So yes, he was doing it for the thrill, the challenge, to prove to the universe he was every bit as good as his friends growing up had said he never would be. The money was nice. Beating the entire universe at the game was better.
I’d had second thoughts about recruting him, as I’ve said. I needed everyone I could get and didn’t expect him to survive. So in that, he was even proving it to me. That was probably important to him. I’d keep that in mind, too.
This did reinforce the fact that he had to be stopped. Outside agencies would keep underestimating him. He’d get better with practice. End game, he’d take out one or more heads of state. Then he’d likely retire, with entire cultures in chaos. He was probably okay with that.
With that presumed, back to the hunt.
I didn’t sleep well, woke early, and Silver took me to a clinic for the finger. They weren’t overly concerned with ID, just with payment and a statement. I said I’d abraded it under a stuck wheel, and they accepted that. I made a point of not watching as a medical assistant debrided the wound and wrapped it with some nanos and bandages. It was ugly, but should heal.
Given the number of hits in this system, the smuggled explosives and connections, I had to give strong credibility to the possibility the local crime families had hired Randall. Could it really be as simple as him being hired by the mafia? Well, not simple. Some of them were vory v zakone, literally “thieves-at-law,” well-connected. However, they were unlikely to hire Randall. They’d just arrange suicides where someone shot themselves in the back of the head twice. It didn’t happen often, but there were one or two here.
Viktor Toptygin was one, officially connected. Mean, Earth ex-pat a couple of decades back, when he got too corrupt even for them. He was responsible for better than thirty assassinations that we knew of, plus a hell of a lot more nonfatal violence. He got away with it because he was giving the UNBI information. Useful information at first; info that put his main competitor, a Sicilian mafia don, into prison. Later, just tokens. He was giving his handler-agents some quite generous bribes.
The fun part is that he had a younger brother, a Russian assemblyman, who effectively ran a large chunk of the country on his older brother’s behalf. In fact, we confirmed that government investigators were pulled off probes that might have led to Viktor. There were also favors the other way, including intimidation of people who might have voted against his bills or opposed him for leadership positions.
When even Earth’s system decided enough was enough, he’d moved here. Apparently, some kind of lesson seeped in. He was much less blatant, and none of the official parties wanted to deal with him. They reached a semitruce. However, assassinations happened from time to time. There were import laws here, so there was smuggling. Political favors came into play. Eventually, bribes and pushes and hits. It’s something we don’t deal with well in the Freehold, because we don’t have a need to. Merchants bring product in, we let them. We’re simple people that way.
Still, that was the environment we faced here. Rarely did anyone die, rarely did the public even know. The mob and the government and the CEOs played their games, and everyone else was mostly happy. They’d see something in the news occasionally, and not realize that years of politics and deception went into that occasion.
What this was, I suspected, was someone challenging Toptygin now that he was old. They’d hired Randall, sent him on some remote tasks to check his bona fides, and to handle some exterior business. Then they’d brought him here. It was entirely possible they rented him out as well. He’d generate income for them, and perform inside cleaning jobs. He got good money without a lot of capital, they got income and work.
However, Randall was getting flashy. The chameleons were high tech. Some of the other hits were just sophisticated in approach. A couple of recent ones had been outrageously over the top.
I suspected they were finding him tough to handle. They might also find him tough to get rid of.
It wasn’t a safe tactic, but I decided to offer my services. I’d need to guess as to whom.
The general consensus in news and reports was one Timurhin, who also had a small holding on Grainne. Well, well. That tied things in interestingly. This could be much closer to home than we’d expected.
Of course, I had to consider that Randall took multiple contracts. He may have just gotten greedy. That could also cause stress with any primary contractee; conflict of interest and all that, as well as visibility being a bad thing. You wanted your enemies to know and bystanders to be clueless, for really high-end stuff.
I wasn’t sure I had the right outfit, but they’d likely direct me or hire me anyway. This was the kind of thing that turned into an arms race, which was another risk. Once Operatives or Blazers knew it was possible, not only would others consider it, but some recruits would enlist for the chance. That was good, if the post-military career was demolition, rescue, security; bad if it was assassination. Yet another reason he had to go down. Worst case, the mobs would start sending recruits to get trained. That would avoid all the issues we all had with Randall by keeping it in the family. It had happened in other militaries throughout history. Your veterans-turned-mercs needed some national loyalty.