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Roland needed a solid ten days to heal up. A week would have been enough to get him above ninety percent, which was near enough as made no difference for practical purposes. He was not destined to enjoy such luxuries though. What he got was about fifty-five hours of full shut-down and another twelve hours of rested uptime.
“External armor is nominal,” Dr Ribiero declared with a sigh, looking up from the screen of his DataPad, “internal systems are nominal, but organics are still healing and structural damage is still barely eighty-two percent repaired.” The older man gave Roland a stern look, “The carapace and skeletals are the slowest to mend, so you really need another five or six days before you are one-hundred percent, Roland. You must avoid heavy exertion, especially anything that will strain the internal structures of your chassis.”
Roland nodded, “Maybe set a hard-limit of seventy percent on rate-coding and recruitment? Save the load on the skeleton, Don?”
“I thought of that, but you’ll just disengage the safeties if you want to do something stupid, like you always have.”
Lucia stared blankly at both men, so Don explained in rushed tones, “Rate-coding refers to how hard each muscle fiber contracts, and recruitment refers to how many of them are used. By limiting both I can control how much Roland tries to lift or otherwise exert himself.”
“But that will limit his speed and strength,” Lucia concluded accurately, “And he is a moron who will override the program when he gets cranky anyway.”
“Astute girl,” the doctor approved, “so we will just have to rely on his better judgement.”
“That is a terrible idea,” she observed quietly.
“I am standing right here,” Roland growled, “And while I may be prone to the occasional burst of ill-advised pugilistic enthusiasm...”
Lucia rolled her eyes emphatically, “Wow. That is the nicest version of ‘I hurt people a lot’ ever uttered."
Roland continued as if he had not heard her, “... I also don’t relish the thought of spending months submerged in a gel tank while the Doc regrows my body. So, I will take his advice to heart.” Roland gave Donald a good-natured scowl, “but that means finding out what’s going on without picking too many fights. Or at least not picking fights with anyone who can push at my level.”
Donald’s laugh dripped derision, “Do you even know how to ‘not pick a fight,’ Roland?”
“Lucia started the last one!”
Lucia chimed in, “Technically, the other guy started it. I just finished it is all. But that reminds me: we have to see the Dwarf this morning, and Pops has extended a very generous retainer offer if we want it. It’s worded very ambiguously on the services it wants you to provide, fair warning.”
“I really don’t want to be sorting out Dockside on a Combine retainer,” the big bald head shook, “Might piss off Gateways, and they are likely to be jumpy as hell right now. Any other offers? I figure Gateways would have made a proposal, too.”
“Nothing yet. By the way when did I become your personal assistant?” she was joking, of course. Lucia had taken over Roland’s entire operation as soon as she had seen what passed for ‘records’ at his apartment. The fixer’s income went up forty percent in three weeks under her direction, surprising precisely no one at all. An unspoken agreement was quickly accepted between the nascent business partners: Roland would be the one who got shot and blown up, and Lucia would handle pretty much everything else. Roland knew a good thing when he saw it and kept his oversized bionic mouth shut at that point. This turned out to be a very wise decision for reasons about to become painfully apparent.
“Gateways is quiet, huh?” the big man mused, “That is weird. An office building just got blown up six blocks from the docks and they haven’t shown up?”
“Oh, they’ve shown up,” Lucia said, “they just haven’t made an offer.” She paused, enjoying the look on Roland’s face as he processed what she had said.
“Gateways sent people down here?” Roland attempted to hide the slight tinge of dread in his voice, “How many? Are they paramilitary? Mercs? What?”
“Nothing like that.” The smug woman was enjoying herself, “I just mentioned that you were under new management and that we wanted to have a sit-down with them. It’s about branding, Roland. Just answering electronic queries with three-word responses is not how you build a brand. So, you are going to put on another suit, sit down at a nice restaurant with them, and politely re-negotiate your rates because they have been screwing you for a long time.”
Roland could not blush. Nor could he blanch. The skin on his face was an intricate dermal mesh woven with high-density electro-reactive polymers. It was dyed a nominally and ambiguously Caucasian hue, and had a flat, almost waxy tone to it. While it moved and emoted exactly like a regular face, it had no surface capillaries to either fill with, or drain of, blood. This pleased Roland because the thought of sitting down to a stuffy lunch meeting with Uptown corporate types was about as awful a thing as his imagination could conjure.
“I’d rather just go to the penal colony on Titan, thank you very much,” he grumped.
“Grow up, Tin Man. I have a lifestyle to maintain and Dad says he won’t buy me a pony this Christmas because apparently I haven’t been behaving.”
The elder Ribiero grunted, “You literally beat a man half to death yesterday, dear.”
She smiled, “He started it. But all joking aside, it’s time for you to take your business more seriously, Roland. That means doing business stuff like meetings and negotiations.” She threw up a hand, stopping Roland’s impending protest in its tracks, “Not ‘negotiations’ the way you usually do them, either. Nobody wants to hire a guy with no finesse and no discretion. Not for the really high-paying stuff, anyway.”
“Can’t you just handle this part?” It was a desperate ploy and destined to fail.
“Nobody is going to pay enormous sums for ‘Lucia the Tiny Ninja Girl.’ ” Her look very clearly communicated that this was something he should already understand, “For the money I’m asking, they want ‘Tank, The Indestructible Monster from Beyond Space.’ Do you see the difference? You are a brand in Dockside. A trusted brand. We need to leverage that.”
“If I act like I understand any of what you just said, can I at least pretend to be in charge when we are outside?” Roland had already lost this fight, and so he retreated to sheepish humor.
