Spintered Reality - part sixteen

“So who is this broad?” said Dolph over his left shoulder, addressing his agent which stood just behind him.
“She’s a nobody,” came the answer.

“If she’s a nobody,” said Dolph impatiently, as he tugged at the sleeve of his racing suit, “Why am I seeing her?”

“Because,” came the answer from F. Bishop Cauch’in, Dolph’s agent, “She is a nobody that knows a somebody.”

Dolph finished removing his racing suit, hung it in the closet behind him and turned around to face his agent, long time advisor, and sometime friend.

“So, I…what?…give her a tour of the track, an autographed picture and you get rid of her right?”

“Not this time, I am afraid,” replied the agent in his proper Amarrian accent, “This woman is not one of your ‘groupies.’”

F. Bishop Cauch’in, or “Bishop” as everyone called him, was a lanky Amarrian that compensated for his appearance by the almost calculated smoothness of his movement. He was bordering on late middle/early old age, but his mind was as sharp as it was devious. Where his association with Richard Sirrelli was concerned it was truly a case of “It takes one to know one.”

“This broad,” he said, placing a mocking emphasis on the way Dolph had dismissed her in his usual misogynistic demeanor, as you so charmingly put it, “is here not just because of who she knows but also what she knows.”

“And jus’ what does this woman,” said Dolph, attempting a rather poor imitation of Bishop, ‘know that I don’t know?”

“Quite a lot I should imagine,” came the properly intoned reply, “that not being an incredibly difficult feat to accomplish.”

“Was that a dig?” asked Dolph.

“No. Merely a statement of fact, said Bishop, then continued….

“It seems that Ms. Blackwolf, the woman in question, has a penchant for going fast, and the means to do so. It also seems she has the means for removing that crown as ‘king of racing’ that you always assume is so firmly placed upon your head.”

“She thinks she can beat me?” Dolph shot back angrily.

“Richard Serelli thinks she can, and in matters such as these he is rarely wrong,” said Bishop as he took a seat at the long leather sofa that occupied most of the rooms west wall.

“Do you think she can beat me?” said Dolph looking down at his agent.

“I think,” replied Bishop calmly, “that if she has the ability to remove the racing crown from your head, she also has the means to keep it there – that’s what I think. Now sit down.”

Dolph took a seat in the large overstuffed leather chair opposite Bishop, every aspect of his posture making it seem as if he were granting Bishop an audience, when in fact, if anything, just the reverse were true. The fact of the matter was that where Bishop’s services as an agent were concerned, he went where the money was, and for the moment the source of the money was sitting across from him…for the moment.

Splintered Reality - part fifteen

Brighde was distracted by visions of “Rick” Sirrelli - - and what he would do to both Gunny and herself when he found out the blueprints they had given him were fake (okay good fakes) still dancing in her head. The clink of dishes from somewhere in the background, and the sizzle of meat on the grill at the back of the restraint served as the background for her troubled thoughts. Gunny’s voice pulled her back to the present…

“So that’s just it? Fakes? You give Richard Sirelli…THE Richard Sirrelli fake blueprints? That’s how you managed to finagle your letter of introduction to the 15 time winner of the great circuit race at New Rome?”

Gunny paused, then continued with even greater aggravation…

“I stuck my stiletto up his nose for cryin’ out loud! I think that might be just a tiny little factor weighing against me when he finds out. He’s not altogether stupid you know…”

“no. not altogether.” Replied Brighde Calmly.

“What were they the blueprints to anyway?”

“The garbage incinerator at the navy shipyard.”

“It’s a miracle he hasn’t figured it out already!” Gunny shot back at Brig.

“Yes. A miracle,” Brighde replied matter of factly.

“As interesting as the this all is,” a voice interjected as it came drifting across the table, “what has this all got to do with us?”

The voice belonged to Gilda Stern and her partner Rosa - - whose tail she slapped away as she attempted to use it to grab another roll off the table, her hands being currently occupied with an overly large beer mug.

“The ship I sold you has the prototype of the capacitor, and there ARE no blueprints for it. I checked with at the Navy Shipyard.”

“So…what…you want the ship back now? Or something like that?”

“Yes, something like that. But no. I don’t want the ship back.”

Rosa, assuming Gilda’s attention was firmly on the conversation, attempted to sneak another roll while Gilda wasn’t looking. Without taking her eyes off Brighde, Gilda slapped the errant tail away from the rolls once again. Rosa frowned as she was foiled by her partner’s peripheral vision that seemed to bear out the old adage about having “eyes in back of her head.”

“So what DO you want then,” asked Gilda, a bit more irritated now.

