Escalante Page 3

  The results of his surreptitious scan began to scroll across the screen. His scanner was not the most advanced available, but it wasn’t cheap either. Bixby had scanned hundreds of people over his career, and most augmented folk had just a few mods here and there. Hard body-mods were expensive to buy and maintain and licensing for anything tougher than corrective prosthetics took large quantities of time and money. Only the wealthiest folks or professional muscle with well-heeled employers could afford the best stuff. At the street level, Walter was accustomed to seeing things like a little bit of Osteo-Plast bone reinforcement and occasionally some Myo-Fiber muscular enhancement. Cops and soldiers loved getting a PressPoint targeting implant, and occasionally he’d find a guy sporting some neuro stuff like hard-wired reflexes or agility tweaks.

  Tankowicz’s list of mods ran through four screens. Some of the stuff Walter recognized, most of it he did not. Three-quarters of it came back as ‘classified’, or ‘redacted’ leaving whole sections of the report useless. It was the last bit of identification data that had Walter thinking very hard about that bottle of bourbon though.

  Military Class Light Cyborg: Registration ##REDACTED##

  Status: ACTIVE

  ARMATURE DESIGNATION: BREACH (SEE FILE ##REDACTED##)

  ATTENTION! DESTROY THIS FILE AFTER VIEWING. CONTACT UEDF EXPEDITIONARY FORCE OFFICE IMMEDIATELY. IDENTIFY AS CODE ‘38456.’

  Walter had absolutely zero desire to call the Defense Force office and say anything at all. He recognized a hot potato when he was holding it, and he knew to drop it right away. He disconnected the scanner from his DataPad and wiped the file clean. That didn’t feel like enough, so he pried the cover off the back and grabbed the bottle of bourbon. He took a big gulp, and then poured a generous portion of Kentucky gold over the exposed electronics inside the old device. He let them have a good long soak before he methodically smashed the ‘Pad into as many pieces as he could. He repeated this process for his scanner as well, including taking a big swig of the whiskey. Then he gathered the wet detritus and carried it out to the alley behind his office and set it alight. He watched it burn and added bourbon as necessary to keep things hot and flaming until there was nothing left but melted plastic slag and globs of solder.

  Shit. Now I need to go see The Dwarf.

  He checked his watch, it was getting to be lunch time, and that meant heading to Mabel’s where Rodney would be just sitting down to eat. Two gulps of whiskey had steadied his nerves and Walter pinged another ride. His expense account was going to be bigger than usual this week, but he was not going to walk everywhere he needed to be. Meeting with Rodney after drawing on his crew was going to be tense enough without him being winded and sore while doing it.

  The ride over to Mabel’s was quick and uneventful, but Walter felt his agitation and apprehension building. Two slugs of booze had wet his whistle for more, and not giving in to that desire was making him sweaty.

  I need to dry out if I’m gonna survive this, he thought, I should see a doctor about a program.

  This thought did not calm him. Rather, it made things worse. Abandoning his crutch now, when he needed it the most, was a horrifying prospect. He put it out of his mind as he exited the car and paid the fare.

  Mabel’s was an uninteresting place that sold excellent food at a decent price. It was a silver metal building with large front windows that diners could look out of as they ate. The morning drizzle had burned off and the sun was asserting itself weakly through the stubborn gray haze of retreating cloud cover. Walter could see The Dwarf seated at his usual table in front. The little man was tearing into his lunch with gusto while he gesticulated wildly at several men in the booth with him. His right arm had been sheered off in an industrial accident, and Rodney had opted for an oversized mechanical claw rather than a more aesthetically appropriate prosthesis. One could always tell Rodney’s mood by how excitably his large mechanical claw darted and spun while he talked.

  Walter breezed through the door and made his way to Rodney’s table with an air of casual confidence that belied his intense discomfort. He had pulled iron on Rodney’s boys today, and The Dwarf may or may not want to make an example of Walter for it. Being a cop bought Walter a lot of latitude as the police were as much a gang in Dockside as any other group. As much as they hated the detective, the squad would not ignore anyone who got out of line with a member unless arrangements were made first.

