Fucking Fat Fuck

-thoughts of a certain frozen someone.

He walked through the grit and dust, tasting the acrid grit in his teeth as he trudged slowly up the escarpment.  The drop was nearby, the locator beacon chirping shrilly in his ears and on the comm set on his forearm.  The drops, silver oblongs often wrapped in parachute fabric, sent a signal every two hours to satellites high in orbit, which in turn gave him a rough fix on his quarry.  Drift was a  problem, though, the frigid wind and shifting fines capable of tugging the drops far off course and further off his predestined path across the surface.  He tapped the side of his helmet, coaxing image magnifiers to life so that rocks a kilometer off leaped into his field of vision.
 
Nothing.  Just he and the planet stood in the vast emptiness of the rocky plain.  He'd not seen a human soul in over a decade, etching out a day to day living as he progressively trekked across the planet,  moving from supply drop to supply drop, keeping himself provisioned so that he wouldn't die and might one day gain his freedom.  The planet was a prison without walls, save the surface suit in which he ate, shat, and slept, and he noetheless was a prisoner.

In the distance, he glimpsed something foreign in the bone white and ash gray of  the surface, glimmering between low clouds of dust at the base of a field of massive boulders.  Shouldering his pack, he trudged into the gloom.

His find wasn't a drop, but something equally important.  Half-buried in the dusty regolith was a body shrouded in parachute fabric, the form contorted in a rictus of pain.  Clutched in the decedent's hand was a spent one-shot.  The suited figure's faceplate was a jagged mess of tempered glass shards, the pieces littered about the ground like fused pieces of ice.  He'd fallen as he landed, the force sending him tumbling in the alien gravity, the weight of it heavy as he fell face first against a rock, his faceplate imploding.  He'd tried in vain to plug the mouth of the one-shot into the indentation in the right side of his helmet, just as he was instructed to do should he decide to voluntarily end his confinement, tried and failed.  The slug would have made a mess of the dead man's head, killing him quickly, but instead he lived long enough to asphyxiate, sucking in the caustic atmosphere of the planet in great burning gulps as he'd struggled in a frenzy to live.
 
He'd seen it several times before, and with the patient intensity of an adept, began to strip the body of its gear.  He started first with the dead man's boots, sizing them against his own, nodding with grim satisfaction that the fit of the locking rings matched.

Tension pervaded the Drome like so much tobacco smoke billowing through the silent bar as Doctor David Johns walked in from the hustle and flow of Fuller Street.  Patrons pushed back against the walls, some fleeing into the night as a contest of wills and words unfolded with deadly certainty between the sole occupants sitting at the bar.  Johns pushed aside his synth-hide trenchcoat, revealing the sleek black carapace of Xo5 battle armor as he ventured to his regular spot two bar stools from the door.  Shoving a few immigrants aside with a cool glance from beneath his visored battle helm, he flicked a glance toward the entrance as a blast of fetid Mix air followed Rez, the decker, through the front doors.

"I don't owe you anything, Dee," barked Navarre Russo, as the subject of her ire pulled a small vial of yellowish fluid from his pocket and grinningly downed it.

She was a lithe, young woman, dark tattoos ringing her eyes in an Egyptian motif that pulled ones gaze into an angry face from which hellfire and fury palpably seethed.  Dark hair squarely framed the rage, her lips caught in a sneer of pure hatred.  Russo had dressed to the nines for the occasion, her tailor-made cranberry jacket, dark cotton slacks, and three-inch pumps contrasting sharply with the grub and grit of the Drome and its denizens.  Her opponent was a conundrum, a patchwork hodge-podge of street gear and armor, his dirty gray Genetek jumpsuit worn and frayed beneath the Xo5 cuisse haphazardly slapped over his thighs.  He wore a grubby pair of DuWear combat boots and a flak vest that had seen its fair share of turns in the Fuller Street Market.  A dented and scratched nanomesh helmet sat on the bar to his side as his casual gaze flicked across Russo's features, his hand resting casually on the butt of a sleek black autopistol cradled securely in its ballistic nylon holster.  He grinned savagely as the V-202 combat stimulant immediately took effect.

"You're going to give me what I want, Russo," declared Dee. "Or I'm going to kneecap you, then kneecap your unborn child."

"Fuck you," growled Russo as she pulled a snub-nosed Hechler and Koch P7 Compact from one of the twinned holsters at her sides, the safety releasing with a quiet snick as she drew a bead on Dee. "You're not walking out of here with anything–not if I can help it."

