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After the grievance was filed with the Hunter’s Lodge, the bounties dried up completely. Manny had managed to secure one for sixty-thousand credits before the Lodge burned the client and wiped the boards, which was exactly what they had wanted.
Manny skulked in the Quinzy Lodge lounge, nursing a glass of vodka and watching hunters come and go. It was a quiet place, as far as lounges went, and the conversations of bounty hunters and assassins were rarely of a sort others would find interesting. Mercenary bars were often loud with the boisterous boasts of hardened fighters, and thieves’ dens bustled with excitable chatter as groups planned or discussed their latest big heist. Hunter’s bars were different. They were quiet and dark. Conversations were low and cryptic. People did not smile in the easy friendly manner of rival tradesmen, but rather they smirked and grinned like predators with an easy meal in sight. It reminded Manny far too much of factional assemblies on Venus, where various groups of partisans would get together to pool resources or plan larger operations. Nobody trusted or liked anyone else, and it was hard to have a real conversation when everyone was trying to sit with their backs to the wall.
Manny had never liked bounty hunting, and had only turned to it as a way of getting off Venus. An eight-year-old boy when the last of the fighting over the Venusian secession had ended, he grew up among the broken remnants of the Separatist armies that had refused to surrender or honor the peace. He had been trained as a guerrilla fighter and scout for as long as he could remember. Now, with the distracting influence of cheap booze dulling the edges of his normally perfect focus, he found himself thinking about the first time he had been handed a slug-gun. He remembered how heavy it had felt in his too-small hands, and how strange it seemed for a child to hold so dangerous a thing. He recalled with crystal clarity how terrifying the report and recoil were when he fired it for the first time. It had bruised his shoulder and he almost dropped it. His weakness had shamed him to shedding a child’s tears in front of the men he worshiped.
With his parents dead, Manuel had grown to love his squad and crew as the kin he could never have. Those rough men and women who had fled to the bowels of the great colony domes and transfer stations dotting the inhospitable surface of Venus were his mother, father, and siblings. The government called them terrorists, but he had called them family.
This made their eventual betrayal all the more awful. He was far too young to understand, they had said. He wasn’t ready for the truth. As if somehow the truth of what they were would become more palatable with age or experience. ‘Hard choices,’ they had explained. ‘This is the only way’ they had exhorted.
At seventeen years old, Manny decided that if the atrocities he had inadvertently taken part in were the ‘only way’ to ensure a free Venus, then he was no longer interested in the cause. Overnight, Manuel Richardson suddenly found himself without a home or a family. He was a enemy to both factions and an outcast. He was friendless, homeless, and lost in a world where everybody wanted him dead. But he was also a survivor, and so he escaped. For several years he roamed the Gate Stations, taking odd bounty jobs or smuggling gigs. He never stayed in any one place long enough to get found out or make friends, but when he heard that the Big Woo gangs were forming their own territory, he recognized it as a chance to start over.
Which is why he was now in a place he did not like, sipping a drink he did not like, working for a man he did not like. There was a lot to not like about this job, but Manny had never seen sixty-thousand credits in one place before and he was eager to find out what that looked like. Ergo, he continued to pretend to drink and he waited. He waited for a very long time. He was seriously considering getting up and leaving when someone came through the door of the lounge and met his eyes. The man was tall, spare, and nervous-looking. He had sandy hair and frightened eyes. His gait was shuffling and clumsy as he walked over to Manny’s table clutching a courier bag.
“My cousin said you like cats,” the scared man blurted the nonsensical callsign.
“They taste like chicken,” Manny gave the countersign and the tall man's tense face relaxed. Trembling hands placed the bag on the table and he turned to leave.
“Wait,” Manny said. “I have a message.”
“I don’t do messages,” the man looked terrified, as Manuel knew he would be.
“He’ll need to know this,” he tried to say but the courier cut him off.
“I don’t do messages, you need to—”
“Listen shit-for-brains...” Manuel grabbed the terrified man by the nape of his neck and pulled his face to within an inch of his own. He growled, and the courier’s teeth clicked together as his mouth slammed shut, “I am giving you a goddamn message anyway. Take it to him or don’t. I don’t give a fuck. But if he doesn’t get this info he will be pissed and I will make sure he knows why. You following me?”
The head bobbed up and down, eyes bulging with fear.
“Good. Tell him that the mark knows, and that they are moving soon. He needs to go to ground while I take care of it.”
The courier’s eyes were blank, filled with terror and devoid of comprehension. Manuel waved him off, “Go, asshole. Tell him. Jesus, don’t just stand there! GO!”
The mousy courier turned on his heel and scurried to the exit with far too much speed for discretion. He disappeared through the portal and out into the New Boston night air.
Manuel sat back in his chair and sighed a long slow breath.
Run, rabbit, run, he thought. Lead us to your masters.
