But my flawless plan unraveled instantly. A sudden jarring suction noise made everyone flinch. Before I could react, a hatch overhead hissed open, spilling icy wind into the room like a furious blizzard. The vandal spun around, his eyes wide with alarm as the storm engulfed us. Then came gunfire—a sharp, deafening crack.

  “What’s happening?” I yelled, completely blind while the monitor of my suit alarmed me the temperature was falling to a new low.

  The icy wind disappeared, leaving an uneasy stillness in its wake. Our target had drawn his gun, mirroring my human, who stood with their weapon trained on him—a perfect reflection locked in a deadly standoff. “I believe we have company,” she said.

  Indeed. Behind our assailant stood an android, his right hand on the barrel of the vandal’s pistol and his left arm wrapped around his neck. Slowly deprived of oxygen, the man turned purple and fell unconscious. Immediately, the robot’s mechanical thumb slipped on the push button while gently resting the maniac’s body on the frozen ground. The explosive belt, along with the precarious situation it symbolized, was ultimately neutralized with commendable efficiency.

  “Task fulfilled!” the AI announced with his synthetic voice on the open channel. “And without unnecessary bloodshed. Hooray!”

  A MK-III—a third generation MechanicalKiller from Gibson Electronics—stared at us, the right arm up, expecting a high-five that never came. Unless reprogrammed, these formidable murder machines typically served as guardians for megacorporations’ warehouses and supercargo shipments.

  “You almost got us all killed!” I screamed at the automaton, before Ali took me in her arms to shield me from the even more intense cold invading the room.

  With a single violet orb covering his entire humanoid face, the tin can eyeballed my partner from head to toe before stopping at the level of her badge yet hidden by her suit. “Negative. It would never have let that happen,” he calmly replied as the diodes surrounding his core—shielded by a steel plate at the height of his sternum—began to flicker with a mauve glow. “Life is too precious.” After handcuffing the target, this black alloy carcass defining himself in the third person hoisted the intruder up on his shoulder without any effort. He then extended his jingling right hand to Ali before presenting himself: “Howdy! I am MarKus, an MK-III unit under expired license. I am a Justice Auxiliary. My ID is #0-21XX-010.”

  “Good morning, MarKus,” replied my human before introducing us. “I suppose you’re gonna claim the bounty?”

  “Negative! You and It will share the reward.” the android reacted. “Alongside its ace-high CanaryBike for Ganyville. It saw you come by the old helitram.”

  Ali agreed. “Show us the way out.”

  “Hooray!” the robot responded, raising his arm again. This time, he received a shy high-five.

  Ganyville stood as the final vestige of civilization on Ganymede. The Technocratic Government, which once held dominion over the Jovian colonies prior to the rise of the independent Commonwealth and the Kingdomlands, had sought to terraform the largest moon in the system, intending to establish it as their ultimate stronghold before expanding to the Rings. However, their efforts to replicate the success of the Dolomieu Process previously demonstrated on Mars ended in catastrophic failure. The Jovian satellite succumbed to structural instability and was tragically fractured into two.

  The sheriff’s office in this lawless, unforgiving world did what it could with what it had, keeping the fragile threads of order intact. But peace was rarer than anyone under eighty in the Techno-Congress, and the fresh bullet holes in the precinct walls proved that Ganymede hadn’t known a quiet day in years.

  “We take a day off, and it’s O.K. Corral in this underground ghetto!” exclaimed Ali, as she walked through the crowd of onlookers in front of the saggy steps.

  “It detects an organic survivor,” MarKus said. “First floor, in the largest office. Behind what’s left of an IBM 3800 printer.”

  “Let’s check this out,” I suggested.

  The lobby was upside down. The Formica furniture had been slammed over, all the computers at the counter had been pulverized and cathode-ray tubes’ glass was squeaking under our feet. Last minor detail, the decapitated bodies of the four assistants had been impaled on the telephone booths’ knocked-over stools.

  Unfazed, Ali rushed to the first floor and violently broke through the door of the sheriff’s office. I tailed her. A loud gunshot greeted us. But fortunately, the bullet embedded itself a few inches from my partner’s face, right on the portrait of the ex-Techno President—and local hero—Ronald Reagan.

