Ties that Bind 4: Blind Mice
31 Oct 2017Tarm Wallunga
30th October, 3303Sol System
“He’s getting closer,” Hermes muttered to himself as he thumbed off the viewer that had, until just now, displayed a few quick lines of text. “Dammit; we may have to accelerate things…”
Any other thoughts Johnny Hermes might have voiced out loud were cut off with the warning tone of the ship’s computer, indicating proximity to Burnell Station. The bang of dropping from supercruise snapped any wandering, errant thoughts back into line, and Hermes angled his Cobra Mk III for a better approach. Settling his ship onto the assigned landing pad, Hermes took a steadying breath and prepared himself for what he had come out here to do.
Half an hour later, he was deep inside the small outpost station, winding his way through the labyrinthine corridors until at last he came upon a dead end, marked with a sealed door. Two figures, still wearing their Remlock suits – sans helmets, he noticed – stood in front of that door. With a dry smirk Hermes also noticed both were resting a hand over pistols that were strapped to their upper thighs.
“So, is this what we’re doing now?” Britta, the shorter of the two with all the mass of an underfed waif, asked.
“We’ve been talking, Johnny,” the other figure, a man who was probably taller than two meters and almost as thin as the woman, muttered. “We do this, and there’s no going back.”
Johnny smirked again and offered a shrug to go with it. “Come on,” he said, “what’s the matter?”
“No contract, that would be my first thought,” the man said. “At least then we’d be covered legally. In case of blowback, that is.”
“Blowback?” Johnny said incredulously.
“Yeah,” Britta answered. “Sigurd has a point,” she added quickly. “You know we can do this, but without a contract…”
Hermes scowled. “Fuck a contract!” he snapped. Then he caught himself, took a short but slow breath. “Look, you’re right,” he said. “You both are. But this… let’s call this a personal thing, okay?”
He looked at his two friends, waiting.
“Fine,” Britta shrugged with barely much thought. It took Sigurd a moment longer to agree.
“We’re with you, the gods help us,” he said, using his non-firing hand to make a dismissive warding gesture. “We’re with you, you know that. We just don’t know the whole story, you know?”
“That’s fine,” Hermes said as he stepped closer to the door. Britta and Sigurd slipped apart, allowing him access. “You don’t need to know it all just yet.” He stopped mid-step, his hand already wrapping around the doorknob. “Just know that these three clowns,” and he jerked his head towards the door as he spoke, “they almost killed a dear friend of mine.” He scoffed. “Of course, none of them knew what kind of pilot Tarm was, so they weren’t properly prepared. Imagine their shock when they figure out why we are here, hmm?”
With a faint but cold chuckle, Hermes pushed the door open, and his two compatriots followed in right behind them. Inside the room there was but a faint, sputtering light, dangling on a power line in one corner. In the center of the room, three men sat tied, bound and gagged to three simply folding chairs. All had their heads slumped forward nearly to their chests. “They’re still out, eh?” Hermes smirked to the single man standing with his back to one corner, an assault rifle held in such a way that he could instantly fire on all three bound men should the need arise.
Luther smirked and nodded to Hermes as he came in. “Yeah,” he answered in his soft voice. “Not a peep, neither.”
“Good.” Hermes smiled. “I’m sorry, guys, for taking so long to get here,” he said after a moment to the three of them. “But I am here now,” he muttered coldly now, even as he reached for the pistol strapped to his side. In a smooth motion he brought it up, pulled the slide back to make sure a bullet rested in the chamber, and then smashed it forward into one man’s masked head.
The cry of pain and shock was loud in an enclosed place, but Hermes didn’t care. He did the same to the other two, whose responses weren’t much different than the first. With a quick nod of his head, Hermes sent Britta to stand behind the men, and then she ripped the cloth hoods from their heads. Each struggled for a moment to force their eyes to adjust to the brighter light of the room, looking back and forth as far as their bindings would allow to make sense of whatever was going on.
“Good morning, assholes,” Hermes said with a devilish grin. Muffled grunts and groans of anger were his only response; none of the three men could speak, after all. “I’ll skip the small talk,” Hermes said with a disdainful chuckle. “I am going to kill each of you, but first I want an answer, okay? Do you understand?”
