The Fixer Omnibus: The Fixer

The Fixer Omnibus

The Fixer

Andrew Vaillencourt

Published by Andrew Vaillencourt, 2019.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

THE FIXER OMNIBUS

First edition. June 20, 2019.

Copyright © 2019 Andrew Vaillencourt.

ISBN: 978-1393061908

Written by Andrew Vaillencourt.

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The Edge of Doom

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

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Chapter One

THE INCONVENIENCES started, as they so often do, with a woman. Not in a sappy, romantic adventure sort of way; but in that specific manner that always seems to follow the introduction of two people who, for better or worse, were going to be stuck with each other for a good long while. That the person in question was a woman, it could be posited, was entirely irrelevant. But it was a woman nonetheless, and no one could deny the inconveniences started with her.

She stood exactly five foot seven, with short, dark hair worn in a fashionable pixie cut with a single magenta stripe in the front, obviously done by a professional. She was just on the lean side of curvy, but with taut thighs and a hint of definition in the muscles of her shoulders and arms. The shape and tone reminded Roland of a dancer’s body. It was the body of someone who took care of her health and fitness without getting obsessed with it. He decided it was a good body.

Roland approved of the look, in the style of banal acknowledgement that the males of the species were inclined to bestow upon the females, entirely unencumbered by the females’ complete and utter disinterest in such. Roland had grown accustomed to the disinterest of women, so his approval went unvocalized and subsequently unacknowledged. This was probably for the best since Roland was not the kind of man women wanted any kind of acknowledgement from. Most people were happier if Roland did not acknowledge them at all. So was Roland. It was a system that worked for everyone.

Other than her general good looks, there were other reasons to keep an eye on the girl... no... woman as she entered the room. Roland adjusted his estimation of her age to mid-thirties as her face caught the dim light near the bar. Pretty face, too, he acknowledged. Not that it mattered.

No, she commanded the eye for reasons other than attractiveness. First among the interesting phenomena was her presence here at all. This was a spacer’s bar; located one long block from Farragut Shipping’s main platform. Arguably cleaner than most Dockside watering holes to be sure, but the furniture and décor were showing their age. As were many of the patrons, for that matter. The lights burned dim and yellow, and both music and clientele leaned towards the ‘loud’ and ‘old’ ends of the spectrum for either. The bar, a long hardwood affair at the back of the room, had more gouges than grain left in it. Coincidentally, this is how an astute observer might have described the bartender as well.

It was an old-school watering hole, with old school sensibilities. It did not have a stage for bands to play, nor did it have a wine list. Beer they had though, in wonderful variety and quality, which elevated ‘The Smoking Wreck’ above most gin mills this side of the Sprawl. The suds ran cold and flowed cheaply. This pleased the clientele; who were decent enough folk (for Dockside, at least).

The uniqueness of the surroundings and the patrons meant no one came here except longshoremen, spacers, pimps, thieves, and whores. She did not belong to any of those groups, Roland was sure. Her clothes appeared nice and fashionable, but also practical. She wore tight blue pants with black leather boots that rose to just below the knee, with a wide belt trimmed to match the leather of her footwear. A black shirt made of some style of shimmery material that looked comfortable and durable covered her upper body. It had no sleeves and had been tailored snug against her body. Not sleazy-snug... more like... fitted. It was a garment for practical purposes, and it looked well made. She carried a small bag over one shoulder. Black, and about eight square inches in size, it sported a simple silver button at the flap. Everything about her screamed Upper-class socialite. Which made her a very strange addition to the current cohort of Dockside lowlifes and ambitious street scum who liked this bar. The Smoking Wreck wasn’t just a wry turn of phrase; it was truth in advertising.

Second, she moved funny. She was twitchy as if hopped up on chemical speed or perhaps neurologically augmented. This might make her presence more à propos, but her eyes were clear and there was no sign of ataxia or shuffling. When she spoke to the bartender, her voice was a sure, unshaken alto that neither stammered nor slurred. To Roland’s practiced eye, she didn’t look like she was on anything. But every move she made had the aspect of an old film reel run at a speed just a little faster than it should have been. The woman walked too fast. She talked too fast. Her hands darted like striking cobras with even the most basic movements. The effect appeared subtle, but consistent. Roland doubted anyone but he had even noticed it.

The last thing keeping Roland’s attention on the girl was what she said to the bartender. It started innocuous enough, and Roland could hear it quite well despite the noisy bar.

I’m trying to find someone. I was told he would be here.

The animated mass of tanned leather and scars that served as bartender was an old war veteran named Marty Mudd. He had been slinging watered-down gin in this dive for twenty years, and he knew better than to give a straight answer, Lots of people come here, doll. Don’t really know every one of ’em. Lot of ’em come here hoping to not be found, if you know what I mean. He looked left and right in an exaggerated caricature of clandestine chicanery, Not sure it’d be good business if I started acting contrary to their wishes. He winked an overly conspiratorial wink at her. His bushy eyebrows and shock of unruly white hair made it a very comical gesture, indeed.

Roland smiled in quiet approval. Marty was good people. He had done his tours during the Venusian secession without complaint and came home to a planet that didn’t need him anymore. He didn’t take it personally. It just wasn’t his style.

No, Marty had stepped off the dock still in his uniform, walked into this bar and took a job sweeping the floor. Sixteen years later he bought the place. Smart, friendly, and tough as tungsten, he proved to be a man Roland liked very much. This made Marty special in a world full of people Roland didn’t like at all. The feeling was mutual. Marty liked Roland as much as Marty could like anyone. Roland wasn’t big on ‘friends’ in the classical sense; but he and Marty had history.

