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Mar 14, 2002, 7:45:10 PM3/14/02

On with the show.

From
amethyst!noao!rutgers!apple!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!bacchus
.pa.dec.com!shlump.nac.dec.com!cthulu.enet.dec.com!yerazunis Sat Nov 17
14:09:57 MST 1990
Article 24 of alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo:
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>From: yera...@cthulu.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: Re: Hello hello hello
Message-ID: <17...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 15 Nov 90 04:14:04 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Distribution: alt
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 55

If you were watching the door (or had the door marked "hot" to your
automation) you might have seen him come in. Totally average male,
thirtyplus, a pod-person. The kind that fade into the fauna scenery.
Brownish hair, too dark for blonde, too light for brown. Wearing dark grey
denim pants, ligher gray denim jacket.

He bellies up to the bar, and the bartender automatically pours him
his usual. He pays, with cash. No credcard. Weird. Nobody pays
cash unless they've got something to hide.

If you're sharp, you notice another weirdness. No jewelery. No
rings. No ear-dangle. Not even a cheap plastic wristwatch.

On the infrared, he shows up as a little cool, but that could be normal
for him. No visible weapons, eyes are either his own or damn good copies.

Probably another underworker trying to cut a deal for fancy
designer chemistry or cheap designer bodywork. But here in Chatsubo,
Out of League, as they say.

Or, as they also say, "bottom of the food chain".

He picks out a booth in the back, moves through the hazy air. He walks
past, and you notice nothing. Not even with the ear-amps cranked. This
guy is quiet. Too quiet. Can't even pick up a heartbeat. Either he's
a skin job, or he's got a set of mufflers on his aorta and bronchi.

Or maybe he's a zombie. Undead. Except that undead don't leave cash tips.

And this guy is most definitely alive. So, he's muffled. Why would
an underworker bother with a soundproof chest before something useful,
like eyeballs or razornails?

He sits in the booth, facing the main bar area. Zoom in on the face, and
there are tiny scars all over, including what looks like a
baby prefrontal. Either the bodyman was sloppy, rushed, or the scars
are mementos, relics of a battle chosen to be kept instead of erased.

Check out the hands, too. Little scars, all over the place. Like
somebody used this guy for a dartboard. His right pinky finger has
a sort of waxy look, like a temporary battlefield repair ignored
far too long.

Too much weird for one person. Definitely too much weird to ignore-
or leave out of sight, automation or no automation.

You contemplate your next move...

<to be continued>
-Bill

"On civilization's funeral pyre"

From
amethyst!noao!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!
decwrl!bacchus.pa.dec.com!shlump.nac.dec.com!cthulu.enet.dec.com!yerazunis
Thu Nov 22 12:35:57 MST 1990
Article 62 of alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo:
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>From: yera...@cthulu.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: Babyface and Dartboard mix it up.
Summary: Nerve poison doesn't leave any useful parts.
Message-ID: <17...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 20 Nov 90 23:30:09 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 82

[What has gone before:

Dartboard and another Chatsubo customer have a civilized
discussion. Some freshly minted babyface razorgirl
recognizes Dartboard and tries to deevee him with a
nerve-poison dart. ]

If you aren't watching Dartboard carefully, (or had locked your automation
on him) you would have lost him in his free-falling dive below the
tableslab of the Chatsubo. Dartboard's fast, and *very* quiet.

Dartboard stays low, behind the foam slab tabletop, as Babyface fights
an obviously malfunctioning dart slinger. Ratz, the bouncers, and
the other customers get ready for the show; nobody wants to miss
the fun, but nobody wants a "Collateral Damage" obituary, either.

Dartboard goes ultra-low, within inches of the floor, and rolls to
a table to the left of Babyface. Silently. The customers at the table
don't move- who wants to draw fire from a hyped razorgirl with an
intermittent soman sprayer?

Babyface isn't watching carefully. She clears the jam and moves toward
the now-vacant table where Dartboard took his dive. Babyface has so
much hardware, she almost rattles when she walks. Big difference
between her and Dartboard- Dartboard's *quiet*.

Dartboard repeats his quiet crawl, circling unseen to the left of Babyface.
He finds a dusty chunk of broken glass on the floor, and palms it in his
left hand.

Another swaggering, rattling step from Babyface, another totally
silent crawl from Dartboard. The first hypo dart, embedded in the
wood-grained foam wallpanel, has stopped dribbling yellow poison; greasy
orangish smoke now licks at it. Self-destruct mechanism's triggered- this
dart leaves no evidence.

Babyface makes a hammer-fist with her left hand, raising it to smash the
tabletop foamslab. Her right forearm, with reloaded dartslinger, is ready
to fire.

Behind her, Dartboard rises silently. Too silently. Babyface doesn't
notice.
Fatal mistake. He points his right pinky, the one that looks like an
unrepaired battle patch, at Babyface's head. His left hand holds the
broken glass.

Dartboard slings the glass in an underhand toss into a vacant spot on the
wall. Babyface fires the dart on reflex- and hits wallfoam.

"Idjit."

Babyface spins to face Dartboard. Dartboard's fingertip explodes in a cloud
of blood, steam, and electric-arc plasma as Dartboard's EMP pulse generator
dumps full power into the expendable antenna that was the end joint of
Dartboard's pinky. Prosthetics all through the Chatsubo twitch, image
amplifiers overload and shut down, earamps register a tremendous thunder.

Babyface's face puffs up and outward. Like a toy baloon
in super-fast motion, the skin and scalp stretch and expand, then the
skin on Babyface's forehead splits and her brain and skull blossom outward,
a giant popcorn kernel, popped in the blast of Dartboard's directed
EMP pulse, spitting steam and blood.

Through the cooked brain, traces of charring flare and burn. The metal
and polycarbon of Babyface's implants absorbed the pulse energy and
turned to plasma. There isn't even enough of Babyface's brain to
scan out into a construct. She's dead, cooked like rice, and whatever
she knew went with the steam.

Dartboard turns to Ratz. "Got a skin patch?" Ratz tosses him
a flat package with a red cross on the label, and pours Dartboard
one of his usual. "On the house. What a jerk."

"Yeah."

"He has one reliable flaw: Loyalty."
Subject: Dartboard goes looking for trouble
Summary: Dartboard's quiet evening at home.
Keywords: Dartboard ARES
Message-ID: <17...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 4 Dec 90 03:31:33 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 104

[What has gone before: Dartboard encounters an old friend,
who promptly tries to kill him. Dartboard returns the favor
more successfully, and while sipping his raspberry rickey and
nursing his charred finger, manages to observe the ARES spider
drone successfully intimidate Nekoko. Always amused by "interesting
phenomena", he manages to capture some raw data before the
drone makes itself scarce. ]

Back in his room, Dartboard opens one of his ATA cases and withdraws a
combat
medkit. First things first, he carefully administers shots of neurocaine
into the two nerves running along the palm side of his right pinky finger.

Giving the local anaesthetic a few moments to take effect, he pulls a
roll of fine tungsten wire, a small toolkit, and a small, obviously handmade
tool. One end of the tool is shaped like a screwdriver handle- indeed, it
bears the engraving "CRAFTSMAN - WARRANTED FOREVER", but the other end
was clearly never meant to mate with a fastener of any type. A pair of
crossed-spiral grooves and three protruding pins make the business end
of this tool a diemaker's nightmare. The tool is obviously a handmade
experiment.

Carefully, Dartboard winds the tungsten wire through the grooves, and
around the pins, in a strangely symmetric pattern. Clipping the tungsten
with a pair of ceramic-bladed wirecutters, he bends the two free ends
outward along the shaft.

Dartboard reaches for a scalpel from the medkit, and begins to cut away
the cauterized flesh where the end of his right pinky tip used to be. There
is little blood; the superheated steam and vaporized tungsten of the
EMP generator's expendable antenna have effectively cooked the tissue
to a well-done roast. He continues the debridement with a finer knife,
then with a tiny alloy dissecting hook set in an aluminum handle. As
he uncovers live tissue, the blood begins to flow again, dripping to the
table and clotting within seconds.

