Just thought I'd write a story that has almost all things that I think are pretty :awesome:. That inlcudes pizza. Lemme know what you think.
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Mister Black Kicks Arse on Mars
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“There is life on Mars alright,” Matt remembered a friend of his once say over a pint of Io’s Finest, “It just doesn’t last very long.”
Hellish dunes and industrial buildings stared at him from the other side of his visor.
“Matt?” said his assistant’s voice inside his helmet.
Matt spotted Marla waving her hand next to a sturdy-looking vehicle. He couldn’t see her face from behind the matte black of her visor but her figure gave her away.
“Welcome to Mars, boss.”
They got into the transport. Six wheels on each side, the bright yellow vehicle looked like it was built to withstand a direct meteor hit. Matt reckoned it probably was.
“Thanks,” Matt said.
“You’re welcome,” she said, buckling her driver’s seat belt, “But next time you want to send me to a giant red rock two days before you even get here, you better think about paying me triple.”
She flipped a switch and the entrance hatch slid closed. Matt heard the characteristic sound of oxygen being fed into the cabin.
“You can take your helmet off,” she said and removed her headgear. Red hair fell over her shoulders and Matt’s eyes involuntarily followed them to the two very noticeable curves on her envirosuit. His assistant was in her early twenties, her pretty face covered in freckles. Matt knew he had good taste.
He took his helmet off and Marla pushed the pedal to the metal.
“You wouldn’t believe the suite I got Nova Terra to prep for you,” she said, “I bet their entire board of directors got hard as a rock when they found out that you took the contact.”
“Honestly, kid, I hope they didn’t,” he said, “How far are we from The Prime?”
Matt didn’t have a definite plan of action of what to do when they got there, but even in his army days he was always a shoot-em-as-they-come kind of guy. He made Colonel at thirty-two and headed one of United Nations of Earth’s leading detective agencies at forty, so he figured he had the right idea.
“Well, it took me a couple of hours to get here, but that’s only ‘cuz of the storm warning, so I figure…”
An all too familiar tingle at the back of his head made him interrupt Marla.
“Hey, does this thing have outer mikes?” he asked.
“Yeah, but there’s nothing you want to hear out there. Just wind and…”
The cabin jumped and everything turned into a blur. Matt felt the sensation of falling and then something knocked the air out of him. When he opened his eyes he was suspended upside down in his chair and it was difficult to breathe. He turned his head. Marla was unconscious, her hair reaching the ceiling that now passed for the floor. He unbuckled his seatbelt and crashed down. He attached Marla’s helmet to her envirosuit and did the same for himself. After unbuckling Marla he gently lowered her to the floor, flipped the hatch switch, and pulled her out.
There was lots of desert.
Their tire tracks disappeared far into the horizon. They were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by the planet’s red dunes, the overturned crawler’s two remaining wheels on fire. The other four were scattered all around the place along with the debris left from the explosion.
And that was when he saw them. Three men in heavily worn combat envirosuit rose up from one of the dunes. They were armed to the teeth, and one of them had a portable missile launcher slung over his shoulder, smoke coming from the barrel.
Next time I’m going on a trip, pack the assault rifle first, socks later, Matt thought.Marla was still unconscious. The men came close enough to reach out and touch and he turned his exterior audiofeed on. The sound of Martian winds filled his helmet.
One of the assailants poked his Kalashnikov at Matt’s chest. The safety switch was off.
“On your knees!”
Matt got on his knees and raised his hands.
The rifle now stared him in the face. His body reacted before his mind had time to tell him he was crazy. Matt pushed the barrel away from his face with one hand and hit his attacker across the hands with the other. The assault rifle landed square into Nova Terra Corporation’s new marketer’s hands. He dropped to his side, smacking his weaponless opponent’s knee with the rifle’s butt as he fell.
Matt felt the knee give in, and pulled the trigger. His exterior audiofeed still on, all the sound in the world became but a burst of gunfire.
The bullets tore into the rocket launcher sporting sob and went out of his colleague’s back in a fountain of blood. The men fell into the dust like two oversized dominos, and Matt brought his rifle’s butt on his last live opponent’s visor, cracking the reinforced glass.
“Kalashnikov, a serious man’s best bet since nineteen-forty-seven,” Matt said as he got up.
He climbed into the crawler’s deformed cabin and sent out a distress signal.
“You OK, Marla?” he asked, climbing back out.
“Matt Black, private investigations, public executions,” Marla said as she stood up, shaking her head. “I thought you said you were through with the killing.”
“Better them than us,” he said.
The flier came not a minute too soon. A man in a military uniform jumped out and helped them on board.
“I’ll wait for the police from Mars City here, but you go right ahead,” he told them. The pilot gave him a nod and took off.
After a half an hour’s flight, Bakhuysen Prime, formely simply the Bakhuysen Crater, came into the flier’s viewscreen.
Nova Terra’s HQ’s supporting structures filled up the entire crater, spires and communication arrays extending far into the Martian sky. Matt knew Nova Terra to have twenty three terraforming plants spread across the planet, every single one of them coordinated from here.
