My ma has cancer. It may not sound that important right now, but by the end of this, trust me, it’ll all make sense.

The Ceti Sector is one of the biggest star systems across Big Milky: thirteen planets, a silicate-rimmed asteroid belt, and a red dwarf enslaved by not one but two dyson rings.

Because of this, the nights on Planet Ceter are cold, merciless frosts, and the days searing enough to warrant a wasteland of scavenging animals, most of whom stand not in packs but instead in civilisations, cast out in the remains of what is, no doubt, the biggest, baddest desert in the galaxy.

We call it the Dust, one of the long-standing remnants of what Jet Corp did to us after they took over the solar system. They stripped our materials, built their empire on our sister-planet, Bimia (or, if you’re a scavenger like me, The Marble or Big Blue), and settled for seven years, not daring to step foot on our surface again.

Why? Well, that’s the tricky part. Maybe they’re scared, scared of what people will do to them, or maybe they can't bear witness to the consequences of their actions: the mutated creatures, the irradiated water, the violence and bloodshed.

Oh yeah, they know all about the bloodshed. They killed my father when I was small, no more than eleven years old, because he stole one of their weapon prototypes. And I hated them for that, really fucking hated them.

But I’m eighteen now. All that was a long time ago, a faded memory that sometimes comes back to me like a bad headache.

Pounding, pounding, always pounding. . . .

---

PART ONE: JET CORP

"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."

— Albert Einstein

---

 

Chapter 1: Witch of the West

 

1.

Night, stars, and a continuous plume of gasoline. The smell of adventure, danger, and Why the fuck did I do this?

I sat in the back of Old Rusty, a cruiser jeep built out of scrap metal and clown-stencilled tarps, riding towards the Western Alps with one answer: Money.

It was a life best left to the professionals, the heartless scavengers who hunted by day and murdered by night. Best left to us, Silver’s gang. There was me, Ashe, the long-nosed lesbian with black hair; Rogue, the gorgeous crimson-haired girl with dark-blue lips and bottle-green eyes; Mylo, the psychopath who cared more about money than anything else; and, of course, Silver, the man who started it all. The man who brought us together shortly after my father died.

This was my family, albeit a very strange one.

The desert’s fine relay of cactuses and stripped acacias danced lazily against the bitter wind and vanished into the horizon behind us. Cobwebbed telecom towers poked out from the sand, spritzed with graffiti—not just cocks but the occasional vagina, too—and led us towards the snags in the distance.

A hand pinched my bicep and I nearly shrieked.

“Knock it off,” I said.

Rogue laughed. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” She pinched me again.

I slapped her hand away. “Enough.”

“Tired?”

“Always.”

“Would you two shut up?” groaned Mylo, cupping his face in his hands.

“Who pissed in your cereal?” said Rogue.

“No one,” he said. “You two are gonna give me a headache, I swear to God.”

“Bad night, Mylo?” said Silver, fixing the rear-view mirror. He was the driver.

“It’s always a bad night with these two,” he said.

“So? Doesn’t give you a right to be a dick,” I said.

“Doesn’t it?” he said, tweaking his night-vision goggles over his eyes. “Doesn’t it really?”

The Infrared on my wrist beeped. *Scan available.*

“Bingo!” said Silver excitedly. “We’re close enough now, aren’t we?”

I sighed. “Aren’t we always?” And I tapped the Infrared screen until my console-display popped open. “Nirvana,” I said, “scan the Dust for—”

*Yes, Ashe?*

I blinked. “Give me a damn second, wouldja?”

*Yes, Ashe,* it repeated.

“Scan the Dust for any guns . . . tech, things we should be worried about. Isolate . . . what’s it called again?”

“The Mopes,” said Mylo. “Would it kill you to remember something once?”

“Yes, yes it would,” I said. Then, I raised my Infrared to my mouth again. “Isolate The Mopes.”

*You got it, sister!*

“Ew, don’t call me that,” I said. I had no sisters or brothers, so even hearing the word sister, especially from an AI, was daunting.

The Infrared began beeping. On the overlay a map of the Dust opened up: an aerial view taken from The Tower. The camera navigated through the desert, stopped on The Mopes, and zoomed in. After ten seconds, a crackle of static came back to me. *Eleven Jet-Corp Gatling Guns located in The Mopes, seventeen pipe-pistols, and one pipe-shotgun.*

“Gatling Guns? Owned by Jet Corp?” I cocked an eyebrow. “The fuck are Gatling Guns?”

“What?” said Silver, gape-mouthed. “You said Gatling Guns?”

“Owned by Jet Corp,” I said. “What the fuck is going on? How? Why?”

“Not hard to steal from the Big Blue,” said Mylo.

“Yeah it is,” said Rogue. “They haven’t been here in seven years.”

“Doesn’t mean people can’t leave the planet,” he said.

“Actually,” replied Silver quickly, “they can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well think about it,” he said, clearing his throat. “Would you want to leave Bimia?”

Mylo smirked. “Good point. Free health care? A cure for every disease? Sustainable economy and resources? They have everything we used to have.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“It sucks, doesn’t it?” I said.

“It really does,” said Rogue.

“You wanna live there, Ashe?” said Silver.

“Yeah,” I said, “but only if Ma went with me.”

“Hmm,” said Silver. “Sorry about the cancer, kid. She’s a good woman.”

I nodded slowly. “I know. I just wish I had more time to spend with her.”

“Well,” said Silver, “if these guns are legit, then we might be able to make enough money to last us a couple months. That’ll give you some time, won’t it?”

My eyes widened. “Wait, you’re not actually thinking of taking these weapons if they’re really owned by Jet Corp, are you?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” asked Mylo sharply.

