Uncensored version here (password: vista): http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7629673#post7629673
I wrote this random action story while procrastinating writing everything else that I'm supposed to be writing... It's loosely based on the plot laid down by the GM of a Traveler pen & paper RPG session that I've had the pleasure of attendeding recently. [SUB]The day after the game, I've learnt that they had opted to kick me out for coming to the game stoned. Ooooh, the evil that men do... :D[/SUB]
So, not a particularly fabulous story, but I think it can work as a fun timewaster if you've got the spare 15 minutes. Lots of cussing, so use your imagination sparingly when imagining what stands beyond the ****s.
Thanks in advance for reading. Peace & love.
Placebo Effect
"Another sure way to off myself'd be a gravity lift," Jed Kinsky's only employee said, "I jam the door, stick my head in, turn that ****er on – and woosh, off goes my head."
Jed nodded. "Right. You'd have to rewire the control panel, fool it into thinking door's already closed."
"So? I could get a cheat sheet. Can't be that hard to find out how to do that, right?"
"Sure. Welcome to the ****ing Space Age, where all your dreams come true."
Jed's employee nibbled on the tip of his name card. The card featured the word Unimportant written in a monospace font across the white plastic. Not a name, but a statement, a reminder that only one thing was for certain: Jed N'd Parts Corporation Shop Clerk was a hard job to keep.
A jingle came from the entrance, closely followed by someone's angry Ouch.
"I mean, that's way better than the one I had about blowing up our entire shop, you and half the East side with it, no?"
"The city wouldn't have noticed," Jed said, finishing the useless conversation. "It's open war out there as is. And it's my ****ing shop, not ours. And we've got ourselves a ****ing customer. Go greet him or something."
A customer was good news: Jed hadn't seen a sale in weeks. Barely anyone bought ship parts from independent businesses these days. Holstein Biorobotics or Microdata or Universum or some other bull**** multinational with an overly pretentious name kept murdering his profits in cold blood. Soon, he'd have to let Unimportant go and set sail for clearer skies.
Their visitor had navigated through the metal junk hanging from the ceiling and now stood in front of the cash register desk. Not too short, not too high. Plain face. No remarkable features whatsoever. Could be Special Forces, Jed thought. The man's jeans and leather jacket outfit hadn't fooled him. The years spent in the Imperial Army's Tradecorp Fleet taught Jed to know a soldier when he saw one.
"You Jed Kinsky?" the man asked, command notes in his voice. A Sergeant, no less thought Jed. "My name's Captain Conrad Biggs. I'd like a word in private."
Mingling with the armed forced of any kind was the last thing Jed needed.
"Sure," he said, "Unimportant, wait in the back. How can I help you, Captain?"
"Truth be told," Captain Biggs continued after a small pause during which Unimportant saw himself out, "I'm not really Captain… I'm lucratively retired."
Lucratively retired could have meant only one thing: Biggs was a mercenary. A fairly common profession with all the corporations fighting their endless wars with everything from spam e-mails and malicious software to bombs and high profile contract murders day in and day out, but life's tough and then you die, and lucratively retired was good, very good. It meant that the Captain had as much authority in Jed's shop as Unimportant, and the amount of authority Unimportant had was **** all.
"So, Captain Conrad Biggs, Conrad's your middle name, or what? What the **** do you want from me?"
"Kinsky," Biggs said, "Your profile states you grew up in here in the city… That was before you failed to certify as a proper spacer, so there went your chance for a career hauling asteroid dust across the galaxy. Subsequently, you joined the military in 2432, and, let's see, ah, yes, were stripped of rank and dishonorably discharged three years later. Now a proper businessman, are you?"
The ******* had connections.
"My question stands, Biggs. What do you want?"
"I'm offering you a job, Jed. I need a local, preferably ex-military. You seem to fit."
For a moment, Jed thought about his post-military life. He concluded that the best word to describe it was bleak.
"What's the job?" he asked.
"You've got to help us talk to a prisoner. No ID on him, but he's a local. Involved in some nasty business that guy, doesn't want to talk. We figure someone from these parts could give us a hand."
"What, you want me to torture the guy?"
"No, that part we've got covered. We want you to tell us if you know him."
"Why the **** would I know him?"
"He's got IATF tattooed across his bicep."
IATF. The Tradecorp. And a local. Chances are, Jed thought, I would ****ing know him.
"What's the pay?"
"Two thousand."
Two thousand credits was enough to buy a new wireframe for the shop, some ghost level telemarketing bots, and to pay some unscrupulous ************s to scream from every corner of the galaxy that a used spaceship without parts from Jed N'd Parts Corporation was a disaster waiting to happen. With five thousand, Jed could buy himself his own ship.
