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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.
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