LotS/The Story/The Search for the Princess/Drekchester (2)
Drekchester (2)
You ride back to the spaceport on your stolen bikes. When you emerge from the ship again, you’re dressed for battle. Telemachus is in his mech, Lu Bu has his sword and claw attached to his arms, and the rest of you are armed to the teeth. If the Blood Alley Gang is interested in making a deal, so much the better. TALOS would be willing to provide whatever ransom is needed for the Princess, and the Emperor to pay it back tenfold once the Sian Empire is liberated. But you can’t trust a Drekchester street gang to deal with you in good faith. You have to be prepared for violence.
The Blood Alley Gang’s territory is easy enough to find from the information Vorden provided. You end up in a dingy part of the city, a collection of rundown slums and industrial buildings pressed together like tottering drunkards trying to hold each other up. The neon-painted streets you’ve been through elsewhere in Drekchester seem like a realm of merriment and glorious opulence in comparison.
Throughout the back alleys that thread the place, groups of miserable looking people cluster around burning fuel canisters. Many of them bear obvious signs of chem-addiction, their flesh discolored or blotched, the whites of their eyes altered into unnatural hues. Some dart about the place like rodents, in short bursts of furtive speed, though it doesn’t seem like they’re going anywhere in particular. Others simply stare into their fires, as though reading the inevitable bleakness of their futures there.
The addicts and assorted street scum you saw earlier seemed amusing. But there’s nothing funny here. It’s amazing how much more depressing this world is when you strip away its mask of bright lights.
Back Alley Diplomacy
Vorden’s directions bring you to a vacant lot, surrounded on all sides by drab buildings. Piles of rubble lie strewn about its edges, all that’s left of whatever structure once stood there – perhaps destroyed in some long-forgotten turf war.
Dozens of people mill around this broken courtyard, members of the gang whose stronghold lies a short distance beyond it. Dozens of stares fix themselves on you and your companions as you approach. Outsiders aren’t uncommon here, from what Vorden said. They come here to buy their drugs, or sell their weapons. But children in mechs, and exquisitely decorated robots with vicious weapons on their arms, are probably a new experience for the denizens of this wasteland.
Several of them have weapons in their hands, and others are reaching behind their backs or into their jackets. If this goes badly, it’s going to get bloody.
“I’m fully programmed to deal with members of all manner of human civilizations and cultures,” says Lu Bu. “Might I offer to handle this situation?”
“Thanks, but I don’t think fancy words are going to work here. Leave it to me…”
You walk towards the wary gang members, your companions following. Time to deal with devils.
Armies of the Night
You manage to suppress the education in your voice, and fill your sentences with grammatical errors that would have earned you a caning during your schooldays. Over this you sprinkle profanities and bits and pieces of merc and pirate slang you’ve heard over the years.
Somehow this seems to work, as ridiculous as you sound to your own ears. There’s an occasional snigger from Talia, who’s doubtless amused to hear the captain of Princess Illaria’s personal retinue speak like a lowlife criminal. But several of the people in the crowd are also giggling, their drugs of choice turning the world into one big comedy, and they’ll probably just assume she’s intoxicated as well.
The gang members treat you as a potential customer, one of their own disreputable ilk, and when you finally start asking them about the Princess they open up.
“Twocked her off Vorden’s scavs,” your main interlocutor says, whom you’ve begun to think of as Chief Goon. “Boys wanted to rumple her. Some of the girls too. But I noosed that bitch weren’t some street-scav or prosser. Took her to the bosses. See – smart. Proper noosing. That’s why I’m mega out here. Maybe mega in there one day.”
The barely intelligible goon gestures behind him with his thumb, towards his bosses’ stronghold. Though you don’t quite understand all of his words, you have to struggle to keep your hands off his throat when he talks about Illaria. But you keep your feelings in check. You don’t have the luxury of doing anything else.
Instead you laugh, and nod along with him – as though you’re as impressed with his cleverness as he is. And then you make your move, saying you’re interested in buying her.
“Too late, chummer.” He clicks his fingers in the air. “Bosses kaufed her.”
You feel your fists clench and the forced joviality slip from your face. The goon’s eyes widen at the sudden change he sees there.
“Who?” you ask. “Who bought her?”
“No rees to be mashed,” he replies. “We got other girls. And boys. You got the creds, make you a deal.”
“Who bought her?” you repeat, a threat slipping into your tone.
