Doom Star: Book 02 - Bio-Weapon Read Online Free PDF Page B

be a gunman for Eastman.”
    “Really?” said Hansen. “Eastman always broke people too soon—in my professional opinion. But then that must have given you a lot of work,” he said to Omi.
    Omi shrugged.
    Hansen laughed more freely now. “Oh, the old days. I don’t miss them, I’ll tell you. The gang leader and the gunman, two toughs that nobody wants to meet in a back alley or in his home. Good old Sydney! But now you’re shock troopers, hired guns fighting for the Highborn.”
    “So speaks the part-time drug runner and full-time informer,” Kang said.
    Hansen slapped the table in outrage. “Now see here, Kang. Maybe I smuggled a tot or two of black sand—I won’t deny that among friends. We all lived in the slums, after all, and had to make ends meet. But this charge of, of…” He angrily shook his long head.
    “Informer,” Kang said. “Job training, in your case.” He snorted. It was his way of laughing.
    Hansen’s foxy eyes narrowed and his veneer of joviality vanished, leaving him sinister seeming.
    “Bet I can guess you how you got this far,” Kang said. “You must have fast-talked the HBs when they were looking for people to trust. Yeah, sure, I bet that’s how you did it. You’d learned enough about undercover work to fool them into letting you be a monitor.”
    “You used to hold your liquor better,” grumbled Hansen.
    “Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Kang said. “We’re all friends here, like you’ve been saying. A gang leader, a gunman, a drug runner and a—Marten, you didn’t live in the slums.”
    Marten shrugged.
    “Where are you from?” asked Hansen, a bit too eagerly, no doubt to stop talking about old times with Kang.
    “He’s from here,” Kang said.
    “You’re from the Sun Works Factory?” asked Hansen. “That’s very rare for someone here to have made it into the shock troops.”
    “He emigrated to Earth first,” Kang said. “Didn’t you, Marten?”
    Hansen lifted his eyebrows, giving Marten a more careful examination. It heightened Hansen’s narrow features, the weakness to his chin and the crafty way his pupils darted. He seemed like a weaker animal, one that constantly judged danger and how close it was to him. “How did it happen that you emigrated to Earth?” he asked.
    “It’s a long story,” Marten said. He slid his chair and stood. “Nature calls.”
    “He’s a quiet one,” Marten heard Hansen saying as he limped away. “They’re always the most dangerous. Remember the time…” Then Marten went to the restroom, relieved himself and as he returned, he noticed a woman in the main doorway glancing about the tavern. He might not have noticed her but she seemed so out of place and frazzled, worried, at wits end.
    She wore an engineer’s gray jumpsuit with heavy magnetic boots and a tool belt still hooked around her waist. An engineer’s cap with a sun logo showed that she serviced the habitat’s outer sun shield. Marten idly wondered what she was doing in Smade’s, what she was doing in the Pleasure Palace all together. She had a heart-shaped face, was pretty and of medium height and regular build. Despite the jumpsuit, it was clear she was well endowed. Alert eyes, small nose and a mobile mouth, a kissing mouth, Marten thought to himself.
    Their eyes met. He nodded. She looked away, then back at him as he sat down. Her gaze slid onto his tablemates. Recognition leaped onto her face as resolve settled upon her. She strode toward them.
    Hansen and Kang argued about something, so neither of them noticed her. Marten saw the two monitors by the bar glance at her, each other and then jump to their feet.
    She beat them to the table. “There’s a problem,” the engineer said without preamble.
    Hansen looked up. “Nadia Pravda, what are you doing here?”
    The two big monitors slid up behind her.
    “The sump exploded and we lost an entire batch of product,” Nadia said. “Tell Bock that it wasn’t my fault.”
    Hansen’s eyes