“This doesn’t look bad,” Shiro said, scooping the quickly dissolving foam, now a slippery gel, away from Juliet’s exposed left arm. He’d brought some of the solvent designed for that very purpose, along with a full trauma kit and an extra EVA suit. Apparently, Angel had briefed him on the condition of Juliet’s suit.

“Yeah, it was only breached for a couple of seconds.” Juliet gingerly flexed her arm, pleased that it didn’t hurt much. Her skin was red, as though sunburned, and she wasn’t sure if it was from radiation or the cold. In either case, her nanites seemed to be handling it just fine. “It’s my leg I’m more worried about.”

“Looks like he got ya right in the knee, huh?” Shiro tugged at the bloody rip in her EVA suit. “Well, let’s get this off you. Stick your legs out straight, and I’ll tug.” Juliet complied, leaning back on the bench, her back against the table, and Shiro grunted as he began to pull at her suit’s built-in boots. Once he got them clear of her feet, it was easy; beneath her EVA suit, she wore a red tank top and some tight, black workout shorts; there wasn’t much to snag on the suit as it slid free. Juliet didn’t feel any pain in her leg—it was still held stiff by the foam that had packed around it like a cast.

After he set her beat-up suit aside, Shiro looked around the filthy mess hall and frowned. “Nothing to put under your leg. Turn sideways.” He gestured to the bench she was sitting on.

“Good call.” Juliet shifted to her left so her foam-encased leg swung around to rest on the bench, and she began to feel serious trepidation as Shiro lifted the can of spray solvent. “I hope he didn’t blow my knee apart.”

“Well, knee replacements are cheap, and we’re walking away with a lot more salvage than we thought we would.” He gestured to the filthy pirate vessel around them.

“Oh? You think I’ll share?” Juliet chuckled. She was half-joking; she didn’t know how the spoils of combat in situations like this were supposed to be shared, but she also didn’t think it should just be lumped in as extra “salvage.”

“Eh, negotiation is an Alice job. We all appreciate your heroics—she’ll be fair. Ready?” He lifted the can, giving it a couple of shakes.

“Yeah, let’s see the damage.” Juliet squinted her eyes as though she were about to watch something gross in a video and didn’t want to see the details. Shiro carefully sprayed a thin layer of the solvent over the top of the yellowish-red foam, and it began to bubble and run almost immediately. He waited a good ten seconds and then sprayed a second layer, and this time, Juliet could feel the cold liquid as it touched her skin in a few places where the foam had nearly fully dissolved.

“Okay, I will wipe, but gently.” He pulled a clean microfiber towel out of his trauma kit and began to wipe the goopy gel away from her leg, starting with her thigh, then working his way down to her knee. The goop was more red than yellow around the joint, and Juliet knew it was from her blood. He found the rip in her skin right away and whistled. “You’re lucky, Lucky!”

Juliet opened her eyes wider to look at her injury more clearly. It was just above her knee and toward the outside of her leg, a thumbnail-sized wound with red, puckered flesh at the edges and congealed blood at the center. She turned to the side so she could see the back, and sure enough, a swollen, scabbed-over hole showed where the bullet had exited—it seemed to have wholly missed her bones. “I guess so . . .”

“You’ll be fine in no time! Especially if you have nanites.” Shiro continued to wipe away the gooey gel on her calf, and Juliet sighed in relief. She’d told him about her nanites when he’d first arrived and offered her an injection for pain.

“Thank you, Shiro. Can you check the bridge? I don’t think anyone else is hiding on this ship, but I haven’t been up there yet.”

“Bridge? On this little ship? More like a cockpit.” He stood, handed her the damp microfiber towel, and drew his pistol.

“Careful,” Juliet called after him as he slipped through the hatch leading to the ship’s nose. He grunted in response, and she turned back to her leg, finishing the job of wiping all the sticky gel off. When she was done, she folded the towel so a clean section was on top and then worked on cleaning up her arm. “Should I put something on these wounds, or are the nanites handling them?” Juliet subvocalized.

“It wouldn’t hurt to apply some adhesive antiseptic gel and bandages to the entry and exit wounds, but the nanites are working hard to mend and reconnect torn vessels. You’ll heal from that wound quickly, in my estimation.”

“Good,” Juliet said, reaching for Shiro’s trauma kit and following Angel’s recommendation. She squeezed the gel into the puffy, swollen wounds left behind by the bullet and then pressed some water-tight bandages over the top. That done, she began shrugging into the extra EVA suit Shiro had brought for her. Shiro returned as she was fastening the front, and she asked, “Anything?”

“Just pilot and nav seats. Both equipped with acceleration gel membranes. You searched the rest of the ship?”

“I looked into the lavatory,” Juliet jerked her head to the starboard-side door leading away from the mess, “but I haven’t checked the engineering access corridor. It’s through the door behind the lift. But wait, if they only have two seats up there with acceleration membranes, how’d they travel fast with three crew?”

“Dunno. Maybe there’s an acceleration couch in one of the quarters? I’ll check out engineering.” Shiro click-clacked through the mess to the door and ducked out of sight.

“What should we do about Engineer?” Juliet asked through comms.

