Free Prepare to Die! by Paul Tobin Page B

built a mechanical harem. It was rumored he did everything with science. It was rumored he did everything with magic. It was rumored that he was dead, too bored to live in a world of imbeciles. It was rumored that all of the rumors were true. Nobody could say. I’ve met him twice, at SRD. He’s still in the armor.
    The guard’s armor had a shimmer to it. Probably a force field.
    “You know who I am,” I repeated to the guard. His weapon twitched. He was caught between saluting and firing. The guard who was talking on his headset looked up sharply, listening to someone relaying orders, and he gave a whistle and the others stepped back and told me I could proceed. The gate was opening. The low-level alarm quit sounding. Security cameras were swiveling. By then, the choppers were in the air. Hovering above. Most choppers look like insects. These looked much the same, but more poisonous.
    Instead of pulling ahead, instead of driving onto the base, I turned off the car and stepped out. This was met with confusion. I’d been told I could go ahead, but I wasn’t. I was screwing up their game plan.
    Yes.
    Yes I was.
    I do not like it when people put guns in my face.
    “Park that somewhere,” I told the man who had tapped on my window with his M240, and I tossed him my keys. “Don’t scratch it. It’s a rental.”
    He held the keys in one hand, just held them out, unmoving, at the point where he’d caught them. He looked to the two others, but they looked away, making him bear the brunt of my asshole-ness all by his lonesome. I walked into the base with the choppers hovering above.
    Along either side of the road, as I passed, a series of small gun emplacements perked up, tracking me, rising out of the lawn like yard-high toadstools. They smelled slightly of machine oil, but mostly I could smell nothing but grass. It had been recently mowed.
    Occasionally, as I walked, a red dot would appear on my chest, my arms, my legs, and once or twice the light got in my eyes.
    The trees were pretty. Well kept.
     
    ***
     
    Commander Bryant said, “It’s changed since you were last here,” gesturing to the base, which looked like it had been recently buffed. Spotless. Everywhere. The silos. The holding buildings. The research labs. Everything had a gleam to it. It felt wrong to touch anything, like a single smear of human oil would scramble a hazmat team into action, or perhaps the entire base would simply be considered tarnished beyond all hope, and quickly abandoned.
    “Yes,” I said. “It’s changed.” Commander Bryant had met me even before I reached the main compound, surprisingly coming down the road himself, alone, with no guards, not counting the choppers that were hovering above. The choppers themselves were almost ten thousand feet in the air, but I had no doubts that they were well within range of whatever they felt that they needed to do.
    Bryant was younger than I would have imagined. Maybe only forty years. He had the lean type of body most often seen in rock guitarists who indulge in cocaine and pussy with equal ferocity. He had a heavy brow and a light suit, business casual, though with the same nearly transparent glow I’d seen around the guards’ armor. There was a slight stiffening of his left leg, making it scuff, not all the time, on the pavement as he approached. I wondered what the story there was. Lots of good stories, on that base.
    He’d taken my hand and clasped it in both of his, like a preacher.
    We’d discussed who I was.
    He’d said, “Sorry about this, but I need to prove it,” and then he’d reached into his jacket and pulled out a Browning P-35 with a draw so smooth and fast that it would have been too late to do anything, assuming you were a person who didn’t move three times faster than most anybody else. As it was, I could have taken it from him, or dodged the shots (three of them, to my chest) without much effort, but it was easier to stand there and take it, to give him a frown,