Danes hardly noticed the scenery or buildings as they walked.Danes had never been to Grand Cayman before and
normally when he visited somewhere for the first
time, he would drink in all the new sights, sounds and smells with
enthusiasm. Not today. Today there were some whales flying around in
his gut, and not in the good way. Before he knew it they were
standing in front of a nondescript office building. Short and squat,
like most of the buildings around here, and made of concrete in the
brutal architectural style of the late '70s early 80s. The only
indications that it was a bank was a small plaque, maybe the size of
an A4 sheet of paper embedded in the concrete of the front wall. It
was stainless steel, engraved only with `Epicurus Industries Bank'.
Danes had bever heard of it before, though the same could be said of
any number of the hundreds of different banks, investment firms and
what-have-you that peppered the streets of George Town.
Most of the ground floor was like the rest of the building, weathered
grey concrete embedded every metre or so with a small-ish window. The
middle third of the ground floor, however, was fronted with reflective
glass panels, tinted slightly bronze. It was hard to see but there
was a small door handle protruding from the right-hand side of the
centre panel. All Danes could see was Himself, Matroska, and the rest
of the street-scene behind him reflected in the building's glass fa\c
cade. A narrow concrete path extended from the street running
straight to the glass door. to each side of the path was a graveled
aread interspersed here and there with various potted plants probably
designed by some long-gone landscaper to soften the stark corporate
feel of the space. It didn't work well, most of the plants were dead.
Still, despite the dismal state of the `garden' the building seemed in
active use. There was a semi-constant stream of suited figures coming
in and out of the building. Most of them fired up cigarettes as they
emerged and milled around on the gravel near the glass wall for a few
minutes as they sated their nicotine hunger, sometimes chatting with
one-another (if another smoker was present) in muted tones before
stubbing out the butt in a conveniently placed ash-tray on the ground,
and returning from whence they came to go about whatever banky
business they might be engaged in.
They had been standing on the path in front of the building for 5
minutes or so Danes guessed before presumably they were taken notice
of. Matroska had made no attempt to enter the building, or to
indicate in any way to any of the passing suits that they had an
appointment. He simply waited. Waited and watched. Yet another man
in a business suit emerged from the glass door. This one, however,
looked straight at them and walked over. He had obviously either seen
or heard of Matroska before as he didn't look surprised in any way at
his formidible appearence. He obviously hadn't seen Danes before but
was not surprised at seeing Matroska accompianied in this way. He
simply looked Danes quickly up and down before his gaze rested once
more upon Matroska.
He spoke, ``Ah Mr. Matroska, welcome,'' and turning to Danes, ``and
you must be Mr McKenzie?'' Danes nodded and the man gave a weak smile
before turning back to Matroska and continuing, ``They're waiting for
you upstairs.'' His voice was slimy and obsequious. Danes disliked
him already.
``And everything has been prepared as per my instructions?'' Matroska
asked in his low monotone, pitch black eyes focussed intently on the
man's face, as if probing his soul for imperfections (of which Danes
was sure there were many).
The man cringed slightly under Matroska's glare. ``Of course, of
course, to the letter. If you gentlement would follow me?'' He
turned and walked back towards the building. They followed.
The inside of the building was in much better condition than the
outside. It was cool and refreshing, obviously having good
air-conditioning is a critical requirement of a functioning office
environment in the Caribbean. The lobby looked much the same as every
other in the many office buildings Danes had had the pleasure of being
in. Opposite the door was a large counter, behind which was sitting a
slightly bored-looking woman, mid twenties and demurely attired.
Receptionist. On the wall behind the counter was a larger version of
the stainless steel plaque which graced the wall outside. Two large
potted plants flanked the door, an additional smaller one sitting off
to one side on the reception counter. Against the walls there were
several comfortable looking sofas for waiting guests, with coffee
tables placed conveniently near them. Everything was normal. Too
normal? What does that even mean? Danes didn't have time to
speculate as they were led around the wall behind the reception
counter, which did not extend the entire width of the lobby, but was
in fact the building's elevator shaft, with the elevator doors facing
the back of the lobby. He made note of a door in the rear wall of the
lobby which (if the sign on it could be trusted) lead to a stairwell.
It always paid to make sure of an alternative exit, and no one wants
to wait for the elevator when a quick exit is desired.
Surprisingly enough they didn't even have to wait for the elevator now
as it opened conveniently just as their host was about to press the
button to summon it. A short trip, up just one level and the doors
opened. They exited into a corridor which apparently ran the width of
the building with doors placed every few metres or so. They were led
to the first door to the right of the elevator as they exited.
Nondescript, like the other doors, their host opened it and they
entered what appeared to be a reasonably sized board room. The far
side of the room was the front of the building and Danes could see
people going about their business in the street a few metres below.
In the middle of the room was a long table with space for around
twenty people. Only two of the chairs were presently occupied, on the
opposite side of the table from the door, with two more suits standing
a respectful distance behind the seated pair. The rest of the room
contained only what one would expect in a modern office meeting room.
Projector screen on the wall at one end of the table, conference phone
sitting in the middle along with various cords sprouting up from a
hole in the table surface, ready and willing to be plugged into a
visiting laptop computer. Around the walls, various cupboards
containing Danes knew not what, but probably random office-type stuff.
Everyone was wearing a suit. What were suits to these people? Danes
had never got that. Maybe being a lower-level IT worker (back when he
did such office work) had exempted him from the great suit cult which
seems to permiate corporate culture. Danes hated them, yeuch,
uncomfortable and hot, especially in this climate. Still, the
building was well cooled so he supposed they were OK at least during
office hours. Matroska strode the couple of metres to the table and
sat down immediately facing the pair. He looked slightly comical
squeezing his mountainous frame into the office chair, obviouslt not
designed for one of his skyscraper height. It didn't seem to bother
him though. Danes took the chair to Matroska's left, sliding it out
from the table slightly to give himself a bit more breathing room. He
looked around again, their slimy guide had left the room and shut the
door. Only now did he get a decent look at the seated pair, and their
standing shadows.
Obviously the two behind were bodyguards. Who else would stand like
that in whatever type of business meeting or transaction this was? He
also thought he could detect the slight bulk of gun holsters under
their fancy armarni suit jackets. Also they way they eyed the
newcomers and seemed to be constantly surveying the surroundings for
potential threats. They seemed almost as aware of everything as
Matroska. No take that back, Matroska didn't \emph{seem} aware of his
surroundings, he just was aware of them. He didn't \emph{seem}
anything really, just was, like a rock.
The seated pair were clearly businessmen of some type. They seemed
important. Important enough to have bodyguards in any case. The one
on the right was thin but tanned, reasonably healthy looking with
black slicked back hair. Looked to be around forty years old and had
a snappy smile like a salesman. He reminded Danes of a lawyer he had
once met. The one on the left was quite a bit older and had obviously
let himself go in recent years. Balding and grey with a terrible
comb-over, the man was pudgy with fat cheeks and a rotund belly. Mean
fat, like Marco thought Danes, though obviously not of south american
origin. They both had on the same sort of dark-blue suit, slightly
pin-striped, which Danes found rather odd, but then again, what did he
know about fancy banking types?
Once they were all seated silence reigned. Danes suspected they were
trying some sort of psyche-out tactic on Matroska. How did they not
know that that wouldn't work?
An underling entered the room with a tray containing coffee
parephenalia and a small plate of biscuits which he set down in the
middle of the table and then left. Finally after a few minutes one of
the business men finally got uncomfortable enough with the silence and
spoke.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Sunday, November 18, 2012
With this post we are up to date with what I have written so far. Further posts will consist of only what I have written in a day (a few thousand words at most) and possibly some commentary on the same. Please keep in mind that this is all a rough draft probably full of spelling and grammar mistakes and all sorts of other errors. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't point them out though. Also, please ignore any Latex command embedded in the text. I can't be bothered to go through and convert them to HTML here (yes an automated tool would probably work, too lazy).
\emph{``Well that went well!''} thought Danes sarcastically as he
barged open the front door and ran out as fast as he could! He could
see the man that Matroska had thrown out of the window lying crumpled
on the dented roof of a nearby car. The man was groaning softly,
Danes suspected that he wouldn't make it. Being thrown out of a first
floor window is one thing, being thrown across a room and
\emph{through} a reinforced plate glass window, falling several metres
onto a car below by none other than Matroska the Prussian is another
thing entirely. Danes wondered how many time he had done it before.
His aim vas very good. However there was no time reminisce now when
he had some desperate escaping to do!
Everything \emph{had} been going well at first, or so it had seemed.
Perhaps it would have always ended like this even if things had gone
differently. No point in thinking about that now. The walk up to the
bank had gone uneventfully enough. The sun was shining, birds were
singing and the population of George Town was going about its merry
business, blisfully unaware of the trepidations racing through Danes'
mind, and the endless stream of encrypted binary-encoded arcana Danes
imagined to be perpetually racing through Matroska's eldritch
techno-grimoire of a mind. The only slightly concerning part being a
few minutes after leaving the jetty. Matroska cocked his head
slightly as they were walking, not losing stride, and said ``Someone
is following us.''
Danes looked at him. His face was impassive as ever, ``Are you sure?''
``It is of no consequence, we continue'' said Matroska simply. That
was the end of that. By now Danes was getting used to not being able
to get any blood out of this particular stone. If Matroska thought it
was OK then he guessed it was. Probably just some local street urchin
who saw them land wanting to earn a few dollars being of use to (or
stealing from) some clueless tourists.
\emph{``Well that went well!''} thought Danes sarcastically as he
barged open the front door and ran out as fast as he could! He could
see the man that Matroska had thrown out of the window lying crumpled
on the dented roof of a nearby car. The man was groaning softly,
Danes suspected that he wouldn't make it. Being thrown out of a first
floor window is one thing, being thrown across a room and
\emph{through} a reinforced plate glass window, falling several metres
onto a car below by none other than Matroska the Prussian is another
thing entirely. Danes wondered how many time he had done it before.
His aim vas very good. However there was no time reminisce now when
he had some desperate escaping to do!
Everything \emph{had} been going well at first, or so it had seemed.
Perhaps it would have always ended like this even if things had gone
differently. No point in thinking about that now. The walk up to the
bank had gone uneventfully enough. The sun was shining, birds were
singing and the population of George Town was going about its merry
business, blisfully unaware of the trepidations racing through Danes'
mind, and the endless stream of encrypted binary-encoded arcana Danes
imagined to be perpetually racing through Matroska's eldritch
techno-grimoire of a mind. The only slightly concerning part being a
few minutes after leaving the jetty. Matroska cocked his head
slightly as they were walking, not losing stride, and said ``Someone
is following us.''
Danes looked at him. His face was impassive as ever, ``Are you sure?''
``It is of no consequence, we continue'' said Matroska simply. That
was the end of that. By now Danes was getting used to not being able
to get any blood out of this particular stone. If Matroska thought it
was OK then he guessed it was. Probably just some local street urchin
who saw them land wanting to earn a few dollars being of use to (or
stealing from) some clueless tourists.
Es watched them go with a mischevious gleam in her eyes. She was too
excited. Where would they go? What would they do? It was all she
could do to contain herself until they had safely rounded the corner
of the resturant. She didn't like the tall pale man, he gave her the
creeps. Plus, his head was really long! Who had such a long head? It
wasn't normal. Was his brain that long too? Is that why his head was
like that? She couldn't tell if he was really smart or not. She had
only heard him speak a few times, and never to her, but she reckoned
that if his brain filled up all the extra head length he had, he must
be some kind of genius or something!
Es saw them emerge again from behind the building but this time they
were further away, across the road. She made sure that everything in
the dinghy was secure and it was firmly attached to the jetty before
stealing up the ladder herself. She looked back down at the dinghy,
softly bobbing in the waves. It should be OK. I mean, they always
just left it tied up like this and it had never been stolen before.
Still, if it was and Danes found out that she had left it, oh man, he
would be soooo mad! She had kind of made that story up about it
needing guarding as an excuse to come ashore with them. She had never
been to Grand Cayman before and she wanted to have a look around. Who
wanted to be cooped up on the ship, anchored in the harbour almost
within shouting distance of the shore? Boring! Plus, Danes and the
funny man were going on some sort of secret mission! She had no idea
where they would go or what they would do but it all sounded very
exciting. Danes going off on some sort of spy-adventure and making
her stay here with the boat? Es didn't want to leave the dinghy when
she had promised that she wouldn't, but, she would just follow them
for a bit, from a distance. Danes would never find out. She'd be
back here way before him. And what if something happened? They might
need some protection or she could call for help or something. She
could be his backup, like a sidekick. Totally awesome.
The sun was getting high in the sky now and it shone down brilliantly
on George Town, glittering off glass fa\c cades on myriad fancy bank
buildings. Yesterday when Es had asked Danes about this place they
were going, he had explained to her about all the banks and stuff
here. Something about rich people hiding their money here so
governments couldn't get at it. Es wasn't fully sure she understood
what exactly that entailed or why the governments were so obsessed
with running off with peoples' money. She knew this though, she would
be super pissed if some government dude came after her money! Right
now Es' life savings consisted of exactly 593 euros. She had spent
the last few years saving as much as she could of her pocket money
(Danes gave her 5 euros a week which she could spend on whatever she
wanted when they were in port) and doing odd jobs whenever she could.
One day she would use it to buy her own boat where she could be
captain and noone could ever tell her what to do, she'd be free! Or
maybe she would buy some land somewhere and build an awesome house.
Or maybe she would live on one of those awesome floating cities that
Danes had told her about (Seasteads he called them) but they had never
visited, yet. She figured there was plenty of time to work that out
later. Right now she had to make sure not to lose sight of Danes.
They were about 100 metres ahead of her, walking up a busy street. Es
guessed it was some sort of main street judging by the traffic and the
size of the buildings lining it. She had been following them for
about 5 minutes along the waterfront before they had turned onto this
street a few minutes ago. Every once in a while she lost them as they
rounded a building or walked through a large-ish crowd of people, but
she always caught sight of them again. She made very sure to stay
well back though, so as not to be seen and she was sure that they
didn't know she was following. The last thing she wanted was for
Danes to be mad at her, or worse, get grounded!
The city was pretty small that she could see. Nothing like Havana or
some of the huge American cities she had seen as they sometimes
cruised along the US coast. Es really wanted to visit America one
day, but Danes always said it was too risky. She hoped that she could
talk him into visiting Disneyland after this trip, but probably not.
Oh whale.
After about 15 minutes or so of following, she saw them finally stop
in front of an ordinary-looking office building. Or at least she
guessed it was an office building, not having much experience with
this sort of thing. In any case it was pretty similar to all the
buildings they had been walking by so far. Five storeys tall, grey
concrete with small-ish windows set every metre or so. Every once in
a while men in business suits carrying briefcases would walk in or
out. She always thought that people were stupid for wearing suits. I
mean, they must be so hot and they look like you couldn't run or climb
in them or anything, yeuch! You'd never catch Es wearing something
like that. She preferred shorts and a t-shirt, or when it got really
hot, a singlet. But still, they must wear them for a reason... Maybe
it made them feel important or something? Business men liked to feel
important she had noticed, especially when they worked for fancy banks
like the ones in the Cayman Islands. This didn't look like a fancy
bank though. It looked pretty dull. Maybe Danes wasn't going on some
adventure after all. Maybe he was just going to some boring business
meeting.
Danes and the other man didn't have to wait long before one of the
business men coming in and out of the building came up to them. It
looked like he was talking to the tall man but Es couldn't really make
anything out at this distance. After a minute or so the suit-man
turned and walked back into the building. Danes and long-head
followed them in.
Es looked around. The street she was on sloped slowly up hill from
the sea and she could make out the kill-9 lying at anchor in the
harbour. Glad she wasn't down there right now, being totally bored.
Although she wasn't having the fun adventure she imagined right now
either. There was nothing here but boring office buildings. At least
there had been more exciting down stuff going on down at the harbour.
It had been around 10 minutes since Danes and the other dude followed
the suit-guy into the building. At first she had gotten a little
closer to see if she could see anything, but there was nothing going
on that she could see. She had sat down on some steps in front of
another office building about 100 metres away to wait. It didn't take
long before she was thoroughly bored, sitting on some concrete steps,
sun beating down, nothing to do. Gah! She completely forgot to bring
her lunch with her. Stupid! Well she was hungry and hot and bored
now so she decided to go back down to the dinghy. This was not how
she thought things would be. Maybe Danes had not wanted her to come
just so she wouldn't die of boredom! Es got up and started walking
back down the street in the direction of the harbour.
All of a sudden there was a loud crashing sound! Es spun around in
time to see a man in a business suit (maybe the one she saw lead Danes
and face-man into the building, she wasn't sure) come flying out one
of the windows on the first floor! He arced downwards, surrounded in
flying bits of glass which sprayed everywhere when his impact
shattered the window. He seemed to hang in the air forever before
smacking with a sickening crunch into the roof of a parked car on the
street.
All Es could do was stare, slack-jawed at the aftermath. Holy shit!
This was more like it! But WTF was happening in there, and was Danes
OK? She didn't have to wait long for her answer as a few seconds
later her guardian threw open the front door of the building and came
running out, flat out, closely followed by Matroska, and after that
several rather angry-looking business-suit men carrying guns!
excited. Where would they go? What would they do? It was all she
could do to contain herself until they had safely rounded the corner
of the resturant. She didn't like the tall pale man, he gave her the
creeps. Plus, his head was really long! Who had such a long head? It
wasn't normal. Was his brain that long too? Is that why his head was
like that? She couldn't tell if he was really smart or not. She had
only heard him speak a few times, and never to her, but she reckoned
that if his brain filled up all the extra head length he had, he must
be some kind of genius or something!
