There's not much to say about the freelance mercenaries' job. It's nothing more than two things - robbing money or robbing people.
However, Captain Qin, who had planned everything, still missed one thing. Even though push messages have become more and more reliable with the help of information technology, there are too many people with the same name in this world, and this Gary may not be that Gary.
So, while they were loudly conspiring, the real Gary was comfortably standing by the French window of the attic next to the street-level police station. He wore a large, comfortable crimson robe, raised a glass of orange-red, bubbly ale, and admired the prisoners hanging upside down around the city monument in the square. After six months of adventures on Mars, he had become the security officer of the 115th District in Mariner Valley, no longer the insignificant little guy.
Most of the prisoners were poor people who could not afford to buy ransom tickets, rather than truly vicious thugs. Unfortunately, the Martians these days were not even uncivilized barbarians. Even petty thefts would be pulled out of private detention centers and punished openly.
It's true that humans are incredibly creative in their torture of their own kind. Most of them were stripped naked (or rather, completely robbed), their body parts broken off, their blood dried and clotted into a web of hardened lumps on their hemorrhagic bleached skin. Gary would often see people stealing these people's body parts in the middle of the night, even if they hadn't died of hunger or thirst or were simply unconscious from blood loss.
In his view, the Martian Federation was clearly not a normal political entity. Rather than a planetary self-government organization, it was more like a loose alliance of tribes—no different from Earth. If it hadn't inherited the industrial core of the community, the only thing it could boast was a free port. In other words, this place was a hodgepodge of good and bad people, and any so-called free citizen could potentially possess a dark and outrageous hidden identity.
There was a knock on the door. Gary put his wine glass on the table, adjusted his exposed chest, and said politely, "Come in!"
The visitor was a maid employed by the police station and also the owner of the hotel where the loft was located. She was in her mid-thirties, a bit overweight, and wore a matching maroon apron and boots lined with a gray synthetic fabric for work. She looked a bit slovenly, but the dark colors of her clothing only accentuated her fiery red hair, even though it was simply tied into a ponytail.
Martian natives prefer the color red.
"Ms. Yao, what can I do for you?" Gary was very polite to her. After all, all signs indicated that she was most likely the mistress of the local sheriff.
"Officer Li, hurry up and clean up, Xiao Huo... The sheriff needs your cooperation on something."
"Do you need me to bring anything?"
"Of course, your ID, your gun, and... at least it's not this robe that can't hide your butt and the barrel of the gun." She gestured at Gary's lower body with her eyes, and he quickly bent down to check. "Haha, all right, just change your clothes. I'm leaving now."
"You're busy..."
Gary listened to the footsteps receding behind the door and breathed a sigh of relief. Truth be told, women like this were rare on Mars. She was like a piece of ice burning in a fire. Her passion and reserve, these contradictory elements, blended perfectly in her, creating a mysterious aura that tempted people into committing a crime.
He picked up the wine glass and drank it all, then changed into a dark red police uniform, pinned on his police badge, replaced the batteries in his pistol, and neatly put it into his waist holster. He adjusted his appearance in the mirror, opened the door, and walked towards the unknown...
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