The two old soldiers enjoyed a professional arrangement as well: Roland took care of Marty when Marty needed his particular kind of help, and Marty did not charge Roland for every single drink he consumed. Marty also helped ensure that Roland’s privacy remained sacrosanct and unmolested by too much unvetted scrutiny. Truthfully, a lot of the people in Dockside helped with Roland’s desire for privacy. Docksiders liked having Roland around because Roland kept problems away, and in exchange the folks respected his privacy. Which of course, is another reason the woman at the bar needed watching. Unfortunately for all of them, the next words she uttered were a big ’ol heap of problem.

I’m supposed to say the word ‘breach’ to you. Does that mean anything? A hint of desperation tinged the edge of her question. Marty flinched in surprise, and he could not help but blink and cast a glance back over the high-top tables and across the dimly lit booths. It carried all the way to a dark corner of the room deep in the back. She caught the look and whipped her head to the left, and Roland knew she could not help but see him seated in the corner booth.

He stared vehemently down at the table and his empty beer glass. His mind swam in a frenetic crossfire of desperate thoughts, all of them pushing the same agenda.

He furiously willed her not to have said the damned word. But she had said it.

He sat silently and tried to will the woman to walk out at that instant. She stayed put.

With a sinking heart he willed his beer glass to be full. But the glass remained stubbornly empty.

He did not want to look up and meet her eyes.

But he had to look. And he did look. She saw him, and he saw her.

Marty held up his hands in mock surrender and gave Roland a look of abject apology. Roland heaved a mighty sigh and waved the woman over. The packed bar was loud with drunken conversations and bad rock-and-roll coming from the ancient music machine in the corner. A few of the locals stopped to stare at the attractive woman in the nice clothes supremely out-of-place in their happy little slice of hell. But as she passed through the dive bar and got to Roland’s table, they made it a conspicuous point to look at something else. Another reason Roland liked this bar: People knew to mind their damn business here. The woman sat down in her nervous, twitchy way. She snapped her head left and right to check her surroundings, and Roland started in before she could get a word off.

Who told you to use that word here? Though phrased as a question, Roland took for granted most people understood that he did not simply ‘ask questions.’ What he had meant was, Tell me who told you to use that word here. Now. Clever people rapidly figured out that his veneer of politeness was merely a courtesy. He was a brusque guy, and he liked it that way.

She responded, My father. He said to come find you and to call you ‘Breach’ if you didn’t trust me.

Yeah well, I don’t trust you, and using that word doesn’t necessarily mean you are trustworthy. Who is your father?

My name is Lucia Ribiero. My father is Donald Ribiero.

Roland could only think of one thing to say, Well. Shit. This information changed everything.

She went on, My father said he knew you from the Army, and if I ever got into trouble to find you here and say that word.

And you’re in trouble?

Yes. There was grim finality in that lonely syllable.

The kind of trouble your father thinks I can help you with?

I hope so, she shrugged weakly.

Did your father say I’d help you?

He said if you didn’t help me, it was because you really were a soulless bastard and the only part of you worth a shit leaked out of you onto some off-world battlefield decades ago. He said you owed him, and even though you were going to act like a complete asshole you actually were a very nice man and just didn’t want anyone to know. She looked sheepish.

Roland cocked an eyebrow, He said all that, huh?

I’m paraphrasing. There were more swear words and some yelling I couldn’t make out, she shrugged. Roland had to admit that sounded a lot like the Don Ribiero he remembered.

He talked about you a lot when I was growing up. Mostly when he drank too much. He said you were solid. She spoke more quietly now. She sounded sad and scared at the same time.

Roland sighed, You don’t know the half of it, lady. You need to know every bad thing he ever said about me is true, and the good things are likely exaggerated.

He only ever said good things about you.

Then he lied. But yes, I knew Don Ribiero, and yes, I owe him. Roland rubbed his eyes wearily, And the best part of me absolutely has leaked out onto some off-world battlefield, for the record. But I’ll listen to your story, anyway. No guarantees on what I can do for you though.

Lucia never got the chance to tell her story though. The doors to the bar chose that moment to open with a melodramatic bang; and four men strode in. These did not look like spacers or longshoremen either.

This group was a study in clichés: Four big goons each wearing tailored gray suits having all they could do to contain musculature one could only describe as ‘excessive.’ They sported identical crew cuts with suspicious bulges under their arms, and they scanned the room’s occupants with curt, professional efficiency. Their practiced and tactical positioning upon entering pegged them as high-quality hired muscle of some sort or another the moment Roland saw them.

The whole aesthetic appeared deliberate, and it made their intentions transparent to anyone with a three-digit IQ. Five newcomers from the right side of town in this dive on a Friday night was not a coincidence. Roland did not believe in coincidences under the best of circumstances and he did not believe one out-of-place rich girl and a squad of armed goons would all come to this Dockside bar at the same time for the beer selection.

The men were pros, it was obvious. They could not be local talent, either. Roland was familiar with all the local talent personally. But he would have bet a month’s pay they were here for a certain now-terrified woman sitting across from him. That much was obvious. Roland weighed his options as the four newcomers moved quickly and professionally through the bar. It did not take a tactical genius to ascertain that he really had none. There was no way to get out the back without being noticed, and there was no viable way to slip by them. Roland was not great at slipping by people under the best of conditions, so it was hopeless in this case.

But, true to their irascible nature, the patrons of The Smoking Wreck made all tactical considerations moot when, with their customary pugnacity, they rebuffed the inquiries of the men in gray suits.

