Zakal: Stories From Within the Institute
Interlude
There were times when Lori Pettigrew, Captain of SS Boojum hated her creator. For most of humanity, it would be a diatribe against the Gods, but for her, like far too many, it was some faceless bastard who worked for Manpower. Her designation had been C-21a/51-7/5-9. She had been designed as a sex slave, and the designation gave her the sloe-eyed look of a Eurasian female, but what people would call 'baby-faced'. Even when she reached adulthood, she looked like a very young girl.
A lot of perverts liked that a lot.
At 45 T-years old, she still looked like a pre-prolong teen, and every damn time she entered a bar, even one she had been to before, she was carded. Honestly, if they caught that bastard, she'd do everything she could to be the one who spaced him; and she'd do it properly, putting him in a skin suit with a tank of air, and send his fat ass on a Dutchman into a star!
She slapped the ID card and the cash card down on the bar, and glared at the barkeep. "Whiskey sour." He examined the ID as if she was making a large bank withdrawal, delivered the drink, and slid her card for payment. She took the drink to a booth. She wondered about who had named this Sector and planet, and even more the one who had named the station. Unless you liked ancient books or movies about serial killers, why would you name a planet Hannibal, and name the primary station Lector? She had been trolling here for over a week now, and was starting to get frustrated. Maybe the information was-
A man slid into the booth beside her. The first thing she felt was the barrel of a pulser. She sipped, looking down. Yep, Nambu-Beretta 1 mm. One of the cheap ones. "Mr Simonov is not happy with you, Captain."
She looked at the weapon again, then at the troll who held it. "I am starting to get a bit agro myself. I am sure he knows he could just use a com channel and ask to talk with me. This," she motioned toward the gun, "frankly, is about as subtle as dropping a KEW on someone's head."
"He wants his cut, and your source for Beauty."
"What I have aboard is all the Beauty I have. There is no more. And as for his 'cut', when he gets off his ass and does the work, he gets a cut. End of discussion."
He pushed the muzzle hard into her side. "He don't take no for an answer. We've got your watch crew under guard. We got guys watching the other four who are wandering the station. Once he talks to you, and he gets what he wants, you can go where you want."
Her head turned slowly, and her eyes were cold. "I know the drill, you moron. Your boss had best hope no one was stupid enough to rough up Sasha. Unlike Nika, she holds a grudge."
The guy gave her an evil grin. "Sasha the blonde twist? She told Marko that she was going to rip off his arm and beat him over the head with the wet end after he slapped her."
She sighed. "Then we best go." She drained the drink, setting the glass down. "Before she carries out her threat."
Boojum
"That's a stupid name." The guy said. He was walking close enough to keep the gun screwed into her ribs.
"It's from an ancient poem named the Hunting of the Snark by a man named Lewis Carrol." She replied, going up to the docking tube. "If your boss had a brain, it would worry him." She paused. "Do you go first, or do I?"
"Marko is covering the inner end with a flechette gun. I come through first, he thinks it's open season on the blond bitch."
She gave him a disbelieving look. "Tell me he didn't call her that." At his grinning nod she sighed. "And you probably stood behind him when he did with that same grin. The only thing that pisses her off more is the C word, or the Q word." She caught the bar and dived into the boarding tube. She looked at the idiot she dubbed Tweedledum on the inside with a folding stock, short barreled flechette gun. He looked like he might have enough brain to actually operate the weapon, though reading a book might strain what little brains he had. She caught the inner bar, flipped herself onto the deck with a dancer's grace, and stood aside as Tweedle dumber followed.
Once he had his feet on the deck, he motioned, and Lori followed Tweedledum. They walked to the mess deck, where the others were. Henry was sitting beside Nika. To the eye they looked like a middle aged couple. The woman's hair had been dyed red with what might be called salt, though knowing her, it was more Thai pepper cut with white pepper. Sasha Obraskaya, an ash blond with sharp Slavic features sat with her back to the bulkhead, her cheek badly bruised. She was going to have a shiner, and someone was going to pay for that.
There were six other men standing in the compartment, and except for one, they were obviously more hired muscle. She scanned them first; a threat appraisal. Two of them not only looked competent, they even looked dangerous. The rest? She had seen pets that were more dangerous. She looked at Nika, who nodded, though her eyes were on the two Lori had spotted. Good.
