“You really are growing as a person,” she replied with a smile.
“I’m trying.”
McGinty picked this moment to interject, “I hate to be that guy, but ah... are we forgetting the elephant in the room?”
Three heads turned to look at the red-headed gangster.
“You know, a certain nine-thousand-pound elephant?”
Manny smirked, “Oh yeah. I think I’ve got that covered.”
“Really?” Billy did not look like he believed that. “We have a top-secret cyborg super-soldier here, who we all admit is probably outclassed—”
“Out-gunned, maybe,” Roland could not let that stand. “Never outclassed.”
“Whatever,” Billy dismissed the comment, “Roland the mighty warrior here is pretty well out-gunned, but Manny the normal guy has a heavy cyborg handled?”
Manny smirked, “I’m young, but I’m sneaky, Billy.”
“Oh, I gotta hear this,” Billy said with an eye roll.
“It’s an AutoCat 8900 series.” Manny said it as if that explained it all. When no one responded he explained. “It has a two-stage cooling system. The first stage is half the size of the second, so there are three levels of cooling available. When it’s idling or doing light stuff, the small stage cools it. At medium workloads, it just switches over to the big coil.”
Roland and Billy nodded so Manny would know he had not lost them.
“When it runs flat out, both coils run for full cooling.”
“Manny,” Roland sighed, “Just tell us what you did.”
“I wrapped FireWire around the second stage’s cooling outflow and soldered the connectors to the cooling control circuit.”
Roland thought about that for a moment, and then he started a rumbling, laugh that shook his chest. Billy looked confused.
Roland explained, “FireWire is used to add heat to pipes or systems on cold planets in emergencies. You just wrap it around whatever you want to keep warm. It’s got a coating that reacts to small amounts of electricity. When you run a few amps of current through it the stuff heats up. A lot.”
“And?” Billy prompted.
Manny looked at Billy like he was an idiot. “When that big second stage kicks in, the firewire will go off and add like, a shit-ton of heat to the system. The hotter the thing runs, the hotter it will get. Even better, I didn’t hack anything or tie anything into the internal systems. It’s just one soldered connection and six feet of half-inch wire around a big hose. The diagnostics won’t see it, and since the first stage works fine, they won’t have a clue anything is wrong until they start to run it hard.”
“You slippery motherfucker,” Billy smiled his approval, “The big freak is going to overheat fighting Roland. That is some seriously sneaky shit.”
“How long before heat gets critical?” Roland needed specifics.
“I used the good stuff, so we are looking at like, fifteen minutes to get up to temp, and then the firewire should outrun the cooling system for a good hour or so before it starts to fade. The cooling was unmodified, so call it ten minutes at full rip before shit starts breaking. If the pilot’s good, he’ll try to control output. Figure that can buy him another five or six minutes.”
“That’s kind of tight. I’ll need to push him hard, then.”
Lucia, having been listening intently and letting her brain run scenarios, offered the best solution. “Let everyone else soften him up and get him running hot. Just when he realizes something is wrong, then you can jump in and push him even harder.”
Roland accepted the tactical advantages of doing it her way, but his personality resisted any plan that did not have him leading from the front. He was beginning his protest when Billy interrupted him with the sort of simple and blunt communication that always worked best with the glowering old soldier.
“She’s right. Shut up and do it her way, you macho idiot.”
“Dammit,” was Roland’s witty riposte. He looked to Manny, who shrugged and pointed to Lucia.
“She scares me more than you do. Sorry.”
“Dammit,” he repeated.
Lucia, gracious in victory, assumed control of the strategy session, “We’ll have The Dwarf start the fight. That should confuse them right off the bat. They are expecting you, Roland. Not Rodney and a bunch of Dockside muscle. They’ll still think they’ve got us though. Rodney will engage Manson with a small crew, and when the mercs pounce, we will spring the reserves on them. That should draw out the armature. When the mech is fully engaged, we can pull Rodney back and let Roland have his fun.”
