Broken string
21 Mar 2019Ouberos
Atroco system.Lasswitz Port.
Maintenance area 42.
Recycling access corridor number 2
“She getting you to do her dirty work again?” the brutish looking man asked with a grin that jerked his tribal tattoos into a feral rictus.
Walking beside him, the smartly dressed figure just shrugged.
“Something like that. There's some trash that needs disposing of. Sometimes these things need a hands on approach,” he replied in a distracted manner. Then he pointed to the access port.
“The Mark will be here soon. Once the lights flicker there will be a thirty second window when the station bio sign monitors will be offline. No one in the control room will notice that one of their trackers has had a sudden, terminal, adjustment,” he replied and took a small hand gun from his jacket. Then he pulled out what looked like a short, metal extension from another pocket and began to screw it to the barrel of the weapon.
“You can open the hatch now, it'll be a simple distraction and a single, silenced round to the back of the head then, allez-oop, and into the compost,” he explained.
The other man nodded his understanding but even as he opened the hatch, his narrow eyes were taking in every detail of the gun.
The smartly dressed man saw his interest and held the weapon up for him to see.
“I'll be honest, it's not an antique Earth pistol at all. Like a lot of my antiques its a fake. This one is from Kamorin, a perfect replica in every way except provenance. But now I've told you that, I'll have to kill you,” he joked and the tattooed man gave him a look that meant he didn't see the funny side.
The sharply dressed man smiled and carried on talking to gloss over it.
“Hardy told me that you’re no stranger to dirty work either. She said you helped with kicking the Legion women out of Lasswitz,” and the other couldn't help but smile at that.
“Aye, I did. Ransacked their rooms, that was a hoot. Shame that's all she wanted doing,” he replied and then laughed to himself.
“The one with all the purple, should have seen all the fancy dresses and frillies she had stashed. She never smiles but I reckon I could make her. Smelled nice too. That was some dirty work alrighty,” he said and held his cupped hand up to his nose as he made a loud show of sniffing.
Which stopped him noticing the jaw of the other man clench up.
“Heard Hardy got you breaking a few things too,” he replied through gritted teeth and the thug nodded quickly, his eyes gleaming.
“Yeah, she said I was to pay real close attention to the guitar. She won't be playing that for a while,” he replied, his words dripping with malice.
“Yeah, that's what I heard too,” replied the man in the smart suit sadly.
The lights flickered and he checked his chronograph.
“Right on time. It's amazing what a few tons of Opals will buy you these days,” he said and the tattooed thug was clearly confused.
“Now? There's no one here, what do you mean buy? Hasn't Hardy arranged it herself? Why would you need to buy the security shut down?” he asked, suspicion beginning to emerge in the back of his mind.
Before the penny dropped entirely the man with the gun suddenly pointed at the open access port and shouted loudly,
“What the frak is that?” his sudden outburst made the thug whip round and face the opening.
Then something cold and metallic nudged the back of his head.
“Allez-oop,” said Ouberos as he pitched the dead body over the edge and into the recycling. Then he shut the door and span the locking mechanism before picking his pistol back up and removing the silencer.
“Philistine,” he said to no one in particular as he left the maintenance area.
Later that day he called in on the Ops room on his way to the shipyard and winked a greeting to a pretty technician before opening the glass door to Chief Hardy's office.
“Hey Milly, how's things?” He asked cheerfully. She looked up from her console and glared.
“Shit and don't call me that again or it'll be your turn to vacate the station,” she replied, a slight slur to her words telling tales on her drinking.
“Sensors are glitching all over the station and we're struggling with the transponders on our networked goons,” she snapped and waved her hand at a projection on the wall that showed four missing goon trackers.
Ouberos shrugged.
“I'm sure they'll turn up soon enough, bad pennies usually do. Have you checked down the back of the sofa?” he said casually.
“Listen, I just dropped by to say I'm heading out again. Thinking of taking a holiday for a while. I will be gone some time, didn't want you to think I'd just cut and run out on you” he said but she barely looked up.
“You'll be back,” she answered flatly.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said thoughtfully. Then after a moment,
“I'm expecting a delivery by the way, from Kinago. It's one of my antiques. For someone over in Prism. I take it, despite recent events you can still have it forwarded if I give the address to Logistics?” He asked and she grunted an acknowledgement as the system failed to locate one of her goon trackers again.
“Good, I'll just give them the details,” he said and left her trying to figure out why the sensors kept trying to lock onto the recycling units.
Galactic Logistics was just down the hall and the cargo division was manned by a neat looking man with cybernetics where his eyes should be.
“Kinago?” He asked, “the famous Luthiers?” he said and made a peculiar gesture over his shoulder but Ouberos shook his head.
“Thats them but in this instance, more like,” he made a similar action at waist height and the man nodded.
“Ahh, a guitar,well if it's from Kinago I bet it's a beauty” he said, then, “And the name? Whose attention at Legion headquarters should I mark it for?”
“Purpura,” replied Ouberos. “Yolanta Purpura,” he said and the man with the cybernetics keyed it in while he spelled it.
“Chief Hardy knows all about it so just send it in the diplomatic pouch and ping her the details when it's been opened. She'll get a real kick out of that,” he said as he left and watched the man key in his instructions to the letter.
One thing about Galactic Logistics, you could always guarantee they would deliver exactly what you told them to.
Then, whistling a happy little tune he made his way to the shipyard and decided that once the ping had been sent he should probably stay on holiday for some time.