by Mark Wandrey
Deagan, though, he was one of Grayson’s lieutenants. Grayson called him a “troubleshooter.” Sometimes it was a literal term. Grayson was careful not to let his shakedown teams go armed unless there was a higher-ranking supervisor with them. It had proven to be a wise move. None of his teams had yet to be pinched while armed, including the mentioned harassers who’d gotten beat up the day before. So Grayson sent Deagan to clean up. Deagan hadn’t dropped the ball once—until now.
“Someone go out there and find Deagan,” Grayson barked. Two other lieutenants were lounging in the office, watching videos. The offices he’d rented were the perfect front. A seafood export company which, if anyone bothered to investigate, hadn’t bought or sold so much as a single fish.
“Maybe it was them pirates?” said Osgood, one of his lieutenants. The man had noted a couple weeks ago that the pirates who’d showed up a year ago were probably part of an operation run by the same entities supplying theirs.
Grayson initially thought that was crazy; now he wasn’t so sure. The pirates had been sticking to attacking fishing boats, until now, anyway. “Sure, possible,” he admitted, “and while we think about it, someone get your ass downstairs and go find Deagan!” He yelled the last at Osgood, who dropped the slate he’d been watching videos on and ran for the door. “You go with him,” he barked at Praeg as well. The man followed just as quickly, and Grayson grunted in satisfaction, then went back to writing the report he’d been working on. Contrary to what many might think, running an insurgency required considerable management skills.
It wasn’t until Grayson glanced up to see the sun beginning to sink into the horizon that he realized Osgood hadn’t come back, or Praeg either. “What in the fuck,” he said and got up. He looked at his other lieutenant, Brog, who was deep in a game or something, and he grumbled about finding good help. Instead he went over and picked up a telephone, annoyed at the planet’s abysmal technology, and dialed down to the loading dock where most of his men were located.
The phone rang for several long seconds. Long enough Grayson was about to hang it up and go down to chew some ass when it was answered. “About goddamned time,” he snarled into the phone.
“Patience, patience,” a voice he didn’t recognize answered.
“Who the hell is this?” Grayson demanded.
“Your going out of business sale.”
Grayson hissed in anger and fear. Despite the harmless locals, he’d prepared for the contingency of being discovered by feckless law enforcement. He dropped the phone and took several steps before slapping a hidden alarm button. All throughout the building red lights began to flash. There was no audible alarm; he didn’t want any more attention than necessary.
“What?!” Brog yelled and jumped to his feet. “What’s going on?”
“Someone is in the building,” Grayson said, “and I think he took out everyone downstairs.” Grayson went to the wall by the door and pressed a control. On the opposite wall, the window went opaque. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot, get a shotgun!”
The main armory was in the basement. The only way to get to it would be through the first floor, which was no doubt what the intruder wanted them to do. Brog went back to the couch he and Osgood had been lounging on and flipped up the seat to reveal a rack full of weapons. Pistols, shotguns, and magazines for both were organized inside. Brog grabbed a shotgun, slapped a magazine into it, and tossed the weapon to his boss. He followed with a pair of extra mags.
Grayson caught them and slid the magazines into his coat pocket before charging the gun’s chamber and releasing the safety.
“Who do you think it is?” Brog asked.
“Mercs,” Grayson said. Having been one himself for a short time, he was all but certain. The enemy must have planned out the attack thoroughly and patiently to manage taking out most of Grayson’s people without raising the alarm. Only, why bother answering the phone? It didn’t make any sense.
* * *
Murdock could have killed them all without too much difficulty. Of course, killing them all in one fell swoop would have necessitated levelling the entire building, risking some neighbors, and probably a lot of hard questions from the cops. Instead he took the patient approach. All afternoon he made use of the information provided by Deagan’s boy. The kid had been pretty chatty after Murdock had given Deagan the full “Sweeney Todd” treatment. Sure, maybe Murdock got a little carried away; he was pretty pissed his quiet little retirement retreat was getting fucked with.
He was sure these assholes weren’t the ones sinking ships. They were ground-based thugs, sent to disrupt operations and subvert the economy. Hell, it was possible this group didn’t know about the other group. The other reason not to just tear the place apart and kill them all was answers. Deagan didn’t know the source of the funding or who was responsible for the operation. He intended to find out.
* * *
Grayson heard the sound, ever so quietly, of a footstep outside the office door. He caught Brog’s attention, pointed at the door, and then raised his shotgun. Brog did the same. Without further warning, the door was smashed inward and someone stumbled in. Grayson and Brog fired simultaneously, the buckshot taking Osgood from the groin to his face.
“Damnit!” Grayson screamed as his lieutenant spun away, a bloody mess. He didn’t notice a figure on the floor reach around the corner, examine the situation, pick a target, aim a pistol, and blow Brog’s brains all over the room.
Grayson jumped in surprise as bits of his lieutenant’s brains splattered him. His time as a merc came back, and he responded, spinning and firing a shot at the intruder. He only hit the doorframe.
“Hey!” Grayson yelled. “Whoever you are, maybe we can talk this over! Someone hired you, just like someone hired me.”
