The Aces and Eights Saloon was quiet as a grave. It was just as empty last year on the same day. Same as the year before, and the year before that, and...

In fact, the whole town of San Calvo was a graveyard. Everyone was holed up in their coffins, waiting with baited breath for the specter of death to pass over them once again. The only living soul about was the cemetery's caretaker. He sat at the bar, nursing a half-finished bottle in his shaky hands. He was young. The spattering of stubble on his chin did little to hide his round face and juvenile features. On any sane world there wouldn't be an iron strapped to his hip. The boy lifted his drink to his lips and sipped at its contents, wincing at the burn it left in his throat. Liquid courage, Miss Seong called it. He tried to pay his hands no mind.

The doors to the saloon slid open with a loud hiss. Three sets of spurs clinked against the floorboards. The boy at the bar turned to face them slowly, holding his hands up where they could see them. "Easy there, fellers." He whispered, his throat hoarse.

Time to meet the specter.

"You must be the esteemed Mr. Haycock," the leading man gave a wide grin, his steel fangs flashing in the sunlight. "Its a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I have always said a personal touch is the most important part of maintaining a healthy business relationship."

He approached the bar, looming tall over Haycock as he took the liberty to pour himself a drink. The man was tall, broad-shouldered and bursting with chrome-enhanced muscle. His dress was as distinguished as his practiced twang: A fine purple vest, golden pocket-deck, charcoal long coat and too-small bowler hat. Clothes like that cost more than the cantina they stood in, Bill Haycock reckoned. That thought made the heat stir in his gullet.

"I propose a toast." The specter smiled, lifting his glass. "To San Calvo's new sheriff. May he protect the fine people of this township for many'a year to come."

They clinked their glasses together and downed a shot in unison. "Or at least longer than the office's previous holder," the specter added, chuckling to himself. His bodyguards joined in, barking like jackals.

The heat previously in the sheriff's gullet moved up to his cheeks. He could feel his face twisting with anger, even as he tried to resist.

"Oh oh oh, Mr. Haycock," The man clicked his tongue. "You ought to learn how to control that temper of yours. Hate can make a moron out of any man." His eyes slid down to the pistol on Billy's hip. "And you aren't stupid, are you, son?"

Billy took a deep, slow breath. He was right. The town had been through enough as it was. Nobody else was willing to pin on the badge after Jack McCaw was sent up river. If something happened to Bill then there'd be blood, and this vulture would take his pickings from San Calvo anyway. There wasn't an alternative. Not anymore. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry, Mr. Ducaine. Won't happen again." He assured, eyes on his boots.

"That's either Baron Ducaine or sir, boy. You had best remember your manners." The baron paused, boring a hole into Haycock's skull with his eyes.

He held his gaze for half a minute before finally breaking it off to pour another shot, demeanor shifting back to the smooth-talker that'd stepped into the saloon just moments ago. "Now, onto the matter of this year's taxation..."


The bridge of the Fortuna was quiet. Most of the hands were downstairs watching the mech simulations, leaving a small skeleton crew on watch for the time being. Captain Deckard Jones was among them. He sat reclined in his leather throne, staring up at the ceiling with an empty look in his eye. They'd been in transit for a month now and boredom had set in. There was little to do on extended voyages such as this one that he hadn't already gotten sick of in his three decades of service. An old man could only play cards and drink himself into a stupor so many times before it lost its appeal.

He dragged himself up, his captain's chair screeching in protest. Those hydraulics should've been replaced months ago if they had budget for it. Thirty years. Thirty years of trudging across the galaxy and he couldn't afford a decent chair. It might’ve been funny if he didn’t feel the weight of each of those years in his aching joints.

In front of his old, useless chair was a still old but slighter more useful deck. It was a hefty console that stretched in a semi-circle around his seat with half a dozen accompanying monitors brimming with information. From here the captain could see everything going on in his ship: internal security footage, live engine readings, oxygen levels and fuel reserves. Everything was low. They hadn’t found a decent port since they’d set off into the frontier in search of work. A friend of a friend sent Jones a tip about some corpo mining flotilla on the edge of known space looking for protection from lurking pirates; plenty of credits to be made, if one was willing to make such a long trek.