Es saw them emerge again from behind the building but this time they
were further away, across the road. She made sure that everything in
the dinghy was secure and it was firmly attached to the jetty before
stealing up the ladder herself. She looked back down at the dinghy,
softly bobbing in the waves. It should be OK. I mean, they always
just left it tied up like this and it had never been stolen before.
Still, if it was and Danes found out that she had left it, oh man, he
would be soooo mad! She had kind of made that story up about it
needing guarding as an excuse to come ashore with them. She had never
been to Grand Cayman before and she wanted to have a look around. Who
wanted to be cooped up on the ship, anchored in the harbour almost
within shouting distance of the shore? Boring! Plus, Danes and the
funny man were going on some sort of secret mission! She had no idea
where they would go or what they would do but it all sounded very
exciting. Danes going off on some sort of spy-adventure and making
her stay here with the boat? Es didn't want to leave the dinghy when
she had promised that she wouldn't, but, she would just follow them
for a bit, from a distance. Danes would never find out. She'd be
back here way before him. And what if something happened? They might
need some protection or she could call for help or something. She
could be his backup, like a sidekick. Totally awesome.
The sun was getting high in the sky now and it shone down brilliantly
on George Town, glittering off glass fa\c cades on myriad fancy bank
buildings. Yesterday when Es had asked Danes about this place they
were going, he had explained to her about all the banks and stuff
here. Something about rich people hiding their money here so
governments couldn't get at it. Es wasn't fully sure she understood
what exactly that entailed or why the governments were so obsessed
with running off with peoples' money. She knew this though, she would
be super pissed if some government dude came after her money! Right
now Es' life savings consisted of exactly 593 euros. She had spent
the last few years saving as much as she could of her pocket money
(Danes gave her 5 euros a week which she could spend on whatever she
wanted when they were in port) and doing odd jobs whenever she could.
One day she would use it to buy her own boat where she could be
captain and noone could ever tell her what to do, she'd be free! Or
maybe she would buy some land somewhere and build an awesome house.
Or maybe she would live on one of those awesome floating cities that
Danes had told her about (Seasteads he called them) but they had never
visited, yet. She figured there was plenty of time to work that out
later. Right now she had to make sure not to lose sight of Danes.
They were about 100 metres ahead of her, walking up a busy street. Es
guessed it was some sort of main street judging by the traffic and the
size of the buildings lining it. She had been following them for
about 5 minutes along the waterfront before they had turned onto this
street a few minutes ago. Every once in a while she lost them as they
rounded a building or walked through a large-ish crowd of people, but
she always caught sight of them again. She made very sure to stay
well back though, so as not to be seen and she was sure that they
didn't know she was following. The last thing she wanted was for
Danes to be mad at her, or worse, get grounded!
The city was pretty small that she could see. Nothing like Havana or
some of the huge American cities she had seen as they sometimes
cruised along the US coast. Es really wanted to visit America one
day, but Danes always said it was too risky. She hoped that she could
talk him into visiting Disneyland after this trip, but probably not.
Oh whale.
After about 15 minutes or so of following, she saw them finally stop
in front of an ordinary-looking office building. Or at least she
guessed it was an office building, not having much experience with
this sort of thing. In any case it was pretty similar to all the
buildings they had been walking by so far. Five storeys tall, grey
concrete with small-ish windows set every metre or so. Every once in
a while men in business suits carrying briefcases would walk in or
out. She always thought that people were stupid for wearing suits. I
mean, they must be so hot and they look like you couldn't run or climb
in them or anything, yeuch! You'd never catch Es wearing something
like that. She preferred shorts and a t-shirt, or when it got really
hot, a singlet. But still, they must wear them for a reason... Maybe
it made them feel important or something? Business men liked to feel
important she had noticed, especially when they worked for fancy banks
like the ones in the Cayman Islands. This didn't look like a fancy
bank though. It looked pretty dull. Maybe Danes wasn't going on some
adventure after all. Maybe he was just going to some boring business
meeting.
Danes and the other man didn't have to wait long before one of the
business men coming in and out of the building came up to them. It
looked like he was talking to the tall man but Es couldn't really make
anything out at this distance. After a minute or so the suit-man
turned and walked back into the building. Danes and long-head
followed them in.
Es looked around. The street she was on sloped slowly up hill from
the sea and she could make out the kill-9 lying at anchor in the
harbour. Glad she wasn't down there right now, being totally bored.
Although she wasn't having the fun adventure she imagined right now
either. There was nothing here but boring office buildings. At least
there had been more exciting down stuff going on down at the harbour.
It had been around 10 minutes since Danes and the other dude followed
the suit-guy into the building. At first she had gotten a little
closer to see if she could see anything, but there was nothing going
on that she could see. She had sat down on some steps in front of
another office building about 100 metres away to wait. It didn't take
long before she was thoroughly bored, sitting on some concrete steps,
sun beating down, nothing to do. Gah! She completely forgot to bring
her lunch with her. Stupid! Well she was hungry and hot and bored
now so she decided to go back down to the dinghy. This was not how
she thought things would be. Maybe Danes had not wanted her to come
just so she wouldn't die of boredom! Es got up and started walking
back down the street in the direction of the harbour.
All of a sudden there was a loud crashing sound! Es spun around in
time to see a man in a business suit (maybe the one she saw lead Danes
and face-man into the building, she wasn't sure) come flying out one
of the windows on the first floor! He arced downwards, surrounded in
flying bits of glass which sprayed everywhere when his impact
shattered the window. He seemed to hang in the air forever before
smacking with a sickening crunch into the roof of a parked car on the
street.
All Es could do was stare, slack-jawed at the aftermath. Holy shit!
This was more like it! But WTF was happening in there, and was Danes
OK? She didn't have to wait long for her answer as a few seconds
later her guardian threw open the front door of the building and came
running out, flat out, closely followed by Matroska, and after that
several rather angry-looking business-suit men carrying guns!
Matroska emerged from the main hatchway looking imposing as ever. He
didn't seem to have a bag or a change of clothing or anything really
that Danes could discern, except for that blacker-than-black coat he
eternally wore. He had never asked to use the laundry or shower as
far as Danes knew. Yet as Danes saw him walking towards him in the
early dawn light he looked as composed and fresh (if that word could
ever be used to describe Matroska's appearance) as he had the first
day they had met, deep in the forests of Colombia. He was indeed a
mystery. Danes didn't get any time to speculate further as Matroska
reached his side.
Danes spoke, ``The dinghy's in the water ready and waiting.''
Matroska nodded. ``Down the ladder at the stern, you first, be my
guest.'' Matroska said nothing, but complied. There was a loud
sputtering (TODO, what's it called?) followed by a low thrum as the
dinghy's outboard motor coughed into life. Es had taken the liberty
of climbing down into the dinghy and getting everything ready for
them. She was seated in the driver's position in the stern with her
right hand on the outboard tiller and left on the port gunwale. She
stared up at them with a meek look (or what she presumed a meek look
would be) on her face. ``And where do you think you're going young
lady?'' enquired Danes with a slight grin on his face. She was
nothing if not bold.
``Uh, I just though I could drive you guys to the dock you know?
You're the captain and a captain shouldn't have to drive himself
right? And that guy,'' she cocked her head in Matroska's general
direction, ``doesn't look much like he's into dinghy driving to me!''
Danes looked down on her, exasperared. What was he going to do? She
wasn't a child anymore (if she had ever been) and it wasn't like Grand
Cayman was the most dangerous place they'd been lately (not for her
anyway). She must have sensed that she was wearing him down since she
increased the meekness level on her face (trying hard to mask a grin)
even further and continued, trying hard to keep pleading out of her
voice, ``Oh please Danes, I'll stay with the dinghy I promise! You
need someone to guard it anyway, who knows what people might do around
here. Uh, not that there would be anyone dangerous around, I just
mean, a lot of theives, or...something,'' she trailed off, obviously
not sure if she'd blown her chance or not.
Danes sighed (this was becomeing a habit), ``OK, you can drive us, but
stay with the dinghy OK? No following us! And make sure you have
your phone with you in case of an emergency.'' She lit up and a broad
grin cracked across her face.
``Aye Cap'n! Won't let you down, already got everything I need.''
She looked very pleased with herself sitting there.
``We might be a few hours, go pack some water and something to eat. I
don't want you wandering off anywhere.'' Danes sounded more stern
than he wanted to really. He was just feeling so stressed about this
whole Matroska business. He hoped he didn't come off sounding too
harsh on her but he really just didn't want to risk anything happening
and couldn't spend time worrying about her safety when he should be
focusing all his attention on his own. She'd be OK though. He made a
mental note to send a text to Hans telling him to keep an eye on her
from the kill-9. Es grinned broader and nudged a small brown bag
under her seat with her foot.
``All here.'' she said. Danes couldn't help but return the grin.
Planned it from the beginning of course. She was turning out quite a
bit like him when he was young.
They seated themselves to evenly distribute their weight in the
dinghy, now getting a little crowded. Danes in the bow, Matroska,
clearly the largest, amidships, and Es driving in the stern. The
journey from the kill-9 to the shore was a short one. Only a few
minutes or so with the George Town skyline before them, lit up from
behind by the blazing Caribbean dawn sun. It was not a large town,
only around 30,000 people called it home, but it was certainly the
largest in the Cayman islands with around half the population residing
here. But the significance of this small town in the world of
international finance was huge. Due to the country's somewhat
favourable attitude taxation and business it has been used by
corporations and persons the world over as a convenient place to store
funds which they may not want the governments of their native lands to
know about. This applied equally of course to legitimate, and perhaps
not so legitimate businesses (and that line can be quite blurry at
times Danes had found out). It was for that reason that Danes
suspected that he had been sent here with Matroska. The Black Hat
Freelancers were suspected to control funds to the tune of trillions
of euros from behind the scenes. But they never wanted to be seen in
clear daylight, preferring the shadows. So one of them might want a
more discreet way to enter that country than a first-class flight in.
Surely Matroska or Hernandez or whomever had sent a little something
the way of customs as they certainly hadn't been bothered by them thus
far, and Danes doubted that they would be. That would make a nice
change, but it did nothing to assuage the knot slowly forming in his
gut.
They arrived at a small jetty in front of a fancy restaraunt. Even at
this early hour there were people out and about. Early risers going
about their morning errands. Es killed the motor and Danes made the
dinghy fast and climbed up a small ladder and onto the jetty.
Matroska followed him silently, as ever his face an impenetrable blank
mask. Danes thought he must have been sweltering under that heavy
black coat but he never once broke a sweat or gave any indication that
he was in any way uncomfortable.
Danes turned and looked back down at Es, sitting quietly and
innocently in the dinghy. Perhaps a little too innocently he thought,
and hoped that she wasn't going to do anything dangerous. No thinking
about that now. Now is the time for focus. He took a deep breath and
let it out slowly. Here we go. ``We'll be back soon sweetie.
Shouldn't be longer than a couple of hours, ok?'' He had no idea how
long they would be, but it felt reassuring just to say it.
``No worries, I'll be fine. I'm 13 you know!'' She grinned and
added, ``Have fun boys!'' cheekily. Danes could see Matroska waiting
patiently (Or impatiently? Who could tell?) out of the corner of his
eye. She would be fine. She was more capable than Danes ever was at
that age, but he couldn't help but think of that fragile broken
creature he found in his engine room all those years ago. The
contrast was night and day. No trace of that former self here, but
still... He quickly turned on his heel and strode off down the jetty.
Matroska caught up within two strides and took the lead, his long
black coat sweeping out behind him in his haste.
didn't seem to have a bag or a change of clothing or anything really
that Danes could discern, except for that blacker-than-black coat he
eternally wore. He had never asked to use the laundry or shower as
far as Danes knew. Yet as Danes saw him walking towards him in the
early dawn light he looked as composed and fresh (if that word could
ever be used to describe Matroska's appearance) as he had the first
day they had met, deep in the forests of Colombia. He was indeed a
mystery. Danes didn't get any time to speculate further as Matroska
reached his side.
Danes spoke, ``The dinghy's in the water ready and waiting.''
Matroska nodded. ``Down the ladder at the stern, you first, be my
guest.'' Matroska said nothing, but complied. There was a loud
sputtering (TODO, what's it called?) followed by a low thrum as the
dinghy's outboard motor coughed into life. Es had taken the liberty
of climbing down into the dinghy and getting everything ready for
them. She was seated in the driver's position in the stern with her
right hand on the outboard tiller and left on the port gunwale. She
stared up at them with a meek look (or what she presumed a meek look
would be) on her face. ``And where do you think you're going young
lady?'' enquired Danes with a slight grin on his face. She was
nothing if not bold.
``Uh, I just though I could drive you guys to the dock you know?
You're the captain and a captain shouldn't have to drive himself
right? And that guy,'' she cocked her head in Matroska's general
direction, ``doesn't look much like he's into dinghy driving to me!''
Danes looked down on her, exasperared. What was he going to do? She
wasn't a child anymore (if she had ever been) and it wasn't like Grand
Cayman was the most dangerous place they'd been lately (not for her
anyway). She must have sensed that she was wearing him down since she
increased the meekness level on her face (trying hard to mask a grin)
even further and continued, trying hard to keep pleading out of her
voice, ``Oh please Danes, I'll stay with the dinghy I promise! You
need someone to guard it anyway, who knows what people might do around
here. Uh, not that there would be anyone dangerous around, I just
mean, a lot of theives, or...something,'' she trailed off, obviously
not sure if she'd blown her chance or not.
Danes sighed (this was becomeing a habit), ``OK, you can drive us, but
stay with the dinghy OK? No following us! And make sure you have
your phone with you in case of an emergency.'' She lit up and a broad
grin cracked across her face.
``Aye Cap'n! Won't let you down, already got everything I need.''
She looked very pleased with herself sitting there.
``We might be a few hours, go pack some water and something to eat. I
don't want you wandering off anywhere.'' Danes sounded more stern
than he wanted to really. He was just feeling so stressed about this
whole Matroska business. He hoped he didn't come off sounding too
harsh on her but he really just didn't want to risk anything happening
and couldn't spend time worrying about her safety when he should be
focusing all his attention on his own. She'd be OK though. He made a
mental note to send a text to Hans telling him to keep an eye on her
from the kill-9. Es grinned broader and nudged a small brown bag
under her seat with her foot.
``All here.'' she said. Danes couldn't help but return the grin.
Planned it from the beginning of course. She was turning out quite a
bit like him when he was young.
They seated themselves to evenly distribute their weight in the
dinghy, now getting a little crowded. Danes in the bow, Matroska,
clearly the largest, amidships, and Es driving in the stern. The
journey from the kill-9 to the shore was a short one. Only a few
minutes or so with the George Town skyline before them, lit up from
behind by the blazing Caribbean dawn sun. It was not a large town,
only around 30,000 people called it home, but it was certainly the
largest in the Cayman islands with around half the population residing
here. But the significance of this small town in the world of
international finance was huge. Due to the country's somewhat
favourable attitude taxation and business it has been used by
corporations and persons the world over as a convenient place to store
funds which they may not want the governments of their native lands to
know about. This applied equally of course to legitimate, and perhaps
not so legitimate businesses (and that line can be quite blurry at
times Danes had found out). It was for that reason that Danes
suspected that he had been sent here with Matroska. The Black Hat
Freelancers were suspected to control funds to the tune of trillions
of euros from behind the scenes. But they never wanted to be seen in
clear daylight, preferring the shadows. So one of them might want a
more discreet way to enter that country than a first-class flight in.
Surely Matroska or Hernandez or whomever had sent a little something
the way of customs as they certainly hadn't been bothered by them thus
far, and Danes doubted that they would be. That would make a nice
change, but it did nothing to assuage the knot slowly forming in his
gut.
They arrived at a small jetty in front of a fancy restaraunt. Even at
this early hour there were people out and about. Early risers going
about their morning errands. Es killed the motor and Danes made the
dinghy fast and climbed up a small ladder and onto the jetty.
Matroska followed him silently, as ever his face an impenetrable blank
mask. Danes thought he must have been sweltering under that heavy
black coat but he never once broke a sweat or gave any indication that
he was in any way uncomfortable.
Danes turned and looked back down at Es, sitting quietly and
innocently in the dinghy. Perhaps a little too innocently he thought,
and hoped that she wasn't going to do anything dangerous. No thinking
about that now. Now is the time for focus. He took a deep breath and
let it out slowly. Here we go. ``We'll be back soon sweetie.
Shouldn't be longer than a couple of hours, ok?'' He had no idea how
long they would be, but it felt reassuring just to say it.
``No worries, I'll be fine. I'm 13 you know!'' She grinned and
added, ``Have fun boys!'' cheekily. Danes could see Matroska waiting
patiently (Or impatiently? Who could tell?) out of the corner of his
eye. She would be fine. She was more capable than Danes ever was at
that age, but he couldn't help but think of that fragile broken
creature he found in his engine room all those years ago. The
contrast was night and day. No trace of that former self here, but
still... He quickly turned on his heel and strode off down the jetty.
Matroska caught up within two strides and took the lead, his long
black coat sweeping out behind him in his haste.