The voicephone chirps. "I KNEW that was going to happen". Spraying
plastisol on the oozing amputation, he reaches for the phone with his one
good hand.

"Mendoza here. ... Yes, Timo. I saw it. In person! Yes, in the bar!
Pretty sharp work, too. I..."

Continuing to listen on the phone, he slides the still-bloody hand quietly
into the medkit pouch, and grasps an unseen object. The wet, sticky
plastisol adheres to the handle. The phone mumbles in his ear.

"No, too small to carry anything like that. It was definitely remoted,
or running a canned...

Without missing a syllable, Dartboard spins to the window, pulling the
medkit and unseen object into firing position. Dartboard's bleeding
hand pulls the trigger of his .45 ACP automatic, the end of the medkit
gains a small hole, the screening of the window gains a small hole to match
several others, and a previously unseen intruder loses his head over
the matter.

"...program. Very slick; words and actions chosen for maximum psych
effect.... What noise? No, I didn't see any...."

"Possible. No external steerable antenna- but it could be
using the legs as a phased array.... Yeah, it was thermally hot but
not like it was burning fuel. No exhaust plume..."

"No, I don't want to sign on now. I want to think about this a little
bit on my own time before I go ask for money to think abo.."

"You always say that. Look, give me some time. Just a few hours, a few
days at most. When I have something, I'll call in.... Yes, anything at
all, even hunches.... You always say that too... I will. You know
that cowardice is my best developed virtue.... Well, that too. See
you next time I'm east. Vieds."

Hanging up the voicephone, Dartboard inspects the medkit, .45 automatic,
and his hand, all of which have become glued together by the drying
plastisol. Fortunately, the medkit contents are undamaged and the
medkit plastisol refuses permanent union with nonliving Colt .45 butt.

Spraying solvent on the plastisol, Dartboard probes in the wound
for a pair of gripping terminals. He loosens them with a tubular
tool, then cleans them of charred blood with a fine brass brush.
Turning the not-a-screwdriver end for end, he inserts the two tungsten
wires into the terminals, and tightens the clamps. The not-screwdriver
pulls free, and Dartboard examines the tiny replacement antenna. For
a moment it glows a dull red, as the EMP generator checks circuit
continuity, then Dartboard carefully sprays a layer of organic isolant
over the clamps and tungsten.

Dartboard cuts the hardened plastisol away from the tissue with a scalpel
and dissecting hook, and then folds a combat skinpatch over the antenna.
The patch finds the living tissue, adheres, and begins to toughen into a
vague
resemblance of human skin.

"ARES... bugger... I wonder..."

[to be continued]

"Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger"
Subject: Dartboard goes on a fact-finding mission
Keywords: Dartboard graphic
Message-ID: <18...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 19 Dec 90 05:09:02 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 132

What has gone before:
Dartboard witnessed the ARES hunter-killer playing tag with
Nekoko in the Chatsubo. Being the paid-to-be-curious type of
person that he is, he does a bit of investigation after repairing
the end of his little finger.

-----

Dartboard rises from the worktable and packs the recently holed medical kit.
Removing the .45 Model 1910 ACP automatic, he carefully reloads a fresh
round
to replace the expended ammo. If you had tiptop automation, you'd have
noticed that Dartboard uses very unordinary ordinance; Bowland explosive
warheads, shaped-charge, with RAP assist, handloaded into real brass
.45 cases. Obviously custom work.

A second 1910 ACP slides from a pouch inside Dartboard's jacket. Identical
hardware, identical ammo. He swaps the two pistols; the just-fired unit
from the medkit going into his jacket, the freshly cleaned unit in
the jacket into the medkit. Searching the floor, he lifts the still-warm
brass casing and drops it into a bag to be cleaned, inspected, and reloaded.

A makeup kit opens, and Dartboard smears his face and hands with a dark
putty, filling the pits and scars. Pens of red and blue simulate the
broken circulatory system of a long-time alcoholic, and yellow contact
lenses turn his eyes jaundiced and hepatic.

Dartboard opens an ATA case, and removes several objects that look for
all the world like rubber vomit. Amazingly lifelike, their surfaces
gleam in simulated fluidity. On the bottom of each is a hollow; Dartboard
pops a thin black rectangle into each.

One other item from this ATA case; a capsule from a bottle labeled
"Syrup of Ipecac". Another case opens, and Dartboard removes a
raincoat appearing too decrepit to warrant the adjective "abused".
Stains and grime form an ugly camoflage on the beige polyester. Unseen, the
inner lining is of knitted kevlar and ceramic fiber; thin enough to be
unnoticed even in a casual physical examination, but enough to
stop an ordinary knife or even a piece of subsonic shrapnel. He
pockets the rubber vomits and their hidden cargoes.

Dartboard runs through his final checklist, and exits his room, moving
in total silence through the evening toward the Chatsubo.

Arriving at the Chat, he takes a menu.

"Hello, I'm Nekoko. Drinks?"

"Food first. What's the worst thing on the menu tonight?"

"Eh?"

"What's the worst thing you have tonight?"

"er, uh, I think it would be the tuna salad."

"OK, tuna salad, extra mustard on the side. And a double scotch"

The cat-eared razorgirl waitress stares at the disguised and unrecognized
Dartboard one moment longer, and then turns toward the kitchen. "I
don't know what's more disgusting, him or his tuna salad."

Dartboard eats his meal heartily, his stomach already churning in
revulsion. "Might not need the Ipecac after all."

Paying in cash, as usual, he exits the Chatsubo and moves toward the
industrial district. Toward the lines of darkened factories and the
ARES warehouse.

In silence, he begins to stagger, first acting the part, then for real,
reacting to the surging, seething tempest in his stomach. He
makes it to the corner of the ARES barbed-wire security perimeter, and
barely contains a surge of acidic vomit against the back of his throat.

Staggering in true agony, he walks the half-block to the ARES gaurd in
front of the armed gatehouse bunker.

"Shift it, alkie, or you'll be salvage by morning"

The gaurd swings his carbine stock, and catches Dartboard in
the ribs- or at least it seems like ribs. Dartboard groans in
earnest, and drops to his knees. He crawls to the curb opposite
the gaurdhouse, and begins to gag. One hand, unseen and silent,
palms one of the ersatz rubber vomits, and places it in the street
gutter. Finally relaxing, Dartboard throws up the remains of the
tuna salad, nearly covering the ersatz puke with the real McCoy.

The ARES gaurd fires a warning shot at Dartboard, chipping the concrete
inches from Dartboard's left hand. Dartboard grovels in earnest,
and raises both hands as if to beg. The gaurd motions him away with
his carbine.

Groaning still, Dartboard staggers into the night, retching again
at two other corners of the ARES complex, and depositing thin black
rectangles disguised under puke in each location. He finally
staggers toward home, washes, removes the yellowed contact lenses,
cleans the makeup from his face, gargles, brushes his teeth, and
re-dresses in a more acceptable outfit.

Back at the Chatsubo, silent and hungry again, he examines the
dinner menu for the second time that night.

"Hello, I'm Nekoko. Drinks?"

"Something soothing to the stomach, please. Milk. And spaghetti."

"Kitchen might be closed. I'll see what I can do."

"Arigato. I appreciate it."

To himself, Dartboard thinks "Nice lady. Or kitty. Or chopper pilot.
Or merc. Or whatever. She's probably dead meat soon anyway. What a pity."

And you wouldn't need a bit of automation at all to see Dartboard
shoveling away the spaghetti like he hadn't eaten a good meal all day.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I, too, will be off the net for a short period around the upcoming holidays.
Those of you who have permission (Phyllis R. and her designees) to use
Dartboard may feel free; others, keepa-u-hands-off. Or else you may
find out what Dartboard has under his other nine fingertips. :-)

Second item: in a rare display of stupidity, I neglected to keep the first
two Dartboard postings! If _anyone_ out there has them, please send
me a copy! Thanks in advance!

