Competition

by Michael P Calligaro



Darrek raced around a corner and through an archway, where he dove to the left side. He took a deep breath and held it, standing perfectly still. Two point three seconds later, the secbot--a squat little beast with four wheels, a rotatable sensor array, and a taser that could stun an elephant--wheeled through the arch. It ground to a halt in the center of the room, and its main sensors began to spin to the right. At one time, the sensors would have chosen the direction of spin at random, but Darrek, in a bit of pre-job preparation, had convinced the 'bot's programming that no matter the random number it computed, the sensors should spin to the right. This gave Darrek 1.5 seconds to slide out through the archway and back around the corner. Normally, the 'bot's rear motion sensors would have noticed this, but Darrek had introduced a subtle bug into the machine's programming which rendered the secondary sensors useless while the main array spun. He slid out with 0.6 seconds to spare.
Safely out of sensory range, Darrek took a moment to check on the secbot's progress. He blinked once and his stylish, mirrored sunglasses overlaid the secbot's sensor information onto his field of vision. The little programmable hunk of metal, on not seeing its prey anywhere in the room nor on the long corridor before it kicked into high gear and sped off ahead. With a smug grin, Darrek blinked again and brought back up his normal information display. One of the info fields told him he had another 10.6 seconds before the secbot reached an intersection, didn't see him on either fork, and called for help. He had to be in the next wing by then. No problem.
Nine point eight seconds later he closed a door behind him and breathed a sigh of contentment. God, how he loved his work! The defense systems, now believing he was deep in the west wing, would start pulling resources out of the east wing to search for him. By no coincidence, he now stood in the east wing. He scanned over the hallway once in normal vision and then again in infrared, finding everything as he expected it. He glanced at the map icon in the lower right corner of his vision and blinked. A translucent HUD map filled his screens. A yellow dot representing himself blinked in the center of the map, and a thin yellow line traced out a path to his destination. A few red dots representing secbots and other "things to be avoided" moved around on the display. He made a mental note of the locations of the red dots and closed the map, since the overlay tended to interfere with his vision too much. He did, however, command his computers to superimpose a yellow line on the floor for him. He knew the layout of this building by heart, but he was proud of the technology he had invented and used it at every opportunity.
He followed the yellow line, pausing from time to time to let a patrolling secbot pass, and finally arrived at his destination. The arches into this room had invisible beams running across their width that, if broken, would send every secbot in the building bearing down on him. With a blink, his glasses drew them in, allowing Darrek to happily confirm that they had not moved since his preliminary studies. Since the beams were expensive, and the building's security team worked under heavy budget constraints, they had tried to keep their costs down by skimping on the number of beams used. They did this by bunching them together near the floor and spreading them out in increasing amounts as they went up. Darrek would have had trouble sliding a piece of paper under the beam along the floor, but there was a good 0.9m opening 1.5m from the ground.
The security team must have decided that no one could jump through a hole that small and that high off the ground. They obviously never figured on Darrek's trying to get in. He had practiced this jump for the last 32 days. In fact, this portion of the job had delayed him more than any other aspect of the building's security. With long loping strides and a curving path, he charged at the archway, leapt, dove through the opening, and executed a perfect roll on the other side. Child's play.
Once inside the room, Darrek took a moment to admire the artwork on the walls. Not a connoisseur, he had no idea what any of it was worth, but he had always liked Japanese art. He spent a good thirty seconds looking at the pictures and letting his computers scan them. He'd peruse them later at home. Right now he needed to focus on the object of his attention, a special case in the center of the room.
He set his glasses on maximum zoom and studied the object in the case up close yet from afar. He marveled at the katana's ornate grip, tsuba, and scabbard. The museum guide had boasted that no finer sword existed on the planet. Darrek, staring longingly at the images of two battling dragons carved into the scabbard, their detail more intricate and exact than that of the paintings on the walls, had to agree. The guide had also claimed the blade could bend sideways until the tip touched the base of the grip and it would spring back to perfect straightness. Darrek would soon be able to put that claim to the test.
Darrek loved swords, especially katanas, but that was only part of the reason he was here. Two months ago, when the sword went on display, the security director had pompously announced that his system was so good no one would be able to steal the priceless sword while it was in his museum. That was the main reason Darrek was here. No one told him what he couldn't do.
Though he knew it all by heart, he quickly let his notes on the room's security system scroll by his eyes for review. The security around the sword was actually somewhat ingenious, though it bordered on overkill. Four laser motion detectors focused on it from the corners of the room. The pedestal knew the sword's weight to a tenth of a milligram and would set off alarms if that weight changed for more than a millisecond. Light sensors ran along the top of the glass case and would notice if any part of the glass was cut or even scratched. All the systems were separate from the main security system and none were accessible from the Net. They didn't even contact the other system directly. If Darrek tripped any of them they would set off a series of audible alarms, alerting the main system. Each of the thirty alarms was on its own circuit and extremely difficult to get to. It would have taken Darrek all night to disable them.
