The Troubleshooter: The Most Dangerous Dame

by Bard Constantine

  “All right, then–grab some cover. This lug won’t be stalled for long.”

  I leaped to my feet. The entire roof and most of the walls of the depot no longer existed. I hurdled the ruined lower section of the remaining wall and sprinted toward Maxine. Buckshot couldn’t do anything about it at the moment because he was too busy yelping and swatting at the cloud of electronic wasps that buzzed around him.

  I’d used the Wasp’s Nest in the past with success, so I installed Maxine’s defense system with the same. The expelled explosive unleashed a cloud of tiny machines fashioned after stinging insects. Not only did they release electromagnetic pulses that disrupted nearly everything digital or electric, they also used their tiny stingers to torture their target’s physiology as well. Buckshot’s targeting and weapons systems were compromised, and he wasn’t having a great time with the stinging either. The only problem was the discharge didn’t last long.

  Still running, I lifted my wrist and spoke into my holoband. “Maxine: I need my backup piece.”

  A metal case shot from the chassis of my ride. I snatched it and slid across Maxine’s hood just as Buckshot’s turret gun whirred. He gave a triumphant shout as the chaff dissipated. Gunfire erupted again, narrowly missing me as I managed to duck behind Maxine for cover. The slugs didn’t do much to her armored alloy, but the stacked junk behind us took some major damage. As the metal carcasses tumbled in a cloud of rust I opened the case and pulled out my backup piece: the Replacement Killer. The seven-shot gyroscopic revolver was mech-modified to fire miniature rocket rounds. I figured it could even the odds against Buckshot’s armor.

  “Distraction mode, Maxine.”

  Slots in the hood hissed as they ejected crimson flares. As expected, Buckshot paused to glance up and trail the movement. I figured I had around a second to act before he registered them for what they were and turned his attention to spitting metal again. Most people can’t do much in that little amount of time.

  I’m not most people.

  I moved in time with the flare discharge, raising up and aiming in the same motion. The Replacement Killer bucked in my hand as it fired repeatedly. The impacts rocked Buckshot backward as explosions erupted across his torso and turret arm. He just managed to stay on his feet, but the damage was done. Smoke drifted from his fragmented armor, and the turret gun sparked and jerked with a grinding sound.

  I stepped forward, the Killer in hand. “Had enough, big guy? Or you ready for a second helping of Mick’s Trubble Stew? Get it while it’s hot.”

  He ripped the soot-covered helmet off, exposing the synthetic eye and wires sprouting from the left side of his shaved head. A sneer twisted his lips. “Might be I had enough. Or it might be you’re outta rounds in that cannon of yours. Might be I’m able to grab my sidearm faster than you can reload that sucker. Whaddya say?” His armored hand drifted toward the heavy pistol strapped to his leg.

  I winked. “I’d say look out for the bear.”

  A look of confusion flashed across his face. “What are you–?”

  Benny roared and seized Buckshot from behind. The two heavy men grappled awkwardly, feet slipping in the gravel as they fought for a superior position. Benny quickly found out the standard chokehold didn’t apply to a cybernetically enhanced opponent. His face was fixed in desperate concentration, his meaty jaw clenched as his suitcoat tore apart at the shoulders from the force of his contracted muscles.

  Their awkward stumbling might have been comical if it weren’t for the intensity of the struggle. It wasn’t a battle of punch sequences and attack flurries, but a match of strength and will. They fought almost quietly–shuffling feet, grunts and snarls being the only sounds.

  Benny managed to slip his arms under Buckshot’s armpits and over his neck in a full nelson hold. He leaned in, bending Buckshot over despite his heavy thrashing and arm flailing. The imagery of a bear in a pinstriped suit wrestling with a giant metal turtle wasn’t lost on me as I swapped the Replacement Killer’s empty clip for a full one. But by the time the clip snapped into place there was another, louder popping sound.

  I stared as Buckshot slumped to the ground with his neck bent at an angle that would have been mighty uncomfortable if he were still alive.

  Benny stumbled backward, his face pale and his eye wide. “He’s…dead.”

  I strode over for a closer look. “Yeah. You snapped his neck like a piece of kindling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that strong, kid.”

