The simulation blossomed around Nadja Gavrić like a hypercube unpacking itself into three dimensions. The plain metal floors of the Roses’ cargo bay turned the shiny white of faux marble. The walls closed in, became a circular chamber. Display cases sprang up around the perimeter. Nadja stumbled backward when her right arm suddenly joined an exhibit of Cometborne funerary instruments.

“Behold!” Carver cried, flourishing a hat he wasn’t wearing. Given he was addressing three professional thieves, Nadja rather thought he’d missed the mark, but then what was she expecting from a corporate heir? “Your target: Orion’s Sabre.”

Nadja was used to simulations. Everyone was—they’d been the dominant medium of entertainment since CMD Pictures filed the patent for its first simulator. This one felt different. There was nothing flashy about it to ensure the customer got their money’s worth. The illusion was given away only by its lack of physicality. They were still a week out from Mars and yet there it hung, uncannily present beyond the glass ceiling: the night-side, crisscrossed with train lines and concentric cities.

Orion’s Sabre sketched itself into existence: roughly a metre long, a sinuous, pearlescent thing in pale pink. Her gaze tripped on its length, as if its topology had no business existing in the physical world. It did not look much like a sword.

“Thank you, Andrew,” Foster said, unperturbed by the museum in the belly of her ship. The sterile light made her skin almost as white as her hair. Delicate sprays of veins bobbed at her throat when she spoke. Not for the first time, Nadja felt a jolt of disbelief that she was working with Josephine Foster. “The Meredith J. Carver Museum of Xenoarchaeology. A week from now, we will steal Orion’s Sabre from this room.”

Nadja waited for the rest. When it became clear Foster was done, she blurted, “That’s it?”

“Is stealing the most famous Cometborne artefact in existence from CMD Pictures not enough, Ms. Gavrić?”

“Actually,” Carver, embodying the C in CMD, broke in, “my family is only the primary sponsor—”

“I don’t give a shit,” Nadja snapped. “This really it? We’re helping this rich kid steal a trinket from his own family? What, does it have sentimental value?”

“Orion’s Sabre hung on my bedroom wall when I was a child,” Carver said stiffly. “When my mother became CEO, she made the decision to donate it to a museum.”

“Oh my god, I was joking—”

“Ms. Gavrić.” A person who didn’t know her might have mistaken Foster’s tone for motherly. “Please refrain from antagonising our client. Andrew, my apologies. You know how it is among thieves.”

Nadja was sure he did not, but Carver laughed anyway, like a man unused to being excluded from jokes.

“We’re going to use the museum’s simulator to make it look like it’s still there,” he offered.

“If that’s all,” Foster said, “I think it would be best if you left the rest to us. We wouldn’t want you to witness anything illegal, would we?”

“Goodness, no, not anything illegal.” Carver winked, ostentatiously, to each of them in turn. “Just—you’ve managed to get an appointment?”

Foster said, “Meera?”

The third member of their team was half hidden behind a partition. Unlike Foster, Nadja had never heard of her before this job, had barely exchanged three words with her since boarding the Roses. She’d thought the woman shy; now Masai stepped forward and executed a neat bow. She cut a striking figure, dark skin and darker braids against the bright green and orange of her clothing. Nadja upgraded her to reserved.

“Dr. Meera Masai. Department of Xenoarchaeology, UAB.”

That explained it. There existed a breed of con artist who considered it a point of honour to never break character on a job. Masai was clearly one of them. Perhaps Nadja would recognise her real name.

“You’re sure this will work?” Carver said dubiously.

Masai stuck her hand in one of the displays. A document appeared in front of her—conventional hologram, not the eerie likeness of the museum gallery—and Nadja realised she’d been manipulating equipment hidden beneath the simulation.

“The Central Lobe dig?” Carver read from the fake resume hanging in the air. “We funded that one. My mother was the corporate liaison.”

Masai’s teeth were a brilliant juxtaposition against her lips. “Consider it an homage.”

“I get it. I don’t need to know the details,” Carver said, and immediately contradicted himself: “The last layer? You’ve got a plan for Argus—”

“Andrew,” Foster said smoothly. “I understand your concern. But you hired me for a reason. In a week’s time Orion’s Sabre will be yours. Until then, put it out of your mind.”

Carver’s mouth worked, as if deciding which role to play, the easy-going accomplice to criminals or the corporate scion who always had the last word. Presently he obeyed and retreated to his own ship. He left the simulator hidden under its simulation. Nadja’s foot snagged on it: a cube of metal, scarcely thirty centimetres to a side. She’d watched Carver bring it in, thought it a deceptively simple thing to support the greatest corporate empire in human history.

A simple thing, and worth far more than the alien trinket projected in the air above it.

• • • •

Josephine Foster wasn’t the most famous thief in the solar system. That distinction went to Irène de la Torre and his flashy hit on the Strategic Lithium Reserve on Ceres—never mind that he’d only gotten away with a few million worth. Nor was she the most prolific. A thief motivated by ego or greed was easy to control. No—Foster was an ideologue, and the title she claimed was most hated, because nothing frightened power more than that which it could not control.

Or so the stories went.

What struck Nadja the first time she met Foster, in a little cafe on Waves of Grass wedged between a law office specialising in intellectual property and a furniture boutique, was the other woman’s voice. In pictures, Foster was indistinguishable from the upper class of Earth: pure white hair cut short, skin neither fighting nor overcome by the marks of age, clothing in severe off-whites and blues as if emulating the planet she wasn’t from. Her voice told a different story. It reminded Nadja of the things people said about Foster. That she’d grown up everywhere in the solar system there was to grow up; that her very first job, before anyone had heard of her, was to steal her own identity and disappear. Other people’s accents held a portion of their lives. Foster’s only told you what she wasn’t. It was a useful quality, in a thief.

The first words Nadja heard in that anonymous voice were, “Walk with me.”

Waves of Grass was a medium-sized habitat in Earth orbit, high luxury by the standards of the rest of the solar system and slightly above average for Earth itself. Its corridors were only mildly populated at this time of day, and for a time Foster said nothing more, leading Nadja through residential halls, past a wooded park made believable by a simulated sky, and finally onto a broader commercial arcade. Nadja was used to this. Under Earth’s jurisdiction, one would never know where the surveillance equipment was, even if—like Nadja—one’s job was to neutralise such equipment. It was safer to keep moving, to shield conversations by breaking them up, rather than trusting you’d identified a dead zone in the security coverage. Nadja had known a man, once, who met his clients in habitats favoured by the radical anti-surveillance crowd—and it had worked, until the day he’d been gunned down in a disagreement over a pair of shoes.

