27Author's Note:Spoken dialogue in this story is always presumed to be Italian but written in English. Where there are exceptions, they're noted as such. When a character hears something in an unfamiliar language, it's written verbatim and italicized. When a character hears or says something that is not in Italian, but that she understands, the words are translated to English. In this chapter, Joker and Atiya bring up some terms which refer to specific socio-political events in Italy (compare: Great Depression, New Deal and War on Drugs). Because they are proper names, they're rendered in Italian and italicized, but this is probably the only time you'll see something like this happen.
Shameless Plug:Atiya mentions Lacuna Coil in the first scene. They're a kickin', goth-metal band who just happen to be from northern Italy. If you like that sort of music at all, check them out.
Misspent Youth
Joker walked past the throng of customers milling about and out a side door onto a patio where sat several small tables, each ringed by chairs and customers. He strode to one near the edge, smiling at its lone occupant as she looked up at him.
"Nice to see you, little brother," she said in sultry tones as he came to stand by the small table.
"You, too," he said, taking a seat. "You look good."
"Don't I always?"
"Invariably. Those maternity clothes really made you look stunning last year," he said.
"Shush!" she replied with mock severity. Joker sat back and smiled as his sister took a drink of wine. Though she lamented the loss of her girlish figure, her children were so much more important to her.
Atiya was barely more than a year his senior, but according to her, that year made all the difference in the world. She had grown to be a gorgeous woman, much like her mother, with eyes like pools of obsidian and hair like darkest night, even if it was barely shoulder-length now. For all that, though, she had a warm smile and a cheerful disposition. She was wearing a tan dress and matching blouse with a plunging neckline designed to be provocative. Joker would've appreciated that sort of thing on (or off of, as the case may be) many women. Just not on his sister.
"What's the occasion?" he asked.
"Haven't seen you in a while. You're always all busy with work and never have time for the important things in life anymore."
They were interrupted by a waitress, a cute, young, blonde thing, who hurried off to fetch a drink for the new arrival.
"Important things in life?" Joker asked.
"Like seeing me, of course," she said with a charming smile. "Maybe all this time spent in the military is dulling your wits. Both of them."
"Oh, this important bit of my life? Like spending time with my favorite sister?"
"I'm your only sister."
"Yeah, you won by default." She smiled with all the kindness of a viper. This was often the way it was between them. When they had been young, Joker and Atiya had been very close to each other, but they had also been the two siblings most likely to be fighting about one thing or another. These days they didn't fight much, but they did love to exchange barbs here and there.
The waitress returned with his drink and told them she'd be back in a few minutes to take their order.
"Oh," Atiya said, sitting forward suddenly, "before I forget, have you called your mother recently?"
"Uh, well…" Joker struggled a bit, caught off guard. His mother was the one woman he genuinely felt guilty about not calling. He also had not talked to her in a while.
"That's what I thought. You should call her. She misses you."
"Well, you know, I've been busy, and…"
"Busy? I can see," she said, leaning back in her chair. Joker couldn't hope to fool her by lying, so he shrugged. "Call her."
He sighed. "What is it about motherhood that makes women so crazy?" he asked, offhandedly.
"The crazy comes from dealing with men who act like children. Call your mother."
"Yes, dear," he said, defeated. After a minute of silence between them, he asked, "Speaking of children, how're yours?"
She smiled as she thought about her family. "Wonderful, as always. I think 'Carlo wants Victor to play every sport imaginable– "
"He's still playing football, right?"
"Of course! But he's tried half a dozen others. Every time I turn around we're buying more athletic equipment."
"Wait until I see him. I'll tell him that pads and helmets are for pussies!"
"Don't you dare! He'll believe it, coming from you!" She smiled and took a drink while her brother laughed. Once the mirth abated, she continued, "And if Victor wants to play without pads, you can bet 'Rita will as well, because she's always better than her younger brother. Just like her mother."
"Must run in the family or something," Joker agreed, wryly. "What other wonderful traits have you blessed her with?"
