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Mack’s funeral was a solemn affair, but mercifully brief and austere in the manner of hard-core war fighters. When it was over, Mindy tried to return to her post with the Chairman. Pops understood what the Weregild meant, and if he didn’t, the look in Mindy’s eyes told him all he needed to know about where she was going as soon as her contract was up. He was loathe to lose the tiny assassin, but there was no way to keep her either.
He decided to cut her loose right away since she was going to be less effective without her partner and her bloodlust was likely to become problematic. He set Laura to the task of procuring new bodyguards, indicating with only a raised eyebrow his interest in her immobilized arm and the purpling bruise on his assistant’s face. Laura was disinclined to talk about it and he was disinclined to pry. Some things were best left a mystery.
Roland was more than his usual portion of grouchy as well. Despite running a mission together decades earlier and being generally well-disposed toward each other, he and Mack had never really been ‘friends.’ But there was an uncomfortable sense of loss associated with seeing someone so much like himself killed. What surprised him was that it was not the acceptance of his own mortality that bothered him, but Mindy’s pain.
Roland was not so obtuse as to miss the parallels between the pair of mercenaries and his own partnership. Mindy was devastated. The most feared assassin in known space, a woman who had killed dozens of men and women, who had fought in and through some of the harshest war zones this galaxy could offer, was currently a hollow-eyed wreck over the loss of a borderline sociopath with machine guns strapped to his arms.
Roland had never had to worry about anything like that before. No one had ever loved him. Roland was built for killing and that’s exactly what he did. He was ninety percent techno-organic machinery and four times the mass of a large man. The skin of his body was literally armor, and his head was only given skin-like qualities so children would not run screaming from him if he had to interact with colonists on far-off planets. For decades, he had accepted this as his lot and built up psychological defenses to match the physical. To be forever alone wasn’t so bad if you pretended to prefer it that way.
But then Lucia came along and deconstructed his carefully assembled emotional bulwark, and she made it look easy. She ignored the distance he tried to maintain, and when he pushed her away, she simply pushed back harder. He did not deserve the kind of effort she had put into him, and he felt secretly guilty for how happy he was with her. She could have had anyone she wanted, and she picked a washed-up piece of Army surplus ordnance with enough blood on his hands to fill a swimming pool. It made no sense.
Now Roland found himself considering what would happen to Lucia if he was killed. He thought about Lucia going through what Mindy was enduring. He did not like it.
Does Lucia love me that much? He wondered.
Lucia was not the type of person who did anything halfway. If she was with him, it was because she was with him all the way. Roland felt a shudder and suppressed it. If he tried to push her away, even for her own safety, she wouldn’t accept it. He had tried it before. When Lucia Ribiero wanted something, she went and got it. That included half-ton war machines, apparently.
So, what am I supposed to do? Do I just sit here and be afraid for her?
The part of him where ruthless pragmatism lived answered the question, Yes. You cannot change her choices. You can only try to do right by her. Which is exactly what she is doing for you.
Also, try not to die.
This did not feel like a resolution. But maybe this wasn’t the type of problem that had a resolution. His earlier ruminations returned to him: Being in love means accepting the fear of losing it.
Love. He was really starting to hate that word. He could not figure out if it made him stronger or weaker, better or worse, more or less. But the seal was broken and the damned feeling was out of the box, never to be stuffed back in. That meant the fear was here to stay, too.
I just wish there wasn’t so MUCH fear...
He did not even allow himself to consider what would happen if Lucia got killed. The galaxy was not ready for a Roland Tankowicz in the clutches of that kind of rage and sadness. If anyone hurt Lucia, he would bathe in their blood, wear their skin as a coat, and use their bones for furniture...
Roland shook his head. This was not a productive line of thought.
I am not an amoral murder-bot.
It had been something of a mantra since meeting Lucia, partially humorous, but a generous portion of tongue-in-cheek chagrin always went with it.
His reverie was soon interrupted, which was fortunate really. Roland was not very good at objective introspection, and bouts of soul-searching were acutely awkward and unpleasant.
Lucia came into the hotel room, which was far less luxurious than the suite occupied by the Chairman. Roland was sitting on the floor since no furniture in the hotel was going to be robust enough to survive his weight. The stripe of magenta in the front of her short hair had fallen over her eyes and she flipped it out of the way, “You’re sitting on the floor brooding in the dark, aren’t you? Do you ever get tired of being a cliché?”
“I’m a simple creature. I stick with the classics,” he tried to smile and it was predictably terrifying.
The woman walked over and plopped down in his lap, startling the man. She leaned back against him and rested her head against the expanse of his chest. Roland never knew what to do when she did things like that, so he just held still and let her be.
“I sent the cloned DataPad information to Gateways. They say it’ll be forty hours or so to break the encryption.”
“It’s a race then,” he grumbled.
“Hmmmmm?” Lucia questioned with a drowsy hum.
“Pike’s crew has Vlad’s first officer in interrogation. There’s a pool on how long before she spills. I’m in at thirty hours.”