-Bill Yerazunis

"We don't need that part."
Subject: Dartboard does what Dartboard does best...
Message-ID: <18...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 28 Dec 90 21:53:28 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 167

What has gone before:

Dartboard has become "professionally interested"
in the ARES hunter-killer hardware. Unfortunately,
Dartboard's profession is Intellegence Analysis-
turning intercepts, photos, and rumors into a coherent
analysis of the adversary's capabilities and plans.
After connecting with Timo (who lives in a sub-sub-basement
of No Such Agency near Washington DC.), he places
some monitoring stations under used tuna fish salad
and waits for the ARES info to build up.

A singles apartment room. One wall is lined with cases. ATA cases.
If you had any automation at all, you'd know that if you were here, you
either were a friend of the occupant, or freshly dead. Dartboard, the
occupant, is reading a book. Reading the old kind of book, the ones made
of paper.

The sky outside the room darkens from grey to black. Dartboard selects an
ATA
case from among many and pops the safety latches He opens the case,
revealing
what looks like a small cyberspace deck shockpacked into half the clamshell
ATA
case, with a milspec CPU and optical storage unit framed into the other
half.
A power cord slides along the 'deck.

Plugging the power into the 110VAC socket near the bed, two red telltales on
the milspec CPU indicates "OVERTEMP" and "DC PWR CROWBAR" and a yellow
telltale
indicates "CHILLER RUN". A green telltale, now dark, reads "CRYO OK". In
a few minutes, that telltale will turn on and Dartboard's personal computer
will be usable.

Unlike most computers, Dartboard's machine is not an element in the
Cyberspace
net; as such it is both utterly invisible to the common cyberspace cowboy
and
utterly impenetrable. Of course, it's also utterly useless as a site to
work
from into cyberspace; this computer was built for security, not ability to
access far-flung data bases.

Leaving the computer to look after it's own needs, Dartboard pulls out the
disguise kit, and he adds a heavier eyebrow, blue eyes, a small mustache,
ten
years of age and thirty pounds of bloat.

Dartboard closes the makeup case, opens another case, and straps a short
cylinder to the inside of each calf. Kevlar street pants, a street jacket
(with the inevitable 45 ACP) and a hooded cloak complete his wardrobe.

He takes a cab from the the Chatsubo to the corner of the warehouse
district, and walks through the district, narrowly missing his step over
three
dried remains of last night's vomiting episode. Rather, appearing to
miss his step; on each occasion, a proximity device in the short cylinders
detects the presence of his spyboxes, and in the moments while aligned
with the hidden devices each cylinder fires a grapple, snags the box,
and withdraws, hiding the spybox under Dartboard's pant legs.

Cabbing again to the Chatsubo, he sees Nekoko working the tables. Dispite
his hunger, he chooses not to push his luck on being recognized by some
flaw in disguise or mannerisms. He chokes down a small capsule and
walks to his rented room. As the capsule's contents take effect,
Dartboard's
body temperature begins to drop; by the time he enters his apartment
his body temperature is 20 degrees centigrade and still falling. Dartboard
moves slowly, halfway to a state between suspended animation and
hypothermia-induced cardiac arrest.

Washing the spyboxes in the sink as he removes the makeup, Dartboard
prepares
the tiny bathroom to be a darkroom. Black cloth covers the window, a towel
seals the door, and three solutions of caustic chemicals fill plastic
beakers
in the tub. Cracking each spybox open, he withdraws a from each lighttight
box
a stack of thin holographic imaging films and paper-thin metal/phosphor
screens. He separates the films from the screens, and loads a plastic rack
with the precious films. He works by feel alone, in total darkness; even his
body heat has been dropped to below the sensitivity limits of this emulsion.
Five minutes in the first bath, two in the second bath, and five in the
third,
and he turns the lights back on. The films are developed, and set out to
dry.
Each film seems a dirty gray, the information encoded in interference
fringes
far too fine to be percieved without a microscope.

The superconducting CPU and optical store have long since become fully
chilled
and completely operational. Dartboard slides each film in sequence into a
slot
on the optical store. An image builds in the visual section of the
cyberspace
deck. A layout of the structure of the ARES warehouse, with highlighted
zones
where electromagnetic emissions of various frequencies have taken place.
Comparing the spectra, he finds the red-keyed Hunter-Killer pathways and
communications channels with ease, among the powerful blue flashes of
walkie-talkies and the dull gray of forklift motors.

But beyond the HK channels and HK posting locations, Dartboard sees nothing
in his computer-generated hologram that makes this installation
extraordinary.
Certainly, in Dartboard's professional opinion, this is not the central
control site. A testbench, an experiment- but not the control site.

Dartboard zooms the hologram back and away, to a tiny constellation of
color.
A cloud of red, far from the warehouse, diffuse, nearly beyond the
ability of the holographic film to resolve to an angle, shows at the
edge of the image. This, in Dartboard's opinion, is the control site.

Dartboard starts a fine-resolution sigint task on the HK emission spectra,
jacks out, and moves to the voicephone. He dials a long distance number, a
strange voicephone number that answers before the first ring.

Dead silence on the line.

"er, um, eh... Whiskey Sierra November Foxtrot two three one "

"WAIT..... CLEAR OR CYPHER "

"cypher, please."

"ID"

"Papa Echo Golf Tango five five one"

Dartboard slots in a flat chip and presses the ENCODE button. A pair
of electronic chirps indicate that an encrypted channel has been
established.

"WAIT..... COLONEL JOHN TIMOTHY IS NOT AT HIS DESK. IS THIS URGENT?"

"no, thank you."

"PLEASE ANSWER YES OR NO"

"no"

"RECORDING FOR COLONEL JOHN TIMOTHY..... "

"Timo, this is Mendoza. I have information on the ARES HK arena. The
warehouse at Victor Nine Five is not the control site. It's a testing arena
only. Control site is probably at grid, um, Bravo three northeastern
corner.
Sorry, I don't have any finer resolution on the site than that yet. It's
next
on my list of places to be checked out."

"It looks like the HK command channel can be jammed, at least for short
periods. It's not spread spectrum or anything truly exotic like a psi link.
Frequency agility unknown but in process, command sequence details unknown
but
in process. Ability of HK to operate with jammed channel unknown but in
process. Spoof resistance unknown but in process."

"Now, for the fees. Assuming you want me on the job, just change my
status from "retainer" to "active" and send the money to the usual
account. I'll have the full elint data on the way to you within an hour."

"Give me a call if you get anything."

Dartboard hangs up the voicephone and pops another capsule. This one
is a heavy metabolism stimulant, configured to rewarm a hypothermic
humanoid in minimum time. The warming energy must come from
somewhere, so Dartboard is already considering dinner; he's taken
these metabolic controllers before and he knows well the ravenous appetite
of someone coming off a cold capsule.

"Chili. And pizza. And steak. And a milkshake. No, two milkshakes."
Dartboard heads to the Chatsubo for dinner before his stomach decides
to eat his pancreas for appetizers.

And you need no automation at all to know a hungry man when you see one.

-------------------------------------

Comments (both good and bad) appreciated; don't use Dartboard without
permission except in a "cameo role".

-Bill

"I blame Society! Society made me what I am!"
Date: 4 Jan 91 04:00:15 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 116

What has gone before:
Dartboard has done his first pass of "scouting" on
the ARES warehouse site. It's not the control site,
but he does have the electromagnetic signature of
the HK command channels. He checks in with Col. Timothy at
Langley, gives him a full interim report, and Dartboard
agrees
with Timo's request to sign on to Timo's team and "go
active" again.

Dirty afternoon sunlight streamed across the aluminum ATA cases. Dartboard
rose silently, more like a cat than a human. If your automation could track
it, you'd notice Dartboard's body temperature was still a few degrees below
normal, a lingering effect of the coldcap from the previous evening.

Dartboard opens a booby-trapped ATA case, and removes a small box, heavy,
leaden, painted olive drab, with a commjack on the side and the words

"FRAGILE - HANDLE LIKE EGGS"

stencelled in military white on all sides.

Pulling a chip from his wallet, Dartboard dials a long distance phone number
that answers before the first ring.

"Bravo Delta Echo Lima Three One One Five "

"CRYPTO REQUIRED"

Dartboard slots the chip and waits for the two electronic chirps that
confirm
a secure encrypted channel.

