“Go tell your boss she’d better pick up the fucking phone and get her drug-addled mind ready for a meeting,” Mark said, his eyes burning into the W3C man’s.
“Y-you’ll pay for this!” The man stumbled out, his people moving with him. Kal made way, flashing an E-12 under his cloak.
“That’s not going to go well, she’s all screwed up on crap,” one of the managers said.
“So what do you want from us?”
Mark faced the speaker. “I want stability. Harmony are coming, and you are the backbone of the Slums. I need to know what is happening there. I know that there is a war brewing, and the EMF cannot have that. We don’t want to be fighting a war on two sides.”
“Are you going to get other gangs to protect our goods and such?” another Greenhouse asked.
“If I must, then I will. Think of yourselves as under the protection of the EMF. We will not be there physically, and there might be a few issues at first, but you can rest assured that they will not last long. Does that sound suitable?” Mark asked.
They grumbled for some time, but they finally reached an agreement. They accepted the EMF’s protection and Mark re-affirmed the initial contract with them and canceled any payments that were going to the Westerlies.
“That went better than I thought,” Olly said as they pulled their cloaks and masks on. Mark left a sizable tip with the bartender and they disappeared into the dark gloom of Earth’s night time.
“I want to go and see the old compound,” Mark said.
“Okay.”
As they walked through the streets, a group of ten circled them.
“Drop your monies and we’ll kill you quick,” one said through the rags that covered his face.
“I don’t much like their tone,” Mark said, using his sub-vocals.
“Piss off and you’ll live,” Kal said, his voice level and almost bored.
“See how well you talk when I cut your dick off and shove it in your mouth,” the leader said.
Mark raised his rifle, the other two sidestepping and doing the same so they were in a triangle.
Their implants added red halos, but there was little need at this range.
Mark let out four short rapid bursts, moving from target to target. The robbers were so stunned that they had no time to react before they were cut down. Mark got hit with a shotgun, the armor under his cloak taking the impact.
In seconds it was over.
“Just a nice late-night stroll,” Olly said, his rifle disappearing into his cloak. No one cried out or yelled in the surrounding buildings. They weren’t the first to die that day and they wouldn’t be the last. Mark could hear another fight happening not even a block away.
“Let’s keep moving,” Mark said. He needed to be at Nivad’s party the next day; he didn’t have time to wage a war at the heart of Westerly Three’s home.
They continued on their way, moving to the rooftops as they found W3C’s patrols. It didn’t take long before they were looking down over the compound. They’d pulled their helmets on and locked them to their smart clothes. Even through the metallic dust storm that was kicking up they could see the compound easily. It had grown to four blocks wide.
“Look at the guards, they don’t even care what’s happening. The businesses around are all shut down when they should be working overtime,” Kal said.
“Westerly put so much pressure on them they found it easier to move than stay. Those are all drug palaces now. They just push Westerly’s shit,” Mark said.
“Looks like shit,” Olly said.
For Mark, it was hard to look at what had been his home in such disrepair. Quentin would have been up on the walls telling the guards to get new jobs with the way they lounged around. Their discipline was gone. They were bullies. Mark saw a few of them going rounds with a group of what must have been prisoners or slaves.
“Let’s get back to the citadel. We’ll be back soon enough,” Mark promised.
Chapter 17
La Monte Terrace
Earth, Sol System
12/3347
Dalia looked at the man sitting in the back of the air-car. It was clear that he didn’t want to be there, though he seemed determined to see the dinner through.
It was also clear that he hated the medals that were displayed on one side of his chest.
The car was quiet, there was nothing for them to talk about as she looked out over Mega City passing below them. Just by looking at Mark Victor you could tell he was a dangerous man. This close to him and his massive frame, it was easy to feel small and scared.
Dalia was wary but she had her own mission. Every dinner was a battle, but this one would be one of the biggest and most important before Harmony showed up.
“You have been given the full briefing?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am. Your agent will make sure I don’t fuck up too bad,” Mark said, tapping his head.
She closed her eyes at the cuss words, centering herself against the crass and easy manner in which he’d used them.
“Good,” she said as La Monte Terrace came into view. It was on one of the largest towers, an entire five floor restaurant and conference area where only the most exclusive of parties were held. Hosting a party here for a night cost the equivalent of a complete EMFC and its accompanying Combat Shuttles and personnel.
They landed, and guards moved around their air-car. One opened the door, and Mark stepped out extending a hand for Dalia to grab. She took it, smiling for the cameras and other important people.
Mark even gave her a smile, but the twitch of his eyes told her that he was looking for threats.
She had met a good many people in her time, but few were as dangerous as Mark.
She was surprised at how gentle he was, knowing full well he could crush her hand in his grip.
He tucked her arm into the crook of his, smiling as they moved. A true smile broke through as she looked at him and the people that were looking at him. He was the center of attention, and she was on his arm.
He’s also handsome in a rugged sort of way, she thought. She wasn’t worrying about the night too much.
***
Mark stuck to juice as he was wheeled around by Dalia, meeting people, shaking hands.
