Sure, it all started back on Earth, in Mexico City--that sprawl of glittering earthspires.

Tenoch had been born in what used to be called Lindavista, but had become a major spire, the lowest-rung housing development. Azatlan.

The Castillo de Chapultepec, once the site of so many battles and important moments in Mexican history, had been kept intact and remained the residence of the Mexican Primarch, Novedades Columpia.

While the rest of the city, which has since its inception been a city built in layers, like a cake, grew upwards so fast it seemed unsteady. A city piled atop itself on the verge of toppling over.

One thing the wretched of the galaxy know…don’t ever directly fuck with the Primarchs. Tenoch broke this cardinal rule, and every other pinche regla que le pusieron enfrente, because he was just a natural-born hijo de puta. He hated the Oligarchs, but his hatred for the Primarchs dwarfed everything. The Primarchs were beyond kings…beneath only the Emperor of Earth, a massively fat thing that looked like a rad-sick baby and ate six hundred hamburgers a day and produced more shit than a cow. This the so-called living divinity and Pharaoh of the living earth. “Living,” Tenoch laughed. It sure was that. More and more blue is spreading by the day. Novedades had Lindavista cleared and promised all families a better living, but it was a one-way ticket into hell. Their new quarters were cramped, little more than an automated door, a poor and broken-down smartbot for cleaning, and a tiny kitchen next to a single sleep hearth.

That spire itself wasn’t living. It was a hive. Teeming with bodies, flesh puckered around newly-fitted chrome jacks at the base of shaved and tattooed skulls.

Glittering interface jacks protruded like bracelets from ladies’ wrists. They smiled, metal hissing as they walked daintily under the bulk of their lovers’ hydraulic mech-arms.

Gangs soon took over the lower levels and families mostly stayed inside their SmartApts, daring to brave the labyrinth of alleys and puestos only when the crackle of rifles and the deep thuds between mech weapons died down.

The big drug back then was called “Meta.” It got you higher than the tallest spire, and provided short-lived physical abilities. And side-effects lots of mental and physical side-effects. Meta made its user strong as a bull. Even a 120 pound girl could rip a grown man’s head clean off. So there were lots of gang fights, everyone loaded with meta and blood and guts flying like confetti through the air. There were two main gangs that owned the lower level. Los Escorpiones y los Sidewinders. The Sidewinders dug hacking and flashy guns. Escorpiones got by on brute force and lots more Meta than Tenoch has seen anyone take. Over time, some say it changed them. Made them less human. The Escorpiones wore mohawks and spiked hair and dyed everything they wore a venom-green that was their color. Piercings, chains, spikes…they favored these decorations. They were deadly up close with their combination of hydro-axes and buzzing saws and welding-guns. From afar, they had a good amount of las-spitting pistols and rifles, a few heavy guns and, it was rumored, a single mini-rail gun that half-worked called “Bocanegra.”

They were heavy. It was a different time.

Tenoch liked to say that he was “Sidewinder desde birth cabron,” a naturally-fitted module node that slid right into the jack of his life and own personality. Everything down to their torn denim and dull, oil-stained rags appealed to him. They wore bandanas over their faces or around their necks. They weren’t bad in a fight, but he especially felt fond of their preference to tech and chromey firearms: Las-spitters, Bolt-revolvers, Skimmers, attack-drones, even rudimentary jet-bikes were used by the sidewinders.

When it came to a fight, they never turned away, but there’d already been more than one rumble that ended with Los Escorpiones shredding through them like wet paper. It wasn’t even a rumor, they didn't bother hiding it, Los Escorpiones were an extension of Novedades, Primarch of Mexico. She paid them directly to do what she wanted, to get what she needed done. The only thing that woman feared, really, was an uprising.

When the Chicxulub broke Earthspace and the war began, everyone knew, every gang on every spire on the planet knew. This must be our chance. Then the blue kept growing. Mexico City, where all these dramatic events took place, is currently under several miles of growth, blue and pulsing like an enormous vein.

