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They had guns.
The first door was still closed and, apparently, locked from the other side. Why anyone thought this would make a difference, Roland didn’t know. But he figured that on the other side of the door would be half a dozen or so of the Dwarf’s goons waiting to extract punishment for the insult he had just received.
He suppressed a chuckle, thinking about how an Uptown girl had just reorganized the face of a serious Dockside crime boss. He was starting to like this chick despite his better judgment. He could not suppress a smirk, Dockside could use the kind of shake-up she could bring. Things have been getting boring around here.
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Respect was important in Dockside, and whether the Dwarf’s crew had a prayer of winning this fight or not, tradition demanded that they try. The Dwarf would lose too much valuable respect otherwise.
Roland knew they’d be waiting because the awful music had stopped and he could hear the voices of several men murmuring and muttering on the other side of the door. The fact that the crew was there already told Roland that the Dwarf had figured ahead of time that something would probably go wrong and had sent for the crew as soon as Roland showed up. Roland was forced to concede that while the Dwarf was scum, he wasn’t stupid.
He considered going back to the other room and using the Dwarf as a hostage to walk out of there, but rejected that idea. Doing that would imply that Rodney’s goons could take Roland in a fight, and that would never do. Roland had a reputation to maintain. It had been a while since Roland had flexed his muscles in public, and Dockside was due for a refresher on why Roland was to be left alone. This would be as good an opportunity as any to reinforce that point.
Roland searched his memory for the Dwarf’s roster of heavies, checking for anyone who might pose a challenge or require special attention.
There was Mook, a big dumb mutant who was strong as an ox or three, but he had a misshapen spine and couldn’t move very well. Roland didn’t anticipate he’d be much trouble. There were the Garibaldi brothers, but they were mostly triggermen. Roland wasn’t worried about guns; anything light enough for those guys to carry wouldn’t be heavy enough to hurt him. Of course, he had to keep Lucia alive too, so he made a mental note to take out the Garibaldis first, if he saw them. Roland seemed to remember an augmented ex-cop who had been running with this crew, but he couldn’t remember the guy’s name or how tough he was, so he put it out of his mind.
He looked at Lucia. “When I go through this door, things are going to go very slowly for you, you know?” He tapped the side of his head with a finger, referring to her augmentation.
She nodded, pale with fear. It was easy to forget she was an Uptown girl. While it was just another Friday night in this part of town for him, this was probably the most tense moment of her life.
“Well, use that. You are going to have lots of time to react to what’s going on, but don’t panic and try to move as fast as you can. Your brain is quick as hell, but your body is still just your body. If you try to turn too quickly or move too fast, you are going to break an ankle or pull a muscle. Move deliberately. You are already the fastest one in the room, so don’t rush, OK? Got it?”
Her nervous system was already cranking, he could tell.
She nodded again, “Got it. Move slow. Don’t rush. Don’t panic. I’m fast. Got it.” She was speaking like a hopped-up chipmunk and her hands were twitching.
“Hey!” he barked, grabbing her attention. “Stay. Behind. Me.” He pointed to the charred hole in his shirt and the pristine, unmarked onyx muscles underneath, “Indestructible cyborg tank-man.” He pointed at her, “Squishy flesh-critter. Got it?”
“Got it. Stay behind. Don’t Panic. Move slow. I’m fast.”
Roland shrugged. She was very inexperienced with her enhancements, and this was as good as he would get from her right now. Time to go to work.
For the second time in twenty minutes, a metal door flew from its moorings and crashed to the floor in a shower of debris. Lucia wondered why anyone in Dockside even bothered with doors at all when dealing with Roland. It was like the giant man was possessed of an unreasoning hatred for doors. Or of opening them, at least.
Roland had half a second to register the room full of thugs when the two men in black coveralls near the exit pulled two pistols each and opened fire.
