Ties that Bind 7: One last Hand of Poker
23 Nov 2017Tarm Wallunga
22nd November, 3303Earth, Sol
“You might as well get us some beer,” I mutter as I am unceremoniously plopped into an overstuffed leather chair in front of my old man’s desk. I toss a look over my shoulder to the well-armed and beefy goons scattered about dad’s main office. “You can tell them to leave, too.” I show him my cuffed hands as validation. “It’s not like I can do much. You’re goons saw to that already.”
The look on dad’s face is stone cold blank. He takes a moment to consider his options, and then reaches into the desk between us, pulls out a pistol that looks oddly familiar, but I can’t tell for all the blinding brilliance of Sol spilling into the room from the tall windows. Then he looks at the not-so-random number of guard goons and makes a waving motion with one hand, dismissing them, and uses the other to push himself up on the desk. That waving hand then closes around the pistol, and I see that it is indeed, as I had suspected, one of my Sigmund 580’s. Sonuvabitch got my guns , I curse to myself. Dad stands up, keeping the gun more or less pointed in my general direction, and moves over to the small fridge that I know he keeps stocked, and retrieves a pair of brown bottles from within. The fridge door thunks closed in time with the heavy wood doors separating the office from everything else in the Tower, and dad pops open those two beers, sets one before me.
I take the bottle, hiding my smirk at this tiniest of victories, and watch my dad warily as he resumes his seat, his own bottle, untouched, in one hand, the pistol in the other, still pointed generally at me. He doesn’t say anything, and I’m not gonna be the first to talk; fuck that. I drink from the bottle, killing the neck and then some more before coming up for air, then nip a little more before setting it down on the marble desktop. Then, I just fix a stare at him, eye for eye, and I make sure every bit of my frustrations, and even some old pent up childhood and adolescent rage for good measure, is cast his way. Whether or not he recognizes it though, I can’t tell through that damn poker face of his.
“So,” I find myself acquiescing after all, the silence unnerving, “why am I here?”
“I don’t know Tarm,” he answers in that old man gravel voice of his. Sounds like two rocks trying the old fashioned way to make little rocks at the bottom of a wooden barrel. Unnerving, is what it is. “Why are you here?”
Goddamnit. And damn him, too. “I need answers, pop. None of this shit makes sense,” I blurt out without thinking. Am I seriously folding under this bastard’s stupid mind games? The hell is wrong with me?
He simply stares back at me, blinking only enough to remind the rest of the universe he’s not a robot, or perhaps, attempting to convince us of that. I don’t know anymore: he’s always kept his emotions well in check, always been a hard man to read. Imagine growing up under that . Yeah, it sucks.
“Answers to what, pray tell?” he asks back in what is almost a convincing tone of innocence. I’m hating this conversation already, as if dreading it for the last several months wasn’t enough.
I take a moment to drink the rest of that beer before answering. If I have any chance of maintaining any sort of leverage on him, I have to be very, very careful in how I proceed.
What I do know, of which I am not so sure he knows as well, is that there is still one of us that has eluded capture. Somewhere out there, Sigurd is still running free, running amok, if you will. The rest of us – Johnny, Luther, Britta and myself – we all got picked up the moment our ship made it inside the 100km security perimeter of Wallunga Tower. Picked us off with surgical precision, at that. Single missile took out the control surfaces of the Cobra we were flying in, somehow magically evading the chaff and ECM Luther tried spoofing it with. Down we went, spinning and falling, until we hit the water with enough force to dent battle steel. How we survived is far, far beyond me. The others were knocked out, except for me, but I couldn’t find Sigurd in the floating bits of busted Cobra. Not until the air foils came in and swept us out. They missed him, apparently; Sigurd was awake and hiding under the water – had I known he could hold his breath that long, or maybe it was some cyber-implant, I don’t know, I would have told him to get us all one so we could just swim our way to the Tower’s base. Machs nichts, now, though. With any luck, Sigurd has some trick up his sleeve to get us out; that was the plan in case something like this happened. Anyone that got away had to make sure they continued to press the plan until it was concluded or we all were dead. On a mental note, I will have to speak to Johnny about where he finds such good help; such blood-oath loyalty is going to come in handy once we get out of this. Shit, I don’t even know if that’s going to happen…..