“Everybody strapped in?” asked the pilot.
Marla and Matt nodded and he brought the craft down. After thanking the pilot for the trouble, they stepped onto the landing pad to be met by the on-site medical crew, some of the company’s senior executives, and a bunch of other people whose exact purpose escaped Matt.
In forty minutes he was already out of his envirosuit, cleaned, shaved, and sporting his tailor-made Armani suit that Marla brought to Mars along his other various belongings. He instructed a nearby guidebot to take him to the conference room.
He was excited to find that the conference room apart from the compulsory oval table and leather chairs also featured a huge window with a view of the red planet. Dust storms died and were born again, and the occasional twelve-wheel crawler or flier made its way to and from The Prime.
Marla’s words made him expect the entire board of directors to show up but apparently he wasn’t that big of a fish. Only two men joined him in the conference room. Matt recognized them as Carl Edinburgh, Director of Production, and Dorian Lint, Director of Operations.
Carl was a tall man, his face all business. He reminded Matt of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula that he saw in a History of Motion Pictures documentary once. Dorian on the other hand was a good deal shorter and chubbier, and, sporting long hair, looked more like an aged rockstar than an Executive Director.
“Welcome to Mars, Mister Black. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Dracula, “Terribly sorry about what you’ve had to go through on your way here. We weren’t expecting you to take the freighter, otherwise we would’ve sent armed escort. I guarantee that nothing like this will ever happen again.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, gentlemen,” said Matt, “You mind telling me what in the hell happened out there?”
“Rebel scum,” said Lint, “While the Union’s threatening us with unprecedented lawsuits day and night, some of our ex-employees decided that negotiations go easier with a gun hands. They say they’re fighting to free Mars from corporate oppression but in reality… In reality, they’re nothing but terrorists.”
“Luckily for us,” Edinburgh said, sitting down, “They had nothing on our detective.”
There was a moment of awkward silence. Matt raised an eyebrow. “If they hate you so much,” he asked, “Why don’t they just leave?”
“Leave?” asked Rockstar Lint, “Leave to where? Mars is their lives. They’ve got nothing going on for them on Earth, nowhere to go. Except for … Except for maybe the Competition.” The “C” in Competition had been audibly capitalized.
He spoke about Gamium, the reason Matt got involved in the first place. That is of course unless Matt missed out on a new terraforming giant being sprung overnight.
“Ah yes, them,” said Edinburgh, “They’ve got almost as many plants as we do on the planet, and the case they presented to United Nations of Earth’s Medium Business Division may very well cost us our license. They claim we’ve unsanitary conditions, unrealistic workload, high accident rate…”
“What do they think this is,” Lint cut in, “A goddamn ski resort? This is Mars! We counterclaimed, of course, but even if we and Gamium both lost our licenses, we’re still back to square one!”
“That is true, Mister Black. UNE had dispatched an Independent Commission to review our operation. They should be here next month. If things aren’t any different by then, we all better start looking for new jobs,” said Edinburgh.
“We have a leak, Mister Black. The case they’ve made is way too detailed. And we heard you’re good at,” Edinburgh coughed, “Sorting problems of this sort.”
Matt looked at the red sky outside.
“All right,” he said, “I’d like to visit your five major plants first thing tomorrow morning, and I’d prefer that no one outside this room knows about my visits. Please get me the most up-to-date documentation on Gamium’s claim… I would also need production reports and the most up-to-date staffing plans.”
“Why in the world would you need the staffing plans?” asked Edinburgh.
“In marketing there’s a saying that goes ‘by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,’” Matt said, not feeling one bit embarrassed about completely pulling that out of his arse, “I want to have the fullest picture I can get.”
Director of Operations gave him an approving nod. Edinburgh frowned.
“Now, gentlemen, if you don’t mind, I’d like to do some on-site reconnaissance,” Matt said.
After the meeting was adjourned, Matt made it to back his room. It was a spacious room designed for both work and recreation. There was a separate bathroom, a half-circle kitchen table with all the appliances to make anything from an exotic milkshake to an atomic bomb, and the compulsory minibar the size of a regular refrigerator. The workspace included a comfy-looking leather chair and an office table with an in-built holographic computer system. The display was showing that he had dozens of unread e-mails. Damn, they’re fast, he thought.
“Guidebot, get me a pepperoni pizza, extra cheese, extra pepperoni, extra fast. And get my assistant over here.”
The guidebot hummed away and Matt fell on his new king-size bed. He thought about tomorrow’s morning. Matt knew that like war plans, detective work can’t be done from behind a computer screen. You had to taste the sweat and smell the gunpowder. The fine ladies and gentlemen over at Medium Business Division severely limited his sweat tasting time, or anything at all time for that matter, but he’d been in worse setups before. Going up against an insurgent Viking-class tank on Iwo Jima II with nothing but a pair of chopsticks came to mind. The tank hadn’t stood a chance.
Matt’s personal assistant walked through the door, a pizza box in hands.
