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  BODYGUARD

  Max Maxon is an ex-marine who makes his living with a gun. Sasha Casad is a rich teenager trying to catch the next spaceship home. Max’s job is to get her there alive. Somebody’s trying to stop them—somebody with plenty of money and firepower. That doesn’t bother Max. A contract is a contract. Against all odds, he’s going to fulfill this one…and then he’s going to make somebody pay.

  Praise for the work of William C. Dietz, author of the “Drifter” trilogy and the “Sam McCade” series:

  “Slam-bang action!”—David Drake

  “All-out space action!”—Starlog

  “Good solid space-opera, well told.”—Science Fiction Chronicle

  BODYGUARD

  WILLIAM C. DIETZ

  Copyright © 1994 by William C. Dietz

  Published by E-Reads

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0-7592-8826-7

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7592-8826-3

  This book is dedicated to all the freaks, misfits, and outcasts of the world. God bless ’em one and all

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Epilog

  1

  “Market discipline must be maintained.”

  Chairperson of the Board Margaret Hopworth-Smith

  We rose from the depths of the Urboplex like a plague of sewer rats, drifting upwards on crowded platforms, riding the humanity-packed escalators, or climbing hundreds of stairs to emerge blinking from seldom-used exits.

  We were a hard-eyed lot, younger rather than older, and almost universally desperate. For we were the bottom feeders, the lowest-ranking members of a long, hard food chain, willing to do what it took to survive, and well aware of the fact that whatever value we had was related to brawn rather than brains. Something I’ve been short of ever since a portion of mine were blown out during the Battle of Three Moons.

  You remember, the Battle of Three Moons was the key battle in the Labor War fought between the deep-space tool heads and the corpies. I was a Mishimuto Marine back then, and, according to my service record, one tough hombre. Anyway, the loss of that much gray matter makes me a bit slow at times, which is why I eke out a living as a bodyguard instead of doing something more respectable. Not that I have many clients, which accounts for my willingness to do less desirable tasks as well.

  I left the low-rise lift tube, walked the short distance to the high-rise tube, and stepped inside. It was packed with the usual mix of droids and day workers. The robots didn’t give a shit, but the humans made room for me. Lots of room. More than I needed. It might have been an especially polite crowd, or it might have been the fact that I stand seven feet two inches tall, weigh two-fifty, and have a triangular-shaped skull plate. It extends across the back of my head and points forward towards my nose. That, plus a lot of short, prematurely white hair, makes me stand out in a crowd. The white eyebrows, bright blue eyes, and squared-off chin help too. But all of us tend to stand out, the men and women who live by the gun, and risk their lives for less money than a taco vendor makes in a day.

  Not that we are better than taco vendors, because it takes real guts to go home to a crummy little cube, kiss the wife, play with the rug rats for an hour, grab some sleep, get up in the wee hours of the morning, make the tortillas, fry the soy, prepare the lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and salsa the customers expect, haul your stuff two miles through scum-infested corridors, and set up shop. Not just once, but day after grueling day. Now that takes guts. Real guts. More guts than most shooters have.

  The doors whispered closed, the platform moved upwards, and the air was thick with at least thirty kinds of fragrance, cologne, perfume, deodorant, and shampoo. I grinned. No matter what sort of scent my fellow passengers wore, it wouldn’t cover their lower-level stink. Fear and poverty works its way in through your pores, penetrates your guts, and pollutes your soul. It makes you do what you’re told, say what’s safe, and kiss corpie ass.

  Which could account for the fact that the lifers keep us around. You can program a droid to kiss your butt, but they have to obey, and that takes all the fun out of it. No, there’s nothing quite so elevating as to have a real honest-to-god sentient by the short hairs. That’s real, that’s fun, that’s power!

  A woman caught my attention. She was on the other side of the platform and looked good in her T-shirt, waist-cut jacket, and matching pants. She might have passed for anything if it hadn’t been for the telltale bulge of a cross-draw hip holster and the wary look on her face. Our eyes met and she gave me a slow, deliberate nod. The kind one pro reserves foranother. I nodded in return, knowing we understood each other in ways the people around us could never comprehend. We knew what it was like to kill people no worse than ourselves, to sleep with one hand on a gun, and live with our backs against the wall. Yeah, we knew and it didn’t make a damned bit of difference. Because knowing doesn’t mean jack shit. Life sucks, and that’s a fact.

  An ad for Duane’s Big and Tall Shop was projected into both my ears as the lift tube’s computer ran a superficial analysis on my appearance and chose what it deemed to be the most appropriate commercial.

  The platform slowed and stopped on Surface Levels 1, 2, and 3 before the woman and I stepped off. We avoided each other but knew we were after the same thing. Money. Five hundred smackers for a single day’s work. More moola than I had made during the previous month. It’s rare for a real dyed-in-the-wool member of the Big Board to put out a call for one shooter, much less two hundred and fifty, so there would be plenty of takers. Especially since there were no requirements beyond “a reasonable degree of mobility and a valid weapons permit.” Or so the ads said.

