FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The smell was the first thing she noticed. Not the shrieks of pain and fear, the listless humming of the air scrubbers or the oppressive heat that wrapped around her naked body like a glove. No, it was always the overpowering stench that assaulted her first, the smell of cheap perfume and foundation, of sweat and unwashed bodies, of bad food and ethanol, and worst of all...the smell of the males.

She jumped as a hand tightened around her wrist, leathery skin catching painfully on her sweat soaked fur, grinding in the collective dirt of untold anonymous encounters. She couldn't recall the last time she'd seen soap or water. The hand pulled upward yanking her from the tiled floor with brute strength.

"No... can't... need time to rest...._please..." _Her pleas fell upon deaf ears and as she was dragged - head slamming against the tiled floor with a sickening crack; and a long mindless sorrowful wail rose up around her. Momentarily she wondered where it was coming from...and then with horror she realized that it was emanating from her own throat the sound trailing off as her mind sank into the dark abyss of unconsciousness.

The harsh tones of reality flared around Clarissa as the white vixen snapped out of the flashback-just in time to suffer through a burst of foul breath from a passing dachshund. She coughed violently and turned away from the noxious canid, focusing her attention on the entrance to the nightclub. Clarissa cursed angrily, and wondered for the third time what infernal rule required her contract managers to be late-incessantly. Another burst of loud rap music blared from the overtaxed speakers, and the vixen mentally cringed; they had played this song twice already.

Clarissa hated nightclubs with a passion. The loud noise, the press of bodies...the dancers; scantily clad foxes or felines who danced the same sad routines as the male patrons watched with vapid fascination. The paint was peeling from the ceiling, the drinks probably watered down to such an extent that Clarissa could have probably gotten more intoxicated drinking tap water than the club's meager fare.

The only reason that the place had such a high body count now was probably because it was the only nightclub open on the station. _No real need to have quality service when you're the only one in business. _Clarissa checked the door once again, and saw it swing open on rusty hinges to admit a few more already rowdy patrons and clang shut, with a deep sonorous gong that made her ears ache.

The vixen was dressed in common mercenary attire: desert camouflage Earth Style BDU with steel toed combat boots; a series of small rings followed the upper edge of her right ear, the only jewelry she wore. Consequently she was very out of place in the nightclub, as almost all of the patrons were 'dressed to impress'. She had received a few odd looks and comments when she'd come in, but one glance at her piercing gaze had served to silence any smart comments immediately.

Clarissa reached into her pocket and withdrew a small bottle of water; she trusted the plumbing of the station about as much as she'd trusted some of her teammates on previous missions. Just as she raised the bottle to her lips, the first pearl of water trembling at it's opening, jewel like, she heard a voice behind her:

"Well at least you attempt to make yourself noticeable."

Clarissa hid her surprise well, finishing her motion smoothly, taking a sip of water before turning around to confront the speaker. The speaker, smelling of cologne and synth-wine was a lizard, dressed in a zoot-suit of all things. The anole had a calico cat hanging onto his left arm, a blaster pistol hung at his hip. Clarissa noted the length of the barrel and hazarded a guess. "That a Kevorkian G-76?" The lizard smiled thinly, showing gel capped teeth. "You obviously recognize quality firearms." Clarissa nodded, mentally quipping, And I also recognize a status symbol when I see one. Doubt he could hit the side of a barn though. Or that he really is that well endowed.

The anole pulled up a seat at Clarissa's table and ordered a bottle of sherry from the service droid which hovered into view. While they waited for the drinks, the lizard began. "I've seen your record Clarissa, and frankly I'm impressed. You've preformed several assassinations, done defensive duty for the T-Axis group, and all manner of other things."

Clarissa felt her temper slowly rise; she disliked it when others discussed her military records in detail, _especially in crowded rooms. _She'd already seen a few patrons begin looking at her more intently then usual, and at the moment, in her present mood the last thing she wanted to do was to have to incapacitate some up in coming merc-wannabe, who saw a bounty and thought he could bag her.

