The Weapon

  "Boss, get down here," Tyler said over the intercom.

  She sounded urgent, not desperate. I saved data, vaulted over the back of the couch and made quick work of the first three flights before slowing to a professional pace for the last one. I kept aware of my senses as I opened the door.

  There were five punks in the office. They had weasel-in-the-henhouse expressions on their faces. They were dressed in pop icon style of spiked hair, polymer coats and velvet tights with platform shoes bedecked in rhinestones. I looked them over, sized them up and fought the battle. That done, I decided to break it to them gently that they'd lost.

  "May I help you?" I asked.

  The alpha-twerp stepped forward, and said, "I'm Cutter." He had what he imagined was a predatory grin on his face.

  "First name Fart?" I asked.

  "Don't be lagging me, man!" he said. I was glad for our course in slang from Kendra Pacelli.

  "What do you want, punky?" I asked him.

  "We're security consultants, do," he said. The last word was as meaningless as "yeah," "eh?" or "right?"

  "And?" I asked. M1000 a month. That's what he was going to ask for.

  "Well, this old building isn't the tightest, do?" he said, sauntering closer.

  "So?" I asked.

  "So, we can assess it for you, and work on plugging gaps." He nodded as he said it, figuring the deal was done.

  So I said, "I prefer to discuss business in my office. This way, please," and turned for the door to the first level. There'd be room in there. Mister Cutter and his largest goon followed close enough to crowd me, with the rest far enough back to envelope.

  As soon as I heard it close, I faced them again, and said, "How much?"

  Cutter grinned and said, "Two-half kay Marks, first of the month."

  Greedy little bastard, trying to sooch me. ("Sooch" is Earth slang for a con game that insults one's intelligence. I have no idea where it came from.) Or maybe he figured I'd beg for a better rate, so as to amuse his asslickers. I nodded and said, "And how will that be paid?"

  "Oh, cash, of course. Cash gets things done, do?"

  If he only knew how pathetic he sounded.

  "Fine," I said. "Will you bring it here, or do I have to come get it?"

  You could see the wheels turning in his head. This was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Not even the sharpest butter knife. I Boosted.

  He got angry. "Don't be fuckin' wid me, pokey!" he yelled, and moved to get in my face.

  I felt Boost take hold, with that brightening of vision. What I did was tactically foolish against a trained opponent, but he was no threat. I grabbed him by the throat and heaved him off the ground. Then I drove my knee into his gonads hard enough to see them displace his eyeballs, which rolled back out of sight. I dropped him, catching him in the solar plexus with my boot hard enough to paralyze his diaphragm, bruise his liver and lungs and stun his heart. He imitated a fish out of water and I turned to his buddies.

  The tendonhead was moving in close, and I started the object lesson. I brought up both feet in a crescent kick combo that cracked teeth and jaw, broke his nose across his face, massively contused his right cheek and smeared his lips to goo. I lit, bounced, and caught him in the right kidney with my left toe and in the collarbone with my right as he fell.

  The other three were confused and motionless, and I stepped in among them. Shortly, they joined their buddies.

  Now, Mister Cutter had barely a scratch on him, even though he was still gaping for air. He'd pass out soon, and would wake up sore but unmarked. The others were hamburger. This lesson would be repeated as necessary, until they figured out that hanging with Fart Cutter was painful on the joints.

  Just to make the lesson stick, I wire tied their scrotums. I threatened, but didn't cut them off, but did warn them that they had only a few minutes before the tissue started dying. They hunched over and took off, swearing at us as they went. I laughed. They'd have to drop trou and have a trusted friend break the ties with wirecutters, or burn through them with hot metal. Embarrassing and painful, either way. I had Tyler mop the floor while I went to sterilize my hands.

  Chapter 20

  Gradually, by twos and threes, we brought everybody in. The twenty-six of the total admitted on work visas were squeaky clean. I would never contact them, they'd simply take their cues from their own private messages, or from the initiation of hostilities. They were warned of other activities that might occur, and to ignore those. We wanted them only for the big event. Miranda Kirlan slipped out of the embassy and joined us. I felt sorry for her—she hadn't, and wouldn't see the outside anywhere a camera might catch her, unless and until we could black market another chip for her. I was trying to avoid that as a security issue. After a few days, we shuffled her off by night and private car to St. Louis.

