Bodyguard

7

“Management is not responsible for radiation-induced genetic mutations that may be experienced by guests, visitors, or crew of Staros-3 during or after their time aboard.”

Fine print found on the back of each Staros-3 boarding pass

There were lots of things to do, like losing Trask, and getting off Staros-3, but we were tired and went to bed instead.

In spite of the exorbitant amount of money we had paid for the cabin, it was little more than a shoebox. The beds folded down from the bulkhead and occupied most of what little bit of deck-space there was. That put the mattresses side by side, but I don’t mess with clients, especially when they’re almost twenty years younger than I am. The sheets had seen better days, but most of the holes had been patched, and they were reasonably clean.

Sasha started to remove her clothes, frowned, and gestured for me to turn my back. Hookers, the only women with whom I had recent experience, didn’t care if you looked or not. I turned my back and made a note to be more careful in the future.

I brushed my teeth in the tiny sink, took my turn in the fresher, and was careful to wear a towel when I emerged. There was no need, however, since Sasha had turned the lights down and was already asleep. I dried myself off, slipped into my spare underwear, and got into bed. It felt wonderful. I don’t know if the ensuing dream stemmed from the cafeteria’s heavy-duty spaghetti sauce, my return to space, or something entirely different, but it was a real lulu.

Sweat beaded the pilot’s forehead. She was very young and wore little more than shorts, a tank top, and her lieutenant’s bar. She had great nipples and I had watched them as she conned the boat through ten thousand miles of asteroid-strewn blackness. She bit her lower lip and whispered a mantra of her own making: “Holy mother full of grace, help me make it through this place, Holy mother full of grace…”

I grew tired of it after the first thousand times or so, but pilots are a weird bunch, and it’s best to let their idiosyncrasies go. There were three ships in all. I had the point position, Lieutenant Daw was number two, and our CO Major Charles Wamba rode drag.

It was a bad mission, the kind recon always gets, full of floating variables, insurmountable obstacles, and ugly ways to die. But that’s what the Mishimuto Corporation paid us to do, to kill as many of these nasty-assed tool heads as possible, and make it back if we could. But this was different, a little something thought up by the oxymorons in military intelligence, and intended to bag information instead of bodies.

My briefing had been provided by a man who turned into a woman with no face. She explained that Mishimuto owned stock in a small start-up company, that the employees of said company had gone over to the strikers, and might have taken proprietary information with them. And that’s where we came in. Our team was supposed to sneak up on the miscreants, surprise them, and recover the missing data. The only problem was that they had taken refuge in a research station called T-12, right smack dab in the middle of the asteroid belt, and defended by a rather sophisticated automatic weapons system. Not a walk in the park.

My thoughts were interrupted when the pilot screamed, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and pointed at the screen. Her eyes grew wide with horror and exploded as we hit the asteroid.

I sat up. My body was drenched with sweat, my heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest, and my breath came in short gasping sobs. I have at least one nightmare a night, so I’m fairly used to them. But this dream had a coherency the others lacked, as if memories were trying to put themselves back together and couldn’t quite make it. It took an hour or more to fall asleep. It seemed as if a few minutes had passed when Sasha opened the fresher, used both hands to towel her hair, and kicked my bed. “Up and at ’em, Max. We need to get off this tub.”

I yawned, pulled my clothes on, and followed her to the cafeteria. Breakfast cost a hundred and fifty-two dollars. Each. And it wasn’t all that good. Nor was the company, since Trask sat about fifty feet away. Earth hung behind him like a backdrop, a not so subtle reminder of what he was all about, and an indictment of generations past. He was engaged in earnest conversation with a serious-looking black man, but took a moment to bow sardonically, to which Sasha lifted her coffee cup in reply. Her words belied the smile. “I don’t trust that man. Let’s find some work.”

We had no other choice. Our bankroll was dwindling fast, and Sasha refused to ask her mother for help because to do so would reveal our location to anyone who monitored Earth-Jupiter radio traffic, and that was practically everybody. The fact that I’d have to earn my passage while simultaneously guarding Sasha from the forces of evil didn’t exactly appeal to me, but it was either that or give up any hope of a fifty-thousand-dollar payday.

But wanting work and getting work were two different things. Almost every shipping line large and small had a cubicle-sized business office aboard Staros-3, and none of them were interested in us. What jobs there were went to specialized droids, experienced spacers, or people with the right connections. So we trudged from cubicle to cubicle, waited through what seemed like endless lines, and were refused by men, women, and androids alike.