Better be worth the damn fuel.’ He grumbled, swinging over in his chair to the navigational charts. There wasn’t much of worth out here: a handful of tiny settlements, a few research facilities, a Thedian listening post. Only one place that he could see might have a spaceport large enough to service the Fortuna. It was a backwater by core world standards, but its population was sizable by frontier standards. The real treasure was one of their main exports: refined N1-class fuel. Low grade, inefficient, and being pushed out of the market by better alternatives- it was exactly what the Fortuna needed.

“Hey, Tex,” he called across the bridge to his pilot, the old walrus in oversized shades and a bucket-shaped hat. “How many jumps would it take to get us to Arish IV?”

Texas Danger let a long trail of smoke slip between his lips as he set a fat cigar down on his console. His old fingers danced across the keys. It took a couple of minutes for the computer to make the calculations and a couple more for Danger’s scar-strewn brain to catch up. ”Uh..lookin’ like I could make it in one, if we wanna burn down to critical fuel. You in a hurry to get your boots dirty? Place looks like a shithole.”

”Oh yeah.” Deckard chortled, standing up. ”Get me off this tub ‘fore it drives me to swallow a laser. I’m gonna go check on my pilots. Let ‘em hear the good news: we’re gettin’ some goddamn shore leave.”

"Now, take two of these tonight, and another two tomorrow morning, then come back to me again. I'll get you fixed up."

Andrea held a smile as she spoke into the standing mirror propped against one side of her quarters, voice carrying an emotion that could pass for kindness, but slightly too exaggerated, too saccharine. After a moment she dropped her head and sighed, rolling her shoulders. Stepping primly over to her desk, she barely held back a yawn as she began to play her fingers over the projected image of a keyboard that emerged from the small computer terminal, typing up her results. As she did, she muttered under her breath, "Still no success. Still looks and sounds disingenuous. Have yet to figure out how I used to be able to do it. Perhaps a live trial would be more efficient than speaking to a mirror; having a subject might precipitate a better response from the amygdala and limbic system and allow for better recollection of how I used to speak during medical practice."

She slapped the side of the terminal, turning the keyboard off to avoid any stray errors that would result in a typo or skewed data. Then she leaned her head back, pulling her hair out from behind her and letting it fall over the chair. She puffed her cheeks out, huffing a breath and staring out into space. My colleagues used to be able to do this too. What did they do that you're missing, Andy? Perhaps I went too far on the tone of voice, or the language wasn't casual enough?

Shaking her head, she failed at holding back the yawn this time, her perpetual sleeplessness dogging her heels as it always did. She ignored it, pointedly staring away from the bed. She had too much to do. Scooping up half a dozen pill bottles from her desk, she carefully placed them into a bag that she kept hanging by the door. Then, even more carefully, she transplanted four syringes from a rack on her desk to a case that she slid into her pocket. Sliding the bag over her shoulder, she pulled her door open and headed for the medical bay. They'd never cared too much about her working there, as long as she never made too much of a mess and always cleaned it up. But it was nearly impossible to get live test subjects there. If she tried, she would alarm the rest of the medical staff, and she didn't need to get tossed up the Fortuna like she was tossed off of Kallas. As unimpressive as they were compared to her old laboratories, they were still a long way better than most of the places she'd worked after her license was stripped.

But that was neither here nor there. She didn't need a live subject at the moment. Not until much later. For now, she just needed to make sure the drugs she was working with could actually be worked with the way she hoped they could without losing potency. Or gaining too much potency. Muscle relaxants were all well and good when used to keep someone from moving during an operation, or any other situations where she might not want them to. But too much of a good thing, as they always used to say. There were drugs that were meant for killing that she'd used before. This was not supposed to be one of those.

As she walked quickly through the narrow hallways towards the lifts that would take her to the inner decks and, eventually, the medical facilities, she carefully opened up the needle case, scrutinizing each just to make sure that they were exactly what she needed. Good. She smiled to herself, quietly humming as she blinked her tired eyes and closed the case and delicately placed it back into her pocket. She accelerating her pace. The earpiece in her ear hummed quietly along with her. If there was anything she needed to know, she'd hear it. Otherwise, she hoped she'd be left unbothered.

