Deep inside the Juggernaut a young woman raced along a dark corridor. The few light panels which still had power cast their weak glow through along the tunnel. Darkness crouched in recesses untouched by the light, and ahead of her the shadows pooled together like black mercury.

It was warm here in the depths of the city; warm and dank, so the woman was dressed lightly in loose clothing and she carried only a small bag strapped close to her body to prevent it leaping about as she ran.

Tucked securely into the straps on her back was what appeared to be a short metal cylinder, less than half a metre in length.

Her dark hair, secured in a tight braid, whipped around her head and shoulders as she pounded the deep and dangerous corridors of the Juggernaut.

Tila Vasquez was twenty now, but she had stopped counting the years since the colony disaster twelve years earlier. Tila had been one of the few to survive that awful day. She had been good. She had done what she was told. She had hidden and waited for help to come, even as the room had grown cold and quiet. She had waited passively for someone to save her, until she stopped waiting, and fought to live.

As she had survived every day since.

Now she was older. Leaner. Harder.

The little girl who had run through the corridors of the Rising Star was gone, lost with everything else aboard the ship. But adult Tila had kept the quickness. Quick was how she had survived very day since.

Quick temper, quick feet.

Quick to leave behind the things that slowed her down.

At least, she used to be.

It had been eight years since she had landed in this city in space, when she had stowed away for her final flight from the civilised world. And while she had found reasons to leave every other place she had lived, somehow here, among the ruins and the wrecks, she had found a reason to stay.

Tila dodged pipes and ducked low ceilings without slowing her pace or breaking her stride. She vaulted abandoned crates and tic taced over small obstacles which blocked her path. A sheen of sweat on her olive skin glowed in the soft light of the tunnels. She paused at a junction and breathed easy despite her run. This was not the first time she had run, and not the first time she had been hunted.

She made her decision and turned left into a new corridor. It was yet another monotonous passageway lined with endless doors. She kept running, and under her breath she began to count.

Seconds later, two men burst into the same junction, following the same path, chasing their quarry. They looked right, then left, and saw Tila already far along the passageway.

They renewed their chase, calling out threats and warnings, but they panted with the effort of their pursuit. They met the same obstacles as Tila, but overcame them with far less grace. The scrambled over crates rather than vaulting them. One ducked too low under a crossbeam and lost his balance. He stumbled into his companion, bringing them both to the ground.

Where Tila was a gazelle, these men were merely bulls.

Glancing over her shoulder, Tila watched them clamber to their feet before she rounded another corner, confident they were no threat so long as she kept her lead. Her lips twitched into a rare smile.

She found an open doorway and hopped through, and then she stopped.

Wrong door.

Dead end.

The smile faded.

She poked her head back out into the corridor, silently counting off the doorways she had passed. She heard the footsteps of her pursuers pounding along the corridor, and she moved back to hide among the deeper shadows.

The men ran past Tila, and she shook her head as they charged by. Then she sprang through the doorway and sprinted back the way she had come.

They heard her, tried to turn too quickly, and crashed into a wall. They exchanged angry glances, quick to blame each other. One of them shoved himself away from the wall and gave chase. The other narrowed his eyes, swore at his companion, and followed, limping, ignoring the bright new pain in his knee.

This time, after Tila passed the junction, she slapped each door as she ran by, counting again, looking for where she had made her mistake. Then she saw what she had missed. In the dim lighting was another hidden doorway. A doorway different from the rest.

Most internal doors on star ships were constructed using the same template. They were often an uninspired industrial design concerned only with utility and cost; the sort of thing you would find on any starship. But this door was different. The door she was looking for was square and heavy with thick seals designed to withstand the vacuum of space. This door was an airlock.

She couldn't see any controls to the left or right of the frame. That was unusual, but not unheard of. Not every ship that had been absorbed by the Juggernaut's slow growth was properly aligned, assuming you subscribed to any ideal about what constituted the proper way to fuse one starship to another.

