Roland looked back at Red Head, “I’ll get their heads down. Have your men pull back to that corner and conserve ammunition. I’ll arrange for cover.” He grabbed Red head by the shirt and spoke very clearly, “Keep you fire on that alley, but don’t spray. Conserve ammo! Move in twos and cover that alcove!” He indicated where Lucia was hiding.
Red head gave him a sideways look, “You better not be fucking with us!”
Roland did not bother to acknowledge this, but turned and yelled, “GO!” Red Head tore off and began shouting commands to his men.
Roland switched to explosive rounds and worked gunfire into the building walls marking the edges of the entrance to the parking lot. He had no good angle for direct hits, but great gouts of flame, smoke and concrete shrapnel tore into the hunters as the mini-grenades tore massive holes in the masonry. They scattered like crows and scrambled back towards the main street as Roland squeezed off his last two HE rounds and switched back to flechette. No viable targets presented themselves, but two more hunters lay unmoving in the alley; Roland smiled. High-explosive ammo was perennial favorite of his when dealing with massed opposition.
He used the resulting twenty-second reprieve to shove the cars over to the corner where the drug gang was regrouping. Moving a forty-one-hundred-pound car presented very little challenge for Roland, and it was short work to heave them over into position. He felt the first hostile rounds hit his back just as he settled the fourth car on its side, blocking the protected alcove and making a defensive bulwark for the gang to shoot from.
Judging by the dull, bruising thump he felt in his spine, he figured that the hits were standard anti-personnel rounds, and they did little more than punch holes into his jacket. He had a dozen more of these jackets in storage, so this was not particularly catastrophic. He fell back to check on Lucia and the drug dealers. Lucia was still in her alcove, doing yeoman’s work controlling her mounting anxiety. Her face looked drawn and tight, and her hand clutched the butt of her gun, still in its holster, with a fevered intensity.
Roland had worked with green recruits on many occasions, and they didn’t all have the stomach for combat. That was just the nature of the beast, and he held it against no one. But at the very least, those guys had volunteered for it. Lucia was not a soldier, she was a victim, and all of this had to be incredibly overwhelming.
It bothered Roland on a fundamental level that she was even here at all. Combat was Roland’s profession, and he had chosen it. This was where he belonged. She did not belong here, and that angered him.
In spite of her fear, the woman was stubbornly refusing to crumple. He admired that gravel in her guts. He had seen enough panicking troops to know when someone was swallowing their fear with willpower alone, and Lucia was nothing if not willful. Roland smiled to himself, she’d have made a good soldier, he thought.
Turning back to the battle, he found to his pleasure the drug dealers were holding up well. A few were panicking and useless, a few more were wasting ammo by spraying careless fire at the opening where the hunters were regrouping. At least half had posted up in good shooting posture and were sending controlled bursts downrange though. Roland attributed this to Red Head’s incessant berating and constant barking of instructions. There was little danger of being overrun at this juncture, so Roland could finally shift his focus to offense.
He slapped a strip of HE into the empty section of his magazine and flipped the selector over to anti-personnel beads. Smiling ever-so-slightly, he then slid it forward into the ‘full-auto’ setting. It was time to wake the neighbors.
Chapter Fourteen
Roger Dawkins woke up.
Which was a surprise, even for him. A quick inventory of his recent memories revealed no indications that waking up had been a foregone conclusion. He clearly remembered getting pancaked by a big-ass cyborg in a shitty bar, and he remembered how annoying that had been. He remembered being severely injured, and he remembered that in his line of work, losing a fight often meant dying. Roger had lost that fight and yet he was not dead. Today was looking up.
As consciousness returned, he became aware of a few more things. First, he was in a staggering quantity of pain. When he considered the severity of his injuries from the fight, he determined that this was appropriate. While he was not overly thrilled with the level of discomfort and the apparent lack of pain medication he had been given, it was at least a good indicator that that he would remain not-dead for a while yet.
Roger thought he might be in a hospital, or at least a place that looked, sounded and smelled like one. The walls were the same antiseptic white that hospitals liked to use; the ceiling was faceless, featureless white as well.
The air stank of isopropyl alcohol and sodium hypochlorite, like it would in a hospital, so the evidence continued to support that conclusion. Several things were beeping and hissing next to his bed, which was equipped with the standard-issue lumpy mattress and thin, scratchy blankets. He decided that he was definitely probably in a hospital.
He was certain his spine had been shattered in the fight, which meant he had not walked out of that bar on his own. That was curious. Roger was very heavy, and none of his androids had been spared by the guy who had beaten him nearly to death. When this sort of thing happened, it was usually his androids that got him to the body shop after a job went to this level of bad. But the ’bots had not been in any shape to do this, last he saw them.
Roger made a mental note to figure out what the hell was up with that big sonofabitch. There was a debt owed on that score, and Roger expected to settle it in due course. First, he needed to figure out how to not get his bones shattered in the process though. Roger did not consider himself a stupid man. He did not waste time or energy denying the huge bastard in that bar outclassed him by several orders of magnitude. That situation was rare enough for Roger that he had forgotten it was even possible. Now his body radiated painful testimony to that very fact.
