Impulse Control

The driver tried to veer back right but with the engine destroyed he was outpaced by the Firebird in less than a second. All he managed to accomplish was spinning sideways on the street before coming to a stop, much to the impotent fury of the gunner in the bed who waved another harpoon at the rapidly departing Dawson.

Up ahead the first tusk truck was on the left side of the road, its driver trying to get the gunner in position to fire at the Humanis driver. Pickers had forced his way to the same side of the rear seat and was using his Predator to take shots at the ork gunner's face. A welded-on bullet shield was deflecting the rounds while the ganger waited for Pickers' clip to run out so he could peek his head up and shoot another harpoon at the tercel's driver.

The scrawny red-headed Humanis member, still in a robe, noticed Dawson gaining on them and pulled something out of his lap, twisting around and pointing with his left arm out of the rear window. In his hand was a gun with a profile Dawson recognized immediately: a Ceska Black Scorpion.

Bullets sprayed in a short burst from the barrel, hitting the road to Dawson's left. Pickers immediately turned around, looking at the street behind them and then grabbing the robed red-head by his hair and wrenching him back down into the seat, shouting don't shoot at her you drekhead!

No longer under fire the bloody tusk gunner stood all the way up and aimed his harpoon at the tercel's driver side door. It stuck in just below the window and made the driver swerve to the right, dangerously close to the edge of the embankment. The ork hit the rope-return motor on his gun and with a loud sound of shattering glass and twisting metal the tercel's door was ripped from the frame. Dawson veered left to avoid it as it bounced down the street into the lightless night.

She drove the Firebird back towards the center of the road as the ork gunner ducked down and held on to his gun emplacement, giving him the stability to stay in the bed of the truck as it followed the tercel into a tight turn. This brought them onto the street Dawson had visited earlier; to her immense relief there was no line of people standing in front of the empty simsense theater like there had been before.

Aligning the Firebird with the tusk war truck, Dawson leaned out of the open-again door and spent a single second lining up her shot. After the aim, a steel rod at medium velocity flew out of the Accelerator and stuck into the rear driver's side tire on the truck. Not only did the tire immediately explode, the rod lodged halfway into the rim itself which immediately ceased rotation. Sparks from the exposed rim as well as from the rod started a low-definition light show as they scraped over the asphalt.

Rather than hit the brakes, the ork driver swerved to the left of the road, spinning the vehicle around completely a single time before planting front-end first into the heavy duty concrete facade of the the theater, sending enormous chunks raining down on the cabin amid the old posters of trideos titles from a decade ago. The gunner managed to jump off just before impact and went rolling down the street in dark street, briefly silhouetted by the departing tail lights of the Humanis tercel.

Dawson sped past the scene of the crash after Pickers and his men, but a small twinkle of orange in her driver's side mirror had her hitting the brakes. The truck was on fire.

She hit her steering wheel with one balled fist. "Damn it!" Gritting her teeth she spun the Firebird around and drove back until she was a hundred feet from the crash, where she took off her hat, holstered the Accelerator and opened the gullwing door to hop out. After she was away the door shut on its own and locked with a resounding click.

Sprinting around the truck, Dawson came up to the driver's side of the cabin which had been broken open in the crash, the metal barely hanging on to the frame. As she expected the ork driver was still in the seat, groaning something unintelligible. By the light of the growing fire from the front of the truck, she could see that the engine block had partially come through the front of the cabin and pinned the orc to the seat where the hot metal was burning through his ratty threadbare jeans and reaching his mottled flesh below.

Dawson took a step to the side to look into the bed of the truck. The bolts had come off of the harpoon gun and snapped its base in half, leaving it dangling over one side of the truck, but she found what she was looking for in a leather bag tied to a mooring point on the frame: harpoons. Pulling one out she returned to the cabin and slid the blunt end of the harpoon in the slim space between the ork's chest and the back of the protruding engine block.

Setting her end of the harpoon against the rear door frame, Dawson pushed with all the muscle she could muster. The engine block squealed in protest, as did the window frame and even the harpoon itself, but she kept at it and after several seconds the enormous hunk of metal was physically forced back towards the front of the truck by several inches, enough to get it off of the legs of the driver.

