Stories for Jack

Automatic Jack was sitting at the front bar, chatting with Van Zandt, when I came back up from making the deal with Grindlebone. Van Zandt is Grin's partner, in a number of different senses of the word, so, even though his name's on the door, it's her bar as much as his. She has some strong Asian genes in her make-up, and tops Grin by a couple of inches, although her thin build makes her seem a bit smaller. Number of individuals have made the assumption that Van Zandt is less dangerous than Grin, but they only do it once. Grindlebone's size keeps people from starting things around him, but Van Zandt is actually quite prepared to lay hands on rowdy customers in order to keep the peace in the bar. She's also a hell of a good bartender, the kind a place needs to give it a soul; She remembers names, faces, favorite drinks, good jokes, personal histories, and how long it's been since you've seen each other, and generally makes you feel like the party was just waiting for you to show up so it could start. A hell of a lady, in other words. Grin calls her his lucky charm.

She and Jack were laughing over a shared joke when I slid onto the stool next to Jack's angular metal form. Van Zandt drew me a pint of Shuggoth's Old Peculiar and listened in while I gave him the details of my little meeting with Grin. Jack was as surprised as I had been that Big Hairy and his boys were wanted for a terrorist action on Charom, and delighted by the percentage I'd managed to wring out of Grin. Hearing that I'd gotten 30% of the bounty earned a whoop out of Van Zandt and a couple of free shots; seems as though he'd sworn up and down to her he wasn't going to go higher than 20%, and had made the mistake of accepting her bet on it.

“But that wasn't the fun part, Jack.” I said, after raising my glass to Van Zandt and gulping down the Liquid Fire she'd filled it with. “The fun part was when Big Hairy, or Gundar Tub'la as his mother named him, managed to get himself free.”

“No skoob?” Jack said. “Well, I guess a guy like that has been restrained more than once in his time.”

“No doubt. When I got there, Grin had him trussed up to this chair, wrists, ankles, lap, chest, all strapped down, and the chair was bolted to the floor. And he didn't really get loose, he broke the chair apart. So, he's still strapped in, really, and he only managed to break one of the legs free of the floor, so when he tried to start walking, he fell over.” Van Zandt had her hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh out loud, unlike Jack, who was guffawing hugely. “Now, the fall managed to break the other leg free, but he couldn't really get up, because the band across his lap was still in place, keeping him strapped to the seat of the chair. So, he thrashed around for a minute...”

I explained to them how Hairy, or Gundar, had finally managed to push himself to his feet, and had danced around a bit, trying to keep his balance on legs he could only bend at the knees. I told them how Grin had used the time Gundar had spent thrashing on the ground to pick up and prime the stick-trap one of Gundar's boys had been carrying when they were captured, and how Grin had used it to trap the poor fool just after he'd gotten himself upright.

“Stick-trap? What's 'at?” Jack asked, tapping his empty cup on the bar.

“I haven't seen one in a long time, even though they're a perfect non-lethal way to take someone out. Thing looks like a chopstick, maybe a little longer than most, but, after you prime it, the next person that comes in contact with it gets caught in this cage of connected sticks, spreads all over whatever the person and locks them down. Real beauty of the thing is, it manages to lock them in in such a way that if they try to break free, the sticks will transfer the force back onto the person in the trap. Basically, they'd have to severely damage themselves to even get a hand loose. Last time I saw one used, the guy inside did manage to break a couple of the sticks around his hand, but doing it broke his leg, a couple of ribs, and his shoulder. Guy couldn't even fall over to take the weight off his broken leg.”

Jack gave out a low whistle. “Did Gundar try that?”

“For a second, until something o' his almost broke. Then he just stood there. Couldn't even move his jaw enough to yell at us. When the Chiromi came for 'em, they just picked him up, cage and all, carried him off. From what the Warden who took charge of him said, it meant Gundar'd be a hell of a lot less trouble that way.”

“So, that's the last of them, huh?” Jack said, sipping from the glass of oil Van Zandt had brought him.

“Looks like. The Warden said they'd been tried in absentia and found guilty. All five of them are headed to some Chiromi hoosegow, and they'll be executed in pretty short order.”

“And we got the bounty?”

“Grin and the Warden were taking care of that when I got the word you were up here. When it's done, Grin said he'd meet us up in his office.” I downed the last of my Old Peculiar. “I did want to ask you something, though. You too, Van Zandt.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a necklace, from which hung a large square locket.

The necklace was silver, and there didn't seem to be anything special about it. The locket, though, was made of a greenish metal, which seemed to have veins of a dirty white running through it. The metal had been shaped to resemble a book, with a hinged spine on one edge and a lock holding it closed. What I would normally think of as the front cover was blank, and the back cover had been engraved with a very strange design. I'd picked it out from the midst of the various gear the five dead men had been stripped of. Mr. Ix said it wasn't one of the things that had flummoxed the bar's security, so I'd claimed it as part of my share.

The design on the cover looked almost exactly like part of the tattoo on the angel from my dream last night.

“Have either of you ever seen this design before?” I put the locket and necklace down on the bar, with the cover bearing the design facing upwards.