"Among her other fine sensibilities are her taste in music– " she broke off what she was saying as sudden excitement gripped her. She swatted at his arm as if to get his attention and, said, "Ooh! Guess who's going to be in town on the 31st!"
Joker shrugged. He had no idea.
"Lacuna Coil! And I'm going to get tickets to see them!" she said, clapping her hands together in girlish glee.
It didn't much surprise. His sister had a great love of various styles of music. When she'd been younger and studying at university, their parents were sure – based on the string of musician/loser boyfriends she'd had – that she would end up pregnant and divorced before she was 21. Thankfully, her standards for men eventually changed and she stopped considering a guy's talent with a five-string to be his defining feature. But she still had a varied and interesting collection of music.
He was familiar with the group she meant. After all, they were a local success story with fans all over Europe and in the States, as well. Joker could listen to them, but he wasn't a big fan. Atiya was right, though: they were talented.
"Who're you going with," he asked.
""Rita. She heard Comalies one day when I was listening to it and said, 'Mama, who's that girl with the pretty voice?' and I said, 'That's Cristina Scabbia and she's in the best band in the whole world.'"
Joker rolled his eyes. "How will all your other favorite bands take that?"
"Oh, shush!" she scolded. "I only have one favorite band."
"Per day?"
She gave him a dirty look, but it softened quickly. "Every few days," she said with a smile.
"How's my brother-in-law? You've been keeping him in line, I trust?"
"'Carlo is fine. His firm's been getting a lot of work recently. You've been watching the news?"
"A.C. Milan is going all the way this year, woo hoo?" he asked, fully expecting her question to be non-sports related.
"Well, here's to hoping," she said casually. Atiya didn't love football the way Joker did, (no one in his family loved football the way he did) but she did enjoy watching it and was familiar with the local teams. "But I had meant that there've been some scandals in Parliament recently and 'Carlo's firm was hired to independently audit governmental records."
"Yeah, stupid government spending money on stuff. And here I thought they just spent money on themselves, poor things."
She smiled dryly and said, "Yes, don't you want to adopt a poor senator or deputy? Just twenty euros a day can guarantee that your special deputy can grow fat and lounge in his Jacuzzi while getting sucked off by whores as he plans new ways to siphon off taxes for his own use." She sat back and frowned, distaste overcoming sarcasm. "I don't even know why I talk about politics anymore, it just makes me upset."
"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Then the politicians."
"Being in politics is enough of a problem itself, these days. Three deputies are facing corruption charges and there was a senator recently assassinated. Money and power comes at a price, it would seem. Did you see senator Picchi on TV the other day?"
"No, should I have?"
She shrugged, then continued, "He was at a press conference telling about how the socialists were dedicated to combating unemployment and inflation, especially in the south."
"Not a lot of support for something like that here."
"He was speaking from Rome. The point is that if he's such a socialist, why does his car cost as much as my house?"
"That must be some car!" Joker's sister had married a financial analyst whose lucrative hobbies ensured a comfortable living for their family while allowing Atiya to devote herself to raising their children. "Besides, someone had to manufacture that car for him. See, he's introducing money into the economy to reduce unemployment and combat inflation!" Joker said gleefully.
Ever since her first year at university, his sister loved to ramble about politics and economics. Since he usually didn't much care one way or another for what she was arguing about, he was content to either bounce ideas off her if he was feeling argumentative or grumble about things if he was feeling agreeable. Today was a bit of both.
Joker merely shrugged. "The guy's gotta look the part." Atiya arched an eyebrow inquisitively but said nothing. "Well, I mean, if he's supposed to act like a leader or representative of the people, no one's going to take him too seriously if he shows up to a session of Parliament with a beat-up Volkswagen and a grungy suit."
"Everyone should own a beat-up Volkswagen," Atiya said with a grin. Despite her husband's fondness for BMWs, Atiya had owned an old Volkswagen Golf for years and frequently commented that everyone should own one. "But more to the point," she continued, "this man's a public servant, or he's supposed to be. It's fine to look professional, but he doesn't need to be ostentatious."