“I want the ship AND you,” replied Brighde, who, along with Rosa - - who was more intent on her beer than the conversation – seemed the only other calm person at the restaurant.

“How did you find me anyway? Did you follow me?”

“I didn’t follow you,” replied Brighde quietly, “You followed me.”

“I followed YOU, came the surprised reply. I stopped for a quick bite and my favorite burger bar near the asteroid field I am mining – a mining schedule you are taking me away from I might add.”

“I need you. I need the ship. I knew you would come.”

“Oh? How is that,” replied Gilda, a big calmer as well as puzzled - - the first being the result of the latter.

“I…”

Here Brighde hesitated before she continued.

“…I saw it in a vision.”

“A vision.” Snapped Gilda. “So now you are seeing things are you?”

The table grew quiet, if quiet can be interpreted as the sound Rosa’s slurping the foam off her fifth beer, over the din of the diner.

“Ok, said Gilda finally. I’ll bite. What else do your visions tell you.”

“That you are going to help me unite the Minmatar tribes.”

“What do I care about your tribes?” growled Gilda, “I am not exactly from your neck of the woods. Hell I am not even from your neck of the galaxy.”

“nonetheless. You will help me.” smiled Brighde.

“…and what if I just walk out of here and get back to business, and tell you to mind yours?”

“You won’t”

“What do you mean I won’t? How do you know?…oh yes…the visions, said Gilda, rolling her eyes. Then she added, and why me?”

This time Gunny interrupted the flow of conversation.

“We heard what happened, or rather almost happened, when you were attacked. You, quite frankly are very luck. Very, VERY lucky.”

“Ya. So they tell me,” said Gilda as she took a sip of her own beer.

Then she added, “I have never believed a word of it.”

The waiter brought the check and Brighde reached for it. Looking at the check she pulled money out of her pocket to pay the bill, and accidentally dropped it on the floor. As both Gunny and Brighde simultaneously reached for the money, the world exploded in light, shattered glass and screams…

…The front glass of the diner, and the tritanium walls that held them in, where pierced by streaks of light from 60 caliber tracer rounds. Glass shattered and filled the air in tiny particles of glass that gleamed in the air like a thousand tiny diamonds. Whole in the tritanium wall appeared, made by the armor piercing rounds. The first rounds shattered dishes neatly stacked on the counter that divided the kitchen from the rest of the diner – the kitchen staff were the first to die. One waitress, just returning from a break had her arm shattered by another round. The second waitress was not so lucky and soon lay dead at the feet of the first. The tracer rounds continued to scream through the air, piercing what seemed like every square foot of the restaurant.

Every square foot, except, as it soon became apparent as the gunfire stopped, the few square feet occupied by Gunny, Brighde, Rosa and Gilda – who sat looking at the shattered beer mug she held in her hand. A beer mug that had been pierced by one of the tracer rounds that had narrowly missed her head.

Brighde looked around the restaurant that was filled with blood, death, and shattered remnants of the diner. Then she looked back at Gilda.

“I DO believe it. I do…”

Splintered Reality - part fourteen

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Rick Sirrelli’s laughter seemed to fill the large space that contained his office. It was obvious to look at him that it was a bit forced, even if it was well practiced. The laughter seemed honed by years of effort using it to humiliate people which – in this case – didn’t work.

“You…he gasped….want…he gasped….to meet Charles Dau’Fin? Wait, he said, gasping for air again, let me guess, you are going to race him in….he gasped….in what? That garbage scow you call a ship? What makes you think you think he would have any interest in meeting someone like you!”

The considerable girth of Sirrelli’s sides heaved again, but eventually he “caught” his breath. There was a long silence while he waited for a reply to his well timed “mirth” -filled only by a menacing stare from gunny and a callous disregard for anything Sirrelli had said so far by Brighde. Once this silence had gone on long enough for Sirrelli to start getting irritated, Brighde continued.

“You,” she said in a measured, calm and quiet tone, “obviously think there is something that Charles Dau’fin wants that I have, or I wouldn’t be here.”

The smile that quickly disappeared from Richard Sirrelli’s face seemed to suddenly reappear on Gunny’s face. Only in her case it seemed a bit more wicked. Gunny reached over her right shoulder with her left arm. She deftly flipped open the lid of a long tub she had slung over her back and removed it’s contents. Gunny tossed the rolled and bound sheets of paper at Sirrelli as if they were a spear. They slid across the expanse of his desk and into his belly. Sirrelli sat there for a moment, pondering the long rolled tube of paper. The paper had a blueish tint to it. Nervously he undid the clasp and unrolled the documents on his desk, they were covered in minute notations, interspersed with electronic circuits. He flipped through the documents.

