Empire 2: So Far to Reach
19 Jan 2018Tarm Wallunga
Lasswitz Depot, Satio System12th January, 3304
“Docking clearance granted, Tango-Alpha-Romeo One-One. Set down on pad five. Welcome to Lasswitz Depot, Commander.” The automated voice isn’t very welcoming, more bland digitized tones than the words might otherwise indicate, but I don’t care. I’m here for a very singular purpose, and all I needed from the local flight control was clearance to land. Booted feet and purpose will get me the rest of the way to where I am going.
Two hangarounds and a half dozen grunts from the Posse meet me as soon as I cycle the airlock into the station proper. It doesn’t take an expert in personal security to know that all of them are armed, but they’re armed, but only with pistols so as to not alert the system authority goons to what we’re doing. The hangarounds and the grunts have their pistols stuffed into their waistbands or hidden under their jackets on shoulder rigs; I’m the motherfucking man, and don’t give a shit, and brandish my Sigmund 580’s with cocky aplomb, each one strapped to my thighs in easy reach of my hands. I’m also wearing my duster, full rockers on display, just one more thing I don’t care about. This is meant to be visible, meant to be seen as we stroll our way through the open passages of the Depot, an indiscreet sweep through the Satio Blue Street Exchange’s last vestige of control in our system.
What am I about to do, you wonder? It’s simple. I’m starting a war, and I’m doing it the old fashioned way. All the other pieces are in place; all I have left to do is knock over the first domino. The office to the head CEO of the BSE is guarded by a pair of suited goons who look like they’d fall over if it started to drizzle. In seconds they’re swept aside by Posse grunts and put on their faces, and I walk right through their submission and into the office of one James M. Barlow. As I enter I can see he’s quickly trying to crouch behind his desk, and two secretaries are scampering to get out of the room before the hangarounds get wrap their arms around them to force them, as well, to the floor.
“Come on Barlow!” I shout with perhaps a bit more glee than I really should have. “What are you doing down there? Stand up and face me like a real man!”
To his credit, he actually does, though slowly and shakenly at first. I give him a moment, a brief, short, moment, to collect himself. Sure as shit, just as I expected, he stands straight up, fixes his ties and pulls on the edges of his coat to make himself more presentable. I almost want to hug the man, and I move to act as though I am, but stop short just on his side of the desk and place both hands on his shoulders, looking him squarely in the eye even though he’s a good six or seven inches taller than me.
“What is this, Tarm? What is going on here?” he spits out in a rush finally.
“What do you think, man?” I laugh, curtly, though; I don’t want to be too presumptuous, after all.
“We had an agreement,” he starts to stammer again. “SigAndro for the security of this depot,” he stutters at me.
And just like that my patience is up. I pull him in towards me with that grip on his shoulders, which immediately throws him off balance, and drive a knee up into his lower abdomen. He’s double over now, coughing, trying to catch his breath, but that might become something of a challenge – a blunt uppercut to his jaw sends him reeling backwards. He settles onto his back and begins rolling over to one side, curling up as though he’s about to take on the fetal position.
“Consider it rescinded,” I say as I step over to where he lays. “I mean, seriously, you really should have seen this coming a mile away.” I squat down right next to him, one hand already pulling out a pistol and then resting it on my thigh as I keep talking to the man. He’s looking up at me with a heady mix of confusion and fear. To be fair, we did have a deal, but what Barlow failed to take into account what the Posse’s – and by that note, the Gunslinger’s – true final intentions were. “Did you forget that we kicked the piss out of you only a couple months ago and took over Ford? How could you let something like that go?”
I raise my empty hand as though I’ve had an epiphany. “Oh! I get it now! It was about profits!” I sneer. “That’s why you let it slide that we kicked your asses and rubbed your noses in our shit!” I emit a short chuckle. “How fucking stupid is that?” I glance over at the hangarounds and Posse grunts, see their own leering smirks at my mini-lecture. “A man tries to kill you, and you roll over?” I shake my head with a clear coat of disdain on my face. “Nah, that’s not how you do it. Someone tries to kill you, you kill them first. That, my friend, is the way of the ‘verse.”