“Alright, Nivad’s making his entrance. Be ready to meet him,” Moretti said through Mark’s implants.
“What is he, some damned prized horse?” Mark asked.
“Nope, but you are, just so’s you know, looking like you got kicked by one.”
Mark rolled his eyes. Moretti had been doing his best to keep his mind off the party. He also seemed pretty nervous, so Mark was on his best behavior to make sure that this thing didn’t fail.
Mark’s eyes caught something; decades of fighting in the Slums and for the EMF had made him trust his instincts, and something told him to look closer in the corner of his eye.
He turned and looked, finding a woman. She was calm, but her hand was in her purse as she looked and waited for Nivad to make it through the entrance and into the actual party.
Mark, who still had Dalia attached to him, moved with her. She looked up at him for a second, but settled in, letting him guide her.
She was good-looking, and even Mark was surprised by Dalia’s beauty. In a room filled with supermodels and plastic people, she still stood a bit higher because of her lack of alteration.
He would have been nervous around such a pretty woman just a few years ago, but now he didn’t bat an eyelid. War had numbed him to her.
“What you got?” Moretti asked, noticing he wasn’t following the plan.
“Hunch,” Mark said simply as they were intercepted by someone. Dalia talked to them and Mark contributed himself as Moretti told him to, a pinch or gesture from Dalia getting more out of him.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched the lady moving to see the entrance better. Nivad was just halfway through the people greeting him.
He was smiling and greeting people like they were long-lost fr
iends, with an atmosphere about him of acceptance and joviality.
Mark sensed it was as fake as most of the people there.
Dalia excused them again and Mark continued to walk.
“We have to go see Nivad,” Dalia said.
“One second,” Mark said, feeling her tense at his side.
“You work for...” Dalia started but Mark tuned her out as the woman he’d been watching pulled out a grenade.
Mark’s augments went full blast, and in seconds and he was moving. Time seemed to slow as the drugs sped Mark up. Free of Dalia, his right hand flicked down, a blade in it.
He grabbed the lady’s hand with the grenade in it, and she looked shocked as his face hammered into hers. He felt her hard fake nose break against his forehead, and blood poured down.
She shrieked and people moved out of the way as Mark twisted the woman’s arm behind her back and put a knee between her shoulder blades. His left arm held the grenade hand, the other pressed a blade next to her face.
“Let it go,” Mark said, almost conversationally.
The woman was crying and making noises as she let go. Mark checked the grenade, then tucked it into his leg pocket. People began moving around him as he patted the woman over, looking for other weapons.
“Lower your weapons,” Nivad Selvra’s voice was calm as he waved the guns from around Mark to be pointed somewhere else. “Major, my people will take her to be questioned.”
“Yes, sir,” Mark said, looking to a security guard in fancy Powered Armor. They took the woman’s arms and tied them up. Mark stepped back and the security guards went about securing the would-be attacker.
“Could we have the grenade?” another asked, and Mark passed it to them.
It’s a damn grenade, don’t piss yourself, Mark thought, seeing the scared look on their face. They likely hadn’t ever used one, so they probably thought it could take out the entire floor.
“The famous Mark Victor; it is good to see you; I wish it was not over someone with a grenade. But once again, you have saved us against enemies both foreign and domestic,” Nivad said.
Mark felt that he wasn’t talking to just him. He also noticed Nivad didn’t seem to care about the woman’s blood on his forehead or chest.
“I was only doing my duty,” Mark said. If he had let the woman detonate the grenade, then Nivad would have gone up, and Moretti had shown him just how influential Nivad had been in letting the Troopers do their damned jobs and telling the politicking officers to go shove it.
“Of course,” Nivad said with a big smile.
Dalia came back to Mark’s side.
“Are you okay?” Mark’s asked her.
“Perfectly fine, much better than I might have been,” she smiled, looking shaky. Mark didn’t miss the look that she gave Nivad. He didn’t understand it, and he wished that he was anywhere but at the damn dinner.
“Well done, saved the head of the Ministry of Intelligence, and his second, and you made the EMF look like the iron fist it needs to be,” Moretti said through the implants.
“Thanks,” Mark sub-vocalized back.
“Fuck, I’m just happy that you didn’t get hurt, you okay?” Moretti asked seriously.
“Bit bloody but okay,” Mark assured him.
“There’s a bathroom over there, let’s get the blood off of you,” Dalia said, guiding Mark away from the press of people.
“We will have to talk Mark,” Nivad said, smiling before turning to others. The woman was getting hauled off and a crew was already cleaning the floor. Anyone who was anyone moved with Nivad as he headed for the large elevators that would take them up to the higher floors.
Dalia guided Mark to the washroom, and they cleaned the blood off Mark’s head, smart clothes and his rack of medals.
He’d never really cared for the medals.
Now at least they show the blood that was shared by those that died while I got these useless pieces of metal.
Instead of making them cleaner Dalia seemed to smudge the blood everywhere. Mark tried to clean it off but she stopped him. “Let’s go and mingle, not a word to anyone,” she said looking at Mark.