Her mind flickered back to the lizard's spiel: "However in this system, the records of previous deeds aren't worth day old shit. You'll have to work your way up; just like everyone else who's had to come to this station." Clarissa's eyes narrowed slightly and she said,

"I was told that the contracts would be worth my while. Are you telling me that my records aren't worth anything?!"

The anole smiled an oily smile and said, "In my eyes they aren't worth the paper they're printed on." Clarissa's jaw twitched and she prepared herself to rise; there had to be other individuals on this station who'd offer her contracts, individuals who didn't walk around expecting people to capitulate to their needs. The lizard sighed patiently and turned to the vixen, looking her full in the face. Clarissa halted in mid stride and turned to face him. "I'm the only person on this station who'll pay in non counterfeit credits, everybody on this station has a printing press somewhere, and unless you wanna get frisked by the authorities every time you make a purchase you'll work with me. That's my offer: take it or leave it."

Clarissa knew that she'd have to get cash soon, she was already eating into her own accounts and the only way she'd be able to get information about the station was through contacts like the scum ball lizard who was sitting across from her, grinning broadly because he knew just how strapped for cash she was.

Clarissa sat down and took a swig from her water bottle, defiantly staring him in the eye; she wasn't conceding defeat just yet. "What's the job...mister..." The lizard held out a hand and said smoothly, "Call me Barristo." Clarissa shook the proffered appendage, mentally reminding herself to wash her hands as soon as she got back to her ship

"Now your first job ...hmmm." He put a thumb to his chin and said, "You're new in the system, so I'll give you something easy.'

Clarissa had to will herself not to roll her eyes in annoyance, he was toying with her, trying to goad her into saying something that would piss him off.

The droid came back laden with a tray, on top of which rested a 12 oz bottle of sherry and a pair of dark shot glasses. The lizard poured himself a shot and threw it back expertly, blinking slightly as the synth-liquid hit his already loaded system. He offered a shot to Clarissa who politely declined the drink. After downing the second shot without so much as a grimace this time, he continued: "I sell high grade Fleegler capsules to the local community, the stuffs big in the outer rim worlds. Mad addictive y'see, one gram and they come begging for more."

Clarissa's opinion of the lizard dropped by a couple more notches, Great_, a pimp and a drug dealer, where have my standards gone? _Seriously glad that the reptilian couldn't read her thoughts, she listened further. "One of my customers has started skipping payments, took us three months to realize he's been doing it; slippery bastard. If one starts doing it, they all start trying to fuck up the system, we start losing revenue, and I end up answering to the bosses why their balances don't add up. Not fun."

Clarissa noted with some satisfaction, that his eyes showed a momentary flicker of fear at the mention of the 'bosses'. Good to know this ectotherm's not completely invincible. Even he has someone to answer to. _Clarissa listened intently as Barristo downed another shot glass and continued: "We've been trying to track this guy for weeks now but he keeps moving all over the place, and he's using someone else to supply him from _their stash. This ferret owes us around 1,500 credits and I've decided that today's the day he pays up. "

The anole pulled out a 3x5 card and wrote a sequence of numbers on the back, then pulled out a photo and slid them both across the table to her. "He's Arixa Fergune, normal lowlife scum who has about a million cousins who'll help him out in a pinch. If he doesn't have the money, plug him. Send the rest of my clientele a message: you pay up or you pay with your hide."

"Any particular way you want me to dispatch this guy?"

Barristo gave her another one of his slightly disconcerting smiles and said, "I'll trust your judgment."

Clarissa nodded slightly and then rose, shaking his hand as she did so. Turning away from the anole she slipped out the door of the Buckshot nightclub and into the bustle of the station. The lights were dim -which wasn't much of a surprise; the station's fusion cores were running at halved output due to delayed fuel shipments, casting a gloomy pallor over the crowd which Clarissa was forced to wade through to get to the elevators.