Marla had ditched the envirosuit for a set of navy jeans that complemented her figure and a black T-Shirt with “Mars Is For Martians” printed across her bustline. It cost Matt a heroic effort to raise his eyes to her face.
“How’s your head, kid?” he asked.
“Not too bad, thanks,” she said, putting the pizza on the kitchen table, “Thanks for getting us out of there.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have gotten far here without my trusty assistant,” he said, cutting the pizza with a circular cutter he found in one of the kitchen cabinets, “Speaking about which, are you ready for your first job on Mars?”
“Only if you promise I won’t get shot at.”
“Not likely,” he handed her a slice, “I’m going to see Nova Terra’s guts tomorrow and I want you with me for the ride. But until then, I’d like you to help me sort through this mess.” He pointed at the holocomputer.
“Sure,” she said, munching on her pizza.
The reports showed the company to operate at only forty percent capacity. Most of the terraforming plants were under constant maintenance with Nova Terra’s engineers working ten hour workdays, and the construction brigades and support staff’s hours were stretched even thinner.
“What would you say to a bottle of Io’s?” Matt asked.
He felt Marla’s hair brush against his cheek.
“Wouldn’t say no,” she said, eyes still glued to the holoscreen.
He got up and made his way to the minibar.
Matt opened the minibar door. Inside, curved into a ball, a man sat dressed head to toe in dark grey. The man raised his head.
Matt gave out a surprised gasp and stepped back.
The man’s look was the look of a panther getting ready to leap, the rest of his face concealed by a balaclava.
The black-clad man grabbed the edges of the minibar and leapt out, landing his knee square into the sensitive area between the detective’s legs. Matt bent in two and the man’s fist connected with his face. He arched backwards and caught a straight kick in his chest that sent him flying across the room.
His attacker jumped on him but Matt straightened his right leg and the man caught a face full of foot. Matt’s opponent quickly recovered and took a stance that reminded Matt of the couple of Karate classes he took way back in high school. Matt didn’t know Karate but he’d never lost a fistfight and he wasn’t about to start now.
He aligned his left foot with his torso and put his right fist in front of his chest and his left next to his face. That’s when Marla came at the assassin with the chair.
There was the thud of metal hitting against wood as the assassin moved away, twisting his body in half-turn. But before his punch reached Marla, Matt punched the assassin in the temple. There was a crunching noise.
Matt put all his body movement, every single ounce of muscle into that punch. The power of the impact sent the small-framed man flying into the wall like a rag doll hit by a baseball bat.
“What in the name of Goorar’s balls was that?” Matt asked, catching his breath.
“You tell me,” said Marla, “Bloody hell Matt, it’s the second time someone tried to kill us today. A bottle of Io’s would be nice right about now.”
“The ******* must’ve drunk it all,” said Matt, looking at the empty minibar.
“Believe me or not, I’ve actually seen a uniform like his before,” Marla leaned back on the kitchen table, “Ninjas wear that kind of clothes.”
“Ninjas? Are you telling me we had a ninja hiding in our fridge?”
“I don’t think he’d go down so easily if he’d be a real ninja. But chances are that he trained with someone who was.”
“And you know this how, exactly?”
“I wasn’t always your assistant, you know. They’re lively bastards, too.”
The fake ninja chose this moment to jump back to his feet and rush at Matt. The detective grabbed the pizza cutter from the kitchen table and made a half-circle swing. The blade cut across the ninja’s throat.
Blood spewed from the wound in a shower of red. The ninja collapsed to the floor.
“Not that lively,” Matt said.
After prolific apologies from Dracula and his long haired friend and promises of disciplinary measures against The Prime’s Head of Security, Matt spent the remainder of the night on Marla’s less-than-Spartan room’s carpet. The carpet didn’t seem to mind.
As they put on their envirosuits in the morning he slid his revolver into a hermetic thigh holster. The two attempts on his life in less than eight hours made him feel that next time he might not get as lucky. In a few minutes time they were already boarding the flier. First stop was to be NTC Plant 17 located in the Schroeter Crater two hours away by air. Or whatever it was that passed here for air.
Against Matt’s protests both Edinburgh and Lint insisted on an armed escort and six Nova Terra’s Security Force troopers boarded the flier with them. They were all wearing heavy body armor and seemed to be the type of men who preferred to let their fully automatics do the talking. Matt didn’t mind the sulky disposition – he was once just like them. Marla, on the other hand, kept fruitlessly trying to engage them in small talk during most of their flight to the crater.
According to the data the two Nova Terra directors sent him earlier, Schroeter Crater was two hundred twenty two meters in diameter, with the actual terraforming plant located on the east side of the crater.
Just like that time in the crawler Matt felt the sensation of danger the moment they’ve entered the plant. The rust-colored pipes, the steam shooting out of the walls, the intertwined hoses under the high ceiling didn't help either.
Matt and Marla had removed their bulky helmets after entering the facility on their security detail's advise, so he wasn’t all that surprised when the man pointed his rifle at Matt’s face. Another trooper took Matt’s Colt Python. Then the escort’s lead smashed his rifle’s butt against the side of Matt’s head.
