The wreckage of the research station lay behind them, a crumbling monument to secrets best left buried. Before them, parked askew in the cracked courtyard like a waiting predator, was their getaway vehicle.

  It was a red beast of grafted metal and defiant engineering. A heavy-framed combustion bike, its tank and bodywork painted a scorched, flaking red that mirrored the badland’s clay. A swollen secondary fuel cell was welded to its side like a tumorous growth, and the exhaust pipes curled up and back like the horns of some infernal bull. It wasn’t built for aesthetics; it was built to survive, and to announce that survival from a mile away.

  “There’s my girl,” Rhaene said, a note of genuine affection cutting through her usual gruffness as she approached it. She gave the rear tire a solid kick, which did nothing but prove the tire was solid. “Didn’t even get dusty.”

  She lied. The motorcycle was most definitely dusty.

  “Beauty is precisely where we left her,” Arbor intoned, already running a diagnostic scan over the frame with his optic. “No signs of tampering. Fuel cell integrity at 94%. A 6% loss from passive evaporation.”

  “Whatever you say, tinman.’” Rhaene swung a leg over the seat, settling into the worn leather with the ease of someone claiming a throne. She gripped the handles and gave a mock rev, the engine letting out a sleepy growl. “I’m driving back.”

  “Your driving algorithm prioritizes acceleration over trajectory stability and fuel efficiency. My driving algorithm is superior in all measurable parameters,” Arbor stated, walking to the side of the bike.

  “Your driving algorithm is boring. So I win.” She looked over her shoulder at Aren, who was crouching a few feet away, staring at the motorcycle with unblinking blue eyes. It was the most focused they’d seen him. “Alright, problem. How’s the kid riding?”

  Arbor looked from the small boy to the bike, then to Rhaene. His logic core presented several options, each with a cascading list of risks. “A sidecar would be optimal. Unfortunately, we do not have a sidecar. A cargo crate would be sub-optimal but serviceable. We do not have a crate either.”

  “We could duct tape him to the fuel cell,” Rhaene suggested, only half-joking.

  “The risk of static discharge, impact damage, or him attempting to drink the fuel is 87%. Unacceptable.”

  “Fine. You hold him.”

  “Holding a squirming biological unit with one arm while operating the vehicle reduces defensive and offensive operational capacity by 60%.”

  “So I hold him?”

  “Your propensity for sudden, aggressive maneuvering increases the probability of a projectile child scenario by 300%.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, the badland wind whistling through the station’s broken teeth behind them. The motorcycle ticked as its engine cooled.

  Aren, sensing the lull in the argument, crept closer on all fours. He stopped a foot from the bike’s front tire, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air, hot metal, old oil, dust. He reached out one tentative, grimy finger towards the tread.

  “Ah-ah, careful there, kid,” Rhaene said, her voice losing its edge. “That’s Beauty. She’s bitey.”

  Aren’s hand froze. He looked from the tire to Rhaene and back to the tire, his head tilting as he clicked his teeth together, biting the air.

  “Nah I’m just playin’, she don’t actually bite,” Rhaene amended, swinging off the seat. She crouched down beside him, putting a hand on the bike’s scorched red flank. “This is Beauty. She’s ours. Well, she’s mine, but Tinman over there gets to pretend he’s her favorite sometimes.” She patted the metal. “Say hello, Beauty.”

  With her other hand, Rhaene silently reached behind her and gave the handlebar a slight twist. The engine coughed once, a short, gruff vrump that wasn’t a start, just a clearing of its throat.

  Aren scrambled backwards so fast he tumbled onto his rear, landing in the dust. He stared, wide-eyed, but he didn’t cry or hide. After a second, a slow, fascinated smile spread across his face. He pointed at the bike. “Buh…?”

  “Beau-ty,” Rhaene said, sounding it out. She then pointed at the boy. “And you’re Aren. See? Introductions.”

  Arbor observed the ritual. “Personifying the vehicle is illogical. It is a machine. A collection of components.”

  “I could say the same bout you Tinman. She has a name just like you, so she gets introduced just like you” Rhaene stood up. “Alright, Beauty, this is Aren. He’s… a new project. Try not to throw him off, okay?” She then turned back to Arbor. “Now, where were we? Oh right! My vote’s still for taping him to the fuel cell.”

