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Suspended In Gaffa (CyberPunk)
The legal stuff...
All rights to this story are mine both as myself and redravin40. It is put here for the members of TFP to read and enjoy only. If I find it in anyplace else in any form electric or otherwise, without my express permission, two phone call will be made. The first is to a lawyer who owes me a few favors and the other....
Well let's hope the lawyer finds you first.
<center>SUSPENDED IN GAFFA</center>
The mind take strange turns when confronted by violent death. People new to the experience can go into shock. Staring down at the body of a man with his face burned off, Detective Mildred (Dred) Stratton remembered that she had not taken anything out for dinner.
To be fair, many other thoughts were skipping through her mind. Not the least of which was that Frank Tate had a nice butt. The chief of security for Walnut City’s largest Free Mall was bending over their fourth corpse of the day. One of Frank’s varks had found the body tucked behind a nano-made copy of Barkers steel sculpture Saint George and The Dragon.
The overwhelming odor of scorched flesh made the detective decide not to make chops for dinner. Another line of thought was worry for her partner Detective Charlie (Char) Dinn. The young cop had come very close to being the fifth casualty of what was becoming a really long day. It was not the first time one of them had been hurt. Some MUCRATS spent as much time gelled as they did in the field. Handling zerkers was just that kind of job.
Today’s killer was about average. Dave Guire had a long history of minor run-ins with the law. He had been in and out of various institutions since he was a teenager. The most recent event involved attacking a co-worker with an air hammer. Dave refused to have nanoneurosurgery and apparently his father backed him on that decision with all the clout that owning the largest string of military surplus stores in North Cal provided.
Mr. Guire had shown up in the MUCRAT’s profile system a few weeks before but there had been some questions on how to handle the father so the survey team had been put off. Which meant nobody was watching when Davie had borrowed a Hard-2C flamethrower from one of his dad’s stores and filled his pockets with mini-grenades. Dred had learned all this just moments before running up on David Guire’s attempt to make a mark on the world.
The two cops jumped out of their car knowing the person they were after had killed two heavily armed security guards in order to get into the Walnut City Free Mall. They were also told all customers had been cleared out and that they better not expect back up for twenty minutes. Of course the varks said they would help but the last thing Dred needed was a half trained security guard getting in the way.
When they hit the top of the ramp it was obvious their information was SNAFU. There were dozens of customers hiding behind whatever they thought would protect them from David Guire’s madness. That meant the cops couldn’t use sonic cripplers or foam. You didn’t want a bystanders family suing because grandma had a heart attack or the main wage earner broke most of the bones in his body because he was too stupid to figure out that when you get foamed you stop moving or else. This meant going one on one with Davie boy. Dred wished for the days when cops could just shoot people.
The tape gun worked as well as it always did, which is to say half-assed. The strapping only caught the zerker on one side and that was not the side holding the flamethrower. Grunting and muttering to himself, David Guire tried to use one hand to set the Hard-2C to overload. A trick he had probably seen dozens of times on the Sex and Violence Channel. That particular trick would have burned half the Free-Mall to ashes. Luckily for the two cops, the trick was more difficult than the actors made it look.
Char used a rolling sidekick, came up under the flamer, and knocked the weapon out of the zerkers hand. He also set off two tumbler grenades strapped to David Guire’s body. The young cop was tossed a half-meter or so down the ramp, while Dred was pinned to the wall. The grenades were DF’s (directed force) so a few shop windows busted but all the shrapnel went into David Guire. Dred cracked some ribs and Char was shuttled to one of the Free-Malls best medical clinics, cursing and swearing all the way.
“Looks familiar,” Dred said, taking a closer look at the burnt corpse.
“He’s a scrimer. I’ve had to run the putz off this ramp a dozen times. The only place you can buy brain burning tech in this mall is in the stores.” Frank’s dry sense of humor was one of the things that had attracted Dred in the first place.
“The Hard-C would have done more damage than this. Anybody see him get it?”
“Not that they’re telling. The tourists have seen the PSA’s. Find cover, don’t gawk and wait for the MUCRAT’s. Not that you helped much when he roasted my men.” There was bitterness in Frank’s voice that went very deep.
“We got here as soon as we could.” Dred knew he was not angry with them. Having made the call on the families of over a dozen dead cops, she understood the anger and sadness Frank was feeling. Looking up she noticed Varks herding a small group of local CD’s away from the scene. The kids were staring at her and Frank in a way that seemed strange.
“What’s the story on that bunch?” she asked.
“Just the usual.” Frank’s eyes dropped to the constant stream of information that was running along the bottom of his I-specs.
“They were watching from the next statue over. Locals know all the best hiding places.”
Dred tried to read the tiny print from her side, not easy since it was upside down and backwards. “Did you do a close scan on them?”
“No reason to. What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this.” She held up a burnt sliver of wood that was hidden between the dragon’s claws.