“Nothing yet. Maybe there’s a bounty on those pirates you killed, maybe on their synth, too. We’ll check when we get to Titan. Can you fly this?” Shiro’s voice started out in her earpiece, but his final words were spoken directly to her as he returned to the mess. “Nothing in the engineering corridor.”

“I . . .” Juliet paused, then, frowning slightly, she subvocalized, “Angel, when you and I were getting to know each other, you mentioned there was software out there, I guess in WBD’s labs where you were made, that could let me learn things automatically through you. I think you even mentioned flying a spaceship. Is there some way you can teach me the way you ‘help’ me do things like martial arts?”

“Hmm?” Shiro pressed.

“Sec,” Juliet said, then, to give herself more time, “I’m looking at something going on with my nanites.”

“I’ll go look at this Engineer guy,” Shiro shrugged and moved through the port-side hatch.

“I can certainly help you to learn to fly this or any vessel, but I think I’d need to do most of the work at first, especially as we’re dealing with difficult navigation computations and maneuvers here among Saturn, its rings, and moons. I think you’d enjoy the learning experience!”

“You could do that?”

“Certainly. I’m more capable than any synth you’ve met, and some of them are qualified as pilots. I’ve read copious guides on the subject, starting back when you mentioned you’d like to leave Earth. Further, when Alice listed the possible ships trailing the Kaminari Kowashi, I downloaded the full specifications of this model, the Foro Tech Ferry, along with the other two.”

“Why’s it called a Ferry?”

“It has the capability of extending its landing struts to allow cargo containers to attach to the belly. It’s designed to carry cargo from port to larger container vessels.”

“Everything okay?” Shiro asked, stepping back into the mess. When Juliet offered him a thumbs-up, he nodded and said, “I think that synth is unregistered. Might be handy if we can trust it.”

“Trust it?” Juliet frowned. “He seemed pretty peaceful to me . . .”

“Did he let you in? Try to stop those pirates from ambushing us?”

“No . . .” Juliet couldn’t blame Engineer for not trying to stop the pirates; for all she knew, they created him. She didn’t like the idea that she’d almost died of exposure outside the door, though, and he’d done nothing. At that point, he’d also been aware his crew was dead. “Still, maybe he was afraid of me.”

“So, maybe we have him checked out. Sometimes synths can be designed with triggers that turn them dangerous.” He shrugged. “Most of what I know is from vids.”

“Anyway,” Juliet said, “I can fly this thing. Should be able to.”

“Show me. Bring us over to the Kowashi.”

“Uh,” Juliet muttered, feeling her face flush as he put her on the spot. She hoped Angel hadn’t been exaggerating her abilities. “Right.” She stood up and, limping but hardly feeling the pain in her knee, made her way forward into the nose of the craft.

“Sit in the front seat,” Angel said as Juliet walked into the cockpit, a rectangular space with good visibility; glass—or some kind of advanced, glass-like material—viewscreens lined the left, right, and forward sections. Two acceleration chairs, more narrow and sleek than the Kowashi’s but filthy, smeared with grease, food, or worse, filled most of the space. The front seat had a flight stick, pedals, and an actual manual throttle lever built into the console around it. Juliet walked past the rear seat, sat in the pilot’s station, and glanced at the controls, trying to take them all in.

“Plug into the console, and I’ll do a systems check.” Angel's firm, sure voice helped Juliet’s nerves to calm, and she settled into the gel of the seat, pulling the crash harness tight over her shoulders and clicking it into place between her thighs.

“I’ll ride in the nav seat,” Shiro said from behind her. “Don’t expect me to do much—not my area.”

“No worries,” Juliet said, pulling out her data cable and jacking into the pilot’s console. Almost immediately, her AUI was filled with information and expanded view screens to her left and right. They showed her images of the ship’s exterior, fore and aft, angled at the ground as if to give her an idea of her clearance for takeoff and landing. Juliet blanched slightly when she saw two of the pirate corpses lying on the ice, their EVA suits swollen with expanded foam. “Should we do anything about the bodies?” she asked, furious at her voice for cracking as she spoke.

“I . . .” Shiro started, but then he seemed to reconsider and started again, “Yeah. I’ll pull them into the airlock. They might be worth a lot, depending on their bounty situation.” Juliet heard him grunt as he clambered out of the seat; then, as he walked away, he said, “Don’t start the engines yet, please!”

“Juliet, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the information on your AUI.” Angel highlighted each window and widget as she started to go through them with her. “This is an altimeter. It’s important for navigating near large bodies, such as this moon. It shows you your distance from impact. This is a 3D model of your ship; it shows you the orientation of the craft at any given moment, with the orange arrow indicating Sol-ward and the blue line or plane indicating the nearest celestial body, in this case, Dione. Do you see how it is directly beneath the ship and level?”

“Yeah,” Juliet nodded. She saw Shiro moving about outside the ship, dragging her erstwhile combatants toward the boarding ramp as Angel continued to go over the various readouts from drive and reactor status, both with yellow “Maintenance Needed!” warnings, to proximity alert and hull integrity readouts. She was starting to learn about the manual controls when Shiro came back into the cockpit and, sighing heavily, sat back down.