The detective came to from an uncomfortable sensation of being unable to move his arms or legs. He was stripped of everything but his boxers and stretched spread-eagle on some sort of a vertical slab. So far so good, he thought. Feeling the sensation of hot liquid crawling down his temple, he also thought that he couldn’t have been more right about their escort preferring their guns doing the talking.
He looked around. Marla, in her underwear, hung to his right. Just like Matt’s, her ankles and wrists were cuffed to the slab.
“You alive?”
“Marginally,” she said.
There were lots of people in the dim-lit room. Most of them wore the rugged combat wear Matt remembered from the crawler experience, but some of them were dressed in dark grey overalls, their faces hid by balaclavas made from the same fabric. The six Security Force armor clad troopers were also here. Naturally, everyone was armed.
Dorian Lint, Nova Terra Corporation’s long-haired rockstar Director of Operations in the flesh, walked out of the crowd. Matt saw his revolver tucked under Dorian’s belt.
“Mister Black, I’m terribly sorry about all this.”
“Not nearly as much as you will be, Dorian.”
“Oh I doubt it, Mister Black.”
“Villain talk, here we go,” Marla muttered from her slab.
“Just to let you know, it was pretty obvious that the leak was either you or Edinburgh. It’s not like I’ve advertised my NTC contract on Mars City Daily.”
“Wow, some fascinating detective work right there, Mister Black. I wonder how you ever made it so big.”
“And these ‘freedom fighters’ of yours, your little Gamium-funded private army sabotaging Nova Terra’s operation are worth balls, if I can say so myself. And ninjas? Come on, how more clichéd can you get?”
One of the men in grey overalls shifted his posture.
“And with all your ninjas, rebels, and troopers, Dorian,” Matt continued, “You failed to kill me thrice now.”
“All in due time,” said Gamium’s agent, “And whatever gave you the idea that I want you dead?”
“Oh, just a hunch.”
“Quite the contrary, Mister Black, quite the contrary. I’m sure you’ve heard of cybernetic behaviour mods? What’s better than closing down Nova Terra’s operation after one of their new contractors kills the entire UNE Commission when they get to Bakhuysen Prime?”
“I can think of a number of things. I’d say that a bullet to your head tops the list, though.”
“Resilient to the last, I see. Don’t worry, I can guarantee that the operation will be almost painless. Almost.”
“Last wish?” Matt asked.
“What?”
“Can I have a last wish?”
“Humour me.”
“I’d like one last kiss with Marla.”
Dorian giggled and motioned his men to move Marla’s slab to face Matt. The detective stretched his neck as if to reach Marla’s lips, but instead of kissing her, he winked. His assistant winked back and with what seemed like no effort at all tore her cuffed hands from the slab. Her feet followed and she jumped to the floor.
Still concealed from view by the slab, she tore out Matt’s restrains and then kicked at her slab. It flew across the room, smashing one of the ninjas into the wall. Marla dashed to a trooper, grabbed his rifle, and bent the barrel in two.
Gunfire filled the room. Matt rolled across the floor and jumped at Dorian. He headbutted his captor and grabbed the Colt from Dorian’s belt. He fell back on the ground, bullets whistling past his face, aimed it at a ninja and pulled the trigger.
The shot stopped the ninja mid-flight. Matt felt a sharp pain and gunned down another ninja before dislodging the throwing star from his shoulder. Marla had gotten hold of an automatic and was laying waste to the fake Security Force agents and Dorian’s guerrilla fighters alike.
She got shot a few times, but Matt knew it was nothing the cyborg couldn’t handle. Matt almost allowed himself to get distracted when another ninja came out of nowhere and caught Matt’s index finger in his left eye, followed by a bullet in his right. Dorian was trying to make a run for it but another shot from the Colt Python took one of his legs clean off. Gamium’s agent fell on the floor with the wildest scream.
By now Matt and Marla were the only two people standing. Matt walked across the pool of blood to Dorian, kicked him over, and aimed the revolver at his forehead.
“Going somewhere, Dorian?”
Dorian muttered something unintelligible.
“Well that went according to plan,” he told Marla.
“Your plan had more holes than all these bastards combined,” she said.
“And yet here we are, making good on Nova Terra’s money.”
“You…” Dorian started, but Matt’s boot shut him up.
“Back to The Prime now. I think both Edinburgh and this Independent Commission of his would be more than interested in what Mister Lint here would have to stay about Gamium’s methods. You know, too bad we finished so soon,” he looked at the fallen bodies, “I sort of start to like this place.”
“We don’t have to leave just now, boss. I got us a room in Mars City. Thought you’d like a little time to cool off.”
“You’re worth your weight in gold, Marla.”
“And boss? They had one bed only.”
Matt looked at his red haired assistant. The assault rifle in her hands only accentuated her semi-nakedness.
“I guess we’ll just have to make do.”
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Mister Black Kicks Arse on Mars
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“There is life on Mars alright,” Matt remembered a friend of his once say over a pint of Io’s Finest, “It just doesn’t last very long.”