"Query"

"GO"

"Status brief John Mendoza"

"MENDOZA JOHN ... ACTIVE ...LAST CHECK IN 03:40 ...WEAPONS RELEASE CLEARED
...MONITOR COLONEL TIMOTHY JOHN"

"Request weapons release"

"WAIT...GRANTED. ATTACH DEVICES"

Dartboard jacks the olive-drab box into the phone and waits patiently.
Precisely coded chirps and twitters fly back and forth for a few seconds.

"DEVICES ACTIVATED AND SAFED"

"Done"

The phoneline clicks dead. Dartboard gently unjacks the box and opens it.
Inside are six shells, like shotgun shells for an ancient 8-gauge shotgun.
Each shows a small blue egg of a projectile, the size of a robin's egg.
Electrical contacts ring the base of each shell. He presses each shell
into a special socket within the box. Six times a green LED and a
double chirp inform him that a robin's egg completely operational
and prepared to hatch.

The ATA case produces a grenade launcher, sized to the robin-egg
projectiles.
Dartboard checks that the launcher is empty, then cycles the unit
repeatedly,
working both the chamber action and a thumbslider labeled YIELD.

Dartboard double checks the launcher safety, and proceeds to load,
carefully sliding each projectile into the launcher magazine.

The phone rings. Dartboard carefully sets the launcher on the bed and
lifts the handset.

"Mendoza"

A single tweet answers Dartboard. He slots his chip and waited for
the double chirp.

"Timo here. Did you just go special?"

"Yes."

"Any special reason for it, or is this just one of your classic 'hunches'?"

"Just a hunch, Timo."

"Well, I hope you know what you're doing."

"Have I ever _not_ known?"

"Point. Send me a report at next opportunity."

"Will do."

The phone clicked dead. Dartboard showers and shaves, quickly dresses in
the
height of Du Pont fashion, Kevlar over Nomex. A pair of rather dark
sunglasses
go into the chest pocket.

Dartboard slings the grenade launcher under his right arm and a loaded
.45 ACP under the left arm, throws a kevlar raincoat on, and moves to the
door.

And the only automation you'd need to understand life here and now would be
a
Geiger counter. Nothing puts a spring in a man's step like a six-pack of
nuclear warheads.

Dartboard's ready to go out and meet the world.

----------

As usual, please don't use Dartboard beyond a cameo
appearance without my permission.

Please send comments (both good and bad) to me.

"it's.. it's DIP !"
Subject: Dartboard raises the stakes
Keywords: Dartboard
Message-ID: <18...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 8 Jan 91 04:33:45 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 93

What has gone before:

Dartboard has decided the whole ARES affair has
gone far too serious to play around with. He's gone
active, and signed on as a field analyst for Col.
Timothy out of Langley. As we join him, he's walking
down the street, raincoat full of his normal
intellegence-gathering paraphenalia, and six very
special packages in a grenade launcher slung under
his right arm.

The best automation in the world couldn't tell you this, but any
psi could; Dartboard was a man who walked without reservations. He
walked the walk of someone who knew precisely what he had to do, and
how he had to do it. No indecision, no doubt. One heart, one mind,
one soul, one body.

At the next major intersection, he hailed a cab. The old Chevy in
battered, rain-pitted yellow grated as the driver hit the brakes.
A single working headlight glowed over the dented front bumper, cutting
a line of light through the drizzle and gathering twilight.

"Head north. Stop by a fast-food joint, I'm hungry"

"You're the boss. Beefybuster's good enough for you?"

"Fine by me."

The cab pulled into a greasy burger stand. In the parking lot, two
young children were methodically torturing the life out of a half-wild
kitten.

"Fifteen burgers, and a shake."

"You want fries with that?"

"Uh, sure."

Dartboard hefted the oversize paper sack into the car. Offering the
cabbie a burger, he stuffed three of the soyfiber specials into his
raincoat pockets. Munching on yet another burger, he methodically places
small, coin-like devices into each of the other ten sandwiches.

"Next exit, take a left, then a right."

"You know where you're going? Not much out here but a few abandoned
factories."

"Yes. Drive."

The landscape had thinned to grassed-over bog and cracked parking lots,
the buildings they served collapsing and corroding. Nothing moves, save
a few wild dogs.

"Go straight through, curve left. Drop me off. Come back in an hour.

As the cab approaches Bravo Three site, Dartboard rolls his window down part
way (until the window jams in the rusted tracks) and pitches burgers into
the
tall weeds bordering the highway. Scattered over a half-mile, they are
noticed
by the keen noses of the wild dogs. The dogs swallow the burgers nearly
whole,
and take their extra cargoes unnoticed.

Dartboard slides from the cab toward a stand of brush. Arriving, he
secrets himself, checks that each coin-device is operating, activates
his own spread-spectrum uplink, and settles in for the wait.

Slowly chewing a cold soyburger, silent as a corpse, without even
a heartbeat, he waits.

Earphone of a broadband reciever in his ear, seeking the chirp that
tells of an ARES HK on the prowl, he waits.

Everything he or his sensors notice moves out on the uplink, to be analyzed
by him later, or, if necessary, posthumously by one of Dartboard's
colleagues.

One hand rests on the trigger of the tactical grenade launcher, loaded with
six rounds, the first round is in the chamber, and the safety is off.
Dartboard is calm, precisely calm, as though he has seen this play
through before, that the outcome is already certain. A certainty
that would strike a mind-spying psi almost as lunacy.

And it takes no automation at all to know that all that stands between
Dartboard and a thermonuclear firefight is two hundred yards of muddy
weeds and two pounds of pull on the launcher trigger.

-------

"I'll be back."
Subject: Showdown at the Bravo Three Corral
Message-ID: <18...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 12 Jan 91 03:08:54 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 130

What has gone before:

Dartboard's sitting in a pile of bushes just outside
the security perimeter of the ARES building at Bravo
Three, eating soyburgers, listening to spectrum
analyzers, uplinking everything his sensors gather,
and waiting for ARES to make their move.

Any psi could tell you Dartboard's gone crazy. He's
also carrying six armed thermonuclear warheads with
delivery systems.

Even the best automation in the world wouldn't help you in this situation.
There's a fellow in a raincoat, and he's sitting in a thicket. He's
staring at a building. He's not moving. He's not making any sound at
all, not even heartbeat. He holds a grenade launcher, loaded with
tactical nukes, aimed dead center on the Bravo Three site. If you're
a psi, you're head is already aching, as the monomania of this fellow
in the bushes nearly crowds you from your own skull.

The RF tomographic analyzer Dartboard carries builds a three-dimensional
picture of the Bravo Three site. Corridors, power lines, even personnel
stations. Heavily augmented personnel themselves. And the hunter-killers.

Four HKs active now. One already outside the perimeter, and three prowling
the interior. No, five. Two more HKs powering up and coming online, in
the warehouse. The chiming tones from the broadband reciever's earphone
give a stereo image to each HK movement.

A rush of bells, and an HK stands before Dartboard. The HK chain gun
deploys.

Dartboard tightens his grip on the grenade launcher trigger. Ten grams from
launch. Five grams. Three grams.

The HK retracts the chain gun. Dartboard eases back to twenty grams below
launch force, still aimed square into the center of Bravo Three.

As a frozen tableau, more-than-man and more-than-machine stand off.
Like ancient gunfighters, each waits for the other to make the deadly
move, to take the first step in the short dance of death.

The seconds stretch on. Deep inside Dartboard's soundproofed chest,
next to his muffled heart, a piece of very uncommon hardware measures
the almost unmeasureable. This hardware was Dartboard's reward for
almost unspeakable hardship.

The hardware is a neutrino telescope.

The neutrino telescope cost a nation's ransom. There are perhaps four in
existence. The neutrino telescope resolution is limited only by the
duration
of the observation and the rate of change of the relative positions of
telescope and target.

In this eyeball-to-CCD stare-down contest, the situation is nearly perfect
for
the neutrino telescope. Inside the shielded, lead-lined case, sheaves of
thin nickel crystals are stretched and twisted repeatedly, each shape
testing a different interference pattern, a different hypothesis of form.