Chapter 3 - Bank
The passage from Turbo to Grand Cayman went smoothly enough, unless
you count a minor malfunction of the fu{\ss}ball table which almost
caused a mutiny led by Es. Table quickly fixed by Frank, no bloodshed
ensued and peace restored. Matroska stayed in his cabin the whole
journey, only emerging to use the head, collect one meal a day (a
restriction enforced only by himself). One time he took a quick turn
around the deck before returning quickly below without saying a word
(his usual demeanour). A fair easterly breeze blowing 20 knots
average the whole way meant that the kill-9 made the roughly 700
nautical mile journey in just under 3 and a half days. Arriving at
dawn the ketch sailed smoothly into George Town harbour and dropped
anchor just as the first brilliant beam of light exploded up from
behind the line of buildings on the shorw, reaching a line of fire to
the sky. Danes watched the spectacle from his vantage point, perched
on the tip of the bowsprit, holding fast to the forstay, and hoped
when all this unsavoury business with Matroska was done, he would
still be around to see and appreciate such beauty He still didn't know
for sure why he was here, the note from the Hernandez had been short,
to the point, yet wholly unsatisfying to his curiosity. He was sure
he would never get anything more out of Matroska, due to the absolute
paranoia which is the hallmark of his black-hat freelancers. Given
where they were sent, however, he suspected that there was a pretty
good chance it had something to do with money. The Cayman Islands are
well known for their delightful banking industry, and their
well-developed abilities to look the other way when large amounts of
lucre, filthy or otherwise passes through their hands.
``Anchor's down and holding skip,'' Danes turned at the report. Hans
was standing on deck, a few metres behind him, dawn sunlight
illuminating his ruddy-blonde hair to a dull glow.
``Word, thanks Hans. Can you fetch Matroska? I want to get this
whole business over as quickly as possible so we can sail on the next
favourable tide.'' Danes had been able to do nothing other than
speculate about what his ``assistance'' to Matroska might entail. He
had already decided that Matroska was here to conduct some sort of
high-level transaction, or possibly make a deposit in one or another
secret bank accounts. What else would he be doing here? Not to get a
tan surely! Danes chuckled to himself at that one. A nervous laugh
to be sure.
``Aye, aye skip'' said Hans and disappeared down the nearest hatch in
search of the long-faced man.
``Watcha doin'?'' came a curious voice from behind him. It was Es.
He could never hear her coming these days. Danes turned around to
face his ward. ``Goin' on shore right? Gotta let that weird tall man
off? Can I come? Can I come? Please, I'll be good! Man this place
looks awesome!'' She managed to say all that in about 3 seconds (or so
it seemd to Danes) before he could get any word in edgewise.
``Sorry Es, can't take you this time. Matroska has some important
business that he asked me to help with.'' said Danes with a
sigh. ``You just stay here and hang out with Frank and Hans and I
promise that as soon as we're finished with Mexico we can go wherever
you like, OK?'' He sure hoped that he could deliver on that promise.
He wasn't too worried, most of the times things like this went OK, but
still, there in the back of his mind he couldn't quite seem to quiet a
little voice telling him to get the fuck out of there now! No matter
how it went though, Es would be fine. Frank and Hans would take care
of her, he was sure about that. There was nothing more heart-breaking
he could think about than his little Estrid having to go back to the
life she came from. The life that he had spent the last four years
trying his hardest to help her forget. Most of the time he thought he
had succeeded, but a few times he had accidentally disturbed her when
she wasn't expecting it (far less often these days) and thought he had
heard her sobbing. He never saw anything of course. She was too fast
for that. To fast and too careful. Never show weakness. That was
the law where she had come from. The weak get consumed by the strong.
Danes had worked hard to try and shift that attitude, though the more
he thought about it, the more he realised that that was pretty much
how the real world worked. Children were not supposed to know that
though. That was something that you learned later, after you had had
a happy childhood in the fantasy world constructed by good parents.
Es it would seem had the fortune of skipping that part. Danes pushed
those thoughts out of his mind. This was not the time. Right now all
he had to do was to focus on the mission at hand, whatever the fuck
that turned out to be!
``Awwww, I always stay with the boat! I want to go with you on one of
your missions. I can handle it, I'm 13 you know!'' Danes chuckled to
himself. She's got spunk, that's for sure.
Danes tried to put on his most placating, but hopefully not
patronising tone. ``Your time will come sweetie, soon enough, but
this mission is not going to be fun. Like I said though, when we're
done, anywhere you like.''
A grin slowly spread on Es' face. ``Anywhere eh? In the whole
world?''
``Well, within reason,'' said Danes. God, where was she going to
suggest?!
``Alright, I want to go to Disneyland!'' Her grin cracked open into a
beaming smile. She had a knack for using that smile to get anything
she wanted, or so it seemed to Danes sometimes. But Disneyland? It
wasn't too far away to be sure (he presumed she meant Disney World in
Florida not the one in California), but if he was reluctant to step
foot on Grand Cayman due to its stron US ties, he was much more
concerned about the US mainland. Still, she had dropped hints before.
A few months ago she had read ``Down and Out in the Magic Kindom'' by
Cory Doctorow and ever since then she had seemed slightly obsessed
with Disney World. Still, it would be a nice break.. Later he could
think about how to make it happen.
``Let's talk about it when I get back, OK?'' Danes said perhaps a
little more dismissively than he intended, for at that moment he had
noticed Hans emerge from the main hatch with Matroska following
behind. ``But right now, we have to get the dinghy in the water.
Wanna help me?''
Es looked a little forlorn, ``Yeah, I guess, '' she said with a
dejected look on her face. The dinghy was located at the stern of the
kill-9, hanging off a pair of sturdy davits. It was reasonably large
as these things went, 3 metres long with a 10hp outboard motor on the
back. Enough to get you around when you needed it. They lowered it
down to the water and made it fast to the back of the boat next to the
ladder.
The passage from Turbo to Grand Cayman went smoothly enough, unless
you count a minor malfunction of the fu{\ss}ball table which almost
caused a mutiny led by Es. Table quickly fixed by Frank, no bloodshed
ensued and peace restored. Matroska stayed in his cabin the whole
journey, only emerging to use the head, collect one meal a day (a
restriction enforced only by himself). One time he took a quick turn
around the deck before returning quickly below without saying a word
(his usual demeanour). A fair easterly breeze blowing 20 knots
average the whole way meant that the kill-9 made the roughly 700
nautical mile journey in just under 3 and a half days. Arriving at
dawn the ketch sailed smoothly into George Town harbour and dropped
anchor just as the first brilliant beam of light exploded up from
behind the line of buildings on the shorw, reaching a line of fire to
the sky. Danes watched the spectacle from his vantage point, perched
on the tip of the bowsprit, holding fast to the forstay, and hoped
when all this unsavoury business with Matroska was done, he would
still be around to see and appreciate such beauty He still didn't know
for sure why he was here, the note from the Hernandez had been short,
to the point, yet wholly unsatisfying to his curiosity. He was sure
he would never get anything more out of Matroska, due to the absolute
paranoia which is the hallmark of his black-hat freelancers. Given
where they were sent, however, he suspected that there was a pretty
good chance it had something to do with money. The Cayman Islands are
well known for their delightful banking industry, and their
well-developed abilities to look the other way when large amounts of
lucre, filthy or otherwise passes through their hands.
``Anchor's down and holding skip,'' Danes turned at the report. Hans
was standing on deck, a few metres behind him, dawn sunlight
illuminating his ruddy-blonde hair to a dull glow.
``Word, thanks Hans. Can you fetch Matroska? I want to get this
whole business over as quickly as possible so we can sail on the next
favourable tide.'' Danes had been able to do nothing other than
speculate about what his ``assistance'' to Matroska might entail. He
had already decided that Matroska was here to conduct some sort of
high-level transaction, or possibly make a deposit in one or another
secret bank accounts. What else would he be doing here? Not to get a
tan surely! Danes chuckled to himself at that one. A nervous laugh
to be sure.
``Aye, aye skip'' said Hans and disappeared down the nearest hatch in
search of the long-faced man.
``Watcha doin'?'' came a curious voice from behind him. It was Es.
He could never hear her coming these days. Danes turned around to
face his ward. ``Goin' on shore right? Gotta let that weird tall man
off? Can I come? Can I come? Please, I'll be good! Man this place
looks awesome!'' She managed to say all that in about 3 seconds (or so
it seemd to Danes) before he could get any word in edgewise.
``Sorry Es, can't take you this time. Matroska has some important
business that he asked me to help with.'' said Danes with a
sigh. ``You just stay here and hang out with Frank and Hans and I
promise that as soon as we're finished with Mexico we can go wherever
you like, OK?'' He sure hoped that he could deliver on that promise.
He wasn't too worried, most of the times things like this went OK, but
still, there in the back of his mind he couldn't quite seem to quiet a
little voice telling him to get the fuck out of there now! No matter
how it went though, Es would be fine. Frank and Hans would take care
of her, he was sure about that. There was nothing more heart-breaking
he could think about than his little Estrid having to go back to the
life she came from. The life that he had spent the last four years
trying his hardest to help her forget. Most of the time he thought he
had succeeded, but a few times he had accidentally disturbed her when
she wasn't expecting it (far less often these days) and thought he had
heard her sobbing. He never saw anything of course. She was too fast
for that. To fast and too careful. Never show weakness. That was
the law where she had come from. The weak get consumed by the strong.
Danes had worked hard to try and shift that attitude, though the more
he thought about it, the more he realised that that was pretty much
how the real world worked. Children were not supposed to know that
though. That was something that you learned later, after you had had
a happy childhood in the fantasy world constructed by good parents.
Es it would seem had the fortune of skipping that part. Danes pushed
those thoughts out of his mind. This was not the time. Right now all
he had to do was to focus on the mission at hand, whatever the fuck
that turned out to be!
``Awwww, I always stay with the boat! I want to go with you on one of
your missions. I can handle it, I'm 13 you know!'' Danes chuckled to
himself. She's got spunk, that's for sure.
Danes tried to put on his most placating, but hopefully not
patronising tone. ``Your time will come sweetie, soon enough, but
this mission is not going to be fun. Like I said though, when we're
done, anywhere you like.''
A grin slowly spread on Es' face. ``Anywhere eh? In the whole
world?''
``Well, within reason,'' said Danes. God, where was she going to
suggest?!
``Alright, I want to go to Disneyland!'' Her grin cracked open into a
beaming smile. She had a knack for using that smile to get anything
she wanted, or so it seemed to Danes sometimes. But Disneyland? It
wasn't too far away to be sure (he presumed she meant Disney World in
Florida not the one in California), but if he was reluctant to step
foot on Grand Cayman due to its stron US ties, he was much more
concerned about the US mainland. Still, she had dropped hints before.
A few months ago she had read ``Down and Out in the Magic Kindom'' by
Cory Doctorow and ever since then she had seemed slightly obsessed
with Disney World. Still, it would be a nice break.. Later he could
think about how to make it happen.
``Let's talk about it when I get back, OK?'' Danes said perhaps a
little more dismissively than he intended, for at that moment he had
noticed Hans emerge from the main hatch with Matroska following
behind. ``But right now, we have to get the dinghy in the water.
Wanna help me?''
Es looked a little forlorn, ``Yeah, I guess, '' she said with a
dejected look on her face. The dinghy was located at the stern of the
kill-9, hanging off a pair of sturdy davits. It was reasonably large
as these things went, 3 metres long with a 10hp outboard motor on the
back. Enough to get you around when you needed it. They lowered it
down to the water and made it fast to the back of the boat next to the
ladder.
This cabin was usually vacant. Being the farthest cabin away from the
centre of gravity it moved the most with the motion of the ship as she
sailed and subsequently none of the permanent crew wanted to make it
home. It was kept vacant and ready in cases such as this, when they
might have to take on an unexpected passenger, ironically
(!!??REALLY??!!) enough, just those who had most need for gentler
motion than it supplied.
Danes knocked. No Response. He waited a few moments and knocked
again. Still nothing. He gave up (like he needed much excuse) and
began to turn when the door slowly opened with a slight squeeking
noise. He turned back and found himself face to face with the
hunched, pale figure of Matroska. The ceilings in any boat can be low
due to the usually cramped nature of smaller vessels, but Danes prided
himself on having a relatively comfortable ship with generous headroom
all over (except some smaller nooks and various holds and other spaces
under the main living deck of course). Even so Matroska was such a
towering figure that he had to bend over a not insignificant amount to
move about in the cabin. Danes figured that Matroska probably wasn't
going to have much fun on this voyage, though by looking at his blank
face you'd never be able to tell anything about his comfort level or
emotional state.
Matroska said nothing, just stared with those black-hole eyes,
seemingly sucking all life out of the surrounds, sucking everything
in, down past the event-horizon of those swirling irises, down into
the depths, never to return. Danes started to speak but suddenly his
throat felt thick and he couldn't form any words. He cleared it with
a cough.
``Sorry if I'm disturbing you...'' Danes waited for the customary
polite denial that any wrongdoing had occured. None came. He
continued after a slight pause. ``...Uh, I read the note from
Hernandez. I presume you know it's content?'' Still no
response. ``May I come inside? I have a few questions.''
Matroska continued to stare for several more seconds before
responding. Some sort of psychological tactic Danes was sure. He
remained mute, but turned and walked back into the cabin and sat down
on the small stool which stood in front of the tiny wooden desk wedged
into a nook in the wall. This had apparently become his office and
contained his small laptop and several papers, all blank that Danes
could see. As Matroska had left the door open, Danes took this as an
invitation to enter, and did so, closing the door behind him. Danes
perched upon the edge of the bed, the only other place to sit in the
small cabin.
Again, nothing but that blank void-stare. This dude really was
serious. So Danes would be doing the asking he guessed. ``You're
aware of our little detour?'' queried Danes.
Matroska finally spoke. It was the same unearthly cadence as
before. ``Your detour perhaps, always my planned destination.''
Danes continued, determined to see what he could get out of Matroska,
now that he had begun. ``But you must be aware of
the, difficulties, this puts on me and my crew?''
``You, your crew, and your possible `difficulties' are no concern of
mine. You made a deal with Hernandez and you well know the
consequences for displeasing him. Not on an unrelated note, you must
understand that should you decide to sail elsewhere than the location
indicated in the message, I would be rather \emph{inconvenienced}.''
Matroska said nothing that might imply a threat per se, but the way
that the last word was uttered (if it was possible to be even more
unsettling than the way he usually spoke) made it quite clear that
\emph{inconvenienced} was somthing that Matroska did not like to be,
and being the one who imposed any such \emph{inconvenence} on him
would almost certainly ruin your day in ways you would do best to not
to try and imagine.
Danes cleared his throat yet again. He didn't like the way talking
with this man-mountain disturbed him. Usually he was cool in pretty
much all situations and he considered himself reasonably eloquent and
persuasive, but there was just something about this man which shook
even the most steadfast of wills. ``Indeed, be assured that I am not
willing to endure those consequences and neither would I \emph{dream}
(Matroska seemed oblivious to the slightly sarcastic tone used here)
of causing you any \emph{inconvenience},'' Matroska's expression
remained unchanged, ``I simply wanted to make sure that \emph{you}
were aware of my situation''.
``I am aware, of everything,'' and with that Matroska did something
Danes had never though he would see, he smiled. Well, a smile perhaps
is not the right word for it. It wasn't quite a smile in the sense of
the word as we know it. The corners of Matroska's mouth curled up
ever so slightly and as he delivered the last word the intensity of
his glare increased (if such a thing were possible) and for a moment
Danes felt displaced, like he was being drawn into the black-hole
gaze. It lasted only a split-second and then the face was back to its
same expressionless mask.
Danes gave up. It was clear that he would get nothing more from
Matroska today, if ever. He sighed. It seemed like he was doing that
a lot lately. He resolved to stop lest it turn him into an emo, a
fate worse than death in his eyes!
``Very well then. If there's anything you require, just ask,'' said
Danes and stood up from the bed. Matroska gave the slightest nod from
his head before turning to his laptop and presumably continuing with
whatever arcana he was engaged in. Danes left the small cabin and
closed the door carefully behind him. He continued up on deck to get
some fresh air, passing the galley on the way he made sure to retrieve
the fortified coffee Frank had made for him earlier. FSM knew he
needed it! As he emerged he looked up. The black sky was pin-pricked
with thousands of gleaming stars shining down their light on him. Now
that they were further away from the coast and its light pollution he
could see them in all their majesty. This sight never failed to calm
him, and FSM knows he needed it! Four days to Grand Cayman, maybe a
bit less. Better enjoy the peace while it lasts he thought...
centre of gravity it moved the most with the motion of the ship as she
sailed and subsequently none of the permanent crew wanted to make it
home. It was kept vacant and ready in cases such as this, when they
might have to take on an unexpected passenger, ironically
(!!??REALLY??!!) enough, just those who had most need for gentler
motion than it supplied.
Danes knocked. No Response. He waited a few moments and knocked
again. Still nothing. He gave up (like he needed much excuse) and
began to turn when the door slowly opened with a slight squeeking
noise. He turned back and found himself face to face with the
hunched, pale figure of Matroska. The ceilings in any boat can be low
due to the usually cramped nature of smaller vessels, but Danes prided
himself on having a relatively comfortable ship with generous headroom
all over (except some smaller nooks and various holds and other spaces
under the main living deck of course). Even so Matroska was such a
towering figure that he had to bend over a not insignificant amount to
move about in the cabin. Danes figured that Matroska probably wasn't
going to have much fun on this voyage, though by looking at his blank
face you'd never be able to tell anything about his comfort level or
emotional state.
