The inside was dark; even the emergency lighting had been damaged by the cyborg’s flight. Manny quickly worked his way up the passenger cabin and to the cockpit door. Peeking in to make sure no one on the street would see him, he ducked low and crawled up to the main flight terminal. Once he made it, he rolled his left sleeve back to reveal the white skin of his prosthetic arm. A practiced series of palm presses called up the main menu, which was projected down the inside of his forearm. For the next thirty seconds, he beamed every encryption-busting worm in his arsenal at the communications suite in an attempt to quietly steal all the data he could. He did not want to use brute force or swipe the whole data core itself, because that would give away the fact that he had been here at all. Smash and grabs were for amateurs and Manuel Richardson was no amateur. Even he had to admit defeat when the robust military AI rejected even his most sophisticated tools. He was considering tearing the core free and dealing with the consequences when a voice he did not recognize crackled over his comm.
“Mr. Richardson? I suggest you check your handheld for a file called ‘Nosebleed.’ If you try that one, you may find it more effective.”
The young man hid his initial bemusement as best he could. “I guess I can assume you are the ‘high-level spook’ Lucia mentioned?”
“You could say that.”
Manny shrugged as if the voice could see him and began thumbing through the screens on his handheld. “If you hacked my comm, you must be high up.”
“You did not make it easy, that is for sure. But that is the reason they call me ‘Nosebleed.’”
“Beaming your file now, Nosebleed.”
It came as no surprise when the file shut down the firewalls without incident. Manny was pretty sure that ‘Nosebleed’ had already known it would work, probably because he had access to whatever information he needed when it came to UEDF operations. He began the now-boring process of downloading the entire memory core. He could not resist asking his mysterious ally one question. “Tell me, Nosebleed, why not just send me what I need to know? Why help me hack a transport to get some comms chatter when you could probably give me all the information I need?”
“Because, Manuel, I want to see what you can do. Also, I do not share top secret information with known terrorists, even if they are technically former terrorists. If I give it to you, I go to jail. If you steal it, who’s to blame?”
“Right.” Manny could spot a lie at ten thousand yards and he would have bet a year’s pay ‘Nosebleed’ was lying. “Because the Planetary Council has never shared information with terrorists when it suited their purposes.”
If his sarcasm struck a chord, the voice in his ear did not show it.
“Naturally.”
“You, my friend, are full of shit.” There was no recrimination in this statement. It was as bland a pronouncement as could be made and even the mysterious ‘Nosebleed’ acknowledged it.
“It’s part of the job description, Manuel.”
Manny’s handheld chimed softly to indicate that the download was complete. The young scout propped himself up enough to peek through the front screen at the people in the street. Mindy was half walking, half dragging the semi-conscious body of a man out toward Roland and the commanding officer. Correctly surmising that he had precious few seconds left, Manny made his way back out to the hole in the side of the transport. He slipped through it quietly and then dissolved into the kiosks and booths lining the curb along the far side of The Drag. His timing proved to be perfect. Just as he disappeared, a second transport looped a broad circle overhead and settled in to land next to the ruined one. This troop carrier was bigger, heavily armored, and bristling with weapons. Gravitic engines keened like banshees under the weight of all that hardware and the final drop to the tarmac shook the ground beneath his feet.
The squad of EF commandos gathered up their final comrade and beat a tactical retreat to the new vehicle. Like cogs in a very well-made machine, they had loaded up and sealed the doors in a few short seconds. The big vehicle shuddered, wailed, and then rose smoothly from the ground. It turned a lazy pirouette in the sky before settling on a south-westerly direction and accelerated off toward the horizon. Once it had shrunk to a dark dot in the distance, a veritable swarm of police invaded the street. Several municipal clean-up crews were held back while the cops pretended to take control of the scene and check the wreckage for anything dangerous.
