This Raygun for Hire
This Raygun for Hire
By
John M. Whalen
3,900 Words
Reading Time: 15 minutes
(This is the first of a series of stories I wrote for Raygun Revival after the Jack Brand stories ran their course. The character is a hired gun who lives and works in the same universe as Jack Brand, only about a hundred years earlier, when Tulon was still a booming planet. This story sprang from the idea I had of trying to write a story where every single scene in the story ends on a reversal. The result is a plot that provides plenty of action and surprises and still makes some kind of sense. I've got a half dozen of these stories, one of which still hasn't been published. I hope to get them all together into a This Raygun for Hire collection at some point.)
The hover-van pulled up under the carport of a tall, steel and glass tower known as The Westerly. It was one of the new condos put up in the middle of the desert, part of the Tulon Central complex that had sprung up at the start of the oil boom. Frank Carson, a tall, lean man dressed in black, got out of the vehicle when the driver, a burly guy in a maroon jacket, opened the door for him. They went through the lobby and rode up in the elevator together in silence. The car went all the way to the penthouse. The elevator doors swished open and they stepped into a small anteroom.
“Have to pat you down,” the driver said.
It was a quick, but thorough frisk that came up empty. Satisfied, the driver opened the anteroom door and they stepped into a wide-open room with lots of furniture, a big holo-screen, a bar, and deep champagne carpeting. The walls were mostly glass with some teakwood trim. The view of the red and purple sunset out on the desert was spectacular.
They made their way through the sun-beamed distance to a man sitting behind a huge oak desk. Vincent Stone was surprisingly young, Carson thought, to be head of an oil company. Early thirties, he had slicked back black hair, and a face women would call handsome. Carson could feel Stone’s shark-like eyes sizing him up as he approached.
“Have a seat, Carson,” Stone said. “Care for a drink?”
“Scotch and soda.”
“I’ve got the real thing,” Stone said. “Not that Synth-garbage you find everywhere else on this lousy planet.”
He nodded at the driver, who went over to a bar and fixed the drinks. “Good flight from Earth?” he asked Carson.
“Hyper-link space travel makes it easy these days,” Carson said.
The driver handed the two men their drinks. Stone looked up at him. “You can go, Tony,” he said, and the man left.
“Cheers, Frank,” Stone said, raising his glass. “You don’t mind if I call you by your first name do you?”
“No,” Carson said, tilting his glass slightly. He looked around the room. “Nice place.”
“A private little hideaway,” Stone said. “It’s for confidential meetings. Like this one.”
“I got your deposit,” Carson said. “A hundred thousand Universal Credits. The check was from something called Abigail Designs. What’s that?”
“Just a dummy corporation I set up for transactions I don’t want traced back to me.”
“I see,” Carson said. “So, what can I do for you, Mr. Stone? You weren’t very specific when you called yesterday over the Comm-link.”
“I want you to kill my wife,” Stone said, as simply as if he’d asked him to wash his car. He picked up a manila folder and held it out. Carson sat there for a moment without saying anything. Then he set his Scotch down on a small table next to the chair he sat in, got up, took the folder and sat down again. He opened it. There was an 8x10 glossy headshot of a blond woman at least ten to fifteen years older than the man behind the desk. The chiffon sleeves of a gown covered her arms and shoulders, trying unsuccessfully to hide the flabbiness of aging. She was smiling.
“We’ll be home alone tonight,” Stone said. “Our ranch is an hour’s drive from here out in the desert. It’s Saturday. Most of the servants will be off. They go home to their families on weekends, unless we’re entertaining. There’ll be a caretaker, and a maid in the servants’ quarters---a separate building apart from the house. The chauffeur sleeps over the garage. They’ll be asleep. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting into the house.”
Carson sifted through papers that were under the photo. There was a map showing the location of Stone’s house, and a schematic of the house. He looked up from the schematic and closed the folder.
“Sorry, Mr. Stone,” he said. “I don’t do that kind of work.”
Stone gave him a surprised look.
“You are a gun for hire?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“You kill people for a living?”
“Only when necessary. People hire me to solve problems. I’m not an assassin. And I don’t kill women.”
Stone set his glass down. “I did some checking on you,” he said. “I screen everyone I decide to employ. You’re currently in some serious financial trouble. You lost a huge investment in a selenium mine on Venus six months ago. You sank almost everything you had into it. Then to keep afloat you borrowed some money. From a very dangerous source. Black Angie doesn’t like to be kept waiting for her money. Your note for 500,000 Universal Credits is due in two days. You know what her goons will do to you, if you don’t have the money.”
“What’s your point, Vincent?”
“A million UCs if you’ll do this job for me. You can pay Angie off and have enough to live on comfortably for quite a while.”
