Overkill (5 page)

Maybe all the guns were to ward off gorts, because Triple-A ’bots were less than perfect. But it might be best to adjourn our meeting well before high noon.

I turned back and leaned in the open door. “Thanks for the lift.”

It occurred to me that Kit Born had been nicer to me than she had to be. If her eyes were any indication, it was entirely possible that an attractive woman lurked under her armor. A teenaged boy who isn’t legally alive doesn’t date much. And since enlistment, in the places where my squad mates dragged me on liberty, the girls did the asking. I tried my first pick-up line. “Say, I don’t suppose—”

The Sixer’s interior was empty.

Across the mud street, one of the pedestrians, a short-barreled Browning slung over one shoulder, paused in mid-limp with his back to me.

He turned and I saw that he was unshaven, with a black moustache that drooped past his chin. My heart skipped and I sucked in a breath. A black patch covered one eye.

After all these years, One-eyed Jack the bounty hunter had found me? He was ready to pounce as soon as my immunity expired? Yavet Illegals fetched the universe’s highest bounties. Payoffs compounded the longer an Illegal eluded termination, like uncashed lottery jackpots. So it was too possible that a bounty hunter had stalked a rare adult Illegal like me to the end of the universe.

The man glared in my direction with his remaining eye, then walked away. I exhaled. It wasn’t Jack. But Dead End was a bad neighborhood.

Kit stepped around the Sixer’s fender, slipped her armored vest up over her base tunic, sweat-molded to her torso, and chucked the vest back into the front seat. I tried not to stare. Kit Born’s eyes weren’t the only parts of her that were beautiful and natural.

She said, “I’m coming in with you, Parker.”

Well, well. Maybe I was the pick-up-ee, not the pick-up-or. Still, I wrinkled my forehead. “Why?”

Eight

Thirty seconds later, Kit was past me and through the front door without answering.

Eden Outfitters’ office manager met us at the bottom of the stairs. His belt supported a gunpowder revolver on one side and a Handtalk that looked older than he did on the other. He was gray, stooped, and limped on an old-fashioned prosthetic that replaced his right leg somewhere above the knee.

On Dead End, amputation appeared to be the new black.

He led us down a passage, at the end of which hung an Animap. It showed the sections of the Line, the border that ringed the safe zone centered on Eden; the Triple-A ’bot emplacements, and a field of winking lights intriguingly labeled “Pest Control.” Eden Outfitters’ primary business was monster management, not one-off vacation safaris for Trueborns with more money than sense.

The office manager frowned at Kit. “Who’s minding your section?”

“The adjacent sections are covering. You know that’s standard.”

He stopped and leaned against the wall, breathing hard. “Of course I know. My sister called. She saw you drive into town, and she wet her pants. I promised I’d ask, to shut her up.”

Kit rolled her eyes. “Ben the florist stopped out on Main Street and gave us the look, too, while I was parking.”

The old man waved a hand. “What do you expect? Grezz give people the yips.”

On this planet, even the florists gave me the yips.

Kit hung her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “Oliver, has a grezz from my section ever killed anyone?”

He paused. “Bauer.”

She raised a finger and shook her head. “That doesn’t count. He was dead before I replaced him.”

My jaw dropped. This meeting wasn’t a renegotiation. It was a renege. Bauer, Cutler’s prepaid, hand-picked-by-resume guide was dead.

The manager sat us down in a conference room, in heavy wood chairs around a rough table. One rocky wall was hung with black-framed flat images, below a plaque that read:
IN MEMORIAM
.
FORMER VALUED EMPLOYEES
. It was a big wall, and it was full.

The old man spread his palms toward Kit. “No. Sorry. You’ve been a valued employee. We were fortunate you applied when you did.”

Despite the generous Wall of Fame employee benefit, Eden Outfitters had an evident problem with personnel turnover.

I stared at Kit. I had assumed she was born here. Nobody sane immigrated to Dead End. Especially to take a job with limited opportunity for survival, much less advancement.

I asked the office manager, “How long ago did Mr. Bauer die?”

“Six months.”

“But you’ve kept Mr. Cutler’s prepayment?”

“Cutler’s people wanted a cheaper price. I said okay, if it was nonrefundable, and that’s the way they wrote it. We sent Cutler a Cutlergram about Bauer. Figured the man himself would prefer that.”