  The Dwarf looked up from his food and caught Walter’s eye. A scowl may have begun to cross the gangster’s face, but it was quickly overrun by a big fake grin. Rodney barked at the two men at the booth and they got up to leave. Both stared poison daggers at the fat policeman as they walked past, eyes burning with promises of vengeance to come. Walter nodded amicably at them.

  Show no weakness. Words to live by and to die by in Dockside.

  Walter stopped at the table and smiled, “Afternoon, Rodney. Mind if I sit?”

  “Detective Bixby! Fook yeah, have a sit-down, ye old fooker!”

  So Rodney was playing it friendly. That was almost worse than hardball. Angry, the dwarf was just another hood and Walter understood that. When Rodney played friendly, it meant he wanted something out of you.

  “I ken guess yer here ta’ look into that big bastard what hit me boys today, aren’t ya’? Can I git ya’ some lunch, detective?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. And yes, I want to talk to you about that and the interaction I had with Knox, as well.”

  The Dwarf shook his head, “I heard that Johnny ran his mouth a bit wit’ ya. He’s a good boy, ye know. Too little brains drivin’ too much mouth if ye ken my meanin’. ’Thank ye for not shootin’ him, though. He’s a good lad for all that.”

  Rodney was being way too nice. Something was up. There was nothing to do for that but wait for the other shoe to drop.

  “Did ye find that big fooker yet and arrest him for assaulting my boys without provocation?”

  “I found him, but there seems to be some confusion about exactly who assaulted who. You know how these things go. He said, he said, blah blah blah...”

  Walter leaned back in the booth, “It looks real strange that one guy would just go after four strapping lads like yours for a lark, right?”

  “Yeah, I know it. Probably just a misunderstandin’, what with my boys trying to meet the new fella and welcome him to the neighborhood. Monty really wants to press charges though.”

  Walter smiled. At last a way out of the issue, “If I recall, Monty is out on parole right now and not supposed to be hanging around with Knox or you for that matter. I can file the report if he wants, but his parole officer will get the memo, too. Has he been making all his meetings?”

  Rodney snorted, “I’ll just check in with Monty and make sure he’s in good standing with the judiciary before you go ahead and file that one, Walter. If ye don’t mind?”

  “Not at all Rodney. You know I’d rather we sort out these things like gentleman and not make a ton of trouble or paperwork for my department. I’ve spoken to the other guy and he is happy to chalk it all up to a misunderstanding if you are.”

  “Is he?” Rodney’s eyes narrowed, “and just who is our new neighbor, now? He goin’ to be sticking around our wee slice o’ heaven?”

  “He is a recently discharged member of the Expeditionary Force. I think he is just looking for a place to retire quietly and not be bothered.” Bixby was treading carefully here. He did not want to give away Roland’s secrets, but he needed for Rodney to steer clear of him, too.

  “This is not the sort of place people go for peace and quiet, Detective,” The Dwarf’s suspicions were obvious, “and we both know he is a whole lot more than just another vet livin’ off his pension. Ye’ll need to do better than that.” There was a threat in that bit. Rodney was willing to let the morning’s ruckus slide, but Walter was going to have to give him something worthwhile.

  “Rodney, how long have we known each other?”

  “Goin’ on ten years now, boy
o.”

  “Do I lie?”

  “Only honest cop in Dockside. Yer a bloody fookin’ anachronism, Walter.”

  “Then listen carefully, and know that as much as you and I work opposite sides of the line, I am playing this straighter than anything I’ve ever given you.”

  Rodney leaned in, “Well now I am curious, Walter. I trust ye’ to lock me up the first chance ye get, but I also know ye wouldn’t lie, cheat or steal doin’ it. Ye’ speak and I’ll listen.”

  Walter nodded. Rodney was self-serving, avaricious, and dishonest to a fault, but he wasn’t stupid. The dwarf would believe his words, at least. What he would do with the information was anybody’s guess.

