Or just dick, she thought with a smile, as a particularly handsome rider type crossed her vision, from his jacket a patched nomad biker of the Bandit Brothers. She’d come to really appreciate bikers; their code of honor was immensely appealing to a woman from as corrupt a society as the Intendancy had created. Upstairs it was impossible to be honorable, but the bikers accepted nothing less from the men, and the chicks some clubs allowed to full-patch, they rode with.
Yes. There was more than one way to scratch an itch, and killing always made her a little horny anyway. Perhaps she’d see if that biker was with anyone… or if he had friends. A wicked smile started to cross her face as she fell in behind him, a tall man with a beer in each hand.
“Lady D,” came a soft voice behind her.
She didn’t have to turn to know it was Rex, the go-to man and bodyguard for a fixer named Charles van Zanden. Not that fixers needed bodyguards in a place like here, where just about any of the place’s well-armed, often-augmented patrons would be happy to do a favor for one of the guys with the information, one of the guys with the work, one of the guys who could connect you to the money.
“Not now, Rex,” she said.
“Charlie wants you, Lady D.”
“Charlie can wait, Rex.” I have my sights on one of those bikers.
“Got a job for you,” Rex persisted and she turned toward him. He was a big man, shaven-headed and somewhere in his forties. He wore a plain tieless suit and little pince-nez that were actually SmartContacts. The Last Stand was of course an implant-disabled zone, so like a lot of higher-level people on the streets he carried a cellphone with an earpiece and a digital wand.
“Can it wait a couple of hours?” Just a quick fuck to get the day out of her system…
Rex muttered something into a subvocal mouthpiece, waited a moment, and gave her back the response: “Your call, but he’s been on your list over a year.”
Over a year, huh?
Yeah, picking up a guy could wait. The night was young anyway.
* * *
van Zanden sat in his corner table, a pair of private detectives on one side and the other empty. One of the detectives was big and powerfully-built in a sharp suit, the other was grossly fat, but they were familiar faces. So was van Zanden, a handsome fortyish man so clean-cut he looked out of place in a ruffians’ bar like this. He was tolerated – welcomed, in fact, with his own table – in the Last Stand because of his connections, which meant work. He was a thinning-haired blond white man in a plain tieless suit, with an electronic tablet in his hands.
“Charlie,” she said.
van Zanden motioned, with a slight tip of his head, for her to sit down. She did. The detectives didn’t move from across the table, but they seemed more interested in their drinks than the woman who’d just joined them. She knew that was an act – Archie and Nero were professionals, and they were paying as close attention to her as they were everything else in the place.
“You spotted one on the list, huh?” she asked without preamble.
“They did.” van Zanden gestured at the two detectives.
“Which one?”
“Johnny Caustus,” said van Zanden. “Need a reminder?”
The name didn’t ring a bell and Diana Angela knew van Zanden had the files ready on that tablet anyway, so she grunted. “All I remember is that he’s a pedo.”
“Tenement underboss from Hackensack,” said the fixer. “Likes young girls. Buys and sells young girls. There’s a ten grand contract on his head in his capacity as a tenement underboss, we’ve got proof of young girls going into his apartment and… never being seen again, and he’s come out of his shell to party tonight right here in Times Square.”
Diana Angela smiled thinly.
“And he’s been on my list since… how long?”
The fixer checked his tablet. “He first came to your attention June ’83. But he was too far away, too well-protected, too hard. Until he comes waltzing in with his boss and some others, less than an hour ago. They’re presently getting shitfaced at the Hux.”
“I’d like to see the evidence,” she said softly. Because this was too good to be true, a prime target right here! She noticed her tongue flickering between her lips; this would be a good kill indeed.
“Showing you would give its source away. It satisfies me and some of it has been independently verified,” said van Zanden. “I give my word that it satisfies me.”
Everyone in power in the tenements had done something to warrant killing, she had decided a long time ago. But it would be physically impossible to kill every tenement boss, so she focused her attentions on the particularly egregious ones. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the big picture, but someone had to avenge those children.
Diana slowly nodded.
“Fill me in.”
* * *
There were different ways to get into places, but tonight’s easy prey – easy but so deserving – would be out clubbing, which made it both easier and harder. Places like the Hux didn’t exactly allow you to stroll in with knives; she’d have to take the other approach.
Who’d taken out this contract, put down their ten grand to van Zanden, she had no idea about; that was the point of the fixer. Maybe it was some external tenement seeking to weaken this guy’s; maybe it was an internal enemy, because tenement bosses and their leading families spent all the time scheming against each other in a constant game for status and survival.
She really didn’t care; what mattered was that this fucker had killed, van Zanden swore to the best of his knowledge, and when she’d independently verified these things he had never been wrong, at least four young children. It probably hadn’t been a relative of those children who’d placed the bounty – although you never knew – but she was going to be killing for Jamie, Nareendra, and Glennis; van Zanden hadn’t had the name of the fourth.
