Bodyguard

14

“Surgeon flees after botched operation.”

The headline on a press clipping wadded up in the bottom of Doc’s duffel bag

Our fellow stowaways had been on board at least as long as we had and knew their way around. They swarmed up ladders, dashed through passageways, and burst onto the catwalk. The hatch that refused to work for Sasha opened smoothly for them.

We ran for the other end of the platform. Our boots pounded the metal gratings and our breath came in gasps. I put a dart into every surveillance cam that I saw, but knew that a long sequence of disabled cameras would be like an arrow pointing towards our destination. It felt good, though, and might provide an edge later on.

The catwalk ended where it met the port bulkhead. Sasha pounded on the green button and swore when nothing happened.

We turned to face our pursuers. Knowing we were trapped, and eager to collect the reward money, the stowaways charged. A couple of scroungy-looking men led the attack with some equally ragged women close behind. A collection of scraggly-assed kids brought up the rear. One of the men brandished what looked like a homemade dart gun. The rest were armed with a wild variety of clubs and knives. The balcony was narrow, so they had little choice but to come at us two at a time-a factor that didn’t exactly even the odds but didn’t hurt either.

I turned sideways in an effort to reduce the target profile and felt Joy scramble down my leg. I had no idea where she was headed and couldn’t take time to look. A dart whispered by my shoulder and clanged off metal. I raised my pistol, took aim, and fired. The lead man, the one with the gun, stumbled and fell. The rest jumped over his still-twitching body and kept on coming.

Sasha fired. A woman clutched her throat, staggered, and fell. A little girl cried, “Mommy!” and stopped to help.

I heard someone yell, “Stop! Stop, damn you!” and realized it was me. But they didn’t stop. They screamed their hatred and kept on coming. My stomach felt queasy, and bile filled my throat as I continued to fire. It was a one-sided battle in which their weapons were completely ineffectual and ours were deadly. The imperative “kill or be killed” is written in our genetic code somewhere, and that’s what we did.

Finally, when the last adult had fallen, and the children were sobbing at their sides, it ended. Some were wounded. I wanted to stay and help, but a series of inarticulate yells followed by the clang of distant footsteps forced a retreat. I was about to grab Sasha and drag her the length of the balcony when Joy tugged at my pants leg. “Come on! I opened the door.”

I looked, saw wires dangling from the now-open control box. and realized that Wamba had given his creation something more than a pleasing personality. Joy had initiative, technical expertise, and who knows what else. I made a note to kiss Wamba when and if I saw him again.

The next set of pursuers moved out onto the balcony, saw us, and charged. Their shouts became muffled as the door closed behind me. That’s when I realized that a stranger had joined us: a boy who was crying, knuckling his eyes, and looking to escape.

Sasha held the kid with one hand and a pistol with the other. Her eyes flashed with anger. “We need to find that bastard and find him now!”

I shrugged. “Great. But how? He could be anywhere.”

She gave me one of those looks, the kind that reminds me of how stupid I am, and knelt beside the boy. Her voice was level and tight. “Security cameras imply a control room of some sort, and that’s where the popper will be. Isn’t that right, boy? Where’s the control room?”

The boy looked resentful and tried to pull free. “You shot my sister!”

I expected Sasha to say something nice, to comfort the boy, so imagine my surprise when she put the gun to his head. “Now listen, you little shit! I shot your sister because she tried to kill me. Now, tell me where the control room is or I’ll splatter your brains all over the wall! Take your pick.”

Voices yelled and fists pounded on the door. I looked at Joy. She shook her head and smiled. Whatever she’d done to the lock mechanism would hold for a while. I turned to the boy. You could see the wheels turn. He hated our guts but wanted to live. It didn’t take long to arrive at the proper decision. The tears stopped and his eyes drifted towards my skull plate. “I won’t tell you where it is…but I’ll show you.”

The kid was no dummy. The longer he held onto the information, the longer he’d live. That’s what he assumed, and Sasha nodded agreeably. “Good, very good. Lead away. And remember, one false move, and I’ll blow your brains out.”

