She'd thought she'd have more time—always a dangerous assumption.

Liberty McQueen stepped over alley refuse, including the ex-colleague she'd just chem-punched into unconsciousness and hogtied with his own garrotte. Behind mirrored lenses and dark tussled hair, she reconned the space-station 'snack shack' across from her.

The Crazy Duck Diner. Her best chance at retirement. A junkyard of Earth memorabilia: fritzing centuries-old neon signage; speakers blasting old-planet retro-pop; shelves overflowing with ancient tech and bric-a-brac. And the floors... Cockroaches competed with a hairless rat-like creature for crumbs, the latter dressed in a tiny spacesuit. She'd have thought it an animatronic hoover, but it was drooling. Excessively.

Grimacing, Liberty scanned the pulsing light and shadow of Phoenix Station's recreation deck. In her years with the Agency, she'd walked into many questionable situations: high-end weapon deals; human trafficking operations. But she'd had the resources and time to vet them; had always had a plan and at least five escape routes. Today...

Escape looked like a neon–lit narc dream served with a side of botulism.

She retracted the chem spike of her ring, flexed fingers to ease the ache from hitting Knight in his rock-hard jaw. An Agency operative on Phoenix already. Her chances of retiring to a pretty cake shop by the sea had gone from slim to microscopic. Dodgy as her destination looked, there was no more time to assess it; she went with the intel she had.

Obtuse chatroom recommendations and six months of food-safety warnings from station management.

"Fuck." She jerked down the glittery hem of her party-deck 'camouflage'; shuffled her tits back into order after her scuffle. If she'd had a choice...

She didn't. She'd stolen from the Agency. And it didn't matter that the asset she'd liberated from their research facility was an innocent civilian—and her goddamn brother.

The reality of that laid her gut with lead. She'd do anything for Kiran, but she'd dived into hell deep water—way over her head. The medical records she'd stolen reported neurological changes of alien origin. The gifts her brother was developing; the things he said—knew about her and others that he shouldn't. Any agency centred on intelligence gathering would never stop hunting him.

She was his only hope.

And his biggest liability.

Liberty glanced to the dark-suited male prone in the alley's trash. Right now, Kiran was safe in one of her boltholes, but if she was apprehended...

One shot of hypno-narcotic and she'd betray the only person she'd ever loved.

Time to boogie.

She aimed thigh-high boots for infested, orange tiles, matching strides to soulful retro-pop—a song about not needing another hero.

She could only agree.

She needed a goddamn criminal. And all the chatrooms said the same thing: the shadow broker operating out of Phoenix was a mad genius at finding things—and losing them.

Perfect.

She entered the diner—instantly had her eyewear's surveillance tech flash warnings. Too much visual clutter. A haze of electromagnetic pollution: humming archaic electronics and other disruptive curios, including a radioactive paper journal by one Marie Curie.

Liberty's lips curved as she wove through rusted chairs and grime. Whoever this broker was, they had a sly brand of cunning. Locating sensors or tech threats would be near impossible.

With a dubious glance at cracked red vinyl and pitted chrome, she slid onto a stool at one end of the service counter; swivelled to keep an eye on the door.

It took two seconds for the spacesuit-clad rat creature to come investigate her boots.

Whatever it was, it wasn't shy—or pretty: wrinkled and nearly hairless, with beady eyes that locked on with laser focus. Her flesh crawled despite having seen far uglier things. She was grateful when something sticky and unidentifiable on the floor distracted the creature.

The door to the kitchen whooshed open, revealing something lightyears more attractive.

A bead-festooned, bare-chested male in flared, gold pants.

With wild blond hair, mascara-rimmed eyes, and a festival of cheap jewellery, tattoos, and piercings, the man fitted his surroundings; a creature of chaos. Lifting a duck-headed pez dispenser in lieu of a microphone, he joined in with the ballad currently blaring.

