Escalante Page 2

  Johnny leaned in and spoke slowly and clearly, “Detective Tubby is a useless fat pig who’s wife left him for a real man, and if he does not fuck off right away, I am going to dip his balls in alcohol and light them on fire. This concludes my statement.”

  Bixby had been a cop for thirty-five years. He had endured worse insults from better men than Johnny Knox, and so the childish attempt to rile him up washed over his shabby wool jacket like a gentle breeze. Johnny’s fellow goons found it uproariously funny, though. Their peals and howls of laughter were accompanied by knee slaps and vigorous claps to Johnny’s back. Johnny looked very pleased with himself.

  Walter calmly tucked the recorder back in the inside pocket of his coat and smiled back at Johnny.

  “Thank you, citizen. The Dockside division of New Boston PD appreciates your help in resolving the matter of which single guy pimp-slapped your boys around like they were catholic schoolgirls. Based on what I’ve seen of your crew, I suppose I am looking for a small child or an elderly gentleman. Possibly a cripple?”

  Walter had a knack for hitting street thugs in the metaphorical testicles and calling one a wuss was about as good as it got. Johnny’s face clouded over and the men behind him coalesced into a single wall of grimaces.

  Johnny Knox had a choice to make. He could let the insult stand, and risk showing that he was afraid of a single, fat, middle-aged cop. Or he could risk the penalties that came with beating up a police officer on the job.

  This was Dockside, so it was easy call for a young, up-and-coming enforcer to make. Walter was not in the least surprised by Johnny’s choice, either. He knew what Johnny was going to do before Johnny did. Big Knox was a prototypical goon, and Walter had been outsmarting those for decades. A meaty fist rocked back and Johnny's weight shifted to his rear leg. A thunderous overhand right was about to be delivered but the enforcer had to abort before firing the blow. The fist had stopped because the aggressor's vision was currently obstructed by the gaping maw of Walter’s police-issue Taurus PT-5E bead pistol.

  It was an old model, with the finish marred by far too many hours in the holster. But it was perfectly clean, and it was close enough for Johnny to smell that it was freshly oiled. It was a well-worn and much-loved weapon. Johnny was neither old nor wise, but he figured that no one kept a weapon like that in such good condition if they did not intend to use it.

  “You didn't watch my hands, Johnny. Always watch the hands. I took the recorder from my side pocket and put it back in my coat pocket. Why would I do that?” Walter asked this politely, with the condescending air of a teacher lecturing a not-so-bright pupil.

  Johnny said nothing. He was ignoring Walter while he tried to think his way out of this embarrassing situation. He was not exactly awash in good ideas at the moment. Walter shook his head, obviously disappointed in his student. “It hides the draw, dumbass.”

  Walter flicked his gaze to Johnny’s crew, “There are twelve of you, and I have ten beads. I do not miss. If you guys wanna draw straws or something for who gets to die stupidly, I can wait.”

  Nobody moved. They were all in the same situation as Johnny. They had enough men to easily overwhelm the cop, but a bunch of them were going to die in the attempt. No one was volunteering to go first, and Walter let the tension stand for a few seconds to emphasize his point.

  “Get the hell off the streets, you idiots. Go home. Stay the fuck off my beat, too.”

  The gang began to retreat slowly, and Walter gestured to the man with the injured hand, "Not you. You stick around. We’re gonna have a chat.”

  3

  Roland had little trouble finding an apartment. He had hard Creds, and he wasn’t big on haggling, so he ended up renting the first place he looked at. The buildings looked new, and that was important. He was going to need somewhere with good electrical service. The landlord was more than a little suspicious of the giant who showed up out of the blue with a fistful of cash. But this was a Monday morning in Dockside; he would see weirder stuff than this before the week was out. The balding man took the money, had Roland sign the lease, and handed over the door code. Then he turned and went back into the office and cracked open a bottle of vodka. Any week that starts like this was going to need vodka. Many weeks were vodka weeks these days.