Moving quickly, Darrek set up a sonic source in a corner and pointed it at the case. He then moved to the next corner so that he faced the exit and his sonic device pointed crosswise in front of him. Darrek almost managed to admit to himself that he might not have been able to circumvent the sword's security, although he held out on the idea that he would have come up with something if he'd needed to. But he didn't need to. The stupid security director didn't realize that it was pointless to wrap something in heavy gauge chain if you planned to connect it to a light plastic cable.
With a blink from Darrek, the sonic source fired to life and shattered the glass case. Alarms immediately blared and a thick security door began to slide down over the arch. Darrek kicked off from the wall and raced across the room. He set off all four motion detectors, which started more alarms. He hardly slowed to grab the sword and scabbard as he passed by the case. The pedestal, on feeling a change in weight, set off even more alarms. Not that any of this mattered. The first alarm was enough.
Darrek, with the sword in his right hand and the scabbard in his left, dove and rolled under the closing security door. He'd made it with 1.2 seconds to spare. He sheathed the sword and stuck it in a special padded leather case strapped to his back. With his hands now free and the sword secure, he took off at a sprint down the hall. While running, he brought up the map and kept his eyes open for the red dots of secbots. Of course, he didn't expect any trouble. He had hacked the main system and changed it's emergency programming. Rather than fan out and converge on the sword room from all directions, the secbots would now all travel along the same corridor, a corridor Darrek would happen to not be on. Also, when the alarms went off, a subroutine Darrek had added convinced the security system that a certain door was already locked and would not need to be locked again. Sure enough, when he arrived at the door it opened easily. Stairs ran up to the ground floor, and Darrek took them three at a time.
At the top of the stairs, calamity struck. Darrek ground to a halt and came face to face with a squat hunk of metal with the words "Security Robot" written on its chest. There was no red dot for this beast so Darrek could not get a security report for it. He hadn't realized there were independents patrolling the museum! He leapt to the right and the secbot's first taser shot missed. It immediately recoiled its wires, turned and fired again. Darrek leapt over the wires, landing on the secbot's other side. He was in a large open room, and the secbot had too much range with its stunner. It had already retracted the taser and was turning to fire on Darrek again when he made his decision. He reached over his shoulder and drew the sword. After a moment's hesitation, he swung and cut off the secbot's sensor array, beheading it as it were. The damn thing started spinning and firing the taser indiscriminately!
Darrek took the only available option, he covered his head with an arm and smashed through a window. It was hardly a professional exit, but he got out with the sword. Nothing else mattered. He momentarily scanned over the blade to see if he had damaged it while cutting through the secbot's neck. Not a single scratch or nick marred the blade. The thing was as good as they had said. Impressed, he resheathed it and sprinted off the museum grounds, across a vacant field, through a hole in a chain link fence he had cut for himself, down a deserted street, and to his car. The car opened its trunk and driver side door as he approached. He removed the leather case and tossed it into the trunk, then jumped into the car and sped off. His timers said that he'd taken 5 minutes and 34 seconds to get out--27 seconds over budget. As he drove, he watched on his constant connection to the police computers and saw that squad cars did not arrive for another ten minutes.
Fifteen minutes after that, lights appeared his rear view mirror, causing him to sigh. So, he'd been doing 90 in a 55 zone. Didn't the cop have anything better to do than to bother him? He pulled over and flipped his displays over to the cop's internal screen. The civil servant was running his plates, but there was a technical difficulty and it would take a moment. The cop got out and approached his car.
"What's the hurry?"
Darrek shrugged. "I just like to drive fast. Is that a crime?"
"Actually, sir, yes, it is. Let me see your license and registration." Darrek handed his favorite pair over. "And why are you wearing sunglasses after dark?"
"I assure you, officer, I can see just fine with them on." The glasses were in nightfinder mode. "And I'm sure that wearing sunglasses after dark is not a crime."
The cop grimaced then looked at the driver's license. His eyes got wide. "Well, Mr. Eue, I'll be right back."
"Take your time officer," Darrek smiled. "I'm in no hurry." In the rear view mirror, he watched the cop get back into his car and look down at the screen there. Darrek blinked and the hourglass on the screen became the information on the plates the cop had just run. The car was registered to one Fuk Eue who lived at 69 Eatshitanddiecopper Rd. Darrek let the cop take this in for a moment before he sent a high powered carrier signal that shorted out or destroyed every electrical system in the poor guy's car. He sped off, leaving the cop unable to start his car much less call for help. He almost wished he could stick around and see the look on the cop's face when the license and registration burst into flames, as they would in four minutes and forty-one seconds.

