“We got about an hour, maybe, down the road and there was this shaking like an earthquake. Turned out the base had blown up. A PDC makes one hell of a fall of rock when it blows up, let me tell you. We were in another valley and it was still raining hot granite.
“So that’s my story,” Papa said, taking his last sip of beer. “And I’m sticking to it. Never told it to another soul.”
“It is a good story,” the Himmit said. “Well worth the price of the trip. I shall gain favor by its retelling.”
“You don’t seem particularly surprised by it,” Papa said. “Of course, if you guys can even look surprised.”
“That an intruder was involved with the destruction of the St. Polten PDF is well known,” the Himmit replied.
“And it being a vampire? Did you know that, too?”
“Thank you for the very good story,” was all it said.
“Your Ghin, the altar calls you.”
Resignedly, he turned his thoughts away from his latest problem and cleared his head. Any input from the altar would be critically important. One did not use it for less. Confining the altars’ use to the vital and avoiding group business rivalries removed anyone’s temptation to decide their own interests might be better off without the existence of the devices. Security came in many different forms. The Ghin was in a position to enforce communications discipline, and he did so. That it served his personal interests to do so was an accepted down side. He was as close to strictly neutral between groups as it was possible to be, which was the best anyone could ask for. That he also considered the interests of his species of paramount importance was all to the good.
There had to be someone in the highest seat of arbitration. Each group being absolutely certain it could write a more skillful contract than the other groups solidified his position. His deserved reputation for being meticulously and impartially literal gave every group the certainty that his presence in the position gave it an edge over the other groups. He, and the other Ghins before him, had maintained the sanctity of contract through the Galaxy since his race were first allowed — the taste of the price was still bitter — off their homeworld. That was as close to order as anyone could ask for.
He carefully lit the sticks of incense on the altar and made his ritual obeisances — one of the few circumstances in which a top Darhel would willingly perform such actions. The relic was sacred. Besides, there was the partially superstitious notion that somewhere, somehow, someone might be listening in.
The device, although communication was nearly instantaneous, took a certain amount of time to make initial contact. The Ghin sometimes wondered if the Aldenata had crafted the prescribed rituals merely to create the illusion that the wait was shorter than the reality. Besides, the drill supported calmness — paramount when dealing with urgent matters.
The hologram focused in slowly, bringing one Tir Dol Ron into his office space. The Ghin twitched in irritation. “Oh. It’s you,” he said. The small snub was precise.
“I arrive,” the Tir replied, responding to the Ghin’s display of bad manners by omitting his title.
“This is doubtless important enough to merit imploring the gods of communication.” The Ghin managed to convey that he did very much doubt such importance. The matter was, of course, important. He just already knew the details of the situation and didn’t appreciate being interrupted from contemplating the details of his options. Besides, Tir Dol Ron was, to put it bluntly, a pain in the ass. “How go your plans for the humans, Tir?” he asked.
“Badly,” the Tir admitted baldly, surprising him. “I underestimated your concerns about recontacting them.”
Such an admission was very out of character. He must want something big.
Chapter Eight
Bobby had put himself together a nice little posse to go get some serious retribution for the opposition’s nasty attack on his bosses’ interests. The stuff so far had been small shit. This was the big one, at least for openers. This was the one that brought the lesson home.
The guys in the diner, and one chick, were all either hardened criminals or seasoned cops. None of your pre-war pussy cops, either. These were bona fide hard-asses who could take care of business, and would, for the generous price he was paying.
The Oak Street Diner had pretty damned great food. It was the only place in Chicago where he’d order pancakes for lunch. The girl who first brought him here said it had something to do with how they made the batter — yeast or something. Bobby didn’t know anything about all that cooking shit, he just knew they were damn fine pancakes and worth an extra hour at the gym.
He put his plate on another table, a signal to the other men to do the same. Whether there was food on their plates or not, they were done. He passed out data cubes like cards in a holo western before pulling the first of the pictures up on his AID — nice little status symbol, that. Usually he used a buckley for data security, but when he wanted to impress, he used the AID.
“Here are our targets. Candy,” Mitchell nodded to the girl, “you’re our in.” She looked kind of skanky in her day-to-day walking around clothes. Too much makeup and a whole lot of sexy. Hot, but cheap.
“New girl next door, borrow a cup of sugar kind of thing, right?” She picked her teeth with a long, acrylic fingernail.
“You got it. You get the door open, we’re right in on your back.” Candy was for sure and certain used to having guys on her back. She had a stripper’s figure — skinny waist along with tits that had obvious cheap implants, and probably some surgical rounding of her ass as well. The platinum blond hair aped some ancient starlet, but her roots were dark as anthracite coal and badly needed a touch-up. Probably an easy solution to his problem of what to do tonight, though.
“Here’s our main targets.” He flipped through the woman and kids in quick succession, seeing no need to pause. “They’re on your cube, so take a look on your own time. Not that you really need to. All you need to remember is to kill anything alive in the house. People, pets. Hell, if in doubt, you can kill the fucking potted plants. Everybody dies. Simple. Any questions?” Of course there weren’t. He hadn’t gone to any special lengths to buy intelligent goons, but even dumbasses could understand these instructions.
“What about the noise? All that shooting’s gonna make lots of noise.” The light brown guy — Bobby thought of him as “Chubby” — was the least experienced of the bunch. But he’d worked a couple of years as a Sub-Urb cop, on the take but not greedy with it; he was worth bringing along just because with his totally ordinary looks and good attitude, he just might have a future in the security side of the Tir’s organization. He’d done okay with his test run on the old lady, and he’d just proved himself marginally smarter than the other three.
“It’s New Year’s Eve. Everybody who doesn’t think it’s firecrackers will assume it’s just some dork firing into the air.”
Target selection had, in the end, been relatively simple. Most of the relatives of that big, flashy unit that had done a Benedict Arnold and run had disappeared but good. He’d like to find out how they’d done it, too. But anyway, enough of them had left tracks going to ground that he had something to work with without trying too hard. Wives, kids. Good targets. Much closer than the somewhat less effective grandmothers, parents and shit they’d taken so far. The objective was to let the bastards know they’d been hit and send a message to any other fuckheads tempted to pull the same stunt.