Lucia snorted a choked laugh, “You guys are seriously sick. You are talking about torture like it’s a horse race.”
“It’s not torture, they are just pumping her full of drugs and manipulating her into having a helpful hallucination. It’s an art, really. Besides, you’re the one laughing at it.” He bounced a pectoral, making her head nod.
Lucia slapped him on the thigh, “Cut that out! And I’m laughing because I’m getting to be as bad as the rest of you. That woman was a thieving murdering menace. A few days getting her brains scrambled is better than she deserves. She should thank the gods above that they aren’t letting Mindy do the interrogation.”
Roland’s big bald head ducked in affirmation, “There’s a subtle difference between tricking someone into giving up information and ripping them apart slowly. That subtlety will be lost on Mindy right now.”
“Yeah,” it was a whisper, “I talked to her about it. She was pretty drunk. I had thought they were uh... closer, considering how she reacted.”
“Closer than what? They were partners for ten years.”
Lucia frowned, “You know what I mean. I didn’t realize that they weren’t romantically entangled.”
Roland did not know how to explain what years of constant near-death experiences could do to forge a bond between partners, “Doesn’t take romance to be close. Mindy is an odd duck. She doesn’t play well with others. The fact that she stuck with Mack means they connected somehow.”
“Yeah. I think it’s because Mack never saw her as anything other than a partner. She’s gotten used to how mercenary types tend to see her, I think. Know what I mean?”
He did, “Yeah. When you are built like her, the big guys tend to think you are fragile and just trading on your looks. That would piss her off, I guess.”
Lucia rolled her eyes, “Says the reigning understatement champ of the galaxy. Do you know why they called him Mack?”
“Never asked.”
“It’s because he didn’t have a name. Not that he could remember. His parents sold him to a slaver when he was a toddler. He killed his owners when he was seven. A fucking seven-year-old, Roland! Killed them with a sharpened piece of metal,” a shudder ran down her body, “Then he lived as a street kid in one of the colonies until he was old enough to hop a freighter. He wound up on Enceladus, lied about his age, and took up with Shikomi Heavy Industries working the rigs. They asked him what his name was and he didn’t know. They just started calling him ‘Mack’ as a placeholder,” Roland could only see the top of her pixie cut rotate as she shook her head, “He died not even knowing his own name.”
“He knew his name, Lucy. It was Mack. Two hundred-and-sixty people claimed the life and all the riches of the goddamn Pirate King in that name yesterday,” Roland exhaled, “When you join any of the merc crews, they don’t ask for your birth records or family name. They just ask you what you want to be called. He wanted to be called Mack. It’s a good name.”
“What is vuhr-gild, Roland? I feel out of the loop on that one,” her pronunciation was forced as she wrapped her lips around the unfamiliar word.
“It’s a modern bastardization of an ancient law,” Roland started, “If a person was killed, and the killing was not considered justified, the killer would have to pay a certain amount of money or property to the bereaved folks left behind. It prevented isolated murders from morphing into giant regional battles.”
He sighed, “Under current merc code, it’s just a declaration of a blood-debt. It means that someone in the guild thinks that a killing violated their conventions, and so the person responsible needs to pay to those who have been impacted by the loss of the soldier. Usually with their life and all their stuff. The stuff goes to whoever the dead person designated when they joined up.”
“So, ambushing Mack during a meeting was a violation of the code?”
“Offering safe passage and then attacking is a pretty big no-no,” Roland had a gift for distilling complicated matters into very simple terms.
“And everybody on Pike’s team feels personally aggrieved, huh?” Her question was wistful.
“Mack was popular. He was a one-man wrecking crew and people liked having him on a squad.” Roland spoke as if the combined affection of an entire elite military unit was just that basic a concept.
“He did seem very good at his job.” She shook her head, “Is that what you think about, Roland?” There may have been fear in her voice, “A warrior’s death and the respect of your team?”
He put a giant arm around her, gentle as a summer breeze, “Not so much, anymore.”
“Awwwwwwww....” she teased, “Such a big sweetie!”
“I am not sweet. I am a giant war-mongering machine-man who eats babies and kicks puppies.” When Roland tried to joke, it was often horrible. This was one of those times.
“But in all seriousness,” he shrugged, “Mack died a good death. There were close to three hundred wrecked androids floating around him, and the video feed from his visor showed that he was kicking the shit out of Grim Roper, too. That’s not a small thing. A man could die proud of that.”
“What’s the story with Roper? You always get real stiff when he’s mentioned.”
“I’m always stiff,” but she was right, “Roper is a mistake. An aberration. He shouldn’t exist.”
Roland’s voice trailed off, and Lucia turned in his lap to look up at him, “You gonna finish that thought, big guy?”
“Do you remember what I said about the second generation of cyborg soldiers before Project Golem?” It was the project that had ultimately built Roland and his squad mates.