* * *

At home, Darrek played with his new sword for half an hour, then hid it away in a closet. The sword's balance and speed were even better than he'd imagined. It was certainly not something he'd be selling any time soon. Wiping the sweat away with a towel, he sat down in front of one of his monitors and read his mail. There was a note from his mother asking how things were going and another from an old girlfriend asking why he never called her anymore. He wrote a quick reply to his mother, telling her that his consulting business was going very well and tactfully asking if she needed any money. The only person in the world who had ever had a rougher life than Darrek was his mother. But she had given him everything he ever needed--his first computer and the freedom to hang out electronically with the right people and learn the right skills. He owed her. The note from the old girlfriend he just deleted.
A piece of junk e-mail advertising "new" microwavable cookies set Darrek aback. He wondered if he should set about destroying the company for bothering him or start buying their products. Anyone who could get unwanted mail through his complicated series of filters and kill files had to be pretty smart, maybe even worthy of his patronage. Still unsure on the better course, he filed that one away for more thought.
The most interesting note was an apparent mash of gibblygook one of his electronic agents had picked up on alt.comp.numbers.random. The program tried to decrypt everything posted there. Since almost no one knew Darrek by anything more than his signoff--DarrekM--this was a common and secure way to get in touch with him. People would encrypt a message that only he could decrypt, strip off all normal-looking text, and post it on the random-numbers bulletin board. Since no data ever sat unencrypted on his system, Darrek had to re-decrypt the message before reading it. It said there was a job that only Darrek could handle and asked if he was interested. Always interested in a challenge, he wrote a reply, encrypted it to the key included in the message, and sent it through fifteen randomly chosen anonymous remailers to be posted on the same board. His message instructed the caller to meet him on the corner of 4th and 128th at 4:00 and not to be late.
He then made an anonymous donation to the local police fund. The donation was almost exactly what it would cost to buy a new squad car. The game wouldn't be much fun if he put the competition out of business.

