Silver Wings and Chrome Kings (2nd Installment)

Chapter the 2nd : My Brother, He’s Heavy

I flipped down the latch and palmed the slide as it slipped from from the guides beneath the barrel. The springs were next and then the barrel itself. I laid the parts carefully out on the oilcloth. The familiar movements were calming, but my hands knew them so well that my mind was free to wander. The meeting with the Tween had gone down like Sarah had said it would and now she and the arms merchant were headed into the sprawling megalopolis that had sprung from the bones of old Atlanta after the firestorm of ‘33. There was powder residue inside the barrel. The twisting hexagonal sides stayed much cleaner than the old lands and grooves system and the caseless rounds burned cleanly, but full auto was a bitch on machinery no matter how high the tech and lead was still lead. The silvering was still good and the barrel shined in the dim light against the darkness of my skin. My fingers found the cleaning materials where they always were and began brushing out the barrel. People in the cities never took much effort in preventive maintenance. Their lives depended on tech that could die during the next solar flare, but if they didn’t think about it then they didn’t have to worry about it. After all, there was always some ‘nician just a vid away and who’d want to get their hands dirty like that anyway? It was different out in the open spaces. Parts were precious and some nearly impossible to come by until you hit the next concrete and steel aberration covering hundreds of square miles, choking out anything that dared push its impudent head up to the sun. The drifters knew the value of good tools and solid tech. Survival wasn’t glamorous but it beat hell out of bleeding out down in the neon cesspools where the city threw its failures because your carry piece decided to throw a shitfit. A gun that can’t shoot straight doesn’t even make a decent paperweight.
Read the rest of this entry »

Silver Wings and Chrome Kings (1st Installment)

PROLOGUE: The Business of the Future

“There seems to have been a problem with the credit transfer.”

“There is no problem. There is no payment for unfulfilled commissions.”

“What are you talking about? Completion was guaranteed. The oversight inspection returned perfectly clean results.”

“Incorrect. Three billets were improperly handled. We have a troubleshooting team reviewing the situation.”

“Three? Send me the data and I’ll take care of it. There’s no need for a separate team.”

“Negative. The team is already in the field tracing the billets.”

“Now wait you…”

“Repeat, the team is in the field and will complete the commission. Your assistance is no longer required nor desirable. There will be no further business relations between us. Ever.”

Unlatching her dented and dirty hardshell armor to pull out a nicstik, Dera shook it alight as the light-sensitive camera mounted on her left shoulder whirred quietly, following a preprogrammed pattern across the crime scene to record the carnage for forensicomp analysis later. Shards of glass littered the floor about the mangled remains of what, at some time previously, had been a human being. Her partner slipped quietly around the room with a portable inspection unit, careful to stay out of the camera’s field of view as it whirred and clicked its way back and forth across the small room.

“DNA scan negative, ID scan negative.”

“You’re wasting your time, Del. The Bumblebee popped up outside the window, emptied the magazine and, just like that, problem all gone. No evidence either. And cybercypher here,” she pointed at the corpse with the glowing end of the nicstik, “won’t have a past or a present on record and sure as hell ain’t gonna have a future.”

“Yeh, I know, but they’ll wanna see the scans anyway” Del sighed, “even if it is just a case of business as usual.”
Read the rest of this entry »