“So, Lee, if we nab him too… it means it doubles down our consulting fees?”

  At the question of my partner, the face of Commissioner Al-Dhedi became vermeil. “Bollocks! You’re the most covetous Alliance-twits in the system!” he bellowed shortly before grabbing his spiral notebook and a pencil from a creaking drawer. “But let’s go over your accidental vandalism account once again: C$32,000 for the satellite dish, C$41,000 for the burned down McDonald’s, C$54,000 more for damage to people…”

  His cassette was still jammed on last week’s track!

  “You can for sure forget the agreement we’ve made,” he resumed. “But if you catch this one, I may—and I said I may—override the impoundment!”

  “I beg your pardon?” I protested, leaping on his plastic laminated top desk, next to the empty ashtray. “Retrieving the Kitty was part of the arrangement. You can’t alter a contract that way!”

  “That’s called cheatin’!” Ali added before breaking the sharpener.

  Al-Dhedi resumed, snatching the broken handle from my partner’s hands: “I got the Martian overseer on my buttocks! Your car chase in the bay has already cost a fortune to the taxpayers of all the external stations!” Those lackey Martians, with their endless decrees and insufferable regulations! Of Ceres City’s eighteen ports and twelve districts, we had to come across this nitpicker of Al-Dhedi. Thankfully, a call from his secretary interrupted his daily nervous breakdown. “—what now, Jacob?” the commissioner barked after smashing the glowing telltale on his push button telephone.

  The door slid open, and without so much as a summons, a man with squared shoulders and jaw entered, clad in the pristine blue uniform and white boots of a Technocratic Marine senior officer. His salt-and-pepper hair was neatly trimmed, and his piercing green eyes scanned us with the cold disdain of someone looking at protein worms in his Corn Flakes. The Marine’s expression suggested little appreciation for the presence of two professional bounty hunters. Or perhaps it was Ali’s position—head down, legs draped over the back of her chair, inhaling glue straight from the small bottle she had swiped off Al-Dhedi’s desk—that was more than he could tolerate.

  “The municipal budget shouldn’t cover the pranks of hotdoggers!” barked the man.

  “Hot dogs?” Ali snorted.

  “Maniacs! Maniacs who don’t care about the consequences of their actions!”

  “Oh yeah… about that.” The commissioner got up painfully to welcome this newcomer and put a name on Grinch#2. “This is Captain Yossef Braun Kamirov. Since the latest victim is a Marine, the Martian military police are now involved in the civil case.”

  “And these wild daredevils of yours are no longer concerned, Commissioner,” declared Braun Kamirov who had remained in the door frame. The Marine stood so straight I thought he would dust off right into space like a Saturn V rocket.

  I wanted to intervene, but Al-Dhedi shut me up.

  “I—I’m sorry, but they stay on the case,” he proclaimed, grabbing a nicotine gum package in one of his pockets. “They may be rude and halfway psycho-arsonists, yet the unfortunately destructive chase they orchestrated last week allowed us to close the book on the mob controlling the port. Forever.”

  Suck it, uniform. We’re heroes here—with a dedicated TV show. A cunning manipulator, Al-Dhedi hated us as much as he admired us. He wasn’t an unpleasant grouch, after all. Thirty years on Ceres18—the gloomiest and most disgusting creek of the dwarf planet, had left his mood darkened, I reckon.

  “You can’t do that,” the clueless Braun protested.

  “The Technocracy may have extended jurisdiction over the Belt and Jupiter… well partially,” Al-Dhedi started, “but here we’re on C18. Since the Red Uprising, our police force has operated as a privatized entity. And therefore, I’m the law.”

  Braun winced and gave us a nasty glance. The third in less than five minutes. Right after he asked Judge Al-Dreddi for the entire content of the file on a diskette, he finally turned around and showed a clean pair of heels without saying goodbye.

  “What a bore,” I sighed. The front paws on the backrest, I watched the captain leave. “I didn’t know the Technos were hiring Soviets. Must be that famous convergence of ideas… right.”

  “Looked bad to the bone, though,” Ali answered, a finger scrubbing her inner nostril. “Dude so tight I thought he’d lay a diamond, but I could almost feel the raw testosterone coming out of his sexy breath. Ugh!”

