After practice the following day, Onda watched warily as the rest of the band slowly packed their gear. She was painfully aware she needed both McKenzie and Banderos on board for this. They had the critical skills needed to get the ship out of dry dock anytime in the near future. Even if the band chipped in, hiring specialists in metal work and engines would mean years more of bartending for Jax and dead-end gigs for the band.

  McKenzie had just laid out the "opportunity" Jax offered the night before. The last chord of practice had long since died away, leaving the hum of the air system to underscore the group's tentative mood.

  Banderos's wiry frame stretched out in the crowded space of his studio apartment they all crashed in. His dark hair couldn't hide the brightness in his eyes. Onda could already tell he was smitten with the romance of the scheme. "72 hours. Perro Station. Just saying the name makes the air here on 0-K feel less heavy."

  Station 0-K was designed for monotony. It orbited Kinnelon, a forested world of lakes, cabins, and ski resorts. The station's lifeblood was transient lodgings and basic refit services for the massive tourist "buses,” the slow, predictable cruise ships of local space.

  "Perro is a city in the black," Banderos continued, gesturing grandly. "Two million residents, the largest shipyards in the system. It’s where we need to be to build a following. This band could be huge. I feel you. You feel it, don't you?" he asked. "I say, we get the parts and fix Jax's ship. Then suddenly, we have a way off this station. We have a way off any station. We can go where the gigs are. Where the fans are. We have velocity."

  Sonica's mouth was a tight line as she meticulously wrapped her guitar cables. "I’m not worried about the ship parts. I’m worried about the pilot." She looked pointedly at Onda and McKenzie. "Jax has been here, what, 3, 4 months? We know next to nothing about the guy.”

  Onda took a deep breath. She knew from long experience that this was Sonica being open and seeking details. She counted off what they did know on her fingers: “He’s been a bartender the whole time he's been on-station. Everything he's earning is going to necessities and dock fees. Those fees are about to jump up. He used his savings to book the jumper. He’s from a courier family, and he’s running. He’s offering a disabled ship with ownership complexities, and he wants to hitch that rickety ride to us. That's all solid. I think, personally, he's looking for a long-term relationship with us. Like Ban said, we go where the gigs and fans are. That's my gut feel,” she shrugged.

  Sonica shook her head. “I've never been anywhere but here, and Kennilon. Neither have any of you. The thought of just hopping on a ship with some guy I don't know and jetting off to a station I don't know? That’s too much mystery, even for a 72-hour trip."

  McKenzie zipped up the last of her kit bags. She was fully certified on engines and power plants, and Onda hoped that the Dust Devil was a mechanical puzzle she was itching to solve. "I was sounding this out last night after he told us," McKenzie began. "He's offering his skill as a pilot and the use of the rental jumper to get to Perro, where the parts are. That much tracks.

  “The Dust Devil is his only asset for getting off this station and out of his life here. Frankly, it’s our best bet to get off-station too,” she surmised. “He wants to be a traveler, not a bartender." She looked at Sonica. "His motive is pure desperation to change his trajectory, and that not only makes him one of us, but a vital one of us. I'm a yes."

  Onda shifted, running a hand through her pink hair. She had been the recipient of too many desperate proposals from spacers trying to get in her pants. She wanted this to work, but she had her own misgivings. "He practically threw the jumper key at me, which is either a sign of total trust or total idiocy," she mused. "But Kenzie is right. He needs us, or he wouldn’t have offered. He especially needs people with McKenzie and Banderos’s technical skills and can’t afford it otherwise.

  “Once we’re out in the black, he’ll need our collective cash, and maybe just a solid group of people who aren't family. We need his ship to get off this spinning platter and hit it big."

  "The risk is being an unknown on a station of familiars," Sonica stressed. "We go with Jax, himself an unknown quantity, to a massive station where we have few contacts and no pull. What stops him from abandoning us there?"

  In the back corner, the enigmatic lead guitarist Tré put his guitar on a wall hook and sank against the wall. "I, for one, am tired of Okay's repetitive rhythms, tired of scanning store inventory and smiling at tourists all day. If the main risk is getting stranded on Perro, then the reward is getting out," Tré stated simply. "We each have a little money, right? Worst case, we can busk for more until we have better-paying gigs. I don't like trusting someone like this either, Sonica."