Six minutes later, Dartboard hears the sound of the returning
cab. Long enough. The neutrino telescope has more than enough data.

"OK, I won't blow you into the stratosphere. Pull back to the chainlink
and I'll depart."

The HK backs away from Dartboard, moving to the security perimeter.

Watching the HK and listening to the broadband, Dartboard opens the
Bravo Three side cab door and rolls down the window. In one motion,
he enters the cab, keeping the Bravo Three site under continuous threat
from the grenade launcher.

"Downtown. Take your time. They won't attack."

"Mister, I hope you're right."

"I'm always right."

-----

Back in his apartment, Dartboard swallows a yellow capsule and begins
to shiver. After an hour head-down on his computer, Dartboard wraps up
his report and analysis, and jacks out. Dartboard slots his encryption chip
into the phone and puts a call in to Col. Timothy in Langley.

"I did a provocation reconnosance and it went by the book. We now have site
specs, C3I, site security and emergency response procedures, and, to top it
off, a layer-by-layer dissection of an operating hunter-killer. Everything
you
need to know to build one- or blow one up. They're kind of nifty but not
indestructable."

"No, you don't even need a shaped charge, although it's easier that way.
It's in the report, let me stream it to you first and then we'll talk
strategy."

Dartboard slots his report and waits while the information is transferred.

"The report boils down to three major points. One: an HK is potent but it
isn't
unbeatable. ARES think's it's unbeatable but they're wrong. Two: the
control
site is useful but not necessary; an HK can operate autonomously if needed.
However, ARES does not repeat not trust HKs to operate autonomously under
all
circumstances. Three: There are at least two humanoids wired like Christmas
trees in the Bravo Three site. Who they are is unknown, purpose of wiring
unknown. They appear to be held against their will. Relationship of
humanoids
to HK project unknown."

"Timo, let me warn you about that psi-shield syrup. It makes you crazy; you
forget who you are and why you are. It compresses your entire
self-awareness
into pure, insane, white-hot singlemindedness. If your brain is a clove of
garlic, this stuff is a garlic press. It also packs one heck of a hangover.
I
feel saner now but... As far as I'm concerned, psi-shield syrup is pure
industrial-strength bad-trip-in-a-drum."

"I agree, I'll stay active for a while. I better go off and peddle this
info
while it's still worth something. I'll check in later tonight. Ciao."

-----------------

Please don't use Dartboard without permission, except for
small cameo roles.

-Bill

"Gimme a donut."
Subject: Dartboard: Would you buy a used dossier from this man?
Message-ID: <18...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 15 Jan 91 02:55:45 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 99

Dartboard goes on to sell his wares

What has gone before:
Dartboard, under the influence of a drug which
should have been an psi-shield but acted like a truckload of
load of LSD gone bad, loaded up his sixgun and stared
down a rather nasty ARES product. Fortunately,
his data recorders worked even though his judgement
was shot to hell. He's recovering from the drug even now.
As we join him, he is in his apartment speaking
on the cryptophone with Col. Timothy at Langley.

"... so here's my updated report. I've added sections on "probable doctrine
of use", and "extrapolated order-of-battle". As soon as you get back to me
with probable targets I can work up some assault scenarios. And- there are
a lot of change-bars on the original text; I plead temporary insanity on
that."

"No, I take that back. If I'm insane then there'll be an investigation as
to
why a lunatic was issued nuclear weapons release. Let's just say that I
have
reflected on the entire situation and wish to modify my opinions."

"Bugger that syrup. I don't care if it drives the psi talents out of
their skulls, it very nearly drove _me_ out of _my_ skull. Cripes,
that was bad stuff. I'm still hung over."

"Well, maybe the analytical people will figure out what went wrong with it."

"Gerard, eh? He's the one who shipped it? Fascinating. No, I don't know
why he doesn't deal well with me. I never stole _his_ girl and I never
cheated _him_ at poker." Dartboard chuckled audibly over his unsubtle
humor.

"I take the Fifth Amendment on that one. But you ought to learn to hide
your hole card better." Dartboard chuckles again, and then laughs out
loud over the very audible profanity at the other end of the secure phone
line.

"Right. Give me a call if anything comes up. It's time for me to make
some money on this info, besides by selling it to you. Any ideas for
a front?"

"Good idea! Same deal as what I did to Cosworth the night after he
made Major. At least this time they can't put me on report for it! "

"Only if they ply me with wine first. Right. Bye."

Dartboard hung up and unslotted the encryption chip. He giggles,
mumbles "It's just the syrup. Yeah, that's it.", and giggles again.

Dartboard strips to the skin, pulls out with the disguise bag. Face, arms,
neck, upper chest, and lower legs depilated. Latex and silicone
prosthetics,
padded and textured to mimic even the feel of reality while carrying a
weapon
system cargo, glued with waterproof adhesive to the chest. A thin film of
waterproof makeup covers the fine-line seam.

On with new cheekbones, red hair (with a few grays, just for realism),
tastefully done in curly waves. Eggshell pancake makeup, and red lipstick.
Eye shadow, applied with the hand of a makeup artist. Fake eyelashes and
colored contact lenses with the Gucci emblem to cover the Hughes eyeballs.

Suitably tasteful undergarments, panty hose, and then a silky kevlar blouse
and
a businesslike pantsuit with more hidden features than a 1965 Cadillac.
Low-heeled black pumps that looked like patent leather but weren't. A touch
of
perfume, laced with just enough human phemerone to dispel doubt but retain
control.

Silver rings and a gold watch, all suitably understated and all suitably
featured. Earrings that looked pierced but weren't, each filled with a
few precious drops of potent neurotoxin.

A handbag, suitably filled with apropos debris, including facial tissue, a
compact .357, credit cards, two concussion grenades, lipstick, comm chips,
cash, blush, powder, and an encrypted copy of the updated report.

Checking himself in the mirror, Jane Mendoza experimentally loosens the
top button of his silk blouse, admires the realism, and blows herself
a kiss. Softly, he talks to herself.

"Honey, you are dressed to _kill_!"

Smiling, he opens the door and she steps out of the apartment. Jane Mendoza
is
going to paint the town red. First stop- the Chatsubo.

-------------------------------

Please don't use Dartboard (a.k.a. John Mendoza, a.k.a. Jane
Mendoza) without permission, except in cameo roles.

Comments on this episode, please.

-Bill

"May the fire be your friend, may the sea rock you gently."
Subject: Mad Dog
Message-ID: <1991Jan30....@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 91 16:57:30 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 176

The views and opinions expressed by this character are not those of the
author.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Beeper beside my pallet.

"Kidney, liver, pancreas needed. Histocompatability indices to
follow."

I am risen. I go among them.

I carry the igloo, for the bounty of the harvest. I carry the dartgun
and the knife. I don't need much, The Lord will provide.

He might be doing it now. I'm sure of it. I'm almost out of
batteries.

The histos come out of the beeper into my Nose. They tell me
whether a kidney's right just by smelling the guy who has it.

The Lord provided me with my Nose. He killed the man with the Nose and
let Joseph find him. He gave Joseph the money for the operation. He
made Joseph turn his back.

The Lord provided me with the strength to do what I did.

They called Joseph my father. That is a lie. There is only one who I
call my Father, and he is my Father. Joseph knew. Joseph knew and he
killed Mary. My Father struck down Joseph. The Lord slew the man
who killed Mommy.

They call me Mad Dog because of my Nose. I can sniff out the right
person in a crowded room, or across the street . My Nose tells me
other things. Things hidden to most people. Things people don't know
they're telling. I know.

I can smell the Evil.

I can smell the Good, but almost never. There is always Evil mixed
with the Good. Evil is everywhere.

I can smell the Evil, The City stinks of it.

I smell a few men who aren't all Evil, down at the bank, smelling of
ethanol, which smells like rum except it's not Evil, and iodine and the
autoclave smell and blood and medicine and all the things that help
people get better. The men at the bank don't smell Evil. They almost
smell Good.

