I shoved a middle-aged man with long scraggly hair towards the Hispanic woman. He tripped and fell against her chest. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Her gun went off. A bullet hit the ceiling and screamed away.
I took two blows to the chest and heard the gunshots that went with them. I staggered backwards and knew I’d been shot. I looked down, expecting to see a big mess, and realized that the Trans-Solar poncho was bulletproof. Of course! The longer the bullet-catchers stayed alive during an ambush, the longer the lifer would be protected.
The second bodyguard, a white dude with tattoos all over his face, fired as I stepped behind a fat guy. Having raised his hands in protest, the bullet-catcher took a round through the palm of his left hand before it hit the center of his poncho and bowled him over.
I dodged the falling body and felt the gun fill my hand. I brought the weapon up, put a round through the white dude’s left thigh, and flinched as a bullet whipped by my ear. The third bodyguard, a twin to the second, corrected his aim. I shot him in the shoulder, realized that his bulletproof underwear had blocked it, and put a round through his gun arm. His pistol clattered as it hit the floor. I was still alive but couldn’t understand why. The fourth bodyguard should have nailed me by now but hadn’t. I turned, saw the crumpled body, and figured her for a ricochet.
The rent-a-cops, still penned behind gate two, tried for a clear shot but couldn’t find one. Bullet-catchers scattered every which way. The lifer did his best to get behind them, but it didn’t work. A pair of women pushed him forward. “Here…shoot the bastard and leave us alone!”
I grabbed the sonofabitch, put the gun to his head, and marched him towards the second gate. The rent-a-cops shuffled their feet and wondered what to do. The smell of expensive cologne filled my nostrils. I spoke into his right ear. “Open the gate and do it now.”
Sweat trickled down his temple and his hands fluttered helplessly. “Don’t hurt me! I’ll double what they’re paying you!”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Lepforg gortnoy. Open the gate!”
A well-manicured hand came up, hesitated for a moment, and stabbed the keypad. The gate started to move, and the rent-a-cops surged forward. I took the gun away from the lifer’s head long enough to bounce a round off the floor in front of them. They backpedaled in a hurry.
“Place your weapons on the floor and do it now!”
The ranking rent-a-cop, a woman with a blue Mohawk, looked doubtful. The rest waited for orders. I shoved the.38 into the lifer’s ear. He got the hint. His voice quavered. “Do what the man says.”
Blue-hair frowned unhappily, did a squat, and placed her handgun on the floor. Her troops did likewise. I figured most of them for backup weapons, but didn’t plan to push my luck. I edged the lifer around until the rent-a-cops were between me and the cage. I waved the.38.
“All right…into the cage.”
The rent-a-cops backed into the cage palms out. A snarl hurried them along. I kicked the door closed, hoped it would take them a few minutes to get it open, and motioned towards the far end of the corridor. “Come on, pretty boy…let’s run.”
He did as ordered, huffing and puffing after the first hundred feet or so, expelling the words one at a time. The floor was cleaner than most of the plates in my apartment, and our shoes made squeaking sounds as we ran. The corridor turned to the right, and we followed.
“What”-pant, pant, pant-“are”-pant, pant-“you”-pant, pant-“going”-pant, pant-“to”-pant, pant-“do”-pant, pant-“with”-pant, pant-“me?”
“Well,” I replied, glancing over my shoulder, “cross-country competition is out, and that being the case, I’ll trade you for a girl named Sasha.”
He looked at me sideways. His eyes grew bigger. “Sasha”-pant-“Casad?”
“That’s the one. Where the hell is she?”
“And your name”-pant-“is?”
I started to get annoyed. The tables had turned somehow, and he was interrogating me. I reached out, grabbed his collar, and skidded to a halt. The.38 wouldn’t fit inside his left nostril, but I did what I could to shove it there anyhow. “My name is ‘tell me where the girl is or I’ll blow your sinuses out through the top of your head.’“
His eyes grew even bigger. “I know who you are! Please, forget the girl, and listen to what…”
I turned the gun to the right and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went out through the side of his nose instead of up through his brain. Blood sprayed all over the place and the lifer screamed. He covered his nose with his hands and I rammed the.38 into his gut. “Now listen, asshole, I’m done playing patty-cake with you. Take me to the girl, or I’ll drop you right here.”
I wouldn’t have dropped him right there, but he didn’t know that, and did as he was told. His voice was muffled. “All right, all right, just leave me alone.”
There was a shout from the other end of the corridor. It was the Hispanic bodyguard. She was pissed, and so were the rent-a-cops.
I sent two rounds in their general direction and gave pretty boy a shove. He staggered, caught his balance, and began to run. I followed. The steel door was fifty feet ahead. The lifer slowed, used the wall as a brake, and fumbled with the keypad. His blood-covered index finger skidded from one key to another. He started over. I turned, aimed low, and sent three rounds down-hall. Eight, nine, and ten. That left me with four rounds and a spare magazine.
A rent-a-cop threw up his arms, tumbled head over heels, and grabbed his right knee. The Hispanic woman shouted something obscene, raised her gun to return fire, and stopped when she realized that even a slight miscalculation could result in her client’s death. I grinned.
The door opened. Pretty boy dived through in hopes of leaving me stranded outside. It didn’t work. Bullets clanged off the door as it closed behind me. I looked for and found the inevitable keypad. I clicked the “emergency lock” button five or six times and heard the heavy-duty bolts shoot home. The door shook as the rent-a-dorks discovered what I’d done and expressed their displeasure.
I looked for pretty boy, found him plucking Kleenex from a blood-spattered box, and whacked him over the head. He collapsed in a heap.
I checked for people, didn’t see any, and took a moment to look around. Art hung on the walls, plants sat just so, and the furniture invited me to sit down and relax. I didn’t.
“Welcome to Trans-Solar, Mr. Maxon.”
The voice came from behind me. I turned to find myself looking down the barrel of a hand-held cannon. My.38 hung straight down, so far out of position that it might as well have been home, sitting in a drawer. I wondered if I could bring it up before he was able to squeeze the trigger. The man smiled and shook his head. I let the.38 drop. It made a soft thump as it hit the carpet. The man nodded approvingly. “Wise. Very wise.”
The man was bald, or nearly so. What hair he had left was pulled back into a ponytail. He was handsome without being pretty and wore his clothes with negligent ease. His eyes were blue and very intelligent. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Really?” I said stupidly. “How’s that?”
“Come now, Mr. Maxon,” the man replied. “Even you are smarter than that. My men wore their jackets logo-out so you’d know where to look.”
Blood rushed to my face as I realized how stupid I’d been. It was so obvious, so god-damned obvious, and I’d missed it. But why? They had Sasha, and that was the objective, wasn’t it? I tried to sound nonchalant. “Yeah, that was pretty transparent, alright.”
“Exactly,” the man agreed. “But it worked, and you were a good deal more resourceful than my staff gave you credit for.” He gestured towards pretty boy’s crumpled body. “Curt will remember you for a long time.”
“Ibelsnork mopocky,” I said nonsensically, doing my best to maintain eye contact, while Sasha emerged from a side door and held a finger to her lips. She tiptoed in our direction, selected a piece of stone statuary off a side table, and closed the distance. She wore a bra, panties, and nothing else.
I was afraid she’d blow the whole thing by giving herself away, or by hitting the man so lightly that it did little more than piss him off. Little did I know. Sasha brought the statue back like a baseball bat, gave him a good thump to the side of the head, and stood ready to follow up if the occasion demanded. It didn’t. The lifer’s eyes went