Tenoch discovered slowly exactly who Novedades worked with, by chasing the shamefully open data that a thousand such gangs left for him to find, all lazy and quick-to-fix, loving the action. Tenoch and a group of Sidewinders moved across the spires, using a mixture of brutality and fear to keep things working. They were the “lesser gang,” yet their dominion grew. Tenoch already hated her for the lie that had become his entire family, mama and a sick jefe, y con dos esquincles to feed on top of it. His little brother Aguila and Rebecca, su hermanita. That Primarch bitch is the reason we’re all living in the spire. A vertical mass of iron, concrete, cold, and bone-shattering skirmishes in the dark. So the day he earned his sidewinder tattoos began like any other. He ascended in the ranks quite fast, but, most of his comrades whispered, a change came over him after what happened. That first attack, it was his barrio. Escorpiones sent in two enforcers so zooted on Meta they started crumbling Smartaps like cardboard boxes calling Tenoch out to play.

So out he went, sliding onto the etched chrome-and-steel streets. Three decks hung from his jack, and he flicked a bolt-revolver shut. A memorable sound. A serious weapon. The two Escorpiones glared at him, spittle running down venous chins and throats, eyes like dinner. Plates.

Shit, Tenoch remembers. Every time. Takes him in like a blast of K_MZXE-(1o9)...straight to the dome. Take you inside the fight, let you feel it. Tenoch knows he has a recording. Back then he recorded everything and this one…it’s the last footage of his mother and family. It’s everything.

This video is why Novedades Columpia had to die:

“You think we’re afraid of a little mierdecita like you can’t shoot worth a fu---”

The first shot’s dead on, spraying a gout of brains and skull fragments over the second, astonished Meta. Tenoch holsters quickly as he ducks for cover, las shots cascading around him. His fingers dance over the keys and inputs that hang from his waist. His hair is longer then, bleached and colored red and blue. Two buzzing fight drones dislodged from his segmented armor back and went fluttering into the air above him.

“Tikal, and Pikal,” Tenoch says to them, jacking back the hammer on the bolt-revolver. The two attack drones buzz in reaction to his voice. “Make easy business of that fuck there,” Tenoch tilts his head at the surviving Meta. The drones zip towards the Escorpion and for the briefest of moments, a flash through the jack hits his neurons and Tenoch has the strangest image of a giant monkey atop…a little building, and it’s fighting little people in hoverskiff-looking machines. Old, OLD, tech.

He has a woman in one hand. The giant monkey. Well, Tenoch is guessing, just as the image disappears, that he was probably a very small monkey shot to look big. A bit of old movie magic. He remembered to ask his dad, once a professor of cinema history at the local university, several levels above. He remembered, but never got the chance. King Kong was the name of the film, and nothing spectacular about that, just sad. It’s a little bit like that, Tenoch thinks, shaking his head to clear it. Except the drill-lasers and exo-saws inside his attack drones have left the second Escorpion piled and sectioned like deli meets steaming burnt and charred with bubbling hot boiling blood.

He raises the revolver and pulls his smartgoggles over his eyes. He can see a half dozen sidewinders coming running, and a few…shit, MORE than a few Escorpiones, with their photon blasters and…something two big guys in trihawks are carrying between jangling chains.

It’s “Bocanegra,” the mini-rail gun the fucks never were supposed to have.

The next thirty-five minutes are pitched battle, with the outnumbered sidewinders shooting a million rounds and dropping most of the Escorpiones, including their Warboss, with a lucky bolt-shot to the neck. Only two sidewinders died, Choto and Magma. Both fought like hell.

They managed to push them back and shot that railgun to shit with their own exploding rounds and a couple of grenades that Tenoch attached to Tikal and Pikal, whose small and firm “arms” were able to fly and drop them with the efficacy of old world bomber planes.

The outnumbered Sidewinders won. The Escorpiones were defeated and humiliated. Overnight, Tenoch was a hero.