  Roland clumped up the steps to his new apartment. It was one of the bigger ones in the southeast quarter, but Roland took up a lot of space. The street seemed quiet, and Roland appreciated being on the second level for purely tactical reasons. He shook his head at that thought.

  Been out of the Army for two whole days, man. Maybe you should relax?

  Then he thought of the four men he had just incapacitated.

  Nah. Second floor is a good call.

  He had to duck to get through the door, but that had been a problem for a while now. His quarters at Teton and the EFS Marauder had all been sized for him, but since returning to civilian life he had discovered that his stature was more of a liability than an asset outside of combat. The ceilings were tall enough at least, and he rose comfortably to his full height once inside.

  He would need furniture obviously, and that was going to be expensive if he wanted anything rated for his weight. He bounced experimentally on the balls of his feet, and the floor felt solid and unwavering. Sure, it creaked a little as more than nine-hundred pounds vibrated atop the faux-wood decking. But nothing moved or cracked or warped, and the big man was satisfied that he would not fall through it.

  It was empty and uninviting, but it was home. Roland had slept in far worse places and under far worse conditions. He could bivouac here as is for a while and still be more comfortable than those three weeks on Enceladus.

  He dropped the duffel bag to the floor and it landed with a crash far louder than its mundane appearance would have indicated was possible. Roland winced at the sound.

  Gently, corporal. That stuff is irreplaceable.

  He unzipped the bag and inspected the contents carefully for damage. The items were built and rated for use in active war zones, so a little drop to the floor in Earth-normal gravity wasn’t going to hurt them. But all of them were extremely critical items, so he was somewhat inclined to be overprotective of them. First, he removed a black tetrahedron the size of a shoe box attached to a long cord of shielded cable. Then he pulled out another cord, and this one terminated in a standard residential interface. He plugged it into a wall terminal and then connected it to the black box. A screen lit up and a green light blinked helpfully to indicate that the system was compatible with the electrical service available. Roland heaved a relieved sigh.

  Oh thank god, I can recharge at home.

  This was huge. His internal power stores were good for years, but the ability to top them off while he slept meant they might be good for decades. He never wanted to go back to the Army again, and not needing their ShipCels meant the last shred of any hold they had over him was gone. He shuddered as a wave of intense fear shook his body. For a tense moment his guts wanted to heave breakfast onto the rug, and his heart tried to beat faster. Of course, his panic was blunted and overwhelmed by the vast ecosystem of nano-machines living throughout his body, and he was spared the prolonged dread of a full-on anxiety attack. This frustrated him for the most bizarre of reasons.

  I can’t even lose my shit like a regular person anymore!

  He understood that it was a necessary safety feature. Things like Roland Tankowicz were far too dangerous to allow abnormal mental states to persist. If Roland fell into depression or nihilism, people would get hurt. The Army had made sure that his mental state never deviated too far out of the healthy range. Dr. Ribiero had been working on giving him back some of those things, but it had to be done gradually and without the Army knowing.

  I’ll die before I ever go back, he promised himself, I’d rather be dead, anyway.

  But it looked like it may not come to that. At worst, he’d have to source a ShipCel in ten or twelve years now that he recharging was possible here. Perhaps
even longer if he avoided exerting himself. That gave him a lot of time to find another ShipCel on the black market. There was a time when considering getting anything from a criminal would have been abhorrent to the big man, but that time had passed.

  Roland suddenly felt very alone and confused.

  He was home. He had no idea what that meant.

  Until now, every aspect of his life was driven by orders, the mission, and the existential need to escape his masters. But now there were no orders, no mission. He had escaped. He was free.

  And he had no idea what to do with himself.

  There would be no debriefing, no after-action report. He could do whatever he wanted to, or do nothing at all. He was terrified. He tried to think of the things he did before joining the Army. Before getting maimed on Venus, and before the Golem project turned him into a monster.

