She smiled. Ali never ever ever smiled unless she wanted something…

  “Fine. But don’t linger,” I conceded.

  Happy to leave this irascible human with her robotic slave, I proceeded to the nearest service terminal. By the time I requested a vehicle from the operator, a spherical flying cigarette dispenser lit me a Lucky from the tip of its telescopic arm.

  “It’s forbidden to smoke in our store, Monsieur.” The salesman, in his blue silk suit with elephant legs, had popped out of nowhere. Yet, with such a shiny tie, this punk should have dazzled me from Alpha Centauri.

  “Please be kind and get me a New Coke, instead of ruining my eyesight,” I grumbled in response. I found myself in a particularly irritable state, as shopping has always been a source of disdain for me.

  However, the bustling pedestrian avenues of the Danaë presented an extraordinary opportunity for observation. The population density was ideal for studying contemporary social trends. I noticed a resurgence of voluminous perms, neon tattoos, crop tops, and excessively open floral shirts. Beneath the artificial UVA/B sun, the scene unfolded like a choreography of exposed skin, synthetic enhancements, and sculpted bodies, all seemingly embracing a form of nudity. Implants and other clinical procedures had effectively eliminated the risks of the genetic lottery, for better or worse. It was a spectacle of superficiality, a poignant reflection of human vanity. Yet, despite its futility, it was undeniably fascinating.

  “Hello, handsome!” Ali cried out, suspiciously grinning from ear to ear.

  My partner had just joined me, arms loaded with bags massive enough to live in it, start a family and park my chromic Pontiac Firebird. All filled with C$400 t-shirts and sneakers she didn’t need and would only put on once.

  “No smell. Hologram,” I grunted, throwing my cigarette butt through the simpering ghost.

  “Shame!” Ali sighed before glancing at her terminal. “You think I got time to grab a Swatch module? They’re on sale. I saw some GD-8 that would go well with my new Game Pocket! This boat is fucking rad!”

  Once again, here came the fake smile.

  “Yes, dear…” I complied.

  I had to rub my temples to avoid a migraine before the arrival of our taxicab.

  Taxicabs lately evolved towards miniature limousines with double fake leather benches, facing each other at the back. They involved an armrest minibar with expensive multicolored drinks, and a mini-fridge with sugar-soaked snacks, our esteemed bald apes’ primary source of calories and high-g space travel drug. For the sensitive snowflakes, the ceiling fountain provided diet sodas with aspartame—but no one ever used it. Finally, free Gauloises cigarettes waited for me next to the door ashtray. Alongside some fortuitous Tylenol!

  “Easy on the Coke,” I advised Ali.

  “Ain’t listening…” she answered, two XXXL wax-coated cups in hand.

  “As always…”

  Right after, the soft voice of a young woman, who appeared to us through the armored porthole separating her from her customers, emerged from the cockpit: “Good evening, guys! Meera at your service. Hyatt Regency Hotel, correct?”

  I nodded. Wearing the fancy yellow uniform of the boat’s crew, the girl smiled at us. Her incredibly dark night metal skin contrasted strongly with her curled silvery-white hair. The cyborg also had charming ivory eyes with absolutely no reflection. A mesmerizing void of light.

  It was such a rare experience to interact with a real person instead of AI. We quickly fell into a genuine and engaging conversation with Meera. Our discussion mostly revolved around life aboard the Danaë. As she explained, the rules on board were strict, almost military in nature. Everything was designed to ensure every customer had the most enjoyable experience, often at the cost of other considerations. According to her, there was no need to pity her situation. She felt completely content with her precarious, semi-nomadic lifestyle.

  “And what about you? Are you here on vacation or in transit for work?” she eventually asked. “What do you guys do for a living?”

  Should we have told her that we were executing notorious criminals so Ali would collect expensive oversized t-shirts while I try to pay off our gigantic debt to Blockbuster? No.

  Instinctively adjusting her phosphorescent hoop earring, Meera resumed as we remained silent: “Don’t get me wrong but I saw you had a gun. Guns are banned from the all-inclusive experience in Techno-space. Are you in the police… or are you bandits?”