Incorporating new ships into the existing structure of the Juggernaut was rarely a simple job. Parts had to align. Doorways and airlocks had to match, and everything needed to fit somewhere, unless the new arrival was simply affixed to the cities surface. New fixings, mounts and wields were essential. Braces and structural work were common, and not every gap was properly sealed. You couldn't guarantee that the floor of one ship lined up with the floor of another. Many scalpers weren't fussy about the quality of the finished job. Tight seals and joins were the priority. Orientation was secondary. Some even preferred the odd layouts which resulted from disoriented ships.

The city grew less like a solid object, and more like a honeycomb. It made exploration a risky endeavour. Every new door opened could lead to one final, great adventure.

Tila never understood the appeal. Who would want a floor to become a ceiling because a ship had been attached upside down? At times like this it only made her life harder, and life here was already hard enough.

She looked up, above the door. There it was. She jumped, slapped the single button with her palm and waited.

Nothing.

She tried again, delivering one quick hammer stroke with the heel of her palm. A weak light flickered in the centre of the button and the door mechanism released a horrible shriek as if it were angry at being disturbed after all these years.

It opened no more than twenty centimetres, and stopped.

Too small.

How close were the others? Tila cocked her head to listen for the oncoming footsteps.

Too close.

She pulled the metal cylinder from her back and inserted it through the small gap. She tested it to make sure it was secure and then held tight with both hands. She pulled as hard as she could to lever the door open and hoped she was strong enough.

The door moved a little, but no more than the width of three fingers.

Too weak.

The footsteps were coming closer.

She pulled the bar free and held it away from her body. Strong fingers squeezed it in just the right way and it sprang open to five times its original length with a sudden snap, a smooth, metallic whisper, and a satisfying click.

Give me a lever long enough.

She tried again, applying the principles of leverage by using the longer staff to multiply her efforts. The door opened a little more but it still wasn't enough.

The two breathless men staggered around the corner at the end of the corridor. Too tired to shout any more, they stumbled toward her as fast as they could.

She was running out of time and she needed this door open.

Sometimes you have to pull, sometimes you have to push.

Tila swiftly pulled herself up and over the bar and braced her feet against the ceiling. She gritted her teeth and strained with back and arms and legs against the years of corrosion in a dead doorway.

This time she felt something give. The door opened a few more centimetres. It would be tight, but it was enough.

She dropped to the floor, tossed her staff through the doorway for gravity to catch, and pulled herself up by her fingertips. She wriggled through the opening which was now big enough, just, to admit her.

She crossed the threshold and fell—not down, but sideways.

The intensity and sudden shift in the direction she had expected caught her by surprise. Her shoulder crashed into a floor that a moment before had appeared to be a wall.

She picked up her staff and climbed to her feet. Looking back through the door, which was now oriented correctly from her new perspective, she realised that she should have expected this shift in the gravity shelf. Bulkhead doors don't open top to bottom. That should have been a clue.

Still, at least this time she didn't fall up.

Tila looked away from the vertical slit in the bulkhead. The sight of the corridor outside at right angles to her floor was briefly disorientating but you learned to live with it in this place. It was easier if you thought of it as pictures of the next room hung on their side, or upside down. She would be ready for it on the way back.

She rubbed her sore shoulder where it had taken the brunt of the impact and picked up the staff. She squeezed it again in just the right place and it snapped back to its former length with a sigh and a click.

The weak light from the corridor behind her was the only illumination Tila had, so the room revealed its secrets slowly. The first thing she noticed were the low, dark shapes scattered throughout the dim room. The light knifed its way through the dusty air and bounced off metal surfaces. It was barely enough to show her the storage lockers built into the far wall.

Shadows suddenly flashed through the light beam. Tila looked and saw the hands of her pursuers tugging at the bulkhead door in an effort to open it enough for them to climb in. She heard one of them pick something up from the hallway, a lever of their own, and together they tried to force the opening wider.