“All while Mindy hunts down Paulie and cuts the head off that snake,” Roland added.
“Mindy will have gone in early,” Lucia agreed. “When she sees her chance, she’ll take Paulie down. Meanwhile, Manny and I will get into that command center and deal with Fox.”
“Destroy those files,” Roland grunted. “Destroy them and burn that place to the ground.”
“Don’t worry,” Manny said. “I know how to handle those files.”
Then there’s just one more thing,” Roland stated flatly, “I need to go talk to Tommy Guns about that armature.”
Billy’s eyebrows rose at that, “Tommy can whip you up any little toy you want, but are you really going to use heavy weapons inside a hangar?” Billy’s armorer was skilled and innovative, but an advanced drug and gambling addiction kept him from working for a legit contractor. The question was not whether or not a weapon existed that could take down a heavy armature. That happened all the time. The question was whether or not using such a weapon would kill everyone inside that building in the process. Billy made the point, “Anything that can knock that big fucker down is going to mess up the place real bad.”
Roland smirked, “It’s just a big machine, Billy. If you want to take it apart, all you need is to bring some tools.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Midnight at the Mass-Freight shipyards was a quiet time. With the galactic economy growing exponentially, the market for gate-capable freighters was brisk and competitive, but not so much that three fully manned shifts would need to run. The main auto-factory floor was churning out parts and sections all the time, but actual human hands would not have any work to do until the day’s parts orders were completed by the massive unmanned assembly lines. Housed in the nearly one-million square foot facility, endless rows of AI-driven milling machines, presses, and extrusion printers twisted and reshaped any number of exotic materials into the basic components of space ships. While the main facility clanged and buzzed with the thousand tinny sounds of bustling machinery, the bulk of the sprawling campus of warehouses, offices, and assorted support buildings remained dark and quiet. Three dozen dead rectangles, all silent in peaceful repose while they awaited the 6AM reveille of two thousand employees.
On the outskirts of the campus stood a large production hangar. Wide and ugly and tall, the structure was nearly windowless and equipped with a retractable roof. Despite the intimidating size of the building, no ships were fated to be built in this hangar. A gate ship was far too enormous a thing to ever be assembled dirtside, but large pieces or whole sections would be cobbled together at this facility. When ready, crew compartments or reactor sections or whatever else was on the day’s work order would get rigged to bulbous lift pods and the roof would be opened. Tug shuttles would attach themselves to the lift pods, and thus large pieces of freighter could then be hoisted into orbit for final assembly into what was usually a mile-long interstellar gate ship. Tonight, there was no sign of any such lofty activity under the canopied roof of the assembly hangar. This was entirely attributable to the fact that Wade Manson and his partner had arranged for this building to be empty, devoid of both material and people, for his usual supply drop. Wade hated doing these, but the weapons and hard creds were too valuable to not show his face at pick-up time. The boys could get... opportunistic... without proper supervision, and Wade knew the best way to avoid problems was to remove the temptation. Takin
g the occasional outing with his crew also ensured that the troops saw his face and saw him in action. It had been a very long time since Wade had slugged things out at the street level, but he had a reputation to maintain. Taking command of milk runs like this helped with that, he figured.
Wade’s first clue that tonight was going to go poorly came as soon as the truck backed up to the loading dock. His code failed to open the bay door, and the accompanying frustration birthed a lengthy string of profanity. This may have been the worst of his complaints for the evening if things had not continued to deteriorate sharply from there.
“The motor’s busted, boss,” one of his men stated. “It’s unlocked, but it ain’t opening.”
“We’ll just go and open it manually, then.” Wade tried to sound calm. Things were off to a rocky start, but hand-cranking a door open from the inside was not a catastrophe.
Wade had to unlock the side door for his crew. He did not trust any of his men with the codes, not when there was a million untraceable hard creds and two tons of unregistered weapons and ammo involved. It also cemented his position as the authority. Street muscle were not sophisticated thinkers, and they needed these subtle clues about hierarchy from time to time.