Carson studied the man’s tanned, well-cared for face for a moment.
“Why do you want your wife dead so badly,” he asked.
“It’s like this,” Stone said with a smile. “Marion found some emails on my wrist-top. They’re from a certain young lady with whom I’ve become involved. I don’t know what the old bag expected. But Marion has contacted her lawyer. She plans to divorce me. She won’t leave me with a penny.“
My wife owns sixty percent of all Trans-Sinclair Oil shares, Frank.” Stone got up and refreshed his own drink. “She inherited them from her father. Her brother, Reginald, owns 30. I only own the remaining 10 percent. They were given to me by Marion when I married her and became CEO of the company. If she divorces me, she’ll throw me to the wolves. Now will you take the contract? I need to know now. I have to act before her lawyers get started on me.”
Carson opened the file again and looked at the schematic of the house.
“How is it supposed to play?” he asked.
“It’s to look like an intruder broke in. Marion heard you and woke up. She tried to call the police. You heard her moving around and went into her room and shot her. I heard the shot, got up and discovered you in her bedroom. You shot me. In the arm. She keeps some jewelry in a chest on her bureau. She usually leaves it open. Take some and then run out. It will look like a burglary gone bad.”
“And the cops will buy this?” Carson asked skeptically.
“Why not?” Stone said with an arrogant smile. “The Tulon Central chief of police is a poker buddy of mine. I also happen to have some information on him, that, let’s say, will make him go along with whatever story I tell him.”
Carson closed the folder again over the smiling face of Marion Stone. “All right, Mr. Stone,” he said. “A million. Half now. Half when finished. Which arm do you want to be shot in?”
#
Carson pulled the rented Hover-Jeep up behind a clump of rocks about 200 yards from the back of the Stone Mansion. It was a moonless night, but there was enough starlight to see the dark brooding house Jason and Marion Stone called home. It stood three stories high surrounded by a corral fence, and was made of Terrazzo stone brought all the way from a quarry in Arizona. There were no other houses or buildings visible anywhere on the distant horizon.
Carson got out of the Jeep. He wore black pants and turtleneck. A wide utility built encircled his waist. As he started toward the fence, he pulled on a black ski mask. A pair of infrared night glasses came out of a pouch in his belt and he strapped them on. He reached down to the Beretta Laser Pistol strapped to his right leg, and switched the activator button on. A tiny red light glowed inside the grip.
A line of trees ran from the fence up to the house and would give him good cover. He hopped over the fence and moved toward the house. He’d studied the schematic Stone had given him and knew exactly where he wanted to go. A drain pipe ran up to the second story from a stand of rose bushes on the side of the house. He shimmied up the pipe, crept quietly along the eave that jutted out from the second floor, and stopped at a large stained glass window.
The window casement was all metal and had a lock on the inside that fastened it tight to the window frame. Stone had told him he would not leave any windows or doors open on purpose. He wanted the police to find signs of forced entry.
Carson took a small cigar-shaped aerosol can out of his belt. He aimed the aerosol at the point where the inside lock met the frame and pressed the nozzle. He turned his nose and eyes away from the acrid smell and waited as the acid spray ate the metal away. A minute later the window slid sideways and he was inside. He put the aerosol into his pants pocket.
It was a library. He could smell the musty bindings of old books and crept quietly across a Persian carpet, circumventing a large globe that stood on brass legs. He opened the door to the second floor hallway slowly and slipped the night glasses down over his eyes. In the green night light he could see that the hallway was empty. Marion Stone’s bedroom was the next one down from the library on the right. Jason Stone’s room was across the hall from hers. He raised the glasses up on his forehead and crept silently to the door. He unholstered the Beretta and turned the doorknob. The door swung open slowly and he stepped into the room.
“Mrs. Stone!” he whispered. “Wake up, Mrs. Stone.”
There was a small cone of light shining down from the ceiling on a woman’s head. It was Marion Stone’s head. She was on her back, her face looking up at the ceiling. It was the only part of her body that was visible. The rest of her was encased inside an iron lung.
He stepped further into the room to get a better look. She lay there with eyes shut, long dark eyelashes lying still and unblinking. Graying blonde hair splayed out over the pillow under her head. There was an oxygen tube in her nose. A brace of electronic medical gadgets stood next to the lung. Monitors that recorded vital signs, a machine that looked as though it were some kind of automatic pump. It throbbed with the rhythm of a heart beat. The woman was being kept alive by the machines.
Carson stood for a moment, taking in the scene. He was stunned. It didn’t make any sense. Stone could be cheating with a hundred women and his wife would never know it. So why did Stone tell him she’d found out he was playing around and called her lawyer?