Now it’s his turn for his features to harden. His eyes narrow to slits, like knife blades. You sense the subtle shifting of his weight as he moves into a ready state that could foreshadow violence. As slight as the movement is, tension seems to radiate through the crowd, and animosity descends over them like a mantle.
“Bosses’ kaufing isn’t for some new-flesh street-scav to noose. If you’re not spending creds, chummer, wreck off.”
“Take us to your bosses then. But someone’s going to tell me what I want to know.”
The goon spits on the ground.
“Think you’re some mega? I’m mega here, not you. Leggie me like that, gonna be rumpling your carc.”
“I don’t understand what you just said, but I’m done asking nicely.”
Two seconds later, you’re in the middle of a whirling melee.
Trouble With turrets
Gang members litter the ground. Some are battered and groaning, others bleeding and dying. A few are laughing as they lie amongst the broken bodies of their brethren, as though the brutality which smashed their bones and ruptured their organs was nothing more than an aggravated form of slapstick.
To your satisfaction, you see that the Chief Goon is one of the groaners. You’d tried to keep him alive during the fighting, but when laser-edged chainsaws and Niflung axes are swinging around the place, such things are never guaranteed.
You crouch down beside him. Then you pull a red syringe from your belt pouch, uncover the needle, and jam it into the side of his neck. You press the end with your thumb, and watch the red substance disappear into his body. He needs to be well enough to talk.
A few shakes and slaps cause him to stop groaning, and a few more start him talking.
“Don’t noose! Don’t noose who the bosses kaufed her to! I’m just mega out here. They don’t leggie me inside mega talk.”
Your fist crashes against his jaw, knocking his head against the unforgiving ground, throwing him back into the grasp of insensibility. You consider finishing him off, but his death is of no more consequence than his life.
“The stronghold?” Talia asks.
“Yes,” you reply.
The five of you head through the lot, and down a passage flanked on either side by squat, graffiti-covered structures. In front of you is a tall, industrial looking building that might once have been a factory. No paint or posters mar its dark walls. It’s like an imposing fortress, alongside the rundown and dilapidated edifices around it.
Your eyes scan its surface for defense systems or other dangers. There are no windows on this side of the building. But…
“Turrets!”
The shout seems to come from all your mouths at once, as panels slide away in the upper reaches of the wall, revealing two swivel-mounted laser cannons. When they fire, the green light cast by their beams illuminates the forms of the gang members who stand at each of them, aiming the weapons as they try to cut you down.
Knock, Knock
One gang member collapses into the building, disappearing from sight. The other tumbles out, and hits the ground a moment later with a satisfying splat. But you and your companions keep shooting until the turrets are little more than scrap metal. No sense in leaving them there for other enemies to come along and use.
Ragnar strides up to the large metal door leading into the building. He kicks at it with one of his hefty boots, and there’s a dull thud. But it remains fixed in place.
“It’s locked,” he says. “Looks like a strong door, too. We’ll be blasting at it for a while.”
You move beside him, and examine it in turn. He’s right. It’s a security door, much newer than the rest of the building from the look of it. A recent addition to help safeguard their base. Then your gaze travels a little way to the right.
“It’s a good door,” you agree. “This wall, on the other hand…”
Blood Alley Gang
The grunts inside the building are better trained, better armed, and more organized. Those things flash into your mind in a single moment, as you process the scene and plan your attack. You see what might be traces of military training in the way they handle their weapons, or at least the skill that comes naturally to veterans of hard fighting.
But even so, there’s little they can do as a mech smashes through whatever furniture they take cover behind, and drives a laser-edged chainsaw through their flesh.
And whatever training and skill they possess, they’re not your equals. You and your companions fight alongside each other as if you’ve been doing it your entire lives.
Ragnar turns to the right, his blazing machinegun transforming the passageway there into a charnel house as ill-fated reinforcements arrive to defend the hallway, and find their deaths instead. On the left Lu Bu holds the mouth of another corridor like an ancient warrior defending a mountain pass, his blade and claws performing a symphony of slaughter, each movement bearing the perfection that could only come from a robotic mind and limbs. Talia flits after Telemachus, her pistols picking off anyone who survives the young prince’s charge.
It’s magnificent, like the intricate workings of an exquisite old-fashioned clock. When you find her, and complete your little group once more, it will be perfect.
You lend your own fire wherever it’s needed, until only the five of you are left standing. Then you move through the building, a mobile engine of destruction. Several enemies come into your path, and are left in pieces.
Large as the place is, it’s sparsely inhabited. Some of the sections have been sealed off, perhaps where the large manufacturing or processing chambers were, back when it was a factory. Only a portion of the building seems to be lived in, and before long you work your way to a corridor with several large rooms opening from it.
