Raygun Heights

10.

"Anything else you have to say to me?" Vennet's voice went from an angry growl to a low rumble. His look remained serious, his eyes were rarely soft, even for the benefit of soft things in the world like babies or furry creatures. Those eyes had seen battlefields, streaks of plasma and particle fire that had taken limbs. While his eyes were serious, they were broad in measure, lacking the hard focus he had taken earlier when glaring at Tangiers. Markus Vennet rested his chin against the calloused knuckles of his hand.

"Mohr has promised to shoot Tangiers and Karl as soon as he can get them alone to ambush. It could be anywhere, anytime. In a bar, on the streets, in the middle of the road. I don't think anyone is going to talk him out of it," Achim Horvitz was propped at the end edge of a metal chair. His legs were tight together. His hands were folded over on the table, not that he had a blaster to draw from under his vest, but he liked to appear as non-threatening as possible to Vennet.

"He's the injured party, naturally he'd be angry. Surely there could be a price to meet to settle all of this," Vennet said.

"Mohr seemed even angrier that it was in public. He thinks even the civilians are chuckling at him and not taking him seriously now that... what did he say?" Achim paused to try and recall, "A 'kitty-pet' managed to slap him around like some server clone or android. He's got a chip on his shoulder and wants to remove it with blaster fire," Achim said.

Somewhere, someone might have said that Achim Horvitz was engaging in the act of snitching. Horvitz viewed himself merely as a commissioned snitch over a rat tattling specifically for his own gain. He was a new member of the Syndicate, and he had been placed specifically by Venneter with Mohr and Lono. Achim also recalled Vennet's reminder: Whenever the Lieutenant needed Achim to come in, Achim came and answered any questions about what was going on, truthfully and to his best recollection. He wondered if the others like Mohr and Lono had to take part in similar tests to prove their loyalty to the organization as a whole. If that was the case, Achim thought, no wonder paranoia and the need for solid fronts was so vital to the group. Everyone was looking at everyone to cut them down, rat on each other. At least, Achim assured himself, he had the backing of a higher-up within the Scorpions.

But what good would that do when you're on those streets, Achim? He asked himself.

"Karl and Tangiers brought in a hefty payment from one of their clients. A Saurian dock worker that we were putting the squeeze on. We had begun to ramp up the taxes on this guy, hoping he'd slide deeper into our pocket. All of a sudden he nearly pays off a quarter of his debt. If he had given this kind of money last week, we would have been satisfied," Vennet said.

"Couldn't we just squeeze him anyway?" Achim asked.

Vennet held up a finger to correct the younger criminal, "When you sign a contract with a guy. When you make a deal like that, you have to be careful on how you alter it. If it gets out that the principal is willing to change too much or not honor our part of the bargain, people won't do as much business with us. I'm not talking strictly protection, either. I'm talking about the loan side of our organization. No, we need our Saurian to default so that it was either us to do a favor for him, or take one of his thumbs," Vennet said, "Then I started to look at these credit slips that were brought in.

Vennet reached for a day bag that was destined for the wall safe and retrieved several slips. The slips were rectangular pieces of silver and bronze. The silver pieces were longer, roughly four inches, with narrow grooves that divided it into two sections. One section, the shorter at one inch, was a mere tab of metal. The second portion had several lines which a computer could read and offer the base case to separate real slips that were backed by the Banking Guild from the counterfeits. The other set were bronze slips, three inches long with its own set of marks for a computer to scan through. The marks were a formality, it gave the numismatists who were working in a private site for the Commercia Banking Guild something to do. Few operations bothered to counterfeit the bronze slips.