Bodyguard

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.”

I would look back later, remember how she’d taken control, and wonder how I could have been so stupid. But I was stupid, and still am for that matter, and it felt good at the time. I nodded slowly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. No sense in staying here. We’ll build a fort somewhere else.”

Sasha looked grim. “No, we won’t. You were right, Max. I should’ve listened, should’ve taken your advice, but didn’t and paid the price.” Her face softened momentarily, and I saw something that might have been affection in her eyes. “You’re good at what you do, and don’t ever let people say you aren’t. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

Something rose to fill my throat, tears brimmed in my eyes, and a feeling of warmth suffused my body. I fought for control and got it. “Thanks…a letter of recommendation would be vastly appreciated. But why not? Build a fort, I mean.”

“’Cause we’re going to hunt the bastard down,” Sasha said coldly. “And his friends too…if he has any left.”

The idea hit my brain like the dawning of a new day. Bodyguards are reactive by nature, always looking to defend rather than attack, so the concept seemed radical at first. But the more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. Why wait for the bastard to attack when you could find the creep, put him away, and spend the rest of the trip relaxing? The plan made excellent sense.

So we lifted the android to a standing position, checked to make sure he’d stay that way, and made an adjustment to his right hand. I thought the upraised finger said it all, and hoped the popper would see it.

It didn’t take long to gather our gear, stuff it into the duffel bags, and clear out. However, things that weighed nothing in zero gee were suddenly heavy and slowed us down. Sasha carried a bag plus the pressure suits, and I toted the rest. Joy wasn’t large enough to carry anything and scouted ahead. We were headed to starboard and on high alert. A second attack seemed unlikely but not impossible.

“We can’t carry this stuff all the time,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “We’ll be dead meat if a popper comes along. No, what we need is a stash, or a number of stashes in case some are discovered.”

I may be mentally challenged, but I know a good idea when I hear one, and the stash thing sounded good. My head swiveled back and forth looking for a good location. And, much to my own amazement, I found one.

The air vent was obvious really, especially to someone who lived on Sub-Level 38 of the Sea-Tac Residential-Industrial Urboplex, where good hiding places are few and far between. Four stainless-steel screws held the screen in place, but one of the recently deceased poppers had been the proud owner of a stainless-steel all-purpose pocket knife, the kind that comes with enough tools to perform brain surgery, and weighs a pound and a half. I pulled the monster out of my pocket, selected the Phillips head screwdriver, and went to work. Sasha supervised. “Don’t leave any scratches. They could give us away.”

I didn’t think there was much chance that my scratches would show among all those left by the maintenance bots and tool heads over the years, but I kept my mouth shut. Some things are worth fighting over and some aren’t.

The screen came free with relative ease. We made an arbitrary decision to divide our supplies into three equal portions, making sure there was a weapon in each-this against the possibility that one or both of us lost our weapons but remained at liberty. And, since the heavily armed poppers had contributed a total of five guns to our arsenal, that left each of us with a backup plus enough ammo to fight a small war-something I hoped we wouldn’t have to do.

So, having placed a duffel bag and the pressure suits inside the air vent, and having reinstalled the screen, we followed the bulkhead towards the starboard side of the ship. Since we were located near the barge’s stern, and knowing there was a great deal of space between us and the bow, it seemed logical to suppose that the popper or poppers were camped towards the entry lock or beyond. I had assumed that we’d climb up through one of the access tubes, recross the sky bridge, and retrace our steps from there. I even said as much. Sasha put me straight.

“Sure, Max, it could work, but tell me this: A popper escaped, right?” Well, where did he go? If he crossed the bridge, we’d have seen him.”

I frowned. She was right. The bridge was completely exposed, so we would have seen him. “How ‘bout the forest? Maybe he’s hiding in the bushes.”

“Anything’s possible,” Sasha said patiently, “but he’s wounded, and that makes it likely that he’ll head home. Wherever that is.”

Thoughts piled into each other as they tried to find a way through my head. The popper had headed home, the popper lived up towards the bow, the popper didn’t use the sky bridge, ergo, the popper knew of another way to get there. Brilliant, huh? But Sasha was way ahead of me. “The way I figure it, we should make another stash, work our way around the forest, and find his escape route. The rest will be simple.”

