Fixer #12

It was time to back up and think it all through. Emily sat down on the tan sofa because her legs were just about to give way. She closed her eyes and let all the myriad thoughts run through her brain. Sometimes she could quickly delineate a problem, but not today. The frustration rose as she did. Emily went over to the bar in the small living room. "What would she drink?" she trying thought, trying to put her mind at peace. She reached for the ice bucket and the martini shaker almost simultaneously. She put some ice in the shaker, followed by two ounces of Rangpur lime gin and one ounce of vermouth. After she shook the drink, she poured it into a chilled martini glass that she had graced with a lovely green Spanish olive and a splash of brine. What an extraordinary way to calm her mind! Perhaps she should call The Fixer and see if he wanted a drink. Hmm... she wondered. What was she going to do with the cross-drawing former partner? She really needed to discuss this with someone and the Fixer was it. The only one. She took out her portable comm.-portal and punched in the code for Mr. Black. He answered on the second ring. "I need you," she said. "Not now, I have two important meetings," he said. "Now! Meetings be damned. I need to go over all that's happened and figure out what to do next. It can't wait," she said. "I'll be there in 20. Make me one of those martinis. I'll be ready for it," and he signed off. Emily wasn't sure what she thought about Mr. Black, but he certainly piqued her curiosity. Thirty minutes later Mr. Black appeared at her door, but he wasn't alone. Damn, it was that Juneau look-alike. Emily flung the door wide and started to berate Mr. Black, but before she could get out even a syllable, Black hit the Juneau look-alike at the base of his skull and knocked him out cold. "Well that wasn't quite what I expected," Emily said. "I could really use that martini now," Mr Black grunted as he pulled the Juneau look-alike into the room. He left him by the door as Emily walked over to the bar to concoct the martini. "This idiot has been on my tail all day. He seemed to think that I was so dumb I wouldn't notice him in the background." "He's been following you all day?" she asked as she made a double martini for Mr. Black. "All bloody day. I finally had to come here, pretend to be surprised when he accosted me in the lobby, and then of course, I had to knock him on the head when we got here." "What are we going to do with this guy?" Emily asked, "We can't very well leave him here, I'd like to sleep easy tonight. That does pose a bit of a problem. He can't stay here and he can't stay upstairs in my room. Shall we dump him in a snowbank? I saw a great one about a mile from here, it's got a trash bin that would be ideal. I would like him to be further away though. Should we take him over to the jump station and hump him to the other side of the planet? That would give us a little lead time. "Sounds like a plan. Let me get my coat." Emily and Mr. Black picked up the body between them like you would a friend who had passed out after drinking too many dirty martinis. They hailed a cab, stopped at the jump station, and bought a ticket for the furthest possible point from the resort. It would take him at least a day to get back and hopefully by then both of them would be long gone. Back in her hotel room, Emily and Mr. Black finally had that martini they had both so badly wanted. "I almost fainted when I got your note about the woman, Avisha. Are you certain? I'm still having trouble processing it all."

Fixer #11

The note read:

"Emily,

The woman is one we know. Re-construct changed her look -- but one mannerism stands out. She holsters on the left and uses a cross draw."

Fixer

Emily let the note flutter to the ground from her lifeless fingers. It couldn't be. It just could not be. She knew, she saw it with her own eyes, that woman had been assassinated. She had dropped not ten feet from Emily. Emily had checked her pulse-- saw the lifeless eyes.

Wow! That one piece of information changed the whole complexion of the mission. A Juneau look-a-like, maybe, and now, her former partner Avisha had gone to re-construct and was hanging with the (real or not) Juneau. The confusion and implications were running rampant in Emily's mind.

Fixer #10

She was trying as hard as she could to think through the problem while not getting killed. It was time to leave the market. She really was sure it wasn't the real Juneau. And with that she quietly faded into the crowd that was gathering.

She was seriously being followed and she didn't like it. If this kept up she was going to have to call the fixer and then her ego was definitely going into the tank.