It had been a timely reminder that no matter how bad you thought you were, there was always somebody badder. Roger liked it when he was the baddest guy in the room, and the current situation hurt both his professional and personal pride. He intended to correct that.
Ruminations on vengeance notwithstanding, Roger decided it was time to try moving. His not residing in a body shop, coupled with the fact that he was not strapped down with vanadium manacles meant that whoever had brought him to this place either did not know about his augmentations, or did not care. The former scenario meant that he needed to get out before that changed and he got shipped off to the penal colony on Titan. The latter meant that whoever had absconded with him was seriously bad news. Both scenarios were cause for some concern, and Roger would rather deal with either from a more advantageous position than flat on his back.
Then Roger’s body reiterated the nature of his predicament: namely that he was in a metric fuck-ton of pain and his legs didn’t work. His attempt to rise accomplished little more than tearing a gasp of agony from his own lungs and a pathetic wiggle the bed.
It seemed there may be a third reason he wasn’t strapped down. Roger was a goddamned cripple and cripples need not be restrained. His irritation increased with exponential vigor as other factors began to align in his beleaguered mind. Cripples did not make a whole lot of money in the planetary muscle game. He had clients who paid top dollar for a high-tech superhuman problem-solver. His current situation precluded him from receiving said top dollars.
The injured man knew that he needed to get a message to one of his regular body shops soon if he wanted to keep those contracts. He was certain his guy in Africa could regrow the spine, but it would probably take a year. Roger did some mental arithmetic and was relieved to realize that his savings could handle a year off if they had to. That was irrelevant if he got shipped to Titan though.
A voice, wafting in from the doorway to his right, admonished him, “Try to hold still, Mr. Dawkins. Your injuries are quite severe and you will only hurt yourself further if yo
u try to move.” It was the dry, toneless baritone of a doctor who had repeated the same instructions to patients too stupid to know better a thousand times. Roger looked over. The man stood back-lit by bright lights from the hallway, and Roger could see that he was a small, stoop-shouldered balding man in a white coat. He held a DataPad in his left hand was making assorted notes on it.
“Your spinal cord has is severed and you have multiple fractures in your hand and foot. You have also sustained a rather severe concussion,” the doctor droned. It was an unnecessary monologue. Roger needed no help to determine the extent of his injuries. His proprioception was enhanced to the extent he could count the hairs on his arms just by feeling them move in a breeze. Just trying to move had provided him with enough sensory feedback to tell exactly how many pieces his lumbar vertebrae had broken into (seventeen).
“Where am I?” He said with an internal wince at the cliché.
“You are dead, Mr. Dawkins,” the doctor said, without looking up from the DataPad, “and this is where you get reincarnated, if you so choose.”
If the doctor expected him to be shocked or impressed by the melodramatic proclamation, Roger did not oblige. The doctor was obviously not accustomed to working with an element like Roger Dawkins, who had been high-paid hired muscle for the better part of twenty years at this point.
This situation was not particularly uncommon in his line of work. Roger’s ‘death’ had been faked twice before, and likely would be again. It was just good policy: Roger had skills and talent, so when he sustained severe injuries (it happened from time to time) his employers would often let him ‘die’ to avoid any of the legal hassles augmented employees could cause.
Roger had arrangements with several underground body shops set up to put him back together when this happened. Someone would pick up his body from the scene or perhaps the hospital, and swap it with another. He would ‘die’ taking all his criminal history with him and then get rebuilt as someone new. He would typically get a new face, and maybe just a few more enhancements than the last time if he could afford them. After a brief vacation and recovery period, he’d get simply back out there and get back to work.
So, Roger did not react with shock or disbelief, as the doctor was obviously more accustomed to seeing. He simply asked, “Which outfit are you with?” Roger was acutely aware of several potentially lethal conflicts of interest. If he was in the wrong guy’s facility, it could cause a real cluster-fuck with some of his clients. It bothered Roger that he did not recognize this place or this doctor; a doctor who obviously did not work with men of Roger’s profession on a regular basis.
As he looked around, Roger found his irritation being replaced with concern. This was different. He was not in a typical underworld body shop. His room was too clean, the equipment too nice. The doctor was not up to speed on men in Roger’s line of work. Something was different here, and not necessarily in a good way.
The disparity with his normal procedures became all the more apparent when the doctor replied with, “Outfit? This is a Corpus Mundi research facility. Are you still feeling disoriented?” His pudgy face tilted downward to peer over the bridge of a lumpy nose, concern marring the otherwise paternal gaze.
Roger couldn’t decide if this answer was terrifying or hilarious.
“Corpus Mundi, huh?” he chuckled, “Well, I guess that answers my question!”
At that moment, there was a commotion in the hallway behind the doctor, and a portly man with thick silver hair wearing an expensive black silk suit pushed into the room. The man, whose florid skin reflected consternation with the situation, turned to the doctor and spoke in a tone that indicated a person accustomed to being obeyed.