  He had liked reading, but he had no books. He didn’t even have a DataPad for fear the Army would bug it. He liked physical training, but he no longer needed to exercise to stay in shape and unless there was a construction mech in the area, there would be no appropriate sparring partners. He stood in the center of his new living room just staring for a long time because he had no idea what else to do.

  When the door chimed, Roland was amazed to find himself relieved. If Satan himself was at the door, Roland would have just been happy for something to do.

  He shifted his body’s skin tone to match his head and neck so he wouldn’t have to put on his coat or gloves. It burned energy, but he was less worried about that now. He put on his best “nothing-to-see-here” face and keyed the door open.

  The pudgy man on his doorstep had that look that instantly screamed ‘cop.’ He was middle-aged, fat. He had thinning hair and he was shabbily dressed. Roland made the shoulder holster and the ankle rig right away, but that was the sort of thing he had been trained to look for.

  “Can I help you, officer?”

  The man raised an eyebrow, “That obvious, huh?” His voice sounded tired and worn.

  “When you know what to look for, yeah,” Roland shrugged.

  “May I come in?” the cop asked hopefully.

  “What’s this all about?” Roland tried to play it coy, but he was terrible at it. The cop’s face contorted as his eyebrow raised and a smirk twisted his lips simultaneously.

  “You have got to be shittin’ me, pal.”

  “Alright,” Roland gave up, “come on in.” He had nothing to hide, either way. Nothing this local detective was going to be able to do anything about, anyway. He extended his hand, “Roland Tankowicz.”

  “Detective Sergeant Walter Bixby, at your service, pal.” Walter shook the massive paw vigorously.

  Greetings handled, the cop stepped across the threshold and took in the empty apartment, “No chance of getting a cup of coffee out of you, I see.”

  “The interior decorator arrives tomorrow. Sorry.”

  “You’re new in town, huh?”

  “You must be some kind of detective or something,” Roland deadpanned.

  “You must be some kind of comedian,” Walter fired back without missing a beat. “You wanna talk about four mooks what got man-handled a couple blocks from here this morning? Witnesses saw a guy matching your description at the scene.

  “I do have a distinctive look,” Roland shrugged, “they were following me. Surveilled me for four blocks, then reinforced and oriented for a takedown. I pre-empted that maneuver.”

  “‘Surveilled?’ ‘pre-empted that maneuver?’ ” Walter shook his head, “You don’t talk like you belong here, pal. When did you get out?”

  “Two days ago. You can run me, clean and honorable discharge, serial number E7-C 4040189.”

  “You wouldn’t even tell me that if it wasn’t going to come back clear, so I ain’t gonna bother with it.” Bixby was an old hat at this, and nothing in Tankowicz’s demeanor indicated he was lying. “E7? You a corporal or a bosun?”

  “All Army, detective. But don’t call me corporal. Call me Roland.”

  “Alright, Roland. I’ll level with you. I’d like to scan you for illegal augmentations before I get too far into this. That going to be an issue? If you’re straight with me, this will go better.”

  Roland sighed and leveled an even gaze at the cop. “You want me to be straight? Fine. I won’t stop you from scanning me, but before you do, I need you to understand two things. First, you will not find any illegal augmentations. But you will find augmentations, obviously,” He held his enormous arms out to his sides and shifted his skin color from white to black with every color in between. Walter’s eyes widened.

  “If it’s a cheap scanner, that will be about all you find and no harm done. If you have a good one? What you will find is some things that you will not be able to un-see. Either way, that gets us to the second thing. As soon as you scan me, I will have to make a call to some people I really don’t want to talk to, and they will come to your house for a very long and very uncomfortable interview. You will be sworn to levels of secrecy you didn’t know existed, and you will be watched very closely for the rest of your life.”

  Walter Bixby pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger, “That bad, huh? Shit. Fine. It’s a cheap scanner but I ain’t even gonna bother. But I’ll level with you, too. I really do not need this shit, you know? You just picked a fight with Rodney McDowell. Folks around here call him ‘The Dwarf’, and it ain’t an ironic nickname, either. I just booted about twelve of his goons out of the neighborhood, but they’ll be back. Rodney’s gonna want to make an example of you, new guy.”

