Read Overkill for Free Online

only Weichsel City, which is three igloos.
    “Eden.” Born snorted as she waved her hand at the criss-cross of mud streets pimpled with hatch domes. The domes led to the below-grade dugouts that passed for buildings. The only visible industry was the tea kettle refinery that made vegetable matter in the local rock into kerosene. “Impressed?”
    I smiled. “You read my mind.”
    Born snapped her eyes away from the road and narrowed her eyes at me. “What?”
    I shrugged. “I dunno. I was just thinking the same thing, that—”
    She turned her eyes back to the road, and detoured the conversation back to its original path. “Yeah. Ever see an Outworld planetary capital with a name that fit, Parker?”
    I shrugged again. “Funhouse. And Jolly. ‘Til you wake up hung over and broke.”
    Born downshifted as the road ramped lower. “Eden’s thin on soldierly delights, Parker.”
    “What isn’t it thin on?”
    She smiled. “Rainfall. An ecosystem in stable harmony for thirty million years. Native parasites, viruses, and bacteria don’t attack downshipped crop stock, or human tissue. Unless you bring a cold with you, you won’t catch one here. The local shale’s so full of kerogen that a tea kettle refinery exports designer kerosene to Earth. The locals could probably farm successfully if they’d quit self-depopulating in the name of living free.”
    I slouched back in the passenger’s seat, but kept the reloaded Barrett across my thighs. The road hairpinned two hundred feet above the bowl’s flat, forested floor. Emplaced within the hairpin was an Oerlikon HU-40 Triple-A ’bot, dish rotating, barrels-tothe-sky. A plaque on its rusted turret read: EDEN OUTFITTERS .As we passed, the ’bot spun, locked, and its gatling spit. Against the gray clouds, a gliding shadow wobbled, then tumbled.
    As we wound down the hill, we passed a dozen more emplacements. I pointed at one. “The Legion yard-saled their HU-40s years ago. Upgraded to units that could tell aircraft from birds. I wouldn’t recommend flying in this airspace.”
    She smiled as she drove. “Nobody does. In fact, nothing’s flown over Dead End for years except gorts and the orbital shuttles. The early settlers lost so many aircraft to kamikaze gorts, cloud, and storms that aircraft were declared contraband imports. I suppose that’s why Cutler brought a tank. He seems like the kind of sportsman who’d just drop fragmentation grenades on game out the door of a tilt wing.”
    With four minutes to spare Kit pulled her Sixer up in front of a plasteel entry dome that was gray except for the EDEN OUTFITTERS sign above the door. Another read, HIRING TODAY . It looked permanent.
    Befitting a libertarian republic, traffic regulation was minimal. But then so was traffic. The only visible signage announced: USE ALTERNATE ROUTE HIGH NOON TO 1 P.M. DAILY. MAIN STREET CLOSED FOR GUNFIGHTS .
    Ha-ha.
    I hopped from the Sixer. My boots sank in the street’s mud, and I looked around.
    A half dozen pedestrians walked the plank sidewalks, three of whom wore sidearms. The fourth’s right arm was a six-barrel Gatling prosthetic. The other two people on the street were a mother holding a baby on her hip with one hand. In the other she held an assault rifle. The baby appeared to be unarmed.
    Maybe all the guns were to ward off gorts, because Triple-A ’bots were less than perfect. But it might be best to adjourn our meeting well before high noon.
    I turned back and leaned in the open door. “Thanks for the lift.”
    It occurred to me that Kit Born had been nicer to me than she had to be. If her eyes were any indication, it was entirely possible that an attractive woman lurked under her armor. A teenaged boy who isn’t legally alive doesn’t date much. And since enlistment, in the places where my squad mates dragged me on liberty, the girls did the asking. I tried my first pick-up line. “Say, I don’t suppose—”
    The Sixer’s interior was empty.
    Across the mud