"So it's okay for 'Carlo to drive a pricey Beemer, but not for Picchi to drive a…?" Joker asked, gesturing for her to finish his sentence.
She did. "Lamborghini. Gallardo coupe."
He whistled appreciatively. "Senators make that sort of bank?"
"This one does."
Further conversation was interrupted by the waitress bringing drinks and taking their order. When she had gone, Atiya took a sip of wine and said, "I think the car was a 'gift,' so he didn't exactly spend any money on it, but he could've done something better than driving it around town."
"Like what?"
"Donate it or auction it and give the proceeds to charity." Joker laughed at that. His sister frowned at him.
"I'll tell your husband he should donate his Beemer to charity and see what he says about that." As much as he loved his sister, sometimes she just didn't make sense. This was one of those times.
"That's a poor analogy and you know it. First, 'Carlo doesn't drive a Lamborghini nor does his car cost anywhere near that much. Second, he works in the private sector; he's not a senator. He's especially not a senator with a socialist platform. Mr. Picchi is blatantly hypocritical, but he knows how to get the votes and he knows how to play the politics."
"Politicians are just that, politicians. Isn't that what Mani Pulite taught us?"
"Alas, that is the way it is, but not the way it should be." She sighed as she contemplated her glass. "Whatever happened to the government having the interests of the people at heart?" she asked before downing the last of her wine.
"A pipe dream at best. What government has ever truly had the interests of the people at heart?"
They paused for a bit when the waitress came by to refill their drinks.
Sitting forward in her chair and leaning over conspiratorially, Atiya said, "Governments formed by revolution."
Lost, Joker asked, "Huh?"
"You asked, 'what government has the interests of the people at heart?' And my answer is, 'government formed by revolution.' A government of the people works better than a government of one person. Supposedly that's the entire reason we have a republic instead of a monarch."
Joker pondered that as he savored his wine. Instinctively, he took a glance around the little patio. Most people were involved in their own conversations. The noise of the city lingered in the background and his sister waited calmly and patiently for his response.
"I wouldn't have thought you'd throw in with the PRF," he said at last.
"Oh, come on, Rauf. Four out of every five people in Lombardy would throw in with the PRF if they haven't already. The media does their best to downplay the situation to portray Padania as some renegade, terrorist organization to discredit it, but that oversimplifies the situation while vilifying the people involved. The PRF is as much a political movement as anything else and that's what really scares those fat fucks in Rome," she said with a frown.
"So what is it that Padania hopes to achieve, then? Overthrow the government and secede?"
She shook her head. "Legitimacy. Just like Sinn Féin did in Ireland, the PRF will work to become legitimately accepted and once it has done so it will become more moderate. It's been forced to resort to these tactics because the political mainstream is doing its best to ignore the pleas of us Northerners, while we're bled dry by rising taxes. If the Socialists do get any more power in parliament we might as well just stop pretending to be a republic and stitch a hammer and sickle on the national flag."
"As much as the government skims off the top, there's plenty of good done with your tax money. Social programs exist to help the poor. We were poor immigrants at one time," he reminded her.
"But Mama and Papa never relied on handouts, they were far too proud. The few times we did it was out of necessity. Rauf," she said, plaintively, "the best way to help poor people is to give them the tools to get themselves out of poverty. You know the saying, 'Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.' But there are too many deputies whose jobs depend on securing votes with government handouts. Handouts paid for by our taxes."
They were silent for a moment as he thought. Neither history nor politics were strong points for him, but he had a good head for facts. Putting them together was the hard part.
"But, the Savoys were deposed after the war. We've had a republic ever since and still we had Tangentopoli and Senator Picchi. What's the answer, then? A full, Athenian democracy?"
She sighed in response. "There is no easy answer. Continued vigilance and holding our elected officials accountable are really the only answers. It's hard to do, but it needs to be done. Those in power have gotten used to being in power and doing whatever they can to stay in power, unbound by laws or morals. Didn't you ever wonder why there are no highly visible police officers who are at least sympathetic to the same ideals as Padania? That's because if you're tough on crime but not toeing the party line, you get targeted for removal."