The kid knew his way around or was leading us on a wild-goose chase. One or the other. We followed him down the corridor, up a ladder, through an accessway, and out into a large passageway. It was littered with scraps of half-eaten food, empty booze bags, and pools of dried vomit. There was no doubt about it, the poppers liked to party. A box-shaped maintenance bot beeped and ate an empty food pak.

The boy held a finger to his lips; we nodded, and followed him down the hall. I went first, followed by Sasha and Joy. Though nearly obliterated by orange spray paint, the words “Control Center” could still be seen on the hatch at the far end of the corridor. I was proud of my ability to read them. There was no way to know if the popper was inside or not. A security cam stared unblinkingly back at me. Was the popper monitoring that particular shot? Waiting for us to walk into his trap? There was no way to know. He paused ten feet short of the hatch. I checked my weapon. “I’ll go first. Cover me.”

The kid nodded. Her face was pale, and her lips made a long thin line. She was scared, one of the more sensible things I’d seen her do, and a sign of inevitable adulthood.

I turned, planning to lecture the boy, and discovered he was gone. My heart beat a little bit faster, since I knew the little shit had every reason to run for the nearest com set and scream his head off. Time was critical.

I touched the button, and the hatch opened. I dived, rolled, and came up feeling foolish. Control panels lined the bulkheads. Vid monitors displayed miles of empty corridors. Air whispered through the vent over my head. The compartment was empty, or seemed to be, and my pulse started to slow.

The kid stepped through the door, swept the room with her weapon, and looked in my direction. I was halfway through a shrug when the popper dropped out of an overhead crawl space, landed on his feet, and shot Sasha in the back. She looked surprised, took a step in my direction, and fell flat on her face.

My weapon was light-years out of position. I fought to bring it around, cursed the gravity that slowed my hand, and prayed I would beat him.

There was time, plenty of time, time enough to notice that his eyes were cesspool black, that his teeth were very, very white, that he wore a gold crucifix around his neck, that his left shoulder had been bandaged by someone who knew what they were doing, that the weapon in his hand was a Ruger Dartmaster, that his finger was squeezing the trigger, that the pistol was jerking in my hand, that darts were walking their way up the middle of his body and punching holes through his throat.

The popper grabbed his neck, hoping to staunch the sudden flood, but blood oozed out between his fingers and dripped down the front of his shirt. I think he fainted then, and bled to death a minute later, but didn’t really care. The kid was, well, I didn’t know what she was, not a friend exactly, because friends don’t keep secrets from each other, but not a client either, because clients are about money, and I hadn’t thought about the fifty K in a long time.

No, the girl fell into some weird category I couldn’t quite put a name to, but felt as a confused mishmash of anger, fear, and sorrow. I knelt by Sasha’s side, searched for a pulse, and found one. I felt relieved, and scared because she needed help and I didn’t know what to do. The back of her shirt was wet with blood and her skin was whiter that it should’ve been. I saw a lump where her head had hit the deck.

“Excuse me…”

The voice came from behind me. I whirled, saw a middle-aged man standing in the doorway, and was in the process of squeezing the trigger when Joy ran towards me. “Don’t shoot! He’s a doctor!”

The man smiled and held his hands palms out. “Not a doctor, but a physician’s assistant.”

I must have looked doubtful because he gestured towards the dead popper. His voice had a sardonic quality. “I bandaged his wound…though the effort seems wasted.”

“He offered to help,” Joy added brightly.

I remembered the popper’s bandage, the expertise with which it had been applied, and got to my feet. The physician’s assistant watched me. He had thinning gray hair, a nose that looked larger than it should have, and about two days’ worth of stubble. I noticed that while his clothes were old, they were fastidiously clean, and had been fashionable once. His eyes were blue, as clear as a tropical sea, and free of fear. I got the feeling that everything that could happen to him already had. The choice was no choice at all.

“He shot her in the back, Doc. Do everything you can.”