She retraced her route to the hotel -- watching for signs she was being followed. She felt comfortable only when she stepped int her room and locked the door behind her. Comfort is certainly relative.

After a quick shower, she noticed the flashing message light. Some things are always the same no matter where you are. Picking up the phone, she rang the front desk. The message was from the fixer. He had a lead on the woman in the picture. She was to meet him at he Hotel Koaroly on Aspinal -- one of the frozen planets.

Emily wasn't happy to leave. She loved the temperate climate of Nevas 4. Becoming ahuman popsicle didn't appeal to her at all, but she really had no choice. She had to find the woman and find a lead to the real Juneau. She packed her bag -- gave her suite one last longing look and headed to the tube station.

She jumped from Nevas 4 to Aspinal, bitching to herself about how cold it would be the whole 90 minute trip. Orbit -- jump -- orbit. As soon as she touched down she heard a page. "Emily Jerris, courtesy tele.comm, please, Emily Jerris, courtesy tele.comm."

"Meet me at Aspinal Forest Resort. I have a spot all picked out." Quick message she though and hailed a cab. The cab was a horse-driven sled. Definitely one of the frozen planets. She was again wearing her fox-colored fur coat with the whole complement of cold weather gear.

The Aspinal Forest Resort was the height of luxury and her cab was met by a livried man who helped her down. Another grabbed her bag and carried it inside, while a third led her to the registration desk. She wasn't sure she like all this high profile treatment. It made it hard to blend and sleuth it out. She wished the fixer had fouond a less posh place, or at least a more discreet posh place, but she'd live with it.

The suite she was checked into was a small apartment. Lord, she didn't want to bbe there long enough to have an apartment. The suite had a living room, small kitchen, two bedrooms and a bath the size of a small pasture. The suite was done in cool soothing blues. "How appropriate for some place that was so bone chilling cold," she thought.

She put her gloves down on the table and picked up a note addressed to her.

Fixer #9

Emily had to find a way to contact the woman in the picture she had been shown of Juneau. She pulled her copy of the photo from her bag and studied the background for other clues of the woman's whereabouts. Again, there was that look of a club in the background of the photo. She absolutely didn't have the time to go through every club in Mesca. Who could she contact? She felt like she had writer's block, only spies couldn't get writer's block. Could they? Maybe she had a covert block.

She decided to head out into the city; perhaps she'd get some inspiration from that. Mesca, even though it was a big city, felt like a place with lots of small cities in it. A city of neighborhoods like New York used to be. As she walked out of the hotel onto the square, they were setting up for market. It was Saturday, and that took her aback; when was the last time she had consciously realized what day it was? Usually they tended to run all together, but as she stood staring at the square she was it was market day, Saturday, in this part of Mesca. The vegetable peddler was setting up his stall even though the day looked like rain. There were rows of carrots, still on their stems with the leafy greens, next to the bright red, shiny tomatoes, and lying right in front of the leeks, big bushy leeks, next to the lush full heads of lettuce. Three different colors of peppers, red, yellow, and green were piled high. They stood next to fresh melons, cut open for a taste, so they could be sold. The melons flanked pineapple, which must have been imported for it was too cold on Mesca, or the surrounding planets to grow them. There were flats of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, piles of peaches, apricots, and nectarines.

On the other end of the table there were mounds of potatoes and every kind of cabbage you could think of for preparing the Mescans favorite dish of cabbage and potato dumplings.

The cheese cart was next to one of the vegetable stalls. Looking at some of the soft, fragrant cheeses oozing from their rinds she wanted only to home to the kitchen to cook, but she knew that would be a long time in coming. There had to be every type of cheese imaginable -- cheeses that she knew from Earth -- which meant that artisanal cheese makers had come to Mesca after the nuclear winter to create their artistry once again. Edam, gouda manchego, brie, camembert, just to name a few, were piled on the table.