With uncanny speed, the grubby gunfighter slid his firearm from its holster, bringing the barrel down with a painful crash against the back of Russo's extended hand. With a yelp she dropped her firearm, and in the same motion Dee lashed out, catching the P7 barrel-first in his free hand as it fell from Russo's wounded grip.

"Bad move, chica," smirked Dee as he flipped the P7 around and aimed both weapons at Russo's head.  "That was a no-no.  For that, I'll have to shoot you."

Patrons quickly filed out of the Drome, the smell of blood and fear in the air as they escaped into the slightly greater safety of anywhere but there.  Johns slowly pulled a waspish black firearm from beneath the folds of his trench coat that was stubby and oblong, its barrel a flattened black disk. He thumbed the charge on the weapon, the pistol vibrating quietly in his grip as monofilament flechettes caught in the electromagnetic field of the gun's firing chamber.  Russo flicked a harried glance over Dee's shoulder, eyeing Johns as he tightened his grip on the flechette pistol at his side.

The man grinned, squeezing two rounds past Russo's unflinching head that imbedded themselves in the far wall of the Drome.  Russo glared furiously as he studied her for a moment, then lowered his aim, tracking toward her belly. "Or, maybe I should shoot you in the gut.  Get rid of that little courier's package you've been running for the past couple months. That'd be a good start on the three hundred thousand I'm gonna take out of you and your clones."

With a feral growl, Russo pulled her remaining P7 from its holster, firing savagely as she strafed her gunfire across Dee's center of mass. With a slight nod to himself, Johns took silent aim at Dee, dialed the spread on his flechette pistol to wide, then filled the air with several hundred monofilament needles.

"-the fuck?" Dee grunted as flechettes and bullets tore past him, imbedding themselves in the bar, the walls, and the few remaining Mixers ignorant enough to stray into the line of fire. With a yell, he rolled across and behind the bar, out of the line of fire as he turned his attention to Johns' heavily armored and heavily armed form.

"Don't fuck with my patients," declared Johns as he calmly sprayed a barrage of flechette munitions into the line of bottles shelved along the wall of the bar.

Dee cursed as glass and liquor showered his crouched form.  Smiling widely, he took aim with his two weapons, punching holes into Johns with mad glee as he let the flood of V-202 do its job.  Russo ducked, firing eleven millimeter rounds into the wooden face of the bar with precision as a cascade of wood and heavy metal exploded around Dee.

"No!" growled Russo as the old medtech fell to the ground, his battle helmet a ragged mess of ten millimeter holes. From her periphery, Rez quickly grappled the downed man, dragging him heavily from the firefight and out into the street.  Dee laughed maniacally as he turned his attention to the pregnant woman, plowing a hail of gunfire into the Drome from behind the bar.

"Die bitch, and take your fucking ripper doc with you!"

Navarre vaulted, sliding feet first across the bar as she took advantage of the opening Doc Johns gave her. Aiming high, she gripped the P7 between splayed legs as she plowed two rounds into the surprised face looking up from the shattered wreckage of the liquor cabinet.  

"Wrong move, motherfucker," she grunted as the wide-eyed ganger slammed sharply against the cabinet with the force of the impacts, trailing pulp and blood as he crashed into the glass-strewn concrete.

Standing over Dee, Russo expelled her rage in ragged gasps as she ejected the spent clip form her gun.  Slapping a new clip home, she chambered a round, firing into the shrunken corpse of a man, the body jerking violently as heavy metal slugs punched it repeatedly into the ground with the rough, wet splak of cavitating hollow-points.  In the silence and gun smoke of the emptied Drome, she gazed down into the shattered face of the man who had caused so much pain and misery in the Mix.  Protecting the mound of her growing belly with one hand while she kept her weapon trained on the dead man's head, Russo kicked Dee's autopistol out of arm's reach.  Leaning down, she plucked the twin of her P7 from Dee's still-warm grasp, then wiped it clean with a bar towel before sliding it into its holster.

"He dead enough, chica?" a familiar voice croaked.

"Johns?" she declared, turning to stare at the bloodied form of her personal doctor.  His battle helmet was riddled with holes, the right side crunched in under the impact of multiple projectiles.  A neat black hole drained blood down his right thigh through the Xo5 battle armor as he was half-carried, half-ushered into the Drome by a couple of apprehensive Mixers.  Johns took his regular place at the bar, wincing painfully as he removed his helmet, the ringed collar scraping lightly against the gore of his right eye.  "You all right?"  