* * *

There was nothing interesting on the corner of 4th and 128th, certainly nothing worth waiting around for. A man in a dark gray suit had been waiting there since 3:55 and kept glancing down at his watch and looking around. Leaves blew by and he clutched his arms around his body, shivering. Darrek sat comfortably on a bench around the corner, bundled up in a warm leather jacket, and watching him through a fibercam he had left on a windowsill nearby. At 4:31 the man got fed up and stormed off down 128th street. After picking up the fibercam, Darrek discretely followed him for a few blocks then widened his stride and caught up. He walked along for another block, then, when no one else was around, asked "So, what did you want to talk about?"
The man practically jumped. Then he looked incredulously at Darrek and asked, "Are you Darrek M?"
With a shrug, he responded, "Could be."
"What's the 'M' stand for?"
"You're a nosy son of a bitch, aren't you?"
The man stopped, but Darrek kept walking. After a moment he hurried to catch back up. "Listen, I've been standing around waiting for you for the last half hour. You don't need to insult me."
Darrek shrugged again and kept walking.
"Well, why are you wearing sunglasses? It's cloudy out."
Darrek looked over at him an smiled. "You're a nosy son of a bitch, aren't you?"
The man frowned and started to say something, then thought better of it. After regaining his composure he said, "I want you to break into Intracon for me."
This brought Darrek to a stop. Intracon was one of the most innovative and successful software concerns on the planet. He'd been meaning to break into them for a while but had never had much of a reason to do so. "That might be challenging." Intracon's security was supposed to be top notch. "Are we up for a bit of industrial espionage?"
"Something like that."
Darrek nodded and continued to walk.
"Well, do you want the job or not?" the exasperated man asked.
"What makes you think I can do that?"
It was the other man's turn to smile. "Because I'm a nosy son of a bitch. I know the right questions to ask of the right people. You come highly recommended."
"Did your sources also tell you that I come highly expensive?"
"They did."
Darrek nodded. "Tell me more."

