Pew! Pew! - Bad versus Worse Read online

  Or was it megalomania?

  He didn’t much care, but other people might, and—for now—he needed them to follow his lead. Unlike Mara—no, no, it was Kara, Kara—they needed to do as they were told. Then it’d all work out.

  The people in the briefing room were a motley group. Off-grid runners for the most part. Sure, there was the telltale marks of link activity on his overlay, but these people didn’t even have credit cards. How you’d get by without one was a mystery that he’d love to solve, but at another time. Cash payments only. Which was good news: Austin hated paper trails. Paper trails were what meant Reed fired him instead of a corporate scapegoat.

  Before she’d gathered these runners here, Kerry had taken a look at Kara and said something like, It doesn’t look like number one hundred worked great either. That was the problem with having hired help: so often, said help lacked any kind of vision or imagination. She was correct, at least in part. The mind control module that Austin had hijacked Kara’s body with worked great. It’s just that it left her a husk, lacking in meaningful autonomy. He wanted slaves, sure, but he wanted willing supplicants. Reed’s tech—his tech—would give him that. Prior to being thrown out—those fuckers didn’t have the common decency to leave him with his health plan—he’d been on the cusp of making the breakthrough. Some other, lesser researcher had made that breakthrough, and now his tech was being used for, for… porn. The assholes were using this beautiful technology in such an inelegant way.

  That wouldn’t do at all. Austin was certain that the conflicts of the world could be resolved in a more… efficient way if people didn’t argue all that time. If they started on an even footing. And he was going to sell them the shoes to do it.

  The analogy didn’t fit quite right, just like his jacket. Once upon a time his clothes fit fine, but a few skipped meals and no more regular trips to a clinic? Well, his body wasn’t what it was. Sure, the metal under the skin did what it was supposed to do, but the skin looked like it was feeling the touch of time. But in a few hours, days, weeks at most, he’d be back on top. King of the world, if he had his way. And Austin Ainley got his way.

  “You going to say something or just stand there?” said one of the runners, lounging back against the hard plastic of his chair. Decent-sized guy, looked like he worked out, although drugs could do that without all the hard work.

  Austin steepled his fingers. “You’re being paid by the hour.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “If you can think of an easier way to make cash other than sitting in a hard plastic chair and watching me, be my guest,” said Austin. “No? I didn’t think so.” The lounger scowled muttering something. Austin’s hearing—augmented by top-shelf bionics—picked up crazy asshole and carve me a piece of that. Austin frowned. His mistake—his, he was able to admit it now—with Mara was that…

  Wait. Mara? Kara? Fuck’s sake. His mistake with Kara was that he’d let the horse have too much play in the bridle. She’d got the bit between her teeth. It wouldn’t do to have that happen here. People were expensive—the costs of recruiting, not to mention the costs of training, were high—and so wastage was crucial to manage. There were nine or ten people in this room right now: Austin, Kerry, and seven contracted runners. The ‘maybe’ was Kara, or what was left of her, standing off to Austin’s right, a long rope of drool extending from her jaw to the carpet. Not like the carpet would be made materially worse by the experience, but it was a sight to see. That the runners hadn’t commented on it was a mark of their professionalism, or more like, a mark of their ability to give zero fucks. Zero fucks was a good asset, if directed in the right ways. Kara was one of the right ways. A lack of respect for the boss? Definitely not right at all. It’s best to get the wastage at the front of the process where it costs the least. Austin let out a sigh. “Did you,” he said, “call me a crazy asshole?”

  “What?” said the man in the chair.

  “Did I fucking stutter?” said Austin. He tapped the side of his head, just below his ear. “Had a little work done in my time.”

  “What? Uh, no.”

  “I’m after quiet fingers to do dirty work,” said Austin. “I’ll take loud fists to do ugly jobs, if I must. But what I won’t take is some asshole coming in here, getting in my grill. My grill. Did you know? I had to let one of my staff go today.” He jerked a thumb at Kara.

  “She’s,” said the man in the chair, “still here.”

