The sky beyond the port side window was the colour of a broken television screen that still hadn't been unplugged. Speckled with stars, it was a pockmarked and sickly darkness. Pretty as a painting, but as cruel as anything in the verse.

Martin stared out that window — floating inside his five-point harness like a helium balloon stuck inside a roller-coaster seat — and watched the dotted night sky turn clockwise. Like a maintenance crew had come along and just realized a painting had been set upside down, and were in the middle of fixing it.

A few seconds passed as the stars rotated life the hands of a clock, until a small jitter rumbled through what Martin could feel of his seat. A second later, the ship shoved him hard into the chair, and the unnervingly cheerful voice of the ship's AI thundered over the PA system. "Beginning deceleration burn. Our estimated time until docking at Neo Tokyo is one hour and fifteen minutes."

Martin hated that voice. Not that he hated AI voices in general, only that he didn't like letting a programmer add artificial emotional inflection. It might be hard to take the ship's intelligence seriously if it announced they were going to be sideswiped by a rogue asteroid. Which was why it felt like someone slapped him upside the back of his head when it continued speaking. "Mister Rawley, please report to the ship's captain immediately."

"Hope she needs someone to push the eject button while she's standing in an airlock," Martin grumbled, as he stood up and looked over at the book on the shelf. Old school paperback copy of The Dragon Chase, with a bookmark sitting four-fifths of the way through. With barely more than an hour left to dock, he could have finished it, and considered just sitting back down, captain's needs be damned.

"Relaying your suggestion to the captain now," the ship's AI said, in the same gatingly cheerful voice it would probably use to announce it was sucking the oxygen out of the ship in order to kill them all.

"Please don't," Martin groaned.

"Suggestion submitted. I flagged it as ultra-super-duper important so Captain Haberhorn will get it right away," the ship's AI reported.

"Crap." Martin left his book, opened his door, and stepped out of his cabin.

For all the technological marvels that went into a spaceship, the internal layout was so appallingly normal they might as well have taken an inner-city townhouse and stuck rocket engines on the bottom. Martin's cabin was connected to what might as well be a living room, connected to the ship's bridge and galley. The bridge was only slightly more technical than a rich bachelor's den, with plush couches arranged around a view screen about as large as the mid-tier widescreens at most electronics stores. The only distinction given was for the ship's captain, who had a chair that looked like someone stole it from the set of Star Trek.

Stolen, or more likely paid far too much for a replica. Martin climbed the stairs, where the ship's senior officers had their own private quarters. The captain was placed next to the improvised vault room, which along with the nearby bathroom were the only three rooms on the top.

Serious breach of proper security, having the vault room against the ship's hull. Marauders and thieves could access the hall from outside the ship, if they knew where to cut. But the ship's captain and crew hand't been too concerned when Martin pointed it out.

"Haberhorn, you wanted to see me?' Martin called from outside the captain's cabin. The door hissed and slid aside, squinting into the surprisingly dim light.

Unlike the rest of the garishly well-lit ship, Candice Haberhorn's office was illumined almost exclusively by the LED filament strands attached to her hair. The neon-red light from her hair lent the room a menacing, otherworldly quality that more than a few people would probably find menacing.

But Martin wouldn't make much of a security consultant if he was unnerved by gluing glow-sticks onto someone's hair.

"I did. Sit down, Martin," Candice Haberhorn said. "And I'll ignore your offer to eject me into space for a moment."

"Did you pick the colour red because it brings out the bloodshot in your eyes?" Martin asked as the door shut behind him and the room turned darker.

"It's defective," Candice admitted, tapping her head. "It's supposed to change colour with my mood."

"You need a mood other than 'I want to punch you in the face," Martin said. He grinned, and carefully measured out the distance between them, just to make sure he was far enough away to make jokes safely. And to forestall any verbal or physical retort, Martin steered the conversation back to business. "So, what brings me up here? Judging by your hair colour, it wasn't for my conversation."

"Your conversation has my hand itching for the self-destruct keys," Candice retorted. She sighed then, and the lights on her hair turned a dark shade of purple. "Martin, you were logged into the vault room six hours ago."