* * *

The Intracon computer system had been surprisingly difficult to crack. Twice he came within bits of being noticed, and once he had to fry a node to hide his presence. In the end he invented a new method of breaking into secure systems. It had all been quite rewarding. But sitting in front of a computer hacking never even held a byte to the physical assault. He'd taken steps to make sure no one could ever really catch him remotely. They might lock him out of a system, but they couldn't catch him. It was quite different when he was sneaking around in their basement with secbots and armed guards buzzing around him. That was extremely thrilling.
Darrek crouched down behind a stack of boxes and surveyed the room through its own camera system. A secbot lumbered by, oblivious to his presence. These secbots were older and less intelligent than the ones in the museum. Intracon really needed an overhaul of its physical security system. This secbot was particularly stupid; it would get lost if it didn't have a magnetic trail to follow.
The secbot ground to a halt and made a full revolution clockwise. It then made another counterclockwise and started rapidly turning left and right making feeble squeaking noises. Darrek had scrambled its trail there and it had no idea where to go. Eventually a human guard came to investigate. Darrek heard him report into an intercom (and he also read the words on his screens) that the 'bot appeared busted and that they should get a tech down there tomorrow morning. With a glance at an icon, a clattering noise rang out in the stairwell down the hall. When the guard looked in that direction, Darrek slipped behind and passed him. People were generally less aware than the secbots, but they were also more random and thus kept Darrek on his toes. This one never noticed him though. He instead went off to investigate the noise in the stairwell. If he managed to find Darrek's little computer-controlled, spring-loaded pellet, he wouldn't know what to make of it.
Darrek didn't even pause at the guard's station. There was no information there that he did not already have on his glasses, and there were no controls that he could not operate remotely. He crumpled up some duct tape and shoved it into the locking mechanism of a door. If anything went wrong, this door would not lock and he could sneak out this way. Darrek liked to think that nothing would go wrong, but he was pragmatic enough to cover himself. He did this to another door and descended a flight of stairs to the sub-basement. The single hardest part of the job lay just ahead.
Darrek's client wanted him to get an optical disc from a shielded room in the subbasement. This room had its own security system that was totally separate and isolated from the main one. What's more, the shielding was such that no electrical transmissions would make it in or out. In short, Darrek's glasses would not function in the room. Also, for all the money Intracon had made in computers, it did not trust them very much. The disc was actually kept in a steel safe with an old fashioned mechanical lock.
He scoffed at the memory of his client asking if he could open a safe like that. Of course he could! He'd opened his first safe when he was little more than ten years old. It was the landlord's safe. If his mother didn't get the rent by that night, she and Darrek would have found themselves on the street the next morning. Darrek was so desperate that he snuck in while the landlord was there, although the fat, greedy bastard was unlikely to hear him through his drunken stupor. Darrek took only twice the rent and hid half of it in his room as an emergency fund. His mother didn't question where the money came from; she was too desperate. After that, she never questioned him when he brought her money.
Reflecting on the slippery moral slope of life and grinning the whole time, Darrek pried the grill off an access panel and climbed into a tight ventilation shaft. He climbed down five meters and removed a small, low-speed drill from his hip pack. He drilled through the wall of the shaft and found three thick wires. These were the source to the safe room's power, and this was the one spot in the building that had reasonable access to them. He drew them out and clamped a box over them. The box would cut them at his command, then reconnect them at his later command. One convenient aspect of an isolated system was that nothing would notice if it went off-line for a while. He climbed back up the shaft and carefully replaced the grill.
From there, he had a fairly uneventful walk to the safe room. He only had to confuse one secbot, avoid another, disable three separate alarm systems, and overpower one guard. At the final door, he signaled for the power to be cut, picked the lock, opened the door, and stepped in. The door closed, leaving him in total darkness. He flashed a light briefly to take in the room and then turned it off. He preferred to crack the safe in the dark, the way he'd been forced to do it that first time in his landlord's bedroom. Besides, he thought to himself, you don't use your eyes to crack a safe.
It took longer than Darrek had thought it would. Though he had practiced at home, he had become rusty at this. Frustrated, he considered attempting some other method to open the safe. Deciding against a mid-game strategy change, he sat back, took a deep breath, and tried again. Still no luck. In a fit of desperation, he tried turning the knob the other way. Click. He felt the first tumbler drop! So the subtle bastards had a safe that worked backwards, did they? He shook his head. Like security through obscurity would ever stop someone as good as him. Knowing to start backward, he opened the safe easily. He then flashed his light again and found only one optical disc inside. It was unlabeled, just as Darrek's client said it would be. He grabbed it, closed the safe and walked back to the door. Then he froze in his tracks.
How long had it been? In his frustration with the safe, he'd lost track. His computers bounced info off of satellites and then through miscellaneous broadcasters on shifting frequencies. He was always able to stay connected from anywhere in the world--except in this room. He'd been so used to that constant connection that he forgot to bring an independent timepiece with him. Without knowing how long he'd been in here, Darrek could not be sure where the patrolling secbot was. He sighed and resigned himself to his fate. There was no sense dwelling on it. Either the secbot was there, or it wasn't. He opened the door to see the secbot turning its sensor array toward him.
Darrek dove out of the room and brushed against the secbot's electrical wand. Though he only brushed it, the jolt threw him against a wall and he bruised his shoulder. Now clear of the room, his glasses flared to life. Ignoring the pain in his arm, Darrek squashed the alarm and reported the secbot as malfunctioning. At most 2 seconds had elapsed. Hopefully none of the human guards had noticed the alarm lights blinking on their systems.
The secbot lumbered toward Darrek, but he leapt over it and raced off down the corridor. It appeared that the bored guards had not noticed the brief alarm, for he had little trouble getting out.
Darrek could hardly wait to get home and find out what was on the disc. Considering what they were paying him to get it, it had to be pretty important. But the disc turned out to contain nothing more than a new encryption algorithm. It was a very good one that he immediately copied, but it was still just an algorithm. Darrek scanned the disc for hidden information, but if there was any there they new how to hide it from him. That was extremely unlikely. So why all the fuss for a new way to do encryption?
Up until that point, Darrek had actually been working for himself. He did not break into Intracon because someone paid him to do so. The payment was nothing more than an excuse to do something he wanted to do anyway. But now that he had proved to himself that he could surmount Intracon's defenses, it was time to learn a bit about his client. He didn't bother with this before because it didn't matter. Even if the job had been a setup, he would have been able to pull it off. But now he had to decide how the job would end. He brought up an image of his client from their last meeting, touched it up a bit, and fired off a Net search.