Hellish dunes and industrial buildings stared at him from the other side of his visor.
“Matt?” said his assistant’s voice inside his helmet.
Matt spotted Marla waving her hand next to a sturdy-looking vehicle. He couldn’t see her face from behind the matte black of her visor but her figure gave her away.
“Welcome to Mars, boss.”
They got into the transport. Six wheels on each side, the bright yellow vehicle looked like it was built to withstand a direct meteor hit. Matt reckoned it probably was.
“Thanks,” Matt said.
“You’re welcome,” she said, buckling her driver’s seat belt, “But next time you want to send me to a giant red rock two days before you even get here, you better think about paying me triple.”
She flipped a switch and the entrance hatch slid closed. Matt heard the characteristic sound of oxygen being fed into the cabin.
“You can take your helmet off,” she said and removed her headgear. Red hair fell over her shoulders and Matt’s eyes involuntarily followed them to the two very noticeable curves on her envirosuit. His assistant was in her early twenties, her pretty face covered in freckles. Matt knew he had good taste.
He took his helmet off and Marla pushed the pedal to the metal.
“You wouldn’t believe the suite I got Nova Terra to prep for you,” she said, “I bet their entire board of directors got hard as a rock when they found out that you took the contact.”
“Honestly, kid, I hope they didn’t,” he said, “How far are we from The Prime?”
Matt didn’t have a definite plan of action of what to do when they got there, but even in his army days he was always a shoot-em-as-they-come kind of guy. He made Colonel at thirty-two and headed one of United Nations of Earth’s leading detective agencies at forty, so he figured he had the right idea.
“Well, it took me a couple of hours to get here, but that’s only ‘cuz of the storm warning, so I figure…”
An all too familiar tingle at the back of his head made him interrupt Marla.
“Hey, does this thing have outer mikes?” he asked.
“Yeah, but there’s nothing you want to hear out there. Just wind and…”
The cabin jumped and everything turned into a blur. Matt felt the sensation of falling and then something knocked the air out of him. When he opened his eyes he was suspended upside down in his chair and it was difficult to breathe. He turned his head. Marla was unconscious, her hair reaching the ceiling that now passed for the floor. He unbuckled his seatbelt and crashed down. He attached Marla’s helmet to her envirosuit and did the same for himself. After unbuckling Marla he gently lowered her to the floor, flipped the hatch switch, and pulled her out.
There was lots of desert.
Their tire tracks disappeared far into the horizon. They were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by the planet’s red dunes, the overturned crawler’s two remaining wheels on fire. The other four were scattered all around the place along with the debris left from the explosion.
And that was when he saw them. Three men in heavily worn combat envirosuit rose up from one of the dunes. They were armed to the teeth, and one of them had a portable missile launcher slung over his shoulder, smoke coming from the barrel.
Next time I’m going on a trip, pack the assault rifle first, socks later, Matt thought.Marla was still unconscious. The men came close enough to reach out and touch and he turned his exterior audiofeed on. The sound of Martian winds filled his helmet.
One of the assailants poked his Kalashnikov at Matt’s chest. The safety switch was off.
“On your knees!”
Matt got on his knees and raised his hands.
The rifle now stared him in the face. His body reacted before his mind had time to tell him he was crazy. Matt pushed the barrel away from his face with one hand and hit his attacker across the hands with the other. The assault rifle landed square into Nova Terra Corporation’s new marketer’s hands. He dropped to his side, smacking his weaponless opponent’s knee with the rifle’s butt as he fell.
Matt felt the knee give in, and pulled the trigger. His exterior audiofeed still on, all the sound in the world became but a burst of gunfire.
The bullets tore into the rocket launcher sporting sob and went out of his colleague’s back in a fountain of blood. The men fell into the dust like two oversized dominos, and Matt brought his rifle’s butt on his last live opponent’s visor, cracking the reinforced glass.
“Kalashnikov, a serious man’s best bet since nineteen-forty-seven,” Matt said as he got up.
He climbed into the crawler’s deformed cabin and sent out a distress signal.
“You OK, Marla?” he asked, climbing back out.
“Matt Black, private investigations, public executions,” Marla said as she stood up, shaking her head. “I thought you said you were through with the killing.”
“Better them than us,” he said.
The flier came not a minute too soon. A man in a military uniform jumped out and helped them on board.
“I’ll wait for the police from Mars City here, but you go right ahead,” he told them. The pilot gave him a nod and took off.
After a half an hour’s flight, Bakhuysen Prime, formely simply the Bakhuysen Crater, came into the flier’s viewscreen.
Nova Terra’s HQ’s supporting structures filled up the entire crater, spires and communication arrays extending far into the Martian sky. Matt knew Nova Terra to have twenty three terraforming plants spread across the planet, every single one of them coordinated from here.
“Everybody strapped in?” asked the pilot.
Marla and Matt nodded and he brought the craft down. After thanking the pilot for the trouble, they stepped onto the landing pad to be met by the on-site medical crew, some of the company’s senior executives, and a bunch of other people whose exact purpose escaped Matt.
