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(Chapters 1 – 4 By EleCivil and Ryan Miller)
Hawke had taken a seat at the bar of a dismal tavern not far from The Abbot. Knocking back shots, he tried to be inconspicuous, having had enough attention for the night. Kelly’s offer still shook him, but it was sinking in that he might just do it. He was trained to be a precise killing machine and no job suited him better, but he never did like wearing suits.
Signing on with Kelly would be the third time his life had been dictated by a contract, which made it easier. Starting with the one that he never got to sign – the one that made him a ward of the state—an official signature accompanied every transition in his life. At eighteen, another contract made him a Martian soldier; all grown up and still state property, just with a stipend and a lousy salary.
As he drank, Hawke stared at a man in the dining room of the tavern wearing a blue overcoat and round glasses. He was seated at a small table with one other man in a tacky brown business suit, each downing a glass of milk. Quite a pair of showoffs – real milk being a pricy commodity, considering how little grazing ground there was on Mars. Hawke downed another shot of scotch, musing about how he’d helped defend the right of rich bastards to raise cows, yet he’d never even tasted real milk before. Life had its cruel little ironies, and Hawke had seen too many of them.
His eye was caught by a flash of gold in Blue Coat’s hand as he dropped a key ring on the table, next to his milk glass. Then Tacky Brown’s hand fluttered down casually--a breeze-loosed leaf falling with no particular destination--landing directly over the keys. Then the two stood up, Blue Coat lifting a briefcase that used to be on Tacky Brown’s side. Something was going down between those lactose-inclined strangers.
Blue Coat smirked and mumbled something to his friend, who laughed deeply and slapped him on the back, wishing him a safe trip home.
As they walked out the door, Hawke leaned towards the bartender and, with a subtle slur in his voice, asked if they had any airsickness bags. He was asked to leave and, after a few seconds of heated protest, he turned and swaggered out the door. It had been a while since he was thrown out of a bar, at least a Martian bar. The bartender said he’d had enough to drink and that, if he was going to get sick, he wasn’t going to do it there.
After stepping outside and letting the door close behind him, Hawke straightened himself out and cleared his mind. He saw a flutter of blue moving past cars through the parking lot. The be-spectacled stranger and Hawke were the only ones outside the tavern in the sprinkling rain. Hawke walked softly behind him. When Blue Coat stopped in front of a silver sedan, Hawke reached into his jacket and tossed his wallet down on the pavement.
“Excushe me.” He called. Blue Coat stopped and turned. Hawke pointed to the ground. “Is thish your wallet?”
Blue Coat bent down to examine it.
“Yes, thank you,” he replied.
As he reached down to pick it up, Hawke slid his weapon – a small, silenced Walther – from under his jacket. Hawke cleared his throat, causing Blue Coat to look up.
“Liar,” he whispered, squeezing the trigger.
“If things go correctly, this will be an unexciting night.” Kelly had told him, handing over the dossier containing all the information needed on his first targets. He’d even included a pill called a “second liver” so Hawke could keep the drinks coming until it was time to leave, staying in the tavern, but staying lucid.
Blue Coat had been a black market arms dealer, a small-time pistol-pusher with a flair for ambition and a knack throwing his weight in the direction of people who were willing to throw back, people like Elliot Kelly, who did not enjoy being pushed around.
Kelly said that Blue Coat’s latest attempt at expansion was an under-the-table deal with a Grey Faction splinter group, and that it was going down at the Tavern that night. With Factioners back at the other end of his gun, Hawke was eager to take the assignment .
He leaned down and retrieved his wallet, picking up the briefcase his target had dropped, and walked away, anything but shaken by the corpse on the pavement behind him. The dealer was down, and next on the list was the customer.
