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“Uhm...”
It was Manny who broke the silent tension holding the room in check,’ “Why does ‘Fox’ make everyone so edgy?”
Lucia answered, “First of all, there are things about Roland you aren’t allowed to know. Here is what you are allowed to know. He is a registered military-class light cyborg.”
This surprised no one except Sid. “Huh. I always figured he was a mutant or just really heavily augmented.”
“Oh, he’s augmented, too,” Lucia added, and continued, “He is honorably discharged from the UEDF under conditions that cannot be discussed. Ever.” She glared at all of them. “Mindy, I know you know more than you let on. I know you have sources. You talk to anyone about it...”
“I know,” the blond had lost her bubbling immaturity. She played the part of the coquette so well that it was easy to forget it was an act sometimes. “Scary guys will whisk me away to a prison colony on Titan.”
“Or worse,” Roland grumbled.
“Reynard,” Lucia said, “Is almost certainly a man named Leland Fox. He was part of the group that built Roland.” Eyes grew wide at this revelation, and wider still when she followed it with, “So was my father.” This was not news to Mindy and Billy, but Sid and Manny were having trouble digesting that.
“So Fox is one of the guys who kidnapped your Dad?” Billy asked, “I thought you uh... you know.”
“Killed them?” Roland snorted, “I let Fox live to go to prison. Thought that would be better.” His voice became quiet and dangerous, “I thought I was growing as a person.”
“You are,” Lucia admonished.
Billy kept the conversation on track, “So Fox got out of prison early, huh. That feels weird, considering he sicced a bunch of mercs on the NBPD.”
“Brokerage,” Roland and Lucia said at once, and Lucia finished the thread. “I assume the Brokerage saw him as an asset and got him released.”
“I’m starting to think that The Brokerage is going to require some personal attention,” Roland's voice was strange for its lack of inflection. The air of menace to the statement was unmistakable despite the dispassionate delivery.
“Time to cancel my membership,” was Sid’s meek response. They all turned to her, and she gave a sheepish shrug, “I’m a loan shark and a money launderer! Obviously, I work with The Brokerage from time to time!”
Lucia spared Sid further interrogation. “So Fox is alive and out. That explains why these mercs seem to know Roland’s capabilities so well. At this point, I’m not sure we even care about Wade Manson anymore.”
“Agreed,” said Roland. “We only needed him to find the real enemy. Knowing it’s Fox gets us that far without him. But Fox won’t be at the shipyard. He’ll have learned from his mistake at the Corpus Mundi building and be far away.”
“He’ll be in his command center. That building in The Sprawl,” said Lucia with a nod. “This is going to be a multi-pronged operation.”
“You been reading his old Army manuals, girl?” Billy asked with a smile.
“You aren’t the only one with a lot of books, McGinty.”
Roland handed out assignments, “Billy, you and I need to get to The Dwarf and mobilize the crews. Rodney is going to want to hunker down and fortify Dockside. We need to convince him that this is a mistake. He needs to get the Dockside muscle to come to Quinzy with me.”
“I hear ya. I can handle old Rodney, but the goons are really only going to follow you. You got to convince a bunch of selfish and opportunistic street toughs to go to war. Tall order, that.”
“I’ll be persuasive.”
Billy rolled his eyes at that and Roland turned to Mindy, “You’re target is Paulie. You fought him in that truck. Can you handle him?”
“I can handle anyone. It’s what I do, you know.” Mindy sounded put out that he would even ask.
“I know you’re a pro, but I have to ask. He’s all yours, though.”
“On it.” Mindy’s blue eyes flashed at the thought of taking on the augmented mercenary, “Sid, I’m going to need to sit down with you to figure this guy out.”
“Naturally,” Sid said, sipping demurely on her beer. “Any assignment for me, Roland?”
“You want in?” the big cyborg replied.
“If we don’t nail these guys, they’re going to come after me for knowing too much anyway. The Brokerage doesn’t frighten me, but Wade Manson and this Fox character do.” She smiled at Roland, “Besides, this is the sort of operation that could really advance a gal’s career. Who knows how my fortunes might grow if we come out on top of this?”
“Fine,” Roland did not care about Sid’s career ambitions, but he would take help from anywhere and he trusted those ambitions more than he did the sunrise. “How much Brokerage money are you still holding?”
“Lots. Millions.”
“Well I guess I know how I’m going to convince a bunch of Docksiders to help me fight a war against professional mercenaries, then.”
Sid blanched a little, “You're going to rob the Brokerage?”
“No. I’m going to rob you. You’re just going to make it easy. Then I’m going to use that money to hire every thug in Dockside.”
“Okay...” Sid did not appear convinced of the soundness of the plan, but she nodded anyway.
