THE STRINGS ARE PULLED TIGHTER

Fifteen minutes into the drive to the space port –he’d paused to hotwire Ashok’s fancy antigrav ride using his prote- Garth received a confirmation report from the avatar he’d left hidden in the Guillfoyle mains. Ashok had not proven Garth wrong, which was kind of disappointing; every time he took the time out of his day to give someone the opportunity to do the right thing, they still chose to go against his warnings.

Garth looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He didn’t think he looked like a liar. As a matter of fact, with his handsome black hair, chiseled face and ice blue eyes, he expected he looked like the most sincerest guy on the planet. Add the fact that he’d specifically told Ashok what would happen if he tried to make a call into the equation and there was absolutely no doubt. Garth N’Chalez was as honest as the day was long. And the days on Hospitalis were pretty damned long.

So now all of Ashok Guillfoyle’s research data –minus the work on the alloys and the God soldier experiments, of course- was leaking out onto the world networks at a furious pace, filling up all the spare data nodes in a rush of incriminating data. The entire process would take more than an hour to complete, because, as defense contractors, the Guillfoyle Company was, had been, working on a great many complicated and detail-laden projects. Even without the doctored reports on the alloy or Ashok’s evil experiments on helpless soldiers, the man’s business predilection for tailoring the truth and fiddling with numbers was everywhere.

While writing the avatar code that would destroy Ashok’s life, Garth had been forced to remove the threat of serious reprisals from the government. Not out of any sense of fair-mindedness –the bastard had tried to have him killed at least three times that he knew of- but because the research data concerning weaknesses in the God soldier’s internal mechanisms was invaluable. Not only had the research team done extensive work at determining the stress and fracture points of the cybernetic joints and other mechanisms, they had begun testing a number of ‘non-lethal’ offensive weapons that would definitely do the trick against the soldiers once some modifications had been made. And as to the alloy experiments, well, there was some gold amidst the dross, and Garth couldn’t afford to have anyone come close to cracking the quadronium angle. When he managed to get himself a proper workspace with the necessary equipment and materials, Garth had every intention of putting together a weapons cache that would make the God soldiers and their commanding officers widdle in the booties; when properly formed, quadronium-plated weapons would cut through the standard stuff like a hot knife through butter.

Garth pulled his vehicle –well, it was his now, as far as all the documentation was concerned- to a halt five hundred meters away from the space port’s closest relay repeater and took stock of his situation just to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. He’d managed to arrange a deadly clash between the Portsiders and the Devil Nuts on space port property, which was good, because hopefully the fight would be sufficient enough to attract the attention of the military; having both gangs pulverized into pink goo wasn’t entirely important to his plans, but Garth was of the mind that the fewer gangsters around who hated him, the better. The Portsiders would have the baffle-sphere on them so he could safely get Huey out of the ship without setting off any alarms, and the theft of Ashok’s damn fine air car would enable him to hide the AI onboard without too many complications.

The one thing Garth had been hoping to bring with him from the original plan was limiting the explosion of Meadowlark Lemon to the interior of the spacecraft, but that was no longer going to work. Initially, he’d counted on having enough time to make modifications to the internal structure of the ship to drive the explosions from the engines backwards through the cabin and out the front, keeping the damage as contained as possible. That wasn’t going to work anymore, not with the timetable he was now stuck with.

Unfortunately, Meadowlark Lemon was going to have to go up like a million dollars worth of pyrotechnics. Collateral damage was a definite, and as the ship’s owner, it was not unthinkable that he would be asked to pay for the repairs. If he was lucky, legislative avatars assigned to the case would assume that the explosion had been caused by the unexpected gang war taking place right out front of the ship. If that didn’t work, Garth would try and blame the God soldiers and their mentally challenged approach to peace-keeping; hopefully the cyborg-morons would start flailing around with cannons and grenades and what-the-fuck-ever, making a world of mess.

The one thing Garth knew he could count on was interrogation. If some agency somewhere hadn’t already pieced together his actions concerning the Portsiders since making planet-fall, the appearance of the entire gang outside his ship was bound to attract attention. Even with the ‘protection’ of a military grade proteus and the ill-defined promises from OverSecretary Terrance, any inspection teams would be forced to question him. The trick, Garth knew, was to make it difficult for them to find any wrongdoing or malfeasance on his part, and he hoped he’d survive the steps necessary to convince them that it was a ‘wrong place, really wrong time’ kind of thing.