Liberty felt her throat lock at the lyrics: retro-pop angst about not needing to know the way home and only wanting a "life beyond the Thunderdome". That sentiment resonated with days—years—of stress and hypervigilance.

Pulse hard, she kicked self-pity to the curb; allowed amusement to rise in its place as gilded hips gyrated her way. She'd found her man. The underworld chatrooms had described Phoenix's broker as... Adjectives varied, but all orbited 'insane'. Fortunately, 'brilliant' accompanied those reviews.

"Hello, beautiful." The lunatic settled tattooed forearms on the counter, bringing purple chem-coloured eyes to her level. "Someone's got that fallen-angel look. What can I get you? Caffeine or stronger stims?" A waggle of the pez dispenser. "Janus got everything you need."

Liberty glanced to the neon-lit entrance, the alley beyond. As much fun as Janus looked and as much as her training whined at her to do due diligence, they'd have to skip the flirty suss-each-other-out song and dance. Knight had a high drug tolerance.

She turned back to violet eyes. "The life you just mentioned, the one beyond the 'Thunderdome'. I'm interested." If she recalled her pop history correctly, the song referred to a brutal fighting arena. A suitable metaphor for what her life was about to become. She peeled a flexible data chip from one fingernail and slid it over. "What express takeaway options you got?"

Janus smiled; took the chip with her and her brother's ID and travel requirements. "How much baggage?"

"Excessive, but I'd like to travel as light as possible."

A flutter of inked lashes. "Beautiful, we can space the excess." With sinuous grace, Janus stood and yelled back to the kitchen. "Elvis! Hound Hog special, stat!"

Liberty eyed the broker warily. The chatrooms had said not to expect comprehensible conversation.

"Today's hot-dog special." Janus returned to prop an elbow beside her. "Peanut butter, banana, and cell-farmed bacon sausage. Named after 'Hound Dog', a song the cook hip-swung to number one back in the twentieth C."

"Your cook's from the twentieth century?" Liberty raised brows. That'd better be code for extracting her sequin-clad behind, not a sign of a psychological break—like that sandwich clearly was. Her every pulse beat marked borrowed time.

Amusement gleamed in Janus's gaze. "Abducted by aliens and cryo-banked." He jerked his chin toward the rat creature currently perched on the counter. "That's Laika 2.0. An upgraded reincarnation of the first space canine—male version, not female like the original. Liberated from the same lab. He and Elvis groove to the same twentieth-C beats."

"Upgraded?" A dog?

"Don't let his tiny paws fool you. Lai's an excellent pilot, and a genius with self-assembling nanotech. Even if I didn't have a soft spot for anachronisms and the unjustly mutated and imprisoned, I'd have employed the little guy in a heartbeat."

Liberty held the creature's stare, felt her flesh crawl again, this time the cause the highly fanciful swing of the conversation.

"You cold?" Janus dropped his gaze to the gooseflesh on her arms. "Lai could nano-assemble you a coat. He's a gentleman like that. Me?" A slow, rogue smile. "I have my own methods for chasing away a chill, but I'm guessing you'd like dinner and dancing first."

Unease turned to edgy awareness. Liberty angled her chin, eyes narrowing. It seemed Janus's décor philosophy also applied to his communications: shuttle loads of BS to keep mental and tech filters overloaded, unable to ID truth and threats.

But there was a disturbing method to the madness.

All this insane talk of lab subjects...

Liberty's gut tightened.

Janus knew exactly who she was—what she'd done.

Her sense of impending doom crystallised into cold reality. "How much time before the dancing starts?"

Janus's lips curved. "You asked for the express option, darlin'. And I'm rated five stars for creativity and efficiency." With a sharp whistle, he sent the rat-dog scrambling to the safety of the kitchen.

Movement at the door. Knight and three other Agency goons.

