Marcos awoke on a narrow cot to the sound of rain rattling against a tin roof. He squinted against the harsh light shining down. Cotton filled his head, his skull throbbed. He reached up with his hand.

"Don't touch it." The strange woman. Weizza. "There is an open hole clear to your brain where I removed the implant. The bandage will release antibiotics as needed. Disturb it and risk serious infection.

"Given that you woke up," Weizza continued, "the procedure was a success. Ko Ba Kuang was right, you are a lucky one."

"How long...?"

"The operation took six hours, you have been asleep for another five. Your command module hooked considerably deeper than the last one I worked on. During the removal you briefly died; I had to install a standalone regulator for some of your basal functions. I'm afraid that will cost you extra. I hope you are good for it, repossession in this business can be messy." Her matter-of-fact tone shook Marcos as much as any gun.

"That– that won't be necessary." Marcos pushed himself up on one elbow, shielding his eyes with his free hand. He was lying on a gurney in front of Weizza's work table. Her strange lens contraption was back in motion, flashing rhythmically as the whirling glass reflected overhead light. This close he could hear Weizza humming softly to herself. It sounded like an up-tempo Bridal Chorus.

She wore the same black mesh gloves from yesterday, which Marcos could now see had some advanced haptic tech in them. An array of thousands of tiny nodules pulsed and rippled across her hands as she worked, allowing her to feel the contours of the device she tele-operated on.

Weizza gazed intently at his old command module, now clamped securely to the table. The implant was much longer than he would have expected, the unfamiliar end terminating in a nest of tendrils that looked vaguely aquatic. A tiny robotic arm bristling with manipulators busily dissected the device, precisely mirroring Weizza's hand motions.

"Is there any food?" Marcos's stomach rumbled insistently. "Been a while since I've eaten."

Weizza replied without looking up: "Muang Ba Kuang is on guard duty now, he will help you."

Marcos sat all the way up and swung his legs out over the edge of the bed. His pants were missing, and the gash across his leg from yesterday had been expertly stitched.

"You will find your pants in the cabinet by the door. I took the liberty of sewing your leg wound with bioactive sutures. It will still hurt, but you may use it as normal. No additional charge."

"Thanks," Marcos grunted. He shuffled toward the cabinet, popped it open and pulled on his pants. His command glasses were also there. He put them on and was greeted with a flashing 'implant connection interrupted' message, which he promptly dismissed. A nag icon blinked determinedly in one corner.

"Of course, there is still the matter of that basal regulator." A payment addendum request popped up. Marcos sighed and released an additional thirty million kyat, bidding farewell to another year's worth of tropical retirement.

He retrieved his boots from the bin he'd left them in, noted that they'd been cleaned and sanitized, then headed out the door. Marcos squinted against the bright morning light.

Ba Kuang greeted him with a lopsided grin and mock salute. "Welcome back Bo Marcos." He'd placed special emphasis on the honorific; Marcos was beginning to suspect that his friend's use of the title was not entirely sincere. "Food is in there," Ba Kuang gestured toward one of the buildings, "help yourself."

Marcos nodded and let himself in. The interior of this building looked more like the rustic shack Marcos had expected when he first met Weizza. Most of the room was taken up by six low tables and accompanying mats, all empty. Marcos began salivating immediately, the room smelled heavenly. A pot of fish stew bubbled away near the door, accompanied by a table of garnishes. He tossed a handful of noodles in a bowl, ladled in soup, then hurriedly added some lime, chili-salt, fried garlic, cilantro and hardboiled egg.

He sat at one of the far tables, back to the wall, facing the door - special forces training never really leaves you. The soup was hearty and flavorful, the catfish tender. Marcos had to restrain himself from gulping down the bowl in one go, instead forcing his jaws to chew and swallow like a normal person. He finished the last bite on his way back to the pot. This time he paid more attention to balancing the garnishes, now that the crushing imperative to devour had waned a little.

Only after polishing off the second bowl did he stop to consider his predicament. Blackmountain would know he'd exceeded his access levels and stolen... something. That placed him high up on a dangerously efficient hit-list. SumatoTek was at least as bad.

Ba Kuang might be willing to help him now, but if he knew the kind of money on offer? All bets were off. And then there was Weizza. With the tech she dealt in, she had to know how the majors operated. She'd certainly had ample opportunity to off him and cash in the bounty. Yet here he was, still breathing air. She must have another angle.

The door rattled open and in she walked. Talk of the devil, and she shall appear. Weizza paused in the doorway, surveying the room. Her headgear was gone, and she had changed her scrubs for a quarter-sleeve black dress. The high-tech gloves were still on her hands, though against her current outfit they looked more like a fashion choice. She walked over to his table and sat down, ignoring the pot of soup.

"Why didn't you kill me?"

Weizza treated Marcos to a wide smile, though it didn't reach her eyes. "I need your help."

"If you've been talking with Muang Ba Kuang about the ID broker, I can make arrangements for you as well. More than you two might be pushing it though."

Weizza shook her head and the corners of her mouth pulled down. The movement briefly parted her hair around a copper stud protruding from her temple. Maybe related to the goggles?

"You misunderstand. I will not abandon my country, I will save it. Have you seen the news?"

Marcos remembered the bulletins he'd skimmed while fleeing the Blackmountain compound. "Some kind of terrorist attacks? Can't say I'm up to speed."

"Terrorism is a poor characterization. Try 'global coupe.' There is an asteroid, Petbe. It contains precious metals worth half a trillion dollars. Space Core placed it in orbit two nights ago, ostensibly to mine it.

"Aden Lynch, the CEO, found a more profitable application. While Petbe was in transit to Earth, a skunkworks team weaponized the mining system. Yesterday a barrage of fragments carved from Petbe wiped out four world capitals and narrowly missed a fifth. Atrocity aside, it was probably the best operational security since the Manhattan Project."

"You think I had some role in this? Stationed out here in this, pardon the expression, backwater shithole?"

"No Marcos, I don't think you were involved. Not directly. But Blackmountain belongs to Lynch, and until recently, you belonged to Blackmountain." Weizza dropped the disassembled command module on the table for emphasis. It lay motionless between them, a gutted squid out of water.

"Yesterday you retrieved some data for SumatoTek," now she held out the USB drive that had been in Marcos's pocket, "the details of which have piqued my interest."

"I can't help you there, I was just the bagman. A spy by the name of Nakagawa was the operator. You know as much as I do about the contents of that drive."

"No, I know a good deal more. Your former associate retrieved two files. The first is a shipping manifest and the address of a warehouse outside Budapest. The second is a list of eight Space Core mining operations. Notably, they have all been excavated to depths greater than 2 kilometers.

"I do not know the meaning of the list of mines," Weizza paused here, scrutinizing Marcos's face for any reaction, "but the manifest is straightforward. It describes a cargo container filled with the components of a Space Core satellite base station. I believe the hardware is authorized to interface with the Petbe 'mining' operation. In the right hands," Weizza held up her gloves, "this hardware could change the course of history."

"You have been to Hungary, Marcos. That dirty Jobik business you consulted on. This time you will go in on the side of the good guys."