Robber Baron

by Wil C. Fry

  "Oh, Philipp! I'm so sorry. Here, move your hands, baby, let me kiss it." I think the best sparring partner is the one who will kiss it and make it better after they've given it to you good. Especially if that partner is Destiny.

  On the last day of class, Quivers pulled me to one side, and spoke in a low voice. "Philipp, I've enjoyed working with you this summer. You've shown me that I need to brush up on a few things, and that I'm starting to get old. In this business, youth and speed will eventually overcome age and experience, especially when the youth is quickly gaining experience." He put a hand on my shoulder. "I know you've got to finish up high school, and all that, but I hope you'll try to find some time to work with me in the evenings. I see a lot of potential in you, and I haven't had enough time to give you very much personal instruction in just this one summer."

  He waved his hand around the room. "In just three months time, you've absorbed more punishment than these girls could possibly take. When you started, anyone of them could take you down at any time, but now the situation's been reversed with most of them. How would you like to learn some more martial arts? Like Aikido, karate, tae kwondo, and such like. This judo stuff will keep you safe on the street, from muggers and so on. But I can teach you a lot of offensive things that may really come in handy, as long as you don't get careless."

  "I think I'd like that, sir."

  He gave me his personal phone number, and told me to call him any evening during the school year, and he would meet me for personal instruction, free of charge. I got the feeling that while he had become quite popular on the campus, he was a little lonely, and was looking for a male friend. I thanked him, and entered one last sparring session with him. The girls gathered around, and watched him throw me around for a while. When we finally ended in a stalemate, they all applauded, and Destiny kissed me full on the mouth once I got untangled from Colonel Quivers.

  *

  All of a sudden, I was preparing to enter my last year of high school. Mike (my boss) gave all his high school kids that last weekend off, as a special favor, and I did what I do best. Destiny and I robbed another bank. Our sixth, if you count that reaching-over-the-counter thing when I was thirteen. This time, we did it in Tarkin, in broad daylight.

  The weekend before, Destiny had dyed her hair black, colored her eyes brown and worn very nondescript clothes. She had taken the public bus to Batesville - they were running two or three times every weekend then - and shopped around, looking for a used car. She had paid cash for a 20-year old Cyr farm truck, and then driven around to various hardware stores, buying a box of ammo at each, and a few boxes of tranquilizer darts.

  For her trouble, I had promised her 60 percent on our next take. She frowned at the suggestion. "Philipp, we haven't really kept track of how much money is mine, and how much is yours, have we?"

  "Well, we've always counted and divided after each take, baby."

  "Right, but we've always put the money in the same place, and we both have all the account information on Justine, right?"

  "Yeah..." I wasn't sure where she was going with it. Maybe I was a little dense. "And we're planning on spending our lives together, right? I mean, the last time we talked, you were saying something about a big farm on a new planet..."

  "Yeah."

  "So don't worry about the percentages, and who gets what. It's all ours, okay?"

  "Okay. Sorry, baby, I wasn't thinking."

  "Just be sure you start thinking when we're in the middle of the action."

  *

  We hit the biggest bank in Tarkin, at high noon on Saturday. Four armed guards, eight cameras, a lobby full of customers, and a lot of money. Just around the corner, out of sight of the street, we put on our gloves and masks, and loaded our guns. Destiny carried her little dart gun, and I had the two Jenkins & Wesson .45 automatics stuffed in my belt. Four loaded clips filled my back pockets, for a total of 90 bullets, if you count the ones already in the guns.

  "Let's go," I said.

  We came around the corner, and hurried to the front door. Coming in, I pulled out my two guns and hollered, "Everybody, GET DOWN! This is a robbery!"

  Some of the customers started dropping to the floor, while employees and guards went wild. Destiny started dropping them like flies with her dart gun. I fired two shots into the ceiling, to let everyone know that darts weren't the only things flying through the air.

  That's the only thing that saved us. One guard had his gun in his hand, but once he realized that I was willing to fire, he dropped it. Destiny started taping up the downed guards and some of the employees while I had one of the female customers put all of the guards' guns into a canvas bag.

  When she was done. I handed the bag to Destiny, and pointed my big guns at one of the tellers. "Where's the manager!" She promptly fainted.

  Another teller pointed to the rest rooms. I almost gave up. I could just picture the manager sitting on the pot, calling the police on his personal phone. I handed one of the real guns to Destiny, saying, "Sandy, I'm going in. Watch the door."

  She nodded, her new red hair dangling purposefully out from under the back of her mask. As I headed for the restroom, I heard her ordering the same customer I had used with the guns to start taping up all of the male customers and employees. I stepped into the rest room.

  Just as I had feared, the manager was standing there holding his phone, talking quietly. I raised my gun to his head; he dropped the phone. I pointed the gun down and shot the phone, splintering it into hundreds of tiny plastic pieces. "Get out there and open that vault, before your face starts to look like that phone."

  He got. Destiny kept her lady servant busy taping up all the customers, shouting, "Tighter! If you can't get it any tighter than that, and he gets out. I'm going to have to shoot him! You don't want that, do you? Then tape him tighter!"

  I took the manager to the vault, which he opened quickly. I held the gun to his head while he dumped stacks of bills into bags I handed him.

  I followed him out into the lobby, letting him carry the four bags. Then I heard the sirens. "Sandy! Let's get out of here!"

  She peeked out the door. "Oh my god, Karl! They're coming!"

  The manager picked that moment to drop the bags. "Pick them up, scum!" I pressed the barrel of my gun into his temple, and grabbed him by the throat with my other hand, still standing behind him. "Walk!" I used the bulk of my body to push him toward the door. Destiny took my cue, and grabbed her woman servant - the only other person left untaped - and got behind her.

  When I stepped out of the door, police cars were whizzing to a stop in front of the bank.

  I took the gun away from the manager's temple and fired in the general direction of the cars, heading toward the corner, walking backward, pulling my hostage in front of me. Destiny pulled her hostage along in the same fashion.

  The police were pulling their weapons, and shouting. I heard Chief Donovan's voice over them all, "Hold your fire! Watch the hostages!" He was drawing his own weapon.

  I fired several more shots in their general direction, not aiming at any of them, and Destiny did the same. I heard our slugs hitting their cars, and ricocheting wildly. I whispered loudly into my hostage's ear, "Stay with me, and don't drop those bags, or you're going to get it."

  Donovan yelled through his megaphone, "Don't go any further! If you lay down your weapons now, and let the hostages go, it'll go easier on you in court! Don't try to fight this out. You're surrounded!"

  I didn't hear any sirens behind me, but I looked anyway. It was a good thing I did, because two cops were coming up the alley down which I intended to go. I fired three shots in their direction, and then my slide locked open. I dropped the empty clip, and whipped another one in before my hostage could escape. But the two cops had taken cover. I turned the corner and flattened my back against the wall, keeping the bank manager in front of me. I heard Destiny firing shots toward the police as she made her way toward the corner. I was trying to count her shots, knowing that I was
carrying all the spare clips.

  I could see the barrel of a gun protruding over an air conditioning unit in the alley, where one of the cops had taken cover. Then I saw the blood. And the other cop lying in the alley. I fired blindly at the air conditioner, until it suddenly exploded, throwing the man behind it into the wall, and tumbling him onto the ground. I threw the bank manager to the ground and grabbed the bags, stuffing all four handles into my left hand. "Stay down!" I shouted to him, and fired up the alley toward the cops in the street.

  Destiny came around the corner, literally dragging her hostage with her; I noticed that the slide on her gun was open. As she drew near, I slid an extra clip into her gun. She pressed the slide release switch, and resumed firing. Police officers were moving into position at the corner we had just come around.

  When we got to the next corner, at the back of the bank, she let her hostage go, and we ran for it, occasionally firing behind us. We turned several corners, ran across another main boulevard, and down another alley. It seemed that the city was full of sirens, and we could hear the cops on foot behind us.

  As we went around the last corner, where the getaway car was, I whispered, "Stick with the plan!" and stayed at the corner, keeping our tails at bay. Bits of brick were chipping away above my head as they returned my fire. Destiny ran to the car, set the controls, and hopped into the dumpster next to it, keeping the door held open.

  I fired two last shots toward the cops, and sprinted toward the dumpster. Just before I hopped in, I vaguely noticed the new car we had bought take off down the street, running on automatic pilot. I slid into the dumpster, pulling the moneybags behind me. Destiny let the lid come down.

  We sat there in the trash bin, ignoring the stench, trying not to breathe too loudly, and listening to the cops run around the corner firing at the rear of our car. They ran on down the street, shouting loudly into their police radios, and soon we heard sirens go by. It got really quiet on our alley, and really started to stink inside the dumpster.

  Destiny dug around in the dark, and found the airtight bag she had stashed there earlier. We pulled out two water bottles and two sandwiches, and commenced eating in silence. I kept watch through a couple of holes in the dumpster's sides, and we stayed there until dark. We ate another sandwich each, still in silence, and still wearing our gloves. We made sure all the trash from our sandwiches and drinks were tucked deep under the rest of the putrid refuge, then got out.

  There was no sign of the police. We guessed that they had found the empty car by now, and knew that we weren't in it. But they would have no way of knowing that we were never in it. Surely, they would assume that we had jumped out along the way. Destiny hadn't given her real name to the man from whom she had bought the car, and she hadn't taken the trouble of getting the title changed over, or buying insurance. There was no trail leading it to us.

  Two streets over, we found her personal car where she'd left it, got in, and drove into the country. On a deserted riverbank, we burned the clothes we had worn during the robbery, along with the masks, the gloves, and the moneybags, after we transferred the money into new bags. I helped Destiny wash the temporary red dye out of her hair, and re-dye it as close to her natural color as we could. We tended the fire until I was sure that nothing remained. The ashes, I dropped into the stream, and then I washed my hands. We put the new moneybags in her car, just behind the seats, under a few sweaters, and went home.

