Connor Rix Chronicles 1: Rules of Force (12 page)

Out of the corner
of his eye Rix saw that Big Fella had acted simultaneously, pulling out the net
gun from underneath his longcoat and firing at the second man, who had been
fumbling under his coat for a weapon. The man cried out as the bands wrapped
around his body, pinning his arms and legs together. He fell backward, his head
making a thunking sound as he hit the ground. His stylish Panama hat rolled
down the street.

Marie stepped out
of the van, eyes wide, with one of the needle rings in hand. She hesitated,
then walked over and, with shaking hands, pricked the second man, still
squirming against his bonds, with the paralyzing drug.

A fresh bout of
cursing broke out down the block.

"Sounds like
KC has her man under control," Big Fella drawled.

They quickly
dragged the two unconscious men to the back of the van and loaded them inside.
They bound the first man's limbs with both plastic ties and chains, and
duct-taped his mouth. Marie pulled the car keys from the man's pocket and
strode over to the Audi.

She opened the
trunk and, after a long moment, looked up at Rix and Big Fella. "Uh, yeah,
like we thought, there's a lot of merchandise here. And even the gold, at least
some of it." She started unloading the boxes from the trunk, carrying them
over to the van. Then she returned to the Audi, dropped into the driver's seat,
opened all the windows and left the key in the ignition as she slid out of the
vehicle.

"Someone's
gonna have fun cruising in a new car tonight," she said.

They piled back
into the van and slowly drove down the block to where KC was waiting. She was
half-sitting on the motorcycle in an alley a block from where the third man lay
twitching. She had already removed the small arrow from the man's leg and was
rolling up her stealth garb into a bundle.
 
The butt of her compact crossbow protruded from the leather
saddlebag.

She swung a leg
over the bike and looked toward Rix and Big Fella in the front seat of the van.
"You were right, Rixie. Dropped him like a bad date. That little ring dart
worked just fine in place of my target points. Handy machine shop you've got in
your garage. Oh, and check this nasty thing out." She pulled a long-nosed
gun with a wide, slotted barrel half-way out of the saddlebag. "I think
this is one of those flechette guns they used at Forward. More evidence, if we
still need it."

She tossed her
hair back and started to put her helmet on. She paused before sliding it on all
the way, and nodded her head to the fallen man.

"What do we
do with him?"

"Leave
him," Rix said.

"See you at
the holding cell." She started up the engine and pulled out on to the
street. Rix put the van in gear and followed for a couple blocks, then turned
onto a side street, taking a different route to their next rendezvous.

The whole
encounter had taken less than four minutes.

15

They watched the
man's eyelids flutter open. His eyes darted from side to side. He tried to sit
up, and then flopped back against his restraints. The muscle of his neck bulged
as he attempted to move his head to take in his surroundings.

Then he froze,
and they saw his gaze lock onto Big Fella, who was standing behind Rix. He
sucked in his breath. The man's eyes tracked up and down, his pupils dilating.

Big Fella was
casually lifting the man's still-unconscious compatriot into the air with one
arm, lowering him, lifting again, as if the man were a barbell and Big Fella
Jackson was conducting his daily workout.

Big glanced down
at the bound man on the floor, the man who had left such a trail of blood at
Open Sky. "You know, Travis," he said, "If we could cram each
end of an iron bar into these two, I'd have a proper weight balance and could
get a decent workout," he said.

Rix had settled
on his Travis Burnet identity, alias number four. It was a good one to expose
to the world, one he had deliberately built to burn someday. He had planted
enough tracks on the web and elsewhere to make it believable, but with no paths
back to his real life. Plus, with his battered cowboy hat and the amped-up
Texas accent he was using for this part of the operation, the name seemed to
fit.

The man shivered
for an instant, and then his eyes tracked back to Rix. His eyelids narrowed and
his face started to flush red.

"Whooo-eeee!
This man does not look happy," Rix said. "Let's see what he has to
say." He ripped the duct tape off the man's mouth.

"You… You
goddam redneck!" He yelled, spit flying from his lips. "Do you have
any idea who I work for? Do you have any idea what he'll do to you?" Rix
folded the tape back over the man's mouth.

"Why, I'm
hoping he'll kiss my ass, is what he'll do to me. And anyway, if all his tough
guys go down as easily as you, he won't have a choice."

The man thrashed
against his bonds.

"Look, son,
I don't give a shit if your boss is the Pope of all South America. And you
know, it sounds like that's just who he thinks he is. I've been in the Mod
trade for a while, and I know who the players are. I know a little bit about
your pussy of a boss. But he's not boss around here anymore.
I am.
Nobody deals in Mods in the Texas Republic without
my say-so. Y'all are going away, and you're not coming back. And that's just
the way it is."

