The Wenonah used to be a “security building,” and the notice to that effect is still bolted to the wall over what used to be the intercom panel. Of course, the panel’s been stripped, lo, these many months now, with all the electronic hardware peeled out and probably sold. Doesn’t matter worth a drek anyway. About the same time the intercom panel went west, somebody took a shotgun and blew the locking mechanism out of the door. The property management company responsible for the place keeps promising they’ll replace it Real Soon Now.
I swing up the stairs, superstitiously stepping around the stain where one of my erstwhile neighbors bled out after a minor difference of opinion with his girlfriend. Making my way down the dark and narrow hallway toward the back, I hear music coming from inside my doss even before I get close enough to see that the door’s open a crack. My H & K’s in my hand and I’m reaching for the wire, moving forward as quiet as a ghost, ready to make my grand entrance and deliver a three-round lesson on the sanctity of private property.
But then I listen to the music rather than just hear it, and I know who’s inside my place. The song—and I use the word loosely—is “Scrag ’em All” by Darwin’s Bastards, one of the more in-your-face bands on the trog-rock scene. If you didn’t know this drek was supposed to be music, you’d probably mistake “Scrag ’em All” for the noise of street repairs around the sprawl.
I engage the safety on the H & K, but don’t slip it back in the holster. Can’t be too friendly here. Then I stride up to my door, push it gently with a boot, and step to the side. Just in case. I don’t really expect trouble, but now’s not the time to start any bad habits.
As the door swings open, the only offensive force that comes through the opening is more of Darwin’s Bastards, now grinding their way into a trog-rock cover of “Stairway to Heaven”. Scary stuff. In some ways, a burst of autofire would have been more comforting. But I don’t let my face show any reaction as I move into the doorway.
The first thing I see is drek strewn everywhere—over the floor, over what little furniture there is, and heaped in the corner. It looks like someone’s tossed the place or maybe set off a grenade in the middle of the room. Basically just the way I left it.
Someone’s sprawled in my single armchair—formerly the home of a pile of laundry that’s been pushed onto the floor. Bart is his name—Big Bad Bart to his friends—“that trog bastard” to everyone else (the overwhelming majority). He’s a big, bloated ork standing a touch over two meters and massing one thirty-five if he’s a gram. He’s got a big sagging gut that looks like it’s sitting on his lap, and jowls big and heavy enough to stop a punch to his larynx. Sure, Bart’s a tub of lard, and it would be easy to dismiss him because of it. But I’ve seen him move, and he’s stronger and faster on his feet than his flabby bulk would make you think.
He smiles up at me from the chair, and I’m glad I haven’t eaten. Bart’s one of those orks who seems to consider tooth decay a badge of honor. His protruding fangs are yellowed and chipped, and the rest of his teeth are black. His breath could knock over a devil rat at five paces.
And since we’re on the topic of Bart’s odious personal habits, let’s talk about Darwin’s Bastards. I’m egalitarian and open-minded when it comes to musical preference. Even though I’d probably rather listen to a jet engine spooling up than sit through an album by DB or Trollgate, if Bart wants to listen to that poisonous trash, it’s chill with me. My kick is that he likes to inflict it on the world, He’s always got his Sony ChipMan deck hanging from his belt, but instead of listening to the so-called “music” through earphones, trode rig, or datajack, he sets the deck to narrowcast to a pair of Bose Micro Vox speakers built into the rigid shoulder-boards of his jacket. With the volume usually cranked up to brain-melting, trying to carry on a conversation with the slag turns into an exercise in lip-reading.
Big Bad Bart and I aren't on the best of terms. Never have
been, and recent developments seem to be conspiring to make sure we never will be. The fat pig apparently hoop-kissed his way up the hierarchy of Cutters soldiers until he became one of Ranger’s more trusted lieutenants. When I showed up in the sprawl, my faked background marking me as a real “comer” in the gang scene, Bart decided I was a threat to him and all his progress. He never made any moves against me, though; by the time he’d figured things out, I’d already ingratiated myself with enough of the big bosses to make fragging me too big a risk. But he sure as frag nuzzled up even closer to Ranger’s hoop.