He waited a full five minutes before pulling out his DataPad and checking the signal. Sure enough, the courier had not noticed the small location transponder Manuel had placed on him when he grabbed the man, and the signal was clear and strong. It was too much to hope that the low-level runner would lead them directly to the client, but it was a foregone conclusion the courier would want to unload the message to someone who would know what to do with it as soon as possible.
The pretty lady and the giant fixer would pick up the trail now, but he needed to stay in the loop if this did not work. He had signed on to get the client, and he wasn’t getting paid until they did. However, he did have a courier bag filled with hard creds sitting right in front of him, and he was more than a little inclined to pocket those as a bonus. He looked at the bag, and then looked around the lounge. His eyes wandered back to the bag and his fingers moved of their own accord toward the clasp.
A slender hand closed over his and forced it not ungently down onto the table top. Manuel looked up, startled, and found himself staring down some of the most spectacular cleavage he had ever seen. He experienced a whole series of conflicting thoughts and emotions in that instant. They ranged from surprise at suddenly being grabbed, to hormonal delight at the astounding view arrayed before him, and then meandered to fear when he realized that the small hand over his was ridiculously strong.
He dragged his eyes away from the dazzling décolletage and met the gaze of his new table-mate. She was extremely pretty, with blinding blond hair and delightful blue eyes. Her mouth was curled in a sweet smile, but those eyes gave her intentions away as something far from friendly. Manuel decided he would much prefer to look down again, and so he did. He also tried to extract his hand, but he could not even make it wiggle, such was the grip of the tiny blond.
Her voice was high-pitched and squeaky. Her words delivered with a slight drawl and bubbly inflection, “No, no, Mr. Manny. You get paid when the job is done.”
Manuel stammered, “Y-yeah...I get that. Just uh, just checking it is all.”
She winked at him, which simultaneously made his heart race and started a cold sweat from the back of his neck, “I assumed as much, Manny. But we are just going to sit tight here for a minute while Lucy and iron-britches run down that nasty old courier. Can’t have the client thinking you were the one setting his boy up, right?”
“Right. Yeah. Okay. I guess they didn’t really trust me too much, huh? Not if you’re here.”
“Roland doesn’t really trust anyone except Lucia. Smart guys remember that. Dumb guys die. I’m Mindy, by the way.”
“Manuel,” he replied unnecessarily and shrugged, “Can I have my hand back now?”
“What?” the woman looked hurt. “You don’t want to hold my hand? You’ll give a girl a complex talking like that!”
Manuel was young and possessed of all the same deficiencies other young men experienced when interacting with attractive specimens of their preferred gender. Anyone with functioning eyes could see that he was not immune to the ample charms of the little blond killer. But he had also grown up a hunted freedom fighter in a band of other hunted freedom fighters. Long practice had taught him about feminine wiles, and he understood that sex could be every bit a weapon as a grenade was.
Often a far more effective one, he thought. Thus, the young man learned early to determine when he was being sized up as a mate, and when he was being sized up as a meal. While the two could be difficult to distinguish from time to time, this was not one of those times. Manuel diverted as much mental energy as he had to quelling his youthful lusts and focused his reserves on not running afoul of his new partners.
“I would like nothing more than to hold your hand, Mindy, and let’s be honest, virtually any other part of you that you’d let me,” his eyes darted back to her chest, barely covered by her skintight blue jumpsuit, which was unzipped halfway to her navel. “But I don’t really think you came here to whisper sweet nothings into my ear.”
“No,” she agreed and released him, “I was here to back you up in case things went weird.”
“And to make sure I didn’t sell you out or run off with the money?”
“Hush your mouth and perish the thought!” She gasped with exaggerated horror, “A nice Venusian boy like you do that? Why, I can’t even imagine such a thing!”
Manuel tossed her a scowling head shake, “I’m no choir boy, Mindy. But I’m no thief, either.”
“I know you aren’t,” she shot him a pout, enjoying how her antics caused his body temperature to fluctuate. Being able to see into the infrared spectrum made manipulating boys far too easy and far too much fun. “But we’ll just set here a bit and have a few drinks. I expect we’ll get a call from Lucy and Robo-dork within the hour.”
“What’s the story with him, anyway?” Manuel switched gears.
“What do you want to know?” She responded with a shrug, “He’s ex-military. Cyborg. Some sort of top-secret program that I do not recommend you ever ask him about, by the way. I used to think Mack was the toughest sucker in the galaxy, but I’m not so sure about it anymore.”
“Wait!” Manuel blurted. “You’re that Mindy? ‘Mack and Mindy’ Mindy?”
She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “That’s me.”
“Ho-lee shit. Wow.”
“Don’t get star-struck, kid. Ain’t no ‘Mack and Mindy’ no more.”