She dropped the now-bent harpoon on the ground and seized the ork by his jacket collar, pulling him out of the cabin and onto the ground. Then she hooked one arm around his upper body and one around his legs to lift him up onto her shoulders. The ganger was well-fed; he weighed a ton.

Desperately Dawson carried the driver away from the truck until she was about a hundred feet away down the road, where she put him down flat on his back and spent several seconds catching her breath. Once she had, she went to the ork and used two fingers to check his pulse. He had gotten a hit to the face in the crash, probably from the steering wheel, and his legs appeared to have second degree burns, but nothing on him looked life-threatening.

She was just standing up when the gunner hit Dawson in the back with a wooden club. The blunt object broke across one of her shoulder blades in a painful crack of the aged and brittle material. Crying out and falling to one knee, Dawson lifted her arm to ward off the next blow with the now half-size club, which hit her in the arm and drove her face-first into the asphalt below. The trench coat offered little padding against direct hits to her body and only Dawson's muscle kept her from getting a broken arm.

The ork raised the broken weapon again intending to bring it down on Dawson's head when a drone featuring Lone Star branding flew directly into the side of his face. Stumbling to one side, the ork swiped at the plate-sized collection of propellers and cameras with one meaty fist, eventually grabbing and throwing it onto the ground where one of its blades broke. In tunnel-vision fury he proceeded to stomp on it twice with his right foot, completely shattering the small device and ensuring it would neither move or see ever again.

His destructive indulgence had cost him. When he turned back towards Dawson she was bringing her hand towards his belly in a jab that knocked the wind out of him, and she followed it with an uppercut to his dropped jaw that actually lifted him slightly off the ground and sent him flying backwards onto the ground amid the wreckage of the drone.

Groaning, the ork forced himself to his knees and found himself looking at the Ares Accelerator Mark I in Dawson's right hand. Breathing heavily, she set her left to the dial and turned it up to maximum velocity. The rod inside the cylinder started to glow red hot, visible down the barrel from the ork's point of view.

Showing sudden clarity and wisdom, the panting ork lifted his arms up into the air beside his head.

Dawson used the barrel of the gun to gesture to the ork driver on the ground. The gunner looked to him and then back to her in suspicion.

"Don't give me time to change my mind," Dawson said severely.

Slowly the ork stood up, arms remaining up until he made it to the driver. He lifted the other ganger up and threw him over one shoulder before he began backing away. Dawson did the same slowly, gun still pointed in his direction until they lost sight of each other in the night.

Once back at the Firebird, Dawson dialed the Accelerator down to minimum velocity and let the cylinder spin for several seconds to vent the heat before holstering it again. At her touch the gullwing door lifted up and admitted her into the driver's seat with a groan.

Dawson muttered, "Fuck," squeezing one hand on the steering wheel. She took only a few moments to compose herself before starting the car again and heading down the street in the same way Pickers went.

Right before taking the next turn she saw the bloody tusk truck explode in her rear-view mirror, sending fragments of rusty shrapnel and ancient smoking automotive components scattering for dozens of feet.

Cruising along the street slowly, Dawson peered into every apartment garage door and scanned every parking lot looking for the doorless tercel. To her genuine surprise she found the vehicle parked in the lot of an old service station, the driver sat down on the ground against one of the pumps with Pickers tending to an injury in his leg while the red-head stood a nervous guard with his scorpion.

Lights on, Dawson approached slowly in the Firebird. Pickers and Red-head immediately noticed her approach and the latter of the two pointed his gun towards her vehicle, holding it in both hands. Standing up, Pickers grabbed him by the arm and forced it down by grabbing Red-head's wrist and twisting it.

If I see you pull that thing out one more time tonight, Pickers mouthed severely, I'm gonna make you eat it. Red-head stumbled back but quickly hit the gun back in his belt, below his white robe.

Pulling up on the opposite side of the parking lot, Dawson got out of the Firebird and only briefly leaned on the hood. She left her hat in the passenger seat and rolled her shoulders, coming around the car to meet Pickers in the middle of the barren station's yard.