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  He nodded to a beat only he could hear as he continued, "We stay here, though, we die a slow, Normie Dread death of convenience and good credit ratings. We go with Jax, we risk a faster death, but we gain a shot at the dream. I choose the shot."

  Banderos nodded firmly. "Then let's go with the dream. The potential outweighs the known stagnation." He looked at the group. “We’re out of clubs to play here, and we all agree that we're the wrong sound for the resorts down well.

  "Let's sleep on it, yeah?" Banderos asks.

  "Yeah, Jax said 1900. That's plenty of time for us to get off work and meet back here to talk it out," Onda confirmed.

  "Ok. Sounds like a plan," Sonica added before stretching.

  ***

  The next morning, Tré clocked in at the station's largest store. He and the other clerks called it The Gift Shop because it was full of nonsensical knick-knacks and souvenirs that folks on-station waiting for their larger transports milled through.

  "'Morning, Tré," his manager called out, not looking up from his pad. "Someday, my boy, all this can be yours," he joked, gesturing at the cramped office.

  Tré just smiled and went to the counter where he'd spend the next several hours scanning mugs, pens, and useless trinkets made 100 light-years away, but had Kinnelon written on them. Risky or no, a short trip that ended in a fireball of doom started to sound like a good idea to him. He shook his head, his beaded braids dancing across the back of his shoulders.

  ***

  "Hey, McKenzie, good work on that bus yesterday. Four other shops looked at that engine and called it a complete write-off. They flew out with it an hour ago," the foreman called to McKenzie as she walked in for her shift. "I got another for you in bay 2 for today."

  "Thanks," she replied over her shoulder before looking at 'bay 2.' It looked exactly the same as the ship she fixed the day before. Even had the same colorways down the side.

  McKenzie looked up the tail number to get its work history and saw that she had put this very ship back in space a year ago. Same ship, different day, she sighed. Escape sounded delightful to her.

  ***

  Three bays over, Banderos dropped his welder's mask over his face and drew a pristine bead across the replacement deck plate he was installing. He looked down the line to see that he had 10 more plates to drop in before lunch.

  Back when he was learning to weld from his mom, he imagined gorgeous sculptures like she made down on Kinnelon. Drawing clean joints between disparate pieces of metal was as much an art as shaping the overall piece.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a supply clerk arriving with 20 more deck plates.

  "Heh Bandaros. Great set last night! Here are the additional plates for the other side of this hunk of junk," she dropped the pallet of plates, then drove off without a reply.

  It was a great set last night. Music, that's where Banderos believed his future was. Not welding for a living.

  ***

  "Oh, Onda, good morning. There are a couple in your office. The boss asked you to help them plan their wedding here at the hotel! Isn't that great!" the lady at the concierge desk called out as Onda breezed by.

  "Yeah. Great," she replied, changing direction directly to her office instead of the coffee shop.

  Inside her small, nondescript space sat a man and a woman Onda was sure she knew from elsewhere on the station. It took a few minutes of talking about their plans to place the woman. She had met her a few years prior when looking for an apartment. The lady sitting in front of her actually laughed in her face about her affording a one-bedroom on the station.

  More chatter later, Onda realized she knew the groom-to-be as well. He had gotten handsy with her around the same time as the apartment fiasco.

  "You're going to be so happy together," Onda observed cheerfully.

  She tapped out a message to the band while the happy couple explained, in detail, how they wanted their special day to go. "I must get out of here. I'm going with Jax. Please come with me," she wrote.

  ***

  Kinnelon Transport and Shipping welcomed Sonica that morning. The same way they had for the past 6 years. Silently.

  She sat at her desk, brushed a bit of dust off her stack of 'employee of the month' mugs, currently in a pyramid shape, and let out a breath that was too exhausted for this early in the morning. The top message on her work pad was a request from a ship owner requesting more information about why their application for a courier license had been declined.

  She'd need to pull up the ship's history, ownership, and a bunch of other information before replying. That was going to be a whole world of pain, she imagined.

  Instead, she logged into the records database for current courier license holders. She quickly found "Hammet Transport" as a license holder in good standing for over 100 years before she stopped looking. The Dust Devil was properly registered and properly licensed. Its last known whereabouts were on Station 0-K, Dry Dock 7.

  So Jax's back story checked out at least. She sent the ship's records and a copy of the station's review of the ship to the band's chat group. She saw she had one message from Onda, but couldn't give it its due attention. She had an irate captain to explain the maritime laws to in polite but firm prose.