Hatchette Ch. 13-14

Frustrated, Roku realized that she'd have to wait -- wait for the next Cabaret performance -- outside, in the car, and follow Tro home. Roku planned to kill the stripper, as her ordered demanded, but she wanted all the intelligence she could gather first. Roku was curious: Exactly how how big a warren of males she had stumbled upon?

The Hatchette car came equipped with a standard issue weapons package in the trunk: Auto-burner, hydro armor, a dozen plasma grenades. On the Thursday before the Cabaret, Roku drove out deep into the woods and checked over the weapons. They seemed dusty and unused and assembled by hands that were unfamiliar with their function. She field stripped everything and reassembled them the way she'd been taught in Hatchette training. Satisfied with her workmanship, she fired off a few rounds from the auto-burner into the tree, found everything in working order and packed the weapons back into the car. If, by chance, Tro lead Roku back to a sleeper cell of Dick terrorists, Roku wanted to be ready. After the Nanpa Girls and that humiliating experience, Roku was itching for a rematch. This time, no one would be catching Roku off guard, on her knees, naked with a dick in her mouth...

The next night, Roku drove herself to the south-side and parked a few black away from the Pantages. She'd dressed in black capri pants for the occasion, with a black t-shirt and a pair of heavy combat boots. It was hot -- too damn hot for such an outfit, but Roku knew she'd want to be wearing more than flip-flops and cutoffs that evening.

Guests were arriving and vanished down the side alley, just as Lady Le-En and Roku had done the week before. Roku stayed in her car. She couldn't risk going down into the Cabaret herself, after asking all those questions, even if its air-conditioning would have been a welcome thing. No, she'd have to sweat it out in the car. Roku might be recognized and she didn't want to spook the stripper before she'd had the chance to follow her.

It was a long, dull wait in the sweltering heat of the summer night.

Minutes turned into hours, and hours stacked up on each other. The audience emerged around midnight, but the performers didn't ascend until one. The singer, the comedians and then finally Tro appeared out of the alley in the company of a number of the chorus line girls. They stood talking at the mouth of the alley for over fifteen minutes before parting way with hugs and kisses. The girls heading west and Tro heading east.

She was on foot. Roku realized her car would do her no good. Tro clicked off in her heels down the street as Roku watched her. She took a corner a block or so down and Roku opened her door and sprinted after. Arriving at the corner, pressed flat against the stone wall, Roku stole a quick glance around. She could see Tro a hundred meters down the block, illuminated in the yellow light of an old style street lamp. She was turning another corner, freeing Roku to sprint the distance between the two corners in her heavy combat boots.

At the new corner, Roku peeped around, watching as Tro took the steps up the front of a old, dirty brownstone building, searching around in her purse. She pulled out a set of keys and put one into the lock of the brownstone's front door. Without looking back, unaware that she was being followed, Tro stepped inside.

Three block from the theatre... Roku could kick herself. She looked up and studied the street sign above her head, letting out a short laugh. She was less than a quarter mile from the alley down which Mei's lay... All these months, all the plotting, all the schemes, all the lures to attract males... If she'd just walked the neighborhood and knock on doors, she'd have found her quarry in an afternoon...

Live and learn, Roku told herself, stepping out openly into the street. Tro was now inside and Roku no longer needed to hide. She walked slowly, as casually as she could muster, down the street towards the brownstone. There was a small neon sign beside the front steps, with an arrow pointing down, advertising some sort of bar or restaurant in the basement. Tro had gone up, into the building proper, not down, but Roku was curious... She paused on the sidewalk in front of the brownstone, looking up at the door though which Tro had stepped, and then down at the basement bar. The place was a Pub, and Irish Pub called Moll Flanders. Roku hesitated. She should go back to her car and pop the trunk, pull out the auto-burner that she had hidden there and come back armed. But instead she took the steps down towards the basement bar, tucking her hands into the pockets of her black capri pants.

The bar was small, smoky and loud. It was dominated by a large, traditional bar, set against the back wall, with bottle after bottle of liquor stacked behind it. The expected taps for beer were positioned at the expected places at the bar, but no one in the Pub seemed to be drinking it. The dozen women who sat on stools, or at small tables up against the walls, were drinking Res from small shot glasses and smoking cigarettes. All eyes turned to look at Roku the moment she stepped through the door.

