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without hurting anyone. I'm not like my mother.
I'm not a killer like my mother.' But I've thought about what happened down
there, and Badg, I'd do it again. If it came down to killing someone or
letting him kill you, I'd kill him. I would take a human life."
He sighed.
I opened my eyes and looked over at him and said, "And that isn't the person I
want to be."
"So then we'll get out." He gave me a gentle smile. "We're no killers and this
is something that is going to end up with people dead. Whatever the smugglers
are hiding, they're more than willing to murder anyone who comes close to
finding out."
"It's settled, then. I'll get a message drone ready to send to Peter Crane
explaining that we got into a lot more than what we're willing to handle, and
you make one last pass through the comnet to see what other information you
can gather together to give to VeCRA. Let's substantiate our claims as best we
can. We'll leave Crane's name out of it, and I'll return the money we didn't
use." I was giving up my shot at twenty million rucets and freedom, and I felt
better. That was how I knew I'd made the right decision.
I put a sincere apology into the drone along with an account of the things
that had happened to us and
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood why we were dropping out, and
transferred the credit from my account into a secure chit that would transfer
it on to Crane's account when the drone reached Cassamir Station. Once that
was finished, I
decided to go up to the bridge and see how Badger was coming with his
information download. I
decided I'd include that in the drone to Crane, so that when he hired someone
else to get his ship back, that person could start where we'd left off.
When I reached the bridge, Badger said, "You haven't sent the drone yet, have
you?"
"No."
"Good. Don't."
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"I was going to include all the information you were getting here."
"See what I found first. You aren't going to like it."
He brought up the first part of the search on his data screen. "This is what
our query regarding the three men who had tried to kill you on Cassamir
station yielded."
That search had come up with identities for two of the three men. The giant
was Gainer Holloway.
Information about him was sketchy. He was from Coronado, and he was a licensed
ship mechanic. He had no record and it was only because he held an
interstellar license that the query had picked him up.
The other identified man was Ejus Gambidja. He was a transport security guard
for United Package
Interstellar. Had a clean record, had been bonded by UPI, and so had
eventually been identified in our exhaustive query. That was all I had on him.
I had nothing on the third man; he was probably someone who'd never done
anything to anyone, had a perfect record and a job that didn't require him to
have ID
information in an interstellar database.
A bunch of sweet guys, my first batch of would-be killers.
"Now this is what I got on the name
Corrigan's Blood
. The query will probably still generate information for a few more days, but
this is what we have now."
So far the search had generated thirty-two famous Corrigans, but only two that
also met our second criteria, that of being associated with blood in some way.
The first was a serial killer from Chezchizad named Paul Deine Corrigan who
had died fifty-seven years ago. He had specialized in murdering small
children, whom he had cooked and eaten after drinking their blood. The report
indicated rituals that went along with this, and the psychotic conviction on
the part of the killer that he was staving off the end of the universe with
his actions.
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
The second blood-tied Corrigan was Dr. Haskell B. Corrigan, a brilliant
researcher who had disappeared from his laboratory on Sprax while trying to
develop a cure for old age. He'd been concentrating on altering the chemistry
of human blood, and while no one felt that he was anywhere near a breakthrough
 and though most people doubted that he was even looking in the right
direction his other contributions to medicine, most in the field of nanoviral
design, had made his mysterious disappearance a tragedy and a loss.
"If it was either one of those two, let's hope it was the second," I said.
"Here's the last report members of the Universal Society of Antiquarian
Gothicans, the society Cal
Basqueian belonged to. I cross-referenced the membership list with names that
were already in the shipcom memory in any context, and with places we have
been or were planning on going."
There were 38,478 names listed: Badger had evidently wormed directly into the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]