Thanks Triaxx. I'm lookin' forward to workin' with H'nt again.
Falkirion,
me too.Gosnell, sorry mate.
11. Talking to the TV
We got back to the Endless and I personally walked Sin right past the cell where I was holdin’ Beni. I have to confess to a certain amount of satisfaction when Sin saw the little bastard. He actually tripped over his own feet before he started tryin’ to rage and make threats. I had his arms pinned behind him and used the leverage to lift him up onto his toes.
“Shaddap,” I growled at him.
A moment later I chucked him into the very next cell and engaged the repulsor field. The stupid bastard either didn’t know what kind of cell he was in or didn’t care because he threw himself at the plexi, as if bein' locked in somehow made him a badass. He hit the field and was immediately stunned and thrown to the deck with his eyes lookin’ in different directions. It amused me greatly. I also knew that the bastard would get to sit right next to Beni, knowin’ the other man was right there, and that Beni had seen him bein‘ manhandled, without bein’ able to bully or cow the other man at all. It would drive Sin crazy.
After that I returned to the bridge with the intention of trackin’ down Toni Azara. We were briefly addressed by a pair of police disco’s wantin’ to discuss what happened when I kidnapped Beni and also the deaths at Sin's night club. I made a big deal of the law enforcement license and said that I was pursuin’ criminals from the border sectors responsible for the theft of half a billion credits. Then I gave each of them a twenty thousand credit Christmas bonus. In July. Afterward, they found everythin’ to be in order and I haven’t heard anythin’ from ’em in half a stazura.
Since then I’ve been lookin’ through Toni Azara’s finances. I’m not in the same league as Alex Murray or Legion when it comes to siftin’ through intelligence, but between myself, Gin, and Seldon, who is an extremely well trained hacker, we were able to access Argon Prime’s public records and track down Toni’s accounts, property and holdin’s, which I have to confess were of great personal interest to me. Like his cousin, Toni had recently done very well for himself. All of his businesses have recently been so successful that he’s been able to afford two new vacation homes complete with brand new, top-of-the-line transports for himself and his family, an entire portfolio of fortune five hundred stocks, and has even begun construction on a brand new and very expensive resort on an island near New Morocco.
It wasn’t until Gin put a hand on my arm, gettin’ me to look at my fist tremblin’ on the table, that I realized how angry I was. Between the Terrans and the gangsters I feel like I’ve been raped, robbed, stripped and left for dead. These gangsters, and later the bloody Terrans too, are gonna pay for what they took from me. I believe the cost is gonna be measured in lives.
*****
Toni Azara was sitting at his dining room table. He was eating dinner with his wife and children. He was laughing as his youngest son described learning to play gravity ball. Then the television in the living room suddenly flickered to life and everyone in the room stopped talking to look at the monitor. It was a black and white feed showing a guy walking around in a small, uncomfortable room with industrial danger markings on the floor and around the two pressure doors.
The guy in the video was in rough shape. He had blood on his face and seemed to be favoring his left side. He was also very upset. Toni had seen lots of guys look like that throughout his life. Guys tended to look like that when everything that really mattered was on the line. Sometimes it was their reputations. Other times it was their money. But most of the time guys looked like that when it was their lives in the clinch and for one reason or another they had become powerless to change what was about to happen.
There was something about the scene Toni didn't like. For one thing the room looked a little like a military loading dock but there were differences he couldn't work out. Like why there were pressure doors on both sides of such a little room. The other thing was the guy. The image wasn't the best quality, being black and white and grainy, but something about the guy seemed real familiar.
"Isn't that uncle Sin?" It was his daughter Emily. "He looks hurt." She turned to him. "Where is he, Papa?"
Toni got to his feet and started crossing the room to look at the monitor. He was a big guy so it happened kind of slowly. While he was moving he saw that his daughter was right. The guy on the screen was Sin. That realization made him feel cold and start to sweat at the same time. He knew what this was, and it was bad.
"Natalie," he said to his wife, "get the kids outta here. Go in the back and turn on some music. Make it loud." Behind him he heard his wife gathering up the babies and taking them away. On screen he watched his cousin slap his forehead with the heels of both hands and shake as if he was screaming. Then a voice came out of the feed.
"Toni Azara," the voice said, and there was something about it that made Toni think of falling onto broken glass. “How you doin’, Toni?”
"Who the frak are you?” Toni bellowed at the television. “How are you doin’ this? And what the frak are you doin’ wit’ my cousin?!”
The image on screen flickered and the picture of Sin disappeared. In its place was a feed from a desktop cam. It was low and fish eyed and showed a guy sitting in a booth filled with machinery and blinking lights. The guy actually looked harder than he sounded. There was a patch over his left eye and Toni was pretty sure he should know him. The guy leaned in to fix his one eye on the camera. “Damn Toni,” the guy growled. “You got fat.”
“Who the frak are you?!”
“Toni!” the guy said, leaning back with a smile. It showed too many teeth, that smile. “You wound me, Toni! You don’t recognize your buddy? Your pal? Your old friend? Didn’t you used to call me your favorite knockaround guy?”
“Oh shit,” Toni felt like he’d just fallen into a pool of ice water. “Drake.”
“There you go! See, you do remember me. You were startin’ to hurt my feelin’s, pal. Buddy.” The smile vanished. “Friend.”
“They told me you were dead.”
“Yeah well,” Drake shrugged. “They told you wrong.”