  “Is she? Is she?” said Austin. He pulled a long, thin metal probe from the collection of tools on his desk. He stamped towards Kara, who showed no sign of knowing or caring. He took the probe and inserted it, very slowly, into the side of her face. It took a bit of doing, the skin taught under the probe at first until it punctured through, and then—with a bright burst of blood—it slipped inside her flesh. She didn’t move at all. “Does that,” said Austin, turning away from Kara, leaving the probe sticking out of her face, “look like someone who’s still here?”

  “Uh,” said the man in the chair, now sitting up a whole lot straighter.

  “I asked you here with great courtesy,” said Austin. “I’m fucking paying for you to be here. And you—”

  “Boss,” said Kerry.

  “Not now,” said Austin. “I’m mentoring someone.”

  “Okay,” she said, putting her hands in her pockets, looking down, a cascade of red hair falling forward. “Do your thing.”

  “I’ve always said,” said Austin, “that if someone dislikes you for no reason, you should give that motherfucker a reason.”

  Kerry cleared her throat, eyes looking up through the hair. “Technically, it wasn’t you that said it first—”

  “Not now, Kerry,” said Austin. She stayed quiet after that.

  The man in the chair looked behind him, then back at Austin. “You… you’re mentoring me?”

  “Yes,” said Austin.

  The man laughed. It was a big sound, full of false happiness. “Oh, someone’s getting learned,” he said. “But it ain’t me.” And with that, he reached towards the sidearm slung low against his hip, raised it, and filled Austin full of metal.

  At least, that’s what he wanted to do. It was a practiced move, full of the liquid motion of repetitive use. The man was used to that particular draw, with that particular weapon. Austin didn’t know the man from any of the others, as indistinguishable as the filaments of carpet under his feet, but he was used to challenge. In the syndicates, challenge was a way of life. Perhaps not so immediate: in a boardroom, you didn’t draw down on someone. HR might not have cared, but PR did if gunplay got caught on cam. If your systems got hacked, the footage spread all over the public networks like the moneyshot on a bad porno? Bad. So, Austin was used to not drawing down in the boardroom, but he didn’t let shit just slide. He might not have worked for Reed at this particular moment, but his previous position had afforded him top shelf bionics.

  Top. Shelf.

  The gloss of overtime slipped around him, the light in the room taking on that opaque, treacle-like texture. His nervous system now running at a greatly increased rate to human normal, he would appear to be moving almost too fast to see to the non-augmented human. He reached behind him, his body’s meat not liking this speed of movement quite so much, pulling out a gold-plated Glock. It was a ‘retirement’ gift from Reed, a decent-sized sidearm with multiple firing modes. He’d taken the precaution of loading it, twenty rounds of promised death slung below one already in the chamber. Austin wondered about this particular gift from Reed, as if they knew his tendency to leave his colleagues dying from a sucking chest wound. As his hand gripped the weapon the hard link came online, the sidearm’s telemetry filling up his overlay. Rounds left in the magazine (20+1). Optics from the sidearm’s forward-facing camera. Heft and weight of the weapon (900 grams, loaded). Drag of atmospheric effects (zero). He let his arm swing back towards the man in the chair, whose own hand hadn’t even made it as far as the grip of his weapon.

  Austin selected semi-au
tomatic from the Glock, then squeezed the trigger. He placed a round in the middle of the man’s forehead, and then—because runners had an annoying tendency for sub-dermal armor—he put another round in the man’s throat, and two dead center in his chest. A bright bloom of blood blossomed from the throat wound’s rear exit, spreading like gossamer taffy in overtime’s slow grip. Austin let overtime relax for a second, tasting burnt almonds on his tongue. Smoke curled from the barrel of the Glock, drawn towards the air conditioner’s mouth in the ceiling.

  “You killed Riley!” said a stocky man behind—presumably—where Riley now lay, in a spreading pool of blood. The carpet would never be the same after this. The stocky man had surged to his feet, a short pump-action shotgun dangling from its sling. This one had full chest armor and a helmet, which was inconvenient.

  “Riley a friend of yours?” said Austin, not lowering the Glock.

