by Blaze Ward
Rob belched politely. It really had been an exceptional lunch. Antipasti with charcuterie plates, cheeses, various breads, and sangria rather than wine.
All the appearance of something heavy, without actually following through. Again, like a Hollywood set that let you draw the wrong conclusions. Rob was wondering just how much of Tanaka was nothing but façade, but didn’t even ask leading questions.
Dumb boyfriend who happened to be a little lethal, but only enough to interest these people, not threaten them or frighten off any leads that might get him to Guadarrama’s arms dealer.
“Come,” Tanaka said, rising and drawing Rob and Leonard Kim in his wake. The goons hadn’t joined them at the meal, so Rob presumed that they were off testing that pistol he’d brought.
Rob felt sorry for whoever drew the short straw, once they determined that it really was only a stunner. Someone would have to get shot. Bad headache when you woke up, lasting a couple of hours.
Nigel had shot him once, just so Rob understood the limits of the weapon.
Rob followed Tanaka across the quad through the mid-afternoon sunlight and breeze. The day wasn’t going to get all that hot, but it was brilliantly clear. Almost enough that Rob wished he’d brought some sunglasses.
The show barn was just that. Big, hollow space maybe three stories tall at the edges and five in the center. One end inside looked like a short city block with alleys, storefronts, and residential second and third floors plus flat tops.
Rob had a hard flashback of being chased through the streets of Puerto Peñasco a year ago, except that it had been colder that morning and drizzling.
The place had risers at the near end where you could sit. Interestingly, they were behind three inches or so of something transparent and hard. Looked like a polarizing layer embedded in the middle as well.
“Know what that is?” Tanaka asked, suddenly bright and attentive in ways he hadn’t been before.
“If you aren’t using armor piercing rounds, I presume this will stop anything handheld,” Rob tapped on it. “And the laser etching in the middle should disrupt a pulse beam pretty effectively. You do this with live ammunition much?”
Tanaka preened. Rob didn’t have a better word to describe it.
“Indeed, Rob,” he said. “I have a first class medical facility on site here, and we bring in a couple of trauma experts, but we can indeed do things with live ammunition if we want. It gives you a much better feel for a weapon you want to push.”
Rob caught the emphasis on push as the man spoke. Again, not necessarily a poker player.
Or maybe he just wanted to see how dumb the kid was. And how good.
“So what’s the game plan this afternoon?” Rob asked, bright-eyed and innocent.
Or something like that.
“We have a run-through set up for the Hogan’s Alley,” Tanaka said. “One of my men has been playing with your pistol and is going to test it with live fire in the range, to see what he thinks.”
Rob nodded. Just about what he had expected.
They took seats in a box overlooking the rest of the stands. Where else would you have a wetbar handy, already laid out with more antipasti and snacks, after all?
The lights down below were set to late afternoon. As Rob watched, they dimmed down to night. Street lights and arcade signs came on.
He was back outside his apartment when Dodger and the others had blown the place up, pissed that he’d escaped them.
Rob worked on his breathing and his pulse, aware that he needed to be more relaxed and less in killer mode. At least for now.
The toughest of the three goons appeared at one end of the little neighborhood and a chime sounded.
A Hogan’s Alley was a tactical training facility with a name so ancient that nobody knew where it came from anymore. Sometimes live fire, but more frequently with either simulated ammunition, laser optical sensors, or ammunition with much of the charge bled off, depending. You walked through it with things popping out that the shooter had to identify and engage in a split second. Some of the targets were criminals. Some of them were pedestrians.
The Service had a facility inland from Puerto Peñasco that covered nearly eight thousand hectares, so that agents could train indoors, outdoors, and in any weather, generally shooting live rounds without much risk of hitting things beyond.
This show barn was going to be limited to city and alley work. Assassinations, as it were, rather than revolutions, since people wouldn’t have to hump thirty miles cross country with a broken apart rifle in their backpack. Penetrate a semi-secured facility. Put the rifle together and shoot someone. Get back out alive afterwards.
But they were goons. Professional enough, from what Rob had seen, but lacking that true edge that the Service and Jorge Royo, plus Roxy, could add to an agent’s repertoire.
The first goon stepped into the street, staying close on his right, which Rob thought was a mistake, since he was right-handed. A poster popped out and the man shot it cleanly.
A second and he didn’t engage.
Lights came on in a second story window and a shadow drew fire.
That was the advantage of a heavy stunner. You could shoot on movement generally, because you wouldn’t kill most people, odd medical conditions notwithstanding.
The man worked his way down the street. He ducked into an alley and Rob watched him on screens now, from cameras set overhead.
More surprises. More targets.
Eventually, the range got cleared by the man.
Rob looked at the overhead scoreboard when he emerged.
Eight-twenty.
Extremely respectable for a professional gunman, but Rob must have made a sound.
Tanaka was studying his face.
“Thoughts?” Tanaka asked.
“Is this layout standard?” Rob asked.
“What do you mean?” Tanaka asked. Leonard Kim was hovering close by now, listening attentively.