I never smelled a Good Woman. Mommy was a Good Woman, but I never
smelled her. She died when I was 7, before I got my Nose. I remember
her, but I don't know how she smelled. She taught me everything from
her Bible. I want to someday find a Good Woman so I know what one
smells like. I never smelled a Good Woman. I never smelled Mommy.

At the bank there's only men that I can see. I know there are
sometimes women there, I smell their Evil, but they make me wait
outside while they send them away. I asked why once and they said it
was because I was a psychopathic misogynist. I looked up those words.
They said I hated women. I don't hate women, I hate Evil. I love
Mommy. She's a woman, she's not Evil. She's not like the whores.

I walk down the street, smelling. I smell The City. It smells of
Evil. I know that there are Nine Other Good Men in the city, otherwise
God would do what he did to Sodom and Gomorrah. I never met any of the
Other Nine.

The women are all whores. I smell the Evil on them. I don't have to
smell them.

Neon letters. I don't read. All I need is the Bible, and Mommy put it
on tape for me. I listen to it always. Sodom and Gomorrah. That's
what I am listening to right now. When the batteries run out, I hear
other voices. When I have the money I buy batteries. Mommy talks to
me when I have batteries.

I can tell it's a bar, and a brothel. I smell the rum and drugs and
women. They're all Evil. Cat smell. It's Evil too.

The women are all whores. All Evil. I wonder if one of the Other Nine
is a woman. That would be Good. I don't think so. All women except
Mommy are all Evil.

I smell something. I smell someone with the right organs. Everything
matches. Not just close, perfect. Big money for a perfect match.
Nobody likes immunosuppressives. Nobody likes to get an IDS. I can
buy lots of batteries if the match is perfect.

She comes out of the bar. It's her. She's a whore, I don't have to
smell her to know that. They're all whores. I know there's rum on her
even before I smell her. Rum on her and Manscent heavy on her. But
there's something else. What I smelled in the psycho hospital, before
I got out. I have a bit of that smell. Maybe that's what Good smells
like on a woman. A tiny bit of Good, in all that Evil. Maybe she is
not all Evil. Maybe the Good can grow in her, if I don't kill her.

Liver, Pancreas, Kidneys. That's all I need, I don't have to kill
her.

When I get them out I can tell her why I'm letting her live. Maybe
she'll see it as a sign. It's a sign that God loves her. He loves
everyone, even whores. Maybe she'll Go And Sin No More. Maybe she'll
become a Good Woman.

The Lord sent me to her to save her. To make her Good. My knife is
ready, my igloo is cold. I will use the darts. I am ready to cut the
Evil parts out of her and make her Whole.

I sometimes let people live, if I smell any Good at all in them, and I
don't need the heart or both lungs or something like that to buy
batteries. I use the darts so they can listen and feel, without
moving. I never let a woman live before, I always cut out the Evil
right away.

I wonder what it will be like inside a living woman. I want to be
inside a woman. I was inside Mommy once, then I came out. I want to
go back in. I want to...

Evil, EVIL, _EVIL_.. She puts those thoughts in my head. She is
_EVIL_. She is a whore, there is NO GOOD in her. She is Evil. I
smell her Evil. She is Evil.

I smell her, I want to smell her. She is EVIL, her smell is EVIL. Her
smell is...

She's a man. The Manscent is IN her. Not ON her. IN her. She is a
man who put on the skin of a woman, he wrapped himself in Evil. There
was Good in him so he wrapped herself in EVIL. There is no Good in
her, she is EVIL. I grab my knife to send her to Hell.

Something hits me. Something hits me hard. Something blinds me. A
bomb. I smell the plastique. C-15 with magnesium for a flash. I feel
the wall hit my back. I feel bullets in my shoulders. I feel bullets
in my spine. I smell the propellant.

I fall on the ground. This is not the end. In the end they hang me in
a tree. That end is the beginning. This is not the beginning. This
is the end.

I cannot move my arms. I cannot move my legs. I hear my Mommy. I
still have batteries.

He asks me who I work for. 'Eloi Eloi' I say. It was time to say
that. I don't say the rest. Not this time. I know he didn't

He asks who Elias is. He looks around. He wants to see if Elias will
come to save me. Eloi has already saved me.

He's going to give me vinegar now, and stab me, and look at me. He's
going to take my clothes and gamble over them. That's what will
happen. It was foretold.

He says something more to me. I hear my Mommy calling me.

I don't want to go, there's so much left to do, this place is so
unclean.

Mommy is telling me what will happen to the City. Soon there will only
be the Other Nine. It takes Ten. I can smell the brimstone. I feel
the fire. The woman looks behind her. I taste the salt.

The sun is going dark. Soon the veil of the Temple will be rent.

It's time to go to Heaven. I'll find out what Mommy smells like now.
Subject: Dartboard and the Organhunter
Message-ID: <19...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 8 Feb 91 03:23:49 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 122

What has gone before:

Dartboard, in female disguise, has posted the availability
of his intellegence report on the ARES hardware- for a fee.
He's now exiting the Chatsubo. Meanwhile, Col. Timothy has
sent off an important message to him concerning the overdose
of anti-psi syrup and his health.

Dartboard visited the powder room one last time. Someone had already
tried to deface his sticker advertising his report, but they were so
far unsuccessful.

Dartboard paid her tab, and moved to the door. She checked the crowd
over one last time, including the drunk who halfheartedly tried to
pick him up (he was now passed out upright in a booth), tossed the
barmaid an extra tip, rang for a cab, and moved out into the night.

The street was nearly deserted. A gaunt figure with a red, scarred
nose approached, sniffing as he shambled. Dartboard turned slowly,
keeping an automation-assisted eye on the scarecrow.

A dozen feet away, and the thin man flashed chrome out of a pocket-
a surgical scalpel. The man moved toward Dartboard, in a jerky
slashing zag.

Dartboard dodges behind a lightpost and whips a concussion grenade
at the assailant's feet. The grenade detonates on impact with the
pavement, and concrete fragments fill the air. The thin man slams
against the brickwork hard, and slumps downward.

Dartboard fires two rounds from his compact .357 into the semiconcious
body. The first round shatters the scalpel wrist, and the second and
third cut the would-be slasher's spine. Dartboard keeps the revolver
aimed at the dying knifeman and begins to question.

"Who sent you?"

"Eloi. Eloi."

"Who's Eloi? Where are they?"

Silence. The slumped figure relaxes at last. Dartboard makes sure
with a third round between the eyes, and finds a metallic glint.
Dartboard scans the area quickly for a corroborator, and sees no one.

Dartboard leans over the dead man, and inspects the head wound. Sure
enough, the nose area is all implant.

Dartboard picks up the dead man's scalpel, and slices from one nostril, up
across the nasal bridge, over to the other nostril. The skin peels down
easily, to reveal a miniature gas chromatograph. The maker's name and part
number is visible on the side plating- Perkin-Elmer. Not your most common
implant maker, Dartboard notes. Perkin-Elmer doesn't build GC noses for
the average buyer.

A quick search of the corpse's clothing reveals some cash, a cheap fake ID,
two
more scalpels, and a textbeeper, displaying a complicated message. The
message seems familiar to Dartboard.

Dartboard realizes the message is not just familiar to him- it _is_ him!
More specifically, the message is Dartboard's histocompatibility profile.
This slasher wanted Dartboard for his organs.

Dartboard considers a new hypothesis: the attack was nothing personal. Just
the spare-parts business. No ARES, no Nicheu, no old "friends" just
showing
up for old times sake.

Dartboard goes over the dead body more carefully. He finds a reciept from a
soychicken joint, and a faded photograph of a woman in front of a church.
The
woman is ugly and paint peels from the church. A voicetape, unlabeled.

No other implants. Even the eyes are original equipment. Dartboard is not
surprised. An organhunter doesn't need much enhancement; victims aren't
chosen
for the fighting ability.

Dartboard briefly considers doing a field autopsy on the corpse but rejects
the
idea. The cab should arrive in a few minutes and most cabbies don't deal
well with a half-dissected body as "carryon luggage".