  “Rodney, you really need to leave this guy alone. I can’t tell you why, but you gotta believe me. You have to stay away from him and get everyone else to give him a wide berth, too. The other crews respect you, and it’s really important that this guy not get hassled. It’s big, Rodney. Bigger than our little street fights and local beefs. He wants to hide and he wants to be left alone. Please tell me you won’t fuck with him, because god help us all if he decides to take part in our goddamn problems.”

  The Dwarf sat back in his booth and gave Walter a long, considered stare. “If any other fooker told me that, I’d a’ laughed at ‘em. But you ain’t a liar and you don’t spook easy, so I’m gonna think real goddamn hard on what ye’ve said. That’s all I ken do for ye’ right now, though.”

  "I appreciate that, Rodney. I can’t make you do the right thing, but I’ll be there to say ‘I told you so’ if you do something stupid.”

  “Fair enough, lad.”

  5

  Getting pulled from sleep was a blessing, actually. His dream had been the usual one. It was the one where he woke up on Wayfair in the bottom of a smoking crater. He was covered in ashes that clung to his body in great greasy clumps and muddy streaks.

  He wiped a chunky gray blob of goopy ash from his chest with the back of his hand and was horrified to find that dust was mixed with thickening blood. Roland did not bleed. Who’s blood was it? He did not remember. He could not recall what had happened or how he had gotten there.

  As his fear began to mount, his feet descended into the mushy black ground and the cyborg began a slow sink into the floor of the crater. He looked down to find that the dirt beneath him had become a sucking quicksand of blood and ashes that was swallowing his boots and crawling up his legs. He flailed and scrambled toward the firmer ground above him, but only sank lower as a forest of human hands emerged from the gory slurry to clutch at his legs and pull him down further. Voices cried out and children screamed as the phantom limbs dragged him harder and deeper. All his strength, all his great fury were useless against the satanic strength of those accusing hands and he plunged deeper and deeper into the horrific mire as the shrieks of the dead echoed louder and louder in his ears.

  Then he was awake, and the shouting was no longer a ghostly chorus of recriminations from his own persecuted victims. As the shrieks of the dead faded back into the familiar nightmare, Roland realized that he had been woken by someone in the street shrieking a stream of invective so long and virulent that a veteran drill instructor would have applauded it. His internal clock said it was 0330, and Roland was now mercifully wide awake.

  He listened for a minute, and it was obvious that someone in his neighborhood was displeased with a significant other. Another voice joined the conversation, a woman’s voice, angry and scared, pleading for temperance while simultaneously chastising the man for being high on blaze.

  The pair went back and forth with increasing vigor for ten minutes, and Roland could not force himself to ignore it. He wanted to. He wanted to go back to sleep and let Dockside’s colorful denizens go about their evening as they always had. He turned over in bed and checked his power cable. His day had been very inactive, so he was already topped off. He pulled the cord out and rolled over, covering his head with a pillow to muffle the shouting. To his frustration, he caught himself subconsciously turning up his auditory gain to hear the fight through his pillow, thus completely negating the act of using the pillow in the first place.

  The man and the woman had been joined by a third. Another man was shouting at the first, and the narrative had meandered into the sexual indiscretions of the woman and how that pertained to the relationship between the two men. Roland tore the pillow away but in his frustration he forgot to turn down his hearing. That was how he was able to hear the sound of a pistol chamber closing and locking into battery. This was a sound hard-wired in his soldier’s brain and his reaction occurred before he could consider the consequences. He was out of bed and moving to the door before he realized it, but he stopped before he got there.

  A war went on in his mind at that moment. A thousand different threads and feelings competed over the decision-making process that would drive his body to do whatever it was going to.

  Not my problem. Not my fight.

  Stay low. Stay quiet.

  He was convinced that he should stay out of this. This sort of thing probably happened every night here. These people probably had this exact same fight on a regular basis. He didn’t need to do anything. He couldn’t change anything. All he could do was make more trouble for everyone. He should go back to bed and turn his auditory down as low as it would go and forget all about it. But he did not. He listened.

  The woman screamed and another pistol bolt slammed home. It was loud and jarring against the backdrop of yelled insults. The group was just below his window, and something about this irritated Roland on a very fundamental level.