“Wrong, dipshit,” a man yelled back. “I managed to find out a little bit from Deagan before I had to cut his throat. You’re Grayson, the only one who knows what’s really going on here.”
“Well, if that’s true,” Grayson said, slowly moving further to the side, “I ain’t telling you, or anyone on your team, shit.”
“Team? There ain’t no team, just me.”
“What?” Grayson felt his blood turn cold. One man had taken out his entire crew? What was this guy, a Depik?
“Let’s just say someone came along who was tired of you fucking with these people.”
Grayson had reached the wall and was slipping along it until he was right next to the door. The bastard would be just on the other side. He squatted down and got ready. “Last chance, you going to talk about this?”
“No,” was the reply, right where he expected it to be.
“Your choice,” Grayson said with a savage grin. He dropped to the floor and pushed out, swinging his gun around and firing at knee height. Only there wasn’t anything there. “What?” he said, and looked up just in time to see Murdock’s fist coming down from where he was hanging by an overhead support.
* * *
“Wake up, dickhead,” Murdock punctuated his sentence with a kick to the ribs. Grayson groaned and opened his eyes.
“Wha…?” he said, looking around and trying to focus on his surroundings. As he began to realize he wasn’t where he’d been when Murdock had knocked him cold, his eyes widened in surprise, then suspicion. He was tied hand and foot on a watery, muddy wooden floor in a dimly-lit building. “Where am I?”
“Somewhere away from prying eyes,” Murdock said, and kicked him in the face. There was a satisfying crack of flying teeth. He lit another cigar stub and puffed contentedly. “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, who hired you?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Yeah, your boy Deagan tried that one. I carved him up while his crew watched. Very motivational. Only, you’re the last of your little operation left alive.”
Grayson started to laugh, then closed his mouth at the predatory grin on Murdock’s face, smoke jetting from his nose and curling around his head in a nightmarish visage. The look on h
is face was…anticipatory.
“Yeah, I’m a merc,” Murdock continued. “I figured you might have been one at some point. I don’t much like Humans who prey on other Humans. I fought here twenty-nine years ago, and we Human mercs decided we didn’t want to kill our own kind. You? You don’t seem to give a fuck. So my motivation not to treat you the same is just about zero.” He emphasized his point by stomping on Grayson left ankle, shattering the complicated joint.
Grayson screamed and tried to get loose. Murdock could see blood starting to flow from where the stripper cuffs were cutting into his wrists. He checked his slate, looking at the feeds from two surveillance drones he’d left out in the alley. Nothing yet. Still, he knew he didn’t have a lot of time. He decided to move things along.
“Pain is a great motivator,” he said, taking one of the knives he’d used to such good effect earlier and sliced away Grayson’s pants to the knees. The other man tried vainly to pull his legs away. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to slice you up like Deagan. I don’t have many nanites left to control the blood flow. No, I need a way to keep you from bleeding out.” Murdock removed a plastic container and squirted fluid all over Grayson’s shins. “This should do the trick.”
One of the advantages of the colonies is they didn’t have the nanny-state laws of Earth. Lots of things were legal on Valais that weren’t on the world of his birth. One was smoking. He took out his plasma lighter and touched it to Grayson’s lighter-fluid soaked legs.
This time Grayson really screamed. It had that certain quality a man’s scream only obtained at the height of pain and terror, as it passed the level of human tolerance. Murdock calmly puffed on his cigar and watched.
Grayson tried to roll to extinguish the flames, so Murdock put a foot on his stomach and pinned the man on his back. The screams became shrieks. After about a minute, the flames died out, leaving huge patches of blackened, charred, and smoldering flesh. Grayson’s cries fell off to pathetic whimpers.
“Still don’t give a fuck? Tell me who bankrolled and gave you your marching orders, and I’ll stop.” He took out the mostly empty nanite medkit and waggled it tantalizing close to the terrified man’s face.
“You’ll stop?” Grayson said between gasping cries of agony. Murdock nodded and blew smoke. “It was a Veetanho,” Grayson sobbed.
“Name?”
“Don’t have a name.” Murdock sighed and bent over to cut the man’s pants off up to the waist this time.
“I’ll save your nuts for later, you might pass out when they pop from the flames.”
“Her name is Skees!” Grayson squealed, then sobbed. “Skees.”
“Where did you make contact?”
“Karma. The whole thing was set up on Karma. Hired most of my crew there, a few from Earth and the colonies.” Murdock took notes on the slate. He was recording the whole thing on Tri-V too; he was old fashioned that way.
“You running these pirates, too?”
“No,” Grayson said without hesitation. Murdock could see he was beginning to hope he was going to live through this. “I don’t know who’s running that op. I’m afraid they’re a competing crew, but I don’t know why Skees would hire more than one.”
“I do,” Murdock said, rolling the cigar stump to the other side of his mouth. “Because Skees was afraid you’d fuck it up.” He gestured at Grayson lying there, then shrugged. “Seems she was right.” Murdock asked a few more questions about Grayson’s operation, when he was expecting more crew, other locations they might be set up, stashed gear and funds, and then circled back to make sure the man’s story lined up. It did. Pain had a marvelous way of focusing the mind.