  His face turned an unhealthy shade of green. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Never killed a man before?”

  He shook his head.

  “Staring at him won’t bring him back to life. It was either you or him, Benny. C’mon.” I jerked a thumb at the wrecked depot. “We got a job to finish.”

  Benny couldn’t take his eyes away from the fallen cyborg. “I’ve seen men die before. Saw my uncle shove a pistol in a man’s mouth and blow his brains out the back of his head. Thought it was the worst thing I ever saw.”

  “Until now?”

  He nodded, still staring. “I never thought I could–”

  “Benny. This guy is part of a team of people that killed your cousin. He had it coming.” I clapped him on the arm. “You wanted to see this through to the end. That’s what we’re doing.”

  He exhaled a shuddering breath. “Ok.”

  The depot was a bullet-riddled wreck of busted timber and sparking wires, but that didn’t matter. What I wanted was stashed under the floor. I tapped on the sealed recess with the muzzle of the Replacement Killer. “Knock, knock.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Lord Troll’s muffled voice spoke up. “Who’s there?”

  “Not your buddy Buckshot. He can’t do a thing for you right now, on account of being dead and all. The way I see it is you got two options: open up and make a deal or stay in there and I punch a few air holes with the explosive rounds loaded in this handy pistol I got here. Your choice.”

  The door hissed as it slid open. Lord Troll’s face wasn’t nearly as discourteous as it was earlier. In fact, he appeared downright terrified. Seeing as he basically laid in a ready-built coffin, it was easy to understand why. He lifted his blood-slicked hands.

  “Look, mate–maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. This can all come good, right?”

  “That depends on how fast you and I become friends. I know you have your data backed up, so trashing this dive didn't matter. You’re gonna allow a friend of mine an all-access pass to everything you’ve got. You do what you’re told and you get to walk away. You try some slick hacker tricks and I let Ben the Bear eat you for breakfast. That’s the deal.”

  Lord Troll nearly broke his neck nodding in agreement. “Right. Look, I was just trying to make a quid here, mate. Nothing personal–thought it was just a bit of going off, you know? No gig is worth carking it. I’ve had it with these SS ratbags, anyhow. Just let me outta this box and I’m your best mate.”

  I tapped my holoband. “You got that, Ms. Sinn?”

  “I heard everything, Mick. I’ll be set up to download his data load when you’re ready.”

  I looked at Benny. “You’re up, kid. Get to a safe house and work with Sinn on squeezing cyber boy for all he’s got. If he tries anything, break a few bones.”

  Benny tried his best not to look startled, the result being a comical scramble of facial muscles. “You going somewhere, Mick?”

  “Yeah. I got a date I can’t miss.”

  “You serious? With who?”

  “With your cousin Electra.”

  Despite everything he’d just been through, Benny’s face still turned pale. “Right. Good luck with that, Mick.”

  Chapter 18: The Widow’s Web

  Le Chat Noir was a Downtown joint just a few blocks away from the Red Light District. It served as both a hotel and a popular entertainment venue that attracted the artist crowd and patrons that liked to dress up but still have a rowdy evening. I’d read somewhere it was painstaking
ly constructed by a man named Anthony Salis, who apparently traced his roots back to the famed Rodolphe Salis, who emceed for the original joint in pre-Cataclysm Paris.

  The entertainment varied by night with alternations of cabaret, burlesque, and other music hall acts. It wasn’t the smooth jazz club experience I preferred, but you couldn’t find too many joints that compared in sheer excessive celebration of art, music, and utter ridiculousness. The audience hall was comfortably lit, massively spacious with tables of different Victorian styles scattered about. A band of scandalously clad chorus girls kicked up their knickers on the main stage while a fire eater, a contortionist, and a Shakespeare reciter performed from the balconies–all dressed in the skimpiest rags decency would allow.

  All in all, it wasn’t too bad a joint.

  I sat across from a beautiful woman, and normally that would have been a good thing. But beauty was usually synonymous with deadly when it came to my dealings with the opposite sex, and with Electra Flacco the two blended together like gin and vermouth.