  And, thanks to the preference shown to disabled veterans, I had a permit. Brain damage and all. Scary, isn’t it? But that’s how it is in a world where poppers pop, snatchers snatch, and bodyguards guard.

  The day workers scattered for their temporary jobs while I made my way through a labyrinth of corridors, sky bridges, and hallways before arriving at Droidware HQ. I have trouble with directions sometimes, so I had scouted the path twelve hours before and committed it to memory.

  As with most corporations, the lifers had taken good care of themselves. The lobby was a huge affair that featured acres of dark red carpet, tons of gray-white marble, and what must have been a thousand board-feet of real mahogany. A golden “D” graced the back wall and shimmered with internal light. The woman at the front desk was real. Real pretty and well aware of it. She stared at the top of my head as she handed me the baton. “To your left.”

  The baton tugged towards the left and I obeyed. The woman I had seen in the lift tube had arrived ahead of me and disappeared through a pair of double doors. I followed. Outside of some small vid cams that oozed over the walls and ceilings, the hallway was completely bare. The woman passed between another set of double doors. I followed and stepped out into a good-sized auditorium. A bin had been provided for the batons, so I added mine to the rest.

  The auditorium was equipped with rows of starkly utilitarian chairs and a small stage. The floor consisted of polished concrete and slanted down towards an industrial-size drain. Not the sort of place to entertain share owners, but just right for an assemblage of greasy, grimy, lower-level scum like ourselves.

  Fifty or sixty shooters had already arrived and managed to look studiously bored. I knew a few of them and nodded politely. No one asked me to sit next to them, nor would I have accepted if they h
ad. It’s better that way, in case you end up on opposite sides of a fight, and a whole lot safer. Friends can betray you. Strangers can’t.

  I chose a seat towards the back, found that my legs wouldn’t fit, and stuck them out into the aisle. A hard case with a fist-flattened nose nearly tripped on them, opened his mouth to say something, and caught his reflection in my skull plate. I smiled and he moved on.

  Shooters of every possible size and description continued to arrive until the place was more than two-thirds full. It was then that the lights dimmed, the forward wall shimmered, and some broadcast-quality 3-D video appeared. The piece ran ten minutes or so, and did a bang-up job of describing Droidware Inc., the high-quality robots that walked, crawled, rolled, hopped, skipped and jumped out of its highly automated factories, and the almost godlike crew of full-time employees who ran the company. All thirty-six of them. The last of these, a grotesque apparition who had what appeared to be a hundred-year-old head on a twenty-five-year-old female body, bid us welcome and introduced a man who appeared as if by magic at the center of the stage.

  I say “a man,” although he didn’t look much like a man, since vat-grown analogues and complicated electromechanical systems had replaced most of his original organs. Just one of the many fringe benefits associated with life-long employment. Machinery whirred as the lifer surveyed the crowd. His voice was distinctly artificial.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Droidware Inc. My name is Jaspers, Ralph Jaspers, and I’m in charge of Competitive Management at the big ‘D.’”

  Jaspers paused as if to give our pea-sized brains time to absorb this vital piece of information and continued. It appeared as if a well-intentioned PR type had instructed the lifer to gesture with his hands, and he waved them in every possible direction. “You were invited here because we need your help to deal with a competitive threat.”

  I felt my gut tighten. A competitive threat? Was Droidware Inc. about to declare war on one of its rivals? The big board had been pretty successful at limiting open conflict between the companies, but it happened once in a while, which accounted for some rather large standing armies. Armies I no longer cared to be part of. If I had learned anything in the Mishimuto Marines, it was that war sucks.

  It seemed that Jaspers could read minds, at least simple ones like mine, and extended a synthiflesh-lined palm. “No, this is not the beginning of a corporate war. The competitive threat I referred to stems not from one of the many fine corporations that offer products similar to ours, but from the nasty criminal element that preys upon our droids.”

  The audience shifted uneasily, since many of them were part of the “nasty criminal element” that Jaspers referred to, and wondered where this was headed. I thought I understood, although my brain is notoriously unreliable, and prone to the occasional error. Still, I knew that Droidware Inc. manufactured some of the best robots on the market: a fact that attracted thieves and discouraged potential customers. After all, why buy a Droidware model if others were almost as good, and a lot less likely to be stolen?

  It was a common sight in the lower levels to see a team of scrappers blindside a droid, drag it into a passageway, and strip it for parts. Parts that quickly made their way into the illegal black-market robotics shops, where they were used as components for low-end bots that eroded Droidware’s market share. Yeah, some companies had armed their robots, but scrappers still found ways to steal them, and their weapons too. And nobody cared either, since the droids had put millions of flesh-and-blood people out of work, and were owned by the same companies that refused to employ us.