  “Ali, you need to see a psychiatrist.”

  She scoffed. “A woman got her needs, spoilsport!”

  “You sure need to get the hell out of my office now,” an exhausted Al-Dhedi concluded, a soft pack of cigarettes in hand.

  Stepping out all sweaty from a Holosex booth, Ali sucked the last drops of her soda-bucket before noisily scraping the bottom of crystallized sugar with her straw.

  “The Commissioner couldn’t tell us much,” I pursued, after the end of her Diabetes Symphony in G minor. “Do you think they’re really twins? Capturing one of them was a violent ordeal.”

  “Dunno,” she answered, grooming her hair over her pink jacket. “But if they both had caught us on the docks, we would’ve been toast-fucked.”

  “Lucky us, indeed.”

  When we finally arrived on Brothels Avenue half an hour later, the military police had cordoned off the alley where the Marine had been murdered. Braun’s pentarotor drones were patrolling the empty area under the artificial sun.

  “I guess we won’t find any witnesses at this hour,” my partner said, knocking unsuccessfully on the door of an automated pleasure house.

  From the top of a trash can stuffed with smelly foam clamshells, I scrutinized the crime scene from beyond the wavering yellow holographic cords. Sadly, the MP had already cleaned everything up around the phone pole except for used condoms. “Wrong track. I think we should go back to the container area,” I concluded. “The other one may have dropped something during the gunfight.”

  And, as always, I appeared to be more than right. My partner hadn’t only hit the suspect’s shoulder. With the usual softness of a .50 AE caliber, she had turned the arm, neck and left half of the child’s head into a gory seedless marmalade. With no robots to perform all the dirty work, the humans of the C18 forensics team were effectively useless. But my catlike senses didn’t miss a major detail hosed down the drain.

  “Lee! Spit that shit out! Spit it out!” Ali grimaced, her tongue hanging out in disgust. “Is that a piece of his fucking ear?”

  “Bingo!” But nothing more than a chunk of curled up flesh covered with hair and blood.

  “Oh, geez! That’s just mega-super-gross.”

  She stepped back while squeaking. Yet my cat instinct made me carry on regardless. If Wild Kingdom was to be believed, this was textbook behavior for my species. “Look closer,” I mumbled, drooling the appendix into her trembling hand. “Do you see this little part that doesn’t taste very good?”

  Extracted from its thin shiny protective shell, the implant resembled a tiny ellipsoid capsule. The bio-alloy magnetically repelled the blood, preventing it from clotting thoroughly.

  “I know what it is. It’s a TMC dog tag,” Ali explained while holding her nose. “They have these small electronic chunks in the pinna. And under the scrotum.”

  “The perineal raphe?”

  “The part you tickle for—”

  “TMI, partner.”

  “You asked,” she continued, making it roll in her palm. “It’s like a military FID, y’know? Hidden there in case our boys and lesbians got blown up someplace.”

  I wasn’t aware. “The Techno-Marine Corps you say…”

  The army seemed to have a double stake in this story. That suspicious Captain Braun hadn’t shown up at the police station just for a box of tea. So, I wasn’t surprised to find him waiting for us at the docks’ main exit.

  “What did you burn down this time?” the Soviet grunted as he deserted the shadow of his flying jeep. His service ribbons twinkled under the false sun.

  “Hello Rasputin! I knew I was detecting some phero-morons drifting towards us,” I said before Ali imitated a silly military salute.

  The Bolshevik sighed and didn’t bother us any longer.

  We returned to the Kitty, still firmly clamped in its cage of the impound yard next to the police station. There, thanks to the control computer, we ran a special program in the implant’s tiny data core.

  “Is it working?” Ali asked.

  “I programmed the virus myself.”

  “Bummer then.”

  “It’s working fine, you petty—” The computer beeped. “Oh! See that?”

  “I ain’t seeing shit.”

  “Precisely! The implant appears data-free. Totally blank—unlike your last diabetes checks. Furthermore—” I turned to the side monitor. “—the alloy used hadn’t been in use for years. In both military and civilian circuits.”

