The Victorians had thought that boxing was a pretty gentlemanly sport and had tried to introduce it to the rest of the Universe. They had been frowned upon so deeply and from such a great height that they scrapped it quicker than the idea of an Australian petting zoo. Still, there had been those who had developed a taste for the idea and had continued it on in the Underworld. As with anything barbaric and/or violent, they turned to Earth and discovered the Romans. Things got a lot bloodier a lot quicker after that.
Tsyrker was not there to bust the fighting ring, such things were below her, though she noticed the Jobru crime boss, Dascrux, and the leader of the Albertine Suns gang, Mejweb. It was interesting that they were talking and she might make a note of it, but even that was beneath her. She, and those she worked with and for, kept tabs on only the highest levels of criminals.
They spent most of their time spying on the governments of countries, worlds and galaxies. The UTN was a grand idea, but it was one that needed balance. You couldn’t have groups outside of the Councils gaining too much power, nor could you have sudden shifts in the power balance at any level. Of course, said power balance needed help in being maintained or sometimes shifted in a way not to cause ripples and that was another job for her organisation.
The fight was over and the body of the Human was being carried out while the Tarancort limped off to celebrate his victory by writing a will. They were replaced by a Merrick and a Rontin Tiger.
“The Suns are trying to negotiate a safe trade route through Dascrux’s territory,” a male voice said from beside her. “He’ll let them and in a month or so they’ll be massacred by the Folb’s Boys.”
“This is a turn up,” Tsyrker replied.
“It is, but so was your communique.”
“I just need to know what I’m hunting for.”
“Indeed and Walters would have wanted in.”
“Couldn’t happen, Sir.”
“That’s why I’m here. Walters has been working for years to get a break at the Desards.”
“I don’t need to tell you that it’s not my break.”
“No. Interesting company you keep. First Wotham and now this, you’re making a name for yourself,” he mused.
“That’s not my intention.”
“But it is a truth.”
“What do you need?”
“You assume you will succeed.”
“I do.”
“Very good.”
“So?”
“The Shadow Archetype,” he said.
“Explain.”
He did so as the Rontin Tiger finished off the last of the Merrick.
CHAPTER 26
Stephen Regrette was in Azwani, sweating into his light suit. It was a nice tan number, almost matching the colour of the sands that stretched in all directions. It was made of a fancy and expensive breathable material and custom cut to hide the bulge of his gun(s).
The wind was as from a hairdryer and brought with it the smell of the ocean though there was no water for many miles. None above ground at least. The nearest body of water was the Vortru Shore where every wave was a tsunami that washed far inland, sinking quickly into the sand and travelling even further in underground. As the water evaporated from the salt flats, the wind took it and gave Azwani the ocean air that it was famous for.
Regrette sat at a little table under cloth shades in a square near the west of the small city. As the water evaporated it pulled the salt up with it, forming the aforementioned flats and leaving behind some of the purest water in the Universe. That was the other thing Azwani was famous for. The tea he was drinking was brewed using water from a well close by, the Igzuwami Well. Each had it’s own name as they were so important to survival and each, allegedly, had their own taste and health properties.
Not too far away in the Forluminan Spa was Koey V. The bug on his car hadn’t been found and Tsyrker was more than happy for Regrette to take up the chase. As long as he kept her informed. The spa used the Forluminan Well and was famous for curing troubles with the guts and to a person like Regrette that was invaluable knowledge. Not that he believed it and he didn’t think Koey would either, and that told him that Koey was prepared to try anything.
There was the age old question, which you have no doubt had to ask yourself: what is the best technique to force information out of someone?
There was money, but that became less effective the higher up you got. People like Koey would weigh up the money against how much trouble he would be in if it was discovered he’d snitched. And he already had plenty of money.
Then there was torture, but that had been proven to simply turn up information that would make the torture stop. You will always get what you want to hear from torture because either they tell you what you want to hear to stop the whole pain thing, or they don’t and you keep torturing them until they do.
The third option was to put them in a situation where it was, or at least seemed, beneficial for them to talk. Perhaps if his stomach was in pain he would talk for medicine.
Finally there was the weakened state. Get them into a situation of physical and/or mental weakness making them more susceptible to your questioning. Perhaps if his stomach was playing up, Koey would not be able to focus on the rigors of interrogation and give up information he wouldn’t otherwise. Perhaps.
It was a, literal, Universal truth that power ruled and that power generally came from money. That first part was true, if you had more power than another then they would kowtow to you. In the Underworld you accepted that; accepted your place in the hierarchy and if you wanted to move up in the ‘World then you hired someone like Regrette to make an opening. The second part wasn’t necessarily true. Money brought you the ability to buy people like himself to do your nefarious bidding. Or it bribed people to ignore your nefarious bidding. What people never seemed to realise was that it wasn’t them and their money that had the power, but the people they hired with it.
Real power came from your view of yourself. An acceptance and belief in yourself; a personal moral code; the ability to hold to your convictions rather than pander to others or worrying what others thought of you; and an appreciation that material possessions are not important. Once you became a self-contained unit not blown around by the wills and whims of others, or of things, you held true power. Perhaps, he thought, he should join the motivational speaker circuit, but then even he wasn’t that big of an arsehole.