"Twenty thousand," Jed said, "And not a credit less."
Captain Conrad Biggs failed to blink.
"Deal."
"Hey, Unimportant," Jed called.
"Yes?"
"Pack your ****. You're fired."
###
Turned out that they held the captured ex-IATF merc in a warehouse complex three miles North from Cognos Road. The entire complex was just two wooden buildings in a potato field, perfect for a stakeout. Jed followed Biggs and the Captain's associate, a man who had introduced himself as Lee, to the closest building's front door. Lee, a grenade belt around his waist and a shotgun in hand, looked like an Up to No Good Badass with a License to Kill.
Biggs waved his carbine's barrel for them to move in. Once inside, they were greeted by six gloomy figures in grey GeneTek Private Security uniforms. The men stood in a half-circle around the captured mercenary, who dangled from the ceiling on a rusty chain, hands tied at the wrists, the once-white wife-beater crimson with blood stains.
"I know him all right," Jed said. "His name's Skip. Local contractor, but he was after my time with the IATF. Look at his tats. You see these barcodes climbing all the way up to his shoulder? Those are employee codes – can't tell which private armies he's in without scanning him, but, hey, Skip's the kind of guy who gets around."
"You're the kind of guy's who's ****ed, Skip, that's what you are," Biggs said, "Tell us: who ordered you to raid the organ farm?"
Skip spat out a tooth.
"I already did... It was Whitetower, ****ing Whitetower, man..."
He smiled a sad smile through the scar tissue. Skip knew he wasn't getting out of here alive.
"One thing about working with Whitetower," he added quietly, "They leave no man behind."
"Oh, ****," Lee said, "Whitetower implants sub dermal trackers to each of their men. When did your team bring him here?"
The GeneTek soldier hesitated. Lee unsheathed his knife. A dashing vertical movement, and he slit Skip's throat ear to ear. He moved to the dying man's side, safely avoiding the dripping blood. Jed stared. He knew how cheap human life came at these days, but the reminders were never pleasant. Still, the twenty thousand made all his moral dilemmas nothing but a side thought.
"Get down," Biggs said.
Jed and Lee dropped to the ground. Hell broke loose with the deafening sound of automatic gunfire. The windows exploded. Bullets tore through the glass and wooden planks, showering the floor with splinters. Blood and bone sprayed across the room as bullets ripped the GeneTek soldiers to shreds.
Two men, both armed with automatic carbines, jumped in through the broken window. Lee got up from the floor and rushed towards one of them with the deaf-defying scream of a suicide bomber. There was a pop, and the room filled with green eye-irritating smoke.
"I need a weapon," Jed shouted.
Lee thrust his knife to the hilt into his enemy's eye and threw his combat shotgun to Jed. Jed caught the weapon, storming for the back door. His first thought when he stepped outside was to run and to never look back. His second thought was about the twenty thousand credits. He crouched, circling the warehouse.
Four Whitetower enforcers stood by the window, not risking to shoot blindly through the green smoke. Just like their GeneTek counterparts whom they had sent to hell mere moments ago, these men were amateurs. Nobody was watching the rear. Jed placed his elbow on his knee for support and aimed for the man closest to him. He pulled the trigger.
Jed hit his target in the back. The shotgun blast knocked the man over, but his armor prevented him from serious injury, and he was already getting back up the very next second. The enforcers turned and fired their carbines at Jed as he retreated to the warehouse's back door. As he made the corner, he saw Biggs leaning out from the doorframe, carbine pointed in his direction. Jed jumped, turning in mid-air, and landed on his back. Two Whitetower men were right behind him. He pulled the trigger, again. So did Biggs. The first enforcer's head exploded like a piñata. The second caught Biggs's bullet in the knee, dropped his carbine, and turned, trying to run, but running with a knee shot to **** was a feat easier said than done. Jed got up from the ground and tackled the wounded enforcer. He landed the shotgun's butt on the back of the man's head, knocking the Whitetower boy out cold.
More shots came from the warehouse. Jed circled the building once again, but saw no-one by the window. The remaining two must have followed their comrades, which meant that Lee was all alone against four armed men. Another pop of a smoke grenade going off came from the building. More shots. Somebody screamed. Jed headed for the back door. Biggs stood idly by, the carbine resting peacefully on his shoulder.
Jed leaned against the warehouse's wall and pulled out a cigarette, his fingers trembling with adrenaline. Biggs offered him a light.
