<em>Just another night in Nar Tyria.<br/><br/>Night's usually for working, but I wanted to relax before this latest bit of biz.  Some jobs are tougher than others and even assassins need a break.<br/><br/>On impluse, I steered my airspeeder into the fringes of Nar Tyria, heading for the Underworld 66 club.  Sometimes self-flagellation goes with my line of work.  I honestly didn't remember that Maria Mercurial would be playing the Underworld 66 that night, not until I got to the club and saw her name flashing out over the packed streets in a rainbow of colours from the holographic marquee.<br/><br/>The crowd was a wild mixture of street slime from the Barrens rubbing shoulders with corporate wage-slaves from the Uptown District, the high and the low of Nar Tyria crammed into a grungy city block to pay court to the rocker queen.  Most of those who made it to the door got the thumbs down from Newt, the oversized Wookie who is the Underworld's arbiter of elegance.  No one was going to get in tonight who wasn't eiher macroflash or outrageously grungy enough to please Newt's sense of the grotesque.<br/><br/>I was carrying an ID that would get me into the Emperor's spa bath assuming old Palpatine knew what was good for him.  The face on it was mine, though the rest of it was about as real as a politician's promise.  I flashed it at the roadie who guarded the side entrance to the club, and was amused to see him instantly straighten up.  The 100 credit chip gripped between two of my fingers probably helped.<br/><br/>Underworld 66 was alive that night.  Light blasted into my eyes as I walked down the ramp leading from street level.  The dance floor was an amorphous beast, writhing with a thousand limbs and the beat of the music red-lined my pulse into overdrive.  On the stage a nova was dancing.<br/><br/>She was synth-linking to the music, driving the banked-up sound machines with the impulses of muscle and nerve.  Most kids who fancy themselves rockers just learn a few basic trigger patterns for their links, and let the programming of the control decks fill in the rest.  Hearing and seeing Maria, you knew that every tone was driven by a highly trained movement, that the choreography of sound, body and voice were all from the heart, as alive as children at play, as intimate as a lover's caress, as real as death.<br/><br/>When the set was over, the Underworld went berserk.  Maria stood under a single, searing spot at the centre of the stage, her chest and belly pumping in deep, gasping breaths.  The metal limbs shimmered as rivulets of sweat poured down from the human flesh of shoulders and hips.  It was almost ten minutes before the demented crowd would let her go.  This had begun as a night off, but when your karma says it time to work, you work.  So the airspeeder and I were ready, waiting in an alley by the stage door, when Maria ran the gauntlet of fans to her limo.  The big Sienar Nightsky airspeeder, mirror-chromed like its mistress from hood to trunk, pulled out into the darkness of the night, and I eased out in its wake, trailing along behind.<br/><br/>I was only a little-surprised when the limo turned deeper into the Barrens, away from the lights of Nar Tyria and into a little heart of darkness.  Sometimes, after a gig, Maria had to unwind.  Her file made it clear how she would do it.  A block away from a merc dive called The Pit, her limo pulled over to a landing platform.  The back door opened, and Maria stepped out.  She was wearing a black street outfit, armourcloth with silver splints, that looked like a fetishes's dream come true and would probably stop a Death Hammer blaster bolt at close range.  Glasses covered the upper half of her face with black lenses so opaque they had to be vision-enhancers.<br/><br/>The Pit was crammed with the wannabees, used-to-bees, and assorted killer-bees of the merc scene.  The vibes were a veritable oratorio of bad-ass.  Maria was at the bar, constructing a drink out of whatever toxic waste they sold under the alias of alcohol.  Several grimy-nasties approached her, offering dubious pleasures, and backed away when their best efforts didn't merit even a glance.  Finally, a guy who might have been a hairless Wookie, except that Wookies rarely get so big or so ugly, locked target-acquisition on the lady.  When his opening line got nowhere, he decided to drop the coy approach and grabbed her arm.<br/><br/>The was a liquid movement of black and silver, and then the ardent suitor sailed into a knot of onlookers.  Maria stood with her back to the bar, her onyx-lensed shades catching faint reflections from the lights overhead.  Ugly boy seemed stunned, which was understandable, then let out a roar as what happened sank into his dull consciousness.  He charged forward.  Why do these muscle types always charge when they run into someone who can take them?  Its almost like they're programmed for it: get thrown, stand up, roar and charge.<br/><br/>With an avoidance move so fine I expected the crowd to burst into applause, Maria took herself off the guy's line of attack.  One silver hand slipped over his out-stretched, clutching arm, the other looped up to grasp the back of his neck.  She stepped aside, continuing to turn as she had begun, and cartwheeled the goon over the bar into a pyramid of bottles.  The destruction was awesome.<br/><br/>There is something about the sound of breaking glass in a joint like this.  Within seconds, the bar turned into one humongous brawl.  I pistoned the heel of a hand into a furry, snaggle-toothed face that got too close and followed a trail of flying bodies that marked the quicksilver lady's path to the door.  I could see the silver limo turning the corner, come to retrieve its owner after her brief night out.  Maria sat with her back against the wall, hands over her face, crooning to herself in a quiet steady voice.  Her personal demons had been laid to rest, at least for tonight, by the twin drugs of music and violence.<br/><br/>The chauffeur climbed out of the car, cradling a short, ugly blaster carbine under one arm.  He bent over the rocking figure and spoke quietly.  She looked up.  I had my cybernetic eyes turned up to deal with the darkness, and under the ghostly light of the dim streetlamp, I could see her face plainly.  I have never understood why the late and unlamented Reynaldo Texa had left the eyes unaltered when he had Maria's skin job done.  May there there was something in the deep, brown eyes looking out of the silver mask of her face that did somthing for him.  It always made me want to cry, or kill something.<br/><br/>Once Maria was safetly in her car, I walked back to where I'd stashed my airspeeder, and kicked away the twitching body of a local with more greed than sense who had gotten too close to the electrically charged anti-theft plates.  They retracted when I told the speeder that I was back.  Maria Mercurial.  I'd studied her.  Seen her make her art and found joy in it as I watched.  With the access to her files that my masters at Konmin Macrotechnology had given me, I knew her better than she knew herself.  <br/><br/>Now all I had to do was kill her.  <br/><br/>Some jobs are tougher than others.</em>