cobra and the delinquents 20 cliffie bonus

 

Chapter 20 Quis Venatores ipsos venabitur

 

“And now,” I said, “Who hunts the hunters.” We had the four remaining members of his team, and the organisation behind them; it seemed likely that there was one.

“Your plan?” asked Willow.

“Nothing fancy. We aren’t out for revenge, just to make sure they can’t do it to anyone else,” I said. “And then, find out from Coffee Guy if he belongs to any larger organisation.”

“And then?” she asked.

“Depends,” I said. “But in principle? We wipe them.”

Willow nodded.

On screen, Worrywart was pacing back and forth.

“Hey, Greg’s been gone a while, you think the little spitfire is causing trouble?”

“She’s vicious,” said Wounded Guy.

“I’m going to go and find out,” said Worrywart.

I grinned.

Divide and conquer.

“Aren’t we lucky that they’re so stupid?” I said. We waited for him to come to us. Why bother hunting when we can lure the prey to us?

 

He had a similar expression on his face to Coffee Guy – Greg – when he came into the safe room. I didn’t bother with small talk. I double-tapped him in the head.

We dumped him through the hole in the shower once we’d stripped him of kit. Sooner or later he’d rot down. The kit, however, was negotiable assets, and out here was valuable. 

Then we went hunting.

We split for Willow to go up and take out the guy on watch, while I shot wounded guy. I was using a silencer, but it woke the sleeping non-beauties anyway, and they stumbled sleepily out of their pit.

There’s nothing like a double tap to the head to halt the inevitable questions of the terminally useless.

 

We swept the perimeter, to check for anyone else, and found that there were no guard posts or pickets posted. Then cleared up the mess – the foundations again for the stripped bodies – and I reached out to Algy to tell Jim he could lift the blanket blackout and come and collect us.

The muffled roar materialised into the Condor, which landed outside.

“Lazy bastard, can’t you use your own little feet?” jeered Jim.

“Not with a prisoner in tow,” I said. “He’s unconscious.”

“Oh, fair enough,” said Jim.

Ruth had come with him, and hugged us both.

“I was so scared,” she said. “But I didn’t give up trying to escape, like you taught me. But I was very relieved when you arrived.”

“You did pretty well,” I said. “Willow will debrief you properly while I’m away working.”

“I missed something, didn’t I?” Ruth made a rueful face.

“The security suite was in the room where they kept you,” I said.

She facepalmed.

“I should have thought.”

“You survived to learn; that’s important,” I said.

“It’s not a bad base for someone,” said Ruth. “You need to install someone you trust here, to stop anyone else taking over.”

“It’s a good place for Sodger to hold as a firm of security consultants,” I agreed.

Shortly thereafter, we were loading up Greg the Coffee Guy, and Jim took us straight up, and hunkered down in geostationary orbit wearing the signature of a small lump of rock saying ‘Neil Armstrong Woz Here.’

Or whatever.

Ruth was doing better with zero gravity than last time. Willow was stoic.

“Jeez, Cobra, that telepathic crap is creepy,” Jim said

“But useful,” I said. “And no, I don’t use Algy to read minds. He has a beautiful soul, and I don’t want to hurt it.”

He shook his head.

“You’re a big softy,” he said. “But I guess I understand.”

“You wouldn’t want Oscar reading minds,” I said.

“Fuck, no,” he said. “I guess these poor sods didn’t get the choice of what they were?”

“It’s why they call them ‘The Forgotten,’” I said.

“I’m glad they have you,” said Jim. “Not that it’s any of my bag, and I’m not going to get involved.”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re not a do-gooder either.”

“Cuts into the profit margin, and the Condor costs an arm and a leg to upkeep,” said Jim. “I try to make sure it’s someone else’s arms and legs.”

That was Jim for you.

He only does things like rescue the odd slaves, and one of those was Oscar. He doesn’t freely admit to it, though.

We understand each other.

 

I gave Greg the antidote, and then as he was awake enough to realise he was tied up and blind, I ripped off the blindfold. He saw me in my warpaint again, and a very free Ruth, standing behind me, anchored with magnets, and playing with a knife.  She was, from his point of view, where he was chained to the wall, on the ceiling. Jim had told me this really freaks people out.

He opened his mouth to yell, and threw up. 

A host of tiny robots emerged to deal with the floating detritus. Boy, am I glad Jim has a micro-robot swarm to handle such things. I suppose the sleep drug didn’t help.

“Hello, Greg,” I said. “Now, I give you more courtesy than you gave my sister, whose name is Ruth. Not that you bothered, because you were always going to kill her.”

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“I put my underpants on outside my tights and picked up my cloak,” I said. “You know who I am. Horace Tiber. You wanted to see me. Well, you get to see me. Now tell me why.”

“Jeez! You ain’t a fuckin’ teacher!” he said.

“Incorrect, Omae; I am a teacher, but I have exotic hobbies,” I said. I rotated sideways, courtesy of air jets.

“What?” he said, going boss eyed.

“The correct interrogative is ‘I beg your pardon?’ not ‘what?’ which sounds ill-educated and rude,” I said. “You will tell me everything you know about the organisation you work for, and how many belong to it and where the headquarters is situated, or I’ll hand you over to my sister. She has bandages on her wrists from the cruelty of the zip-ties and she told me she can think of somewhere she’d like to put a zip-tie that tight.”

Ruth stood behind me, smiling, brightly, having put away her knife, stropping a zip-tie back and forth across her hand.

He wet himself. At least that soaked into clothing and did not have to be cleared up.

“You know, the Emperor Tiberius didn’t have zip-ties, but he did have string, and he used to trick people into drinking a lot and then tying string tightly enough to cause absolute agony,” I said. “Being a teacher, I have all the classics at my back.”

