Free The Pride of Parahumans by Joel Kreissman Page A

behind him, which showed
nine nearly identical jaguars, with only their clothes to
differentiate them. In the center of the field of view sat a jaguar
wearing a closely tailored suit, a scar running down his left cheek
marring his features.
    Nervously, I quickly applied my thumbprint to
the document and left. When my crew mates arrived the next day, I
practically leaped into Aniya's arms. I spent the entire night and
half of the next day huddled up in her pouch, with all the security
equipment within five meters of her room disabled.

Chapter 8
    "A bounty hunter, seriously?" Denal sounded
incredulous. "How did he even know we were here?"
    It was the day after my friends had come back
from their assessment trip. They'd found a decent sized chunk of
something dense and grey. They hadn't checked what it was
officially but the readings I'd seen suggested something in the
area of osmium. And they had become certified members of the
miners' guild like myself except that they would still be going on
these expeditions. Though now I wasn't too sure I wanted to leave
the habitat.
    "He said that he tracked us thanks to the
miners' guild sending messages asking for references to the Ceres
Directorate," I replied, Denal looked a bit guilty about something
after my statement. "Anyways," I added, "even if none of us were
stupid enough to list some references on their applications, there
are several financial records that would place us here: the
large-scale exchange of our Ceres qcoins for Vesta's, the mortgage
payments we send their way to fend off repossession, et cetera.
Probably why he was in the region in the first place; no way he
could have flown all the way here from Ceres in the three days
since we applied to the guild."
    "Not necessarily," Cole threw in. "Vesta is
passing fairly close to Ceres now, and there are a lot of ships
faster than ours. I'd guess that a bounty hunter would use a fast
courier-class ship or maybe a military surplus interceptor if
they're chasing people. And maybe we should keep running, to make
it harder to find us."
    "Cole, with the communication relays
connecting every station in the Belt, anywhere we tried to hide
would be known everywhere within hours." I found it a bit hard to
believe that he was still determined to leave this place. "And most
governments would have just let him take me, and you too once you'd
come into port. The Marquez Guild reviewed the evidence and sent
him packing, even if they tripled our rates."
    "Tripled?!" Aniya exclaimed in disbelief.
"Can we even afford that?"
    "I don't know. Maybe. It depends on how much
we can make off these jobs."
    "We should move to the Wolf Guild's
territory," Denal suggested. I suspected he was still a bit
infatuated with that rules-bending investigator who had saved our
lives on our first day in the asteroid. "I bet Olga would give us a
better price than these guys."
    Yep, definitely infatuated. At least he was
leaving me relatively alone now.
    "Odds are her progenitor would charge us just
as much. And that would make the commute to and from the spaceport
a regular gauntlet, where anyone who wanted to claim our bounty
could go after us. Marquez at least will be able to keep us safe
from bounty hunters and hit men near where we live and work." I
opted not to mention the real reason, the blackmail.
    "So, what are we going to do if we can't
afford it?" Cole asked, with a bit of justification, but I thought
he still sounded overly critical of Vesta's society.
    I came up with an idea that I thought might
work. "I'm not stuck on the ship for extended periods of time
anymore. Maybe I could do some more analysis work for the guild
while you're out mining or something." Surely the miners' guild
needed all the analysts they could get if we weren't even allowed
in the field.
    ***
    A week later, I found myself in the minute
apartment I'd rented, looking over job listings. It turned out that
being the newest chemist in the miners; guild, despite having just
as much