"Is he gonna be all right?" Jed asked through the ruckus.
"Yeah, don't worry 'bout him."
Jed took a few puffs. Soon, the screaming and the shooting subsided. Lee stepped out from the smoke, a bloodied combat knife in hand.
"Anyone… Left… To kill?" he asked, catching his breath.
"Nope, you got 'em all, Tiger," Biggs said. "And we've even got ourselves a prisoner."
"What now?" Jed asked.
"Now comes the hard part. Come on, help me get that knee-less Whitetower trash into the trunk."
###
Rain struck a rhythmic tuck-tuck-tuck against the glass. From his position on the windowsill, Jed could easily see the street below. Neon billboards decorated the sidewalks, urging citizens to replace their flabby fleshy limbs with top of the line prosthetics, to invest in BioPharma bonds, to learn their true selves with the help of Quadrovascular mind-enhancing drugs, and so the list went on. The ads were too numerous to count. One of the slogans caught Jed's eye. "Strength through technology," he read out aloud.
"Bull****," Lee said, "All you need's a real sharp knife."
The flat had no furniture apart from a pair of dusty old mattresses. Jed wondered if that's where the two mercs who hired him spent their nights plotting their missions. If so, then surely there were better ways to make a living.
Biggs emerged from the bedroom.
"You didn't kill him, did you?" Jed asked.
"Not yet."
"So, em, Captain… You know that friend of ours in the bedroom has a tracker on him, right? Look, I don't know what you're planning here, but I did my part in full, so I think it's a great chance you make good on your side of the bargain, transfer my credits, and if anyone asks, I've never seen you before in my life."
Jed found the silence that followed somewhat unnerving.
"Look, Kinsky," Biggs finally said, "You'll get your money, don't worry about that. But we need a third man. Now, it can be you or it can be somebody else, but we can't afford to pay two guys at the same time here. I just don't see how's that any good for you."
"Right…"
Realistically, this meant that Jed had two alternatives: he could push on, or he could opt for Lee's knife in the throat. He figured the former as the more appealing option.
"So," Jed said after clearing his throat, "What exactly is it that we are doing here? Now that I'm a full member of the team, and all that?"
"Welcome aboard," Lee said, following his words with a sarcastic smirk of a cold blooded killer. "We're after the guys who tried sabotaging two GeneTek's facilities, an organ farm and a tissue plant. The tissue plant they blew sky high."
"And the organ farm?"
"Well, GeneTek Private Security was for once at the ready. Still, they managed to nab only one prisoner. No casualties."
"Not until we got there," Biggs said. "What a bunch of ****ing amateurs."
"So… Now what? And don't say now, we wait I beg you, please."
"Like I've said, now comes the hard part. We have to find out who's giving the orders, grab him, pack him, and deliver him to our employer. And when that happens, you'll get your money all right."
"Right, I see… Well, that guy in the bedroom must have been getting orders from someone, right?"
"That's what he's here for," Lee said, heading for the bedroom. He opened the door and dragged the Whitetower prisoner to the middle of the room. The prisoner left a thick trail of blood across the concrete floor. He mumbled something from under the duct tape over his mouth.
"What's the name of your Commanding Officer, son?" Biggs asked.
"Mmmm!"
Lee unsheathed his knife.
"Hrrmppf-mmmm-mmm!"
"Wait," Jed said, "Hold on. There's got to be a better way. Hold on. Look, Whitetower boy, whoever you are. We've got a job and we've got to do it quick. We can offer you two choices: money and freedom or a slow and painful death. Choose very carefully."
"Mmmm!"
"Lee, can you, eh, take that duct tape off?"
Lee jerked the tape off the prisoner's mouth.
"Money and freedom, money and freedom! Please!"
"All right. Well, here's the deal. You're a merc, so consider this a contract. Say, a three hundred credits contract. Not much for a man of your caliber, I know, but we've got to take the circumstances into account. What you need to do to get the credits is just tell us the name of the man your group reported to. You will then contact him and arrange for a meet. Sounds easy enough?"
"And you're not going to kill me?"
"Honest to God," Lee said.
"Yeah, honest to God, we're not going to kill you. So, come on. Let's not make this any longer than it should be."
"Sternhouser," the prisoner said, "The name's Sternhouser. I've got his cell, too."
"Well, what do you know! Give the man a cell phone!"
"His hands are tied. What's the number?"
The prisoner dictated the number. Biggs dialed and pressed the cell against the mercenary's cheek.
"Don't try anything silly," Biggs said, putting the phone on speaker mode.