One of the regulars, John Rikker, worked as a professional sled driver for Farragut for forty hours a week, and liked to moonlight as an amateur tough guy the rest of the time. He took pride in being a big strong man from a hard part of town. He had so many rough edges, referring to him as a ‘troublemaker’ could only cover the most superficial aspects of his personality. John Rikker, Roland conceded, was an asshole on a very fundamental level. More importantly, he was not a man who suffered the rudeness of outsiders gladly or with grace.

He clearly took exception to the demeanor of the pushy, well-dressed invaders. So, in true Dockside fashion, he invited them to engage in an anatomically improbable and certainly uncomfortable sex act with several different inanimate objects. It was too impressive a bit of vulgar eloquence to have been extemporaneous. Roland assumed that John had practiced the insult ahead of time in preparation for the joyful day he could unleash it upon some unsuspecting joker. This was John’s big moment, and he got his jaw busted for the trouble.

The quickness with which the lead goon blasted poor John in the head with a right hook was beyond impressive. This set Roland’s jaw a little. It was beyond human. Superhuman speed meant one of two things: Either he had his neural and physical capabilities boosted through drugs, or he was physically augmented. Both were bad, the second one very bad. Knowing Don Ribiero was mixed up in whatever this mess was meant it very likely leaned strongly toward the ‘very bad.’ Roland realized he needed answers, and he only knew one way to get them. He spared a longing look for his empty beer glass and sighed. So much for a relaxing Friday night.

Stay down, he ordered Lucia, curtly. Then he got moving.

Chapter Two

THE WELL-DRESSED MAN searching for Lucia Ribiero was not having a good time. Paying gigs were nice, and nice-paying gigs were even nicer, so Roger Dawkins didn’t like to bitch too much about it. Complaining was for hourly chumps, and he was a goddamn professional. But he very much resented having to leave his nice, clean, uptown apartment and schlep all the way to Dockside chasing some skirt whose Dad didn’t know well enough to play ball. When that stinking, grubby, Dockside asshat had mouthed off, Roger indulged himself with a little well-earned justice to make up for having to come here at all. It wasn’t the most professional way to have handled that, but busting that rube’s jaw would also likely loosen up the other tongues in this craphole. He considered it an investment in getting the job done in a timely manner.

Maybe, just maybe, he could get out of here before the smell of working-class trash and shitty beer bonded permanently to his nice 4,000-cred suit. That would be nice.

When the man in the corner booth stood up from his chair, Roger’s day went rapidly from bad to worse. Roger did not know how to process what he saw when the big shadow stepped into the dim light of the main bar. It was six inches shy of eight feet tall, and impossibly wide. He had what appeared to be normal human anatomy, but the physique was hyper-muscled in a manner akin to caricature. His chest was beyond thick, with a wide, powerful waist. The thighs were like oak trunks. His shoulders looked like over-inflated basketballs, and what passed for the neck was just endless cords of sinew and muscle connected to trapezius that looked like ship cables.

The big man was in simple black military-style pants, slightly baggy, and a tight black shirt that had long sleeves and a high crew neck collar. He wore gloves, which Roger thought was strange. But then again, everything about this guy was strange. The huge man was completely bald and had a pug nose and wide jaw. Small black eyes were set deep under heavy brows, and the face sat locked in a scowl of grim purpose. His skin had a flat, almost waxy tone to it that nagged at Roger’s subconscious, but that could have just been the bad light.

Roger was not necessarily afraid of this new development. To be honest, he was never really afraid of anyone. The man had invested wisely in his professional development and had the best advantages money could buy. Much of his early earnings had gone towards several dozen highly illegal augmentations that made Roger unshakably confident no matter what situation his employers dropped him into. He took great comfort in the fact that he was quite literally built for danger.

His bones were as dense as granite and his musculature could handle picking up a small car. If that wasn’t enough, he could flat out run forty-five miles per hour if he had to. His reflexes were five times as fast as any regular person’s and his equilibrium, proprioception, kinesthetics, and other neural processes were far above what normal people could achieve.

As extra help, he had brought along three of the latest model security androids for extra speed and muscle. These were utterly illegal as well, since they were not painted the mandatory bright yellow of registered security ’bots. Androids not dressed and colored according to their designations seriously violated municipal code. Taking them along had been a calculated risk, but their tracking modules were essential to hunting down the girl in a city this size. No, as big as this bastard was, Roger felt great about his chances. It was still slightly unnerving to look at though. That was one seriously big bastard. Roger reckoned he was probably boosted in some manner as well, which could make this very interesting.

Can I help you gentlemen find your way out? the big man asked politely. If one were to translate that from ‘what was said’ to ‘what was meant,’ the result would have been, Get the fuck out. Now. Roger was not intimidated. Nor was he inclined to leave. Granted, he hated this place, and hated being there, but he hated not getting the job done even more. The boss could be a real prick when the job didn’t get done. Roger was not interested in that scenario. So, Roger responded in kind:

I can’t leave without my friend. Translation: I’m looking for someone and I ain’t going anywhere until I find ’em.

Roland picked up on the tone, but he was not playing ball, Your friend is not here. Go look somewhere else.

Roger was getting aggravated, Well Mungo, I’m just gonna hafta poke around until I’m sure. You understand, right? He smiled an oily, toothy smile, Unless you want to direct me right to her and then I’ll be outta here just as quick as you please. Roger didn’t want it to go that easy. He did not like the big man, and he did not like The Smoking Wreck, or Dockside, or anything to do with today at all, really. The whole mess was conspiring to make him unreasonable, and he was in the mood to be difficult.

