Aphrodites tears, p.21
Aphrodite's Tears, page 21
“Then you don’t deserve our help. Stay weak and scared and die here on Venus with your sad little scars, then. Grow old and sick, weeping great big Aphrodite’s Tears while you lament just how bad you have it. Do nothing. Change nothing.” He waved a hand rudely, dismissing Ellie’s objections with contempt. “Fuck it, I don’t care either way. But what the hell is the point getting all pissed off over being called a Morlock if you can’t even be bothered to help yourselves when you have the chance?”
He gestured to Manny again, pointing to his bionic arm. “Manny was shot helping me. He lost that arm taking fire meant for Lucia. Fire from a man I should have killed years ago, I might add. He deserves my help because he’s earned it. You? Not so much. Now, if Manny tells me to tear down this dome and kill every Red Hat on Venus, I’ll take a crack at it.” He looked down on the woman with a feral grin. “And believe me, I just might be able to do it.” Then he sighed, “But Manny doesn’t want that. He wants me to help you guys beat Craddock and Hardesty so you can have a better life. He seems to think that you want that too.”
“We do want a better life—” Ellie tried to say more, but Roland cut her off.
“I remain unconvinced.”
At this point Ellie turned away from Roland, her long skirt twirling angrily as she showed the big man her back. She looked to Manuel, and her eyes no longer betrayed her scolding maternal nature. “Manny,” she breathed, “what are we to do? We’re not weak and we’re not cowards. You know this! Tell him!”
The next words from Manny’s mouth were the hardest he had ever spoken. He was going to hurt the woman who spent most of his youth trying to help him. This was the woman who had given him the help and money he needed to flee Venus when he left the Red Hats. For these reasons and more, he loved her too much to let her lie to him and lie to herself.
“I remain unconvinced.”
Ellie stopped, frozen at his cold tone.
“Roland is right, Ellie. Craddock and Hardesty do these things because people like you and me let them do it. All of this...” his organic hand flicked in a frustrated circle that enveloped their surroundings, “... is the way it is because everybody here is too scared, too tired, and too weak to do anything to change it. I’ve seen things, Ellie. I know it doesn’t have to be like this. I just watched a bunch of criminals band together and kick the shit out a troop of Galapagos mercs and send both the Combine and The Brokerage packing.”
“Venus is not Earth!” Ellie protested.
This time it was Manny who scowled at her. “I know, Ellie. But I’ve been as far as Thorgrimm, and I can promise you, people are people wherever you go. It’s time to stop making excuses for how we behave.”
“People will die. Good people, Manny. My friends. Our friends will die.”
“Probably.” His tone was merciless. “But is this what you call living?”
“You don’t have the right to make that choice for them!”
“That has not stopped the Red Hats from making your homes their hiding places. It hasn’t stopped Hardesty from exploiting their loyalty to expand his businesses. Businesses, I might add, that actively hurt everyone in The Colander...” Manny’s voice trailed off, as if the train of thought he was on had suddenly jumped its tracks and careened into a new landscape of ideas.
Manuel sat down. “Aw crap.”
“What?” Roland grumbled.
“I think I just figured out why they want me dead.”
Ellie scowled. “You left them. They want you dead because they think you are a traitor.”
“I’ve been hanging around in Dockside too much.” This fact did not sound like it made him happy. “I’d have believed that before, but working with Billy McGinty has opened my eyes to what happens at the higher levels of these things. Nobody that high up actually cares about the occasional runaway, Ellie. Yet they have spent a lot of resources chasing me across a hundred light years and seven stations. Ever wonder why?”
“Because Craddock is an ass?”
“While that’s true, it was never about what I did. It’s about what I’ve seen.” Manuel Richardson did not sound like a scared twenty-four-year-old. He sounded like a tired old man. “Gods, it’s all so goddamn simple when I look at it! Moron!” He punctuated his self-rebuke with a bionic fist to the tabletop. “It’s about Hardesty getting off of Venus rich and powerful. Here’s how he’s going to do it, too.” He shifted forward, face intense. “It’s so stinking obvious! OmniCorp has been trying to break the Venusian Laborer Conclave for years. With iron prices dropping, Venusian labor is getting too expensive to be competitive. OmniCorp wants to bring in cheaper labor and more machines to keep Venusian mining viable. The Union doesn’t want that because it means lower wages and fewer jobs.”