  She possessed a charm that reflected her privileged upbringing, a sense of poise under pressure that most men would envy, and a manner of speech that assumed she wouldn’t be denied what she wanted. That was expected considering who she was. What I didn’t expect were the outbursts of girlish giggles and the genuine smile that graced her lips and lit her eyes in rare moments. It was surreal in a way–we could have been just another couple out for a raucous evening at Le Chat Noir and no one would have been the wiser.

  She was dressed to the nines in a leather curve-hugging corset and matching pencil skirt. Her pale shoulders were draped by a fur stole, and a ruby the size of a hen egg glimmered from the choker around her neck. A stylish fascinator was pinned atop her scarlet bob, adorned in feathers and gemstones. A regular at Le Chat Noir, she had warm greetings for admiring patrons and hosts alike. She sipped a blend of Blavod Vodka and cranberry juice, appropriately called a Black Widow.

  “How is it?” She gestured to the drink she ordered for me–a smooth blend of Wild Turkey, Courvoisier, St. Germain, vermouth and bitters called a Carre Reprise.

  “Not bad.” I finished it and lifted a finger to the barmaid for a reload. “Cognac isn’t really my poison, but I can’t argue with this blend.” I took a look around the swirling array of movement, dancing, and boisterous laughter. “Gotta say I didn’t think this type of joint would be your style.”

  “Oh?” She raised a coy eyebrow as she lifted her long-stemmed cigarette holder to her lips. “And what would you say is my style, Mr. Trubble?”

  “Some Goth joint with pasty-faced vamps sipping Bloody Mary and waxing poetic about death.”

  She smothered her giggles behind a velvet-gloved hand. “That’s a first. Glad to see I’m still capable of surprising.”

  A mime-faced barmaid dropped off a fresh drink. I sipped slowly. “Can’t blame a fellow for the misunderstanding. The word on the streets is all about the men you’ve put on ice. Not so much about your charm and good looks.”

  “Does that make you nervous, Mick? Some men can’t resist a bad girl. But you–you like the quiet ones, don’t you? Like your little lost girl, what’s her name…?”

  “Natasha.”

  “Natasha.” A wicked grin spread on Electra’s face. “Is she your speed, Mick? Sweet, quiet–does whatever you say?”

  I smiled in return. “Not gonna bait me with that, Electra. When it comes to my speed, it whittles down to a single word: woman. After that I’m not particularly choosy.”

  She laughed again. “I like you, Mick. It’s not often I come across a man I like. Most of the men I meet bore me to tears.”

  “Most of the men you meet are probably scared to death of you.”

  “I don’t see why.” Smoke trails whorled from her cigarette holder when she elegantly spread out her toned arms. “Isn’t this what the average man looks for in a woman?”

  “The baby cousin of New Haven’s most powerful Don and a notorious killer in her own right? I don’t see why more men aren’t running you down, Ms. Flacco.”

  She delicately dipped her shoulders as her gaze drifted to the stage. “I suppose that might have something to do with it. It’s a funny thing, being a dangerous woman. A man can be dangerous. He can be a known killer. He can be all that I am and still find an endless stream of women fighting one another for the chance to tumble in his bed. But a woman…?” She exhaled a stream of smoke and smiled. “It’s just the opposite.”

  I lit a gasper and let it dangle from my bottom lip. “Guess that means you’re trading in your handgun for knitting needles and an apron, right?”

  She threw her head back and cackled. “If my brother could only see that. He’d probably die laughing.”

  “I bet. So tell me–how did you get in this line of business? I’d imagine your mom wasn’t exactly thrilled.”

  “My mother died when I was very young. My father worked hard and didn’t have much time to invest in making me a proper lady. I followed my brother everywhere he went. Whatever Nate did, I wanted to do too. He eventually got tired of chasing me away and started to teach me stuff. When he went to work for my uncle, I’d already learned the ropes. I proved myself by earning big and taking care of business.” She puffed on her long-stemmed holder and smiled. “That’s how I got where I am today.”

  I held my glass up. “To taking care of business.”

  We finished our drinks and signaled for reloads. Electra leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “Speaking of taking care of business, how do we make sure your psychotic ex is on to us?”