  We also brought in a nuke. I almost went gibbering insane from the associated risks. We had a specific need for a low-yield mining device, but with the huge numbers of security personnel and equipment on Earth, it seemed certain it would be found. It would be an obvious terrorist device, as they don't allow nuclear charges to be used for mining on Earth, ever. Really. They have a phobia about it. Well, we'd give them a reason for that phobia, even if after the fact.

  So I made a long, lonely, unarmed drive from my HQ in the FDC area out to a still remote spot in the mountains of West Virginia, where a large tract of World Heritage Forest would cover me, I hoped. I was followed by Kimbo in another vehicle. Both of them had transponders that could be shut off in a moment, and three different IDs. I was still worried lest someone note us turning them off, but we timed it closely enough and the system assumed we'd left zone control or made a legitimate stop. Kimbo would stay out as watch and support, while I went in. I hid the car, penetrated the fence—you wouldn't think trees would be protected by a double cordon of bare earth, razor wire and sensory mesh fence, but Earth is just nuts—and scrabbled quietly between the boles in dark. Getting captured would mean compromise for a lot of Operatives.

  It had been too damned long since I'd done any wilderness crawling. I got tired in a hurry, and made enough noise that the animals would go silent around me. My hands got raw from the dirt and the coarse roots, I sweated and muddied up and quickly was a mess.

  After several hours, I was at the right locus in time and space, in a flattish meadow just below the steep crest of a hill. It was still woody, but had fewer trees than most of the surrounding area. It was a warm, humid night in the thick air of Earth, but I cooled off quickly, lying on the ground and not moving.

  Above me in space (okay, some distance around the planet—picky, picky), a stealthy assault boat should be making a very specialized approach. I wasn't sure if it was Ninja, Black Watch, Ranger, Legionnaire, Zulu or Speznaz that was up there, or even if anything was there, but I'd know soon. Aboard should be ten more Operatives and a package. They'd been crammed into a tub for twenty days and would likely not care about the risk of death, so long as they could get out of the box.

  The boat (well, "ship"—it had interstellar capability, after all) should be phasing into normal space . . . now. And it should be phasing back into hyper . . . now. Ten Operatives should be doing the ultimate in insanity, a drop from orbit to a precise target on the planet below. Too low in mass, density or threatening material to trigger alarms, too insane an idea to consider. They would have been braked by a heavy thrust of degenerate hydrogen, the fluffy cloud of polymer strings around them burned off by the friction of the fall into atmosphere. Deployable shields would ablate slowly as they fell, and we hoped the trace would be too low-energy to detect, or that it would be assumed as mere debris, as there was insufficient mass at too low a velocity for a strike.

  If we were wrong, ten Operatives and my surprise package were about to be fried into vapor. That assumes that making a phase jump that insanely close to the gravitational field of the Sun, and to the mass of Earth, was accomplished without a multi-dimensional shockwave that would be invis
ible in regular space but would smear the atoms of the ship and crew from here to the edge of the universe. Our boat crews are as nuts as we are, and get even less publicity. I'll always spot them the first beer when I meet them.

  Less than an hour later, I heard the faint rustling flap of parachutes. They were opening at two hundred meters with fast opening canopies. They each had two set to trigger independently, had manual releases as well, and a spare canopy in case one of the others failed. They'd be fully open at about fifty meters, have time to look down and hit the ground. It redefined "suicide drop" and if anyone lived through this war, that would be a story to beat all stories. "No shit, there I was. Thought I was gonna die—"

  Ahead and above in the clearing, dark shadows were shifting and drifting. I heard them land with soft thumps and sporadic low crackles of weeds and brush. It looked to be about ten figures. They tumbled down, wrapping their canopies in their arms as they did, a maneuver I'd trained in but never thought we'd have to use. They went silent, I waited until the animal noises resumed, then I signaled them.

