Milky Way Repo

by Michael Prelee

  “How do these guys know where the dive bars and low rent districts are?” She said. “It’s like they have some sort of built in compass for dirt.”

  “Atomic Jack may have contacts here. I thought he was local to Go City but these thugs always seem to know someone who knows someone.”

  “You need to trust me, you know.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “No, when we’re there, sitting down at the table with these guys? You need to be cool.”

  “I’ll be like ice. This is your show.”

  “I can tell,” she said, “you’re the kind of guy who likes to be a little blunt, you know? Get down to it and not waste a lot of time talking if there’s work to be done but I have to tell you, this isn’t like that. There will be talking at the table.”

  “There’s talking in what I do, too,” he said. “When I was a marshal we talked to criminals. We talked to them when they were committing crimes, we talked to them during hostage negotiations and we talked to them after the fact just to find out why they did the dumb stuff they did. You don’t need to worry. When I say I know how to sit still and listen, I do. I can listen to you chat up a couple of thugs.”

  She turned toward him. “You need to understand something. I work for Saji Vy.”

  “This fact has not escaped my notice.”

  “Saji is one of the richest men on Earth. Building starships and starship components and having his fingers in nearly everything else has made him exceedingly wealthy. It has left him with deep pockets.”

  “And?”

  “A deep sense of paranoia. He surrounds himself with sycophants and yes men who will do anything for him. Anything at all.”

  Cole nodded. “So if he finds out about this?”

  “These guys we’re meeting? They’re dead. Arulio is unique. Wetjacks are common in the corporate world but Saji built Arulio. I mean, he wired him up, nurtured him and caters to him because of what he can do.”

  “One of a kind.”

  “Saji has had things done to people who crossed him or…whom he perceived as crossing him. Ugly things. These guys we’re meeting? They think they’re tough. They run book, own strip clubs, dabble in petty theft and probably sell dope for all I know and they’re comfortable in that world, thinking they own it. That arrogance? That feeling that they can just push people around and do anything they want? It has left them with one foot in the grave and they don’t even know it.”

  “When you say you work for Saji…”

  “I report directly to him. I see him every day. If something like this were to happen when I’m in charge? Losing my job would be the least of my troubles.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow indeed. So when I tell you to let me run the table? I mean sit there and let me do my thing. Do that and an hour from now we’ll be drinking a toast to my success and relaxing with Arulio back on your boss’s crappy ship.”

  Cole nodded and sat back against the door. “It’s all you, babe.”

  “And Nathan? He’s up to something. He’s a planner right? Always like to have an ace up his sleeve?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Look, that may not be a bad thing here,” she said. “Who knows? Maybe something will go ass up and we’ll need a plan B. I don’t know. Just keep him out of my way. I don’t want him going cowboy on me and blowing the deal.”

  “Nathan will be cool. He wants the situation resolved with no trouble. If you’re getting the job done you’ll never know he’s around.”

  “Okay, that’s good, that’s good.”

  “It’s all you.”

  “Good.”

  The van pulled up to the diner and deposited them on the sidewalk. The diner was big; bigger than Cole thought it would be. It stretched down the block, more like a buffet place than a diner. If it was full of people they could be a problem. Of course, the neighborhood looked like it was past its prime so maybe the crowd would be light. There weren’t a lot of vehicles in the parking lot. A van sat in the back and a couple of small fusion two seaters were near the back door. They walked in and looked around.

  Cole had nothing to worry about. He could see kitchen staff going through their paces but there were only a few customers at the counter. The lights were low and the shades were drawn against the morning sun. It looked like a lot of the dining room was closed off. There were a few booths and tables but few of them held customers. A waitress was pouring coffee at the counter and threw Cole a half smile. It wasn’t a welcoming gesture.

  A curtain rustled in the back. Cole spotted Kinty and the kidnapper waved him over. He nudged Kimiyo. They walked back to him and he pointed them toward a secluded table. That other guy from the alley back in Go City, Bonto, was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee. Cole was glad they weren’t in a booth. He did not want to be confined in any way.