  It wasn’t the first time someone asked us this question. Although weapons appeared to be allowed on most ships and stations, it wasn’t wise to display them unless you were looking for trouble. Unfortunately, hiding such a large caliber under Ali’s tight vest was a Herculean task.

  “Guns are cool” slurped Ali, her forehead resting against the scented stickers-covered window.

  Meera laughed. “I get that you don’t let people shuffle you around.”

  After leaving the fashion district and its golden life-size Parthenon, the taxicab entered the wide central expressway beneath the water park sheltering real DNA-modified sea nymphs. When, suddenly, an alarm rang out.

  “What’s going on?” I gasped, my ears on alert, as something hit our vehicle from behind. We swerved violently to the left.

  “Buckle up, guys!” our driver yelled, her left hand anchored to the handlebar.

  After crushing the safety railing, we fell from one rotating deck to another in a frantic cavalcade. Judging by Meera’s muffled swear words, our ride wasn’t part of the show. Dodging an open-air aerobics class and a group of children coming out of an arcade, the taxicab crossed the fourth ring main concourse and finally managed to recover at the last second. We almost passed through our hotel’s bay window and crashed the daily tea dance.

  “A thousand apologies! Another one of those mor—customers from the Inner System who doesn’t know how to use a rental car,” Meera shouted. “Are you guys hurt?”

  “No, thanks to you,” I replied, my soda-soaked tail spiked over my head, taped to Ali’s neck covered with bloody scratches.

  Although my human’s forehead grew a bump on it the size of a golf ball, it was true that Meera had just saved our lives. This young girl had unsuspected driving talents despite taxicabs’ lack of handling. She didn’t belong here, playing the steward in a circus uniform. This woman should fly a starfighter or get into the next SASCAR Cup Series on Canyon Creek.

  “In any case, you’re in front of your resort,” she replied as we stepped out of the vehicle. “You don’t have to pay anything. And I apologize again for the scare.”

  From the outside, the taxicab looked like a can of nutrigel after going through a crusher. Yet, it still worked. May God Darwin bless Venusian steel.

  After thanking her, we wished Meera a good day. But the miraculously still-functioning cockpit window suddenly went down on the passenger side. The smile of the driver had faded. She had tears at the corner of her ivory eyes. “Wait, please! That weapon—do you really know how to use it?” she asked.

  Life in this Jovian consumerism temple wasn’t so sweet after all. As Meera explained to us in a secluded alleyway, a trio of criminals had come to threaten her a few days earlier after finding she was a bodacious rider. They were preparing a heist in one of the flying city’s fifty casinos. Trapped, the young woman would pay the price to settle the case and avoid any retaliation.

  “What’s your opinion about the whole situation?” I asked Ali, once back in our room, a small yet cozy suite whose glass walls overlooked the vacuum of space.

  “Meera said she’ll provide us more details tomorrow.” My human dropped her stained jacket into our personal laundry chute, discarded clothes powering the ship’s auxiliary systems instead of supplying the garbage-gravfield. Once done, she applied a brownish ointment on her bump which disappeared soon after, leaving only a slight pinkish hematoma. “However, if she ponies up the cash, I don’t see why we’d refuse. We ain’t mercs but these guys must have a bounty on their heads. Gotta do our job, right?

  “Indeed…” All we had to do was wait for more instructions.

  Fortunately, it had been months since we could take some days off, except on miserable space stations full of drug addicts, implant scavengers and homeo-prostitutes. After another morning of shopping, Ali paid a visit to the thalassotherapy center of the neighboring hotel. Her main occupation? Overeating 3D-printed nutrigel sushi while getting massages. A true Martian idler!

  As for me, I couldn’t bask under the false sun of the next-door lakeside resort and get my belly stroked. Like a good captain, I dropped by the maintenance dock to fix the Kitty’s numerous damages. As usual, the bill came out higher than expected. Everything was orchestrated so we would never hold a positive balance in this corrupted system. We had to chain contract after contract.

  But Meera’s gig didn’t sound right. Something I didn’t like. I couldn’t fathom it yet. Yet all my cat senses turned red. Unfortunately, the bounty hunter’s ones wanted to taste the green bills. Don’t you dare judge me!

