Hammers and Nails

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  There will be open war, Lucia realized. The one thing we have been trying so damn hard to prevent is going to happen. Once Wade and The Widow finish killing each other, The Brokerage will simply have to set up and take over. There will be no one left to stop them.

  She thought of bringing in the Police because this is the sort of thing they existed to handle. But there was only so much they could accomplish against forces like this. New Boston PD would investigate, but even that untarnished institution would be stymied by interference originating as high as the Planetary Council itself. They would try, but without a catalyst to keep the pressure on them, in time they would have no choice but to drop it and move on. If there was any more fighting in the storied streets of Summertown or the jeweled thoroughfares of the Old Fen Way, then it was a sure bet the New Boston Police would maintain spirited investigations. Which is precisely why this eventuality remained improbable.

  The real fighting, with all the blood and fear and death, would take place in Dockside or big Woo or maybe even Quinzy. Places where the poor people lived, and the constabulary was more pliable. It was unlikely Uptown would ever see a shot fired after the Belham raid. Thus, the decapitation of most every major crime family in a one-hundred-mile radius was swept under the rug like yesterday’s bread crumbs.

  Lucia found it all incredibly frustrating. She had been raised in Uptown and had never known about anything like The Combine or The Brokerage. She had grown up thinking Big Woo was just an industrial slum, and Dockside was just a rough place where things got unloaded from ships. With no more childish illusions to protect her from the horrible reality of how the great economic machine of New Boston worked, she gamely tried to accept the unvarnished corruption of it all with as much stoic detachment as she could muster. Sitting in Roland’s apartment the next morning, sipping coffee and watching the machines attached to the man she loved as they sped his eventual recovery, she remembered something her father had said about the great success of their city.

  “The taller the palace, the deeper the shadow it casts.”

  Roland had lived in the shadows for thirty years now. He liked them. They were dark and they were cold, but unlike the ever-shifting lights of Uptown, the shadows were reliable. This was an uncomfortable truth Lucia only understood after stepping into them. The bright lights and clean antiseptic surfaces of Uptown were a facade, an illusion. In the darkness lived objective reality. There was honesty in darkness; she understood that now. She missed her illusions, but hearing Roland cry out in the dark of night as his own mind tortured him with dead innocents made her hate them all the same. Her father had asked her to choose, but there was no choice to be made. She could not choose the path of a normal life and the fiction of Uptown anymore. Roland had been strong enough to choose hard granite truth over alabaster lies. She could do no less. Not when a good man had paid so dearly for the forgery that was the life she had lived. Roland had purchased this truth with his freedom, his sanity, and most of his earthly flesh. Apparently, her price was to live with the ever-present danger of becoming addicted to violence and danger; and the risk of a premature and horrible end because of it. Another old story came to her, and she considered another price paid for wisdom.

  Even Odin had to sacrifice his eye and hang himself from a tree, she thought. She gave her head a defeated shake and prayed the cost of her own enlightenment would not be so steep as an old soldier’s, or even a pagan all-father’s. But truth had made Roland strong, and it was making her strong, too.

  To go back was to be weak, and she could not look at the damage twisting that cyborg body and not want to be strong. Roland deserved to have someone strong to protect him the way he protected everyone else. He may never admit it, but it was just another one of those truths that could only be seen when you looked into the darkness, instead of turning away from it.

  She looked hard at the giant cyborg, sleeping the deep sleep of a machine on shutdown, and wondered if he dreamed when the chassis was deactivated. Did he find escape from the souls of his dead when the machines running his body kept him unconscious? Or was it a tortuous, unending loop of past horrors played over and over again while millions of tiny robots put his body back together?

  Lucia shuddered at the thought. She wondered, how many times has he had to relive his descent into madness while his broken body keeps him a captive witness to his sins? Only to wake up primed and ready for another round of battles?

  When his body was fixed, he would go to war again until it broke against yet another wave of enemies. Then he would sleep, and wake again to repeat the cycle.

