Degistani Delinquents, Part 2 - Strong-Arm Conversions
16 Aug 2017Monolith Preacher
OOC: This piece and the next are part of a "split story" written by myself and my wingmate Stryker Aune. Be sure to check out his logbooks for the other side of the story as it unfolds!As I left the club I made sure to cast an eye at the bartender on the way through. It seems he had decided to finish his shift before getting his finger reattached. I had to give him a couple of points for that work ethic. I was pondering my next move as I opened the door to exit when a hand the size of half my back landed quite firmly on my left shoulder. I span around as I unsheathed my flick knife, but held it at bay when I recognised a face from the Black Omega roster list.
“Boss said I'm coming with you.”
I re-sheathed my knife and looked at him blankly.
“You speak Degistanian?”
He didn't seem to appreciate the joke.
“I don’t care about them. I’m here to escort you.”
My left eyelid twitched slightly. “And what if we've got to move through a valley between two mountains? I could dissect you to get you through them, but I'm not used to putting people back together again.”
Stryker took a Bowie knife out and tossed it to me. “Check the edge, it's about as sharp as any blade in there, right?”
I ran my thumb along the blade. It seemed sharp enough, but I could tell it hadn't been put in through a nano-lathe. “Seems sharp enough, what's your point?”
“Give it a lug against my pectorals and it'll bounce off”
I looked at him and took stock. The muscles protruding through the lines of his tanktop were large enough that he either used steroids or had some major overhauls done to his endocrine system. His eyes had the kind of dead look usually reserved for the pleasure slaves I gave my VIPs. His tone however seemed rather serious as opposed to merely deadpan. I threw him back his knife.
“At least you're dressed for the weather. We'll be taking my Python. Anything you see inside which bothers you is probably none of your business...and I don't want you injecting anything into your buttocks en route. If you want to up your rep count I'll throw you some uppers.”
As I turned around and started walking to the docks, I realised how uncomfortable I felt with this whole scenario. I hadn't been under anyone's thumb since I took over as boss of the Gcirthi Pyrats, and now Deggie was trying to exert control over me via the most base method. He'd sent a muscle-bound oaf to follow me around as insurance for me to complete the one mission I was basically guaranteed to succeed in. It was bad enough he'd criticised my faith, but now he was doubting my physical and oratory prowess.
I made sure to deactivate my brainwashing devices on my way into the Python, as I had long ago decided to let Black Omega individuals have their own beliefs. Call me a prude, but I was never one to try and brainwash my co-workers. I hadn't had anyone in my Python before, and I realised on the way in what a state it was. I had a couple of slaves cowering in the corners awaiting transport, but that was nothing out of the usual. However, the slave relaxing with some onionhead was out of the usual. I told Stryker to sit where he wished, and he started looking through the ship's specifications. As we left the dock and I boosted out of the no-fire zone, I got up and let the ship move forwards at its own pace for a moment. I grabbed the smoking slave, threw him into the airlock, and spaced him. The whole time Stryker was too busy checking the technical parameters of my weapons to care. At least he had a mechanic's mindset.
Truth be told, I'd missed my Python. My Golden FdL was always going to be my number one, and the luxury of flying a Beluga was never going to get old, but I still had to wait for a truly black paintjob to finish it off as the graphite was a bit of an eyesore to me. I was missing the good ol' days of contract smugglin', and there's was nothing like the oily smell of the residue left by thousands of slaves in my unwashed Python interior to take me right back to those times. I let Stryker continue inspecting the interior as I wandered round remembering the story behind every nick on the slave cages, every bloodstain on the entry ramp, and every random makeshift ashtray. I'd made sure to clean up needles for the sake of not cross-contaminating any sets of physical cargo, but there were still a few dusty razor nicks here and there on horizontal surfaces. It was nice to know that Stryker was about as likely to care as anyone else in my wing, as after having to bribe every other Federal official in the Pegasi sector with nosebag had been getting rather tiresome. I had the money, but wasting all that good stuff on such wastes of space always annoyed me.