Roku wasn't welcome there.

She could feel the vibe the second the door closed behind her. There were no smiles -- no one suggestively looked Roku up and down. The two dozen or so eyes simply glared at Roku, telling her this wasn't the sort of bar she should stop for a drink in.

Roku knew she had found what she was looking for.

Taking her hands out of her pockets, Roku walked up to the bar and smiled at the barmaid. She was a heavyset, thick necked woman with red permed hair. She frowned back at Roku, drying a glass with a dish towel in her hands.

"Good evening-" Roku began to say to no one in particular.

"You got any ID?" the barmaid interrupted, "you don't look old enough to drink here." she accused.

"I'm eighteen," Roku replied, now on the defensive.

"The hell you are!" the barmaid let out an indigent grunt. She raised a chubby fingered and pointed back at the door. "How about you comeback in a year or so, sweetheart..."

"But, I'm meeting a friend here..." Roku lied. She looked around at the faces of the women sitting at the bar. They were all looking over at Roku, looking her over through the cigarette smoke. None of them could have been under forty -- everyone in the bar seemed to be in their middle-age. Was that their objection to Roku? Or was it something else...

"Oh yeah, who?" the barmaid said, putting down her dry glass and picking up a wet one.

"Tro. Doesn't she live upstairs?" Roku replied. The barmaid looked up from her drying -- Roku had caught her attention.

"Tro?" the barmaid parroted, giving Roku a sideways glance. "She's meeting you in here?"

"That's what she said..." Roku played it dumb, with a shrug of her shoulders. "So, can I get a drink while I'm waiting?"

"Why don't I give Tro a call?" the barmaid said suspiciously, putting down her glass and towel.

"Great, can I still get that drink?" Roku leaned forward, elbows on the bar, she looked over at the woman to her immediate left and smiled. "How you doing?" she said conversationally.

The barmaid reached under the bar and came up with the handset to an old style, wired phone. She didn't dial any number, just raised the earpiece and listened. Roku waited, with a stupid grid on her face, looking distractedly around the bar, playing the innocent she hoped everyone believed her to be. The barmaid listened at the phone, nodded her head silently in reply to something, then returned the handset back under the bar. Roku noticed her had didn't reemerge...

"She ain't ever heard of you..." the barmaid said tersely.

"I didn't even tell you my name..." Roku protested.

"Well... She still ain't ever heard of you. She ain't expected any visitors. Not tonight, not ever. Why don't you get along, little lady..." The barmaid stood still there behind the bar, her hand still out of sight.

"No drink?" Roku protested and laughed at her own joke. She looked around as if she expected the other patrons to think she was funny. They didn't.

"Why don't you go drink somewhere else," the woman to Roku's right offered, "before there's trouble."

"Trouble?" Roku raised her voice, incredulously. "Who said anything about trouble? I just want an fucking drink. This is a bar, isn't it?"

"We don't serve underage kids," the barmaid said flatly.

"I said I was eighteen," Roku protested, putting her hands palm down on the bar and leaning forward, aggressively. "I want to be served, damn it!"

"And I said get out," the barmaid replied, calmly. The woman to Roku's left and right decided this was the moment to get up off their stools. They might have known what was coming next, or the the might have been maneuvering to flank Roku. Luckily, Roku could keep an eye on them in the reflections off the various liquor bottles behind the bar.

"What kind of bar is this?" Roku said loudly, so she could be heard by the whole room. "I come in here, say I'm meeting a friend, and I get treated like a criminal! You know what I think? I think something shady is going on here. I think, maybe, I should just give the cops a call..." Roku paused to make sure everything was listening. She looked around into the stony gazes of the silent patrons. "How about that, huh? Get a police asking around down here? Turning over a few stones? Maybe looking into exactly what it is you're serving behind that bar?"

The Pub was deathly quiet. Everyone waited for the barmaid's reaction.

"Okay, okay kid," the barmaid said contritely, still not raising her hand from under the bar. "Maybe one drink. There's no need for any bad blood. Maybe you're eighteen, maybe you're seventeen. What do I care?"

The barmaid's free hand went under the bar and came out with a glass. She reached down again and came back with a bottle. She poured Roku a full shot of Res, never once moving the hidden hand from beneath the bar.

