That’s when I saw her. A little girl with straight black hair, doll-fine features, and a thumb in her mouth. She didn’t scream, struggle against the straps that held her in place, or do any of the other things you would have expected. She just hung there, watching the destruction, waiting to die.

Something primal worked its way up through my throat and came screaming out my mouth. I felt the slugs hit my body armor as I made my way forward. A smaller man might have stumbled, might have fallen, but my size worked in my favor. The bullets hit and I kept coming.

I saw the scrapper had long greasy locks, bad teeth, and a two-day growth of beard. He grinned, knowing that I couldn’t shoot without hitting the girl, tilted his gun up towards my highly reflective head, and started to squeeze the trigger.

I guess I’ll never know why the little girl took her thumb out of her mouth and grabbed his hand, but I’m real glad that she did, because it gave me sufficient time to cross the intervening space, grab the bastard’s head and spin it halfway around.

The move was all strength and no science, but it worked anyway. Bones crunched, the scrapper’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped towards the deck. I grabbed and held him long enough to free the girl. She looked into my eyes, smiled approvingly, and pointed towards my skull plate. “Shiny!”

I smiled in return. “Very shiny. Do you like it?”

The little girl nodded, slipped her thumb back into her mouth, and waited for whatever life would bring next. The firefight was over by then. It took the better part of an hour to find the girl’s terrified mother and hand her over.

Norris was super-pissed by the time I got back, and threatened me with all sorts of dire consequences, but so what? It wasn’t like she was my boss or anything, so I kissed up enough to get paid, double-checked to make sure the right amount of money had been dumped into my account, and headed for home. I was tired, and a shower seemed like the best idea I’d ever had.