t it?”

“That’s an understatement,” Juliet sighed, shaking her head and starting forward over the surface toward the distant rim of the crater. She swiveled the rig’s torso to see the wrecked gunship, and sure enough, it was there, not far from the Kowashi. She could see rime spreading up from the icy surface, folding around the ship's hull as though the moon was trying to engulf the invader. “I don’t think anyone’s alive on that wreck,” she said into comms.

“Very doubtful,” Alice replied. “How’s the battery in that rig? Radiation draining it fast?”

Juliet glanced at the battery meter and saw it was still in the green at ninety-six percent, but that was worrying; she’d only been out of the ship’s bay for a couple of minutes. “Gonna need to be really careful out there, Aya,” was all she said. “Angel,” she subvocalized, “let’s use the jets to get into position. Save the battery for fighting the radiation 'cause I’ll run out of juice long before I run out of air.”

“Agreed,” Angel said, and then Juliet felt the PAI take charge, moving toward the ridgeline in a series of hops facilitated by the air jets. Juliet kept the rig stable and upright, letting Angel focus on the movement.

“Any sign of company? Any communication?” she asked the crew comms again.

“Not . . . ing . . . in the . . . rad . . . “ was the response she received.

“Shit!”

“We should have anticipated communication problems as we gained some distance from the ship. I’m sorry!” Angel said, just as she fired the air jets in a long jump that took Juliet up over the crater’s rim and onto the ridge.

“Nothing we can do about it. I hope the crew will stay cautious and give us time to do our thing.” Juliet surveyed the ridgeline, then looked at her map of the area. She was right where she wanted to be. “Okay, taking control for now. Time to dig.”

While she used the rig’s breaker bar to crunch away at the ice on the ridgeline, carving a three-meter cleft, then moving a couple of meters to the side and making a second one, she had an idea. “Angel, can you just send a signal to them by activating comms, on and off? Like, you know, tap code?”

“I can try. What should I say?”

“We’re in position. Wait for the all-clear.” Juliet grunted, trying to hold herself still as the breaker bar vibrated and rocked the rig. The battery was down to sixty-eight percent, and she was beginning to get nervous. Still, the ice was coming apart easily enough, and when she finished the second, three-meter trench, she ran the bar through the ice at the top, connecting the two. Three minutes later, she’d done the same at the bottom. Her cutting done, she reached out with the rig’s claw and grasped the top edge of the rectangle she’d cut, trying to pull it away from the ridge in one clean section.

It creaked and popped, tiny cracks spreading through the surface, but the hunk began to pull away enough so she could use the other waldo to shove the breaker bar in and add some torque from the side. With a cracking rumble reverberating through the rig’s frame, the huge chunk of icy surface pulled away, breaking away from the ice beneath. Still holding the big rectangle upright with her clawed arm, Juliet maneuvered the rig to the side so she could see behind it. “What do you think, Angel? Is that a big enough cavity to hide this thing in?”

“It will suffice, I believe. Anyone observing this ridge from a distance will think this displaced piece of ice is one of the myriad strange structures on this moon’s surface. Up close, someone may well see the rig’s distinctive paint behind the barrier you’ve constructed, however.”

“Yeah. It’ll do, I think.” Using every trick thousands of hours in a similar rig had taught her, Juliet pivoted the exoskeleton behind the slab she held upright with the claw arm, and then when she was backed up to the ridge, in the cavity created by the removal of that big icy block, she slowly lowered it onto the exoskeleton, sandwiching herself between it and the ice beneath. As her view faded to nothing but the dimly lit, icy cave she’d constructed, Juliet looked left and right, trying to figure out the best way to keep tabs on the outside.

“I can’t see anything, Angel.”

“Is there not a camera mounted to the claw extension?”

“Oh, yeah, but it’s for close-up work.”

“Still, maneuver it into the crack so it faces outward. I’ll be able to make sense of the images, at least enough to detect movement.”

“Right. Okay. Keep me posted ‘cause you’re better at that stuff than I am.” Juliet carefully maneuvered the claw arm so it pressed out through the gap left by her slab of ice. “How’s that? Can you see out?”

“Yes. I have an unobstructed view.”