Oh, we came close once, when the Regis Line offered Sasha a job as a hostess, but there was no slot for me. I actually felt the fifty thousand slip through my fingers, but Sasha shook her head and led me into the hall. Yes, it was strange that she didn’t leave me behind, but I had no reason to question a decision that put money in my pocket, and wasn’t smart enough to think it through.

I did notice one thing, though, and that was the fact that Sasha looked more and more discouraged, as if the weight of the whole world rested directly on her shoulders. With the exception of the kiss, she had never been exactly friendly, but there was an air of desperation about her that I’d never seen before. Not even when we were running from the snatchers and poppers. I tried to talk to her, tried to cheer her up, but it didn’t seem to help. She seldom spoke and became increasingly depressed.

We were exhausted by mid-afternoon. We skipped lunch in an effort to conserve our funds, returned to the cabin, and settled in for a nap. I awoke four hours later to find Sasha gone and a note on her bed. “Max, gone for a walk, back soon, Sasha.”

“Gone for a walk”? Was the girl out of her mind? Yes, of course she was, though the whys and wherefores were a mystery. And I had failed to think of that, just as I had failed to think of so many other things. Visions of Trask and the Trans-Solar goons danced in my head as I splashed water on my face, slipped my arms through the gun harness, and headed for the door. I paused for a moment, performed one of the small rituals that keep me alive, and stepped out into the corridor. Everything looked dark and ominous.

The bulkheads were thick with multi-layered graffiti. They closed in around me and pushed a thousand day-glo images through my eyes. The crowd swirled, became annoyed with my relatively slow pace, and pushed on by. Robo-hawkers, disabled spacers, whores, and itinerant lawyers begged for alms. The smells of sweat, incense, food, smoke, and ozone filled my nostrils and forced me to breathe through my mouth. It was, I decided, even worse than the Sea-Tac Urboplex, and the closest thing to hell I’d ever seen. I watched for Sasha, and did my best to think like a teenaged girl, going where she’d go, doing what she’d do, but it didn’t seem to work. I checked the cafeteria, the retail shops, and the business section, but she was nowhere to be found.

Finally, in an act of what can only be described as desperation, I did what I should have done early on, and stopped at one of the habitat’s public terminals. There, for the absurd fee of twenty dollars, I was allowed to ask about Sasha’s whereabouts. I even remembered to use her alias. The answer came back almost instantly. The voice was synthesized: “Mary Cooper is located in cubicle fourteen of the Staros-3 medical facility. Mary Cooper is…”

I ducked out of the booth, shouldered a dweeb out of the way, and followed the red-cross-shaped pictographs towards medical. Had she been mugged? Raped? Shot? The possibilities were endless, and all of them filled me with fear. Fear, and a sense of shame, since I was her bodyguard and had failed to protect her. Never mind the fact that she should have woken me, should have told me where she was going, it was still my fault. I was a grown-up, and she was a kid, and it was my responsibility to prevent such things.

The shoe was on the other foot now, with the crowd moving more slowly than I liked, which was too bad for them. I’m big, strong, and perfectly capable of taking advantage of that when I want to. Most people scattered, and those who didn’t got shoved. I kind of hoped that some asshole would take offense, would give me an excuse to work off my anger, but no one did. Maybe it was the chrome-plated skull, my size, or the nasty grin. Whatever it was worked and allowed me to reach the medical center in record time.

The receptionist had long orange hair. It had been teased up into a point and allowed to droop like a halfhearted question mark. His smirk told me what he thought about big men with chromed heads.

“Mary Cooper. Where is she?”

“She’s in cube fourteen, and who may I say…”

The route was obvious and I took it. The cubicles were tiny affairs screened with curtains. The numbers got larger. Twelve…thirteen…fourteen. I whipped the curtain aside.

Everything was white including the paint, the bed, and the gown Sasha wore. She stood with her back to me looking in a mirror. The sudden commotion caused her to turn. One hand clutched the front of her gown while the other started towards her gun. The second hand topped, fluttered for a moment, and fell to her side. A bandage covered her left eye. Gauze ran around her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks. My heart jumped to my mouth. “Sasha…what happened? What did they do to you?”