Out of the eight blasts that ‘bocanegra’ managed to spit out, one went directly behind Tenoch (missing him by only feet) and destroyed his terrified family and everything, everything he ever loved or had to remember them by in a single blast.

Tenoch has seen this footage many times on soul-sick and sad nights like this, lighting up some strong Earth Mota, the shit that you get in space is just like cornsilk, no fucking high to it. Tenoch keeps a stash, always. Pacha Mama, medicina, whatever bullshit---he couldn’t and wouldn’t live without the stuff. Or his dexy’s and amphetamine salts, crystal shards and snorted nightless vast cruisings of endless data. That night he earned his bandana and Sidewinder tattoos. Because they were the only family he had left. And Arturo Mata, their Warboss, first took notice of his young warrior, so skilled in both battle and in hacking.

Later, they called it “The Battle of Lindavista.”

Mata lent him the men, gave Tenoch the resources to set it all up, make it look like what the Sidewinder’s really wanted was that sweet credit tit, suck on it just like all the gang’s and chemboys that came before. He’s sure that was what the bitch thought, just down to about thirty seconds before he stuck a shiv into her belly, twisted, and pulled out her heart. The single, first and so far only, human being--a throng-city nobody--to kill a primarch.

Soon the Emperor decreed Sidewinders a heretic cult, but their popularity spread too quickly for him to contain. Everybody, everywhere wanted to be a Sidewinder. They got the money together, Tenoch built up the decks he’d need and he looked up every night at Xochipilii and the white-blue moon. Soon, just soon enough, Sidewinders worldwide worked out a secret ride up to Xochipilii, just as the Emperor of Earth’s enforcers came closest to taking him. After a while, the Emperor put together a sadly unconvincing video of his enforcer’s killing Tenoch. He smiled, watching it the night before in bed with…some fake blonde with more tattoos than him. Sure, not sidewinder tattoos, but he liked the way the spikes of her long centipede protruded over her spine and ended on her right buttock. What was her name? Tenoch had been zooted, sure, she’d been zooted too but…as selfish and stupid as it was, he hoped one of them would remember. Beyond the pale blue of the moment, there had been something else. Important. He can see her hair, white under blue lights. What had it been? What was her name?

Ximena? A psychesse from somewhere in Mexico. Rich family. He’d invited her (goddamn, he’d been zooted) to come pillage that prison-planet with him. Why had she said no? He remembered now she said her work, essentially, was the same as his. Data thief for hire. So why not come along? She liked him well enough, he could tell that.

Tenoch leaned in close to the particulates of his viewing port. They drooped like sand down an hourglass as he came close and reformed the moment he looked away.

He dropped two benzos and hoped he’d fall back asleep somehow. A moon awaited him, a new life. He would be back though, that he’d promised.

Ximena. Yes, he’d promised her. And the Sidewinders. They were a gang, a criminal street gang--no denying. Now they were an army. His own private fucking army. Puta madre. He felt like motherfucking Ryu Ruiz.

Odiaba cuando alguien le dijo que chingada hacer. It’s the one thing that really, really fucking pissed Tenoch off. Whether they were a Primarch or a prosti-bot, he took no shit. Who knew how much time any of them had left or what was really going on? That didn’t fall under Tenoch’s purview, he decided, the strange uncanny blue forests of fungi on Earth spreading as far as the eye could see. Reports of glowing, blue humanoid figures between the stalks. No, he had no fucking clue. He wanted no clue. There were things, he was sure without knowing, that were too terrible for human words to encapsulate.

Ximena.

He smiled like…he hadn’t smiled since his parents and siblings were still alive.

He kissed Ximena’s mouth in the blue of that rent apt and then he told her. What had she asked? But, he had said the stupidest thing to her, a fucking Sidewinder saying.

(Idiot that he is)

“I’m not here for a long time, baby, I’m here for a good time.”

Then they’d…not made love. They became desiring blue animals lost in a dream of moons and blood and guns.