That hit Martin like a bucket of ice-water. Shortly after it had been re-frozen. "Captain, i was asleep then. I'm pretty sure this ship's obnoxious AI could tell you how many breaths I took since I went to get some rack time."

"Five thousand eight hundred seventy-four," the ship's AI chimed-in. "You may be suffering from a mild case of sleep apnea."

"I know," Candice said. She leaned forward in her seat, and rubbed her forehead. Martin noticed his wisecrack about her eyes might have been uncomfortably on-point. Even in the now neon-red light, the bags under her eyes were more suitcases than handbags. "Look, your login credentials shouldn't have let you into the vault room. And the cameras, our AI, the activity log for your door, and the residual thermal radiation in your room all confirm that you were in your bunk when your credentials were logged."

"Was anything taken?" Martin asked.

And by anything, there was only one thing Martin was referring to.

"No. Which means I'm writing it off as a ghost in the system. The only thing I'm adding to your service file is a request to review your personal security credentials, to make sure you're not recycling your social media passwords," Candice said. Her finger traced the nearby computer screen as if she were checking items off a list. When she reached the bottom, she put her hand down and gave him a wicked smile, accentuated by the colour of her glowing hair changing to pink. "I'd rather our client's secret cargo wasn't as accessible as the burner account you use to hit on female writers on Wattpad."

Martin sputtered, and held up his hands. "Cap, that's a disgusting thing to accuse someone of. Might as well call me a nazi or a Fabulo Lorenzo fan. Even with the amount of kinky literature they host, no one in their right mind would mistake Wattpad for a dating site."

"Tell that to my DM feed," Candice grumbled, and the neon-red glow returned.

"It might help if they did something about the washboard scroll on their homepage," Martin said.

"Their what?"

"Washboard scroll. You know, how all the covers are of various guys' abs. Like every story is saying 'hey baby, open my cover." Martin paused, and grinned. "Now that I say that out loud, I can see how someone might confuse Wattpad with a dating site."

"Hey, Wattpad's serious literature, sometimes. I write on there," Candice said.

"I know. If you don't want to be propositioned as much, perhaps you shouldn't have named your account DirtyMindDirtyStories?"

"I wanted to slip 'lying' in there somewhere, but that was taken." Candice leaned back in her chair, as if she were about to turn back to whatever she was doing on her computer. Quite possibly writing, rather than her job. But she surprised Martin when she snapped her finger, tapped her glowing hair, and then pointed at his. "I almost forgot. Go see the ship's medic, he's expecting you. You need a hair cut."

"What's wrong with my hair?" Martin asked.

"For a scruffy mercenary? Nothing," Candice said, and her hair turned pink again. If schadenfreude had a colour, Martin suspected he was looking at it. "But this job's in Neo Tokyo. It's a cyberpunk commune, and they have a dress code. Combat gear's considered edgy, so asides from adding some glowing neon lights, it's fine. But I'm afraid we're buzzing about half your hair off, and dyeing the rest teal."

"Teal?" Martin attempted to protest in a mature but indignant manner. It ended up coming out halfway between a toddler's pout and a frog's croak.

"Would you prefer fuchsia?" Candice asked.

"Could I at least get gunmetal blue?" Martin asked.

"All right. But I'm only letting you off easy because I don't want to piss your former employer off too much. Even if you were fired."

"Laid off," Martin grumbled. "With an absurdly generous severance package, after the company was dissolved when Luca Cardego bought us out. And on that subject, try to avoid rubbing my nose in this too much, because I really don't need this job."

"Right. Your share ended up making you a billionaire," Candice said, and when she smiled the pink in her hair turned lighter. "Hey, does this mean you have abs? I could use a new cover model."

"Why would my bank account have anything to do with my stomach?"

"All billionaires have abs," Candice insisted.

"You've been washboard scrolling on Wattpad for too long," Martin said as he stood up. "Anything else I should know?"

"You'll be getting a Backup Information Retrieval Device for this assignment. Doc will set it up after he's finished with your hair."