Waves of Grass had cameras but no guns. Nadja liked it better that way. A childhood in the mining towns of the asteroid belt had left her with a religious fear of guns. An Earth orbital could survive a depressurisation accident; a cheap corporate mining dome could not.

Fifteen minutes of obfuscating silence was enough for Nadja. Because there was only one reason for Foster to seek her out, Nadja said, “Why me?”

“Hmm?”

“You want me for a job. I’m good at what I do, but I’m not exceptional. Not like you.”

“A realistic appraisal of one’s own abilities is, in itself, a valuable quality in a collaborator.”

“That’s nice. Doesn’t answer my question, though.”

Foster’s stride did not falter, but her attention shifted sideways, fell more firmly on Nadja.

“Without going into specifics,” she said at last, “it’s an inside job. I don’t need a genius. I need someone reliable.”

Nadja snorted. “That’s closer to the truth. But there’s thousands of people you could have approached, and you chose me, a woman you’ve never met before. I didn’t make it to age forty with barely a criminal record to speak of by ignoring red flags when I see them. So, one more time: why me?”

“Look around you, please, Ms. Gavrić.”

Nadja blinked. She’d thought their path random; now she paid better attention to their surroundings. The shopping arcade was of the kind common on high-class orbitals: made up to look rougher than it was. This one was mimicking what people on Earth thought the asteroid belt looked like, all narrow alleyways and seedily lit shop fronts. It was reality distorted by layers of Earth pop culture, and therefore even more distasteful than an outright fabrication. Like the Beltwise franchise, Nadja thought bitterly. Bastardised truth, the CMD way.

Nadja froze. Any self-respecting citizen of the belt had only disdain for the mega-corporations, but Beltwise occupied a special place in the pantheon of Gavrić family history. Surely Foster could not have known that. But, looking closer, the shopping arcade wasn’t like something out of Beltwise—it was explicitly themed. Three units down was the façade of the bar that gave the franchise its name.

Nadja’s eyes flicked automatically from corner to corner, scanning the ceiling and the awnings for the tell-tale signs of surveillance cameras. Too late, she saw the man in a security officer’s uniform, clocking her interest, and she looked away hastily, right at Foster watching the officer watching Nadja, and that was it, wasn’t it? Foster would take this as a sign that Nadja was too clumsy for the task, and never mind that she wasn’t operating at maximum capacity.

“It was your mother’s sister, is that right, who wrote the original Beltwise stories,” Foster said softly, and perhaps she hadn’t noticed the guard after all. “Sent them to CMD for one of their asinine contests.”

“Voices of the Belt,” Nadja muttered.

“That’s the one. Came second, I recall, and that might have been the end of that, but then simulator tech came along. Someone had the bright idea that Earthsiders would love a more palatable version of life in the Belt, and why commission something new when they already had the rights to your aunt’s work, and all it needed was a few tweaks to make it accessible for an Earth audience? Remind me, how much money did your aunt make out of that contract?”

“Two thousand,” Nadja said through gritted teeth. “It was the prize for second place. Two thousand for all the rights and no royalties.”

“All the rights. It doesn’t seem fair.”

All at once Nadja felt again the anger of a small child learning of injustice. “How do you know all this?” she snapped, having no other outlet for the emotion than the woman standing next to her. “Why do you care about my family?”

“Ms. Gavrić,” Foster said, “when I decide to go after a corporation, I do my research.”

Being recruited was like being asked out: the dance of plausible deniability until finally one party broke and revealed what it was they wanted.

Nadja could not hide the desire in her voice when she said, “You think you can take down CMD?”

“What will it be, Ms. Gavrić?” In Foster’s smile there was no doubt of her answer. “Care to join the endeavour?”

• • • •

The Carver Museum was a classic example of Second Wave orbital architecture: a ring around a central sphere, connected by two evenly spaced spokes. Unlike a typical habitat, the ring was split into two segments approximately two-thirds of the way around its circumference.

“The larger segment,” Foster said, tracing its outline in the hologram in front of her, “contains the public areas: dock, galleries, gift shop. The smaller is for staff facilities—storage rooms, labs, and so on. They’re connected to the highlights gallery in the middle by these two passageways.” She indicated the spokes. “They serve as security checkpoints. In addition to the usual measures, each passageway has a pressure sensitive floor—”

“Hold on,” Nadja said. “Why are we skipping past the usual measures? I can’t do my job if you don’t give me all the information. Every detail, not just the interesting ones.”

Foster glanced up, irritated. “They aren’t relevant. Carver will disable the first layer of security.”

“And you trust him with that?”

“Nadja,” Masai broke in. “Josephine has done this before—”

“So have I.” All Masai had done so far was agree with Foster. It was more annoying than it should have been. “I don’t trust Carver. That’s all.”

“Trust me, then.” Foster raised her eyebrows. “But you’ll have every opportunity to case the security system in the first phase of the plan. You and Dr. Masai will enter the museum while I remain here. Your job is to acquaint yourself with the layout, and to upload the program that will simulate a fake Sabre on top of the real one. The museum’s simulator is yoked to their security network, which means you’ll need to reach an access port at one of their security stations. Meanwhile, Dr. Masai will use her cover story to arrange a private viewing of the Sabre.”

“They let just anyone do that, do they?”

Masai smiled sweetly. “They do if you’ve spent a decade manoeuvring for the honour. Or if they think you have.”

“During the viewing, Dr. Masai will plant this on the inside of the display case.” Foster held up a tiny metal object. “A localised EMP device. Range of about a metre. It will disable the alarm systems in the case.”

Nadja squinted. The thing in Foster’s hand could have been anything. “And that’s all it will take?”

“Museum staff are accustomed to academics being a nuisance, not a threat,” Foster said. Next to her, Masai stifled a laugh. “That’s all it will take.”

“And how are we getting in?”

“The passageways to the highlights gallery double as airlocks. To adhere to systemwide safety law, they’re required to have emergency hatches on the outside. Those are your entry point. They typically require a security check, but—”

“Let me guess. Carver will take care of it.”