It would have been too much for Clarissa to ask for to have an uneventful ride down to the hangar bay, and so it happened that as she slipped into the elevator carriage, mentally praying that some idiot wouldn't walk up behind her and try to start something, that she heard a low whistle and turned to see a burly akita in a muscle shirt and cargo pants enter along with her.

She turned to face the newcomer, feeling apprehension as he looked down on her, from his impressive 6,1 height and quipped, "Well I always did admire women in uniform."

Clarissa's already foul mood caused her to snap, "I'm not interested compadre, find some other floozy. I heard the Buckshot's _got girls aplenty." The Akita's eyes narrowed slightly and Clarissa heard the _snap of a cracking knuckle joint. Two levels passed in silence and as Clarissa's floor chimed she moved to pass the hulking expanse of muscle blocking the doorway.

"This ain't your floor."

"What?"

"I don't like girls with mouths, you ain't gettin off until you apologize. I was tryin to be nice is all." Clarissa looked at the hangar entrance with longing as the doors closed, sealing them in. Clarissa's quick mind flitted over to the set of titanium alloy knuckledusters in her left pocket. Although she'd get a moment's satisfaction from walloping this oaf, she knew that it wouldn't do to have enemies-when she wasn't carrying a pistol.

Clarissa apologized in an even tone, and then waited for the muscle-bound dog to admit passage. As soon as she stepped out into the open air, she breathed a sigh of relief. Males had never been a favorite with her, at least not since her college years. A few unfortunate events during those years had ensured that almost all men who approached her became undesirable. Her long tail billowed behind her as she strode toward the antigrav platform which led down from the landing to the bank of hangar bays which rose in a spiral from the bottommost tiers of the station's superstructure. Clarissa clambered on, feeling the device shift uncertainly with her weight.

Wondering how long it had been since the thing had been serviced, she turned to a small console and keyed in the numerical code from the parking slip in her breast pocket. The grav-pad dropped unexpectedly downwards, leaving Clarissa in a freefall for a full three seconds before it went into it's normal descent routine, spiraling downwards at a much more tolerable rate. Clarissa picked herself up off the pad, grimacing as she felt a slight bump beginning to swell up on her right wrist; apparently she'd banged it attempting to break her fall.

She looked up at the naked girders of reddish metal superstructure, around which were intertwined various pipes and cables, half of which were probably add onto the station's original structure; the facility had only been built to handle 15 ships and it had taken several overhauls to reach it's current capacity of 150 vessels. As Clarissa spiraled downward she saw a much larger pad carrying a group of simians up toward the social level. They were dressed like tourists, with their cameras, backpacks, and horridly out of fashion clothing and Clarissa couldn't help but think that at least one of the group would end up learning the hard way about carrying a purse in a crowd.

Clarissa had to hand it to the males, if they did get one thing right (even this was a bit much)- whoever had invented the wallet had been a genius; portability and ease of use in one small package. The lift dropped Clarissa off at flight gantry # 12, which was the temporary home of her old Ikaria A-12 Star hopper.

The ship was at least half a decade old, but despite the outmoded technology, Clarissa preferred it over some of the other models she'd seen in the hangar. It's lack of complex parts ensured easy repairs and overhauls, even a person with relatively low technical skills could make simple field repairs with ease.

The ship was built for three occupants, and had a rear storage bay which Clarissa had resized to accommodate a single Spartan X-71 Heavy Bomber and an old turbine-type hover bike. The ship had four small levels, first floor was the galley and cockpit, second floor held the berths , most of which Clarissa used for storage and the final level housed the cargo bay, a miniscule armory and the engine rooms and computer core . Clarissa keyed in the access code and checked her watch. It was 1:00 pm.

