Hammers and Nails

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  Roland shrugged, not being one to judge a man for taking joy in his work, and returned to the fray himself. Rodney’s goons had all found cover of some kind and were working as best they knew how to hold the invaders at the doorway. The enemies were experienced and had succeeded in stacking up and pushing five or six men through before the firefight broke out in earnest. Thus, the battle had devolved into a desperate holding action at the choke point of the entryway. The raiders were working hard to push men through the gap, and the gangsters were pouring unrestrained hell into the door to discourage them.

  Roland realized early that the small arms used by The Dwarf’s crew were simply not going to be effective against that body armor. Lucky hits and shots to the face were still very much an issue, but the mercenaries had come prepared for dealing with street muscle, and it showed.

  “Pull your men back, Rodney! I’m taking the door!” Roland shouted over the din as he surged forward, “Shoot anything that gets past me!”

  The volume of fire splashing over Roland increased exponentially as the mercenaries realized who and what was coming at them. There was enough incoming ordnance that Roland had to push through the rain of projectiles as if walking against the current of a swiftly flowing river. Roland lowered his head and covered his face with a forearm as he charged. As hardened as he was, the old soldier was well-versed in what the chaos of battle could do to even a good plan. A lucky hit to his eye would make for a sad end to his heroics, and so he ran forward blindly. He hit the doorway in four strides, whereupon he set to smashing anything wearing gray. Some of his enemies were augmented or bionic. He could feel the heavy impacts of blows delivered by metal limbs as sharp directed shocks he could detect all the way in his bones. He noticed his own strikes missed as often as hit, which indicated some of these attackers had enhanced speed and reflexes as well. Roland could respect a quality opponent, but still they died with crushed torsos, splattered skulls, and broken necks.

  The mercenaries held the door with game professionalism for six seconds. Then, like everything else Roland set his fists and rage against, they broke. The survivors fell back from the entrance with far less military comportment than they had shown in taking it. It was a stumbling, ignominious, scurrying retreat. It was a collapse devoid of precision or tactics. The mass of fighting men spilled into the alleyway like lemmings, fleeing the roaring onyx giant in pursuit. One man had the presence of mind to toss a grenade behind himself as he fled, and Roland had to pause and cover it with his body to spare any bystanders from shrapnel.

  The antipersonnel munition stung horribly when it went off, but lacked the kinetic punch necessary to do more than irritate the big man. It bought the fleeing mercs enough time to get to their cars though. Roland poured all his speed into pursuing and was on them as the last car lifted off. Massive legs bent and flexed, hurling half-a-ton of furious cyborg into the air. Roland struck the side of the last car like a wrecking ball and he latched onto the ascending vehicle with fingers akin to docking clamps. The car leaned and tipped as an extra thousand pounds dragged one side back toward the retreating earth. With the sudden change in angle, Roland’s grip slipped, and he nearly fell. In desperation, his arms wrapped around a stabilizer nacelle, which arrested his fall and further twisted the struggling vehicle. Driven by a fit of inspired malevolence, the cyborg further degraded the car’s flight capabilities by sticking his arm into the spinning blades of a nearby steering turbine.

  There was a horrible shrieking sound as a thousand delicate engine parts collided at high speed with an obsidian forearm as thick as a tree trunk. The cyborg hissed through gritted teeth as his fist smashed through the metal fan blades, but they were made to be lightweight, and thus were not designed to tolerate the spontaneous introduction of armored appendages. With a snarl, Roland heaved his arm outward and felt, rather than heard, the popping of brackets as he tore much of the stabilizer free of its moorings. When he was certain the car was no longer airworthy, he released his hold on the side of the wounded machine.

  It was almost fifty feet to the pavement and the giant landed with a crash that did far more damage to the street than it did to the man. From the crater his body had made, Roland watched like a satisfied hunter as the wobbling aerocar listed and spun in lazy circles above the street. The other two cars had abandoned their damaged companion, and Roland left them to their escape. He had what he needed. After a brief and precipitous attempt to gain altitude, the driver obviously realized the machine was going to go down. The car then twisted lower and lower as the driver attempted to wrestle the crippled thing into as gentle a landing as possible.

