attacker’s unseen armor. In his head, Mallory began praying, preparing for the worst.
This close, Mallory could only see the world through the distortion of the camo projection. Through the angular ripples of the projection, he saw a bright flash erupt from the ground behind the man holding him. A ball of smoke rolled upward from the flash, revealing a circle of the walkway melted to black slag. The air was suddenly rank with the smell of hot metal and burned synthetics.
“What the fuck?” The man holding him dropped him and backed away. Mallory staggered against the wall but remained upright. His two attackers were standing right next to him, but Mallory had the sense that he was no longer the focus of their attention.
“Okay, boys, playtime’s over.” The new voice came from a petite woman standing at the mouth of the alley, back where Mallory had come from. She had brown skin and straight white hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a white jumpsuit with a shoulder patch that Mallory couldn’t make out at this distance.
Her most distinguishing feature was the razor-thin gamma laser carbine she held pointed down the alley at them.
“This ain’t your business, lady.”
The woman cocked her head. The barrel of the carbine didn’t move at all. “You know, it might be a good idea for you to think about whether you should be telling me what is and isn’t my business.”
“Now wait a goddamn minute—”
“Cool it, Reggie.”
“Now you going and using my name, what the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“She’s BMU, Reggie.”
“I don’t give a shit if she’s the fucking pope—”
“Well, I do. Rolling a tourist isn’t worth the trouble.”
The woman added, “Listen to your brother, Reggie.”
“What? No one said anything about who—”
“I told you. BMU. Understand?”
After a long pause, Reggie said, “Okay, cut our losses. Fuck it.”
Both shimmers moved away leaving Malloy alone in the alley.
The woman walked down the alley. Without the distortion between him and her, he could now see the shoulder patch on her jumpsuit. It wasn’t too surprising to see the initials “BMU” embroidered in gold on a red field. Below the initials were a crossed sword and rifle.
She also had a name embroidered on the left breast of the jumpsuit: “V. Parvi.”
She bent over and picked up Mallory’s slugthrower.
“Thank you,” Mallory said.
“You’re welcome,” she stepped over to him and handed him his gun. This close, she wasn’t just petite, but tiny. She was a full head shorter than his Occisian build—barely 150 centimeters, if that. “But don’t go thinking that anything on this planet’s free, Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick.”
The woman was named Vijayanagara Parvi. She belonged to an organization with the somewhat generic name of the Bakunin Mercenaries’ Union—she was a recruiter. Apparently, Father Mallory’s alias, Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick, had just been recruited by Ms. Parvi. Of course, she told him, he didn’t
Of course, the primary benefit would be that he would cease being a target for bottom-feeders like Reggie and his brother.
“The way it works on this planet,” she told him, “you need to be part of something scarier than the shitheads who want a piece of you.”
In the end, Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick went along with her pitch. The whole situation fit so seamlessly into Mallory’s cover he chalked it up to divine providence. It didn’t even matter that he had the strong suspicion that