  “Didn’t you learn to knock, pumpkin?” ironically asked a middle-aged woman with short straight black hair and almond-shaped brown eyes. Standing up from her chair, she glanced at Ali’s palladium badge before dusting off her bloodstained denim jacket. “Damn hunters… even dumber than the ol’ feds.”

  MarKus joined us, folding the plastic laths under his weight. At the sight of the sheriff, his purple orb and heart lit up. “How are you doing, Sheriff Dolly Park? It counted no less than 259 hits from a M55 Remington rifle as well as 18 impacts from a Belter-made Glock, model P220.”

  Park snorted while holstering her colt. “In other words, my boys didn’t stand a chance.” The sheriff quickly got a grip on herself as another survivor of the carnage, her soju brick, cleaned her wounds and quenched her thirst. “Any injured, Purple Heart? How are my boys doin’?” she asked while turning off the thermocouple beneath her heated drink.

  “All dead. And displayed in a rather gloomy manner.” After having allowed the woman to down in one go the rest of her alcohol brick, the MK-III, known in town as ‘Purple Heart’, carried on his report: “The modus operandi is similar to a cyborg registered as ‘Plague Cassidy’. A varmint tagged at 75’500J₩ after the moonshiners massacre near Paradise. Could you confirm, Sheriff Park?”

  Park agreed with a grunt before noticing the body MarKus still held over his shoulders. “Who’s that flatfoot?”

  “This one’s been snooping around the old cryonics center,” I explained as I jumped on the desk between the sheriff’s white hat and a set of magnetic keys. “20’000, is that right? Martian credits.”

  Searching into a creaking drawer, Park snorted again. “It would have been a pleasure. But as killing my deputies wasn’t enough, Plague took the money terminal and all my dineros. Foreign and local—got a quirley, pumpkin?”

  “Alright. Looks like we are on the hunt now,” said MarKus, rolling a cigarette for the sheriff with some paper and dusty tobacco he gathered on the cluttered ground.

  “We?” I exclaimed.

  “Guess we’re a team now,” Ali commented. Leaning on the doorframe, she was browsing her wrist implant; probably searching for Plague Cassidy’s Jovian contract in the database.

  “Do we, though?” I grunted as pairing up with this MarKus would be less money at the end of the contract.

  “It can set with that, kitty-cat,” replied Purple Heart after handing the perfectly rolled cigarette to the lumping Jovian official. “Our chances of success could only be increased. And you seem pleasant.”

  “You have a twisted definition of ‘pleasant’ talking about this grumpy mop,” Ali joked before I looked daggers at her.

  Park let out a sardonic laugh after taking a puff on her cigarette. “Gotta be careful on this job, Purple!” she warned, tipping her Stenson. “Plague’s a multiple-time recidivist. A cyberpsychosis school case. Y’all know what it is—with too many implants, your mind’s up the spout.” Tailing MarKus to the cells, she continued in a tired voice: “This hard case is brutal and fearless. You’ve seen the fuss he can make for a few bills…”

  I scoffed. “Sheriff Park, my dear, you underestimate what we’ll do for those ‘few bills.’”

  Chasing Cassidy with MarKus’s CanaryBike or even the Kitty was pure madness as Ganymede’s destruction had completely disrupted its magnetic and gravitational activity. The instruments were of no help in the wide-open spaces, not to mention the risk of collision with lost ice bodies—sometimes as broad as comets—was deadly high. The hunt had to be carried out on horseback. The old-fashioned way. Of course, the mounts provided by Dolly Park were enhanced clones. Unlike their human counterparts, their existence was perfectly legal. These creatures had been engineered to survive the harsh conditions of moon surfaces without needing to breathe. Tanks were embedded between their prominent ribs, hidden beneath the leather saddles, and their hooves were reinforced with osmium—the heaviest metal in the system. They were, in a way, both repellent and endearing, their rough exteriors belying a certain rugged charm.

  “These mules won’t end up cooked because of solar radiation?” Ali asked through our space suits’ short-range radio. She brushed the neck of his orange-colored steed she called Swift Wind.

  Behind us, in the open airlock of Ganyville’s vault, MarKus was saddling his lilac mount. “Negative. Jupiter’s magnetosphere greatly protects all its Galilean satellites,” he replied while steering the beast out of the city. “That’s why humans wanted Ganymede to be their new home world beyond the main asteroid belt.”