"Em, Sir? This is Dom from Unit Nine."
"Why am I talking to you? And where's the rest of your team? We're about to send Unit Six to your location, were you ambushed? You're in the city, why didn't you come in?"
"Eh, Sir, I was wounded, Sir. I… I… There's nobody left, these guys were pros… I can't talk over the phone, we've got to meet."
"What, you think I'm some kind of a moron? Am I on speaker phone? Who's there? What do you want?"
"We're just here for the money," Jed said into the phone, "Your business is your business, but if you want your man in one piece, meet us up at the old junkyard in Little Nizza, bring five grand." He almost said cash, but then remembered which century he lived in.
"You've got to be ****ing kidding me. I'm hanging up."
"The credits aren't just for your boy Dom here," Jed said, "They're for you. See, we know about those GeneTek strikes. Do you want them to know who's responsible? Your life's going to get pretty short pretty fast, we can pretty much guarantee you that."
Silence.
"****, all right. Little Nizza junkyard."
"Two hours."
Sternhouser hung up.
"One more thing, Dom," Jed said, "That sub dermal tracker Whitetower uses… Where is it, exactly?"
"Eh.. It's not sub dermal. It's sub cranial. It's in my freaking skull. So I guess I'm coming with you now, aren't I?"
"Guess so."
Lee stuck the duct tape back on Dom's mouth.
"No way we're sticking him back in my trunk," Biggs said.
"Well… Technically, all we need is his head," said Lee, eyes fixed on the man's throat.
Jed climbed back onto the windowsill. "You know," he said, "This isn't a complete slump of a place. For example, I couldn't help but notice the gravity lift we used to get to this floor."
"So?" Lee asked, "Most houses have gravity lifts, that helps us how?"
"Well, I've got this terrible idea…"
###
Jed sat in the car, thinking about how strange it was that people believed that the world held their best interests in mind. Take the recently decapitated Dom for example, may he rest in peace, if in pieces. Dom really thought they'd let him go.
If Jed had learnt anything, then it was that money had an effect akin to that of a placebo – no matter how dire the situation, the promise of a cure made people think that there was still a way out. That everything could still be OK, no matter that the world burnt around them. Same with Sternhouser, that poor fool. Right about now, Biggs was setting up his sniper nest while Lee walked deeper into the junkyard to meet the target, Dom's head in a canvas bag slung across his shoulder.
Jed waited. And waited. And waited…
A shot echoed through the junkyard. A large caliber, it was unmistakably Biggs's sniper rifle. Another shot, then another. Jed grabbed his shotgun and headed for the meeting spot.
The spot, a clearing amongst the rotten piles of metal husks, was home to bloody sight. No surprises there, Jed thought. Two men in Whitetower armor lay writhing on the ground, their unprotected limbs maimed by Biggs's high caliber rounds. The third man – presumably, Sternhouser himself – stood on his knees, Lee's knife at the throat.
Biggs climbed down a stack of rusty wheel-less automobile carcasses, joining the group.
"Sternhouser," he said, "You're coming with us."
"What about the other two?" Jed asked.
"They're coming with us too. Three prisoner's better than one."
Placebo effect, Jed thought. They make you think you're rich but all you have's a trail of dead bodies and some ****er's head in a canvas bag.
He aimed the shotgun at the closest Whitetower man first. A blast, and the man's head turned into red mist. He pumped another shell in and blew the other man's head clean off, then pointed the smoking barrel at Sternhouser's forehead.
"My money," he said. "I want my twenty five grand."
"The hell are you doing? And what, you want the extra five for the bloodrage finale?" Biggs shouted, "It was twenty, you crazy *******."
"Don't tell me you didn't wait for Sternhouser to wire that five k he owed me."
"He don't owe you ****."
"Look," Jed said, "I'm getting my money. If you don't transfer them now, I'll assume you were planning to kill me all along, and then I don't see no reason why I shouldn't blow Mr. Sternhouser's head off just out of ****ing spite. If you do… He's all yours, I'm happy, you're happy, everyone's happy." Jed looked at Sternhouser. "Except him, I guess, but he's ****ed either way."
"Fine. Whatever, fine. Lee, do it. Wire him his twenty."
Lee opened the cover of the PDA on his sleeve.
"Account number?"
After confirming the transfer, Jed threw aside his shotgun and headed for the street. He figured he could afford the three credits for the taxi ride to the Interplanetary Shuttle Port. The planet he grew up on had little more to offer: he had seen enough death and insanity to last him a lifetime. It was high time he set sail for clearer skies.