“Johnson! You were to notify me immediately once he woke up!”
The doctor, nonplussed, responded with dry economy, “He is my patient, Mr. Fox, and I will treat him as I see fit. You would have been notified as soon as I determined he was sufficiently recovered to have a conversation with you. That has always been our protocol, here.”
“You know damn well that this case is special, Johnson. And you don’t get to play high-and-mighty doctor with me.” Mr. Fox grabbed the DataPad from the doctor and roughly shoved him toward the door, “You can go now, doctor.” He sneered the last word, and it oozed with sarcasm. Johnson left the room with his face wound in a tight snarl and his gait stiff with irritation.
Mr. Fox turned to the now-grinning Roger Dawkins, and spoke with the enthusiasm of an accomplished salesman, “Mr. Dawkins! Terribly sorry you had to witness that! Sometimes our various departments rub each other the wrong way. You know how it goes. All one big family, here, I assure you!”
Roger was beaming, “Corpus Mundi, huh? To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Fox scowled, “Well, yes. Doctor Johnson there may have dropped that bit of information just the tiniest bit prematurely,” he sighed, “But yes, I would like to welcome you to the Corpus Mundi family, Mr. Dawkins. If you are amenable, of course. I am Mr. Fox.”
Corpus Mundi, with the not-ominous-at-all motto of “One World, One Body” was an enormous corporation. From humble beginnings as a pharmaceutical and medical supply company, it had branched off into virtually every aspect of human development and technology. Their holdings rivaled in size the economies of several medium-sized countries. As a single body, the Corpus Mundi board of directors wielded more personal and political power than any other group save Gateways, Inc. and the Planetary Council itself.
Roger had experience here; he had worked for the company in the past. He supposed it would be more accurate to say he had worked for any number of smaller corporations owned and operated as subsidiaries by Corpus Mundi. But if one was to be completely honest, Roger had worked for criminal organizations backed and sponsored by these Corpus Mundi proxy companies.
Roger felt like that still counted as experience since he had been on a Corpus Mundi job when he wandered into the Smoking Wreck. Like any meandering galactic business interest, Corpus Mundi had operatives and operations that wandered all over the spectrum of legality and morality. Roger had no illusions about corporate ethics; it was all just business to the Board, and it was all just business to Roger Dawkins. That was just good business.
It was a quick and easy leap of logic to draw the obvious conclusion about this meeting. Finding himself at an actual, legitimate Corpus Mundi research facility could mean only one thing: Roger had just been promoted to the major leagues. All his hard work and attention to detail were finally paying off. This was his access to the kind of money and prestige that turned talented pros (like himself) into real bosses. This was turning into a truly great day.
With a herculean effort, he curbed his excitement. Roger knew his business, and this business was the careful choreography of competing self-interests and common enemies. It would be a complicated dance, and there was no mistaking who his partner in the ensuing waltz would be.
He remembered the words of his father, a minor capo in a medium-sized crime family from the Sprawl, “You can dance with the devil if you want to, kid. Make sure you enjoy the money and the fun while it lasts though. Sooner or later, the bastard is going to want to lead.”
Roger was not sure what a corporate giant like Corpus Mundi would want from him, but his individual skill set was quite specific. He figured that he was not here because they felt sorry for him. If he wanted to dance with this devil, he had better be prepared to follow when the time came.
He turned his attention back to Mr. Fox, “I am a businessman, first, Mr. Fox. Corpus Mundi business seems like good business to me, and I am always amenable to working with good business partners.”
Fox smirked at the exaggerated politeness, “We have always valued your contributions to our subsidiaries, and we find that you may be the right candidate for a special new initiative.” Fox sat down on a plastic chair next to Roger’s bed, “We would like to hire you, full-time.”
Roger indicated his broken body, “Can I assume your health
care plan is first-rate?”
“Oh, Mr. Dawkins,” Fox’s eyes sparkled, “It’s so much better than that!”
Roger smiled back, “I bet it is,” he chose his next words with practiced care, “what is the, uh…” he fumbled, “… position?”
Fox’s smile never wavered, “What if I told you we wanted you to finish the job you were doing when we found you?”
“I’d tell you that there is a very big obstacle to concluding that piece of business.”
“Yes,” Fox agreed, “bigger than we had been led to believe, ourselves.” Fox leaned in, using a conspirator’s whisper to ask his next question, “but what if we could help you to become… bigger… than the problem?”
Roger was already augmented. More to the point, he currently sported about as much augmentation as was feasible for a human being to support. He could lift five tons and see the wings of a fly at twenty yards, for Christ’s sake! The big fucker at the bar had slapped him down like he was a child though. That was a different level altogether, and that was a level Roger would not mind being moving to. The broken man in the bed was more than a little curious about what Mr. Fox may or may not have been referring to.
“What do you have in mind, Mr. Fox?”
Fox straightened in the chair, smiling broadly, “We here at Corpus Mundi’s ‘Better Man’ division have been pushing the limits of cybernetic enhancements for some time now. I think you will find that our latest designs will help you become the kind of person who can complete this most important task for us.”
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