“He’s run this set of streets and alleys before?” Rob clarified.
“He has,” Tanaka said. “Why do you ask?”
“Eight-twenty is a little low if he knows where things are going to pop out,” Rob offered, maybe a little professionally insulted. “I’ve been places where a cold eight hundred was the minimum to even get an invitation.”
Roxy would have probably put up a nine hundred plus, but she was the most lethal gunslinger Rob had ever met.
“Cold?” Kim asked.
“Never been there except to have it described by the rangemaster,” Rob replied. “Maybe watch a walk through like this once, and then do it yourself.”
“You have much experience with a sim like this?” Tanaka asked.
“Before the mistress came along, I was doing other things for other people,” he shrugged. “Spent too much time with men making a living with guns, perhaps. You pick up a few things.”
“Would you like to give it a try, Rob?” Tanaka asked in what was probably supposed to sound innocent.
Rob wasn’t fooled. They’d brought him here and showed him this because he was more dangerous than he looked. Eugen Tanaka wanted to know how dangerous, but Rob wasn’t sure if the man was measuring him for a job or a coffin.
Always a risk when you get into the dark corners with people.
“I might,” Rob grimaced. “But I’d use a class four pulse pistol in that case. More comfortable in my hand. The little popgun cycles too slowly for large encounters or suppressing fire.”
“Where did you learn those things?” Leonard Kim leaned down to look closer at him.
“I was with the Republic of Aquitaine Navy at one point,” he lied smoothly. “And had my boarding badge and marksman badge. Pay still sucked, but it taught me some things.”
Lincolnshire fleet, rather than Aquitaine. And he was technically still drawing active duty pay and benefits, just so those bastards could requisition him for things when they got in over their heads.
But he wasn’t surprised at where the con
versation was going.
“We could get you something heavier,” Tanaka nodded. Yup, bright-eyed with interest.
All a sucker’s game.
Rob hemmed and hawed.
“Oh, why not?” he finally said. “Been a while, but I used to be pretty good.”
“Those gentlemen you put into the hospital would say you still had the chops for it, Rob,” Tanaka replied.
“Didn’t think I hit any of them that hard,” Rob shrugged. “Elbow on the one. And a fist. But sure, let’s do this?”
He stripped off his suit jacket and hung it from a handy chair. The shoulder holster came next, with Tanaka taking possession of the little pop gun for now.
Tanaka led him out and down under the bleachers, to where the three goons from before were waiting. Rob appreciated the number of weapons on the walls of the little storage room. Enough for a small war or a large gang to get out of hand.
“What do you need?” Tanaka asked, gesturing expansively at the glass cabinets filled with tac gear.
Rob took a moment to look at it all, like a kid in a candy store. Dolf had more stuff, down in the bullpen, but not many other people did.
Properly, he should grab ballistic lenses for his eyes, as well as inserts for his ears. Maybe change shoes, but he didn’t have anything handy that he trusted, nor did he want to be too far from his, in case someone accidentally scanned them.
Too many secrets.
And he didn’t want to look like he did this on a monthly basis, which he did.
“Class four pulse pistol?” Rob asked one of the goons.
“Right handed or left?” the man asked, gesturing to a top shelf in a glass case.
Rob understood just what an interesting trap Tanaka might have been setting now. He had kept his shoulder holster for a right-hand draw, but he could shoot equally well with either.
Rob studied the four. Two looked cherry. Handled so infrequently you might be able to sell them new in box.
The most battered one was right-handed, which was good. It had the look of something someone had carried regularly, worn a little bright in places where it touched the holster coming and going.
“That one,” Rob said, trusting that the man who had carried it had gotten himself a newer one, and put his old pistol here because it still worked.
The goon reached into the case and pulled it out respectfully.
“How far down are they tuned?” Rob asked.
It was the mark of someone used to pulse weapons on combat ranges, not civilians who plinked. They didn’t dial the weapon down at all, just scorching the targets.
“Live, sir,” the man said, ritually checking the safety and handing it to Rob point down. “We don’t dial the power off when training.”
“Oh.” Rob was impressed.
Crazy and risky, but you got the best results that way.
As long as you had competent medical staff handy when the inevitable accident occurred.
“Hip holster?” Rob asked.
Uncomfortable, but it would fit under a normal jacket. If he was kicking in a front door to clear a building, Rob would have been in tactical armor and carried the weapon in a thigh holster. Out for a night of dinner and opera and it would be in a shoulder holster like a detective.
Hip holster was easiest to get at when it was covered.
The man found one and Rob tucked it in. Slugthrowers had a wider barrel and housing than a pulse pistol, class for class. And you had to carry the bullet cartridges, usually in the grip.
This was a set of batteries and a charging array, plus a lens to focus the beam and sights for the shooter. Most of the weight and bulk was batteries, but they could be arrayed flatter and thinner.
Here, he could have put his jacket back on and walked out onto the casino floor.
He’d thrown down one hell of a gauntlet, though, so Rob knew he’d have to carry through and beat the previous score.
That or give one hell of a good demonstration, so that they took him serious enough to maybe recruit.