* * *

Darrek turned up the collar on his leather jacket and danced around, trying to keep warm in the windy autumn night. The trees at the edge of the parking lot gave scant protection from the wind but did provide some amount of visual cover. As always, he'd left his car far enough away that it would be inconspicuous if he needed to leave it but close enough to get to in a hurry. He'd arrived 45 minutes early, just to be safe, but as the cold set in he started to wish he'd cut it a little less safe. When the car pulled into the deserted parking lot only five minutes early, he swore to himself. "I could have come 30 minutes later and not frozen my buns off." The car stopped and Darrek's client, one Jack Morris, got out followed by two goons. The driver stayed behind the wheel and left the engine running. "Typical," Darrek sneered.
He stepped into the dim yellow light of sodium lamps and wandered over to the lone car.
"Hello Darrek. I can't believe you wear those sunglasses at night."
Darrek shrugged. Information on the car's owner, found from a search on the license plates, scrolled by, including his home address, his wife's name, and the name of the grade school his daughter attended. "I like my privacy."
"And what's that you've got on your back? A stick?"
Darrek reached up over his left shoulder and fondled the padded leather case strapped tightly to his back. "It's something I picked up a few weeks ago. Seemed a shame to just leave it in the closet."
"But what is it?"
"You're a nosy son of a bitch, aren't you?"
Jack coughed and looked Darrek up and down angrily. Darrek ignored him and turned his head to look at the two goons, forcing Jack to comment.
"Darrek, these are business associates of mine. You have no need to worry about them." He muttered something else through clenched teeth, but Darrek could not make it out.
Darrek shrugged again.
"So, did you get the disc?"
"Of course," he said with a smirk. He pulled it out of a pocket and held it up.
With hardly concealed excitement, Jack rushed over to take it. But just as he reached for the disc Darrek stepped aside and started pacing. "You know, Jack, the hardest part of getting this was figuring out why you wanted it. There are plenty of strong encryption algorithms out there, and as far as I can tell, this one isn't considerably better than them.
Jack's face grew red. "You weren't supposed to look at the contents of that, you were just supposed to get it for me! And how do you know my name?"
"Please Jack, try not to be so blatantly ignorant. First off, did you really think I'd go to all that trouble to get this and not be curious of it's contents? And secondly, what kind of criminal would I be to not check up on my client? Honor among thieves is at an all time low these days."
Jack glanced back at his goons and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Darrek, of course, perceived it. Jack probably took great pleasure in saying, "You're a nosy son of a bitch, aren't you?" He then continued with, "So what did you learn?"
Darrek smiled. "Interesting stuff, let me assure you. You work for Centauri. You folks make inferior products that are regularly trounced by Intracon's. Still, a new encryption algorithm wouldn't give you much of an edge. In today's political climate, these things are practically useless for law abiding companies."
Jack tried to interrupt. "This is all very interesting, Darrek, but why don't you give me the disc now?"
Darrek ignored him. "Then I realized what this was all about. I'm sure you're aware that this year the FBI pushed through a bill that makes it treason to export strong encryption, a crime punishable by death."
One of the goons walked around the car and stood behind Jack, who said, "I think I read something about that last month."
"I'll bet," Darrek continued. "You don't want the encryption at all. Intracon's signature is on this disc. You plan to drop it off in somewhere in the middle east and then call the NSA. With the witch hunt currently going on regarding this stuff, you figure you can get the government to remove Intracon's CEO for you."
Jack nodded. "And without him, the company will fall apart. Now I think you should hand over that disc." One goon drew a gun and the other strode menacingly toward Darrek.
With a frown, Darrek said, "Give me a break guys. Taking things by raw, stupid, force went out with prohibition." He glanced at an icon and blinked. A blinking light appeared in the trees to Darrek's left and floated toward the car. Both goons, the driver, and Jack looked up at it. Dipshits, Darrek thought. Though his glasses switched to opaque mode, he closed his eyes anyway. It didn't hurt to be safe.
"What's that boss?" That must have been one of the goons.
"I don't know. Shoot the damn thing." Definitely Jack's voice.
The next sound Darrek heard was screaming. He opened his eyes to see his clients rolling on the ground rubbing their eyes. Even the driver had fallen out of the car. Darrek glanced up at his little hoverball and it dropped down into his hand. Every square millimeter of the ball not devoted to propulsion was covered with a perfectly reflecting surface and an array of these new lightbulbs he'd stolen from an R&D company half a year ago. Typical high powered, portable spotlights put out a million candlepower. When this ball flashed it put out a billion.