  Ali patted the sizzling screen. “That’s super-old tech. Older than the Kitty.”

  The computer made a sad beep.

  “Don’t you listen to her, pumpkin. Félix raised this animal wrong,” I apologized.

  “Don’t drag Dad into this…”

  “Ali? Cigarette, please.” Typing on the keyboard, I then explained to her my only hypothesis: “He was a ward. Or groomed in a military camp. See? There are three of them around us—on C7, C9 and… here on C13.” On the main monitor, the 3D isometric colored plan highlighted the active bases throughout Ceres City. The old Ceres11 Customs Office and the nearby factory also appeared but looked gray on the screen. A quick research informed us both premises had been closed for years in agreement with the Americans of the UCB.

  “To say it’s shady would be like a… an understatement or something,” Ali admitted, lighting my Lucky.

  “A litotes. Meiosis, even.”

  “Whatever, bookworm. Unfortunately, with Captain Dickhead around…”

  “... our leeway is greatly reduced.”

  Ali yawned, and I realized that we hadn’t slept for two days. “I’d suggest taking a snooze in the cockpit for the rest of the afternoon, Lee. When Ceres transitions back to its night cycle, we gotta start crime-fighting again.”

  I agreed, switching on to ABC Belt.

  Regrettably, our TV nap with MacGyver didn’t last. A curious rancid smell of sweat and dirt awakened me a few minutes later. Between two loud snores coming from my human, I heard a metallic rattling sound. A grenade. A grenade thrown by the half-open windshield ricocheted against the control panel.

  I screamed at the same time Ali took me into her arms. The explosion shook our sanctum and spread shrapnel through most of the instruments alongside our precious cassette collection. The thick foam seats and their metal frames saved our lives. None of us was badly hit.

  “Fatherfucker!” I heard Ali yell with grace and restraint.

  Still stunned by the blast, I witnessed the beginning of her pursuit. Alas, shoving the poor F.A.B. out of her way, my partner barely left the hold that several bursts spat by a small caliber machine gun greeted her.

  “You ok?” I inquired.

  “You bet I am!”

  Afterwards, deactivated maintenance robots used as shields, she moved towards the huge coolant reservoirs.

  Ali unleashed, I too was back on track. On the still functioning left CRT, the computer traced the bullets’ trajectory. Calculations being made, magenta lines slowly ran through the black screen where the software outlined our target and environment. Their path went across the smoke dissipated by the explosion of a second grenade. Out there, between the ellipsoidal tanks hung on the private police station’s walls, a dancing tiny polygonal heat-ghost materialized.

  “He’s behind the cisterns,” Ali confirmed. “Don’t pin him with the 40! Al-Dhedi will spank the shit out of us…”

  “I don’t care! I enforce our beloved Castle Doctrine. No one can throw bombs into my ship! Especially when I’m sleeping inside!”

  A fresh cigarette at the corner of my lips, Furious became my new name. And when a kitty is furious, do not—I repeat do not—give him access to a starfighter.

  In a single continuous burst, the rotary 40 mm cut the reservoirs cleanly, just above the head of the little psychopath that cowardly fled the scene. The blue radioactive liquid poured into the impoundment, bubbling and fuming.

  “Got a visual!” my partner shouted. A cone-shaped robot drifting between her legs extinguished an incipient fire. “I’m going after him in the passageway by the security booth.”

  “Wait for me!” I said before storming through the window.

  I hurtled down the ship armor and quickly hit the ground before sprinting towards the dark tunnel. I hated running below the standard gravity. I had the feeling of being a straw doll, struggling not to fall over at every step. I envied Ali and her heavy magnetic boots.

  The walkway—which turned out to be a crowded tent city, led to the docks. There, we followed the remaining traces of the coolant shining in the artificial darkness. With no sewer or air vent in sight, the boy couldn’t escape our utterly violent retribution.

  “Here he is!” Ali yelled, ramming two hobos getting a fix on our path.

  “Tag him!”

  “Can’t!”