But, Roger reminded himself, he was a professional; and this conflicted with his professional pride. Pros don’t bust up bars and make extra noise if such could be avoided. Pros did the job with minimal fuss and extreme discretion. Roger intended to avoid being unprofessional because he had been paid to be discreet. Besides, it all seemed quite moot. Something about this big fucker told Roger he would get his wish under any circumstances.

Roland was also seriously trying to restrain himself. He had to get the girl out of the bar, and he knew with a high degree of confidence he could accomplish this at any time. He was aware of the fact he was dealing with at least one augmented human, and likely three more to boot. This did not really bother him much. His confidence may not have appeared sane to anyone else, but Roland was definitely not ‘anyone else.’

Roland Tankowicz was not illegally augmented. He was not an illegal security android, either. Roland was half-a-ton of something else entirely. Roland’s origins and aptitudes were his own business, and thus not common knowledge in Dockside. Great care had been taken to secure that information, and Roland wanted it to stay that way. If everyone at the Wreck saw what he was capable of, his mysteries would not remain his own for very long. This reticence was a strictly practical consideration and it would not prevent him from doing what he had to do to get out of there alive, though. So, in the interests of preserving his own secrets, Roland continued with his attempt to be as reasonable as he knew how to be.

Listen, pal. I get it. You’re on the clock, and you can’t go back empty handed. But we can’t help you. I’m sure Marty’s called the cops by now, and even with their shitty response time in Dockside, you still don’t have time for this. Roland’s voice changed to an exaggerated whisper, I don’t think an enhanced guy like you wants to deal with cops, do you? I hear there is a special prison for you guys on Titan. Do you want to go to Titan? I’ve been there. It sucks. Roland was bluffing, but it was a calculated bluff. Nothing short of explosions or plasma fire would bring the cops to this part of Dockside, but dealing with the police when you are illegally augmented was a legendarily grim process. He hoped that this would shake the newcomer.

Roger wasn’t biting. He smiled that big, oily, fake smile, Maybe I go to Titan someday, maybe I don’t. But I promise no cops are coming, Mungo. I promise that. Money had changed hands to ensure that this little operation was unencumbered by law enforcement. Roger was far too experienced not to have handled that potential complication already.

He made a show of adjusting his cufflinks and straightening the sleeves of his obviously expensive suit, Now I know the bitch is here, and I’m not leaving without her. Me and the boys here can take this place apart, and all of you lowbrow scum with it, or you can make nice and hand her over. Roger, too, was doing his best to be reasonable.

It was a sad irony, oft spoken of after that day, that neither man was actually being reasonable. It was all just preamble to one inevitable conclusion. As Marty later told it, We all wished they’d just get on with the stupid fight at that point. It was like the only people who didn’t know they were going to brawl was them two idiots!

Roger’s ’bots moved to his flanks and quartered off the bar from the doors. Everyone knew it would come down to Roland and the jerk in the suit. Some things are just obvious like that. Roger held his hands out the sides, palms up and implored with as much fake courtesy as he could, Just hand her over Mungo, and we’ll leave.

Roland responded with his characteristic eloquence.

No.

Roger Dawkins did not hesitate for one second. Technically, due to his accelerated reflexes, he hesitated one eleventh of one second before he pressed on the floorboards with his right foot hard enough to launch himself in near-horizontal flight at Roland.

Roland did nothing.

When Roger’s right fist connected with Roland’s jaw, it had enough kinetic energy to crack the skull of a rhinoceros. Roland’s head whipped to the side and blood sprayed from Roger’s fist and Roland’s cheek. Dawkins hit the floor and rolled to his feet, already pivoting for a savage low kick to Roland’s right knee. The kick was less than a half second behind the punch and executed with a fluid and practiced ease. About one fifth of a second before his foot made contact, however, Roger noted that something was wrong with his hand. Just as his foot connected with the outside of Roland’s knee, he realized what it was: the bones had shattered. His foot was now broken as well, since his enhanced leg muscles had just driven his tiny metatarsals into what felt like a column of pure steel.

Roger was confused. Confused and angry. His bones were not supposed to break. At least not from punching and kicking people, anyway. Even when he fought other augmented people, his bones held up just fine. Roger did not get any time to ponder this development as Roland’s ham-sized fist closed around his broken foot and hoisted him upside down and into the air. As he was being hefted aloft, Roger had to acknowledge that his own 290-pound mass did not seem to be much of a strain on his opponent’s muscles. Neither were the enhanced structures in his skeleton it turned out. Pain exploded from his foot and radiated to his tibia as Roland squeezed until an audible cracking sound sent lightning bolts of agony to Roger’s panicked brain.

Roger’s world was collapsing around him. Everything he knew and counted on to be true and absolute was being challenged in a most unsatisfactory manner. Roger Dawkins beat people up, professionally. It’s what he did, and he was good at it. But now someone was beating him up and he was most perturbed by this development. As it was with musical theater and modern art, Roger did not appreciate irony.

All this was rendered moot when the flick of a thickly muscled arm sent Roger flying across the room in a most ungainly style. His enhanced proprioception allowed him to categorize each injury with infallible precision. So when he collided with the far wall of the bar, he knew with certainty he had broken his collarbone, his right ulna, and two of his lumbar vertebrae.

His impact also buckled the heavy masonry blocks and sent radiating cracks shooting across most of the ferroconcrete structure. The whole building shook in an alarming manner and his impression made a sound like a bag of wet dirt falling from a truck. Pain from his foot and leg stopped at least, as his semi-conscious form slid down the wall in a sodden heap to rest in the corner.