“Ready,” he grunted.

“Just put your hand on the throttle and flight stick, and I’ll handle the little hop over to the Kaminari Kowashi,” Angel said. Juliet complied, and then Angel added, “In your crew comms, you should alert everyone that you’ll be igniting the thrusters on this ship, designation Bumble, in thirty seconds.”

“Bumble?”

“Yes, the ship’s name. You can change that, or Alice and the others can, depending on what they do with this vessel.”

Juliet kind of liked the name, but she supposed it didn’t matter much. She figured the best-case scenario regarding the pirate ship was that they’d sell it and split the proceeds. “Uh,” Juliet said, selecting her crew comms, not having realized that Angel could broadcast them over to the Kowashi, “Firing up the Bumble’s drives in thirty seconds. Stay clear.”

“Roger. Glad to hear your voice, Lucky,” Alice replied.

“We’re clear,” Bennet said, “Me and Aya are swapping battery packs on our suits; still working on hooking up this wreck.”

“Aya and I,” the perky-voiced salvage tech chimed in.

“Ten seconds,” Angel said for Juliet’s benefit, drowning out Bennet’s response.

Juliet felt nervous, far more than she should, considering she wouldn’t be doing anything, and her breaths started to get quick and short as Angel continued the countdown. At zero, the ship rumbled, and then, soft as a feather on a puff of air, it lifted into the thin air around Dione. She watched, through the big viewscreens and the windows on her AUI, as the ship lifted fifty meters into the air, then slowly turned and drifted over the ridge and the edge of the crater toward the Kowashi and the wrecked gunship.

“Setting down thirty meters off the Kowashi’s port side,” Angel said, and Juliet passed it along into the crew comm channel. Angel lowered the ship, smooth as silk, toward the ice, and Juliet watched on her AUI as the altimeter and ship orientation changed with each move. It seemed easy, of course, with Angel doing everything, but Juliet’s palms itched to take actual control of the vessel; she’d felt the same about driving, but this was something else—the idea of having control of an H-3 reactor and the drives attached to it made her love of fast cars seem childish.

“Very smooth,” Shiro said, standing up as soon as the Bumble’s landing struts settled. “If you can walk, let’s go help with that gunship.”

“I can walk.” To prove her point, Juliet shrugged out of her harness, stood up, and hurried past him toward the rear of the ship. She didn’t particularly enjoy being in the airlock with the three people she’d killed, and her traitor brain kept trying to figure out which body was Alysia, which was Rex, and which was the captain. While she and Shiro waited for the airlock to cycle, she distracted herself by looking at the pile of guns Shiro had stacked in the corner opposite the bodies. “You got their guns.”

“Sure; valuable.”

“Care if I take one of those rifles, or are you gonna take it outta my cut?”

“Nah, you earned it. I won’t mention it to Alice.”

Juliet knelt by the three long guns and asked Angel, “Which one was the pirate who kept shooting at us using? He didn’t seem to have to worry about recoil.” She had an idea already which it was—one of the guns looked like a smaller version of White’s gauss rifle.

Sure enough, Angel highlighted that gun and said, “This weapon is a battery-driven magnetic railgun with vented stabilizers. It fires metallic flechettes from a side-mounted magazine, currently missing. It was designed to fire in low G scenarios, vented to counteract the minimal recoil caused by the flechette acceleration.”

“I’ll take this one,” Juliet said, scooping up the gun and tucking it under her arm so it hung next to her SMG. Shiro just nodded, and as the airlock finished hissing and the exterior door opened, Juliet followed him out. After a quick jaunt over the icy surface, they walked up the ramp and into the Kowashi’s hold. Juliet saw Aya moving about by the gunship wreck, hovering around in the other exoskeleton, and she hissed out a breath and said, “Shit! I forgot I gotta go get the other rig.”

“Take a break. Aya can grab it; she can pick it up when she’s done with the cables.” Shiro said. He’d carried Juliet’s damaged EVA suit and was standing by a crate, peeling the unused magazines off it. “Come get your bullets, then go through the airlock into the main ship.”

“Ah, okay, thanks.” Juliet took her magazines and went out the bay door to the passenger airlock. After she’d cycled through it, she made her way down the corridor, up the lift to her room, and unloaded her weapons into the drawer of her built-in dresser. Her arms were shaky, and she felt ragged, like she’d run a marathon or something, and when she sat on the edge of her bunk, it was all she could do to keep from falling back into its embrace. “I feel wrecked, Angel.”

“You’ve been through an ordeal. I’m sure the crew would understand if you wanted to rest. I have a wide array of data from your new medical nanite suite. I can see that your blood pressure is a bit low, your heart rate is elevated, and many of your hormones are out of balance, likely due to large adrenaline dumps during your combat experience.”

Juliet was still wearing her EVA suit, her helmet on the bunk beside her, and she stood, picking it up. “I’m gonna grab some food, maybe an energy drink or smoothie, and then I’m going back out to help. I wanna see what that gunship is like.” Almost as an afterthought, she retrieved her SMG and loaded a fresh magazine. “Just in case someone comes knocking before we get off this little ice ball.”