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“Both eyes, brother”
Rico was right After the first rush of the flight, when the initial bustle of people finding bunks, deciding they hated their neighbor, then finding a new one was over, people wereon Belter decks The inners on decks split between Earth and Mars Amos was on a Belter deck, but he see
Prison rules for sure
On the sixth day, a sether and fanned out through the compartment With fifty people on the deck, it took them a while to hit everyone Amos pretended to sleep in his crash couch and watched theh walked up to a passenger, explained about in-flight insurance policies, then took a credit transfer with a cheap disposable terminal All the threats were implied Everyone paid It was a stupid racket, but sih that it worked anyway
One of the extortionists who looked like he wasn’t a day over fourteen headed their direction Rico started to pull out his hand terminal, but Amos sat up in bed and waved hiood over here No one in this corner pays”
The thug stared at hi Aassed and tied up, but if that’s how it had to happen, he’d live with it
“Deadsaid He put as much macho as he could into it, and Amos respected the commitment But much scarier people than a skinny pubescent Belter had tried inti the threat
“So there was this one tiht in a reactor crawlspace when a coolant pipe blew,” he said
“What?” the kid asked, baffled Even Rico and Jianguo were looking at Aimbals squeaked as they reoriented
“See, the coolant is radioactive as fuck Hits the open air and it vaporizes Getting it on your skin ain’t good for you, but you can survive that Washes off, h Get a bunch of radioactive particles down in the lungs where you can’t get ’em out? Yeah, you pretty much melt from the inside”
The kid glanced over his shoulder, looking for support dealing with the crazy ranting guy The rest of team extortion was still busy
“So,” Aet into a et a rebreather strapped toany of that shit in”
“So what? You still —”
“The point of this little tale of woe is that I learned some facts about myself”
“Yeah?” The situation had gotten weird enough that the kid actually see out