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friend and partner. This is Simara, the pilot.”
    The elder man approached with his left elbow up and forearm at an angle, a tangle of black hair curling out from his breather. He had a mat of grey fur on his barrel chest and a heavy paunch hanging over his thong.
    Simara matched his gesture to cross his arm in this strange battle greeting.
    “Do you claim salvage?” he asked.
    “Uh . . .” Simara glanced at her rescuer and decided to go with the flow. “This is Zen’s quadrant.”
    Katzi turned to Zen and bowed to seal the verbal contract, then swept an arm at the other two figures. “This is my crew, Keg and Sufi. Let’s get to work.” Keg, preparing a cutting torch with a portable tank on wheels, was a gaunt young man with bony limbs, his rugged skin crisscrossed with white scars. Sufi was a muscle-bound woman with a braid of hair down her back and a thick strap of leather squeezing her breasts. She wore brown gloves over big hands and a leather skirt over ample buttocks. They seemed like automatons in their breather masks, gargoyle worker drones.
    The mound of dirt Simara had seen in the distance turned out to be camouflage netting over the twisted ruin of her escape shuttle, and Sufi tossed her a pair of gloves and began to peel back the covering. Simara jumped to her aid as Keg lit his cutting torch and tuned the flame. Katzi and Zen began to work on the buggy trucks, extending the back tires and folding down flatbed panels to hold the salvage. Everyone moved with determination and furtive haste, and Katzi repeatedly checked the horizon all round where the lightning flashed and rumbled. An angry sun turned orange like an enemy ember as it slid toward mountain peaks.
    The cowl of the shuttle was fractured and crumpled, the control panel a wreck. Simara was lucky to have ejected before the impact. She was thankful to be alive, dripping with sweat in her shabby, borrowed boxers. She wanted to spit out a terrible taste in her mouth, but didn’t dare waste the bodily fluid. She swallowed and gagged, and blinked out tears to keep her eyes in focus.
    Miniature scorpions skittered like ants from under every component as they dismembered the vessel piece by piece and threw the wreckage in the buggies. Keg worked his torch with fluid expertise, cutting deftly with precision at key structural points, slicing and dicing in a shower of sparks like a manic demon. Katzi and Zen did the heavy lifting, and Sufi pulled full weight beside them, making Simara feel weak as she struggled just to keep upright against cruel grounder gravity.
    “Break,” Katzi finally shouted, and they all collapsed together in the shade of a loaded buggy. He offered bottles of water with snakelike straws, and they tucked them under their breathers and sucked for sustenance. “Are you somebody special, Simara?” he asked after they had rested a moment.
    She turned to study him. “What do you mean?”
    He shrugged. “Choppers are tracking your black box already. Freelance hirelings, no markings. We don’t usually get much attention out here in the desert. Even the insurance companies don’t bother with scrap metal down the gravity well. Why are you so valuable?”
    “I’m nobody,” she said. “Just trader trash.” Her stepfather would be glad to be rid of a daughter he had never loved, though the missing shuttle would set him back a fistful of creds and serve him right.
    “You’re wearing a skullrider,” Katzi said.
    “What?”
    He tapped the side of his breather. “You hear voices from the air.”
    “It’s just wi-fi,” she said, “but the grid is out because of the magnetic storm.”
    Katzi nodded. “Bali is a dead zone. There’s no chance of radar or surveillance. But you’ve got brain implants. That must be worth something.”
    Simara reached to rub scars at her hairline. Zen must have done a thorough investigation while she was out cold. Barely peeked, huh? She shrugged. “Everyone carries a trinket on the trader