“Yes ma’am,” Mark said. Keeping all the other names he wanted to say in his mind.
“Wow that’s kind of fucked up to use it as PR. Not saying I wouldn’t use it as well,” Moretti said through Mark’s implants.
“Shut up and make sure there’s no recording,” Mark sub-vocalized, opening the door for Dalia.
“Never happened,” Moretti assured him.
Fucking dinners, Mark thought, as Dalia held the crook of his arm. He looked at her again, then away.
Chapter 18
Westerly Complex, Sector Three
Earth, Sol System
12/3347
George watched as Jamal walked into Mistress Pulonia’s office, in the tallest building of the Westerly Three Complex’s Compound.
“What happened, Jamal?” Pulonia asked from her place on the cushions, her voice as hazy as the drug filled room. The leader of the W3Cs was as naked as the day she was born, with someone's head between her legs.
“Some bastard who called himself Diablo attacked me,” Jamal said, his dark skin getting darker with anger.
George looked at the cut for what it was, a bare scrape. If someone had done it on purpose, then they were good with a blade. He’d been in enough fights to know when someone was making a statement as opposed to when they had actually tried to kill you.
“What are you doing here then?” Pulonia said, someone presenting her with a thin smoking device. Pulonia breathed from it, fondling the woman offering it to her absently.
“I am reporting the meeting,” Jamal said.
“Take that tone and I’ll have your knees broken,” Pulonia exhaled, her eyelids fluttering with the drug’s effects.
Jamal dropped to the floor, prostrating himself.
“I meant nothing by it my lady, I swear. I thought you might want to know what happened at the meeting,” Jamal said.
“Don’t assume that you can even think of what I want to know,” Pulonia’s voice would have been deadly if not for the drug-induced shake as she pulled the head of the person between her legs closer. “We will never show weakness, that was what made the old leaders fall. Go and destroy whoever attacked you. Make sure that nothing is left of their gang.”
“They looked to be from the EMF,” Jamal said into the floor.
George’s boredom fell away as he looked at Jamal.
Diablo. He remembered the name that Jamal had said as a chill ran through him and his eyes widened. He knew the tales of Diablo, the one half of the whole that was the Victor brothers, the brothers that had left for Earth’s Military Forces.
George was twenty-two, and he’d had a hard life in the Slums. As a young child the W3C gang had taken him in, and he had learned how to kill, how to fight.
They had wanted him to be strong enough to make it to the EMF. That had all changed when the older leadership had been killed off and a new leadership installed.
Anyone that wanted to go to the EMF was killed. They didn’t want to lose their capabilities, so George had stayed with the gang, not wanting to get a blade in the back.
They were one of the most powerful gangs, and Pulonia terrorized the other gangs and put her print on the Slums. Now she lived at the top of the tower. The power that she had gained had become her cage as she brought the gang down with her.
George used to fight for something, but with Pulonia it had all come crumbling down.
He’d forgotten his dream to escape into the EMF, but he hadn’t forgotten the Victor brothers.
“Fucking recruiters. Make them regret ever coming to the Slums, hit them everywhere and anywhere. Send them a message. The Slums are ours, they can fuck off,” Pulonia said, deflating into the cushions, grabbing them as she rode a heady mix of ecstasy and pleasure.
“It will be done,” Jamal said, leaving quickly.
George felt his stoma
ch drop; he had watched the old videos of the Troopers. They were not the kind of people he wanted to piss off.
But they might reward me if I tell them that an attack is coming. If they do attack Pulonia, they’ll be the only force to defeat her. If I help them they might reward me. This was gang logic, even though he knew that a part of him, the part that had wanted to join the EMF, hoped that they would include him in their ranks.
If it would clear him of the stain that was Pulonia’s rule. He was fine with that.
He was just going to have to be very careful that Pulonia or her killers heard nothing of his intentions.
Chapter 19
Citadel
Earth, Sol System
12/3347
Jerome used his implants, his helmet opening as he walked into the storage room turned armory. It had been several lifetimes since he had been in the citadel, but it hadn’t changed in the slightest. The only difference now was that he was going into the citadel itself, instead of the training grounds.
More than one person was trying to complain about the Troopers that were cluttering up the place, but some other Regiment with a few threats and a little violence had got them to shut the hell up and leave them alone.
Now they just look at us with disgust, as if it will do something.
The Troopers and the leaders of the EMF were butting heads, and it seemed that Nivad Selvra cared little. Instead of telling them to stop, he seemed content to sit back and see how things unfolded.
Jerome didn’t get the guy.
“How was the patrol?” Tyler asked, moving into the room.
“Boring as shit like normal.”
“What about the scouts?” Tyler asked in a lower tone.
“Moretti is all over, building a map and all that. We should be good to go if we need to.”
“Can’t believe how fucked up the gang got,” Tyler shook his head.
“They had too much of a good thing, too fast. It also sounds like this new leadership came in from another gang when Quentin was gone and took out the old leadership, putting themselves on top.” Jerome stepped into a charger and opened the rest of his armor. “How’d the outposts go? Heard there was trouble.”
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