The Mercenaries’ Tale – 1.14 Sniping
Natural assassins kill to a beat. Like a proficient ballroom dancer circling to the key notes of a waltz, a good killer moves from one target to the next in one continuous movement.
Blaise secreted herself within an alcove under one of the balconies overlooking the three layers of decks leading up to the conference hall. The ship was a mess of raised platforms and elevated viewpoints, all lost and wasted on the flat nothingness of the Dustlands that stretched for miles in all directions. Blaise had scouted the cubby hole after noting that careless workmanship had resulted in one of the balconies being built on part of an unfinished, badly planned balcony. Rather than work her way around the hallways and stairs to get up there, she ran a finger along the brim of her hat and licked her lips before running up the wall and deftly climbing it as instinctively as a cat might scale a fence, using outcroppings and window ledges as handholds before sliding herself into the nook.
Now comfortably hidden, she swung the rifle off of her back and took a quick peek, the barrel of her rifle bouncing around as she took stock of the environment in front of her through the rifle’s scope. A quick tally made for sixteen probable Dalminetti goons. She made sure the silencer was screwed on to the rifle’s barrel tightly with one turn of her hand. Settled, she closed her eyes and thought loud and clear.
You there, Gratin?
It took a moment for a reply. The first time she ever experienced it, she almost fell over. People live their whole lives with a voice in their head: their own voice. It’s not often someone else’s voice gets to speak in a person’s mind, but one of Gratin’s many talents was telepathy. He apparently couldn’t read minds, which she was sceptical about, but he could definitely ‘talk’ to you without moving his mouth and could sense other people without seeing them.
I’m suitably placed, Mistress Blaise.
Although he hadn’t actually said anything out loud, Blaise could instinctively determine that it came from above and pointed her scope upwards, centring on the floating figure of Gratin, his legs and arms crossed as he sat on nothing but sky.
I’d like to know how you do that, said Gratin’s voice.
“Me too,” sighed Blaise, returning her rifle downwards to level with the first likely target.
Pardon? said Gratin. Blaise cleared her throat, feeling awkward.
Sorry, I said “Me too”, she thought. Have you found Doug yet?
It’s difficult to pick out any particular aura with so many people present, the mage responded. However, I believe I have located him somewhere below…around him is the lingering sensation of…coldness, I think.
Blaise briefly wondered whether it was actually an ‘aura’ that mages sensed, or whether that was a fancy word for life signs.
It’s the best word to describe it, despite its ethereal qualities, said Gratin defensively.
“You weren’t supposed…” Blaise grunted and rolled her eyes as she bit her lip. You weren’t supposed to hear that! she thought.
Apologies, said the mage. Thoughts are thoughts, after all. How would you like to proceed?
I’ll take care of the goons, you mop up any stragglers.
Certainly. Since I’m not expecting any I shall devote my energies to ensuring that Doug remains unharmed. It shall be difficult, given the walls and the lack of visual contact.
Blaise nodded out of habit, and then shook her head to herself when she realised that Gratin probably couldn’t see the gesture from up there. With two fingers she flicked an earpiece out of the band of her hat and pressed it into her ear. With the nail on her index finger, she indented the small button on the earpiece, and a low pumping beat began in her head.
Natural assassins kill to a beat. Blaise didn’t kill naturally; she preferred some musical assistance to aid her. The low bass segued into one of her favourite songs. Although the song’s name was officially lost to time1, it was a fair bet that it was called ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ since that was the line that got repeated the most.
I like this song, said an unwelcome voice interrupting her thoughts as she tried to organise them.
“Shh,” said Blaise. She lined the sights up with the suited man she’d mentally designated as a starting point and waited for the lyrics to begin.
“Let’s go!”
She pulled the trigger. As the anonymous suited man’s brains decorated the wall behind him, his two friends barely had time to react as they were deliberately picked off, each with a bullet wound to the head. Two more nearby took fatal wounds to the head region while rushing to aid their dead comrades.
Blaise clacked the bolt on her rifle and slipped in another five round cartridge.
“Another one bites the dust!”
She managed to pot a thug trying to pin-point her out while waving a 2Freddy gun around.