Roland was on a roll now, his military demeanor asserting itself in his posture and language. “Mindy! Take Sid and head over to her counting house. Stage a robbery. Be a little dramatic, but don’t overdo it. Then get the money somewhere secure. When she’s done, Sid, go to the Smoking Wreck and tell Marty to hide you. Use the word ‘Breach’ and he’ll know what to do. When Billy and I are done at Hideaway he will get you and stash you in Big Woo.
Mindy snapped to attention with a dramatic click of her heels and waved a sloppy salute, “Yes sir, General Iron-Butt, sir!” In her current outfit, the whole effect was magnificent in its stupidity.
“I’m a corporal, you yellow-headed twit. Just go.”
“But I’m still hungry!” Mindy complained.
“Come on, Mindy,” Sid sighed. “There’s plenty to eat at my place. You can raid the fridge while you rob me.”
“Can I tie you up?” the little blond seemed sincere in this request, but Sid’s scowl was all the answer Mindy needed. The women left, leaving Manny, Billy, Roland and Lucia alone.
Roland looked at Manuel, “Manny, this is way outside of what you signed up for. I want you to go with Lucia to get her in and out of that building, but if you want to walk away now, we will pay you what we owe and no hard feelings.”
The scout met Roland’s eyes without flinching, “This Fox guy, what’d he do to you?”
“If I answer that, you will be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”
“I already gotta do that, Mr. Tankowicz. The Red Hats will never let me go. Soon enough they’ll find me here and I’ll have to move again, anyway. There’s a real good chance I won’t live long enough to get in trouble for it, either way.”
Roland conceded the point, “Fox and his scientist flunky put a program in my brain that allowed them to control my body against my will. Then the Army used me in operations that resulted in the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of civilians.”
Manny nodded without judgment, “I figured it was something like that. Mindy talks too much.”
Lucia winced slightly at that comment. It was something they would have to correct, but Manny had already moved on.
“The Red Hats took me in when I was five years old. They didn’t have any fancy cybernetic tricks to fuck with my brain, so they settled with good old-fashioned propaganda and grooming. By the time I was eighteen I was a full-blood true-believer in the cause. I figure by that time I helped caused the deaths of a few hundred civilians myself. When I realized this and started to resist...” He shook his head and turned his eyes to the floor, “They tried to kill me. The people who raised me, the kids I grew up with and played with. They all turned on me without a second thought. I was just a kid, Roland. Hell, I still am. But now I run from station to station, waiting for the day some snitch or sympathizer turns me in, and the kids I played tag with in the mess hall try to slit my throat in the middle of the night. Again.” He spat the last word, and two syllables were turned into an expletive by the betrayal of those he had trusted most. “I was so young, so stupid, I bet they had been laughing at me the whole damn time. They treated me like I was a useful tool and then kicked me to the curb when I asked the wrong questions.”
Roland understood. The details were different, but this was a very familiar story to him.
The young man looked back up, showing neither fear nor shame, “Do you know what I figure the difference between you and me is?”
Roland shook his head.
“Not a goddamn thing. I’m in, Mr. Tankowicz. But I’ll want a favor when we are done.”
“You want to go after the Hats?” Roland surmised.
Manny nodded.
“Agreed.” Roland held out a hand and Manny shook it, “Within reason, I should add.”
“Unquestionably. So, I get Ms. Ribiero into that building and then what?”
“Lucia gets to go after Fox. You help her secure Fox and exfil.”
“What if Fox does not want to be secured?”
Roland shrugged, “Lucia will make a call in the field on how to proceed.”
Manny’s eyebrows lifted, “Okay. You’re the boss.”
Lucia cocked her head to the side, “Do you want me to handle Fox like I did Johnson?” Warren Johnson had Been Fox’s partner, and for his crimes Lucia had killed him on the roof of a Corpus Mundi black site. The question should have disturbed her more. But she realized asking it did not affect her at all. Lucia wondered how much of that was the nanobots controlling her brain chemistry and how much was her own desire to kill the man responsible for so much of Roland’s pain. Something occurred to her in that moment. A brief insight into the tortured mind of a human weapon. This is what he feels, isn't it? This need to protect, yet also to punish. I’m ready to kill a man because that man hurt Roland. That’s what Roland does. He hurts people who hurt others.
She found herself uncomfortably comfortable with that, but she recognized the pitfalls. A sad ironic thought followed the previous one.
Don’t become an amoral murder-bot! Her augmentations would bear careful observation, she understood. She was not ready to become as hard as Roland. She was his conscience, and that was a very important role. Even with a conscience, Roland was not a pleasant man. Without one, he was a natural disaster.
Roland had faith in her, and he said as much. “You can make the call. I don’t trust myself to be objective about it. Everything I know says he needs to go. I let him live once and we can see how well that worked. When you have a better handle on what’s going on, you can decide the best way to manage him. I trust you to make the right decision.”
“You really are growing as a person,” she replied with a smile.
“I’m trying.”
McGinty picked this moment to interject, “I hate to be that guy, but ah... are we forgetting the elephant in the room?”