In forty minutes he was already out of his envirosuit, cleaned, shaved, and sporting his tailor-made Armani suit that Marla brought to Mars along his other various belongings. He instructed a nearby guidebot to take him to the conference room.
He was excited to find that the conference room apart from the compulsory oval table and leather chairs also featured a huge window with a view of the red planet. Dust storms died and were born again, and the occasional twelve-wheel crawler or flier made its way to and from The Prime.
Marla’s words made him expect the entire board of directors to show up but apparently he wasn’t that big of a fish. Only two men joined him in the conference room. Matt recognized them as Carl Edinburgh, Director of Production, and Dorian Lint, Director of Operations.
Carl was a tall man, his face all business. He reminded Matt of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula that he saw in a History of Motion Pictures documentary once. Dorian on the other hand was a good deal shorter and chubbier, and, sporting long hair, looked more like an aged rockstar than an Executive Director.
“Welcome to Mars, Mister Black. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Dracula, “Terribly sorry about what you’ve had to go through on your way here. We weren’t expecting you to take the freighter, otherwise we would’ve sent armed escort. I guarantee that nothing like this will ever happen again.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, gentlemen,” said Matt, “You mind telling me what in the hell happened out there?”
“Rebel scum,” said Lint, “While the Union’s threatening us with unprecedented lawsuits day and night, some of our ex-employees decided that negotiations go easier with a gun hands. They say they’re fighting to free Mars from corporate oppression but in reality… In reality, they’re nothing but terrorists.”
“Luckily for us,” Edinburgh said, sitting down, “They had nothing on our detective.”
There was a moment of awkward silence. Matt raised an eyebrow. “If they hate you so much,” he asked, “Why don’t they just leave?”
“Leave?” asked Rockstar Lint, “Leave to where? Mars is their lives. They’ve got nothing going on for them on Earth, nowhere to go. Except for … Except for maybe the Competition.” The “C” in Competition had been audibly capitalized.
He spoke about Gamium, the reason Matt got involved in the first place. That is of course unless Matt missed out on a new terraforming giant being sprung overnight.
“Ah yes, them,” said Edinburgh, “They’ve got almost as many plants as we do on the planet, and the case they presented to United Nations of Earth’s Medium Business Division may very well cost us our license. They claim we’ve unsanitary conditions, unrealistic workload, high accident rate…”
“What do they think this is,” Lint cut in, “A goddamn ski resort? This is Mars! We counterclaimed, of course, but even if we and Gamium both lost our licenses, we’re still back to square one!”
“That is true, Mister Black. UNE had dispatched an Independent Commission to review our operation. They should be here next month. If things aren’t any different by then, we all better start looking for new jobs,” said Edinburgh.
“We have a leak, Mister Black. The case they’ve made is way too detailed. And we heard you’re good at,” Edinburgh coughed, “Sorting problems of this sort.”
Matt looked at the red sky outside.
“All right,” he said, “I’d like to visit your five major plants first thing tomorrow morning, and I’d prefer that no one outside this room knows about my visits. Please get me the most up-to-date documentation on Gamium’s claim… I would also need production reports and the most up-to-date staffing plans.”
“Why in the world would you need the staffing plans?” asked Edinburgh.
“In marketing there’s a saying that goes ‘by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,’” Matt said, not feeling one bit embarrassed about completely pulling that out of his arse, “I want to have the fullest picture I can get.”
Director of Operations gave him an approving nod. Edinburgh frowned.
“Now, gentlemen, if you don’t mind, I’d like to do some on-site reconnaissance,” Matt said.
After the meeting was adjourned, Matt made it to back his room. It was a spacious room designed for both work and recreation. There was a separate bathroom, a half-circle kitchen table with all the appliances to make anything from an exotic milkshake to an atomic bomb, and the compulsory minibar the size of a regular refrigerator. The workspace included a comfy-looking leather chair and an office table with an in-built holographic computer system. The display was showing that he had dozens of unread e-mails. Damn, they’re fast, he thought.
“Guidebot, get me a pepperoni pizza, extra cheese, extra pepperoni, extra fast. And get my assistant over here.”
The guidebot hummed away and Matt fell on his new king-size bed. He thought about tomorrow’s morning. Matt knew that like war plans, detective work can’t be done from behind a computer screen. You had to taste the sweat and smell the gunpowder. The fine ladies and gentlemen over at Medium Business Division severely limited his sweat tasting time, or anything at all time for that matter, but he’d been in worse setups before. Going up against an insurgent Viking-class tank on Iwo Jima II with nothing but a pair of chopsticks came to mind. The tank hadn’t stood a chance.
Matt’s personal assistant walked through the door, a pizza box in hands.
Marla had ditched the envirosuit for a set of navy jeans that complemented her figure and a black T-Shirt with “Mars Is For Martians” printed across her bustline. It cost Matt a heroic effort to raise his eyes to her face.
“How’s your head, kid?” he asked.
“Not too bad, thanks,” she said, putting the pizza on the kitchen table, “Thanks for getting us out of there.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have gotten far here without my trusty assistant,” he said, cutting the pizza with a circular cutter he found in one of the kitchen cabinets, “Speaking about which, are you ready for your first job on Mars?”
