Jocasta heaved a theatrical sigh and took another sip of the drink.

“Momma did warn me not to wear my heart on my ass cheek,” she said, tilting the can in jaunty salute.

“So who are you hunting?” Neil asked. Jocasta raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe you?” she suggested. Neil could be charming but there was no doubt in her mind that he could also be irritating enough that any number of people might have an interest in renewing the acquaintance by force of arms. Stars, it was a rare person who didn’t steal something from someone to keep body and soul together, and sufficiently lubricated with alcohol or other drugs. Neil put a hand to his chest and gasped in mock alarm.

“Oh no, she played the old ‘show-up-in-a-bar-covered-in-cooking-ingredients-in-order-to get-invited-back-to-an-apartment-strip-off-and-put-down-all-my-weaons-take-a-shower-and-then-get-my-man’ ruse and I fell for it, like a sucker!” Neil said in mock horror. Jocasta snickered and then sat back into the chair. At some unseen signal from their mistress two of the drones darted forward, a curtain of coherent light blazed from the head of one and the hologram of an evil looking man. He had a single biological eye that seemed to blaze with malice, his second replaced with a bulky looking augmetic. A turban was wrapped around his head and his beard and mustache bristled as though electrified. One of the drones flitted around, making little attack runs on the holograms bulbous nose before pulling up at the last second. The hologram seemed to blink and flinch, somehow conveying the idea that its hands, not pictured, were swatting at the dragonfly shaped drone.

“Is that… The Black Caliph? Isn’t he dead?!” Neil demanded.

“So he would like people to believe, but they never found a body and there are plenty of people willing to pay for him even twenty years after the massacre,” Jocasta said. The hologram blinked out at some unseen signal from the bounty hunter, the drone swerving and colliding with its fellow with a clatter of little mechanical manipulators as they tussled and played.

“He has had his face rebuilt and limited genetic reconditioning so he can enjoy his retirement,” Jocasta explained. If you had the credits you could change almost anything about yourself, facial reconstruction was fairly common but genetic alteration was an expensive and involved process. Genetic alteration was highly controlled in the Terran Hegemony, reserved for the treatment of diseases and modifications for the countless soldiers and sailors of the military. Gene shock was a real concern and most alterations to genetic code came with sterilization to prevent a genomes-gone-wild situation. That didn’t mean it didn’t happen of course, if you had the credits you could find a clinic that would look the other way, or you could simply go to one of the Free Worlds our out into the Gulf where Terran rule had yet to spread. Some of those places could be pretty grim, it wasn’t difficult to install dormant viruses and other such gene-ware to prevent wayward serfs from getting uppity.

“No face and no DNA? That is going to make him hard to find.”

“Hence the ‘hunter’ component of my job title,” Jocasta agreed dryly.


“I can help you get your man,” Neil said, his voice filled with a confidence that had momentarily fled it when she revealed who her target was.

“No doubt,” Jocasta said in a tone that suggested maybe she had a few doubts but was keeping them to herself out of politeness.

“But first, what does a man of such obvious accomplishment,” she paused to gesture around the apartment with an expressive tilt of her drink, “need my help with?”