  “Yes,” said the stocky man. He looked down, then back at Austin. “He is. Was. Aw. Fuckit.” And with that, he grabbed for the shotgun, squeezed the trigger, and blew Austin’s torso in half.

  At least—again—that’s what he wanted to do. Austin let the overtime kick in one more time. While it wasn’t wise to overuse it—he didn’t have Metatech milspec enhancements, because that shit left you a real psychopath after two tours balls-deep in the mud of another country—this particular situation had some extenuating circumstances. First, no one called Austin an asshole—a thing the PR clowns at Reed were going to learn. Second, it was back to mentoring. You needed to show people the good, and then penalize them for the bad. The Glock twitched sideways in his grip, his overlay reporting he still had 17 rounds of good, wholesome leadership and guidance left in the weapon.

  Austin lined up the chin strap of the helmet, the Glock’s camera showing him exactly what it was pointed at. He pulled the trigger twice, casings spiraling in slow motion from the breach, the rounds slicing through the stocky man’s helmet strap. Austin lowered himself into a crouch through gravity’s slow embrace—angle was very important—and fired three more times, the shots knocking the helmet up, up again, and then off the man’s face. Austin fired twice more, once for each eyeball, and then let time march on as it was supposed to, overtime taking a backseat.

  The stock man’s body swayed, the shotgun dangling from one hand, before he toppled back to join Riley on the floor. Austin looked around the shocked faces. “Plenty more mentoring to go around,” he offered.

  A woman at the rear of the room, straddling her chair and wearing an expression slightly less shocked than the remaining runners, looked him in the eye. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that the lesson was understood, loud and clear.”

  “Excellent,” said Austin, settling the Glock behind him on the desk. “Where were we?”

  “Well,” said Kerry, from her position by the wall. How she’d gotten there so quickly was a mystery, but understandable with gunfire. “I figure you’re telling us about the job.” Her voice hardly shook at all.

  “Yes,” said Austin. He lowered the Glock, taking in the people around him, all sitting still like they’d been epoxied in place. “Kerry. I need to know where the device is being held. What can you do about that?”

  “Well,” she said, brushing a strand of red hair back from her face, “I still know a few people at Reed. I can make some calls. I need to know, Austin. Is this the big one?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’ll burn those contacts. If this is the big one, it’s worth it. If it’s not, we should save that play for when it’s going to matter more.”

  That’s what Austin liked about Kerry. She was a forward-thinker. A strategist. She understood the value of a good plan. She wasn’t questioning his direction, just whether the time was right to drop some atomics on the situation. “Let’s say that this is the biggest play. The leagues, Kerry. We’ll be managing those fuckers at Reed before the week is out.”

  “Okay. I’ll burn some bridges,” she said, with a nervous smile.

  “Let the flames light our way,” said Austin.

  • • •

  In the end, only five of them remained.

  Kerry: always there. Able. She had schematics of the facility that Reed were using as the test site for the device. The device had a code name and a number, but Austin had always called it the Decider because of how it worked. It helped you make the right decisions. His new invention that Kara was modeling for him was far less subtle, and together they would form a stable product base to grow his empire from. If you couldn’t make the right decisions from the Decider’s gentle nudges, he’d pull in the big guns of the other module. It needed a name, something as catchy as Decider, but that could wait for another time. First, extract the Decider.

  The Decider was in a secure location, surrounded by armed guards. The ways in or out? Well, many. On foot, sure. You could saunter up to the gate and get shot. There was a sewer system, but while Austin figured on needing some new clothes regardless, wading knee-deep in human shit wasn’t a trial he wasn’t ready for. Which left the helipad. They’d grab an air car—rent by the hour, not the day—and drop in. The surprise factor coupled with Kerry’s auth codes would ensure their dwindling supply of mercs wasn’t wasted.