  Just as it became clear the driver was going to put the car down without crashing, the main gravity engine disappeared into a brilliant ball of expanding fire. A blue-white explosion engulfed the back half of the descending vehicle and erupted outward with a solid wall of pure heat. This was followed by a shock wave that knocked windows out of the nearby buildings and set off alarms over a three-block radius. What remained of the car plummeted the last fifty feet to the asphalt as a screeching rain of burning metal and flaming debris. The wreckage collected right in the center of the busiest street in Dockside, a blazing pyre burning with thick black smoke that stung the eyes and nostrils.

  Roland spun at the sound of gruff laughter and saw Rodney the Dwarf looking at the wreckage with a smug grin, his raised rail-driver, still wafting gray smoke in lazy tendrils.

  “God damn it, Rodney!” Roland threw up his hands, “I was trying to take some of them alive, you dipshit!”

  “And I was trying to fookin’ kill the whole lot of ‘em, boyo.” His eyes went dark, and his accent thinned to shadow of its former self, “They came to my house, Roland. If I don’t send the right message, I’ll have problems with the others. You know this.”

  Roland had to agree with the assessment. Respect was king in Dockside, and someone had just seriously disrespected Rodney McDowell. But the disrespect had been immediately answered by the big gun attached to the little man, and in spectacular fashion. All anyone on the street knew was that somebody tried a hit on The Dwarf, so The Dwarf blew them out of the sky right above The Drag for it. The story would be all over Dockside in thirty minutes, and Rodney was going to look stronger than ever as a result. Anything less than that would have had people wondering if The Dwarf was as big a deal as his reputation proclaimed. There would be no questions about that now.

  “Let’s go inside,” was Roland’s grumbled answer.

  Inside, they found Rodney’s crew already cleaning up the mess. Lucia, watching from the hall, wasn’t sure if she was impressed or horrified at how practiced the whole group seemed to be with the process of cleaning up dead bodies. The men were sharing nervous small talk and already fabricating exaggerated tales of their own prowess in the battle. That Roland and The Dwarf had done the lion’s share of the heavy lifting remained only a tertiary concern to the weaving of those stories. By the time they were done congratulating each other, Lucia suspected the evening’s bar patrons were going to spend hours being regaled with the legendary exploits of The Dwarf’s crew as they bravely defeated twenty, thirty, or even forty heavily armed paramilitary contractors. Respectful lip service would be paid to Roland’s role, since no one would believe he had not handled himself ably. It amused the woman to hear them chatter since it humanized the faceless goons in a way that was odd for how comforting it was.

  If Roland picked up on any of this, or if he cared, it did not show. “Any survivors?” he asked, hope springing eternal.

  Barney scoffed and pointed to a man whose neck was broken so badly the head looked like it might fall off, “Like this guy?” He then pointed to another lifeless form. This one’s chest had been crushed so horribly that the only thing holding his organs in place was his armor, “Or maybe this guy? No! Wait! I bet this guy can still talk!” He pointed to third man, lying with arms akimbo and wearing a skull that had been collapsed inward so catastrophically his eyes had popped from th
eir sockets.

  Roland scowled, “I get it, Barney. I’m not nice. In my defense, they were trying to kill us.”

  “Just sayin,’ Roland. If you want survivors, don’t hit so hard.” Barney went back to picking up.

  Lucia chose that moment to emerge from her vantage point and enter the main bar with McGinty in tow. She took a look at Roland and rubbed her face with weary resignation before lamenting, “Oh, for crying out loud!”

  Roland’s face twisted in confusion for an instant, and then comprehension came, “Sorry about the suit, Lucia.” His nice suit was nothing but shredded rags above the waist. “Pants might be salvageable, though,” he offered. If Lucia’s facial expression was any indicator, this did not help. Then she saw the piles of corpses strewn about, resplendent in the red tincture of gory disarray. Lucia’s stomach lurched at the sight of it and a wave of terror ran through her body.

  Nanobots weren’t ready for that! She mused, Kind of wish they were, though!

