by Blaze Ward
But that was the problem with an arena like this. You knew where everything was. Could anticipate it, because you knew when the next thing was likely to appear, and how to think.
Back on Ramsey, Miguel had a team of sadistic carpenters, who rebuilt their walking range every week on Saturday, just so your Monday morning drill was always someplace new.
Bastards, but it left you on the edge every time.
Rob charged the sniper, firing into the room as he crossed the street, eyes focused forward but ears listening for vehicles level or descending.
Solid hit as he got to the building.
Rob bounced sideways and kept moving, getting to the alley quickly.
He switched hands and crossed the opening at a run, shoulders and head turned to the side and pistol sniffing.
Manikin standing there with a club, just waiting for you to step into range to get your skull crushed in as you slipped into the alley.
Rob shot him and watched the figure turn red. Deactivated.
He moved into the alley, watching for someone to stand up from behind a pile of refuse, step from a door, or drop from a fire catwalk.
The first man had engaged a cook stepping from the back of the bar, but nobody slid out on a projection screen.
Something popped up on the left and Rob nearly put a shot into it.
Old man. Had that crazy homeless look you got when they didn’t want help and would fight you for trying.
Scent was too clean, which would have been enough to shoot him for real, since a homeless person had a smell. The alley didn’t even smell of puke and piss.
Bad verisimilitude.
Rob considered suggesting it to Tanaka, but the men he was training would likely be on the other end of whatever battles Rob would end up fighting with the man, so maybe not.
The target looked at Rob and grumbled something. Rob stepped well to his right, found a wall, and scanned both directions as he shifted the pistol again.
Movement behind turned into a couple walking on a date.
Neither of them turned suddenly and tried to shoot, so Rob let them go.
Old geezer got to the mouth of the alley and suddenly spun around, eyes bright and a knife in his hands.
Rob shot on the gleam of metal, catching the manikin before it took a third step.
He walked fire up the torso, assuming that maybe the target would be on some sort of drugs that might have burned out his nerves.
You might not feel pain, but a class four had enough kick to knock you on your ass.
The manikin went down.
Rob stopped and listened for two seconds before exploding into motion, headed down the alley until he got to the door.
Rob stopped and crouched for a long moment, waiting.
Another ambusher would have heard movement and noise, but Rob hid, so some faceless shooter would have to stick his head out in order to spot the invasive pest named Handsome Rob.
Nothing popped out, so Rob stood and moved to the door itself.
Standard storage room door. Heavy enough to keep kids from kicking it in. Sophisticated enough to keep low-rent burglars at bay.
Rob had watched Mel come up and open it to end the sim.
It wasn’t that Rob wasn’t the trusting sort, but he moved to the handle side of the door and pressed himself flat against the wall out of sight.
Reaching across his body, Rob turned the knob and pushed hard. The door swung inward and beam fire exited. Sounded like a stunner. The tone was different enough.
Rob stuck the pistol out and fired as fast as the trigger would cycle.
Then he stuck his head around and saw the last manikin red.
He pivoted back and checked the alley, but nobody else was coming up behind him, so Rob slipped into the doorway and closed it.
Short hallway, then another door on the right, but this one was open.
Rob moved into a standard debrief room. Big space where the trainer could run down all the things you did, with screens handy to replay everything in slow motion, to show everyone various good decisions as well as bad ones that had been made.
There was always something you could have done better on a run. Nature of the beast.
Mel and the other goon were there. Unarmed.
Even a little relaxed.
Rob holstered the class four.
After a few moments, the big screen on the wall beeped as a far door opened and Leonard Kim came in.
Rob nodded to the big man and waited for the combat computer to finish calculating his score and projecting it. He felt pretty good about the run.
The numbers left a sinking feeling in Rob’s belly. Just about a worst-case scenario. He wasn’t supposed to be that good, at least in his current identity as a pretty boy.
Nine-oh-five.
Leonard Kim’s face was surprise itself. The two mercs looked a little jealous.
Rob wondered if he had just blown his cover.
And if that class four had enough charge left if he had.
20
Rob decided in that split second that he had to play this even more stupid than he had planned. He’d been expecting to get hit at some point back there, but the range was junior varsity. Roxy might have been in the nine ninety range had she run it.
“Holy shit!” Rob yelled, waving his hands and jumping up in the air. “Can someone get me print out of that to take home and show the boys? They’ll never believe that. New high score!!! Damn!”
Leonard Kim showed surprise, but a different kind than before. More calculating. Less nervous that maybe they had a ringer inside the security perimeter.
They did, but now was not the time to tell them. Rob didn’t know if Tanaka was Lonelyman.
Or just the next victim that got Rob close to his target.
“New high score?” Leonard asked tentatively.
“You bet,” Rob let his voice stay loud and up half an octave with excitement. “Best I’ve ever had in my life was an eight fifty-seven. Wowsers! Thanks for going easy on me, guys.”
He said that last to Mel and the other merc, like maybe they’d dialed everything down a notch without telling Tanaka, so his guest could get a new high score.
They wouldn’t say anything at this point, except to nod. Certainly, they didn’t want to look bad now.
