Cally's War

There were so few public access terminals these days. Everybody and his sister had a PDA, well, except for the lucky bastards with AIDs. Well, clean ones, anyway. But PDAs sometimes broke, or people lost them — anyway, thank god for public access terminals.

This one was in the middle of the busiest section of the Corridor he could find. There was so much visual noise here with all the other people passing that no particular pedestrian would ever remember him. Not that anybody but the Bane Sidhe would be looking, and by the time they were, he’d be long gone.

He had really wanted to spend his retirement on Earth — the amenities were so much better, even when one was perforce keeping a low profile. Oh, well, things were how they were.

Dulain was a good planet. One of the first colonized by humans, and it had some hazards, but it also had a good belt of very pleasant islands. Not too great a place to work as a penniless colonist. But just fine for someone with a nice nest egg. And a ship was leaving at nineteen-thirty on Tuesday. Perfect. It only took him a few moments to transfer the funds from his numbered accounts to numbered accounts on Dulain. He’d opened an account on Titan with some of the cash from his payoff. The rest he had, unfortunately, had to deposit in a public locker, taking his chances. Still, the important part about the cash was the ability to buy his outbound ticket under an uncompromised ID.

And he’d never have to eat another soybean corn dog again. Ever.