Chapter 1

The Score

Loop one, over two, over three. Pull. Over one again.

Vetch's mag-boots rubbed. But he laced them anyway. He needed the repetition. He'd learned that early. Busy hands, quiet head.

It worked, sometimes.

'This is the big one, Pax!' Silas said. 'We do this, next mission will be from the Helix, I guarantee it!'

Silas was on one again. Always angling, never slowing down. Always winning somehow. It rubbed Vetch the wrong way, but this was the crew the clan said needed him. When orders are given, you don't get to argue. Even if it was Silas wearing the badge today.

Silas wasn't a clan boss; he was just Vetch's boss. The orders came from above. The clan, or if you were really unlucky, the Helix. Silas was always talking about the Helix, like it was some promised land, warmth, cards and easy booze.

Vetch needed a drink, but this wasn't the Helix. This was The Vaults, a series of cobbled-together containers, each as long as most ships in the dock, twice as wide, built up from decades or more of pulling wrecks. Useful and vacuum-hardened. But not so good at keeping heat in. They all leeched off the Tower One support systems. No wonder nothing worked right here.

The cold from outside seeped through the thin walls. Why did they bolt the habs here, hanging off Tower One, halfway in the spin? He didn't get it. Vetch had grown up planet-side and had only got off dirt five years ago. He still missed the warmth of the sun on his skin. The mass of a planet pulling at his feet. Predictable, safe. Until the war.

He didn't miss the ruin. Not even a little.

At least this wasn't the docks. No gravity at all down there.  Or was it up there? Spacer logic still messed him up. He could never get it straight that he was walking on the ceiling and down was up.

Standard Spacer logic said, up was to the rim, down was to the core. Didn't matter which way your feet pointed, just get used to it.

Drift's Edge wasn't so much a space station as far as Vetch could tell, but a failure held together by ancient history. A giant cylinder, too many klicks long to walk in a day. People were supposed to live on the inner rim, and once it had been that way.

These days, you wouldn't want to. Outside Tower One, the only pressurised habitat left in this place, it was cold and dead as the black.

Barely anything worked on Drift's Edge except what needed to.

The Helix sat on the outer rim of the spin; from there, top Rems told him they could see out into the black. Vetch doubted it, tall tales.

He smirked; everyone here was tall to him.

'The Helix doesn't give a fuck about people like us, Silas!' Pax's temper flared. 'I might be new to the clan, but all vaulters know that!'

Pax's mouth was gonna get him slapped one day. Silas let it slide, though.

'They do, I promise. I've got a contact,' Silas said. 'When have I ever lied to you?'

Vetch huffed and stood.

'Plenty'a times,' he muttered as he stepped off the first-story deck of their Vault apartment, which was nestled in, and dropped one floor down to Market Street, below.

He landed lightly, mag-boots sounding a satisfying click into action on contact with the deck beneath his feet, ensuring he didn't rebound.

'Vetch,' Pax called after him. 'Need company? I've had enough of his shit.'

He looked back up. Pax was about his age. Still in his early twenties and quick to anger. Just as quick to joy. Vetch had spent some time on ice to get here. Ages were just guesses for folks who travelled the black.

'Sure, I'll walk slow for ya,' he called back.

He liked Pax. Pax knew the rules of this place, and he still had the easy joy of someone who hadn't seen the harsh side of living.

But sometimes, that grated on Vetch too.

Spacers milled about, tall but wiry. Vetch had been kept shorter by the gravity of his birthplace, which also meant he carried more muscle mass, as long as he kept feeding it work. Spacers looked like people built to hang off ladders. Long in limb and body, the low-grav environment put little limit on their early growth.

Spacers weren't weak though, humans had fixed it, generations ago, well before even the collapse, that spacer life was as normal on the body as it was on a planet. He supposed they'd had to. Spacers were just made for a different world.

On Hearthe, even Vetch had been tall.

'Hey, you said you'd wait,' Pax breathed heavily as he caught up.

'Nah, I said I'd walk slow for ya.'

Vetch was already halfway to the strip stalls.

He needed a monarian whisky like most needed water.

It kept the nerves steady.

'What's got Silas all puffed up?' Vetch asked as they walked.