  Will there always be more enemies? Will the waves never cease?

  She prayed there was more to it than that. It felt to her like there must be. She had seen the man inside the armor, and she wanted very badly for Roland to live as a man, not as a weapon. But she understood with absolute certainty that the only way to accomplish this would be to run out of enemies. Roland would fight until death or victory. It was just his nature to do so. To save him, she had to convince all the rich criminal organizations to stop using his home and people as a proxy for their own conflicts. They needed to send the message to everyone that Dockside was still off limits. Then maybe, Roland could rest.

  Let’s just see what I can come up with, then. Lucia decided with a cleansing swig of her morning coffee.

  Lucia pondered what they had learned and how to leverage it to suit their needs. The original plan of having Manny fake a hit on Sid’s counting house was off the table at this point.

  We already know Wade Manson and The Brokerage are behind it all, so we don’t have to do the sneaky stuff anymore. Trying to out-sneak something like The Brokerage is a losing proposition, anyway. They will be pure vapor, and there is no one to go after, really. It’s not like The Combine, with actual leaders to target.

  The next step was obvious.

  What we need to do is find and hit Wade Manson. Without him, The Brokerage is just a bunch of crooked lawyers and accountants. Then we need to insulate Dockside from all these power plays. The fights will never end unless we make this place somehow independent of all that crap. Roland did it with his fists for decades, but it’s all bigger than him, now.

  When Roland needed deep intel on the inner workings of the other families, he often went to see The Dwarf. Lucia hated The Dwarf, and theirs was a complicated relationship. The Dwarf was a greedy, dishonest, and opportunistic man. He was the closest thing Dockside had to an actual crime boss, but he took great pains to keep his operation small enough and spread thin enough to avoid attracting the kind of attention that might run him afoul of Gateways, or The Combine, or even Roland. Roland had often confided to her his suspicions that Rodney “The Dwarf” McDowell had insinuated his interests into enough different marketplaces the hairy little man may have rivaled a Board member in actual influence, if not raw wealth. The Dwarf thrived in Dockside’s no-man's-land because he was unlike other criminals. He did not have lofty dreams of empires or power. He simply wanted to be fat, rich, and lazy in ways that kept him from getting killed.

  Lucia decided to go pay him a visit. With the right kind of nudge, Rodney could become a useful ally. The thought of it turned her stomach more than a little. He was a disgusting, lecherous, offensive little man, but she also knew his weaknesses. His help would be necessary for the bold plan her hyperactive brain was assembling while her giant companion slept in blissful ignorance. She picked up her comm and keyed in a code.

  “Good morning, Sunshine!” Billy McGinty sounded rather chipper this morning.

  “You sure?” she let the question hang. “Roland’s hooked up to the chair, you know.” 'The chair’ was code for 'Roland is banged up as all hell and we need to be very careful while he recovers.’ Most Docksiders knew Roland was as tough as a coffin nail, but the exact how's and why's of it were left deliberately mysterious.

  “Whoa! What?” Billy’s tone changed from casual good cheer to real concern, “I heard about the brawl at Bel
ham, but how the fuck is he in the chair?”

  “Whoever ran that hit knew his specs. They brought some kind of railgun and a heavy armature.”

  There was a long silence, then careful words, “Girl, I don’t even know his specs, and I have spies everywhere! Is he going to be all right?”

  “Yes. It takes more than a couple of jerks with big guns to knock him down for very long. No structural damage, just surface armor and some muscle fiber. Dad says if we let him sleep he’ll be back in action in another three days.”

  “That’s a relief, because you and I both know shit is about to come down like a goddamn monsoon out here. I figured this might be a great opportunity for me and mine, but if we are dealing with the kind of folks who can dig Roland’s specs out from under Council security? Maybe I need to reassess...”

