Killer's Killer

"Bastard, wake up."

"I am awake," I answered.

"Your eyes are closed."

"Who are you going to believe?"

Nevertheless, to please my erstwhile companion, I opened my eyes and looked at him. From the generally unpleasant sensation this caused I could tell they were quite bloodshot, and gazing upon his unpleasant features did nothing to alleviate the discomfort.

One glance would tell an observant person everything they needed to know about my temporary colleague. Big, immensely strong, bald head tattooed with intricate swirling patterns, face a mess from a lifetime of fighting, clearly not terribly bright since an intelligent person would know well enough to avoid being hit in the first place. Dressed as though he saw every holovid about mercenaries and believed every one of them. Clearly Martian, by the perpetual scowl he wore.

Something about the red dust in the atmosphere has a psychological effect on the inhabitants. Increases their aggression or some such. The phrase "Seeing red" took on a different connotation once they settled Mars. Same meaning, but a different connotation.

"Where is she?" he grunted impatiently.

We had come to Nebula Station to meet up with the Countess Madelyne Dujour, a wealthy heiress who had sent me a datapacket, looking for some disreputable types to do some disreputable work. Naturally, since I knew her from her days as Maddy O'Day, a two-bit courtesan from the Outer Rim Bordello and Grill, I was the first person of whom she thought. Since I was not currently dead, I gladly accepted the chance to help a dear old friend. And when the initial advance was securely transferred into my account and transferred back out into my hidden account, I agreed to meet with her here.

"She'll get here when she gets here," I answered without answering.

"It's been three days!"

"And if it is three more, what then?"

His only response was an angry growl and to go glare out the small porthole that looked out onto the starfield beyond Nebula Station.

I closed my eyes. Watching impatience bores me.

Soon enough, however, there was a chime at the door. To my considerable amusement, I was on my feet before my compatriot had fully turned around.

I answered the door. The Countess stood there, tall and willowy slender, her face hardly showing the subjective aging she had undergone that I had avoided by being dead, her hair hanging in complicated braided loops. Elegantly dressed in a gown of natural fibres, not synthetic, which spoke of credits, but not ostentatious, which spoke of the intelligence I remembered of her.

"Jack," she smiled at me warmly as I ushered her in.

"Countess," I smiled back, offering her a courtly bow.

"You haven't changed," she observed.

"And you have only grown more beautiful," I replied.

"Who do you want us to kill?" asked my idiot partner.

"You, actually," said the Countess, and deftly shot him.

"Thank you, Jack," she said, looking over her husband's murderer.

"Not at all, Countess," I replied.