The door panel lit up green and a sharp ‘click!’ indicated that the door was now unlatched. Wade pushed through and stepped into a cavernous assembly area. Four of his men followed while two waited outside with the truck. It was a tiny group to be dealing with so important a cargo, but Wade had learned that secrecy was a far better way to protect a valuable shipment than manpower would ever be. Cruising up to a shipyard with five trucks and forty guys would have been very hard to explain to anyone curious enough to inquire about it. On the other hand, a single truck cruising around the shipyards was the sort of thing people ignored every day.
Wade found the lights and keyed them up so he could get a look at the door situation. To his irritation, only about a quarter of the lights came on. It looked to Wade like only the center strip of light fixtures was working, and the outer rows remained dark and unresponsive despite multiple attempts to get them to start. He bashed the switch over and over, as if the problem was that four hundred light fixtures were simply not noticing they had been switched on, and forceful repetition would somehow alert them to the oversight. He gave up after far too many tries and sighed.
He wondered to himself, First the damn door and now the lights? Who’s taking care of this shithole? He had bought off the security guards, as a matter of policy; now he made a mental note to bribe the maintenance staff as well next time. Then he shrugged and put it out of his mind.
Having accepted that the lights were on the fritz, he looked around. The hangar remained dim in a way that birthed no small quantity of distress. Deep shadows filled corners and large pools of impenetrable blackness blanketed the equipment and machinery stored and stacked along the perimeter of the open hangar space. There was enough light to fix the door and to get his supplies loaded, at least. This would have to do because Wade did not have the time or energy to worry about much else.
His shipment was exactly where it was supposed to be. Which went a long way toward calming his nerves. Eight man-sized shipping containers sat in a neat stack on the loading dock, separated from his truck by a mere ten feet and one very well-constructed steel door. This was as it should have been, and he sighed in relief at the sight of it.
Then he heard something very strange, and his eyes moved upward where they saw something that was not as it should have been. A voice, gruff but surprisingly in tune, was singing.
“Six long months I spent in Quinzy,
Six long months doing nothing at all!
Six long months I spent in Quinzy,
Learning to dance for Flanagan’s ball...”
Wade hurled another string of profanity at this new frustration, and his relief evaporated like liquid nitrogen in a hothouse. There was a small bearded man sitting atop his precious shipment. A short, squat, barrel of a man wearing an orange leisure suit and sporting a misshapen mechanical right arm.
“Evenin’ Wade,” said The Dwarf. “Welcome to the ball.”
Wade’s profane diatribe was long and meandering. It started with his surprise at seeing Rodney McDowell in this location and at this time, and moved beyond that to speculate as to Rodney’s motives, parentage, and sexual proclivities. Then it trailed off to stunned silence right around the time he had gotten to The Dwarf’s probable positions on bestiality versus necrophilia.
When his avalanche of invective had spent its energy, Rodney clapped slowly.
“JAY-zus fookin’ Christ almighty, Wade, me boy! A lad might start to wonder if yer happy to see him or not with a greetin’ like that! Do ye kiss my mother with that mouth?”
“What the fuck are you doing here, Rodney?” Wade scanned with his eyes the open space of the assembly area. He was sure the loathsome little runt wasn’t alone, but he couldn’t see any of the little man’s crew nearby. Wade was smart enough to assume the lighting issue was not an accident, and the mobster quickly surmised that most of the shadows surrounding him and his men probably hid an assortment of Dockside muscle. His own boys, competent as they were, had already drawn down on the hirsute gangster and were ready to open fire at the first sign from their boss.
“I think that’d be kind of obvious, Wade,” the Dwarf chuckled. “I’m havin’ a ball, and robbin’ the shite out a’ ye.”