He wondered what had happened to the woman. Iron lung used to mean polio, but that disease had been stamped out long ago. He’d heard they were using iron lungs now to treat a respiratory problem that developed in some people when they came to Tulon from Earth.
He heard a noise. He turned and saw Stone’s driver, Tony, standing there in the darkness. There was a plasma gun in his hand. Carson dove to the floor as a purple flash blurted from the muzzle of the gun. The plasma ray struck the iron lung, sending up a shower of sparks. Carson fired from the floor. A blue wave of light arced from the Beretta. The big man jerked and yelled, then crumpled to the floor.
Carson got to his feet, watching the iron lung and the medical devices hooked up to Marion Stone going up like a fireworks display. Lights flashed, bells and whistles sent up a wild cacophony of alarms. He didn’t know what to do about any of that. He went out the door and across the hall to Stone’s bedroom. He threw the door open. The room was vacant. A big four poster bed was empty.
He went back out to the hallway. He heard something above his head that sounded like wood sliding against wood, and became aware of bodies dropping down onto the hallway floor in front of him. He slapped the night glasses over his eyes and saw that panels in the ceiling of the hallway were sliding back and men were coming down from the floor above. There were four of them. They were dressed in black, had masks over their faces, and carried long steel swords.
The man closest to Carson charged, swinging the blade in his hands in a furious swoop. Carson fired his pistol and stepped back out of the way of the sword. The swordsman went down. Carson was aware of movement behind him. He spun but only came around halfway when something hard struck the side of his head. Inky blackness seemed to fill up the night glasses and he fell to the floor.
#
Carson shook his head and pushed the swirling darkness back to the corners of his mind. He saw that he was back in the library. He realized he was sitting up in a chair. His ski mask, utility belt, and night glasses had been removed. A green-shaded lamp sitting on the corner of a desk was the only light in the room. Stone sat behind the desk. He had the dead security man’s plasma gun in his hand. Carson’s own pistol lay in the middle of the desk top. Four men dressed like ninjas stood silently, one in each corner of the room, their arms folded over their chests, their swords sheathed behind their necks.
“Welcome back, Carson,” Stone said. He waved a hand at the men standing in the corners. “You’ve already met my private security team. I trust you have sense enough not to try anything foolish. That’s why I haven’t put any restraints on you. They would cut you to pieces before you got out of the chair.”
“What is this, Stone?” Carson said.
Stone smiled. Hooded lids lowered over his steely grey eyes. “Perhaps I should ask you that question. I watched you on a hidden security cam. You had no intention of fulfilling our contract. Did you?”
“I told you, I’m not an assassin,” Carson said. “And I don’t shoot women. But I knew if I turned down the job, you’d only hire somebody else, and she’d end up just as dead.”
“So what were you going to do? Tell her what I had in mind for her and take her to the police?” Stone said. “That wouldn’t have been very ethical of you, considering I already paid you five hundred thousand.”
“You want a refund?”
“You’re an amusing fellow,” Stone said with a dry chuckle.
“Why ask me to get rid of her in the first place?” Carson said. “Why the story about the lawyers and divorce? In her condition she’s not going to divorce anybody.”
“Since you most certainly will soon be dead yourself, I don’t mind explaining,” Stone said. He put the plasma gun down and folded his hands on the edge of the desk.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest with you, Frank,” Stone said. “It’s true my wife found out about my affair, and threatened to sue me for divorce. But that was three months ago. You see, I’ve always been aware of my precarious position in life. A younger man married to an older woman. It does create problems of jealousy and suspicion. I decided when I first married Marion to prepare for eventualities. I have certain friends in the underworld. I asked them if there was a way, if I ever had to, to just make her sick enough so she couldn’t do me any harm. My friends provided me with an untraceable drug that once injected induces permanent coma. When she threatened divorce, I had to do something. I didn’t want to kill her. That would have brought in the cops. I went into her room while she was sleeping and injected her. Poor old thing. She woke up for a brief moment and knew what was happening to her. Her eyes looked so surprised.”
“You had her out of the way,” Carson said. “Why didn’t that satisfy you? Why bring me into it?”
Stone picked up the plasma pistol and got up out of the chair. He walked around a corner of the desk and sat down on the front edge of it, folding his arms casually over the suit coat he was wearing. He rubbed the barrel of the gun against the wide lapels of his jacket.
“It’s because of Marion’s brother,” he said. “Reginald. A very suspicious fellow. He suspects I’m responsible for Marion’s condition. He’s made some fuss about it, but to no avail. He has no proof. But recently Reginald made some legal moves to obtain control of Marion’s Trans-Sinclair holdings. No longer content to try to prove my guilt concerning Marion, he’s trying to accomplish what she had threatened me with. He’s trying to push me out into the street with nothing.”
