It was the belly-bomb, wasn't it? That's what was hanging me up. Call me hopelessly naive (I've been called much worse, trust me), but I'd always associated belly-bombs and suicide missions with ideologically driven fanatics—in other words, with slogan-chanting wackos. Not with corporate hard-men. I'd always classed corporate assassins as the cold and logical types, the slots who plan everything down to the minutest detail and won't take a job unless there's a 99 . 99% chance that they'll walk away from it. Hell, corporators—whether they're managers or killers—are driven by the personal profit motive, aren't they? I've never really thought loyalty unto death was part of the corporate world. You do your job because you're paid for it—paid very well, in many cases—not because you truly believe in what the corp's doing. Who in their right mind would die for the Just and Righteous Cause of Yamatetsu Corporation?