Dartboard checks the nearby terrain. In an alley, Dartboard finds the last
confirming evidence- an organhunter's chillerbox. Dartboard cuts the nose
implant free of the shattered organhunter skull, drops it into the
chillerbox,
pockets the corpse's personal effects and waits for the cab.

-----

Approaching his apartment door, Dartboard notices a small white card,
unmarked,wedged between door and jamb. Dartboard pockets the card and
enters his
apartment. Across the bottom of the card are seven groups of tiny nicks;
the nicks provide a local telephone number.

Dartboard dials the number, and is greeted by a single chirp- the request
for a secure line. Dartboard slots a cryptochip and hears a double chirp.

"Mendoza"

"Sabenski here. John, I have a package for you. From Center. Eyes only."

"Come over. I have to get out of my makeup."

The line clicks dead. Dartboard keeps the cryptochip slotted, and dials his
answering service. Fourteen confirmed buys, fully paid, and ten more
deposits
awaiting finalization. Dartboard authorizes release of his I.A. report on
ARES
to the fourteen confirmed and disconnects.

Dartboard moves to the bathroom to wash up before Sabenski arrives. He
considers the probable contents of a personal-delivery package. Whatever
it is, it probably is not good news.

Somehow, the importance of an organhunter attack just doesn't measure up to
the
contents of Sabenski's package. The voicetape, textbeeper, and nose implant
can wait till later.

-----

Thanks to Chris Palmer @ CalTech for the "other half" of this
story.

"My life is a nightmare. Death would offer a welcome respite."
Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski
Message-ID: <20...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 11 Feb 91 23:54:20 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 169

What has gone before:

Dartboard, in drag, was assaulted by an
organhunter while leaving the Chatsubo.
After dispatching the 'hunter, he returns
to his apartment- to find Agent Sabenski
awaiting his return phone call with an
eyes-only package from Col. Timothy.

Dartboard stepped out of the barely-warm shower and wrapped a coarse, worn
towel around his waist. Moving through the apartment, he carefully checks
each object for position and activity. Dartboard removes a .45 ACP
from his work jacket and tucks it into the towel.

A knock at the door, and Dartboard retires to the bathroom door. He
views the entranceway by reflection from the cracked mirror in the living
room.

"Who is it?"

"Sabenski."

Dartboard draws the ACP into ready position and clears the safety.

"Three Five Nine"

"um, Yankee"

"Enter." Dartboard levels the .45 at the door.

The door opens. A thirtyplus almost-blonde female enters, bulked out in a
thick dark jacket and pants, almost camoflage, and carrying a bulging
manila-cardboard envelope. She can best be described as what the
bodybuilders
call "thick"; well muscled, heavy without fat. She moves like Dartboard
moves,
silently.

"You never change, do you?"

Dartboard lowers the gun away from the woman, and smiles.

"That's how I plan to live long enough to get gray hairs and a pension."

"Yeah, and you sure dress well, too. Brooks Brothers Towels..."

Sabenski places the envelope on the table, and presses four points on the
dirty
surface in sequence. She turns away to give Dartboard privacy to press
other
unmarked points. The manila envelope emits two birdlike chirps to inform
the
owners of the successful disarming of the internal autodestruct.

Dartboard lifts the envelope and tears the top edge free. He removes an
interior envelope of dark red overprinted with black "COMPARTMENTED AND
SECRET" warnings, with a yellow carbonless multipart form adhered to the
thick
red paper. Sabenski offers Dartboard a pen, and Dartboard signs the
multipart
tissue. Sabenski countersigns the form, tears the top copy free, and stuffs
her reciept into an inside pocket.

Sabenski moves toward the door. Dartboard gestures her to the threadbare
couch.

"Have a seat. This won't take long- I hope."

Sabenski shrugs and moves to the couch, fingering an unseen weapon in one
of her bulky jacket pockets. Dartboard moves to the bathroom and shuts
the door.

Within the red envelope Dartboard finds Goldbaum's report on the anti-psi
syrup, the deaths of ARES employees Meshia and Ng, and the recommendations
concerning himself as a "possible nondirected psionic hazard". He reads
Timo's
set of orders including an order to have his kidneys and liver replaced at
Langley expense, and a "stay-cold" order warning him to stay away from base
unless ordered otherwise.

Dartboard crumples the stiff papers into a ball, and places them in the
sink.
He turns on the faucet gently, and a thin stream of water strike the pages.
Flame erupts from the pyrophoric documents and within seconds nothing is
left but a fine gray ash, rapidly turning to mud in the tapwater.

Dartboard exits the bathroom, hanging his towel by the door, and moves to a
foamplast wardrobe near the couch. He dresses rapidly, placing various
tools
in hidden pockets. Sabenski watches him with what could only be described
as
a cold and clinical detachment.

"Did Timo brief you before he gave you the package?"

"Enough. What's up?"

"Medical is too damn efficient. I almost got slashed by an organhunter
looking to fill the Medical Branch liver contract. Sell me back my own
guts. What a world!"

"Waste the 'hunter? "

"Concussion grenade, interrogate, and full metal jacket. Know who 'Eloi'
is?"

"That's your department. I don't do puzzle palace work."

"That's why you'll never get promoted out of the Marines."

"It's why they threw you out of IAC..."

"Wasn't thrown. I was promoted out. Anyway, the organhunter had a Nose.
Fancy GC unit, made by Perkin-Elmer. Nonstandard. VERY nonstandard. Not
available on the commercial market."

"Sounds like the sort of thing you'd notice, sticking your nose into other
people's noses." Sabenski smiled, like a reptile, like a drill sargeant.

"Pound sand. I pulled the nose and brought it back here with the personal
effects. Looks like an ordinary organhunter except for the nose hardware."

"Where's the body? Did you put it in the fridge? Next to the beer? "

"Left it. Too conspicuous to autopsy without cover. I want to go back and
check it out. I need someone to watch over me while I do it. Are you
available? "

"Sure. I'm still on Company time."

"Fine. Buy you dinner after the cutting?"

"I suppose. Don't try anything ungentlemanly." Sabenski smiled again,
the same cold, bloodthirsty smile.

"I'll charge it back as a 'business expense'. Hang around, I'll teach
you some field IA."

Dartboard pushed a field surgery kit and a baby fluoroscope into cargo
pockets,
checked his Colt one last time. Sabenski slid her hands among the many
pouches
in her bulky jacket and pants, testing by feel and touch. Both ran their
final
checklists silently, moving only slightly. They both smiled.

"Let's rock.."

"...and roll."

The two operatives silently moved from the apartment and down the hall,
ready to slice and dice.

---------------------------------

Errata: please amend previous episode...

I) Miscounted number of bullets Dartboard fires at MadDog.
It's really three total- two to disarm, one to finish.

II) Chris Palmer isn't. It's DAVID Palmer. Double-sorry.

--------------------------------

Thanks for all the fan mail about the "carrion luggage" pun.
Glad to hear that someone out there reads Dartboard.

---------------------------------

Dartboard and Sabenski are my characters, please don't use them except in
cameos without my permission.

- Bill

"That's it, man. Game over! We're meat, man! Dead meat!"
Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski Go Slumming
Message-ID: <20...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 28 Feb 91 04:10:42 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 135

What has gone before:

Colonel Timothy has sent Sabenski to deliver Dartboard
a new set of orders. Meanwhile, a local organhunter
has tried to off Dartboard for his organs- to sell
the organs to Colonel Timothy to give to Dartboard.
Dartboard and Sabenski are going back to field-autopsy
the organhunter and let Dartboard exercise his
talent of observing the subtle.

"Fastest way there is a cab- unless you have a car."

Sabenski shrugged, her urban 'flage jacket staying nearly rigid as the
body beneath moved. "I brought a motorpool 'cycle. I hate cars."

"Silly me. The short hair and discipline made me think you were civilized."

"Very funny. I'll drive. You ride shotgun. You do know how to ride
shotgun,
right? "

Sabenski fires up the dark gray motorcycle, hopped it free of the
kickstand, and motioned Dartboard onto the back. Dartboard pulls his
.45 ACP free of the holster, and then steps astride the bike.