“Only if you promise I won’t get shot at.”
“Not likely,” he handed her a slice, “I’m going to see Nova Terra’s guts tomorrow and I want you with me for the ride. But until then, I’d like you to help me sort through this mess.” He pointed at the holocomputer.
“Sure,” she said, munching on her pizza.
The reports showed the company to operate at only forty percent capacity. Most of the terraforming plants were under constant maintenance with Nova Terra’s engineers working ten hour workdays, and the construction brigades and support staff’s hours were stretched even thinner.
“What would you say to a bottle of Io’s?” Matt asked.
He felt Marla’s hair brush against his cheek.
“Wouldn’t say no,” she said, eyes still glued to the holoscreen.
He got up and made his way to the minibar.
Matt opened the minibar door. Inside, curved into a ball, a man sat dressed head to toe in dark grey. The man raised his head.
Matt gave out a surprised gasp and stepped back.
The man’s look was the look of a panther getting ready to leap, the rest of his face concealed by a balaclava.
The black-clad man grabbed the edges of the minibar and leapt out, landing his knee square into the sensitive area between the detective’s legs. Matt bent in two and the man’s fist connected with his face. He arched backwards and caught a straight kick in his chest that sent him flying across the room.
His attacker jumped on him but Matt straightened his right leg and the man caught a face full of foot. Matt’s opponent quickly recovered and took a stance that reminded Matt of the couple of Karate classes he took way back in high school. Matt didn’t know Karate but he’d never lost a fistfight and he wasn’t about to start now.
He aligned his left foot with his torso and put his right fist in front of his chest and his left next to his face. That’s when Marla came at the assassin with the chair.
There was the thud of metal hitting against wood as the assassin moved away, twisting his body in half-turn. But before his punch reached Marla, Matt punched the assassin in the temple. There was a crunching noise.
Matt put all his body movement, every single ounce of muscle into that punch. The power of the impact sent the small-framed man flying into the wall like a rag doll hit by a baseball bat.
“What in the name of Goorar’s balls was that?” Matt asked, catching his breath.
“You tell me,” said Marla, “Bloody hell Matt, it’s the second time someone tried to kill us today. A bottle of Io’s would be nice right about now.”
“The ******* must’ve drunk it all,” said Matt, looking at the empty minibar.
“Believe me or not, I’ve actually seen a uniform like his before,” Marla leaned back on the kitchen table, “Ninjas wear that kind of clothes.”
“Ninjas? Are you telling me we had a ninja hiding in our fridge?”
“I don’t think he’d go down so easily if he’d be a real ninja. But chances are that he trained with someone who was.”
“And you know this how, exactly?”
“I wasn’t always your assistant, you know. They’re lively bastards, too.”
The fake ninja chose this moment to jump back to his feet and rush at Matt. The detective grabbed the pizza cutter from the kitchen table and made a half-circle swing. The blade cut across the ninja’s throat.
Blood spewed from the wound in a shower of red. The ninja collapsed to the floor.
“Not that lively,” Matt said.
After prolific apologies from Dracula and his long haired friend and promises of disciplinary measures against The Prime’s Head of Security, Matt spent the remainder of the night on Marla’s less-than-Spartan room’s carpet. The carpet didn’t seem to mind.
As they put on their envirosuits in the morning he slid his revolver into a hermetic thigh holster. The two attempts on his life in less than eight hours made him feel that next time he might not get as lucky. In a few minutes time they were already boarding the flier. First stop was to be NTC Plant 17 located in the Schroeter Crater two hours away by air. Or whatever it was that passed here for air.
Against Matt’s protests both Edinburgh and Lint insisted on an armed escort and six Nova Terra’s Security Force troopers boarded the flier with them. They were all wearing heavy body armor and seemed to be the type of men who preferred to let their fully automatics do the talking. Matt didn’t mind the sulky disposition – he was once just like them. Marla, on the other hand, kept fruitlessly trying to engage them in small talk during most of their flight to the crater.
According to the data the two Nova Terra directors sent him earlier, Schroeter Crater was two hundred twenty two meters in diameter, with the actual terraforming plant located on the east side of the crater.
Just like that time in the crawler Matt felt the sensation of danger the moment they’ve entered the plant. The rust-colored pipes, the steam shooting out of the walls, the intertwined hoses under the high ceiling didn't help either.
Matt and Marla had removed their bulky helmets after entering the facility on their security detail's advise, so he wasn’t all that surprised when the man pointed his rifle at Matt’s face. Another trooper took Matt’s Colt Python. Then the escort’s lead smashed his rifle’s butt against the side of Matt’s head.
The detective came to from an uncomfortable sensation of being unable to move his arms or legs. He was stripped of everything but his boxers and stretched spread-eagle on some sort of a vertical slab. So far so good, he thought. Feeling the sensation of hot liquid crawling down his temple, he also thought that he couldn’t have been more right about their escort preferring their guns doing the talking.
