He looked through the window into the smoky bar, the sound of the Cortex playing in the background warring with the live music coming from a piano in the far corner. Along the back wall he could see the girls, all in various states of undress. A young man, little more than a boy really, walked past them heading for the john, and they posed for him, hips stuck out, breasts thrust forward, fake smiles plastered on made-up faces. The boy dropped his head and walked faster, and the whores sagged back, murmuring desultorily between themselves.

His breath steamed up the glass, and he wiped it clean with the sleeve of his shirt.

Someone shouted, and his head whipped around to the sound, but it was just a guy on one of the gaming machines, whooping because his number had come up.

His hand pulled back from the gun at his hip, and he breathed slower.

There. There they were. Sitting in the corner around a table, chips and cards scattered on the old green felt. Four people, with maybe six and a half ears between them, thirty-eight fingers, and seven eyes. Some of the blackest, deadliest, most efficient killers this side of the Core. And he knew each and every one of ‘em.

Bill Wilson. Rumour had it he’d lost his earlobe taking on a whole barn full of wild men out on Carson’s Moon, only fact was a woman bit it off when he refused to pay one time (the warrant for her murder was still active). His little fingers had gone to frostbite, waiting for the Mackenzie brothers to show up on St Alban’s, hiding in a snowdrift. He only had seven toes for the same reason.

Boyd Burkett, on the other hand, was credited with wiping out an entire transport ship because he was paid to. Men, women, children … they were all fodder to his trusty Black and Boston handgun. The fact that he also carried a Dixon Breechloader cannon strapped to his back probably helped, and made it obvious what he was.

Lyle Haskins’ ear had gone in a firefight on a rock he couldn’t even remember the name of, when his erstwhile employers