| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Covert Meetings |
| Date: | Fri, 28 Nov 1997 00:05:22 +0000 |
>>>>>[+++++begin trideo
A church interior: a small place of worship, steel grilles casting
shadows on the plate glass and the light of candles the only
illumination. It's clean and well-tended, but almost empty: Easy walks
down the aisle towards the altar, behind which Jesus hangs from His
cross. The sculptor has put the nails through Christ's wrists in true
Roman fashion, modelling the wounds with a morbid precision. The flash
hider and front sight of her CAR-15 are visible as she scans the empty
building, the chopped assault rifle's muzzle following her eyes.
"I came alone, you can relax." a handsome, dark-haired Elf says as he
steps into view with his hands empty and open.
"I didn't, Mani's waiting outside. Hard to talk him out of following me
in here." Easy lowers the carbine and pulls her long leather coat over
it, then sits. "So, Luigi, you wanted to talk, let's talk." Easy's
Southern accent contrasts with Bartolo's Italian edge.
Luigi Bartolo settles onto the pew across the aisle, his own duster
gaping before he adjusts the ride of the Defiance shotgun beneath it.
"You got a problem. For me it's just a situation. Except maybe I can get
something out of it, but I need your help to do it. Heihachi, the
Georgian and I put together the plan to trash your farm. Heihachi was
pointman, some suits hired him for the gig, but he got cold feet and
wanted to airgap it. Big distraction, maybe take you out, and make the
farm hit look like a raid instead of sabotage built into the
irrigation."
"So what was your involvement?" Easy enquires.
"Putting the right people on the work crew, so we got the charges
planted easy. This one was running as soon as you broke ground. The
Georgian worked out the method, she -"
"She?"
"Yeah. She. She wanted to leave you usable land, if you lived through
this, just not farmable. I led the team that blew the charges." Bartolo
watches Easy with apparent casual ease: there is a long pause during
which she doesn't tear his head off with her bare hands.
"Do you know who hired Heihachi?" the Elven samurai asks at last.
"Nope. He probably doesn't know either." Bartolo offers a cigarette, and
Easy accepts it after a moment's hesitation. "Your rat works for
Heihachi, I don't know who he is. Not Vinny, I know his voice, but that
leaves a lot of possibilities. You knew you had a rat, right?"
"Yeah." Easy lights the cigarette, holds the flame for Bartolo, and
blows blue smoke from her nose. "Figured we'd play him a little while
we reeled him in. So, what do you want from me, what are you going to do
for me?"
Bartolo grins. "Okay. You know what I want, I want to be recognised. But
I've got to bring a lot to the table to earn that, more than I can hold
together in Tarislar. Heihachi's patch would suit me nicely. If I could
snatch enough of that fast enough, I'm Don Bartolo. Won't be able to
grab the financial services or, probably, the White House: so I act
magnanimous and pass those to his _rengo_ as a goodwill gesture.
Heihachi picked a fight, lost it, too bad."
Easy taps ash off the cigarette. "And since I'm going for his throat
anyway, you want me to help you pull this off."
"Together, we could do it. The other problem I've got is Kim Chun Pak.
Doesn't seem to matter how hard he got hit, he keeps holding up.
Someone's pumping money into him in a big way."
"Why?"
"You tell me." The Mafioso shrugs expressively. "But if you can take him
out, it would be a blessing."
"And worth what?"
"Fifty grand in clean cash." Bartolo replies. "What will you do, snipe
him?"
"Nope. My sniper's been practicing on the Paks, so they're locking down
tight and dodging. He won't stick his head up. I'll take him at home."
"You're gonna do him yourself? Actually, yeah, you would." Bartolo
grinds out his cigarette. "You mind if I ask a personal question?"
"Sure, as long as I can kill you if I don't like it."
The Italian snorts with laughter. "Where the hell did you get that
'ware? I mean, you are running some major-league cyber there, real
.90-calibre stuff."
Easy shrugs. "Stole it."
"WHAT?"
"Stole it. I was working for Stiletto Pete, down in Fort Worth. Just
another working girl, you know? Breaking legs, sending messages, courier
work. Paid okay, enough that I was able to score some second-hand wires.
I was having an argument with Fort Worth PD back then, so I couldn't be
too fussy who or what.
"Anyway, I guess Stiletto Pete trod on someone's toes, because this Elf
bitch from out of town lands on us. She walks in shooting: kills half
Pete's staff, puts Pete in hospital in the process of telling him about
what her bosses objected to, turned around and left. All despite the
best efforts of all Pete's muscle, me included, to kill her. She hardly
broke into a sweat. Left twelve of us dead and forty-some shot up."
