A Quick Death in Texas: Chapter 2 - It Takes a Village to Kill a Fucker

"Family" can be biological. It can also be the people that'll support you, even if what you're doing is drastic.

Van had good confidence in therapy. He didn’t have the sort of schedule where he could keep up with regular sessions, but Dr. Rama in St. Joe’s always had a way of working him in when he needed to get something out of his head. She saw him as a man that needed a stable foundation to stand himself on, strong on his own, but imbalanced. The simplest advice she had for him, was to learn to respect the man in the mirror. Confidence starts with self image, that you are who you want to appear to be. At his worst, when he laid down lives en masse on someone else’s call without even a conscious say in the matter, he had no control over what he saw in a reflection. In those days, it was either one of two images, that of a shaved bald and scarred-all-over half naked wrack in a too-small pen, or a faceless, voiceless menace in an adaptive camo combat suit.

He was about to take a run at the man who made him as he was, handed him damage in exchange for power he wasn’t allowed to refuse- Brian Charles Grafton, motherfucking Brian. He was the man who unpersoned him, rendered him an inanimate object, a weapon in a black ops arsenal. All done for reasons Van felt violated to even understand- a kid verging on being a man, with bulk, athleticism and an interested mind, lacking only discipline, can be converted into a keen killing implement, as long as you’ve got a cruel monster of a bionicist in your inner circle, noble house funding and a black hollow where your soul should be. This was the man whose say determined the image in Van’s reflection for more than a decade of his life. This was the man whose foot-stamping hissy-pettiness and persistently, arrogantly unsatisfied nature led him to deactivate Van’s own passive defense and self-repair bionics, just so he could leave him with a permanently split eyebrow via penknife, for daring to displease him on a bad day. Van still couldn’t remember what he was upset about. It was either too many bodies or too few, and he wasn’t even sure he was the agent Brian was mad at in the first place.

Point of it all was, he wasn’t a wrack in a pen or some superpowered pig in a battlesuit any more. Whatever he saw in himself now, whatever conflict of self assuredness and anger that made him feel like a perpetually half-finished project, it wasn’t anything so pathetic or hateable. Even if he couldn’t shake the feeling he was walking a road that didn’t have a way back for him, he at least had a choice in an outfit for the trip.

At least he could show That Motherfucker what he actually looked like.

His skin was a roadmap of scars, a walking diagram for how to perform a living dissection on a terran, carved too deep into him for his own self-repair to clear up. He didn’t hate looking at them, even if he thought he should. He’d never see them as a gift, but only ever of as a mark of what he was capable of surviving. He’d fantasized about showing the fucker just a little of the marks along his arm, just so he’d know it really was him, before putting a bionic fist through his face and out the back of his skull; he knew it could never go down like that, but dreams are dreams for a reason. For now, he covered the mess with a commando sweater and bluejeans, covered the hangman’s slash around the neck where they wired the copro into his peripheral nervous with a bandanna- rhidling burgundy blood red, Sendra clan colours with a Terran spin. The belt he picked was utility, the kind of durable doubles as an armguard if some asshole pulls a knife. He treated himself to soft, warm socks, because anyone used to wearing boots that were equal parts weapon and door-ram could tell you, being spartan with your footwraps bought you nothing but misery on long walks. The boots themselves, they survived the fight at Insomnia in one piece, they only needed the blood and chunks cleaned off them. He wasn’t sure as he laced them if they were lucky for him, or just unlucky for the people he was after; maybe he was just hoping for some spark of galactic pagan magic to give him an edge. Then, the jacket, the black leather, the literal and figurative armour. It was a replacement for the one that got torn and blasted to shit rescuing Taino, tailored by old Sammy Rothman of St. Joe’s during a stop on the trip back, custom work by a gentleman who saw value in an ethical thug. The regular design was made to stop falls at speed form a  motorcycle from peeling the rider like a grape; the mods to it Sammy made on Van’s behalf made it good to stop a few pistol shots, or a few game stabs with an edged weapon. He zipped it to the top, and tried not to be bothered by the ostentatious collar, it made a good neck protector.

He looked in the closet door mirror when he was all done and buckled. He said to himself, what do you see?

The pessimist in him said, a dead man that’s about to drag a lot of people into the grave with him.

The dreamer in him said, the last mistake of a very bad person.

The voice that rose between the lobes of his brain, from the base of his skull, growled Readiness.

“You’re awake,” He said to it.

“I never sleep,” it spoke back.

“Good,” Van said to The Canine. “I like your attitude.”

