I paid five grams for half-an-hour at a public com terminal in a cafe. Ludicrous prices and likely inflated just for me, but I paid in fluid, handing the proprietor a clear polymer vial of helion which disappeared into his pocket without touching the cafe's register. I hadn't joked about not wanting a beeper on my gun. Being traced now that I was a bullhorn seemed like an even worse idea.

  Ten minutes later, I knew what it was, and I wasn't pleased.

  Bullhorns were immigrants from Santa Kylie, where they didn't grow bulls with or without horns. Why everyone thought I was one, I couldn't understand.

  Santa Kylie was a mining colony some twenty light-years away. Had been quite successful until a combination of internal politics, Syndicate clans, and corruption had thrown it into civil war. The bullhorns were those who'd managed to get off-planet, a small minority of which had made it to Rimont station, where they proceeded to do what most immigrant do: work hard, save harder, and hope for a better future for their children.

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  Secs, on the other hand, were security unions. Local boys and girls who took it upon themselves to make sure the streets stayed safe, mainly by going onto said streets and turning people they deemed unsafe into recycling vat material.

  The sec gangs had mostly fought each other, and then, some ten years ago, had suddenly united under the common theme of bashing bullhorns. Rimont security forces had kept them away from the upper levels, but had let them do what they pleased in the lower reaches of Rimont station. Where the majority of the bullhorns were to be found.

  I couldn't care less, except for the fact that I resembled one.

  "What are we going to do?" Hao said, reading over my shoulder.

  "Sell, buy, leave," I replied, trying to appear chipper. It was sounding less and less likely.

  "And the refit?" Hao said. "We need new filters, new aquifers, a new pump housing. A total scrape of our vats would be nice too."

  "We'll wrap that up in the buy part, and do the work in space. This entire situation is crudmunching voided."

  "Agreed." Hao pushed away from the com table.

  I wiped the com's local interaction cache, for what it was worth. If someone wanted to track me, there were plenty of cameras around. All I had hope for now, was finding a trader and getting out before we were dragged into some kind of fight.

  "Time to find this Montar person," I said.