Matroska said nothing, just stared with those black-hole eyes,
seemingly sucking all life out of the surrounds, sucking everything
in, down past the event-horizon of those swirling irises, down into
the depths, never to return. Danes started to speak but suddenly his
throat felt thick and he couldn't form any words. He cleared it with
a cough.
``Sorry if I'm disturbing you...'' Danes waited for the customary
polite denial that any wrongdoing had occured. None came. He
continued after a slight pause. ``...Uh, I read the note from
Hernandez. I presume you know it's content?'' Still no
response. ``May I come inside? I have a few questions.''
Matroska continued to stare for several more seconds before
responding. Some sort of psychological tactic Danes was sure. He
remained mute, but turned and walked back into the cabin and sat down
on the small stool which stood in front of the tiny wooden desk wedged
into a nook in the wall. This had apparently become his office and
contained his small laptop and several papers, all blank that Danes
could see. As Matroska had left the door open, Danes took this as an
invitation to enter, and did so, closing the door behind him. Danes
perched upon the edge of the bed, the only other place to sit in the
small cabin.
Again, nothing but that blank void-stare. This dude really was
serious. So Danes would be doing the asking he guessed. ``You're
aware of our little detour?'' queried Danes.
Matroska finally spoke. It was the same unearthly cadence as
before. ``Your detour perhaps, always my planned destination.''
Danes continued, determined to see what he could get out of Matroska,
now that he had begun. ``But you must be aware of
the, difficulties, this puts on me and my crew?''
``You, your crew, and your possible `difficulties' are no concern of
mine. You made a deal with Hernandez and you well know the
consequences for displeasing him. Not on an unrelated note, you must
understand that should you decide to sail elsewhere than the location
indicated in the message, I would be rather \emph{inconvenienced}.''
Matroska said nothing that might imply a threat per se, but the way
that the last word was uttered (if it was possible to be even more
unsettling than the way he usually spoke) made it quite clear that
\emph{inconvenienced} was somthing that Matroska did not like to be,
and being the one who imposed any such \emph{inconvenence} on him
would almost certainly ruin your day in ways you would do best to not
to try and imagine.
Danes cleared his throat yet again. He didn't like the way talking
with this man-mountain disturbed him. Usually he was cool in pretty
much all situations and he considered himself reasonably eloquent and
persuasive, but there was just something about this man which shook
even the most steadfast of wills. ``Indeed, be assured that I am not
willing to endure those consequences and neither would I \emph{dream}
(Matroska seemed oblivious to the slightly sarcastic tone used here)
of causing you any \emph{inconvenience},'' Matroska's expression
remained unchanged, ``I simply wanted to make sure that \emph{you}
were aware of my situation''.
``I am aware, of everything,'' and with that Matroska did something
Danes had never though he would see, he smiled. Well, a smile perhaps
is not the right word for it. It wasn't quite a smile in the sense of
the word as we know it. The corners of Matroska's mouth curled up
ever so slightly and as he delivered the last word the intensity of
his glare increased (if such a thing were possible) and for a moment
Danes felt displaced, like he was being drawn into the black-hole
gaze. It lasted only a split-second and then the face was back to its
same expressionless mask.
Danes gave up. It was clear that he would get nothing more from
Matroska today, if ever. He sighed. It seemed like he was doing that
a lot lately. He resolved to stop lest it turn him into an emo, a
fate worse than death in his eyes!
``Very well then. If there's anything you require, just ask,'' said
Danes and stood up from the bed. Matroska gave the slightest nod from
his head before turning to his laptop and presumably continuing with
whatever arcana he was engaged in. Danes left the small cabin and
closed the door carefully behind him. He continued up on deck to get
some fresh air, passing the galley on the way he made sure to retrieve
the fortified coffee Frank had made for him earlier. FSM knew he
needed it! As he emerged he looked up. The black sky was pin-pricked
with thousands of gleaming stars shining down their light on him. Now
that they were further away from the coast and its light pollution he
could see them in all their majesty. This sight never failed to calm
him, and FSM knows he needed it! Four days to Grand Cayman, maybe a
bit less. Better enjoy the peace while it lasts he thought...
Danes' cabin was aft. The largest of the six cabins aboard the
kill-9, but hey, he was the captain! Although the largest, saying it
was large would perhaps be a bit generous. There was enough room for
his bed on the starboard side, a semi-circular sofa running around the
aft-end of the cabin and his desk on the port side, plus all of the
customary lockers seemingly tucked in every available cranny onboard
such sailing vessels. A small head containing a shower was located
behind a door in a small nook forward of the desk. The cabin was
surfaced in tasteful teak paneling, which could probably do with a new
coat of varnish. After this mission, Danes promised himself, there
would be time enough. He sat down at his desk and pulled the envelope
out of his pocket. The cacao leaf stared back at him, as if mocking
him. ``Open me!'' it said, ``You want to know what lies within...''
He wasn't sure of that, but even so, despite itching to open this
envelope for the last few days since the cabin meeting, he sat there
staring at it for several minutes before building up the courage.
Danes opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper and on
it was written:
\begin{quote}
\emph{Go to Grand Cayman. Once you arrive you are to escort Matroska
the Prussian and assist him in any way he requires. Then you may
proceed on to your final destination as agreed.}
\end{quote}
It was signed simply ``Enrico''. Fuck! Thought Danes. Fuck, fuck,
\emph{fuck!} The Cayman fucking islands?? He was as much of a fan of
offshore banking as the next man, but it was well known that the
american government had all too much influence there. Danes had spent
the last few years slowly pissing off the US government by blasting
the free internet all over the gulf coast from international waters
whenever he was in range. They were looking for any reason to take a
pirate internet ship down, him especially. Now here he was, carrying
several hundred kilos of cocaine into a US-friendly port, just having
sailed from Colombia (not one of the US's favorite countries) and
esorting a shadowy underworld bad-arse on FSM-knows-what kind of
mission! He'd have rathered sail round Cape Horn in the middle of
fucking winter than drop anchor in that vipers' den. No fucking
wonder he was told in a note and not in the meeting itself. That
would have changed things, though Danes doubted there was any way he
could've chosen to refuse even at that early stage ,the strategy was
probably designed to prevent any possible violent outbursts from those
with less controlled tempers than Danes. Still, what could he do? He
couldn't make the coke deal with Hernandez's buddies in Mexico if he
didn't finish this Matroska business in a satisfactory manner. They'd
have notice from Hernandez to sort him out if he tried that. Plus,
Matroska probably wouldn't be very happy if he kicked him off the ship
either. He could always skip out with the coke, but then he's got a
pissed off Enrico Hernandez, a pissed off Matroska, and a bunch of
cocaine in a now very hostile (to him) carribean. No, Danes shook his
head, there was no option really. He had to just get it over with and
hope to FSM that this all turned out for the best.
Not for the first time Danes wondered why the hell he was doing all
this? Dealing with all these arseholes who would chew you up and spit
you out without thinking twice. Still, it was good money and he did
need quite a cash flow to keep his free internet node side-project
going. Danes sighed softly to himself. This debate was for another
time. Right now there was nothing for it but to just force it in, and
try to survive. He usually did, mostly.
He pushed back on the chair and stood up carefully. The motion of the
ship was more pronounced now. They must have rounded the headland
which protected the harbour of Turbo and moved into rougher waters.
He felt the boat heel over to port and steadied himself slightly as
the movement settled into a new rhythm. The sails were up now. The
persisistant thrumming of the engine ceased. It's funny how you get
used to a sound and you don't notice it, but when it stops, it feels
like the silence is deafening. Suddenly all he could hear was the
swooshing of the water past the hull as the ship carved her way
onwards, and the faint singing of the wind outside. This was what he
loved most. A fair wind, a gentle sea, and his ship surging forwards
as her sails catch the breeze. Then his mouth twisted into a sour
grimace as this moment was shattered by the recollection of what lay
ahead. God damn, god damn he thought.
Still, he \emph{might} be able to get some more info about what he had
to do from his guest, who was the source of all this trouble. He
wasn't too optimistic about it, given the stony-faced nature Matroska
had exhibited thus far, not to mention his reputation. But still, he
figured it was worth the try. What was the worst that could happen?
Then he tried not to think about that...
A quick jaunt up the hatch-way to make sure all was well with the
watch. He knew it was, he could feel the boat moving well through the
water, so that was just an excuse to himself. Just a delay tactic so
he could postpone confronting Matroska a few minutes longer. Outside
the temperature was warm, as it almost always was around these parts,
though a fresh breeze blew, taking away the edge. He could see the
glow from the lights of Turbo on the horizon to starboard but it was
quickly slipping away aft. A few hours more and they would be out of
the Gulf of Uraba and out into the vastness of the Caribbean sea with
nothing between them and whatever lay in store for him on Grand Cayman
but 700 nautical miles of ocean.
``How's everything going up here?'' Danes asked. Hans was at the
wheel. Once they got clear of the gulf they would turn on the
autopilot, but Danes liked her to be hand-steered this close to land.
There was no-one else in sight. Frank was probably down in his cabin,
or tinkering with one thing or another. Estrid, well, she could have
been anywhere, you could never predict.
``All's well skip. A fair breeze and calm seas. We'll be out of
Uraba in 3 hours at this rate.''
``Excellent, once we clear Punta Arenas del Norte set a course for
Grand Cayman.''
``Grand Cayman? Cunt of a thing skip. This should get interesting.''
``Yes,'' sighed Danes, ``but let's hope it doesn't get too interesting!''
``Aye, lets,'' echoed Hans stoicaly before staring off into the
blackness once more.
There was no more delaying it now, he just had to do it. Back down
the hatch-way, Danes made his way forward, past the galley where Frank
was busy brewing a fresh batch of coffee in preparation for taking the
next watch.
``Cup of the old black stuff?'' Frank asked jovially. The look Danes
wore on his face must have mirrored his thoughts because Frank
immediatly chuckled, ``Might just irish that up for you skip, you look
as though you could use it!''
``When I get back from this Frank, I'm sure I will.'' And he swept on
through the main cabin with it's comfortable sofas, TV, and
fu{\ss}ball table (the original one they had didn't work well at all
at sea of course, so Danes had converted it to an electronic version
so his addiction would be sated), past the crew quarters, the
workshop, and finally up to the closed door of the forcastle cabin.
kill-9, but hey, he was the captain! Although the largest, saying it
was large would perhaps be a bit generous. There was enough room for
his bed on the starboard side, a semi-circular sofa running around the
aft-end of the cabin and his desk on the port side, plus all of the
customary lockers seemingly tucked in every available cranny onboard
such sailing vessels. A small head containing a shower was located
behind a door in a small nook forward of the desk. The cabin was
surfaced in tasteful teak paneling, which could probably do with a new
coat of varnish. After this mission, Danes promised himself, there
would be time enough. He sat down at his desk and pulled the envelope
out of his pocket. The cacao leaf stared back at him, as if mocking
him. ``Open me!'' it said, ``You want to know what lies within...''
He wasn't sure of that, but even so, despite itching to open this
envelope for the last few days since the cabin meeting, he sat there
staring at it for several minutes before building up the courage.
Danes opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper and on
it was written:
\begin{quote}
\emph{Go to Grand Cayman. Once you arrive you are to escort Matroska
the Prussian and assist him in any way he requires. Then you may
proceed on to your final destination as agreed.}
\end{quote}
It was signed simply ``Enrico''. Fuck! Thought Danes. Fuck, fuck,
\emph{fuck!} The Cayman fucking islands?? He was as much of a fan of
offshore banking as the next man, but it was well known that the
american government had all too much influence there. Danes had spent
the last few years slowly pissing off the US government by blasting
the free internet all over the gulf coast from international waters
whenever he was in range. They were looking for any reason to take a
pirate internet ship down, him especially. Now here he was, carrying
several hundred kilos of cocaine into a US-friendly port, just having
sailed from Colombia (not one of the US's favorite countries) and
esorting a shadowy underworld bad-arse on FSM-knows-what kind of
mission! He'd have rathered sail round Cape Horn in the middle of
fucking winter than drop anchor in that vipers' den. No fucking
wonder he was told in a note and not in the meeting itself. That
would have changed things, though Danes doubted there was any way he
could've chosen to refuse even at that early stage ,the strategy was
probably designed to prevent any possible violent outbursts from those
with less controlled tempers than Danes. Still, what could he do? He
couldn't make the coke deal with Hernandez's buddies in Mexico if he
didn't finish this Matroska business in a satisfactory manner. They'd
have notice from Hernandez to sort him out if he tried that. Plus,
Matroska probably wouldn't be very happy if he kicked him off the ship
either. He could always skip out with the coke, but then he's got a
pissed off Enrico Hernandez, a pissed off Matroska, and a bunch of
cocaine in a now very hostile (to him) carribean. No, Danes shook his
head, there was no option really. He had to just get it over with and
hope to FSM that this all turned out for the best.
Not for the first time Danes wondered why the hell he was doing all
this? Dealing with all these arseholes who would chew you up and spit
you out without thinking twice. Still, it was good money and he did
need quite a cash flow to keep his free internet node side-project
going. Danes sighed softly to himself. This debate was for another
time. Right now there was nothing for it but to just force it in, and
try to survive. He usually did, mostly.
He pushed back on the chair and stood up carefully. The motion of the
ship was more pronounced now. They must have rounded the headland
which protected the harbour of Turbo and moved into rougher waters.
He felt the boat heel over to port and steadied himself slightly as
the movement settled into a new rhythm. The sails were up now. The
persisistant thrumming of the engine ceased. It's funny how you get
used to a sound and you don't notice it, but when it stops, it feels
like the silence is deafening. Suddenly all he could hear was the
swooshing of the water past the hull as the ship carved her way
onwards, and the faint singing of the wind outside. This was what he
loved most. A fair wind, a gentle sea, and his ship surging forwards
as her sails catch the breeze. Then his mouth twisted into a sour
grimace as this moment was shattered by the recollection of what lay
ahead. God damn, god damn he thought.
Still, he \emph{might} be able to get some more info about what he had
to do from his guest, who was the source of all this trouble. He
wasn't too optimistic about it, given the stony-faced nature Matroska
had exhibited thus far, not to mention his reputation. But still, he
figured it was worth the try. What was the worst that could happen?
Then he tried not to think about that...
A quick jaunt up the hatch-way to make sure all was well with the
watch. He knew it was, he could feel the boat moving well through the
water, so that was just an excuse to himself. Just a delay tactic so
he could postpone confronting Matroska a few minutes longer. Outside
the temperature was warm, as it almost always was around these parts,
though a fresh breeze blew, taking away the edge. He could see the
glow from the lights of Turbo on the horizon to starboard but it was
quickly slipping away aft. A few hours more and they would be out of
the Gulf of Uraba and out into the vastness of the Caribbean sea with
nothing between them and whatever lay in store for him on Grand Cayman
but 700 nautical miles of ocean.
``How's everything going up here?'' Danes asked. Hans was at the
wheel. Once they got clear of the gulf they would turn on the
autopilot, but Danes liked her to be hand-steered this close to land.
There was no-one else in sight. Frank was probably down in his cabin,
or tinkering with one thing or another. Estrid, well, she could have
been anywhere, you could never predict.
``All's well skip. A fair breeze and calm seas. We'll be out of
Uraba in 3 hours at this rate.''
``Excellent, once we clear Punta Arenas del Norte set a course for
Grand Cayman.''
``Grand Cayman? Cunt of a thing skip. This should get interesting.''
``Yes,'' sighed Danes, ``but let's hope it doesn't get too interesting!''
``Aye, lets,'' echoed Hans stoicaly before staring off into the
blackness once more.
There was no more delaying it now, he just had to do it. Back down
the hatch-way, Danes made his way forward, past the galley where Frank
was busy brewing a fresh batch of coffee in preparation for taking the
next watch.
``Cup of the old black stuff?'' Frank asked jovially. The look Danes
wore on his face must have mirrored his thoughts because Frank
immediatly chuckled, ``Might just irish that up for you skip, you look
as though you could use it!''
``When I get back from this Frank, I'm sure I will.'' And he swept on
through the main cabin with it's comfortable sofas, TV, and
fu{\ss}ball table (the original one they had didn't work well at all
at sea of course, so Danes had converted it to an electronic version
so his addiction would be sated), past the crew quarters, the
workshop, and finally up to the closed door of the forcastle cabin.
The sun quickly sank below the horizon and soon it was full dark. As
full dark as it can get with the glittering lights of a reasonably
large port city in the background. Danes was lost in thought, staring
blankly into the darkness in the direction they would head, north to a
secret smugglers cove in Mexico when Hans tumbled back up on deck from
the maw of the main hatch.
``Our guest is all tucked in skip. Put him in the forcastle cabin,
hope he doesn't get seasick,'' quipped Hans with a wry grin. Danes
turned away from the darkness.
``I'm not sure he can feel anything. Those eyes...'' Thinking about
the void within those twisting irises made him shudder, and even
though the evening was balmy in these tropical climes, he wished he
had a coat on so he could pull its collar up around his neck. What
was he getting himself -and his crew- into now?
``Know what you mean. He never said anything to me as I showed him to
the cabin, but one time he caught my eye, and I swear he looked right
into my soul! Never experienced anything like it. The sooner we get
this job done the better I reckon skip.''
Danes sighed. ``This trip might be a bit longer than we all like
Hans. Got a letter from the Hernandez fellow with some 'suggestions'
or the like regarding Matroska. I've yet to read it, but I don't get
a good feeling abot this at all!''