Among the throng Manny spotted two individuals he recognized. Sam Parker stood half a head taller than anyone else. Despite his youth and low seniority, the tall detective seemed to be taking command almost entirely by accident. The other man was shorter, dumpier, and decidedly less commanding. Manny’s face twisted into an ugly sneer at the sight of the loathsome apparition. A finger went to his ear and keyed the activator stud of his comm.
“Heads up, Boss. You should probably get Mr. Tankowicz calmed down. Lonnie Pritchard is here.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Roland!”
It was spoken as an expletive, sharp and shrill. Despite the hard work of her nanomachines, Lucia’s anxiety was making very short work of her temper. Roland heard the implied rebuke, though he had been in Lucia’s life long enough to understand that it was not directed at him or his actions. It was a warning that she was struggling with the situation and needed him to pay more attention to how his actions were affecting her. He did not take it personally; rather, he accepted that the situation had escalated quite rapidly and Lucia may not have had time to comprehend his plan. If he was being honest with himself, referring to what he had just put in motion as a ‘plan’ was probably grading it too high, anyway.
He turned back toward the ruined facade of his office and made eye contact with his partner. She was keeping it together, letting her brain put pieces of information in place and steering the conclusions toward positive outcomes. “Yeah, Boss?”
“You feel better now?”
“That was necessary, Lucia. I’ll explain after the street is clear.”
She brushed his excuses aside with an impatient wave of her hand. “Not that. I’m sure you had a plan. Or at least a thin excuse to punch things you think was a plan.”
Mindy interrupted as she stalked by them both. “He was totally winging it, Boss. Don’t buy into his bullshit.”
Mindy’s jibe was met by two hard stares. She immediately held up her hands in surrender. “I know, I know. Not the time. Sorry!” She headed out into the street to meet a gaggle of uniformed police walking their way, tugging at the front of her shirt as she passed. “I’ll go stall ‘em while you two come up with a story.”
Lucia looked back to Roland. “You got a story for this? Because Lonnie Pritchard is here and I don’t want any more of your ‘plans’ today. As a matter of fact, I’ll go ahead and do the planning for a while. At least until we repair all the damage your last plan caused.”
To see a nine-hundred-and-forty-pound killing machine hang its head before a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound woman might be a rare thing in the universe. However, in Dockside, this exact scene was known to play out with some regularity. This did not decrease Roland’s menace-laden mystique, too many dead men and destroyed empires lay in his wake for that to ever happen. Rather, when the average Dockside hood witnessed the all-too-familiar occurrence of the terrifying cyborg trying to avoid the ire of his partner, they all wisely assumed this meant that she was the more terrifying of the pair.
“I guess you don’t want me to kill Lonnie, then?”
“I would love for you to kill Lonnie, Roland. It is a bad idea, though, and you know it. We get away with a lot of crap down here, but killing a cop in the middle of the street is a bridge too far.”
He knew she was right, and ever the tactician, elected not to argue the point. “I’ll let you do the talking, then. Is Sam managing him?”
“As much as anyone can. Nothing will stop that junkie from selling everything he learns to our enemies the first chance he gets.”
“C
an I scare him?”
“If I thought it would work, I’d let you try. But the only thing he really fears is running out of blaze.”
Roland’s jaw flexed and Lucia swore she could hear the muscles of his neck creak. “I hate junkies. And I really hate dirty cops.”
She tried to smile, her own sour mood casting the curve of her lips in a thin facsimile of the desired expression. “And I hate Rodney the Dwarf. We all have to make accommodations, big guy.” She gave him an affectionate pat on one thick forearm. “Now come on, Fixer. Game face. Here they come.”
Roland exhaled, squared his shoulders and turned to see the broad athletic figure of Detective Sam Parker heading their way with his gangly and drab partner in tow.
When they met in the center of the ruined street, it was Lonnie who spoke first.
“Why is it, Tankowicz, that every time shit goes seriously wrong in this town, we always find you in the middle of it all?”
“Because, Lonnie, you are always hiding under your desk with your thumb up your ass when things get kinetic. Until your balls decide to drop, somebody has to do your job around here. Might as well be me.”