They were using SpyderCo HVB-92 pistols that fired 5mm ceramic beads at twenty-five times the speed of sound, which made a terrific racket. The Garibaldis were firing in semi-automatic and making every bead hit dead center on Roland’s chest. The friction they created set the air on fire as the beads flew, and on impact the beads carried huge amounts of both thermal and kinetic energy. These were serious weapons for serious men. Roland allowed himself to acknowledge the quality of both the technology and the marksmanship. Sparks showered and cascaded from every impact, turning the surrounding room into a holiday pyrotechnics display complete with orange blossoms of fire and burning acrid smoke.
Which was entirely irrelevant because Roland was wholly impervious to small arms fire. At the time of his creation, there was a very small, very discrete set of man-portable weapon systems on earth that could do more than minor damage to his skin. Small, concealable pistols were not on that list.
In the space of eight seconds the Garibaldis had dumped fifty rounds apiece. The barrage had drained their weapons dry, and one hundred rounds of potent ammunition had done precisely zero damage to Roland. It had, however, done an excellent job of wounding half of their own men with ricochets. Various goons lay sprawled about with neat 5mm holes in their clothes and faces, oozing blood and wafting smoke.
There was a very pregnant, silent pause for a moment while everyone assessed what had just happened. Aside from the groans of the wounded, there was very little to listen to as the gunmen stared open-mouthed at the tableau. Their target had just taken a hundred direct hits from four very nice guns. They had finished the job their boss had started in ruining his shirt, but that seemed to be about the extent of their effectiveness. They blinked at each other, faces frozen in stark incredulity. This was not a situation the famous Garibaldi brothers had come prepared to deal with.
Somewhat panicked, the two identical dark-haired and dark-eyed men dropped their magazines and fumbled for reloads, while the rest of their motley crew attacked.
This included Mook, a seven-foot gray-skinned mutant with a grossly asymmetrical face and very stooped posture. Flanked on either side, Mook advanced with four other local enforcers for back-up. Roland didn’t recognize them and dispatched the first one to reach him with a casual backhanded slap. He was pretty sure the guy didn’t die from the love tap. Probably not, anyway. Roland couldn’t check because he had more pressing concerns.
Mook took one lumbering step forward and swung his club-like fist in a looping overhand right, aiming for Roland’s head. Mook was nearly as big as Roland, but his knotted arms were longer, almost gorilla-like, which gave him a distinct reach advantage. Roland considered letting the punch land for a moment, betting his skull was tougher than that fist, but then thought better of it. He had seen Mook in action once or twice, and he didn’t feel good enough about that bet to roll the dice right now.
Roland ducked the ponderous blow and thundered a right hook to Mook’s ribs. He only used a fraction of his available power, not wanting to punch a hole right through his opponent. The solidity and implacability of the gray-skinned behemoth surprised Roland. Mook’s body was far more dense than he had originally thought. The black fist drove against Mook with enough force to shift a car, but the towering mutant only exhaled a heavy puff of breath and swung at Roland with his left.
Roland had returned to a high boxer’s guard and took the blow on his right forearm. It felt like a tree had fallen on him. Roland grinned, enjoying a real workout for the first time in a good long while, and countered with a straight left aimed for Mook’s square, oversized chin. Like two pieces of industrial machinery, Roland’s wrecking-ball mitt made solid contact on the lumbering giant’s cinder-block jaw. This time the cyborg put some real power into the blow and felt the teeth click shut and the heavy head snap back. Mook staggered a step, glassy eyed and wobbling.
Roland pressed this advantage by landing two more straights, sending Mook flailing backwards into the scrambling Garibaldis, scattering the brothers. Despite the repeated blows, Mook refused to go down. He tried to catch his footing and square up with Roland again, but Roland was not having it. A big right boot collided with the mutant’s sternum carrying enough force to hurl the poor thug into and through the exterior wall.
Mook smashed a ten-foot hole through the Hideaway and landed in a boneless heap across the sidewalk, six feet to the right of the door. His limbs were all bent at unnatural angles and his breathing came in ragged gasps. Anyone who cared to make the observation would concur there were many broken things inside of Mook, and Roland instantly regretted his kick.