"This like a body-cam?"

"That's one of its features. It's another dress-code rule in Neo Tokyo, you'll need to have an active recording device on you at all times. So either use the device, or we do some expensive surgery to have your eyes replaced with cameras and pop a small computer inside your skull."

Martin gulped, and held up his hands in defeat. "I'll take the body cam."

"Good choice. See you when we dock at Port USB."

"Port USB?" Martin asked.

"They named all the ports in Neo Tokyo after old-school computer ports. Now get going, if Doc doesn't finish your hair in time, we'll do this without our overpaid security consultant," Candice said, and turned back to her screen.

Dismissed, Martin went down the stairs, and kept going. Two floors down, below the bridge, there were only two rooms. Most of the deck was taken up with the cargo bay, but a small room on the side was set up for the ship's doctor. Doctor Emmett Umber, or just Doc to the regulars on the ship. Martin had found the old man to be dangerously eccentric at the best of times, but the man's manic smile beneath his bushy mane of white hair, while holding a pair of electric shears, was deeply unnerving.

"Ah, Marty! Ready to pass incognito through Cyberspace?" Doc asked, and spun a dental chair around to face Martin.

"Doc, Neo Tokyo's a city, not a theme park ride," Martin said.

"Great Scott, Marty. Cyberspace is the name of one of Neo Tokyo's highways. Grid, Net, Web, Netflix Dispenser, all the highways are named after famous names for the internet," Doc said, and gestured for Martin to sit.

Martin complied, and watched as Doc hummed while wrapping a towel around his neck and shoulders. "So Doc, are the streets all named for famous internet sites? Looking up a street name is done by finding it's URL? The postal service uses IPv6 as postal codes? Speed bumps are 'buffers', there's a mass transit line called a 'hyperlink', and their homes are referred to as 'storage space'?"

"Exactly right. Great Scott, Marty, you sound like a natural. You'll fit into Neo Tokyo like an Ethernet plug in an open port," Doc said.

"No, I just..." Martin sighed. He would have shrugged, but Doc was already busy shearing the hair on the side of his head. Martin shut his mouth and watched as Doctor Emmett turned his hair into the strangest thing he had ever worn on his head.

From about the forehead down, it was so short the military would approve, with traces and lines cut even shorter in what Martin suspected was supposed to be a stylized circuit-board. Doc was busy dying the otherwise untouched hair on top, and Martin looked over to check the colour was something he was willing to tolerate.

But when Doc pulled out a small drill and several blinking LED strips, Martin drew his sidearm with more exuberance than he had felt during his last firefight. "That's going to get you shot, Doc," Martin warned. "And yes, I think the risk of putting a hole in the ship's hull is worth it."

"Fine, fine. But wear your combat goggles," Doc said, and he turned to the counter. "Now leave the dye in for a bit, while I boot this thing up."

Doc put a large white box on the counter, and took off the top. He took the manual out next, an imposing looking tome large enough to contain the entire 'Dirty Lying' series, or half of 'A Different Virus'. And after that, he reached into the box and took out a small, metallic bird.

"What is that?" Martin asked.

"Your BIRD. Backup Information Retrieval Device," Doc said, as he set it down on the table. "Boot-up process should only take a minute. You can wash your hair in the sink while you wait."

Martin stood up, and stuck his head under the tall tap, scrubbing at the dye with soap until the stream stopped looking like Cool-Aid. He straightened, attacked his hair with a towel, and turned back to the table.

The device stood up on its tiny metallic feet. It's eyes blinked green twice, then held a steady blue as its head swivelled slowly from left to right, taking in its surroundings.

"It's capable of flight, so it can stay close by without needing to be interacted with." Doc explained as he fussed with Martin's hair. "And the manual says this model is quantum-entangled to remote servers, so that it can record the information it observes in high-fidelity constantly, without any possibility of interruption. The perfect security device."

The BIRD device then looked over at Martin, fixed him with a stare that somehow looked like the tiny machine was doing an enormous amount of thinking. Then it opened its beak, and said, "Fuck, not again."