The package in question nestled in the carriage compartment with space to spare. It measured about the size of her head. The protective gel casing offered no hints to the size or shape of its contents, but it was light enough to pick up with one hand. The printed manifest on the exterior proclaimed it to contain ten servomotors designated by a long string of letters and digits that would have told her whether they were used in weapons systems or zeoforms or some other more ubiquitous tech if she’d cared enough to look them up. It wasn’t worth the effort. There would be no reason to hide a delivery of servos in a pile of identical packages if it contained what it was supposed to.

She pulled a knife from the sheath at her belt and sliced open the package with a precise flick of her wrist. A small servo about the size of her palm toppled out. Tajo leaned closer to the table, eagerly gesturing for her to get on with it already. She upended the package, and out spilled a pile of identical motors, each trailing a small nest of wires capped off in plastiputty.

At first, she didn’t see it. Tajo plucked out a black, ovoid datastick with long, delicate fingers. He held it out quickly, eager to get rid of it before it tainted him, somehow making him a target, too. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to be a target either.

Agnieska took the datastick and plugged it into the console tucked in the corner. The machine hummed briefly before spitting up a stream of text that blurred across the screen as it loaded. So much information. It would take days to read properly.

“What is it?” Tajo asked, hovering over her shoulder.

“I’m not sure. It—”

She broke off, barely able to believe what she was seeing. She scrolled, sucking in information as quickly as possible, heart hammering. If she had known the contents of the package, she never would have accepted this job. Or maybe she would have begged for it? She wasn’t quite sure.

“What?!” he demanded, banging on the back of her chair.

She spun around to face him, her cheeks drained of all color.

“It’s the Teubercorps safety schematics,” she said.

“Which ones?”

Agnieska blanched.

“All of them.”

‍

•••

‍

“We’re doomed,” said Tajo over a meal they were both too wound up to eat. They’d been debating it for hours, but there was no answer in sight. “If we don’t get rid of them, your sister will kill us. But if we do, the client will kill us. Maybe we should just take a long dive into a hot sun and get it over with.”

“We could publish them to general comms,” suggested Agnieska hesitantly. “Although I suppose then Teubercorps would try to kill us.”

“Yeah, that just seems like a way to die quicker. They’ve got corp resources, and they’d be plenty pissed.”

She toyed with her meal packet.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess that does it. They can’t kill us if they can’t find us.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” he asked.

“We find my sister Lena. If anyone can throw Militsa off our scent, it’s her.”

“Won’t she try to kill you?”

“Naturally. I’ll just have to convince her otherwise.”

‍

•••

‍

In an immense stroke of irony, Lena turned out to be hiding on Vervane, the outpost world where Agnieska had almost been assassinated by her other sister. It was a desolate planet dominated by sickly green sands full of oxygenated copper. The grit got into the gears of a zeosuit and played holy havoc with the servos. Agnieska had vowed to never return, but here they were.

According to the intel, Lena was hiding out in a tiny settlement on the edge of the dunes, all of the buildings coated in a greenish rime. She’d covered her tracks well, but Agnieska had tracked her up until about a year ago, and she managed to pick up the trail again with a bit of searching. On the way to Vervane, they’d seen no sign of Militsa, but that meant nothing. She would show up eventually.

While Tajo piloted the ship, Agnieska reviewed the data, memorizing as much of it as possible. The datastick was so heavily encoded that it couldn’t be copied, and she understood why. With this material, hackers could compromise any Teubercorps tech from ships to zeoforms. She could remove the failsafes that kept pilots from fully integrating with their suits and achieving total immersion. Thanks to her mother’s genetech, she was already a natural pilot, but she’d be better if she could only stop running for a minute and devote herself to fine-tuning her skills. But if she could disable the bridge limits, she’d be unstoppable. She might have to barter this datastick away, but she was going to preserve every bit of data from it that she could.

Lena’s hideout turned out to be a communication station, its collection of various antennae poking spindly fingers into the air. As soon as Agnieska walked in the door, she found herself staring into the muzzle of a beamer. She looked past it to her sister’s determined, heart-shaped face.

“I have the full set of Teubercorps security specs and Militsa on my tail,” she said, holding up the datastick. “I’ll share if you help me.”

Lena lowered the weapon slowly, sighing.

“If you’re bluffing, I’ll shoot you,” she said. “Who’s he?”

“He’s…” Agnieska looked at Tajo, who arched a brow. “He’s a friend.”

“That’s unexpected,” said Lena. “And risky.”

“You’re telling me,” said Tajo. “Now are we gonna stand around in the doorway until someone shoots us, or are you gonna let us in?”

“With that attitude, you just might be my first friend too,” said Lena. “Let’s talk.”