And I have to pull my thoughts back on track. Sigurd is free, but the rest of us aren’t. And here I am, drinking a beer with the poker face champion of the universe who just so happens to also be my dear old dad.
I stand up to draw out the time I need to best formulate my answer, soak up more time by getting and opening a beer from the fridge. The whole time I can feel my dad’s laser gaze piercing the back of my head with better accuracy than a gangland execution. “Where’s mom?” I ask as I pop the top on beer number two. I kill the neck on this one too, and for perhaps half a second I give a shit about not having eaten since leaving Deciat two days ago. But then I see the tiniest expression of emotion give rise in the corner of one of my dad’s eyes, and then it’s aborted faster than the time it takes between star systems. For a second, maybe two, I might have gained the upper hand. “Where is she, dad?” I ask again, pressing my miniscule advantage.
“She’s dead,” he says with a certain measure of finality that I can’t even begin to interpret as anything other than a closed topic of discussion. Dad had a full house, and that trumps my pair. My sails deflated by the heavy tone of dad’s statement, I resolve not to give up. This motherfucker (no pun) holds all the cards and I’m sick of his excessive abuses of power that keeps his advantage and robs the rest of us of any option. I suck down some more beer, perhaps for the calming effect on my nerves after drinking on a totally empty and dry stomach, perhaps for the liquid courage to cover any gaps that teenage anger can’t provide, and step a few paces closer. The pistol in his hand shifts, becomes more specifically aimed at me than just the general pointiness from a moment ago.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I venture. “But I’ve also heard it wasn’t natural causes, as the official reports indicate,” I continue. My tone grows hard. I’ve seen those reports, both the official and unofficial. Both, under scrutiny stand up to the best of reviews, but the unofficial one had imagery the other did not. I take another step or two closer, and now there’s only a few paces remaining between us.
“What of it?” my dad asks, careful to include the slightest bit of curiosity, as if he hadn’t heard those same things that indicated something other than the hand of God taking my mother up to heaven. He’s good, I’ll give him that.
“Oh you know what of it,” I growl, and take a moment to kill the bottle before stepping even closer again. I know that pistol has a clear line straight to my belly, and I don’t give a shit. The alcohol has done now exactly what I needed it to do. Its fucking go-time, bitches, and I’m done having this bastard holding ever advantage, all the cards, all the loopholes, all the carrots – tired of him keeping all that shit over my head. “You ordered her death just to get me to come home!” I shout, much louder than I had anticipated. Louder than I meant. The look on his face breaks, this time for more than just a second. His jaw hangs open, wide enough to shove the bottle into his mouth if I wanted to, hangs that way for four seconds – I counted.
“How…” he starts, but now I’m in arm’s reach. The pistol is aimed directly at my dick, but I’m past that point now.
“Fuck you! You killed my mother! You tried to kill me!” I scream. I’m screaming so loud people on the other side of the damn Hudson could hear me if their windows were open. “But here’s what I don’t get, you damn stupid son of a bitch…” I growl, catching my breath. “Why? Why did you do all that? What was your endgame, Father?” The venom hanging on the word “father” was more than enough to kill a planet of people, I know; the taste in my mouth after saying that is enough to choke me, myself.
“You were supposed to come home you stupid, obstinate ingrate!” He shouts back at me. He’s pissed; instantly his face turns red, and I can’t deny that I’m surprised. Again, though, I don’t care. His simple little statement was all the validation I needed from this universe to the next that he’s guilty as dirty, simple sin. I’m trembling with rage, I’m past the point of concern, and I think I might be a bit inebriated – enough to overlook all the rest.
It’s surprising what you can still manage to do when your hands are bound, more so when they’re bound in front of you. It’s also surprising how effective of a blunt object an empty beer bottle can be. A shame that it shattered into a thousand slivers of golden brown glass after only one swing, but that one swing was more than enough to catch dad off guard and leave him dazed enough to drop both his beer and the pistol he had kept on me from the moment I sat down in front of him. He fell back in his chair, and with the brutal shove of one booted foot, I thrust him backwards until he’s lying flat on his back on the floor. In the time it takes him to regain his seconds, I’m already all over him with the pistol – and yes, it was my Sigmund 580 – pressed against his forehead.