  They sat down, Kinty and Bonto on the side facing the door. Cole pulled a chair out for Kimiyo and sat beside her. He hated having his back to the door.

  “Hungry?” Kinty said.

  Cole shook his head. “Nothing for us.”

  “Suit yourself. They make great waffles here. I love me some waffles.” The big man sliced a piece of waffle off his plate and forked it into his mouth. Cole could smell maple syrup. “We’re alone back here. The waitresses know to leave us be unless we call them.”

  “This a Syndicate joint?” Cole said.

  Kinty waved his fork in a small circle and smiled. “Friends own it. They’re nice enough to let us have the room for business.”

  “You are Donald Kinty?” Kimiyo said. She was looking at a computer tablet, her attitude indifferent to the men on the other side of the table.

  He looked her over, chewing slowly. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Kimiyo Bramitz. I represent Mr. Vy in this matter.” She turned to the second man. “I assume you are Kenneth Bonto?”

  He nodded. “You don’t need to introduce your friend, lady. We remember him from Go City.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Cole said. He looked at Kinty. “Wrist all healed up?”

  He held up his fork. “Just fine. Maybe later I’ll show you.”

  “Maybe”.

  “I’m not interested,” Kimiyo said. “I don’t care what’s going on between the two of you. I want to know if Arulio is all right. I want proof of life.”

  Bonto smiled. “Of course he’s alive.” He pulled out his phone and clicked a button. “Live picture, sweetie. He’s safe and sound.” A small hologram displayed above the table. Arulio was sitting in a cramped space. He was squatting on a plastic crate. Cole thought it was in a van. He could see windows behind Arulio and a reflection in the windows that might be Atomic Jack. Light gleamed off something like a glass dome, like the glass dome of a helmet. Kimiyo leaned in and saw Arulio shift uncomfortably wherever he was sitting. She leaned back.

  “Gentlemen,” Kimiyo said, “I request the immediate and unconditional return of the man currently in your custody. I want Arulio back now.”

  “Can’t have him, love,” Kinty said. “Not unconditionally. There is the small matter of payment.”

  “We will not be paying a ransom,” she said. “Arulio is an employee of Saji Vy, a registered human-network interface for SajiCo. You have no claim to him.”

  “She’s doing all the talking, tough guy?” Kinty said, looking at Cole.

  “She is.”

  “Look, missy, that guy,” he said, pointing at Cole, “has someone on his crew who owes us money. Money they have not been able to produce. It’s too bad you and your boy got mixed up in this but that happens when you keep rough company. You owe, you pay. That’s just the way it is.”

  “You’re taking advantage of a situation that has nothing to do with me to settle a matter with a member of Captain Teller’s crew.”

  “No shit, sweetie. We’re criminals. That’s what we do.”

  Cole’s eyes slid toward Kimiyo. Her left eye twitched with anger.

  “I see.�
�

  “Look, your boy is safe. He’s here. I need to be paid and we all get on with our lives.”

  Kimiyo gripped the small briefcase on her lap. Cole could sense her frustration. “Mr. Vy is a very powerful man and this situation…”

  “Don’t.”

  Kimiyo looked at Kinty. “Excuse me?”

  He dropped his fork and it clattered on his plate. “Don’t tell me about how powerful your boss is. My boss? He doesn’t care. You live in your world, we live in ours. When those two worlds mix? Ours generally comes out on top. Now stop boring us and give us the money.”

  Kimiyo looked him over and licked her lips. “That attitude is not helpful.”

  “I don’t really care.” He picked up his fork and took another bite of his waffle. Bonto smiled and sipped his coffee.

  Kimiyo reached into her bag and pulled out an antique silver cigarette case. She opened it and pulled a cigarette out. Kimiyo looked over the two men on the opposite side of the table. She tapped her cig twice on the silver case and lit it.