  I puffed on my gasper and spoke around the exhaled smoke. “I’ve been under Natalie’s radar long enough to spook her and take out her tech partner. That makes her pretty vulnerable right now. I gave the word to my tech-savvy friend to put me back on the grid a couple of hours ago. That should be long enough for Natalie to zero in on my location using her resources. I’m pretty sure she knows exactly where I am right now and has a few roaming surveillance orbots in the area. She should have a bird’s-eye view when we go upstairs and heat things up. I figure she makes a move. When she does it’ll be our best shot at nailing her.”

  “Nailing her?” Electra swatted me on the hand. “Here I thought I was the sole focus of your masculine attention.”

  “All kidding aside, this could turn ugly fast. You sure you’re up for this, Electra?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Her expression was deviously delighted when she stood and offered her arm. “What do say, Mick? Time to go upstairs and heat things up?”

  I shook my head. My gut told me things were about to go downhill real quick. I knew our little plan was held together with duct tape and coat hangers, but maybe it was the atmosphere in the joint–a potent combination of sex and humor that made me giddy with the sense of invulnerability. Maybe it was the nonstop chain of drinks we’d downed in the last hour, or maybe it was Electra herself. She was a magnet and I was just a rusty nail unable to resist her pull. She was so confident, so fearless. So alive.

  Maybe that was the reason I’d talked myself into trying to pull off the stupidest gambit of all time.

  I stood and took her arm. “Why, Ms. Flacco. I thought you’d never ask.”

  The heat ignited a bit early. The elevator doors hadn’t even shut properly before Electra wound herself around me and pulled my mouth to hers. She smelled of rose petals and the taste of cranberry and vodka still lingered on her tongue. The dizzying combination was more than enough to make my blood boil and try to give as good as she gave. By the time the elevator stopped I’d almost forgotten why we were there in the first place. Her naughty laughter and the filth she whispered in my ear awakened the kind of lust that shoved everything else out of the picture. I never even paused when my groping hand found the long switchblade strapped to her thigh. Her deadly reputation no longer mattered. The only thing on my mind was the softness that lay under her clothes.

  The short walk across the h
allway was an awkward shuffle with us intertwined, trying to hold on to the pieces of clothing that fell off in the elevator. She had my Bogart on her head; I had her heels in my hand. My coat was draped over one arm; she was draped over the other. I didn’t know where my tie was, but with her mouth on my neck it didn’t really matter.

  After a few tries she managed to swipe her holoband across the pad to unlock her room door. We tumbled inside and onto the crème-colored velvet comforter of the oversized bed. More clothes quickly littered the floor. The Mean Ol’ Broad thumped off the carpet without notice. A few heat-arousing kisses later she pulled back with a deliciously wicked smile on her face. Leaning in, she took my hands and raised them above my head.

  I felt a stupid, drunken grin spread across my face. “I surrender.”

  The handcuffs clicked into place at that exact moment.

  I glanced at my imprisoned hands. “Think I might need to use those, darlin’.”

  Still smiling, she slid down the length of my body in a way that made me gasp out loud. “My game, my rules, Mick.” She wrenched one of my shoes off. It hit with carpet with a thump. My other shoe quickly followed.

  I lowered my voice. “I’m serious, Electra. Just in case something happens, if you catch my drift.”

  “Something’s going to happen.” She yanked hard, snatching my pants off in a single motion. “I guarantee it. Now don’t go anywhere. I’m going to slip into something more comfortable.” She paused at the bathroom door. “Nice to see you rise to the occasion, by the way.” A fit of giggles shook her shoulders when she dipped into the bathroom and closed the door.

  “C’mon Electra. I’m not kidding.” I gave a futile pull, but the cuffs weren’t the play kind and the bed had one of those solid metal lattice frames. I glanced out the window. The blinds were open, allowing anyone who cared to look a clear view of the goings-on inside. Of course that was the point, but I didn’t figure being handcuffed to the bed into the scenario. I kinda doubted Natalie would find it all that hilarious, but it still felt embarrassing to lay there in my boxers for all the world to see. Plus it reminded me too much of another uncomfortable situation with the Gutter Girls I tried not to think about.