An Unrefusable Offer (Part 3)
Posted on Sat Dec 14th, 2019 @ 3:06pm by Fordyce Kirschler PhD
Mission:
Mission 10 - Temperance
Location: Various, Lithios Prime
Timeline: MD 10 01:59
2886 words - 5.8 OF Standard Post Measure
Previously, in "An Unrefusable Offer (Part 2)"...
The whole operation had gone textbook. In fact, it had gone so textbook that he'd started to get paranoid and think it was a trap. Maybe he'd tripped a sensor back at the entrance. Maybe Lucienne Bex was tired of him. Maybe the item itself was a time-delayed explosive. But literally nothing had gone wrong, as occasionally happened for him. Sometimes you infiltrated a heavily guarded facility, lifted a single unknown item of extreme importance, and walked away with no consequences. Not often, but sometimes.
At the doorway [to his flat], he stopped. Two men huddled in the corner. He could smell synthetic fluid, charred flesh, and something strangely chemical. Ford pulled something out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. He pulled a tab on the end of the Lithian smokestik and the flash briefly illuminated the two faces - one looked like shit, and the other one really looked like shit. Both were easily identified as Dijkstra the Funhouse's boys from the tattoos on their temples.
"Run into a little trouble on the way over, boys? Bring him in. But don't let him leak on my damn floors."
And now, the continuation…
"I told you boys to quit dusting up with Maarten's mooks. They don't play fair, you know that. Look at this shit."
He gestured with a gloved hand to the arm of one of the men; burned skin and other tissue accumulated there and looked like at any minute it would fall and splatter onto the protective sheet on the floor. The arm was gyrating with small twitches from the malfunctioning hardware beneath the skin. The man was moaning and mumbling in a near-fugue state from the pain of the electrical feedback so Ford punched him in the neck with a pistol syringe full of sedative. That probably hurt like hell, too, but the guy wasn't conscious long enough to let him know about it. With the help of his impromptu assistant, he managed to get the body up onto the desk that passed for an exam table.
"They was the ones that started it. I don't want no trouble with Iron-Arse Maarten or Iron-Arse Maarten's mooks or nobody else," said the uninjured man defensively. Ford thought it was ironic that someone in a street gang didn't want any trouble with anyone, but he let the remark pass without comment. "Then they pulls out that plasma grenade. Who mess with that kinda shit, man? Out in a market? Burned Biberveldt real good, I didn't know if he was gonna make it. I put a dermacool patch on him and get him outta there before the Primarch's darksuits showed up." The young man's chest puffed up proudly. "Carried him straight here, like they told me."
"You were supposed to be coming here anyway," groused Ford.
"Yeah, we got that thing Dijkstra wanted you to have. Almost lost it. Figure that's why they jumped us?" It was a rhetorical question. He was obviously still coming down off an adrenaline high and just kept running his mouth while Ford worked on repairing the cybernetic components of his friend's arm. The twitching became less pronounced as software was reprogrammed and hardware replaced. "I carried him straight here. Bieberveldt, I mean. They burned him real good. But I got him here."
"You want some kinda medal, kid?" asked Ford with a good-natured laugh. "Ask him for it when he wakes up, probably saved his stupid life. For all that's gonna be worth now - he'll live another day or two with excruciating, mind-numbing pain and then a lifetime of twitchy servos. And unless you can scrounge up enough for him to go into the tanks or get booked in one of those derma-clinics, he's going to have a shitty looking arm, too. I don't have the equipment for that kinda stuff. You got that kinda scrip?"
The young man didn't seem to hear Ford, as he proceeded to carry on in a quiet voice. "I don't know what that guy was thinkin', man. With that plasma grenade, you know? I saw civvies goin' down in green flame. Green flame. Government's gonna be real mad. Burgher's gonna be screamin' on the nets tomorrow. Aw, man, Primarch's gonna be shittin' bricks if the fleeties get mixed up in it. You think they will? They watchin' everything nowadays, just lookin' for something, anything. I mean, what kinda people does that, anyway? A plasma grenade out in a market like that..."
"Probably the kinda people who like to end things," grumbled Ford as he worked on removing the dead flesh and the dermacool patch from his 'patient.' He wasn't a medical doctor, but he'd learned his way around the interface of biological and technological long enough to do a hack job. "You wanna end something you end it quick. Iron-Arse is probably trying to strong-arm Dijkstra, maybe push him out into another district. It's a good time for it; everybody else is worried about Starfleet, not the streets."