"Criminals target the police, sis. It's the way things work," he said with a chuckle.
"Police chief Giustino Crenna was shot in the head with a high-powered rifle, but the assassin didn't so much as fire a shot at any of the cops around him! His successor stressed how we needed stronger ties to Rome and then denounced the PRF with the next breath." Realizing that she had been talking more loudly than before, she paused to look around. No one seemed to pay them any attention though.
When she spoke next, she was noticeably quieter, "And that guy's been doing just fine for the last few years. What we need is for people not to be afraid to espouse unpopular ideas."
Joker said nothing. Her words hit closer to home than she knew. In the Carabinieri there had been an unspoken rule that no matter what the feelings of an individual, no one was openly sympathetic to the PRF.
She sat back in her chair and sighed. "Either that or just ditch Rome altogether," she grumbled.
"You favor secession?" he asked.
She shrugged. "I'm not sure it's really a good idea. I'm not as involved in the cultural end of things because I still think of myself as being from Italy instead of Lombardy, but there are some good arguments for it. I'd be content with a greater degree of regional autonomy and I bet plenty of others would as well. That and lower taxes, of course."
They sat in silence for a minute before she picked up her glass and took another drink. She had made a lot of good points. Their parents really were the sort to frown on handouts even though their mother had started donating money, both to charities and the Church, once her children had grown up and moved out.
Furthermore, their father was the sort of person who abhorred laziness and favored hard work as a way to better oneself and one's situation, a set of values he'd instilled in his children. Honest labor, in particular; Father had a rather poor opinion of politicians and lawyers. The end result was that Joker was quite sympathetic to what his sister had to say.
"You know I used to take my orders from Rome," he said carefully, not wanting to alarm her, but curious what she would have to say.
She shrugged. "There are many who get orders from Rome but choose to listen to their hearts instead. That and you would never choose duty over family, no matter what you'd like to think," she finished, a knowing smile on her lips.
He smiled but looked away, movement out of the corner of his eye catching his attention. The waitress was on her way to their table, carrying trays of hot food. The air filled with the tasty smells of dinner as she offloaded her burdens. Joker asked, "So, since you asked me out, dinner's on you tonight?"
Atiya thanked the waitress and shrugged again at her brother's comment. "If you like."
"That's alright. I'll buy. It's the least I could do, right?"
She smiled at him. "How about we just split the check?"
As he ambled into the conference room for the briefing, Joker whistled a happy tune. It was good to have seen Atiya the prior night, and it reinforced his commitment to his job. Both she and her husband had a much broader perspective than he on things like politics and the good of the country. It was a perspective he trusted.
King and Ace were sitting in uncomfortable silence when he arrived. He noticed it immediately, some sort of odd tension between them, but didn't let it get him down. He opened a window and sat down, whistling all the while. Ace politely ignored him as he whistled at her, and, his tune finished, he sat back and waited.
King was dressed in a shirt, jeans and combat boots. Ace was wearing a demure dress. Garbed thus and with her hair loose, she looked practically ladylike. They offered salutations after he was seated and done whistling. Joker was left with the distinct feeling he had interrupted something between them, but it was kind of a moot point. There was a time and a place for everything, and now was the time and place for serious business.
Unless Tara showed up in pajamas again. The thought brought a smile to his face.
As it happened, Tara was wearing a patterned, blue sundress when she showed up. Joker returned her smile and added, "You're looking fashionable, might I add."
She smiled and thanked him, then acknowledged King's greeting and then Ace's. Her attitude towards the younger girl was discernibly cooler. There was something between the two. Joker filed that away for future reference; he would ask Tara about it later.
"Vinny's not here yet?" she asked. A brilliant deduction on her part.
"It would appear not." Joker responded. Which was surprising to note, as Garibaldi was generally punctual.
"Any ideas what's on our agenda this time?" she asked.