Emily shook herself out of her reverie. "I've got to find this woman." She took the picture out of her bag and started asking the vendors if they could i.d. her. As she moved from stall to stall -- the crowd seemed to part, making her progress easy. It was like magnets that repel each other. A static electricity was charging the air. Emily could feel that something was about to pop.

And pop it did, literally. It was the pop-gun sound of rifle-fire and she dropped quickly behind a cart of apples. She watched as first a bright red apple and then several green ones spattered into apple sauce.

She scrambled backward trying to keep her eye out for the sniper and not lose her balance and go sprawling. As she slowly worked her way behind a pear wagon she saw the muzzle fire of an 810 Meegan -- this was the choice of any sniper worth his salt, and definitely the weapon of choice; the one that NASA assigned to all their operatives.

Obviously she was on to something. It had to be the next vendor. It was galling to her that she might lose a lead. It wasn't going to happen today. She threw her bag over her shoulder -- carrying it like a messenger bag, and dove for cover as the pop, pop, pop started again.

"Damn," she pulled her gun from her waistband holster. It was useless to put a gun in your bag. You had to dig for it. As she pulled the weapon out, and glanced around, she caught sight of the 810 Meegan again. This time, rather than scramble back, she steadied herself, took the gun in both hands, and fired.

The 810 Meegan cartwheeled to the ground quickly followed by its operator. She jumped over the apple cart and darted around a cart of oranges hoping to get to the sniper before anyone else. She knew it was a long shot, but she hoped he might have been careless and was carrying i.d. As she pushed her way through two men, she saw Juneau lying at her feet. What was next?

This couldn't be the real Juneau. Was it that damned look-a-like from J9? the only real way to tell was blood i.d., but she didn't have the time or the i.d. kit to do anything with the blood.

Fixer #8

Emily sat for a moment trying to decide on a course of action. Did she approach the woman first, or Juneau? Well, she'd have to get to Nevas 4 and then make the decision.

The trip to Nevas 4 from Terris Minora was easy. The physics were hard, but the jump was easy. Emily had never really understood the principles behind it, but the ease of movement made her job so easy. Do a job, make a jump! No one knew where you were going. She stepped into the float just like back on Earth, but because the distance between Terris Minora and Nevas 4 was so great, she had to take the jump float. It worked on the principles of teleportation. You entered the float, it flew to approximately fourteen miles planetary orbit and then the whole ship was teleported, (picked up and droped) in a fourteen mile planetary orbit around your destination planet. The float flew to the tube station and there you have it, travel that would take hundreds of years in about two hours.

The Nevans were an interesting group of poeople. The original settlers had left Earth when the teleportation jump had been proven successful. Many of them left Earth because of religious and political differences with those around them. The leader/president/guru of Nevas was a man named Redran Joll. Joll was fanatical about personal freedoms. In his world there would be no oppression for differing points of view, there would be openness to to everyone's ideas, there would be no political parties, and if anyone else wanted to lead, they could, although the duties of a leader were nominal on Nevas 4.

Because there wer no rules as to who could come on planet -- that would be discriminatory -- it had become a haven for a collection of interesting law-skirters. Not law-breakers, skirters. Just on the fringes of what was right and what was wrong!

Emily knew that this made her job more difficult because no one felt compelled to offer any kind of information.

Upon her arrival on Nevas 4, she took a horse-drawn cab to her hotel in Mesca. She was staying at the Condes de Mesca, it was an exact replica of the Condes de Barcelona,the luxury hotel in Barcelona, the capitol of the country Catalunya.

The Condes de Mesca was the height of luxury, in a modern decor. The suites were divided into a living area done in shocking blues and greans and a sleeping area of pale gold with red oak accents in the bedstead and the hardwood floor. The view wasn't as lovely as that at the Condes de Barcelona, but it was close.

Fixer #7

"Hello, Fixer.  Have you been waiting long?"

"Just got here."

"I didn't see you come in the front,' she said questioningly.

"Tried to stay out of the lime light.  Came in through the back," he said curtly.

"Well then, let's get down to business," Emily said.  "We've got to take care of more than one problem now."