“Okay, I need a shower,” Rob announced, turning to face Leonard. “Gonna be stinky soon and don’t want the mistress thinking I’ve been off fooling around on her or anything.”
“Indeed,” Leonard relaxed another fraction and gestured Rob to follow.
Rob detached the holster, cleared the weapon professionally and handed it to Mel, just like they trained you to do. Then he turned and grinned at Leonard and followed the man deeper into the facility.
“I was going to take you to the conference room to talk to Eugen, but yes, let’s get you showered first,” Leonard said. “And a new shirt, since that one has oil stains on it.”
Rob looked down and saw where he had turned on his stomach to avoid a shot. One of his buttons was missing and the stain was ground pretty deep into the fabric. No great loss, but he’d look like a killer rather than a lover for a while.
Rob followed the man to a standard locker room. He pulled a towel off a stack by the door and rested it on a nearby bench.
“Gimme fifteen minutes and I’ll be set,” Rob announced cheerfully.
“Very good,” Leonard replied and departed.
Rob stripped quickly, studying the room and wondering how much surveillance he was under.
And if those three mercs would take it upon themselves to gang up on him in the shower. They probably didn’t appreciate looking like junior varsity today, but would have to balance that against Rob being the special guest of Tanaka, who might have all their heads put on sticks out front as a warning to future generations if they did anything right now.
This time.
Still, he took the towel with him and hung it where he could get to it in a hurry.
The showe
r was thirty seconds under warm water. He could have stayed longer, but again, this was what the Lincolnshire navy had pounded into him. Other fleets were the same way.
Nobody came in while he was wet.
Nobody came in while he was drying.
A new shirt had appeared in the time he was gone. All three minutes of it.
It even fit, which suggested that they had looked him up in the resort computer system and gotten his measurements from the tailor on staff for emergencies. That, or Tanaka had that good of an eye to measure a man.
And had a shirt handy that would fit Handsome Rob.
Good to know, either way.
Rob toweled his hair and flipped it back. Good enough for today, to make him look even more disreputable than before.
Pretty boys didn’t put up nine-oh-fives on a sim range.
He would need to be disreputable now. Lonelyman would be paying even closer attention to Rob now, whoever he was. Wondering how disreputable that man might really be.
Nobody had messed with his shoes or his belt. Hopefully nobody would dismantle the shirt and find toys and things Nigel had hidden in seams, but there was nothing Rob could do about it at this point. The shirt was a loss to be written off. Hopefully, it didn’t blow his cover.
Mel appeared, rather than Leonard. The man scowled.
Rob came to perfect stillness.
The merc was smart enough to recognize the scene they were suddenly in, and both his hands came up defensively. Carefully.
“Nothing like that,” Mel said. “Boss sent me to take you to him. I know better than to start a rumble, after I interviewed those punks you bashed.”
Rob nodded. Just so they understood each other.
At least for now.
He followed the merc up a staircase, down a couple of halls, and through a door into an upscale conference room. The kind of place where deals with three commas got signed. Ten digits. Serious cash changing hands.
Tanaka was there. He’d removed his tie from earlier, letting the open collar suggest that things were at a new plateau of comfortable. Leonard Kim was still buttoned down, with a blue tie so subtle Rob figured he’d have to be breathing on it to see the pattern.
None of the mercs were present. Mel stayed in the hallway and closed the door.
Tanaka toasted Rob with a whiskey highball from the top of the table.
“Thanks for the shirt,” Rob smiled. “And thank you for letting me run that range at a lower setting than the boys back home. Can’t wait to rub their noses in it when I see them next.”
“Lower setting?” Tanaka asked.
Leonard stood now and moved to the bar, fixing Rob a glass from the looks of things.
“Low eight hundreds is my average back home,” Rob lied pleasantly. “Eight thirty on a really good day. Never once hit nine hundred.”
“I see,” Tanaka got all cagey as Rob took a seat with a view out some windows onto the combat range floor. “Where did you get that level of training, Rob?”
Rob drooped his head and his shoulders, mimicking embarrassment, just like they taught you in method acting classes.
Be your new character, letting go of the real you.
As if there was a real Roberto Segura. Hell, even that name was fake, but he’d lived with it long enough that it worked. Roberto Obregon could be a little bit less of everything.
“Uhm…” Rob began.
“It’s okay to talk, Rob,” Tanaka smiled encouragingly as Leonard put a fresh glass down. “Just us boys. We won’t tell the mistress anything.”
“Good,” Rob blew out a deep breath. “She might not appreciate some of the things I did before she came along.”
“Bad things?” Leonard asked helpfully, somehow making this interrogation not look like one.
Unless it was really a job interview.
“There are places I can’t go,” Rob offered evasively. “Statutes of limitations, and that sort of thing. As long as I stay well away from Corynthe, I’m generally safe. And I keep moving.”
“People coming after you for some of those things?” Tanaka had a rich twinkle in his eyes now.
“Mostly process servers, rather than bounty hunters,” Rob said absently, tilting his head back and forth to suggest both threats. “But I got it good with the mistress, you know?”