"You took her as a role model, huh?" Bartolo suggests.
"Yeah, maybe... Anyway, this makes a lot of people mad, and this chrome
killer makes one mistake: she doesn't blow town right away1. Instead she
goes for some R&R at the Velvet Glove. Nice place, discreet, safe,
secure, she figured no risk. But don't you know, one of the guys on the
door used to work for Pete, and when he sees her go in he drops a dime
to me, and gives me the code for her room. She was humping some joyboy
halfway to death, I guess killing turned her on, so I put a Viper burst
in the back of her head. The joyboy started making noise, I had to kill
him as well to shut him up."
The samurai shrugs and smiles. "So now I got two fresh headshot corpses,
and the best way to hide corpses is in an organ bank, so Jimmy and I
take them to Stiletto Pete's tame doc. Jimmy figures he needs a new job,
but Pete's gonna thank him for this, so he'd better get out. There's a
lot of demand for body parts right now, with all the people this lady
shot, so two more stiffs to break for spares come in handy. Pete got the
joyboy's liver, I think.
"But the woman's chromed to the max, says the doc. Wired to hell,
titanium inserts in her bones, double smartlink, muscle augmentation,
the works. All custom cyber, biomatched to her DNA, real hot stuff: she
was wearing a few million in chrome. He's admiring it and saying it's a
shame nobody matches the genetics, before his terminal goes bing! and
throws up a match. Me."
"Would you believe it?" Bartolo says, wonderingly.
"Yeah. A one in, maybe, five hundred or a thousand match? For the person
who killed her. So she's about my height, makes a lot of the work
easier, and Stiletto Pete tells the doc, put that shit in Easy and don't
you dare fuck it up." Easy lights a cigarette of her own.
"Holy damn..."
"Yeah, well, there were a few problems. The wires never took right at
first, I mean the doc's trying to do betaware surgery in a semi-licenced
chop shop, in the end I had to go to Chiba to get them fixed properly,
stop me twitching. They stuck a trigger in while they had me in the
tank, made life a little easier. He couldn't get the left hand's
smartlink to work, either, so he pulled it. There was some funky comms
gear that was just too exotic and complicated, he flat refused to stick
that in my head, not if I've got to be functional afterwards, and I'd
shredded a module for her skillwires when I shot her. Still, who's
complaining?"
"Any comeback on all this? Whoever paid for that razorgirl probably
didn't like having her snuffed and stripped." Bartolo asks.
"Yeah. While I'm still in the clinic, getting used to cybereyes and
being so fucking fast, someone wiped Stiletto Pete off the face of the
world, really unloaded on him. Killed him, fragged his house, killed
everyone in reach, got seriously harsh on his ass. They missed the doc,
which means they missed me, and I figure I want it to stay that way. So
I blow town and get a Greyhound to the border, make it over, head for
Vegas. Jimmy knew a guy who knew a guy on the prizefighting circuit, I
get in touch, he says sure I can try out. Pulled four fights in two
months, then blew town for Seattle." Easy finishes her cigarette.
"Why'd you leave?"
"Four fights, four wins. There was trouble finding opponents, and I was
attracting attention. Didn't want that. Didn't want some local boss
trying to get me in his bed, didn't want to be made offers I couldn't
refuse, didn't want to get known enough that Friends of the Dead Bitch
find me. Plus, the fights were all me in a thong bikini against four
Orks or Trolls in studded leather codpieces: guess what I get if I lose.
Not my idea of fun.
"So, I turned my prizefighting purses into a ticket to Seattle, get here
and blow the rest on a couple of Ingrams, look for work, and for a while
don't find any. Went back to dancing tables for a while to pay the
bills, then things did pick up. Got secure enough that I didn't worry so
much about the FDBs. Why am I telling you all this?"
"Because I got an honest face?" Bartolo suggests.
"Yeah, right. Anyway, I'll see what we can do about Kim, how about
Heihachi?"
Bartolo hands her an envelope. "Frag list. Targets you might feel like
hitting, and a few I'd rather you left intact."
"And what's in this for me is...?" the Elven samurai enquires.
"Short term, you got intelligence, targets, backup. You need cold
hardware, I can get it through the Georgian, cost price to you. That
kind of stuff. Long term, if this works... you're the one who helped
make me Don. I couldn't forget that debt even if I wanted to. It would
be useful to you. Meanwhile I'll keep the Chun Paks tied up, cover your
back, run interference locally."
Easy examines the list, thinks for a moment. "Deal." They shake hands.
+++++end trideo]<<<<<
-- Easy >23:51:35/11-27-58>