Foster’s voice was edged with impatience. “The advantage of an inside job, Ms. Gavrić. I do not enjoy complexity for its own sake.”

“What about the pressure sensors?”

“The artificial gravity is disabled during airlock test cycles. You’ll get through the passage in zero grav.”

“You’re telling me the museum voluntarily, regularly disables its security measures?”

“No. The timing of the cycles is randomised, and they last about two minutes. Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t have time to take advantage.”

“But?”

“But Carver will trigger one for us.”

Nadja stared at Josephine Foster. The woman her parents had told her stories about blurred with the reality before her. Not a legend after all. Just another woman willing to compromise for an easy score.

“Fuck this,” Nadja said, and stormed out of the cargo bay.

• • • •

She didn’t expect Foster to follow her. The Roses was a small ship, the bridge at one end, the cargo bay at the other, a hallway’s worth of cabins in between. Evading a determined pursuer was not possible.

“Ms. Gavrić.” Foster’s voice carried like a ribbon, smooth and stately and plenty binding if the knots were done right. “A word in my cabin, please.”

Nadja faltered. Was she really risking this opportunity because of a bad feeling? She’d always trusted her intuition before, on jobs that ended up going sour—but this was Josephine Foster. If ever there was a time to second guess herself, this was it.

Still—she entered Foster’s cabin looking for a fight and found one in the messaging interface hovering in the air above the desk. Nadja had only a glimpse of the letterhead—Park & Singh Legal Associates—before Foster waved the hologram away.

“Lawyers?” Nadja said. “Is there something I should know?”

“Only that at my age, I’ve learnt the value of planning for every eventuality.”

“You really have nothing better to do than planning for failure?”

“Like what?”

“Like forging Masai’s credentials.” Nadja put heavy sarcasm into the con artist’s name. Foster needed to know she saw past the facade. “What she showed Carver isn’t enough.”

“Meera can handle her own forgeries.”

Foster sat down. Like the rest of the Roses, the cabin was done up in the neo-retro-futurist style currently in vogue on high-class orbitals. When Nadja had come aboard, she’d smirked at this mockery of Earth bourgeoisie. Now she wondered whether the choice was really as ironic as all that.

“If you’re so worried about time,” Foster went on, “why don’t you save some now and tell me what’s wrong?”

“You know,” Nadja hissed. “You said we would take down CMD.”

“I think depriving CMD of their most famous treasure will take them down a peg or two.”

“You busted the union-busters in the asteroids. You broke the agritech duopoly on Mars without ever setting foot on the planet!”

“Yes,” Foster said mildly. “And in between I cleaned out First Venusian’s vault. It can’t all be noble causes. A woman must earn a living.”

“Earning a living is one thing. This? Acting as Andrew fucking Carver’s retainer? Helping him steal a priceless artefact he only wants because, boohoo, his parents decided it was bad PR to have it on his bedroom wall? This isn’t what I signed up for.”

Foster regarded her with an expression that made Nadja suddenly aware that Josephine Foster had been through this exchange dozens of times. Dozens of successful jobs. Dozens of stubborn thieves whipped into line.

“Which corp?” Foster said at last.

“What?”

“Your parents. Miners, yes? Who did they work for?”

Nadja’s jaw worked. Surely Foster already knew the answer. “VespagiCorp.”

“Ah, VespagiCorp.” Foster’s smile curled up like kindling. “I have fond memories of VespagiCorp. Do you remember their motto? Emblazoned on everything in that ridiculous jaunty script?”

“For the soul of humankind,” Nadja muttered.

“That’s the one.” Foster was not a physically imposing woman. Still it took an effort of will to remain relaxed when she rounded the desk to face Nadja directly. Up close, her skin looked at once unblemished and on the verge of tearing. “The soul of a people is not a possession. Not a thing. It does not belong to the likes of VespagiCorp or CMD. And nothing I do betrays that principle.” She gave this declaration a few moments to settle. “Are we quite clear, Nadja?”

There was a part of Nadja that knew the conviction she now felt was a function of Foster’s closeness, of the softly poured iron of her voice. The rest of her said, “We are.”

“Excellent. That being resolved, I have a task for you.” She returned to her desk, reached into a drawer and withdrew a data drive. “This contains the program that will simulate Orion’s Sabre for us. Courtesy of Carver, of course, I wouldn’t know the first thing about simulators.”

“How can we be sure it will work? The man thinks riding a fucking hover scooter qualifies him for the Mars-to-Saturn Rally.”

“Well, quite.” Foster did not laugh, but it was closer than Nadja had seen her come. “But I trust him when it comes to the simulator. It’s a matter of family pride. The rest?” She waved the drive around. “His fingerprints are all over this. That’s what I need from you. Sanitise it. Wipe all evidence of Carver from it. When museum security notices the swap, I want the program to be a ghost.”

Nadja took the drive. A small, nondescript thing. Easy to overlook. It would be a few hours’ work to make its contents as anonymous as its outside. She glanced back at Foster, who had returned to her legal escape route. Unencumbered by Foster’s attention, the rebellious part of her mind rose to the top. Was this what working with Foster was like? The constant friction between the image of a childhood hero and her reality? Mythology versus intuition? Nadja didn’t fancy herself the kind of woman swayed by force of personality.

She’d make up her own mind. If nothing else, it would be a better use of her time than covering Andrew Carver’s tracks.

• • • •

It was three in the morning when Nadja snuck into the cargo bay to investigate Carver’s simulator. Foster had a plan B. Why shouldn’t Nadja consider her options? If she could get her hands on a simulator, the payout would be vastly greater than the flat fee she’d agreed for this job; and if it turned out Foster was prioritising profit over ideals, Nadja was willing to do the same.

From the outside, the simulation of the museum gallery was a strange, shimmering gray that suggested translucency despite giving no view of what lay beyond. She closed her eyes when she stepped through it, to avoid the signals from her brain insisting the thing was solid. The display was unchanged, the simulator itself a cube in ugly, functional steel. Despite her best efforts, she could find nothing on its surface but the seam where it had been welded shut. A single-use device: programmed to display one scene and then shut inside a carapace forever. The only way in was brute force.