That’s ancient history. Now? If Bart was once concerned that I was angling to be Ranger’s protege, it doesn’t seem to be bothering him anymore. Don’t get me wrong. Ranger would never confess that I’d whipped his hoop in the council meeting. But drek like that spreads through the gang faster than gossip in a retirement-village bridge club.
It’ll also have made the rounds that I’m boss-man Blake’s fair-haired boy at the moment, and that—probably—protects me from harassment and direct retribution. Unless it can be disguised as something else, of course.
So, I snarl at Bart, “What the frag do you want?” My H & K’s by my side, handshaking happily with the wire in my brain. The tech reassures me just how fast I could bring the gun up and squeeze the trigger if I have to, and estimates how much of Bart would be blown into the upholstery of my armchair.
Bart smiles, and I can imagine the wave of halitosis rolling slowly across the room toward me. “War council,” he says—or that’s what I think he says.
“Yeah?” I ask. “So what you doing here, priyatel?” The word’s Russian for “friend,” but I know my tone changes the meaning to something very different. “Never heard of a fragging phone?”
He shrugs, and his jowls wobble. Darwin’s Bastards are screaming something about being a rock and not rolling, and the accompaniment sounds like a car being disassembled by an autocannon. The wire informs me that, yes, I could blow the ChipMan off his belt—probably—without doing more than lacerating the rolls of fat he calls a waist. Tempting idea, but maybe I’ll save it for a later date. “Ranger wanted me to deliver the invitation in person,” he says. He looks at the watch on a sausage-sized finger. “You’re gonna be late.” And then he grins, like that’s been the idea all along.
“Then what you sitting on your hoop for?” I demand. “Let's go.”
We ride the couple of blocks from the Wenonah to the Cutters’ place by the cemetery. Bart’s hog—a 2052 Gaz-Niki White Eagle—is almost ten years newer than my Harley Scorpion, but its owner apparently takes no more care of it than he does of himself. The bloated ork cruises along behind me, the clattering blast of the Eagle’s badly tuned engine fitting perfectly with the percussion part of DB’s “Bloody Day Coming”. We park the bikes out back, then jander into the safe house.
The “war council” is going down in the basement, and it’s already underway when we swing in the door. There are a dozen or so soldiers there—like Paco, all young, all tough. I’ve worked with most of them before, and get on well with the majority of those. Seeing a couple of fists raised in greeting, I shoot back a chill grin. Ranger’s up front—not giving the briefing, surprisingly—and the look he gives me would strip paint. All the seats are taken, so I lean against the room’s back wall. Bart follows me in and, wonder of wonders, kills the soundtrack.
It’s a tough little biff named Kirsten who’s giving the briefing. She’s using a portable projection display with a subnotebook computer, throwing an image of the screen display up on the far wall. At the moment, the display is showing a map of the Hyundai pier, a segment of the docks down around Pier 42 where that weird multicorp firefight went down last November. The cross-hairs cursor is settled on one of the “temporary” warehouses across Marginal Way from the piers, right under the Alaskan Way viaduct. (They were “temporary” when the city built them to handle an interim undercapacity in 2034 or so, but the city never replaced them with anything better.) I know the place she’s rattling on about. It’s right in the shadow of the Kingdome, a depot and sometime meeting place for the triad called the Eighty-Eights.
Kirsten grates on about asset distributions, primary and secondary objectives, but I just tune her out. All that mil-speak comes down to one statement: go visit the Eighty-Eights and frag them up. Simple. No matter what the war boss or his designate—Kirsten, in this case—has to say about it, whoever’s actually leading the raid has total discretion over how to use his “assets” and what to choose as objectives. Much as the Cutters might want to pretend otherwise, the gang isn't an army and doesn’t have anywhere near the level of command and control of a professional outfit like the Star.
So that frees up my mind to worry about more pressing problems. My continued survival, for one, a subject very close to my heart.
Ranger would like to see me gutted. That’s obvious and—after the gang council where I dropped him—inevitable. Yet Ranger, like Bart, has to recognize the fact that Blake apparently has his eye on me, for whatever reason. Geeking me without damn good reason would not be conducive to continued good health. Or something.
