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.