“No, you’re not,” Wade was too cagey to buy the story. Something wasn’t right. “If you were robbing me, you wouldn’t have waited for me to show up. You’d have just taken my shit and cleared out.” He paused, thinking for a minute, “If this was a hit, you’d have ambushed me already, for that matter. So it ain’t a robbery, and it ain’t a hit. So, I ask again, Rodney. What the fuck are you doing here?”
The Dwarf rewarded Wade’s cleverness with a broad smile. “Yer a sharp lad, aren’t ya? But not too sharp, I hear. Word is, you are trying to take over the whole game here.”
“Does it surprise you?” Manson was playing for time. Something was very wrong about all of this.
“No. But I have it on good authority that ye’ve hooked up with those Brokerage lads, and that’s a wee problem for us Docksiders. We don’t give a shite what you Combine fucks do wit’ yerselves in the other zones, but we just cannae let your power games fook wit’ our nice little thing.”
Wade began to understand, “Ah. I get it. You’re here to scare me into backing off The Brokerage, right? I can be reasonable on that issue. But this ain’t the way to make me play nice.”
“Not so much the scarin’ you part, Wade. We don’t need ye scared. We don’t give a fook what ye do or become, since there’s no more Combine to back ye. Fook off and die, for all we give a shite. No. What we need, Wade, is for yer wee masters to be scared.”
Wade barked a laugh, “You don’t just scare The Brokerage, Rodney. The whole fuckin’ Combine didn’t scare them. They’re just a bunch of crooked lawyers and accountants that only want to organize and manage shit. There isn’t even really a ‘they’ to scare. You might as well shoot into the ocean to scare the waves.”
The Dwarf hopped down from the crate he had been sitting on and walked up to Manson. His men, nervous, jostled their weapons until Wade held up a hand to calm them.
“Did ye ever wonder why they picked you to be the front man for this little jaunt o’ theirs, Wade?”
Manson knew a trick question when he heard it. “I don’t see how that fucking matters, Rodney.”
“It’s because they needed someone ta take the fookin’ fall for knocking off the Combine, and it needed to be someone that no one would question was dumb enough to fookin’ try. They went lookin’ for the toughest, loudest, thickest Boss o’ the lot, and they told ya you would get to be king fer playin’ ball.”
Wade stiffened, that did sound familiar.
“Tell me, Mr. Big bad boss-man of The Sprawl, has The Brokerage ever let anyone be in charge of anythin
g? Or do they just set up shell companies and manage ‘em from afar?”
God damn it! was all Wade’s brain could come up with. He kept his mouth shut while he tried to think his way out of this.
The Dwarf kept pushing. “You’re a patsy and a fall guy, Wade.”
The Boss’s face colored at the insult. His breath hissed through clenched teeth, “Is that a fact, Rodney?”
“It is, Wade, me boy. I can prove it, too.” The Dwarf stepped back, cupped his hands over his mouth and called out into the aether, “If there are any Galapagos mercenaries hidin’ about, ready to ambush and murder us all, please be so kind as ta make yerselves known!”
Wade scowled, and Rodney continued his song while they waited.
“She stepped out, and I stepped in again.
I stepped out, and she stepped in again.
She stepped out, and I stepped in again.
Learning to dance, for Flanagan’s ball!”
Four seconds later, a body plummeted from some inscrutable shadow above them and flopped to the concrete with crunch. Wade’s men gasped and leapt back as the corpse crashed in a bleeding heap barely six feet from their boots. It had made no sound as it fell, and Wade figured the armored man had been dispatched before he dropped. He did not bother to make a close inspection of the corpse. It wore the featureless gray armor of one of Reynard’s mercenaries, and that was as much as he needed to know. The seasoned mob boss began to feel the first icy tendrils of true fear working their way down his spine.
The Dwarf walked over to the dead mercenary and flipped it over with a rough push delivered with the toe of an alligator hide boot. Blank eyes stared into the rafters, and blood seeped from the corner of its open mouth. Rodney sniffed in appreciation, “And here we have the first guest to show up for my little ball. Not so good a dancer this one, eh, Wade?”
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