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Hyperion had a lot of faith in a bunch of green kids fresh from the inner planets. Sure some of them had 30 - years on Janis, but she could tell from their soft skin an d easy smiles they'd never spent any time on the edge planets.
The mercenaries she worked with looked like they'd been carved from pumice. Rough, dyed, pot marked, and crude - a testimony to what a lifetime on the edges would do to a person. Even Janis had become worn and rough in her five years here. Hard experiences had taught her to tuck her bright orange hair in a cap and to wear long sleeves. It took years to learn if you could trust someone and some secrets were lucrative.
Despite the red battle armor with the word "Engineering" emblazoned across the front, these Hyperion goons were going to be picked off fast. "Do any of you even know how to fire the weapons your company makes?" she asked.
A smattering of hands raised. Always the same group, the three or four who hadn't been born in the inner worlds.
"We're going to fucking die," Daze said. He pushed up his worn combat up, his finger seeming to point at the naked Hokum girl painted on the side as he walked to the back of the platform. Janis stared down at her escortees on the pavement, their metal covered faces lit by the rocket blasting back into space.
"Take the trash cans off," she ordered. "Please tell me you have civilian clothes on under there."
"Dress suits," one of the ones who kept raising his hand spoke up. "That idiot Tassiter thinks you should dress smart even on field ops."
The man pulled his helmet off with everyone else, revealing a long face with strong features that would be attractive if his confidence carried to his eyes they way it came out of his mouth.
"I'm surprised you didn't strangle yourselves with your ties when you put those rust buckets on," Daze said.
A chuckle came from the man who'd spoken up, his grin weak on one side, as if the mercenaries made him nervous. Janis recognized him as the one in the file with the mismatched eyes. His photo was at least 5 - years old and he had grown into his nose and high cheekbones.
"So you're Handsome Jack?" Janis said.
"Am I?" His smile grew bigger, showing a perfect row of teeth.
"Boy did that get him excited," Simone said. The female mercenary rolled her dark brown eyes and pointed at an overweight man to his right. "Just so you know, we are calling that one Fat Jack so we can tell you apart."
"Or you could call me by my middle name, Alan."
"Shut up Fat Jack," Daze interrupted. "We can meet and greet later. Right now all you need to know is that we've been hired to haul your asses to an abandoned Dahl facility so Hyperion can try to force salvage rights and take advantage of the research done there. On the way you will be shot at, stabbed, and jostled in a very uncomfortable bus. I have a 25 percent acceptable fatality allowance, so even your parent corporation thinks you're going to die. I think I should have asked for 50 percent now that I see you."
"How uncomfortable is the bus?" A dark haired scientist named Nakayama asked. "Some of us have the piles and don't like being uncomfortable."
Janis covered her face and tried not to laugh as Daze lips parted, his gaze refocused on the little man asking questions.
"Really fucking uncomfortable," Simon said. "But if I were you I'd worry more about some drugged up psycho deciding your ham hocks would pair well with his rotgut."
"Touche," Nakayama added. "I'll just grin and bear it."
Janis felt a sneer form. "Is that what your mom says on Sunday nights?" Everyone but Nakayama laughed. "Get out of that armor and I'll send one of the rear gunners to town to get the ladies decent pants and shoes and the men T-shirts. You're going to be walking targets otherwise."
"Who's paying for that?" Daze asked.
"Who's got an acceptable kill ratio?"
Shrinking his lips so he looked like and infant about to take a crap let Janis know she'd bested Daze. Walking down the hall she looked for a gunner who looked like he had a lick of sense but settled for one who could count credits. This would be long ride.
Everyone in Hyperion now wore a combination of mismatched dress slacks and old grungy t-shirts that had turned grey where you could still see the original fabric through stains. The women in the group who had worn skirts were lucky if the pants they were given weren't so baggy and long it looked like the hey had switched to a dress.
The atmosphere filled with the whispered complaints about the clothing's smell and lack of style. Sneers painted the faces of men and women use to all the luxuries of life, only to vanquish as they were handed overly complicated Hyperion pistols upon entering one of three busses.
The good looking Jack sat across from Janis on the middle bus, obviously trying not to stare at her dark orange pupils-she assumed his kindness came out of respect between freaks. She could get the color altered at one of those day clinics but had decided just to make peace with herself instead.
He had this lopsided smile that forced his eyebrow up. He didn't say much during the ride, and she soon realized the smile emerged when he seemed concerned or amused. Occasionally he'd turn it on her, his brow scrunching slightly as he scrutinized.
Janis instinctively pushed her fingers through the holes in the bottom of her shirt, the feeling of the fabric pushing on the soft skin between her fingers a comfort. He took interest in her neck, looking but not looking, and she tried to avoid making sure her collar covered her skin.
Eventually his gaze drew the attention of the little Asian man named Nakayama-who groaned every time the bus jostled him. The sound of his complaints, coupled with the smell of sweating off-worlders, made her pull on her shirt harder. She could yell and make Jack stop looking, but all that would do is further frighten the group of already nervous nerds.
"So why aren't you on the roof shooting at those lizard birds with everyone else?" Nakayama asked.
"You don't put all your aces on the table," she said.
Her voice brought a bigger smile from Jack, whose neck snapped to look at her when Nakayama addressed her.