From his vantage point as a bleeding broken mess of a man slumped against the dirty wall of a seedy Dockside bar, Roger got to watch Roland Tankowicz tear three expensive security ’bots to pieces with his bare hands. The security ’bots were tough, fast, and strong as hell. They were specifically designed for hard combat in the urban environment, yet the fight was a brief and violent affair as the three machines attempted to surround their quarry and pick him apart.

It wasn’t working though. To Roger, the huge man looked like a grizzly bear going through a pack of coyotes in the melee. The giant had adopted a strategy of buttoning up into a defensive posture like a boxer and waiting for the androids to attack. When the androids would score a hit (with little effect), they would receive a catastrophic injury from the resulting counterattack.

Roland’s footwork was tight and mathematical, and his hands snaked out like darting sledgehammers with pinpoint accuracy and blinding speed. Roger, through the rapidly dimming haze of his own fading consciousness, could not help but admire the big man’s work (If he was even a man at all... Roger had his doubts). It wasn’t just smashing the androids, it was outfighting them; taking them apart meticulously in a manner designed to spare the building from extra damage in the process.

Roger watched him snap a stiff jab into the face of one android, return to a high guard in time to catch the blow from another, and then counter-punch the third with a right hook. There was a pivot on his rear foot, a head slip to make the first android miss its next attack, and then a brutal hook to the body that broke something inside the expensive ’bot and sent it crashing to the floor in a spastic, heaving, heap. The big right hand then immediately caught the head of the third android, and casually raised the four-hundred-pound thing in the air long enough to punch its body away with the left hand. The body-less head was then tossed over the big man’s shoulder contemptuously.

The second ’droid was still functional, but only for a moment. A few deft movements from Roland, and it was armless. Then Roland smashed it to pieces with its own arms. He finished by stomping the twitching android, still squeaking and sparking on the floor, until it stopped moving entirely. A faint wisp of smoke rose from the twisted scrap that had once been a very expensive piece of paramilitary hardware.

This big sonofabitch was something different from the usual industrial cyborgs and back-alley augmentations that Roger saw from time-to-time. Roger did not know what he was looking at, but he now knew why the girl had come here, and he suspected that his job (if he lived) had just gotten a whole lot more interesting. On that wry note, Roger Dawkins slipped into blissful unconsciousness.

Chapter Three

LUCIA RIBIERO WAS PANICKING again, and she hated herself for it. Watching some terrifying giant smash and kill a bunch of robots in a bar was more than she was ready to deal with, which was an entirely understandable limitation to her worldview, she felt. That her father had been kidnapped and whoever did it had sent a bunch of cyborgs and robots to get her added a new dimension to her terror. That was a level of distress she was categorically unprepared to deal with. She worked in advertising for crying out loud, this was not how her days usually went.

Lucia tried to give herself credit where it was due. She was as tough as anyone, and smarter than most, but this was all too much. The day really hadn’t started out that bad to be honest, so the rate and scale of its deterioration into the current state of affairs was quite significant and disheartening.

It had all started with a quick stop at the corner coffee bar for a latte, which was nice. Lots of normal days started with lattes and lattes were a perfectly nice way to start a day. After that, she went into the office where she was the VP of Customer Engagement for a large beverage distributer. It was a meaningless title for a meaningless job at a meaningless company, but the pay was fantastic and the people were nice. With the unemployment rate over 14%, it was just nice to have a job at all right now; so she didn’t complain. Work had been fine, and all she had to do before getting home and soaking in a nice warm bath with a good cabernet, was to stop in to see her father for a bit. That’s just a lovely damned day in general, and Lucia had no reason to doubt that this is exactly how it would go.

Lucia had been visiting her father a lot, due to a sudden increase in migraines and anxiety attacks lately. Her feeling of overall jumpiness had gotten rather pervasive, and she wondered if it wasn’t time to see her psychiatrist about a prescription. Donald Ribiero was an excellent neurologist and biotechnologist and had been supervising her treatment himself for the present. The headaches were much better under his care, but she could not shake the feeling that the whole world was moving slower than she remembered. She should probably lay off the lattes, but Lucia loved coffee more than sanity, so that was not likely to happen.

When she dropped in to see her father earlier, she had been unprepared to find the place in complete disarray and her father gone. His beautiful top-floor apartment was always in perfect order; so, finding it a mess was a very clear indicator that something was terribly wrong. A meticulous man, Donald Ribiero was not the type to tolerate that kind of untidiness under any circumstances, and certainly not if he was going out. Don was the type of old coot who would occasionally bring a lady back for a nightcap, and he liked his place to be tidy for just such a case.

A girl would have to be into some weird stuff to want to hang out in the apartment as she had found it. Every stitch of her father’s clothing was pulled out of his closets and drawers and strewn about the place. His antique hardwood desk had been torn apart, and the carpet peeled back from the wall in places. The kitchen cabinets were open and the contents pulled onto the floor where they sat in messy piles of cookware and utensils. His mattress was off the bedframe and left askew as if whoever had tossed the place simply dropped it when it became obvious that it was not hiding anything. Every piece of furniture was shifted or thrown over. Lucia did not need a tin star on her chest to work out that the place had been professionally ransacked. That was the first time today she had panicked.

Ninety seconds after getting to her father’s apartment, her comm had buzzed to tell her she had a message. She was not ready for what it had said.

Breach, was the one word message. Automated and electronic, she knew the coded signal was part of a triggered alarm response from her father. It was a word with a lot of meanings, but in this case, it referred to a very specific bug-out plan that she had rehearsed with the old man since she was fourteen. She never really thought she’d have to execute on it, but now she was doing exactly that, apparently.