‍

•••

‍

Days later, Agnieska waited in her repaired Amaroq at the edge of a sharp cliff on Vervane. The ground sat far, far below, the shifting sands no more than a greenish blur. The last time she’d been here, Militsa had pushed her off. That plummet had done much more damage than her little slip on Ounoth-10; if Tajo hadn’t pulled her from the wreckage, she would have died. But here she stood, in a new suit and the same place, waiting for Militsa to try again.

Her scanner blipped as it picked up another zeoform coming in fast. There she was. Right on schedule.

Militsa had made some improvements to her zeoform. She thought non-lethal mods were a waste of good time and space, so every available slot had been devoted to weaponry—the bigger and flashier, the better. The weight slowed her down a bit, but she was piloting a tank with legs to begin with, so it didn’t much matter. She only had to catch you once, and it would be over.

“Stop right there,” said Agnieska, holding out her zeo-hand. “Or I drop it over the edge.”

Militsa stopped. Her comm crackled, the speakers hissing. That damn sand had probably already gotten into the circuits.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said, her voice barely audible for all the static.

“Try me. If I’m going to die anyway, at least I’ll go knowing I put one over on you.”

The speaker made an odd noise. Militsa had snorted.

“I’ll still be one step closer to becoming the heir. Or two steps, since you were so kind as to lead me to Lena. It was a good call to propose a truce, but not quite good enough. I paid her a visit before our little meeting, and wouldn’t you know it, that depot of hers went boom. So tragic.”

Agnieska let the silence stretch out between them. Militsa took a single step toward her.

“I’ll drop it,” Agnieska repeated.

“Oh no you won’t. You want it as badly as I do. But I tell you what. If you give it to me, I’ll give you an hour’s head start before I come after you. My word of honor.”

“You can take your word of honor and shove it up your ass sideways.”

Militsa broke out into staticky laughter.

“You’ve grown up, little Mouse,” she said. “Now hand it over, and then we’ll play. We both know it’s the best chance you’ve got.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Agnieska held out the stick. Her sister’s zeoform stepped closer. Closer. Her armored hand delicately plucked the prize from Agnieska’s grip.

“Oh, one more thing?” said Agnieska. “That stick is a fake.”

Militsa’s weaponry powered up with such speed that it was obvious she’d been intending to attack all along. But Agnieska was not going to allow her the opportunity. She leaped forward in a single, gigantic stride, wrapping her arms around Militsa’s zeoform and toppling them both sideways off the very same ledge that had almost killed Agnieska when they last met.

The heavy cable attached to the foot of Agnieska’s suit whipped into the air, no longer hidden by the sands. It stopped her descent with a jerk, and she released her grip on Militsa’s zeoform. Militsa scrabbled to hold on, her weaponry forgotten in her desire not to plummet to the ground.

“All that weaponry is heavy,” said Agnieska. “You should have gone for thrusters.”

Militsa squeezed her then, metal groaning under the pressure. The ground whirled in dizzying circles far, far below. The red flashes of too many warnings to count coated Agnieska’s vision, but she didn’t need to read them to know that her sister’s weapons were live. Agnieska didn’t doubt for a moment that Militsa would shoot even if it meant plummeting to her own death. 

But Agnieska wasn’t going down quietly this time. With a surprising lump of regret in her throat, she activated her pulsar rifle and took aim. 

“You wouldn’t dare, Mousey,” said Militsa.

“I’m not a mouse anymore,” replied Agnieska.

Still spinning in the air, dangling upside down by one foot, she shot her sister’s zeoform right in the face. Militsa’s grip loosened, released. She plummeted down, leaving a ribbon of foul-smelling smoke in her wake, and Agnieska felt nothing but relief.

‍

•••

‍

Tajo and Lena hoisted her back up, their faces hidden behind ornate breathing apparatuses. Although they’d put a dummy in Lena’s place, anticipating Militsa’s attack, Agnieska was still relieved to see her sister in one piece. Maybe they would never be close, but she didn’t want to be responsible for the death of another sibling. One was plenty.

“We’ll have to bring the ship out and pick up the zeo,” she said, stepping out of the suit and putting on her own breather. “That leg is busted.”

“I figured as much,” said Tajo. “You okay?”

“Stellar.”

“We should make sure she’s dead,” said Lena, pointing down to where Militsa’s suit lay crumpled on the ground. 

With her heavier suit, Militsa’s chance of survival was nil. Agnieska had barely made it herself, and that was with a lighter suit and thrusters. Despite all that, she nodded, needing reassurance, too.

They rode down the slope in Lena’s buggy, sands shifting beneath its treads. Agnieska’s lungs burned despite the breather.

The zeo’s pilot’s compartment had been breached, jagged pieces of torn metal streaked with blood. There would be no need to crack it to see inside. But the face that greeted them wasn’t Militsa’s at all. It was a total stranger.

As they stared, mouths agape, a transmitter next to the body of the unknown woman crackled to life.

“I’ll be seeing you, Mouse,” said Militsa. “Soon.”