Her mouth moved but nothing came out. It seemed natural to move in, put my arms around her, and let her sob into my chest. She felt small and very, very fragile. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, the sobs died away. She pushed me away and wiped a hand across her mouth. “Sorry about that…it was stupid…and very weak.”

“Stupid? Weak? What the hell are you talking about?”

Her voice grew stronger as she turned and shook out her pants. “No big deal. I sold an eye, that’s all.”

The words rolled around the inside of my head like twenty-ton ball bearings. Images flashed through my mind. I imagined Sasha lying on an operating table as a doctor pried her eye out of its socket and dropped it into a basin. It made me queasy. “You did what?”

She was defensive. “We need money. I sold an eye. People sell organs all the time. It’s no big deal.”

I may be stupid, but even I tweak eventually. This was more than a schoolgirl on her way home, more than a skirmish in some corporate war, this was big. So big that teenaged girls were willing to sell their eyes to move from one place to another. I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her around. “Why, Sasha, why! Why would a girl sell an eye? And don’t give me that bullshit about taking you home. Are you running drugs? What?”

Tears welled in her remaining eye, brimmed over, and trickled down her cheek. She shook her head. “No, I’m on a mission for my mother. An important mission. That’s all I can tell you.”

I heard my voice get louder. “For your mother? What kind of mother would want her daughter to sell an eye?”

Sasha stood tall. She wiped the tears away. Her face grew hard and defiant. I saw hatred in the eye that remained. As if I were responsible somehow. “Who the hell are you to judge? My mother does what she has to do. And so do I. So shut the hell up and step aside. I’m getting dressed.”

We walked through the corridors in silence, she with her thoughts, I with mine. What she’d done was monstrous. What sort of parent, what sort of mission, could justify a thing like that? There was no way to tell, but one thing was for sure. Anyone who was willing to sacrifice herself to that extent would do the same with me. I would have to be very, very careful. Our cabin was just ahead. We slowed down.

Habits are interesting things. They can hurt you or help you, and I need all the help I can get. That’s why I make a fetish out of small things, like checking the load on my handgun every morning, and plastering a tiny piece of transparent tape across my door when I leave. These things were a struggle at first, but they’re second nature now, and I do them without conscious thought. Except when something unusual happens, that is. “Don’t touch the door. Someone’s been in our cabin.”

Sasha frowned. “How do you know?”

“I left a piece of tape across the door. It’s broken.”

“So what do we do?”

I thought about it for a moment. The wheels turned slowly but turned just the same. “You hungry?”

People came and went in both directions. Sasha watched them. “Yeah, but what does that have to do with the door?”

“Let’s order some room service.”

I placed the call from a com booth down the hall. It took fifteen minutes for the autocall to arrive, use its electronic pass key, and roll inside. I waited for a bomb to go off, for assassins to peer outside, for a thief to run down the corridor. Nothing.

Minutes passed, the autocart emerged, and the door closed. We waited for the robot to trundle away, keyed the proper code, and stepped inside. Our dinner sat steaming on a carefully set fold-down table. The rest of the place was a mess. What few belongings we had were scattered about like toys in a child’s room.

I stated the obvious. “It’s been searched.”

“Yeah,” Sasha agreed. “But by whom?”

I shrugged. “Trask is a distinct possibility, but why wait till now? My money’s on Trans-Solar. It took some time…but they caught up with us.”

Sasha didn’t agree, but she didn’t disagree either, which was almost the same. We balanced trays on our knees. Sasha took some pills as an appetizer. I envisioned her big brown eye, a strand of nerve still attached, rolling around the bottom of a kidney-shaped basin. Or worse yet, being installed in a lifer’s head. My appetite vanished and I felt an almost overwhelming need to cry. But bodyguards don’t cry, not in front of clients anyway, so I poked at the food and pretended to eat it. Not so Sasha, who had the appetite of a stevedore, and cleaned her plate with a piece of bread.

It was a simple matter to throw our dirty clothes into the knapsack, slip out the door, and meld with the crowd. The room charges would continue to mount, but that was better than checking out, which would signal our departure. Sasha set a brisk pace. I struggled to stay abreast of her and watch for tails at the same time.

“Dorlop impog asup 95601.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked where we’re headed.”

“A ship called the Red Trader leaves in two hours. She’s headed for Mars, which is not the most efficient way to get where we want to go, but some progress is better than none.”