“We know that, Manny. It’s one of the main reason we tolerate the Red Hats. They keep OmniCorp out.” Ellie, for her part, was sounding far more nervous than her words might imply.
“Yeah, but Hardesty is a consultant for OmniCorp. He’s at every meeting and involved with every transaction.”
Ellie’s voice lost some of its confidence. “We know that, too. He’s the president of the whole damn union. Naturally he would be working at the same table as OmniCorp, if only to protect our interests. OmniCorp wants to bring in an entirely new labor force. It would ruin us all. Craddock keeps him there to spy and placate and ultimately hinder them.”
A deep, rumbling chuckle began to emanate from Roland’s chest at this. Ellie rewarded him with a frown that could freeze a Venusian sunset.
Manny’s reply was less rude, though no more agreeable than the big cyborg’s. “Yeah. I thought that, too. On one of my last missions, I found out that Hardesty was helping OmniCorp get more security into the domes.” He held up a hand to stop Ellie’s protestations. “I know. He could just be playing his role. But now I don’t think so. I should have looked closer at the time, but like you I figured it was just Hardesty doing his thing, right?”
Ellie and Roland just looked at him.
“What if he’s not just playing a role? Because if memory serves me, he was working on bringing in a whole army’s worth of private professional security. More than enough to secure a beachhead for OmniCorp scab labor.”
Roland chimed in, “The RUC has been letting communications and construction equipment slip through the checkpoints as well. They have no idea where it’s coming from or what it’s for, though.”
“But I think I do,” Manny said, his tone matching his heavy heart.
“Yup,” Roland agreed. “OmniCorp is going to flood this place with cheap labor and equipment. That company is going to break the union and Hardesty is helping them do it.”
Ellie’s lower lip quivered, and her eyes grew wide at the implications. “He would not do that. That would be...”
Roland, ever the pragmatist, finished her thought for her. “A complete and utter betrayal? He would. He totally would, and I am pretty sure he did.”
Ellie Connelly was having a moment. A big, scary, heart-wrenching moment. Her body swayed in undisguised conflict as she tried desperately and without success to convince herself that what she was hearing meant something completely different from what she knew it must.
Manny drove the knife home. “Hardesty has betrayed us all to OmniCorp.”
Ellie was defeated. Resignation drove her shoulders into a tired slump. “No one will believe you.”
Manny barked a short laugh at this. It sounded suspiciously like Roland’s own derisive snort. “You forget who you are talking to, Ellie. Proof I can get.”
“Can we count on you, Ms. Connelly?” Roland asked.
The older woman’s reply was short. “I do not like you, Mr. Fixer. You reek of death and I can’t tell the difference between you and all the other killers walking around The Colander.” She straightened, putting her shoulders back into the haughty posture she had begun with. “Manny can count on me. As he always could. You can go and die for all I care.”
“Good enough, Lady.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The information from Sergeant Cummings confirmed their suspicions on several fronts. The first item confirmed was that Cummings had very little idea at exactly how much contraband had been smuggled through the intake. Far more than some construction and communications equipment had been finding its way past the watchful eyes of the RUC. The manifests included high-end communications gear, complex electronics, sophisticated AI cores, and enough construction gear to build a small dome.
This dovetailed into the next confirmed suspicion. Namely that somebody was, in fact, building a dome. Roland had been a combat engineer and he knew how to build things in bad environments. There was no doubt in his mind about what all the equipment was for.
The final thing confirmed by Cummings’ intel was the most obvious. Nestled in an addendum to a manifest was a late addition to an otherwise nondescript shipment of toiletries. Three crates, seven-by-four-by-four feet, weighing seven hundred-and-twenty pounds each. The manifest called them ‘spare parts.’ However, the checkpoint scans told a very different story. The scanner images, which Cummings had made sure went missing before anyone saw them, showed the distinctive shape and configuration of Shikomi Heavy Industries Kano-style armatures. None of their information indicated who the originator may have been, but the smart money was on OmniCorp.