Too hard. Roland thought to himself. Dial it down.
Mook was just a poor dumb guy that only had one way to make a living. He wasn’t a killer or anything awful; just a better-than-average street heavy good for scaring deadbeats and junkies into paying their bills on time. Roland didn’t feel good about hurting him, but a fight’s a fight, and Roland couldn’t afford to dance all night.
He whirled to check on Lucia. He could not decide if he was pleased or horrified to see her dealing with three of the Dwarf’s thugs without much noticeable difficulty.
She was moving with fluid grace in and out of the way of their clumsy blows and attempts to grapple. Periodically, an elbow or a foot would snake out to break a nose or smash a groin. What made her task problematic was not her skill, but her mass. All three of the men had at least a hundred pounds on her, so despite outclassing her opposition in technical proficiency, she could not inflict much damage. She was fast and well trained, but just too small to put them down with anything close to efficiency. The agile woman was grinding them down one small injury at a time though, and would finish them off eventually. It was the only viable tactical option for the 130-lb woman: a version of hyper-velocity ‘death by a thousand cuts.’
Realizing that she did not need immediate assistance, Roland had time to deal with the Garibaldis. Mook’s unceremonious exit had scattered them like cockroaches, but they were professionals and they were already regaining their feet and weapons.
Nico Garibaldi was the first to get up and with practiced ease he sent three beads into Roland’s left knee before Roland was on top of him. He probably assumed that Roland was wearing body armor and hoped that the knee would be an unarmored spot to shoot. It was as good an assumption as any, just dead wrong.
Roland clamped his hand over the top of Nico’s head, engulfing it in a black fist and pulling the screaming man into the air. Nico slapped and punched at the massive forearm with one hand and emptied the HVB into Roland’s chest with the other.
He felt the hits from Chico Garibaldi’s HVB bouncing off his back while he held Nico’s thrashing body off the ground. He felt a freezing, detached rage building inside him, and he knew exactly where it came from.
To say that Roland did not like the Garibaldis would be a catastrophic understatement. The twin assassins were not like poor Mook. They were professional murderers. But even that wasn’t all that reprehensible in Dockside. Killing was as viable a trade as any other in this part of town. But the Garibaldis were a special case. They took pride in their work and in their lack of discretion. They did not care who the target was, where the target was, or how old the target was. Once the money changed hands, they did the job without question. Roland had seen what happened when the Garibaldis did a job, and the aftermath always reminded him of when he’d wake up after being blacked out by the Golem. When Roland saw the Garibaldis, he saw what his former masters had wanted him to be. What they MADE him be.
He turned, a savage snarl on his lips, and with more strength than was strictly necessary hurled Nico at Chico.
Roland suspected that his own neurological augmentations were inferior to Lucia’s, but his dilated sense of time was sufficient to see the flash of flame and gas from Chico’s last shot exit from Nico’s back while he was still mid-flight. Blood and bone arced from the exit wound as the bead tore through the body with terrible ease, trailing smoke.
Chico’s face went from grim determination to stark horror in slow motion as he registered what was happening. Nico’s lifeless corpse struck his brother with enough force to pitch him over backwards and drive him into the ground. Roland spared them a quick glance and then remembered to check on Lucia. She had put one of her antagonists down somehow, and the two remaining heavies were very much the worse for wear. She looked tired though, and Roland left the surviving Garibaldi for a moment dispatch the thugs with stiff-yet-merciful blows.
Lucia’s eyes were wide and her pulse was chattering in her veins. Her breathing was deep and rapid, and Roland recognized the signs of impending neurological overload.
“Lucia.” He pitched his voice in a slow, soft baritone It the most soothing tone he could muster, “You need to relax. Remember? Go slow. Slow down Lucia.”
Her eyes met his, panicky. He continued, “Slow down. Relax. Breathe.” She relaxed, tension visibly leaving the muscles of her jaw and neck. Her pupils returned to a more acceptable diameter, and her breathing slowed.
