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“She’s a VD Auroch-Z cosmosHauler. Fourth generation by my guess.”

“Don’t equivocate. We both know you’re not guessing.”

I wipe sleep from my eyes, annoyed. “She has 125 million cubic meters of hauling capacity. One main Gastron helium reactor. Built in the Venusian yards, circa 520 PCE. Crew of forty. One industrial docking bay. Two secondary tubes. Obviously she’s a smuggler.”

“Sounds like the human encyclopedia’s got a turd up his nose,” Pytha drawls. She pours a cup of coffee from her carafe and hands it back to me. I wish it were tea. “The last of the beans till we hit Lacrimosa. Sip wisely, peevish one.”

I slip into the seat behind hers and take a mouthful of the coffee, wincing at the heat. “Apologies. I neglected to eat supper.”

“I neglected to eat supper,” Pytha repeats, mocking my accent. Born on the Palantine Hill of Luna, I have lamentably inherited the most egregiously stereotypical highLingo accents. Apparently others find it hilarious. “Haven’t we servants to spoon-feed His Majesty supper?”

“Oh, shut your gory gob,” I say, modulating my voice to mimic the Thessalonican bravado. “Better?”

“Eerily so.”

“Skipping supper. No wonder you’re a little twig,” Cassius says, pinching my arm. “I daresay you don’t even weigh a hundred ten kilos, my goodman.”

“It’s usable weight,” I protest. “In any matter, I was reading.” He looks at me blankly. “You have your priorities. I have mine, muscly creature. So piss off.”

“When I was your age…”

“You despoiled half the women on Mars,” I say. “And probably thought it was their honor. Yes, I’m aware. Forgive me, but I find books a passion more illuminating than carnivals of flesh.”

He looks at me in amusement. “One day a woman is going to make a pretty meal of you.”

“Spoken like a man who barely escaped the lion’s jaws,” I reply.

Pytha goes still and stares at Cassius for a long, awkward moment as her arithmetical brain endeavors in vain to divine whether he is offended or not. I sip my coffee again and nod to the ship. “To the matter, no legitimate Mars or Luna corp would send that poor girl out to the Gulf without escort. Not with Ascomanni about. Those Julii-Barca Solar markings are false flags: wrong shade of red on that sun. Should be scarlet, but that there is vermilion. The Syndicate would know that. So, low-rate smugglers. Like Pytha said, probably hauling ore from some off-grid mine to avoid customs. And please, stop testing me, Cassius. At this point, you know that I know.”

Cassius grunts, still stinging from the lion rejoinder. It was petty of me to say, and I feel lesser for having said it. Ten years recycling each other’s air will make the best of men devils to one another. After all, that is why Blues were raised in sects.

“No bloody way that vermilion is an actual color,” Pytha says.

Of course Pytha is as much an exile from her kind as we are from our own. I can’t imagine why.

“Sounds more like the last name of a Silver,” she adds. “Heh heh.”

“Care to wager on that?” I ask gamely.

She ignores me. “Blackhell. You gotta be a special kind of stupid to wander into the Belt without legs to run or claws to fight. Nearest Republic gunship is ten million klicks away.” She finishes her coffee and bites into the ion blueberry tail of a Cosmos Comet caffeine gummy. She offers me the remaining white tail, which I decline. “Suppose the distress signal was an accident? Didn’t last long.”

“Doubtful,” Cassius replies.

It’s too dark to tell if there are any carbon scoring markings along the outside of the Vindabona—the telltale sign of a forced breach. I don’t find any, but that hardly disproves their existence. Pytha looks back at Cassius. “Do we risk hailing them?”

“Let’s not announce ourselves just yet.” Cassius looks back at me and speaks the word on both our minds: “Trap?”

“Perhaps.” I overdo a nod to make up for my earlier barb. He doesn’t seem sore. “Might be a pirate ship strapped to one of those asteroids. I daresay we’ve seen this one before. Emit a distress signal for bait, then sit back and wait. But…it’s peculiar all the way out here. If it is a trap, it’s a poorly conceived one. Who would run across it? No one likes the Gulf.”

“So we should investigate.” Cassius uses his instructor’s voice.

“With caution,” I confirm. “There may be souls aboard. But we needn’t risk the Archi just yet.”

“My mind exactly. So what do we do, my goodman?”

I smile and put down my coffee. “Well, Cassius, I daresay we should put on our dancing shoes.”

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