"Yeah?"

"It seems that we have a Juneau look-a-like following me.  A look-a-like that reports to Johansen."

"Damn!"

"My thoughts exactly.  I know we don't need that kind of heat or action right now."

"How did you get rid of him?"

"I tapped him on the shoulder -- he fell down and I left."

"You are good!"

"Not really, but thanks."

"What do you want to do now?" Emily asked.  "Let's go through what's been happening.  1.  Juneau is in hiding.  2.  You, Mr. Black, are supposed to neutralize Juneau.  3.  I have mixed emotions about this because I worked for Juneau and now I work for the resistance.  4.  the resistance is made up of a few old NASA employees who know the new situation and are unhappy about it.  5.  So why would members of a group that supports the old NASA be against the leader of the old NASA?  Lots of exciting questions, hunh?"

"So what do you want me to do Emily?  I'm certainly happy to take out Juneau, as I've already been paid half my fee; but, I'd like to know soon, I do have a schedule, such as it is."

"You told me you'd have a report for me when we got to J9.  What did you find out?" Emily asked.

"The latest intel on Juneau is that he is staying on Nevas 4.  He's changed his face, which is why it's confusing to me that you were attacked by the Juneau look-a-like.  Why would he change his face to look like a guy who just changed his face?  It really just makes no sense.  I had planned to go to Nevas 4 tonight after this meeting and deal with him, but I'm tempted to wait now and see what you come up with; it could make for an interesting story."

"Thanks for the intel.  Do you have a picture of the new and improved Juneau?"

Black handed her a photo of a man with reddish=brown hair, greying a the temples.  He had a roman nose, but it looked as if it had been broken in a fight.  His eyes were very pale, icy blue, and in the photo they were filled with anger. When she was the eyes Emily knew it was Juneau, there are somethings that facial surgery and enhancements just can't change.  The photo had been take at a club.  she really couldn't make out too many details and as she stared at the photo something else in the background captured her attention.  Actually it was a someone else, there was a lovely young girl in the background.  She had jet-black hair and the olive-skin you see on Italian women.  She was looking at Juneau as if she'd never seen something so exquisite and tasty.  That might be the angle to play; the love interest.

"Black, I'm off to Nevas 4.  I want to check out the girl in this picture.  She knows something."

" I wondered if you saw that .  Here's the plan; you go to Nevas 4, I'm off to take care of another job and I'll meet you in three days at the Condes in Mesca on Nevas 4", and he left the table.

