A pleasant chiming sound emitted from hidden speakers and a familiar voice spoke over the train’s public address system.

“If I may have your attention please, this is Chief Steward Carswell speaking. I do hope you are all enjoying your journey so far on the Beaumonde Ocean Limited. I am excited to inform you that Miss Calliope Grant will now be performing in the Casino car an hour ahead of schedule. Parental discretion is of course, advised. Miss Grant’s performance begins in five minutes. Thank you, and thank you for choosing to travel on the Oceanic. Wan shung hao.” The chimes repeated.

At the mention of Calliope Grant’s performance, the door to Ivan Matthews’ first class cabin opened, and he rushed out in the direction of the casino, Samara Salisbury and their bodyguard, Stig, hot on his heels.

Worth heard Whitaker disengage the lock on his door and nodded to Jonah, who took a step back, stun gun at the ready. Worth shouldered his way through the narrow door and immediately regretted it, as he heard the zipping sound of a firearm going off. He flinched as he felt the sharp bite of a small calibre bullet striking home.

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In the dining car, Quinn and Jonah continued their exquisite meal, savouring every bite, while they compared notes.

“So, since we’ve got access to First Class, what are we going to do about it?” Quinn asked Jonah around a forkful of salad.

“So I’m thinking, we go in there in the evening, do a super candid, friendly interview, and maybe I can get Matthews a little snoggered, and keep on going to do the thing,” Jonah replied.

“So once we’re back there, how do we make contact with the target?” Quinn asked.

“Quinn, I’m not much of a planner.” Jonah said, digging into his side order of salmon. “I figure I’d just knock on the door, and let him know that, uh…” he thought for a few seconds. “Wait, that sounds like a plan. I regret it instantly.”

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Back on Shenmue, the crew pored over the intelligence given to them by Fanty and Mingo, consisting of a mug shot of their target, Eric Whitaker, blueprints for the Oceanic Limited’s floating stock, and the name of their contact on the train, a porter named Devlin, who would be able to get them into the private first class car where Whitaker was ensconced.

It was decided that YJ and the Doc would remain on Shenmue, with YJ flying the ship and the Doc lowering himself on the cargo bay winch with harnesses for the rest of the crew and their quarry. Worth, Jonah and Quinn would board the train, locate and secure Whitaker, and find a way to get on the roof of the train, either by gimmicking an emergency exit, using a service hatch, or cutting their way out of the observation deck on the first class section.

With the train set to leave the following morning, only one obstacle remained – how to get three lowlifes to look like bona fide luxury train passengers. The clothes Quinn had on his back were suitable enough, if a little rumpled, but the gambler knew he would be able to get by on his smile and confident demeanor.

That left the hulking Worth, who was most comfortable in a pair of coveralls with a plate vest strapped on, and Jonah, who had never worn anything more formal than a prison uniform.

“Where are we gonna find some fancy duds before tomorrow?” Worth grumbled.

Jonah smirked. “Obviously you’ve never burglarized with me before, have you.” He led Worth into the Atoll Plaza’s garment district, aiming to rip off a local business small enough not to invest in the best security systems.

Worth frowned when he heard Jonah’s plan. “Don’t know how I feel about ripping off the little guy.”

Jonah rolled his eyes, then looked across the street and identified an upmarket Reuben, Rosen & Wong’s clothing shop. “That big enough for you?”

Worth grunted.

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“I hate to interrupt your thieving,” YJ said from where he was leaning against the primary cargo hold entryway, “but we’ve got a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Jonah said.

“Financial,” YJ said. “I just received a sternly worded wave from Wes Ferris on Beaumonde wondering why we were two months behind in our ship payments.”

“Hey,” Jonah said defensively. “I set up an automatic debit account for our debt lord McKittrick!”

“That you did, and one payment was debited automatically almost three months ago before our account ran dry,” YJ replied. “That last haul from Greenleaf to Persephone put us out of reach for some time and now we’re overdue.”

Worth grunted. “Uh, I haven’t exactly had any extra coin sitting around to do proper maintenance on this boat either.”

YJ shook his head. “We’re through the last of our score from that job on Regina,” he said. “It was a fun ride while it lasted.”

“Well we’ve got that sack of coins from Badger, right?” The Doc said hopefully.

Jonah shook his head. “McKittrick and Ferris want their payments in credit. Guess they figure we’re a good source of traceable loot.” He frowned. “We’ll have to hit a moneychanger, and it won’t help near enough.”

“So what are our options?” Doc asked.

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There was blood everywhere.

The payload bed of the hover mule was coated in a sticky layer of the stuff, its horrible cargo dumped to the deck in a tangle of gore-streaked limbs. Below, an ever-widening pool was forming as blood dripped through the grating on the cargo bay floor.

Bright fresh spatters marked the path that Jonah had taken to get to his wheelchair and drive to the infirmary, and curved swaths of blood shone under the harsh lighting of the corridor where Worth had hauled the still-living bodies of the Kid and Brade Sorgen onto a gurney. The gurney, covered in the vital fluids of the two unconscious gunmen, lay on its side in front of the infirmary entrance.

