Airspace That Doesn't Forgive Mistakes

The enforcement drones picked up her trail eight minutes later, which was, Kesi reflected while throwing the Rattletrap into a dive that made every one of her forty-percent-spite welds groan in protest, roughly seven minutes faster than she'd hoped and exactly as fast as she'd actually expected.

"Hold on to something," she told the girl, who hadn't said a word since Kesi cut her free of the transport pod restraints, and who was gripping the co-pilot seat with a white-knuckled focus that suggested she understood the situation far better than a twelve-year-old should have to.

"They'll follow the debt," the girl said suddenly, over the shriek of thrusters cutting hard atmosphere. "Not just you. Whoever you owe money to. They'll follow it straight to you, because that's how they always find the ones who run."

Kesi spared her half a glance, weaving the ship between two support pylons with a margin she wouldn't have attempted for anyone paying her the going rate. "You know a lot about how enforcement thinks, kid."

"I'm not cargo," the girl said, in a voice that had clearly practiced saying it and clearly hadn't been believed nearly often enough. "I'm evidence. My mother worked sky-district compliance. She found out what they were doing to lower-district labor contracts, and two days later she was dead and I was cargo. You didn't steal a delivery, pilot. You stole the one thing they can't afford to let disappear."

Below them, the rust-colored sprawl of the lower district opened up, close enough now that Kesi could see the particular grey-brown haze that passed for sky down there, familiar and ugly and hers.

Eleven days on her debt had just become the least of her problems.

"Well," she said, leveling the Rattletrap into its final descent, "guess we're both evidence now. Better buckle in properly, kid. This is the part where it gets complicated."