Cutlergrams were the cheapest way for the Human Union’s general population to send legal notices, and were worth what they cost. The message would have been months in transit. That would have assured that Eden Outfitters had time to spend Cutler’s prepayment before Cutler’s accountants found out that the prepaid goods were, uh, damaged.

I ran my fingers through my hair. “Now what?”

The old man studied his fingers. “You won’t last a week without a guide. Probably not with one, either, but that’s not my rice bowl to break. Pack up. Go home. Trueborns are smart. Your boss will understand. Won’t he?”

Nine

My heart rattled in my chest. “Cutler” plus “understand” formed an oxymoron. And if I lost this job, I’d be dead in four months, when my immunity lapsed.

Bounty hunters tracked Illegals as zealously as Triple-A ’bots tracked gorts. My plan had been to earn Cutler’s bonus for this job, then spend part of it for up-fare to one of the big hubs, like Mousetrap. You can buy anything at a hub for a price, even a squeaky-clean new identity. Before my immunity expired, I would spend the rest of my bonus for a hub scrub. Then I’d start fresh and broke, but clean and legal, somewhere.

Cutler didn’t get rich by prepaying unearned bonuses to screw-ups. If he paid me only severance, that wouldn’t even cover outbound steerage fare, much less the cost of a black market ID scrub.

My stomach churned. Illegals could survive for years on an overcrowded world like Yavet, like fish hiding in a sea teeming with fourteen billion other fish. I was the living proof. But Dead End’s entire population was less than the population of one
level
in a mid-size stack city on Yavet. A single fish can’t hide in a fish bowl. One-eyed Jack was only a childhood nightmare now. But even the florists on Dead End looked mean enough and hungry enough to moonlight as bounty hunters.

If I couldn’t get off Dead End, and I couldn’t hide within its tiny population, could I hide outside it? Bounty “hunters” were really scavenging jackals. Scavengers didn’t take risks. This was a huge planet, and the bounty jackals probably wouldn’t risk going outside the Line. But in unfamiliar terrain, among lemon bugs, gorts, grezzen and gods-knew-what else, I wouldn’t survive a week. I closed my eyes and groaned.

Kit Born cleared her throat.

Ten

Kit said, “I took Bauer’s place four months ago. I can do it again.”

The old man shook his head. “That means the other sections gotta keep covering yours. That means overtime pay. And half of Eden beating down my doors, scared shitless.”

Kit puffed out a breath. “All that’s the same whether it’sme now, or Bauer when you made your deal.”

I shifted in my chair. That explained why Kit Born left her post out in the boondocks, just to take delivery of supplies that were being shipped out to her anyway. She wanted to size up her potential client anonymously before she pimped with her employer to take Bauer’s place. I got smiled at, interviewed, then got a lift to town because I was a potential paycheck, not a potential date.

Okay, business was business. Kit seemed mission-capable to me, but when you negotiated “trivialities” for Cutler, you were still obliged to throw coins around like manhole covers.

I raised my palm. “Cutler paid for a grezzen expert, not a trainee.”

Kit’s boss didn’t mind being a dick about a refund, especially to a Trueborn, but he also knew Trueborns had lawyers. Lots of them. He squirmed in his chair.

Kit snorted. “Trainee? Don’t you mean Cutler shouldn’t have to pay full rate for a chick?” She held up one hand and began ticking things off on its fingers. “I’m a licensed multi-engine pilot. I—”

I rolled my eyes. “Your breasts and your license have nothing to do with it. Cutler paid for—”

The old man coughed, chopped the air with his hand. “Shut up! Both of you! Parker, I may be an Outworld hick to your Mr. Cutler, but my word is good. I’ll get you a male guide as experienced as Bauer—”

Kit reached over and grabbed the old man’s hand at the wrist. “Wait. I’ll do the job on contingency. If Cutler doesn’t get his grezzen, I work for free. If he gets his trophy, he pays me the guide share that Bauer would have gotten. I know how generous you aren’t with your employees, Oliver. I’m sure the difference Cutler could owe me will be pocket change to a Trueborn.”

That was a terrible deal for her, but it would get the old man off the hook. Not to mention me. He turned to me, and raised his eyebrows.

Cutler liked pay-for-performance. My own deal already had a big bonus in escrow that got released to me as soon as we got a grezzen back inside the Line, or got refunded to Cutler if we didn’t. I turned to Kit. “Let’s go meet Cutler. It’s a deal if he likes you.”