Stone lifted the plasma gun and scratched the side of his cheek with the end of the barrel as though he had an itch.
“I couldn’t take care of him the way I did Marion, so I had to come up with another way. That’s why I sent for you and set up the contract on Marion. Funds were deposited in your account from a dummy corporation called Abigail Designs. When your body is found, once your identity is established, the police will run a check on you. They’ll find the 500,000 Universal Credits deposited in your account by Abigail Designs.”
“That will lead the cops back to you.”
“No, Frank. They will discover that Abigail Designs was created by none other than Reginald Sinclair himself. That’s right. Several documents and electronic transmissions I’ve arranged will make it look like he was the one who set up the dummy corporation. This will lead the police to believe that, frustrated by failed attempts to gain control of the company by legal means, Reginald hired you to kill me.”
“And everybody probably thinks you’re just another pretty face,” Carson said.
“I have my moments,” Stone said. “I admire your coolness under the circumstances, Frank. I’m almost sorry, I’ll have to kill you. But it really can’t be helped.”
The oil man turned the barrel of the pistol on Carson and nodded his head. One of the Ninjas came up behind him like a silent shadow, and he felt cold steel against his Adam’s apple. Carson watched as the man’s finger tightened around the trigger. He had to think of something quick. He could see the trigger beginning to move.
There was sudden movement by the door and a choked, gargling sound. Stone looked to his right and his face turned ashen, his mouth dropped open. Carson turned his head just enough to see a ghostly figure dressed in a white nightgown standing in the doorway. Marion Stone staggered forward, her arms stretched out like a zombie. Her face was light blue in color and her eyes shone bright with madness.
“Marion!” Stone stepped a few backward paces away from her. He seemed terrified. “How? Stay back!”
The woman marched slowly toward him and he pointed the plasma gun at her. She seemed unaware of it. Carson tried to move, but the blade at his throat pressed closer.
With all eyes on Marion Stone, no one noticed Carson move his hand down into his pants pocket. His fingers found the aerosol container of acid he’d used to open the window. He palmed it. Stone aimed the gun at his wife’s chest and looked over at the ninja. “Kill him,” he shouted hoarsely.
Carson pulled his hand out of his pocket, raised the aerosol container up over his head and sprayed it. The ninja screamed and Carson felt the sword move away from his throat. He jumped out of the chair and saw the ninja clutching at his eyes with his free hand. Carson grabbed his sword arm and brought it down hard on his raised knee. He heard bone snap and the Ninja screamed again. Carson grabbed the sword from his nerveless fingers and gave the sharp point of it back to him between the second and third rib.
He turned to see the other three swordsmen coming toward him. He parried the thrust of the first attacker, and with two hands on his own sword, twisted the ninja’s blade down toward the floor. He brought a knee up to the man’s groin and smashed his elbow hard up into the man’s chin. The man flew back into the onrushing path of the two men behind him.
In the midst of it all, Marion Stone walked, her arms reaching out for her panicked husband. Jason Stone raised his gun to fire. Carson threw the sword in his hand and the blade struck Stone’s gun hand. The oil man yelled and the gun fell to the floor. The ninja that Carson had knocked back came forward again, but Carson stepped aside and ducked to avoid his onrushing blade. He threw a hard left into the ninja’s gut. The man doubled over. Carson karate chopped the back of his neck.
He looked across the room and saw Marion Stone had picked up the gun that he had knocked from her husband’s hand. Stone kept backing away from her. Two more ninjas crept steadily toward Winslow. One of them whipped a pair of nun chucks around his shoulders and head. Weaponless, Carson dove for Stone’s desk, grabbed his pistol where it still lay on the desk top, and rolled. He landed on the floor on the other side of the desk and fired. Blue waves of electricity arced across the room and the nun chucks flew out of the ninja’s hand and cracked against the wall. As the ninja fell, a dark burning hole in his chest, Carson fired again. The last ninja, his blade flashing in the light, crumpled to the floor with a scream.
“No, Marion, get back!” It was Stone. He now stood with his back to the big globe by the stained glass window that Carson had entered through. He held his arms out in terror as Marion Stone came steadily forward with the plasma gun in her hands. “Please, Marion.”
“Why, Jason? Why?” the woman asked and then she fired. A purple ray struck Stone in the chest and he fell back, his body sprawled over the top of the giant globe. He lay there like a collapsed Atlas.
Marion Stone dropped the gun and started to fall. Carson ran around the desk and grabbed her. She looked at him with eyes that had returned from the dead.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did he do this to me?”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Stone,” Carson said. He picked her up and her thin and shaking frame felt like the body of a wounded bird. He carried her out of there.
The End
Copyright 2008 by John M. Whalen
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks