13
“Good for one free meal.”
A pass to the Lunar Gardens Cafe found in popper number two’s waist pouch
The poppers were cautious, and that was a mistake. Had they rushed in and nailed us in bed, the whole thing would have ended right there. But they didn’t, and we made reasonably good use of the extra seconds. I scrambled to my feet, checked to make sure Sasha was up, and pointed to the right. “You take the right, I’ll take the left!”
She nodded, held her gun in the approved two-handed grip, and took aim. There were four poppers in all. Two males, a female, and an android. A limited-edition model with three eyes, vampire fangs, and a pimp-city wardrobe. He, she, or it worried me more than the others did, because robots can be damned hard to kill. They charged the cargo modules, leaped to the top, and spent half a second looking at us.
I wasted half that time wishing I had the.38 instead of the dart gun, took aim, and pumped the trigger. Black holes marched across the front of the android’s peach-colored jumpsuit. Jets of bright blue fluid spurted out and splashed on the deck. The robot grinned. He was still grinning when his gun came up, his finger squeezed the trigger, and Joy climbed his pants leg. The first darts blew air into my ear and the rest went wide as Joy jumped for and grabbed his gun arm. Darts splattered against the deck at my feet while hot plastic peppered my ankles.
The robot frowned, tried to shake Joy off, and died as my darts found and destroyed his central processing unit (CPU). He was still in the process of falling when I picked my next target. I fired, but she had moved, and the darts tore through empty space.
Diving onto an opponent can be quite effective if you hit and knock them down. But if the other person turns sideways as I did, and the assailant hits the deck like she did, the shoe’s on the other foot. Only the most charitable of souls would have ignored the opportunity to jump on her exposed spine, and given the fact that I’m not especially charitable, I didn’t.
But, instead of the yielding flesh that I had expected to encounter, my boots landed on some of Pro-Tec’s finest semirigid body armor. It did what it was supposed to do, and spread the impact of my attack over a wider area. I was still in the process of absorbing that information when the woman did a military push-up. I tottered and fell sideways as she rolled. I saw her gun come up, fired mine in response, and watched a hole appear between her eyes.
The air whooshed out of my lungs as I hit the deck, and I was still struggling to breathe when Sasha arrived. She placed hands on hips and grinned sardonically. “What the hell kind of bodyguard is this? Lying around while I do all the work?”
This was less than fair, and I was planning to say so, when I saw three bodies where there should have been four. I struggled to my feet.
“I see three of them…where did the last one go?”
Sasha shrugged and gestured towards the bushes. “I hit him once, maybe twice, but he got away.”
I looked where she was pointing and saw a trail of blood. “Damn.”
She frowned and looked defensive. “It’s too bad he got away…but we narrowed the odds.”
I looked to see if she was serious. “Yeah? By how much?” I watched her think it through. If four poppers had made it aboard the barge, then why not five? Or six? Or ten? Assumptions could kill you. The voice confirmed my fears. It came from the bushes somewhere.
“Not bad for an over-the-hill head-case and a teenaged bimbo, but it ain’t over yet. Not by a long shot. I’ll be back! Wait for it. I’ll come when you least expect me.”
I jumped to the top of a storage module, saw a cloud of robo-insects take to the air fifty yards out, and considered going after him. It didn’t seem wise, though, not with the cover the bushes provided, and no certainty that he was alone.
I made one helluva target standing on the storage module, and jumped down. Joy grabbed my pants and scampered up to my shoulder. She put her feet at the base of my neck, grabbed an ear, and leaned way out. She looked happy. “Hiya, boss. How’s it hanging?”
I looked into her face, saw the merriment that danced in her eyes, and understood something that would have been obvious to anyone but me. Wamba had equipped Joy with the single emotion he wanted her to have, the one he hardly ever felt himself, and hoped to experience by having her around. Had the plan failed? Was that why he had given her to me?
I forced a smile of my own. “Pretty well, all things considered. Thanks for the help. You saved my life.”
Joy beamed with pleasure and rubbed herself against the side of my face. The feel of her miniature breasts brushing back and forth against my ear stimulated strange thoughts. I plucked her off my shoulder, smiled reassuringly, and placed her on the deck. She giggled happily. Long, slender legs flashed and she cartwheeled away. There was no doubt about it. Joy needed some clothes.
But first there were other more pressing problems to deal with. Like collecting the arsenal of weapons our attackers had unintentionally delivered and going through their pockets. Not a pleasant task, but a productive one. We found money, about four thousand in all, lots of spare ammo, some gas grenades, enough knives to open a cutlery store, two varieties of illicit drugs, and, last but certainly not least, temporary I.D. cards of the sort that corpies provide to freelancers. They can be set for anything from a day to a year and erase themselves after that. But these were good and came with 3-D photos, thumbprints, and a scanner strip. None of which would have meant diddly except for the fact that all the cards had been issued by Trans-Solar. Shasha knelt beside me. I showed her the card. “So much for getting rid of them on Mars.”
She was silent for a moment. “Damn.”
“Yeah. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what’s going on?”
The stubborn look reappeared. She shook her head. “I already have.”
I shook my head sadly and got to my feet. “Right. And corpies give to charity. Well, let’s dispose of the bodies before they start to smell. I think I saw an ejection port near the storage compartment.”
What would have been easy in zero gee was hard work in ship-normal gravity. People weigh more after they die, or seem to, and it doesn’t make sense. Life should have weight, and leave a body feeling lighter, like a canteen emptied of water. But that’s not the way it works, as the guys on the local meat wagon will be glad to tell you.
But, by rolling the bodies onto a cargo pad, and dragging them to the ejection port, we got the job done. Of course, lifting the stiffs and stuffing them down the tube was not an especially pleasant task, but better them than us. Once that was accomplished, the rest was easy. It was a simple matter to close the hatch, seal it shut, and hit the green button.
I felt a slight vibration as air was pumped out of the chamber and heard a thump as the bodies were ejected from the tube. I tried to feel something, tried to think religious thoughts, but nothing came. It’s hard to empathize with poppers, dead or alive, and my religious training, if any, had disappeared along with my other memories.
The adrenaline drained out of my bloodstream and took my energy with it. I was afraid. And who wouldn’t be? We were trapped on a spacegoing barge with one or more hired killers. Fear was normal, and anything else would be stupid. But fear is an uncomfortable emotion. It saps your strength and demands full attention until you respond. But what should we do? Our arrival at what had been our fortress served to underline the problem.
The android was where we’d left him. His sky-blue body fluids had oozed out, mingled with human blood, and formed a brownish crust. What had seemed snug and secure prior to the attack felt open and vulnerable now. I had just started to think about that when Sasha assumed command again. She stood hands on hips, her gun in easy reach, with a newly acquired backup stuck in her waistband. “Collect the gear, Max. We’re pulling out.”