They strained against the old door mechanism until their improvised tool snapped. Like the rest of the Juggernaut, it was too old and worn out to be of any real use. They resorted to brute strength instead, a more effective tool in this place, and, little by little, the door opened.

Unhurried and unconcerned while they tired themselves out, Tila scanned the room. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and the room was growing brighter by the second as the door behind her yielded centimetre by centimetre.

She recognised the dim shapes scattered around the room as bed frames. Rust had found the frames in the warm, dank air, and the metal had been burning, slow and quiet, for some time.

I wonder who used this room as a home, and where are they now.

At one time, something had breached the wall to her left. Messy repair work had made no effort to conceal the gaping hole in the wall. Something, maybe even another ship, had ripped through the wall like a fist through a paper bag.

Micro-foam sealant decorated the wall in splashes of pink and blue. The pastel colours were oddly cheerful in the dingy light.

As Tila moved through the room, she noticed something glinting on the wall to her right. A brass plaque. Years of grime had long since hidden the surface of the polished metal, but a recent enough scratch had uncovered a sharp, bright line which called to her in the darkness.

Tila stepped through the light beam and wiped away the worst of the dirt with her sleeve. It read in bold letters Eclipse. Underneath, in smaller text, it said, Registered and licensed by Mirador Port Authority.

Jackpot.

Behind her the bulkhead door finally crashed open and the room brightened. The men's shadows leered into the room like dusky ghosts.

One of them moved too quickly, and in the darkness and his haste made the same mistake Tila had. He fell awkwardly, caught off balance by the sudden change in the orientation of the gravity plane, and landed on his back.

The other man followed, but he rolled into the room with more caution, his feet aligned with the wall to his left. He cleared the lip of the door and neatly turned his feet to meet the oncoming wall.

The first man struggled to his feet, swearing and blaming the other, again, for his mishap.

Tila considered her options. They had been following her for some time now, so it was unlikely she was escaping this situation without a fight. She could simply give them what they wanted, but even that had its risks. In her experience, men always wanted more than what was on offer.

While they argued, she quickly tried to prise the brass plate from the wall but it was too firmly attached.

Typical, she thought. Everything else in this city falls apart if you so much as look at it wrong, but the fastening on this plaque is perfect.

Tila turned to face the men. They had stopped bickering and were advancing, separating to approach her from each side.

She stared them down and held her ground. Defiant, yet ready to move.

"Que pasa?" she said cautiously. They didn't reply. "You can't have it," she told them.

"You don't even know what we want," said the one on the left. He was the handsome one, she decided. He had fewer scars and most of his teeth, but it was a close call either way.

"I don't care what you want. You can't have it."

Handsome pulled a knife. A short, broad blade with a hooked point.

"Just give us the staff, and we'll let you go."

"You do know this isn't my first day, right?" said Tila. "You're not taking it."

"It's paleotech, isn't it?" said Handsome. "It might be worth a fortune. It might be priceless."

"It might be worthless," said Tila, edging slowly backward. "Not everything from before the Commonwealth is valuable. Some things are just old."

"I'm willing to take that chance," said Handsome.

"We can pay you. Well, we can give you something for it anyway," said the other man. He was the clumsy one who kept rushing, falling, and blaming his friend. He gestured obscenely with the only three fingers of his right hand.

"Give us the staff, and we'll let you go," said Handsome.

"Unharmed?" said Tila.

"Promise," lied Clumsy. His fingers still twitched.

Tila rolled her eyes. She had been dealing with threats like this since before she arrived in the city. It had been scary at first, learning to fight, but she had discovered she was good at it. She had to be.

These two amateurs were going to slow her down, nothing more. Clumsy was nothing to worry about. Handsome at least held the knife properly, like a weapon, not a toy.

Better to play it safe and live again another day.

She held up a hand.

After all, it's just a staff. It might be worthless.

"Okay, okay," she said slowly. She reached over her shoulder with her other hand and pulled out the compact staff.