The rest would be simple? Tracking a professional killer to his lair would be simple? Was Sasha out of her mind? I looked her way, half expecting a sardonic smile, a hint of irony, but no, she was completely serious. I felt confused, very confused, and my head started to hurt. I wanted Sasha to be smart, wanted her to assume control, but couldn’t quite let go. In spite of the fact that Sasha thought circles around me, and was more competent than any girl her age had a right to be, she lacked experience. A sometimes fatal flaw. I fought the headache and prepared to assert myself when and if we found the popper’s escape route. We had just dropped a duffel bag containing a gun, ammo, and a third of our food into a large junction box when Joy pointed towards the other side of the bay, and gave the alarm. “Look!”

We looked, and saw what appeared to be a black dot quartering the area where the battle had occurred. Sasha kept her voice flat and unemotional. “The bastard has a spy cam.”

“Yeah.” I said grimly. “Or took control of a maintenance cam.”

She gave me a look, the kind reserved for occasions when I’m a pain in the ass, and gestured towards the grating. “Come on, let’s get the cover on.” I hurried to help. The grating clanged as it dropped into place.

“Look!” Joy said for the second time. “It heard! And it’s coming our way!”

We looked. The spy cam had heard and was coming our way. My reaction was to hide and hope for the best. Sasha had other plans. She pointed towards the deck. “Lie down! Pretend you’re dead!”

The order went against all my instincts, all my desires, but she gave it with such certainty that I obeyed. The deck was cold and the lights were bright. I closed my eyes. Black blotches floated on an ocean of red. I heard a whirring noise, air caressed my face, and the scene grew darker.

I felt the spy cam hover over me, or thought I did, and wondered what Sasha would do. The answer came as the darts thumped into the spy eye’s metal housing, servos whined as it tried to get away, and the whole thing landed on my unprotected stomach. Air whooshed out of my lungs, my eyes flew open, and my arms wrapped themselves around the still-struggling machine.

I was eyeball to lens with the blasted thing when Sasha drove a twelve-inch commando knife into the camera’s cylindrical torso. The weapon had been liberated from one of the poppers, and the combination of the saw-toothed back edge and the high-tensile stainless-steel blade proved more than equal to the task. It passed through the housing, punctured a vital part, and ended the machine’s life. The robo-cam jerked a couple of times and lay dead in my arms.

Or so I thought until a voice came out of it. A voice identical to the one that had addressed us before. “Thank you. There is nothing so boring as an easy hunt. I shall relish the days ahead.”

And with that the machine discharged whatever electrical power it had left directly into my body. I awoke to the smell of burned chest hair. Two faces were looking down at me. One large and one small. Both looked concerned. Sasha was worried. “Max? Are you okay?”

I lied. “Never better. How long was I out?”

“Twenty or thirty seconds.”

“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here before the sonofabitch sends reinforcements.”

An unspoken consensus carried us out into the forest. If the popper could send one maintenance cam, he could probably send more, and the canopy would provide at least a modicum of protection. I waited until we were a good fifty yards out before I allowed Sasha to break out the first aid kit and rub goo on my chest. It continued to hurt after she was done, but not quite as much. I sealed my shirt and we moved on. I was dizzy, sick to my stomach, and determined to hide it.

I wished there was something we could do about the clouds of metallic insects that rose in front of us. circled like windblown foil, and resettled when we had passed. They were like miniature spies, checking on our movements, and reporting them to anyone with the patience to watch. Our only hope lay in the fact that it would take the popper some time to treat his wounds and locate another surveillance cam. Or so we hoped.

The bushes were laid out in rows to facilitate the movement of various robots, and it wasn’t long before we started to encounter them. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from box-shaped contraptions that we called “leaf suckers,” to snakelike machines that slithered through the canopy and trimmed unwanted foilage.

I watched them carefully at first, afraid the popper would use them to spy on us, but, outside of sluggish attempts to move out of our way, the robots continued their work. But that could change, so I continued to keep an eye on them. The whole thing became monotonous after a while. Trees, robots, trees, and more robots, with no sign of the popper or his trail. Then it rained, a fine, penetrating mist that seemed part of the air around us. It coated the leaves, soaked our clothes, and slicked the deck. Joy loved the water the same way she loved everything else. Oblivious to our discomfort, she giggled and did cartwheels up the path.

The mist turned into a steady rain, and I found the blood shortly thereafter. Little brown dots of it, fuzzy around the edges, and dry prior to the rain. The drops came slantwise out of the forest, and a broken branch marked the point where the popper’s path had intersected our own.

I motioned for Sasha to stop, took a careful look around, and considered the risks. Softened by the mist and battered by the rain, the dots were coming apart. In twenty minutes, thirty at most, the trail would disappear. The answer was to pick up the pace, in spite of the fact that doing so would make us less vigilant, and vulnerable to an ambush. The part of me that remembers and takes over at unpredictable times made the necessary decision. I waved Sasha forward and she obeyed.