Couldn’t throw a bimbo at him and expect her to do anything but bounce off. Not after seeing what Mac looked like.
“Through here, sir,” one of the mercs gestured Rob to follow.
He nodded to Tanaka and Kim and followed.
Now he had to make it look good.
19
Tactical Combat Simulator. A game as old as professional law enforcement officers that expected to shoot people regularly.
Hogan’s Alley, named after some obscure place back on lost Earth, before the Interstellar Age.
Dark. Cooler than Rob expected. He figured that was so you didn’t work up a hard sweat.
Evening or night in a medium-sized, sleepy city. The kind that didn’t have glazings of neon and random pedestrians out for pickled shark at two in the morning.
Concrete under his feet. Granite facing and bricks, broken up occasionally by glass windows on store fronts.
Smell of something weird in the air. Wasn’t poison or a soporific, at least none Rob knew.
“You’ll progress down the main street, sir,” the man explained. “Then turn into the second alley on the right and then exit via a door at the end. You watched Mel do it earlier?”
“I did,” Rob confirmed.
“Good enough,” the man nodded. “I’ll close the door. Five seconds later the range will go live. Good luck.”
Live. What an interesting term.
Most places went active.
Live suggested that the bad guy turrets shooting back also had full-powered weapons.
How realistic did you want this to get, Tanaka? How risky?
Rob waited for the door to close and drew his pistol as it locked. The other goon had waited here, since it was the straightest line to the alley.
You moved down the sidewalk, engaging things as they popped out.
Rob heard the chime and sprinted across the intersection before anything moved.
If nothing else, all the weapons would have to recalibrate.
Sure enough, movement drew his eye and barrel. Man in a rough hat and gun in his hand projected onto a slide-out backdrop. Most of them looked like that. The man controlling the range had several options for what each encounter was.
Rob put a shot through the target’s heart and slammed his butt into a corner where a store doorway recessed a little.
Across the way, another door opened and a figure emerged. Female. Non-combatant.
Rob nodded and scanned the two upper stories and the roof across the way. Assassins liked rooftops.
Nobody popped up.
Rob emerged at a soft jog and stayed close to the building.
A man emerged from the first alley in front of him. Right handed holding a pistol, which meant he had to rotate all the way across his body in order to shoot.
Rob put one into the manikin’s hand, then walked the pulses up the arm, with the fourth one hitting the side of the head.
The manikin nearly exploded, cotton batting flying everywhere.
Rob moved.
Glance up. Shadow.
Someone drawn to look out a window at the sound of beam fire. Usually a suicidal mistake, but not always.
Rob tracked and aimed. Old man holding a glass bottle in one hand rather than a gun. Nearly drew fire anyway.
In a real situation, it might be a Molotov cocktail, or a bottle of acid. Or Rob might put a shot into the sill just to make it explode and drive the target back where he’d be safer inside.
Rob moved.
Sound of a vehicle. Sliding on repulsors but moving too slow for a car headed to work. Rob found a light pole and marked headlights coming up behind him.
The vehicle began to slow and Rob threw himself forward and down, crouching low behind the light pole and using it as whatever cover it would afford. He fired into the side of the vehicle as the rear window on the driver’s side came down and the snout of something ugly protruded.
Rob put three shots into the darkness
above the barrel, walking them in a circular pattern.
Must have hit a sensor, because the barrel retracted.
Rob put two into the driver’s window. One melted a chunk of thermoplastic.
The second one penetrated the interior, just about even with an ear.
This was why you carried a class four. Class Three might have bounced off. Four would have, if the vehicle was upgraded in any way, but in that instance, Rob probably would have been carrying something heavier anyway.
The repulsor car drifted into the far curb, up, and slammed into the front of a building with a satisfying crunch. Most of it was sound effects, but it still had the look and feel of reality.
Just none of the smell.
That was fine. Rob didn’t need to smell scorched flesh and fresh shit right now.
He moved off at a sprint, covering fifteen yards quickly and throwing himself into a forward, rolling dive as he came across the alley opening on this side. A target had already emerged, but he was prepared for a second one.
None was there, but Rob marked that down as a bad design decision. You should always have a second shooter available to come out in this sort of sim, in case someone killed the first one before it got a shot off.
Something slammed into the wall above and ahead of him. Probably would have gotten him, too, had he not stopped moving to throw off aim.
Whatever it was had enough power to spall shards of brick.
Rob regretted not having goggles right now, but he’d managed to shut his eyes fast enough that he wasn’t blind or bleeding.
He threw himself into a side roll, with a half turn in the middle. His shirt was probably ruined, but the next incoming shot was again high. Would have taken him in the belly button had he stood up, but he was flat on his stomach, gun sniffing.
There.
Two shots.
Someone had emerged from the door to the saloon and fired a rifle of some sort. If Rob was closer, he might have picked it up instead, but his four was enough for now.
Movement above again.
Sniper this time, sticking a barrel out a window.
Looked like the guy controlling the range had gotten a little pissed that Rob had moved sideways against what the other mercs did here.