After all, there was so much to do!

It was late in the night yet the sky radiated with light. The city of Antaura, the so-called Jewel of Mars, burned. Flames flickered atop golden spires of phototropic glass. So soaring were these towers that whole networks of shuttle tunnels ran between them, snaking and twisting through the air like a floating highway. Tens of thousands of refugees surged through those tunnels. Packed shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye could see in either direction, the crowd was a flood- anyone who slowed or stumbled was sucked underneath the waves.

Outside, the nightmare continued. The tracers of solid projectiles and the beams of stray lasers lit up the atmosphere. The dark shapes of ships hung above the planet, thousands of smaller objects pouring from their bellies on a direct course for Mars. A meager fleet of fighters left the ground to engage them, though they stood no chance; there were a dozen hostile vessels for each one of theirs. Desperate battles waged across the planet from surface to stratosphere. Every Martian strong enough to lift a gun was expected to stand their ground for faith and nation. The Sol Union called this their Blackest Day scenario: when Theden forces pierced the Solar System and invaded the core worlds.

John Marshall had put thousands of flight hours into this exact scenario, to the point where he'd memorized every possible variable. He could rattle off the exact model, armament and I.D number of every exoframe he'd encounter. He knew which direction every hostile pilot favored when reacting to incoming projectiles. Knew the exact number of unpreventable casualties coded into the program. It was forty-eight thousand, three hundred and twelve: a massacre of unimaginable proportions. And that was just when he did everything right.

It was a textbook unwinnable scenario. Its purpose was to force exo-pilots to confront impossible situations and adapt to them as best as possible. They had to learn that not every fight was winnable; sometimes the best you could do was cut your losses and make as safe a retreat as possible.

The steady thrumming of the H-11 Carbine in the Ulysses's hands rocked the cockpit. John shuffled in his seat, finger twitching on the flight stick. He held it in a death grip with his left hand. Beads of sweat slid down his forehead. His heart palpitated in his chest. It always irritated him just how anxious he got in the pilot's seat. He'd put over a hundred days into this sim; how'd it still make him so goddamn nervous?

An H-11 had a variable fire rate of anywhere between six hundred and fifty rounds a minute to as high as eighteen hundred, depending on the specifications of the exact model and its settings. The Ulysses's H-11 was tuned to the highest possible rate for maximum killpower in close quarters. It could spit out more than thirty individual pulses of superheated energy every second- firing fast enough that it could be mistaken for a continuous beam, if not for the horrific skipping screech that accompanied the light show.

At that speed, Marshall could slag an exoframe before its pilot even noticed the blip approaching on their radar.

The Ulysses danced between broken towers with the odd, bouncy movement of a bumblebee. It was frighteningly fast; faster than any twenty tons of steel ought to be. Four, wing-like thrusters propelled it forward through the Martian city, carrying the exoframe along even as it turned to unleash a round of missiles from hidden racks in its limbs. Hornet seekers curved around the side of a building and out of sight, exploding against an exoframe Marshall only knew was lurking there from repetition. Its ambush always slowed him down by three seconds too many.

About half a click ahead lay was an intersection where the fighting was thicker than molasses. Heavy frame Sol Union mechs stood their ground against a veritable swarm of smaller yet far more numerous Theden light frames. The Union mechs had erected a makeshift barrier by piling up chunks of road and discarded vehicles, but it wouldn't buy them much time at all.

John kicked the exoframe into high gear, ignoring the warnings flashing across his deck about the inertial dampeners. If he slowed down at all, even for a quarter of a second, those men would die.

He pressed down on the trigger once he reached his effective range, and the carbine began to kick once more. It sang a horrible tune as it cut through hostile frame after hostile frame, shredding their shields until their exposed, metallic bodies could be delivered their fiery purification via a round of seeker missiles. It was rare to watch a pilot die in their cockpit. Most of the time they were lost in a flurry of lasers or the bright light of explosions. Sometimes, though, John would catch a glimpse: an arm here, a face there, something that may have been coolant fluid or human blood. Or maybe his mind was trying to trick him into feeling guilty.

