Tales of a Madman 5
Have you ever killed someone? I'm not talking about in the heat of combat or in self-defence, I mean the cold-blooded murder of a living, breathing person. It's an amazingly easy thing to do, you just pull a trigger, drop a rock, make your car swerve slightly; there are thousands of different ways to kill someone. The only thing that they have in common is that they leave you with an incredible sense of power.
When you have someone in the sights of your rifle, it is through your choice whether they live or die. If there is anything closer to being a god that that I don't know what it is. Your victim's future is entirely dependent upon you and the chances are that they don't even know that you exist. This is your chance to change the world, even if it is only in a small way. Who knows what your victim would go on to do if you let him live? He could find a cure for all disease, find a way to stop Thresher and Dark Night in their evil ways, banish all poverty and even find a cure for old age. On the other hand the person in your rifle sights might be a mass murderer, he could work for a Soft Company that is about to unleash a deadly virus on Mort, he could be someone who gets his kicks from hurting little children.
No matter what kind of person your intended victim is, you will change the world when you pull the trigger! Of course, the more important the victim is, the greater the change that you will make. It is possible that your action could change the history of the world but you will never know, will you? It's not possible to tell what would have happened if you'd missed your target.
The first time I was given a BPN that had me acting as a sniper I didn't think there would be any problem with it. It was a simple job, remove the head of a religious cult known as the Readers of the Stars. No explanations, no reasons but there never are, are there? The guy I had to remove, Harris Longstaff was his name, was known as the Lord Prophet and lived in his cult base in Sector 8c of Downtown. I had a week to remove him or it would be my head on the block.
Remove, that's a nice, polite way of saying murder I guess. It's amazing the number of different words there are for killing someone. All the jargon that is somehow meant to make the act itself more acceptable. Remove, terminate, exterminate, silence, destroy, waste, rub-out. I have even heard it called retroactive birth control but it all means the same thing. Whatever way you say it, it is still the act of murdering another person. I'll try to say murder from now on, my shrinks approve of honesty, or so they say. I don't think that they'll be too happy about me calling it murder though. They will tell me that it is a necessary evil, that there are times when a rogue element of society has to be removed.
I can just hear them now, "It is not a pleasant experience but it has to be done for the greater good!"
Bullshit! There is no such thing as the greater good, there is only the good of Slayer. Some poor fool says something that offend our leader or does something that Slayer doesn't like and he is destined to be a non-person. Slayer issues one order and people die. No questions, no reasons, no debate, just a death. They try to tell me that this is the natural way of things. That it is right for one man, no not a man, a thing, to have this much power, this much control over our lives and our destiny. It can't be right, there has to be a better way than this.
I'm sorry. I get worked up sometimes and I lose track of what I'm saying. That never used to happen to me, maybe it has got something to do with all the drugs that the docs are constantly pumping into me. I tend to lose my grip on things more often now, I can forget what I am saying halfway through a sentence. They never tell me what the drugs are for and when I ask they just smile and say that I should be honoured. Right, honoured!
Harris Longstaff and the Readers of the Stars. While I was checking out this guy I found out that the Readers of the Stars used to hand out food to the down and outs and they were getting very popular with the citizens of Downtown. Longstaff used to preach about how there was a message to the people written in the stars. He said that if Slayer would make the clouds go away we would be able to see the great message that would make life better for all of us. The guy was a grade A freak but he seemed harmless enough.
He wasn't even getting worked up about the clouds. He thought that Slayer could make the clouds go away if he wanted to and every so often he would send a polite message through the right channels asking him to make it stop raining. Harris and his acolytes ran soup kitchens for the Downtown bums and he would preach to them while they came to eat. Like I said, he was getting very popular but it wasn't because of this message in the stars crap. It was because he was feeding the people when they were hungry. I don't know where he was getting the money for this, but I do know that he used to dabble in the stock market.