Roland did not look down but he could feel Lucia’s disapproval radiating from his right-hand side. Since she was more invested in resolving the looming crisis than she was in flogging the self-esteem of one dirty cop, she addressed the other man.
“UEDF screwed up, Sam. We’ve been retained to un-screw the situation by, uhm...” Words failed her briefly. She did not know how to explain this in a way that would not get Sam in trouble or give Pritchard enough interesting information to sell. “Well... people who need it handled.”
“Ms. Ribiero,” Parker began, and it was obvious he was speaking as carefully as he could, “there is a destroyed UEDF transport sitting on The Drag. Roland just had a temper tantrum with a marked UEDF cyborg in broad daylight in the middle of the street. I got councilmen screaming in my ear and a department that is not allowed to do shit.” He held his hands out to the sides, face aghast. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that? We couldn’t even get in there to break it up. Orders came down from so high up even I couldn’t figure out who it was.”
“It was better that way, Sam,” Roland grumbled. “You guys would have only made it worse.”
“And you made it better?” Pritchard spat.
“Shut the fuck up, Lonnie,” Parker snapped to his partner.
Lonnie scowled back. “Watch yourself, rookie. You ain’t as hot a shit around here as you think you are.”
“Boys!” Lucia barked. “Focus!”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Parker composed himself with a cleansing sigh. It gave away the youth his imposing physique and natural presence often hid.
Lonnie saw it and snickered. “Aw, did mommy give baby a spanking?”
“I don’t think I like your tone, Lonnie,” Lucia said it with eyes narrowed.
“I don’t think I fucking care, lady.”
Lucia’s hand shot forward so fast the sleeve of her jacket snapped like a whip. She caught Pritchard’s lapel and yanked him forward. As he staggered, she turned his body and wrapped the collar of his own sport coat around his neck. The dirty cop’s expression went from smug to confused to terrified as the blood flowing to his brain decreased from a comfortable normal to an anemic trickle. Lucia held him in place, her own fierce strength keeping the larger man from falling, choking him with a single arm. Her other hand rested on one haughty hip and a finger tapped an impatient tattoo against her thigh. “Do you care yet, Lonnie?” The frantic bobbing of his head told the woman she had his full attention. “Good,” she added graciously. Then her foot snaked out to kick his legs out from under him. She drove him to his knees and squeezed. The man’s face began to purple and his mouth opened and closed with little choking sounds. He tried to claw at her arm but his strength was fading too quickly and hers surpassed his under any conditions.
Lucia placed her lips an inch from his ear and spoke in the most sweet and motherly tone anyone had ever heard.
“When I decide to hand out a spanking, Lonnie, you’ll know it.” The captured man gasped when she eased up on the pressure just a bit. Then he yelped as the small woman hauled him back to his feet and looked him in the eye. “If you can’t show me the respect I deserve, I’ll have you taking meals through a tube for the next year.”
“Can you believe she was worried about me?” Roland asked Parker.
“Stow it, Corporal,” Lucia replied without taking her eyes off Pritchard.
“Stowing it, Boss.”
“Ms. Ribiero?” Sam looked uncomfortable. “I am fully aware that Detective Pritchard is a jerk, but... Ah...” He ended with a shrug.
“Right. Fine.” Lucia released the trembling man, who promptly fell to the street in a coughing heap.
Through the spasms, Lonnie squeaked, “That’s assaulting an officer!”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Oh get up, Lonnie. You try to press charges on Lucia and they’ll find your body in a recycler within the week. Stop being an ass and try to show some dignity. You’re embarrassing yourself. Again.” Parker reached down and grabbed a handful of Lonnie’s coat and hauled him upright. While he had no strength augmentations or high-tech enhancements, the longshoreman’s son was born with terrific genetics and a workout schedule that would kill a lesser man. Pritchard rose as if levitating. “If I recall, this is the second time Ms. Ribiero has had to remind you of your role in this town. But I guess you were blazing too hard to remember the first.”