“She’s a passenger ship?”

Sasha laughed then stopped as if something hurt. “I wish. No, she’s little more than a clapped-out freighter, and we’re members of the so-called crew.”

I frowned. “Then why sell your eye?”

Sasha spoke patiently as if to a child. “Because the jobs cost five thousand dollars apiece.”

There was nothing to say so I didn’t.

Staros-3 was shaped like the letter H, with living accommodations clustered around the center bar, and docking facilities, solar arrays, and other facilities located along the four extremities. They were variously identified as Leg One, Two, Three, and Four. The Red Trader was docked on Leg Three so we headed in that direction. I checked our tail for any sign of Trans-Solar’s goons, or Nigel Trask’s greenies, and damned near missed the black man. The same man I’d seen with Trask. He caught my eye and waved. Sasha made a grab for my arm, but it was too late. I waved back.

He was there within seconds, his eyes darting from one to the other, summing us up. He had intelligent eyes, a rather aquiline nose, and thin, expressive lips. His suit was white, or had been once, before the accumulated grime stained it gray. We stepped into an alcove to escape the traffic. “Mr. Maxon…Ms.

Casad…this will only take a moment. I know you’re in a hurry. Mr. Maxon…may we speak privately?”

I looked at Sasha. She didn’t like the situation one bit. “Speak your piece…but I’m staying here.”

The man bowed in acknowledgment. “As you wish.” He turned, blocking Sasha with his body. “My name is Philip Bey. I have a message for you. Mr. Trask wants you to know that our associates have performed some research, and the Mishimuto Corporation discharged two marines who suffered brain damage identical to yours. They experienced the same reduction in cognitive function, the same loss of memory, and had skull plates similar to your own.”

“They did?” I asked stupidly. “Where are they? What happened to them?”

Bey looked me in the eye. He was so direct, so sincere, that I felt sure he was telling the truth. “The first committed suicide within months of discharge. The second has been in and out of mental institutions ever since her release from the Marine Corps. A man who claimed to be a relative took her on a day-trip. She hasn’t been seen since.”

Thoughts plodded their way through my mind. They were like elephants linked trunk to tail. Slow, ponderous things that barely moved. I looked to Sasha for guidance. She refused to meet my gaze. I turned to Bey. “What does this mean? What are you saying?”

Bey shrugged. “Mr. Trask believes that you are in danger. He’s aware of your upcoming journey and suggests that you remain here with us. We will pay your expenses plus five thousand dollars.”

I frowned, moving the thoughts by force to will, determined to make my own decision. Five thousand dollars would have been a fortune only days before, but I had my sights set on fifty thousand, and there was Sasha to consider. A contract is a contract, and I had agreed to escort her home. Besides, the greenies were as bad as the corpies, so why stay with them? I shook my head. “I’m sorry about those other guys, but there’s no reason to think they’re connected to me, and I’m under contract.”

I looked at Sasha, and where I had expected to see approval, I saw something like sorrow instead. It seemed I couldn’t do anything right.

Mr. Bey bowed slightly. “As you wish. I shall inform Mr. Trask.”

The old Sasha seemed to reassert herself. “Do that…we have a ship to catch.”

Bey looked at Sasha’s bandages. “Yes. I hope the accommodations are worth the price. The god called ‘technology’ demands many sacrifices. Your eye was little more than a down payment.”

Sasha turned white and headed up-corridor. I followed. So much for getting off Staros-3 unobserved. The greenies might be strange but they didn’t miss much. I hurried to catch up. The Red Trader was connected to Lock 3-C. We stopped outside the lock, called the ship via vid screen, and identified ourselves to a woman so fat I could barely see her eyes. If she had virtues, charm wasn’t one of them. “Well, it’s about damned time. You got the money?”

Sasha held a certified check in front of the scanner. The woman nodded. “Good. Get your asses aboard. We got a schedule to keep.”

The screen snapped to black. The lock yawned and swallowed us whole. The hatch made a hissing sound as it closed. The umbilical that connected the Red Trader with Staros-3 was already pressurized. The second hatch opened quickly. The umbilical was pleated to accommodate slight movements of the ship or the habitat it was moored to.