“I wonder if a zip-tie can be tightened enough to cut right through?” said Ruth, brightly.

“Well, then you can’t force his bladder to burst,” I said.

“I’ll talk but get her out of here!” said Greg.

He talked. I won’t bore you with his bad language, bad grammar, repetitions, or the need to call Ruth back in when he lapsed a trifle. For some reason, he believed she might take revenge for her rough treatment.

He tried obfuscation and tried to claim he did not know where the base was, but I wasn’t buying any of that.

Moreover, I was pretty sure I knew; I had the co-ordinates of the place he had contacted to speak to me through Ruth’s phone, and I figured he would send that somewhere he considered secure.

He was part of a fairly elite mercenary unit, centred in Nebraska [and hence sending Ruth’s phone there] about fifty strong, and they did work for the Wolfpack on a regular basis. They had a barracks in a bunker in the Sandhills, a desert-like region. The thermal picture showed the extent of the base, and the trackway to nowhere was a shining blaze on the desert landscape. Especially as night fell, and the desert lost its heat, but the bunker did not. There is always waste heat from a collection of people and it has to go somewhere.               

On the ground, you’d never find the thing, but from orbit, many things become obvious. And it’s hard to protect against that.

Of course, you have to have an idea of where to look; and it looks as though they underestimated the facilities I had to hand to find Ruth’s phone, not to mention what Greg told me, and what I found on his hastily installed security suite where they had kept her.

 

“Jim, can you turn that bunker into slag?” I asked.

“The most powerful boom is caused by gravity and terminal velocity,” said Jim, cheerfully. “I have a few rocks from God, shaped roughly with my laser, and tucked thoughtfully in Lagrangian points. All I have to do is to add a guidance unit. Considering who they are working for, I’ll even do it gratis.”

He hadn’t mentioned that the Lagrangian point he was thinking of had an old abandoned factory facility there, which Jim used for storage.

“Would it help to aim it at Ruth’s phone?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you think they’ve taken it into the base?”

“Wouldn’t you, if you thought you could get information about an enemy from it?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “What did you plan to do about Chummy?”

“I was going to kill him,” I said.

“Might as well send him home,” said Jim. “Chained to the missile.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” I said.  “I suppose I ought to kill him first; he was co-operative.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose so,” said Jim. “He’d make such a mess if he explosively decompressed in the airlock.”

I didn’t want to know.

I broke Greg’s neck; bullets in spaceplanes are never a good idea.

Jim went out in his suit, to set up a guidance unit on the missile-shaped rock, with its passenger.

“At least my phone will die in a good cause,” said Ruth. “And I backed up my photos this morning anyway.”

We watched the rock streak groundwards, heating up as it went, and Ruth saluted her phone.

There was a hell of a lot of debris kicked up.

“One hole in the ground, formerly known as a mercenary base,” said Jim.

“Nice work,” I said.

“I need to take on more reaction mass – or to you, refuel, before we go to the moon,” said Jim. “Unless you planned to stay there.”

“I want to leave Willow and Ruth on earth as well,” I said.

 

We went back to the arena, and I let Jim go and fuel up while I spent the afternoon with my family.

It had been a rather busy day, and I wanted to hug everyone.

 

oOoOo

 

We had an emotional family reunion and Quin said his first word, which was “Roo!” for Ruth.

“Clever boy!” crooned Willow.

“Don’t they usually say ‘mama’ or ‘dada’ or something?” I asked.

“You haven’t been listening, he said ‘Dadadadada’ the other day,” said Willow, severely.

I stand corrected.

“NO!” said Quin, as Willow picked him up to put him down for a sleep.

“I guarantee that one will be more common than any other,” I said.

Orville sniggered and washed his whiskers.

Oscar seemed very settled with our cats, which I was glad to tell Jim when I rejoined him.

“Daddy stay heowm?” asked Amy. Oh, those big appealing green eyes and quivering whiskers. I scooped up that dear little tabby cat and cuddled her closely.

“One more mission, little one,” I said. “Then I’m going to retire.”

“If Tarquin lets you,” said Willow.

“Tarquin can go to hell,” I said. I had too much to lose and every mission was more risk. An assassin for hire cannot afford emotional entanglements, yet here I was with a family. And I wanted out. I wanted to be a mild-mannered teacher with some exotic hobbies.

 

oOoOO

 

Our trip to the moon was smooth. Jim had a news station playing, relaying the unexpected meteor impact in Nebraska, fortunately in an uninhabited area. He found an old recording of a 20^th century satirist[1] and sang along to,

“'Mid the yuccas and the thistles

I'll watch the guided missiles

While the old FBI watches me,” until I poked him.

We landed in a crater on the moon.

“Nice and quiet, no noisy neighbours,” said Jim. . “I picked one where there has been a lot of exploration already; plenty of tracks of all kinds so our tracks moving about won’t be obvious if anyone flies over. Help me rig a cam net to sweep the ground and hide the Condor’s shadow.”

I helped him with that; I was glad Jim was taking secrecy very seriously. The net worked on similar technology to Follicolour^TM which is to say it had smart colour changing abilities. Jim is a smuggler; he knows all the tricks.

 

 

I cannot claim that the next couple of weeks was pleasant. I had an astronauts’ course to go through, and my guts did not like the pills I was swallowing to reduce calcium loss due to low gravity. Jim and Oscar had had modifications to allow for that, but I did not, so pills it was. And the low waste food bars.

And a custom butt plug. Don’t forget that.  I couldn’t.  And no decent food.

I appreciated Aunty Fee and Willow for their cooking even more for missing it.

 

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[1] Tom Lehrer