“Perks of the position, I guess” I mused aloud to no-one in particular.
As we dropped into Degastani, I checked the local Galnet articles. It seemed we'd started a war with the Degastani Independents. We had the upper hand in the war, but it takes more than military force to sway a galaxy's thinking. That was where I came in, and whether or not they wanted to admit it I was the best person for psyops in our whole operation. My guess was that Stryker was here to make sure my brainwashing of the locals was going to be in line with Black Omega policies. They'd never audited my religious conversions before, considering it was an immutable condition of me joining up in the first place that I would be allowed to convert at will. It had been a long time since I'd had a minder, and I didn't much appreciate it.
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Degastani 2 A had a port named after an old Spanish naval officer who discovered the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Georgia. Although it was owned by the local conservatives, contracts were being outsourced to Degastani Holdings. I hoped that Black Omega would give me the go-ahead to take over from “the corporations” as the locals called them if my mission here was successful, but that remained to be seen as we had bigger fish to fry at the moment. For now, we had to hop around in half-baked spacesuits with BO markings just to get us through customs checkpoints. I had to get used to Stryker checking my suit over every time we set out in the morning. Usually I'd be paranoid about someone going wrong with the small motors used for the filtering system, but after he found a way to fix the hydraulic problem on my cargo scoop that Sheng had still been unable to pin down I decided to trust his knowledge of machinery. He'd even managed to modify his own suit so he could have a thin but firm layer on his gloves to allow for working with fine tools and bolts. He worked quite well during our rounds, where we'd man checkpoints. I'd be keeping an eye out for people communicating in discreet ways such as with hand signals. My goal was to ascertain the shadow language used by the locals by talking to them in black markets, to my associates and by preaching on street corners observing the local's reactions.
Obviously, at times, this came with some issues. Usually when I got heckled I would proceed through a three stage system. First I'd counter the heckle. If the individual or group got shirty I'd try and calm them down and logically dissect their argument. If that failed and things got violent, I'd draw a blade and dissect their flesh. Easy enough to do in places with atmosphere. Not so easy when you've got to find somewhere unobtrusive to put a knife on the outside of a spacesuit. I don't like carrying a gun as it's too easy for anyone to steal and pull the trigger on you. This made me find a use for Stryker when he wasn't fixing things. Having him around when I was preaching made the hecklers less common. It also meant the ones that did turn up were more virulent, which was exactly what we wanted. The fervent locals spilt more information, which made my research move at a faster rate than usual. After a few days I had found out that the local cult called themselves the Fredegi, and were notable by distinctive headgear. A peculiar drinking tube which curled around the helmet and came through their visor was said to siphon out water from filtered bodily excretions.
These local cultists had been disrupting our operations and local maintenance contractors had been routinely kidnapped for ransoms both monetary and political. I had been learning a fair few funny handshakes and getting my head around the glottal stops which littered their slang, and I had to admit I had admired the fervour which their extremists had argued with my street preaching before Stryker knocked them out with singular swings of his...well, I couldn't entirely tell where his triceps ended and his biceps began, but his fist only needed to land on its target to get the job done so I guessed it was all the same.
We eventually came up with a lead in a dingy bar next to a massive steel girder which no-one could quite remember the original purpose of. Originally we had started drinking there because the atmosphere regulation was slightly damper than the majority of local dives which deliberately parched the interior to encourage more drinking. We has continued to drink there because I found a rather pliable substance dealer and information broker who could be easily swayed by a few tonnes of rare goods sourced from out of sector. After giving him a decent rate on a haul of Medb Starlube he assured us was to be used for mechanical purposes, he finally gave us the lead we were looking for. He told us of a place a few miles out from the lone mining rig still in operation, which was situated on the dark side of the planet. Apparently he could set up contact with someone who could get us inroads to their command structure.