“Don’t bother,” Masai said from somewhere behind her. Nadja jerked her head into a fake display case. Masai laughed. “Even if you get through the steel, there’s another layer beneath that. Pressurised. If you open that up, a pressure sensor on the inside triggers and the simulator destroys itself.”

Nadja stepped out of the display, resisting the urge to brush phantom shards of Cometborne art off her sleeves. She’d already spent a hefty amount of dignity. “How do you know?”

“You think no one’s tried to steal one of those before?”

“They must not have tried very hard. All you’d have to do is open it at equal pressure.”

“And how would you work out what that was?”

“Trial and error.”

“Ah, yes, because the average thief has dozens of these simulator boxes lying around to experiment with.” Masai laughed again, not, Nadja thought, out of mockery, but because she was a person who laughed often. “Besides, if there’s two layers of protection, who’s to say there isn’t a third?”

“Fine. I get it. I was stupid to think I could get it open.”

“I don’t blame you for trying. But CMD have got this far without anyone getting their hands on a simulator, and you’ve gotta imagine people have tried. They’re impregnable.”

Not wishing to dwell on her naivete, Nadja said, more aggressively than Masai deserved, “What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night.”

Masai hesitated, like calculating the right response. “I’m an archaeologist,” she said at last. “I like to look at the archaeology.”

Nadja snorted. “You’re gonna have to do better than that to fool the museum people. ‘The archaeology’?”

“Maybe I was looking for you.”

Nadja’s gaze, wandering, returned sharply to meet Masai’s. “Why?”

“I wanted to ask why you don’t trust Josephine.”

“I’m a thief. She’s a thief. Connect the dots.”

“You can trust her for this job, can’t you?”

“You call her Josephine. What are you, friends or something?”

“Yes. We’re friends.”

The simplicity of the answer gave Nadja pause. Most people she knew would have said or something. “More fool you. Josephine Foster doesn’t have friends.”

“Oh?” There was that amusement again. “And what do you know about Josephine Foster?”

“Enough.”

“Spoken like someone who realises the answer might be ‘nothing’.”

“I know that she’s supposed to be better than this!” Nadja took a breath, held it, lowered her voice. “I’ve been on dozens of jobs, Masai. I won’t pretend they were all noble. I’ve stolen from people who didn’t deserve it. I’ve seen teams fall apart, and I always get out before it’s too late. Foster was supposed to be different. Better! So why does it seem like this job is punching down? Why does it seem like she barely even knows what she’s doing? Why are my instincts telling me to get out?”

Masai watched Nadja with a slight kink to the slant of her mouth. Eventually she said, “I had the same misgivings, to begin with.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Josephine . . . in some ways, she’s a performer. And a perfectionist. She plays her cards close, only reveals them when she knows she’s won. It’s grating, I know. I didn’t trust her either, when we first met.”

“But?”

“But she’s never been caught. She’s never let me down. And—” Here Masai’s voice went stony, and it occurred to Nadja that she wasn’t the only person on the team recruited for animosity towards CMD. “And she’s never betrayed her ideals. Ever.”

Nadja’s pulse quickened, like scenting intrigue on the recycled air. “You’re saying there’s more to this job than meets the eye.”

“Am I?” Masai met Nadja’s gaze and grinned. “I’m saying I trust Josephine, that’s all. And maybe that’s not good enough for you, but it’s all I can offer.”

Nadja glanced at the simulator, sitting on the floor like so much scrap metal. She could let Masai think she was convinced, then return later, take the thing and run. Sell it to someone willing to gamble on their ability to get it open. As escape routes went, she’d had worse.

Even as she considered it, Nadja knew she wouldn’t follow through. She’d grown up on stories of Foster—embellished, filtered through corporate censors, but stories she’d learnt, later, were fundamentally true. Whoever Masai really was, the woman was clearly an experienced operator, and she called Foster friend. This, more than anything, was what swayed Nadja. It implied that Josephine Foster was a woman who cared—about people, about ideals.

That was a myth Nadja had believed all her life, and she’d give Foster the chance to prove it.

• • • •

The lobby of the Carver Museum featured two gift shops, fourteen security cameras, and fifty-six ads for a CMD simulation called Now and Forever, which Nadja had never heard of, but which was probably based on an obscure twenty-second-century IP. That was how CMD did business. Why bother with fresh ideas, when there were two centuries’ worth of predatory contracts to exploit?

Entry to the highlights gallery cost extra. A soft voice spoke over the ticket queue, enticing visitors to pay the surcharge: “Orion’s Sabre, so-called because Kasumi’s Comet was first identified in the constellation of Orion, is the greatest treasure of the Cometborne race . . .”

Masai, in conversation with the museum employee who’d come out on shepherding duty, scoffed. “It’s not even a weapon!”

In other circumstances, Nadja might have been curious. Here, now, she tried to cast Masai the sidemost of glances.

“Really?” the employee said. Nadja needn’t have worried—the man was barely listening.

“The lower levels of dig site C-5 suggest that the Cometborne venerated instruments of pleasure the way humans often venerated instruments of war—”

Damn if the woman didn’t commit to a role. She kept the lecture up all the way to the VIP booth. Idly Nadja wondered if the museum was shameless enough to charge academics entry. The man behind her in line cleared his throat in the universal signal for you’re holding up the queue. Nadja put it out of her mind. She was a professional. No distractions.

Ticket in hand, she made for the passageway to the central sphere. She’d lost track of Masai, but that was for the best. They each had their jobs to do. She counted her steps out of habit, even though her next visit would be in zero grav, and stopped halfway down the corridor, pretending to enjoy the view, Mars above and open space beneath, while she made a catalogue of the visible security measures. Four cameras; two pairs of thermal sensors. Things Carver claimed he’d disable, but Nadja trusted neither his motives nor his competence.

Then it was on to the highlights gallery and her first sight of their target. Orion’s Sabre looked much as it had in Carver’s simulation. Instrument of pleasure, Nadja thought, imagining the thing on his bedroom wall, and stifled a smirk. In fewer than twenty-four hours she’d be back, removing the Sabre’s display case and spiriting its contents away with no one the wiser. The thought failed to mesh.