---

At its core, the Sendra Clan were a family organization, with both blooded members who were a part of the extended family tree, and unrelated families that made up the clan’s greater ‘village’ organization. This meant that there was more than just rules and regulations to follow for the sake of the family business of information gathering and brokering, but customs and traditions as well. Being a Sendra meant at least a partial embrace of the local ancestral animist traditions, of finding an honored ancestor to watch over you and honoring them before you head out on a task. It meant that, to an extent, you learned to deal with heights- even most rhidlings get dizzy walking the heights the average Sendra is cool and calm doing a job at. It meant that you learned the value of a good meal as greasing the wheels of hard work, that it might not make the job easier, but it’ll give it less friction.

It of course meant, that if the chief made you lunch on your way out for a job? You damn well show up and enjoy that lunch, no matter how many necks you have to break in the day ahead of you.

“Van, if there’s something that I gotta hand to you, it’s that you’ve got the most hustle of any man I’ve met who makes a habit of sleeping past noon,” said Francis Mendel, who was also an honored guest at the table. “I mean that sincerely, mind. It’s just not typically the mark of someone that goes above and beyond.”

“Gee, thanks, Francis?” said Van, with a handful of steaming pazanni grain grasped between a strip of crispy ninan bread poised at his mouth, smirking.

“Echh,” Francis said, trying to wave him off. “You know what I mean. I give you full sanction to stop me from becoming my grandpa, with the backhanded compliments.”

“The man has spent enough uncommon hours of his life awake,” Miaka Sendra-Klieu, wife of Granny Janila for the past 6 years, spoke with her kind smile. “You can’t disobey the sun, it’ll rise regardless of how long you were awake in the dark.” Miaka was a sweetheart, a gentle presence at Granny Janila’s side that had helped to temper out some of her harder tendencies since she’d come to know her. Janila Sendra would always be Van’s second mother, a woman who had come to understand him on that level, but Miaka he’d come to learn was just as willing to be in his corner, a loving lamb living without incident in a pack of wolves.

“The way I see it, living like a beach bum is getting revenge for a decade of nonconsensual black ops work,” Van said when he was done chewing, the warmth and spice of the meal making his mouth tingle.

“Speaking of, how’s the water today? Way I see it, New Providence is two hours away by helo, I figure I may as well enjoy being on the coast for the day,” said Francis.

Van hung on his breath for a moment, trying to think of what to say. “Sorry, I wasn’t really in frame of mind to look, really,” he said after a second.

Francis nodded, solemn. “Fair enough, fair enough.”

Van looked backed to Miaka, whose long face was growing apparent, her ears starting to droop. His sensors passively swept her and picked up a small spike in her vitals, a shift in mood; he shut them off and felt rude for forgetting to do that before sitting down. She pushed away from the table, and walked alongside him.

She leaned in close to his ear. “You are worth more than what was done to you,” she said. “Don’t forget that we’d all miss you if you didn’t come back.”

“You don’t have to go yet, Miaka,” he said, feeling the weight she was feeling.

“No heart or mind for what you’re talking about next, I think. I don’t like to worry about things I can’t affect,” she said. Janila married her not out of clan politics, but out of love- the Klieu were farmers and ag scientists by and large, far removed from the dark game that is spy work. Miaka had learned from her relationship with Janila that she was braver than she knew, and could handle knowing the broad strokes of clan activity without weight on her mind. But the finer details? She was too gentle a person to ever be able to stomach those.

So instead she pushed her mass and warmth against Van, squeezed his shoulder and gave him a handful of claws, just enough to prickle his skin- feel that? I’ve got you, you’re hooked in and safe, little one.

“Show them,” she breathed in his ear, as she left the garden patio, clearing some dishes as she went. She didn’t turn back.

“You understand that I’m scheduling this the same as any Sendra clan task, boy?” The voice of granny Janila snapped Van’s attention back. She addressed him not with a patronizing tone, but one of a hard and stern respect. When the head of a rhidling raknasda, killer-clan, as old and enduring as the Sendra addresses you as a child, you understand it’s a thing done out of paid love and respect, of one that feels they had a hand in shaping you.

Van nodded to her.

“Just because it’s got an open completion date, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to return late, do you understand me?”

Van nodded again. He said to her eyes with his, that he understood her in full.

The breeze blew for a moment, and died. “Good,” she said as it did. “So then we can discuss the matters of your support.”

“I wasn’t expecting much in that department,” he said. “To be honest, I’d prefer to be as lone as possible on this.”

“Yes, boy, I expected that, given you have a martyr complex like some men have drinking problems,” she said, her words like vinegar.

Van suddenly felt 14 years old again when he realized the face he was making.

“Trust in Granny to know best for her clan, yes? This is why they made me chief, they put the clearest eyes on the highest chair, so they can see over everyone elses’ heads.” She pulled the briefcase from beneath the table, and slid it to him.

“Courtesy of our friends at the There-and-Backs,” she said, as he popped the latches.