In this way Koey was a powerbroker, a tool used by others to gain or keep their place in the Universe. Koey, however, like many criminals, thought the same as those they served. Koey believed money gave him power and more power would give him more money. He lived in a microcosm of the world his employers lived in. If Regrette could show the power he held, Koey would bow under the weight of it.
The question now was what did he want? What could Koey give him? All the time through the interrogation Koey would be weighing Regrette’s power against the Desard’s and Regrette knew he’d only get a certain amount of information out of him. It wasn’t necessarily the importance of the information that stopped people talking, but the perceived amount they had given away. Regrette would have to make sure he got what he wanted in those first few questions before Koey decided he’d said too much.
It was a lot easier just assassinating people.
***
“So?” Regrette asked.
“So what?” Tsyrker asked back.
“So what do you want to get out of this? He’s only going to talk long enough to feel he can barter.”
“You know I’m not going to tell you.”
“You’re a hard lady to please.”
“What do you want out of this?” she asked him.
“Hewy Desard and no, you can’t ask why.”
She thought about it.
“For now? That’s good enough for me.”
“Ooh,” Regrette grinned, “you’re going bigger.”
“You know Grant will push as far as he can.”
&
nbsp; “This isn’t about Grant anymore,” Regrette said.
She smiled at that.
“What?”
“You know what. If Grant’s involved then this is all about him.”
Regrette sneered briefly, but she was right. They wouldn’t even be sitting here if it wasn’t for him and you were better to follow his lead than carve your own path. Let alone try and go up against him.
“Mssh, alright, alright, but I’m gonna get what I want.”
“As am I,” Tsyrker nodded, still with a smile. “Now. Plan?”
***
Regrette had broken into the spa the night Koey had been there and found that he was booked in for another appointment. He’d once met a woman who swore by them and she had said you had to do three over a seven day period so he knew Koey would be back. He also knew the process. At the time he hadn’t wanted to, but as with all information, it came in handy eventually. It meant that Regrette knew that there were two parts to the process. Without going into all the colonically distressing details, there was a filling and an emptying.
It was between these two processes that Koey found himself once again face-to-face with Regrette. Turned out that Koey didn’t treat people too well and the staff at the spa were only too happy to let him interrupt for some questioning.
“Hello,” Regrette called cheerily
Koey looked up from where he was seated on a large chair that almost enveloped him in cushion around the stomach, waist and thighs. Next to him a large machine with a thick tube whirred and chugged. Not only was he trapped in the chair, you don’t need me to tell you where that tube went, but the process would only get more and more uncomfortable the longer it was before someone pushed the button marked ‘flush’.
Koey didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to. He knew what was happening, he’d done similar to others. The thing now was to get it over and done with. Preferably while still being alive and without giving too much away.
“I take your silence to mean you understand the present situation,” Regrette said.
“Just get on with it,” Koey said a little crossly.
“Now hold on there, Koey, you know we’ve got to set some groundwork. I want you to know I’m serious.”
“You’re seriously an idiot if you think you’re getting away with this.”
“Come now, Koey, things are only going to get more uncomfortable for you the longer you don’t play nicely.”
“Then get on with it. This isn’t about Gothra, so what is it?”
It was getting uncomfortable, but at this point that was part of the normal process. He still had time before the next part of the process, but once that time ticked by (and he didn’t think the nurse was coming back until this man left) things were going to get nasty.
“Hewy Desard.”
Koey laughed despite his discomfort.
“You are an idiot.”
“But a very serious one, Koey. I could spend a lot of time convincing you of this, but time is against you and this isn’t personal, but business. So the question is not how serious I am, but how bad I am.”
Koey narrowed his eyes. Who was this guy? It was a serious question. The Desards were serious people and he would be in serious trouble if he discussed them. But. If this guy was serious then he would be in trouble not telling him what he wanted. Things, according to this paragraph, were serious.
“I know what you’re thinking Koey, I’ve seen that look a lot. You’re wondering if I’m serious or if I’m dead serious,” Regrette moved his coat to show his pistol.
Koey flicked his eyes down to it and understood. Not that he had a gun, but what kind of gun he had. An expensive gun; a working gun; a serious gun. The kind of serious that you italicise. And of course he was telling him that he was willing to kill. He tried to shift a little in his seat, his bowels were beginning to get painful. He shook his head.
“If I thought you could? Yeah, maybe, but I don’t think you can. I think you’ll try and botch it and really serious people will come looking for me.”
Regrette walked behind Koey and looked at the whirring machine. He knew they had now passed the time that Koey was used to. The discomfort and perhaps pain would start to fog his brain. Whatever he wanted to say, his brain would override and make sure he did what he could to relieve the discomfort.
“I don’t botch the things I set my mind to,” Regrette said.
“Come on, man,” Koey said with an edge to his voice.
Regrette walked back around.
“Tell me what I want to know and you walk out of here.”
“I can’t. You’re talking about a world you don’t know. I don’t know.”
“You still don’t think I’m serious enough?”
“For this? I know you ain’t.”