“What’d this one do?” Cleopatra asked as Diana Angela came into her office. She was a tall ebony woman in a shimmering gold dress, some said the illegitimate daughter of a major Harlem OG. You could tell from the darkness of her shaved head that she was of an old gangsta family, those who had been organized crime since before the streets had been abandoned.
Diana Angela closed the door that led onto the parlor, where seven of Cleopatra’s girls were waiting to be dispatched. They didn’t need to hear any more than they’d already figured out.
“Pedo killer. At least four known kids, probably more,” she said.
“You need an escort, a lineup, what?”
“He’s in Times Square. Just a shower and then a dress, tonight. Then a cab.”
* * *
Eyes turned to watch the stunning blonde woman step out of an armored yellow taxicab, alone, in front of a Times Square club named the Hux where a line of waiting hopefuls snaked thirty feet up past the doors along Seventh Avenue. Some of the eyes belonged to the place’s bouncers, serious security although their guns were mostly out of sight.
The patrons, and aspiring patrons, of a club like this were likely to be the sons and daughters of powerful tenement people, to be handled lightly. But the armed force was available; clubs like the Hux drew attention from envious streetgangers too, and it wasn’t unknown in places like this for fights to erupt between people from rival or warring tenements. Their soldiers settled it on the ground with their lives, the rulers got bloody noses and two-week bans from the club.
Diana Angela got to her feet under the eye of the Hux’s bouncers, straightening herself up and reaching into her handbag for the clip of bills she’d need to start giving them. She was in a frilly pink slip of a party dress and white stiletto heels, bereft of anything security might conceivably interpret as a weapon.
She would have to be the weapon, but that was the fun part when it came to paedophiles. And there would soon – she kept the carnivorous grin just off her face – be one fewer of those.
The next few minutes involved a lot of bribes, simpering, and being felt up. The Hux
security knew perfectly well that beautiful women did not just saunter into nightclubs unaccompanied with no angle. If she were a tenement high-up she’d be with an entourage; alone meant she was probably looking to fuck a tenement high-up. For the night, for a lifetime… it happened. It was how a girl with looks could make her way on the streets, and not something it was Diana Angela’s place to judge. It was probably the course she’d have taken, if she’d been born raff, and she had nothing but sympathy, friendship, and protection for the girls in that trade.
She passed through layers of security that didn’t take chances, as good as the most paranoid tenement boss because they were guarding some of those very same people. One inner-circle security team leader recognized her but said nothing, and got a crisp five-hundred discreetly slipped into his palm in appreciation. The shaven-headed ex-mercenary smiled:
“Good hunting,” Logan murmured under his breath.
Not everyone on the streets was a shit. Of course, he wouldn’t expedite her getaway if things turned really sour – that was up to her to work out. She was really putting her head into the lion’s den here, but that was part of the thrill. Sending Johnny Caustus to hell was delicious icing, but icing on that cake. She was never going to hurt innocent people, but God was it fun to kill guilty ones!
The last security man on the third floor mistook the smile on her face as anticipation for a different kind of fun – that, she would have later tonight – and leered at her as he signaled to the camera to let her through. The innermost door opened.
Music, ambient house beats from an artist who’d been popular in the arkscrapers a decade ago, played at a volume low enough to allow talking without much effort. Drinks and service girls circulated; DA winked at her friend Rosa as they passed, Rosa arm in arm with a handsome black man from probably one of the Bronx or Harlem OG families, who wore a tailored purple suit and a lot of jewelry. She felt eyes on herself as she circulated, scanning the private, roped-off areas where inner-circle tenement bodyguards mixed with more of the Hux’s people. It would look bad for the club for anyone to get killed on its premises, but the real high-ups insisted on at least a little of their own security while they held court.
A shame, that. There were at least six tenement bosses holding court in this room, and one of them she knew for a fact had a hundred thousand dollars on his head. The big beefy man with the cigar was also a happy peeler, known to enjoy flaying people alive, and she…
On target, DA. You can get Donald Larson another time.
That was the problem with this city. There were too many throats for one girl to cut no matter how hard she hustled!
And from Jason Fuesting comes Echoes of Liberty Book 1: By Dawn’s Early Light
Eric Friedrich was supervising the last ice harvesting shift for his ship's shot-up environmental systems when they detected an anomalous ice comet drifting by. Investigating the icy tomb, Eric finds a ship that couldn't exist--a relic from a nation the Protectorate killed billions to erase from history... And will kill even more to keep secret.
When his world explodes, Eric must make allies in the unlikeliest places, and seize even the slimmest chance of survival while unraveling a conspiracy that shattered planets and set off interstellar war!
Chapter One - Ice
Space was dangerous on a good day, a day when everyone knew what to do. Improvisation only adds to the danger and so far everything had been improvisation. Nobody on the Fortune had a choice, or rather the choice was unsettlingly clear: ice or asphyxiation.