Six or seven steps were sufficient to carry us into a rather spacious lock. Sections of paint had been worn away, leaving islands of magenta. A rubber mat gave slightly beneath my feet and air jets cooled my face. I was still inspecting the space suits racked to either side of the compartment when the inner hatch irised open and a man entered. A funny smell followed him in, like when you visit another person’s apartment, or skirt the edge of an enthnoplex.

He had thinning black hair, feral eyes, and a hatchet-shaped nose. He wore a filthy tank top, baggy shorts, and bright orange high-tops. His eyes went from my skull plate to Sasha and stuck like glue. “And what have we here? Some nice-lookin’ poontang, that’s what. Hi, honey, my name’s Lester, what’s yours?”

Sasha gave him a look that would have killed most men. “Screw you.”

Lester licked his lips and rubbed his crotch. “What a coincidence. That’s exactly what I had in mind.”

I stepped forward, gathered some of the tank top in my right hand, and lifted Lester clear of the deck. His feet kicked and his fists beat against my arms. “Put me down!”

“Apologize to the lady.”

“All right! I apologize. Now put me down.”

I put him down. He pulled his tank top straight and looked daggers in my direction. “Come on. The captain wants to see you.”

We followed Lester out of the lock, down a passageway wide enough to accommodate standard cargo modules, and right through an access corridor. The ship was surprisingly roomy. And why not? It had been constructed in space, where shape made no difference and size was limited by little more than the cost of materials and the energy it would take to push them around. So, given a desire to move large quantities of cargo all at once, and the need to retain a competent crew, the corporations were inclined to build large rather than small. It was one of those thoughts that offered themselves when it made little difference and were impossible to find when I really needed them.

Lester took a left and led us past a number of cabins to a brass plaque that read “Captain.” It had been polished to a high gloss, and the hatch to which it was affixed stood slightly ajar. Lester rapped three times. His knuckles made very little sound, but a voice yelled “In!” nevertheless.

Lester turned in our direction. I could see that he wanted to say something, to take a parting shot, so I raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

He scowled, did an about-face, and marched down the corridor.

The voice was annoyed. “I said ‘In,’ damn it!”

We entered. The combination office-cabin, for that’s what it seemed to be, was spacious. The decor could only be described as eclectic, since it incorporated everything from ultra-modern fiber chairs to an overstuffed sofa with a paisley print. The common element was food-cartons, plates, and remnants of which were scattered everywhere.

The captain was even more monstrous than she had appeared on video and was supported by a specially modified forklift. Yards and yards of shiny black cloth had been used to make pajamas for her over-sized body, and the slightest movement sent light rippling in every direction. She had piggy eyes, and they were filled with malevolence. “What you staring at, chrome-dome? You ain’t so pretty yourself. Give me the money.”

Sasha handed her the check. A small, well-kept hand reached out to accept it. Light flashed off a multiplicity of rings. The captain held it up to the light, saw that the electro-threads were intact, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. She poked it down into the crevasse between her massive breasts and gave us the look most people reserve for dog turds.

“Good. Consider yourselves duly sworn in and all that other crap. Now here’s the deal. I run a tight ship, I don’t take shit from know-nothing ground-pounders, and I expect a full shift’s work. Clear?”

We nodded.

“Good.” She looked at Sasha. “So, sweet stuff. What happened to your eye?”

Sasha met her gaze without flinching. “I sold it.”

The captain nodded, as if selling an eye was the most natural thing in the world, and nothing to be concerned about. “Right. Find an idiot named Kreshenko. Tell him you’re the help he’s been asking for, and keep an eye on Lester, he’d screw a droid if he found one equipped with a hole.”

The forklift whirred and carried her to a combination desk and console. She searched through the junk, found a disk, and flipped it in my direction. I caught it and she nodded approvingly. “You’re in charge of the farm. Your predecessor drank himself to death. Don’t make the same mistake. Read the disk, memorize the contents, and don’t mess up.”

I nodded stupidly, hoped I could comply, and knew I couldn’t.

The captain reached for a bag of Oreo cookies, spilled some into the palm of her hand, and shoved one into her mouth. The words were muffled. “Good. You can have cabins G and H. Now get to work.”

We were halfway out the door when she stopped us. Crumbs dribbled down her chin. “One more thing…the dart guns are legal…but keep ’em holstered.”

We shrugged, nodded, and hit the hall. It seemed as if secrets were damned hard to keep. The ship broke free of Staros-3 about an hour later, accelerated away, and started the long, slow journey to Mars.