“I’ve told you everything,” Grayson said. “God, this hurts! Please, make it stop?”
“Yeah,” Murdock said, “I think we’re done here.” He walked over to a machine and fed the rope attached to Grayson’s legs into it. He turned it on and the mechanism began to pull the rope in, then Grayson was dragged across the floor. As it took in the rope it made a horrendous grinding sound.
“Wait, you said you’d stop!” Grayson screamed.
“I did stop burning you,” Murdock said and winked.
“No!” Grayson begged as his feet were fed into the industrial fish mincing machine. “You can’t do this…ARGH”
Murdock smoked as the device did its grisly work. The machine wasn’t really designed for anything as hard boned as a Human. The circuit breaker tripped twice from the motor overheating, especially on the pelvis, making Murdock restart it. It took several minutes for the screaming to finally stop.
Murdock picked up all the physical evidence and pocketed it. He’d searched Grayson and removed anything made of metal or heavy plastic before bringing him back to Shell Game Seafood. He took a few minutes to use a hose and wash away all the human-looking debris, then dumped the big bucket full of what used to be Grayson down the chute, where it would end up in the bay. He yawned and tossed in the tiny remnant of his cigar. Well past midnight, he headed for his room at the Sharps’, wondering if they’d left any food out.
* * * * *
Chapter Eight
“Where did you disappear to yesterday?” Sheela Dresdin asked when Murdock walked into Shell Game the next morning.
“Anything been happening?” Murdock asked.
“No,” she admitted, “it’s been completely quiet. None of the other shop owners said they’ve seen a thing.”
“Maybe my roughing up those three guys ended it?” Murdock suggested.
“People have fought them a few times,” Sheela said, “and every time the animals showed back up the next day, and it was ten times worse.”
Sheela’s daughter Shannon looked up from chopping heads off fish and Murdock gave her a wink. She looked at him curiously, then laughed at the strange grin he had on his face.
“You look like the cat who ate the proverbial canary,” Sheela said.
“I just had a good night’s sleep.” Sheela shrugged and checked her clipboard. “How can I help?” Sheela directed him to some pallets of flounder, and he started sorting fish.
As afternoon approached, they stopped for lunch. Sheela went next door to the restaurant she partnered with and came back with a carryout bag full of roasted fish and some potatoes. Murdock dug in with his usual hunger, again marveling at how meat here replaced vegetables as a staple. He wondered if it was healthy. Sheela Dresdin could see his pensive look.
“You okay?” she asked. He told her what he was thinking. “Oh, we’re fine. You’ll notice the variation we have of types of fish helps make up for vitamin shortages. We also eat soups with seaweeds and some hothouse vegetables.” She pointed at the potato he was eating. “That potato variety was designed on Earth before first contact as a way of providing rare vitamins to people lacking them. They grow easily in almost any climate. The government banned them.”
“Typical,” Murdock said. The potatoes had a slightly sweet taste and a yellow tint. He thought they were delicious.
“Just remember to vary your diet,” she said, “avoid tuna too much, even though it’s one of the best tasting. They don’t have much vitamin A or D.” She pointed at the potato. “Those do.”
He grunted and swallowed. “Thanks, I’ll remember.”
After lunch they went back to work filling an order. As late afternoon approached, Murdock again accompanied the younger Dresdin down to the docks and met Shell Game II. Having seem him before, Captain Orlan waved when he saw Murdock.
“Hello, Mr. Murdock,” the captain said.
“Just Murdock is fine,” he said and shook the man’s hand when he came down to the dock.
“Hey, Shannon.”
“Good catch, Captain?”
“Pretty good,” Orlan said and smiled. “We spotted another whale pod. Dr. Sharp said he thinks the pod has moved into the area.” The man shook his head.
“That a problem?” Murdock asked.
“Normally, no,” Orlan said, “except the pirates are kill
ing whales wherever they find them.”
“What the fuck for?” Murdock asked.
“Nobody has asked.” The captain shrugged. “Sharp thinks the government might be paying them, that’s why they’re sinking fishing boats and killing transplanted Earth life.”
Murdock nodded and filed it away. An hour later he was riding in the truck taking their load of fish back to the market.
When he jumped down from the truck, Sheela Dresdin ran out of the shop. She looked upset.
“Did you hear?”
“Hear what?” he asked. “We were loading the truck.”
“The police found an office in town full of bodies. At least a dozen men, all off-worlders, murdered. Most just had their necks broken, but a few were shot.”
“No shit,” Murdock said and nodded his head. It took everything he had not to grin.
“The police came here wondering where you were last night.”
“Sleeping,” he said without missing a beat. “I got some dinner and a few drinks, then headed back to my room.”
“You got witnesses?” Murdock looked over and saw a man, not in uniform, but definitely a cop.
Detective, Murdock thought. “Don’t remember where I ate and had drinks,” he said and shrugged. “I’ve only been here a couple days, and these streets are confusing.”
“Understandable,” the cop said. “However, I see you’ve had a couple confrontations with these people.”
“What people are those?” he asked. The cop gave a little smile.