“The androids with human brains? Yeah... oh.” He had mentioned at the time that only two members of that group had escaped total mental breakdowns and decommissioning. Lucia realized what he was saying.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
“Yeah. Holy shit.” He closed his eyes, remembering the story, “Roper never lost his mind, because he was fucking insane already. Total sociopath. Kills for fun. Thought being an invincible machine was the best thing that ever happened to him. Losing all connection to his humanity didn’t fuck him up because he never had one to begin with.”
“He went rogue, ghosted on his superiors, and left for the frontier to get paid doing what he loved.” Roland’s eyes darkened, “He’s why me and my squad got the Golem fail-safe. He is why the army made me a slave.”
Lucia accepted all of this with the same level of compassion with which she always accepted the horrible details of Roland’s hellish past, “So now I suppose you are going to go kill Roper?”
“Yes,” Roland never lied to her. She would know if he did anyway, so there was no point to it, “Roper will be back. Vlad is probably the key to whatever is going on with The Combine. Now that he’s exposed, he won’t run and hide. Not with Mindy chasing him, anyway.”
“What do you think he will do?”
“He’ll hole up. Confer with whoever hired him. Hit The Combine again from another angle”—a massive fist slapped against an equally giant palm—“I just wish I knew what that angle was going to be.”
“I beat the crap out of Laura, by the way,” Lucia shifted gears.
“You really need to stop beating up everybody who annoys you. Personally, I find it charming, but sooner or later it’s going to come back to you...”
“Yeah, well this is the weird part.” She turned all the way around so she could look at him, “I was just trying to be all ‘Tank Tankowicz, kicker of asses’ on her, right?"
Roland raised a brow at that," Really? What does that look like?"
"You know," Lucia shrugged, "just being all quietly belligerent and other alpha-male bullshit. When I shut her ‘Pad off on her she went completely crazy.”
“So, she threw the first punch, huh?” Roland did not look like he believed that part of the story, “I mean, I’ve never actually met the woman, but I never got the impression that she was that volatile.”
“It definitely seemed out of character to me. Worse, when I started slapping her around, she pulled a bionic arm with a knife blade and tried to kill me!”
Now Roland was interested, “Prosthetic, huh? That’s a surprise.”
“You’re telling me? I was there.” She threw him a wink and went on, “Anyway, so she goes from locker room catfight to death-match in less than a second. She tried to say later that she was just testing me, but it didn’t feel that way. She really lost her cool in there. Something got under her skin, bad.”
“What do you think it was?” Roland was learning to let her hyper-brain sort out the possibilities. It was unique in the galaxy and he was inclined to let it do the heavy strategic lifting.
Her brow furrowed in thought, “Something we did or something I said really pissed her off.”
“More than her normal pissed off? Is that even possible?” Roland wasn’t actually joking. He had heard stories of the ice queen.
“I think she’s up to something, Roland. I don’t trust her.”
He nodded, “You shouldn’t. She works for the biggest criminal in the system. They are both bad people. But I take your meaning. You figure she’s a suspect?”
“It feels farfetched, I know”—Lucia was still working it all out—“but it won’t surprise me at all if that’s how it turns out.”
“Well. Fuck. That will be ugly,” he mused, “but if she’s behind all this why not just kill Pops herself?”
“I don’t know, but every scenario I can see seems to have her in it. None of this stuff works without her either behind it, supporting it, or just being incredibly stupid. I mean, why even let Pops go on board that ship? You said yourself it was a mistake.”
“I should have trusted my instincts.” Self-reproach was an art form to Roland. If he had insisted on a different plan, Mack might be alive right now.
“My gut says that was Laura’s idea. No one else would have been able to convince Pops to do something so dumb.”
Roland decided to play devil’s advocate. The possibility of the Chairman’s assistant setting him up was very problematic, “Vlad may have just been too paranoid to come down to the station. He has a lot of bounties in a lot of systems. A station full of mercs and bounty hunters is not a fun place to be when that’s the case.”
“Yeah, but sending the chairman up to the bear’s cave was just as risky. Why no compromise?” Lucia would not let this go. Roland might have been inclined to suggest that Lucia’s personal animosity toward Laura may have been coloring her analysis, but he did not want to get deactivated in his sleep. Lucia knew where his access port was and how to use it.
He tried again, “I think bringing Mack and Mindy was the compromise. Most people would consider Mack to be the equivalent of an entire platoon of bodyguards.”
Lucia shuddered, “Most people would be right,” but this admission did not dislodge her, “There are two possibilities here, Roland. She is either fantastically stupid and incompetent, or she is involved. Which is more likely?”
“God damn it. Your logic is unassailable, there,” couched in those terms, it seemed more likely than he wanted to admit that Laura may be part of the problem, “But that opens up a whole bunch of tactical complications moving forward.”
“And a few opportunities as well,” the tiny woman copped a wicked smile.
“You terrify me sometimes, you know that?”
“That’s because you are a big ol’ softie.” She leapt up and threw her arms around his neck, “Now let’s see if we can’t put a smile on that big brooding mug of yours.”