As soon as the blast doors closed, Malby screamed and threw down his combat helmet. It bounced across an inner chamber that led into a small operations room. “What’s happening?!” he yelled, waving his pulse rifle and hopping around as his broken leg healed. He looked at Jiang, then Lucky. “Where did the Union get blasters like that?”

Nico closed his eyes and slid down a mesh wall next to a bank of computers, waiting for his foot to finish regenerating.

Lucky looked more closely at the computers and recognized them from the vid. One was the six-dimensional data cube that Mr. Beet Red had been using.

That seemed odd. In the vid, they were under the tarp outside the stackshack.

Lucky holstered his plasma rifle and slid down next to Nico.

Nico opened his eyes and glanced over at Lucky, then sat up straighter.

Lucky smiled. “You’re all good, man.”

Nico hesitated, then relaxed his shoulders.

“Sorry about being a dick out there,” Lucky said.

Nico’s eyes widened. “Nothing to apologize for, sir. I should never have gone for the blast doors.”

Lucky silently agreed, but tried to put the kid at ease. “You can stop with that ‘sir’ crap. I’m no officer. I’m just old.”

Nico nodded. He still had his hammerhead top on. It was warped and dented, but Lucky could still make out “this side fucked” scratched on the side.

In the middle of the small operations room, perma-peacock Malby was still holding court.

They sat and watched for a while before Nico broke the silence. “So, is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“You know,” Nico said, “what they say about you?” He squirmed, clearly not wanting to repeat what it was they were saying about Lucky. “That… that you can dodge anything. That you never get shot.”

“Maybe you missed the big hole I had in my thigh earlier?”

“Oh yeah,” Nico said.

“Kid, I learned a long time ago that nothing good comes from paying attention to what people say about you,” Lucky said.

“He doesn’t remember anything about anyone anyway,” said Jiang, who had walked up while they were talking. She was sneaky.

The kid looked at her quizzically. “Why?”