  I sighed. “They made a slight miscalculation.”

  “Affirmative. A constant from them,” the robot went on, trying to be humorous.

  The second half of the moon loomed overhead, its shadow stretching over the distant, decaying town as I climbed onto my partner’s horse. From here, I could keep an eye on our surroundings while we crossed the desolate, gray plains encircling Ganyville.

  Jupiter III was a grim reminder of humanity’s failures. Ganymede had become little more than a barren wasteland—dry seas, vast deserts, and titanic canyons carving the fractured mantle into lifeless squares. Attempts to create an atmosphere had failed, and what little water remained had drifted off into space. A few frozen mountains of ice lingered where the crust had stayed intact, but they were a cruel reminder of what had been lost. With each rotation, the moon stretched a little farther from hope, its orbit dragging it ever deeper into an emptiness that had no end.

  For several hours, our group silently followed the tracks of Cassidy’s horse to a shady gorge. The AI bounty hunter hoped to catch up with the bandit before reaching the Caverns of Laplace, a vast complex of grottoes where it would be impossible to pursue him. Thus, the MK did not hesitate to whip our mounts in the middle of the steepest shortcuts.

  “How well do you know the area, MarKus?” Ali asked as we passed under a cracked ice arch.

  “It was born and raised on Ganymede,” the robot replied. “It works exclusively on this satellite for the Alliance.” Our guide was not to be idle. A third of the Commonwealth’s moons remained lawless territories full of highway bandits. Like the Rings.

  After a short detour, we followed a craggy path down to defunct goldmines. Signs, both in Solarian and Korean, warned us about the risks of crumbling. “Is Park a friend of yours?” I asked before a ghost town could be seen underneath, half submerged by a rockslide.

  “Affirmative. Sheriff Dolly Park is a long-time companion. She’s from down there,” MarKus replied before taking a turn on a bridge overhanging the abandoned settlement. “However, it did not know her deputies. No time. They always die too quickly. It makes the sheriff really sad.”

  “You seem to have a conflicting relationship with death,” Ali noticed. “It is rather curious for an auxiliary. Or a robot.”

  The android stopped, looking down at the creek. In the distance, behind the saggy bunkers lined up on the barely visible main road, an endless graveyard testified of the catastrophic earthquake which wiped out the boomtown. “It doesn’t like death,” he replied. “So, It doesn’t kill.”

  “You mean you have never ghosted any of your contracts?” my copilot asked as we overtook the MK’s horse.

  “Negative.” MarKus came up with the strangest explanation an AI could think of: “It loves life and blesses it. Without life, It couldn’t look at the stars every day. It would love to see them closer. That is its one and only dream.”

  With his solitary mauve eye, filled with a quiet, mournful melancholy, the robot gazed out at the stars, beyond the shattered remnants of Ganymede. His iron hand pressed against his cold, metal heart, a gesture that seemed both empty and desperate. There was something profoundly unsettling about the sight, something that sent a chill down my spine.

  As we left soon after the canyon, we came upon a present from Plague Cassidy. The serial killer had planted one of the deputies’ heads on a rock pick. Weightlessness had freed it, and the face of the unfortunate floated at the withers of our horse.

  “Does Plague think he’s Hop-o’-My-Thumb?” Ali joked despite the doleful discovery.

  “This is a warning,” I corrected her.

  “Cassidy knows we’re after him,” the android said before descending from his saddle to bury the head under a block of iron ore.

  Ali cursed. “Can’t wait to stick some lead in his fucking face.”

  “Negative,” MarKus intervened. “It does not kill. It—”

  “Yeah—whatever…” my human sighed. “What do we do? My unicorn is exhausted.”

  “The temperature is quickly falling. And I presume you also need to clean your filters,” the robot said. “We will bivouac here.”

  “Good idea,” I concluded.

  While brushing his mount behind the ears, the alloy golem took out a small music boxlike cube from its ventral drawer. After pulling a crank, the case anchored in the ground and its cover opened. A yellow ribbon escaped from the inside and began to take on volume. In less than ten seconds, an atmospheric Faraday yurt had taken shape before my amazed eyes. “Make yourself at home,” the owner said while checking the rubber door for leaks.