Darrek sauntered over to Jack and stepped on his chest. "I've changed my mind, Jack. Anyone who'd look into a gigacandlepower light is just too stupid for my business. There's nothing worse than working for an incompetent baffoon. Trust me on this." A screech of wheels made Darrek jerk his head up. A car came racing around a corner. "Uh oh." He tossed the hoverball into the air and sent it after the new car.
The car skidded to a stop and a door opened. Someone jumped out and shot down the ball before Darrek could flash it. Swearing, Darrek grabbed a gun from one of the goons and raced to Jack's car. He drew his katana over his shoulder and slashed the car's front wheel. He then dove behind the rear wheel and poked it. He returned the sword to its sheath and looked under the car. With the wheels slashed there was not much room for the bad guys to shoot under it, but he stayed behind the rear wheel anyway. He hefted the gun awkwardly and looked it over. What the hell am I going to do with this, he wondered. Guns were such a low tech way of getting things done that Darrek had never bothered to learn to use one. Besides, he wasn't sure he could kill anyone. Still, he pointed the gun over the trunk and in the general direction of the new car and fired a few times. With no cameras in the area, he had to stick his head around the bumper and verify that they weren't walking toward him. He pulled back quickly when a bullet thunked into the trunk.
"Shit, shit, shit!" His heart pounding in fear, Darrek pondered his scant options. He was in the middle of an open parking lot with sharpshooters just waiting to pick him off if he made a break for the woods. He was surrounded by partially blinded people who'd recover soon and give him even more trouble. He had a gun and a sword but no good plan to get out. Maybe he could drive the car to the woods? As if to answer his thoughts, shots rang out and the car rocked to the side, its wheels facing the gunmen blown out. The gunfire continued, and Darrek heard a number of thunks up front by the engine.
What now? He could try grabbing Jack, holding a gun to his head, and backing out to the woods. No, that never even worked in the movies; how could it possible work in real life? Maybe they considered Jack as expendable as the car. This thought was punctuated by the rear window blowing out, covering him with shattered glass.
"Hey, Jack." Darrek called out. "Remember when I told you there was nothing worse than working for an incompetent baffoon? Well I was wrong. Being an incompetent baffoon is much worse." What to do? A solution came to Darrek, but he hated it. He hated it so much he set it aside and tried to think of another one. At the sound of the car advancing, he pointed his gun in its direction and fired a few more times. The car stopped again. Panicked, Darrek cast his plan into action.
"You know, Darrek," Jack called back to him, "if you weren't planning to give me the disk you probably shouldn't have even come here. What, did you only come to tell me I'm stupid? Now who's the stupid one?"
"Shut up, Jack!" He fired a shot in his direction but made sure to miss. Jack shut up. He then fired a few more shots at the other car.
The gun clicked.
Darrek was so scared he didn't even know how many shots he had fired. After another minute, the car began to creep forward again.
The distant sound of sirens fell like music on Darrek's ears. It took the cops fifteen minutes to get to a burglarized museum, but they moved considerably faster when their screens told them an officer had been shot. Darrek hated needing help to get out of this jam. He especially hated turning to the police for his help. But he valued his life more than his pride. The other car paused for a moment and then took off out of the parking lot. Darrek used the opportunity to make a break for the woods. A shot, probably from the other goon, went over his head, but Darrek didn't even look back. He tore into the woods and back to his car. His nerves were so on edge, he even drove the speed limit out of there.
After a few minutes he calmed down and his normal cockiness returned. He was away safe, and, regardless of how badly it had gone, he'd done what he wanted to do. Next time, however, he'd consider sending flame mail instead of insulting his client in person. Still, this wasn't over. He was already planning how to go about ruining the Centauri Corporation.
But the game wouldn't be much fun if he put all the good competition out of business. He pulled over to a mailbox and quickly jotted down a note to Will Lintel, Intracon's CEO. It said "Will, you've really got to keep this more secure. It's dangerous!" He signed the note DarrekM, stuffed it and the disk into a padded envelope he'd already addressed, and dropped it into the box.


The End


Copyright Michael P. Calligaro

All Rights Reserved


Back to Stories