He would. Cutler was big on free enterprise and pay-forperformance. Maybe more so if the free entrepreneur had Caribbean blue eyes. The eyes worked for me, anyway, especially when she was angry. Kit had been less than candid with me, but I couldn’t blame her for sizing up in advance a bunch of offworlders whose incompetence or inadequate equipment could get her killed. And if she hadn’t suggested her compromise, her employer might have let me dangle in a situation that could have gotten
me
killed. Besides, maybe she had made her offer because she wanted to get to know me better.

When the two of us got back to her Sixer, I paused with my fingers on the door handle. “Thanks.”

She cocked her eyebrow. “For what?”

“For helping me out.”

She rolled her eyes, and snorted. “Help
you
, Parker? I’d blow a gort first. And breasts don’t affect a guide’s job performance. Mention mine again and your testicles won’t affect yours any more.”

Perhaps I had overestimated her romantic interest in me.

She jerked her thumb at the Sixer. “Get in. Let’s find out if I have a new boss. Which won’t be you, fortunately.”

Eleven

Kit’s Sixer bounced down Eden’s mud main street while I stared at her. “Born, what did I ever do to you?”

“Not to me, Parker. The Legion served the secessionists in the Marin Suppression on Bren. Torture and genocide don’t charm me.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know—”

Kit raised her fingers from the wheel, and stared straight ahead. “I know soldiers, Parker. I don’t need your excuses. I do need to be your guide. Let’s leave it at that.”

Eden’s Main Street is the length of a fixed-wing forward airstrip, and as muddy. Kit stopped in front of another entry domette, this one painted faux brick, which announced over its door,

EDEN HOUSE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT

IN-ROOM GUN LOCKERS

YOUR STAY LEMON BUG FREE
,
OR BREAKFAST’S ON US

The Eden House lobby would have fit in any closet of any home Cutler owned. A hand-lettered sign flapped slowly beneath the turning ceiling fan. The sign announced that the lobby hosted Libertarian amateur stripper night monthly, “all genders welcome.”

It seemed to me that “both” would’ve been Libertarian enough. First prize was a Claymore mine.

Kit rolled her eyes as she passed beneath the sign. She didn’t pick up an entry form.

Bartram Cutler stood up from a worn plastek chair when we entered, then laid his Reader back down on the chair seat. Six feet three, square of jaw, clear of eye, as perfect as Earth genetics and plastics could make a man.

He looked Kit up and down from her scuffed boots to her slouch hat, with a quick stop at They Which Must Not Be Mentioned, and frowned.

I said, “Aaron Bauer, the guide you hired through Eden Outfitters, is dead, sir.”

Cutler’s eyes widened. “Bauer? Dead? How?”

Kit said, “He was a Line Wrangler. Best guess is a grezzen got him, earlier this year.” She extended her hand to Cutler. “I replaced him.”

Cutler frowned. “As a wrangler or as our guide?”

She said, “Both. If you approve.”

He kept frowning. “I hired Mr. Bauer more for his unique knowledge of grezzen than as a guide. Do I even need you, Ms. Born?”

She shrugged. “Only if you want to live through this.”

Cutler snorted. “What I want is a grezzen. Can you find me one?”

Kit said, “Your problem won’tbe finding grezzen. It will be finding grezzen before they find you.”

Cutler rolled his eyes. “What’re you going to cost me?”

“Nothing, unless you come back with your grezzen. I told Eden Outfitters I’d take the job on that basis.”

Cutler rubbed his chin. “My people didn’t bargain for a guarantee. Why would you sweeten the deal?”

“Let’s say I’m civic minded. A dead Trueborn would hurt the tourist trade.”

Cutler eyed the deserted room. “What tourist trade?” Then he sighed. “All right. Parker, see that she doesn’t report for work with the smart mouth and the wet T-shirt.” He flicked his eyes at the flapping contest sign as he turned away. “This is her new job, not her last one.”

Kit snatched Cutler’s Reader off his chair, cocked her arm, and aimed the Reader at the back of his head.

I clamped her wrist with my hand, froze it as she wound up, then said, “Mr. Cutler!”

“Yes, Parker?”

As Cutler turned back toward us, I pushed Kit’s hand and the Reader down and forward, while I said, “Don’t forget your Reader, sir.”

He wrinkled his forehead, reached out and took his reader, then turned away again.

I hissed in Kit’s ear, “You said you need this job!” I knew
I
did.