Frank laughed. It sounded more like a cough. “Should I keep the crime scene pristine for the science crew?”
“Are you going to send for one?”
“And shoot my budget on a scrimer?” After the Privatization Act of 2024 the price for crime scene work came out of the budget of whoever was directly involved with the case.
“OK,” she knew it was a lot to ask. “I’m going to need a copy of the info on those kids.”
“This is a little out of your territory.” Dred had never heard this kind brisk tone from Frank before. She went straight from understanding to pissed off.
“Article 12-B: State of California, Emergency Charter, Sub-section 6: Free Malls must share any information concerning zerkers and their victims. Even in your company town some laws still apply. Now do I have to make a formal application?”
“Look, I didn’t mean to sound like a suithead.” Dred could tell Frank was sorry for pissing her off but not why.
“I didn’t think I would have to put up with gaffa from you.” She turned and walked over to the med-tech who was bagging up the scrimer’s body. He was shaking his head, looking disgusted.
“Something wrong?”
“Oh mon, you speak truth. This boy was foolish extreme.” The accent matched the dreadlocks but the tin skin spoiled the effect. “Plenty of places to get skin disks and he goes cheap.”
“Something wrong with his disks?”
“The cheap burn like a tire farm. That and the skid he used on his hair …” The big med tech gestured wide, “One touch of flame and … Phoenix.”
The tech picked up the body bag one handed and walked away. A thick cloud of ganja smoke followed him.
Dred shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her pea coat. Her face was tense with thought. With a start she realized that Fred was trying to get her attention.
“I can get a copy of the report printed up in my office. We could look it over at the Black Lung.”
“Jam it to my line over at the Rat Hole. I’ve got a wounded partner to check on.” She was being really nasty but if he insisted on acting like a vark she would treat him like one.
Her visit with Char did little to improve her mood. He was gelled so she couldn’t talk to him. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to talk about, anyway: her feelings for Fred, the dead scrimer, the weather, or maybe how tired she was of saving the lives of people who didn’t care.
The Rat Hole had started life as a high school. It was low to the ground and covered with graffiti. The place still smelled of the chemo bomb that cleared out the squatters when the state decided to turn the building into headquarters for the MUCRATS. There had been a lot of talk from Center Office about how having a separate post of operations was a great honor for the MUCRAT’s but the reality was that regular cops wanted nothing to do with them.
Char dropped the sliver of burnt wood off at the lab. Simon treated her like he did everybody else, with rude disdain. He was one of the best CSI scientists in the state but he also had a major PD that made working with him a misery.
Ever since the state of California had made personality disorders a legal handicap it was impossible to fire Simon but they could stick him in a high school chemistry lab and tell him to handle the complete caseload of fifty officers and psychologists. Char just walked away when he started yelling at her.
Her plans for a hot shower were pretty much shot when she walked into the locker room to see Jeth Michaels holding court. The big cop had hooked up with the MUCRAT’s after a very nasty shoot out with a zerker. His partner died that day and Jeth started his time in the MUCRAT’s convinced he had a license to wreak every zerker he could get his hands on. After two close calls with excessive force charges, Jeth seemed to have mellowed out a little bit. Instead he had decided to be the voice of the common cop.
“I’d like to see one of these fucken politicians try and take down a full core zerker with coptape.” Jeth was on a roll. “Has this craptape ever worked the way it’s supposed to? Charlie was almost killed because of this dreck.” He shoved the tape gun in Dred’s face.
That was too much. Dred didn’t care for the way every experimental program or tool was foisted off on them but he wasn’t going to use Char to prove his little point. Doing a classic disarm, she popped the tape gun out of his hand and fired. The cop tape worked properly this time, wrapping the brawny cop from head to toe. Even with the detangle spray he would be loosing hair from some pretty sensitive places.
Ignoring the stares of her fellow cops, Char turned and walked to her locker. Great, once again she had proved her reputation as loose cannon. Still, it was better to have shut him before he got started on the plugs. An extra head hole that reminded you that someone was always looking over your shoulder.
The psych squad was supposed to be full members of the MUCRATS. Their primary job of profiling and identifying zerkers had saved more then one street cops life. Still, knowing that they could see and hear everything you did was so invasive that there was automatic resentment. The former vets would give the other cops gaffa if they yelped. It was only for your eight hour shift, try living with it 24-7 like they had in the military.
Dred changed into her off duty-suit, a hand-tailored Armanie that had set her back three weeks salary, and headed for the monitoring room. She waved to the monitor techs and found the rack of her disks. Pulling the adapter out of its pouch, Dred attached it to the feeder wire. Her daughter thought the old plug was ugly and harped on Dred to have it upgraded. There were some things she didn’t ever plan on changing. Closing her eyes, Dred keyed the duty time and her code form.
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Last edited by redravin40; 09-28-2003 at 06:37 PM..
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