A sudden, intolerable pressure slammed into his body. It crawled up along his spine, digging its fingers into his nerves and sinking its teeth into his blood. His vision swam. The world drained of its color. A heavy, invisible hand pressed down against his face, but he ignored it. Marshall fought to keep his finger on the trigger and his reticle pointed at the enemy. Ignore the Gs. Complete the mission.

The whole of his cockpit rocked with a sudden, hefty impact, and he felt his exoframe begin to tumble head over heel. A great, metal face dominated his primary viewscreen- there was another frame grappling with his. John blinked a hundred times as he tried to check his systems for damage. It looked like a foreign object had pierced Ulysses's lower right thigh. A knife, maybe, or an improvised weapon.

More warnings flashed, this time across every screen in the cockpit: emergency failures across multiple vital systems. Total loss of flight control. The Gs were pouring on and the Ulysses's inertia dampeners were refusing to compensate. John gasped for air in bursts, wheezing, begging for the pressure to lift from his chest for even a moment- just a moment to catch his breath.

Two tangled exoframes slammed into the side of one of Mars's golden spires, shattering glass and snapping steel beams in twain. They tumbled for a few hundred feet before the floor gave out and they were falling again, surrounded by the broken remains of office furniture. John wasn't quite sure how many floors they fell. It could've been as few as two or as many as a hundred. Try as he might, he couldn't focus. Pain wracked his body, addled his mind, but he refused to lose consciousness.

But Blackest Day was a textbook unwinnable scenario, designed and programed to adapt to the user's every attempt to conquer it. The greatest pilots in the galaxy couldn't stop Antaura from burning.

John blacked out, and the simulation ended.

Andrea couldn't concentrate for the life of her. She was generally pretty good at working on an empty stomach, but she'd messed up, mixing up two of the syringes and needing to chuck that whole batch. She hadn't powdered the pills she was mixing well enough, so the suspension was chunky and imperfect. She never messed up that badly, and she was unhappy with herself. Quite a bit of her pay from the past couple months had gone into these chemicals; a screw-up like that was a glaring sign for her to stop. Sighing, she packed her drugs back up, calling behind her: "Hey, Jake. I'm going to go eat, I'll come up and finish up Maya's bloodwork later."

Jake didn't respond, other than an ill-tempered grunt. He didn't like her very much. She had a reputation, she supposed. Didn't trust her to do bloodwork without doing something medically questionable. Please. She could do basic bloodwork in her sleep. She had better things to worry about than the ignorant opinions of dullards and quacks. Having not eaten yet, she was beginning to feel the hollow in her stomach, and that was far more important than what other people had to say. Walking quickly—but then, she always walked quickly—she took the lift down to the level of the mess. Navigating the halls with a confident, snapping stride, she emerged into the busy room. There were others in the room, certainly, many staff members and her fellow pilot Mox, but her eyes lasered onto William. She kept one eye on him as she took a few food cubes from the dispenser. She'd eaten so many of the things as basic rations that the blandness and the awful texture skated underneath her notice.

So, tossing one in her mouth and started the arduous process of chewing it, she walked over the table he was sitting on and sat down across from him. A moment passed as she swallowed, and when she spoke her voice was just a little bit too saccharine. "William, sweetie, can I ask you for a favor? I'd like some help in the medical bay later, maybe tomorrow?" She smiled a small, expectant smile. "I'd like to run a few clinical trials. Don't worry, I'll make sure it's perfectly safe beforehand. You don't need to worry about anything when I'm here."

Another cube shoved down her throat, and she realized belatedly that she should probably say something to Mox. After all, the kid had greeted her this morning in the hallway, and she'd completely ignored her. Interaction would be only polite. She inclined her head at younger woman, voice changing gears on a dime to a dry deadpan as she held a third nutrient cube between her finger. She honestly didn't know whether or not she was full yet. She never could tell with the cubes. "Good morning, Ms. Holiday. Enjoying the luxury?"

