by Reiter
“You findin’ sumfin funny, friend?” Brattle asked.
“Just the delivery agent the blue man’s picked to do the deed,” Amosse shared.
“Wha’zat supposed ta mean, pretty boy?”
“Well I don’t rightly know,” Amosse said. “But I’m thinking that he wants something from around these parts and I’m his distraction.” Looking around, Amosse chuckled. “Just what percentage of your people did you call out to come chasing after me?”
Brattle chuckled as he squatted. He pointed at Amosse with his rod and said, “Pat ‘im down!” The one holding Amosse’s head moved to carry out the order, but had not been at it long when he came to the outside jacket pocket at the front of the jacket. Reaching in, a familiar-looking storage card was produced. “Wow, look at that. You’re turnin’ out ta be one helluva distraction!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Amosse snapped. “If you have the right kind of scanner, you’ll see I never touched that thing!”
“Oh, you mean like one of those high n’ mighty med-scans?” Brattle asked. “I got one o’ those in my ride!”
“Well go and get it then!” Amosse yelled.
Brattle took a step back as the exchange had taken an unexpected turn. “Well, that’s not right,” he said, looking into Amosse’s eyes. There was fear, as there should have been; death awaited the fool... but what the street thug could not see… was duplicity. Scared and very angry, yes, but he did not appear to be lying. Brattle stood up and reached for his communicator but never took his eyes off of Amosse.
“Fannie,” he called out. “It’s me! You got eyes on me empire?”
“Is that what you call it?” a female voice responded with a tone of levity and familiarity. “Seems to me to be ten sectors of sh–”
“Can tha wise ass and take a look ‘bout!” Brattle snapped. He could hear the woman keying in commands as she cleared her throat. She knew it was serious business and moved quickly to check Brattle’s holdings.
“No trouble at the bins,” she reported. “The last shipment of bodies has been tagged and put down for the night. They’re counting the take at the sweat house,” she continued. “We had a John who didn’t want to pay earlier, but he’s been moved to the bins. Day-Workers are all checked in; Night-Workers are either on site or on the way.”
“Wait!” Amosse said, realizing a possible point of interest. “Is she looking through cameras directly wired into her console or are the images fed to her through a computer?”
“What diff’rence does that make?” Brattle asked as his eyes squinted at having found what could have been the first slip his captive had made.
“Look, I’m not in a position to screw you over here!” Amosse snapped. “But if it’s through a computer, tell her to check again and see if the images are exactly the same.”
“N’ why would it change?!”
“Exactly the same?!” Amosse stressed. “The same guard walking by? The same spark coming from faulty wiring?! The same fucking rat creeping down the same fucking gutter!!!”
“Oh shit!” the woman said over the open line. “He’s right! Every time I call up a site, I get the same video feed!”
“Hold the line, Fannie,” Brattle said as he thought for a moment. “Get ‘im up!” he commanded and Amosse was lifted from the alley floor as Brattle walked up to him, fuming in anger. “I don’t even know this batter,” he stated, “… so it can’t be because I crossed him! What’s this blue bastard’s game?!”
“In his eyes, he doesn’t need a reason to take anything from you,” Amosse advised. “That means everything of yours is fair game.”
“He can’t be in all these places at the same time!” Brattle shouted before realizing what was incredibly clear. “He can be if he takes my triplets,” Brattle whispered.
“I’ve got people rolling to Eastern Suites,” the woman advised.
“No, Fannie, don’t bover wif that!” Brattle spoke as he turned to move toward his hover-car. He waved for his men to bring Amosse along. “I had ‘em moved to my place once I heard the BGK was stepping down.”
“That would explain a great many things,” Dungias said as he came up through the pavement. A gravity pulse knocked Brattle and all of his people to the ground, throwing them to the walls and the parked hover-car.
The pulse, however, seemed to roll around Amosse and he was untouched. He gasped as all the people flew away from him, and he froze at the sight of Dungias standing there with his black cloak settling around his body.
“Well done, Amosse,” he said as he drew the larger of his two flechette tubes. Twirling the tube in his hands, Dungias took a two-handed grip and swung a gleaming claymore sword through the middle of the hover-car. “Now we’re even, your fate is your own!” The blade vanished into the tube and that device disappeared into the cloak. Dungias started down the street, keying a command into his brace-com. A pulse of white light burst from his body. Similar pulses burst from the remains of the hover-car and the communicators of Brattle and his men. Amosse’s wrist-com was untouched.
The former crewman did not wait for any of the street thugs to get to their feet. Amosse knew he stood little chance in convincing them that the Malgovi was playing them all. But he could run, and while the sky-bike had been just another part of the trap, it had managed to bring Amosse closer the shaft of the lift. It was nearly a quarter mile away and there was good reason to believe many of the people chasing him were faster runners with greater endurance… but it was the only chance he stood at living.
** b *** t *** o *** r **
Her dark brown hair blew in the wind as the carriage made its way down the avenue. Teela laughed at the antics of the young doctor as he re-enacted his first day in Cyber-Medicine. Apparently the cadaver he and his partner had been given had not been the clinical definition of dead, coming to life the moment power was put to the circuits. While the only action the body had taken was sitting up and saying ‘hello’ in eleven different languages, the reactions of the student body was what Teela had found to be worth cackling over.