Satisfied that he had all the bases covered, Garth loaded Harry Bosch up and placed a call to one of the Devil Nut goons that had shown interest in his information; they hadn’t gotten back to him in a timely fashion and if they weren’t going to bite, he was going to have some serious problems on his hands.

The Devil Nut answered his prote, shouting to someone behind him as soon as he got a good look at the caller. The call was immediately shunted over to Devildong, who looked like he’d been on the wrong end of too many all-nighters in his short life. “You’re the ‘sider who called us up, lookin’ to sell out your brothers, right?”

Garth/Harry nodded. “Sure am.”

Devildong spat through teeth stained from chewing too much tobacco. “You’re right. They’re all out looking for some fuckin’ Offworlder gink.”

If there was any justice in the world, Bobby ‘Devildong’ Horatio would have his head torn off from a rampaging God soldier in the first ten minutes. He was just too tired and hackneyed a gangster to have much in the way of a serious life. Garth was willing to wager his left nut that Bobby had a lifetime subscription to magazines titles ‘Gangstas 4 Life’ and ‘Murderbible’. “An’ I know where they’re all gonna be, too.”

Devildong eyed Harry suspiciously, the effort of having a real thought evident from the bulging vein popping out above a blood-shot eye. “What’s in it for you?”

Garth wanted to roll his eyes. He was getting tired of having to spell things out. “When these guys kill the Offworlder, they’re gonna come gunnin’ for me, Devildong. And I gotta tell ya, I don’t give myself more’n a week once that happens. I don’t have a lot of places I can hide out in they don’t know about, all right? You guys show up and start killin’ ‘em off, I figure they’ll have more important things to worry about if they get out alive.”

Devildong muted the conversation and spoke to his lieutenant. Garth’s proteus overrode the mute and the ex-merc listened in as Devildong and his equally stupidly named right-hand man, Lucky’z Nutz, discussed the various merits of the story and their itching desire to fuck the hell out of the Portsiders once they were all dead. They reached an agreement; viz. it was too risky not to take the unhappy gangster’s story at face value because all the Portsiders really were roaming the city looking for one guy. Devildong tapped the mute button, and, thinking he had the upper hand, nodded sagely, stroking a non-existent goatee. “How do we do this?”

“The guy they’re after is gonna be at the space port in, like, half an hour. The ‘siders are gonna wait until he’s inside his ship, then they’re gonna surround him. When the guy comes out, the plan is to shoot him until there’s nothing left. Then they leave.”

“Hey, look,” Devildong interjected, “gettin’ the ‘siders where it hurts is a good idea, sa, but the port? I don’t know how you all manage to get on and offa that place without you get arrested or killed, but I don’t even want to risk it.”

Garth had mentally prepared himself for the tremors of fear and was quick to answer. “I got you guys all hooked in. Same systems gets them on and off’s gonna do the same for you.”

Devildong’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

“Guy what does the programming’s a buddy of mine. Caught him fuckin’ another guy, tole him I’d turn him over to his brothers if he didn’t do me a solid from time to time. This’ the last solid I can get, so you’d better make it count.”

“How can I trust you?” Devildong demanded suddenly. He’d just had a major epiphany –of a sort- and the vein above his other eye was pulsing in response to the unexpected burst of thought power. “This could all be a Portsider trap.”

“For fuck’s sake.” Garth ground his teeth. “Get your guys. Go to one of the fucking ground service roads that lead into the port. The ones normally used for loading and unloading cargo. Park your stupid asses outside receiver range of the port relays. Send one of your fucking drones down the road. If the alarms go off, you all run the fuck away. If they don’t, then you’re all good. Fuck.”

“When is this supposed to go down again?” Devildong asked.

“Half an hour.” Garth hissed. “Lissen, it’s been a real slice. Maybe when the heat from you guys massacring the ‘siders cools off, I’ll join up with the Nuts, err, Devil’s Left Testicle.”

Devildong smiled wide. “Yeah, man, that’d be a good idea. Thanks for the info.”

“Any time, Devildong.” Garth killed the conversation and closed his eyes. It was official. There were things masquerading as human, and they were dumber than single celled amoebas that huffed glue all weekend, and they called themselves the Devil’s Left Testicle.

Rolling his shoulders to relieve tension, Garth dialed up the space port and filed his flight plan. He waited for confirmation from the port’s avatars, delivered his verbal agreement to follow all the rules of the port –the avatars had asked him the same questions last time- and agreed to park his air car at one of the designated spots several hundred feet away from the Meadowlark Lemon.

Garth checked his prote. Twenty-five minutes until show time.