I wrote this random action story while procrastinating writing everything else that I'm supposed to be writing... It's loosely based on the plot laid down by the GM of a Traveler pen & paper RPG session that I've had the pleasure of attendeding recently. [SUB]The day after the game, I've learnt that they had opted to kick me out for coming to the game stoned. Ooooh, the evil that men do... :D[/SUB]
So, not a particularly fabulous story, but I think it can work as a fun timewaster if you've got the spare 15 minutes. Lots of cussing, so use your imagination sparingly when imagining what stands beyond the ****s.
Thanks in advance for reading. Peace & love.
Placebo Effect
"Another sure way to off myself'd be a gravity lift," Jed Kinsky's only employee said, "I jam the door, stick my head in, turn that ****er on – and woosh, off goes my head."
Jed nodded. "Right. You'd have to rewire the control panel, fool it into thinking door's already closed."
"So? I could get a cheat sheet. Can't be that hard to find out how to do that, right?"
"Sure. Welcome to the ****ing Space Age, where all your dreams come true."
Jed's employee nibbled on the tip of his name card. The card featured the word Unimportant written in a monospace font across the white plastic. Not a name, but a statement, a reminder that only one thing was for certain: Jed N'd Parts Corporation Shop Clerk was a hard job to keep.
A jingle came from the entrance, closely followed by someone's angry Ouch.
"I mean, that's way better than the one I had about blowing up our entire shop, you and half the East side with it, no?"
"The city wouldn't have noticed," Jed said, finishing the useless conversation. "It's open war out there as is. And it's my ****ing shop, not ours. And we've got ourselves a ****ing customer. Go greet him or something."
A customer was good news: Jed hadn't seen a sale in weeks. Barely anyone bought ship parts from independent businesses these days. Holstein Biorobotics or Microdata or Universum or some other bull**** multinational with an overly pretentious name kept murdering his profits in cold blood. Soon, he'd have to let Unimportant go and set sail for clearer skies.
Their visitor had navigated through the metal junk hanging from the ceiling and now stood in front of the cash register desk. Not too short, not too high. Plain face. No remarkable features whatsoever. Could be Special Forces, Jed thought. The man's jeans and leather jacket outfit hadn't fooled him. The years spent in the Imperial Army's Tradecorp Fleet taught Jed to know a soldier when he saw one.
"You Jed Kinsky?" the man asked, command notes in his voice. A Sergeant, no less thought Jed. "My name's Captain Conrad Biggs. I'd like a word in private."
Mingling with the armed forced of any kind was the last thing Jed needed.
"Sure," he said, "Unimportant, wait in the back. How can I help you, Captain?"
"Truth be told," Captain Biggs continued after a small pause during which Unimportant saw himself out, "I'm not really Captain… I'm lucratively retired."
Lucratively retired could have meant only one thing: Biggs was a mercenary. A fairly common profession with all the corporations fighting their endless wars with everything from spam e-mails and malicious software to bombs and high profile contract murders day in and day out, but life's tough and then you die, and lucratively retired was good, very good. It meant that the Captain had as much authority in Jed's shop as Unimportant, and the amount of authority Unimportant had was **** all.
"So, Captain Conrad Biggs, Conrad's your middle name, or what? What the **** do you want from me?"
"Kinsky," Biggs said, "Your profile states you grew up in here in the city… That was before you failed to certify as a proper spacer, so there went your chance for a career hauling asteroid dust across the galaxy. Subsequently, you joined the military in 2432, and, let's see, ah, yes, were stripped of rank and dishonorably discharged three years later. Now a proper businessman, are you?"
The ******* had connections.
"My question stands, Biggs. What do you want?"
"I'm offering you a job, Jed. I need a local, preferably ex-military. You seem to fit."
For a moment, Jed thought about his post-military life. He concluded that the best word to describe it was bleak.
"What's the job?" he asked.
"You've got to help us talk to a prisoner. No ID on him, but he's a local. Involved in some nasty business that guy, doesn't want to talk. We figure someone from these parts could give us a hand."
"What, you want me to torture the guy?"
"No, that part we've got covered. We want you to tell us if you know him."
"Why the **** would I know him?"
"He's got IATF tattooed across his bicep."
IATF. The Tradecorp. And a local. Chances are, Jed thought, I would ****ing know him.
"What's the pay?"
"Two thousand."
Two thousand credits was enough to buy a new wireframe for the shop, some ghost level telemarketing bots, and to pay some unscrupulous ************s to scream from every corner of the galaxy that a used spaceship without parts from Jed N'd Parts Corporation was a disaster waiting to happen. With five thousand, Jed could buy himself his own ship.
