Hammers and Nails Read online

  “Your bounty hunt is over,” Roland spoke without inflection. He didn’t need it. His demonstration had added all the emphasis the proclamation would ever need. “Normally, I’d have killed you and mailed your remains back to your Lodge with a sternly worded message about respecting my privacy. It would have been a very small package. I hate paying postage.”

  Wild Bill could not tell if the man was joking or not. He nodded. Nodding seemed safe. The man continued.

  “But lately, I have been trying to soften my image. Folks I respect have asked me to try to kill fewer people and engage with my emotional issues in a more evolved manner. You know how it is, right? Man gets so used to just killing everyone who pisses him off that he forgets how to do anything else.”

  Bill did not know how it was, but he was too scared to disagree. He nodded again.

  “Right. So, I’m not supposed to kill you. My girlfriend hates it when I just kill people. She’s a nice lady unless you piss her off.”

  The big man leaned in, and his tone took on a conspiratorial note, “Here’s the problem, bud. She buys all my clothes and gets them tailored for me. It’s really goddamn expensive because I’m shaped like a fucking gorilla, right? So when I mess up an outfit?” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head, “Wooooo—hooooo does she get pissed.”

  Wild Bill was lost. He had no clue what was happening right now.

  Roland leaned back and pointed to his chest. Wild Bill could see a massive expanse of lumpy black muscles through the shredded remains of an expensive-looking linen shirt. His eyebrows lifted in recognition.

  “Now you get it,” Roland tossed him an affable nod. “You ruined my shirt. Now, there is no goddamn way I’m going home tonight and covering for you. You seem like a cool guy, but I am totally going to throw you under the bus on this one. But don’t worry. I think I’ll hang out here for another hour or two and have a few more beers before I go home and rat you out.”

  He leaned forward, eyes glowering as the friendliness disappeared. “This should give you enough time to get the hell out of my neighborhood and my city, if you know what I mean. It won’t be safe for you here after that. Get me?”

  Wild Bill gulped, “Yeah. She sounds like a real scary lady. I’ll be outta here in an hour.”

  “Good man.” Roland smiled, which was more terrifying than reassuring. “I’d hate for something horrible to happen to you. Have a nice life.”

  Wild Bill left the bar on wobbling legs, and to the tune of giggling dockworkers. He made his way straight to the Cambridge ferry station and caught the very next trip to Enterprise station, vowing never to return.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “A bounty hunter?” Lucia Ribiero’s eyebrows elevated to a prodigious height. “Somebody was stupid enough to take out a bounty on you? That doesn’t feel right.”

  “I know,” Roland’s massive head shook, “Guy was barely augmented. Bionic eyes, some neural shit for reflexes, and I’m assuming bone work if he could sling two Dragoons at the same time. But really minor stuff all the same.”

  “Did you do the finger-flicking thing to him?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t want to hurt him too badly, but he didn’t stay down. So I punched him. That’s how I figured he had skeletal work, too.”

  Lucia smirked. Getting swatted to unconsciousness with a single finger had to be about the most demoralizing thing in the galaxy for a tough frontier bounty hunter. But getting punched by Roland was often fatal, so the finger thing was kinder. Lucia appreciated that Roland was trying to kill fewer people. It was a sign he was maturing emotionally. In the six months she had known him, Roland had grown from a nihilistic and violent underworld fixer to less-nihilistic, sometimes-above-board, freelance problem-solver. The violent part was still there, but they were working on it. Roland was definitely killing fewer people than normal, and Lucia took credit for his progress.

  “So he lived?” She continued, “What did you do with him?”

  “Sent him packing. I told him you were going to be pissed at him for ruining my shirt and he should run while he still had the chance. He took my meaning.”

  “I am pissed that he ruined your shirt. You know how expensive your clothes are.” The short-haired woman wasn’t really mad. To Roland’s experienced gaze, she seemed more annoyed than anything else. As for getting clothes that fit, the crux was that Roland was just really damn big. His arms were like tree trunks, and his legs even thicker. His back was wide enough to park a car on. He was covered in knots and ropes of dense synthetic muscle and his proportions were exaggerated nigh unto caricature. While an intimidating specimen, a helpful quality when dealing with many of the underworld players he often had to handle, it meant clothes had to be made from scratch to fit him. This was never cheap if he wanted to look somewhat presentable.