“What the frak do you want?! You frakkin’ hurt my cousin and I will frakkin’ KILL you!” Toni roared. “Do you understand me?! I’m gonna frakkin’ KILL you...!!”
Drake smiled at him. It was an evil, knowing smile and robbed Toni of all his bluster. “Just let me know when you’re done,” Drake growled, soft and threatening. He was showing all those teeth. There was something terrifying about all those teeth.
“What the frak do you want?”
“What do I want?!” The civil facade slipped. That one eye seemed to blaze and Drake leaned in toward the camera with bared teeth, only he wasn’t smiling anymore. Before he realized what he was doing Toni took a step back. That was when the smile came back.
“If you hurt my cousin,” Toni shouted again. “I will personally ...!”
“What?” Drake cut him off and once again Toni felt his words dry up. “What are you gonna do?” That one eye was so intense. Looking at it was a bit like looking at the sun. It hurt somehow. Drake reached out and took hold of the camera. To Toni it felt a little like the guy had reached out and grabbed his face. When Drake took his hand away the camera was pointing at a big red button that was normally under a locked plastic cover. But there was key just below it and the cover had been flipped back. Toni still didn’t understand what he was looking at, but he had a sick feeling in his guts. “That,” Drake said, “is the button that will open the outer doors to the airlock where your cousin is currently screamin’ and punchin’ himself in the face.”
“You son of a bitch! If you ...”
The camera turned again and Drake was staring him dead in the eye. “You asked me what I want, Toni? The fact that you don’t know already concerns me. Are you sure you’re healthy? You don’t have a brain tumor or somethin’ do ya?”
“You’re not gettin’ that money,” Toni said. “You’re not! You killed my guy and stole that ship. All I did was take back what was mine! Do you hear me?! You are NEVER gettin’ that frakkin’ money! DO YOU FRAKKIN HEAR ME?!”
“Is that you’re final answer?” Drake actually seemed to purr as he asked the question. The camera pitched back to the button. Drake’s hand appeared from the side of the screen and a finger started tapping the button. “Sure you don’t want to run it by Uncle Sal first, Toni? My guess is his answer might differ from yours somewhat ...” The camera pitched back to Drake’s face. That one eye seemed to be looking right into Toni’s soul. “... especially if you failed to cut him in.”
Toni couldn’t seem to breathe. His heart was pounding in his ears and he felt like he was going to puke. “If you ...!”
“Enough.” Drake growled. “I’m tired of listenin’ to you. So let me tell you how it is, Toni, because you’re obviously too stupid to figure this out on your own. You are gonna go see your uncle. You are gonna tell Sal that I have his boy in an airlock three hundred kilometers above the surface of Argon Prime. You are gonna tell him that if I don’t get my money back I’m gonna let Sin try flyin’ his way back home. You get me?”
“I swear to God and all that’s holy if you ...”
“Shut you’re hole,” Drake growled at him. “I’m not finished.”
Toni shut his mouth. He couldn’t believe it but he did. When the hell had skinny little Drake gotten so frakkin’ scary?
“After,” Drake shook a finger at him, “I vent your cousin out into space I am gonna start shovin’ nuclear bombs down your throat. You know those pretty little villas you're buildin on that island east of New Morocco? Yeah. I’m gonna nuke 'em. That monstrous palace with all the columns in the hills above the delta? Yeah. I’m gonna nuke that too. That house you’re standin’ in right now with you’re wife and kids in the back room?! Yeah. I’m gonna turn it into a glass parkin’ lot!”
“Frak you! You don‘t got any ...!”
“Toni you’re a moron,” Drake cut him off. “You couldn’t think your way out of a paper bag if you’re life depended on it and right now it does. So don’t hurt yourself tryin’ to figure out if I’m bluffin’ or not and you just take your fat ass to your uncle’s house and tell Sal what I said. You hear me? You tell your uncle that I want my money back. After you talk with the old man I’ll call you back.”
“How the frak will you know when I talk to ...?”
The feed cut out. Drake disappeared and there was nothing but white noise and snow.
Toni felt like his heart was gonna beat its way right out of his chest. “Frak me.”
*****
I currently have three hammer heavy torpedoes and one firestorm, not to mention a couple of Beluga missiles and twenty three Tornadoes. At the very least I was confident that I could back up my threats. I do hate to bluff. Gil always said bluffin’ was a bad posture to take. All it took was somebody callin’ you once and you’d lose credibility forever.
I looked up at Sin, still pacin’ his way around my airlock. He saw me and I thought of that job I pulled for him after Gil left; that job where used me and four other guys as decoys to draw the security away from his target, while another crew, the real crew, went after the safe. It got two of us wounded and one guy killed. Later I realized he’d been hopin’ that we’d all get killed so he wouldn’t have to pay any of us. I stared at the guy and thought of the airlock openin’, and what his face might look like as he was vented out into space. The though put a smile on my face and I watched Sin go pale.
I'm pretty sure Sin is already a dead man. I won’t be able to say for certain until I talk to Sal and see which way the old man jumps. Salvatore Vassar was once one of the most powerful men in the Federation, even if only a very few people knew his name. He used to pull strings that had influenced votes in parliament, created and destroyed businesses, and dictated the movement of billions of credits. He’s been semi-retired for jazura but even so, Sal isn’t the kind of man you want for an enemy. I’ll need to be careful.
Very careful.
God knows I wouldn't want Drake breathing down my neck and threatening me and mine when he's havin' a bad day.