``We'll get by skip, we always do, '' said Hans with his perpetual
cheer. It always made Danes feel better to think that no matter what
they went through, he had a solid crew he could rely on. Could
Matroska say something like that, with all his intrigues and shadow
lackeys?
``Let's not dilly-dally here then, cast off, make sail and fetch me
Mexico!''
The crew sprang into action, Es jumped ashore and let go the mooring
lines as Frank hauled them in. Hans, in the cockpit had started the
engine and began top maneuver away from the dock. Es leaped back
aboard at the last second as she was want to do. It was like a game
to her, seeing how long she could wait before finally taking a running
leap off the pier and flying over the void between the pier and the
slowly retreating kill-9. She landed spry as a cat, hands gripping
the railing and bare feet catching the edge of the deck briefly before
she vaulted over the railing and onto the ship proper.
``Woohoo! I reckon that was the farthest yet!'' laughed Es as she
back to the cockpit.
``Show off,'' grunted Frank, but he had a grin on his weathered face.
``You try that again at my age and see how you fare!''
``How old are you again Frank, like 1000 or something?'' quipped Es
with an insouciant smile, ``Before I get to that age we'll all have
our brains implanted in robots and be flying around in space. So I
guess we'll have to come up with something else when we get there''
``You'll never get my brain into a robot!'' Frank said, ``I love my
machines, and I'll take care of them till I die, but I'll be damned if
I want to become one. I like being meat!''
``Well you can be meat while I'm in space. Have fun meat puppet!''
With this she turned on her heel, ran forward across the deck to the
main mast and scampered up the ratlines, into the darkness above to
watch their departure from one of her favorite spots at the highest
point on the ship, where the various antennae and sensors spiked out
into the night.
``That cheeky monkey,'' sighed Frank as he sat down on a cushion in
the cockpit. ``I swear she get's bolder by the day''
``Aye, that she does,'' said Danes, ``that she does. You'll take
first watch Hans. As soon as we clear the headland set sail and head
for the coordinates we got from Hernandez. I'll be in my cabin
checking out these 'suggestions'.'' Danes turned and headed down the
main hatchway, leaving the kill-9 in Hans' capable hands as she
slipped out of Turbo harbour and into the black night.
full dark as it can get with the glittering lights of a reasonably
large port city in the background. Danes was lost in thought, staring
blankly into the darkness in the direction they would head, north to a
secret smugglers cove in Mexico when Hans tumbled back up on deck from
the maw of the main hatch.
``Our guest is all tucked in skip. Put him in the forcastle cabin,
hope he doesn't get seasick,'' quipped Hans with a wry grin. Danes
turned away from the darkness.
``I'm not sure he can feel anything. Those eyes...'' Thinking about
the void within those twisting irises made him shudder, and even
though the evening was balmy in these tropical climes, he wished he
had a coat on so he could pull its collar up around his neck. What
was he getting himself -and his crew- into now?
``Know what you mean. He never said anything to me as I showed him to
the cabin, but one time he caught my eye, and I swear he looked right
into my soul! Never experienced anything like it. The sooner we get
this job done the better I reckon skip.''
Danes sighed. ``This trip might be a bit longer than we all like
Hans. Got a letter from the Hernandez fellow with some 'suggestions'
or the like regarding Matroska. I've yet to read it, but I don't get
a good feeling abot this at all!''
``We'll get by skip, we always do, '' said Hans with his perpetual
cheer. It always made Danes feel better to think that no matter what
they went through, he had a solid crew he could rely on. Could
Matroska say something like that, with all his intrigues and shadow
lackeys?
``Let's not dilly-dally here then, cast off, make sail and fetch me
Mexico!''
The crew sprang into action, Es jumped ashore and let go the mooring
lines as Frank hauled them in. Hans, in the cockpit had started the
engine and began top maneuver away from the dock. Es leaped back
aboard at the last second as she was want to do. It was like a game
to her, seeing how long she could wait before finally taking a running
leap off the pier and flying over the void between the pier and the
slowly retreating kill-9. She landed spry as a cat, hands gripping
the railing and bare feet catching the edge of the deck briefly before
she vaulted over the railing and onto the ship proper.
``Woohoo! I reckon that was the farthest yet!'' laughed Es as she
back to the cockpit.
``Show off,'' grunted Frank, but he had a grin on his weathered face.
``You try that again at my age and see how you fare!''
``How old are you again Frank, like 1000 or something?'' quipped Es
with an insouciant smile, ``Before I get to that age we'll all have
our brains implanted in robots and be flying around in space. So I
guess we'll have to come up with something else when we get there''
``You'll never get my brain into a robot!'' Frank said, ``I love my
machines, and I'll take care of them till I die, but I'll be damned if
I want to become one. I like being meat!''
``Well you can be meat while I'm in space. Have fun meat puppet!''
With this she turned on her heel, ran forward across the deck to the
main mast and scampered up the ratlines, into the darkness above to
watch their departure from one of her favorite spots at the highest
point on the ship, where the various antennae and sensors spiked out
into the night.
``That cheeky monkey,'' sighed Frank as he sat down on a cushion in
the cockpit. ``I swear she get's bolder by the day''
``Aye, that she does,'' said Danes, ``that she does. You'll take
first watch Hans. As soon as we clear the headland set sail and head
for the coordinates we got from Hernandez. I'll be in my cabin
checking out these 'suggestions'.'' Danes turned and headed down the
main hatchway, leaving the kill-9 in Hans' capable hands as she
slipped out of Turbo harbour and into the black night.
The final member of the crew was a gangly-looking waif-girl named
Estrid. She had stowed away on board the ship 4 years ago at the
tender age of 9. Dirty, scrawny and looking decidedly brutalised by
the realities of a harsh childhood, Danes had found her, three days
out from Havana, cowering in a far corner of the engine room under a
filthy rag of a blanket. It took 5 hours of gentle coaxing in Danes'
much less than perfect Spanish to finally get her to come out and
accept a hot meal and shower. Her slow emergence from that primal
state of fear and reaction to a semblance of normality took many
months of slowly building trust. Danes tried to find out about where
she came from and why she ran away, but the sheer number of forsaken
orphan children scratching out a miserable existence in the Caribbean
at that time made it an impossible task. The only thing he ever
managed to get out of Es (as the crew had come to call her) was that
there had been a terrible place where she had seen and experienced
terrible things and one day when she was big and strong, she would go
back to that place, if she could find it, and burn it to the
motherfucking (insert equivalent spanish explative here) ground. As
the years past she became a more or less ``normal'' kid. Well as
normal as one can be whilst growing up on a pirate cocaine smuggling
ship! The wretch she left behind, seemingly vanished into the aether,
replaced with a happy, energetic young girl, ready to take on anything
and everything. She was the resident monkey of the crew, always
willing to have a climb up the rigging when anything needed fixing, or
just for the view. She quickly soaked up any and all information
anyone was willing to give her, and worked hard to master anything
anyone was willing to teach her. In this way she has become an
integral part of the kill-9 crew and like the daughter Danes never
had.
The kill-9 also had some hidden talents due to it's usage as a
smuggling vessel. Hidden compartments and the like, for storage of
its illicit cargos. Smuggling was all good and well when the bils
needed to be paid, however this was not the primary purpose of the
ship. Danes was at heart, a hacker and information freedom activist.
As an anarchist he resented all forms of centralised power as the main
causes of oppression and suffering in this world. Back in the early
days of the 'nets, governments were blisfully unaware of the magnitude
of posibillities that this new communications tool opened up to the
world.
Here was for the first time a truely decentralised and free way for
all people (well those with computers and 'net connections that is) to
communicate, without interference or an agenda being pushed by central
powers. Those were the good old days, the wild west of the '90s and
'00s. Once governments the world over began to realise exactly what
had been unleashed under their noses they began to fight tooth and
nail to put the cat back in the bag. Some governments had more
success than others. Oppressive dictatorships were the first to stamp
out 'subversive' communications on the 'tubes. North Korea being the
most successful by proxy, one could say, as the vast majority of their
people never even got a first whiff of that glorious flow of free
information. Other shining examples were China and Iran, who got
website blocking and usage monitoring down to a fine art.
This sort of thing was all fine and dandy in these countries where
freedom had never really gotten a foothold to begin with, but in
western countries, things had to be done a bit differently. There one
must preserve the illusion of freedom, even if the reality is quite
the opposite. So western countries started pushing legislation like
the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which seemed so outrageous to
internet denizens as to never pass into law, and which went largely
unnoticed by the general public. The first few rounds of anti
internet freedom laws were indeed struck down, but through sheer
persistence, governments of the world slowly chipped away at what was
permissable online that by within 10 years or so the internet was
reduced to a glorified cable TV service. Delivering 100's of
sanitised, crippled, but approved sites, whilst everything else was
labled 'subversive', or bastions of child pornography (think of the
children!) and subsequently declared illegal. All new devices would
be jam-packed with 'security features' to make us safer online and
blocked all those nasty sites, to monitor our web usage, and of course
made it extremely difficult to access anything deemed not appropriate
for the general public. Oh there was some outcry, at first. But the
milennium generation, who had grown up with restricted tablet PCs
instead of having to hack together what they could our of spare parts.
Who had never experienced the fun of playing with the IRQ settings to
get a sound-card to work under DOS, etc, etc. They never even noticed
as long as facebook and youtube were still up. It just became the way
things were and memories of the way things used to be were confined to
the minds of old, greying, oldschool hackers, anarchists, and the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This conveniently meant that all sites discussing anti-government
themes, or any sort of alternative to the status quo were illegal and
ostensibly wiped out. In reality they were just pushed underground.
Down to the seedy underbelly of the internet which had always been
there, erstwhile haunts of the über-paranoid, the drug dealers, the
criminals, and the paedophiles. Darknets and TOR, protected by heavy
encryption, anonymizers, private VPNs, etc. This worked for a while,
until the public internet became so locked down and traffic so
restricted that encrypted packets were banned outright, to protect the
public from themselves, of course. Companies could apply for a
special licence to use encryption for their VPNs, internet banking,
etc, but they had to supply the government with a key so they could
decrypt whatever they wanted to.
If an unauthorized encrypted packet was detected, the originating IP
address was looked up in the governmental database that all ISPs were
required to supply with customer information, and the offending party
would have their internet privileges revoked. This usually resulted
in the individual being socially shunned by their community as
facebook was now the primary form of communication by all people.
The underground, however, adapted as it always does. There were still
those who desired freedom, and they would have it no matter what.
The ship was a node in a vast wireless mesh network, the free
internet. Born in darkness, at first only a few individuals
experimenting with ad-hoc, anonymous, secure mesh networks. With the
tightening restrictions on the public internet came a growing interest
in open alternatives to the walled-garden it had become. Soon
hundreds of like-minded hackers were tinkering away with devices and
software to create free networks wherever they went. Nodes were set
up anywhere they could be, on roof-tops, cable-tied to lamp posts,
bolted into the sides of buildings. After a few generations of
designs it was easy. A node could be created out of any old hardware
that could run linux (a lot) and had a wireless transmitter. Just
plug in an USB stick with the right software on it, and boom, free
internet node. It had to be easy though, since they were forever
being discovered and destroyed. As quickly as they were found and
taken offline, three more were put up elsewhere. Data stored on the
network was encrypted and replicated across multiple nodes for
redundancy, so something stored on the free internet was actually more
likely to persist than on the original internet.
As well as this system worked on a smaller geographical scale, there
was a limit to the range that the consumer-grade wifi transmitters
could be coaxed into broadcasting. Thus, permanent, long range nodes
were required if the free internet was to have the same national and
global reach as the original internet. That's where the kill-9 comes
in. It was one of many ships operating as nodes in the free internet.
Equipped with powerful radio transmitters, sensitive receivers, and
high-speed satellite uplinks, they formed a bridge between localised
clusters of free internet nodes and the rest of the world. Of course
a long-range node didn't necessarily have to be on board a ship, it
just conveniently put it beyond the reach of government authorities,
safely in international waters, like the pirate radio stations of old.
Estrid. She had stowed away on board the ship 4 years ago at the
tender age of 9. Dirty, scrawny and looking decidedly brutalised by
the realities of a harsh childhood, Danes had found her, three days
out from Havana, cowering in a far corner of the engine room under a
filthy rag of a blanket. It took 5 hours of gentle coaxing in Danes'
much less than perfect Spanish to finally get her to come out and
accept a hot meal and shower. Her slow emergence from that primal
state of fear and reaction to a semblance of normality took many
months of slowly building trust. Danes tried to find out about where
she came from and why she ran away, but the sheer number of forsaken
orphan children scratching out a miserable existence in the Caribbean
at that time made it an impossible task. The only thing he ever
managed to get out of Es (as the crew had come to call her) was that
there had been a terrible place where she had seen and experienced
terrible things and one day when she was big and strong, she would go
back to that place, if she could find it, and burn it to the
motherfucking (insert equivalent spanish explative here) ground. As
the years past she became a more or less ``normal'' kid. Well as
normal as one can be whilst growing up on a pirate cocaine smuggling
ship! The wretch she left behind, seemingly vanished into the aether,
replaced with a happy, energetic young girl, ready to take on anything
and everything. She was the resident monkey of the crew, always
willing to have a climb up the rigging when anything needed fixing, or
just for the view. She quickly soaked up any and all information
anyone was willing to give her, and worked hard to master anything
anyone was willing to teach her. In this way she has become an
integral part of the kill-9 crew and like the daughter Danes never
had.
The kill-9 also had some hidden talents due to it's usage as a
smuggling vessel. Hidden compartments and the like, for storage of
its illicit cargos. Smuggling was all good and well when the bils
needed to be paid, however this was not the primary purpose of the
ship. Danes was at heart, a hacker and information freedom activist.
As an anarchist he resented all forms of centralised power as the main
causes of oppression and suffering in this world. Back in the early
days of the 'nets, governments were blisfully unaware of the magnitude
of posibillities that this new communications tool opened up to the
world.
Here was for the first time a truely decentralised and free way for
all people (well those with computers and 'net connections that is) to
communicate, without interference or an agenda being pushed by central
powers. Those were the good old days, the wild west of the '90s and
'00s. Once governments the world over began to realise exactly what
had been unleashed under their noses they began to fight tooth and
nail to put the cat back in the bag. Some governments had more
success than others. Oppressive dictatorships were the first to stamp
out 'subversive' communications on the 'tubes. North Korea being the
most successful by proxy, one could say, as the vast majority of their
people never even got a first whiff of that glorious flow of free
information. Other shining examples were China and Iran, who got
website blocking and usage monitoring down to a fine art.
This sort of thing was all fine and dandy in these countries where
freedom had never really gotten a foothold to begin with, but in
western countries, things had to be done a bit differently. There one
must preserve the illusion of freedom, even if the reality is quite
the opposite. So western countries started pushing legislation like
the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which seemed so outrageous to
internet denizens as to never pass into law, and which went largely
unnoticed by the general public. The first few rounds of anti
internet freedom laws were indeed struck down, but through sheer
persistence, governments of the world slowly chipped away at what was
permissable online that by within 10 years or so the internet was
reduced to a glorified cable TV service. Delivering 100's of
sanitised, crippled, but approved sites, whilst everything else was
labled 'subversive', or bastions of child pornography (think of the
children!) and subsequently declared illegal. All new devices would
be jam-packed with 'security features' to make us safer online and
blocked all those nasty sites, to monitor our web usage, and of course
made it extremely difficult to access anything deemed not appropriate
for the general public. Oh there was some outcry, at first. But the
milennium generation, who had grown up with restricted tablet PCs
instead of having to hack together what they could our of spare parts.
Who had never experienced the fun of playing with the IRQ settings to
get a sound-card to work under DOS, etc, etc. They never even noticed
as long as facebook and youtube were still up. It just became the way
things were and memories of the way things used to be were confined to
the minds of old, greying, oldschool hackers, anarchists, and the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This conveniently meant that all sites discussing anti-government
themes, or any sort of alternative to the status quo were illegal and
ostensibly wiped out. In reality they were just pushed underground.
Down to the seedy underbelly of the internet which had always been
there, erstwhile haunts of the über-paranoid, the drug dealers, the
criminals, and the paedophiles. Darknets and TOR, protected by heavy
encryption, anonymizers, private VPNs, etc. This worked for a while,
until the public internet became so locked down and traffic so
restricted that encrypted packets were banned outright, to protect the
public from themselves, of course. Companies could apply for a
special licence to use encryption for their VPNs, internet banking,
etc, but they had to supply the government with a key so they could
decrypt whatever they wanted to.
If an unauthorized encrypted packet was detected, the originating IP
address was looked up in the governmental database that all ISPs were
required to supply with customer information, and the offending party
would have their internet privileges revoked. This usually resulted
in the individual being socially shunned by their community as
facebook was now the primary form of communication by all people.
The underground, however, adapted as it always does. There were still
those who desired freedom, and they would have it no matter what.
The ship was a node in a vast wireless mesh network, the free
internet. Born in darkness, at first only a few individuals
experimenting with ad-hoc, anonymous, secure mesh networks. With the
tightening restrictions on the public internet came a growing interest
in open alternatives to the walled-garden it had become. Soon
hundreds of like-minded hackers were tinkering away with devices and
software to create free networks wherever they went. Nodes were set
up anywhere they could be, on roof-tops, cable-tied to lamp posts,
bolted into the sides of buildings. After a few generations of
designs it was easy. A node could be created out of any old hardware
that could run linux (a lot) and had a wireless transmitter. Just
plug in an USB stick with the right software on it, and boom, free
internet node. It had to be easy though, since they were forever
being discovered and destroyed. As quickly as they were found and
taken offline, three more were put up elsewhere. Data stored on the
network was encrypted and replicated across multiple nodes for
redundancy, so something stored on the free internet was actually more
likely to persist than on the original internet.
As well as this system worked on a smaller geographical scale, there
was a limit to the range that the consumer-grade wifi transmitters
could be coaxed into broadcasting. Thus, permanent, long range nodes
were required if the free internet was to have the same national and
global reach as the original internet. That's where the kill-9 comes
in. It was one of many ships operating as nodes in the free internet.
Equipped with powerful radio transmitters, sensitive receivers, and
high-speed satellite uplinks, they formed a bridge between localised
clusters of free internet nodes and the rest of the world. Of course
a long-range node didn't necessarily have to be on board a ship, it
just conveniently put it beyond the reach of government authorities,
safely in international waters, like the pirate radio stations of old.
Chapter 2 - kill-9
Danes was glad to be back aboard his ship. It had been a weird few
days for him. What had begun as a simple smuggling mission to
generate a bit of extra cash had turned in to a decidedly weird and
more dangerous task than he might have wished.
It was two days since his encounter with Marco and Matroska The
Prussian in the small cabin on Enrico Hern\'andez's cocaine plantation
in the mountains of Colombia. The time since then was spent getting
down the mountain; a day's journey in the ancient truck to Medill\'in,
almost another getting from there to the port at Turbo where the
kill-9 was moored. They spent the night in Medill\'in of course. In
the most derelict old hotel you can imagine (!!please elaborate!!).
It could have been worse, the morning after the they got to
Medill\'in, a car was waiting for them outside the hotel. Danes
didn't know who sent it, Enrico or someone else, possibly working for
the Satanic Society; still he appreciated it. The bus to Turbo, spent
crushed in the hot, muggy cabin, between a toothless old hag and a
crate full of chickens; was not Danes' idea of a pleasant way to spend
the better part of a day. As it was he spent it in a nice, cool,
air-conditioned BMW. Whoever these people were, at least they had a
modicum of class. The entire time Matroska said nothing. All he did
was tinker upon a small laptop computer that he pulled out of some
hidden pocket inside of his enormous daemon-jacket. Every now and
then Danes would try to sneak a look at the screen whilst Matroska's
head was turned. As soon as he got within glancing distance though,
Matroska's face would snap back around and give him a cold stare with
those deep black-hole pits of eyes. It was to no avail; however, the
one time that he actually manager to get a glimpse of the screen, all
he saw was what looked like random static. The output of the monitor
must be encrypted in some way. Danes was not sure how Matroska was
decoding it; he guessed some sort of corneal implant which would
intercept the image and decrypt it.
They arrived at the docks just as the sun was dipping into the ocean,
painting the water with orange and gold. They got out and the
mysterous car departed immediately and without a word. As it pulled
away Danes noticed that it didn't even have a number plate. Weird. A
few minutes walk brought the to the mooring point of the kill-9 on one
of the more secluded piers. There were only a few ships attached to
this one, opposed to most of the others that were decidedly full. It
was the height of the sailing season in the carribean and the docks
and marinas were filled with the boats of rich American buisinessmen
and drug lords, cruising around, flashing their cash and generally
having a good time, as they are want to do. Not normally prime-time
for smuggling, but Danes was (up until recently that is) running a bit
low on capital and moving a few hundred kilos of the Bolivian marching
powder never fails to fill the coffers.
As per usual the crates containing his deviant cargo were already
stowed away when he arrived. The Hernandez cartel was nothing if not
efficient. They have agents here at the docks and as soon as the deal
is brokered, a message is sent out and arrangements are made with the
ship's mate to sort out the details. After all, why waste time when
there's smuggling to do?
When they arrived the crew were readying to make sail, they had seen
them coming and Danes never liked to stay in port any longer than he
had to. As they ascended the gangplank he noticed Matroska stiffen
slightly in his gait. He had noticed kill-9's first mate Hans lurking
in the shadows off to the right, taser in hand, waiting for the
stranger to come into range. Danes had sent a message whilst in the
hotel in Medill\'in but Hans was ready just in case it had been
coerced. Danes flashed off the subtle hand-signal which indicated all
is well.
Hans lowered the taser and emerged from the shadows. A diminutive,
blond-haired Austrian man, his short goatee was perfectly cropped and
oiled to a point. He was thin, not gaunt and stretched like Matroska
but compact without looking gangly. His sleight frame had a hint of
containing some hidden power underneath. Danes had met Hans 10 years
previously whilst he was jaunting around Europe. Hans had been
running a small-time underground hacking shop at the time. Doing
freelance work for minor eastern European mafia type capers. He had
tried to break into Danes' personal network while he was chilling out
at a cafe in Prague. Needless to say the penetration attempt failed
but Danes recognised Hans' talent and invited him to join up for an
enterprise that he was working on. After some cajoling and a few
beers, an alliance was formed; not yet broken.
On seeing Hans and his lowered weapon Matroska finally relaxed and out
of the corner of his eye, Danes thought that he saw a flicker of muted
steel vanish up Matroska's right sleeve.
``Sup dude?'' enquired Hans in his bizarre Irish/Austrian hybrid
accent. Although he had been raised in Vienna, Hans' parents were
both Irish catholic expats working there with the church. He received
an old beater of a computer at the age of 12 and spent the subsequent
week figuring out how to crack one of the many nearby wireless
networks (his parents never had the 'net, too subversive). For the
next few years he learnt his trade, at first frequenting various
script-kiddy hangouts but he soon realised that shit was for noobs.
He left home at 15 when he worked up the courage to tell his parents
that he was an Atheist (another side-effect of the his furtive 'net
access) and his father went ballistic and beat him up with a belt. He
spent the next five years as a vagabond, traipsing around Europe
freelance hacking for whatever he could to get by. Until he met
Danes, that is. Since then Hans has been Danes' right-hand man and
most trusted onfidant. When Danes got tired of the European weather
and skipped out the to Carribean, Hans was right there with him all
the way, and when he had acquired the kill-9 as payment (well, maybe
compensation is a better word) after one particularly hairy caper,
Hans fell into the position of first mate. Despite having no previous
sailing or nautical experience of any kind, after 6 months at sea in
the waters of the gulf of mexico, he was as salty as any old dog.
``It would seem that our little courier job has turned into something
more substantial,'' replied Danes with a slight inclination of the
head towards the towering form of Matroska, following behind him on
the gang plank.
``You're telling me! Is that...'' with this Hans squinted into the
dying light, trying to make out details but his mind failing to
acknowledge the truth his eyes were telling it, ``Matroska the
motherfucking Prussian?!'' exclaimed Hans, an incredulous look
creeping across on his tanned face.
``The very same. Though I should warn your little friend there never
to point a weapon at me again, whether or not he thinks I am aware of
it. The consequences for doing so can be rather...unpleasant.'' The
voice was a mirror of the man, formidable and sinister, dark and full
of intensity. He spoke quietly as if he trusted that the world would
quiet itself to hear him speak, and with intent. There was no
bragging to his words, just truth. A man who walked within the
circles which Matroska frequented had no use for posturing and
bluffing, he simply spoke what was needed and expected others to take
him at his word. They rarely got a second chance to underestimate
him.
``Fuck me!'' gasped Hans, ``No worries on that point matey. From now
on all my weapon pointing will occur in directions strictly not
towards you!''
Matroska stared, his blank face betraying no emotion, no hint on what
was going on behind those black obsidian eyes. He gave a curt nod.
``If someone would show me to my quarters?''
Hans, now recovered from his surprise at seeing the most notorious
hacker alive up close and in person, quipped ``Well now that we're
mates, let \emph{me} show you,'' as he turned and ducked down the main
hatch and into the bowels of the ship. Matroska, saying nothing,
followed silently.
During the entire somewhat tense exchange Danes and the rest of the
crew had been nervously rooted to where they stood. Danes wondered
what would have happened if Matroska had taken offense at Hans'
manner. He shuddered to think and made a mental note to tell the crew
that their special guest was not to be disturbed. As Matroska
disappeared down the hatch, the crew slowly resumed preperations to
make sail.
The kill-9 was not an especially large vessel, just 30 metres from the
tip of the bowsprit to the taffrail. She was a ketch, gaff rigged,
and Danes had spend a lot of time over the first few years he owned
her refitting her to be largely automated. In an emergency she could
be sailed single-handedly, and indeed Danes had had the great fortune
to test this on one particularly memorable voyage, though he had no
desire to repeat the feat. As a consequence of her size, automation,
and the relative difficulty of finding good crew for the less than
above board voyages she frequently embarked upon, the kill-9 carried a
crew of just four souls, and of course the occasional passenger,
wanted or otherwise. There was of course Danes, owner, captain,
smuggler, hacker, and all round adventurer. First mate Hans, the
Irish-Austrian loudmouth we've already encountered.
Frank was portly, middle-aged and balding with a ring of straggely
greying hair wrapped around the back of his leathery, tanned pate
which he pulled back into a small pony tail. Danes thought it looked
a little ridiculous but Frank would hear no word of fashion advice
directed at its removal. He said that he was determined to retain the
same amount of hair he had in his youth, even if it was migrating
rearwards and down at a rate of 5mm per year. Frank used to work for
Google as a data-centre technician during the golden years of the
'00s, back when ``don't be evil'' actually meant something. He was in
charge of the kill-9's numerous computer systems and was also the
resident brew-master famous throughout the carribian for his pale ale.
In 2013 his wife left him for and Italian romance novel cover model
named Bastino. This triggered some sort of early mid-life crisis and
after the divorce was finalised he cashed out his Google stock (of a
not insubstatial value) and skipped out to Florida intending to spend
a while soaking up the sun looking at beautiful beach babes and
drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. After a little while
he realised that Florida was just full of old people and this time he
skipped out again, this time to the bayous of Louisiana after watching
too many re-runs of ``Swamp People''. Once he found out, yet again,
that the location he had chosen was not exactly as popular culture
would have had him believe, he decided this time to just stick it out,
as at least here he had peace, quiet, good fishing, and never had to
watch fat old ladies walking down the beach in far too little
clothing.
And that was where Danes found him, in a little known and completely
uncharted creek off the Mississippi River, sitting on his porch
reading a book and sipping on a fine india pale ale of his own
brewing. The kill-9 had just come through some particularly bad
weather in the Gulf of Mexico and had some delicate systems that
needed expert attention. After discreetly asking around he had hear
rumour of a sort of reclusive technical wizard living in the nearby
swamp, and had gone questing. As it turned out, Frank was getting a
little bored of the bayou life away from the machinery he loved and
jumped at Danes' invitation to come aboard as the kill-9's resident
tech-guru.
Danes was glad to be back aboard his ship. It had been a weird few
days for him. What had begun as a simple smuggling mission to
generate a bit of extra cash had turned in to a decidedly weird and
more dangerous task than he might have wished.
It was two days since his encounter with Marco and Matroska The
Prussian in the small cabin on Enrico Hern\'andez's cocaine plantation
in the mountains of Colombia. The time since then was spent getting
down the mountain; a day's journey in the ancient truck to Medill\'in,
almost another getting from there to the port at Turbo where the
kill-9 was moored. They spent the night in Medill\'in of course. In
the most derelict old hotel you can imagine (!!please elaborate!!).
It could have been worse, the morning after the they got to
Medill\'in, a car was waiting for them outside the hotel. Danes
didn't know who sent it, Enrico or someone else, possibly working for
the Satanic Society; still he appreciated it. The bus to Turbo, spent
crushed in the hot, muggy cabin, between a toothless old hag and a
crate full of chickens; was not Danes' idea of a pleasant way to spend
the better part of a day. As it was he spent it in a nice, cool,
air-conditioned BMW. Whoever these people were, at least they had a
modicum of class. The entire time Matroska said nothing. All he did
was tinker upon a small laptop computer that he pulled out of some
hidden pocket inside of his enormous daemon-jacket. Every now and
then Danes would try to sneak a look at the screen whilst Matroska's
head was turned. As soon as he got within glancing distance though,
Matroska's face would snap back around and give him a cold stare with
those deep black-hole pits of eyes. It was to no avail; however, the
one time that he actually manager to get a glimpse of the screen, all
he saw was what looked like random static. The output of the monitor
must be encrypted in some way. Danes was not sure how Matroska was
decoding it; he guessed some sort of corneal implant which would
intercept the image and decrypt it.
They arrived at the docks just as the sun was dipping into the ocean,
painting the water with orange and gold. They got out and the
mysterous car departed immediately and without a word. As it pulled
away Danes noticed that it didn't even have a number plate. Weird. A
few minutes walk brought the to the mooring point of the kill-9 on one
of the more secluded piers. There were only a few ships attached to
this one, opposed to most of the others that were decidedly full. It
was the height of the sailing season in the carribean and the docks
and marinas were filled with the boats of rich American buisinessmen
and drug lords, cruising around, flashing their cash and generally
having a good time, as they are want to do. Not normally prime-time
for smuggling, but Danes was (up until recently that is) running a bit
low on capital and moving a few hundred kilos of the Bolivian marching
powder never fails to fill the coffers.
As per usual the crates containing his deviant cargo were already
stowed away when he arrived. The Hernandez cartel was nothing if not
efficient. They have agents here at the docks and as soon as the deal
is brokered, a message is sent out and arrangements are made with the
ship's mate to sort out the details. After all, why waste time when
there's smuggling to do?
When they arrived the crew were readying to make sail, they had seen
them coming and Danes never liked to stay in port any longer than he
had to. As they ascended the gangplank he noticed Matroska stiffen
slightly in his gait. He had noticed kill-9's first mate Hans lurking
in the shadows off to the right, taser in hand, waiting for the
stranger to come into range. Danes had sent a message whilst in the
hotel in Medill\'in but Hans was ready just in case it had been
coerced. Danes flashed off the subtle hand-signal which indicated all
is well.
Hans lowered the taser and emerged from the shadows. A diminutive,
blond-haired Austrian man, his short goatee was perfectly cropped and
oiled to a point. He was thin, not gaunt and stretched like Matroska
but compact without looking gangly. His sleight frame had a hint of
containing some hidden power underneath. Danes had met Hans 10 years
previously whilst he was jaunting around Europe. Hans had been
running a small-time underground hacking shop at the time. Doing
freelance work for minor eastern European mafia type capers. He had
tried to break into Danes' personal network while he was chilling out
at a cafe in Prague. Needless to say the penetration attempt failed
but Danes recognised Hans' talent and invited him to join up for an
enterprise that he was working on. After some cajoling and a few
beers, an alliance was formed; not yet broken.
On seeing Hans and his lowered weapon Matroska finally relaxed and out
of the corner of his eye, Danes thought that he saw a flicker of muted
steel vanish up Matroska's right sleeve.
``Sup dude?'' enquired Hans in his bizarre Irish/Austrian hybrid
accent. Although he had been raised in Vienna, Hans' parents were
both Irish catholic expats working there with the church. He received
an old beater of a computer at the age of 12 and spent the subsequent
week figuring out how to crack one of the many nearby wireless
networks (his parents never had the 'net, too subversive). For the
next few years he learnt his trade, at first frequenting various
script-kiddy hangouts but he soon realised that shit was for noobs.
He left home at 15 when he worked up the courage to tell his parents
that he was an Atheist (another side-effect of the his furtive 'net
access) and his father went ballistic and beat him up with a belt. He
spent the next five years as a vagabond, traipsing around Europe
freelance hacking for whatever he could to get by. Until he met
Danes, that is. Since then Hans has been Danes' right-hand man and
most trusted onfidant. When Danes got tired of the European weather
and skipped out the to Carribean, Hans was right there with him all
the way, and when he had acquired the kill-9 as payment (well, maybe
compensation is a better word) after one particularly hairy caper,
Hans fell into the position of first mate. Despite having no previous
sailing or nautical experience of any kind, after 6 months at sea in
the waters of the gulf of mexico, he was as salty as any old dog.
``It would seem that our little courier job has turned into something
more substantial,'' replied Danes with a slight inclination of the
head towards the towering form of Matroska, following behind him on
the gang plank.
``You're telling me! Is that...'' with this Hans squinted into the
dying light, trying to make out details but his mind failing to
acknowledge the truth his eyes were telling it, ``Matroska the
motherfucking Prussian?!'' exclaimed Hans, an incredulous look
creeping across on his tanned face.
``The very same. Though I should warn your little friend there never
to point a weapon at me again, whether or not he thinks I am aware of
it. The consequences for doing so can be rather...unpleasant.'' The
voice was a mirror of the man, formidable and sinister, dark and full
of intensity. He spoke quietly as if he trusted that the world would
quiet itself to hear him speak, and with intent. There was no
bragging to his words, just truth. A man who walked within the
circles which Matroska frequented had no use for posturing and
bluffing, he simply spoke what was needed and expected others to take
him at his word. They rarely got a second chance to underestimate
him.
``Fuck me!'' gasped Hans, ``No worries on that point matey. From now
on all my weapon pointing will occur in directions strictly not
towards you!''
Matroska stared, his blank face betraying no emotion, no hint on what
was going on behind those black obsidian eyes. He gave a curt nod.
``If someone would show me to my quarters?''
Hans, now recovered from his surprise at seeing the most notorious
hacker alive up close and in person, quipped ``Well now that we're
mates, let \emph{me} show you,'' as he turned and ducked down the main
hatch and into the bowels of the ship. Matroska, saying nothing,
followed silently.