"Here," she said, with a gesture at the full glass, "drink up and lets be friends." Her lips curled like she was trying to smile -- like it was a physical act of torture to get her face to assume that position.

Roku picked up her glass and raised it under her nose. She took a long sniff, then held it still, in front of her lips, like she was contemplating what was to come.

"There," she said, affecting an air of smug satisfaction, "was that so hard?" She was moving the glass of Res towards her lips...

She was painfully aware of how intently the whole bar was watching her take her drink. She could feel the seconds as they crawled passed, the glass of Res making slow progress to her lips. Automatically, her bionics were clicking on. The battle sub-processor in her brain -- the computer that occupied not an insignificant portion of her left frontal lobe -- was suddenly piping her combat data: Extrapolated positions of potential targets, both in view and out of the field of vision; relative suitability as improved weapons of various items easily within arm's reach; blood pressure, oxygen and adrenal levels; potential escape and evasion pre-plotted routes; everything that Roku was about to need.

That hand, under the bar -- Roku knew the barmaid was holding onto a weapon. The battle sub-processor gave it an eighty-two percent chance of being a plasma weapon. And the woman to Roku's right, the one who'd suggested it was time for Roku to leave, Roku could see in the reflection of a bottle of vodka that she had a hand under her blouse, searching for some sort of weapon. That woman and the woman to Roku's left were each exactly one hundred and twenty degrees behind her, in a perfectly executed ambush maneuver. They'd strike simultaneously with the barmaid, Roku knew, for maximum effect...

...But they were unaware they were fighting a Hatchette.

Three against one -- well, twelve against one, when you got right down to it -- everyone but the barmaid standing behind their target. But Roku still have the element of surprise. Roku made a motion, like she was about to knock back her glass of Res -- all in one, with a gulp; with the smug, idiotic superiority Roku had attempted to display. That was their queue, they all moved to attack at once. The barmaid came up with the burner in her hand; the woman to Roku's right pulled a blade from under her blouse and the woman to Roku's left lept forward with both hand for Roku's throat.

But Roku drink didn't touch her lips -- she didn't tilt her head back as they expected, enjoying everything milliliter of the tick, syrupy Res. No, as the barmaid's burner came up, Roku thrust the glass forward, tossing its contents at the rising gun. Before the barmaid could level her weapon, it was already soaked in slick Res.

There's something about plasma weapons everything should probably know -- it's the first thing they teach you in weapon's training -- you have to be really careful never to get them wet.

A plasma bolt de-encapsulates when it enters the body of its target. That's how it kills -- all that energy, instantly released when the magnetic field that's holding the bolt together breaks down. It's the water in the human body that does this -- de-magnetices the plasma bolt -- the specific heat of water is too great for the energy bolt, it can't heat it up fast enough for the plasma bolt to pass through it, like air. So it explodes. Brilliantly, with a spectacular amount of damage. But any water will make the plasma bolt de-encapsulate. That's how a hydro vest works, it's simply bags of water that cause the bolt to explode on the outside of the wearer instead of the inside. Get a burner wet and, well... If the bolt explodes while it's still in the barrel...

The barmaid's burner exploded taking her hand and most of her forearm with it. She crashed back up against the bar, smashing into the odd assortment of liquor bottles stacked there. The alcohol, added to the barmaid's already superheated flesh, mixed to engulf her in an impressive fireball -- the barmaid letting out a blood curdling scream as she self-immolated.

The woman to Roku's right came at her with the knife. Roku extended her leg and caught the woman solidly in the stomach. She crumpled back, the wind taken out of her, and Roku spun on her left leg, throwing a punch into the face of the woman attacking from the left. That woman took the punch squarely in the nose and stagged back with a stream of blood from her nostrils. Roku came around, three sixty and threw a second punch at the winded woman to the right. Roku caught her in the chin and sent her collapsing to the floor. Roku planted her feet firmly on the ground just in time for the second wave of attackers to hit her.

The rest of the bar was up on its feet now, charging towards Roku; but the lay of the tables and chairs on the floor meant they could only practically attack Roku in a single file. Roku met each one in turn as they attacked her with an assortment of weapons: knives, blackjacks, a couple old model burners. Roku made quick work of each one in order, disarming them and delivering a knockout blow. The fight was over in under a minute, leaving Roku standing amongst a pile of prone bodies.

