in the Wasteland entire.
I grimaced, then stepped out of the door to the sounds of distant screams and the cracking and sawing of laser carbines.
The
Coin Collector
was a pyramid of brassy metal, its edges rounded and measuring a mile long, the throats of its fusion engines nearly covering one face and possessing enough drive power to fry a small moon. As the giant reel inside its EVA bay, which lay a quarter of a mile up from the fusion engines, wound in the bathysphere, I turned to watch Harriet clumsily using a suction sanitizer on her body to clean off all the blood now that she'd licked off everything she could reach with her tongue.
As the bathysphere drew closer to the ancient prador tug, I considered the debacle below. The Frobishers had been utterly unprepared for Harriet and utterly unprepared for me. Harriet had torn into them quickly, leaving the route to the parking lot scattered with body parts, and had been munching on the same when I had arrived there. More Frobishers had turned up while I was stealing a swamp car and they had managed to get off a few shots before my QC laser fire drove them back and beforeHarriet finished off the stragglers. Next, I had taken one of the cars out and set it on automatic before abandoning it. A proton blast had turned it to wreckage about half a mile out, but by then we were well beyond it and soon safe inside the bathysphere. Still, the Client would not be pleased and I did not look forward to that.
I peered down at the holes burned through my jacket and into the artificial parts of my body, which were most of its parts. My sight was slightly blurred, my other senses dull, and my right arm wasn't working properly. It seemed likely that as well as structural damage there might be some problem with my smart plasm component. This meant I would have to go into a mold and level-two consciousness for nerve reintegration, which also increased the likelihood of the Client communicating with me. This annoyed me intensely, as did the Frobishers' ludicrous attempt to rip me off.
Had Madeleine Frobisher really thought she could just lure me down, capture me, break into my bathysphere, and steal the payment I had brought? Had she completely neglected to factor this ship up here into her plans? Then again, perhaps she
had
factored it in. Perhaps her aim had been not only theft of the payment I had brought but seizure of my ship as well. How naïve. I stood, walked over to one of the array of hexagonal screens and human consoles plugged into prador pit-controls, and made a call.
"Madeleine," I said, the moment her face appeared in one of the screens. "That was really a rather silly thing to do."
"You destroyed the artifact," she replied. "Why did you do that? It's something you've been hunting down for ages."
Odd,
I thought, she seemed genuinely puzzled. Working the controls, I called up a view of the Frobisher colony raft from a remote I'd dropped on the surface before descent.
"As you should be well aware, the item you showed me wasn't genuine," I replied. "It has not been sitting in your raft over the ages, but was recently made there."
"It was not!"
"Whatever. Your subsequent attempt to imprison me and break into my craft demonstrated your intent."
"My intent was to ensure you had brought payment. It was you who started killing my brothers!"
"Weak, Madeleine, very weak." I paused, a suspicion nagging at me. I relayed an instruction to the
Coin Collector
for a search of the area surrounding the colony raft. "So, if you didn't make the thing, where did you really get it from?"
She gazed at me for a long moment, perhaps realizing her predicament and understanding that lies would not help now. Meanwhile the search produced results: a group of Cleavers watching from around an ancient tripod-mounted holocorder mounted on a platform that was itself fixed to a swamp car. This could not be a regular activity of the Cleavers, for surely they would have automatic systems in place to
I grimaced, then stepped out of the door to the sounds of distant screams and the cracking and sawing of laser carbines.
The
Coin Collector
was a pyramid of brassy metal, its edges rounded and measuring a mile long, the throats of its fusion engines nearly covering one face and possessing enough drive power to fry a small moon. As the giant reel inside its EVA bay, which lay a quarter of a mile up from the fusion engines, wound in the bathysphere, I turned to watch Harriet clumsily using a suction sanitizer on her body to clean off all the blood now that she'd licked off everything she could reach with her tongue.
As the bathysphere drew closer to the ancient prador tug, I considered the debacle below. The Frobishers had been utterly unprepared for Harriet and utterly unprepared for me. Harriet had torn into them quickly, leaving the route to the parking lot scattered with body parts, and had been munching on the same when I had arrived there. More Frobishers had turned up while I was stealing a swamp car and they had managed to get off a few shots before my QC laser fire drove them back and beforeHarriet finished off the stragglers. Next, I had taken one of the cars out and set it on automatic before abandoning it. A proton blast had turned it to wreckage about half a mile out, but by then we were well beyond it and soon safe inside the bathysphere. Still, the Client would not be pleased and I did not look forward to that.
I peered down at the holes burned through my jacket and into the artificial parts of my body, which were most of its parts. My sight was slightly blurred, my other senses dull, and my right arm wasn't working properly. It seemed likely that as well as structural damage there might be some problem with my smart plasm component. This meant I would have to go into a mold and level-two consciousness for nerve reintegration, which also increased the likelihood of the Client communicating with me. This annoyed me intensely, as did the Frobishers' ludicrous attempt to rip me off.
Had Madeleine Frobisher really thought she could just lure me down, capture me, break into my bathysphere, and steal the payment I had brought? Had she completely neglected to factor this ship up here into her plans? Then again, perhaps she
had
factored it in. Perhaps her aim had been not only theft of the payment I had brought but seizure of my ship as well. How naïve. I stood, walked over to one of the array of hexagonal screens and human consoles plugged into prador pit-controls, and made a call.
"Madeleine," I said, the moment her face appeared in one of the screens. "That was really a rather silly thing to do."
"You destroyed the artifact," she replied. "Why did you do that? It's something you've been hunting down for ages."
Odd,
I thought, she seemed genuinely puzzled. Working the controls, I called up a view of the Frobisher colony raft from a remote I'd dropped on the surface before descent.
"As you should be well aware, the item you showed me wasn't genuine," I replied. "It has not been sitting in your raft over the ages, but was recently made there."
"It was not!"
"Whatever. Your subsequent attempt to imprison me and break into my craft demonstrated your intent."
"My intent was to ensure you had brought payment. It was you who started killing my brothers!"
"Weak, Madeleine, very weak." I paused, a suspicion nagging at me. I relayed an instruction to the
Coin Collector
for a search of the area surrounding the colony raft. "So, if you didn't make the thing, where did you really get it from?"
She gazed at me for a long moment, perhaps realizing her predicament and understanding that lies would not help now. Meanwhile the search produced results: a group of Cleavers watching from around an ancient tripod-mounted holocorder mounted on a platform that was itself fixed to a swamp car. This could not be a regular activity of the Cleavers, for surely they would have automatic systems in place to
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