During the entire somewhat tense exchange Danes and the rest of the
crew had been nervously rooted to where they stood. Danes wondered
what would have happened if Matroska had taken offense at Hans'
manner. He shuddered to think and made a mental note to tell the crew
that their special guest was not to be disturbed. As Matroska
disappeared down the hatch, the crew slowly resumed preperations to
make sail.
The kill-9 was not an especially large vessel, just 30 metres from the
tip of the bowsprit to the taffrail. She was a ketch, gaff rigged,
and Danes had spend a lot of time over the first few years he owned
her refitting her to be largely automated. In an emergency she could
be sailed single-handedly, and indeed Danes had had the great fortune
to test this on one particularly memorable voyage, though he had no
desire to repeat the feat. As a consequence of her size, automation,
and the relative difficulty of finding good crew for the less than
above board voyages she frequently embarked upon, the kill-9 carried a
crew of just four souls, and of course the occasional passenger,
wanted or otherwise. There was of course Danes, owner, captain,
smuggler, hacker, and all round adventurer. First mate Hans, the
Irish-Austrian loudmouth we've already encountered.
Frank was portly, middle-aged and balding with a ring of straggely
greying hair wrapped around the back of his leathery, tanned pate
which he pulled back into a small pony tail. Danes thought it looked
a little ridiculous but Frank would hear no word of fashion advice
directed at its removal. He said that he was determined to retain the
same amount of hair he had in his youth, even if it was migrating
rearwards and down at a rate of 5mm per year. Frank used to work for
Google as a data-centre technician during the golden years of the
'00s, back when ``don't be evil'' actually meant something. He was in
charge of the kill-9's numerous computer systems and was also the
resident brew-master famous throughout the carribian for his pale ale.
In 2013 his wife left him for and Italian romance novel cover model
named Bastino. This triggered some sort of early mid-life crisis and
after the divorce was finalised he cashed out his Google stock (of a
not insubstatial value) and skipped out to Florida intending to spend
a while soaking up the sun looking at beautiful beach babes and
drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. After a little while
he realised that Florida was just full of old people and this time he
skipped out again, this time to the bayous of Louisiana after watching
too many re-runs of ``Swamp People''. Once he found out, yet again,
that the location he had chosen was not exactly as popular culture
would have had him believe, he decided this time to just stick it out,
as at least here he had peace, quiet, good fishing, and never had to
watch fat old ladies walking down the beach in far too little
clothing.
And that was where Danes found him, in a little known and completely
uncharted creek off the Mississippi River, sitting on his porch
reading a book and sipping on a fine india pale ale of his own
brewing. The kill-9 had just come through some particularly bad
weather in the Gulf of Mexico and had some delicate systems that
needed expert attention. After discreetly asking around he had hear
rumour of a sort of reclusive technical wizard living in the nearby
swamp, and had gone questing. As it turned out, Frank was getting a
little bored of the bayou life away from the machinery he loved and
jumped at Danes' invitation to come aboard as the kill-9's resident
tech-guru.
``So, you have come here to do business with my dear cousin, yes?''
His husky voice reminded Danes of that of a fifty year old prosititute
who has spent her life drinking too much whiskey and soking several
fine cuban cigars each day. Danes steeled himself for the negotiation
process ahead and replied.
``I heard from one of my sources that you have a couple of hundred
bricks of the good stuff in the wrong location. I can help with
this.''
Marco rolled his eyes. ``Hah, a trifling matter, the smallest
shipment of the year. You will take it to a certain cove on the coast
of Mexico. My comrades at the dock will give you the location.''
Marco spat just before hocking up what seemed to Danes like half of
the contents of a leper colony cess-pit. He wiped the remains off his
jutting chin leaving a small slime trail though his stubble.
``And what of compensation for this `trifling' service I shall
render?'' asked Danes in the most nonchalant way he could imagine.
``Of course, of course, how does twenty million sound?''
Twenty million!? That would do to outfit his ship and pay his crew
for a whole year! An outrageously high price for such a minor
smuggling job. There must be something deeper going on here. Danes
was of half a mind to up and leave right here, except that there was
only one way to leave during a Hern\'andez negotiation and it involved
those two delightful fellows standing outside and it ended in a rather
unpleasant manner for one of those present. I'll let you guess which
one.
He considered the offer for a few seonds so as not to seem over eager
or suspicious. Government agents were not beyond trying to infiltrate
the Hern\'andez cartel in this manner and Danes didn't want to raise any
suspicions.
``Seems like a pretty penny for such a minor service to your cause
Marco?'' said Danes.
``Ah, right you are Mr McKenzie, I can see you are not an incompetent
like some of the people we get in here offoring us services. There is
indeed a little something more I would like you to take care of on
your voyage.'' again capping off his performance with a little throat
clearing flourish which would scare even the stubbornest small child
into submission.
``Would you care to enlighten me?'' queried Danes, already getting a
little impatient with the situation, but always mindful not to step
over the line.
``You may have noticed a certain gentleman standing with us in this
little cabin.'' As if anyone could have missed such a thing! Danes
nodded, almost imperceptibly. Marco noted this and continued. ``Do
you recognise this man?''
``I have heard of some of his exploits.''
``Good, then you know what he is capable off. I suggest you don't do
anything to antagonise him''
``I'll certainly try my best,'' replied Danes, a little tetchy now.
``Ah, Danes, no need for that. We're all friends here, for now''. At
this point Marco attempted to let out a little chuckle to go with his
brilliantly witty repost; however, it came out as more of a short,
sharp hack, followed by a long series of strangled wheezes which took
more than a few moments to subside. Danes was wondering what exactly
would happen if Marco were to just drop dead right in the middle of
the negotiation. Somehow he didn't think that it would end up going
well for him. Marco recovered, drawing a long, deep breath. ``He is
good friends with my dear cousin and he is on a special mission.
There is something he needs to do to complete that mission and you are
going to assist him''
``And if I refuse?'' Danes asked, really more of a rhetorical question
prompted by his having watched too many movies.
``Well, I think you know what happens then,'' Marco said, motioning
slightly with his head in the direction of the two guards outside.
``Of course you won't let us down. You've served us well in the past
and I trust you will continue to do so in the future. You are being
well compensated for your efforts.''
There wasn't much for it now of course. There wasn't anything Danes
could do but agree. Unless he wanted to be on the bad side of one of
the more powerful drug cartels in the world. Not a good position for
a drug smuggler to be in. It wasn't really what he had planned but
the money was very good and the chances that things would go wrong
were not that much higher than a routing smuggling job. Plus,
Matroska the Prussian, the ledgendary leader of the Satanic Society of
Black-Hat freelancers, on his ship!? That alone would guarantee him
work for the next six months; not that he needed it with the money
this job would bring in.
He had already decided to do it of course. The inner debate was just
something that he did when coming to terms with a big decision.
Perhaps he'd spend a few months cruising after this. No more jobs for
a while. Just peace, the sea, and of course his high-speed satelite
`nets connection. Maybe he could get a few weeks work done on some of
his own projects. Capatalism is so tedious.
``Half now, half when the job is done,'' Danes said. The negotiation was
over now, just going through the motions. The disconnection protocol,
both parties knew it well.
``Indeed, I'll wire the money now. Account number?''
Danes rattled off the number of his Swiss bank account, he knew it by
heart of course. Marco pulled a small computer -about the same size
of a cigarette packet- out of his pocket and keyed the number in. It
made a small conformation beep. A few moments later Danes heard a
similar sound emanate from his own portable PC. He pulled it out of
his pocket and checked the mesage. A confirmation. Ten million euros
transferred into his account, fuck yeah. Pretty much all big business
transactions are done in euros these days, after the US economy tanked
and took the dollar and almost the whole world economy with it. Those
weren't a pretty few years.
``Excellent, you have recieved confirmation of the transfer?'' asked
Marco. Danes nodded. ``Then we are done here. As I said before,
you'll get the delivery location at the docks. Usual procedure
there.'' Marco handed Danes a small brown envelope, it was unmarked
except with small stamp. A cacao plant leaf, the symbol of the
Hern\'andez drug cartel. ``Your instructions as to Matroska. Simple
enough, just follow them and we are both happy.''
With that Marco yanked the wires from the battery terminals and the
light flickered out. It was dark once more in the cabin. He turned
on his heel and walked through the white rectangle of light which was
the doorway. A moment later the urchin boy scampered back inside and
half dragged, half carried the battery back outside with him. For a
few moments the sound of his struggle could be heard, fading away as
he lurched and heaved up the path to the villa. Danes was alone in
the cabin with the tall, long-faced man; Matroska the Prussian.
The trip back down to the plantation entrance was uneventful. Danes
had tried to strike up a conversation with his new compadre but to no
avail. Matroska remaind stony-faced and mute the entire journey. He
seemed unfazed by the close forest and snagging branches. Danes
guessed that he'd probably seen much worse than this in his time. In
short order the trees began to thin out and a few moments later they
emerged, blinking into the sunlight.
They were standing in the small clearing that marked the entrance to
the plantation. A rough, dirt road terminated here, as did several
other paths leading off somewhere into the jungle. There was also a
gate, large enough to admit a small truck, guarding the road to the
plantation proper. The truck wasn't here to pick them up yet, they'd
have to wait. Sometimes it took an hour, sometimes 5 minutes. Danes
couldn't really see much of a pattern in it be he suspected it at
least partially depended on how important you were but probably mostly
on the current mood of the truck driver. Still not one word from
Matroska. He was just standing off to the edge of the clearing,
staring off aimlessly into space. He probably had a lot on his mind.
Danes was itching to open the envolope that Marco had given him.
There was alot about this particular job which made him nervous and
he'd like to know a little more about it. He didn't want to open
anything until he had a little privacy.
They didn't have to wait long, Matroska must be pretty important to,
well, whoever was organising this. After about ten minutes the sound
of the sputtering ancient truck could be heard in the distance, slowly
growing louder. A few minutes later and they were trundling down the
winding mountain road on the way to the coast, the kill-9 and
beyond that, Danes knew not what.
His husky voice reminded Danes of that of a fifty year old prosititute
who has spent her life drinking too much whiskey and soking several
fine cuban cigars each day. Danes steeled himself for the negotiation
process ahead and replied.
``I heard from one of my sources that you have a couple of hundred
bricks of the good stuff in the wrong location. I can help with
this.''
Marco rolled his eyes. ``Hah, a trifling matter, the smallest
shipment of the year. You will take it to a certain cove on the coast
of Mexico. My comrades at the dock will give you the location.''
Marco spat just before hocking up what seemed to Danes like half of
the contents of a leper colony cess-pit. He wiped the remains off his
jutting chin leaving a small slime trail though his stubble.
``And what of compensation for this `trifling' service I shall
render?'' asked Danes in the most nonchalant way he could imagine.
``Of course, of course, how does twenty million sound?''
Twenty million!? That would do to outfit his ship and pay his crew
for a whole year! An outrageously high price for such a minor
smuggling job. There must be something deeper going on here. Danes
was of half a mind to up and leave right here, except that there was
only one way to leave during a Hern\'andez negotiation and it involved
those two delightful fellows standing outside and it ended in a rather
unpleasant manner for one of those present. I'll let you guess which
one.
He considered the offer for a few seonds so as not to seem over eager
or suspicious. Government agents were not beyond trying to infiltrate
the Hern\'andez cartel in this manner and Danes didn't want to raise any
suspicions.
``Seems like a pretty penny for such a minor service to your cause
Marco?'' said Danes.
``Ah, right you are Mr McKenzie, I can see you are not an incompetent
like some of the people we get in here offoring us services. There is
indeed a little something more I would like you to take care of on
your voyage.'' again capping off his performance with a little throat
clearing flourish which would scare even the stubbornest small child
into submission.
``Would you care to enlighten me?'' queried Danes, already getting a
little impatient with the situation, but always mindful not to step
over the line.
``You may have noticed a certain gentleman standing with us in this
little cabin.'' As if anyone could have missed such a thing! Danes
nodded, almost imperceptibly. Marco noted this and continued. ``Do
you recognise this man?''
``I have heard of some of his exploits.''
``Good, then you know what he is capable off. I suggest you don't do
anything to antagonise him''
``I'll certainly try my best,'' replied Danes, a little tetchy now.
``Ah, Danes, no need for that. We're all friends here, for now''. At
this point Marco attempted to let out a little chuckle to go with his
brilliantly witty repost; however, it came out as more of a short,
sharp hack, followed by a long series of strangled wheezes which took
more than a few moments to subside. Danes was wondering what exactly
would happen if Marco were to just drop dead right in the middle of
the negotiation. Somehow he didn't think that it would end up going
well for him. Marco recovered, drawing a long, deep breath. ``He is
good friends with my dear cousin and he is on a special mission.
There is something he needs to do to complete that mission and you are
going to assist him''
``And if I refuse?'' Danes asked, really more of a rhetorical question
prompted by his having watched too many movies.
``Well, I think you know what happens then,'' Marco said, motioning
slightly with his head in the direction of the two guards outside.
``Of course you won't let us down. You've served us well in the past
and I trust you will continue to do so in the future. You are being
well compensated for your efforts.''
There wasn't much for it now of course. There wasn't anything Danes
could do but agree. Unless he wanted to be on the bad side of one of
the more powerful drug cartels in the world. Not a good position for
a drug smuggler to be in. It wasn't really what he had planned but
the money was very good and the chances that things would go wrong
were not that much higher than a routing smuggling job. Plus,
Matroska the Prussian, the ledgendary leader of the Satanic Society of
Black-Hat freelancers, on his ship!? That alone would guarantee him
work for the next six months; not that he needed it with the money
this job would bring in.
He had already decided to do it of course. The inner debate was just
something that he did when coming to terms with a big decision.
Perhaps he'd spend a few months cruising after this. No more jobs for
a while. Just peace, the sea, and of course his high-speed satelite
`nets connection. Maybe he could get a few weeks work done on some of
his own projects. Capatalism is so tedious.
``Half now, half when the job is done,'' Danes said. The negotiation was
over now, just going through the motions. The disconnection protocol,
both parties knew it well.
``Indeed, I'll wire the money now. Account number?''
Danes rattled off the number of his Swiss bank account, he knew it by
heart of course. Marco pulled a small computer -about the same size
of a cigarette packet- out of his pocket and keyed the number in. It
made a small conformation beep. A few moments later Danes heard a
similar sound emanate from his own portable PC. He pulled it out of
his pocket and checked the mesage. A confirmation. Ten million euros
transferred into his account, fuck yeah. Pretty much all big business
transactions are done in euros these days, after the US economy tanked
and took the dollar and almost the whole world economy with it. Those
weren't a pretty few years.
``Excellent, you have recieved confirmation of the transfer?'' asked
Marco. Danes nodded. ``Then we are done here. As I said before,
you'll get the delivery location at the docks. Usual procedure
there.'' Marco handed Danes a small brown envelope, it was unmarked
except with small stamp. A cacao plant leaf, the symbol of the
Hern\'andez drug cartel. ``Your instructions as to Matroska. Simple
enough, just follow them and we are both happy.''
With that Marco yanked the wires from the battery terminals and the
light flickered out. It was dark once more in the cabin. He turned
on his heel and walked through the white rectangle of light which was
the doorway. A moment later the urchin boy scampered back inside and
half dragged, half carried the battery back outside with him. For a
few moments the sound of his struggle could be heard, fading away as
he lurched and heaved up the path to the villa. Danes was alone in
the cabin with the tall, long-faced man; Matroska the Prussian.
The trip back down to the plantation entrance was uneventful. Danes
had tried to strike up a conversation with his new compadre but to no
avail. Matroska remaind stony-faced and mute the entire journey. He
seemed unfazed by the close forest and snagging branches. Danes
guessed that he'd probably seen much worse than this in his time. In
short order the trees began to thin out and a few moments later they
emerged, blinking into the sunlight.
They were standing in the small clearing that marked the entrance to
the plantation. A rough, dirt road terminated here, as did several
other paths leading off somewhere into the jungle. There was also a
gate, large enough to admit a small truck, guarding the road to the
plantation proper. The truck wasn't here to pick them up yet, they'd
have to wait. Sometimes it took an hour, sometimes 5 minutes. Danes
couldn't really see much of a pattern in it be he suspected it at
least partially depended on how important you were but probably mostly
on the current mood of the truck driver. Still not one word from
Matroska. He was just standing off to the edge of the clearing,
staring off aimlessly into space. He probably had a lot on his mind.
Danes was itching to open the envolope that Marco had given him.
There was alot about this particular job which made him nervous and
he'd like to know a little more about it. He didn't want to open
anything until he had a little privacy.
They didn't have to wait long, Matroska must be pretty important to,
well, whoever was organising this. After about ten minutes the sound
of the sputtering ancient truck could be heard in the distance, slowly
growing louder. A few minutes later and they were trundling down the
winding mountain road on the way to the coast, the kill-9 and
beyond that, Danes knew not what.
Hopefully in not too much of a wall of text fashion, I will post what I have written so far in manageable chunks of a few thousand words. This being the first. Here goes:
Chapter 1 - Plantation
Chapter 1 - Plantation
The wind blows down from the mountains of Colombia. Over the vast
expanse of cocoa trees nestled in the foothills of the northern Andes.
