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chimera of reds and greens, the oxygen in her mask sucked dry. Overcome with fear and the certainty of destruction, she scrabbled at the clasps behind her head to get a fresh breath of air, some respite from torment, but Sufi cuffed her hand.
    “Don’t touch your breather, fool,” she hissed as the helicopter roared above them.
    Simara gasped with anguish and sucked for life. The gargoyle woman smelled rank with sweat and pesticide, a bug-eyed demon. A click of data transmission sounded in the back of Simara’s brain, a whisper of home from a nearby wi-fi node. She heard a sputter of disconnected voices emerge from static as her system began to boot up—
life of the party
—
across quadrant seventy-seven
—
blue coyote.
She clenched her brain against the incoming signal, hoping to prevent a ping bounce back to the transmitter.
No data in, no data out, please, mothership, don’t let me betray my new friends.
The helicopter charged by and disappeared in the distance as she and Sufi lay panting in their oven, cooking under their cowls. They waited a few minutes for the return of sure doom, but the desert stayed silent until Keg snapped his torch alight with a flint.
    “Let’s tidy up and get out of here, kids,” Katzi said, and Simara groaned against gravity as she crawled out and clambered to her feet.
    Keg carved up the last few fragments of the shuttle and lashed his fuel cylinder in the passenger seat of his buggy, his sunken chest blackened with smoke and charred hair, as the crew piled on the last remnants of salvage and tied down the treasure. They packed up their gear and raked the sand, then climbed into their loaded trucks and sped off in different directions with barely a word of goodbye, a hard day fought and rich with bounty.
    “Buckle up,” Zen said as she vibrated with exhaustion in the seat beside him. They ran without lights in the darkness, and Simara wondered about nocturnal carnivores. Did they have dinosaurs on this forbidden planet? Giant snakes? She squinted her eyes into the night-vision viewscreen in search of hungry raptors or an angry cartoon T-rex. She brushed a scorpion off her knee as a helicopter sounded in the distance behind them.
    “They’re widening the search,” Zen said, his voice serene with fatigue. “Who are you, Simara?”
    “I’m nobody, Zen. Just an orphan trader girl with no family and no home.”
    “You can stay with me.”
    Simara studied him as he drove through this garish landscape. He looked like a masked villain in his breather, a grim and angry robot at the wheel with lightning sparking and cracking in the background in a web of green evil. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the hot geyser where they had shared a tranquil breakfast, his statuesque body, pretty face, and refreshingly courteous manner. She struggled against exhaustion to find some hope in her hellish new world.

TWO
    Simara’s stepfather came to her again in her bed, smelling of jar gin and hallucinogens, his pupils crazed pinpoints, his leering face contorted with lust. He fondled her nubile breasts and pulled at her panties, speaking to his dead wife, murmuring obscenities. He stuffed a rag of blanket in her mouth to stifle her screams and pressed her hips with his torso. Simara struggled for breath, choking on dirty cotton as consciousness began to slip away into a dark haze. No! Never! A surrender to coma would leave him free to violate her. She knew what her stepmother had endured—no spaceship had ever been built for privacy!
    She forced her eyes open to her stepfather’s lecherous face—such an ugly man, grizzled and unshaven, his touch like greasy sandpaper. He grinned at her as his hand pried between her thighs.
My little slut. You like that, don’t you?
    No! Never! Simara curled a fist and reached back, summoning a last remnant of energy out of encroaching darkness. She braced her neck for purchase and let fly a murderous blow to his face, felt a sure connection with pulp, a