The ramp hissed open and Clarissa stepped into the ship's innards. Pulling a remote from a wall holster she keyed in a few commands, and the flowing notes of Beetoven's 5th flitted birdlike into the confines of the cargo level. Clarissa bent her head as she passed under the wing of her Spartan X-71 bomber, sliding her hand lovingly across the cool metal as she passed. Entering the small personal lift, she pressed the well worn button which sent the lift on a three second journey to the second floor. The carriage stopped with an earsplitting shriek, and Clarissa mentally noted that she'd have to re-oil the compressor system on the lift's hydraulic brakes.

Her room was the largest of the three; middle door and located closest to the lift, affording quick access in case of an emergency. She pressed her thumb against the bio-scanner and heard a musical chime as it recognized the vixen. She pushed the solid steel door open and entered the room. It was furnished simply, a small workstation was in the far corner, a queen sized bed which Clarissa had come to regard as a necessity after having to sleep in the cockpit of her bomber for over a week. Clarissa kicked off her boots and shed her jacket, pulling back the workstation's chair and sliding in, booting it up with the casual flick of a finger.

After keying in another access code, she had gained access to the station's Interlink channel, and rifled through the pockets of her jacket for a few moments before pulling out the picture and the index card. The sequence of numbers that Barristo had written upon the back of the card was really an IP address, a sort of beacon that let the station's switch boards know where to broadcast signals effectively thus conserving precious bandwith.

The IP addresses could be traced easily, provided that one had the correct programs-but Clarissa guessed that Barristo's agents had tried to hack into the guy's system, gotten tagged and he'd flown the coop as soon as they sent out a collection agent. Clarissa pulled out the photo and studied it.

The eyes were always the first thing she noticed, they were slightly out of focus, and Clarissa could guess that the ferret had been under the influence of something _when the picture was taken. She opened a small flatbed scanner, sliding the picture underneath and running it though. The ferret's face ballooned on the holographic screen, and Clarissa zoomed in again just to make sure. _Dilated pupils, yep...something's in his blood.

Clarissa zoomed out again, checking the facial fur. Reasonably clean, which meant that he'd had a steady job when he'd started taking the stuff. Obviously Barristo's idea of 'lowlife scum' included the full spectrum of the middle class. Clarissa minimized the picture and pulled up a layout of the station. Immediately her eyes fell upon levels 1-300 all of which were apartments. Clarissa knew that in the less civilized systems, racial and species divisions were still alive and well. She automatically wrote off levels 50-300 as those were expensive luxury condos, only wealthy canids and felines lived up there. Middle and lower class were spread out below them in stratified layers.

The stations' network had two main transmitters, one which transmitted to the residential level and another which handled the commercial levels and hangar, which were primarily low use areas. IP addresses were not merely a series of random numbers. Arixa's address, (45.23.) behaved via a simple set of rules. The first two digits dictated the coverage of the generators, so Arixa lived somewhere in between levels 1-45. But this meant that Clarissa would have to search each of the 500 apartments in levels 1-45 in each of the 300 level blocs.

Some of this confusion was removed however when one noted that the second set of numbers denoted connection speed and as the middle class were restricted to under 30 kbs.... Clarissa's hands flew over the keyboard as she entered in the search, setting the ship's COM system to passively scan the net for computers running at 20 or higher Kbps, and sure enough she found them, a band of hotspots in level 37, all the other low income middle class were running at the redline. But she noted with some interest that one signal in particular was...moving?

She set the scanners again and ran the program. The same slow laborious movement. Directly above her. Clarissa slipped on her coat and boots, stumbling toward the door. The lift took her down to the engineering level where Clarissa fumbled through a bin of old electronics before withdrawing a selenium gas powered jetpack. She'd bought the thing on a whim but never used it.

Slinging the pack onto her back and pulling a mini-scanner from a bin, she sprinted for the exit-narrowly avoiding clanging her head against the wing of her bomber as she passed.

Once outside, she strapped the Jetpack's control setup to her arm and keyed in the IP address on the scanner's battered keypad. Opening up the throttle, she rocketed upward, narrowly missing girders and walkways as she ascended. Clarissa set the jetpack to it's hover function and paused to set the scanner for 'proximity'. Slowly she eased the hat stick forward and watched as the numbers decreased. Finally she looked up from the device. She was hovering fifty meters away from the damn thing, and there was nothing except a small spider like maintenance droid which crawled spiderlike over the girders, spraying rust resistant foam on the scarred metal.

