Play It Casual

Klingon Hamlet

Walking the street, eyeing up the talent at corners, newspaper under the arm, gun at the hip: keep cool, shades hide the beady eyes, the smile keeps the lips from jittering, be cool. Be cool.

Voice leaps into my ear: Almost there buddy. Y'alright?

Bite my tongue, swallow my yelp; the earpiece is tiny, wormed right into my ear, out of sight. The voice should be welcome, should be calming: Kip, my partner, trusted friend, watching overhead, a sentinel in the clouds: ship cloaked, scanners on full. I know I'm a blue dot on his screens, my target's big and red, and the gap is shrinking real fast. Too fast.

My toes squirm; I push on. Pavement is bouncing the afternoon sun into my eyes: my shades bounce the light right back, but the heat is melting me, sweating me. Any minute now and I feel like my face'll melt off, and the word SPY!!! will blaze across my teeth.

Yup, I say, choking on panic. Round the corner, past the monitor-droids, he's sitting there on the steps, yo-yoing, laughing, spitting at passers-by.

Gunshot; left, I drop to one knee, blink, it's just an old-school car with a bust-up engine; I untie then tie my lace smoothly. Good hands, that's it, pretend, don't shake, good.

Up, my knees crack, up and walk. Streets are pretty empty. The odd laugh or shout or scream pops in the air. Everything mellows, fades. Everything but my target.

Hey YOU.

Second heart-stopper. My spine dances. My fingers tickle the bump of my holster. Behind my shades, my eyes are OO.

Turn; swivel. Keep it casual til sh!t gets actual. Always had a ring to it when I wrote it years ago. Now it stains my brain, makes me wince, as I rotate, smiling and look into the eye of a seven-foot tall killer. He's not subtle. He has a machine gun, and its dick is eye-level.

Whoa there. I'm a Brother. The smile cramps my cheeks. Gun, so close, grab it? Flip it up, flick off the safety toggle, then put a bullet through this bear's chin? Can be done. Maybe throw a shoulder in first; stagger him, then send him to hell.

But Enemy number One is behind. Probably watching, mildly interested. I'm one of many who faced down a gun on that bad bad man's street. Hence my mission. He makes this world a bad place. He's an infection. My gun is pumped full of cure.

A brother. All moustache and slick-back, frowns and grunts. Must top two-fifty pounds of dumb-ass. Gun in my face, though. Play it casual.

Yeah. Here, let me show you... I stretch a hand out, up, palm out, then guide it into the folds of my cloak of the Brothers of the One. His eyes flick down. My mirror-shades frown back. I pull out the Volume, show its gold-plated edge, and drive it straight into the bridge of his temple. Gentle crack: skulls are quite quiet when they split. Wetness: blood, brain matter.

He looks like a confounded cow as he stumbles back and falls ass first to the curb.

I, in a convenient flash of thinking-on-my-feet, snatched his weapon as he fell. Thirty bullets.

More than enough.

That was all thirty seconds, maximum. Enemy number one is gone, though. Probably into his fortress: a terraced home in a down-and-out street, the very street I'm on, surrounded by whores and slave-bots, straggler junkies and steroid junkies, heavies and heavy artillery.

I've got a submachine gun, a handgun, and the book that tells fairytales about an absentee father. I leave the book. No sense in lying. I remove the robes; they clung to tight to my armour. No spying, to waiting, no sweat.

Kill.

Faces blur by. Sirens wail. Ambu-levs scurry over to the dead sack of meat. I stroll on, confident now, metal exo-suit gleaming. I'm a knight of the round table. I'm justice incarnate. I'm The Man.

Steady, says Kip. Heart-rate's topping two-fifty.

Bio-meds, I insist, will hold me together. Scan the house.

A beat. Ten footsteps. Two gasps, one child looks at me and smiles. I smile back. It's a good day.

Thirty lives. Ten bots. A--Jesus, he has a trans-atomic bomb in there!

I freeze. Of course! QuanTech got wasted last week. Wasn't ever random. This laywaste's got a cunning plan.

Kip says nothing; I feel his worry, share it. Then: Pull out. Too dangerous, you know it.

It's one-way. Always was the plan. Besides, I've knocked on the door-

Get out! Now!

Bye Kip. I flick the earpiece away like an errant snot. Door opens; darkness and dampness waft through. I don't look at the face. I close my eyes, curl my finger, raise the gun, and pull. There's a loud chain of cracks; the gun jumps so hard my elbow hurts; BANG and there's two feet keeping the door open, soles up, soul gone.

In I go; subtlety unrequired. A string of screams and shouts. Epithets and hasty instructions: Run, damn you, kill him, aaaaggghhhh! Heard it all from these punks' victims. In I go. In I go...

All shiny inside, but dark. Floors clean but something smells. Light is far away in here. Cramped but retro-fitted with the top tech. Stairs at the end, screens inbetween; faces beaming from both. I shoot the tellies, then point my gun at the unshot faces hovering on the stairwell; legs frozen, I'm the headlights and they're the deer. I sniff their fear; good enough for them.

Kage, I say calmly. Where.

They point up, up up up and I realise why it's so damned dark: the ceiling's low: this building has an extra floor squeezed in real nastily. Bet Kage and the bomb are in there.

I run. Along the hall, up the stairs, the face---a hot girl gone nasty with drugs and drunk---screams and sees me shooting her five times in the belly but it's just her drug-addles brains going haywire. Pity attempts to invade my brain. Then I remember the junkie that raped my little brother all those years ago, and I shove past, almost making her nightmare a reality.

Past that wench and smack bang into the belly of the beast: Kage. Smiling, like me ten minutes ago, smile hiding a grimace. I gleam. I grin. I aim. I fire. Bullets hit the wall behind him. He keeps on smiling, while his holo-image flickers and ripples, dances and writhes, then returns to its original visual perfection.

Damn.

Kage's eyebrows raise, as does the hand with the glass of wine. Indeed. Bomb's long gone. Give you ten seconds....?

Nine seconds flat I'm out the door, running. The ground bounces under my feet. I'm spun by the shockwave, hurtling to land on my head, while the mouth of that awful house vomits fire and smoke and brick and bones.

***

Booby-trapped or remote-detonated: either way, he saw me coming. And... I dab at the cut on my forehead, accept a cup of tea from Kip, take a sip, ...he killed all those hookers. They were his bread and butter.

Kip sits slowly into his pilot's chair of the Aerion---his sky-ship, his pride and joy, and now our "getaway car". I was maybe wrong. Maybe those life-signs were faked. Maybe no-one died.

I nod. I think about the veined-up hollowed-out face of the girl I didn't save. I wanted to kill her on the stairs. Now I wish I had. I could still hear the screams, as she was pulled from the rubble, a limbless mess. Kip had not reached me, did not see her, it, that thing that banshee-screamed for her mamma, while I wept...

Maybe, I'm saying, voice echoey, like when your ears pop while you hurtle towards the earth in a jet-engine coffin. We know that Kage knows our movements. We thought we had him. He had us. And now we've lost him.

I ponder the trans-atomic bomb. I push the girl with the craters at her sockets away. Drown out the screams with thought of what that time-bomb could do. Mushroom clouds of anti-time ripping through the world. Unimaginable.

Kip's looking at me like he might slap me awake from a drunken stupor. Any ideas?

I smile. For the first time in a long time, it's genuine. Oh yes.