Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds by Kris Austen Radcliffe

every morning, pockmarking his face. Preen his conjoined eyebrows so they danced like a sewer rat and scratch at his bulbous nose, just to achieve the perfect shade of sallow ruddiness.
    The bastard grunted and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. The three lackeys twitching behind him grunted too, a unified gesture of chimps reinforcing their alpha. All three shuffled and scowled, uncomfortable from standing on the storeroom’s uneven grating. Like the other outposts beyond the Asteroid Belt, the space station’s economy suffered. But here within Jupiter’s gravity well, the costs of infrastructure upkeep were much higher, and the station’s rotting interior showed it.
    The walls creaked and one of the betas looked up, obviously concerned.
    They wanted off the station as badly as Sabastia. Good , she thought. Fear makes for faster deals .
    Seven years ago, before the War, Earth would never have allowed an outpost to become dangerous to its human inhabitants. Now, the Construct Intelligences—the artificial machine brains controlling the economic systems of Earth—no longer wanted to share resources.
    But not every Construct agreed. Some, like Tal, went rogue after the War. A .03 microsurge of radiation infiltrated the station’s shielding , the CI whispered through the speakers implanted in Sabastia’s ears. A hidden angel sharing her body, Tal squatted in Sabastia’s skeletal reinforcements and the other alterations her body required for off-Earth living.
    A sensor ping issued from the center male , Tal said. He carries visual and tactical augmentations . The other two protect him .
    The deal offered by the frigate captain would allow Sabastia to upgrade the systems onboard her ship, the Frost . If all went well, she and Tal would jump Jupiter’s gravity well and move freely throughout the outer Solar System. And maybe—just maybe—land one of the lucrative Titan runs.
    “Twenty minutes,” the captain said. He grinned, his yellow teeth gleaming like frozen piss under the dark room’s jury-rigged overhead light. The work lamp swung in rhythm with the space station’s creaking walls, elongating shadows and tossing glare into the corners.
    The flunkies glanced around, more unnerved than before.
    Captain Ugly wanted twenty minutes of processor time on the Frost ’s computing core. No one got twenty minutes on a core. Ever.
    Sabastia laughed and tapped a finger on the table’s rough metal surface. The sensor systems in the gauntlet around her forearm pinged softly with each touch. She wasn’t some middling wannabe but a real Trader with real Trader augmentations—beyond her secret angel, who would stay hidden, especially from these scumbags.
    “What can I process that you can’t on your own ship?” She leaned into the lamp’s pool of light and flashed the corneal implant on her left eye.
    He captained a frigate, for goodness sake. Not a real Central Earth Research and Defense vessel, but still a contracted ship under the Sheins-White corporate umbrella. His ship’s core processed navigation data and the ship’s systems at the same time . And he had free access to the StormCloud Communication Net. He didn’t need twenty minutes on a Trader ship’s core.
    The captain placed his elbows on the table. “Why do you care, little girl?”
    He wishes to access the Trader’s Net .
    Sabastia snorted and sat back. Porn. In twenty minutes the ugly dumbass could download literally a lifetime’s worth without fear of the trackbots in the StormCloud.
    “Your bauble for twenty minutes?” She grinned, tapping her finger again. “It’s not worth five.”
    On the table between them, the diamond hilt glistened in its case. Dead center on the flat plank, the makeshift light on it like a spot, Sabastia watched color wiggle through its facets like a rainbow of snakes. She’d seen a similar artifact only once before—a computer core grown in the micro-gravity of the now-abandoned colony orbiting