"Why the fuck do they always shoot me in the right eye?" Johns muttered, pulling a pack of cigarettes from a utility pouch on his armor. He flicked a cigarette into his mouth, lighting it with a cheap lighter on the bar.  Exhaling, he continued, "The question ought to be, dear Luck, whether or not you are all right."

"Yeah," Russo laughed weakly as she flicked a glance back to Dee's corpse. "Not a scratch."

Johns nodded tiredly.  "Good.  Let's dispose of that thing, then."

"What have you got in mind?"

"Gonna go see the Padre, up at the church on Tamiya."

"Lux?" Russo asked, pulling her coat tighter about herself as she stepped around the bar.

"Yeah," Johns replied. "Give him a little more flesh for that feast of his.  You?"

"Me?"  Russo grinned savagely as she headed out into the crowded street, pushing a few gawkers aside as she made her way through the doors of the Drome.  "I've got a mass murderer to permakill."

�What is it,� I ask, wondering who would call so late to my office.

�In two days, Mr. Monroe,� the voice booms quietly. �You will die.�

I feel my throat go dry as I gulp for breath. I lean forward against my desk as I scribble the words that seal my fate onto a yellow notepad lined with precise blue lines.

�Who are you,� I demand. �What's your name?�

�A friend,� the voice on the other end replies. �Your life hangs precariously, Mr. Monroe, and you have been forewarned.�

�Why should I listen to you?� I shout.

�Act accordingly,� the voice continues with finality as the line goes dead in my hand.

I let the receiver slip from my fingers and bang against the floor as it bounces on its tether of cable. The notepad glares up from my desktop, my own death warrant scribbled hastily in ink still wet from the fountain pen my father gave me. I rip the top page from the notepad and stuff it in my pocket, then yank the bottom drawer of my desk open. I pull a bottle of bourbon, a glass tumbler, my old service revolver, and a box of hollow points from its contents.

The bottle is cool in my hand as I pull the cheap cap off the bourbon and pour a tall glass into the tumbler. I swallow half the glass, then start loading hollow points into the revolver. The weight of the gun is heavy in my hand, and I feel for a moment like I could give death to the world from its cold bored muzzle. I stand, hastily shoving the rest of the hollow points into my pants pockets along side the death threat, then slug back the rest of the booze. I can feel it hitting hot and hard in my empty stomach as I grab my coat and keys.

I'm a coward by nature, and for a moment, I feel a niggle at the back of my neck, like something is grabbing me by the scruff and saying, �Something's not right.�

I want to stay here, in the office, but the call has got me spooked, and I don't wait around for death to come to me. I look at my name, James Monroe, stenciled backwards on the frosted glass pane of my office door, and wonder how long forty-eight hours would feel like, cramped in my dank, dark office.

Matao was thirteen kilometers out of Federal District 17 when the Feds lased his Deuce.  Black smoke eddied out from under the polyalloy cowl the mechanics had /sworn/ was ninety-eight percent ablative.

"Shit!" he cried as the engine ground against itself.  He was barely outside of the northern defense zone, and every eighth of a mile a tall silver spike tipped with a blossom of indicator lights sprouted from the rubble.  Those indicators showed angry, sullen red.  Dead Red, they called it in the boonies, because anything that strayed beyond the poles never seemed to make it back out in one piece.

Matao glanced into the rear cargo compartment, and half a dozen pairs of tired, anxious eyes gazed back at him.  He'd only taken the body-pickup as a last resort, his previous smuggling arrangement hosed when the contact failed to show.  It was hours later when he realized how close he'd come to being caught.  Right now, being caught seemed like the best alternative.  With the Feddies, you knew you'd soon expect the short end of a noose.  /Anything/ could happen on the other side of those poles.  Defense pylons, they were called, but everyone called their collective grouping the Grid.  Somebody, Freeside, the Feds, maybe even a Relic, had set the Grid in place about half a century ago, and common superstition held true with accounts of things unseen in the tamer parts of the Wilds staying inside the electronic zoo that the Grid had become.  "Okay folks.  We've got a problem.  Feddies are back there, okay?  We aren't going much farther in this rig.  We got a choice.  You wanna stay here, or do you wanna skirt the Grid?"  