“Um, hello? They’re owned by Jet Corp? We’ll be killed? You forget what happened to my pa?”

He groaned. “Not this shit again.”

“Fuck you!” I said. My reaction was sudden, hot, and justified. He knew not to talk about Pa's death lightly, but something in him, something psychotic, kept testing my patience. “Honestly, you’re such an asshole.”

“Relax.” Silver made a calm-down gesture with his hand. “It’s okay. Look, Ashe, money is money.”

“And dying is dying, what’s your point?” I said.

“My point is,” he began, “there’s no use fearing these bastards in blue when they haven’t been here in seven years and probably won’t for seven more.”

“Airtight logic, that is,” I said. “I'm not taking those weapons.”

“I’m not saying that,” he said. “You don’t have to. If they’re real, and your Infrared’s not glitching, then we’ll be taking ’em. You can help and get a solid payment to last you a couple months, or you can go out on more of these raids and spend less time with your ma. The decision is yours.”

I glared at him for a moment. “This is stupid.”

He stared back, defiant. “Well, it’s the best option on the table for you. Regardless, we’re taking them.”

I groaned, thought about it, realised I had no choice, and said, “Fine. But I’m not touching them. Literally not a finger.”

He grinned that brown set of teeth. “That’s fine, too. Just help out, and we’ll be done with this base in an hour max.”

Mylo laughed. “This should be gooood.”

Old Rusty crunched to a stop outside a split in the escarpment of the Western Alps. Through it, and over a ledge with a blue canopy, the scrap-base took up most of the plateau. The buildings, scattered with thick cables and tarnished girders, were lit by lanterns and suspended on grated platforms, bound together by bridges and supported by rusty, sheet-metal balustrades. Cylindrical chimneys spewed carbon monoxide into the breeze, their bases leading into the streets below.

Steel snags—vehicle parts and roof pieces—poked out from the sand, wrapped with rope and used to hang clothes out to dry.

Not a soul in sight. This was a small, defenceless base. No big walls like the Gloom, no watchtowers with snipers at the ready. This was as free as they came in the Dust.

I kicked Old Rusty’s backdoor open and stepped into the desert night, wrapping my cashmere scarf tautly around the neck of my electric-blue jacket.

Bimia took up the night sky like a fat smear against a blackboard, illuminated by blue city lights and ringed by an atmoshield twice its size. The Tower, a gigantic space station, floated outside of it, shaped with a spindly body, starboard PV arrays, and an enormous blue eye.

Both were owned by Jet Corp. Everything in the solar system was owned by Jet Corp. It was a space agency with more money than those of us on Planet Ceter could willingly hand over if the time called for it.

“Fucking freezing,” said Rogue. She was dressed in a slim red coat along with a pair of metal-plated trousers. It was necessary that we kept our legs protected. One bite from an outland crawler was enough to immobilise you. These did half the job against them; the other half involved a shotgun to their heads.

“Wanna piece?” I plucked a stick of Blue-Sapphire bubblegum from the side-pocket in my backpack.

“No thanks,” she said, tying her hair into a ponytail.

“Suit yourself.” I unwrapped it and tossed it in my mouth.

Mylo hurried out the front passenger door, bearing his sniper rifle, strapping his night-vision goggles on tight. He always had a triangular facial structure, and that annoyed me for whatever reason. Hell, everything about that manchild annoyed me: the way he talked, his croaky voice, even his wild brown hair. Dude never heard of a haircut or a shower.

“Why don’t we stop a little closer?” he asked Silver. “Easier to loot that way.”

“Probably because we’re not morons, dipshit? They’ll hear us coming,” I said.

He sneered. “Shut it, Witch of the West. Any closer and your nose’ll be in their face, so I guess you’re right. My bad.”

“Very funny, Joker.”

“Yeah, very funny,” said Rogue.

Silver opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out, holding his bolt-action rifle in one arm. Real strong, manly man. You didn’t have to strip him of his leather to know he was muscular. His bushy beard was as grey as his hair, and his glacial-blue eyes twinkled under Big Milky’s starry sky. “Ready, ladies?”

“Still curious about those guns,” said Mylo. “Guess goin’ in gung-ho is the best way to find out.” He cocked the bolt-knob.

“I’d say it’s a miscalculation,” said Silver. “But it’s definitely worth the look.”

“What if Jet Corp are back?” asked Rogue.

“Impossible,” said Silver.

“How?” I said.

“Because we’d know about it if they were.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“No bugships, no bluesuits, and no gunfire. And I doubt that these people would know how to use Jet-Corp weapons.”

“How can you be so sure though?”

He spread his hands. “Call it a hunch. Either way, it changes nothing.”

But it did change things: These outsiders had literal space-grade technology, meaning we had no clue what they were capable of. They could blow us up, shoot lasers at us, something insane. I’d only heard stories about the sort of technology on The Marble, things about plasma swords, gravity weapons, radiation guns—things I’d love to get my hands on. But, yeah, they were only stories. Whether they were true or not . . . I didn’t know.

Before I knew it, Silver pulled out a zip-gun from his pocket. "You kids ready then?"

“Lead the way, captain,” said Mylo.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Rogue.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out Sammy, my pipe-pistol. Pa gave it to me as a you’re-growing-up-gift when I was ten, and ever since then I’d been wanting to make him proud by being the best raider to ever live.

Heh, yeah, like that was gonna happen anytime soon.

I blew a large, blue bubble until it exploded with a sharp pop. Then I tongued the gum back into my mouth. “Alright,” I said. “Let's get it over with. I don't have all night."