Harper pulled on her black combat boots, a pair of locally made linen trousers and her duster jacket, leaving it open at the front. She stepped outside, still hesitant as the sunlight hit her eyes. It was strange being out in the open unmasked, fresh air filling her lungs. Back home in New Helsinki, she always had a ceiling over her head. She swallowed, breathed in and took a few steps forward.

  Crantown was located in a clearing where the wetlands met the forest, where the ground was hard enough to support the foundations of the log cabins the villagers built as dwellings. They all looked the same from the outside: longer than they were wide with greying straw rooftops. The difference came from their surroundings. Chicken coops, a lit forge by an outdoor smithy, a pig pen, and the faint smell of urine carried over by the tannery at the very edge of the village. Power lines hung overhead, connecting the houses to the three small wind turbines that gave the village electricity, creaking slowly in the mid-September wind. It had gotten colder since Harper left New Helsinki.

  “Labrīt!” the villagers she passed greeted her as she made her way to the hardwood platform at the center of the village, which served as a makeshift landing pad for dust ships. She’d try to repeat the greeting as best she could once or twice, but mostly just responded with an incoherent mumble and a forced smile.

  Walters was already outside, cleaning the ducted fans of the Hail Mary. An unnecessary job: they were clean enough by the second day in the village, and the Hail Mary had finished charging its batteries by the third. But the hairy little man was restless and bored, trying his damndest not to spend the entire profit of the run on moonshine. He smiled broadly enough to give Harper a flash of teeth from under his thick black moustache, surprisingly white given how dirty the rest of him was.

  “Harpy!” he exclaimed, a nickname that had mercifully replaced sugartits. Harper wasn’t very partial to it, but she was learning to be grateful for small victories.

  “Walters…” Harper said back with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “Listen, we ready to fly out soon?”

  “Eager to get home?” the pilot asked, wiping his greasy hands in his trousers.

  “No. Eager for the next job. That is, if you’ll still have me.”

  Harper was half-expecting Walters to make some unwanted joke about having her. The other half expected him to chew her out for getting Payton killed. She didn’t expect him to say: “Hells fucking yes Harpy! Thought we lost ya for a sec there!”

  Walters wrapped his skinny arms around her before Harper could move, his cheek leaving a stain of moustache oil across the yellow monkey face on her t-shirt. She gave him a pat on the back, breathing out in relief as he let go. “Well, you know. Ain’t giving up that easy.”

  “That’s the spirit! We’ll need a new captain, maybe another gun or two when we get home though. Actually, I got some ideas about that…” Walters said after pulling back, wiping his moustache as if Harper had been the one to stain it, rather than the other way around.

  “So we ready?”

  “No… Miss Cloude still needs time to recover. Another day or two. She got more dust in her blood than you did, kid.”

  “Miss Cloude?” Harper said and crossed her arms, “Not sugartits or sweet cheeks? Not even blondie? You surprise me, Walters.”

  “Harpy, please,” Walters said, “Anna Cloude is a lady.”

  “Mean to say I’m not?” Harper said, furrowing her brows and staring down at the pilot.

  “No.” Walters said, as if the answer was obvious.

  Before Harper could decide whether or not to knock out Walters’s pretty white teeth, the hoofbeats and grunting of dust-reindeer pulled her gaze away from the pilot. Most people called the beasts “dreins” for short: grey hairless creatures with large antlers, changed by the nanites in the dust, then domesticated by nomadic Randuur living in the wilds.

  Four of the beasts pulled a steel wagon, wooden wheels replacing ancient tires, carrying a pile of goods hidden under a tarp. An old nomad sat hunched over at the front, covered almost entirely by a pale cloak, his face hidden under a checkered scarf.

  Another four dreins flanked the wagon, these ones part of a leaner breed. Each had a rider saddled on its back, all of whom wore long grey coats and covered their faces with thick scarves. Those looked similar to a typical duster jacket, but longer, split at the back to allow for more comfortable riding. Each of them carried a bolt action rifle fixed with a bayonet, yet they still had a bow and quiver attached to their mount, and swords made from scavenged steel hanging from their belts. More reliable for long journeys through the dust.

  Walters moved back, pressing against the Hail Mary, hand reaching for the small .38 revolver in his jacket. Harper didn’t feel threatened until her crewmate did, just in awe. The group was too small to be a raiding party. And yet now, she felt strangely aware of the fact she was unarmed, clenching her fists as if that would do any good.

  One of the riders at the front, the only woman among them, pointed her gun right at Walters before he could draw. The one next to her laughed and slid off his reindeer. He was tall and lean, lowering his scarf to reveal a weathered and scarred face with a short beard. His eyebrow was pierced by a simple steel ring, with an identical one on his left nostril. He smiled, broad and confident, and crossed his arms.

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  “Why turn this into a gun-fight, hm? A wounded girl and a small man would fall quick, no?”

  “Being wounded means you faced death and survived,” Harper said, unclenching her fists and trying to hide the pain the action had caused in her stump finger.

  The female nomad climbed off her drein. She was agile enough to keep her rifle pointed right at Walters as her feet hit the ground. Then she pulled off her scarf, revealing a handsome face with light brown eyes that looked almost yellow. Her pale, freckled face was framed by dark locks, and decorated by even more piercings than her companion.