'New job, he says, came down from the top of the clan.' Pax was watching his steps, dodging litter and children darting at his feet.

'Top of the clan, why us?' Vetch said with a small frown curling his lip. 'We're nothing, even with me. Especially with Silas.'

'That's what I'm saying, exactly what I'm saying!' Pax suddenly had a broad grin; he hadn't seen enough shit to stay mad for long. 'Something no one's seen before and they think of us? Nah. He's not having it, though, convinced this is our ticket.'

'It's a ticket to trouble, is what it is,' Vetch muttered. The problem, as Vetch was beginning to realise, was that tickets to trouble are where the money is, and money was how you got out. Got to graduate through Drift's Edge before the Nine Worlds will contract a Rem.

Pax nodded lightly, not quite in agreement with the words, but with the sentiment.

'Yeah, I mean, it's total bullshit, of course. But Silas is gonna Silas. You know?'

'Doc will pull him in, she always does,' Vetch replied. His frown eased; even Vetch couldn't stay mad for long when Pax got into his flow. Also hoped he'd reached his target.

'Ah, here we are,' Vetch said. 'I need a drink.'

'Not too many, Vetch, yeah?' Pax said.

They stepped under the fire-red neon of The Afterburn's gantry.

A security scanner flickered across their faces, and Vetch grinned for the first time that day.

***

A few hours later, Vetch spied Risa "Doc" Kline crossing the floor. She was pissed off, as usual.

Vetch held his glass up in a mock toast, and Doc pulled up at their table without a word, eyes darting to the nearly empty bottle of Vetch's favourite whisky.

The Afterburn turned into a club when it got late enough, but this was mid-afternoon. Just food and drink. Mostly drink, paired with a not-too-loud steady electronic beat to keep a steady tempo to their conversation.

'Spoken to Silas, I gather?' Vetch said as he poured another. He offered to Pax as well, but he just held a hand over his glass, glancing at Doc nervously.

'Yes, and he's on his way. Signalled him as soon as I found you,' Doc replied. 'I should have guessed it would be here, though.'

She looked around The Afterburn, a subtle snarl giving away what she thought of the place.

'We don't like the job, Risa—' Pax said.

'When will you two understand that doesn't matter?' Doc snapped. 'You're Rems of the Caleedan clan. Once assigned, you're either in this crew or you're on the streets. Get kicked, no one else is gonna take you on board with a reputation for insubordination on your back.'

'Doc—'

'Don't "Doc" me, Vetch. You were a soldier. You should know this better than anyone.'

'Never said I ain't goin',' Vetch muttered.

Doc's eyes flashed back to the bottle, then at Pax, then narrowed on him.'How much have you had to drink?'

'Not enough,' Vetch muttered. 'I ain't drinking no more than anyone else in here.'

'Whatever baggage you are carrying, Harrow,' Doc said, her eyes narrowing. 'If you drag Pax down with you, I'll make sure you never see the other side of your next cryo sleep.'

'Ain't nothing like being on the same page, Doc.' Vetch downed the last of his glass and pushed it away.

'Silas will be here soon.' She signalled a nearby serving droid, which dutifully rolled over on a monosphere wheel. 'Clear this up,' she said, before it could offer more.

***

Just as Silas arrived, Doc handed Vetch a drink.

'It'll cut through the booze,' she said.

'Don't need it,' he replied.

Truth was, though, he had drunk more than he intended again. He'd just wanted to take the edge off.

Quiet his mind.

'Boys!' Silas shouted across the floor, looking around The Afterburn without a hint of disdain for the bar. 'Where else would you be, huh?'

He pulled up a stool to their table and put two hands up in a small shrug, and pursed his lips before continuing.

'Look, I know you've got your doubts here,' Silas said, pressing a finger to his lips as if preparing his next words carefully. Then beamed a wide grin. 'So I've been talking to the clan. They're gonna up your pay for this one.'

He splayed his hands out like a supplicant and half shrugged. Vetch had to suppress a snort at the display. But Pax just grinned, snapping his eyes to Vetch for a second, looking like it'd washed all his concerns away.

Instead, Vetch just sipped at the steaming hot drink; it caught at the back of his tongue.

Coffee.

He hated coffee.

He took another sip.

