She frowned. “What? The oranges?”

I shook my head and pointed through the door. We both stepped up to it and peered inside. A hefty chunk of the marijuana crop was devastated down to the roots, as if a horde of locusts had just come through. “I have a feeling your ‘hacker’ nephew didn’t want to timeshare the crop as much as you did, at least not that one.” The codes for hijacking nanobug programming were easy enough to find on the PlanNet. I scuffed the dust around us. “You’d better vacuum this blue stuff up, because your crop’s still in it.”

Her face turned pale and then red. “Why, that little rat bastard. He tried to do a rip on us.”

“Yup. That’s about the size of it.” I picked up my toolkit and dusted it off. “If you give me his name, I can call the police and have them press charges for you. There’s a planet wide ban on these kinds of nanos.”

She gave me a look and for a second, I almost felt sorry for her weasely young relative, whose life was about to get real unpleasant. “No need for that, son, ’cause once I get hold of him, his name’s gonna be ‘mud’!”

END

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