"Twenty thousand," Jed said, "And not a credit less."
Captain Conrad Biggs failed to blink.
"Deal."
"Hey, Unimportant," Jed called.
"Yes?"
"Pack your ****. You're fired."
###
Turned out that they held the captured ex-IATF merc in a warehouse complex three miles North from Cognos Road. The entire complex was just two wooden buildings in a potato field, perfect for a stakeout. Jed followed Biggs and the Captain's associate, a man who had introduced himself as Lee, to the closest building's front door. Lee, a grenade belt around his waist and a shotgun in hand, looked like an Up to No Good Badass with a License to Kill.
Biggs waved his carbine's barrel for them to move in. Once inside, they were greeted by six gloomy figures in grey GeneTek Private Security uniforms. The men stood in a half-circle around the captured mercenary, who dangled from the ceiling on a rusty chain, hands tied at the wrists, the once-white wife-beater crimson with blood stains.
"I know him all right," Jed said. "His name's Skip. Local contractor, but he was after my time with the IATF. Look at his tats. You see these barcodes climbing all the way up to his shoulder? Those are employee codes – can't tell which private armies he's in without scanning him, but, hey, Skip's the kind of guy who gets around."
"You're the kind of guy's who's ****ed, Skip, that's what you are," Biggs said, "Tell us: who ordered you to raid the organ farm?"
Skip spat out a tooth.
"I already did... It was Whitetower, ****ing Whitetower, man..."
He smiled a sad smile through the scar tissue. Skip knew he wasn't getting out of here alive.
"One thing about working with Whitetower," he added quietly, "They leave no man behind."
"Oh, ****," Lee said, "Whitetower implants sub dermal trackers to each of their men. When did your team bring him here?"
The GeneTek soldier hesitated. Lee unsheathed his knife. A dashing vertical movement, and he slit Skip's throat ear to ear. He moved to the dying man's side, safely avoiding the dripping blood. Jed stared. He knew how cheap human life came at these days, but the reminders were never pleasant. Still, the twenty thousand made all his moral dilemmas nothing but a side thought.
"Get down," Biggs said.
Jed and Lee dropped to the ground. Hell broke loose with the deafening sound of automatic gunfire. The windows exploded. Bullets tore through the glass and wooden planks, showering the floor with splinters. Blood and bone sprayed across the room as bullets ripped the GeneTek soldiers to shreds.
Two men, both armed with automatic carbines, jumped in through the broken window. Lee got up from the floor and rushed towards one of them with the deaf-defying scream of a suicide bomber. There was a pop, and the room filled with green eye-irritating smoke.
"I need a weapon," Jed shouted.
Lee thrust his knife to the hilt into his enemy's eye and threw his combat shotgun to Jed. Jed caught the weapon, storming for the back door. His first thought when he stepped outside was to run and to never look back. His second thought was about the twenty thousand credits. He crouched, circling the warehouse.
Four Whitetower enforcers stood by the window, not risking to shoot blindly through the green smoke. Just like their GeneTek counterparts whom they had sent to hell mere moments ago, these men were amateurs. Nobody was watching the rear. Jed placed his elbow on his knee for support and aimed for the man closest to him. He pulled the trigger.
Jed hit his target in the back. The shotgun blast knocked the man over, but his armor prevented him from serious injury, and he was already getting back up the very next second. The enforcers turned and fired their carbines at Jed as he retreated to the warehouse's back door. As he made the corner, he saw Biggs leaning out from the doorframe, carbine pointed in his direction. Jed jumped, turning in mid-air, and landed on his back. Two Whitetower men were right behind him. He pulled the trigger, again. So did Biggs. The first enforcer's head exploded like a piñata. The second caught Biggs's bullet in the knee, dropped his carbine, and turned, trying to run, but running with a knee shot to **** was a feat easier said than done. Jed got up from the ground and tackled the wounded enforcer. He landed the shotgun's butt on the back of the man's head, knocking the Whitetower boy out cold.
More shots came from the warehouse. Jed circled the building once again, but saw no-one by the window. The remaining two must have followed their comrades, which meant that Lee was all alone against four armed men. Another pop of a smoke grenade going off came from the building. More shots. Somebody screamed. Jed headed for the back door. Biggs stood idly by, the carbine resting peacefully on his shoulder.
Jed leaned against the warehouse's wall and pulled out a cigarette, his fingers trembling with adrenaline. Biggs offered him a light.
"Is he gonna be all right?" Jed asked through the ruckus.
