Hammers and Nails by Andrew Vaillencourt

Author:Andrew Vaillencourt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cyberpunk, action, noir, cyborg, military, crime
Publisher: Andrew Vaillencourt
Published: 2017-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

News feeds across the entire planet were squawking like startled grackles as they tried to piece together the greater story of the battle at Belham Tower. Most were leading with a terrorism angle, which was a testament to the Widow’s disinformation engines. Generally speaking, the Uptown citizenry bought the story, but if any one of those lily-white, clean-shaven, well-dressed holovid reporters had bothered to ask the folks living in the lower districts about it, they might have heard a more accurate version of events.

But no one smart enough to make it Uptown was dumb enough to ever go to Dockside for anything other than entertainment of an illicit nature. So, the terrorism story led, and nobody who mattered bought it. Lucia watched the various infonet aggregators spin their fanciful tales over breakfast at Roland’s apartment. Roland’s own informants, mostly low-level street hustlers trying to curry favor with the big man or to sell information they thought worth hard creds, were equally busy running down every rumor and unsubstantiated bit of scuttlebutt available to the darkest denizens of the New Boston underworld. The information they brought back was not of a nature that bode well for the stability of the local economy. Only Wade Manson and the Widow had survived the party, and even the most obtuse mugger plying his trade in Dockside knew what that meant.

There will be open war, Lucia realized. The one thing we have been trying so damn hard to prevent is going to happen. Once Wade and The Widow finish killing each other, The Brokerage will simply have to set up and take over. There will be no one left to stop them.

She thought of bringing in the Police because this is the sort of thing they existed to handle. But there was only so much they could accomplish against forces like this. New Boston PD would investigate, but even that untarnished institution would be stymied by interference originating as high as the Planetary Council itself. They would try, but without a catalyst to keep the pressure on them, in time they would have no choice but to drop it and move on. If there was any more fighting in the storied streets of Summertown or the jeweled thoroughfares of the Old Fen Way, then it was a sure bet the New Boston Police would maintain spirited investigations. Which is precisely why this eventuality remained improbable.

The real fighting, with all the blood and fear and death, would take place in Dockside or big Woo or maybe even Quinzy. Places where the poor people lived, and the constabulary was more pliable. It was unlikely Uptown would ever see a shot fired after the Belham raid. Thus, the decapitation of most every major crime family in a one-hundred-mile radius was swept under the rug like yesterday’s bread crumbs.

Lucia found it all incredibly frustrating. She had been raised in Uptown and had never known about anything like The Combine or The Brokerage. She had grown up thinking Big

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