  The young taxicab driver had finally contacted Ali again by holoconference in the early afternoon, shortly before I joined my partner at the exit of the pool’s tanning booths—or as I called them: human toasters.

  “Are you done roasting like an Easter lamb?” I asked her as she plunged into the icy water of the adjacent basin—all that under the lustful gaze of a group of cadets from the Marine Academy.

  “Meera will pick us up with a new taxicab in the hotel parking lot,” she whispered once back to me. “Alongside her, we’ll meet two of the criminals at the burglary location. Shortly before midnight.”

  “Go on.”

  “We zero those punks then we catch up with the last one—the big-honcho.”

  “Leader.”

  “Yeah, leader-boss. In the hangar reserved for the ship’s logistics. Below the last rotating ring.”

  Stark naked, Ali came out of the basin, not without deliberately drenching me. The water had a harsh, chemical taste from being filtered repeatedly.

  “Do you have any input on these jokers?” I insisted while lighting a cigarette from a drone.

  My partner sat on the ledge. She splashed her feet to demonstrate her eagerness to head back swimming. “The Broadway Gang. Three siblings. C$45,000 for the trio. We’d recover at least C$10,000 of Techno-tax on their ship depending on its condition. Easy cash with the dollar-credits Meera promises us.”

  “Excellent! This will pay for the maintenance and allow us to save some money on our way to the belt.”

  “Whatever… Can I go now, Monsieur?” she asked, slowly sliding back into the water.

  “You may,” I concluded before seeing her leave for her absurd wanderings that would fill her afternoon.

  I found myself quite occupied with attempting to catch the attention of the affluent patrons at the Michelin restaurant, in the hopes of acquiring a few Peking duck morsels or succulent crab meat. Genuine, organically raised farm animals from Mars, not some synthetic nutrigel. In such a situation, I deemed it worthwhile to temporarily set aside my dignity.

  With an extended stomach, I decided to join Ali in the middle of the evening. Dragging my paws was a chore, and I had to request the hotel’s staff to carry me on a luggage cart. The glass elevator shortly took me to my floor where a moving walkway slowly escorted me to the right corridor leading to our suite. There, I crossed the departing group of cadets I noticed near the swimming pool earlier.

  “Ali? Are you ready?” I asked as I strode through the half-open bedroom door.

  My partner’s bathrobe had been nonchalantly thrown on the carpeting, near the mattress which was no longer on the bedstead. Her gun and badge were resting on the knock-down nightstand against a giant pyramid of little Yoyo Mints. Frankly speaking, I had anticipated a considerably larger chaos.

  “Gimme five minutes,” she replied from the shower.

  An hour later, we met Meera in the staff parking lot behind the recycling stations. Without further discussion, we joined the expressway in the taxicab. Between two noisy info-ads, the radio played Sweet Transvestite before the rest of the mythical Rocky Horror soundtrack.

  Afterwards, the Tropicana casino and its kitschy frontage were in sight. But once on the forecourt illuminated by the gold and silver bulbs, we heard gunshots and screams. My partner and I quickly realized a violent robbery substituted the modest heist.

  “What the fuck, Meera?” Ali asked with a hint of irritation in her voice, turning to the porthole that separated us from the cockpit. The cyborg remained mute, her hands on the wheel and her gaze forward. In the rear-view mirror the young woman looked anxious.

  The right gull-wing door of the vehicle suddenly opened, and two individuals sat in front of us. They were wearing theater masks: the first was Melpomene, the sad grimace of tragedy; the second, Thalia, the twisted smile of comedy. Each brigand carried a massive metal block under his arm, likely filled with cash. Their other hand gripped their still-smoking machine guns even more firmly.

  When they saw us, they both gasped: “What the fuck, Meera?”

  No time to waste! One—two, one—two! Ali moved quickly, as pros do. Then—four holes stitched in faded seams, punctured silence, broken dreams. A tux left tattered, worn and frayed, Ali’s work, a swift ballet.

  Poetry, once again. Her cat’s-eye-sized bullets silenced them forever, leaving the bench repainted in red. My ears began to buzz. Nothing quite as deafening as a gunshot inside an armored car.

