“Now you want to help me?” Cicada said. “Ho, that’s rich.”
“Yes, I do want to help you,” Dick said. “I am going to help you because now… obviously… with no other options left, you’re going to do what we should be doing, which is getting our people back.”
“No one gets left behind, eh, Dicky?” Cicada said. She raised her gleaming silver arm. “Not entirely, anyway.”
“We all have our scars,” Dick said.
“I don’t!” Cicada said, mock-cheerfully. “Everything that’s still attached is in pristine condition.”
“You can play that card against anybody else,” Dick said, his voice becoming low and unusually oily, “but not against me. You chose to have yourself fitted with silver and polysteel. You chose not to have your limbs regenerated from your own body, your own cells. I didn’t have that choice.”
“Healing damage isn’t the same thing as undoing it,” Cicada said.
“No,” Dick said. “It doesn’t undo anything, but it’s better than doing nothing.”
“It’s worse than nothing… it’s replacing what was weak and broken with more of the same,” Cicada said. “I’m better now. Tougher. It’s not gonna happen again.”
“Well, irrespective of what’s come before and what may lie ahead, you can’t take off without me and I’m not leaving anybody behind,” Dick said. “They have some of our best people in a detention cell. And Bard.”
“And Leo,” Nick added.
“And Lilliana, too,” Cicada said.
“I’m still not leaving anybody behind,” Dick said. “And since you must have come to that conclusion already, there’s no reason for us not to work together… especially as it would ordinarily fall to Lilliana or Bard to engineer a rescue operation.”
“Okay,” Cicada said. “Here’s how we’re going to do this. I going to go, blow up any walls and/or people who get in my way, get them the hell out of there, and get them the hell back here, where you will be ready to take off. Meanwhile these other freaks are going to get the rest of the freaks back on board, because once this goes down I don’t think the casinos’ masters are going to honor our sovereignty or the sanctity of the ship.”
“That would be an excellent plan if the station wasn’t already on high alert,” Dick said. “Right now, the whole section around the Meadows is in hostility mode rather than hospitality mode. Security squadrons are out in force. There’s at least a two way struggle for control of the station brewing, and if I’m correct in reading between the lines on the chatter, another player’s about to enter the fray. Your rocket gun is powerful but it doesn’t have a tremendous rate of fire.”
“You have a better plan, then?”
“As a matter of fact… I don’t.”
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