The cpping continued for another minute. Whistles, cheers, barks, the whole works cascaded over me as I walked up to the table with my crewmates and the Meowtws. I awkwardly waved and held a nerdy smile on my face. I wasn’t used to any of this.

  Yeti shouted over the crowd, “Alright, motherfuckers, shut up already!” The cheers died out in an instant. Everyone put their heads back down and got to work. “That’s more like it.” Yeti focused his eyes in on me, “Your nice stunt there earned us mad respect with the moon, and opened up a window for us to counter attack.” He pointed over at Speck, still covered in blood. “Your boy over there had a field day.” He started chuckling.

  “De Meowtws were able te take out two dropships, cutting dem fucks in two, sending dem runnin for deir moddas.” Azura smmed her robot arm on the table, smirking at me, “I knew I had a good feelin’ ‘bout ya, girl.”

  Noodle was wearing her yellow hoodie, she nodded at me and smiled, “It was awesome.”

  I still needed to have a talk with her about the Huff that was ravaging the city. She was responsible for what I saw in the subway tunnels. It was the same shit that had save me twice now, once from a terrible hangover, another from death, but it had ruined so many lives.

  Dutch stood behind Yeti, an ever-towering mountain of fur and muscle. She grunted at me with a slight nod. I’ll take it.

  “Alright, everyone, enough circle-jerking. We got business to take care of.” Yeti turned back to his table and flipped the holodeck on. A 3D image shot out of a rge structure in the middle of an icy valley surrounded by mountains. “This here is the power pnt. The main power supplier to Carpetree. The Gellys have shut off power to certain areas to send us a message. Speck there has a nice, juicy theory on why the pce wasn’t leveled and we were all left to die from the frozen confines of space.”

  “They are looking for something?” I spoke up.

  Uwu stepped up to my side, sliding his hand up my back, “We think it might be more that they’re looking for someone. They can’t risk all the life support systems. They could blow the power pnts and sweep the city in exosuits, looking through the frozen ghost town for an object.”

  “Exactly that.” Yeti stood up straight and scratched his chin, “Who exactly are they looking for and why? That’s the question, and until we get that answer, we just have to fight back.”

  Uwu nodded, “Sucker is still breaking into the data she stole from the Gelly connection. Once she’s got an answer to the question, we can beat the Gellys to it. If they find it first, this whole moon is a goner.”

  Yeti rubbed his hands together, “Until then, our next target is the power pnt, if your big brains haven’t guessed.”

  Azura pushed Yeti aside, “If we can control de pnt, we can take back da city and have da upper ‘and. De Gellys wont give it up easily. Once de arm sounds, dey be swarmin de pce.”

  She typed away on the screen, bringing up the rail access to the pnt. “Dis is de one remaining line to de pnt. We get you to sneak in, disable de arm, and we can swoop in wit de calvary. Taking de pce once and for all.”

  “Easy enough.” I scoffed, “That’s a hell of a pn. Do we know how many Gellys are there?”

  “No.” Azura shook her head, “Plus, de corpo fucks be der too.”

  Echo’s raspy voice backed me up. He hadn’t said hi to me since I arrived. I was a bit hurt by it. “Sounds like a fucked pn. Sending us in as the fodder with no clue how many corpos or Gellys are around. We don’t even know what we’re going up against here.”

  Yeti snapped to him, “And you fancy lot have the skills to get in there. Speck here is a master infiltrator, you big-eared dope can hear a gnat pissing from a mile away.”

  Echo sneered at the Captain.

  “We’ve been in worse situations.” I broke the conversation up before it got ugly. Yeti could be a bit of a dick, but we needed to work together to get this all done. “So, where is the security room?”

  Yeti cpped my shoulder, “That’s why you’re the hero!” He typed away on the keyboard and the image shifted to a small room in the center of the power pnt. “Right there. It’s a bitch to get into. You’ll need to grab a card off of a guard, blow a hole in, murder everyone of them before they can figure out what’s going on, I don’t know, figure it out.”

  I folded my arms and leaned back. This was looking to be a terrible idea.

  Azura smacked Yeti away, “We ‘ave a man on the inside. You’ll meet up wit’ him at de pnt.” She typed away and brought up an image of an Anthro-Mole with a star shaped nose, “His name is…”

  “Donald.” I cut off Azura as she looked at me confusingly. “He saved my life back at the pza.”

  “Den you already know him. Dis will be easy.” Azura smiled.

  “Fuck yeah! We got a pn to get our power pnt back.” Yeti looked at me, “Go ahead and take anything from the arsenal, I know all your shit got fucked. It is the least we can do. Alright, you guys leave tomorrow morning at the shift change, get ready to move out.”

  The group dispersed. Echo left muttering along with Speck. Uwu gave me a hug from the backside. I held his arms around me and leaned back to kiss him. “Meet me in the bedroom. I need some love right now.”

  He left, leaving me at the table alone with the Meowtws. I caught Noodle’s eyes and waved her down. I wanted to talk to her, and this was the time. I needed to know that she wasn’t out peddling drugs to communities.

  I needed to know her reasons.

  “Hey Noodle, can I talk for a sec?”

  She nodded, a slight smile on her face, “Yeah, what’s up?”

  I wasn’t sure how to approach her about the subject. I eyed her skinny body, thinking about that drug b in her apartment and the poor people down in the subway.

  “That drug you make, Huff is it? What the hell is with that stuff? I saw a bunch of people hopped up on that shit in the tunnels. They were zonked out.”

  I watched her body nguage change drastically from peppy to defensive. She folded her arms and looked away, “That’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “I saw that b in your apartment.”

  “You saw what I make for the Meowtws to fight the Gellys and Corpos, not that shit in the subway, okay? My shit’s preem. That garbage, I have nothing to do with it!” She scowled at me. I could tell she wanted to leave as she inched away, swaying from side to side.

  “Then what is it? Who makes it, if not you?”

  She scratched her arm nervously, “I told you, my parents, they were taken away, but not because they were fighting the Corpos directly. They…” She paused.

  “They what? You can trust me, Noodle.” I touched her arm, “I just want to know that you’re not caught up in that mess.”

  “No, thank you, I get it. My parents used to make Huff for the hospitals here. They gave it out for free. It wasn’t called Huff then, but it helped people heal, bringing broken bones to mend in days, curing the cold, stuff like that. They were proud of their invention and made no secret that they wanted to keep it cheap and useful for the people. They were healers.”

  “And the Corpos wanted that secret formu.” I’ve seen this a hundred times. Corporations sweeping in and stealing inventions meant to help those in need. Those fucks.

  “They were strongarmed by the Corpos and framed for illegal drug distribution. I didn’t lie. They were hauled off to prison, probably being forced by the Corpos to mass produce the stuff for their profits. I don’t know if they’re still there, or shipped across the gaxy.” Her eyes were tearing up.

  I gave her a hug without thinking twice. She leaned into me and sobbed. This damn rock was filled to the brim with despair.

  “I’ll make you a promise. I’ll storm that prison, and set them free myself if it’s the st thing I do on this rock. That’s a promise.” I didn’t know if I could keep it, but damn, I wanted to.

  “Thanks.” She wiped her tears and sniffled. “Until now, I didn’t even know if we could win, but with you guys here, I finally have hope.”

  Bringing hope to the people, like a true hero. Fuck me, this was all starting to get too personal.

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