'Vetch you listening?' Silas said, concern showing in his eyes.

'You got a job, pay's up.' Vetch said.

Silas sighed and ordered food to the table. He was a dreamer, but he knew how to sell a contract.

While they waited, Silas kept Pax entertained with stories of his first contracts. A dive into a long cleaned drift-hulk to pull an old Syndicate bounty, marked years earlier. No one had dared attempt it. Too many thought those things haunted, Vetch didn't. He had no patience for ghost stories. They were for people who hadn't held another's body together with their fingers.

'One time,' Silas said. 'We got into a race with the Renaud clan for an intact derelict yacht in the meridian debris belt!'

The stories were meant to entertain Pax and glamourise the Rem life. The risk was always masked by Silas's well-timed heroics. No job was safe, though; danger was around every corner. Nothing in this life came easy. Plus, Silas wasn't that good. Vetch was though. He went in first and made sure everyone knew it.

The food arrived, and the mood shifted.

Silas helped himself first, and Vetch, always hungry, filled his plate as if it were a competition to see how much he could fit without spilling.

Doc took a portion for herself, while Pax took Vetch's lead as if it were permission.

'Look,' Silas said between bites, pulling out a data pad and flipping it around to show the others. 'Two weeks ago, Caleedan scouts found an old drift-tanker floating, dead, most of the way here from Orpheus 1. It's travelling at 0.1c, fifty light days out. Looks like it lost power, no way to know when, and it's just been cruising the shipping lanes.

He casually licked sauce off his fingers.

'Guys' who found it,' he continued. 'Were a two-man crew, and neither of them was a breacher, so they just tagged the location in the survey and called it in. Protocol.'

Orpheus was the nearest system of the Nine Worlds. One light year over.

'That's a few months in a g-chair, if we're gonna get there before anyone else picks it up. If it's on the shipping lane, frankly I'm shocked it's unclaimed.' Doc said. 'I'll requisition plenty of protein mix.'

'Who else knows?' Vetch said. 'How long's it been driftin'?'

Silas turned to him, a sly grin on his lips. 'That's why this one's special, Vetch. Only the clan knows, and they say it's old. The bosses came straight to me. No one else knows. We've been handpicked for the first dive. The Oracular Acolyte says we've got the best odds.'

Pax leaned in, a glimmer in his eyes. 'The Oracular picked us?'

Doc had clearly known Silas long enough to know when he was boasting, and Vetch had seen his type before. But Pax? Pax was green. Vetch hoped he wasn't too green.

'That's right, kid, I told you, we're getting noticed!'

'A drift-tanker?' the gears whirred in Pax's mind, he had awe in his tone. 'Only ever seen those in textbooks. When was the last one pulled?'

'Generation ago. Last time the Vaults got expanded. They stripped a tanker for the plating. We could be sitting in it now.' Silas showed him his teeth. He knew he had him. 'Look, tankers are nowhere near as big as Drift's Edge, but it'll dwarf my little cruiser. The key thing is it could be pre-collapse, and that's why no one's found it before, which means Choir-tech. Choir means payday.'

'Choir...' Pax repeated, his grin threatening to split his face in half.

'Pax,' Silas quickly interjected. 'That stuff isn't safe, you see anything that looks even choir adjacent, you call it in, yeah? That's why we've got Vetch and me here.'

Pax turned to Vetch.

'You've dove for choir tech?'

'No, I'm just appropriately scared shitless, unlike you.' Vetch couldn't hide his smirk. He knew enough to know they were surrounded by the choir's legacy. The Grand AI's old all disappeared in the collapse, Choirmasters they called them, but the acolytes running service, the station itself, he bet all ran on what remained of the choir.

One time, everything ran on that stuff, the Song he'd heard it called. Bunch of mumbo-jumbo as far as he was concerned. Machine code was code, whatever interface got stuffed on top of it. But he knew it could be dangerous if not taken seriously, especially the further you got from civilisation. Drift’s Edge’s Acolytes seemed safe enough, though.

Pax laughed, loud and long, as if Vetch had said the funniest thing he'd heard in years.

'We'll do a fast intercept, get there in a few months. Our boots will be the first to hit those decks in centuries,' Silas said. 'Mark my words.'