Shaking misgivings away, she turned to her other task. The data drive with Carver’s program was in her pocket, and she was approaching the security station. It was set back in an alcove, a little desk and a door where a guard was waving a pair of employees through into the staff area of the museum. Uploading the program would be easy, a quick jab into an open port, in and out like a syringe. She’d have to distract the guard, but if Nadja knew anything about the standard of museum security, that wouldn’t be too difficult—

“Miss? Come with us, please.”

Nadja spun around. While she’d been watching the man at the station, two of his fellow guards had cornered her. They weren’t the burly type of security guard she was used to. These two were the real deal—polite but alert, weapons strapped to their belts that she hoped were non-lethal.

Nadja put on her best innocent voice. It was a technique well past its prime, but even people in their forties could get lost in museums. “I’m sorry! Am I not supposed to be looking at this? I thought it was part of the exhibit—”

“With us, please,” the guard repeated. She placed one hand on Nadja’s elbow, one twitch away from tightening. “There was a minor peculiarity in the security algorithm. Not to worry. We’ll have it sorted out in a moment, but I do need to ask you to accompany me to central security.”

Nadja heard the beat of adrenaline in her ears. Her gaze flicked involuntarily to the Sabre’s display case, where Masai should have been getting a bespoke tour—but there was no one there.

Plans never went smoothly. But this—to fall at the very first obstacle, to be scooped up by an algorithm Foster somehow hadn’t accounted for—this was something else.

She weighed her choices. The guards were polite now, but that could change once they got her out of the public eye. On the other hand, resisting would only confirm their suspicions. If she was caught, better to be caught professing innocence. What proof did they have? Maybe there was still a way to salvage the job.

“Of course,” Nadja said. “Lead the way.”

The guards escorted her to the employee-only door. She glanced at the lock, but without in-depth knowledge of the security systems, she couldn’t even tell if the machine was biometric or if it was scanning a subdermal implant.

Suspicion kept adrenaline company in Nadja’s veins. She should have pushed harder—but Carver had made everything so easy, with his knowledge and his access codes, and Foster had let him. It wasn’t right. She should have pushed harder.

The doors closed, leaving Nadja and the guards in a stern gray corridor, silent except for a pleasant voice announcing that the museum was now in lockdown, and could all visitors please remain where they were, there was no cause for alarm.

• • • •

Afterwards, Andrew Carver blamed it on having had more than a little to drink and less than enough common sense. “I bet,” he’d said to an audience of people he called friends, “that I can make Josephine Foster herself my errand girl,” and it’d been the sort of thing anyone might say in a moment of drunken exaggeration, but Andrew didn’t intend to be known as a man who made empty statements. He woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache and an idea, and by the time the hangover pills kicked in, the idea had become a plan so firm it proved impossible to dislodge.

It was this plan that brought him to the casino of Second Venusian. If Earth and Mars were civilised, and the asteroid belt lawless, then Venus was the place where one might get a little of both.

Even Foster listened when a Carver called, and he knew all the right things to say to bring her around. Make it a sob story—young man disillusioned by the cold wealth of his family; yearns for the simpler embrace of childhood; a chance to strike a blow at an oh-so-evil corporation. He cast himself as a crusader for the poor, spending his own family’s money to steal from it.

“And why,” Foster said, “have you come to me? If you can disable the security systems, there are any number of freelancers available who’d carry out the job for a fraction of the price.”

Here was the crowning piece of Carver’s strategy: a challenge to Foster’s sense of her own superiority. A puzzle so complicated only she could solve it. That it meant giving away proprietary secrets gave Andrew only momentary pause. He wasn’t lying about the disillusionment, and it wasn’t like his parents would ever know.

“There’s one final layer of security,” he said with an appropriate flourish of secrecy. “An algorithm. Argus, it’s called. They say it can’t be circumvented.”

“Do they,” Foster said. “I’ve heard that claim before.”

Andrew smiled. He had her. “It runs separately from the rest of the security. I can’t access it directly. But I can get you its activity logs. The rest would be up to you.”

“A security algorithm that can’t be beaten,” Foster mused. “Mr. Carver, consider me intrigued. We may have an agreement.”

Andrew Carver had grown up with stories of Josephine Foster. He’d heard his mother curse the woman on more than one occasion. As a child he’d daydreamed about entering law enforcement, becoming the hero who captured Foster for good.

Now he dreamed about the look on his mother’s face when Orion’s Sabre was reported missing, and when he shook hands with the devil Foster he thought, giddy, I will never feel more alive than I do right now.

A more careful operator than Andrew Carver might have doubled back to see what Foster did next. He might have watched her, sitting still while slot machines sang across the way. And had he the patience to wait out the hour, he might have snuck a glance over her shoulder and seen the message she composed when her thinking was done.

We have a way in.

• • • •

The central security office was small, but neater and better-appointed than Nadja had expected.

“Argus detected an intent to steal,” one of the guards reported to her counterpart at the desk. “Red flags on Orion’s Sabre, the security checkpoint, and the countermeasures in the lobby.”

The man at the desk sighed. “Again? Put her in the cell. I’ll deal with her later.”

The cell was high quality too—or maybe a cell always looked more secure from the inside. Briefly Nadja wished she had more experience with incarceration.

A security algorithm. She knew the concept—a limited AI that analysed data from surveillance equipment to detect planned thefts. The theoretical underpinning had been around for decades, but as far as she knew, no one had put together an implementation reliable enough to see actual use. As evidence, it wouldn’t fly in any court in the solar system.

Unfortunately, private orbitals weren’t subject to planetary law.

They hadn’t searched her yet. She still had the data drive with Carver’s program—unsanitised—in her pocket. The rest of the job was clearly a shitshow, but she could complete that part. Implicate him. Let his own family fall on Carver’s head. It wouldn’t keep her out of prison, but maybe it would keep her warm in prison.

“Hey!” she yelled, loud enough for the man at the desk to flinch. “I haven’t done anything! You can’t keep me here! I know my rights.”

In actuality, Nadja wasn’t sure what her rights were—the law was deliberately hazy when it came to non-planetary bodies—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make a nuisance of herself. It only took fifteen minutes of blatantly untenable legal threats before the man at the desk gave up and approached her.

“Listen,” he said. “If you just shut up and wait, I’ll hand you over to CMD and this will all blow over. Almost none of these cases amount to anything.”

That might have been comforting, were Nadja not part of the almost. “I will not! I demand you do your job and resolve this.”