Clarissa had put her thumb on the joystick, ready to turn around when she stopped. She pushed the stick forward coming in for a close view. The little droid was struggling up the vertical face of the girder-and a small rectangular chip was glued to it's back. Several wires led from the chip to the insect like body of the droid and in a flash Clarissa grasped the simple genius of Arixa's plan.

The chip, glued clumsily to the droid's back was a simple Network Interface Card, which would route the signal from the Interlink servers to another computer in the network. The card probably was designed to cut off if active scanners were used but Clarissa's roundabout method had rendered the plan useless. The droid was the perfect cover, it's patrol routes changed constantly and with their large power cores, there was only a slight possibility of the thing cutting out in the middle of service.

Clarissa pulled the droid off the wall, and plugged a small cable into an access port, running the scanner's digital tendrils over it's software...a few seconds of scanning and Clarissa had easily gained the exact transmission location, narrowing the re-directed signal down to apartment 234 on Level 233.

Clarissa descended in a slow spiral, finally bee lining toward her ship. Skidding to a stop she unbuckled the jetpack and checked her watch. 2:00 pm. As she sprang down up the entrance ramp, Clarissa threw the half-expired jetpack into a bin and pulled a cellphone from her pocket. Speed dialing Barristo's number, she waited for the lizard to pick up the phone.

"Yeah?"

"It's Clarissa...I've found him."

It had taken Clarissa another half hour to choose the appropriate outfit for her small trek into the upper tenements. She obviously couldn't wear her standard outfit in a residential area; on stations like this, the residents were able to recognize mercs from a mile away, and unless one knew how to properly camouflage themselves, their quarry would have flown the coop as soon as they got within 500 meters.

Clarissa's outfit was deceptively simple, tight fitting blue-jeans and a lime green shirt, over which she wore a thin jacket. Unless one looked closely at the vixen one might envision her to be one of the minor distributors, peddlers who fed the local habit and answered to local Lords like Barristo. But the outfit was merely an ingenious disguise.

On the inside of the pants legs Clarissa had taped paper thin strips of ultralight Kevlar, focusing most of the material on her knees and ankles, the most obvious spots for a shooter to aim for, especially one who was inexperienced. The gel was rated for lo powered blaster fire-but considering the poverty level on the station, that was all she expected Arixa to field, if anything.

Her jacket contained a light lead mesh interwoven into the padding which could fool house scanners, and inside the right inside pocket was a singe Smith & Wesson 652 model revolver. Old world weapons were useful, as the rest of the civilized systems used plasma and laser based weapons. The technology used to trace ballistic weapons had almost completely disappeared, and left a gigantic hole that enterprising mercenaries with a little extra money were only too willing to fill.

Clarissa strode toward the repulsorlift pad, her stride relaxed...calm. Completely different from the devil-may-care look that she had worn when in her previous outfit. Clarissa's ride up to the upper level was uneventful, except for a few unsettling tremors from the pad's generators. She stepped off the pad and headed for the lift which would take her to the tenement levels. As she stepped inside the lift, her eyes strayed to the graffiti scrawled upon the wall floors and ceiling, an odd tangle of multicolored lines and squiggles, in a hundred different languages and dialects, denoting the supposed prominence of the various gangs and cults that ran the station.

Criminal organizations were especially prevalent in space stations, and this one was no different. Clarissa had done a small bit of research before coming to the station, and wore only neutral colors; but with a simple change she could affiliate herself with at least three districts-when it suited her. Clarissa noted with some sign of relief that the elevator was traveling on old style cable tracks, none of the badly maintained antigravity lifts for her. She keyed in level 233 and waited out the long ride to the top, feeling her blood begin to boil as pre mission jitters wracked her mind.