  She didn’t want to surrender her humanity to the tiny machines that made her so formidable, but if they could keep her from tossing her lunch in front of The Dwarf, she might be inclined to let it happen.

  “Are we goin’ ta talk about what the fook just happened?” The Dwarf’s pudding-thick accent had returned, it seemed. “Yer seriously bad juju these days, Tank! I’m gonna need ta know why the fook yer bringin’ yer baddies to my shop, boyo.”

  “Look around, Rodney,” Roland barked back, “They weren’t here for me.”

  “Of course they were here for you, you great gobshite! They been hittin’ at ye for weeks now!”

  Lucia swallowed her gorge and forced a chuckle, “Rodney, when they last tried to kill Roland, they brought three railgun teams, land mines, and a heavy armature." She picked up a bead rifle from the floor and tossed it to the Dwarf. “Is this what you would bring to take on Roland?”

  The hairy little man examined both the rifle and the Fixer for a long moment. “I can’t argue wi’ yer logic, lady. But why in all the nine hells are these fookers suddenly up an’ after me, then?”

  Billy supplied this answer, “Combine’s gone, Rodney. That means the other territories are up for grabs. Dockside ain’t got a boss, but it has gangs. And let’s be honest, here. You are the only real threat to The Brokerage and Wade Manson out here.”

  “They’ll be after you too then, McGinty,” The Dwarf said, “Once they’ve taken over the other districts and chewed up Dockside.”

  “Exactly why we are all here, Rodney,” said the red head. “The only way to beat these guys is to out play them. The Brokerage is going to use Wade Manson to take over, and then they are going to run this town like one of their shell corporations. It’s all they know how to do. We gotta organize, and we gotta find a way to work together that sticks, or this shit is just going to keep happening.”

  “And our great big muscle-y hard case over yonder can’t just keep punching everyone who gets out of line anymore, eh?” The Dwarf snorted, “I guess it’s been a long time comin,’ boyo. But rest assured, whatever we come up with, it better do right by Ol’ Rodney, or ye can all go fook yerselves.”

  “It’s gonna do right by everybody, Rodney. That’s why it will work.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “You said your mercenaries could handle The Dwarf, Reynard,” Wade Manson leveled this statement in the form of an accusation. “Your boys got their asses kicked out there.”

  Reynard studied Manson’s swollen face and tried to count all the visibly bulging blood vessels. He stopped when he got to nine. That Wade Manson was irritated was obvious. Less obvious was Reynard’s own growing aggravation with the volatility of his partner. The silver-haired man consoled himself with the hope he would not have to tolerate it forever. Seated in the conference room and sipping on coffee, the two men painted a mundane picture of businessmen engaged in a morning meeting. One would be hard-pressed to assume, at a mere glance, that anything heavier than quarterly projections or new product lines were being discussed.

  “Perhaps you would like to relay your assessment to Mr. Paulsen yourself?” he responded with a raised eyebrow, unable to resist the urge to bait Manson just a little.

  “I ain’t afraid of that merc, Reynard. So don’t try to scare me with him.”

  Reynard smiled, but his thoughts were darker than his face implied. I know you’re not afraid, Wade. You are too stupid to be afraid. You would have to have an ounce of sense to understand how precarious your situation is, and that is about an ounce more sense than you have ever had.

  But he kept it all inside and instead took a more diplomatic tone.

  “Naturally, Wade. It’s not about scaring you, it’s about perspective. Plans have layers and contingencies. It was only bad luck that Tankowicz was present at the Hideaway when they went after McDowell. There will be another opportunity, and the plan will continue.”

  “But The Dwarf knows we’re after him now, and he has probably figured out that it’s me behind it.”

  You are not behind it Wade. Fox again kept his thoughts to himself. You are a pawn and a patsy, and if they hadn't figured out to blame you on their own we’d have arranged for it to happen, anyway.

  As before, he placated the sputtering mobster, “If you want to be in charge when the dust settles, Wade, you have to be seen making the moves. There are a lot of territories devoid of leadership at the moment. I don't have to explain to you what it takes to bring the local gangs to heel. This is why we chose you to be our front man after all.”