I stand up straight and pull the slide back on my pistol enough to expose the brass coating the round in the chamber, just to make sure I actually chambered a round before getting off my ship. Sometimes I get paranoid, and sometimes a little extra double check is vital.
“Guess you didn’t get that memo, huh?” I ask dryly. He starts to shake his head as if to answer that final question, but I don’t give him the chance to answer it fully. Two slugs rip apart his skull faster than the telling of the tale, and I’m already turning to head back to the docks.
“Torch the place, do what you want with the people inside,” I say as I walk out the door. The hangarounds follow me; that’s their job. The grunts? Who cares? Really didn’t care if they even came along, but ol’ Gail insisted, so I said whatever.
Before too long, I’m already lifting off and turning my nose towards Ford Orbital.
------***-------
“That’s the ship,” Liao muttered as he eased the throttle back another notch or two. “That’s one of them, anyway,” he corrected himself as he read off the scan data. He watched from the comfort of his command seat as the Federal Gunship drifted by, one eye on the ship itself and the other on the computer displays offset to his right-front. On that screen two varying wavelengths were played out, one showing the original emissions pattern of the stolen vessel, the other showing that there had been modifications to the vessel, but not so much as to truly give it wholly original emissions patterns. Of course, for Liao, none of that mattered just yet, anyway. Regardless of his combat skill, regardless of the load out of his Fer de Lance, and no matter if he was able to get himself into a superior position, he was not about to trust himself to take on this mark while he flew around in a Gunship. He had watched him in action not long before, when his club-mates went to war against that Sigma Andromedae group. To call his mark a true combat ace wouldn’t necessarily be accurate, Liao had learned, but to discount his abilities would deadly, if not outright dangerous.
Instead, Liao would wait. Eventually Tarm Wallunga would exit Ford Orbital flying his Type 7, a ship that Liao had realized of late didn’t carry any armament. That would be when he struck.
Satisfied with his scans, Liao edged the throttle back up and headed back for Ford Orbital.
------***-------
Luther had thought about taking the Anaconda on this trip, but decided he would be better off with something for more agile and much less recognizable. Mk III Cobras were a dime a dozen, he knew, and so that was the ship he had chosen, complete with a fresh coat of black paint lined in crazy disjointed green lines.
“Find the boy, Luther,” Tarm had said, weeks ago, now, “and bring him back here.” A simple mission, Luther had thought at the time. As it turned out, such was definitely not the case.
First, he stopped in Inara, hitting up the local bars until he found the contacts he needed in order to prepare a full series of identity credentials that would allow him back on Earth. Then, because they were all new credentials, he had to earn the access permit that would allow him to actually enter the Sol system – under his false ID, that is. And then finally he made his way back onto the surface of Earth. Briefly he swung by the ruins of Wallunga tower, just to see what he and the rest of the Gunslingers had wreaked there. The superstructure of the tower was stunted, now, missing more than a dozen stories from the top. The rest was a shambles of twisted steel and exposed skeletal girders. Only the bottom twenty or so stories had remained even remotely intact, and Luther judged that most likely only the first few floors were even in regular use. Construction crews from all around the old city were working around the clock the clear the debris and damage, and would, most likely, tear the place down.
Continuing his search from there, however, is where things really got open ended. Wallunga Corporation, as a corporate entity, had ceased to exist. This complicated matters when it came to finding documents regarding the company itself but Luther was an accomplished hacker, among other things. Finding the files regarding a Wallunga Corporation CEO and his son proved only slightly more difficult, given precedents in preventing personal information from being released. Those safeguards were bruised through in brutal course, and Luther found the birth records of one Seamus Joseph Wallunga, born on 30th November, 3303. So, if nothing else, he had proven that Tarm indeed had a brother.
But where in all the universe is this baby, now, Luther wondered.
He set the Cobra down on Burnell station to look up an old friend there, maybe have a few drinks with him, and then toss back and forth some ideas on how best to find this infant. Whatever happened after that, Luther supposed, would just have to wait for the right time.