“And another one gone”
One of the suits cowering behind a waste bin felt warm metal slide briefly through his ear holes followed by complete blackness as Blaise made an educated guess as to where his head was and shot at the bin.
“And another one gone, another one bites the dust”
One of the suits had cottoned on to what was going on and was pelting in retreat towards the doors near him, shoving a large tourist couple out of his way as he sprinted for his life, vaulting over tables and ducking his head from side to side in attempt to be a moving target. Blaise tracked him with a steady aim and a smile.
“Hey, I’m gonna get ya too”
She put a bullet in the guy’s calf and, as he screamed and fell, she readjusted and fired. Red pulpy goo splashed the glass doors in front of the suit and scared off a tall bulky man about to step out on to the deck from the other side.
“Another one bites the dust!”
Foot tapping to the beat, Blaise clacked the gun open and slotted another cartridge into the breach. Civilians were running every which way now, and the remaining suits in the area were on to where she was hiding. She counted eight down so far. One of the goons right below her burst into green flame and ran towards the nearby swimming pool.
Nine, corrected Gratin. Blaise grinned as she swung herself out of the hole and hooked herself around the railing above, left leg wrapped around one of the vertical bars as she took aim at the first suit planning to open fire below. The funkier part of the song kicked in as she gave his temple an air hole.
“How do you think I’m going to get along without you when you’re gone!”
It was now a game of taking out the guys about to open fire before they could, because the first sound of conflict might be a signal for Doug’s captors to execute him. Her rifle darted around and she quickly offed two goons who had picked her out as they raised their guns.
“You took me for everything that I had and kicked me out on my own!”
Before the less observant thugs running around below could fathom her position, she leapt over the railing on to the deck and rolled through the door nearby, swivelling once prone so she was now looking down the rifle’s sights through the door and at the opposite balcony. The yelling of alerted mafia thugs brought three more through the door on to the balcony in her line of sight and Blaise allowed herself the momentary satisfaction of the music’s lyrics synching with what she was about to do as her finger tensed on the trigger.
“Out of the doorway the bullets rip, to the sound of the beat!”
- There is a vast collection of ancient but loved music in this age, preserved and distributed in all but the names and stories of the artists who created them. Take for example the case of the vast back-catalogue of songs by Elvus Priestley who, according to the majority of music historians, was recognised as The One True King sent from the heavens to die for our sins via the unholy means of clogged arteries, his loyal followers faithfully awaiting the Second Coming of Priestley until the following died out. This is actually a source of controversy within historical education circles, as certain well-informed (and only slightly obsessive) academics with access to the kinds of rare pre-emptively fragile books that fall apart if you even think of opening them contend that the Priestley legend is actually the result of contamination of details from an ancient religion merging with the artist’s history. The religion in particular concerns Faustus Christ, the son of the Devil who sold his soul to a higher power in order to gain eternal life.
The peculiar thing about time is the effect it has on stories. Imagine a game of Chinese whispers where you receive a message and turn to pass it on to the next person in the chain only to discover that they’re in the next millennia. That puts quite a damper on effectively conveying the message you hold, so you say ‘sod that’ to waiting around in person and instead pass it on to someone else and hope that it gets through okay. This is how human history works, and even those that decide to write their interpretation of the message they carry down on paper are still only conveying a diluted, not completely informed representation of the thing the message originally was.
One man says ‘visionary revolutionary singer’, the next interprets it as ‘prophesizing dogmatist saviour’. It’s an easy mistake to make. ↩
- It would be unreasonable to expect the ‘Tommy gun’ to survive this long into the future. It’s post-modern day equivalent, the ‘Freddy gun’, is very similar in design and purpose: drum magazine, rapid fire and your choice of wood-textured stock (now with real wood!), the Freddy gun is a mafia family favourite and just one of the many luxury guns brought to you by Gifelle Arms & Weapons, the people who brought you popular weapon lines such as the Gat™. It could be worse: originally they were going to call it the ‘Barry gun’. ↩
Post by Sean Patrick Payne | November 11, 2013 at 12:00 pm | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment
Tags: Blaise, Dalminetti Mafia, Elvus Priestley, Faustus Christ, Gifelle Arms & Weapons, Gratin, guns and weaponry, history, music, Queen, the Dalminetti airship massacre