  Said dwindling supply of mercs: while there had been no further need for excessive tuition, a few had decided they didn’t want the money. Austin could respect that. Some jobs didn’t feel right, and he’d prefer people who were all-in versus the alternative. He was left with just three. Ruby Page, the woman who’d said she’d understood the lesson at the briefing. She wore a smile and some sass that said under other circumstances we’d be good friends. She was pure augmented brawn, her slim form belying a hefty level of milspec hardware under the skin. There wasn’t enough meat left amidst the metal in her to make a decent burger. Olivia Simons professed to be a hacker just trying to get by; in Austin’s experience there was no person ‘just trying to get by,’ and when he’d pressed her she’d admitted that she was journaling the whole thing to pay her way through college. Austin was fine with that. He didn’t even want a percentage. Fame had its own rewards. The final member was a man built like a lumberjack wearing the name Lancelot Leck like it was an old shirt he’d just grown too comfortable with to throw out. Austin had given the older man a look-over, his bionics the ‘heavy lifting’ kind. Leck had said that he’d worked construction for a Reed facility before they’d ‘fired my ass,’ and he was ready to come out of retirement. A little pay-back would help him sleep easier at night what with all the automation in construction these days, and the money wouldn’t hurt neither.

  One more completed the crew: Austin. Because he was going in, and he was going in with fire. No way he was sitting on the back line waiting for another’s play like some kind of has-been quarterback. No. He’d be at the front, and he’d be spilling Reed PR blood. And if PR weren’t there? He’d settle for any other blood.

  • • •

  Kerry pulled up the schematics on the tired display, highlighting a central room. “Here,” she said, “is all the bacon we could ever need.”

  “I’m not really into bacon,” said Olivia. “I mean, I understand the taste thing? I do. But pigs.”

  “Filthy?” said Ruby. She was cleaning a pair of short, custom sub machine guns. They looked to Austin’s eye to be a matched pair; one had RUBY written on it, the other PAGE. Austin figured it on being some kind of calling card, which was fine. It’d help Olivia’s story some, and all publicity was good publicity.

  “No. Crate farming is inhumane.” Olivia sniffed, holding her deck a little closer. “If you see the vids, they—”

  “Pork tastes like the tears of fucking Jesus,” said Leck. “How can you not eat bacon?” His voice was a rumble, like a worn down gasoline engine. He had an assault rifle which looked well-maintained, and he also packed a 10 pound sledge hammer, the bright yellow paint on the head flecked and worn from much use.

  “I feel like we should bring this meeting
to a focus,” said Austin. “Kerry?”

  “Thanks boss. Look. Basic in-and-out. Clean sweep. You’re looking for a box about so big,” and here, Kerry held her hands apart about the width of her shoulders. “Probably fixed to a wall, a little bit like a safe. It’ll be locked, so that’s where you come in.” She nodded to Olivia.

  “Won’t be locked for long,” agreed Olivia. “Pigs or not.”

  “There are… forget the pig thing,” said Kerry. “There are no pigs there.”

  “What about a vending machine?” said Leck. “I mean, there might be a BLT or something.”

  Austin sighed. “Do you have your weapons? This is a night op. There will be resistance. You’re being paid to eliminate that resistance. It goes without saying that ensuring Olivia gets to the safe alive is important.”

  “What about after the safe?” said Olivia.

  “Once we have the device,” said Kerry, with a smoothness that Austin admired, “it’s out, into the air car, and back here to our super secret lair for burgers and beer.”

  “I’d prefer a BLT,” said Leck.

  “Sure, you can have a BLT,” said Kerry. “It’s figurative, anyway.”

  “As long as we’re clear.”

  “Crystal,” agreed Kerry, narrowing her eyes. Then she looked to Austin. “Anything else, boss?”

  Austin gave that a little thought. “I’d like to sweeten the pot some,” he said. “I will pay a bounty on every Reed employee you kill. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds rough,” said Olivia.

  “You afraid of a little blood on your hands?” said Ruby. She leaned closer to Olivia. “Blood is… exciting.”

  “It’s not that,” said Olivia. “I don’t have a gun. How am I supposed to compete?”

  This was definitely Austin’s kind of team. He bent over, snaring the shotgun from where it was lying on the floor next to its previous owner. They really should clean that up, but later. “Will this do?”