The banded stacks of Reales staring back at him from inside made him flick his sensors back on- 100k, judging by the volume and mass he was feeling. There was a note, too:

Siblings of Unified Interstellar Mixed-Mass Shorthaulers pledge funding endowment to our proud and honorary brother, VAN EVER PARKER, and Bronx Cheers to all oppressors who hide in the shadows of a society that’s better than they are.

PS: If at all possible, use this to buy something that blows something else up.

Yep, space truckers definitely sent this. He snapped latches back into place.

“That was generous of them…” Van never understood how to accept a gift. The shake he felt in his hands building from sheer scale of the one he’d just been handed, he knew he’d need a smoke to steady out.

Francis drew his billfold from his breast pocket. From it, he pulled a black steel card, and slid it across the table to Van, who picked it up and swept it with his sensors. No RFID, no near-field, not even a magnetic strip; just engraved with the sailing ship of the Tradewinds casino, and embossed with a stylized MEG- Mendel Entertainment Group.

“Here, welcome to the list that’s above The List,” said Francis, smiling handsomely. “If I’m being Frank, which I can’t not be obviously, I should have given this to you after we finished our thing, with the dinner theater, you remember?” Rhidling killer-clans had their own way of talking, and terran gangsters had theirs; Van spoke both dialects.

“I remember, yeah,” he said.

“Yeah, well, word has trouble travelling faster than light, so easier for you to take this with you. Anywhere I’ve got people, they’ll recognize that, they’ll know you’re My Guy, even if you aren’t one of my guys, you know? Anything I’ve got, you’re welcome to, even if its behind the velvet rope, understand?”

“Much appreciated, Francis, thank you,” Van said, and he meant it. The easiest help he had accepting in his life was the sort that was on him to engage, and he took it happily as a gift. “It’s always good to have friendly eyes watching your back.” Frances smiled and nodded a You’re Welcome.

“Ah, yes, speaking of,” Granny Janila said, a sly and fanged smile spreading across her face. “There’s the matter of an individual within the clan, who asked specifically to be your intel handler on this task.”

Van raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Who?”

---

“New Laredo is way far out beyond our range, other side of the Freelands, so you’re going to be the first Sendra feet on that soil,” Taino Sendra said to his big brother Van. “But I’ve put my picks in the field for the stops you’ll be headed to next, so they’ll have a den dug out and waiting by the time you show up.”

Van smiled as he strode out onto the lander tarmac with him. The way the kid had healed up, turns out he was going to have a split brow of his own. He didn’t like the way he’d gotten it, but the fact they now had something that they shared in their own appearance made him feel just slightly warm inside.

“What about you, who’s the inner circle?” Van asked.

Taino gave him the slightest roll of his eyes, he knew what he was actually asking. “Tadji, his sister and their cousins. They’re rolling with me dressed as engineers and galley cooks. Their idea, not mine.”

“Good to hear,” Van let his hand slip. He wasn’t hearing his little brother placate him, he was hearing that little brother had picked a good man from a family of certified hide-takers to shadow him.

“Swear to you, it’d be stupid to try and take the Jungle out of that family, but even so,” Taino started.

“You’d wish they’d tone it down a notch,” Van finished, with a smile. “I get it, your neighbors are ninjas.”

Taino shrugged, tired in his soul from having been watched since birth. Being clan heir meant being on standby to assume emergency duties as chief in the result of the current’s death or incapacity, and moreover, meant running in the incumbent seat should the clan families call a moot in that circumstance. He was used to having people with guns and knives hiding in his shadow, but it didn’t make it any less grating.

“Hey, I think it’d be cool to have ninjas for neighbors,” Van said.

“It gets old,” Taino replied. “It’d be nice to change the bedclothes for once without having the guy hiding in the closet handing me the sheets.”

All around them, there was scramble, the hustle of stevedores and lifting equipment moving containers and palettes. Alameka Grove didn’t have the biggest spaceport, but when one of the major collectives in town had a move going on, the sheer amount of activity in as small a space made it feel like they were in the middle of any of the million-plus cities of the Freelands. The Sendra Clan were one of the collectives big enough to make it move like that; it was often the only activity they produced that made so much noise, had so much bustle.

“What about your specialist-” Van started, and then a nearby lander did a test fire of its manu-thrusters, rendering all sound within a 100 meters meaningless for a few seconds. “What about your specialist team,” he said, again.

“I’ve got Shady scraping that phone down to the circuit wafers. The inbox was an open book, but there’s some vaulted files in it that they’re still trying to break the encryption on, it’s some fork of new Consortium tech they’ve never worked hand-on with yet. If there’s any fertile dirt left on it, they’ll get at it, they just need time. And tea.”