  “The debate is unresolved,” Arbor said. “All proposed solutions have critical flaws. Your ideas having more than mine.”

  “So we think of a new one. C’mere, kid.” Rhaene picked Aren up under his arms and plopped him onto the motorcycle’s seat. His legs dangled, not nearly reaching the foot pegs. “See? He fits on the seat. That’s a start.”

  “He lacks the mass, coordination, or cognitive ability to maintain that position independently at speed. He would slide off during the first turn.”

  “So we don’t let him be independent. We sandwich him.” Rhaene climbed on in front of Aren, demonstrating. “I drive. You get on behind him. You’re the backrest, I’m the dashboard. He’s the… uncomfortable filling in this sandwich.”

  Arbor processed the image. “Inelegant. It restricts my field of vision and my ability to draw a weapon.”

  “It also keeps the kid from becoming a red smear on the highway. Your ‘field of vision’ will survive.”

  Aren, seated between them now, looked up at Arbor’s looming chest plate, then at the back of Rhaene’s jacket. He placed a small hand on the fuel tank in front of him, patting it gently, as if reassuring the bike.

  “See? He’s already making friends with her,” Rhaene said. “It’s settled.”

  “It is a suboptimal compromise born of a lack of proper equipment,” Arbor stated, moving to mount the bike behind Aren. The suspension groaned under his weight. “But it is the least terrible option. Do not interpret this as agreement.”

  “Duly noted and immediately ignored.” Rhaene reached back, grabbed one of Arbor’s metal hands, and pulled it forward, wrapping his arm around both her waist and Aren’s middle. “There. Seatbelt engaged. Kid, you’re the meat in a demon-and-robot club sandwich. Congrats.”

  Arbor’s arm was an unyielding bar of cool metal. Aren squirmed for a second, testing the restraint, then settled. He seemed to find the secure pressure… acceptable.

  “All passengers secure?” Rhaene called out, firing up the engine. Beauty roared to life, the sound vibrating through all three of them.

  “Affirmative,” Arbor said, his voice tight.

  Aren let out a delighted squeak, his hands splaying on the fuel tank.

  “Next stop, civilization,” Rhaene shouted, and fed the bike gas. “Try to keep the existential dread to a minimum, will ya?”

  The red motorcycle, carrying its bickering crew, tore away from the ruins, leaving only dust and unanswered questions behind.

  “Next stop, Carpark!,” Rhaene shouted over Beauty’s roaring as she fed it gas. “Vexa’s drop point. We hand over the datapad, maybe show her the kid, get our-”

  “-credits, yes,” Arbor’s voice buzzed in her ear via the comm. “And then, after the standard deduction for unsanctioned biological cargo…”

  “Your optimism is infectious, Tinman. Really warms the ol’ heart-chamber.” Rhaene shifted her grip on the handles. “Carpark’s a pit, but the noodle cart on 3rd and Gutter makes a broth that’ll put hair on your-"

  Both of them fell silent at the exact same moment.

  The wind carried a new sound underneath its constant whine. A distant, ragged buzzing, like a swarm of angry metal wasps. It was faint, but growing.

  “Engines,” Arbor stated, his sensors already triangulating. “Multiple. Lightweight, high-RPM. Not Guild. Not military.”

  “Bandits,” Rhaene spat the word like a curse. Her body tensed, a predator coiling. “How far?”

  “Seven-point-two kilometers and closing at an intercept vector. Estimated contact in four minutes.”

  “Shit. Options?”

  “Outrun them: improbable, given their numbers and likely knowledge of the terrain. Negotiate: possible, but statistically leads to ambush 89% of the time in this sector.”

  “So we fight.”

  “So we fight,” Arbor confirmed. His arm tightened imperceptibly around Aren. “Initiate defensive protocol ‘Three-Ring’. You are primary combatant. I am vehicular control and point defense.”

  “Try not to drive like you’ve got a stick up your chassis.” Rhaene’s hands danced over the bike’s modified console, flipping switches. A low hum resonated through the frame as plating slid over vulnerable components. “Kid, you’re on observation duty. Keep your head down and your mouth closed unless you wanna eat a bullet.”