Liberty's stomach dropped away. So much for bikinis and cupcakes. When she'd saved her brother, she'd taken on an enemy with resources across known space. There'd only ever been one outcome—and it wasn't a pretty café on a balmy shore.

She forced a smile. "You live up to your name." Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doors and transitions—between birth, life ... and death.

An unrepentant grin. "Beautiful, today, I only got one set of eyes and they set on you."

"You mean the million credits I'm paying." Knight strode up, brushing alley refuse off one shoulder. He tossed a credit token on the counter. "You get her destination?"

Janus slid over the data chip.

Knight pocketed it. "She neutralised?"

Liberty's gut rolled. Neutralised, a.k.a. drugged.

Janus met her grim stare with a wink. "Specialty technologic. Transferred when you sat your sexy arse down. You'll know it when it kicks in." He pressed a button under the counter. A panel behind him slid back, revealing an airlock—a smuggler's 'pantry', its battered hatch open, ready for 'stock'. He looked to Knight. "Transport's inbound. ETA ten minutes."

Knight turned to Liberty. "I'd say I'm sorry, McQueen, but you knew the rules of the game."

Liberty held his gaze, smiled. Yes, the game. The one she was done playing.

A two-knuckled strike to Knight's Adam's apple.

The lightning blow connected, sending him stumbling back—and startling her.

Whatever she'd been dosed with was yet to slow her.

She dove over the counter, Knight's backup rushing forward, stunners firing. Janus blocked escape through the kitchen—

She lunged for the airlock, incoming stun bolts a storm—slapped the hatch controls, sealed the door.

Knight appeared beyond its scarred window, holding his throat. Teeth bared, he triggered the intercom. "There's only one way to avoid interrogation, McQueen. Tell me the item's location. I'll put in a good word for you."

A simple trade: her freedom for her brother's. The brother who'd bandaged skinned knees, wiped away tears, and quietly defied their uncompromising parents by loving his baby sister without expectations or conditions.

She stepped back, punched the outer hatch's release; caught Knight's horrified look as he finally understood she was not playing.

The seaside café—just a pretty dream.

A violent ejection into space.

A human body, dressed in only a party dress, wasn't designed to survive a vacuum. With no air pressure, bodily fluids turned to gas—boiled. Those gases inflated tissues ... until they tore apart. The sole mercy: a loss of consciousness within fifteen seconds.

So, Liberty wasn't sure how she could still formulate that horrifying thought as she spun out into darkness, away from the lights of Phoenix Station. Her lungs burned, holding her last ever breath, but they didn't collapse. Her skin felt cool, radiating heat into the unforgiving void, but the sensation came with a sense of tightness—vibration.

Shimmering. Something on her eye. No—her body.

Nanotech.

What the—?

A stinging slap: impact with mesh—a net. Then tumbling dark and light; reeling bulkheads, the hold of a cargo retriever; a glimpse of a rat face peering from a bubble-shaped cockpit. Then the hold closed, sealing off the black.

A blast of precious nitrogen and oxygen.

Liberty sucked in a lungful, her mind spinning even as her body accelerated rapidly forward with the craft: Janus—his claims about employing alien lab experiments, about having a 'soft spot' for them. Kiran... Janus's had known what would happen if she were captured.

So he'd spaced the entirety of her baggage.

Crackling ship coms. Janus's cheerful voice: "One express extraction as ordered. Death confirmed. Welcome to life beyond the Thunderdome, beautiful. Now, who's up for dinner and dancing?"

Liberty inhaled deeply, closed her eyes—pictured herself burying toes in warm sand. "Tell that handsome dog of yours to put on a tux."

Acknowledgements, Copyright, and Challenge Details

This short story was written for the 2021 Ultimate Sci-Fi SmackDown challenge: round 2. Challenge details: Story must include Tina Turner's song 'I Don't need Another Hero' and two of the following characters: Cleopatra, queen of Egypt; Elvis Presley, Donald Duck; Marie Curie; Laika of Sputnik 2.