  “I really wish you could have been more reasonable,” she said. Kimiyo took a long draw and leaned forward.

  Kinty shrugged. “Maybe we’re just not reasonable men.”

  “Maybe,” Kimiyo said. She exhaled a cloud of smoke in their direction. Bonto coughed a waved a hand at the smoke. Then both men looked at each other.

  The two of them started to jump up but both of them gripped the table and sat back down. Cole backed away from the table, pulling his pistol and aiming at one, then the other. He watched as both men blinked heavily and shook their heads. Neither of them reached for a weapon. Kinty grabbed for the water glass on the table and gulped it down.

  “What…what was that?” He said. “What did you do?”

  She turned to Cole. “Hold out your hands.” He did so, shifting his pistol from one to the other as she sprayed his hands, torso and face with a can. “Stay back and don’t touch the table or them.” He nodded.

  “What did you do?” Bonto asked.

  She held up the cigarette case. “Hemorrhagic fever in a clandestine delivery system, you idiots. Think of fast acting Ebola virus.” They started to breathe hard and looked at each other. Cole took another step back and eyed the curtain in case they had friends outside.

  “We’ve had shots…” Kinty said.

  “Not for this you haven’t,” Kimiyo said. “This is new, right out of our labs.”

  “You’re lying,” Bonto said.

  She leaned across the table, jabbed her finger in his face. “I’m not lying. You know I’m not lying.”

  “How long?” Kinty said.

  She smiled at him. “You must be the smart one. Alright, here’s how this goes. You have fifteen minutes to get the antidote, which I have.” She held up another canister. “I get my man, you get the antidote. One of you goes, one of you stays.”

  “Jack will kill us,” Kinty said.

  “I already have,” Kimiyo said.

  She walked over to Cole. He eyed them, waiting for them to do something stupid but they just talked. After a moment, Kinty walked over to them.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  Cole spoke up. “Anyone walks through that curtain but you and our man and I kill everyone except our man. You understand?”

  Kinty nodded.

  “Don’t approach anyone else,” Kimiyo said. “You could be contagious.”

  “What about your wetjack? How do I not approach him?”

  “He’s had shots that make him immune. Get going.”

  Cole pulled the curtain back and he walked out.

  Cole took Kimiyo by an arm and moved her to the other side of the curtain entrance. “Just in case he has friends outside and tells them where we are, stand over here. Now, what were you thinking?”

  “You don’t understand, I’m saving everyone’s life. All of us.”

  “From Saji?”

  She nodded. “If he finds out that Arulio has been out of my custody? It’s all over for us and for these dirtbags. He would never risk someone having access to Arulio.”

  “You told Nathan that all of the data in his head was encrypted.”

  “It is,” she said. “But he won’t take the risk that someone accessed it.”

  They moved back to the table. Cole looked at Bonto and saw he was holding a napkin up to his bleeding nose. “You don’t look good. I hope your friend hurries up.”

  Nathan and Duncan were across the street, facing the diner parking lot. They were huddled in the doorway of a building that looked like it had once been home to a real estate office. Now it was dirty and abandoned. It had a wonderful alcove, though. Nathan had used the Olympia g-net to scope the place out from the Blue Moon Bandit last night. A small rifle leaned against the door behind him, hidden by his body and the shadow of the recessed entranceway. Duncan squinted. Nathan knew he wasn’t having a hard time seeing, though, he was just focusing. Duncan had ocular implants that let him see for miles on a clear day or the smallest objects in a dark engine. He turned to Nathan.

  “One of Atomic Jack’s crew just walked out,” he said. “He’s headed into the parking lot.”

  Nathan took a look.

  “That’s Kinty,” Duncan said. “Cole broke his wrist in that alley.”

  “Where’s he headed?”

  Duncan squinted again. “Back of the lot. There’s a van back there,” he said, pointing at a non-descript white van. “I wonder if that’s where they have Arulio?”

  “Could be. They might want to stay mobile so they can jump off once they have their money.”