It felt surreal. Her father’s obsession with security had always seemed an idiosyncrasy driven by guilt over the loss of her mother. Lucia had never really taken it seriously, but the fight training and gun stuff had been a lot a fun. She simply enjoyed the private lessons and treated it as little more than her father’s personal guilt causing him to act in a hyper-protective manner. Now she wasn’t so sure.

She remembered that the ‘Breach’ protocol meant immediately going to a place in Dockside to find one of Dad’s old army buddies. She couldn’t use any electronic devices or payment methods. Hard creds only, and no personal vehicles, either. ‘Breach’ was one of the worst-case-scenario plans. It meant something terrible was going on.

Lucia felt her pulse racing when she left the apartment to go find The Smoking Wreck. When she stepped out onto the moist black streets of New Boston, it was to the tune of a thousand tiny alarms ringing in her head. Every possible bad thing she could think of competed for primacy in her rapidly boggling brain. She gritted her teeth and made a conscious effort to focus on the job in front of her with sufficient vehemence to shove the buzzing to the back of her mind. The frantic woman couldn’t make it go away, but she didn’t have time to deal with it right now.

New Boston was the home of the largest collection of spaceports and docking platforms in the northern hemisphere and boasted a population of thirty-one million souls. A few short centuries ago it had been a dirty mill town filled with red brick manufacturing facilities and the choking black soot of a Dickensian dystopia. She could still be a loud, dirty, cantankerous old lady of a city if you went to the right places, but for now, New Boston was a shining, towering metropolis. The whole planet envied her city as a global center for trade and culture.

Right now, to her mounting unease, all that shining grandeur was lost on Lucia. The city now seemed a tepid jungle full of millions of potential evils waiting to entrap her. She put it out of her mind as best she could. It wasn’t much help to think about it.

Lucia understood her city and her place in it all. She knew that Dockside wasn’t where she was supposed to be, but it was where she had to go. So, it was with very real trepidation and no small discomfort that she hailed a cab and hopped in to take the long ride over the container tram lines into the seediest and most dangerous area in the whole sprawling megalopolis. The cabbie knew it too, but was too polite to say anything.

Lucia had her second bout of panic when the cab driver stopped the car four blocks away from The Smoking Wreck and told her that he could go no further. Only cabs that were paid up with the local crime syndicates were allowed to operate in the Dockside district, and her guy was behind on his dues. She would have to walk the last mile, and hope that the local criminal element was not interested in well-dressed urbanite ladies walking down dark alleys at night in the bad part of town.

It turns out that this was a silly thing to hope for. When she felt the two men settle in behind her as she walked, she knew deep down in her lizard brain that they intended to rob her... or worse. It just wasn’t fair! She was scared, worried about her father, confused, and she could feel a migraine coming on. Now two assholes were going to jump her for the seventy-one creds left in her purse. She quickened her pace to try to put some distance between herself and the two men behind her, but that only hastened the outcome.

Those two men behind her, affectionately known among the folks in Dockside as Mooch and Poco were professional-level losers. They had never met a get-rich-quick scheme they didn’t like, and they were prone to bouts of intense physical violence whenever the mood (or the drugs) came upon them. They were street-level opportunists with a moral compass that never pointed north. The sight of an uptown girl with expensive boots and a purse that just had to be stuffed with creds was just too appealing to the two young men. Especially since the word was already trickling down about a certain short-haired rich bitch that might be worth some serious creds to the right people. They had no clue at all if this was the right girl, but either way, they were going to have some fun tonight.

They fell in behind her to see if she would turn onto a less-used side street or even an alleyway so they could make their move in private. When she sped up, they knew they were caught. All thoughts of strategy went out the window at that point, which did not change the results by as much as one might think. The duo were not high-level strategic thinkers on their best days; and today wasn’t even close to their best. They simply ran and clutched at the fleeing woman.

Lucia, now fully panicking, experienced the strangest sensation when Mooch and Poco started to grab her: Everything slowed down. A lot, really, when she thought about it. The closer their hands got, the slower they seemed to move. The headlong charge looked more like an underwater ballet as the two men hurtled toward her, arms outstretched and fingers reaching. All the terrified woman saw was the languid loping of a pair of drunkards.

Her own reaction was slower than she expected as well, but it was light-years ahead of the two thugs. Her right hand, clutched tight in a balled fist, came under the first one’s arm and arced cleanly up to the chin and made solid contact. Poco’s jaw clicked shut hard enough to break teeth. His head snapped up and back in an abrupt u-turn and a stream of blood and tooth fragments began a torpid parabola from his broken mouth.

Mooch registered none of this as his own clumsy fingers closed on the empty air where his erstwhile quarry had just been. He saw Poco’s misfortune in passing, but he could not alter his own trajectory in time to do anything about it.

As soon as he had control of his momentum, Mooch spun to take another swipe at the small-yet-slippery girl. He got his bearings on her just in time to catch a savage kick to the groin. It was the first time in two years a woman had touched him there, and sadly, the previous contact had also been a soccer-kick to his tender bits. His knees buckled immediately as fireworks of pain danced on his retinas.

Lucia was already turning back to Poco, who was still holding his leaking face. His eyes grew wide for a moment as they caught the image of a small, well-dressed woman streaking towards him. He never even saw the ferocious whipping trajectory of her tiny, bony elbow as it traced a horizontal path to, into, and through his left cheekbone. Poco checked out of reality at that moment and took a nap on the street, blood and dignity oozing pathetically from his ruined face.