  It was just an infrared flash, in a simple pattern that said it was safe. I got a double flash in response, and three minutes later I had ten bodies counted as they ghosted past and went back to ground. I was elated. Considering that three of them had only had the training jumps we'd given them, it was quite an accomplishment. I rose and scuttled through the formation and took cover in a thick tangle of bush, wrapped around the clump of limb trunks. They moved again. In that fashion, we made it back to the fence and then to the cars.

  They eased into the vehicles, which had no internal lights. Shuffling and shifting indicated they were changing into the civilian clothes we'd had ready for them, and in my car I heard a single "Oh, blast," as someone realized they were in the wrong seat and had clothes that didn't fit. I hoped they'd hurry. The canopy was starting to fog up. While that would hopefully be taken as a couple scrocking in the woods, it might draw some cop who wanted a ticket for his monthly tally.

  The nuke should be in the trunk, heavily shielded and sealed. I had no intention of checking it. Either it worked or it didn't. Frankly, I wanted it gone as quickly as possible. There are places on Earth one can easily hide the stray emanations from a nuke. Eastern North American was not one such place.

  They finally finished dressing, and Tim Blankenship spoke. "Damn, that was a rush."

  "I'll bet," I said. "Sorry I missed it. You got the other gear?" I was only half sorry I'd missed it. The glory of doing it had to be something. The excitement, too. But the risk . . . no, thanks.

  "Sealed and ready," he assured me. Mostly what he'd brought was hermetically sealed explosives and a bit of nerve agent. We could manufacture both on site, and would, but it was easier to smuggle it in here and through the embassy in increments. I see no need to do it the hard way, when I can simply drop people in from a jump-capable craft in orbit, through the atmosphere and to the ground with chemicals that are sealed so as not to be detected by the UN's sensors that are present in every town.

  Four other drops took place over the next month. We lost two troops going into Africa, scorched into vapor by ablation problems. Operatives Burkett and Mandall. They were our first mission casualties. None of the ten for Australia made it. I can only assume the ship was lost doing that insane dropout so close to the conflicting G fields of Earth, the Moon and Sol. Warne crashed in in Russia, one canopy failed, the other streamered around it, and his reserve not deployed. He landed hard enough to shatter his body, and they perforce left him in a hole, sans gear and clothes. If he was ever found, he'd be a John Doe murder victim and never associated with us. Thirteen deaths of fifty insertions was a hell of a casualty rate, and I cried over it, locked in my room. I was killing my kids to get them in place so they could die, possibly to no avail. It was painful.

  * * *

  First of the month. I'll bet you thought I'd dismissed the incident with Fart Cutter, didn't you?

  Wrong. I slid up to the outside of his pack's hangout around 2330 (24-hour clock, recall), and waited. I suppose this was a bit needless and egotistical, but I didn't want him imagining he'd grown a brain and coming back. This was to be Part Two of Lesson One: Thou Shalt Not Mess With Mean Strangers From Out Of Town. Frank and Tyler were with me, just like old times. We were bedecked with procured assets and improvised gear.

  It was an apartment building, not that old but officially decrepit and abandoned. You'd think the cops would do something about the lights inside and the movement, what with power wastage and the environment and safety issues, but the cops were only thugs against unarmed peasants. Against weasels, they turned into rabbits themselves. Or were paid off. Or, some places, were part of the gangs, using the uniforms for cover. Everyone knew what went on, no one did anything about it.

  We clambered up the wall on the alley side using gaps in the brick façade as hand holds. We'd pause periodically as pieces would crumble away, clicking down the side of the building to bruise one of us.

  The room we wanted was clearly lit by a single tube, about 50 lumens. It was easy to locate, and we finally hunched around the frame like three spiders, me on the sill above, hanging by my fingers with my toes resting on the top ledge, and Frank on the broken remnants of what had been a fire escape, with Tyler hanging from the sill with her feet above the window below. Frank gave me a map of who was where, I whispered, "GO!" and in we went.

  My feet broke the age and Sun-crazed polymer window into several shards, and I arched, bent and stuck the landing. Tyler vaulted in and across to my left, Frank shot in to the right.