He looked around. Marla, in her underwear, hung to his right. Just like Matt’s, her ankles and wrists were cuffed to the slab.
“You alive?”
“Marginally,” she said.
There were lots of people in the dim-lit room. Most of them wore the rugged combat wear Matt remembered from the crawler experience, but some of them were dressed in dark grey overalls, their faces hid by balaclavas made from the same fabric. The six Security Force armor clad troopers were also here. Naturally, everyone was armed.
Dorian Lint, Nova Terra Corporation’s long-haired rockstar Director of Operations in the flesh, walked out of the crowd. Matt saw his revolver tucked under Dorian’s belt.
“Mister Black, I’m terribly sorry about all this.”
“Not nearly as much as you will be, Dorian.”
“Oh I doubt it, Mister Black.”
“Villain talk, here we go,” Marla muttered from her slab.
“Just to let you know, it was pretty obvious that the leak was either you or Edinburgh. It’s not like I’ve advertised my NTC contract on Mars City Daily.”
“Wow, some fascinating detective work right there, Mister Black. I wonder how you ever made it so big.”
“And these ‘freedom fighters’ of yours, your little Gamium-funded private army sabotaging Nova Terra’s operation are worth balls, if I can say so myself. And ninjas? Come on, how more clichéd can you get?”
One of the men in grey overalls shifted his posture.
“And with all your ninjas, rebels, and troopers, Dorian,” Matt continued, “You failed to kill me thrice now.”
“All in due time,” said Gamium’s agent, “And whatever gave you the idea that I want you dead?”
“Oh, just a hunch.”
“Quite the contrary, Mister Black, quite the contrary. I’m sure you’ve heard of cybernetic behaviour mods? What’s better than closing down Nova Terra’s operation after one of their new contractors kills the entire UNE Commission when they get to Bakhuysen Prime?”
“I can think of a number of things. I’d say that a bullet to your head tops the list, though.”
“Resilient to the last, I see. Don’t worry, I can guarantee that the operation will be almost painless. Almost.”
“Last wish?” Matt asked.
“What?”
“Can I have a last wish?”
“Humour me.”
“I’d like one last kiss with Marla.”
Dorian giggled and motioned his men to move Marla’s slab to face Matt. The detective stretched his neck as if to reach Marla’s lips, but instead of kissing her, he winked. His assistant winked back and with what seemed like no effort at all tore her cuffed hands from the slab. Her feet followed and she jumped to the floor.
Still concealed from view by the slab, she tore out Matt’s restrains and then kicked at her slab. It flew across the room, smashing one of the ninjas into the wall. Marla dashed to a trooper, grabbed his rifle, and bent the barrel in two.
Gunfire filled the room. Matt rolled across the floor and jumped at Dorian. He headbutted his captor and grabbed the Colt from Dorian’s belt. He fell back on the ground, bullets whistling past his face, aimed it at a ninja and pulled the trigger.
The shot stopped the ninja mid-flight. Matt felt a sharp pain and gunned down another ninja before dislodging the throwing star from his shoulder. Marla had gotten hold of an automatic and was laying waste to the fake Security Force agents and Dorian’s guerrilla fighters alike.
She got shot a few times, but Matt knew it was nothing the cyborg couldn’t handle. Matt almost allowed himself to get distracted when another ninja came out of nowhere and caught Matt’s index finger in his left eye, followed by a bullet in his right. Dorian was trying to make a run for it but another shot from the Colt Python took one of his legs clean off. Gamium’s agent fell on the floor with the wildest scream.
By now Matt and Marla were the only two people standing. Matt walked across the pool of blood to Dorian, kicked him over, and aimed the revolver at his forehead.
“Going somewhere, Dorian?”
Dorian muttered something unintelligible.
“Well that went according to plan,” he told Marla.
“Your plan had more holes than all these bastards combined,” she said.
“And yet here we are, making good on Nova Terra’s money.”
“You…” Dorian started, but Matt’s boot shut him up.
“Back to The Prime now. I think both Edinburgh and this Independent Commission of his would be more than interested in what Mister Lint here would have to stay about Gamium’s methods. You know, too bad we finished so soon,” he looked at the fallen bodies, “I sort of start to like this place.”
“We don’t have to leave just now, boss. I got us a room in Mars City. Thought you’d like a little time to cool off.”
“You’re worth your weight in gold, Marla.”
“And boss? They had one bed only.”
Matt looked at his red haired assistant. The assault rifle in her hands only accentuated her semi-nakedness.
“I guess we’ll just have to make do.”
幻術
But if you don't feel like going into detail, just saying why it worked / hadn't worked for you would be great as well! Thanks!![[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iLSmTPwJGZY/SjPRHvcJG6I/AAAAAAAAQNE/ppc1RUirbkk/s400/7.jpg]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iLSmTPwJGZY/SjPRHvcJG6I/AAAAAAAAQNE/ppc1RUirbkk/s400/7.jpg "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iLSmTPwJGZY/SjPRHvcJG6I/AAAAAAAAQNE/ppc1RUirbkk/s400/7.jpg")