His bowels now wanted to evacuate themselves, but they couldn’t. That is a feeling that words cannot, and should not, describe.
Regrette walked to the door and Koey’s spirit fought between hope and despair, but it wasn’t a nurse who walked through.
“Oh, come on,” he groaned.
Regrette closed the door behind the Typan dressed in light urban armour and a helmet with a silver visor that hid their face.
“You’re a Typan?”
“Nope,” Regrette grinned. “I’m the type of guy who can bring one here just to prove to you I’m serious.”
To be fair, his guts were reaching a point where he would tell this guy something just to get the nurse back in, but a Typan? Maybe this guy was serious.
“Not enough,” he said as he tried to shift his position.
The Typan reached for it’s helmet.
“No, don’t,” Koey cried.
No one saw a Typan’s face and lived.
“Seriously. You can’t just walk into the world that Hewy moves in. You’d never get close.”
“So how do I?” Regrette asked.
“Gothra. She’s your weak link. You might be able to get to Maggie through her. We were doing a deal, Maggie’s taking over Gothra’s operations.”
“I don’t want Maggie.”
“Right, right, I know,” he said with the desperation of a man in the netherworld of discomfort. Not just his guts now, but his muscles. “But take down Maggie and Hewy will come to you. You don’t mess with the family.”
“Very good,” Regrette smiled.
“They’ll all come for you.”
“What’s the deal?”
“You want Maggie? You’ll need to cripple operations. Four main places,” he wheezed. He couldn’t think, his brain was just filled with the need for release. “Kagar, Polince, Randaritchia and Wiloth should do it.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Regrette asked.
“You found me twice. Come on, man.”
The Typan walked over and squeezed a tube.
“I am, I am,” Koey screamed.
The Typan let go of the tube and pressed the ‘flush’ button.
Koey’s sigh of relief could be heard on the other side of the city.
CHAPTER 27
Grant found himself in the van at Gulch’s computer. It wasn’t actually Gulch’s computer, but that was how they both thought of it. Grant knew his way around a computer and the Universal Trading Web, but not like Gulch.
Gulch had insisted that he should go with them to Dwituf Minor; that it was his job and Grant had pointed out that this wasn’t a job and he wasn’t getting paid for it. That wasn’t, Gulch had pointed out, how it worked. He hadn’t joined Grant for a job, but for the ideal that Grant held. Grant had laughed that off and had quoted Gulch about ‘the find of the century’. Gulch couldn’t argue on that one and Grant knew that he wanted to stay and look into it more. It was just a little reconnaissance, Grant had assured. No big deal. Plus, Gulch wouldn’t be able to focus. That had hurt him a little, he took pride in his work, but Grant could see that he knew it was true. Archaeology, history and science were much more Gulch’s bag than running around after bad
guys. It was, he’d often say, the real way they’d change the Universe for the better.
So now Grant was watching a screen that was showing the picture from a tiny camera Kaskey had hidden on his person. They rarely used cameras in this way, but Grant had insisted as he got bored quickly being stuck in the van. He didn’t know how Gulch did it. What did he look at all day? Was he happy when he was in here? He’d never thought to ask.
On another screen he had information on the Quillitt Gang, the largest in the city of Pelluu and not, as far as he could see, affiliated with Gothra.
***
“So, so, so, so, so,” the Byfrok said sitting opposite Kaskey in a dingy bar. “I like you.”
“You just met me.”
“You’re going through the channels, I like that. My boss likes that.”
“I’m here to make money, not step on toes.”
“Very wise,” the Byfrok nodded tapping both sets of pincers on the table.
“It’s an Albertine trait,” Kaskey shrugged. “And I’m wise enough to know Quillitt isn’t the biggest fish in the city.”
“Not so wise to cast such aspersions,” the Byfrok tutted.
“I told you I don’t want to step on toes.”
“You just worry about The Gang.”
“So what’s the deal?”
“Dsetreen Quarter. Ten percent comes to us, but it doesn’t buy you protection from the Police if you get caught.”
“Not a great deal,” Kaskey frowned.
“Better than the alternative. You rip us off or bring the Gang into disrepute, well, you better not come back.”
Kaskey nodded and the Byfrok got up, dropped down onto four legs and left.
Kaskey watched the Byfrok go. He loved the way they could bend their bodies to use those lower limbs as either arms or legs. The extra set of arms meant they could fly complicated ships solo and were highly sought after by the UTN Navy as fighter pilots as well as those in the Underworld. He finished his drink and also left. Grant had told him that there was no known association between the gang and Gothra and if he wasn’t supposed to worry about her then it meant that she didn’t have any operations running in the city. He supposed that was wise, but it was also wise to have protection in your city.
He’d been in Ghrotal when Kaliff Foley was assassinated. She paid the local gang to act as eyes and ears throughout the city in case anyone came to assassinate her. Hard to gather information when everyone you could ask was working for the person you were trying to kill. The Assassin had quietly and methodically cut a swathe through the gang before reaching the building where she lived and worked. If Gothra was smart, and he assumed she was, then she would have a similar set up to clock people like himself who were sniffing around. But if it wasn’t the Quillitt Gang, then who was it?