“…and just what is this,” he asked.

Sirrelli knew very well what it must be. For the first time in his life, he had a hard time playing the game he played so well – playing people.

“What do you think it is fat man?,” Gunny shot back at him. She started to add another comment but Brighde held up a hand stopping her.

“If you wanted the capacitor from my old ship, you didn’t have to try and kill me for it. All you had to do was ask.”

Sirrelli gave Brighde his best “shocked look.” “I never…” He began.

“Give it a rest” said Brighde matter-of-factly.

With that she reached into a bag she had at her side. She skipped a silver disk across his desk as if she were skipping it across a pond.

“Interesting viewing that, she continued, two features. The first one is of a recent mercenary attack on an osprey class mining ship. You note that the security video stops when it is knocked off line by shrapnel from the exploding mercenary ship. The second feature is concord police video from gate cameras. A fine view of someone I know very well being blown out of space….it’s me…or rather original me as people seem to be so fond of reminding me.”

“So if I had just asked you for the plans and specs for the capacitor before? You would have just given them to me?”

“No,” replied Brighde calmly, “but dieing has a way of changing one’s outlook on life.”

“So the knock-off copy has lost the nerve of the original,” Sirrelli shot back at Brighde with a wicked grin.

If he had counted on his reputation, or Brighde’s changed outlook to protect him, neither did so. With a surprising swiftness that belied her size, Gunny was up and over the desk in a moment – a moment later, Sirrelli found himself staring down the length of a rather nasty looking stiletto – the end of which was held well up his nose.

Years of nefarious activities gave Sirrelli reactions which allowed him to remain calm under such situations. However, he also knew that it was unwise to further irritate a woman he already knew to have a short fuse, who currently held 12 inches of razor edged steel pointed up his nose.

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,” said Brighde with a smile. “The “knock off copy” as you so rudely put it, is different from the original. The original Brighde would have let Gunny take out your appendix through your nose.”

Brighde paused just long enough to make Sirrelli wonder if she was any different.

“But as I said, death has a way of changing you. Making you realize what is important in life.”

Brighde looked over at Gunny.

“It’s ok Gunny. Really.”

Reluctantly Gunny removed the knife from Sirrelli’s left nostril and slid it back into her boot sheath. Sirrelli noticed, however, that she did not resume her former position on the other side of his desk. Instead she made sure she stood just off his left shoulder, within arms length of his nose.

“So that’s it?” Sirrelli asked, “Your just going to give the blueprints to the capacitor to me?”

“Not exactly,” replied Brighde. “You’ll notice that one page is missing – a crucial page.”

“without which, I assume,” Sirrelli added, “ the capacitor is about as useful as an extremely expensive door stop?”

Brighde just smiled.

Rick Sirrelli reached over and pressed a small section on the edge of his desk. Two small posts slid up in the middle of his desk and emitted a cross section of laser beams that formed a key board. He began pounding away on the keys, with a practiced efficiency that said he wasn’t always in the line of work that he is in now.

“I am sending a message to Charles Dau’fin telling him you have a ship that I think can beat him in the next Great Circuit race.” Sirrelli said.

“I have no desire whatsoever to…” Brighde began, but was promptly cut off.

“You and your…here Sirrelli cleared his throat…acquaintance know how to pique my interest, and I KNOW how to pique Dau’fin’s interest.”

Splintered Reality part 12 and a half

“If you don’t want to get on the elevator with my friend, how about if I just pry the doors open and THROW you down the elevator shaft,” yelled Gunny at the dock hand that stood waiting for the “next” elevator down to the office level.

News of Brighde’s arrival had preceded her, and they obviously knew exactly who she was. In this case, that wasn’t a good thing – at least to everyone else. Whether it was a “half blood” thing or an anti-clone thing, gunny didn’t care. Bigotry was bigotry and she didn’t care what it was about or who was it’s source. If someone wanted to pull her string, and risk being hung with the same string, this was just the way to do it. The lift arrived and the doors hissed open. Just as Brighde was about to step through the door the dockhand came flying past her and slammed against the back wall of the elevator. He slumped down, and stared past Brighde in shock – unable to believe anyone would have reacted in such a violent manner.

“I wasn’t going down,” growled the dock hand as Gunny followed Brighde into the elevator.

Brighde smiled down at the dockhand and said simply, “It looks like you are now.” Then she followed up with, “and if I know my friend here, I’d say your best course of action would be to stay there on the floor.”

The elevator whisked them down to the office level. When the opened, the dockmaster, was there to greet them; in a manner of speaking.

“I’m Brighde Blackwolf and this is my friend Samantha McPhearson,” she said pointing at Gunny.

