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"Ooooaahhhh!"
    "I've seen Bruce Lee movies, dude. You aren't him," Kyra said, striding for the merc.
    The merc backed away from her. "Heeeooooaaaahhh!"
    "I can make this fast or slow," Kyra said. "Either way it's likely to be painful."
    The merc scrambled away. He fell over a chair and stumbled back to his feet. His eyes flew wide in panic.
    Kyra sighed and followed him, her knife still ready.
    The merc found an open space in front of the window and apparently some courage. He stopped, swiped the edge of his nose with his thumb and beckoned to her.
    Kyra sprinted at him, her arms wide. She saw the shock in his face as she shoulder-tackled him in the stomach. Kyra drove him into the open airlock beside the window. She slammed him into the outer airlock door and dropped him. Kyra skipped backwards, pushing the inner door closed.
    The merc scrambled to his feet, throwing himself against the inner door.
    Kyra slapped the cycle button, and the inner door sealed shut. The air began to hiss from the airlock.
    "Hey wait. You don't have to do this," the merc said. "I just did this for the money. I just want to go back to Earth..."
    The air grew too thin for him to talk. He managed to mouth the word, Please .
    Kyra gave him a bye-bye wave as the outer airlock door opened.
    The merc flew out into space, launched out with the trace atmosphere still left in the airlock.
    Kyra walked around to the giant window and watched the merc struggling out in space.
    His hands pulled at his throat. His legs kicked out at vacuum. It only took seconds for him to stop moving. His body drifted down towards Earth, the blue Atlantic ocean bright behind him. She watched until his corpse became a dot, and then disappeared altogether.
    "Breathtaking," Kyra said.
    As the adrenaline from the fight faded, she realised her legs felt wet. Looking down, Kyra saw blood running from a dozen cuts on her legs. Most of them were minor, but one of them was bleeding badly. The table she'd used as a shield hadn't covered her legs.
    She pulled up her ReadyNet and scanned for the medbay. Ripping the fabric of the legs of her jumpsuit, she found the deepest wound. She wrapped her ripped jumpsuit around the cut as tightly as she could and started to walk. A dribbling trail of red followed her from the room.

Chapter 9
    RECOVERY
     
    K yra followed the blinking arrows to medbay. She grew less and less cautious the dizzier she felt. If she didn't hurry, she'd die of blood loss. She put her hands to her leg, and they came away slick and red. She smeared the blood on a nearby wall, trying to clean her palms. Reaching the medbay, she stumbled inside, feeling queasy.
    The medbay was bright and airy. Equipment hummed under the glowing lights, ready to operate.
    Kyra pulled herself onto the operating table and dragged the attached monitor to her. Turning off all the anaesthetics, she targeted her legs and set the table to work.
    Two robotic arms rotated from under the table and grabbed her legs, holding them still. Another emerged from the end of the table with a scalpel in its metal fingers.
    Kyra looked around for anything else to focus on. A poster on the wall warned against the dangers of sex in zero gravity. Kyra tried to concentrate on its warnings of floating globules. Even through the remaining haze of alcohol, she felt the sharp blade cut into her leg. She yelped and bit her lip.
    The knife worked its way along her legs, opening up dozens of cuts and removing the last of the legs of her jumpsuit. The arm retreated and returned with a tiny pair of pliers. It zipped up her legs, tweezing out flak and throwing it across the room. The flak pinged into a metal container on a nearby counter.
    Kyra tried not to watch the arm work. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the picture of her daughters. She studied their faces, as she had a thousand times before. She knew every crease of their smiles, every glint in their eyes.
    The robot arm finished and withdrew again, returning