The levels passed in a blur 1...20...40...50, and the vixen's heart rate sped up as she neared her destination. Her hand strayed to the brass knuckles in her left pocket, and she slipped them over the fingers of her long delicate hands. It was always like this with new areas. On the first mission she'd get uncharacteristically nervous, even though she almost always succeeded in doing the jobs assigned her.

The elevator chimed noisily and Clarissa let out a deep breath before stepping out into the walkway. The floor was worn smooth, and had a slight patina from the years of footprints which had scoured it's surface. The air up this high was hot, as the apartment levels were located up at the station's zenith, and all it took was a simple lesson in convection, to explain the nearly 20 degree temperature difference between the apartments and the hangar levels.

About 100 feet above her the walkway from the higher up level loomed precariously and Clarissa could see a veritable rats nest of cables and wiring of varying thickness and coloring following the gentle curving arc of the walkway. Clarissa guessed that about 10 percent of the population had access to pirated services, which explained the odd smatterings of high speed uplink tags Clarissa had found scattered throughout the middle class strata.

The lights here were a barely distinguishable glow; perhaps the pull from the commercial sector's power grid had been stronger than usual that night. As Clarissa strolled past the rows of tenements she could hear the sounds of holo-feed players broadcasting the swoop race from Artarcus IV. She could hear the muffled sounds of laughter...of children playing, though none roamed the streets as child slavery was a very real threat on a space station.

She could hear them, but not see them; windows had been dispensed with hundreds of years ago; too easy for robbers to break and enter. Yet for all the precautions, life here seemed to be only two notches away from normal. _Normal. _Clarissa had lived a normal life...once. Before the change had come.

A change that had affected her family...and shaken it to it's core. Clarissa stopped in front of the apartment building where she had traced the signal. Apartment 234. She felt her heart rate slow as she reached her hand toward the metal surface. Clang...Clang...Clang.

The sound echoed hollowly, the other noises having faded from her consciousness, her mind was waiting for a response. Praying for it. She slid the brass knuckles farther up her fingers and tapped with the left hand this time, rapping the metal sharply, one ear twitching at the piercing musical note that was produced. Three seconds passed.

Clarissa flexed the fingers of her left hand, hearing a muffled pop, as a joint snapped from inside the fabric of the jacket. There was the sound of footsteps from behind the door. A light _whirr _emanated from the top of the frame, and Clarissa glimpsed the fisheye lens of a buttonhole camera peering out at her.

"Who're you?"

The voice was hoarse and quivery, that of a being of at least 70 years, not the 45 year old ferret which she had glimpsed in the picture. Clarissa swallowed and said, "I'm your supplier. Got some Flea if you want it."

"Show me your hands."

Clarissa had already slipped the knucklers off her fingers, and quickly flashed her hands in front of the camera. There was a light click as the camera's scanners engaged and swept down her frame.

Another pause, and then the door unlocked with a muffled thunk and swung open on loudly hissing hydraulics. Clarissa stepped forward and entered the apartment. The door closed behind her and Clarissa was sealed in. It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but in that time Clarissa was able to approximate the position of the ferret with ease. She could smell him even from the entranceway.

Clarissa looked up finally and saw him. The animal's fur was matted with grime, sweat beaded on his forehead, his only clothing a pair of tattered shorts, his chest bare. His eyes shone with an unearthly light, the right eye slightly red from a burst vessel. His hands shook slightly.

_My God...how can Barristo sleep at night? _The ferret strode unsteadily over to the far wall and slid a dimmer switch upward slightly, alleviating the gloom. Clarissa felt her heart sink slightly with a mixture of disgust and pity as she saw the state of the room. Synth-beer canisters were strewn all over the floor. A red coffee table sat in the middle of the room, on top of which were various empty bottles and bags. Clarissa could guess what those had once contained. On the far wall, to the left of an old cathode-ray TV set hung a picture of a pair of ferrets, one male and one female and a child of about 5 years. All looked young and happy. Her eyes flitted over to the aged creature sitting in a chair, running his trembling hands over his arms and realized that they were one and the same.