"You've still got it, old woman," Pickers called out to her with an amused grin etched across his face. The friendly smile he'd once had was now marred by a number of scars, the mounting number of years and the ugly scorpion patterned onto his cheek and forehead.

Whatever already meager joy seeing Pickers again might have brought Dawson had been beaten out of her back on the street. Her voice came out low and hostile.

"And I'm surprised you're not dead yet," she shot back. "What did you do to get a target on your back this time, Pickers? Kill someone's brother?"

The good cheer on the man's face faded at once and he adopted the tone he must have employed all the time when addressing his Humanis cohorts. "The war continues," he announced. "It will be a long fight but it must be a fight."

"Fucking spare me, Jason. You're too smart for that supremacy spiel. How many is it going to take, huh? How many ork kids do you think you have to put in the ground before it brings him back to life?"

Pickers' facade of stern control immediately evaporated, giving way to the tidal wave of emotion below. "Don't you talk about him," he shouted at her, voice wavering. "Do you even remember his name, Dawson?"

"Victor Gabriel Reyes, Knight Errant employee serial H445639. He was my friend too, Jason."

"Yeah?" Pickers said, taking a step towards Dawson and pointing at her chest. "If that's true then why aren't you here with me, Imp? Why didn't you do anything after he was killed? How many years did we spend freeing those animals from camps, keeping the protectorate from gassing them in their dens only for a pack of gangers to kill him on a street corner like he was--like he was just target practice!"

"I didn't do anything because there was nothing to do, Jason! They fucking caught the tusks who did it five days later! For fuck's sake, they were all dead in prison fights within six months! Is that not punishment enough?"

Pickers ran his hand over his face to wipe from it the sweat he'd built up while screaming at her. "It's not about punishment," he said with something approaching calm. "It's about making sure no decent, honest human has to suffer what I've suffered. It's about safety, prosperity, and security."

"You're a regular prophet of peace, Pickers," Dawson spat at him, words oozing contempt. Pickers swallowed once and then asked plainly.

"What do you want, Dawson?"

Their philosophical differences were as resolved as they were likely ever to get, so she turned to the matter at hand. "Applied Reactions."

He looked at her with a brief flash of worry, then muttered "Never heard of it."

"Don't waste my time," Dawson shot back. "I found the decker you hired to turn off the alarms."

His face twisted in barely-contained fury. "It's alive?"

"She is," Dawson said, her voice suddenly at a much higher volume, "And she's going to stay that way. Do you hear me, Pickers? You're not going to touch her or any of her friends or the next time you see me it won't be with a badge in my coat."

Pickers' brows went up in a combination of genuine surprise and well-deserved fear. His strong reaction struck Dawson as peculiar, as did the sudden raising of her own voice. Why had her emotions suddenly run so high when she said that? She was only protecting a witness. It was nothing out of the ordinary.

Wasn't it?

He swallowed audibly and said, "Fine. What do you want to know?"

Dawson ran through the list of her evidence thus far. "Do you have the orichalcum?"

Pickers snorted derisively. "I wish. If I did, do you think I'd be riding around in a tercel from 2030?"

"I think you'd be smart enough not to flaunt a huge payday so soon after a robbery and a murder."

His face became defensive. "We didn't kill anybody," Pickers claimed. "Me and my muscle were told to go into the lab, rough it up and bring the orichalcum back to my client who was waiting in the lobby.

"So you didn't kill the accountant?" Dawson questioned. Pickers breathed a disbelieving ha.

"Humanis doesn't support the killing of other humans under any circumstances. And anyway why would we? Who do you think let us into the lab after the automated alarms were shut down?"

Dawson turned her head to one side, considering this new dimension. "He was in on it?"

"Yeah," Pickers said, "Only he must not have known the whole plan because when I came out of the lab, poor bastard was dead. My client had opened his throat with a ritual dagger and was draining his blood into a basin."

"Your client," Dawson reiterated, "Someone from Aztechnology?"

Pickers shrugged. "Probably, based on the mask. Never saw his face and the only name he wanted to be addressed by was Johnson. Cheap bastard, too--I found out after the job that he only paid us an eighth of what that canister of liquid orichalcum was worth. I would have kept it if I'd known that."