"Yeah, don't worry 'bout him."
Jed took a few puffs. Soon, the screaming and the shooting subsided. Lee stepped out from the smoke, a bloodied combat knife in hand.
"Anyone… Left… To kill?" he asked, catching his breath.
"Nope, you got 'em all, Tiger," Biggs said. "And we've even got ourselves a prisoner."
"What now?" Jed asked.
"Now comes the hard part. Come on, help me get that knee-less Whitetower trash into the trunk."
###
Rain struck a rhythmic tuck-tuck-tuck against the glass. From his position on the windowsill, Jed could easily see the street below. Neon billboards decorated the sidewalks, urging citizens to replace their flabby fleshy limbs with top of the line prosthetics, to invest in BioPharma bonds, to learn their true selves with the help of Quadrovascular mind-enhancing drugs, and so the list went on. The ads were too numerous to count. One of the slogans caught Jed's eye. "Strength through technology," he read out aloud.
"Bull****," Lee said, "All you need's a real sharp knife."
The flat had no furniture apart from a pair of dusty old mattresses. Jed wondered if that's where the two mercs who hired him spent their nights plotting their missions. If so, then surely there were better ways to make a living.
Biggs emerged from the bedroom.
"You didn't kill him, did you?" Jed asked.
"Not yet."
"So, em, Captain… You know that friend of ours in the bedroom has a tracker on him, right? Look, I don't know what you're planning here, but I did my part in full, so I think it's a great chance you make good on your side of the bargain, transfer my credits, and if anyone asks, I've never seen you before in my life."
Jed found the silence that followed somewhat unnerving.
"Look, Kinsky," Biggs finally said, "You'll get your money, don't worry about that. But we need a third man. Now, it can be you or it can be somebody else, but we can't afford to pay two guys at the same time here. I just don't see how's that any good for you."
"Right…"
Realistically, this meant that Jed had two alternatives: he could push on, or he could opt for Lee's knife in the throat. He figured the former as the more appealing option.
"So," Jed said after clearing his throat, "What exactly is it that we are doing here? Now that I'm a full member of the team, and all that?"
"Welcome aboard," Lee said, following his words with a sarcastic smirk of a cold blooded killer. "We're after the guys who tried sabotaging two GeneTek's facilities, an organ farm and a tissue plant. The tissue plant they blew sky high."
"And the organ farm?"
"Well, GeneTek Private Security was for once at the ready. Still, they managed to nab only one prisoner. No casualties."
"Not until we got there," Biggs said. "What a bunch of ****ing amateurs."
"So… Now what? And don't say now, we wait I beg you, please."
"Like I've said, now comes the hard part. We have to find out who's giving the orders, grab him, pack him, and deliver him to our employer. And when that happens, you'll get your money all right."
"Right, I see… Well, that guy in the bedroom must have been getting orders from someone, right?"
"That's what he's here for," Lee said, heading for the bedroom. He opened the door and dragged the Whitetower prisoner to the middle of the room. The prisoner left a thick trail of blood across the concrete floor. He mumbled something from under the duct tape over his mouth.
"What's the name of your Commanding Officer, son?" Biggs asked.
"Mmmm!"
Lee unsheathed his knife.
"Hrrmppf-mmmm-mmm!"
"Wait," Jed said, "Hold on. There's got to be a better way. Hold on. Look, Whitetower boy, whoever you are. We've got a job and we've got to do it quick. We can offer you two choices: money and freedom or a slow and painful death. Choose very carefully."
"Mmmm!"
"Lee, can you, eh, take that duct tape off?"
Lee jerked the tape off the prisoner's mouth.
"Money and freedom, money and freedom! Please!"
"All right. Well, here's the deal. You're a merc, so consider this a contract. Say, a three hundred credits contract. Not much for a man of your caliber, I know, but we've got to take the circumstances into account. What you need to do to get the credits is just tell us the name of the man your group reported to. You will then contact him and arrange for a meet. Sounds easy enough?"
"And you're not going to kill me?"
"Honest to God," Lee said.
"Yeah, honest to God, we're not going to kill you. So, come on. Let's not make this any longer than it should be."
"Sternhouser," the prisoner said, "The name's Sternhouser. I've got his cell, too."
"Well, what do you know! Give the man a cell phone!"
"His hands are tied. What's the number?"
The prisoner dictated the number. Biggs dialed and pressed the cell against the mercenary's cheek.
"Don't try anything silly," Biggs said, putting the phone on speaker mode.
"Em, Sir? This is Dom from Unit Nine."