The last man was who they had come after. Arthur Simonov, head of organized crime in the Hannibal Sector. Letting the underworld think she had Beauty aboard pretty much guaranteed he'd come out to grab it.
"Join us, Captain." He motioned like the lord of the manor to some flunkey. It was her ship, but he thought he was in charge. "As soon as the rest of your people are corralled, we can begin." He paused as his wristcom buzzed. "Just a text. I'll have to instruct that moron.. So, they're in my hands, we can begin."
She walked across the compartment, catching Sasha's eye. The thugs were standing two to his left (both Tweedles). She wasn't worried, none of the emergency signals had popped, and if they weren't dead, her people were already hard at work. She looked at the table beside Sasha. The cutlery drawer had been emptied, and there was a polishing cloth. Good. She turned, leaning her bottom primly against the table. "Begin what?"
He laughed, an avuncular sound that didn't fit his piggy eyes, waving to his men who... put their guns away. Lori's eyes widened just a touch. To anyone who know her, it would have been the equivalent of a gasp of shock. "Why incorporating you into my organization, of course." He waved at the ship. "You know how valuable a dispatch boat, even five decades old is to me? Not having to depend on some Solarian boat's schedule? Enough private cargo space for small, valuable items? This ship is very valuable, and as her crew I am offering you all a place in my organization."
She pretended to consider. Actually she was hoping Darius and Conner were right about how bad they thought the opposition were. She reached a count of twenty before looking up. His smile was gone. "Frankly I don't see an upside. We're a small private enterprise team, and make a good living delivering small cargoes through half half of the League from Maya Sector to Earth itself. You honestly don't have enough money to hire us long term. Except for Megacorps or governments, no one does."
"Oh I wasn't thinking of offering money. I was offering something much more... important."
"Is that so?" She asked artlessly. "And what would that be?"
"The welfare of your crew." He replied. "All you have to do is first, agree to work solely for me, and give me one more thing. The distributor who supplies you with Beauty." He gave her a flash of a smile, but she remembered that only humans considered baring your teeth as amusement. "Otherwise, your crew will enter the supply side of the operation."
Her eyes narrowed. "I am not quite sure I understand."
"I think you do. You see, I know how Beauty is made."
Just as we were told. She thought. "I see. First, there is no distributor. What we have aboard is all there is, as I told Tweedledum over there." She jerked her thumb at the man. "And as for working for you, none of us will."
His eyes grew cold. "You've heard the term 'Penalties and fines'?" She gave a short nod. "If you don't have a distributor to give me, and you refuse to work for me, then I will have to use you as an example for your crew. Once they see what happens to you, perhaps they will negotiate for their own lives."
"Perhaps." She turned around, both hands still where the men could see them. "But there is a flaw in your logic."
"Oh? And how is that?"
"It assumes I am just going to go willingly." Then she spun.
Slaughterhouse
A thug's life is simple. Loom over your target, threaten to beat, cut or shoot them, and if all else fails, beat, cut or shoot them.
This works about 95% of the time, because they are dealing with the average citizen who is worried about themselves or their loved ones. Sometimes it is just easier to hand off your protection money instead of putting up with power outages, personal injuries, or fires. But that leaves 5% who are a bit harder to deal with.
The largest portion of the remainder are other thugs, or the police. whereas a regular thug is just close-lipped, a policeman is just a calmer more inquisitive thug; just as a German shepherd is a wolf that works for his food. Of course you can't always use the same methods with them. As much as you might want to hit them, unless you kill them, the other thug knows what goes around comes around. And if the bosses don't agree, it goes to gang wars. But as much as gang wars are great for media share, all it is really is a family argument with weapons. Also as much as the families will mourn the losses, the police will just clean up the mess and chortle as long as innocents are not hurt.
The police are harder to deal with. If a gang lord said 'you and what army?' to a policeman, the cop would just jerk a thumb over his shoulder at the milita, national guard or actual military who not only have you outnumbered, but outgunned as well.