The fire behind the bar, that had once been the fat barmaid, was really starting to burn. Smoke was filling the Pub. Roku would have to work fast. She picked up, off the floor, the pair of old model burners two of her attackers had been carrying. She checked the pulse of one of the unconscious women. Still beating, she found -- but the smoke would soon take care of that. Roku groped at the woman's chest: Full, normal breasts. Then Roku felt down between the woman's legs. There it was, even through the fabric of the woman's pants, Roku could feel it. Just to be sure, she slipped her hand down inside the waistband. Sure enough, the flesh of a small, flaccid penis was hiding down there, between the legs of an otherwise normal looking middle-aged woman. Roku didn't have to check the others, she knew what'd she'd find. The ferocity with which they had attacked Roku, their coordinated assault. This wasn't just a den of wary criminals, these were trained and hardened Dick Terrorists. Moll Flanders was a Dick bar. And with Tro living upstairs... The whole building must be lousy with them...

The smoke was beginning to choke Roku. She cut across to her internal oxygen supply, with the carbon dioxide scrubber. It was an emergency backup implant, but it allowed Roku to go almost twenty minutes without breathing. However, it did nothing to stop the smoke stinging at Roku's eyes and she moved quickly towards the exit.

That's when she first heard the alarm.

Not a fire alarm -- no, that would have been a loud klaxon, designed to get everyone's attention -- this was an almost imperceptible ringing in some far off room, deep inside the build above. It was at the very limit of Roku's enhanced hearing, but it was definitely there. One of her attackers must have had time to push a panic button, setting off an alarm higher up in the brownstone. Roku's battle sub-processor was already computing the implications. It was throwing up potential ambush choke points -- it was giving a ninety percent chance that they'd been armed assailants waiting for Roku at the top of the front steps of the brownstone. With the height advantage and full coverage of the street for hundreds of meters in both directions, the computer was giving Roku less than three percent chance of successfully escaping.

She'd have to stay and fight. There'd be backstairs, Roku concluded, and turned away from the exit. She stepped deeper into the choking smoke, navigating by touch. She could feel the heat of the inferno that was behind the bar and skirted it to the right. She dropped to her knees and crawled as the smoke thickened. She came to doors that seemed to lead to a bathroom, then a back door with stairs beyond.

That was what she was looking for. She jumped to her feet and took the stairs up. One flight, and she put she shoulder into the door, dumping her out into the brownstone's lobby. Sure enough, the battle sub-processor's predictions had been correct, two woman stood at the front door of the building, looking down at the street. They were dressed in their underwear, obviously sleeping when the alarm roused them. Their backs were to Roku, but they turned as Roku piled through the stairwell door. Their auto-burners came swinging around, but Roku was already firing. A plasma bolt from each handgun hit each woman dead center in the chest before they could snap off a shot.

Roku didn't have time to see them fall. From behind her, someone was firing a burner. The door to the stairwell hadn't completely closed and a plasma bolt exploded against it. Roku lept forward and rolled. She came up shooting, blind down the dark corridor. Two, three, four shots. As the bolts exploded, she could see the silhouette of a figure flailing wildly.

Roku's roll had brought her to the base of the brownstone's main stairs. The sound of feet moving above could be heard -- moving down the stairs towards her. Roku raised her burners, thrusting them out in front of her, akimbo. She started up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time -- almost sprinting. From doors and around corners figures were appearing. Roku fired, pumping at the triggers. She crested the first flight of stairs, circled the landing, and started up the next flight; all the while throwing plasma bolts at any target that presented itself. Her aim was true, she didn't waste a shot. Bodies were falling out of doorways, torn apart horribly by the energy weapons. Plasma bolts exploded around Roku, but none found their mark. The residents of the Dick brownstone were panicking and shooting wildly -- attempting to escape and fight simultaneously.

Up the next flight, and Roku was at the top of the building. Here a few targets presented themselves, but Roku dispatched them without consideration. Her left burner was empty and she tossed it aside. The burner in her right hand was also low on ammunition. Roku considered searching each of the rooms that faced onto the landing, but the smoke from the fire in the basement bar was already wafting up the stairwell. It wouldn't be long before the whole brownstone was engulfed in flames.