Tacky Brown was already long gone, but that was no problem – Hawke knew where he was going. Kelly said Blue Coat wouldn’t carry the goods on his person; that would be too risky. No, he would keep them far from the Factioner until he could get away with the money, probably in a personal storage unit. To ID the storage unit, all Hawke had to do was ID the keys Blue Coat brought with him. The customer had been handed one with orange tabs at the end – Lock-Rite Storage, five blocks East.
“Don’t kill the customer.”
Such were his instructions, though Hawke didn’t care for them. The customer was Grey’s, and there wasn’t a cop in Marineris that would bat an eye if a dead Factioner turned up in an ally somewhere. But Hawke didn’t become a lieutenant because he questioned orders.
He sped up, moving at a quick clip through the side streets, hoping to reach his destination quicker than the customer. But the customer was on the main roads; the long, straight paths that led directly to Lock-Rite. He wouldn’t be taking shortcuts, for the customer had no idea that booking it might improve his chances of survival. No, the customer wasn’t in a hurry.
“Don’t kill the customer.”
“Why not?”
“It’s your first day, lieutenant. Don’t wear yourself out. Just bring me the key.”
Hawke heard the chirp of a siren behind him. He didn’t bother turning around, but sidestepped into the doorway of a fish-packing plant, jumped and planted his feet and hands on either side of the stone arch over the door, holding himself above the view of the passing police. His papers classified him as “unemployed” meaning he would have to give one hell of a good reason to the cops for being in an industrial zone after hours. As he hung 6 feet over a doormat, he reminded himself to ask Kelly for fake IDs on his next mission.
He was still stuck on Kelly’s fondness for the customer. Why would he want to arrange a trip for the dealer who was selling to Grey Faction, but not want to buy a ticket for the Factioner? It made no sense to Hawke. But Kelly’s orders didn’t have to make sense; they had to make money. And this job was going to earn Hawke his first paycheck. He decided it wasn’t worth screwing up.
The flashing lights of the cop car disappeared from the dank street and Hawke hopped down, his hand diving inside his black jacket for his gun. He peered out of the doorway and saw the bright orange Lock-Rite sign on the other side of the street. Easing off his piece, he ran across the street, leaped over a metal fence, grabbed the edge of a roof and swung himself on top of the small concrete reception office. Looking out at the sea of large orange lockers before him, he shot a security camera on the edge of the roof and jumped down into a cloak of silent shadows, waiting.
He didn’t wait long. The customer strolled into view through the front gates, stepping lightly and carelessly, appearing to be a regular Joe coming to pull something out of his locker for the night.
Hawke’s lips curled. He took special pleasure out of aiming his P-15 at Factioners. In his mind, he was just evening a bitter score, a debt that he needed to collect from Grey. He took a breath, getting his anger under control, and crept to the edge of the shadows.
As the customer passed, Hawke reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, turning and heaving the customer into the alley. The customer let out a weak grunt as his back met the metal edge of a dumpster. He didn’t waste any time pulling out his revolver.
Could have popped him when he walked by and gotten the key from his pocket--an unexciting night.
But no, this one’s supposed to live.
Hawke lifted a nearby garbage can and threw it at the customer. He saw the customer’s gun muzzle flash as the can struck him in the arm. No telling where that bullet went.
Hawke pulled out his own pistol as the customer was regaining his balance. He reached his arm out and put bullet in the customer’s wrist. The revolver clattered as it dropped to the concrete. Before the customer could fight back, Hawke stepped forward and pistol-whipped him in the side of the head. The customer fell next to his weapon, head bouncing once before settling on the pavement, just as his handgun had done seconds before.
Hawke picked up the unconscious customer’s firearm, then searched his pockets. He took the key out of the breast pocket of the brown jacket, leaving the customer’s wallet where it was. After all, he wasn’t a thief.
Sitting in front of the fireplace of his penthouse, Elliot Kelly turned to see Hawke step out of the elevator holding a briefcase in one hand and, on the other, spinning a key ring on his finger.
“How did it go? Enjoy yourself?” Kelly asked, forsaking his comfortable chair to stand over his Angel of Death.