  “It’s more than that, Billy,” for all his experience as a gang leader, Billy sometimes forgot how things worked in other places. “I know you hate The Combine, but they served a purpose. People in Uptown and the Sprawl need the stability they brought. The people here won’t thrive in the chaos of a gang war the way folks in Big Woo have.”

  “Okay, then. What’s the plan, Lucy? You’re the one with the super-brain.” The gangster sounded completely confident in Lucia’s ability to figure it all out, which sent electric shocks of panic down her spine. She had changed a lot from the woman who worked in marketing only eight months prior.

  “I think it’s time to export your system of guilds and marketplaces to Dockside. These skirmishes will not stop as long as Dockside is unaffiliated. It’s just too tempting a target.”

  “So, we are going to make it less tempting by bringing all the rackets together? I mean. It worked in The Woo, but Dockside is a different world. In my case, we all hated Marko so damn much it was easy to bring everyone in. What do we got like that in Dockside?”

  “The Brokerage is behind all of this, and they are just a giant oligarchy masquerading as a bureaucracy, right?”

  “Sure. But so was The Combine,” Billy pointed out.

  “But the Combine was never actually in charge here,” she fired back, “They had influence, sure, but they did not give orders. The Brokerage has no muscle, but they are using Wade Manson for that part.”

  “And Wade is a ‘Boss...’” Billy caught her drift.

  “Dead on,” Lucia congratulated him. “Most Docksiders can’t even pronounce ‘oligarchy,’ but they all hate being told what to do. This is not an evolution, Billy. It’s just a power shift. The Brokerage brings nothing to the table as far as actual commerce is concerned. They’re just barging in to take their cut. The Combine survived by avoiding that, and because they had a lot of guns. The Brokerage is going to try it with lawyers and politicians and Wade fucking Manson.”

  “But it’s still just a racket, I get ya,” Billy was on board, now. “Everybody wants to control the docks, but nobody’s allowed to fight over them without bringing Gateways down. You want to end the fighting by giving control of the docks to the Docksiders, who won’t play ball with anyone, anyway.”

  “You don’t beat lawyers and politicians with guns, Billy. You beat them with organization.” Lucia pressed on, “This can work. Think about it! Dockside’s major rackets are all centered around the transfer of illicit goods from around the galaxy. We’ve got the guys moving guns and other contraband through the docks—”

  “Smugglers,” Billy supplied the answer.

  “—and the entertaining of the thousands of the itinerant spacers and truckers that move those goods.”

  “Hookers, booze, drugs, and cage fights,” Billy added.

  “Right. All those rackets are hands-on. They are labor-intensive.”

  “I get you now!” now Billy sounded excited, “In the Woo, we had all the drug labs and the whole slave trade, which don’t actually require a lot of people. We were cheap and easy to oversee compared to stuff like smuggling or prostitution. It’s why The Combine had so little trouble with us for so long. But you are totally right about Dockside. The Dockside market is full of ground-pounders. Low and mid-level street hustlers, territorial enforcers, expediters, all sorts of shit like that. Hell, Dockside has more hired muscle per square block than anywhere else in the Megalopolis.” Billy paused, “Shit! Come to think of it, Dockside also has the best street-level muscle in the whole goddamn Megalopolis, too!”

  “Do you know what that says to me, Billy-boy?” Lucia dangled the thread of her idea in front of his face.

  Billy grasped it after a moment, “That’s a goddamned army, Lucy. A. God. Damned. Army.”

  “All it needs is someone to show them how to do it. Someone who has done it before.”

  “We gonna do this like Big Woo, then?” Even without knowing the whole thing, McGinty was already agreeing with the plan. When Lucia’s brain was firing on all cylinders, the wise man held on and went for the ride.

  “Just like Big Woo,” she said.

  “Just like Big Woo,” he agreed.

  “I need my general,” he added, “You know all the hoods look up to him. They’ll follow him. But he ain’t gonna like this.”

  “Give me three days. He’ll be ready by then. Leading soldiers is in his blood. As long as we don’t ask him to run a crime syndicate, he’ll go along.”