She extended her hand to the dock foreman, and said, “And you are…”

The dockmaster left her hand hanging in mid air and finished the sentence for her.

“…not happy to see you.” He said, then added, “But now that you are here, you may as well come in. Follow me.” Then he looked past Gunny to the dock hand still slumped on the floor of the elevator. “And do get up Jenkins. What is the matter with you?’

With that the dockmaster led them through a maze of twisting corridors, the layout of which was obviously meant to be confusing to any stranger trying to navigate to the heart of the floor. Once they found their way there, they found themselves in front a very large heavy oak door. It looked as if it could withstand the direct assault of at least a half a dozen men, trying to shoulder their way in to the office.

“Wait here,” the dockmaster shot back at Gunny and Brighde, and he stepped opened the door to the office, and disappeared. A moment later, he reappeared.

“Go on in,”

Brighde was about to step through the door that the dockmaster had left open when the dockmaster added from behind her….

“…and bring your gorilla in with you,” he said looking at Gunny, daring her to do anything in response.

Which was exactly what Gunny was about to do when she felt a restraining hand on her arm.

“Thank you,” she heard Brighde say a bit too politely off to her side.

They both stepped into the office of Richard Sirelli, owner of Sirelli Racing, who was a prominent figure in racing himself – a figure that was, in fact, so large, it was often thought to have it’s own gravitational pull. Despite the round figure, it was the undercurrent of ruthlessness for which he was known, that made her keep Gunny’s short temper in check. She hated dealing with someone like Sirelli but there it was. She had no other choice.

Splintered Reality - part twelve

The news his dock foreman brought Rick Sirelli preceded him. The second Jacque rounded the corner of Sirelli’s office, a well aimed beer stein came flying at the center of his forehead like a well aimed cruise missile. Jacque dodged to one side, and the mug impacted on the steel doorframe, large chunks of glass flying into the hallway, as yellow fluid, which had been well contained by the stein until a moment ago, began to flow down the wall in thin rivulets.

“I tell you to have someone killed, and instead you bring her to my doorstep!” Sirelli bellowed.

Jacque tensed, preparing to duck another makeshift missile, as his much loathed boss shifted his enormous girth in his office chair.

“I wanted her dead body and that garbage scow she calls a ship, not to have you bring her around for lunch. Now the ship is gone, and the woman is still intact – again. Doesn’t that bitch ever stay dead?’

“Apparently not” replied Jacque, barely hiding his contempt.

“What am I supposed to do now?” asked Sirelli rhetorically, shifting uncomfortably in the desk chair which barely contained him.

“I don’t know, snapped the foreman suddenly, shoot her out an airlock, stuff her in her a thruster, strap her to a missile. I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s not my fault if the mercs’ you told me to hire couldn’t get the job done.”

A silent moment passed as Jacque realized he had perhaps gone a bit too far this time. Unabashed he continued…

“If you could ever manage to pry that fat ass of yours out of your chair and do a little of your own legwork, maybe things would get done. As it is, I doubt the shop has enough grease to get your ass out of that chair you are stuffed in, and I doubt think those stubby legs of yours would hold all that weight if you could.”

Richard Sirelli’s glare held his foreman’s eyes for a moment. His enormous strength, which belied the foreman’s idea that his boss was some foul tempered oaf with too much money, showed no external signs. Instead he spoke quietly, which, for all that, was far more threatening than if he had reacted to his foreman’s outburst in kind.

In an even, calculated tone, Sirelli spoke to his foreman, “You are…”

“…what fired?” interjected the foreman nervously.

“…no, I was going to say dead,” replied Sirelli matter-of-factly, “But I think I have something even better in mind.

“Better?” asked Jacque nervously, the roles now reversed to where they usually were.

“Well,” replied his boss, “Better for me perhaps…”

Sirelli left off the rest, realizing that anything his foreman could imagine in the ensuing moments, while he met with the woman, would be far worse than any threat actually made.

“Bring her in,” he said firmly.

Splintered Reality - part Eleven

“And how do you know this?” exclaimed Gunny with a puzzled look, as she punched a series of numbers into her control panel.

“Look,” replied Brighde sheepishly, “I know how it sounds but…”

Gunny cut her off as if she hadn’t heard Brighde at all.

“How?” she interjected.

There was a long silent pause which filled the small Amarrian figate. Brighde hesitated, not sure how her long time friend and ship mate would respond.

Quietly, looking out at the starts that formed the outer rim of Amarri space, Brighde said, “you won’t believe me.”

Gunny, having finished setting the ship on autopilot, turned in her chari to face Brighde. She put one hand on Brighde’s shoulder.