"Why am I talking to you? And where's the rest of your team? We're about to send Unit Six to your location, were you ambushed? You're in the city, why didn't you come in?"
"Eh, Sir, I was wounded, Sir. I… I… There's nobody left, these guys were pros… I can't talk over the phone, we've got to meet."
"What, you think I'm some kind of a moron? Am I on speaker phone? Who's there? What do you want?"
"We're just here for the money," Jed said into the phone, "Your business is your business, but if you want your man in one piece, meet us up at the old junkyard in Little Nizza, bring five grand." He almost said cash, but then remembered which century he lived in.
"You've got to be ****ing kidding me. I'm hanging up."
"The credits aren't just for your boy Dom here," Jed said, "They're for you. See, we know about those GeneTek strikes. Do you want them to know who's responsible? Your life's going to get pretty short pretty fast, we can pretty much guarantee you that."
Silence.
"****, all right. Little Nizza junkyard."
"Two hours."
Sternhouser hung up.
"One more thing, Dom," Jed said, "That sub dermal tracker Whitetower uses… Where is it, exactly?"
"Eh.. It's not sub dermal. It's sub cranial. It's in my freaking skull. So I guess I'm coming with you now, aren't I?"
"Guess so."
Lee stuck the duct tape back on Dom's mouth.
"No way we're sticking him back in my trunk," Biggs said.
"Well… Technically, all we need is his head," said Lee, eyes fixed on the man's throat.
Jed climbed back onto the windowsill. "You know," he said, "This isn't a complete slump of a place. For example, I couldn't help but notice the gravity lift we used to get to this floor."
"So?" Lee asked, "Most houses have gravity lifts, that helps us how?"
"Well, I've got this terrible idea…"
###
Jed sat in the car, thinking about how strange it was that people believed that the world held their best interests in mind. Take the recently decapitated Dom for example, may he rest in peace, if in pieces. Dom really thought they'd let him go.
If Jed had learnt anything, then it was that money had an effect akin to that of a placebo – no matter how dire the situation, the promise of a cure made people think that there was still a way out. That everything could still be OK, no matter that the world burnt around them. Same with Sternhouser, that poor fool. Right about now, Biggs was setting up his sniper nest while Lee walked deeper into the junkyard to meet the target, Dom's head in a canvas bag slung across his shoulder.
Jed waited. And waited. And waited…
A shot echoed through the junkyard. A large caliber, it was unmistakably Biggs's sniper rifle. Another shot, then another. Jed grabbed his shotgun and headed for the meeting spot.
The spot, a clearing amongst the rotten piles of metal husks, was home to bloody sight. No surprises there, Jed thought. Two men in Whitetower armor lay writhing on the ground, their unprotected limbs maimed by Biggs's high caliber rounds. The third man – presumably, Sternhouser himself – stood on his knees, Lee's knife at the throat.
Biggs climbed down a stack of rusty wheel-less automobile carcasses, joining the group.
"Sternhouser," he said, "You're coming with us."
"What about the other two?" Jed asked.
"They're coming with us too. Three prisoner's better than one."
Placebo effect, Jed thought. They make you think you're rich but all you have's a trail of dead bodies and some ****er's head in a canvas bag.
He aimed the shotgun at the closest Whitetower man first. A blast, and the man's head turned into red mist. He pumped another shell in and blew the other man's head clean off, then pointed the smoking barrel at Sternhouser's forehead.
"My money," he said. "I want my twenty five grand."
"The hell are you doing? And what, you want the extra five for the bloodrage finale?" Biggs shouted, "It was twenty, you crazy *******."
"Don't tell me you didn't wait for Sternhouser to wire that five k he owed me."
"He don't owe you ****."
"Look," Jed said, "I'm getting my money. If you don't transfer them now, I'll assume you were planning to kill me all along, and then I don't see no reason why I shouldn't blow Mr. Sternhouser's head off just out of ****ing spite. If you do… He's all yours, I'm happy, you're happy, everyone's happy." Jed looked at Sternhouser. "Except him, I guess, but he's ****ed either way."
"Fine. Whatever, fine. Lee, do it. Wire him his twenty."
Lee opened the cover of the PDA on his sleeve.
"Account number?"
After confirming the transfer, Jed threw aside his shotgun and headed for the street. He figured he could afford the three credits for the taxi ride to the Interplanetary Shuttle Port. The planet he grew up on had little more to offer: he had seen enough death and insanity to last him a lifetime. It was high time he set sail for clearer skies.
幻術
I actually mailed it to the people I've played the RPG with a couple of days ago. The response had been identical to that of Massassi.