Mooch decided at that moment to try to extricate himself from the rapidly deteriorating situation. His crushed testicles limited his mobility, and the bottled lightning he and his unconscious partner had tried to abduct got to him before he ever found his feet. She punched him four times in one second, with alternating hooks fired with machine-gun-quick patter. Each impact whipped his head in the opposite direction, turning his cranium into a spastic oscillating speed bag. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. Which was a blessing, really.

So, it was less than twenty minutes after winning her first fistfight ever, that Lucia found herself hiding under the table at a bar, watching a man she knew only from her father’s stories fight a battle against superhuman enemies to protect her. She felt, as the incessant pressure of a mounting panic attack began to fray the edges of her sanity, that it would be entirely justifiable if she lost her mind completely and fainted from all the pressure.

And that’s precisely what she did.

Chapter Four

SO WHAT, EXACTLY, ARE you? was Lucia’s understandable, if not entirely polite, question. For reasons purely practical, Roland had brought her unconscious form back to his apartment in Dockside. Since she was obviously being pursued vigorously, he needed to get her out of sight quickly; and he lived in highly convenient proximity to The Smoking Wreck. He liked to consider that a coincidence, but he knew deep down that living close to his favorite bar was more than a little intentional. Lucia sat in one of the two normal sized chairs in his otherwise blandly furnished apartment. Roland did not entertain often, and his domicile reflected both his girth and his military background in its spartan décor.

A generous Army pension and numerous paying gigs as a Dockside ‘fixer’ meant a comfortable existence, if not an extravagant one. His apartment was bigger than most, and in a section of Dockside that was at least two standard deviations above the mean for squalor and crime level. Roland didn’t have to sweat petty crime that much. Every mugger, bruiser, drug-dealer and pimp in Dockside knew to give Roland’s apartment a wide berth. Roland appreciated peace and quiet. Those that disturbed the peace became examples for the rest, and it had been a long time since he had needed to reinforce the lesson.

The apartment had three largish rooms. A kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room; as well as a bathroom. His furniture was sized and built for his stature out of necessity and represented the only really expensive items in the place. It was kept to military standards for orderliness, and while tidy, exuded no real warmth. Lucia acknowledged, in an archaic fashion, that it certainly lacked a ‘woman’s touch.’

Roland had not been expecting company, but he was lucky enough to have a few beers in the fridge. He offered the lady a lager while she pulled herself together. Of course, Roland always had beer handy, so luck may not have been much of a factor. When you weigh a thousand pounds, and have things inside you that make getting drunk very difficult, you are going to go through a lot of beer.

What am I? Roland feigned offense, I’m a decorated veteran. What are you?

Lucia at least had the decency to appear sheepish, I’m sorry! I just... she gestured at him, I mean... uh... what are... uh... you? Like a cyborg or something?

He tried to smile in a disarming manner. He was bad at it, and he hoped she accepted the gesture in the spirit he was trying to deliver it. She relaxed visibly at his feeble attempt, and he took that as a good sign. Roland was not what most would call a ‘people person.’ But neither was he a stupid man. He had muddled through a few years of engineering school and had been a proficient combat engineer during his traditional military service. He understood physics and chemistry better than most, and further schooling during the process of making him into what he ultimately ended up becoming had made him fairly conversant in his own systems. His imperfect understanding of the harder science coupled with his natural inclination to brusqueness made explaining it all somewhat tricky.

Technically, it’s classified. I can go to jail for telling you and you could go to jail for knowing. But, he paused for a moment, choosing his words carefully, ... since the answer probably has a lot to do with your father’s trouble, I’ll clue you in. He gestured to the fridge, It’s a fairly long story, so grab a fresh beer if you need one.

Lucia took his advice and cracked open another can of beer. She settled into the chair and assumed an exaggerated listening pose, I’ve got nowhere to be, buddy.

I’m not what most people think of when they think ‘cyborg’, per se... he began in a wholly inadequate introduction. I mean, I have inorganic components, but it’s different from a regular prosthesis, he continued, as if that cleared everything up.

Lucia’s scrunched brow only reinforced the sinking feeling in Roland’s guts that he was making no damn sense.

He sighed, Cyborgs get body parts replaced with artificial versions of stuff. If a guy gets his regular arm blown off, the army puts a metal arm back on. That arm is just a mechanical replacement for the organic thing that got lost.

Lucia looked at him; took in all seven and a half feet and nine-hundred-and-forty pounds of him, and politely asked, So none of... that... she gestured in his direction, ... constitutes ‘mechanical versions of stuff?’

Well... sort of... Roland backtracked. This was not going well, It’s not so much ‘mechanical’ in the traditional sense. It’s... Unable to find a better way to explain, he simply told her what he had been told, It’s mostly techno-organic myofibrillar and osteoplastic analogs. He shrugged, my body is not strictly organic, but it’s close enough that my brain thinks it is, and my nervous system treats it like it is.

Lucia did not look convinced, I’m not going to lie. I have no idea what any of that even means.

My body parts were not built in a shop and then attached to me like other ’borgs, he sighed. The body was grown, molecule by molecule, from polymers that mimic human muscle and bone. My own DNA was used as blueprint, so my nervous system would treat it just like my own bones and muscles.

She gasped, Oh my god! Is your real body underneath all that... she gesticulated wildly, ... stuff?

Roland shrugged, Some of it. We call the techno-organic stuff the ‘chassis’ or sometimes the ‘frame.’ It helps differentiate the systems. He went on, The chassis was grown separately, but most of my organic mass was removed long before my nervous system was transferred. Roland wasn’t sure that was the right way to phrase it. His arms, legs, and several of his internal organs had conveniently been removed by separatist explosives prior to his conversion, but that was a much longer and grislier story. One he’d prefer not to get into at this exact moment, to be honest.