"It better not be a firefight in the middle of an abandoned building," Joker said with a frown. His colleagues offered no response, lost as they were in their own thoughts.
As they sat in silence, the approaching footsteps of a small, fat man could be heard as Garibaldi made his way down the hallway at his regular, hurried pace. The man himself walked into the room and sat down, setting his briefcase on the table with a heavy thump. He grunted acknowledgement at them.
"Alright, my superiors and I were very impressed with the way you handled yourselves on the last op. You all did a wonderful job in handling a difficult situation and adapting to changing conditions in the field, all while flawlessly completing mission objectives. Excellent work."
Joker had nothing to say that was worth saying. Super-ass-kicking-bio-ninja-soldiers of doom though they may be, their experience last time out had served as a poignant reminder of their own mortality. For all their superior tactics, high-tech armor and amazing regenerative capabilities, it would take nothing more than a single stray bullet and Joker would end up as a pallbearer again. Or worse yet, in a casket himself.
The stony silence that greeted Garibaldi after he had finished speaking meant that the others were occupied with similar thoughts. After a few seconds, Vinny cleared his throat and continued on, doing his best to ignore the mood in the room.
"Your next action will be easily more dangerous than the last, but we've taken steps to minimize your exposure and done what we could to ensure your safety. Even so, logistics is only the first of your problems. You'll be infiltrating a compound on the outskirts of Rome, so there's going to be a good deal of transit time and even some jogging."
"Rome? Is this a follow-up to our action against Section One?" King asked. Rome was the heart of enemy territory, both militarily and politically. Not only would it be difficult to get in and out, but they could be seriously outnumbered and outgunned in short order unless they kept a very low profile there. It was better than getting caught in the crossfire between Section One and the PRF, but not by much.
"Very much so, but don't expect to see more of them anytime soon. You did a lot worse to them than they did to you," he said with a smirk. "No, this will be a hit and run action against their sister organization, Section Two." Almost subconsciously, Joker sat forward, his attention engaged. He'd heard of Section One from his time as an MP, but mostly rumors and secondhand stories. But he'd never heard of a Section Two, or any others.
"How many of these Sections are there?" Tara asked.
"That's really kinda hard to say," Vinny said, scratching his head. He pulled a cigar and ashtray from his briefcase and lit the stogie. "Bear in mind that these organizations don't legally exist anywhere and it's hard to track down information on them, but our best guess is that there's three sections attached to the same umbrella organization.
"You've already met the Section One guys, who specialize in para-military, counter-terrorism ops. Section Two gets the low profile, covert stuff. Section Three – if it really exists – is devoted to intelligence, counter-intelligence and espionage. While we can identify the major players from the first two, it looks like Section Three is better at playing spy games than we are."
Tara muttered an, "Oh," but was otherwise silent.
"Is this more wetwork, then?" King asked.
"Well, not quite. Your secondary objective is going to be a rampage where you try to put the most bullets in the greatest amount of people in the shortest amount of time."
Tara scowled and opened her mouth to speak, but Joker got there first, "Shooting but no killing?"
"If you can avoid it, I'd prefer you not kill anyone."
King nodded sagely while Joker and Tara exchanged confused looks. It was Ace who provided the explanation. "Bodybags are cheaper than hospital beds."
Of course, he should have realized that sooner. More resources were spent to help a soldier recover from his injuries than were spent on a funeral. It made a twisted kind of sense, especially if you looked at it as a numbers game. Joker never really had, though.
Tara didn't seem to know what to say to that, but King was already thinking ahead, as usual. "What's the primary objective then?"
"That will require the expertise of the Little Miss over there," he said, gesturing to Ace with his cigar. "But first," he said, jamming the cigar in his mouth and pulling some photos from his briefcase, "have a look at the competition." With that, he tossed the collection of photos into the middle of the table where they spread out to reveal a dozen or so glossy pictures, half of which were those of young girls at the cusp of adolescence.
Stunned silence followed.
