The Business of War

Once and Always


Chapter 7

"Yeah, well, thin's 're goin' a lil' nuts out there. I don't mind sayin' it..."

Cassandra was humming as she made her way through the halls of RPD HQ when she heard the voice. It brought a smile to her face as she rounded the next door and snuck up on her friend to give him a hug. It was hard to manage, in some ways.

"You're back!" she laughed. "Oh, god, I was worried about you!"

Hardman laughed. "Yeah, I bet ya were. Worried abou' tha' paycheck thin', at least."

She gave him a look and grinned. "Well, a girl's gotta make a living somehow."

Hardman gave her a smile and gave Turboman a look. "Uh... gonna have ta finish this up later man. I gotta talk ta Cass."

"No problem," the leader of Drastic Measures nodded, excusing himself from the room.

"What's up?" Cassandra asked, giving Hardman a look that could be loosely described as quizzical and more accurately known as confused.

"Well..." the big blue robot chewed on his lower lip, a sure sign that he was anxious about something. It was one of his biggest tells, really, and he never even realized that he did it sometimes. "It's jus' tha'... Well, Gaderham tells me ya been helpin' 'im track down this vigilante guy roamin' th' city?"

"More interested watching, rather than actual help, but yeah, I guess. Gag has too."

Hardman nodded. "Good, I guess bu'... Well, I jus' want ya ta be careful, y'know?"

"I can take care of myself," she said defensively.

"I got no doubts about tha'," Hardman said, putting a large hand on her shoulder. "But this is somethin' way biggern' mad scientists wi' pterodactyl robots an' rich kids help fer ransom 'n volcanos. This 's a war, Cass, an' a damn ugly one. They're smart enough ta kill ya when you show up th' first time, an' not write ya off as a pest who can't do anythin'. These bad guys 'r smart as hell. You an' I both know how dangerous Mesmerman is."

The name sent a chill down her spine. Mesmerman had been responsible for her time in the cybernetic shell known as Siegema'am, which had been a thoroughly less than pleasant experience, to say the least.

"An'," Hardman sighed "word has it Mesmerman's somewhere IN th' city, somehow. Gag tells me he's th' guy responsible fer shelter 4 gettin' a new coat o' red paint."

"Yeah, but he hasn't been heard about since," Cassandra said, hoping to reassure her large friend.

"Don't be too sure," Gaderham said, rolling into the room from a different door. "One of our patrols found something."

"Mesmerman or the vigilante?" Cassandra asked, moving past Hardman to where Gaderham was laying out files on the room's single desk.

"Both, I think..."

"Oh, joy," Hardman grunted.

"We found a peculiar sight in one of the ruined sections of town. A bunch of bodies piled up on each other, and they'd all been moved around recently. Initial forensic evidence suggests that they all killed each other in a startlingly creative amount of ways," Gaderham fanned out a few pictures of the bodies, piled up on each other like they'd all been trying to get to something. Hardman and Cassandra both looked them over as Gaderham continued. "When we got clearance to move them around, we found a safe underneath them all, still locked tight, and when we busted it open, it was empty except for a letter that was addressed to a... let me get this right... a Vincent Williamson."

"Th' CEO o' Gavel Arms," Hardman grunted. "Th' guy General Cutman had been impersonatin' before th' war started."

"What did the letter say?" Cassandra asked.

Gaderham flipped through a few pages. "Well... let's see... Ah, it says 'And they lay there what took the plunge with sightless glare and their lips struck dumb while we shared all by the rule of thumb.' I can't quite make sense of it, I'm afraid."

Hardman gave Gaderham an incredulous look. "Not up ta date on yer drinkin' songs, are ya, Wheelie?"

"Gaderham," he correctly thoughtlessly, "and what do you mean by that?"

Cassandra, who'd gotten lost in the photographs shook her head. "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."

"S'a song called th' Derelict. Ol' pirate drinkin' song. Hell, it makes sense ta me. The whole song's about a group o' dead men on a boat tha' gets found, drifitn' out at sea, and it turns out tha' th' crew all killed each other over th' gold in th' chest."

"Interesting," Gaderham said, "but I fail to see how it helps us."

Hardman opened his mouth to speak but the speaker overhead crackled to life. "IIIIINFIDELS! I demand that all avaialable Mechanical Maniacs make haste to my office for their next mission! NOW!"

Hardman sighed. "I gotta go, I guess. Here's hopin' we don't botch THIS job too. Cass'll know the details, Gaders, so just ask her," he said as he left the room, stopping at the door long enough to look at Cassandra and say "You take care of yourself," before disappearing from view.

Cassandra sighed as she watched him go before Gaderham attracted her attention again. "How does this obscure piece of nautical history help me?"

She gave the photos a look again. "Well, for one, the first few verses of the song describes how each of the people in the pile of bodies were killed. One got strangled, one got stabbed with a pike, one got shot, one got his skull cracked open, etcetera, etcetera, but..." she gave everything a closer look as she continued. "There's a verse after the one in the safe, which talks about a woman who'd been aboard the vessel who'd also been killed. Stabbed in the heart, I think. I don't know how that helps... It could be the song is supposed to refer to how General Cutman and Mesmerman basically stole the collected resources of Gavel Arms, but something tells me that isn't right either."

Gaderham thought carefully for a moment. "What is the last verse about?"

"Um... it talks about how the people who found the ship disposed of the bodies. They wrapped them in the derelict's sail, tied it up and dumped them overboard."

"Still not much to go on," Gaderham sighed. "What do you think?"

Cassandra thought about it for a moment. "It might be something, it might be nothing. You can never tell when it's Mesmerman. He's really into that whole 'messing with people' thing." The two simply stared at the assembled files and photos that made no sense before Cassandra thought of something. "Hey, how'd it go down at Syne Co? Did they give you a lot of trouble?"

"Actually, no," Gaderham said with a note of surprise in his voice. "Normally, when dealing with something so obscured from the public eye, you have to jump through all manner of hoops to even get people to look at you, but they were very friendly and eager to help."

"Okay, that IS weird."

"It did make me a tad suspicious, I admit," Gaderham nodded. "So I did some research. It turns out that over the last year, Syne Co's production levels with regards to cybernetic research and applicable technology production have nearly doubled."

"Bigger budgets?"

"No. That's the odd thing. NOTHING has changed at Syne Co in the last four years! No personel changes, no grant requests, not even a new mission statement. It's been the same company for FOUR YEARS."

Cassandra looked the little robot up and down. "Yeah, something is up with that place."

"I know, but we can't just walk in and start tearing up the place. It's partially funded and owned by the government, and that would be stepping all over their toes, and they would NOT like that. Especially in this environment."

"No kidding."

Gaderham sighed, looking more exhausted than he ever had before. "The infuriating thing about all of this is that its all connected somehow. I just know it. Syne Co, the vigilante, even Mesmerman's presence in Monsteropolis. It's all linked, and I don't know how."

Cassandra gave the exasperated robot a hug. "Hey, you'll figure it out. You're pretty smart for a desk clerk, y'know."

"That is barely reassuring."

"Still, you'll solve this thing. It just may take some time and some help."

"Yes," Gaderham sighed, "and I have a feeling I'll need whatever help I can get."

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