Artemis

Jazz begins her next day by powering up the HIB, which she left at the visitor center. She has it attach itself to a return train so that it will be waiting for her outside Artemis’s bubbles. She meets Svoboda. A gardener leaves, saying, “I’ll leave you and your john alone. No sex on the grass” (95). Svoboda delivers the device that Jazz designed. He asks Jazz if she has used the condom yet. They chat for a bit, and then Jazz leaves to return to her scheming.

Knowing Bob had a point about her shoddy check during the trial, Jazz begins her caper by thoroughly inspecting her EVA suit. When it’s time to begin, she gathers her supplies and has the HIB open Conrad’s airlock for her. Stepping out onto the lunar surface, she walks to the harvester bay and waits four hours for the harvesters to return to their charging stations. Once they charge, Jazz hops on one and rides it to its destination. She sabotages the first harvester from here, but one of the other harvesters runs over her spare oxygen, tightening her timeline. She cuts a hole in the coolant wax case and welds in a valve. She then climbs into the cab to use the battery to create a triggerable heat loop. This change will cause the harvester irreparable damage. Jazz’s device from Svoboda is back in her coffin using her Gizmo to surf the web, thus establishing an alibi.

Then things go sideways: Jazz climbs out of the harvester to discover that the other harvesters have circled her, watching her with their cameras. Sanchez Aluminum knows someone is breaking their harvesters.

Jazz and Kelvin’s letters focus on sad and stressful events. Jazz discovers that one of the people her boyfriend is sleeping with is a 14-year-old girl. The “morality-police” beat him for this behavior, in keeping with Artemis’s vigilante justice. Kelvin expresses his sorrow for Jazz and discloses that his sister is pregnant. Both Jazz and Kelvin need money and are becoming desperate.

Knowing that the EVA Guild is on its way, Jazz resorts to desperate maneuvers to evade capture. She also knows she must successfully sabotage all four harvesters to get paid, so she decides to blow them up. She starts with the one she already worked on, but the explosion is much larger than anticipated. She must create a blast shield before moving on to the next one. The other harvesters begin to attack her. She breaks off their antennas to prevent this, but the delay makes it impossible for her to create all the “kaboominess” she needs.

Jazz must bail before she can destroy the last harvester. She makes a desperate escape back towards Artemis’s bubbles, but when she sees the guild members return to the bubble, she realizes she is trapped outside. Jazz makes her way to the Aldrin bubble and clings to the train as it leaves Artemis for the visitor center. There, she stashes her things in the tourist lockers and enters the airlock, which is fortuitously open. On the other side, Dale is waiting for her.

The letters between Kelvin and Jazz focus on the dire financial situation they are both in. Kelvin’s parents have delayed retirement: Kelvin doesn’t make enough to support his sister alone, even though he has been promoted to loadmaster-in-training. Jazz makes a friend who keeps her from resorting to sex work by loaning her money; she also announces that she has a new boyfriend, Tyler. She and Kelvin discuss smuggling as a possible side hustle.

Dale and Jazz huddle in the airlock and help each other out of their EVA suits. Dale doesn’t want to turn Jazz in but expresses concern about her behavior. Jazz offers him 100,000 slugs for his silence. They discuss Dale’s ongoing relationship with Jazz’s ex-boyfriend, Tyler, who cheated on her with Dale. The betrayal still hurts Jazz. Dale wants to reconcile, so he demands not money but renewed friendship, including a weekly beer meetup at the pub, in exchange for silence. Jazz reluctantly agrees and heads back to her coffin.

After resting, Jazz goes out to retrieve the HIB. After circling Conrad several times, she is alone. She opens the locker, grabs the HIB, and is heading home when she literally runs into Rudy. The two banter as Rudy accuses Jazz of being the saboteur. The story of the harvesters has taken over the Artemisian news cycle. Jazz denies her involvement. Rudy correctly guesses how she used the HIB and tells her that a security camera in the visitor center captured a woman of roughly her size. He further speculates that Trond hired her to do it and tells her he will protect her from deportation if she admits her involvement; he even offers to pay her. Jazz refuses and Rudy leaves her to stew, warning that things will worsen for Jazz with a powerful enemy like Sanchez Aluminum.

Jazz heads to the bar and is contemplating finding someone to have sex with when Trond messages her. Trond wants to meet in person to discuss Jazz’s plan to break the last harvester. Jazz finishes her beer and heads to Shepard. Irina, the grumpy housekeeper, does not greet her at the door. Instead, Jazz finds it jimmied open and a smear of blood on the wall. She flees.

Kelvin and Jazz’s letters focus on their budding smuggling operation. They both need the money. Jazz tells Kelvin how in love she is with Tyler. She also writes about Dale teaching her how to use the EVA suit. The two consider bringing in another loadmaster.