When Vinny spoke, his voice was devoid of his characteristic humor and was solemn, almost ominous in tone. "While you four are relatively recent arrivals to this scene, the Italian government has been working on cybernetic technology for at least the last ten years. Full mechanical replacement is still not commonplace in any way, but certain unscrupulous factions have found that it is possible to replace up to two thirds or so of a body's original equipment with artificial components. There are several problems with this, least of which is the high mortality rate among older subjects. The government's answer recently has been to utilize cybernetic operatives for assassination and intimidation against organized crime, rival political groups and Padania. The pilot program was so successful it soon rounded up a whole bunch of backing from a lot of influential members of parliament. The results are what you see in these pictures."
"My God, they're just little girls," Tara said, horrified. Her words were in English, but the sentiment was plain.
Joker and King exchanged a significant glance. Looks like the rumors were true, he thought to himself. And if he had been hearing about these things when he was an MP, they must've been around for a while by now.
"They're not little girls," Garibaldi said. "Thinking like that will get you killed the first time you run into one. They're cyborgs. Machines. You could empty an MP5 into the chest of one of these and it'd still come after you with blood on its hands and murder in its eyes. Don't be fooled by what they look like. They were all little girls once, but not anymore." There was a zealousness, a depth of emotion to his words that spoke of some personal vendetta he had, but now was certainly not the time to ask about it. Instead, Joker turned his attention to the photos.
Ace had reached out and picked up a photo to study it more closely. It was a picture of a girl with short, blonde hair and blue eyes. She had a neutral sort of look to her, neither smiling nor frowning. For all Joker knew, this could be a random picture of some girl who was just told that she couldn't play with her friends until she washed the dishes. Or it could be the portrait of a killer.
Joker reached towards the pile, aiming for a picture of a lanky blonde whose hair was done up in pigtails, but King got there first. "I didn't think you were much for blondes," the big man quipped. King ignored him as he studied the picture he held.
Unfazed, Joker grabbed another picture out of the pile. This one was of a pretty girl with dark hair and a shy smile. She seemed to be posed for the shot with a small dog, maybe some sort of terrier, in her embrace.
"These two work as a team?" he asked Garibaldi, flipping the picture so Vinny could look at the girl and her pooch. To his surprise, there were words on the back, written in Sharpie. The name of a girl, presumably the one pictured, hung alone. Below it were the words, 'Agent: Marco Togni.'
"They all work as teams, one girl cyborg with one agent. The dolls are little more than tools with limited decision-making ability. They mostly do what their agents tell them to do. They're loyal to a fault and utterly self-sacrificing. When given the chance, target the agent instead of the cyborg. The agents are the brains of these teams, but they're not bulletproof the way the cyborgs are."
"Actually, I'd meant the dog," Joker said, tapping the picture to emphasize the words.
"I hadn't," was the reply.
Joker smiled outwardly, but was quietly miffed. He started to dig through the pile of pictures and a few seconds later had located the picture of Marco Togni. Judging by the picture, Togni was a good-looking guy in his twenties or thirties with glasses, stubble and short, black hair.
The others had noted his actions and started looking on the backs of their own photos. Tara's puzzled expression could only mean she didn't understand something, so when Joker noticed it he asked, "What?"
She looked up at him and said, "There's no name on this one. Like, there was a name, but it's been blacked out." The picture she held was of another dark-haired girl. This one had long hair, light skin and glasses. Why would a cyborg need glasses? On that thought, why would a cyborg have a dog? Joker wondered to himself. When Tara turned the picture over, the back listed her name as Claes, but the spot below it was a black rectangle. If there had been a name there, it was unreadable now.
All eyes went to Garibaldi. "Part of what keeps these things under control is a psychological dependency that's pharmacologically induced. It creates this profound attachment, a dependence of a cyborg on its agent. That one's agent died and hasn't been replaced. When originally conceived, one of the sticking points of the project was that the loss of an agent rendered a cyborg useless because it couldn't be reprogrammed to accept another agent. The mad scientists who think this shit up have come up with a workaround, but that cyborg is too old to benefit from it. You won't see it in the field," he said, gesturing to the picture of Claes, "since it's a guinea pig devoted to testing the limits of the design, but it'll almost certainly be in Rome when you get there."