The plantation was gouged out of the rainforest that still surrounds
it. Unaccesable by all but the sturdiest of 4wd vehicles, and of
course helicopters. But only Enrico Hern\'andez has one of those
around these parts. Enrico, the grotesquely wealthy drug warlord of
this region. Living like a king in a mansion many hundreds of
kilometers away from here on the outskirts of the capital Bogot\'a.
No, he never had to suffer the day-long journey to the plantation from
the nearest semblences of modernity and the cocaine capital of the
world, Medell\'in. He simply got in his private chopper and spent a
couple of hours sipping champagne and snorting cocaine off the back of
a 16 year old hooker.
This was not, however; the method that Danes McKenzie had used to
travel here today. One could very easily tell by his mud covered
clothing and sour demeanour that he had traveled here in the usual
way, in the back of an ancient (and surprisingly still functioning)
truck, held together by rust, old wire and cable-ties; driven by a
toothless old ``chauffeur'' in the employ of the Hern\'andez drug cartel.
He was not here by choice, although the land hereabouts was
breathtakingly beautiful, it was perhaps equally as dangerous.
Swarming with hoards of opportunistic and dissatisfied local bandits
who although (ostensibly) loyal to the Hern\'andez family, would not
hesitate to rob and murder an unsuspecting gringo should the
opportunity present itself. Not to mention of course the various
snakes, spiders, panthers, etc. and the ever-present mosquitos, always
ready to deliver whatever deadly tropical disease they happened to be
carrying at that particular moment (probably all of them). No, Danes
preferred to stay on his ship, the kill-9, a beautiful 30 metre
gaff-rigged steel ketch, which he used to transact certain of his less
legal endevours, such as the one he was about to embark upon.
Danes was just nearing the end of his arduous journey up the mountain
to the plantation. He was walking the final several hundred metres
from the main plantation gate (where the truck terminates) to the
small cabin where Enrico liked his business transacted. Enrico
wouldn't be there in person of course, not for such a small
transaction; only a few hundred kilos of cocaine, that magical white
powder on which his vast empire was built. One of his many lackeys
would handle this. The path up to the cabin was short, but steep and
annoyingly windy and overgrown with overhanging trees and vines. They
caught on his clothing and scratched at his arms and face. Enrico
liked his clients to be on the back foot when he negotiated with them.
That's why they had to use this path (not the same one that the
Hern\'andez crew used of course). They would arrive alone, outnumbered,
tired and annoyed, but intimidated and with a strong feeling that they
wanted nothing more than to finish up with this particular transaction
as soon as possible. Danes, of course, had done this before and was
familiar with the caper. That doesn't mean that he wasn't tired and
annoyed of course, but he would keep his head cool, for now.
Rounding the last bend in the track now, he can see the cabin through
gaps in the trees and undergrowth. A rude affair, hewn out of the
trees that once stood in its place. Roughly constructed from hand-cut
logs, no windows, only one small door on the far side. He knew that
the only internal illumination came from one flagging light bulb
hanging from the ceiling, powered by an old truck battery; and
whatever light managed to sneak in through the cracks in the log
cabin's walls. Off to the right, another path snakes off into the
forest. This one is much nicer. Wider and with all the brush neatly
clipped back to allow passage un-molested by snagging branches. This
path (or so he assumed) led to the villa of the plantation which
housed the various plantation managers, guards and various lackeys
required to keep the operation going. The lowly plebs who did all the
actual work, of course resided in a nearby village.
Two burly looking men stood next to the cabin, dressed in green
paramilitary-style uniforms (if a bit worse for wear) and holding
AK-47 assault rifles. Still an old favorite for any self-respecting
drug-lord. Slightly bored looks garnished their faces, they'd done
this many times before.
``Hey Juan, how're the kids?'' asked Danes. No response as always.
They knew better than to get to know their master's clients. They
know they're just as likely to kill someone up here as to escort them
back down the mountain. One of them motions to the far-side of the
cabin with a slight flick of his head. Danes follows the gesture and
rounds the corner and proceeds into the dark, gaping maw.
It was dark inside, no one else was there. They always make you wait
a few minutes alone. They sure as hell don't want to wait! They
could just as easily be snorting lines and playing cards back at the
(much more hospitible) plantation villa. There only furnature was an
old rickety wooden chair. The others would stand of course, it gave a
sense of overbearing, more psychalogical tactics. The chair almost
looked as though it'd shatter into a thousand pieces if he sat on it.
He did and it didn't. Deceptive.
A few minutes pass and soon he can hear the sounds of approaching
footsteps thudding on the hard-packed dirt path outside. Presumably
the plebs outside had notified their superiors back at the villa of
his arrival. A few moments later and a sillouette appears in the open
doorway, quickly joined by another. The first one was familliar,
short, stocky and bald; but not in a nice, jolly George Costanza way.
In a much more intimidating, being able to tear your heart out through
your colon kind of way. His name was Marco Hern\'andez, Enrico's
cousin, or some sort of relative. You can never quite tell with these
South American drug families, they're very interconnected. He's no
schlump, Danes must be more important than he thought. As Marco moved
further into the cabin, Danes got a better look at the second
sillouette. It was a very tall man, thin but with an underlying
appearance of deceptive strength. Following behind the tall man was a
scrawny boy of about 10 years struggling with a battered old 12 volt
truck battery. It was about half his size and by the way he carried
it, panting and heaving, about half his weight too. Marco spat
something in spanish and the urchin dragged the battery across the
floor to the wall and dumped it there. He shot a quick look at Danes
before scampering out, barely avoiding a half-hearted back-hand from
Marco.
``Useless boy!'' sighed Marco, ``I take him from the village to
improve his life, but he is lazy and insolent!''
Marco sighed again as he began to hook up the battery to two wires
which hung across the ceiling from the bulb and dangled down the wall
opposite the door. ``These children, you can do nothing to improve
them. I may have to kill him, I don't know.''. The bulb flickered to
life, giving off a feeble yellow light which gave everything a pale,
sickly hue.
The light, weak as it was, revealed the second personage who had just
entered the room. He was an exceptionally tall man, pale and gaunt in
the face. His abnormally long head was crowned with short, spikey
hair, coloured black as pitch. His eyes were two black holes
-contrasting starkly with the almost white flesh of his face- each
emitting a trail of super-high energy particles from rapidly rotating
poles, blurring to form the dimly-glowing circuit of the iris. He
wore a black full-length leather coat, glinting ever so faintly with
the light of the flickering bulb. Over a hundred of the choicest and
blackest young virgin bull-calves must have had their soul-fire
extinguished in dark midnight rituals to become part of that
magnificently evil vestment. His left hand, adorned solely by a fine
ring of blackest obsidian. Shoring up the foundation of that heinous,
towering, meat sky-scraper were two enormous leather boots. Each toe
covered with matte titanium plate and lightly spiked.
Danes recognised him now, for a different reason from that of his
companion. Not out of familiarity, but out of notoriety. The thought
made him shiver slightly. This was Matroska the Prussian! Famed dark
hacker and leader of the Satanic Society of Black-Hat Freelancers, the
most successful, subversive underground anti-movement in the history
of the 'tubes. No one is really sure how the Society came, except
perhaps the founding members that is. It is suspected to have come
out of Anonymous back in the mid '00s but like everything else about
the orginisation, its origins are cloaked in secrecy.
Danes had been peripherally involed with them during the nascent
stages of the movement but had skipped out to Europe before the ball
really got rolling. It all changed though once Matroska joined in the
fun. No one's quite sure where he came from. It was rumoured that he
was just another one of many faceless government workers driving the
wheels of power, when one day he just snapped. He rose through the
movement's ranks at a breakneck pace. As soon as people figured out
just how crazy he was, he was promoted. People just sort of realised
that they were in the way of what he wanted, and they got the fuck
right out of it! Before you knew it, he was the leader and it was
motherfucking on. No longer a loosely organised groups of
script-kiddies DDoS-ing scientology web-sites, the Society with
Matroska at the top only selected the best. Soon strange things began
to happen. A succesful company, fully solvent one day would become
insolvent the next. A third-world warlord mysteriously dies in his
sleep allowing some other company to gain a foothold in certain
resource-rich areas under that warlors's former control. Or perhaps
just as likely, the people, liberated from opression. There seemed to
be no pattern to these events, just conincedence. There were some,
however, who though they could faintly trace a connection back to the
Society. Never anything concrete, just rumours of rumours. Some who
spoke too loudly their thoughs, perhaps would come into some accident,
or else simply decide, for whatever reason, that silence is the best
policy after all.
Danes had always wanted to meet Matroska, this it would seem, would be
his opportunity. Although he wondered what the hell he was doing
here, in the middle of Colombia, in the forest, in the negotiation hut
of a powerful drug lord... Any speculations he may have had regarding
Matroska's motives would have to wait. Marco spoke. It was a welcome
break to the ominous silence in the deadened air of the cabin.
expanse of cocoa trees nestled in the foothills of the northern Andes.
The plantation was gouged out of the rainforest that still surrounds
it. Unaccesable by all but the sturdiest of 4wd vehicles, and of
course helicopters. But only Enrico Hern\'andez has one of those
around these parts. Enrico, the grotesquely wealthy drug warlord of
this region. Living like a king in a mansion many hundreds of
kilometers away from here on the outskirts of the capital Bogot\'a.
No, he never had to suffer the day-long journey to the plantation from
the nearest semblences of modernity and the cocaine capital of the
world, Medell\'in. He simply got in his private chopper and spent a
couple of hours sipping champagne and snorting cocaine off the back of
a 16 year old hooker.
This was not, however; the method that Danes McKenzie had used to
travel here today. One could very easily tell by his mud covered
clothing and sour demeanour that he had traveled here in the usual
way, in the back of an ancient (and surprisingly still functioning)
truck, held together by rust, old wire and cable-ties; driven by a
toothless old ``chauffeur'' in the employ of the Hern\'andez drug cartel.
He was not here by choice, although the land hereabouts was
breathtakingly beautiful, it was perhaps equally as dangerous.
Swarming with hoards of opportunistic and dissatisfied local bandits
who although (ostensibly) loyal to the Hern\'andez family, would not
hesitate to rob and murder an unsuspecting gringo should the
opportunity present itself. Not to mention of course the various
snakes, spiders, panthers, etc. and the ever-present mosquitos, always
ready to deliver whatever deadly tropical disease they happened to be
carrying at that particular moment (probably all of them). No, Danes
preferred to stay on his ship, the kill-9, a beautiful 30 metre
gaff-rigged steel ketch, which he used to transact certain of his less
legal endevours, such as the one he was about to embark upon.
Danes was just nearing the end of his arduous journey up the mountain
to the plantation. He was walking the final several hundred metres
from the main plantation gate (where the truck terminates) to the
small cabin where Enrico liked his business transacted. Enrico
wouldn't be there in person of course, not for such a small
transaction; only a few hundred kilos of cocaine, that magical white
powder on which his vast empire was built. One of his many lackeys
would handle this. The path up to the cabin was short, but steep and
annoyingly windy and overgrown with overhanging trees and vines. They
caught on his clothing and scratched at his arms and face. Enrico
liked his clients to be on the back foot when he negotiated with them.
That's why they had to use this path (not the same one that the
Hern\'andez crew used of course). They would arrive alone, outnumbered,
tired and annoyed, but intimidated and with a strong feeling that they
wanted nothing more than to finish up with this particular transaction
as soon as possible. Danes, of course, had done this before and was
familiar with the caper. That doesn't mean that he wasn't tired and
annoyed of course, but he would keep his head cool, for now.
Rounding the last bend in the track now, he can see the cabin through
gaps in the trees and undergrowth. A rude affair, hewn out of the
trees that once stood in its place. Roughly constructed from hand-cut
logs, no windows, only one small door on the far side. He knew that
the only internal illumination came from one flagging light bulb
hanging from the ceiling, powered by an old truck battery; and
whatever light managed to sneak in through the cracks in the log
cabin's walls. Off to the right, another path snakes off into the
forest. This one is much nicer. Wider and with all the brush neatly
clipped back to allow passage un-molested by snagging branches. This
path (or so he assumed) led to the villa of the plantation which
housed the various plantation managers, guards and various lackeys
required to keep the operation going. The lowly plebs who did all the
actual work, of course resided in a nearby village.
Two burly looking men stood next to the cabin, dressed in green
paramilitary-style uniforms (if a bit worse for wear) and holding
AK-47 assault rifles. Still an old favorite for any self-respecting
drug-lord. Slightly bored looks garnished their faces, they'd done
this many times before.
``Hey Juan, how're the kids?'' asked Danes. No response as always.
They knew better than to get to know their master's clients. They
know they're just as likely to kill someone up here as to escort them
back down the mountain. One of them motions to the far-side of the
cabin with a slight flick of his head. Danes follows the gesture and
rounds the corner and proceeds into the dark, gaping maw.
It was dark inside, no one else was there. They always make you wait
a few minutes alone. They sure as hell don't want to wait! They
could just as easily be snorting lines and playing cards back at the
(much more hospitible) plantation villa. There only furnature was an
old rickety wooden chair. The others would stand of course, it gave a
sense of overbearing, more psychalogical tactics. The chair almost
looked as though it'd shatter into a thousand pieces if he sat on it.
He did and it didn't. Deceptive.
A few minutes pass and soon he can hear the sounds of approaching
footsteps thudding on the hard-packed dirt path outside. Presumably
the plebs outside had notified their superiors back at the villa of
his arrival. A few moments later and a sillouette appears in the open
doorway, quickly joined by another. The first one was familliar,
short, stocky and bald; but not in a nice, jolly George Costanza way.
In a much more intimidating, being able to tear your heart out through
your colon kind of way. His name was Marco Hern\'andez, Enrico's
cousin, or some sort of relative. You can never quite tell with these
South American drug families, they're very interconnected. He's no
schlump, Danes must be more important than he thought. As Marco moved
further into the cabin, Danes got a better look at the second
sillouette. It was a very tall man, thin but with an underlying
appearance of deceptive strength. Following behind the tall man was a
scrawny boy of about 10 years struggling with a battered old 12 volt
truck battery. It was about half his size and by the way he carried
it, panting and heaving, about half his weight too. Marco spat
something in spanish and the urchin dragged the battery across the
floor to the wall and dumped it there. He shot a quick look at Danes
before scampering out, barely avoiding a half-hearted back-hand from
Marco.
``Useless boy!'' sighed Marco, ``I take him from the village to
improve his life, but he is lazy and insolent!''
Marco sighed again as he began to hook up the battery to two wires
which hung across the ceiling from the bulb and dangled down the wall
opposite the door. ``These children, you can do nothing to improve
them. I may have to kill him, I don't know.''. The bulb flickered to
life, giving off a feeble yellow light which gave everything a pale,
sickly hue.
The light, weak as it was, revealed the second personage who had just
entered the room. He was an exceptionally tall man, pale and gaunt in
the face. His abnormally long head was crowned with short, spikey
hair, coloured black as pitch. His eyes were two black holes
-contrasting starkly with the almost white flesh of his face- each
emitting a trail of super-high energy particles from rapidly rotating
poles, blurring to form the dimly-glowing circuit of the iris. He
wore a black full-length leather coat, glinting ever so faintly with
the light of the flickering bulb. Over a hundred of the choicest and
blackest young virgin bull-calves must have had their soul-fire
extinguished in dark midnight rituals to become part of that
magnificently evil vestment. His left hand, adorned solely by a fine
ring of blackest obsidian. Shoring up the foundation of that heinous,
towering, meat sky-scraper were two enormous leather boots. Each toe
covered with matte titanium plate and lightly spiked.
Danes recognised him now, for a different reason from that of his
companion. Not out of familiarity, but out of notoriety. The thought
made him shiver slightly. This was Matroska the Prussian! Famed dark
hacker and leader of the Satanic Society of Black-Hat Freelancers, the
most successful, subversive underground anti-movement in the history
of the 'tubes. No one is really sure how the Society came, except
perhaps the founding members that is. It is suspected to have come
out of Anonymous back in the mid '00s but like everything else about
the orginisation, its origins are cloaked in secrecy.
Danes had been peripherally involed with them during the nascent
stages of the movement but had skipped out to Europe before the ball
really got rolling. It all changed though once Matroska joined in the
fun. No one's quite sure where he came from. It was rumoured that he
was just another one of many faceless government workers driving the
wheels of power, when one day he just snapped. He rose through the
movement's ranks at a breakneck pace. As soon as people figured out
just how crazy he was, he was promoted. People just sort of realised
that they were in the way of what he wanted, and they got the fuck
right out of it! Before you knew it, he was the leader and it was
motherfucking on. No longer a loosely organised groups of
script-kiddies DDoS-ing scientology web-sites, the Society with
Matroska at the top only selected the best. Soon strange things began
to happen. A succesful company, fully solvent one day would become
insolvent the next. A third-world warlord mysteriously dies in his
sleep allowing some other company to gain a foothold in certain
resource-rich areas under that warlors's former control. Or perhaps
just as likely, the people, liberated from opression. There seemed to
be no pattern to these events, just conincedence. There were some,
however, who though they could faintly trace a connection back to the
Society. Never anything concrete, just rumours of rumours. Some who
spoke too loudly their thoughs, perhaps would come into some accident,
or else simply decide, for whatever reason, that silence is the best
policy after all.
Danes had always wanted to meet Matroska, this it would seem, would be
his opportunity. Although he wondered what the hell he was doing
here, in the middle of Colombia, in the forest, in the negotiation hut
of a powerful drug lord... Any speculations he may have had regarding
Matroska's motives would have to wait. Marco spoke. It was a welcome
break to the ominous silence in the deadened air of the cabin.
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