The man nodded, knelt by Sasha’s side, and went to work. Metal flashed as he cut through blood-soaked fabric. Gauze appeared from the case by his side. Blood welled up and was wiped away. The entry wounds were high and to the right. Doc checked for exit wounds, found them, and slapped self-sealing premedicated pressure bandages over the holes. The bleeding stopped. He nodded his satisfaction, slipped a needle into her arm, and handed me a bag full of liquid. “Here, make yourself useful.”

There were words on the bag, but they defied my ability to read them. Whatever it was trickled down a tube and into Sasha’s body. Doc slipped his arms under the upper part of her body. “She’s stabilized, but who knows what’s happening on the inside. Could’ve nicked a lung. Help me move her.”

Joy had scrambled to my shoulder. I gave her the I.V. bag and slid my arms under Sasha’s legs. We carried her to a counter and laid her out. I took the I.V. bag and sent Joy for some water. I used it to wipe away the worst of the blood while Doc attached self-adhesive disks to various parts of her body and used a hand-held monitor to check her vital signs. Then, having nodded a couple of times, and mumbled to himself, he tended the bump on her forehead. The eyepatch was askew, and he fixed it. “What happened to her eye?”

“She sold it.”

He gave me the same look most people reserve for corpies. “Asshole.”

I gestured, and the I.V. bag swung back and forth. “You’ve got it all wrong, Doc! I didn’t have a thing to do with it!”

He started to reply but was interrupted by a third voice. “Freeze.”

I turned and found myself looking into the bore of a Colt Space Master. I was zero for two. My primary weapon was in its holster and the backup was stuck down the back of my pants. It might as well have been on Mars for all the good it would do me. The man with the gun was short, paunchy, and better dressed than the twelve or fifteen people gathered behind him. Something about the way he held the Colt told me he knew how to use it. His voice was calm. “Move it, Doc…you’re in the way.”

Doc shook his head and looked stubborn. “There’s been enough killing.”

The man was unmoved. “Tell it to Kirtz, Nichols, Chin, and a couple more. They’re dead.”

Doc shook his head slowly and turned into the line of fire. Training, or maybe it was instinct, told me to use that moment to pull a weapon, fire through Doc’s body, and drop the guy in his tracks. I listened to Doc instead. His voice was calm. “Kirtz, Nichols, and Chin took their chances and lost. It was self-defense, and you know it. You want the money? Well, there it is, lying over there. Help yourself.”

The man glanced towards the popper’s body, gave a slight inclination of his head, and backed in that direction. The crowd tripped over each other getting out of the way. I watched for guns and wondered if I could get to Sasha’s backup. It was sticking out of her waistband. All I needed was two, maybe three seconds to pull it and fire.

The man was good, and kept his eyes on me the whole time. The Colt never wavered as he knelt by the body, patted it down, and found the wallet. He thumbed it open, glanced at the contents, and nodded. “Okay…fair enough. How ‘bout it, chrome-dome? You willin’ to let it drift?”

I get tired of the “chrome-dome” thing at times but didn’t want to kill anyone over it. I nodded. “Fine with me.”

The crowd mumbled a little, angry at the loss of their friends, and resentful about the money. But the man knew what made them tick and pointed towards the boxes piled on the far side of the room. “Those boxes have food and god knows what else in ’em. I got a feelin’ the poppers ain’t comin’ back. Help yourselves.”

There was something akin to a stampede as the crowd headed for the boxes and tore them apart. The man smiled, made the gun disappear, and strolled our way. He held out his hand. It was hard as steel. “The name’s Dan. Dan Riler.”

“Max Maxon.”

“Glad to meet you, Max. Welcome to our little community. Sorry about your friend. Hope she’ll be okay.”

Doc took the I.V. bag. “She’d be a lot better if you took this conversation somewhere else.”

We stepped aside. I didn’t want to leave her, but couldn’t afford to ignore Riler either. “Yeah, I hope so too.”

Riler gestured towards the popper’s body. “Was I right? His friends won’t be back?”

I shook my head. “Nope. They jumped us at the other end of the barge. We stuffed their bodies into an ejection tube.”

Riler nodded agreeably. “Nice of you to clean up. They were a mean bunch. Boarded as a group. Checked us right away. Said they were looking for a man with a chromed head and a girl with an eyepatch.” Riler lifted an eyebrow. “Call me crazy, but it seems as if someone wants you dead.”