The infirmary itself was in even worse shape. The Doc was hard at work over the prone form of Brade Sorgen, whose head was geysering blood in regular spurts that splashed the ceiling of the portable field surgery unit.

The Kid, his hands bound, lay where he’d been tossed in a corner, after the Doc had judged his wounds to be superficial at best.

Jonah was squirming in his wheelchair, clutching his injured midsection and doing his best to jump the triage queue. “Doc, I swear, I can see a white light,” he blurted through clenched teeth, while eyeing the physician’s supply of painkillers.

“Save it,” the Doc snapped almost absently, “I’ve seen schoolchildren handle pain better than you!”

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Two crews stood toe to toe at the edges of the Eavesdown Docks at midday in the shadow cast by Shenmue’s fuselage.

The Sundeen Seven, Jonah’s former associates, had somehow tracked him down after the crew had left them floundering in an asteroid field. This time it obviously wasn’t business; it was personal.

Akane broke the tension by bursting into tears.

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As the hover mule crashed over the hurricane fence that surrounded the abandoned missile base where Hagan and his pirates had set up shop, the crew heard the popping sound of a magnesium flare going off, bathing the base in false daylight as the tiny projectile drifted overhead. A ragged alarm started bleating through rusted speakers, likely coming from the ramshackle command centre.

Confused shouts were followed by bursts of automatic weapons fire from the guard towers around the perimeter – orange tracer bullets streaming into the wetlands to hiss out of existence as they hit water. The overexcited guards were hosing the countryside with machinegun fire, which, while tearing up the underbrush something fierce, didn’t come close to hitting the escaping hover mule.

A second flare, then a third, joined the first in the sky, lighting up the darkened wetlands. Jonah and YJ had to cover their eyes in surprise as they were suddenly caught in the glare of a bright spotlight. They had been spotted by at least one of the guard towers.

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The crewmembers compared notes. Akane told them that she had discovered the class of ship belonging to the robbers – a Mantis, that had dusted down, lifted off and evaded a pursuing flight of ASREVs before going to hard burn.

YJ, Tulsa and Jonah revealed their findings – the importance of the 14K Triad in local goings-on, the (temporary) survivor they encountered at the hospital, the erotic assassin, and the cryptic last words of the doomed burn victim – Chi’ang Shih.

“The Chi’ang Shih,” Akane whistled. “That’s the Chinese word for vampire.”

“You’ve heard of them?” Jonah asked.

Akane nodded. “Only by reputation. They’re a gang of mercs who get the job done, usually with a fair amount of collateral damage.”

YJ nodded. “I’ve heard of them too. Apparently they don’t like leaving loose ends behind.”

“That explains the red-haired firestarter at the hospital,” Jonah said.

“Sounds to me like they’re living up to their name,” Worth added.

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Collecting themselves in the smoke-filled alleyway, YJ, Akane and Worth could hear the sound of approaching sirens dopplering in from all directions.

The sniper who had put paid to Bristow was either gone with the wind or holding his fire for the time being, so the three of them ran to the mouth of the alley and surveyed the situation. Roiling clouds of smoke were obscuring the wide avenue that ran between the warehouses that crowded one another, but by the sound of it the rescue vehicles would be screeching to a halt in seconds, blocking their escape.

Akane looked about and spotted a nearby sewer grating in the road. A thin trickle of Bristow’s blood ran towards it like a ribbon pointing the way to freedom. “There!” she shouted.

Worth quickly hauled the grating up to allow Akane and YJ entry into the murky depths. Then he hopped in just ahead of a wave of heat from the collapsing warehouse, replacing the grate and hanging from it for a few seconds before dropping down with an unpleasant splash.

Unpleasant did not begin to describe their surroundings. They were standing knee deep in what was ostensibly a storm drain, but from the rank odors choking the air, the sewer was definitely pulling double duty.

Akane stood in the shallowest part of the drain, having felt the pang of the loss of her boots’ warranty the instant she splashed down.

“Good call, Wild Sky! There’s virtually no feces down here,” YJ snarked. “Now which way are we headed?”

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The crew of Shenmue limped back into civilized space, recovering from wounds inflicted during a salvage operation that had turned into something out of their darkest nightmares. The physical injuries healed, but the psychological ones lingered.

Out of an uncharacteristically charitable sense of understanding, they shepherded the sole survivor of the massacre on board the Breaker Morant to her family on Paquin, then turned to the business of keeping their boat in the air.

The crew didn’t talk much about what they’d seen on board the derelict transport and what had later transpired inside Shenmue. The doc had his painkillers, YJ had the bridge all to himself, Akane toiled in her workshop while Worth convalesced in his bunk, and as for Jonah, he mostly sat in the ship’s common area, quietly seething over having been played like a musical instrument by a mark he should have been able to see right through.

Three weeks passed, and by that time Worth’s injuries had just about healed completely and Akane had managed to reconfigure her wardrobe so that the scars she’d received on board the death ship didn’t show.

A series of low-paying jobs led them to the Eavesdown Docks on Persephone, a network of landing pits and open-air markets walled in by a maze of shipping containers stacked three or four high. There a misunderstanding with the local Tong caused all legitimate job leads to dry up overnight. However, word of a Firefly transport sitting empty soon reached those who could find far more unseemly use for it.

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