“There you go. Perfect. Just go slow. Breathe in for a count of four, then breathe out for a four-count. That’s right.” It was called ‘combat breathing’ and it had been helping soldiers with panic since the twentieth century. She was calming down, and Roland was just assessing the room when her eyes went wide again and she dived into his arms.
Romantic implications were abandoned when Roland felt the searing heat and thunderclap impact characteristic of every time he got shot in the head. Goddamn Chico Garibaldi had recovered and was emptying a twenty-five-round bead magazine directly into the back of the big cyborg. Where the burning projectiles struck his back, there was a staccato tattoo of mild stings. His head, on the other hand, had much less armor. Every so often there would be a flash of white-hot agony as a bead would crease the skin of his scalp and rattle off his reinforced skull. It would leave a nasty rend in the skin for several hours before his nanobots could repair the mesh. Thankfully, his skull held up.
There was nothing Roland could do with that much gunfire coming his way but wrap his arms around Lucia and cover as much of her body with his. Fortunately for her, she was easy to envelop.
Roland waited until he heard the click of an empty magazine and then stood. His coat, entirely shredded by the barrage, fell from his body in smoking tatters. He shrugged out of the hanging rags and tore the undignified remains of his shirt away. He turned slowly and faced Chico.
Chico got his first good look at the most feared fixer in Dockside, and he did not know what to make of what he saw. Bare-chested, Roland was a seven-and-a-half foot black mass of writhing muscles and simian proportions. He stared down at the assassin from his full height. The scowling bald head was still smoking from a dozen direct hits, and the looming giant glowered at the stupefied killer with heavy brow furrowed and teeth showing. It was a face that told Chico that he was a dead man. The mouth tightened into a grim flat line and the eyes neither flared nor blazed, as the stories so often alluded to in these moments. They were flat black hollows, betraying no hint of emotion.
Roland had no emotions when it came to Chico Garibaldi. Roland was not emotionless: He had felt real terror when he thought Lucia might get shot, for instance. But then again, Lucia was a person, and Chico was just a monster who killed for fun and profit. He was just meat for the grinder as far as Roland was concerned, because Roland liked killing monsters. Every time he ended someone like Chico, he felt like it erased one innocent that had died because of him. It was all he felt he could do to even the score.
Roland had killed hundreds of people in his career, and the worst of them had been better men than Chico Garibaldi. Roland knew he could tear the tiny man apart and still sleep like a baby that night. For his part, Chico realized for the first time since the fight began that Roland was going to kill him, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
Chico sprinted for the door, his dead twin all but forgotten, and made it about two steps before a black vice clamped on the back of his neck and threw him across that room. His brief flight was terminated in abrupt fashion by the bar that had previously been serving drunk revelers. He struck with his right shoulder and his humerus snapped like a dry twig. His head bounced off the fake wood paneling with a dull thud and spots danced across his vision.
The concussion disconnected him from the pain of his broken arm, and with rubber legs he tried to stand, more from reflex than any real sense of purpose. He didn’t see the blow that collapsed his ribs, but the stabbing fire of a punctured lung brought his situation into stark focus as his legs turned back to formless jelly. He slumped against the bar, hacking agonized coughs that sprayed foamy blood onto his coveralls.
“Roland, stop!” he heard the woman say, “Please!”
The gigantic black blur that took up Chico’s field of vision paused. He heard the monster rumble calmly, firmly, “He’s a killer, you know. He’s killed women, children, innocents. He tried to kill us tonight. He’ll try again, Lucia. This is just how it goes, here.”
“Well, I’m not from here.” Chico was losing consciousness, and the voices sounded like they were coming from inside a tunnel. “Just leave him. Let’s just go. Please.” She was pleading. Chico, having grown up in the slums and alleys of New Boston’s underworld, was confused on a very primal level.
A woman he was supposed to kidnap was pleading with a man he tried to kill, so that he could live. Chico was briefly cognizant enough to appreciate the irony of his situation. Then he fell asleep.