  “That will not go well for him,” Roland growled the retort, but he was secretly excited. Which scared him. The thought of a battle, a brawl, a war seemed to fill a void in his soul, and that did not speak well of his mental state. He wasn’t sure he liked the implications of this.

  “Are you a good cop, detective?” Roland asked quietly.

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “If you are a dirty cop, I’ll give you a handful of cash and warning to just stay away from me. If you are a good cop, I’ll just impress upon you that I am one of the good guys and ask you to trust that I won’t be a problem. If this Dwarf character comes after me, I promise you I can handle him. You won’t have to worry about it.”

  “Not the point, pal. It won't go well for anybody. That’s my point. It will fuck with my job, it will fuck with your life, and it will make a shitty situation worse. The docks have brought so many people here and dropped so much easy cash on the town that I got about fifty gangs and rackets all fighting for the biggest piece of the action, and the last thing I need is some big-ass mysterious special forces freak kicking all the goddamn hornet nests.”

  “Isn’t that what the cops are for?” Roland was less sympathetic than a nicer man would have been.

  “The cops are just another racket here.” Walter didn’t sound mad, he sounded tired, “I’m trying like hell to do my job, Roland, but nobody is helping me. There are good, hard-working folk here. I’d like to think I’m helping them but I’m all alone out there. I can handle that, but right now you are not acting like part of the solution.”

  He heaved a mighty sigh, “Is there any way I can convince you to make nice with Rodney so I don’t have to deal with this shit?”

  Roland did not want to make nice. He wanted to fight, to kill, to rage and destroy. That was what he had been built to do. It was what they had made him for. Something inside him leapt at the chance for conflict. But then the fear surged, the deep, ugly dread that somehow they were right. That he was a monster, a weapon with no will of his own. His gorge rose again and suddenly he wanted that to not be the case.

  “I’ll try,” he promised the last good cop in Dockside.

  But he didn’t like his chances.

  4

  Walter left Roland’s apartment with a bad case of indigestion and a very bad feeling about the conversation. There was a goddamn seven-foot special forces goon in the reside
ntial quarter and he had already picked a fight with The Dwarf. Walter experienced a twinge of guilt for scanning the guy behind his back, but he was a detective and some things were just hard-wired with him.

  He pinged a car for a ride back to the office because he was all done walking for the day. When he got there, he checked with his receptionist for any messages. There were none, of course. Walter was persona non grata even in his own department. He sat heavily at his desk and plugged the scanner into his terminal. But then he stopped. His terminal was connected to the department network, which was very far from being secure. If he did this, he may very well be telling everyone in Dockside about the new resident. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. Tankowiz seemed like a good guy if a little weird. But Bixby was sure that the shit was going to hit the fan in that southeast residential sector now that he was here. He had been at this too long to pretend that The Dwarf and Roland were going to get along.

  Walter opened his desk drawer and pulled out one of the two items that lived there. He brushed aside the half-empty bottle of bourbon with trembling fingers and grabbed the dusty DataPad underneath it. He powered the ancient device up and then manually disconnected it’s transceiver. Now he could read the scan without anyone else seeing the results. He would decide what to do with the info after he had seen what it was. He plugged the scanner into the ‘Pad and waited for the data to transfer over. He thought about having a swig of the bourbon while he waited, but decided against it. One swig of booze had a way of becoming three or four, and soon he’d be asleep at his desk. He needed his head in the game right now, and he hated it. Stress made him want to drink, but stress usually meant he needed his wits. It was a simple formula: The more he wanted to drink, the less he should do it. Every day was a struggle between his desire for the oblivion of a good drunk and his need to stay clear. He lost that argument more often than he won it, but today he prevailed and the bottle went back into the drawer unopened.