The Procurers

The Procurers - Part 7

By Pfantazm

1.7 - THE ZYMOBIUS FILE

Evan walked cautiously down the duracrete ramp to the pedestrian level where The Black Hole was situated. The level above it appeared abandoned and burned out, but the near-indestructible shell of the building still stood, supporting a couple of miles of housing, businesses and other spaces above. Not surprisingly, The Black Hole, the seediest fetish bar Evan had ever heard of, was deep in the planet's gravity well. It was down near here where you could start to feel the heat from Hell-vaga's molten, wounded core.

His airbike was parked nearby, in what he hoped was a safer neighbourhood. He figured there was a better than seventy percent chance the bike would still be there when he got back. If not, the thieves would get some real surprises when Evan activated its special features.

The front door of the Hole was not marked. You only ever heard of the place from someone else, and once you knew where to look, it wasn't hard to find. Not many places nowadays had a door made of polysteel- reinforced wood, complete with wrought iron spikes. The message that it sent was, if you don't already know what lay beyond this door, you shouldn't be opening it.

With a slight twinge of nervousness, Evan entered the bar.

An overmuscled woman with pink hair stood cross-armed in the entryway. Beyond her were a pair of doors identical to the first. She wore liquid latex over her chest and at hip level, kepping her decent, and heavy steel boots. She towered several inches over Evan and was quite simply the ugliest woman he could remember meeting. Her name tag said, "Hi! I'm Penelope!"

"Name, short stuff?"

"Evan."

"Go on in. Raven's around the corner."

He swung open the inner door, and reflected on the fact that she represented everything Evan didn't like in a body, and not just because she was female.

The joint stank. There was sweat and worse human odours in the air, and there was a haze of smoke floating in the main room. The bar itself stretched across the right-hand wall, and there were a few tables surrounded by chairs clustered near a synthorgan. The bot playing the instrument was in rough shape. Someone had apparently taken a dislike to the choice of music, and caved the android's head in. Diodes and test relays blinked within. The assault seemed not to have affected the bot's musical ability, and it looked like no one was going to fix it if it wasn't broke enough.

The music was a piece of tuneless trash-electronica, which passed for culture in that part of town. The noise was punctuated by some very organic, very human, sounds.

The arm of the room where the front door was had few occupants. Even the bartender was at the far end of the bar, staring down the other end of the L-shaped room.

As Evan turned the corner, he saw what was grabbing everyone's attention.

A St. Anthony's cross dominated the wall opposite the bar. A man, nearly naked, with only the shreds of what might have been pants or underwear or both hanging around his waist, was lashed hand and foot to the beams, facing away from the crowd. A second man, a bear with metal spikes implanted into his bare shoulders kneeled behind him, and was fucking him with a dildo with an uneven texture. There was a woman at their side who had a whip out and was showing it to the audience. There were tattered rags at her feet, suggesting what had likely happened to the bound bottom's clothes.

The pair of performers were scantily clad. Chain mail was the theme. He wore a mail shirt and some sort of metal jock; she wore a mail shift down to her hips that showed off everything.

Given what he'd heard of this place, there was no guarantee that the man on the cross was a volunteer. Evan tried not to think about it and scanned the crowd for his contact.

Evan blended in with the patrons quite nicely. His deep purple hair was cropped quite short, and his crimson eyes, normally a repulsive colour on any random person, looked merely threatening on him. He wore his biking jacket, made of Tannon, a popular (but still inferior) substitute for real leather on a planet with no room for cows. A plain black T-shirt and black engineer's trousers completed the look. He wasn't used to this scene, but he knew enough not to look like prey.

He finally saw RavensLock27 seated near the door to what had to be the offices, tucked in the space which would make a square out of the L. Evan pushed by the various bar patrons to get to him.

He sensed one guy reach for his ass from behind him. He grabbed the offender by the wrist and twisted it painfully. Evan hoped it wouldn't turn him on. In grabbing him, Evan spun himself face to face with the guy. Soft violet eyes, and buzzed black hair spotted with red. "Not now," Evan growled menacingly, and pushed his hand away. He stalked off, leaving the groper to massage some of the pain out of his hand, and made it to Raven's table.

"Upstairs," said Raven simply. The black-haired man followed Evan through the Private door. Evan willed himself not to jump or flinch when the whip cracked in the room behind him.

Raven lived up to his name: black hair, black irises and a skin pigment around his eyes, darkening them further. Elsewhere, his skin was pale, the epitome of retro goth. The man was gaunt, but Evan detected some tech support in the way he walked: cyborg muscles, at a guess. Motors in his limbs to make him stronger.

Evan and Raven had finally met after lengthy negotiations over the package that threatened his life and OJ's. At the top of the stairs, one could hope, lay the penultimate step to sealing the deal.

