They'd turned the music off now. Jitters was sucking at a bottle. Only Doc Threadneedle was apparently uninterested in the game.
Kenne looked at the saloon door. The Maniax were standing between him and it. That was his bad luck. The gangboys were in the entertainment mood tonight, and nothing appealed to them more than watching some asshole respray the ceiling with greymass. He looked down at the gun, which must be feeling pretty heavy.
'Two chances out of three, cowboy.'
He did it quickly. Up to his head. Pull. Click.
He let out a whoop, and slammed the gun down onto the bar, breaking glasses.
'Whooo-eee, I thought I was gonna fill my britches fer sure, sister. Looks like I win, eh? Unless you want to play on, Mizz Frankie Stein?'
Jessamyn picked up the gun.
'You can go home now, sister. It's all over. Buy us all drinks, and it'll be forgotten. Ain't nobody gonna hold it against you.'
She put the barrel to her temple.
'You don't have to do it,' said Magda. 'That would be crazy. Even Curtius ain't that big an asshole.'
Her finger tightened.
'Hold on there,' Kenne pleaded. 'Two out of two, remember. Them's crazy person's odds.'
'Jessamyn…' said the Doc. 'Stop it.'
Everyone in the saloon was looking at her. Their heat-patterns flared, as if they were blushing all over.
She pulled the trigger.
VI
Cocooned inside the air-cooled cockpit of his DeLorean 'Snowbird' SandMaster, Bronson Manolo checked the dispositions of the Holderness-Manolo forces surrounding Dead Rat. Within five minutes, they should all be in place.
Once the spotman reported back that Jessamyn Amanda Bonney was in Dead Rat, Manolo had called in Holm Rodriguez from Denver and Susie Terhune from Phoenix. Terhune was an assault specialist solo who had subcontracted for H-M on several occasions, and Rodriguez was their top Colorado Op, further qualified because he came from the quarry's home turf. When he was with the Denver paycops, he had busted little Jessamyn on some juvie beefs. Truancy, stealing lollipops, pulling PZ brats' pigtails, whistling commie songs in church, assault with a deadly weapon: kidstuff like that.
'One good thing about this action,' Terhune claimed, 'at least nobody in Dead Rat could possibly be classed as an 'innocent bystander'.'
H-M had enough field Ops to handle the sanction, but Manolo recognized his limitations, and had had Rodriguez and Terhune augment his forces with some local soldiers who knew the sand. Most of his full-scale skirmishes had been in NoGos or Urban Blight areas. Out here in the Big Empty, the situation was quite different. Less cover, more miles. This was sandrat heaven. He was quite willing to delegate field command to Terhune until the objective was obtained.
He checked his GenTech digital chronometer against the dashdial. He was synchronized with the machine.
'Ommm,' he said to himself, shifting his level of psychic awareness, 'ommm.'
Gari the Guru had given his blessing on this sanction down at the Pyramid. 'You can't destroy, Bronson, you can only convert a thing's form.' That was true, converting forms was Manolo's business. He took nasty live people, and turned them into nice dead ones. Bob Holderness would have been proud of him.
When this take-out was over, he was looking forward to a session in the hot-tub with Kandi, maybe a few snorts of cocoa, and some radical waves to ride out in the bay. The pollution didn't kill the ripple, and couldn't get through to you in a skin-tight SCE unit.
Manolo didn't groove to the Big Empty. He was a cityguy. He didn't like to breathe anything he couldn't see.
'In place, Bronson,' said Terhune. Her light blinked green on the mapscreen. 'Mortars ready to ride. Let's nuke the spook.'
'Rodriguez?'
Manolo tapped the screen, and Rodriguez's light flared. 'Okay for sound, chief. We're in place.'
'The quarry?'
'We tracked her from the Threadneedle site. She's in the Silver Shuriken now. We've given her enough time to get blasted out of her skull.'
'Excellent. Judicious. Righteous.'
'Thanks, bro.'
Manolo pulled his seatbelt across his lap, and plugged it in. The console lit up, and he flicked some buttons. The inboard computer flashed stats at him. The weapons systems gave him some readiness read-outs.
'Okay Jose; let's spread some karma…'
VII
The bullet flattened against her temple. She felt as if someone had taken a swing at her with a sledgehammer, but didn't fall off her stool. Her arm flew out, wrenching her shoulder, but she kept a grip on the gun. She shook her head, and the spent slug fell to the saloon floor.
'Let's look at that,' said the Doc, prodding her sore spot with his fingers. 'Hmmnn, more bruising than there ought to be. Your steel-mesh underflesh hasn't quite knitted properly. The durium platelocks are fine, though. You might have done something less drastic to test my handiwork, but everything seems to be holding up properly.'
Curtius Kenne was staring at Jessamyn as if Jesus H. Christ himself had ridden into town on a donkey, walked into the bar looking for trouble, and kicked him in the gazebos with steel-spiked sandals.
'Freakin' hell,' he said, almost in reverential tones.
Jessamyn handed him the still-smoking gun. 'Didn't I mention that I had a bullet-proof skull?'
He took the weapon and looked at it. The barrel was blackened at the end.
'Silly me.'
One bullet, one chamber.
'Your turn,' she said.
He held the gun as if he didn't know what it was, and looked at her.
She smiled pleasantly. 'You heard me, cowboy. It's your shot.'
Jitters laughed and clapped his hands, then slapped Kenne on the back. 'Yessir, now it's time to see some bloody buggering Yankee guts and glory spread out all over this pub, eh what? That do-or-die Davy Blooming Crockett spirit. Come on, Ragtime Cowboy Joe, take your medicine. The bint did her bit, now it's up to you to show us what you're made of.'
Kenne swallowed his spit. Tears leaked out of his eyes.
Jessamyn knew what the cowboy was made of. Flesh and blood and bone, just like everyone else. No blastic, no durium, no implants, no steel, no diamond-chips. Just chemicals and 78% water.
They weren't even the same species, Kenne and her. She couldn't feel anything for him. But she helped him.
She took the gun, and put it into his hand properly, wrapping his fingers around the butt, shoving his forefinger through the trigger-guard, and held the barrel to his ear. She thumb-cocked the piece, and stood back, admiring her handiwork. Kenne stood like a statue, Rodin's Old Cowhand Blowing Brains Out.