The man considered her a moment longer. “Fine,” he said. “I can process you here. Come with me.”

Nadja emerged slowly, expecting him to restrain her, but he beckoned her towards a table where two chairs sat facing each other as if for a medical consultation. Nadja ignored the urge to make a break for it. Instead she scanned the room for an access port. There: an unoccupied workstation, for the guards making their rounds. Out of reach behind her. She sat down opposite the officer. The workstation was like an ember against the back of her neck. She slipped a hand into her pocket, feigning nerves, the shape of the data drive reassuringly familiar.

A sharp sting at her thigh. Nadja looked down, confused. The officer withdrew an autoinjector. She could not immediately make sense of it. Interrogation drugs were extremely illegal.

“Standard CMD protocol. Something to keep you relaxed. And truthful. I’m going to ask some questions. If your answers are satisfactory, you can leave. Okay?”

Nadja’s last lucid thought was, Oh, right. Private orbital.

The guard asked questions. Nadja tried to answer them. Why had she been in the museum? What had she been trying to accomplish? Each time she opened her mouth, some detail jumped out at her, jarring, and she stopped to examine the question from a different angle. When she wanted to tell him about the EMP device, she remembered how she’d kept an eye on the Sabre and never once seen Masai go near it. When she wanted to talk about the museum security, she thought of Foster’s repeated assurances that it was irrelevant. Even her description of Masai, the con artist, stuck in her throat. What did she know about the woman, really?

Nadja was a professional. If she was going to detail her plan to the enemy, she was going to do it right. She clung to that conviction, let it keep her quiet through the nudging of the drugs. There was no reliable way to compel truth, only to suggest. Suggestion she could resist.

And yet the man did not grow frustrated.

“I’m sorry,” he said when his questions ran out, “but I’ll have to escort you back to your cell,” and Nadja, brain still sluggish, realised her mistake. She’d resisted the drugs, told the man nothing. Protected the plan, like a good thief did when caught.

What she hadn’t done was say, I’m a tourist. I was here to visit the museum. I didn’t have a plan. I don’t know about security algorithms.

The security officer was looking at her with renewed interest.

Nadja panicked. Tore free of the hand around her arm, lunged for the middle of the room. She made it three steps, arms reaching out as if to seize her freedom, before the man tackled her. She tripped, fell across a workstation, cheek pressed against the cool surface of the desk, and felt a moment of utter clarity.

Whether by subconscious intent or utter chance, her hand was centimetres from the access port. Her hand, tucked out of view beneath her body, holding the data drive.

In and out, just like the autoinjector, and she wished CMD joy in the dismantling of its own son.

• • • •

Nadja was jolted awake by a voice she hadn’t expected to hear again.

“What are you doing here?”

Masai easily overpowered the gentle keyboard-clacking of the man at his desk. He turned a weary gaze on her. Nadja couldn’t imagine where she’d come from, but there was no alarm on her face, only impatience.

“Again? How many times do I have to tell you to just explain who you are! For fuck’s sake, there’s shyness and then there’s getting locked up because you can’t say three words to an authority figure without tripping over your own tongue.” Masai was halfway to the holding cell before the man at the desk stopped her. She brushed off his touch. “Could you free my assistant, please?”

“Excuse me, ma’am. You are . . .”

“Dr. Masai. Department of Xenoarchaeology, UAB. This is my assistant. We’re here on a research trip, as I’m sure your records can confirm.”

The man accepted her proffered ID card but did not look at it. “Dr. Masai, the security algorithm detected an intent to steal which was borne out by further interrogation. She was focused on Orion’s Sabre—”

“Of course she was! She’s a student of Cometborne technology! Do you know how I behaved the first time I set eyes on the Sabre? Your algorithm would have overloaded itself trying to arrest me. Can you please get a move on? We have work to do.”

The guard sighed and punched a few commands into his terminal. Straightened. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I see your appointment . . . Dr. Masai plus one.” He paused. “I’ll have to run a background check. Standard procedure when there’s been an alarm.”

Nadja had barely begun to hope before it was dashed. Masai’s forged documents were good enough for most situations, but they’d never stand up to a thorough check, not when the person they represented didn’t exist. Faking a person in one moment was easy enough. Faking a lifetime was much, much harder.

“Fine,” Masai said imperiously. “Whatever gets us out fastest.”

Nadja caught Masai’s eye. Maybe she could get the cell open. They’d have to make a run for it. The drugs were still in her system, slowing her, combating a fresh surge of adrenaline, but maybe . . .

The security guard cleared his throat. “All clear. My apologies, Dr. Masai. You and your associate may leave.”

“Thank you,” Masai said, hefting her messenger bag. It was synthetic leather, exactly the sort of throwback you’d expect from a backwater professor. If Nadja hadn’t been so focused on what was happening, she’d roll her eyes. Masai could stand to be more subtle. “Come on, Nadja. Let’s go.” She turned to the room at large, all haughty again. “I am going to help my assistant back to our ship, and then I am going to file a complaint so comprehensive your heads won’t stop spinning for a week.” She drew herself up. “Good day.”

They were halfway to the Roses before Nadja found the lucidness to croak out, “What the fuck?”

“Quiet,” Masai muttered. “You look a step away from collapsing.” She offered Nadja a shoulder to lean on. “We’ll talk later.”

That seemed like a good idea. The adrenaline began to fade. Step by step, Nadja and Masai plodded their way out of their disaster of a heist, and by the time Nadja lay down in her cabin, she barely remembered any of it.

• • • •

The third time Meera Masai was passed over for research funding, she decided to take matters into her own hands. The move to the University of the Asteroid Belt was supposed to help her pick up the pieces of her academic career. What was the opposite of hallowed? UAB.

Apparently CMD’s influence reached dusty halls as much as hallowed ones.

Not that she’d ever doubted Isabel Carver could do it. It was more that Meera had underestimated how thorough the woman would be. Sometimes, feeling sorry for herself, Meera replayed her time on the Central Lobe dig and wondered if there’d been a cannier way out, a way to preserve both her academic integrity and her academic prospects. Other times she wallowed in the injustice. It wasn’t her fault she’d seen something Carver didn’t want her to see.

The worst thing was that Carver wasn’t even subtle about it. The note from the university administrator flashed on her computer screen: Application for funding was approved by the committee for grants, but rejected by the corporate review board.