Ford moved over to a dormant device and flipped a switch, obviously expecting the machine to come to life. It did not. He scowled, balled up his fist, and banged the side of the machine where a small indentation marked the site of several previous such impacts. The outer casing of the machine shook and then it finally started its boot-up sequence. He'd cannibalized a heavy duty sarium krellide power cell from some non-functioning scrapyard generator to run the damn thing but the waveguides were shot and sometimes needed a little "encouragement." He fed the device some information and then stepped back to wait for it to print out what he needed.
"Open that box there, the red one. Lift up the second tray. Got two Tal Shiar pistols in there. Just don't get caught with 'em, kid," said Ford, taking a moment of pity on the young man and his wounded companion, Biberveldt. The pistols were illegal twice over - once for being imported without a permit and again for having only one setting: disintegrate. Some part of him was even thankful to be ditching them.
The makeshift skin-printer he'd been leaning on beeped and a compartment lit up with a dim light, revealing a line of sickly colored flesh that had been printed out using a protein encoder he'd bought at a steep discount (he suspected it was lifted from a local hospital, but, as a customer, he didn't ask many questions). He opened the compartment's lid, removed the translucent slab of skin, and admired it for a moment. Amazing technology - a new dermal layer printed on a base of regenerative material that would do wonders for just about everything but the nerves. Nerves were tricky like that.
Over the next few minutes, Ford set about cleaning up the rest of the unconscious man's wound and then grafting the printed skin on. It wouldn't look right - he didn't have the equipment for that. But he could at least put in the effort to make it look halfway decent, restore motor function from the damaged cybernetics, and keep it from getting a massive infection from one of the bacterial strains floating around this shitty rathole of a city. He was about to skip town, but he was still under contract so long as he was here. (His morals were wonky but present nonetheless.)
After finishing up and reviving the man from his unconscious state, Ford started to take a moment to admire his handiwork but the device in his pocket beeped insistently, interrupting him. The alert of movement in the alley was too coincidental to be anyone other than Iron-Arse Maarten's men, probably following the sloppy trail left by the two idiots in his flat. It could have been one of the Primarch's darksuit goon squads, but the government usually wasn't sharp enough or keen enough to catch up this quickly. Or maybe his paranoia about being caught for the theft was actually justified. Less likely, some overeager Starfleet lieutenant might have decided to investigate, too. Regardless, it was trouble in the form of six humanoids.
Identities aside, they were probably just after Dijkstra's boys and the contraband they'd brought him but that didn't mean Ford was safe at all. Iron-Arse Maarten had his own in-house roboticist so he'd always needed Ford less than Dijkstra the Funhouse. He'd declared neutrality with both gangs the moment he set up shop in this district but neutrality was a pretty flimsy concept when people were tossing plasma grenades around night markets. For Iron-Arse Maarten, the fact that he was patching up Dijkstra's boys might have made it seem like a prime time to kill two birds with one stone. He could easily claim they were after the opposing gang members with Ford as nothing but collateral damage. Then Dijkstra would be down one safe place to seek cybernetic care and two street mooks.
He'd had just enough time to warn the other two before the door to his place blew open forcefully, slamming against the wall as it swung violently on its hinges. The whole thing actually made Ford laugh. Why the hell did he bother with all that fancy security when the door could be physically blown open like somebody popping a can of crisps? That was a whole bar of latinum he could have saved if he'd just had a minute of (oft-needed) foresight.
The first man through the doorway ran at him like a complete amateur, energy baton outstretched in one hand. Dr. Kirschler was terrible in close-quarters but he managed to use the mook's inexperience against him. He caught the hand by its wrist and used it as a pivot point to bring the rest of the man's body closer through momentum. A knowledge of basic anatomy was his primary advantage, and when his elbow came up and smashed into the man's face he felt the correct bones crack and release the fragrance of fresh blood. A knee to the stomach seemed to remind the man that he should disarm himself; the energy baton went clattering to the floor, soon followed by the body. Ford picked up the baton and stuck its point against the base of the man's skull. It connected with a neuroport there and flooded every cybernetic implant in his body with external voltage, causing the man's body to flop violently and helplessly.
Two disruptor bolts flew past Ford's head with no warning; motion in his peripheral vision told him Dijkstra's men opened fire to cover their way to the alternate exit. They were cowards, but at least they pulled attention away from him so he could make his way over to the workbench. It was tucked away behind the skin-printer in the cramped, low-ceiling room and served as part-workspace, part-storage for his assortment of nanites and the stacks of synthetic leather scraps that were byproducts of his recent obsession with wearable nanotechnology. He didn't waste any time being careful with the nanites; he smacked the container off its shelf and watched it go flying, scattering invisible little machines all over the room as it went.