  Aren just blinked, sensing the shift in energy but not the cause.

  The buzzing crescendoed into a roaring cacophony. On the shimmering horizon, shapes emerged. They were vehicles, but born from a fever dream. At their core were tiny, sputtering clown cars and oversized tricycles, their pathetic frames almost comical. But built upon them were towering, ramshackle constructions of sheet metal, scrap wood, and brightly painted canvas. They looked like rolling circus wagons that had been in a horrific collision with a junkyard, then armed with rivet guns and sawblades. A mobile, insane carnival of rust and ruin.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Rhaene muttered.

  The bandit convoy swarmed with practiced chaos, surrounding the lone motorcycle in a wide, dust-choking arc. With a series of bangs and puffs of acrid smoke, the lead vehicles deployed interlocking panels and poles. In less than a minute, they had created a shambling, moving ring of vehicles around them, a makeshift arena of clattering metal and flapping canvas. A circus tent on wheels, and Arbor and Rhaene were the main act.

  From the largest contraption, a clown car supporting a pagoda-like structure with a peeling “BIG TOP” stenciled on it, a figure emerged. He was tall and wiry, clad in a patched and faded harlequin suit that might have once been vibrant. His face was painted with a tragic, smeared grin and tears. He placed a tall, striped pole onto the roof of his car, and with absurd grace, stepped onto a thin wire that extended from it.

  “Ah, travelers!” his voice boomed, amplified by a crackling speaker somewhere. “What fortune! An audience! I am Bonzo! Once Bonzo the Clown, but let’s be honest, laughter doesn’t fill the tank!” He began to tightrope walk towards them, arms outstretched for balance, his movements a perfect pantomime of elegance atop the shuddering vehicular ring.

  Arbor’s optic lights fixed on him. “Bonzo the Bandit. Guild file lists him as a ‘theatrical nuisance’ with a surprisingly high lethality rating.”

  “We’re not here for the show, glitter-tits!” Rhaene yelled.

  “But the show is here for you, my surly friend!” Bonzo cried, now directly above them, looking down with his painted sorrow. “A simple toll! Your fuel, your shiny robot friend, perhaps the curious little pup you have there! Then, you may go! We all get what we want! I get supplies, and you get… the invaluable lesson of cooperation!”

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  Rhaene didn’t argue. She didn’t even turn her head fully. In one fluid motion, she twisted at the waist, her revolver clearing its holster and barking a thunderous shot upwards.

  BANG!

  The shot didn’t hit Bonzo. It vaporized the towering, rainbow-colored wig he was wearing, sending a shower of synthetic hair floating down like sad confetti.

  Bonzo froze mid-step on the wire. He slowly reached up, patted his now-exposed, bald head, and looked at the drifting wig fibers with profound disappointment. The painted smile seemed to wilt. “That,” he said, his amplified voice deadly quiet, “was the hat’s brother.”

  The pole retracted with a sproi-ing sound. Bonzo dropped gracefully back onto his vehicle as the entire circling convoy erupted.

  A calliope somewhere wheezed to life, playing a grotesquely sped-up version of “Entry of the Gladiators.”, bandits poured from hatches and platforms, and a man with flaming batons juggled them into incendiary throws that arced towards the bike.

  Arbor swerved, the fireballs exploding against the hardpan where they’d just been. A woman on spring-loaded stilts bounded alongside, hurling weighted nets.

  “Drive!” Rhaene roared, holstering her gun. This wasn’t a shooting gallery; it was a melee.

  Arbor’s systems seamlessly overrode the bike’s controls. His right hand remained locked around Aren, his left now steering. The red motorcycle became an extension of his logic, weaving a brutal, precise path through the chaos.

  Rhaene launched herself from the bike. She landed on the running board of a passing bandit car shaped like a giant duck, her fist caving in the sheet-metal beak before she used it as a springboard to vault onto the main ring-structure.

  What followed was a spectacle of violence only Rhaene Kancu would be able to perform.