  “I still think he’s going to hate the idea.”

  “At first, but I can be very convincing,” she practically purred the words. “We’ll need the Dwarf, too. Roland has always suspected he is sitting on a giant stockpile of cash and guns. He's even more convinced of it since your little tea party in The Woo. Goddamn, do I hate the little rat, but I can play nice if I have to.”

  Billy chuckled, “I know how to handle him if it comes to it. We speak the same language.”

  “Make sure he understands that he’ll be speaking it with no teeth if doesn’t watch his step, Billy.” Twice before, Lucia’s boot had reminded Rodney to keep a respectful tone. It was a bit of a cliché between them at this point.

  “Jesus, you are terrifying.” It was the highest compliment Billy knew how to give. Lucia accepted it with regal grace.

  “Don’t sweet-talk me, you two-bit hustler. Just get started. I suggest talking to Madame Madeleine, first.”

  Billy groaned, “This is going to be fun. She is going to want to run the whole shop.” The infamous Dockside Madame had organized all the prostitution in Dockside under her umbrella twenty-five years prior and then added the Big Woo brothels during Billy’s coup six months ago. The old mama-san had held onto and consolidated every bit of that power ever since. She was one of the most feared and respected people in all of New Boston for one simple reason. Sex sells, and in New Boston, Madame Madeleine set the prices for it.

  “Take it off the table right away. Tell her we do this my way—” Lucia felt strange saying the words. She was dictating terms to criminals here, and she was already referring to it as ‘my way.’ Life was very strange sometimes, “—or she can take her objections up with Roland.”

  “Oh man,” McGinty laughed into his comm, “This is going to be wicked fucking awesome!”

  “If we survive it,” Lucia added.

  “Meh,” the redhead quipped, “ain’t that always how it goes?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Roland did not, in fact, love the plan. The concept he did not object to, but the execution, he felt, was flawed in several ways. This was not due to any particular oversight on Lucia’s part, but rather the placement of the pieces.

  “There is no goddamn way that letting Rodney anywhere near this is going to end well. He is a snake and a thief, and he will fuck us over as soon as he thinks he can do it safely.” This was the first of Roland’s objections, delivered with vehemence once he had been awoken and briefed. Lucia had brought him some breakfast while his systems all came back on line and was sitting next to the chair watching him eat.

  Lucia treated his objections with a deft parry. “Is he smarter than me? More ruthless than Billy? Tougher t
han you?” She answered her own questions before the big man could grunt a response. “No, he is not. He is not any of those things, and thus we will keep him where he needs to be whether he likes it or not. You have managed to keep him in check all by yourself for thirty years now. The three of us can handle him, even if we let him have more rope than he usually gets.”

  “Every time Rodney pokes his head out of the Hideaway, I punch it back down. It works because it’s what he understands,” Roland would not give up. Lucia loved him for that. He was nothing if not consistent.

  “No, Roland. That’s what you understand.” Roland stifled a wince. She was dead right on that point and it stung him to hear it from her. She patted him on the arm, “Rodney can be managed lots of ways, mostly relating to his greed. Your way works because he doesn’t want to die. My way will work because he wants to be rich.”

  Roland responded with a low inarticulate growl. If he had a witty riposte for this moment, he would have used it. But he did not, so he conceded defeat. “Fine, then. But Billy will have to manage him. Billy, at least, Rodney will listen to. They are very different animals, but they’ve lived in similar jungles. Rodney will take direction better from Billy than he will either of us.”

  “It’s cute you thought we hadn’t worked that out already,” her eyes sparkled with good humor. “Besides, you and I have beaten him up too many times for any real hope of collaboration. It has to be Billy’s game, because you’re The Fixer. We get to stay neutral this way.”

  “Good. I won’t run a gang.”

  “Of course not, Roland.” She pitched the next part with more confidence, knowing how it would tug at him, “But will you lead soldiers?”