“No,” Lucia was merciless, “Now suit up, soldier. We roll in twenty.” She was gruff, but her brown eyes sparkled with mirth.
“Dwarf or Gateways?” he asked, since she was obviously running the shop today.
“Dwarf. So, don’t wear any nice suits. I still remember the last time we went there.”
“Are you worried about me or the Dwarf?” Roland queried.
“I’m worried about the suits, to be honest. You are not an easy guy to get tailored attire for, and I don’t want to give you any excuse to start walking around in army surplus grunt-wear again.” Lucia was not a fan of Roland’s style preferences. Generally, this was because his preferences lacked anything an objective observer might refer to as ‘style.’ “You are supposed to be a highly valued and respected professional, not a homeless weirdo.”
“I thought I was a highly respected professional?” Roland was a little stung, “Everyone here respects the hell out of me!”
“No, they don’t.” Harsh brown eyes transfixed the big ‘borg, “Most simply fear you, which is not the same thing. The rest see you as an expendable asset with a high success rate.”
“Sounds like the Army,” Roland murmured in resignation.
“And that is why you let them get away with it. You are comfortable with it and don’t realize that is what they are doing. Everybody in Dockside knows you and some even like you, but Dockside is not where the real money is. We need the big players to realize and accept that you are a highly skilled, highly motivated, and high-value consultant. You need to be the guy in Dockside. Not just for cracking skulls, but for everything. You are a business Roland. A brand. You need all the big players to see that. Right now, they all think of you as a muscle-bound bullet-sponge that does a good job of keeping everybody in check. The rates they are paying you are an insult to your potential.”
Donald could not help himself, “It’s true, Roland. It cost close to a billion credits to build your team, and they treat you like a better-than-average street hood.”
Roland was beginning to see just how stupid he must appear to the brilliant scientist and successful businesswoman. It was humbling, “I guess I really only understand combat,” he shrugged, “I thought I was doing pretty well.”
Lucia smiled, “Roland, you understand combat extremely well. You understand fights, and fighters, and fighting better than anyone.”
The Doctor interrupted again, “Also true. Everybody in the program tested extremely high for intelligence and role-specific aptitudes. We only selected the top performers.”
“And that is exactly why you need to start commanding more respect,” her face was pure encouragement, “You are not just a tank, Tank. You are a fixer. No... you are The Fixer – capital ‘F’ and all.”
Roland nodded slowly, “and The Fixer charges a lot for his services?”
“Holy crap, yes. The Fixer’s fees are astronomical. But he’s worth it. Have you ever failed a job?”
Roland looked hurt, “Of course not!”
Lucia gave Roland a look that seemed to indicate she was waiting for him to have an epiphany. It didn’t happen, and she threw up her hands, “Roland! Nobody has a 100% success rate. You are exceptional. That’s the point, here!”
She pressed her face into her palms, “Dad, are you sure he tested all that highly in intelligence?”
“Quite high, actually. But the tests were role-specific, and his role was to smash through obstacles and get shot.” Donald, Roland noted, seemed to be having entirely too much fun watching his daughter browbeat his looming creation.
“I guess I just never looked at it that way,” Roland attempted to recover some dignity, “Someone offers me money to do a job, I do it. That’s just good policy. I never really thought about what I should charge because I don’t really know what a job is worth. I always made enough money to get by comfortably, and as long as the jobs weren’t the type of stuff that was going to have the Army breathing down my neck about my non-disclosure agreements...?” He shrugged, “It wasn’t broken, so I didn’t try to fix it.”
“Well, just let me worry about what to charge and how to bill it, and you just keep getting the jobs done. I’ll make you rich, yet.” It did not sound like an empty boast to Roland. Lucia managed a very comfortable existence in Uptown before her father got himself kidnapped, and that was the priciest real estate in the world. Why she had chosen to slum it with Roland afterward would remain one of the great mysteries of the universe. He was already doing much better financially after just three weeks under Lucia’s management, and he was smart enough to not derail that particular train.
“That sounds like a deal,” he paused, dark eyes squinting at the woman, “Hey, waitaminnit! What am I paying you?”
Lucia smiled the sweetest, most coquettish smile at her disposal. Lucia possessed an arsenal of weaponized smiles, and nine-hundred pounds of armored body parts provided exactly zero protection from any of them. The currently selected smile, both saccharine and sultry, was dazzling and beautiful and Roland recognized that no matter what she said he was going to agree with it and probably thank her afterward. It was frustrating because he was a good strategist and he hated being outmanoeuvred. The realization that not only had he lost a battle, but that he had lost it before knowing it was even going to happen was just painful.
“You’re not paying me. I’m paying you.”
Lucia’s victory was complete. Roland, ever the optimist, took a swipe at salvaging the loss, “Well, good, then. That makes perfect sense to me.” Roland groaned inwardly at the sound of his own words. This was not the confident assent of The Fixer, it was the undignified acceptance of his sheer and unvarnished defeat.
Donald chortled, recognizing the weakness of Roland’s attempt to sound like this was all his idea, anyway. Roland’s face did not reflect the cheerful poise of his verbal agreement.
“Oh, can it, Old Man!” Roland growled, then turned back to Lucia, “I’m gonna change into work clothes, Boss. Be ready in a minute.”
As he turned, he opened his mouth and words started to come out before he consciously realized what he was saying. His brain, superhumanly fast when he needed it to be, failed to save him this time.
Don’t say it! His brain screamed inside his skull, don’t say-
“Thank you,” he mumbled as he turned to get dressed for the day’s meetings.
I am such a dumbass.
Lucia responded so sweetly it made his teeth hurt, “You’re welcome.”