Feeding that many people must have taken a lot of cash and I don't think that he would have got enough out of his stocks and shares for that so maybe that was why Slayer wanted him murdered. It is possible that he was getting the money illegally but I never found any evidence of it. Not that I was looking all that hard for that sort of stuff. All I wanted to do was kill this guy and collect my payment.
The job itself was a pretty simple one. Every three days Harris Longstaff, the Lord Prophet as he liked to be called. would set up this soup kitchen in front of an old warehouse where the cult was based. He would get his acolytes to put up a stage and he would stand there and preach to the bums who came to eat. The only protection he had were these acolytes who were hired Props. They were just around to stop any hassle that started with the street punks and they were no danger to a trained operative. They strutted around, trying to look impressive and would do a quick check on the area before every sermon. Amateurs.
Once I'd figured out his routine, it was a simple matter to set myself up on a rooftop that overlooked the warehouse and the stage. It was the early evening when I got myself settled down and the acolytes were busy setting up the stage. Harris was due to appear in about an hour so I got myself set up and tried to keep dry. My building was just under 400 metres away from the stage but the scopes on my FEN 30-30 made it look as though I was standing right by it. I was resting my rifle on the low wall that ran around the edge of the roof and it would be a simple shot. One squeeze of the trigger and I could go home.
I hadn't bothered to take my armour since I hadn't reckoned that I'd need it and I was starting to feel very vulnerable even though I was sure that no-one knew I was there. You get so used to wearing this heavy protection that you feel very exposed when you don't have it on. I was convinced that someone was sighting in on my back and even though I knew that I was alone, I was sure that any second I would feel the blast from a gunshot.
The rain was coming down heavily, it was getting cold and I was as nervous as if this was my first job. I pulled my jacket closer and lit up a Feelgood, trying to think of anything other than my lack of armour. I swore that that would be the last time I went on any BPN without at least a suit of Body armour. The comfort was not worth the nervousness.
I sat with my back to the wall, turning round and peering through the scopes every so often. The nervousness passed and pretty soon all I was concerned about was the rain running down my back. I must have been at least 50 metres above the nearest road but I could still hear the Downtowners moving around below me. That place is like a giant ant's nest, there are always crowds moving around, going about some business or other. I watched one street through the scope for about 20 minutes and in that time I saw two muggings and a gang beating. There were no Shivers around and I wasn't about to involve myself in something that had nothing to do with me. In Downtown you have to be able to look out for yourself.
Eventually, the acolytes had got the stage ready and Harris Longstaff turned up. He was a tall guy, with long white hair that was plastered to his head by the rain. He was dressed in a deep blue robe that covered him from neck to foot and must have cost a fortune. I don't know what it as made of but it sure looked expensive. He walked out onto the stage and stood there for a few moments, looking over all the Downtowners that had come to eat his food. He had a look on his face that I don't really know how to put into words. It was as though he was a father watching his children enjoying themselves or as if he was personally responsible for all the bums that were stuffing themselves with food bought with his cash.
He started talking to the people that had gathered and most of them actually stopped eating to listen to him. I was too far away to hear what he was saying but I could tell by the way he moved and the expression on his face that he was deeply involved in whatever he was preaching about. He would point towards the sky every few minutes and when he did, every person there would look upwards, even the acolytes who were meant to be protecting him were engrossed with what he was saying. That made me mad for some reason. True, it did mean that the Props weren't looking around for someone like me, but there are such things as standards. These guys are meant to be professionals and it annoyed me that they could be so careless.
I straightened myself out, stretched the kinks out of my arms and squatted down behind the wall. I loaded the 8mm High Explosive Armour Piercing round into the FEN and took a bead on his forehead. It would be so easy to pull the trigger and Longstaff would not be a problem for SLA any more. He would never know what had hit him, alive one second and dead the next. No warnings, no chance to avoid it, nothing! I eased my shoulders into a slightly more comfortable position and started to squeeze the trigger.