  “What was that? You killed them?” Meera shouted through the tinnitus as she turned around while starting the electric engine. Her voice was quivering. She was no longer worried, but angry. “For real?”

  “Like, what’s your deal?” my partner asked.

  “You had tasers at your disposal, you psycho!”

  The tasers must have slipped between the seats because I hadn’t noticed them. My associate raised her eyebrow, and it made me realize their use had never been in mind. “We’re bounty hunters, sugar. Not social workers!” Ali pointed out, the tip of her left middle finger furiously massaging her tragus. “Now, you gotta motor! Or the cops are gonna fry our butts on the spot before we could even meet their boss-dude!”

  Meera immediately put her foot on the pedal. One could almost hear the noise of the thrusters melting the white asphalt.

  “Sirens, Ali. Getting closer,” I concluded before the taxicab entered the ring’s external road reserved for logistic transport.

  We had the quickest car chase we’d ever been part of. Meera’s driving outpaced the Danaë security forces easily. We sped across half a dozen rotary bridges to the rhythm of Take on Me, weaving through expressways and maintenance tunnels, reaching the deserted hangar just as the song came to an end.

  “Duck so their leader won’t see you!” Meera angrily ordered as the sliding gates opened. “Now, idiots!”

  That didn’t stop me from having a gander. The ship house looked like a huge supermarket with honeycombed shelves. Each of these garages, dimly illuminated by red LEDs, sheltered a delivery or transport vessel. The most impressive civilian fleet I had ever seen paraded in front of my snoot: Martian yachts, Belter-made Chryslers frigates, colorful Ford Family Space-Vans… Even a renovated Oldsmobile’s Starwagon with brand-new Baltimore-XX twin turbines! Still not as elegant as the Kitty, though.

  In the darker area, where we headed, stood a Swift-0 scout with wings spread between a set of clamps. The Swifts were narrow, high-performance single-seaters, designed with modularity to integrate advanced weapons systems. Their primary features were exceptional speed and agility, optimized for evasion.

  “Were they planning to escape on that ship? The three of them?” I noticed when the vehicle slowed a few meters from the small vessel.

  But Meera ignored me. “Hand me the money,” she demanded as we stopped. Leaning on the flank of the monoturbine, the last of the three criminals—a tall blond man with a more prominent chin than Chevy Chase—looked down on the approaching taxicab. “I’m going out. That was the agreement.”

  The porthole opened at its base, allowing us to pass the steel cash drawers. Once the taxicab’s ignition turned off, only their holographic serial numbers glowed in the dark.

  “It’s all over if his cronies don’t stick their noses out of your car,” Ali replied, giving the second drawer away. “He’s gonna figure out the mission went south. He’ll burn you, stupid!”

  Outside, the man grew impatient. Blinded by the still-running headlights of the taxicab, he came closer before exclaiming: “Zéphyr, you there? Where are my brothers? Security is closing all the departure chambers. We will be stuck here, for fuck’s sake!” He waved a machine gun identical to those of his companions presently nailed to the seats and bathed in their blood.

  “Zéphyr? Wait… I know that name!” I meowed.

  “Sorry guys, but I’ll handle the rest,” we heard as Meera, alias Zéphyr, smiled at us through the armored glass just before leaving the cockpit by the driver’s door.

  We heard a clack. The onboard computer bolted the taxicab’s doors and portholes, trapping Ali and I in the back, with the two plateaued and most wanted criminals on the ship.

  “That doesn’t augur well for the situation at hand,” I said.

  “What a fuckin’ piece of shit!”

  “Language.”

  “Bite me, Lee—uh. The windows seem bulletproof. Don’t feel like testin’. If buckshots start bouncin’ around, with us inside, it’s gonna ground beef us!”

  “Indeed.”

  “You got a plan?”

  “Did you forget who I am, dear?”

  I crawled under the seat, between a pair of Méduse shoes and half nibbled fried rat wings. The opportunity to demonstrate all my infiltration skills learned from Ninja Gaiden had come. Unfortunately, crab and duck slowed me down and my belly remained for a few seconds stuck under the driver’s seat with my head on the brake pedal. How outrageous!