Without CMD’s patronage, Meera couldn’t access artefacts from the digs on Kasumi’s Comet. Without funding, she couldn’t even reliably source items from the black markets. All she had left was the handful of items she’d smuggled out, the most interesting of which was a broken communicator. She’d thought herself a great rebel, daring to defy the corporation with this act of petty theft—had already known, then, what the thing they’d dug up did, had been on the team to make it work. That wasn’t the same as knowing what it would become once Carver got her hands on it, but maybe part of her had recognised the way Carver looked at it. Like a prophecy fulfilled. Maybe Meera had stolen from the woman because she knew, deep down, it was her last chance to score a point against her. Not that it worked. As far as she could tell, CMD remained firmly un-defied in all the ways that mattered, viz. the administrator’s message still blinking on the screen.

Meera flipped from the message to a draft she’d written the previous evening, a just-in-case draft she’d known would be the case. Without allowing herself a second thought, she sent it spiralling out towards her scant contacts in the Belt’s black markets.

To whom it may concern, the message said. I know a secret that will destroy CMD. Find me.

She hadn’t expected a response. Who would bother tracing one such outlandish claim in a solar system full of them? Who would make the trip to UAB, and one of the satellite campuses besides? It was only another petty act of resistance, a defiant spark she could nurture through the fourth application for funding.

The reply came through the next day, as if someone had been waiting for her to speak. Meera read it twice, the last-but-one Journal of Xenoarchaeology forgotten next to her afternoon cup of tea, and when she got to the interlocking letters of the signature, J and F, she stared at that cup of tea as if the steam rising from its surface might tell her what she’d gotten herself into.

• • • •

Nadja woke abruptly, eyes aching in their sockets, mouth the sort of fuzzy she associated with rich people’s pets. Wasn’t there something she had to tell Foster? Her eyes found Masai, sitting in the single chair in the Roses’ little guest cabin. The fog cleared. Masai had been far too confident with security, far too sure she was going to get Nadja out. It didn’t make sense, not unless she was working with the museum, but then why get Nadja out in the first place?

“What the fuck is going on?”

“How are you feeling?” Masai said.

“You don’t fucking care how I feel—”

“I do.”

“And neither do I, because I know when someone is fucking playing me, so unless you tell me right now what’s happening—”

Masai raised her hands in placation, which was for the best, because Nadja had no idea how she’d have finished that threat.

“Okay. I get that you’re angry. But I think it’s best if you hear it from Josephine. Can you walk?”

“They hit me with drugs, not a fucking crowbar.”

“Carver is about to rendezvous for the handover. Come down to the cargo bay. I promise we’ll explain everything.”

“The handover? Are you seriously still pretending this was a real job?”

Masai took a deep breath. “Stay here if you like. But it will make more sense if you see everything first-hand.” She hesitated. “Josephine wants this to be as easy as possible. Please?”

Nadja knew how this went. Failed jobs, the team scattering, hoping consequences came for someone else. She ought to run, refuse to let the others scapegoat her, but that wasn’t an option here. They were all stuck on the Roses.

And, still, there was the voice in her mind whispering Foster’s name. Still, her first thought on waking had been to tell Foster what had gone wrong. Still, there was the part of her wanting to be vindicated for her faith in the woman. The magician Foster, for her final trick, making it all make sense.

Nadja said, “Lead the way.”

• • • •

Andrew Carver rendezvoused with the Roses two million kilometres from Mars. With the simulator switched off, the cargo bay was blankly anonymous.

Nadja stood by the ladder leading back up, the better to make herself scarce. She had no intention of taking the blame for their failure, and by the unworried expression on Foster’s face, she guessed the other woman had every intention of trying to force it on her. Masai, for her part, was busying herself with a podium in the centre of the cargo bay—a stool topped with a white sheet, as if emulating the museum they’d failed to plunder. On top was a carrying case, the kind that one could calibrate to the need of protecting a specific item from the duress of deep space travel.

The kind in which one might, say, store Orion’s Sabre.

Was it possible Foster had got to the Sabre after all, in the chaos of their escape? No. That was the legend talking. Josephine Foster was good, but no one could be in two places at once. She’d been back on the Roses.

And yet—she seemed awfully confident for someone about to admit to failure.

The wicket airlock in the cargo bay doors swung open. Carver was alone. Nadja shifted on her feet. Neither Foster nor Masai seemed the murderous type, but it would solve their problem neatly.

“Is it done?” Carver said, with all the confidence of a man who had never once experienced physical danger.

“It is,” Foster said.

“Show me.”

Masai unlatched the carrying case. From her vantage point, Nadja couldn’t see its contents. She braced herself to run.

Carver stared down at the case like an eight-year-old experiencing awe for the first time. Or—no. Like a man who’d once met awe, and was willing to spend unimaginable amounts of money to remake the acquaintance.

“It’s beautiful,” he whispered. “Just like I remember.”

Masai caught his wrist inches from the case. “This thing is thousands of years old,” she snapped. “Touch it with your bare hands, it could crumble.” He looked at her, all surprise and indignation, and she softened her words. “I’d hate to see you waste your money. This case is calibrated to protect the Sabre. Don’t open it until you’re on planet or in a shielded habitat—even this much deep-space radiation is a risk.”

“Of course,” Carver replied, mollified. “I remember the hubbub when they removed it from my quarters. It took half a dozen experts to agree on the right way to do it.” He allowed Masai to latch the case shut again.

Foster said, “Ten billion, Mr. Carver.”

“Yes, yes. Already done.”

“Then our business is concluded.”

“It is.” If Nadja never saw Carver tip an imaginary hat again, it would be too soon. “I had my doubts. I thought there’d be some sign of the theft, and when there wasn’t . . . But your reputation is well-earned, Ms. Foster.”

“I’m flattered,” Foster said, dry as her skin.

“If I ever have need . . .?”

“One job per client. No exceptions.”

“Er, yes. In that case . . .” Carver collected the carrying case. “Until we don’t meet again, eh?”

Nadja waited until he was properly gone, until the airlocks were cycled and the bridge linking their two ships retracted, until the soundless void of space separated her from him.

Then she said, “What the fuck?”

Foster washed the satisfied look off her face.

“Ms. Gavrić, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you.”

