The pile of scrap components next to Rush grew steadily over the course of an hour. Separating every single piece into the right categories for sale was a long, laborious process, but Rush didn’t mind at all. Hartwell had caught more than a few fellow Junkers trying to offload their work onto him. The most insane part was that Rush clearly noticed every time someone added something to his pile, but he never protested. Apparently he wanted to be useful.

  A solution to the workload problem had presented itself in the form of Giza. She sat down right next to Rush and snapped at anyone who tried to sneak anything into his pile of work. It was a perfectly good solution, right up until a distraction showed up.

  “Dame!”

  Giza hopped right out of her seat and into the arms of Notre Dame. Hartwell rolled his eyes, but allowed the interruption. He knew Dame well enough to approve of him personally, and he didn’t mind Giza flirting a little. On Scrapworld, having a crush on a boy was the closest Giza might ever get to being a normal teenage girl.

  “Hey, Giz,” Dame said. “How’s life? Still making money?”

  “More than ever,” Giza said. “How about you? Not being too lazy?”

  “We’re doing decent,” Dame said. “Even found something that could pay off a lot of debt. Which is kind of why I’m here.”

  “What? To brag?”

  “No, actually...I want to borrow Rush.”

  Rush looked up, nodded, and set aside the piece of scrap he’d been sorting. He was halfway to standing up before Giza interrupted.

  “Borrow? Your clan wants to borrow him? After what they did?”

  “Let’s not get into that,” Dame said. He reached into the ragged coat he wore and withdrew a small circuit board. “Look. We’ve got some engine thing we want to get running. We need an electronics expert. Rush helps us out, he can have this. Fifty debt units, easy.”

  Giza closely examined the circuit board, and then looked at Rush. He nodded, as the value seemed accurate. He’d done “consulting” like this before, as part of the very loose barter economy that existed between the clans. For final approval, Giza looked to Hartwell.

  “Try not to take more than an hour,” Hartwell said. “I want to head out again soon.”

  Rush stood up and joined Giza and Dame, and Giza nodded in the direction of the other clan’s mustering grounds.

  “One sec,” Dame said. “Mind if I chat with Giza for a bit, Rush?”

  Rush stepped right back to his sorting pile and sat down as Dame and Giza stepped away.

  “Giza, not that I don’t love spending time with you, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I kind of think it’s best if it’s just Rush. You know how my clan gets about ‘others’,” Dame said. Opiuchus clan was notoriously closed-off, even by Junker standards. “I had to spend half an hour convincing them to let Rush help. Nobody’d like it if I showed up with some other kid in tow.”

  “You’re not really selling me on the idea of Rush going in there alone.”

  “He’s not going to be alone,” Dame said. “I got his back, one-hundred percent. Trust me.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Giza, come on, you can’t babysit him all the time,” Dame said. “Man has to stand on his own two feet sometimes.”

  “So is he standing on his own two feet, or are you having his back? Make up your mind.”

  “Man, just let me borrow Rush for like an hour,” Dame sighed. “I promise I’ll get him back in one piece.”

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  “Fine. I trust you.”

  “Alright, there we go,” Dame said. He leaned in towards Giza. “So, how about a kiss for good luck?”

  “I just said I trust you,” Giza said, as she pushed Dame right back. “What do you need luck for?”

  “Alright, alright,” Dame said. “Come on, Rush, time to move out. Say goodbye to mommy and let’s get going.”

  “My mom isn’t on Scrapworld anymore.”

  “I meant- forget it,” Dame said. “Just follow me.”

  The Opiuchus clan had not changed much since Rush had last walked among them, years ago. Like most Junker clans, they didn’t rest or take shelter as often as Caelum clan did. Their members were wiry, all skin and sinew beneath skin burnt dark by constant sun exposure, and beaten coarse by years spent sleeping in dirt and scrap metal. There were no beds here, much less haulers dedicated to them. The Opiuchus clan worked hard, slept as little as possible, and only stopped moving when they could go no further. The perpetual state of exhaustion was visible on all their faces, along with the perpetual glare of suspicion.

  “Hey guys,” Dame said. “Got Rush. You remember Rush, right? Smart kid.”

  No one said anything.

  “Cool, great, let’s go check out this engine, then.”