  The boy tore through the maze of crates, firing at us repeatedly without hesitation. His relentless speed gave him a strong lead, even as the night dockers, roused by the chase, offered their help. They knew all too well what we were hunting—two of their own had already fallen victim to these tiny monsters. “Yallah! He’s darting over there!” one woman shouted from the top of her crane, her voice echoing through the metal corridors. “I see him—he’s making a break for the compactor!”

  “This rascal is scrupulously avoiding any source of light,” I conveyed between two puffs of recycled air. “Either he’s clever, or we have here an explanation as to why they only come out at night. Possibly both!”

  I was just a few meters ahead of Ali when her Desert Eagle thundered behind me, echoing through the docks, nearly drowning out my own ragged breaths. Wide bullets ricocheted off the compactor’s jaws, barely missing the kid’s legs. One misstep, and he’d have tumbled into that maw, ending things in a way I didn’t even want to picture. But somehow—like a tightrope walker—he managed to reach the far side of the machine’s metal jaw. He tore his back on the way, yet kept going, crawling through the barbed wire stretched across a hardened steel rampart, slipping straight into the abandoned base.

  “Bogus! Fucker’s ready for Double Dare,” Ali grumbled, hands as visor. The dockworkers had activated the full power of the halogen ceiling lights in the port area, ending the artificial night for the residents and brothels’ customers.

  “Certainly. Besides, him taking refuge in the base is also another proof of the army’s possible involvement,” I added while my partner slowly adjusted a new shooting attempt.

  The child collapsed, as if struck by lightning. One second later, we heard the detonation of a rifle. A sniper shot had made him fall on the other side of the rampart.

  Captain Braun arrived at the foot of the giant compactor after performing this impressive firing demonstration. He had given up his elegant uniform and wore instead an urban camouflage suit with several shades of gray. Grenades lined his belt, and an infrared-scoped rifle completed the ensemble. It made me wonder if he was hunting a child or a Xenomorph.

  Braun had the same scowling face as last time. He grumbled after readjusting his green beret. “He tried to get inside the compound.”

  “In your compound,” amended Ali. “Otherwise… hell of a shot… for a Soviet, I mean…”

  Braun’s eyes were riveted to the barbed wire that overhung the enclosure wall. After taking a hit like that, along with a deadly fall, the odds of finding our target alive dropped next to none. Yet, the Marine seemed perplexed: “It’s been sealed off for years.”

  “These murderous children have a military grade ID-implant. Just like your Marines,” I told him. “Unless they fled from an anchored TMC ship, they probably came from this shady place.”

  “Impossible!” Braun declared. “It has been dismantled…”

  Ali pouted. “As if!”

  The MP had just been hit with a dose of cold reality. He had a blank stare, and his lips moved without him uttering a word. This story might effectively go even further.

  “At least, let’s get Cannibal Junior back to Jumanji!” my human announced while already tightrope walking on the compactor.

  But the Marine wanted us out of the picture: “Hey! You can’t go there! It’s a restricted area!”

  “I do what I goddamn like, Rasputin!” Ali yelled in response.

  Indifferent, the soldier glanced at me.

  “Intimidating my partner, Captain, is an art so complex that even Sun Tzu himself would hesitate to author a treatise on it. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” With that, I hurried off to catch up with my copilot, before the Marine could follow.

  Once on the other side of the concrete rampart, the child had disappeared. Blood spots gleamed in the closest of the muddy trenches surrounding the huge cylindrical edifice covered with greenery. From the bottom to the top, the building had no visible windows. Our hemoglobin trail faded shortly afterwards at the entrance of a tunnel. There, miniature footprints took over, leading us to a moisture-ridden conduit worth of Discovery Zone.

  “He survived,” Braun said.

  “Fuckin’ Sherlock Holmes.”

  “The child’s a berserker. Shouldn’t he be drafted for your next peacekeeping operation?” I teased him.

  “Shut up. Both of you…”

  The Soviet removed the scope from his rifle and equipped it with a wired assault clip. He led the way into the duct with Ali on his heels. The ventilation tunnel’s atmosphere was sticky. Like in a jungle, humidity and heat reached suffocating levels. I had to take my courage in both paws to shepherd the group once it became too dark.

  “Stop!” I whispered to G.I. Joe right behind me.

  “See something?” my partner asked, closing the line.