  She was a typhoon of blunt force. A trapeze artist swung at her on a rope, cutlass gleaming. She caught the rope, yanked him out of his arc, and used his body to club two jugglers throwing razor-sharp pins, no need to guess where the pins went.

  A fire-breather engulfed her in a plume of napalm-grade flame. She charged through it, jacket smoldering, and planted a haymaker in his stomach so hard the man’s painted smile literally popped off his face into a ceramic plate clattering to the ground.

  “Really?” she had time to mutter, staring at it. It was an alright trick, yeah. But during a raid? Who prepares things like that.

  Arbor, meanwhile, was akin to a surgeon operating in a hurricane. The difference being that Arbor was able to perform a successful surgery in low power mode on a sinking ship. He hadn’t ever done it, but he knew he could theoretically do it if the occasion ever presented itself.

  Driving with one hand, he used his free arm to defend. A bandit on a motorized unicycle sped in, swinging a giant rubber mallet. Arbor had already seen it from a mile away, the robot had stereotypically calculated the trajectory, caught the mallet head, twisted, and sent the man spinning off into the path of a tiny car, which comically bounced over him with a honk-honk. Arbor was lucky he wasn’t programmed with the same sense of surprise Rhaene was, if he had stared at the scene behind him, he wouldn’t have been able to avoid the newly furnished carpet of, irresponsibly, peppermint-colored caltrops that were just scattered from a cannon atop a nearby platform.

  During this exchange, Aren, in the crook of Arbor’s arm, was watching it all, his head on a swivel, not scared but utterly fascinated.

  “Rhaene! Incoming high!” Arbor’s comm crackled.

  She looked up. Lo and behold, three bandits on a shared trapeze were descending, a heavy net between them. She couldn’t dodge in time.

  “Tag!” she yelled.

  Arbor braked hard. In the same motion, he lifted Aren and threw the boy, not with force, but with perfect, calculated accuracy. Though saying that it was the perfect calculated accuracy would be unnecessary. Everything he did was with the perfect calculated accuracy.

  Aren sailed through the air, flying into the trapeze artists’s nets with a soft squeak, tangling it, and landing neatly in Rhaene’s waiting arms as she jumped from her perch, kicking a trapeze artist as they tried to make a clean landing.

  She landed, rolled on a lower platform, set Aren down behind a barrel, and was back in the fray as the net buried empty ground.

  The tag-outs became a lethal ballet as they fought. Rhaene, surrounded by knife-throwers, tossed Aren back to Arbor like a football. Arbor caught him, now steering and holding the child, while his legs became weapons, piston-kicking a charging bandit off his roaring tricycle. He grabbed the trike with the instep of his foot and kicked it up as a momentary shield against a volley of throwing axes before ditching it to be lost behind the

  Bonzo orchestrated it all from his moving pagoda, screaming directions through a megaphone. “The ringmaster is displeased! The lion is biting the tamer! Apply the clown car! Use the funny gas!”

  “I really want to punch his fat, red, nose man…” Rhaene glared at Bonzo as she threw another two clowns onto the raw ground underneath the moving circus.

  A sedan with six doors screeched alongside Arbor, all its doors flying open to disgorge a small army of tiny, squeaking bandits in even tinier cars. Arbor, for a nanosecond, processed the sheer idiocy of the tactic. Maybe he wasn’t that much better than Rhaene.

  “Really…” He gunned the engine, riding up the side of a half-pipe structure, and came down squarely on the sedan’s roof, crushing it flat with a symphony of collapsing metal and sad horn-honks.

  The finale was inevitable, but no less spectacular. Rhaene had fought her way to the central support of the mobile tent, a massive pole welded to Bonzo’s lead car. It was surprisingly durable, Rhaene wailed on it, smashing her fists against the metal to no avail.

  “Use your head a little!”

  Of course, what Arbor meant by this was for her to simply disconnect the central support. She didn’t have to break it. Of course, Rhaene took it a completely different way.

  “Wonderful idea tinman!”

  With a toothy grin, Rhaene tilted her head and took a bite of the central support, her teeth sinking into the metal and ripping it askew like a lion ripping meat from a wildebeest carcass. Huge scrap of metal in mouth, Rhaene turned her head and spit the chunk straight into the head of clown that was getting a little too close trying to stop her.