The man lay
still, but Rix could see a wide grin slowly breaking out underneath the duct
tape.

"Oh now
lookee here. I think the man must've thought up something clever to say."

Rix pulled the
tape off the man's mouth. He coughed, and then looked from Rix to Big Fella.
"He's watching you, you know."

"Know it,
hell, I'm
countin' on it
son. I know
you're wearing some nice optics, although not as nice as the ones I sell. I
guess you just don't rate first-class equipment. I was kind of afraid we might
have snatched somebody too far down the totem pole to matter, so the boss
wouldn't even notice. But I guess we caught at least the bottom rung."

The man's leg
lashed out in an attempt to kick Rix, but the chains held him secure.

Rix had known
within a few minutes of arriving at this location that the man had optical
implants with transmission capabilities. KC had examined him while he was
under, and had taken an inventory of the obvious Modifications.

Rix turned to Big
Fella. "Why don't you wake up that other sack of shit so we can finish up
this little meeting." Big Fella nodded and propped the man up against the
wall. He grabbed a plastic water bottle and dumped it over the man's head. His
head slumped forward and then jerked up with a start, slapping against the
wall. His eyes opened and he looked around wildly.

The holding cell
they had secured for the two was in one of the sections of the city that had
taken serious shelling during the war. Much of the city was still being rebuilt
from the ground up — thus the New San Antonio name —but there
remained areas where ruined properties had been abandoned, the owners having disappeared
or given up. As many a property owner learned to his sorrow, insurance claims
are hard to untangle when a nation breaks into civil war. The building they
were in had been a muffler and tire shop, from what they could tell by what
little was left inside.

Rix leaned over
the chained man, looked directly into his eyes and grabbed him underneath the
jaw. Using his own optics, he zoomed in on the man's right eye. He could see
faint light dancing across the lens, evidence of the displays the man was no
doubt calling up.

"You
transmitting?"

The man smiled
again, and nodded slightly.

"Hey boss
man, wherever you are — you getting this?" Rix spat out the words in
an exaggerated Texas accent. "My name is
Travis Burnet
," he hissed into the man's face. "I'm
keeping a couple of your boys here. I think this one must be an illeeegal
alien. I expect I'll turn him over to the proper authorities directly."

Rix pulled back
from the man's face, and then stood up. He walked over to the other side of the
room and dragged a faded and bent plastic chair back to his prisoner's side. He
sat down, sighed, and resumed eye contact. "I can't really stay
face-to-face with your man. On account o' the stench." He shook his head.
"Is this the kind of candy-ass cologne all you South Americans wear?
'Cause it smells worse than the devil's own ass-crack."

Rix leaned back
in the chair and folded his arms. The bound man on the floor was staring
directly at him, unblinking. "Look, this is simple enough. I'm running the
Modifications trade in this country. And I don't want any Brazilian trash
peddling a bunch of half-assed junk in my territory. I'm only gonna tell you
one time. Get the hell out of Texas, and don't come back. I'm not shittin' with
you, man. If I have to come all the way down to Brazil and deal with you in
person, it's going to really piss me off. Because once I kill you, I'll have to
deal with all the rest of your shit, like your bawlin' widow, which is a real
pain in the ass. Although I might be tempted to take a poke at her, if the line
isn't too long."

Rix looked up and
nodded almost imperceptibly to KC. She reached into a canvas bag at her feet.

He looked back
down to the man, and was silent for a moment. Rix was content to play this
Travis Burnet role to bait his opponent — and was enjoying it quite a
bit, he admitted to himself — because he was pretty sure it would work.
But when he looked into the man's face he couldn't help but see the murderous
yellow savage who had rampaged through the security videos, killing the
researchers at Open Sky, and savaging the security team at Forward Aeronautics.
Rix was playing his role with what theatricality he could muster, but he had to
force the casual manner. Everything was going to be deadly serious from here on
out.

"Now, to
show that I'm not just making noise," Rix said, "I'm going to extract
a little payment from your trespassing. First, that little stash of Mods your
boy here had in his trunk is mine. I might burn it, or give it away to the
neighborhood kids, or maybe I'll sell it myself, assuming it's not the usual
crap that comes out of Brazil.

"But most
important, I'm keeping your lieutenant here. I wouldn't count on seeing him
again. I hope he's not your brother or anything, because I know how hard it
would be to hafta tell your momma how you screwed the pooch and now your
brother's gone missing."

He looked up at
KC. "Ok, juice 'em."

