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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