The next largest is the brave and stupid, and the two terms are not mutually incompatible. A deer or elk can confound a wolf pack by confronting them and not running. The poor predators get confused and wander away. Occasionally the white mouse you bring home to feed to a boa constrictor will sometimes kill the snake, even a house or field mouse will chase the cat away. It is possible, and even has happened. But in the great gambling house of the universe, you have to remember that in the long run, the house always wins. Besides, if you look a thug in the eye and say, 'pull the trigger', a lot of times the thug just obeys the instruction.
The smallest group by far are those that not only resist, but do so efficiently There is a reason professional soldiers fresh from combat don't often get mugged. Frankly after weeks or months or even years of people actively trying to kill you, your senses expand beyond what anyone would believe and you're trained to act, not react.
The odds at the moment were two to one, and three of them were bints. But Simonov's men were quite honestly fighting out of their league. As Captain Pettigrew always said, it was Darwin Awards time. And there is no second place. Her right hand snatched up a barbeque fork, and she threw it at the man to the right of Simonov as she charged the bossman himself. She didn't need to see if it hit, she'd spent three decades learning to throw things from pens to bowie knives, and if she could see it, she could hit it. It was only five meters from the table to the bulkhead, and Simonov had only begun to stand, his right hand diving for his coat for his own gun when her snap kick hit and broke his forearm.
Nika had a more... direct method. As Lori had turned to face the table, she had also turned, and as Henry ducked, she stood, casually ripping the other tabletop from the 6mm bolts that attached it to the posts from the deck. While she looked middle aged, meaning in her nineties thanks to prolong, she was the same age as the Captain, and had retired from the Solarian Marines as a Gunner's Mate; the highest rank someone from the Shell could reach. Then she stood to her full height, and being from Ndebele that was impressive. She only looked shorter because she tended to hunch over when on ops, and her hair, which had been straightened from the original tight curls just looked wavy. So to the unknowing she looked like a tall fat woman.
But there was less fat on her than the average Olympic class athlete. So the fifty kilo tabletop was nothing to her as she spun herself, throwing it toward the opposite bulkhead like a flat square frisbee. The two she had marked as her targets had actually gotten their guns out when the blade of the table smashed into them and the man beside them. He was the shortest of the three, and it smashed his head into the bulkhead when it crushed the other two against the titanium alloy. Like a hexapuma she was there before they could aim, and her hands grabbed their heads, slamming them together hard enough to shatter their skulls.
Henry stood as the table passed bare centimeters over his head, and charged his man. Henry Duchamp was smaller and wiry. In fact when he and Nika went around pretending to be an old married couple, it was like the stereotypical pussy-whipped guy with the huge wife. He was actually as old as he looked, but in his eighties, he had what a lot of people didn't have; black belts in both the Coup and Neue-Stil Handgemenge. He struck using the the Hand Hammer, and spun to his right to help the others.
Sasha had exploded out of her chair, and Tweedle dumber was sliding down the bulkhead, a red streak from where his skull had been crushed etching a line. She had caught Tweedledum bu the jacket, and thrown him back across the compartment, and then grabbed his right arm, jamming her heel into his armpit, and pulled. The shoulder dislocated with a sound like a turkey wing being ripped off, and he screamed, trying with his left to stop her. She was screaming in Ukrainian, pulling againg and again, but the muscles weren't giving. She kicked his elbow from below, dislocating it as well, then bent his arm even as he screamed to reach the table and the butcher's knife beside his head.
"Sasha!" The woman looked over her shoulder at the Captain, who still stood nonchalantly with one leg kicked up like an exotic dancer showing off for an appreciative customer. Her foot was on the broken arm of her opponent, and everytime he started to move, she leaned against it. "If you do it, you'll clean up the blood."
The younger woman snarled, then buried the knife in her opponent's chest. As he gasped away his life, she turned, crossing her arm like a kid who had to come home right now. "There." She said with that accent. "Happy now?"
"Ecstatic." Lori looked back to Simonov. "Nika?"
"All down." She lifted her foot, and the one who only had a barbeque fork in his throat stopped breathing when it smashed down. "And not getting up, Skipper."
"Excellent." She purred. "Then-" her head spun toward the hatch. As if that movement had been another signal the others snatched up weapons, aiming them at the hatchway. For several tense seconds they stood or knelt there, ready to unleash hell, then a hand came into view, waving up and down like someone trying to get attention across a crowded tram platform.