The office of The Black Hole was much more warmly decorated than the bar itself. Instead of having bare plasticrete sprayed with dark colours and fake blood, the room was drywalled and painted a warm orange. Bookshelves with houseplants crowning them furnished the room.

Seated behind the desk was a gentleman who was a study of contrasts with Raven. His hair was yellower than a canary eating a lemon, and his simple colourful street clothes would have given him any amount of trouble in the bar below. Compared with Raven's near dead appearance, the blond looked as though he'd go on living forever. His skin was clear and tanned, and the man had a musculature that made Evan's libido jump.

"First," the seated man said with a slightly twangy accent, "you want to know what a nice guy like me is doing in a place like this."

Evan grinned slightly. "Actually not the first thing I've wanted to know since getting here."

"Oh, so that's what's got you scowling. Then I'll tell you what I'm doing here anyway and answer both questions. Where's the thing, Raven?"

"The switch is on the side of the monitor, Sasha."

A 2-D screen with a closed-circuit feed of the action downstairs sprang to life. The woman, with a strap-on, Evan guessed, was now fucking the victim and had his head pulled back by the hair, while the man had climbed up on the cross and was forcing his crotch, still covered by the jock, into his face while the bottom tried to turn away.

"The helpless victim there," the blond said, "is my brother. And that, is Raven's sister." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his agent. "This is them at their bonding ceremony a couple of decades back."

The picture the blond showed him had all three players from downstairs in tuxedos - except that the victim's face was wrong.

"Holography, Evan," Raven said, "is a wonderful thing." He reached over to the monitor and pressed a second button. The victim's face and head resolved into that of the third newlybond from the picture. "If we know where his head is going to be at all times, and if he doesn't show his face to the audience too long, Tiko and Mary can 'kidnap' Chay there every few months or so in addition to their normal act, and the crowd doesn't get bored. It is the difference between having an outlaw bar and being outlaws."

Evan said, "Assuming I believe you, why are you bothering to tell me?"

"Because, friend, you came in here angry," Sasha told him. "Believe me, I don't find any more pleasure in what Chay is doing down there than you do. I only know Raven through him. People in our situation do what they gotta do. There's two things I know. One is, my brother is happy, and above all else, safe, with his husband and wife. The other is, it doesn't pay to do business with angry people, and right now, my cause needs what you have."

Evan took a moment or two to let it sink in. He knew Raven owned The Black Hole. Sasha had no reason to lie, except to save Raven's hide. He told himself he was doing it for OJ now, and let the sex show slide. "You've heard my price," the mauve-haired dealer said.

"That's better," Sasha smiled. "I'll meet it, but not tonight, and not until I have assurances that your goods are still in a viable condition. Where are they?"

"You think I'll tell you?"

"I don't care if they're in the city or on New Hawaii. You know what I mean. How are they being stored?"

Evan described the case he was using: waterproof, but not airtight, dark, and no exposure to extreme temperatures whether high or low. "I did research on this, Sasha. I know what I'm handling."

"Good to hear," the blond said with a smile. "And what exactly are your thoughts about what we're doing?"

"I'm all for it, even if I won't be hanging around to see the consequences of what you accomplish. I like the effect it has on your organization," Evan said, looking Sasha up and down meaningfully.

The colorful gentleman laughed. "Well, it's been quite some time since I swung toward the guys, and I must admit I would be tempted, but since it sounds like you're, uh, headed for greener pastures, I think it's best that I pass. Maybe someday, after our little revolution's over and the corp's not there to be mad at you anymore."

"Maybe," Evan said. Mentally he added, maybe, but not unless I'm forced back to this armpit of a planet.

Sasha tapped a few touchspaces on his agent. "Meet me tomorrow at this location at midday." Evan's own agent received the address. "We'll make our exchange there."

"And if they're not viable?"

"Well, I'll be able to tell right there at the table if they are or not. If they're not, I'll be able to tell why. If they were never any good, you'll still get your fee as good faith for all the trouble we've gotten you in. If they've been mistreated by you, well, BoTan may only have Halvaga III in its sphere of influence, but I don't have any such restriction. Are we clear?"

"Crystal."

"Alright then. I'll see you tomorrow. Raven, why don't you show our new friend out."

The retro-goth escorted Evan back to the stairs. On his way to the side entrance, he reflected that while he'd taken excellent care of the goods, he'd also received them second-hand.

<What do you mean he's slipped out of your grasp again?>

"Just like I said, I tried tagging the guy in The Black Hole and he was onto me before I could touch him. You didn't say anything about tracking down a corp thug."