“Mind blown.”

“The museum had one final layer of security,” Foster said, and Nadja had a flash of Carver saying, the last layer, and the way Foster had cut him off—almost suspiciously, if Nadja had been of a mind to suspect.

“The security algorithm.”

“That’s right. Proprietary CMD software. State of the art.”

“And it works?”

“Oh, absolutely not. Two hundred years people have been trying to get AI to solve their problems, and for what? No, it doesn’t work. Three false positives a week. All it does is create more work for human security. No, the trouble with Argus is its unpredictability. I spent months analysing its results, and the subtlest thing set it off one day only to pass unnoticed the next. There was only one way to plan around it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Really? You set it off deliberately.”

“Very good, Ms. Gavrić. That was your task. I needed someone ignorant of our true goals. Someone who’d be frustrated by the lack of information on my part and pay extra attention to security in the museum. Someone who—forgive me—was not the subtlest operator. In other words, someone Argus simply couldn’t miss.”

Nadja ground her teeth. “You used me.”

“I did.”

“I got myself drugged activating Carver’s program, and that wasn’t even the plan?”

“In a way, it was the plan. Your belief in the decoy plan was integral.”

“That’s awfully close to technically.”

“Oftentimes technicalities are the points around which the whole plan pivots.”

“I didn’t sanitise the program,” Nadja said bluntly. “The next time they audit their computer systems, they’ll find Carver’s fingerprints all over it.”

This, finally, gave Foster pause. “Really?”

“Fuck him. Fuck CMD.”

For the first time Nadja had known her, Josephine Foster laughed. It was a surprisingly unguarded sound, warm and uproarious.

“A decade, this plan has been in the making, and I never thought to frame Carver for it. Nadja, that truly is the cherry on top.”

“On top of what? Will one of you please tell me what the fuck the actual plan was? How did you get the Sabre out of the museum?”

“Meera?”

Masai reached under the white sheet. Orion’s Sabre popped into existence in mid-air, hovering above its makeshift pedestal.

“The case was real,” Masai said. “The Sabre wasn’t.”

“But—why wouldn’t Carver suspect? Simulating the Sabre was his idea in the first place!”

“Because,” Foster said, “it’s unthinkable to him that anyone outside his corporation would have access to a simulator, much less the expertise to use one. You made the same assumption just now. You were quicker to believe I had somehow stolen the Sabre.”

“So that was it? All those grand promises you sold me—it was all about swindling Carver out of his ten billion? That’s spare change for him.”

“Ms. Gavrić.” Foster smiled, thin-lipped but genuine. “Have a little faith. What are the two columns on which CMD stands?”

A performer, Masai had called Foster. Nadja controlled her impatience. “Their simulator patent and their supply of IPs.”

“Precisely. Now, suppose their patent wasn’t quite what it seemed. Suppose, for example, that a CMD-funded archaeological dig on Kasumi’s Comet found something fascinating. A functioning Cometborne device that could project perfect simulations of reality. Suppose that the discovery was suppressed, because the company rep on-site, one Isabel Carver, recognised its potential and spirited it away to R&D for reverse engineering.”

“You’re saying simulators are Cometborne technology,” Nadja said. “Not an original invention at all.”

“Correct.”

Nadja strode over to the fake Sabre and pulled the white sheet away. Beneath the stool sat a palm-sized object like a piece of coral bleached from red to pink in the sun. It gave no indication that it was doing anything—but neither had Carver’s simulator in its metal box.

“Fuck me,” she breathed. “We were never stealing the Sabre. We were stealing the original simulator.”

“What better place to hide it,” Masai said with a trace of bitterness, “than the storeroom of a museum, where uninteresting objects go to die?”

“But how did you find out—” Nadja groaned. “No. I know. You’ve been telling the truth all along. You really are Meera Masai. You really were on that dig. That’s why your credentials stood up to the background check.”

“Guilty as charged. Or not guilty?”

“So you spent the lockdown rooting through the storage room?”

“And the best part is, CMD was so secretive about the simulator they didn’t catalogue it correctly. I replaced it with a broken comms device, and if anyone notices the difference they’ll think it was mis-filed. Who cares about a broken bit of technology when you’ve got the Sabre on display?”

It was, Nadja had to admit, elegant. “So you knew about the simulator, and you came to Foster with this plan to . . . what’s the end-game? Make sure everyone else can get simulators, too? CMD still have a ten-year head start. The patent would have expired eventually. This only accelerates the competition.”

“You’re so close,” Foster said. “But ask yourself one thing. Why would CMD fake the patent? They sponsored the dig; the simulator legally belonged to them. They could have told the truth about its provenance and nothing would have changed, save some good press for their R&D department. So why risk getting caught in the lie?”

“Because they’re ego-fucking-maniacs?”

“There’s that. But have you ever read one of those CMD contracts? Do you know the language they use?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“They grant CMD all rights, in perpetuity, in all media . . .” Foster’s voice took on the loving cadence of a predator caressing its prey. “. . .now known or hereafter devised.” She stretched the moment out as far as it would go. “On the subject of unknown past inventions, they are sadly silent.”

It took Nadja a moment to work through the implications. “You’re kidding.”

“CMD’s contracts don’t cover the simulator. As soon as we go public, they’re going to be hit with a lawsuit for every single IP they acquired prior to the discovery of the Cometborne simulator. Which, because of how stingy they’ve been, is nearly all of them.”

“This can’t possibly hold up in court.”

“It will. CMD itself was scared enough to fake the patent, and their competitors will jump at the chance. So will the individual creators who signed those contracts. People like your aunt. It’ll be the class action of the century.” Foster smiled: the smile of a magician right before her bow. “They’ll need some good lawyers.”

And Nadja thought of the letter in Foster’s quarters, and understood.

She’d signed up for this job for a pittance. A flat fee. It hadn’t been about the money. It was about the stranglehold CMD had on human creativity, and she’d thought Foster agreed. That was what had made it so disappointing. Foster, settling for the easy score, the ten billion she wouldn’t have to share with anyone else, the thief she’d exploited. Not an ideologue at all.

And she had used Nadja to do it. Maybe Nadja would never quite look at Josephine Foster in the same light again. Maybe it was possible for the myth to be true and not true.

But ten billion paid for a hell of a lot of lawyers.