Luna Marine(101)
“Whatever you say, Slider.” Standing, she turned around, spread her legs, and gracefully bent over, grabbing her ankles to give Slider a good look.
“The color’s a bit flat and garish,” Jack said. “I had to go down from millions of colors to two fifty-six. But I might know a way to get around that. I’m still tweaking it, you know.”
“Well, all I can say is I would love to give her a tweak! Flash, m’boy, you and me are gonna clean up!”
“What do you mean?”
Gently, he patted the screen over Sam’s raised bottom. “Okay, honey. Let’s see you dance for us!”
“Whatever you say, Slider.” She straightened up and began a slow, sensuous bump and grind, turning slowly as she danced to nonexistent music. Frowning, Jack made a mental note to check her source code, especially the random sequencing routine. She was falling into that “Whatever you say” response much too often.
“Flash, do you have any idea what the guys would pay to have their very own naked babe, at their command, right on their own PADs?”
“Pay? I figured some of the guys would just like to have them….
“Oh, Flash, Flash, Flash, I am so disappointed in you! There is opportunity here, big-time, and you obviously are in desperate need of someone to show you how to make the most of it! You gotta learn how to play the angles, man!”
“But we can’t sell it, can we? I mean, I started with this commercial package. It was really pretty lame, a kind of customized do-it-yourself date on your computer, but it was protected by a copyright, you know? And the AI agent came from another package. I just kind of knitted the two together.”
“Ah, that stuff is all in a gray area, know what I mean? You probably already technically violated copyright just by rewriting her source code, right?”
“I don’t think I—”
“Sure! And with all the stuff you did with her code, you changed her quite a bit, right? Like, you were telling me you worked in that emergency quick-change bit, and got her to respond personally, with your name, and stuff? And obviously you worked in the Net agent stuff, and the government-issue agent, too, right?”
“Yeah, but I still used—”
“You used the store-bought program as a template. Sure. But what we have here is a whole new product! Trust me!”
Jack looked at Slider for a moment, letting his gaze flick up to the patch glued to the Marine’s helmet. Armor and helmet decorations weren’t authorized for the 5th MarDiv, strictly speaking, but none of the brass, up to Major General Holcomb himself, had issued any orders to end the widespread practice. Slider carried his Hops Vincet patch glued to his helmet, right next to the visor drag and above the stenciled name SLIDELL.
All The Way To Mars And They Made Us Throw Away The Beer….
Jack knew all about the beer patch and the story behind it from his uncle, but he’d been startled to find someone who’d been on Garroway’s March here, in Russia. He’d heard that the Corps was a tight little family, that if you stayed in long enough, you would inevitably run into just about everyone…but he’d not really believed it until he’d met Slider.
He was worried about Slider’s proposition. It still didn’t seem entirely legal…and Jack hadn’t really planned on selling Sam to the other Marines. He’d thought that she might be a good way for him to make friends, but he hadn’t thought at all about using her to make money. But the fact that Slider had been there, with the MMEF on Mars went a long, long way toward making Jack want to trust the guy. In point of fact, Slider was a little vague about the details; once he’d claimed to have been at Mars Prime during the march, helping to offload the contraband beer that Garroway had used in his unorthodox attack at Cydonia, but most of the time he claimed to have actually been with “Sands of Mars” Garroway in the long trek up the Valles Marineris.
It hardly mattered. Slider was obviously an operator, as old-hand Marines called them, but he seemed a decent enough guy. And whether he’d actually been on the March or not, he’d been to Mars…
Jack did wonder, sometimes, why the guy was still only a corporal when he had to have been in damned near forever to have gotten a billet with the MMEF. He’d asked Slider about it once, but the Marine had just shrugged, and said, “Sergeants. Can’t live with ’em, and it sure would be nice to live without ’em.”
“So what’s your idea?” Jack asked.
“I figure we could sell these to the other guys at sixty bucks a pop, maybe seventy-five, see?” He stared at Sam for a moment, watching her silent, writhing dance on the PAD’s display. “Hell, I’m gonna have to think about the price, some. Even a hundred wouldn’t be too much for one of these baby dolls! Anyway, I figure you and me split the take, fifty-fifty. You do whatever customizing is necessary, you know, to get her to use the customer’s name and everything. And I’ll see to the sales and marketing end of things. I can make the pitch, close the sale, collect the cash, and then we make the split. Deal?”