  Dame led the way to the center of the clan encampment. A large, partially rusted device had been placed on the ground in front of one of their haulers. A few cables hooked it to the hauler’s engine, presumably in hopes of getting the other device working. Rush tilted his head and looked at the assembly of hoses and chambered cells.

  “You want to get that working?”

  “Yeah,” one of the Opiuchus members said. “Some kind of engine, as far as we can tell. Fuel intake’s here, there’s the output, internal combustion in the core here…”

  The clan member grabbed at the hose emerging from one side of the device, pointed out a cable, and then patted the heavy metal core of the device. Rush examined each component in turn. He could understand the desire to get it working -intact old world tech fetched a high price from the Republic. There was, however, one problem.

  “That’s not an engine,” he said. “That’s a vacuum cleaner.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a vacuum cleaner,” Rush repeated. “A big one. I think they used them to clean out mecha interiors.”

  “That’s- that can’t be right.”

  “It is,” Rush said. He stepped up and pointed to each of the components the other person had pointed out. “There is a motor in it, but it’s small. The rest of this is just intake hoses and storage for the dirt.”

  After a moment of shocked staring and disappointment, one of the clan members pushed another.

  “You said this could be a starship engine!”

  “Hey, it’s got an engine, doesn’t it?”

  “Not a starship engine! This is worthless!”

  “We abandoned thirty pounds of good copper to haul this thing back here because you said it’d be worth it!”

  “Hey, calm down,” the apparent finder of the vacuum said. “The kid could be fucking with us.”

  “I’m not. Here, look.”

  Rush stepped up to the vacuum, toyed with the electronics, and then hit a switch. Thanks to its connection to the hauler’s Kell Cell, the vacuum roared to life, and started to suck up the rust particles from the ground for a few seconds.

  “See? Vacuum.”

  The briefly-mitigated fury got turned right back on. Voices raised, fists clenched, and insults started flying back and forth. Dame grabbed Rush by the shoulder, pulled him a few steps back, and shoved a circuitboard in his hands.

  “Thanks Rush big help time to go,” Dame mumbled.

  “Are you sure?”

  “One-hundred percent, you should get back to Giza right-”

  Something went thud behind Notre Dame, and he turned around just in time to see one of the arguing Junkers get knocked to the ground, and the other grab a metal pipe. The metal pipe went down, and Rush went off.

  He caught the pipe in both hands as it fell, making sure to sink with it so the impact didn’t break his wrists. The clumsy swing was slow and easy to absorb anyway, and the grip that held the pipe was loose enough for Rush to pull it right out of the wielder’s hands. The would-be assaulter seemed more confused than anything as the pipe got ripped out of his hands and tossed aside.

  “Don’t do that,” Rush said flatly.

  The moment of confusion passed, and all emotion turned right back into anger.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “Rushmore.”

  “Guys, you should remember Rushmore, he’s weird, right, he does weird things,” Dame said. Junkers were expert salvagers, but even he was struggling to salvage this. “Like he gets involved in things he shouldn’t and doesn’t know when to leave. That kind of weird.”

  “You were going to hurt him,” Rush said. “He made a mistake. He didn’t deserve that.”

  “That’s none of your god damn business.”

  “Rush, it is time to leave,” Dame insisted. “Now.”

  Dame stopped asking and started insisting. He grabbed Rush by the arm and started physically pulling him away from Opiuchus clan. Thankfully, Rush didn’t put up a fight, and they were soon far enough away that Dame could stop to properly berate Rush.

  “Rush, why the hell would you put yourself in the middle of a fight?”

  “If I were that person, I wouldn’t want to get hurt,” Rush said. “Why would I let him get hurt?”

  “Because- fuck, because then you get hurt,” Dame said.

  “I’m not hurt.”

  “But you could’ve been.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “I- god damn you’re hard to talk to,” Dame said. Rush nodded in agreement. He got that a lot. “I see why you and Giza get along, though.”

  “She’s nice to me,” Rush said, as if that were the only thing that mattered.

  “Yeah, bet she is,” Dame said. He gave Rush a quick shove back towards Caelum clan. “Head on back, Rush. I better go smooth things over at home.”

  Rush started walking, and made it ten steps before remembering to turn around and say goodbye to Notre Dame. Giza had been reminding him to do that.