  *

  I started the 12th grade two days later. Destiny started her third year of college a few days after that, still working for New Planet. I stayed on at Mike's, working about fifteen hours a week. It was my first day back at school when I heard that Police Chief William Donovan had been killed in a shoot-out after a bank robbery in Tarkin. I kept my composure while in school, and then cried later, in my bedroom in the governor's mansion. Destiny came over and consoled me, in the way that only a woman can console a man.

  I wasn't crying for Chief Donovan. I figured any man that could spawn and raise a rapist son wasn't worth much. I was crying for myself. I had killed a man. I hadn't intended to, either. I had only been shooting in the general direction of the police cars, trying to ensure our escape. I could see my dad, in my mind's eye, shaking his head sadly.

  *

  That take was just over 4 million newdollars, the most we took for a long time to come. In fact, it was the most we could possibly take, unless we started taking bigger bills, or carrying more bags, or taking someone else into our confidence. Later in my criminal career, I had some other career criminals tell me that two people is one too many. I've had others say that a crew of four would have been better for some of our jobs: more guns and more arms. I think two is the perfect number; one alone leaves no one to watch your back. Extra people means extra leaks and more things that can go wrong. It also means smaller shares of the money.

  Six.

  Before I move on with these memoirs and write about my life after Persiphone, there are just a few more things I'd like to say about my life there. One thing is that Persiphone is perhaps the most beautiful planet I have ever been on, all things considered. The climate, weather, gravity, soil fertility, education, geography - everything. I've never been on another planet quite like it. I guess everyone feels that way about "Home," but think about it. Out of the few hundred planets occupied by humanity, only a small percentage is as close to "Terran normal" as is Persiphone.

  During the next eighteen months, Persiphone's population continued to grow rapidly, passing the 600,000 mark before I left her. Almost due south of Batesville, in the equatorial region of the continent Vertiga, a new farming community/city sprang into being, called Ekwado ("EK-wah-doh"). Also near the equator, on the main continent of Alana, Kleenair began to grow into a powerful resort city in its own right. The previously unoccupied continent Lichten sprouted its own city - the center of a mining community - called Kracota ("kruh-SOH-tuh," apparently from the word "beauty" in some obscure Terran language.) Basplace brought in the most people during that time, as the Cyr Corporation continued to move its headquarters there. Michael Cyr was now said to be living on a million-acre ranch, in a 49,000 square-foot home, most of which was underground and nuke proof.

  Harry continued on as Governor of the planet, seeing me only occasionally, except when he took me with him on a winter vacation to Kleenair. He had gained quite a bit of experience in the running of planetary governments, during his years with the Colonial Commission, and he applied it wisely to Persiphone. Whenever the Planetary Legislature put up a fight on something, Harry just suggested putting the matter to a planetary vote. Almost every time, the population voted in Harry's favor. After a while, the legislature grew more cooperative. He handily proved to the people that they were the bosses, not some stuffed shirt fat cats in the capitol.

  During the winter break of 2486, Destiny drove the getaway car while I single-handedly robbed the only bank in Midway, the only town on the continent of Troller. We got about 100,000 newdollars, not even a pimple on the body of loot we already had. That was our seventh bank robbery and our last until we left Persiphone.

  *

  During my senior year of high school, I worked at Mike's about four days a week, and worked out with Lt. Colonel Jason Quivers (retired) two days a week. Sometimes we met at the gym and sometimes we met in the wild country outside of town. He told me to start calling him Jason, since I was almost grown. That only confirmed my previous suspicion, that he was only giving me the personal training because of a subconscious desire for a friend. And that was fine with me. The only other friend I had was Norman Dester, and the two of us had grown apart since I had moved into town.

  Jason and I continued sparring and practicing judo moves, just for warm up, then he began to teach me more efficient attacking moves, and ways to turn defense into offense. I picked up a lot of Aikido, karate, and other ancient fighting arts. He showed me how to fight with the quarterstaff, with a sword, with a knife and how to fight barehanded against so
meone who carried such weapons.

  I learned that the unarmed man always has the advantage - unless you're talking about long-range snipers, or nuclear war. But even if my opponent had a pistol, I could win; Jason proved it to me. I fired tranquilizer darts at him, starting at twenty yards, and I never hit him; he got my gun away from me and had me pinned on the ground before I could fire the last dart.

  Then he set up targets and showed me how to fire a pistol the right way. He taught me how to make a real silencer for a pistol, how to make a makeshift silencer for any gun, how to shoot a rifle with a scope from long range, how to handle an automatic weapon, and how to correctly operate a hand blaster. Automatic weapons and hand blasters are illegal for civilians on most planets, but he had them, nonetheless. Jason was a true believer in the rights of individual citizens, having been raised on Yurple.

  Many times, if she could work around her job and school, Destiny came out into the field with us and merely watched approvingly, like a mother watches her son pull out a chair for a lady. She saw more possible future applications for my new skills than I could possibly imagine.