Three heads turned to look at the red-headed gangster.
“You know, a certain nine-thousand-pound elephant?”
Manny smirked, “Oh yeah. I think I’ve got that covered.”
“Really?” Billy did not look like he believed that. “We have a top-secret cyborg super-soldier here, who we all admit is probably outclassed—”
“Out-gunned, maybe,” Roland could not let that stand. “Never outclassed.”
“Whatever,” Billy dismissed the comment, “Roland the mighty warrior here is pretty well out-gunned, but Manny the normal guy has a heavy cyborg handled?”
Manny smirked, “I’m young, but I’m sneaky, Billy.”
“Oh, I gotta hear this,” Billy said with an eye roll.
“It’s an AutoCat 8900 series.” Manny said it as if that explained it all. When no one responded he explained. “It has a two-stage cooling system. The first stage is half the size of the second, so there are three levels of cooling available. When it’s idling or doing light stuff, the small stage cools it. At medium workloads, it just switches over to the big coil.”
Roland and Billy nodded so Manny would know he had not lost them.
“When it runs flat out, both coils run for full cooling.”
“Manny,” Roland sighed, “Just tell us what you did.”
“I wrapped FireWire around the second stage’s cooling outflow and soldered the connectors to the cooling control circuit.”
Roland thought about that for a moment, and then he started a rumbling, laugh that shook his chest. Billy looked confused.
Roland explained, “FireWire is used to add heat to pipes or systems on cold planets in emergencies. You just wrap it around whatever you want to keep warm. It’s got a coating that reacts to small amounts of electricity. When you run a few amps of current through it the stuff heats up. A lot.”
“And?” Billy prompted.
Manny looked at Billy like he was an idiot. “When that big second stage kicks in, the firewire will go off and add like, a shit-ton of heat to the system. The hotter the thing runs, the hotter it will get. Even better, I didn’t hack anything or tie anything into the internal systems. It’s just one soldered connection and six feet of half-inch wire around a big hose. The diagnostics won’t see it, and since the first stage works fine, they won’t have a clue anything is wrong until they start to run it hard.”
“You slippery motherfucker,” Billy smiled his approval, “The big freak is going to overheat fighting Roland. That is some seriously sneaky shit.”
“How long before heat gets critical?” Roland needed specifics.
“I used the good stuff, so we are looking at like, fifteen minutes to get up to temp, and then the firewire should outrun the cooling system for a good hour or so before it starts to fade. The cooling was unmodified, so call it ten minutes at full rip before shit starts breaking. If the pilot’s good, he’ll try to control output. Figure that can buy him another five or six minutes.”
“That’s kind of tight. I’ll need to push him hard, then.”
Lucia, having been listening intently and letting her brain run scenarios, offered the best solution. “Let everyone else soften him up and get him running hot. Just when he realizes something is wrong, then you can jump in and push him even harder.”
Roland accepted the tactical advantages of doing it her way, but his personality resisted any plan that did not have him leading from the front. He was beginning his protest when Billy interrupted him with the sort of simple and blunt communication that always worked best with the glowering old soldier.
“She’s right. Shut up and do it her way, you macho idiot.”
“Dammit,” was Roland’s witty riposte. He looked to Manny, who shrugged and pointed to Lucia.
“She scares me more than you do. Sorry.”
“Dammit,” he repeated.
Lucia, gracious in victory, assumed control of the strategy session, “We’ll have The Dwarf start the fight. That should confuse them right off the bat. They are expecting you, Roland. Not Rodney and a bunch of Dockside muscle. They’ll still think they’ve got us though. Rodney will engage Manson with a small crew, and when the mercs pounce, we will spring the reserves on them. That should draw out the armature. When the mech is fully engaged, we can pull Rodney back and let Roland have his fun.”
“All while Mindy hunts down Paulie and cuts the head off that snake,” Roland added.
“Mindy will have gone in early,” Lucia agreed. “When she sees her chance, she’ll take Paulie down. Meanwhile, Manny and I will get into that command center and deal with Fox.”
“Destroy those files,” Roland grunted. “Destroy them and burn that place to the ground.”
“Don’t worry,” Manny said. “I know how to handle those files.”
Then there’s just one more thing,” Roland stated flatly, “I need to go talk to Tommy Guns about that armature.”
Billy’s eyebrows rose at that, “Tommy can whip you up any little toy you want, but are you really going to use heavy weapons inside a hangar?” Billy’s armorer was skilled and innovative, but an advanced drug and gambling addiction kept him from working for a legit contractor. The question was not whether or not a weapon existed that could take down a heavy armature. That happened all the time. The question was whether or not using such a weapon would kill everyone inside that building in the process. Billy made the point, “Anything that can knock that big fucker down is going to mess up the place real bad.”
Roland smirked, “It’s just a big machine, Billy. If you want to take it apart, all you need is to bring some tools.”