<So far as we are aware, Mr. Domino, the target is not. We have no competition, and we are relying on you to keep it that way.>

"Look, here's what I know. The guy at the restaurant released two pingers to two customers, one of whom, I find out, is not this OxygenJim. The new man's never gets active at all, and Evan's pings twice and dies. You're telling me that Evan has no implants, but he has some kind of internal bug-killer and proximity detection. You tell me what he is."

<What he is, Mr. Domino, is your problem. We had the understanding that you could handle this assignment.>

"I gave you the understanding that thugs were extra."

<If you are trying to pressure us into a higher fee, Mr. Domino, we won't-->

"Hey, hey, lay off with the 'Mr.' shit. The name's just Domino. If you won't accept that offer, here's your second and last chance. I don't deliver your stolen property; I just get you a fix on the carrier. Once I tell you where Evan is, use your own thugs to recover your loot."

"It's that or I splash my story on every media outlet whose address I can find on your planet."

<Blackmail is a most unseemly business, Mr. Domino. My partners will not be happy.>

"People misrepresenting their cases makes me unhappy. We'll start a support chatroom for unhappy people. In the meantime, what's it gonna be?"

<...>

"Waiting," Domino said belligerently.

"Fine by me. You'll have him in two days at the most. Domino out."

The red-and-black-haired man with the violet eyes severed the connection. For the next fifteen minutes, he paced around his hotel room, full of angry energy and cursing the BoTan corporation. Then he settled down in front of his screen, with the picture he saved of Evan and OJ leaving OJ's house, and worked on the problem of tracking a corporate thug.

Aboard Daybreaker Ganymede's e-mail program chimed to indicate that a message or chat was inbound.

Scott_Quinn was already uplinked to his computer and waiting. He initiated his tracer program and opened the chat.

"This is Daybreaker."

"Quinn, what's this about a homing device?"

Scott suppressed a smile. He started backtracing the signal. "I found one in the salad I took home from the diner you took me to. If you wanted to know where I was staying, you could have asked."

The feed was choppy, suggesting that it had been deliberately scattered over as many lines between wherever Evan was and Daybreaker as possible. Scott could only hope that he was using the best software out there to do it. Within the picture Scott was getting, he could see the dark of night cloaking the room where Evan was, and the lights of the city through a large window behind them that was wider and taller than the screen. Scott could also see another figure in the room. The second person was backlit, and appeared only as a silhouette, but a silhouette with orange-coloured hair.

Evan looked panicked. "What kind of a homing device? What did it look like?"

"A simple pinger, the kind that only lets its owner know where it is. It activates itself upon ingestion." Evan relaxed. "Do you mean to tell me that it wasn't you who put it there?"

"I swear I didn't."

Scott had already concluded the same thing, but needed to give his tracer time to do its thing and follow the stream of packets back to their source. "If you didn't, I don't suppose you would have any sort of idea who it might have been?"

The dealer got jittery again. "It's, uh, the other buyer that I have lined up for our files. She's getting to wonder why she doesn't have them yet."

A lie, Scott decided. "On that subject, I would still like to negotiate for both files--"

"Not now, and not over the 'net. Meet here at one in the afternoon tomorrow." Evan quit the chat.

Scott said a naughty word in a language nobody spoke anymore.

"You didn't get him, boss?" Meicross asked from the pilot's cabin.

"No. He's almost as paranoid as I am."

"So we got nothin'."

Scott grinned. "Not exactly nothing, Meicross. I did find out that he's using the best packet-scattering algorithm out there to keep his messages secure."

Meicross appeared in the hatchway directly above Scott and looked down at him from the cabin. "Ain't you always sayin' that JaSon's stuff is the best security software?" Scott nodded. "Don't you wind up beta testing all his software?" Scott nodded again. "So, what's that mean, boss?"

"So I have the source code for the algorithm he's using. I can find the location on the 'net that leads to the scatter he made, and that means I can find him."

"So?" OJ asked.

"The bug died less than a minute after I ate it. At best the corp knows which parking lot the airbike was in while I was getting to it."

OJ breathed a sigh of relief. "I wasn't made for this kind of hide-and- seek stuff."

"You worry too much, Jim," Evan said. "I told you, if the corp knew where we were, they would have been here by now." He tousled OxygenJim's curly hair. "It's like I told you before: come tomorrow afternoon, it's all going to be over one way or the other."

Domino's agent informed him of an incoming message. It was the guy from the diner. He started the connection and Hatcher's face appeared on the screen.

"What do you want?" Domino demanded.

"You still paying for information on Evan?"

"Those bugs never tracked! They didn't tell me anything. I'm not paying for information I didn't get!"

"Well, I had one of the other guys from the diner follow him out when he was here, and he, like, went to this building? He's still hanging there."

A slow smile crept across the mercenary's face. Just when you think you're not ever going to get your creds, the gods drop the money in your lap.