Arixa cleared his throat loudly, and Clarissa jumped slightly. Reaching into her pocket with her left hand she withdrew a baggie of small red pills and tossed them to the ferret who snatched them out of the air like he was grabbing onto a lifeline. And in all probability he was. "Who are you with...I've been looking for a new supplier since last Monday."

"Can't say. A friend told us you'd been bitten, said I might be able to help the 'itch'." The ferret looked at the bag closely. "These are red." Clarissa cursed mentally, she'd been unsure of what the capsules had looked like and had grabbed some small vitamin c tablets from her medicine chest to use as a prop.

"It's a new batch...we're new in the business. Apparently red's the new black." His bright eyes searched her face momentarily. Finding nothing in her face, he reached down into the bag and withdrew a few of the pills, swallowing them dry. Clarissa sat down in a chair opposite the ferret, shifting her coat slightly-and using the motion to slip her right hand inside her jacket. The fingers curled around the handle of the pistol.

The old six-shooter slug thrower was an antique that had belonged to her father. The family had been in the Solax mining business, and he had used it to defend himself when staking his claims among the stars. He'd said the gun had always brought him luck, and in homage to him she always brought the weapon along with her when on contracts in new areas.

"Nothing's happening.'

"Possibly a delayed reaction. Or your tolerance levels are up." The pair sat in silence for a moment. A roach scurried along the wall, and Clarissa tracked it's movements with her eyes. Best to end this now...

"You can go now."

Clarissa didn't move. A long sigh escaped her lips as she prepared herself. "You've been a hunted beast Arixa." She withdrew the revolver and rose. "You should have known he'd find you..."

"Barristo..." he breathed, face pale, eyes wide.

"Apparently you owe him 1500 credits. Either you pay him off or I kill you." She looked him dead in the eyes. His eyes fell and he looked at the floor. "I haven't got any money...nothing at all."

In a voice near a whisper he said, "I had a family...once. They left...after it all started...the drugs. I lost my job...we fought. She took the ship and left." He looked up at her and said: "This shit eats you alive, you know?" Clarissa nodded and pulled back the hammer on her pistol.

Click.

"Yeah...life'll do that to you."

Her fingers tightened around the trigger. Nerve impulses raced along neural pathways as her brain calculated the aiming vectors. Tendons contracted...and the gun bucked. The bullet sped across the room in the blink of an eye, and the ferret 's head was thrown backward, a spray of blood arcing out like some hellish fountain as chips of bone and flecks of grey matter flew outward from his cratered skull. In her mind Clarissa could see the look of release in his eyes as the bullet tore through his cranium.

Clarissa had heard from assassins that their victims sometimes thanked them as they died. She'd never believed it. Until now.

She pulled the hammer back and shot him in both kneecaps. Her sense of pity had prevented her from taking the 'creative license' that Barristo had said she'd had. It was unlikely that Barristo's thugs would count what order the shots had been fired in. By this time the smell of gunpowder was heavy in the air. Clarissa walked over to the wall and flicked the dimmer to high, flooding the room with light. The corpse looked somehow noble even in it's withered state.

Clarissa flicked the venting system to high, wanting to exchange the air before the authorities came-assuming that they would even bother coming up for what was simply a domestic issue. The cops and the gangs rarely bothered each other. Still, the less they knew about her modus operundi the better.

Before she left, she picked up the spent casings, slinging them into her pocket, then walked over to the picture of the ferret's family. She slammed it against the table, breaking the glass and withdrawing the picture. The shards of glass looked liked diamonds in the harsh light, some landing in the pool of blood that had already begun to leak from the metal chair in which Arixa had sat. She folded the picture in half and placed it in the hand of the dead ferret; closing the fingers around it tightly; in a futile attempt to offer some form of comfort to the beast she had been assigned to kill.