“I heard. I also heard you killed the Pirate King because of him.”
“Not by myself,” Mindy’s eyes, which had been sad and drooping as tough memories flooded her brain, picked up a twinkle as the conversation turned toward happier thoughts.
“Yeah,” Manuel was remembering the rumors now. “There was a bunch of Pike’s guys and uh...” he paused, frowning, “Was it them?”
“Who?” Mindy responded, all innocence.
“Roland and Lucia. They were there?”
“Yup. Roland beat the shit out of Grim Roper and Lucia killed the lady who murdered Pops Winter, all while I shanked Vlad the Impaler through his eye with a dagger.”
Manuel’s face went agog as he put all the pieces together. This was so much bigger than he had ever thought it would be. He wasn’t just working with a local fixer. These were not gang leaders or businesspeople with axes to grind. Roland and Lucia were players in a giant interstellar crime war. A war spanning entire systems and was being fought on multiple fronts. The Combine, The Brokerage, Gateways Inc., all of them giants in an enormous game for control of vast power and mind-boggling sums of money. This was huge. This was dangerous. More to the point, this was all way out of Manny’s league. This conflict would shape the future of the entire galactic economy and Manuel Richardson had just blithely volunteered to be part of it.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Mindy patted his cheek, startling him. “You get used to it. If you just do your job, don’t back-talk Lucia, and stay the hell out of Roland’s way, you will be fine.”
“What’s he like, really?” The dark-haired young man had to know. Something about Roland frightened him. There was a darkness, a severity to the man that Manuel wasn’t sure the others could see. Lucia was in love with him; this much was obvious. Mindy respected his strength and capacity for violence, anyone who bothered to look would see that easily. But living underground with a group of people he only later realized were fanatical terrorists had taught Manuel to ascertain certain things first when he met someone. There was a void inside Roland Tankowicz that Manny didn't think the others had noticed. The young man had lived for years in the sort of depraved amoral darkness that drove men insane and brought out the cruelest, most abysmal tendencies in otherwise good people. He was born into it and had lived in it. He could see it in others, and he saw it in Roland Tankowicz.
“You’re afraid of him.” Mindy presented it as a fact, not a question.
“You aren’t?” he shot back.
Mindy’s face changed at the question. Not drastically, but the lines of her eyes became sharp and shadowed. Her lips, a moment ago so luscious as to make a man hyperventilate, twisted to something feral and cold. Her whole demeanor darkened and Manny understood with abrupt terror that Mindy was as much a monster as Roland was. She was just better at hiding it.
“Of course I am, boy. He’s a monster. A literal killing machine. They built him in a laboratory and designed him to destroy.” Her gaze was ice-cold, and it locked into his with unbreakable tension, “Do you know what they called him?”
Manuel shook his head, not trusting his voice.
“Breach, kid. They called him ‘Breach,’ because a bunch of sick military fucks in lab coats built him specifically to break things. And if he didn't want to break something?” She tapped the side of her head for emphasis, “They shut off his brain and made him do it anyway. They treated him like just another tool.” She brought a fist down on the table, and Manny jumped at the sudden sound. “He was just a big ol’ hammer they got to swing whenever they wanted at whoever they wanted.”
She was too intense, too forward. Manuel felt himself shrink into his chair and tried to avoid her glare. She reached out and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look her in the eyes.
“So, yes. I’m afraid of him. I‘m afraid of what he can do because I’ve seen him do it. I’m afraid someday the wide-eyed wannabe-hero soldier currently driving that half-a-fucking-ton of military ordnance will give up and die. Then, instead of goofy stupid Roland Tankowicz trying to be a hero, we will all get to play with Breach. Ask Billy or Lucia about Breach. Breach can’t be stopped, kid. Breach is not a hammer, little Manny. He is the hammer. Breach breaks shit because that is what he was made to do.”
She let him go, “Have you ever heard a cyborg scream in terror in the middle of the night? I have. Roland has nightmares about what Breach did. Nightmares about what they used his body for. I’m talking about women, children, old men and innocents. He would wake up covered in their blood, or on a pile of dead bodies. Can you even imagine what that feels like?”
Manuel’s stomach lurched and he felt his gorge rise in his throat. His hands gripped the table with desperate strength and drove his knuckles white with the exertion. He could not meet Mindy’s eyes when he answered, and his voice was a small, defeated murmur against the roaring of his own blood his ears.
“Imagine? No, I can’t imagine it. But then again, I don’t have to.”
Mindy blinked at his response, and when she saw the cavernous emptiness behind the eyes of the young man, she realized something horrible. Suddenly it was all so obvious, and her mouth drew into a tight white line. A Separatist, too young for the war but the right age for the troubles, suddenly leaves Venus and hides in Big Woo? There was only one logical conclusion.
Manuel Richardson had the nightmares, too.