Juliet stared at the battery meter, watching it slowly tick down as the rig’s active shielding tried to fight off the harsh radiation. It seemed to be going down a lot more slowly now that she wasn’t moving, perhaps thanks to the thick layer of ice she’d packed on top of herself. When it read thirty-six percent, she felt a rumble coming from the ice beneath her, and her mind began to race, wondering if she’d triggered some sort of collapse.

“A ship is landing nearby,” Angel said, exchanging one sort of stress with another. Juliet touched her SMG, hoping the gun would fire all right in the low temperatures, once again wondering if she were insane for going through with this plan. As the rumble faded and Juliet ceased to notice anything more in her ears, she subvocalized, “Anything?”

“Not yet. The ice and steam are still settling around the ship. The image is blurry, but it seems to be a small industrial ship with twin VTOL drives and yellow paint. I believe it’s a Foro Tech Ferry. It’s situated ahead of you and to your right, nearly fifty meters distant. I’d say we did an excellent job predicting where they might set their ship!”

Juliet didn’t reply. Instead, she pulled her plasteel hand out of the waldo and placed her helmet over her head. She let it sit on the crown of her head for a minute while deftly inserting the data cable, then pressed it the rest of the way to her shoulders. She flipped down the clasp at the base, near her chin, securing it in place, and watched as green lights populated her AUI, indicating a full battery and air tank. She unclasped her harness, making sure it was shoved to the side, out of her way.

Gritting her teeth, imagining she was as tough as Ghoul or White, Juliet put her hand back into the waldo and got ready, waiting on Angel to tell her what was happening out there. “Come on, come on,” she hissed, through clenched jaws, the waiting almost worse than what she knew was coming.

“I believe they just lowered their boarding ramp. I can see movement at the base of the ship. I’m marking it on your map.” Sure enough, a red circle appeared on Juliet's HUD, and Angel labeled it “Pirates.” A blue “J” indicated Juliet’s position, and a green circle behind her was marked “Kowashi.” “I see two figures moving away from the vessel. They are approaching the ridgeline to your right.”

Juliet glanced at Angel’s map and was pleased to see red dots leading away from the “Pirates” circle in two distinct lines. “I wish we knew if they were communicating with the Kowashi. I’d like to know if they made any ransom demands or announced themselves before I start shooting.”

“There aren’t any likely lawful scenarios for the behavior of this ship and its crew. Your friends and employers are at risk; I don’t think you should feel a moral dilemma about defending them.”

“I know, Angel. Knowing that and pulling the trigger are different things, though.” Juliet frowned and tried to remind herself of the advice Dr. Ming had given her in her last session. He’d tried to encourage Juliet to form a set of personal ethical guidelines. He’d asked her when she thought it was okay to do violence. Her response had been quick—when someone threatened violence to her or people she cared about. Ming hadn’t argued with her, but he’d tried to help her see that sometimes the threat of violence could be dealt with in other ways—fleeing, for instance.

“There’s no running from this. Not from where I’ve put myself.” She supposed that was on her; she could have lobbied for the Kowashi to run away or to try to get help from another crew and split the profits. She hadn’t, though, and now she had to live with the genuine danger she and the crew were in. “To live through this, I’m going to have to be ruthless. At least for a while.”

“Your survival is at stake, I agree. You can’t pull your punches in a setting like this; one mistake and you’re dead. Even damage to your EVA suit could be fatal, almost instantly.”

Nodding grimly, Juliet, again, readied herself, watching those red dots trail away from the “Pirates” ship and waiting for them to stop. Just as she’d hoped and Angel had predicted, they paused at the ridgeline, the first closest one only eighteen meters to her right. Juliet whispered, trying to get herself psyched up, “Give it a sec; let them lay down, get their guns aimed. Let them look through their optics at the Kowashi. Don’t want them to see me coming.”

She watched the stationary dots for ten long, slow breaths, and then, with a grunt, Juliet shoved those waldos forward, sending the icy block flying off the exoskeleton. As it tumbled nearly noiselessly off the ridge to slide on the frozen surface below, she popped the hatch and, in the steamy vented air that escaped, she clambered out. Juliet lifted her SMG, ignoring the big yellow ship before her, and panned the ridgeline to the right, looking for her first two targets.