“Yeah, the Cyborg Zombie was one for the books… and that solved the overcrowding problem,” Jovasor concluded. “We went from thirty-nine students all the way down to sixteen.”
“What?! You have to be kidding!”
“No at all,” he assured her. “By the time we got to our rotations, there were only five of us left. We felt like we were being hunted down and dragged away one at a time. So the five of us moved into an estate house and we became something of a family.”
“An estate house?” Teela asked with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah,” Jovasor said dismissively. “Well, I was on a kind of scholarship so the school just gave it to us.”
“Schools don’t do that, Jovasor,” she said, keeping a smile on her face. “I’m thinking maybe you bought an estate house and invited your four friends to live with you.” Jovasor’s face fell blank as he looked at the young woman.
“H-h-h-how… how do you come to that?”
“Look at where we are!” Teela shouted, standing up in the carriage. “You insisted on that penthouse restaurant, and I was the only one looking around like I had never been there before.”
“I’ve never been to that place!” Jovasor argued.
“No, but you’ve been to places like it! You knew the man was going to pull out my chair for me, and you gave that look of disappointment when they were late bringing out our water. Plus you’ve yet to use the credit stick in your brace-com. You just keep using your thumb. That means you’ve got an account here at Black Gate.”
“I used to live here!” Jovasor pointed out.
“So did I, and I know how much that option costs per term,” Teela advised. “My campus meal plan was cheaper! If it makes any difference, a lot of us already knew you had money.”
“How?” Jovasor asked, surprised to hear his disguise had not worked as well as he had hoped.
“The way you carry yourself,” Teela quickly answered, ta
king her seat. “You faced off against the Captain as if she wasn’t the sort of person who might shoot you for disagreeing with her.”
“She would?” The young woman could not keep from collapsing into laughter looking at the wonderment spread wide across the young doctor’s face. He swallowed hard as he watched the young woman laughing, but his attention was drawn away when the carriage slowed to a stop. Letting Teela continue to laugh, Jovasor Cole got out of the carriage and started down the walk into the park.
Teela, nearly overcome with laughter, noticed his departure and started to rein herself in. She wiped her eyes and stood up. “Where are we?”
“The moment of truth,” Jovasor muttered as he continued to walk.
“Hey, this…” Teela said as she stepped down from the carriage and remembered when last she was in this facility. “Jovasor, why are we here?”
“This is where the mighty Z was brought to his perfect knees,” Jovasor said as he walked up to the path that would lead to the point where the First Mate had been petrified and captured. Jovasor had never looked at the place as anything other than a controlled location where he could take scans and search for evidence of what had happened. He had never taken the time, nor given the opportunity, to just take the place in for what it was.
“I don’t know what all is wrong with this boy, but he has some serious issues!” Teela thought as she started to follow after Jovasor. She could see movement in the foliage inside the park and there was too soft a breeze to account for the sound. “And I am so not in the mood for poetic justice right now!
“Jovasor, we really need to be getting back.”
“Why?!” Jovasor shouted as he walked faster. “Why do we hold him to such a level, huh? Like he’s some kind of god or something!”
“Are you sure you’re talking about all of us?” Teela asked. “… or just you?”
“I love it when couples argue,” Skorunn said as he came out from the shrubs. He knew the woman had heard them, so there was no need to maintain the uncomfortable attempt at stealth. “Don’t you guys?” Eleven people walked out from the shadows from five different directions, effectively surrounding the two.
“Constable,” Jovasor called out, cueing the laughter of nearly everyone in the approaching group.
“Sorry, Rich Boy. They haven’t put that back online just yet. Seems there was a storm that got out of control a while back. They’ve fixed all the pretty stuff, but the wiring caught massive hell with the lightning and what not; gonna take a little longer to restore. Too bad you were into your own little world back at the sign notifying you of that. And we took care of your automated driver before your girlfriend could spot us.”
“This one’s bent,” Teela thought. “He knows we’re bilked! He just wants to see us squirm… and it looks like Jovasor’s going to give him what he wants!”
“Okay, we don’t want any trouble,” Jovasor said, holding up his hands in surrender.
“Too bad, Credit Kid,” Skorunn replied. “Cuz trouble sure as hell wants you!”
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
(Rims Time: XII-4203.12)
“What am I doing here?” Jovasor thought, looking at the man who had just threatened him. His green eyes took inventory of the figure who was doubtlessly the leader of the group. He was of a disheveled appearance, but it looked like it had been perfected to the limits of his means. The thin-spiked black and green hair seemed to work in conjunction with the earrings and the chain going from his nose to his ear. “I don’t even know if I like Teela… and before I know it, I’m trying to wine and dine her. How that got us to this point, I’m not sure. Gods, am I about to die?
“You touch me and you’ll regret it,” Jovasor warned. “I’m part of a pirate crew! We both are!”
“Oh no,” Teela thought. “Jovasor, this is no time for name-dropping!”