  “I get that, but it’d be nice if shit went smoothly once in a while,” Manson tried not to sound petulant, but failed. “What’s the plan for The Dwarf, then? He’s never been a Boss, but everybody knows his connections run deep as hell.”

  “Yes, McDowell is very much a wild card in all of this. Unlike your ‘Combine,’ Rodney has been far more clever and far more circumspect in how he has gone about amassing his power.” It was a subtle jab at Manson’s former associates, but it sailed past the mobster unnoticed.

  “Yeah, well, we always knew he was the meat of the Dockside rackets, but he never stepped up or stuck his neck out. Kept his shit small and tidy so nobody ever took him down.” Manson spoke as if this frustrated him. As if The Dwarf’s ability to work with subtlety and care in a volatile environment had robbed Wade of a chance to fight him. Reynard scowled at the stupidity of that attitude. But they had needed someone both ferocious enough to step out in front, and stupid enough to take the fall in a convincing manner. Wade had made that cut, and would serve his purpose. None of which made him easy or pleasant to deal with though.

  “Our best spies still aren’t sure exactly where all the Dwarf’s assets lie, but we have a high degree of confidence that they are not unlimited. He can be broken, and he will be. We just need to move in a prudent and measured manner, Wade.”

  “So, what? We hit him again? We gotta be real careful with running hits in Dockside, Reynard. Unless your ‘plans’ include tussling with Gateways or having the docks locked down so tight there’s no money to be made there, that is.”

  Wade probably thought he was being clever, pointing out what everybody already knew, and Reynard let him have that.

  “Yes, we took a chance on that once already, but I’m not sure another try is in order. Certainly not the same type, anyway.”

  Wade, now emboldened, pushed even harder, “Not to mention Sid. That bitch has a ton of information on our financial instruments, and a ton of cash in escrow, too.”

  A ton of your cash, you mean, Reynard thought, but thought better of speaking that aloud. Instead, he equivocated, “The damage Sid can do to the operation is merely financial, and not strategic. The plan will continue either way, even if the information she holds makes it cost a lot more than it needs to.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Wade barked, “It’s my money she’s holding and my investments she can expose!”

  Reynard realized that he must be tired because his inner m
onologue was trying very hard to escape his brain and get out through his mouth. It took all his mental discipline not to say what he was thinking: That’s how being a patsy works, you buffoon.

  But Reynard held his tongue, and told the irritated mobster what he needed to hear, “Trust me, Wade. When this is over, your wealth will be infinite. In a few weeks, you’ll be laughing about these losses from your penthouse atop Belham Tower.”

  “That’s what I keep hearing,” Wade mumbled back. He did not sound convinced, but he liked the sound of ‘infinite wealth,’ so he let it slide.

  “We will handle both Sid and Rodney shortly, Wade. Don’t get bent out of shape over it. In the meantime, we need to address your part in the fall of The Combine. The Widow made it out of the party, but we always knew that was likely. Now you need to step into the limelight as it were.” Reynard gave Wade a small smile. “It’s time, Wade, for you to do what you do best.”

  Manson smiled back. “Hell yeah, it is. It’s time for me to hit the streets and go to war!”

  “Your people are ready?”

  “Damn right. I’ll start with Malldown and pick up Richter’s boys easy enough. That should give me enough horsepower to go after Southie. Quinzy and the Uptown boroughs can sit tight while I sort that out. Limp-dick capos with fancy suits won’t have the stones to do shit but hunker down and fortify their own territories, anyway.”

  “You’ll steer clear of Dockside, I presume?”

  Wade sneered at his partner, “What the fuck do you think? Of course I will. I ain’t ready to fight Gateways and neither is the Brokerage. You got a plan for Dockside already, and I’m happy to leave you to it. But you better get that goddamn fixer and The Dwarf handled, or this is all going to be for nothing.”

  Reynard nodded. There was nothing untrue in that statement despite the rude delivery. “By the time you have consolidated the other territories, Dockside will be ready to go our way without a shot fired, Wade. But you must make sure that the Widow goes down, and that it is you who makes that happen. Nobody will fall in line if it looks like The Brokerage or some off-world concern does it. It needs to be you.”