“You stupid fucking asshole. What were you trying to do? What was your goal, dad?” I yell at him from my new position of power. He makes a muttering sound, but it’s not enough for me to understand it. I draw back and jab the muzzle of the 580 into his forehead; he doesn’t like it, I can tell, but I also just don’t give a shit. “Try again!”
“You were supposed to come home,” he says again. “You were supposed to take over the family business!”
I’m stunned. Completely, utterly, devastatingly stunned. He did all this just to bring me home and take over the company? What in the actual FUCK was he thinking??
I’m weak, and lean back against his desk, trying to steady myself, to steel myself. He struggles to get back up, a wiggle here and a wiggle there. I fire the pistol, a single round, the explosive sound it makes loud and ringing in my ears. There’s a hole in the floor, three centimeters to one side of his head. He freezes.
He makes mewling noises, his lips move, but I’m not hearing any of it, not having any of it. I’m sickened and pissed all at once. I just don’t get it. None of this makes sense. Nothing adds up. “You wanted me home? Then why try to kill me crossing the Core??” I’m shouting again. An errant thought in the back of my head is wondering why no one’s bursting into the office between my shouting and the gunshot, but I leave that thought to its wandering as I have more pressing business in front of me.
“You became expendable,” he grunts back at me. Expendable ?? The fuck does that even mean? “You hadn’t replied to anything I sent you, figured you were gone for good,” he goes on. “New ideas had to be explored. Your baby brother will inherit the company now, not you. So far as I am concerned, you’re dead to me.” There’s that famous stoicism, surging back into his voice. His eyes have gone hard, too, and their leveled dead at me, as if daring me.
No, I realize; he’s mocking me.
In a rage, I scream, the grip of my firing hand tightens, loosens, tightens again, so many times that by the time the final round is spent, my knuckles are bone white. A stark contrast, I consider after a moment, to the ruby red spilling onto the floor from beneath exit wounds.
“Inherit this,” I scream as my final words, leaning in close to get a clear picture of the moment his soul slips the mortal coil. Steely blue, near grey eyes fade ever so slightly.
There’s a crash behind me, and in reflex I’m dropping to a knee, aiming an empty gun towards the sound. Something’s blurry my vision, I can’t see straight and I can’t tell if it’s the two swiftly consumed beers or some other liquid causing it, but the shapes seem familiar, as do their voices.
“Tarm!” Johnny yells as he crosses the office to take me by the arm. “Jesus man, you alright?” He asks. I can see him leaning to see behind me, and a weird look crosses his face, like the shadow of a bird over the ground from overhead. He offers me a simple, single nod, then starts leading me out.
“Sigurd got in, eh?” I ask quietly.
“Yup,” Johnny answers, guiding me out the office and through hallways, leading me generally up towards the rooftop.
“Good.” A weariness is encumbering me, something doesn’t feel right, and I don’t know what it is. I press on anyway, each step becoming a struggle. I find myself so thankful for Johnny’s timely intervention.
We’re on the rooftop, a modified shuttle, the kind for orbital flight only, is waiting for us, side doors open and Luther and Britta leaning out, assault rifles at the ready, sporadic shots traded back and forth with some guard post a hundred meters away. Johnny’s ducked over, squat-running across the tarmac of the roof to get into the shuttle, and I’m right behind him, as if this were some action vid and we were the heroes. Only we’re not. Definitely not the heroes. I had just killed my dad in cold blooded rage – how could I be the hero??
I jump aboard and just as quickly the shuttle jerks upward, noses up further and I’m thrown back against the rear of the open bay as Sigurd surges skyward. Looking back I see the Tower receding, and then nothing. A giant fireball erupts somewhere a few floors down from dad’s office and consumes everything above it. I look over at Johnny, who’s hanging onto some rail over his head with one hand, his other hand folding up some device and shoving it into his pocket.
“We’re clean, Tarm. Just gotta break orbit and mate back up with Luther’s ’conda and we’re outta here,” Johnny’s yelling to me over the sound of the straining engines. I don’t know what to say, what else to do, so I just nod to him.
“Where we going from there?” I hear Britta ask.
“I know a few people in Satio,” Luther offers. “Safe haven until shit cools,” he says.
Johnny turns to me, quizzing look in his eyes. I shrug. “Fuck it. Sounds good to me.”