You kick each door open in turn, your weapon held at the ready, and are greeted by the sight of a series of bedrooms. Each one is expensively if tastelessly appointed, filled with electronic equipment and assorted curios. They look like they belong to high-ranking members of the gang.
All seven rooms on the sides of the corridor are empty. But an eighth door stands closed at the far end, and you hear the sound of muttering voices coming from behind it.
You gesture for your companions to move aside, and they press themselves against the walls to the left and right. Then you push the door, darting away as it swings open – avoiding the assortment of missiles that flies past. You see a throwing knife, a shuriken, and what looks like a playing card.
You step into the room, weapon raised, and find yourself face to face with seven people dressed in the outlandish fashions of Drekchester, holding a range of bizarre armaments. These must be the bosses of the Blood Alley Gang, and you’ve never seen a stranger set of misfits. Your eye is drawn to the one in the middle, whose muscular torso is twice as wide as anyone else’s in the room. He almost rivals Telemachus’ mech for girth. Another is clutching an electric guitar, held up by the neck as if it were a club. A third is levitating a pack of laser-edged playing cards, which dance in the air as they await their controller’s commands.
As if to make the scene seem even more bizarre, holographic videogame screens are arranged around the room, each one bearing a pause message and blaring out a different piece of music. Were they actually gaming whilst their gang was being attacked, like Nero playing his lyre as Rome burned?
“We want the Princess,” you say. “Tell us where she is – using words which can actually be found in a dictionary – and you’ll save us the trouble of beating it out of you.”
You can see the hesitation written on six faces. They know you’ve beaten a path through the rest of their gang, and they don’t seem eager to suffer the same fate as their minions. But they look to the big man in the middle, and his face shows only violent rage.
“Kill them!” he yells.
“You may have noticed that you’re all still alive,” you remark, as the gang members writhe in pain or nurse their injuries. “That gives us seven chances to ask our question.”
“Start with the tubby one,” Talia suggests.
You nod. The others followed his lead. If they’re scared of him, they might not break while he’s still around.
“Whom did you sell the Princess to?” you ask, walking over to where he sits on the ground, a large red hand pressed to a wound on his shoulder.
“Wreck off,” he says, punctuating the words with a ball of spit. You casually slip aside, and let it land on one of the other gang members. “Think we’re phobed by you, chummer? We’re the Blood Alley Gang! We’ll die before we leggie!”
“Ragnar,” you say, turning to the Niflung, “chop his leg off.”
“Sure.” He stomps over to the big man, bringing a squeal of pain from one of the others as he treads on their injured leg, and brandishes his weapon. “Which one?”
“Surprise me.”
A look of horror crosses the man’s face, as he realizes that Ragnar really means to hack his leg off.
“Vince Vortex!” he screams, his voice shrill like a girl’s. “We sold her to Vince Vortex!”
“If you’re going to make up a name,” says Talia, “at least make it sound real.”
Ragnar grunts, and raises his axe.
“No! Wait!” the man screams again.
“There really is a guy called Vince Vortex,” says Telemachus. “Don’t you ever watch Twisted Steel?”
“The sport?” Ragnar asks. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. People in battlesuits beat each other up in a ring. I tried to sign up, but they wouldn’t let me fight without armor.”
“Vince Vortex runs it,” the boy says. “He used to be a fighter. All the fighters have funny names like that.”
“Yes! Yes! That’s him!” gasps the burly gang member, evidently pleased beyond measure to have his words backed up instead of his leg hacked off. “The off-world mega. He had the most creds, so we kaufed her to him, and shoved her on his shuttle.”
“A shuttle?” Talia says, her face a picture of dismay that’s soon eclipsed by anger. “Then she could be anywhere!”
“No!” the gang member says, as she raise her pistol. A stream of desperate words flies from his lips in rapid succession: “He bios on Hyperia! Hyperia! In this system! Next world along! Right there!”
“Hyperia?” says Telemachus. “That’s the planet where they broadcast Twisted Steel from.”
You turn to Lu Bu, but there’s really no need.
“I detect no indications of deception,” the robot says, understanding what you’re after.
You nod, and head for the door.
“We’re going to Hyperia,” you say over your shoulder.
“Should I still chop his leg off?” Ragnar calls from behind.
“No,” you say, after a moment’s hesitation.
The Niflung grunts. Then he and the rest of your companions follow you, leaving the leaders of the Blood Alley Gang almost sobbing with relief.