  Right outside my goddamn window? Really? The rudeness of that was a strange thing to focus on, but it struck him as important.

  This is my home. Why can’t they respect that?

  Roland had not had a home in a long time. He did not know if he really understood what it meant to have one, but he would never feel like he owned a place if people thought they could have gunfights right outside his window.

  The two men were shouting louder, daring each other to shoot, each trying to bluff the other down. Roland recognized the game they were playing. People who studied fighting called it escalante, and it was common to impromptu conflicts. Each side was afraid to fight but too proud to back down, so they would try to bluff the other into backing down instead. If neither side was willing to retreat, the intensity would escalate until fighting was unavoidable and the guns would end it one way or the other.

  Maybe it was his personal irritation at having his night interrupted. Maybe it was the hope that he could make this neighborhood a little quieter. Maybe it was the last vestiges of the nightmare still playing on his insecurities. But Roland Tankowicz made up his mind. There was a fight brewing and he had to admit that he hated not being in it. He accepted he should not get involved, but these people were violating his peace and the sanctity of his home, and that is what sealed his decision. If this was going to be his home, and his neighborhood, then he was going to need it to be quieter than this. Roland was not stupid though, and he remained starkly aware of the requirements of his discharge. This made him consider carefully how to proceed. If he strapped on his guns and tore up Dockside, he was going to end up back in his cell under Teton or worse, ‘decommissioned’ like the others. Wisely, he left his gun in its case and shifted his skin color to a neutral Caucasian hue that matched his head and neck before he keyed his door open. The cool night air struck the armored mesh that covered his body and made it tingle exactly the way it would when he still had skin. With a cleansing breath the big man stepped out onto his landing and assessed the people in the street below him.

  Two scruffy men had guns drawn and were pointing them shakily at each other. The weapons were dingy, cheap, and poorly maintained. Roland noted with dry sarcasm that the men could be described exactly the same way. Their eyes were red and streaked with veins and their bodies were lean and rangy in the way of people who spent their money on drugs instead of food. They had wild, un
focused looks on pallid, deep-lined faces, and Roland realized he was looking at two men who would be dead in a year or so no matter what he did. That did not make it easier to do what he planned. It made it harder but for the sheer futility of it all. But futility was ever the soldier’s burden, and Roland shouldered it like an old familiar coat.

  He pitched his voice, a guttural booming base, downward to the pair of tweakers. They startled at it, nearly discharging their weapons with the violence of the interruption.

  “Put them away and go to bed. If I have to come down there you will regret it.”

  Both of the men turned on wobbling legs and stared upward at the voice. Well and truly in the grip of a drug-induced haze, neither could decide if what they saw was real or just a fabrication of their altered state of mind.

  “Fuck off!” one yelled bravely, hoping that the apparition could be banished with mere belligerence. He was not so lucky.

  The great hairless behemoth above him simply shrugged and growled, “Have it your way, then,” and the giant leapt.

  The landing was eighteen feet above the street. Roland Tankowicz weighed nine-hundred-and-forty pounds. When he hit the pavement he was traveling almost 20 miles per hour and he delivered more than 18,000 ft-lbs of force. The street shuddered under the impact with enough violence to cause each man to lose his footing and sit down hard. Roland was wearing only baggy gray sweatpants and the corded synthetic muscles of his enormous frame bulged and writhed under his dermal mesh like angry pythons as he stomped over to the downed men.

  One of them, possessed entirely by either terror or foolish bravado managed to squeeze off a shot with his pistol and the small weapon hurled a 5mm bead into the meat of Roland’s flank. The ceramic projectile shattered in a shower of yellow sparks and the armored titan kept walking as if nothing at all had happened. As far as Roland was concerned with that mosquito-bite of an attack, nothing had. Both men scrambled to their feet and tried to run, but Roland was already among them. The first went down with a perfunctory smack from Roland’s left hand. He struck the curb with a thick slap and his eyes rolled back into his skull and stayed there. Blood ran from a split lip and the throaty snores of the unconscious man blew frothy spit bubbles into the leaking crimson river.