My liver, pancreas, heart and other organs were replaced with better synthetic versions grown from my own DNA by the program. That wasn’t the whole story. He didn’t mention that he didn’t have lungs or that his heart was an actual mechanical pump. It seemed like unnecessary detail. His spine and skull had been reinforced to an absurd degree with liberal quantities of bleeding-edge polymers. The skin of his face and head were laced with a fast-repairing mesh of artificial skin lattice. It gave his face a flat, dull, sheen; and the greatest scientists of Earth’s mightiest military hadn’t been able to figure out how to get hair to grow on it, either.

The program had regrown or rebuilt the balance of his limbs and organs, peeled the skin from his torso, and mounted the depleted, raw, and bleeding meat that was Roland Tankowicz into a home-grown cybernetic body built right to the specs of his own DNA.

I was a big boy before I got all cyberized, so my chassis ended up looking like this, he flexed playfully, straining the seams of his 4XL shirt. I don’t think this is the look they were going for, but it’s what they got, he added, trying to lighten the mood. She chuckled politely.

Roland had been a large, powerful man when he joined the United Earth Defense Force. What had been six-foot-six and nearly three hundred pounds of idealism and enthusiasm got pulled right from the front lines of a Venusian border dispute and plopped into the most ambitious warfighter enhancement project in human history. This had been for the best, really. The injuries he sustained on Venus were not going to be survivable, and everyone knew it. He mentioned this without going into too much morbid detail.

Thankfully, it seemed, the Army had plans for me, and it was all going to be OK. They would just build me a new body! He snorted derisively, You know, as long as I agreed to a few terms and signed some waivers. Shoulda read the fine print, first.

Since his options had consisted of sign here or die a horrible slow death, he had gone ahead and volunteered for the program. The Army delivered as promised: the new body grown for him matched all his genetic potential and enhanced it. Impressive musculature became extreme, and what had once been a big, strong man was now a towering technological juggernaut.

Most of me is just high-tech synthetic versions of regular human tissue. I have a synthetic immune system and even synthetic blood.

That was a rather gross oversimplification. A veritable swarm of nanomachines took the place of blood and other cells in the techno-organic hulk, and billions of microscopic robots moved resources around and suppled energy and fuel to the various systems. Roland’s remaining organics (such as they were) still had and employed human blood, but thanks to those little ’bots, most of the resources he needed could be gleaned from any environment. Minerals and chemicals could be consumed as raw materials, or synthesized from available properties in the environment. Oxygen was scrubbed from virtually any combination of atmospheric gasses, or simply used in a miserly fashion from the onboard stores.

A testimony to his builder’s commitment to durability, approximately 150 pounds of Roland’s total mass was allocated just for spare resource materials. His faithful nanobots could rebuild an entire limb from these stores, provided Roland had the time and energy to accomplish such a task.

Which was a bit of an issue, actually. Energy was not a big deal when he was still with the army. Roland was equipped with the same military-grade ShipCel that powered the Avenger-class strike drone, and the Army had lots of those lying around. If Roland limited himself to basic locomotion and everyday tasks, then the power source was good for close to a decade before the core needed recharging. At standard combat-theater output, he might get nine months out of a full charge. Full Power? He’d be lucky to get thirty days. It was something he had to stay on top of though, because when Roland ran out of ShipCel power, his body stopped moving. That can be a very big deal when one is built from a half-ton of exotic metal and plastic. In an emergency, he was capable of absorbing most frequencies of electromagnetic radiation and converting them to power, but it was brutally slow and exposure to direct sunlight on Earth would net barely enough juice to walk very, very, slowly. It was an ugly proposition.

Adding another layer of complexity to his power issues, Roland’s body was not strictly his own. It remained officially classified as defunct military ordnance and as such he could not easily acquire new ShipCels for it. The Army had scores of them, but Roland was not in a position to requisition any from his former employer. Purchasing one would cost more than a nice house in the suburbs, and he was nowhere near having that kind of money. Basically, Roland had to get creative when it came to managing his power needs.

ShipCels could be recharged, but that meant plugging in and sitting for a very long time; and ShipCels had a limited number of recharges in them before they required new cores. He had been out of the military for twenty-five years, and Roland was on his third ShipCel. The last one he had to ‘acquire’ from a black-market gun-runner who had a crashed Avenger stashed on one of Saturn’s moons. Roland was not slavishly loyal to the government, nor was he overly fastidious about operating in strict legality, but dealing with that gun-runner had left a bad taste in his mouth. He had set himself more than one mental reminder to murder that particular bastard at some point. He just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

His current ’Cel was in good shape, and he did his best to keep it topped off by plugging in at night. The power bills were brutal, but he didn’t know what else to do. If he stayed out of pitched battles and charged obsessively, he might get twenty years out of this one. That was the plan anyway.

Keeping his power consumption low wasn’t all that hard. At 100% output, Roland could press close to twenty tons over his head, or sprint sixty miles per hour on a straightaway. Hilariously, he had virtually no ability to turn corners at that speed, but technically he could go that fast if he needed to. Since that sort of silliness was rarely necessary, getting through the typical day used only the tiniest fraction of juice. If he avoided strenuous activities, then eight hours on the charger was usually enough to offset a typical sixteen-hour day of working and drinking. The power bill was a little painful, but he could afford it. Roland felt it was worth it if it helped put off sourcing another ’Cel.

The eighty-six pounds of organic material that lay cocooned inside all this high-tech wonderment was easier to handle; as the needs of the flesh were comparatively tiny compared to those of the machine. Why he