“So those three are OmniCorp spies, then?” Mindy asked as the team compared notes in their sweltering storage unit.
“Seems like it,” Roland affirmed. “Slid them in right under Craddock’s nose.”
“But why guys as conspicuous as Kanos? They stick out like sore thumbs down there.”
Manny answered this one. “Because they could only get three in. They needed to make sure their operatives could handle Craddock’s metal men if it came to that. Kanos will outclass Stahlkorpers, and even the BobCats won’t match up well. A Kano can also mount more comms gear and better electronics overall. As for getting noticed?” Manny threw out a dismissive hand wave. “Folks here see so many armatures that Kanos are just a curiosity to them. After a few weeks they probably stopped caring.”
Lucia chimed in. “So we figure these Kanos are OmniCorp operators. I suppose we need to assume that they will not be laborers. Are we thinking mercs and security contractors?”
“Most likely,” Roland concurred.
Manny pointed the conversation in a more productive direction. “We need to connect them to Hardesty and OmniCorp. Ellie may not be well-disposed toward us right now, but she is not wrong about where people’s loyalties lie. If we can’t show all this definitively, Hardesty will act like he was spying all along and skate through this looking like a hero of the people.” He looked over to Lucia. “How long were you in his office?”
She returned a confident nod. “Long enough. I got the whole thing on Echo. Complete layout and security specs.”
“Good work, Boss. I’ll make an infiltrator out of you someday.”
“I won’t lie, it was kind of fun.”
“Okay, I think it’s time for me to make a run at Hardesty’s records. How bad does the security look?”
Lucia gave the young man a sideways look. “I have no idea how to answer that question. I think it looks pretty damn tight. The building is high-tech, and the staff don’t strike me as morons. I would not even know how to start sneaking in there. You’ll probably find it adorable.”
“I only make it look easy, Boss. It never really is. Like when Mr. Tankowicz punches something and it explodes. It only looks easy... but he’s actually hitting very hard.”
“It’s totally easy,” Roland interjected. “I don’t even break a sweat.”
“You can’t sweat,” Lucia laughed. “You don’t get to brag about that part. By the way, Manny, I think I may have picked up some of that soft-intel you like to talk about.”
“Really?” Manuel looked pleased with his protégé.
“This guy has a real thing for stacked blonds. Like, a regular and frequent thing.”
All eyes turned to Mindy, who suddenly looked very apprehensive.
“And where, oh where, could we find one of those?” Manny let the words slide from his lips with saccharine glee.
Mindy sighed. It was an expressive, dramatic, and wholly theatrical sigh. “Fine. I’ll shake my ass for the bastard. But I’m not letting him touch me. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Don’t worry Mindy. We don’t need you to do more than distract him. Honestly, once I’m into his system I don’t care what you do with him.” Mindy’s eyes lit up at this, and Manny shut her idea down in its infancy. “But try not to kill him,” he added quickly. “If we kill him right before we expose him, it will look very suspicious. We need him to hang publicly, so the Hats will turn on him.”
“All right then,” Lucia said. “What’s the plan?”
The plan was fairly straightforward, which is how Roland liked it. Ellie Connelly arranged for Hardesty’s next ‘appointment’ with the local madame to be handled by Mindy. This required little more than the exchange of a modest sum of credits from Lucia and some of the local barter currency from Ellie. The madame did not seem to be overly distraught over losing the custom of Hardesty, since acquiring young girls that suited his tastes had become problematic. Most women who spent an evening with Lincoln Hardesty were disinclined to repeat the ordeal for any price.
Mindy had dolled herself up to play her part. It was a suitably staggering display of improbable proportions and a solid façade of overt sexuality so blatant it could actually deflect gunfire. Her chosen attire appeared to be some kind of latex applied to her body with a thin brush and judicious attention to detail. Patches of glitter and iridescent sequins were strewn about in artful patterns designed to accentuate certain regions. Roland was no physicist, but he had passed his engineering courses with strong Cs. He could not figure out how certain parts of her seemed to be defying gravity. There were no visible support structures, and certainly nowhere to hide any. It was Lucia who best expressed their collective opinions on her get-up.