  “He doesn’t look good,” Duncan said. “He’s kind of shuffling and coughing.”

  “He must not be taking his vitamins. Yeah, look at him. He’s going straight to that van.”

  Atomic Jack looked at Arulio strangely, making the wetjack feel very self-concious. He was already feeling ill because he hadn’t had his normal course of meds and nutritional supplements. When they had taken him these gangsters had failed to take his traveling bag, despite his protests.

  “Your skin is so white,” Jack said. “Is that a side effect of the conversion process?”

  Arulio considered him. He was so strange in his bulky brown pressure suit. Its air pumps hissed loudly in the cramped confines of the van.

  “Yes, the bleached appearance of my skin is indeed a side effect of my conversion. Your skin is very dark. This is an effect of your condition?”

  Jack nodded inside the big glass helmet. “Yeah, my skin constantly regenerates when it’s burned off.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Burning? Like you can’t believe,” he said, shifting in his wide seat. “The regeneration isn’t bad, though. It just itches like mad.” He held up his gloved hands. “I can’t scratch very well with these on.”

  “I would imagine not.”

  “I’m surprised someone would disfigure themselves willingly,” Jack said. He gestured to himself. “I didn’t have a choice in looking like this but you did.”

  Arulio paused again before answering. It was a habit that frequently annoyed those he conversed with but he believed every answer required careful consideration.

  “In life, we must frequently trade something precious for something we deem to be even more important. My physical appearance was the cost for my enhanced abilities. I weighed the choice carefully but it has been worth it, up to this point.”

  “Don’t worry about your predicament,” Jack said. “Your people got buckets of cash. They’ll have you free in no time.” He coughed slightly. A disturbing sight, Arulio noted, because his skin flared orange around his throat and jaw.

  “This thing you can do,” Jack said, “where you can intercept signals and data and things. It’s satisfying?”

  “Satisfying? At times it is euphoric.”

  “But the noise. Doesn’t it become distracting?”

  Arulio shook his head. He was uncomfortable talking to this criminal about such private things but
felt like he had no choice.

  “It’s not noise. The signals, the data they flow through me. I interpret what I want and ignore the rest.”

  Jack leaned forward in his suit. “You just filter it right out?”

  “Sort it out, actually.”

  “What if it’s encrypted?”

  Arulio started to tread carefully. “Some encryption is vulnerable, some is not. It depends.”

  “So if I got you close to a database that I need to crack, there’s a good chance that could get in, extract what I need?”

  “My specialty is analysis, not breaking into networks or databases. It would be unethical to do what you are suggesting.”

  “Ethics don’t play much of a part in what I do,” Jack said. “Don’t look shocked. I know what I am. I don’t have any illusions of legitimacy. Stealing and extortion is how I make my living. With abilities like yours, though, I could run the table.”

  Arulio paused. Looking past Jack, out the back window of the van, he could see one of his men walking across the parking lot. It was the tall one called Kinty. He was holding a napkin against his nose.

  “You have ethics.”

  Jack smiled. “I do?”

  “Aboard the Blue Moon Bandit, when you were hurting Richie, you kept saying, ‘you owe, you pay’. That is a rudimentary form of ethics.”

  “Hmm.”

  Someone banged on the side door of the van. “Open up, Jack. It’s me,” Kinty called.

  Jack triggered the van’s remote and the door opened. Arulio blinked against the sunlight. Kinty was bleeding from the nose and holding a wad of napkins against his face.

  “They pay up?” Jack said.

  Kinty shook his head. “Game’s changed, Jack. I need to take him in.”

  Jack’s scabbed brows furrowed. “What happened to you? Are you bleeding? What’s going on?”

  “Jack, I need you trust me. I only have a few minutes here.” He held up his bloody wad of napkins.

  Jack moved toward the door, his pressure suit banging awkwardly against the door frame “I don’t like this,” he said. “Are you tryin’ to screw me? What did she offer you in there? Come on, Kinty. Tell me. You tell me!”