Claes. The name meant something to him, but he wasn't sure what. He'd read or seen it somewhere before, but he couldn't place where. Just another thing to think about later.
Ace said, "Is 'Rico' a girl's name?" She held up the picture of the blonde girl, then turned it to display the back. The girl's name was indeed listed as Rico, with her agent as Jean Croce.
"Not usually," Joker replied.
Garibaldi said, "The cyborgs have no recollection of their origins. The agents rename them to further separate them from who they used to be. And, no, Rico is not a girl's name."
"You just said we wouldn't see that one in the field but that we will see it in Rome. We're hitting them at their home base? Their barracks or maintenance facility or whatever they have?" King asked, tearing his eyes away from the picture he held with some difficulty.
"That's right."
"How many?" Ace asked softly, putting Rico back and grabbing another portrait.
"Huh?"
"How many of them are there?"
Joker looked at the mess on the table, trying to count the pictures. There were thirteen total. That meant six teams of girl and agent with Claes as the odd one out. More than they would ever want to encounter at any one time, but not really all that many.
"There's no good estimate on that. 'A lot,' how's that? We have detailed information on these, but there could be more. Another facility, maybe. There's a pretty good bet the Americans have their own. There's no reason they couldn't have sold the technology to Japan, Russia, or any EU nation. As for our good friends in Section Two? It's hard to say. Probably twice as many as you see here, but a lot of them are in the field now. They see deployment all over the peninsula as well as in places like Sicily, Sardinia, and God knows where else. They've become increasingly popular with the powers-that-be for anything from chasing down crime bosses to 'dabbling' in foreign policy."
By now Tara had set three pictures of girls side by side, but the look on her face was still one of disbelief. When she looked at those faces, all she saw were little girls. Who knows, Joker thought to himself, maybe she sees herself in those faces. Tara had been the prototype; the first of their kind, as it were. Joker knew that it was because of something that had happened in her past, necessitating some sort of modifications. While that was the story for all of them, King excluded, for Tara it had happened when she was young. Maybe even the same age as any of these girls.
To allay her doubts, he asked, "So what should we expect? What can they do?"
"And how do we fight them?" King asked.
"Well, they're rather unassuming, and you already know exactly what they look like so there shouldn't be any surprises when they pull guns and start shooting. That's an important point. There were a lot of problems when these things were first introduced because we got all these reports of killer kids. It sounded crazy, but seeing them in action will make a believer out of you.
"They're strong, a lot stronger than you'd expect from a bunch of 'little girls.' You guys are supposed to be stronger, but let's not get into any arm-wrestling contests if we don't have to, okay?"
"You said something about them being bulletproof?" King asked.
"They bleed just like you and I – or at least they appear to – but no one's ever disabled one of these things just by shooting it. There should be a limit to how much damage they can take before they stop working, but as I said, none of our guys has taken one out before. The weak points are supposed to be the eyes. The skulls are too thick to penetrate without something in a large caliber, but the eyes are soft and squishy.
"But you're not going to kill them, just shoot them up a whole bunch. Try to avoid headshots and aim for the chest and extremities. If you have to, don't feel bad about sending one of these machines to the scrapheap, but make that a last resort.
"If you do get in to hand-to-hand, keep in mind the fact that you have the advantage in size and mass so you should be able to move them around and control the fight that way. But they're deadly in close combat so your best bet is to stay away from them. That's what I would do."
But we're badass super-soldiers and you're a fat man with a bad comb-over. If I were you, I'd stay away from them, too. The retort lingered on his lips, almost ready to be spoken, but something about Vinny's mood implied he had no interest in jokes. Even so, Joker was interested in what these little girls were made of. Certainly not sugar nor spice nor anything nice.
"Alright. So what's the real objective of this mission?" King asked.
Pulling a manila folder from his briefcase, Vinny said to Ace, "You're gonna get to be the star of this show, Missy."
Next: Fleeting Contact