  Specifically, Roland was seven-and-a-half feet tall and weighed nine-hundred-and-forty pounds when his material reserves were topped off. Roland was officially classified as a retired military-class light cyborg, but this designation was somewhat disingenuous. The product of a secret military super-soldier program, Roland was unique in the galaxy. Instead of cybernetic limbs or a full armature, his body had been built molecule-by-molecule from techno-organic polymers mimicking human tissue. So while a cyborg in the strictest sense of the word, his actual systems bore more resemblance to human anatomy than any machine. His body had muscles instead of actuators or motors, he had synthetic nerves instead of sensors, and he had a slurry of nanite-rich fluid for blood. The entire chassis had been built to the specifications of his own DNA, which meant his brain and nervous system treated the body as if it was the same one Roland had been born with. No other cyborg could match his speed, sensitivity, balance, or coordination as a result. It also helped that building him this way meant he did not suffer violent psychotic breaks or dissociate into rampant sociopathy. Other versions had not been so lucky.

  Nearly two feet shorter than her partner, Lucia’s body was curvy and athletic. Her own muscles were tight and well-toned, but they lacked the excessive bulk that defined Roland’s silhouette. Roland thought she looked and moved like a dancer. Fluid athletic grace came as naturally to her as raw physical power came to Roland. She kept her dark hair very short, and she was fond of dyeing a single magenta stripe into the front of her daring pixie cut. Lucia Ribiero was objectively pretty by any standard, but Roland believed she was the most beautiful thing in all of explored space.

  “Sorry, boss,” Roland shrugged. “I had to take the hits so no one else there got shot. Can’t have Marty lose all his customers over me. Guy might start charging me for drinks if that happens.”

  “I figured,” the woman sighed, then returned to the matter at hand. “So who thinks putting a bounty on you is a good idea?”

  “Somebody who doesn’t know me well enough to send a real hitter.”

  The woman rolled her eyes, “Obviously. You have not been subtle with your capabilities these last few months. Unless a squad of armatures or a platoon of mercs shows up, we can safely assume that whoever did it is pissed off at you obliquely.”

  “Or maybe they’re just cheap.” It started as a joke, but Roland realized there was a real thread there. “I mean, if you don’t have much cash, you are only going to get a certain level of pro. Dropping me is going to take either a bigger, meaner cyborg than I am...” Lucia snorted at that and Roland ignored her, “... or a lot of guys with heavy weapons. If the bounty is small, you just won’t get the right kind of help.”

  “You’ll get wannabe cowboys and young bloods out to make a name for themselves,” she agreed. “So we are looking for a guy who doesn’t like you who is also dumb, cheap, or both.”

  “Sounds about right,” the big man grumbled.

  “Well that could be anybody, really. With The Combine falling apart, and Billy coordinating the Dockside rackets, there are a lot of new players jumping into the game these days.” She blew the stripe of magenta hair away from her face and frowned, “We
need intel.”

  “That is a fact.”

  Lucia slapped Roland’s arm. “You think? Time for Mindy to earn her keep, I suppose.”

  Roland could not stifle a wince at the thought. The tiny blond assassin was a new acquisition for Roland and Lucia’s operation, but they had needed the extra hands. When Lucia took over the business aspects of Roland’s life, his income went up exponentially, as did his profile. Now, with a gang war brewing and a major paradigm shift in the criminal sphere underway, Dockside’s most famous fixer found himself with more work than he could do by himself. Naturally, Lucia pulled her weight and then some. Years of martial arts and weapons training at the behest of a paranoid father had made Lucia very helpful in a scrap, but there was a lot more to Lucia Ribiero than expensive lessons.

  Lucia and Mindy were a study in polar opposites, and comparing the two of them always made Roland shake his head in wonder.