  “I like this one, dear,” she said, tilting her head as she looked at Harper, “Maybe we should take her back to our tent… if only her friend wasn’t so hostile.”

  Harper felt taken aback. Some sort of power play? For once, she was thankful to be interrupted by Walters.

  “Got reason to be,” the man growled, in a voice deeper than Harper knew he was capable of, “Ra usal Randuur… Never trust a Randuur.”

  “He speaks our language, yet he does not like us?” the man said, looking at the woman who was presumably his wife, “How curious… But as I said, we are not here for a fight. Quite the opposite. We are here looking for help.”

  Villagers began to gather around the travellers and dusters by now, cautiously approaching armed with hunting rifles and pitchforks. Alma among them, unarmed, concern in her eyes as she looked at Harper. The drein began to grunt and stomp their hooves as the riders tried to calm them.

  “Easy everyone…” Harper spoke up, raising her hands, “We’re just talking here…” She turned to the couple at the front, head tilted and heart racing. “What’s this about?”

  Unlike their companions, the couple seemed unfazed, both smiling as they looked at the villagers around them. “Actually, I’m glad you’re all here. Got a deal for you all, and these dusters. Three way split. Who speaks for you?”

  “We speak for ourselves, stranger,” Alma spoke up, stepping next to Harper as if she could protect her if something went wrong. Something that both touched and annoyed the duster.

  “No leader?” the female Randuur spoke, “Seems you haven’t seen war in a while then. That’ll change when there’s violence…”

  “Pay no mind to Carin, violence is something we wish to avoid,” her husband said, cutting her off, “Have you seen the giant ash flyer that crashed in Riga?”

  “You mean the dust ship that fell in Riga? Yeah… we saw it,” Harper said, patting Walters on the shoulder, hoping the pilot would finally let go of his pistol. Which he reluctantly did with an exaggerated scoff.

  “And you didn’t loot it? Curious…” Carin said.

  “Didn’t have the time,” Harper said, holding up her bandaged left hand, “Long story.”

  “I see,” the male Randuur said. The other Randuur hopped off their mounts and helped the elder down. He was even smaller than he appeared when he was sitting on the wagon. The old man grunted, wobbling over to the back to pull the tarp off.

  The wagon was half-filled with VHS tapes, electronics, scrap, clearly grabbed in a hurry from the wreck of the Siegfried.

  “I am Ivo, chieftain of the Valgka tribe,” Carin’s husband said, placing the butt of his rifle on the ground and pointing at the goods at the back, “These are goods from the Siegfried. There’s plenty more where they came from, enough for both dusters and villagers. We have no interest in such things, they are all yours if you want them.”

  “Bullshit,” Walters said, surprisingly loud given the words came through gritted teeth, “Randuur are just as greedy as anyone else. What the hell is your angle?”

  “No angle,” Ivo said, raising his hand. His people looked uneasy, almost suspicious as he continued, but he simply gave them a nod. “We are desperate. I will not lie. Most of our men were killed a few weeks ago by raiders from the south. Our women, children and elderly are still squatting in the ash, trying not to breathe. All we ask in return is the chance to settle in these ash-free lands until the spring, help with hunt and harvest, regain our strength.”

  “If the loot is that valuable, why bother splitting it?” Walters asked, stepping closer only for Carin to point her rifle at him again. He raised his arms, reluctant, superior, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, you could be looting it now, or us and the villagers could shoot you and take the whole thing for ourselves…”

  “Try it, you little rat…” Carin said, her finger on the trigger. The villagers were growing tense. Perhaps they didn’t want violence, but some saw the point in Walters’s words.

  “Easy, easy everyone…” Ivo said, glancing around, “Scout flyers from Nordrun already flew past this morning, we had to turn tail before they saw us. And it means we have maybe a day until proper recovery crews arrive. We work together, we get it done quicker, we get more.”

  “Enough to make splitting it worth it? I don’t know…” Walters said, glaring Ivo down.

  “Jesus, Walters!” Harper finally interjected, “They’re offering us a deal and they need help. I don’t know about the village, but fuck it. We help them. Besides… are you forgetting Payton’s body is still there?”

  “You don’t know them like I do…” Walters said. But the last part stung. He lowered his arms. “Fuck it. For Payton. Not like I gotta keep them in my place. But we go with our ship and just a couple of you lot. Can’t have you catch us off guard out there.”

  “We agree as well,” Alma said, stepping forward to shake Ivo’s hand, “Long as you make it worth our while, of course…”

  “What about those reideri?” the village blacksmith shouted, “Won’t they follow?”

  “No,” Carin said, slowly lowering her rifle, “Last saw them near Warsaw, Zindler turf. The cartel was giving them free rein to-”

  A gunshot interrupted her sentence, drawing the attention of the entire village to a spot just outside the platform. A tall blonde woman stood there, in a dress made of linen that looked more like a sack, her feet and legs bandaged and wobbly. She held a smoking revolver in her hand, pointed at the sky.

  “No…” Anna Cloude said, pointing the gun towards the Randuur, “No one goes back there… ever again…”