“Nothing’s ever easy,” Eric mumbled to himself as he stared at the displays projected against the inside of his helmet. Radar is green. Ish. Links to all team members, green. Main link back to the Fortune, green. Task status, then O2 checks.
Eric blinked, trying to ease the eyestrain from the hours of watching his men through monochrome green light enhancement. A sparkling green haze, the leftovers from the last three hours, clouded the view around him.
Hours of boredom, stuck in a suit while we pry apart an ice comet.
Eric yawned as he checked the time display.
“Team one, status,” he said.
“Anchors set, connected to the tether,” came the reply.
Eric glanced to his right. Barely visible above a distant ridge of ice, team one’s lead gave him a thumbs up.
Good, almost done.
He glanced at his millimeter wave display and its thousands of moving contacts. A frown creased his brow as he looked at the blinking overload indicator on the display. We really need to find upgrades for these suits. How am I supposed to warn people if my gear can’t track everything?
“Team two,” he started. Flickering red on the radar display stilled his tongue. “Indy, looks like we’ve got another wave of stuff incoming from eleven o’clock. Take cover. Looks small, but it’s going at a good clip.”
“Copy that,” Indy responded.
Dozens of red dots amid the sea of blue contacts winked in and out of his display as his suit’s computer strained against the number of simultaneous objects it could track. Each heartbeat brought them closer. All going the same direction. Wait. Shit. His display lit up with a cascade of yellows following a different vector.
Eric pressed against the ice as he blurted, “All teams take cover!”
Breathing hard, he glanced in team three’s direction. A huge red contact lit up the radar display. That’s almost on top of-- A large shadow streaked through the haze, sending shards of ice and rock debris billowing in its wake. Wow, that was close. That had to be what was causing those yellow returns.
Cautiously, Eric pushed back from the ice and spoke, “Teams, sound off!”
“Team one clear, all we got was a light peppering. No damage.”
Silence.
“Team two?” Eric asked.
Digitally distorted static erupted from his headset. Eric gritted his teeth for several moments before the transmission ended. Eric sighed and pounded the side of his helmet with a fist hard enough to fritz his low-light projection with each strike.
“Say again, team two,” Eric said.
“Team two clear. We got peppered pretty hard but somehow nobody’s hurt. Also, anchor set and tethered.”
“Team three clear. Set and tethered.”
About time, we’re done here.
“Roger, Indy. Prep to return to the Fortune. I’d like to get out of here before something else happens,” Eric replied. His eyes narrowed as he looked over the status of his team. “Sokolov?”
“What?” Richard Sokolov growled.
Eric sighed.
“Stow it, Dick. Getting some odd readings over here, check your O2. Think you might have a leak.”
“Hold on. Nope, gauge says I’m just fi-- blyad!” Static.
“What’s going on?” Eric demanded. Sokolov seldom fell back into his native tongue. The ice cloud obscured the man’s last known position.
“Was looking at the gauge and it just dropped half through the yellow. Yeblya lezha pribor! Who the hell did we loot this shit from?”
“We didn’t,” Indy chimed in. “Your suit’s original to the ship. Probably a hundred years old.”
“Great. Just great,” Sokolov groused.
“Cut it, you two,” Eric grunted. “Sokolov, you reading a little under ten minutes left?”
“More or less.”
“Looks like my monitor is accurate. We should be back long before you’re sucking vac. You good?” Sokolov grumbled. “Everyone, get back to the cable and hook on,” Eric ordered before switching channels. “Desi, Friedrich. Anchors are in, we should be good. Sokolov took a strike. He’s okay, but his suit is leaking. Don’t take your time reeling us in.”
“I can only reel in so quickly. The cradle’s only rated for a certain impact,” Desi’s exotic accent rolled across the radio. Eric knew next to nothing about her past, other than overhearing her mention where she grew up, Orleans.
A vibration through the line from the winch signaled
their trip to safety had begun and Eric eyed the haze as it drifted past them. Shifts of three teams each had worked the last eighteen hours to cut this ice comet into four fragments. One by one, each fragment had been reeled in and secured in the bay below him.
Last one. We’ve been lucky. Too lucky. A bead of sweat trailed down the side of his neck, just where he couldn’t do anything about it in the confines of the suit. A sudden chill down his spine sent Eric checking his millimeter wave warning display again. Nothing big, nothing fast.
Eric relaxed as the cable pulled them clear of the debris cloud toward a stretch of what appeared empty black to the naked eye amidst the surrounding star field. Magnified many-fold by the enhancement rig grafted into his helmet, the feeble illumination from the system’s distant star reflected brilliantly off the edges of a pair of bent hull plates amidships. Four square meters of steel plating sealed the rent just inside the shadow cast by the ship. He stared at a stretch of darker steel peeking from the patch. That puncture had vented Environmental Control into the void. What is that? Eric looked closer and then averted his eyes from the frozen smear of blood left by the doomed technician who had almost been lucky. The Fortune had seen better days.
The Right of the Line Page 42