  Most obvious were the physical differences. Mindy’s hair was blindingly blond; Lucia’s was dark. Lucia had an aura of cat-like athleticism, and Mindy was small and compact. Mindy was barely five feet tall, while Lucia was half a foot taller than that.

  Less apparent, their augmentations were in contrast a well. Lucia’s body was home to millions of top-secret bleeding-edge nanomachines that enhanced her body and brain in marvelous ways. Mindy, on the other hand, used commercially available biotech to increase her abilities. They were similar creatures, but the two approaches to bionic augmentation had yielded very different results.

  Lucia was very strong for a woman her size. She could out-muscle a very big man most of the time, and often did, but her strength was not technically superhuman. Her nanobots strengthened her muscles by maximizing her own body’s ability to build tissue. She had strong bones because she got regular exercise and her ‘bots stimulated the natural production of bone cells in her blood.

  Mindy, on the other hand, received regular infusions of MyoFiber intramuscular weave, making her three times as strong as any man alive despite her tiny frame. She had also purchased OsteoPlast skeletal enhancements, and her bones were harder than steel. More than one unlucky victim had learned not to underestimate her for her size.

  The women were both fast, but Lucia’s thoughts and reflexes were more than five times as quick as the fastest human, because her nanomachines could process information faster and in greater quantity than human nerves ever could. Mindy’s reflexes were also boosted, but she would never be as fast as Lucia. Nobody was. Mindy's hard-wired synthetic nerves overclocked her reaction speed significantly, but Lucia was pure magic.

  One would have to mention Mindy’s most obvious augmentation, as it was rather prominent. The little killer had purchased a set of truly epic breasts at some point in her career. This was not for vanity, though she certainly wanted her marks to think it was. In her line of work, scouting and intelligence gathering were critical aspects of the job, so Mindy had built a body to make both quite easy. Her eyes hid cameras, and her ears held recording devices. Thus, when a drunk Mafioso or tipsy politician saw Mindy in a cocktail dress, he invariably found himself facing the camera and talking into the mic.

  The architecture of her chest did not change the fact that Roland found the woman hard to take much of the time. He supposed she came by it honestly. Mindy had always found it hard to fit in with a group, and losing her only friend and longtime partner on a recent mission had left the little blond assassin in a transitional state. Roland had enough of that baggage himself to at least attempt to be sympathetic. But sympathy was not really in his wheelhouse.

  None of his reservations about Mindy overrode the strategic reality that this was the type of job she would excel. Mindy was an infamous and respected contract killer and she held registrations with both the Registered Order of Privateers and the Hunter’s Lodge. She had access to exactly the sort of people and information that would be helpful if one wanted to track down a bounty contract. This irritated Roland because Mindy irritated Roland. Admitting she would be useful or helpful would only drive the annoying little blond to greater heights of obnoxiousness.

  “Don’t make that face, Roland,” Lucia’s voice snapped him from his reverie. “She is good at this stuff and she really is trying to be less annoying these days.”

  “She put gear oil in my coffee yesterday. She told a whole mercenary crew that I was a food service AI mounted to a sex-bot chassis. She snuck into OUR room last week and put a parking ticket on me while I slept. If she really is trying to be less annoying, then she is doing a terrible job of it.”

  Lucia tried not to chuckle. Roland’s sense of humor was nonexistent, and Mindy took great delight in pushing the big man’s buttons. She liked to push everyone’s buttons, but Roland was so grouchy she seemed to take extra pleasure in frustrating him.

  “Oh, come on, Roland. The parking ticket was funny.”

  “Remember you said that when she turns her attention to you one of these days,” he griped. But as usual, Lucia was right, and would go along with her ideas like he always did. “What is she working on now? Is it worth it to call her in?”

  “She’s at Hideaway managing The Dwarf and probably hitting on the bartender.”

  Roland had forgotten it was Friday night. Rodney “The Dwarf” McDowell ran a night spot called Hideaway nine blocks away, and Mindy had become a regular at the awful dive. This had more to do with the pretty blond bartender than the music or the clientele, Roland suspected. Mindy’s proclivities leaned heavily toward scantily clad girls with questionable morals, and the lusty bartender checked all the right boxes.