I finished regaling the bartender my story about making cocktails at Hutton Orbital- because it always gets me a drink for the road- we suited up and we left for the main gate of the colony. As we were having an argument with the checkpoint guard about the validity of our credentials and the need to not have my Python cleaned, an extremist Fredegi came rushing in from the perimeter wall and broke the guard's visor with a rock. As the man fell to screaming as the decompression hit, the cultist turned his attention to us and yelled out a battlecry.
“MAY YOUR BLADE CHI-”
Stryker had punched a hole through their visor, miraculously not damaging his own suit in the process. It was probably the cleanest punch I had ever seen. Glass spiralled out of the opening into the air, and he kept punching them as they fell. The Fedegi's body hit the floor unconscious, but Stryker’s face twisted into a sneer, and he kept on with the onslaught. The glass was being mashed into the cultist's face, and I realised it was a long-haired androgynous teen. Any hope of discerning the sex was impossible at this point, as the throat had already caved in from the punching, and the face was beggining to go the same way. I thought it was a bit excessive, but his suit was holding up alright and I was intrigued to find out how long that would last. A smaller part of me hoped it might rupture and put those thick veins of his under a bit of strain so I could work out what stims he normally took in his spare time. I'd never had anyone reject my drug stores in the past, but he'd been clean for the entire trip assuming he didn't have a secret stash of his own somewhere.
As I roused myself from this moment of daydreaming I realised Stryker was still punching. A few more guards had descended from the checkpoint's infrastructure and were trying to pull him off the kid, but there wasn't much left to salvage. The arms had been broken at the elbow, forearm, and wrists as well as being dislocated. The fingers had been snapped away, and the legs had been dislocated at the groin and broken at the shins, knees, and ankles. I checked my suit's watch and realised I'd been thinking to myself for about three minutes. He stood up with three guards hanging off him and I noticed he'd managed to break through take the kid's heart out in a rather novel way. Most people came up through the sternum, but he'd broken the ribs around the breastbone and tore it out past the lungs. All in all it was a sloppy job.
Stryker flashed his credentials and at the guard hanging off his back and began walking out the gate as the ones on his arms let go of their grip. I followed him and decided to give him the time to get into the SRV we were driving back to my Python before asking him any questions.
“I'm always glad you like to drive these things. I feel better flying than I do behind anything with wheels.”
He didn't responds to the first positive comment I could remember relaying to him. I decided to push on regardless.
“So is that your usual method of dispatch? It seemed to take a bit longer than I'm used to...”
His eyes went distant for a moment but his driving remained steady.
“It was … enjoyable.” He glanced at me momentarily before turning his gaze back to a boulder which he deftly jumped over with the afterburners. “I assumed you'd be more... conducive to allowing me to let off steam than most of them.”
I couldn't blame him there. Before I'd sold my slaves here, I'd made them run from my Python to the atmosphered lounge, a clean 500 meter sprint at 1.2G. I decided to compare notes some time in the future concerning torture methods, as it seemed he might be able to teach me a few things that could make me a bit less surgical and more unpredictable in my methodology.
We took the time to eat on our way to the co-ordinates our contact had given us, and I was glad a meathead could stomach MREs without moaning about the carbohydrates. I was getting a bit annoyed with his attempts to ogle the door frames as I didn't want to have to space him for taking Monolith trade secrets, but I didn't want to have to explain it to Deggie on the way back either. I made him go first out of the doors on the way to meet the contact so I could rush him through them with my own brisk walking pace.
We saw the looping cord of the Fedegi's drinking tube as he came out of his SRV about fifty yards from my Python's exit ramp. I made a hand signal I'd picked up from our contact to indicate we were to be trusted, and true to form a few dozen of his friends sprang up out of fox-holes in the sand. I looked askance at Stryker.
“I don't suppose you can take the twenty or so on the right if I can take the twenty or so on the left?”
His gaze didn't falter from the Fredegi in front of us
“I think you should start praying, Preacher man.”