Fixer # 6

“All right,” she gasped, “Enough foreplay. Who the hell are you?”
He coughed and asked her in a wheezing whisper, “Relax your foot, I can hardly breathe.”
“If you don’t give me the answers I want you won’t breathe,” she replied as she let up a fraction on the pressure she had placed on his neck.
“All right, let me breathe.” She let up just a fraction more. The man’s color slowly started to return. “My name is Xavier. I am a decoy put in place to keep the real Juneau out of harm’s way. My boss is Jim Johansen, the primary in charge of enforcement.”
“Why would one of the triumvirate want to save Juneau’s life? They’ve done everything imaginable to bring him out of hiding so they can kill him,” Emily replied.
“Wait, I’ve got it. You’re trying to draw him out by creating some situation hat he would have to become involved in. When you, as Juneau, screwed it up, he’d have to come out of hiding to save face literally and figuratively. God, don’t you people ever give up?”
“I have to report back to Johansen within the hour saying that you were neutralized. If I don’t an entire hit squad comes down on you like rain,” he said.
“Oh, Damn, I told the black man we should have spoken in a more inconspicuous place. So what do you have to show Johansen – my head on a stick? What? I’m certainly not going to let you kill me today and you’ve made me late for my meeting. Up you go!”
The Juneau look-a-like got up and shook his head trying to straighten out his neck. “How about I go to that meeting with you and we try to work this out. I mean, what to show Johansen and all.”
It was always interesting that even in the nicest parts of a city people did not become involved in situations that might entertain a notion to call the police. So, Emily, who had received no interference with her handling of Xavier hailed a cab. Have you ever been to London and seen those lovely black cabs? J9 was rife with black cabs, and Emily sank back into the luxury of the seat staring at Xavier. He really did look like Juneau. The only feature that was slightly off was the nose. Juneau’s didn’t come to quite as sharp a point as Xavier’s.
“So how did you really get involved in this?” Emily asked.
“Like I said, I work for Johansen. Maybe 10 years now. I got the new face eight months ago. I had to have the heal time before I could go out in public. Plastic surgery is still a witch. I wish they could create a different way to change your face. Hell, they can make a mechanical horse smell like a live horse, why not come up with a way to change a face?”
It was strange that plastic surgery and enhancements had not moved at the same pace that other technology had. That was about to change, but Xavier and Emily knew nothing about it.
“Beats me! Too bad you had to through all that only to have your plan blow-up in your face. Sorry, bad pun,” Emily chortled.
I’m not so sure it did blow up in my face, maybe, just maybe, this is all for the best. You have me in a cab and you’re taking me to Mr. Black. Perhaps my face is going to make it intact.”
“Level with me, said Emily. Why me, why Mr. Black? And are you going to report in to Johansen so I can live to die another day?”
“Damn, I can’t believe that I forgot – give me your comm-.”
“Sorry, I don’t’ carry a portable comm.- Too many people know where you are when you carry one. It has GPS and I don’t need that. I carry around enough hardware. If someone really wants to get a hold of me, they can find me, or leave a message at my service. If they come to find me then I know that it’s utterly important.”
“Have the cab pull over then because I’m going to have to call.”
“Why don’t you carry a comm.-? I’d think a tough guy – assassin like you would make that a necessity.”
“Same deal. I don’t want every Jim, Karen, or Jacob calling me.”
“So, it’s true. You are a part of it all; they are going to try to change things aren’t they? We’ve got to get the real Juneau out of danger so that we can continue to exist.”
Does it sound melodramatic to you? Wow, it sure does to me, but perhaps we need some melodrama, no – we have to much melodrama. It’s time to tone down the characters. So let’s change the last bit of dialogue to this:
“We’ve got to find the real Juneau, only he’ll know how to stop the triumvirate.”
The car pulled up at the Jessso Club at 9:25. Emily didn’t like being too early. Who knows who could be following her? Hell, if this idiot had found her, anyone could. What was she going to do with him? He couldn’t keep following her around. That would never do. So, maybe the fixer could take him out; but she had to get him alone. She couldn’t very well tell the fixer, “Oh, by the way, can you get rid of the guy in the corner? He’s been sent to kill me and has attached to me like a puppy. I don’t need this growth. Amputate it!!”
She needed to go online and figure out who he really was and why he was following her. But that was going to have to wait.
“O.K. You wait here in the cab, or go someplace else. I don’t have time for you right now.”
“Sorry, I’m like glue.”
“Well, Elmer, I don’t need this!” And she tapped him on the shoulder. The would-be assassin slid to the floor of the cab in an unconscious heap. “Gees, they sure make them trusting nowadays,” she thought. Emily paid the cabbie adding an extra 100 so he would quietly dispose of the sleeping guy.
She smoothed down her pin-striped suit as she stepped out of the cab. She looked good and it was a certainty that she wasn’t going to blend in. As she walked into the bar, she took in her surroundings. The Jessso was wood-paneled like the old English gentleman’s club. It really catered to the expensive executive who wanted a plush setting for an after hours meeting or for that little assignation after work. It was a perfect place to meet the fixer because everyone was so discreet.
As Emily looked from the bar to the tables placed at discreet distances from each other she saw the fixer seated with his back against the wall, watching everyone who came into and went out of the room. His eyes settled on her and she moved slowly over to the table. She wanted to give him the time to see that she was harmless. Well, not exactly harmless, but certainly not ready to kill him today.