“Oh, I understand, Rob,” Tanaka said. “But you appear to be a man of rare talents, so I am always interested in how those sorts of things come about.”
Rob decided that his character was a little more shallow and dense than he’d played it up until now.
He actually looked both ways, like he was crossing a street, before fixing his eyes on Tanaka.
“So let’s just say that Aquitaine has a couple of organizations that only exist generally as acronyms?” Rob bit the words off like they pained him to say out loud. “Folks that look at classes of kids coming out of basic training and maybe see folks they want to divert into other organizations instead engineering or damage control, you know?”
“Indeed,” Tanaka nodded sagely. “I have met a few men and women like that over the years.”
“Right, so maybe something like that happened to me eleven years ago,” Rob said without making eye contact. And starting a new verbal tic, just like he was getting nervous and not realizing the rhythm of his words. “And I did some things for maybe one enlistment and then a second four-year hitch. Things we really can’t talk about unless I wanted real ninjas coming after me, ya know?”
“Understood, Rob.” Tanaka even sounded like a wild animal whisperer now.
Rob had met one of those that Jorge had brought in when he wanted to maybe include some trained animals in a movie he wanted to make. The funding had fallen apart, but the contacts were always really interesting.
“So I got eventually out and went straight,” Rob said. “Well, went civilian, anyway. But folks occasionally stay in touch, you know? And old buddies occasionally drop by and maybe need to hire some friends for these things, and the pay is about as much as most people make in a year, for four to six weeks training and work. Couple of those a year and I’ve got eight or nine months of dancing.”
“I see,” Leonard nodded now and took a sip.
Rob remembered that he had a drink and took too much at once, like he was overly nervous.
Staying in character. Not like a glass was going to do anything to him, unless they had spiked it.
Then he was dead anyway.
“And the mistress?” Tanaka asked.
“Purest bit of luck I’ve ever had,” Rob beamed now. “She was slumming and happened to pick me out on the dance floor. Nobody else could keep up with her, like ever, so I’ve been her boy for about a year now.”
“And then what?” Tanaka pressed.
“Man, I don’t know,” Rob shrugged. “Not dumb enough to expect that she wants to make me a mister, but also not dumb enough to screw this gig up until she decides she’s tired of me, ya know?”
“So you haven’t done any of your other gigs for a year or so?” Leonard asked now.
“Didn’t say that,” Rob turned on the man a little. “Ya just gotta handle it careful like. Convince her to spend a week at a spa for ladies, while I’m off doing guy things. Kinda like today. She and Alicia went shopping. I’m having cigars and brandy. Or whiskey and lunch. Whatever works. Long as I don’t even look at another woman, ya know?”
“Yes, I am familiar with that, Rob,” Tanaka said. “In my business, I rarely find women I can trust that well. Easier to just bring in professionals occasionally.”
“Yeah,” Rob replied, looking around the room and all the money it represented. “I imagine it can get lonely, man. But you seem to be doing well.”
He watched Tanaka go utterly still at the unfortunate phrase. Leonard Kim twitched like someone had just gigged him with a cattle prod.
Rob pretended not to notice as he took another long sip of the whiskey. Tasted pure. Hopefully that was a good sign.
This
was one hell of a ledge he was walking.
“I am doing better than well, Rob,” Tanaka said with a bit of gruffness to his voice that hadn’t been there before. “But I was interested in you. Checking your background, maybe. Possibly hiring you like some of your other friends do, if we can slip something into the mistress’s schedule. You should have your own money set aside, for when she gets tired of having you around. And I say that as a man who’s been there.”
Rob actually squirmed in his seat, like an eight-year-old called to the headmaster’s office.
“Uhm…”
“What is it, Rob?” Tanaka got all friendly now. Eyes focused and everything.
“Well, it’s just that, Roberto Obregon doesn’t really exist, ya know?” Rob hemmed and hawed now. “That was just the identity that was closest to my physical specs when I needed to not be…that other guy for a while. And you probably don’t want to mention his name, either, because then maybe somebody sends ninjas here to ask you what you know and how you happened to hear that name. Aquitaine’s a little tetchy about that. That’s the bounty hunter side of the equation. I’d hate to mess up your life on something like that, ya know?”
“I see,” Tanaka smiled. “Well don’t you worry, Rob. We’ll keep everything quiet so neither of us gets into any trouble.”
“Thank you, sir,” Rob beamed and relaxed. “Never want to ruin a good thing, ya know?”
“Indeed I do, Rob,” Tanaka finished off his glass and stood. “Let’s get you back to the mistress before she misses you.”
Rob rose as well, recognizing that he’d pushed this just as far as he probably could.
Tanaka took Rob’s hand and shook it.
Rob accepted the dismissal cheerfully. He followed Leonard back out of the building and into the quad where the limo had already been drawn up and waiting. Inside, Rob maintained his bright, silly exuberance and had one last highball of that good whiskey as they took off and headed south.
Hopefully, the car wasn’t programmed to crash into the ocean with all hands lost.
21
Eugen waited as Leonard returned. He’d fixed himself another glass, but that was as much as he would indulge himself today. There would be guests for dinner and he would need a clear head.