  That clown had just paid off his house. He had a loving wife and kids at home. He had gotten into a little gambling trouble and said that this would be his last gig, just something to get a little more bread on the table.

  As he fell, the entire circus fell apart at the seams. The calliope music warped into a dying, discordant shriek as the structural integrity of the makeshift big top gave way. Canvas tore. Support beams groaned and twisted. And the body of the clown was left behind in the wake of the moving circus,

  “The big top is falling!” Bonzo wailed, his amplification cutting in and out. “Every clown for himself!”

  “Arbor, now!” Rhaene yelled, already in motion. They had to get out of there. The two of them were already on the bike, so all that was left was her own way back. Easier said than done, really.

  Her path back to the bike was a crumbling gauntlet. The only non-collapsing route left was across a narrow, shuddering tightrope strung between two tottering poles. Below it, not ground, but a large, dented cauldron that had been part of a “Dunk the Bozo” act. Inside, a viscous, greenish liquid bubbled and churned, emitting wisps of acrid smoke that ate at the surrounding metal. It also must’ve eaten at a couple of bozos, so Rhaene didn’t want to take her chances at how resistant her skin truly was.

  “Rhaene, that route is structurally compromised. The probability of collapse is 97%,” Arbor’s voice was flat in her ear, but it had a sense of urgency for her to find another route.

  “Only other options are collapsing into explosive confetti and knives, tinman! I’ll take the 3%!” She sheathed her revolver and leapt onto the quivering wire. Why were clowns so overdramatic. A normal walkway would’ve sufficed, but no, they had to be over the top,

  She had to use the sides of her boots, arms outstretched, moving with a demon’s agility. Below, the acid popped and sizzled.

  She was three-quarters of the way across when the pole on the far end, the one anchored to a wagon called “The Giggling Coffin”, gave way with a shriek of tortured metal. The tightrope went from a tense line to a whipping, useless cable.

  Rhaene fell.

  But she was a brawler, not a tightrope walker. She’d planned for this. She was surprised she had even gotten that far, really. As the wire’s tension disappeared, at the last second, Rhaene had kicked off from it, launching herself into a desperate, horizontal leap toward the nearest solid object, the roof of the “Giggling Coffin” wagon itself.

  But, it wasn’t enough. Her trajectory was short, her body arcing downward toward the bubbling vat.

  ‘SHIT!”

  Arbor saw the calculation fail. His logic core presented the solution in milliseconds: intercept impossible via ground route. Required: an anchored line.

  Rhaene, mid-fall, was already acting. Her left hand clawed at her belt, yanking free a compact grapple gun she used for scaling wrecks. It was shoddy and rinky-dink. Nothing like the newer models on the market. There was no time to aim for a distant beam, it’d take too long to fire.

  So, in freefall, Rhaene pointed it downward, at the acid pot’s thick metal rim, and fired.

  The grapple hook shot out, its claws clamping onto the rim with a solid clang. It was a horrific anchor point, but it was all she had. She triggered the retract, pulling herself at an angle, the motor whining as it violently shortened the line, arresting her fall and swinging her in a desperate arc over the acid, her hair grazing the acid, the acrid fumes burned her lungs.

  The swing brought her crashing into the side of the wobbling wagon, knocking the wind from her. She clung there, one hand on the grapple line, the other searching for a purchase on the splintered wood.

  “Arbor!” she gasped into the comms. She chuckled. “Looks like it ain't time for this bozo to get dunked yet”

  Arbor was already moving. The red motorcycle surged forward, not toward her, but parallel to the wagon, matching its speed as it was dragged along in the general collapse. The gap between bike and wagon was closing, but a churning mess of fallen bandits and debris lay between them.

  “On my mark, release and jump,” his voice was calm, a beacon in the chaos. “I will catch you.”

  “You better, you rusty bastard!” She readied herself, muscles coiled.

  Arbor calculated the vectors, the bike’s power, the wagon’s drift. “Mark.”

  Rhaene let go of the grapple. She pushed off from the wagon with all her strength, launching herself into open air over the hazardous ground, she didn’t even look. She trusted Arbor. And if Arbor was wrong?

