Vatican Assassin Read Free Page B

“Lunar Prime,” but just about everyone else still calls it Reagan Station. Reagan Station is lived-in. It’s like any other city, with good sections and bad, old, broken-down dark areas and shiny new construction.
    Independent and united in their neutrality, Luna’s populace segregates itself into its own smaller, separate areas: The Jewish Section, The Pagan Enclave, The Universal Temple, Chinatown. Their separate sectors spoke off the central hub of old Reagan Station proper and the Main Dome through a series of interconnected corridors and airlocks.
    The Main Dome is at the center of the old station and the city, a giant atrium nearly a mile across, the central hub for the station. Three floors of residences and shops circle the atrium. The dome atop the atrium is clear, allowing a breathtaking view of the stars and Earth. Artificial gravity supplements the moon’s weak attraction on the floor of the main dome. At the center is a wide, roughly circular pool almost a half a mile in diameter, deliberately overgrown with vegetation and teeming with aquatic life. It’s designed as a part of the environmental systems and also to be “aesthetically pleasing.” The pool is crisscrossed by two broad walkways lined with trees and bushes. Maples and pines, oaks, elms and Douglas firs, and ferns, hedges and dogwoods, all can be found under the moon’s Main Dome.
    There are lilac bushes and stretches of grass surrounding the central pool. Artificial breezes circulate. We try to bring Earth with us, to recreate it best we can. It’s been recreated well in the Main Dome of Reagan Station.
    BC is in a deserted part of the Dome. There are cleaners and other maintenance robots around, but no people. This is part of BC’s plan. This immediate area has no shops or residences.
    And now, no bag. Not a part of my plan. And my ankle hurts!
    I thought my bag would be safe around here. Maybe it was picked up by Maintenance. That might be worse than getting stolen. They’ll make a record of it. I think I hope someone stole it. Twisted. Huh, like my ankle. Bad pun. Is that a pun? I don’t know...
    BC looks back at the wall of the Main Dome. The circular outer wall of this level of the dome is blank, but above him, on the second level, he can hear the din of people and commerce. Where I need to be. The reception hall entrance is back up there, on the other side of the dome.
    I can’t go up there looking like this, all in black with my collar off, legs dipped in shit and the rest of me splattered. Real fine company.
    Then there’s the Lunar Security Cop I knocked out. She’ll be waking up. I gotta get outta here. Gotta get some new clothes, fast, too. Time to move. He walks through the pine trees and heads for the center of the dome, towards the central pool. He walks along the pool’s edge until he sees a line of shops ahead on the dome’s outer wall. He scans the signs of the shops until he sees the one he needs. Men’s clothes. Just ahead. Men’s Shop. Perfect. Now, I’ve gotta kind of casually walk out of the trees and into the open, covered in shit. Hum Dee dump Dee dum...
    He ducks out of the wooded section and heads for the Men’s store. There are a few people around, but most don’t notice him or try not to notice him.
    I haven’t been here long enough for anyone to know me yet, thank God. Most of these people seem pretty calm, too... I wonder if the job is done? Should be by now. Should be mass pandemonium, people running crazy... well, maybe not, but some kind of reaction, anyway. Maybe they’re just keeping it quiet for now.
    BC makes it into the men’s clothing store without incident. The sales assistant eyes him warily as he walks in. He’s young, impeccably dressed. He arches an eyebrow as he tries to look down his nose at BC. His nose wrinkles as he begins to smell him.
    “Can I help you?” His voice virtually drips with disdain.
    “I need a new suit. I’d like to have these clothes I’m wearing