Skorunn’s green eyes flared wide with surprise as he processed what he had just been told, though he could not believe what he had heard. “What?!” Skorunn screamed as his cohorts cackled at the warning. “A pirate crew? You?!”
“I am the Chief Medical Officer on the Xara-Mansura,” Jovasor declared. “Look it up if you don’t believe me. Our Captain is a friend of the Governor of Black Gate. You don’t want to mess with us.”
“Oh, I do,” Skorunn said as he rubbed his chin. “I really, really do. Especially now that I know you’re in tight with the new Gov’nor. I mean, he’s the only one who’s ever come down to the Bowels, after all.
“So, you’re the Ripper for a pirate crew. Did everyone hear that?” Seven slowly turned into sixteen as most of Skorunn’s flock stepped out of the shadows. A second wave! Skorunn had allowed himself to be part of what could have been a baiting situation. “We are in the presence of greatness! Too bad the Gov’nor didn’t tell you one of the unwritten laws of Black Gate: if you wan’ be a bad-ass, you best bring yo stank witcha!” Skorunn said in a pronounced accent that was quite amusing to his cohorts.
Teela looked around, hoping to see some passerby or some avenue of escape. She found nothing of any use as her hands clenched nervously at the fabric of her jacket. “We’re not ready for this,” she thought. “I just joined this damned crew, and I think Jovasor was on board only days before me. I’ve only completed the first stage of my basic training.
“Basic training!” she whispered. Teela moved quickly to stand in front of Jovasor. She was desperate to find the means to come from this encounter with their lives intact. “What he meant to say is there’s no need for violence.” She reached to her wrist and removed her brace-com. “Here, you can have this! It’s custom made! There’s no need for violence.”
“Who said anything about need?” Skorunn returned, much to the delight of those that traveled with him. “After I get done making Rich Boy here bleed, I’ll see to my needs with you!” Skorunn glared at the young woman, taking a moment to look up and down her body. “You just wait your turn! Right now, I’m dealing with the Pirate Doctor.”
“You sure you don’t want to save your energy for me?” Teela returned, surprising herself and the people gathering around her as they started making howling noises. Teela closed her eyes for a moment and steadied herself.
Skorunn smiled, turning to face the courageous young woman. He chuckled, walking to stand directly in front of her. “You going to faint?”
“You don’t stink that much,” Teela replied, generating more howling and some laughter from the crowd. “J-j-just don’t have me… falling asleep with…”
“I think you want to say ‘that little thing’, or something like that,” Skorunn commented, dropping his face into Teela’s eye-line.
“No, I just wanted you to get closer,” she said before slapping him hard across the face.
“Damn, Skorunn!” one of the others yelled. “She suckered you, man!”
“She did at that,” Skorunn said as he put his hand to where he had been struck. “You know, you just might be brave enough to get yourself into trouble.”
“You’re filth!” Teela shot back before spitting in his face. Skorunn’s fist crashed into her face, splitting her upper lip, sending her to back an empty bench.
“Get her ready for me and hold her down!” Skorunn commanded as he turned to face Jovasor. Three rushed over to grab Teela. One directed two to each grab an arm, turn the young woman around and bend her forward over the back of the bench. He removed her belt and pulled down her pants, taking a moment to feel the smooth flesh revealed. He heckled her as he went about his inspection, asking Teela who was going to save her. No one noticed as Teela closed her eyes and opened her right hand.
“Battle wand, your Mistress beckons!”
** b *** t *** o *** r **
“I am beginning to see why my Master is so involved with saving these people,” CK commented as he received the signal that a brace-com had been removed away from the ship. He kept the signal from being sent
to the Xara-Mansura; it would serve as nothing but a distraction, and a needless one at that. He also did not allow the signal to go to Dungias, as he was deeply invested in the Bowels of Black Gate. CK did have two readily available assets of the crew which he could deploy.
“Wake up, you two!” CK commanded as he administered an electric shock from the brace-coms of both Rahneece and Dugger. They were awakened as he sent messages to their brace-coms, alerting them to the emergency.
“Kot!” Ephaliun said as he read the message while he checked his weapons belt. Nothing of his had been removed, so he proceeded quickly out of the room.
“Which one of us goes and which one stays to guard the stash?” Rahneece asked as she came out of her room, forcing her eyes to open wide as she was still waking up.
“Double Kot!” Ephaliun cursed before their brace-coms received another message that a drone was en route to watch over the cargo. “Well, I guess that answers tha–”
“I hear you, Mistress,” a deep and echoing voice boomed from Dungias’ room. “I hear and I obey!”
“Mistress?” Rahneece and Ephaliun said simultaneously while looking at each other. Lifting their hands and arms to cover their faces from the debris of a shattered door, the battle wand came flying out of the room. It floated for a moment before turning down the corridor, flying toward the window at the end. Ephaliun gasped before he took to sprinting after it, though it was clear that the wand was flying faster than he could run.
“What the hell are you going to do if you catch it?” Rahneece shouted as she ran after him. The wand bashed into the safety glass and thousands of cracks formed inside the frame. The second attempt saw the wand crashing through and out into the city.
