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is that?"
    Kawso took a cautious step closer and saw a rectangular box sitting on the deck. It had a pair of optic sensors on the upper face and straps dangling down from one side.
    "Don't touch it! It could be a booby trap!" Furni warned.
    The Nort sergeant gave him a silencing grimace and gingerly picked up the object, holding it waist high. He turned it over in his hands: one side had a chip slot. "Huh," he made a low chuckle. "It's just a skevving backpack."
    An opening on one face of the pack glinted in the dimness and a synthetic voice replied, "No, I'm not."
    A three-pronged steel claw snapped out of the opening and grabbed a large handful of Kawso's crotch in a vice-like grip. Furni was startled as the Nort let out a high scream. "Aaaaaaa! Get it off me!"
    He hesitated at the peculiar sight of Kawso dancing about with a pack attached to his genitals, afraid to shoot at the thing for fear he would miss and hit the sergeant. Furni heard swift footsteps behind him and turned, expecting reinforcements; they were, but just not for him.
    "Lights out," said Rogue and his fist came at the Nort trooper like a missile, the punch propelling a GI helmet in his hand like a huge mutant knuckle-duster. The hardhat smashed Furni aside trailing blood, teeth and fragments of jawbone.
    "Hey!" the helmet complained. "What am I now, a boxing glove?"
    Rogue ignored the comment and flipped the armoured gear onto his head, moving to grab Kawso. The claw released its killer grip and the sergeant tumbled backwards. Rogue tugged the off-balance Nort by the shoulder strap of his autogun and before he could react, the GI pitched him into one of the blast holes.
    Sergeant Kawso hit the scummy ocean cursing and screaming as the orange murk gushed in through his open mouth. He drowned in a dilution of foetid poison and his own liquefied organs. Rogue snatched up the backpack and secured it over his shoulders. "Helm, you got the frequency for the charge locked in?"
    A voice issued from a chip bearing a morose skull image and the digit "1" on the brow of his helmet. "Affirmative, Rogue. Give me the word and it's done."
    "Tell me you got it." Another chip, this one slotted in the backpack, spoke aloud. The flat face of the microcircuit had the number three visible on it.
    "He's got it, Bagman," said Gunnar from the number two slot on the rifle. "And he woke up half the damn Nort Army doing it."
    Rogue ignored the chatter, his heightened hearing concentrating on the screams of sirens and the noise of approaching boots on the metal decks. "Blow it, Helm. We're outta here." Without waiting for confirmation, the GI stepped lightly over the edge of the same hole he'd thrown Kawso down. As he struck the water, the drag from his gear flipped Rogue over, just in time for him to see shimmering balls of yellow flame erupt from the centre of the Nu Sealand rig. The C9 detonator charges had been placed in just the right locations, along weak lines of rusted pipe and vital conduits that fed hot gases from the geothermal sink below the ocean floor.
    He hovered under the waterline for a moment, as the first chunks of metal and plastic began to fall away past him into the depths below. The acidic embrace of the Orange Sea was already burning into his bare skin and stinging the protective nictitating membranes over his eyes. Rogue turned from his target and struck out in a hard, measured pace, swimming down and away.
    Nu Sealand became a torch, vomiting flames and black smoke up into the air, adding a little more toxic matter and poison to the planet's ruined atmosphere.
     
    They said Pitt City was a Freeport, but in truth there was absolutely nothing free about it. If you didn't have money in Pitt City, you might as well be dead. As Ferris saw it, it was all about degrees of how rich you were. Nobody here was too rich, because if they had that many nu-credits, the first thing they would do would be to buy a ride off the chem-infested rock. There were a few folks who