“Brig, she began,” trying to summon up as reassuring tone as possible, “we’ve known each other a long time. You are the only family I have – at least the closest thing to it. Just tell me sister.

“Does it matter how I know? Don’t you think its about time? How many eons have our people been concurred by one race or another? How long? You know the ancient history of the tribes a well as I do. The elders make everyone learn it so we can carry on the tradition.”

There was another long pause filled only by the hum of the sub-light engines.

Brighde continued.

“Back on ancient Earth, when the pilgrims came to the ancestral homeland of your people, what happened? What did your grandfather tell you?”

“The pilgrims only survived with the help of my ancestors,” replied Gunny glumly – she knew where Brig was going with this.

Brighde’s tone was getting more heated now.

“And what happened within one generation to the ancestors of the same band of your people, she said. What happened to that same village? What did the Europeans do?”

Gunny turned to stare out the window, so Brighde would not see her tears. Looking out the window she answered.

“They killed everyone. The entire village.”

Gunny jumped as Brighde broke the quiet by slamming her fist into the control panel to emphasis her next point.

“And the ancestors of those same people built this ship, Brighde growled. They were killing and enslaving the tribes then and the Amarri are STILL going it. Doesn’t it matter to you that the grandparents of the same people who built this ship OWNED your grandparents?”

“Your wrong,” said Gunny quietly

“What?!” shot back Brig.

“Your wrong about who built this ship. The Amarri usually use Minmatar slave labor.”

“That’s the point, exclaimed Brighde. Don’t you think it is time the tribes where united? Don’t you think its time the slavery stopped?”

Gunny regained her composure and turned back to Brighde.

“But you said they WILL be united – now. How do you know that?”

“I just know,” replied Brighde more quietly.

“How?”

Brighde hesitated. Sighed. Then looked out the window at the void of space. Quietly she replied…

“I had a vision.”

Splintered Reality - part Ten

At 20,000 tons and 650 feet long it was one big ship. The body of the ship, meant to carry cargo, looked for all the world as if a giant hand had taken one big can and smashed two smaller cans on each end, then stuck a shuttle on the front for the pilots. Piloting the thing was like trying to push a greased, drunken pig in a direction it didn’t want to go. It was also slow. So slow that many is the time that the owner felt like she might have to get out and push, just to get it to move at all.

But…

It was also free.

Gilda had won it in a card game. That was just before she and Rosa had been permanently banned from the New Vegas solar system. Gilda, in her naiveté, has always assumed it was for the drunken brawls that were a nightly occurrence. The previous owner, who was now selling donuts in a New Vegas greasy spoon, didn’t see it that way. All he knew is that his “baby” that was once his livelihood was plying the highways and byways of the galaxy, and it was doing it without him. All of which made him madder than a wet Trilaxian Prairie Chicken, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Or so he thought.

At the moment, his “baby” was now being rather incautiously guided into a docking bay on the outer rim of Amarian space. As the ship was nearly in the docking bay, the back end fishtailed, slamming against the space doors of the bay, setting off a dozen screaming alarms throughout station. None of which could be heard in space, and if Gilda could hear them, she probably wouldn’t have cared anyway.

Inside the station the foreman felt a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it was more than just the entire dock area rocking. He knew who it was who had set the station rocking and he hated dealing with her. He swore, and frequently, that she did it on purpose. She had a knack, or sheer dumb luck, for being able to cause the most upset with minimal damage to the space doors. He tried to take the cost for the damage, however small, out of her payment once, but she had threatened to reach down his throat, grab his lower intestine and turn him inside out. He threatened to stop trading with her and she just laughed – and that was the problem. There was no one else to buy ore from and she knew it.

He wouldn’t have to deal with her if that fat old fool he worked for, Richard Sirrelli, hadn’t burned every bridge both before and after himself. Here they sat on the edge of Amarii space. Sirrelli was Minmatarian, and the average self respecting Amarii wouldn’t give him the time of day. Those who had no respect for themselves, or anyone else for that matter – the Amarii underworld would, but ore is one thing you couldn’t steal. At least not in the massive quantities needed to run this pig of a station that the foreman was forced to call home. The Minmatar wouldn’t deal with Sirrelli either, none of the tribes would. He had long ago forgotten who he was and where he came from. Richard Sirrelli had spent most of his life standing on the shoulders of other Minmatarians to get ahead. When he got there, he kicked every Minmatarian to the curb that had ever helped him. The foreman didn’t consider his boss an apple, he thought of Sirrelli as the whole orchard. But like the miner he was about to go down to the loading dock to meet, Richard Sirrelli was the only game in town. He was the only one who would hire someone with the foreman’s background.