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remained open for business, such as it was. The armored doors were propped ajar with jagged chunks of pink brain coral to entice customers to step in out of the heat. The sole exceptions were the always closed plate-steel doors of the Havana Gun Shop, and the Penguin Air Parlor, where a doubloon bought you five minutes of sweet, cold AC. And if some greedy gleeb tried to overstay, the AC was automatically cut until the other patrons threw you out. Whole or in pieces, their choice. But Thumbs liked the heat beating down on his bare chest, his ballistic vest flapping freely in the hot ocean breezes. A deep tan gave a nice contrast to his short white tusks, made a guy look healthy, and much harder to see when doing a run at night. Miami was a hot city. Always had been, always would be.
    These thoughts were suddenly interrupted when cries for help from an alleyway caught Thumb’s attention. Drawing the big Ares Predator from his inside holster, he checked the scan before going in. Not a tourist, or one of his Slammers. Not his concern then.
    What Thumbs saw was a terrified dwarf. Dressed in denims and loose cotton shirt, the halfer was backing away from a perfectly ordinary telecom unit, staring at the thing as if he fully expected it to spit acid at him. His hands were moving over his body in sharp slaps that Thumbs recognized as a military weapons search. Weapons against a phone?
    Startled, the dwarf jerked when he saw Thumbs, but that was only standard. Thumbs was big for any member of his race. An effect he cultivated by wearing cowboy boots with fifteen-millimeter heels, and lifting weights that would crush a norm.
    Ramming a hand into his pants pocket, the dwarf fumbled frantically for something, and Thumbs tensed his forearms in response, the carbide blades of his cyberware peeking a millimeter out of his forearms. The halfer couldn’t have a weapon, or else he’d have pulled it by now. Hey, that was a certified credstick the dwarf had just pulled out of his jacket and he was thrusting a stout arm toward the giant troll.
    “You, a hundred nuyen!” he barked in a barely controlled yell. “Shoot the telecom. Now!”
    Shoot the what? The notion was ludicrous, but even loonies had credsticks so Thumbs automatically said, “Two,” then after a split tick added, “fifty.”
    “Three!” shouted the dwarf frantically. “But DO IT NOW!”

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    Bending at his knees to adjust for angle, Thumbs brushed back his fringed vest and whipped out the Predator. The big autoloader thundered at his touch on its hair-trigger, and the telecom unit exploded in a blast of plastic, wiring, and chips. Then just to make sure, Thumbs pumped two more into the sparking equipment, finishing the destruction utterly.
    Only a couple of alley residents paid any attention to the bizarre event of terminating a telecom unit with extreme prejudice, as the mercs liked to say.
    “Thanks,” the dwarf almost wheezed in relief. Using a cuff to wipe the sweat from under his hat with one hand, he rummaged in a pocket with the other, unearthed a credstick, and tossed it to Thumbs, who made the catch with one hand.
    Thumbs winked as he slid the stick into his vest. “My pleasure,” he replied, jacking the slide on the massive handgun, chambering a fresh caseless round for immediate use. It was an old habit, hard learned in grim street fighting and not one he could ever, or would ever, forget.
    Without another word, the dwarf turned and began to move away as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run. But at the mouth of a garbage-strewn alley, he stopped and glanced over a shoulder. “Here’s a bonus download for ya, chummer. Hot data, fresh from the horse. Beat feet.”
    Faintly in the distance, Thumbs heard sirens sound. Already? For shooting a stinking telecom? Feeling his scalp prickly, he nodded his own thanks, then moved into the busy street, dodging traffic with practiced ease, his mind already conjuring the bounty of chemical and fleshy