  “So,” Jaspers continued, “we decided it was time to do some housecleaning. We spent months preparing for this day. Our agents have identified the most successful scrappers, know where they live, and how they operate. We have grid coordinates for the illegal factories that purchase black-market parts, profiles on how they operate, and detailed information about their security systems. Your job is to take that information and put it to good use. Similar efforts are underway around the world. Questions?”

  The most obvious question was “Why should we help you make robots that take jobs away from human beings?” But the answer was obvious. Robots were more efficient than people were, amortized themselves in two years, and never asked for a day off.

  The second most obvious question was “Why not order the Zeebs to do it?” Especially since they were indirectly controlled by the corporations, but the audience knew the answer to that one as well. The Zeebs kept order on the streets but lacked the training and incentive to do anything more. Sure, the corpies liked to complain, but since anything that resembled real law enforcement might get in the way of profits, they left things as they were. We were silent. Jasper liked it that way and nodded his approval. “Good…let’s get down to business. Plans have been laid and are ready to be executed. Before we move to that step, however, there are some minor housekeeping matters to deal with. Corporate security informs me that twenty-seven members of the audience lack the weapons permits necessary for this kind of operation and will not be allowed to participate.”

  I don’t think anyone was surprised to learn that Jaspers was in radio contact with his goons. I remembered the baton and the vid cams. The corpies had taken our mug shots, fingerprints, and lord knows what else. More than the minimum amount of information necessary to run us through the so-called “Citizen’s Registry,” and come up with twenty-seven unlicensed shooters. Shooters who had lost their permits or never had one to begin with.

  Doors popped open around the perimeter of the room, and uniformed soldiers stepped in. They wore the burgundy-and-gray uniforms of the Droidware Dragoons and held riot guns cradled in their arms. Their was a universal hiss of indrawn breath followed by the loud whisper of fabric as hands went to weapons. Some people stood while I remained perfectly still.

  There are sizeable gaps in my memories, but my dreams are quite vivid. One involves a group of soldiers firing into a crowd. I don’t know if the massacre really took place, or if I was there, but I’m afraid that it did and I was. So I had seen what double-ought buck does to a crowd and knew what the industrial-strength drains were for. Jaspers held up his hand.

  “Please be calm. There’s no reason for alarm. Those individuals who do not have valid permits will be detained for a period of six hours and compensated for their time. Their weapons will be confiscated but they will be released unharmed.”

  “Why?” a man off to my right demanded suspiciously. “Why detain us?” He stood in a half-crouch, hand on gun, eyeing the Dragoons with open dislike.

  “Because those who do have valid permits would like to arrive down-level unannounced,” Jaspers replied calmly, “and because you are not authorized to carry a weapon.”

  The rest of us, those with valid permits, nodded sagely, and said things like, “Right on,” “You can say that again,” and “Tell ’em how it is, J-man!”

  There was little doubt that the non-permitted shooters would sell us out if they had the chance. We looked at the man who had asked the question, and he wilted under the weight of our stares. He and twenty-six other people were led from the room. I wished I was one of them. The concept of getting paid for not working appealed to me. I should be so lucky.

  The last of the rejects was no more than out the door when the rest of us were divided into what Jasper called “Sanction Teams” and placed under the command of steely-eyed ex-military types. And, being a steely-eyed ex-military type myself, I approved.

  Judging from the way they carried out their briefings, the team leaders had done their homework. There were twelve people on my team, and our leader was a hard-eyed, tight-assed woman named Norris. She was pretty in a pinch-faced “don’t mess with me” sort of way, and I liked her style. We had gathered towards the rear of the auditorium, and she was talking about the equipment piled at our feet. She stood at parade rest.

  “Forget the hardware you brought with you. According to data provided by the s
canners built into the entry hall, you people are armed with everything from double-barreled Derringers to Hicap Machine Pistols. Rather than mess around with such a wide variety of ammo, and take the time to assess the reliability of your hardware, we decided to issue Glock Disposables.” Her arm blurred, and an ugly-looking block of metal and plastic appeared in her hand. I recognized it as the weapon in question. She sounded like a drill instructor.

  “The Glock .9mm semi-automatic disposable hand gun was designed for police use but will meet our needs rather nicely. You will notice the protruding twenty-five-round magazine here, the over-sized safety here, and the thumb-activated laser sight there. Each weapon is capable of firing up to three magazines prior to deactivating itself.” Norris smiled. It appeared and disappeared so fast I couldn’t be sure that I’d seen it at all.

  “So, if we lose a team member,” Norris continued, “and the scrappers grab their weapon, there’s a limit to how much damage they can inflict with it.”

  The guy next to me cleared his throat nervously. He had the soft, pot-bellied look of an off-duty security guard. “What if we need more than three magazines?”

  Norris raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Then we are in deep shit. Seventy-five rounds should be more than adequate for this particular mission, but if it isn’t, then use your own piece as a backup. Satisfied?”