Captain Deckard Jones leaned against the hexagonal wall of the umbilical cord connecting the Fortuna to Yalta Station. If things had gone how he'd hoped the station's crew would've been using it to shuttle N-1 fuel cells to his ship's depleted engine. Instead the cord was empty, save for himself and his irate first officer. Madeline Lyon hadn't said a word since the two of them left Mr. Ducaine's office, but she didn't have to. Deck had learned to read Lyon's catalog of scowls through thirty-odd years together. And this? This was her angry scowl.

Deck cleared his throat to break the silence. "I don't like it any more than you do," he began, refusing to make eye contact. "But you heard the man: we don't refuel if we don't do this job."

Mads kept her lips pursed as she stared daggers into her captain's skull. The heat of embarrassment built up in his face, as if her gaze had stripped him down to his skivvies. He huffed, pushing off the wall to pace from one side of the corridor to the other. "Five million credits and a full tank, Mads. That contract with AM Ventures we're chasin' pays the same over three months. And this'll take us, what, a day? We're practically robbin' this guy!" He threw his hands up, risking a peek over his shoulder at Lyons' expression. It hadn't changed.

With a sigh, Jones' arms dropped back down to his side. He wished they could've just docked with the station, filled up the tank and gone on their merry way. He wished that Ducaine asshole hadn't declined their purchase and dragged Deck over to his office on Yalta Station with his 'humble proposal.' The man was a slimeball, that much was obvious. He wrapped himself in extravagance and spoke with a practiced swagger. Jones was a wheeler and dealer himself, in a way- he could recognize one of his ilk in an instant. Still, what else could he do? Ducaine had all the cards.

"Say something, damn it!" He yelled.

"He's lying." She replied, her tone even and restrained. "The situation's more complicated than he's making it out to be."

The captain put on his best grin. "We'll play this careful like, Mads, I swear. you know me: I always got somethin' up my sleeve." When her expression finally wavered Jones knew he had her beat. He turned away, then, and started up the umbillical cord toward the Fortuna. He lifted a finger to his ear to activate his ship-wide comlink. "Captain to exo-pilots, assemble in the hangar and prep your Frames for deployment. We got ourselves a contract. Will debrief you all when I get there."

"A lovely viewpoint, Ms. Holliday. I wish I was still as young and—"

Captain to exo-pilots, assemble in the hangar and prep your Frames for deployment. We got ourselves a contract. Will debrief you all when I get there.

She took a long, deep breath and let it out in a satisfied sigh, a small smile plastering itself to her face. "I would love to continue this conversation, truly. Perhaps later?" Then, shoving her tray to the side—she really didn't know how many nutrient cubes she'd eaten at this point but she really, genuinely didn't care—she shoved her chair back and stood, giving Mox a nod and then turning to William, the smile on her face growing just a little wider. "Tomorrow then, little prince!" Turning her back on them, she quickstepped over to the cafeteria door and rammed it open. The smile on her face stayed.

Inasmuch as she could really feel emotions, there was one pumping through her right now: anticipation. She hadn't been on a battlefield—a real, military battlefield (she'd been a Major, right? It was sometimes hard to remember)—in quite a long time. But still, every time she headed to where her beloved was resting, she felt her pulse quicken at the thought of mounting up again.

It wasn't long until she made it to the hangar. She'd almost run there, after all, and it was still mostly empty. Finally she reached her goal: on the far left side, two from the edge, was a monolithic beast of metal and bad news. She stroked it gently. "The joints are looking decent," she muttered to herself. "Hopefully decent enough." Last time she'd taken Perses out for a spin, she'd ended up raining hellfire with her induction cannon, missile pods, machine guns and retrofitted plasma cannon all at the same time, and the left ankle joint had broken loose. It had been unusable since. But now? Good as...well, not good as new, but good enough. Her eyes flicked up to the barrel of the Thanatos folded up on its back. "Good. Excellent."

Now all she needed to do was wait for Captain Deckard and the other pilots to get down here for briefing.

Well, that and get in the thing.

Where's that ladder gone off to?