It was warm, and the humidity increased as we jogged through the bushes, preceded by wave after wave of robotic insects. It felt good to run, good to push my luck, and I found myself grinning like what? An idiot? A wolf on the trail of wounded prey? The second seemed more suitable, and I hoped it was true. But too much time had passed, the trail was cold, and we reached the other side of the forest without spotting the popper. The little brown dots came less and less frequently now, then stopped in front of a stainless-steel airtight door. Had he brought the bleeding under control? Or stepped through and continued to hemorrhage on the other side? There was only one way to find out.

I positioned myself on one side of the portal and Sasha took the other. Joy jumped upwards, hit the large green button, and dropped to a crouch. Our weapons were drawn and aimed as the door swished open. I waited for defensive fire that didn’t come. I started to move but the kid beat me to it. She went through the opening fast, but a hair too high, making herself a better than average target.

I followed, eyes searching for things suspicious, but found nothing more than some unimaginative graffiti. Though a good deal smaller, the corridor was similar to the first one we’d been in, complete with vertical ridges, emergency com sets, fire-fighting gear, and surveillance cameras. I saw no escape slots, however-an omission which could mean that the automated trains didn’t travel this particular passageway, or they did and pedestrians were S.O.L.

Satisfied that the popper had cleared the area, we looked around. There were ten to fifteen drops of blood, all clustered together, and smeared by a bootprint. Some partial prints marched into the distance and disappeared: a clear indication that our quarry had rigged a bandage. I looked at Sasha and she nodded. We hugged the sides as we made our way down the hall, hoping the popper had better things to do than watch the security cameras, fearing that he didn’t. Motors whirred as they tracked our progress.

It was a weird feeling, knowing something was watching, but unsure of whether it mattered. The situation must have spooked Sasha too, because she opted for the vertical ladder the moment we encountered it, and I followed. For reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, I assumed the popper had continued down-corridor, but cameras made me nervous, so I kept my feelings to myself. The cameras tilted to follow us and stopped when they could tilt no more.

The ladder led to a narrow maintenance tunnel. If cameras were present, I couldn’t identify them. Though equipped with rudimentary hand-and footholds, the passageway had been intended for robots, one of which blocked our path. It was shaped like a large turtle, and judging from the noises it made, was engaged in cleaning the gratings beneath our feet. The strong smell of disinfectant reinforced that impression.

Sasha solved the problem by stepping onto the robot’s gently rounded back and off the other side. Joy jumped, caught hold of my pants leg, and held on as I followed suit. If the turtle-shaped machine objected to this treatment, it gave no sign of its displeasure.

We followed the corridor for a hundred feet or so, stopped in front of still another airtight door, and took the usual positions. Me to the left, Sasha to the right, and Joy wherever she wanted to be.

The hatch slid open and I saw darkness beyond. Darkness and the flicker of what looked like flames. The kid made eye contact, nodded, and stepped onto a narrow balcony. I joined her. Below us, three-quarters filled with thousands upon thousands of crates and boxes, was a space similar in size and shape to the one occupied by the forest.

And there, at the hold’s epicenter, burned a large bonfire. The barge’s automatic fire-fighting systems had been defeated somehow. The flames leaped higher as they consumed an especially choice piece of fuel, then fell back, as if tired by their exertions. And, moving around in the foreground, their forms silhouetted against the flames, were people. Lots of people, fifty or sixty at least, all talking, laughing, and swigging from a variety of containers. There was something primitive about the scene, and ominous as well.

I had just turned towards Sasha, and was about to say something stupid, when a beam of white light shot across the hold and pinned us against the bulkhead. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at all. It belonged to the man who had addressed us through the maintenance cam. “Well! Look what we have here! I hoped you would follow. Welcome to hell.”

Sasha turned, hit the door release, and nothing happened.

Another light popped on. This one roamed the crates below, paused each time it touched someone, and moved on. They were a motley lot. I saw men, women, and yes, children. And, judging from the way they avoided the light, as well as the generally ragged condition of their clothing, it was obvious that they had no more right to be aboard the barge than we did. The voice spoke to them. “Look! Look at the catwalk! They are worth ten thousand dollars each! Do as you will to the girl, but keep the man alive.”

There was silence for a moment while the stowaways considered what the man had said, followed by a howl of approval, and the sounds of movement.

Sasha tried the door, found it still wouldn’t budge, and set out along the balcony. I stuffed Joy into a pocket, checked my weapon, and followed. It’s funny how life works. Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get worse, they sure as hell do.