The dusty red horizon grew wider and the blue sky blacker as the freighter climbed the thin Martian sky. Home - just a lowly cluster of tenements and refineries along a mud-choked river - kept getting smaller, but she wanted to see it vanish. The freighter banked hard, and the teenaged stowaway pressed her face to the tinted glass window just in time to see the last rust-stained buildings slip out of view.

They'd still be there, she realized as she sank back onto the crates. Her father and his regrets. The Party and their broken promises. The great maw of the refinery doors and a ribbon of gray-clad workers curled halfway around town, marching to their doom...

"I said what?s your name, babydoll."

It took the woman on the landing platform a moment to get her bearings after the long flight and lingering daydreams. She flashed the official an apologetic smile and lifted her shoulders helplessly: "Sorry....kind of a long trip, you know?"

The official smiled only a little in reply.

"Jay Burwell," she added. It was the name on her ticket, it was one of her favorites, and she meant - hoped - to keep using it for a while. "Nice city here," with a look of admiration at the tall cranes and gleaming skyscrapers around them.

The official looked left and right, and his badge shifted on a wrinkle in his uniform. Ilvyn Drees, Port Authority, it said. He held out his hand, palm up.

"An introduction," she laughed and put a hand to her heart, seeming taken aback. "This sure is a nice city." But when she reached out to take his hand, he drew it halfway back.

"You're new here," Ilvyn Drees said slowly, tipping his head and leaning forward as if explaining to a small child. "Customs is a tougher job here than most places. Seeing thousands of strangers into town every day, checking their cargo, their bags..." He trailed off pointedly there, and continued with a nasty kink to his smile, "Never know what you'll find. 'Round here, guys like me, we're tipped for our services."

This close to her, the Jaybird could smell scented product on his fingers, had probably rubbed it into his hair right before he left his office. There was no wedding band, but a tan line and shiny skin where one usually rested. She dug into her back pocket, selected half of her petty cash and held it out to him.

Drees took it, counted....and grimaced. He looked down the landing platform again, gave a nod to his colleague who nodded back. Then he rested a hand on his holstered sidearm and snaked his fingers into her back pocket. The Jaybird tightened her jaw.

It's a long way down....he'd never see it coming....he'd deserve it...

"Two hundred yuan won't get you very far," he said. At least he'd stopped groping her, praise be.

"Well then, good thing I'm broke now," she replied with a cheerful smile. "That oughta serve me better." She tried to move past him. He grabbed her shoulder.

"Gonna run off without your claim ticket' And without anything for me to remember you by, either," he added with a quiet chuckle. He curled two fingers around the chain of her necklace and followed the trail down to the neck of her tank top. She stiffened, but turned her eyes to look at him and managed something approaching a polite smile.

"I thought I'd given you plenty."

Drees took a step closer and looked the rest of the way down the necklace chain, critically. He tsk'ed. "Hardly," he said, and fished the pendant out by the chain. "What's this?"

She set her jaw tighter and said nothing now, forcing herself to look straight ahead while he examined the latest trinket to add to his collection. It was a silver band with what looked like a flattened pearl set in it. Why oh why oh why didn't I hide it in my boot...

He stepped much closer, taking his time unclasping it. His nose touched her hair. Just one push, then I'll make my escape....won't have to wait but a moment, see his head burst on the pavement like a watermelon...

"Illy!" his colleague snapped from the other end of the platform. Drees grimaced and reluctantly stepped back with his prize in hand, holding it up to the light. Then he dropped it into his pocket and shoved her claim ticket against her shoulder, giving her just enough time to grab it before he let go. "You can go get your bag now, Miss Burwell. I'm done with you," he grunted, already turning his back to join his partner. She watched him go, and slowly her scowl twisted itself back into a smile.

"Oh, Mr. Drees....you are far from done with me."

The changes could have been good for Mars, she always felt, but Earth was too strong. Earth needed the rare Martian minerals as bad as Mars needed the food and medicine until the Republic could build her own bio-domes....but negotiating when your people were sick and hungry was no easy thing. Earth could just plain hold their breath longer.

"They've got thicker air after all," the pilot laughed; the girl smiled weakly, but smiled all the same because he was one of the kinder outsiders. The man flew an airship out to the refineries every month, part of a freighter crew that exchanged minerals for supplies with an Earth delegation regular as clockwork. "I don't know....You guys got it bad, but Tharsis ain't half-bad, I guess."

"Not even half far enough." She stretched against a crate, fingering the cheap trinket he'd picked up for her from the Inner Asteroids, inspecting it under the warehouse's flickering fluorescent lighting.