"The accountant was probably the real target," Dawson theorized. "Any idea why?"

"Dawson, I didn't even know he was going to kill that guy, let alone why he might have killed him. You'd have to ask him."

"Where did you meet him?" Dawson asked. Pickers looked a little uncomfortable and his answer was slow in slipping out.

"...met him in the lounge of the Troll Atoll."

"The strip club?" Dawson asked, sincerely appalled at his hypocrisy. "You're a piece of work, Pickers."

"I go there to find targets for us to defame," Pickers said without conviction, "Humans who are dating trolls."

"And how many times did you go there before you started fitting that description?" she asked back.

He waved his hand dismissively. "No one will take a star's word against mine."

"Had you seen him there prior to that?" Dawson pressed. Pickers nodded slowly in confirmation.

"Yeah. I think he recruits for jobs there pretty often. I haven't been back there since--in case it wasn't clear, I was trying to lay low."

"You did a fine job of that," she complimented, nodding towards his half-destroyed tercel. He grunted in acknowledgement.

"Dawson," Pickers said at a low volume, "When I told the azzie that I had to look outside my gang for a decker, he said to find someone expendable and that he'd arrange an accident for them."

Her mouth twitched at the left corner when she heard him refer to Alenia as expendable. The spike of fury she felt must have made it to her face because Pickers took a slow step back.

"You're saying," she muttered through her teeth, "She's still in danger."

"Not from me," Pickers said, "But the azzie saw the elf's face. You know how corporates are with loose ends."

"Yeah," Dawson said, "We used to be ones ourselves, in case you forgot."

"I remember the bad times a lot clearer than the good," Pickers said sullenly.

"We weren't drunk for the bad times," she reminded him. And over that they shared one small, sad smile.

She looked to the two Humanis members by the tercel and then back at Pickers. "I'd ask you to stop what you're doing but I know you won't. So instead all I can do is hope you'll die before you do something that makes you realize how ashamed he would be of you if he saw you like this."

Sensing that their conversation was over, Pickers started backing away. "Your problem has always been the same, Dawson," he called out, reaching up to tap the left side of his head with two fingers. His left eye was the cybernetic one.

"Too much essence, Imp. You worry about people who aren't even born yet. Get some tech up there and you'll find it's a lot easier to focus on the here and now."

Dawson turned away and half-walked, half-limped back to the Firebird. She all but collapsed into the driver's seat and hit the ignition start. The purr of the electric engine powering on was barely audible beneath her heavy breathing.

As she drove back towards Silicon Valley, Dawson fed a compact disc into the slot on the stereo. Soon a crescendo of metallic instruments was keeping her company as she sped through the night.

"Never give uuup, fight against all evil! Show me what you gooot, be a firm believer!!"

= = =

Dawson wasn't really thinking about anything on the elevator ride up to her floor. Or perhaps she was thinking, but only about the pain in her shoulder and her arm and her leg and her face. She'd caught sight of herself in the rear-view during the drive and learned some piece of sharp asphalt had cut a shallow line across her left cheek, leading a thin sheet of blood to trickle down beside her mouth before drying.

A KE surveillance drone caught sight of her in the hallway but didn't slow to inspect her; Dawson returning from a night out in a state of disarray was sadly not an uncommon occurrence and the rigger in ops didn't even consider it worth investigating. She appreciated the solitude.

After briefly considering the soykaf machine, Dawson decided it would be better not to prolong her exhaustion and she made for her door instead. Punching in the code caused the cross bars to shift into the wall and let her open the way into her apartment. Standing just past the corner of the hallway, Alenia was peering cautiously out from the living room. The presence of her left leg in view indicated she was wearing only one of Dawson's shirts... the same one she'd worn yesterday.

Shutting the door behind her served as the signal for Alenia to come scurrying out from her half-cover to crash into Dawson and throw her arms around the detective's midsection. "I'm so glad you're back," she said, words dripping with relief that was beginning to drain out of her. Dawson used one arm to keep her at the same pace as she walked forward into the living room.

"I was so worried when--when..." Alenia hesitated, then seemed to cobble together an approximation of an answer that wouldn't in some way reflect badly on her. "...when you left earlier..."