And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead

"And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead" by Brooke Bolander, published in Lightspeed Magazine Feb. 2015
 Description, by Amal El-Mohtar [Tor.com]: "A no-holds-barred pulp action cuss-fest .... In the far-future there are fully synthetic humans grown for grunt-work and war: “The children of wires and circuits aren’t worth a tinker’s fuck compared to the children of real flesh and bone, so far as the world’s concerned,” observes Rhye, our foul-mouthed, gun-slinging protagonist. Seriously injured after a prize fight, she’s taken in by Rack, who helps her up and offers her a place to stay. Rack and Rhye make a great team: he’s cool, quiet, a brilliant security specialist, while she’s fierce, blazing, loud, angry. Mostly Rack looks after Rhye, cleaning her wounds and not judging her life choices—but when a mob deal goes sour, it’s up to Rhye to save both their lives by diving through circuitry and bodiless space to find Rack and the third party he was hired to extract....."
Category:Best Novelette