"Here." She made as if to pass it to them, squeezed it, then dropped it. It sprang to its full length, clanged on the metal floor, and rang out an unusual tone from its unusual alloy. It rolled forward to stop at their feet.

She held their gaze.

"Oops," she said.

Handsome snapped his fingers at his companion and pointed at the staff. "Get it."

Tila fixed her eyes on Handsome. She had learned the hard way to never take her eyes off the man with the weapon. Clumsy obviously thought the same, because his eyes were locked on Tila while his crippled hand scrabbled around on the floor. He found something, and with a triumphant smirk closed his hand over his companion's foot.

Handsome glanced down.

It might be worthless, but it's mine.

Tila exploded.

In the moment it took the men to react, Tila slammed her right knee into Clumsy's face, then stamped hard on Handsome's foot. She jabbed Handsome in the face with her left hand to knock him off balance, and swung with her right. Handsome hopped backward with yelp. On the back swing, Tila dropped to one knee and brought her right elbow down as hard as she could onto Clumsy's head.

Handsome shook his head and rushed back in, swinging wide with brute force and unthinking rage. Tila rose and turned her shoulder to meet him. She grabbed his knife-hand and forced his arm painfully over her shoulder. She turned around, twisting his wrist the wrong way until she felt something crunch that shouldn't. Handsome yelped in pain. The knife fell from limp fingers and skittered away.

Now she was facing the plaque again. Keeping her tight grip on Handsome's wrist, she lunged toward the wall and dropped to her knees again, pulling Handsome down and forward with her. His head bounced off the brass plaque and he dropped.

Not so handsome now.

Tila turned, ready for his friend. Clumsy was on his feet again, but now he was armed. He had ignored the knife and instead held Tila's staff over one shoulder like a bat.

He charged, swinging high.

Tila went low. She dived between his legs and rolled, then kicked up to her feet with the knife in her hand. The man snarled and swung again. Tila ducked under the swing and planted the knife in his foot with a snarl of her own. She felt the blade go all the way through until it scraped on the metal floor.

Clumsy screamed and dropped the staff. He collapsed to the floor and struggled to pull the knife out, whimpering in pain.

Tila crouched, yanked the knife from his foot, and grabbed a fistful of hair to pull back his head.

"Don't... don't..." he pleaded.

"You'll live," she said, and slammed his head into the floor.

Tila wiped the blood from the knife on his filthy clothes and turned her attention back to the brass nameplate. Unfortunately, there was now a dent where she had introduced it to Handsome's skull.

Tila used her sleeve to wipe the dent clean and ran the knife around the edges of the seal. She took her time to cut it away, being careful not to nick the metal with the blade. It was the work of a few moments to loosen the plaque enough so that she could lever it free with the flat of the blade. It finally, reluctantly, came away from the wall with a satisfying pop.

Tila secured the plaque in her bag and threw the knife into a dark corner of the room. She saw Handsome was waking up. He saw the staff on the floor and chanced it, reaching for it with unsteady fingers. Tila stepped forward, putting her full weight on his hand. His fingers splayed beneath her boot and he gave up a pitiful cry as he tried to tug his hand free.

Without taking her eyes off him, Tila nudged the staff out of his reach with her toes, then in the same motion rolled it toward her with her foot. She kicked down, forcing the staff up and over the arch of her shoe. She flicked her foot up, heel back, knee at an angle. The staff hooked between her ankle and knee and spun up to eye level. She caught it with one hand and it snapped back to its compact size as she slotted it home under her backpack.

Tila stepped over Handsome's body and headed for the door.

He pulled himself to his knees, clutched his broken fingers and spat at her.

"Next time we see you, we'll kill you."

Tila shouldered the pack and looked down at him.

"Next time I'll still let you live."

Confusion overcame anger.

"Why?"

Tila adjusted her pack for comfort and started toward the doorway.

"Because life hurts more."