I ignored the invitation and shrugged. “Maybe it’s my deodorant or something.”

Riler laughed and gestured towards the scavenging crowd. They were like crows on a road kill. “Well, your troubles are over. For a while, anyway. There were some bad apples in the crowd, but you thinned ’em out, and the rest are too scared to attack head-on. Course you gotta sleep…and so do I. Tell you what…you watch my back, and I’ll watch yours.”

I looked at Sasha. The Doc had located an emergency stretcher and convinced two members of the crowd to carry it. The kid looked pale, real pale, and it scared me. Partly because I liked her, but partly because I needed her, and didn’t want to be alone. Yes, she had lied to me, yes, she had hidden things from me, but I hadn’t been lonely in a long time, and the thought of losing her made my gut feel empty. So I’d stay with her, do what I could to nurse her back to health, and hope for the best. But I had to sleep, and Riler’s offer made sense. I stuck out my hand. “You’ve got a deal.”

It took the better part of two hours to get Sasha down to the main deck, make a home for her among the crates, and settle in. She remained unconscious, which worried me, but didn’t seem to bother Doc. Or maybe it did, and he hid the fact. In any case, I felt as if I should stay awake but found it hard to do. So when Riler offered to stand watch, and suggested a nap, I took him at his word.

I was gone within seconds of putting my head down. I don’t think I dreamed right away, but who the hell knows? I know this though: Like some of my previous dreams, this one was real, or had been real, however you want to look at it. As with the previous dreams, this one picked up where the last left off.

The initial sensation was that of fighting my way up from a deep sleep, coming almost to the surface, but not breaking through. I heard voices, two of them, one male and one female. They were arguing. The man was against something and the woman was for it. “It isn’t right, I tell you…and that’s all there is to it.”

“Right?” the woman demanded. “Is war right? Is theft right? Because that’s what’s going on. He killed some of our friends, would’ve killed us, if the commandos hadn’t been here.”

“Two, three, or any number of wrongs don’t add up to a right,” the man responded stubbornly. “He’s a human being, and what you propose goes beyond all standards of decency.”

“And what would you know about decency?” the woman asked scathingly. “A man who lied, cheated, and stole his way out of the gutter? How dare you lecture me on right and wrong!”

“It’s true that I’ve done all these things and more,” the man replied calmly, “but none of my transgressions even come close to what you propose. I refuse to be part of it. More than that, I plan to tell the union.”

There was silence for a moment, as if the woman was thinking things over, followed by the muffled thud of a gas-propelled dart. I heard glass shatter, metal clang, and something go thump. I strained to open my eyes, struggled to see what had happened, but found that I couldn’t quite break through. I heard the woman say, “Asshole,” and felt darkness drag me down.

But I floated to the surface now and again, snatched whatever sensation was handy, and carried it with me. I felt movement, heard laughter, smelled feces, felt cold, tasted water, and experienced pain. Lots of pain. Pain from the chest wound, pain from the needles in my arms, and pain I couldn’t quite identify. It hurt to be me, to exist where I was, so I fought my way upwards, determined to break into the light, to tell them how I felt, to make the pain go away. And suddenly I was there, looking around, seeing Sasha, Riler, and the crates. It was disappointing somehow, and less than I had hoped for. Riler saw my movement and gestured with a fork. A meal pak sat balanced on his knee, and the smell made me salivate. “Welcome back. You’ve been out for nine hours.”

I rolled over and came to my knees. Sasha looked the same as she had before.

“No need to worry,” Riler said evenly. “She came to about three hours ago. Doc gave her something and she went to sleep.”

I nodded and felt a tremendous sense of relief. We were down but not necessarily out. Riler tossed a food pak in my direction. I caught it, pulled the tab, and felt the container warm my hands.

Suddenly I wanted to be in the asteroids, on Europa Station, or back on Earth. But they were a long way off and no more friendly than where I was. I opened the meal pak, tried the stew, and liked it. Riler nodded, and we ate in silence.