"I say, is it safe to come in now?"
"Nigel, one of these days..." Lori sighed. "Yeah, all clear."
Nigel Shimboku looked around the corner just in case, then stepped into view. He had been a citizen of London, in the British Protectorate state, and by definition, a Cockney, though you would hever have told it unless he was upset. His accent was pure Public School. "Oh, good. I see you handled it without my help."
"Help?" Henry asked. "You mean having you stand around whining because someone hit you?"
"You know I can't stand violence up close and personal." Nigel sniffed. "Some of us are not barbarians who handle everything by beating on it, or skewering it." He loked at his watch. "That being said, I think we should get underway rather sharpish."
"Oh god." Lori stopped leaning on the mewling man's arm. "Sasha, take care of this POS. I have work to do." She took off at a run, passing Ralph Conner who was carrying a limp form over his shoulder, and a shoulder bag of data chips.
"Vacuumed out both his computer, and the lab." He said. The man he was carrying moaned, and Conner slapped him. "Quiet, I'm working here. We took down the lab just like we planned."
"Breakage?"
"Ours or theirs?"
She sighed. "Did we rescue anyone?"
He shook his head sadly. "The facility was right over a garbage chute right over main recycling. And of course they 'fixed' it so no one noticed the bodies." He hefted the bag. "Seventeen we know of so far. But that only goes back four months. There were three being processed, and none of them would have been more than a vegetable if we hadn't just ended their misery." He whacked the man he carried again. "This is the lab rat that did the work. Only he and Simonov knew the secret. When Nigel saw them, he went a little overboard."
"Then we had best get the hell out of here before Hell pays a visit." She moved past him then was running again. Sean Jaeger was in the pilot's chair, already talking to docking control. "-She'll be-" He looked up, then turned back to the controls. "Captain's here."
Lori took her chair, and spent several minutes clearing the docking procedures. When you arrived, you had to access your bank accounts to pay for docking fees, sanitary tank draining, air fees, reactor mass and vernier jets fuel; all of the little things that a station offered that cost money. When you left, you had to go through the same process in reverse, making sure any bills that had accrued during your stay was taken care of. As the old spacer saying went, when the anchor lifts, all debts were paid. The stations made sure they were before they unclamped the docking tube.
"Hiram?"
"Back getting the kettle boiling. He says our nodes will be hot in five."
"How much breakage did the bad guys get?"
"Nine. Of course the two idiots who came in to tell us we weren't supposed to be in the lab might survive with prompt medical attention."
"Might?"
"Well Nigel went a little overboard..."
"Christ on crutches, why does he always do that?"
"No idea, skipper."
"Did he at least set the blast doors to come down this time? I don't want a repeat of Amadeus Station."
"Oh I did that, except for the one in the lab itself. The fate of those two is in God's hands." He said piously.
"With Nigel going off? More in Satan's."
Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." She looked at him curiously. "The last half of an old quote from Earth history, the Albigensian Crusade. 'for the Lord will surely know his own'." He looked up. "And I would say so will his Infernal Majesty." He flipped a switch. Docking tube disengaged. Thrust now." The ship slid backwards under mass thrusters
"You have the conn. I'm going to explain the facts of life to our guest." She stood, walking back in about 2.5gs, after all until the wedge came up, they were dependent on the grav plates. She had reached the mess hall as suddenly the ship went to the single grav of a wedge, causing her to literally bumped off the overhead. She rubbed her head cursing fluently in Chinese as she reached the hatch.
Nika was already reattaching the table; they had used bolts designed to break away so all she really had to do was use new ones. Henry stood over Simonov. While he was the least dangerous to the eye (Except for Lori herself) he had picked up the late Marko's flechette gun with the air of someone well trained in it's use. Sasha was picking up the cutlery, then with a sigh, grabbed the knife standing out of Marko's chest, and set in the sink. "See, Skipper? No muss no fuss." Lori pointed at where Sasha's first victim was still oozing on the deck. "Dyermo!"
Lori shook her head, and looked at Simonov. "Now, see what happens when you don't play nice?"
