Ghosts in the System

[The_gladiator]

He took the water and let her line sit.


Waste of my talents. Somewhere no one knows your name.


Duty or pleasure. He filed both and did not pick.


“We’ll see how the night plays out,” he said. Same words as before. Cheaper now, with the stage lights dropping.


Leon Pilat took the podium. Humble on purpose. Becker had heard the name on enough charity letterheads to know the humility was part of the invoice.


Then the waitstaff.


“Bullshit!”


A few gasps. The room tried to decide whether it was a joke.


Becker did not look at the stage first. He looked at the kitchen doors, the same direction she had tracked earlier, then at her glass, then at her face.


“You clocked those two in white before I did,” he murmured.


He set the water down.


“Gotta hit the head. Shake an annoying rock out of my boot.”


He did not know if she would get the hint: a weapon in the boot, and a cover to retrieve it if this went south.


“I smell a rat.”

 

[WretchRoad]

She had two choices: pretend ignorance or admit she had them in her sights. She, one of the rats, cursed her luck and her good eye for faces.

She recognized them, alright, now that she had a voice to go with a face half-hidden under some expert prosthetics. The two men were at the same Basic training facility as her, but on a different tract. The one who shouted out, he was the shorter of the two, with red hair grown over his ears. The other, she couldn’t see anymore, the taller of the two with tan skin, his green eyes capped with brown contacts.

“I’ve been to a few things like this, I saw one of them pour wine before properly decanting. Seemed odd,” she hoped it wasn’t an over-explanation, that it was enough to keep him from suspecting her.

Danica didn’t pack heat, there wasn’t a place on her body to safely fit a pistol when her dress, and wandering hands, would reveal anything out of place. Instead, she had her silver bracelet. Each bead held a tiny protractable pin connected to a basin full of neurotoxin, a credit to the research and development teams at the Reach.

Leon smiled it off, willing to play on the interruption. “I assure you…” then he stood there, blank stare. A black hole burned between the eyebrows.

She grabbed Becker's arm as Leon went down, thumping against the stage. “Don’t,” she warned.

One by one the doors slammed shut. Another dozen of the staff opened their uniform jackets to display ultra-light armored vests, meanwhile another came in through the kitchen loaded with automatic phase rifles, and handed them out.

 

[The_gladiator]

The disruptor at his ankle was a comforting weight until it wasn’t.


IGA raid. That was the shape it took in his head. Doors slamming. Vests under waiter whites. Phase rifles coming out of the kitchen.


He let her pull him back.


“Friends of yours?” Quiet. A tease. He did not truly suspect the connection. Not yet. Her eye for the two in white had already said she was not just a high-paid escort.


Nothing to see here. He wanted out. No need to get mixed up in stolen artifacts. He was guilty of a great many things. That did not happen to be one of them.


Leon was down. A black hole between the eyebrows. The room had stopped pretending this was a gala.


Becker did not reach for the boot. Not with a dozen rifles in play and her hand on his arm.


“Don’t,” she had said.


He didn’t.


Yet.


Though she didn’t know he had a gun powerful enough to put a hole in a small battlecruiser, she had the right of it: whatever he was carrying was not a match for ten phase rifles and body armor.


Then a crack he had never heard before.


One of the toughs in armor went down. The round punched a hole in his chest and tore a gaping exit on the way through.


Becker had never seen a slug rifle like the Winchester they were auctioning off. If he had to bet, it made a hole like that.


“Should have found that dive bar after all.”

 

[WretchRoad]

Shouts erupted from the armed staff who all turned, guns hitched high, to face the catastrophe of their comrade.

At the same time, Tall and Tan emerged from just behind where Leon had stood to take the stage, half-crouching behind the podium. His speech never broke his lips as everyone shifted with the crack of the rifle, echoing through the hall.

She’d seen holes like that before, ones carved out of space suits by scrap metal the size of a thumbnail hurtling at ten kilometers a second. Like Becker, she connected the dots.

“Remember for next time, yeah?” she remarked under her breath, “I always have good ideas.”

She hadn’t let go of his arm, she was trying to pull him behind the bar.

However that gun was supposed to work, she hoped it carried more than one round, because a crowd of rifles were aimed back at the corner of the room.

An execution and a dozen rifles were part of the plan, but this one was not. She knew that’s all it took for these things to go off the rails.

 

[The_gladiator]

He let her pull him behind the bar.


On the way past a table he grabbed a paper. Something to keep his hands busy. Then he saw what it was and started reading it aloud, because the room had already gone loud enough that sense had to come from somewhere.


“Winchester Model 1873. Chambered in .44-40. Twenty-four-inch barrel. Twelve-round tubular magazine. Nickname: the gun that won the West.”


As if the words had summoned it, the rifle cracked again.


Another man with a phase rifle went down in a bloody heap. Return fire stitched the expensive wood with burn marks and plasma char.


“Those idiots are shooting into some of the galactic elite. Someone is going to die for this. And I don’t mean here in this firefight. I mean later.”


Becker squinted into the smoke, trying to see who was firing on the enforcers. Small. A woman, maybe. He could not be certain.


“If you have such good ideas,” he said, under the next volley, “how do we get out of here before that lunatic uses the other ten rounds and the IGA turns this place into a smoking pile of bodies.”

 

[WretchRoad]

The fact that they got off another round was impressive. They must have had training, or knew the weapon better than anyone else in the room.

“They’re going to run out of shots before the phase rifles,” Danica stated. But if they’re getting one-hit kills, they could probably take out the whole operation first.

Nevermind how he knew it was the IGA, she’d have to ask those questions when they weren’t in a room that was being blasted into a new constellation.

She edged over to peek into the hall, watching people hit the floor, scurrying away like steerage rats from a ship fire. “You’re not worried about your friends?” She asked rhetorically as she searched through smoke and crashed tables. No sign of Green Eyes, who must have abandoned the podium. From the other side of the room a woman yelled “For the Children of Sahur!” followed by shouts and a flurry of phase blasts.

Then, Danica locked on the red head, who was shoving a table away from a door left undefended. He looked like he was about to abandon the fight for a stealthy exit.

“I have an idea,” she nodded toward the door. “If you have a gun.”

 

[The_gladiator]

“Depends why you want to know,” he muttered, already bending to the boot.


“I’m only as worried for my friends as they are for me.” Another mutter. “Kinda pissed about my steak though. Not gonna lie.”


He stood with the disruptor palmed. He did not hand it to her. The snub-nosed weapon disappeared against the black of his trousers.


His eyes followed hers to the redhead shoving the table off the undefended door.


“What’s the move?”

 

[WretchRoad]

The attitude struck her as ice-cold, either he carried a hell of a grudge or he had incredible faith in his friend's abilities. She didn't see them on the floor, so she hoped they made it away from the firing range. They weren't her responsibility, either way. Becker was the target, and now he was an asset. He needed to survive this if he was eventually going to face the IGA.

"We follow the red head and shut that door behind us," she raised her voice over the shouts and gun blasts that were getting louder now. Another crack.

"The gun is in case he catches us following."

In an ideal world they wouldn't have to shoot another agent. In an ideal world this operation wouldn't have gone tits up. She would have settled for an agency where the right hand knew what the left was doing, but expectations only led to disappointment.

Danica flinched as a blast carved through the bar top, filling the air with the smell of burnt wood.

"Ready?" she implored.

She was coiled up and gearing to bolt for the door the moment he said yes.