The three men were apparently confused, or so their distorted facial expressions would seem to indicate. Quickly growing impatient, Hermes snapped out a quick thrust kick to the man in the center and connected solidly just beneath the man’s neck and jaw, knocking him over, chair and all. “Pick him up,” he growled. Sigurd and Luther scooped the man up, righting the chair.
“I said, do you understand?” Hermes asked again. Over more muffled grunts and groans, the men nodded. “Excellent. I don’t wanna hear you pleading for your lives, or any of that sort of nonsense,” he added. “The simple truth is that each of you will die, here, today, now. You see, a friend of mine reached out to me, with some very damning evidence that I have recently confirmed to be true. So, I will ask you my question, you will answer that question, and then I will shoot you in the face. I promise oyu, it will be quick. Messy, perhaps, but quick.” Hermes crouched then in front of the man in the center, and lifted his pistol up to eye level so that all three of them could clearly see it.
“Sigmund 580. My friends favorite sidearm. Not my personal choice, though. But still, a reasonably decent weapon, I suppose. Sufficient, clearly, for this task, yes?” He smirked again. “But I digress. We all have other things to do today, so let’s get down to it, shall we?” He stood up, and stepped to one side, leveling the pistol to the man on the right, pressing the muzzle to the man’s forehead.
“Who ordered you to attack my friend, Tarm Wallunga, while he was crossing the Core?”
Hermes mouthed the words Three, Two, One as he waited, as the others made more mewling sounds and generally indicating anything other than the answer that he wanted to hear. “A shame, I suppose.” He pulled the trigger smoothly, and the bullet burst through the man on the right’s face and skull, spraying blood and brain matter across the wall behind him. With barely a nudge, he tipped the chair over onto its back, leaving the dead man there, and turned to the man on the left.
“So, you see I mean what I say,” he said, turning his face to the one in the middle. “I will kill this man next if I don’t get the answer I want. But don’t think that because your two friends will be dead that you won’t have to answer me. I may have other things to do today, but I think I can make an exception and free up enough time to make your last few hours in this ‘verse much more painful.”
He paused a bit, cold grey eyes watching with great intent for every facial twitch to determine the man in the middle’s ability to resist. After a moment, he spoke again. “Tell me: who ordered the assault on my friend in the Core?”
The man in the middle caved, bobbing his head back and forth. Hermes turned to the man on the left with a smile on his face. “You see? Eventually all men can be persuaded.” With the muzzle of his weapon pressed to the man on the left’s forehead, he fired his weapon once more, and with barely a second thought, turned his full attention to the only man of the three still breathing. He shrugged a bit as he reached out to remove the gag from his mouth.
“Speak the answer,” he ordered flatly. “Go quick, or go in a tremendous amount of pain.”
“You know the answer,” the man in the middle grunted hoarsely. “Must I really say his name?”
“Britta, do you still have that wonderful knife of yours?” Hermes turned his head to ask of the short woman.
“Sure do,” was the only answer. By now she had moved from behind the man in the middle, knowing full well what might be coming next. There was already enough blood on the walls behind where the three men had sat; she didn’t envision getting herself any dirtier. Instaead, she reached to a sheath carried on her lower back and extracted a knife two dozen centimeters long from guard to blade tip, flipped it over and offered it to Hermes, grip first.
“Now, shall we have fun?” Hermes asked, leaning the tip of the blade in real close to the last man’s eye.
“Fine!” he shouted in fear and defeat. “It was Hermat! Hermat Seiler! He set us up with the information we needed and the advance we needed in order to get out there!”
“Hermat, eh?” Hermes scoffed. “Old bastard is still using middle men in a poor attempt to keep his hands clean, I see.” He shrugged faintly, then pressed the muzzle of his weapon to the bridge of the man’s nose. “Nothing personal, you see,” he whispered. “Just business.”
The final shot was just as efficient as the previous two.
Tarm,
Three blind mice lost their way, and were never seen again.
A litter of cats that never ate better
Are still happy to greet you
The farmhouse is quiet this time of year
H.