He barked a laugh. Everyone he met was so tired - still tired from the War, from space travel, from life on Mars - but she wasn't. Not yet. There weren't many kids this far from Earth. "Earth?" he echoed the thought.

She smiled. "Further."

This time he laughed softer. He leaned sideways against a steel beam and lit a cigarette. There was wonder in his eyes suddenly, a little fire dancing like when he told stories about Jovian mining missions or the one time he saw Saturn. "What if I told you....heard it from an old friend from my days with the Scientific Survey, honest guy, but it's a wild rumor....nah," he shook his head. "Never mind."

"What. What," she pressed. He smiled.

"Surveyors say they've found something funny inside Elysium."

"More of those structures?"

"A door."

Jay Burwell pushed the cleaning cart down the hallway, ignoring the swivel and squeak of the back left wheel. Alice B., her ID card said. Hopefully Alice didn't reach home for a while, because when the woman found it hadn't been burned down after all" She'd likely be back in a big hurry.

She was nearly at his office when he heard her coming, and she recognized his voice: "Oh, Alice?" She winced. "Can you come, uh....help me with something?" Praise be, this jerk's worse than I thought! That shouldn't be possible!

But part of her was glad. It meant that maybe, just maybe, people in this city had more secrets than most. This one - and hopefully lots more - clearly got up to no good, and that was good for her. "Not Alice," she said as she shut the door behind her. She leaned against the frame and fixed him with a green-eyed stare.

Several expressions waged a brief war across Ilvyn Drees' face, probably up to the point he figured out this woman looked the bad kind of predatory. He opened a drawer and put his hand inside. No doubt he had a gun there. "You've made an awful mistake."

She smiled, shook her head slightly, and advanced. "You thought you had the better hand, didn't you....You had my bag, you had your gun and badge, and pretty little me, broke and alone with you on the platform." He started to cut in, but she didn't give him a chance. She scattered the small prints from her camera across his desk. "Read 'em and weep."

"This....you..." Ilvyn Drees had visited a brothel on his way back to the office. Bullied the owner out front - enough to get a little cut, one of the pictures showed - before heading inside to help himself.

"Who should I tell first' Your boss....or your wife?" He raised the pistol, but she only laughed. "Think I came here alone" That's not the only copy....not to mention all the places I uploaded these."

It took all of three seconds for Drees to completely change gears. "Look, I just....I'm sorry, alright' You can have it all back." He set the gun down on his desk and dug out the bills, counted out two hundred yuan, and offered them over.

She counted quickly, and then just stared across the desk at him.

He laughed nervously. "Right, right....for all your trouble....this'll, um..." He dug around in his wallet, fishing out the cash he'd collected throughout the day. Once again she counted, cool as you please. "This buys me those pictures....right?"

She cast a look around his office and stared at him again. An idea clicked. "Shipping manifests."

"But you can't - "

"I can't see your wife taking it well," she smiled sweetly, sadly. "I mean, when this goes to trial....there's just no telling what a woman scorned will say."

His face turned red with rage and embarrassment, and he shook with both anger and fear. He started printing out a list. "If something happens to this cargo....if people find out..."

Her sweet smile twisted further. "Then we'll have to keep this our little secret, won't we." She held out a hand for the papers, rolled them up and stuck them in her back pocket. Then she held out her hand again. "My necklace."

Drees offered it halfway across the desk - and stopped. His eyes narrowed, and he had just the beginning of his own smile. "How do I know you'll destroy the pictures?"

"You'll just have to trust me." Clearly he wasn't. "Let me put it this way..." She leaned way forward, until he was staring down the zipper of the janitor's jumpsuit she 'borrowed.' "I want payback. You want your career....maybe your marriage, too. We can walk away with all that....or I can just get payback. I don't care how things work around here, that's how things work for me. That crystal clear?"

"Crystal clear," he echoed, and leaned forward to drop the necklace into her hand. Once she had it, she didn't let him sit back down - she grabbed a hold of his collar, wound an arm all the way back and punched him in the nose as hard as she could. From the look of things she caught his mouth, too: blood flowed freely from his face as he groaned back into his chair. She shook her fist out and grabbed a hold of his pistol with her bandana, dropping it into a pocket.

Just another piece of leverage.

He groaned out an attempted protest as she made her way out the door, and she paused to look back at him. She sized him up slowly, the way he'd done to her, from head to toe, and returned her gaze to his. Then she smirked:

"A**hole."