Hawke walked over in front of the fire, set the briefcase down on the floor and dropped the keys into his new boss’s waiting palm.
“There weren’t any problems, if that’s what you mean,” he replied.
“What of the arms dealer who insisted on making me a political figurehead.”
“Taken care of.”
“And his customer? No…casualties, I hope.”
“He’ll live.”
“Good. You’ve done well. You’ve shown more restraint than I expected.”
Hawke grunted. He wasn’t in the mood for compliments.
“And, of course, you aren’t walking away empty-handed, are you.” Kelly produced an envelope from his jacket pocket and pressed it into Hawke’s hand.
Hawke opened it up and counted it, quickly. Earlier that night, he had become a killer. Now, he was a hit man. A small distinction, and not one that made a difference to the twinges of uncertainty playing their way across the insides of his eyelids as he took a breath. There were fifty thousand dollars in his hands, much more than he had ever earned for a day’s work in the service. Fifty thousand dollars was the price at which he’d sold his soul. Not to the devil, but to a pallid politician with a well-furnished penthouse.
Not that there was much of a difference.
“I will have more assignments later,” Kelly said. “Though, this man was just a small fish. Don’t expect them all to be so easy.”
“What makes you think it was easy?” asked Hawke.
“No bodyguards, barely armed. As I said, an unexciting night.”
“How do you know all that?”
Kelly shook his head, smiling. “Come, now. I wouldn’t entrust the lives of my enemies to you without so much as a trial run.”
“What?”
“I had my eyes on you the whole night.” He motioned to a doorway by the elevator. Standing there, one wrist tightly wound with medical gauze, was Tacky Brown. “Raven, I’d like you to meet…well, you can call him John.”
Hawke scoffed and said, “I guess I don’t feel so bad about letting you live.”
“Is that supposed to be an apology?” asked John. “And I want my gun back.”
“I don’t have it,” replied Hawke. “I tossed it in some dumpster on my way over here.”
John’s eyes grew wild and he stepped towards Hawke with his good hand drawn back in a fist. Hawke took out his Walther, pressed it against John’s chest and clicked the hammer back. John looked down at the black semi-auto then over at Kelly, eyes pleading for support.
“No need to dispatch a co-worker, lieutenant,” Kelly said. “What John lacks in finesse he makes up for in earnest. He is rather a…jack-of-all-trades, a wild card in my deck of employees. Tonight, he was working both as bait and as my eyes.”
“Wanted to make sure I knew how to kill a man?” asked Hawke, putting his gun away as John begrudgingly stepped back.
“I couldn’t take chances with a new man in my employ,” replied Kelly. “What if you had decided that, instead of shooting the mark, you would warn him, tell him that Elliot Kelly had a hit out on him, and that, for the right price, you would give him more information? And what if, upon seeing what you believed to be a member of Grey’s Faction, you decided to let your personal differences get in the way of your orders?”
“Then you’d be short one…John. But I know of no one who would shed a tear for some Faction low-life.”
Kelly’s nostrils flared and his lips curled into a sneer, but then he smiled and chuckled, as though he’d told an inside joke between he and himself. “You have a zeal for your work, and that is something I can respect,” said Kelly. “But you still managed to wing poor John.” He turned to John, who was staring at Hawke. “Restoring that wrist is not going to be cheap. Quite a few nerves need repair. It’ll come out of your pay, John.”
“What?” John’s eyebrows went up, looking at Kelly. “But Boss.”
“Oh, calm down. If you hadn’t brought your revolver, he wouldn’t have shot you. Be glad you didn’t lose that hand tonight,” Kelly said.
John bowed his head and sunk back into the doorway from whence he came, giving Hawke a sideways glare.
“Okay,” Kelly said, turning back to Hawke. “That is all I need of you tonight. I’ll call you when I have the next assignment.”
Hawke nodded and stepped into the elevator, allowing himself a deep breath as the doors slid to a close.
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