  “Is ‘Managing The Dwarf’ what we are calling that now?” Roland sneered, “I bet she hasn’t even threatened to kill Rodney yet.”

  “She does seem to get easily distracted by Kitty, doesn’t she?” Lucia could not argue with Roland on this one. Mindy was not hard to distract.

  “Her name is Kitty?” Roland sounded very surprised by this.

  “You have lived here for twenty-five years, Roland. You know every hood, drug dealer, goon, mook, scumbag and hooker for a twenty-block radius, but you don’t know the name of Rodney’s bartender?” Lucia could not believe this. “This is a woman you have spoken to on many occasions. A person who works directly for a man you watch so closely you know how he organizes his sock drawer. You’re telling me you don’t know her name?”

  It was too much. And then Lucia realized why. Her face split in a mean grin, “It’s because she used to hit on you, isn’t it?”

  “What? No. She never hit on me.” Roland looked annoyed.

  “Roland! I’ve seen her do it. You are so adorable sometimes. She made you so uncomfortable that you never even learned her name! I bet you’ve never made eye contact with her, either!”

  “Of course I have. Don’t be ridiculous.” The skin of Roland’s face and neck was an electro-reactive mesh of skin-like textiles. It was tough and durable, dyed an ambiguously Caucasian hue. It stood out in stark contrast with the heavier black armored mesh covering the rest of his body. But thankfully it had no capillaries to flood with blood so he was spared the embarrassment of blushing like a fool.

  “What color are her eyes, then?” It was a challenge. Roland rose to it without hesitation.

  “Brown.”

  Lucia gave a hearty laugh. “Ha! She has amazing green eyes, Romeo. Like, freakishly bright green. If you had looked even one time, you would know that.”

  “Dammit,” he growled.

  Lucia could not contain her laughter. Interacting with women who were not combatants always flustered Roland. The reason for this was actually quite tragic, but this did not detract from the hilarity of a giant armored cyborg mumbling like a teenager whenever a pretty girl talked to him. It should not be possible for someone so terrifying to look so helpless, but this was one situation that always made it happen.

  “Don’t worry, you big ol’ softie. I think Mindy has Kitty fairly well cornered and you won’t have to deal with the pretty bartender ba
tting her eyelashes at you.”

  Roland would not give up so easily. “She was only ever after tips, anyway. It’s not like I was paying her any attention.”

  “Obviously you weren’t,” Lucia’s eyes flashed with delight.

  “Let’s just call Mindy in and have her look into that bounty hunter. Please?” Roland really wanted to change the subject.

  Lucia made the call, and ten minutes later the minuscule assassin burst through the door.

  “Hiya, Boss!” she squealed to Lucia with far too much enthusiasm. Then she twisted her face into an exaggerated scowl and dropped her normally squeaky voice as low as it could go. In her best approximation of Roland’s grumpy snarl she grumbled, “Hi, Roland, what’s awful today?”

  “Somebody tried to kill him,” Lucia said, all business.

  Mindy’s irreverent nature was unshakable, though. “People try to kill him all the time. Sometimes I try to kill him, just for fun.” Narrow shoulders rose and fell in a non-committal shrug, “What’s so special about today?”

  “Registered hunter, on a contract,” Roland replied.

  “OOOOoooooooh!” Mindy seemed more delighted than concerned with the news. “Didja’ kill him?”

  “No. But he did have a very bad day.”

  “You’re getting soft, Ironsides. Lucy’s a bad influence on you,” Mindy winked at Lucia.

  “I’m growing as a person,” his voice was level and flat, betraying no humor.

  Mindy stuck out her tongue. “Don’t grow too much. Your shirts are already too tight.”

  “Mindy. Focus!” Lucia barked. Mindy would badger Roland for hours if not reigned in. “We need to know who took out the contract. Either Roland can start cracking skulls or you can just log into your Lodge and check the boards. I’d rather not send Roland to the Lodge when he is in one of these moods.”

  “I’m not ‘in a mood,’” Roland said. “I’m just not happy about having people try to shoot up my favorite bar, is all.”