  "Hello, Fart Cutter," I said.

  "Dogf—" he started to swear, recovering from the shock. He clutched at his waist, probably for a weapon, and I shot him with goo from a stickyweb gun. I shot him in the face.

  Tyler swarmed into Tendonhead and a buddy, and I heard the pop of breaking wrists. She's a nasty minded bitch, and I love working with her. A couple of screams were interrupted by cuffs to throats and jabs to solar plexi, and I continued with business while Frank sat on three others.

  Fart Cutter was thrashing and yanking at his mouth and nose, trying to separate his hands and his face and the web. That wouldn't work, and I couldn't have him dying, so I spritzed just enough solvent on to let him breathe with difficulty. I relieved him of his "gun," which was a homebuilt muzzleloading piece of garbage. Kimbo could do better in ten minutes.

  "It's now the second of the month," I told him. It was three minutes after midnight. "You didn't come round with that twenty-five hundred marks. So I'm here to collect."

  He tried to be brave. "Dogfuck, I ain't paying you space. And I'll be by tomorrow to—"

  "You ain't fucking gonna live until tomorrow unless I see money, punky," I snarled. Then I kicked him in the head enough to rattle his brain around.

  He was silent, and I continued, "Two five kay. Now. Or I slice off your fucking scrote." Yes, I use that threat a lot. It works. I clutched at his groin and he whimpered.

  "Can, man. Do," he said.

  "Where?" I prodded.

  The cash was in a box behind the couch, under a floorboard, and inside some ratty quilts. I looked inside. Six thousand and a bit. Plus the thousand he was carrying and the two more from his buddies. "Two five," I said. "Plus late payment fee, interest, collection fee, and a bit for my friends. You'll remember next month, do?"

  "You're going to fucking die by next month, dogfucker," he insisted.

  Well, a lesson had to be delivered. These asocial little animals didn't even understand brute force. "Kill one," I told Tyler. "Not the Tendonhead." She did. Slowly.

  There was a substantial dark stain under the body when she finished. Facing the others, I used the illogic beloved of terrorists, five-year-olds and street punks, and said, "Fart Cutter killed him. And he'll kill you, unless he brings the money, every month. Do." That is such a stupid fucking slang.

  Then we thoroughly beat the shit out of the others. I sprayed solvent on Cutter as we le
ft. Other than a faint bruise, there wasn't a scratch on him. I figured the point had been made. I was right. He was found dead in a dumpster three days later. A pity. We could have used his chip. But we did keep the spare we got from the kill. A petty criminal's chip is better than none.

  Are you wondering why we didn't buddy up to the local punks? It's simple. They have ties to the cops, who get kickbacks from them. Yes, the cops know who runs the operations, and often, you can get stolen merchandise back by bribing the right cop enough to pay his friends and himself. As long as you can beat the price offered by the fence, you're good to go. Or you can pay the cop to list extra things on your report, and insurance will pony up the matching money, to give you a little something for your trouble. Really. The cops are worse than the regular criminals, because they can hide behind the government and you can't stop them. I wanted nothing to do with that end of the "business," because it would take too long to get plugged in, would make it obvious when I left, and while they could be bought off on most crimes including murder, a hint that we were there for espionage or worse would make them be good boys and share that knowledge with people who would come looking for us. It was risky to fight them as I had, but I needed the money for operations. It took every penny we generated legally, everything we could import from off-planet, and everything we could illicitly transfer. And the cops wouldn't be friendly enough to the gangs to back them up on collections. So long as they got their cut of the money, they didn't care where it came from, and they wouldn't want to hear excuses.

  Ironically, the real problem came a few days later. We took turns buying food, and tried not to fall into patterns. That avoidance itself would be suspicious, were it attached to us. We hoped to not get it attached to us by never appearing anywhere on schedule, thus making it harder for us to look suspicious in the first place. People get busted as suspects simply for having a schedule that matches a particular series of crimes. Concrete evidence is not considered necessary. So we didn't dare keep a schedule and we didn't dare not.