She walked over
and jabbed the two men with the ring needles. They twitched and flexed and
shouted curses in Portuguese and Spanish, but soon fell silent.

"Alright,
KC, do your thing," Rix said.

She pulled a
small toolkit out of her bag, walked over and softly kicked the first man in
the head. She then dropped down on her knees, selected a delicate tool from her
bag, and forced open the man's eyelids. She bent over him and worked with the
tool for several minutes.

At last she sat
up. "Ok, the lens and readout film are removed. The implant is still
there, but it's dumb and blind now." She unbuttoned the man's shirt and
stripped it off. She put her face to within three inches of his body, scanning
with a pair of the Open Sky optical display goggles. She rolled the man over.
When she got to his neck, she smiled. "Here we go. A tracker." She
pulled out another tool, and prodded and poked at his neck. She pulled out a
small, flat tab from a sheath at the base of his skull, and tossed in on the
floor. Small bits of skin and blood were stuck to it.

"There.
Hopefully, a dog will eat this, and the boys in Brazil will have a really
active tracker to follow."

She examined the
second man next, but found no tracker or advanced implants.

"What should
we do with the flunkie?"

"He's
local," Rix said. "We'll take him and dump him somewhere on the other
side of town so he won't cause trouble for a few days. Or ever again, if he's smart
enough to learn a lesson."

KC nodded.
"And the yellow dude?"

"I'm going
to arrange for his disposal now." He walked over to a quiet corner of the
building and woke his E-Thing.

He quickly
composed and sent a message to Rohm:
Please send private aircraft and
security detail to NSA airport earliest. I have an unruly gift for you. It
originally came in an ugly yellow wrapper.
He
attached an image he had taken of the man with his optics shortly after they
captured him.

Rix walked back
to where Big, KC and Marie were standing, by the sliding garage door at the
rear of the building. He noticed Marie was looking at him with an expression on
her face he had never seen before. It was almost like fear, but mixed with
something else. He tried not to show that he had seen it.

"Well, Rix,
I'd say the shit is really going to hit the fan now, but that sounds too
passive," Big Fella said. "It's more like, you held the fan in one
hand and crammed the shit into the blades while cussing out the fan's whole
family going back to the first fan that pulled itself up out of the prehistoric
ocean onto dry land."

"I can't
wait to hear more of your theories of evolution at the next beer call,"
Rix said. "But right now let's load up these men and get out of
here."

****

Vinicius Cunha
stood up for the second time in the last minute. He wrapped his left hand
around his right fist, and squeezed them together, knuckles glowing white. He
sat down again quickly, and spun his chair to face the window behind him. The
fragments of the chair he had smashed against the wall moments before lay
scattered on the floor behind him.

 
He turned back around to his desk. The
screen still stood upright, with the frozen image of the man who would steal
from him, taunting him. With a lunge he swatted it from his desk with his left
arm, sending it tumbling across the room. His nostrils flared and in one fluid
movement he stood up again, kicking the chair away from him, raised his right
arm, and brought his fist down with a crash onto the antique desk, splintering
the top.

He stood for a
moment, dazed, looking down upon his ruined desk, the rosewood treasure that
could never be replaced. He knotted his muscles, fists balled so tightly that
pain radiated up his forearms.
"Droga!"
His bellow filled the room, echoing in the hallway beyond.

He stalked back
and forth across the room several more times, before taking six deep breaths,
and closing his eyes.

He then slapped
at his E-Thing and summoned Mr. Blue.

It took twenty
minutes for the man to drive from his home to Vinicius' compound. When Mr. Blue
walked into the office he glanced around at the destruction, face neutral,
saying nothing. Vinicius was standing, arms crossed, staring out the window.

He turned after a
minute, and gave orders in a quiet, firm voice.

"I need you
to organize a trip to Tejas. We'll take the jet. We'll need to avoid the usual
entanglements, as we will be taking many weapons. Gather all the best men. The
ones who are not squeamish. Get started. We'll talk more in the morning."

Mr. Blue nodded,
and turned to leave.

"Oh, one
more thing. And don't take this the wrong way. But I need you to stay and watch
over our operations here. I need someone I can trust to do the right things
while I'm away. It seems lately I have too many people on the payroll who can't
walk down the street without sliding in dogshit."

"I
understand."

As Mr. Blue left,
Vinicius exhaled deeply. Action always made him feel better, and a plan put
action in motion.

Oh yes, Texan,
I will find you. And then I will visit you daily in one of my involuntary
testing facilities. You won't like the Modifications I have planned for you.

He smiled at the
thought.