“God DAMN it, Mindy!”
Manny just gulped and developed a morbid fascination with the tops of his shoes. That felt safest. Roland was predictably unimpressed. “Nice,” he rumbled sarcastically.
“What? This old thing?” Mindy said with a slow turn. “I just had it laying around.”
“Let’s get you a coat. You can’t walk through the lobby looking like that.”
Roland was right, and a coat was secured so Mindy could traverse the lobby without causing any cardiac issues amongst the patrons. Manny went along as her driver and handler. With his features altered enough to fool facial recognition software, the real risk was scanners picking up Mindy’s augmentations. Manny was going to spoof the scanners with more mundane readings from a device in his satchel, but its range was limited and its success would be most dependent on how diligent the staff were about checking up on system anomalies. Dedicated personnel might notice issues with the scanners as they walked past and investigate potential sources. Lax employees would run the diagnostics, tap on the screen a few times, and then shrug when everything looked to be working fine. They hoped for the latter, but they could always abort if they felt compromised.
Lucia situated herself in the lobby, taking a seat on one of the red couches and fiddling with her handheld as if working on something deeply important. This was not entirely subterfuge, as she was busy patching into the building’s security channel to facilitate eavesdropping. The concierge recognized her, and immediately found some other task to attend to rather than deal with the rude woman from Earth.
Roland sat on a bench across the street and grumped about his secondary role in the operation. The hotel had active bio-scanners, and it was just not possible to spoof his litany of modifications without making it obvious trickery was afoot. One did not need sophisticated sensors to pick up on many of his alterations. A simple pressure plate would reveal his weight, and the cheapest handheld scanner in the world would detect the density of his skin. If the scale read nine-hundred pounds, and Manny’s device was saying ‘unmodified human,’ even the dumbest security gargoyle would want an explanation for the obvious disconnect. While his military exemptions might keep him out trouble, his detection would render the operation impossible. Roland took solace in the fact that they were not in Uptown, where even the streets had active bioscanners and most buildings prohibited actively modified people from entering without a whole lot of extra scrutiny. Thus, he could at least wait across the street in relative comfort.
He watched as Manny and Mindy approached the main door to the lobby and slip through it unmolested. The doorman, still stoic and unmoving, let his eyes wander up and down Mindy’s body as she passed. Her sleek black wrap blunted the effects of her ensemble, while doing little to disguise the architecture of the woman underneath it. Neither did it hide the brazen sway of her hips nor buttocks, which is what seemed to have broken the doorman’s veneer of professional detachment.
Once the doors closed behind them, Roland lost sight of the pair.
“Comm check, Breach” he mumbled into his subvocal comm mic.
Lucia sounded off first. “Mama Bear.”
Then Manny, “Lefty.”
Mindy, “Honey Pot.”
“Any chatter, Mama Bear?”
A pause while Lucia scanned the security network for any sign their comms had been detected. “No chatter, Breach.” Her voice caught just a little. They had elected to use callsigns because both Roland and Manuel were known operators at this point. It made sense, but Lucia hated to call Roland ‘Breach.’ ‘Breach’ is what the Army had called him. ‘Breach’ is what they used to kill and destroy. There was a lot of emotional baggage that had to be carted along with that callsign, and Roland had been avoiding it for decades.
‘Breach’ had also been what his friends in his squad called him. It was the name used by his cybernetic siblings and represented his purpose and role within their group. They all had one. There had been ‘Lead’ ‘Comms,’ ‘Sneak,’ ‘Scout,’ and finally: ‘Breach.’ It was an identity, a place, and a mission. It had made him happy once. Then it became just another thing the army took from him. This was a loss he found difficult to live with, and now he had resolved to take it back. It was Roland’s burden and not hers, and she respected what he was trying to do with it. She supported the effort as best she could, though she hated calling him that name.