"I've got money-"
"Oh spare me. If money was all we were after, we would have cleaned out your bank accounts-"
"Which I did, skipper." Nigel was unfolding body bags, and had three of the men already stuffed into them. "Cash withdrawal, all here." He slapped his pocket.
She gave him a minatory glare, then turned back to Simonov. "Excuse my associate. He doesn't get out much."
"I can tell you how Beauty is manufactured-"
"Beauty is usually supplied by reputable pharmaceutical houses in the core. It is an artificial endorphin derivative, and while it could be produced in the lab at great expense, there are far cheaper ways to make it. This is because endorphins are naturally created and released by the human pituitary gland when the body is overworked, injured or otherwise stressed." She quoted pedantically. "It is harmless enough to its users, and is used under a doctor's supervision under patient self control for terminally ill patients instead of the antique morphine based systems, since they discovered that someone on such a regimen will give themselves enough to feel better, and no more, and it is not addictive, except for a psychological one.
"The cheap way to do it was discovered by Mesa about forty-five years ago. They discovered it quite by accident when they still ran 'Verdant Vista' before it became Torch. They recover the bodies of slaves when they can because the corpses have uses in the culturing of bacteria and some of the more pervasive molds of the planet, which are then processed into other pharmaceutical products. Bowdry medical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Manpower was examining a corpse who had died without a noticeable mark, and discovered that one local plant has a toxin in it's thorns that paralyzes the nervous system; sort of like curare of Earth It also causes excruciating pain during the last stages before death. A blood test found that there was something like four or five times the amount of endorphins as would be found in someone who had been injured; closer to what would be found if you had lost a limb in an industrial accident.
"The drug you call 'Beauty' was harvested from the brains of human beings, and even more hideously obtained. They would take slave; usually those who showed a lick of resistance by injecting them with the refined toxin, then put them on life support. A needle was placed into the pituitary gland," she mimed stiking something into the back of her neck, "and the endorphins were drawn out before they reach the bloodstream. Since the body is still in agony, the gland goes into hyper production with consequences for the "donor" which range from massive retardation and motor control loss to death.
"But you didn't have the toxin did you?" Nigel asked furiously. "So instead you stuffed needles in them and then had your Doctor Mengele wannabe torture them." He looked up at Lori. "We can't be sure how many his men just 'collected' off the station or the planet, but there was fifty people reported missing just in this system in the last ten months alone. If you go over everywhere he has connections, you're talking maybe three hundred or more. We don't know yet how long he's been in operation, but we know he's been running and distributing it in the nearest five sectors for at least that long."
Simonov smirked, leaning back. "So you think you got me? I have a lawyer, and better yet, I listen to her. You took me without due process. No warrant, no extradition. There's nowhere in the galaxy that can try me without that!"
"Well yes and no." Lori purred. "Oh if we were actually members of any law enforcement agency, you would be correct. After all, a cop can't just peek in your backyard windows then arrest you for a crime he saw committed. It's like the old puzzle given to cops; you're serving a search warrant for a stolen piano. You happen to look in a drawer, and see illegal narcotics. You can't use it in an arrest because you could not fit a piano in the drawer. But if the drugs were hidden in the piano bench or the piano itself, you could. As for warrants of any kind, or extradition proceedings, you have so many judges, politicians and constables in your payroll that every attempt so far has failed.
"But there is a way around that. You see, if I leave you on the courthouse steps somewhere you don't have those connections, and where you are a wanted man, there is nothing that says they just untie you and let you go. Provided of course they didn't arrange to have you there. And as I said we're a small private enterprise team, and make a good living delivering small cargoes. That includes the occasional asshole." She gave him a smile as feral as his own had once been. "You might think you're smart. After all, an industrialist named Henry Ford said it back in the Old United States when someone was trying to prove he was stupid. "'If I want to know the answer to that question, I hire someone who can give me the answer'." She motioned.
"Case in point. My ship is named after a creature in an ancient poem called the Hunting of the Snark. The readers are warned that some Snarks are actually Boojums, which literally leave no trace of you to find. Just as it says in the final stanza:
"'In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see'."
Behind them a section of the station, about 4,000 cubic meters of a dock far from where her ship had been, blew away as a fuel air explosion equal to 4,000 kilos of blasting explosive put an end to some poor victims suffering.
Yep, he had gone overboard big time.