Oh, Ranger could easily arrange for someone to scrag me. An up-and-comer inside the Cutters might do it for brownie points with the war boss, and outside talent isn’t that expensive in a buyer’s market like Seattle. But no matter how theoretically unattributable Ranger makes the kill, there’s always the chance the blame will find its way back to him and the word get out that he had me fried. A route that would be a definite risk.
But there’s a much simpler, much more certain route he could take that dates all the way back to that early example of science fiction, the Bible. I can’t remember which Biblical figure did it, or why, but one of them sent an enemy out to the wars, put him in the front line, and got him geeked that way. (The Bible doesn’t say if the cobber behind the plot also arranged for someone in the second line to get
careless with his spear, but that's the play I’d have used if
it were me setting it up.)
And so, all in all, it doesn’t come as any surprise when I hear Kirsten announce, “Larson, you’re leading Team A. Bart’s got Team B.”
I shoot a glance over at Big Bad Bart, and he’s giving me one of those dentist-frightening smiles of his. He knows what Fin thinking, and I know he knows, and he knows I know it. Suddenly I feel a tingling in my back, right between my shoulder blades, and the meaning is inescapable. As far as Ranger and Bart are concerned, I've got a target painted over my spine.
* * *
Night again, and we’re rolling through the streets of Seattle in another Bulldog van to what’s sure as frag going to be another shoot-out in another warehouse. Whoever said, “Life’s just one damn thing after another” doesn’t know squat. Life’s the same damn thing over and over again.
The Bulldog’s packed to the gunwales with the “heavies” from both Team A and Team B. That’s ten gang-bangers— including Bart, who bulks enough for two. Everybody’s wearing whatever armor they’ve got and bristling with assorted offensive weaponry, with all of us jammed into a windowless box designed for eight. A couple of the younger gangers are talking quietly, carrying on a tough-chill conversation to prove to each other, themselves, and anybody else who cares that they’re cool as ice and smooth as silk. But the more experienced soldiers know. We can smell the tension, a kind of low-grade funk that you never really forget. Some of Team A are checking their weapons again. Paco, my lieutenant on this one, is toying with one of the grenades hanging from his bandolier—a nervous habit that doesn’t make me feel any better. Bart seems to be asleep.
A button-transceiver burbles inanities in my ear. Both teams have sent two bike “scouts” ahead to scope out the target, and the team leaders—me and Bart—are in constant contact with our scouts. I don’t know about Bart’s people, but mine seem to figure they’re not doing their jobs if they aren’t keeping me apprised—in exquisite detail—of the whole lot of nothing that’s going down across from Pier 42.
it’s real tempting to cut them off—except I'm sure as frag
that the moment I do, they’ll babble something I really should know, and I’ll miss it.
I give my people one last scan. Apart from Paco, I’ve got Jaz, a classic example of Cutters street muscle (big and not overly bright). Also Marla, who claims to be a Snake shaman, but seems to consider nine-mil ammo her fetish of choice. And then there’s the musclebound ork everyone just calls Doink. I've never worked directly with Doink before, but I know that the others are steady and dependable. Plus, they like me personally—or I think they do—which makes me feel a little better. Not because I’m insecure around people who don't like me, but more because they’d be less likely to go along with Ranger’s plan to off me—I hope.
And Team B? I know them, too: Sydney with her cherished grenade launcher; Fortunato and Jack “the Hammer,” some of the gang’s younger blood; and Zig the dwarf cradling his Remington Roomsweeper like it’s a baby. I’ve worked with a couple of them, and shot the drek and boozed it up with the rest. Like with my own team, I figure they’re probably not in on any plan to cut me down from behind.
But then they don’t need to be, not with Big Bad Bart in on the game. Propped up in a corner of the van, snoring his fat head off, he’s packing an Enfield AS7 drum-fed assault shotgun—a big, brutal motherfragger of a weapon that looks no bigger than a popgun in his hands. The Mossberg CMDT combat gun—which the Star FRT used to pulp little Piers and remodel my van a couple of nights back—is more lethal, but not by much. If Bart takes a shot at me, I’ll be too busy getting torn to shreds to notice the difference. So the name of that tune is not to let him into a position where he can take that shot.