Where does a man begin his story?  You'd think I'd have all my shit stowed already, what with everything I've gone through. I suppose I could tell you who I am an' what brought me to this big big ol' cesspool of data.  My name, at least, on the birth records, is David Cohen, and I'm twenty-two years old.  I was born on the outskirts of the Louisiana-Texas border.  You know the place, one of those nice little pontoon shack cities that cropped up all over the coastal flood plains since Antarctica turned hotter than a Cup-A-Soup.  The place was called Beaumont.  At one time it was a refinery city.  Big damned smokestacks everywhere, and once one of the richest natural gas fields.  Course, over time the deposits wore out and about all you had left were penniless workers and the indigents coming in from all over God's Creation.  I was born to a single mother, crazy as they come.  A real looneytoon, but she loved me in her own way.  Got me the money to get the toys I wanted.  And what I always wanted were the the nice ones.  Computers, multiprocessors, you name it I got it. See, despite the conditions, Beaumont was a pretty rich shanty.  Big name providers shunted optics through that area cuz you could easily work it out in the open rather than under a hundred feet of water, and my mamma worked for them.  Got fried a few too many times workin' the wires, but that's my opinion.  Anyways.  I'm self-taught for the most part, but I learned a lot from workin' with my mamma running the optic lines for the Texas Data Authority.  Once I had the basics down, I learned to tap pirate feeds off of those optics.  Heh.  I remember a time I hooked all my friends up for the big Grand 300 Extra digital vid package.  Every channel in the book almost, and all for free on the entire block of hour housing complex.  Those were good times, that's for sure.  Being young, dumb, and full of cum, you kinda think you can do anything, and that's just how it was.  I tried makin' money the easy way as I got older, manipulatin' funds through the local net to unsecured credchip terminals, then havin' a hayday with my pickin's.  I got caught, and that's about the first time I got my name in the books.  Went to the JDC, came out with a few more friends than I expected, and started to learn a little from the realy hotshots in town.  Course, just about every hotshot there was a bumpkin had his head fried at least once.  No true cowboys, as it were, so my skills never really got on par with the big players.  I started doing lo-lev work running minor systems.  Kept everything in check for the money launderers, makin' sure the feds didn't sniff up the wrong terminals.  Deleted a few files here and there, got some okay money, then I started dyin'.  Bigtime.  Got caught in with the wrong crowd at one point and had my face blown off almost.  Nasty, dying like that, and I died slow.  Got an emergency cloning from my employers, cuz they didn't want to lose the data in my head.  Let's just say, that despite the entire concept of flesh bein' nothin' to a go-to man, I was screamin' all the way to the vat, from what I can recall and what others have told me.  To say the least, that's just the first time I started hackin' up the daisies.  Same folks kept goin' after me cuz they were rivals with some of the folks I ran for.  Big bad sumbitches, straight out of Dallas.  I died about seven more times before I realized my luck was runnin' thin.  My employers were not taken' care of the problem, so I walked.   Straight out.  But first I did a few go-tos, got some info, and did what I could to throw off my scent.  The Dallas folks were sending a few heavy hitters after me, real contract killers gonna kill me perma-like, not the regular thugs they sent in with a few H/Ks and a baseball bat.  Pros.  And they were gonna hunt me until I was dead as dead could be.  I headed to Withmore.  Lost my deck and softs in the process, so I could get the money for my papers and the transport, but I made it, and now I'm gonna hide, cuz those fuckers are still after me, and what little information their Dallas employers think I have is gonna go when they splatter my last clone into some other poor fool's shot of whiskey.

�We failed,� one man states. �We were lucky the Prime Minister's agents didn't follow so far up the trail.�

�We were simply more prepared,� replies the other. �Next time we may not be so far ahead in the game.�

�Kayabusa,� the first man asks, �What of Tomi?�

Kayabusa grimaces. ��He'll have to be eliminated.�

�He's an old hat in Parliament and our only moderate backer.�

�He risks too much exposure and has his lips too close to the Prime Minister's ear.�

The first man gazes up into the cold, blue sky as a low-flying jet streaks above the rooftops. He tightens his grip around the sleek black umbrella tube in his lap. �How will it be done?�

Kayabusa picks up a slender leather attache at his feet and slides it between them. �My resources have compiled a lengthy dossier on Tomi's habits. I'm sure you will procure an appropriate scenario.�

�I don't like this.�

The first man grips the attache and stands, looking older as the morning light shines into the cracks and fissures in his face, reflecting off his antiquated bifocals. �I'm just a politician.�

�Indeed, you are, Mr. Nobutomo.� A thin smile plays across Kayabusa's lips, �But in the beginning, so was Hitler.�

(Edited by Grim at 9:07 pm on Oct. 19, 2008)

And Claire, yeah, get that done woman.  Yesterday.  I expect a private, hardbook cover sent via owl.  If you can't accomplish that…well we just aint friends no more!