"No offense but you don't look very strong," Nakayama said.
"No offense but you sound like an idiot."
"Forgive him, you're the first woman he's talked to who isn't his mom," Jack said.
Janis exhaled and rolled her eyes back. Virgin humor, how sophisticated. She figured rumors of the Dahl station being haunted weren't the only reasons no other mercinaries wanted to work with Hyperion corporate lackeys.
"I Echo my aunt Yuki and her daughter every few weeks."
Nakayama's obliviousness made Janis' eyes open wider, before she locked eyes with Jack. They both laughed at the shared perplexity. Maybe he wasn't so bad.
"What? It's true."
At the exact same moment Janis and Jack blurted out, "We need to get you laid."
Upon finishing the statement the two faced each other, as she reconsidered her opinion of the man sitting across from her. Neither breathed as they starred, the secret of their isolation and the choices that brought them here seeming to have lead up to their meeting. Fate? She felt a question form on the tips of her tongue, something about where he was from or if he wanted to share some of Daze's liquor when they got to the location.
Then the engine on the bus exploded.
Janis didn't falter, she grabbed Jack by the neck of his ancient T-shirt and drug him towards the exit, as a rocket broke open the section they had been sitting in.
"Shit," Janis chanted. "Shit, shit, shit."
"I hate seeing such a pretty young lady use such bad la…" Janis cut Jack off by throwing her body weight against his chest and forcing him to the floor as another mortar shook the vehicle.
"You're on top of me." Jack said from the top of a body of mostly dead bodies.
Shifting her weight to see if she was hurt, Janis paused for a second on something firm, then looked at Jack. "Well that's either your pistol, or you like it."
"No, actually that's me," Nakayama said, lifting his hand next to his face. She hadn't noticed his contorted body under Jacks. In lieu of explication the scientist raised his pistol, forcing a soft laugh from Janis.
"If you were feeling his gun, then what am I feeling?" Jack asked.
A long moment of silence passed between the three of them, as gunfire erupted around the bus. Nakayama inhaled with a "tisk" sound and answered, "Okay so maybe that's me too."
Janis blinked in time with Jack, both sighing before muttering something about standing up and doing their best not to look at Nakayama. The Asian scientist turned to face away from them, adjusted himself, and caused another pinned person to groan in complaint.
"Oh come on, it happens sometimes when I get scared," he said. "You know fear boners? Fear boners? Look stimulus combined with extreme stress can cause arousal… Shut up it's normal! Don't judge me with your cold, heartless eyes."
Janis rubbed her face, listening to Nakayama ramble, before looking at the woman at the bottom of the pile of broken Engineers. With a huff of air she put her hand on the little man's shoulder and said, "Dude, she just died, let it go."
"Oh," Nakayama said. "Ohhhhh. So when she died the last thing she saw was…"
"Your turgid man cannon saluting the stars," Jack broke in, rubbing his temples. "Can we get out of here before another missile finishes us off, and I don't mean massage parlor style."
"Gross dude," Nakayama said. "I just killed someone with my dick and you're making orgasm jokes? Too soon."
Before she could make a suggestion to shoot Nakayama and leave him here, Jack had his coworker by the neck and shoved against the wall of the he bus. "You idiot, someone is out there trying to kill us and you're scolding me for making an off color joke. Do me a favor and shut up before I shove your weird perverted penis down your sobering pie hole, over and over, until it explodes all over you."
"You kids from The Big H sure know how to make a girl uncomfortable."
Both men looked at Janis as if they had forgotten her existence. Bullets ripped through the bus near them, puncturing holes of leaking daylight and killing the few survivors left in the back of the bus.
"Maybe we should run away before we die," Nakayama said.
"Good idea." Simone's voice boomed from behind Janis. Her dark skin had taken on a sheen of dust and perspiration, while newly torn holes dotted her clothes. Between gritted teeth she hissed at the corpses littering the floor of the vehicle. "We're so not getting our deposit back."
"Retreat to point echelon and wait for the others to catch up?" Janis needed the situation to be back under control before they all died.
"That's the plan," Simone said as she tapped the hole in the bus she'd entered through. "You make the big booms and get the primary to safety, I'll take Hemorrhoids and start out in the other direct to draw fire away."
"I resent being called Hemorrhoids," Nakayama said.
"It's better than Creepy Boner," Janis said. Indicating Jack join her she added, "You with me."
"Creepy boner?" Simone asked as Janis rushed past her into the battlefield.
Daze stood on top of the flipped third bus, a smoldering cigar clenched in his purplish lips. The Hyperion engineers on either side of him fired clumsily at the enemy who had taken cover behind rat racers. "Looks like bandits at least. This would be bad if Atlas had shown up."
"This is good?" Jack asked.
"It'll get better when Janis blows them up and gets you to safety." Simone said as she pushed Nakayama in the opposite direction.
A few steps into the sandy loam that covered this part of Pandora, Jack repeated Simone words as a question. "Big boom huh?"
Rather than explain why she didn't have a missed launcher to back up the claim, Janis stuck out her right hand as she walked and a line of orange light escaped from her palm, shot out towards the bandits, and caused the person it hit to explode like a grenade.
"Boom," Janis said, feeling no other explication would be needed.