  “Is there a VCR?” I asked before doffing my suit.

  “Negative. But It has a radio and some Glen Campbell cassettes.”

  “Oh, dear God! No!” I meowed.

  “Or a Simon. Wanna play?”

  “Sure,” Ali candidly reacted.

  A rather misguided notion, if I may say so. Have you ever engaged in this form of electronic entertainment, wherein one must replicate lengthy sequences of illuminated notes? Undoubtedly, you have. However, to do so against an artificial intelligence? May God Darwin have mercy upon you.

  Late the following morning, the “star of Zeus” appeared behind a cloud of debris as we arrived at the entrance of an iron desert. Under our feet, rivers of molten metals had frozen in contact with the void, forming long black scars. There was nothing exciting for tens of miles. Except for a new warning from Cassidy at a sparse crater’s entryway. Besides the head of a different deputy, it was then the cyborg’s mount that floated a few centimeters from the ground littered with olive gravel despite the weight of its hooves. It had broken a radius inside one of the cracks trapping the unstable terrain.

  The bounty-hunter android scanned the landlocked plain with thermal binoculars plugged to his wrist but detected no threat. However, if Plague had continued on foot, he couldn’t be very far.

  Within the vast crater, white stalagmites rose like ghostly sentinels around the rusted, forsaken terraforming drills. As we pressed onward, these jagged spikes of sodium sulfate grew ever wider, their sharp peaks climbing higher with each step. In the distance, where the land bled into the horizon, they coalesced into a jagged mountain range—untouchable, an unforgiving barrier, too treacherous to cross on horseback. The desolation was overwhelming, yet there was an eerie majesty to it, as if the remnants of a forgotten ambition still lingered, frozen in time.

  “We are soon at the Caverns of Laplace,” our guide said. “We will have to be very careful.”

  “Roger that,” Ali declared as a cruiser-sized boulder wafted slowly into the dark sky.

  Right after, my human startled, making me turn around. I thought she had caught a cold in the floating rock’s shadow. But when vermilion beads began to escape from her suit, I understood something dreadful had just happened. “MarKus!” I shouted through the radio before our companion came back.

  “What is goin—” A spark immediately appeared on the robot’s shoulder. Then a second silent impact ricocheted on his right forearm’s steel plate. “Sharpshooter! Get your mounts out of the way.”

  As Ali’s body crashed to the ground, the sound of gunfire shattered the silence. One by one, the steeds’ heads exploded, sending frozen brown plasma floating into the void. In the weightless vacuum, MarKus moved with terrifying speed, leaping towards my partner and catching her just before she slammed into the blackened surface. We dived for cover, adrenaline pumping, as he pressed his fingers firmly against her wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

  “Is she ok?” I asked, terrified.

  “Before your associate almost chewed gravel, a 5.56 mm projectile severed the sternohyoid muscle overhanging her clavicle,” MarKus explained. “Fragments of depleted uranium nailed the carotid artery.”

  “This is bad!” I cried before new projectiles polished the surface of the collapsed stalagmite behind which we had taken shelter. The hazardous gravity caused the sodium dust to fly around the cover barely wide enough for the three of us. “What can we do?”

  While pinching Ali’s suit, MarKus snooped into a compartment behind his left thigh. From his paramilitary medical kit, he pulled out two encapsulated shots and a needleless injector. “This one is to encompass the uranium,” he explained to me by applying the medi-shot equipped with the first green vial to my human’s neck’s base. “The second—the red one—is for pain.”

  The opioids took effect in less than a heartbeat. “That—that ain’t so fucking bad…” Ali stammered through the red mist that condensed on her visor. Her trembling hand had gripped my right leg.

  “Cassidy made his Jack,” the robot said as I tried to help him by pressing on the pink space suit’s leak, but the hole caused by the bullet was too wide. The air was escaping, and my copilot started to choke. “He must think you’re dead after such a shot.” After brushing away the floating blood pearls and the thermal liquid’s turquoise fumes, he frantically searched another compartment behind his right leg. After a few seconds, which seemed like a hundred, he ultimately found what he was looking for. “Sorry. It is really sorry.”