He looked at the young man Taino was becoming. Van had come into his life as the worst threat he’d ever known, and been turned into not only a protector, but family. He couldn’t not be proud and honored by how he was being paid back now.

“So I guess this is the part where I talk about how proud of I am of my sibling from a similar species?” Van asked, a smile spreading across his face.

“Nah,” Taino said. “It’s the part where I say I hope you stomp the motherfucker you’re after to death.”

“Ooooh!” Van said with raised eyebrows. “Them terran swears!”

“If the guy you already alieka madun daei kada-” ‘made fertile the garden’, Taino probably said it without even thinking it in response. “-was any indication of his friends, I don’t even want to think about what you got. I mean that,” Taino said, and he wasn’t smiling.

“Get him, instead,” he said, with a sternness Van had never heard before. “It’s his turn.”

The world went still for a moment, as Van thought to himself, this clan is going to be in good shape.

Their moment was broken by an off-key howling ‘eeee-yahhhh!’ and a cry of “On boy-horde, on boy-horde!,” as Keeda Enara of Clan Maniro surfed by atop a pressure-packed soft container, being pulled on powerjacks by a team of burly young men in sleeveless hi-vis vests and hardhats.

“Keeda, what the fuck?”  Van blurted as she went.

“Hi Van!” she called. “It’s your quarters, see! We’re gonna take it up to space and build it for you, should be ready in an hour, maybe two, depends if pressure blowout wrecks anything.” The stevedores caught their breath, and lurched forward suddenly, resuming their stride, causing her to wobble. “Okay-kay, see you in a bit, going to space now!” she shouted, straightening herself out.

Van turned to Taino. He was smiling again.

“Yeah, nobody was going to stop them from getting a piece, either. They want to help you, and we couldn’t tell them no,” he said, grin broad, toothy and sharp.

“Them?” Van asked.

---

“You didn’t have to help me the first go around,” was the first thing Van could think to say to her, when he saw her standing on the ramp of the Closeup Sunrise’s lander section.

“Maybe I don’t like it when people kidnap my neighbors,” Telin Enara of Maniro said, leaning against the airlock frame as she took a cigarette lighter to the tips of her freshly filed claws. Prepped and ready for anything, right down to a fresh heat-harden on the edge of her nails. “Maybe, I just like to make sure my neighborhood is safe to pass through, for people in general.” She smirked at him.

“Gotcha, and what’s a longhauler consider her neighborhood?” he asked as he came up alongside her on the ramp. He noticed the thin intertwining lines she’d put into the side-shave of her hair- iketo, warrior-knots, the mark of a Northerner ready to go out with a knife and come back with pelts.

Slyly, she pointed up. Her smirk turned to a smile, and her tail flicked against the lander hull.

“I never once in my life fucked around with being a Freelander, Van,” she said. “Not about to start, not if I can have a hand in stopping bad folks from getting up to bad shit.”

“There’s a difference between walking a walk and going to someone else’s war,” Van gave her the faintest hint of a shrug. He wasn’t trying to run her off, and in fact he was more than glad to see her. He just needed to understand the kindness of someone willing to ride to hell for someone that was still basically a stranger, in his eyes.

“I used to pride myself on finishing other people’s fights,” she said. “I needed to be reminded of how right doing that feels.”

She straightened and faced him. For just a moment, Van wanted to take a step back, and give space to her comparatively tiny frame.

“Courier work is good work. It’s not what I do, though,” she said. “Thank you for reminding me of what I do.”

“That is?” Van said. He’d been reading her passively, his sensors taking data and logging it to a ticker of neverending info-blather, that could tell him everything and anything he needed to know about a situation, or absolutely nothing at all. But he took a moment to take an active lock on her, right down to the slit-pupils of her jade green eyes and the corners of her sharp smile. He needed to understand something, anything, about why her dog was in his fight- was she telling him lies? Was he being manipulated?

“Like I said, I finish other peoples’ fights,” her smile was tempered with an edge that made him think that, even with the size gulf between them, were she to catch him clean with a hand, she could put enough force through his dermal armour to make him hurt. It was a smile, yes, a cool and calm one. But not one that anyone would describe as easygoing.

“I think that puts us in the same line of work, yeah?”

“Yeah, it does,” Van said. As propped up by his own strength, the sheer uncanny power he could feel at times, he had to consciously straighten himself to match the posture Telin was paying him. “Just so long as you’re willing to work with someone with a record like mine.”

She cocked her head, gave him a side squint he was beginning to become familiar with. “Trust me, you’re my kind of coworker. Just so long as you’re willing to work with someone whose record you have no idea of.”

The smile turned enigmatic, and for a second, all he could think was well, I guess you got me.

“Fair enough,” he said instead.

She gave him a little pat on his shoulder. The warmth lingered, Van felt.

“Then it’s time to go to work,” she said.