Longstaff moved forward just before I made the shot. I would have risked it and tried for him again but I was more than happy to wait until I got him in my sights again. After all, I was in no rush. Longstaff had moved to the very front of the stage and reached forward to catch hold of a young girl who was in the crowd. He helped her onto the stage and then put his arms around her shoulders. The kid must have been 8 years old at most and she looked completely overwhelmed at being upon the stage with "The Lord Prophet". She had these huge brown eyes that looked so innocent and helpless and she was biting her lower lip anxiously.
Harris said something to her and she looked up at him and smiled. Her entire face lit up with the smile and she cuddled closely into him. He ran a hand over her hair and said something to the crowd that they obviously approved of, I could hear the applause quite plainly.
I squinted through the sights again, getting a bead on his forehead once more but something had changed. Before he had brought the girl up onto the stage Longstaff had been a target, nothing more. Now I thought of him as a human being, a living, breathing person with a real life. I tried to banish these thoughts and get on with the job but they just wouldn't go. How could a man like this be a threat to Slayer. He had his arm around the little girl and she obviously loved and trusted him.
I put the rifle down and ran a hand across my face, wiping the rain from my eyes. Breathing deeply I tried to think straight and convince myself that I had to do the job. I needed the money and it wouldn't look good on my file if I couldn't do a simple job like this. Grabbing my rifle, I got myself positioned again and looked through the scope for Harris.
He had lifted the girl up now and was carrying her on his hip. I tried to blank that bit of my vision out and sighted on my target. I got a bead on him, between his eyes and just up slightly, it would be a perfect shot, just like they taught us in Meny. The rifle was rock steady and I tried to squeeze my finger on the trigger but I just couldn't do it. No matter how hard I tried my finger simply wouldn't move.
I was staring at Longstaff for a least two minutes before he put the girl down and helped her back into the crowd. A racking sigh went through my body and I quickly repositioned the rifle. Once again I sighted on Longstaff but I couldn't keep the rifle steady, my hands were shaking too badly. Nothing I tried would make me stop shaking and I knew that the sermon would be drawing to a close soon. I was running out of time.
Longstaff appeared to steady himself in my sights for a moment and I took a chance. I pulled the trigger and felt the kick of the recoil as the rifle thumped into my shoulder. Harris had gone down but not with the head shot that I had been hoping for. His right shoulder had been mostly blown away and he was lying on the stage with blood pumping out of it. He would probably die from a wound like that one but I couldn't take a chance with it, I had to finish the job.
Now that I knew I had to carry on I was amazingly calm. I jacked another round into the rifle and stood up with one foot up on the wall. Resting my elbow on my raised knee, I sighted along the rifle and fired again. Longstaff jerked convulsively as the 8mm slug tore through his brain and then lay still.
The crowd was screaming and running for cover. The acolytes were rushing around like headless chickens looking for the killer of their boss. The only person that wasn't running was the little girl that Longstaff had picked up. She was standing at the edge of the stage just looking at the corpse of the man who had been holding her just moments earlier. I stood, frozen on the rooftop, watching this girl as she climbed onto the stage and went over to Longstaff. She knelt beside him, put her hands together and closed her eyes. It took me a long time to realise that she was praying for Longstaff.
Finally, I came to my sense, slung the rifle over my shoulder and moved to the stairway that would take me down to the roadway and my bike. I was walking in a trance, thinking of Longstaff and the girl. I don't remember how I got home that night but I do remember getting very drunk when I did get back to my flat. I still have nightmares about that little girl praying over the corpse of the man that I had killed in cold blood.
My white-coats say that it is good to talk about traumatic experiences like this. I say that they are full of shit. I murdered a man because Slayer didn't like what he was saying about the clouds and the stars. Harris Longstaff's life was worth a couple of hundred Credits and a slight increase in my SCL rating. That's how valuable life is in Mort, in Slayer's World of Progress. If that's progress, I don't want it.