Around the corner of the skin-printer's casing, Ford could see the men engaged in their firefight with the wounded Biberveldt and his friend. Two of the assailants were missing, leaving behind only the lingering and unmistakable smell of cellular disintegration. It seemed Dijkstra at least bothered to hire and train decent marksmen.
Ford dropped to his belly and began crawling toward his computer station, banking on the two crack shots to buy him a little more time. He pushed a button under the desk and reluctantly fried all of his sensitive data storage devices. He'd actually paid an above-board price for those, so it annoyed him having to go this route. In the final moments before all the circuitry had met its end, a software spike hijacked the Lithian government's nearby communications beacon long enough to transmit a few terabytes of data into storage at the local branch of the Bank of Bolias where he could retrieve it after the blockade had been lifted. It wasn't a total loss, but damn if it didn't annoy the shit out of him.
Once he was sure the data issue was handled, he pushed another button under the desk and heard himself say, "Please state the nature of the medical emergency, you mewling half-faced clack-dish."
A holographic Fordyce Kirschler had popped up on the other side of the room, cheerfully ready to serve anyone's medical needs despite the total lack of access to any sort of medical database. The program was a hijacked Starfleet model and had arrived as a joke from one of the friends he'd made on a Nakada Services Amalgamated contract. It spouted off all kinds of foul-mouthed epithets once activated. It was even smart enough to learn new ones. Ford had found it hilarious and routinely used it to surprise his clients. Now it was repurposed as a distraction and performed admirably as fresh volleys of disruptor bolts flew when the remaining three assailants opened fire at the hologram. Seeing it, Ford actually cracked a smile, then grabbed The Item and Dijkstra's contraband before making a mad dash for the exit.
Someone must have had some enviable peripheral vision and spotted him in just enough time to lay down a spray of gunfire in his direction. A lucky bolt caught Ford in the leg. He could feel the bone shatter inside, and the appendage started dragging uselessly behind him as he passed through the door. On the other side, he fumbled to get a good grip on a pistol syringe he'd produced from his jacket, then jammed it into his bad leg. Immediately, his eyes dilated, and he thought all his limbs were going to fall off. He wasn't even sure his consciousness was still inside his body; it might have been somewhere in the upper atmosphere or halfway to the Andromeda galaxy. Then he came back to himself with drug-assisted clarity, energy, and strength. That stuff would make him crash hard - very hard - but until then he was good to go even on a horribly broken leg.
Right beside him, Biberveldt had a wide-eyed, unseeing stare. He was shaking, not even holding his Tal Shiar pistol anymore, just standing there jabbering to himself while his friend supported him and continued to lay down the occasional bout of suppressing fire. Poor Biberveldt was probably still in shock from his tango with the plasma grenade and now doubly in shock from his encounter with the people who'd come to finish the job. A fragile young mind could only take so many brushes with death in the space of a single hour.
"They're gonna kill us, they're gonna-"
"Shut up, Biberveldt," said Ford as he used the door frame for support. "I liked you better when you were unconscious."
The console next to the door gave him access to his flat's systems. He triggered an imminent storm alert and instantaneously two massive duranium storm doors slammed down to seal off this entrance and the doorless one through which the assailants had come. Meant to protect him from the ravages of the occasional violent Lithian hurricane, they'd hold long enough for what he was planning. Not that he relished in having to do it. But Lucienne Bex's escape plan definitely didn't accommodate being chased around the city by a bunch of punk-ass mooks trying to add another notch to their belt.
From his wrist device, he accessed the in-built systems of his workbench. Biberveldt's childlike sobbing didn't exactly help him concentrate, but he managed to write out a new software program for the nanites in about two minutes. On the other side of the door, he could hear concentrated disruptor fire as Iron-Arse Maarten's men worked on freeing themselves from their duranium prison. With a sinking feeling in his stomach and only slight hesitation, he wrapped up the coding with instructions that limited activation to just the interior of his flat and pushed the program to the nanite control system. There were probably a billion invisible nanites clinging to him, Biberveldt, and Biberveldt's friend alone - billions more inside - and he definitely didn't want the ones outside to follow the example of their brethren on the inside.
Ford wasn't a man to shy away from the gruesome or grotesque, but he started limping away from the door almost immediately. Even he had no interest in hearing what was taking place inside his flat as the environmental circulation system kicked up to maximum and the billions of reprogrammed, black market nanites inside started whizzing around, consuming every last molecule of organic material in the room. As he hobbled down the sidewalk away from his Lithian life, he thought he heard the holographic version of himself shouting one last insult - drop into the rotten mouth of death! - as the room's occupants did just that.
OFF::
Dr. Ford Kirschler
Engineering Consultant
Bank of Bolias