“He’s on a burn right now,” Roland offered. “Look at his eyes.”
Parker did not bother. “He’s always on a burn these days.”
Pritchard opened his mouth as if to protest, but Roland had run out of patience. “You talk and you die, asshole. Make a choice.”
Lonnie’s mouth closed with a click, though his furious scowl spoke volumes.
“Anyway,” Lucia tried to re-start the conversation. “This is a UEDF matter, and unfortunately that means none of us have any jurisdiction. Not the police officially, and not us, unofficially. UEDF is not going to care about the balance in Dockside because that is not their problem.”
“Which is why this happened,” Roland waved a hand to the destruction. “I have it on good authority that the UEDF was going to keep pressuring us as long as they thought they could get away with it. This was notice that they could not. Now, like it or not, they have to care about the balance here.”
Parker, at six-foot-four, had as much luck as anyone when he tried to look Roland in the eye. “Roland, I don’t get to know what you can and can’t do. I tried once and spent three days getting a very specific debrief from some scary boys in black suits. But I know damn well what an Avenger drone packs and I know damn well they could have smeared you all over the street.”
Roland tried to interject and Parker held up a hand. “I’m a detective, Tank. This is my thing. It’s obvious they didn’t hold their fire because they were scared of you. If they were scared, they wouldn’t have let their fancy armature have a go at you in the first place. To me it is pretty clear that someone with a lot of juice told them not to blast you off the street. The way I see it, your little brawl here was nothing more than a nice big public display to expose them and maybe embarrass the UEDF a little.” He exhaled sharply. “When the news crews run with this, the UEDF is going to look like a bunch of incompetent assholes who don’t give a shit about local communities or law enforcement. A lot of formal complaints are going to be filed by a lot of powerful politicians over this stunt. Some heads are gonna roll and I figure they’ll have to back off now, if only to avoid the bad press.”
Roland nodded his approval of Parker’s assessment. “That’s about the size of it. If I had backed down and let them have what they wanted without a scene, they’d consider me managed and never leave us alone. I guess they thought they could handle me if I tried to make trouble.”
“Now they know they can’t,” Parker acknowledged. �
��At least not without a big ugly firefight and a shit-ton of political fallout.” The detective’s shoulders rose and fell theatrically. “Yeah, well that’s all well and good for you. Here’s my concern. At some point, if you keep pissing them off, they are going to say ‘fuck it’ and take that plunge, to hell with the consequences. Then innocent people will get hurt. How the hell am I supposed to serve and protect under those conditions?”
Lucia addressed the detective’s concern. “We are in the process of moving the fight off-world, Sam. You’ve already figured out we have some high-level political support, and your concerns are understood and shared by all parties.” She cast a knowing glare to the still-scowling Lonnie Pritchard. “When I can share more with you I will, but operational security concerns prevent me from going into it right now.” Her gaze remained locked on Sam’s partner, who returned the look with a rude gesture.
“You want a visit from DECO, Pritchard?” Sam asked casually. “They won’t just fuck up your career, you know. They’ll ruin your life in ways you haven’t even thought of yet.”
Lonnie blurted, “You think DECO is in on this?”
Sam Parker did not appear angry at his partner. He looked disappointed. “You are without a doubt the worst detective I have ever seen, Lonnie.” He turned back to the pair of fixers. “Okay then. I’m going to finish securing this scene and come up with some bullshit to spin to the reporters before my idiot lieutenant says something to make us all seem stupid. I want that detailed debrief soon, though.” He gave them both a polite nod and grabbed his partner by the sleeve. “Let’s go, Pritchard.”
Lonnie shook the hand off roughly. “Fuck off, Parker,” he mumbled, though the retort lacked any real fire.
As soon as the police were well away, Manny approached Roland and Lucia. Mindy arrived simultaneously from another direction. Her shirt was artfully askew and Lucia noticed at least a third of the police officers milling about were engaged in earnest appraisal of her retreating backside.
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