  That was the funny thing. Arbor was never wrong.

  Arbor, driving with one hand, his other arm a secure cage around Aren, leaned hard to the side. He didn’t grab for her; he presented a stable platform. Rhaene’s trajectory slammed her into him and the bike. And it wasn’t pretty. She coughed blood and the motorcycle was definitely dented, but she didn’t waste any time. One of her arms quickly hooked around his neck, the other wrapped over his arm to secure Aren between them. Her smoldering boot found the footpeg.

  “Go! Go! Go!” she rasped, the taste of blood in her mouth from the impact.

  Arbor didn’t need the command. He fed every ounce of power he could to the motorcycle. The rear tire dug into the dirt, throwing up a plume of dust and confetti, and then they were catapulting forward.

  They shot forward like a crimson bullet, just as the grand, ridiculous, patchwork tent came down in a cataclysmic avalanche of canvas, wood, and clown cars. The deafening crash was followed by a chorus of muffled honks, sad trombone sounds, and distant, whimpering cries of “my nose… my beautiful nose…”

  The red bike didn’t slow. It carried its three riders out of the cloud of dust and into the open badlands, leaving the circus of calamity in a heap behind them.

  In the sudden, ringing quiet that followed, broken only by the engine's rumble and the whip of the wind.

  Rhaene, her heart still hammering against her ribs, reached up and examined the ends of her long black hair. The tips were singed and brittle, giving off a faint, acrid smell. She looked at the back of Arbor’s steadfast cowboy hat.

  “...All according to plan…?” she grunted, a last-ditch attempt to deflect the impending scolding she was in for.

  She already knew it wouldn’t work.

  “Your improvisations added 1.7 seconds of unnecessary risk to the extraction protocol and resulted in minor cosmetic damage,” Arbor stated, his sensors having logged the hair damage. A pause. “The grapple shot, however, was statistically adept given the zero-sum parameters. A 68% improvement over free-fall.”

  “Don’t get it, but I’ll take it that I’m not in trouble,” she said, a smirk tugging at her lips despite herself.

  From the space between them, pressed against Rhaene’s back and Arbor’s arm, Aren’s small hand reached up.

  The kid was actually surprisingly well-off. No missing limbs, not even a missing finger. That was a surprisingly good bandit encounter, at least to Rhaene. Everybody knows that Arbor could spend all day talking about what could’ve been better in that attack. But even he stayed quiet.

  Aren’s fingers, surprisingly gentle for where he’d been, carefully touched the burnt ends of Rhaene’s hair where it fell over her shoulder. He felt the crispy texture, brought his fingers to his nose, and sniffed. His face scrunched up and he coughed, pushing the hair away. He looked at his fingers, then up at Rhaene’s face, his blue eyes wide with a question he didn't have the words to ask.

  “Yeah, kid,” Rhaene said, her voice losing its snark. She was a little tired.

  “That’s what happens when you play with fire. Don’t try it.”

  Aren considered this, then slowly wiped his sooty fingers on his already-filthy gown. He gave a single, solemn nod, as if filing the information away. Who knew if he even know what she was saying.

  “See?” Rhaene said, tilting her head back toward Arbor. “Educational. The kid learned something. That’s worth 1.7 seconds.”

  Arbor’s optic lights flickered. He had no rebuttal readily available for that particular brand of illogic. The conversation was terminated by the unassailable variable of a child’s curiosity.

  Behind them, in the settling wreckage, Bonzo the Bandit pushed a piece of striped canvas off his chest. He found his cracked megaphone, tapped it, and heard only a pathetic wheeze. He sighed, the painted tear on his cheek now smudged with soot. His eyes, however, were not on his ruined circus, but on the distant plume of dust marking the red motorcycle’s escape.

  “Note to self,” he muttered, tucking the broken megaphone away with a magician’s deftness. “First, spring-loaded nets. Then the acid.” A faint, genuine smile touched his lips beneath the greasepaint.

  The best acts always left the audience wanting more. And he had a feeling their paths would cross again. The show, after all, must go on.

  He then collapsed.