Motoring through the rainslick streets, Dartboard notices the strange
sound of the bike exhaust. A combination of vacuum cleaner and heavy truck.
Small diesel, with turbocharger. Natch; the bike is a tactical vehicle
and nobody takes LP gas into tactical situations. One bullet into
the tank on a propane-powered vehicle and it's End of Game.

Swerving through a turn, the heavy bike skids on the slick of old oil
but Sabenski keeps them upright and moving. She's obviously used to
handling this kind of motorcycle.

Dartboard motions the bike over, a few yards from the Chatsubo. Sabenski
shuts down the engine and Dartboard gives her a quick briefing.

"I'll need one or two minutes with the fluroscope to go over the body,
assuming
there's nothing to find. Likewise for the clothing. I think he had
something
in his hand that the concussion grenade blew free; I'd like to recover it.
If
anything unusual shows in the autopsy, add some additional time. Your job
is
to keep the locals from distracting me."

"No problem. You want them dissuaded or deceased?"

"Use your judgement. Don't waste any Congresscritters."

Near the armored Chatsubo door, a pooling stain of blood is pulled in a
smear
to a dark stairway, the access to a walkdown slum apartment. The body of
the organhunter is in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Dartboard and
Sabenski move slowly and silently, alert for a trap or another predator
in the darkness.

"Give me a hand stretching him out."

"No problem." Sabenski picks up the organhunter almost casually, showing
off
her weightlifter physique. "Good enough for you, Mendoza?"

"I thought you were a lot huskier than last time I saw you. Anabolics?"

Sabenski snickered at the comment. Dartboard noted the snicker as one
more thing to be curious about- just what _were_ the Marines issuing
their field ops these days?

"Time for work. Cover?"

"On cover." Sabenski moved silently to the stair head and methodically
scanned the street, both hands in pockets. Both hands probably caressing
some very nicely tuned weapon systems, caressing the weapons almost like
caressing a lover's body.

Dartboard unfolds the pocket fluorscope and began moving it over the
stiffening body. Left leg shows a well-healed fracture. Pelvis OK. Chest
shows small implant under left clavicle, plus .357 slug hole in spinal
column.
Right arm OK. Left arm shows major fracture damage from .357 slug.
Cranium
shows healed skull fracture, and surgical excavation of the nasal area to
accomodate the Perken-Elmer GC nosegear. Nothing else. Boring. Dartboard
spends a few seconds more checking the fillings for extra hardware, and then
folds and pockets the fluoroscope.

Dartboard opens the field surgery kit, pulls on rubber gloves, and begins a
chest autopsy; a cut from each shoulder to the center of the chest below the
sternum, then a single cut to the groin. The skin folds back and the
viscera,
still warm, steam slightly in the chilling damp air. Dartboard probes the
abdomen with a disposable plastic hook. He sees yellowish veins indicative
of
liver and kidney problems; common enough to street people who drink
unfiltered
municipal water supply. The small intestine is nearly empty; so is the
stomach. Not much subcutaneous fat, either. The organhunter didn't eat
well-
or often.

The upper chest tells a similar story; lungs blackened and clogged by city
fallout, and an infection cyst on the endocardium; probably a heart
infection
cured with the wrong antibiotics. Happened a lot in organhunters; they got
exposed to immunosupressive chemicals while prepping their goods for
sale, and pneumonia or cardiac infections were common. Higher on the chest,
a
deep scar, all the way through the muscle layers, probably a knife wound of
long ago. The implant under the left clavicle is an old location
transponder,
of the kind used for the youngest juvenile offenders. The transponder
batteries
are long since dead; it had probably been in the organhunter's shoulder
since
he was ten years old.

The teeth are worn, chipped, and filled only occasionally. The filling is
zinc-based; the cheap stuff that the free clinics use. The brain is grey
and mottled; no wetware plugs or rig adapters.

Cross-shaped scarification on the left arm. Strange. Looks like a repeated
injury. Self-inflicted? Ritualized? Dartboard considers the evidence
before
him.

A street person. Refugee from juvie hall. Old by twenty years, dying by
thirty years.

Dead in thirty seconds. But that's business.

Where does a street bum get a custom gas-chromatograph nose?

Dartboard closes the surgery kit, and moved up the steps. Sabenski takes a
look at the gutted corpse, and whispers; a prayer or a curse, or maybe both.

"My, aren't we ghoulish tonight. Find anything interesting?

"Nope. Let's search the area."

-----

Sabenski and Dartboard are my characters; use them only in cameos unless
you have permission.

-Bill

"Ever retired a human by mistake?"
Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski Do Dinner
Message-ID: <20...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 6 Mar 91 04:17:25 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 119

What has gone before:

Sabenski is standing gaurd while Dartboard efficiently
(too efficiently- too much practice) autopsies the
organhunter for whatever secrets he can glean from
the corpse. The results are meager... so far.

"So, what did you find?" Sabenski continued to scan the rainy street,
up, down, left and right.

"Organhunter was a street person. Not rich. Not even middle class.
Probably sociopath. Not in organ business for the money."

"How do you know?"

"You really want to know?"

"Well, yeah. What the heck."

"OK, to start with, no fat. Malnourished, unbalanced diet, marginal
starvation. You could see he wasn't well-fed even with his clothes on.
Second, bad teeth, and what teeth were left were patched with free-clinic
patchputty. Third, multiple street-fight and accident scars. Broken bones,
healed by setting, not by glue or pinning; that's free-clinic style.
Clincher was on his left arm; a scar like a bible-school cross.
Self-inflicted, looks like it was done with repeated cuttings. My bet is
some religiously-fixated nutcase."

"But that doesn't explain why you wanted to come back here. You're being
illogical."

"The problem was that Perkin-Elmer nose. It still is. This guy's a
homeless
bum- but he's got a nose that's worth a minor fortune. Didn't make sense.
I came back to find out that he really wasn't as poverty-stricken as I
first thought; then it all would make sense. I expected to find a ton
of other enhancements- Zeiss eyes at least, plus some in-brain wiring
and maybe a few other toys. No dice. The organhunter really _was_ a
poorhouse case, so the P-E nose is still a piece of the puzzle that
doesn't fit."

"And you're pretending to be Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yep. And you, my dear Sabenski, are Dr. Watson."

"So what do we do now?"

"We observe. Cogitate. Think. Oh yes, you're a Marine; this will be a
new experience for you." Dartboard smoothly blocks Sabenski's
sparring-force
throat punch.

"Now, look around. What are the other pieces of the puzzle? Who dragged
the organhunter down into the stairwell? Why?"

Sabenski considered for a moment. "And where's his chillerbox? And his
other tools?"

"Beat you to them. I already found the box; it's in my apartment, keeping
that P-E gas-chromatograph nose cold. Not like the hardware needs to stay
cold."

"But the other tools?" Sabenski scanned the street again. She points
to a pile of trash fetched into the corner between two decrepit buildings.
"See that ?"

"Hmmm. Yes, very good." Dartboard pulls a small-frame pistol from among
the trash. The pistol has a small gas cylinder slung beneath the barrel.
"Identify."

"Anaesthetic dart. Cold-gas propulsion. Six shots in the magazine,
clip-loading, range about twenty yards, noise less than sixty dB, no
barrel flash, almost no recoil. Worthless against any sort of armor."

"Right. Classic organhunter weapon. This was what he had in his
right hand when I hit him with the concussion grenade. I wondered
how he planned to subdue me with only a scalpel. He didn't have the
muscles to do it."

"Karate? Black-belt in kickboxing?"

"Nope. No callous bulges on the fingers or foot soles. The organhunter
was no fitness nut- and certainly not a martial-art specialist."

"So, Sherlock, any closer to a solution?"

"Only a bit, Watson. But now let us dine. This public house has a
particularly fine Italian dish."

Dartboard and Sabenski move inside to the smoky, smelling flash and
flare of the Chatsubo. Dartboard unloads the dart gun, and moves to
a quiet table near the back; a table with a good view of the door.
He leaves the dartgun on the tabletop. A waitress with cat eyes and
cat ears moves to the table.

"Hi, I'm Nekoko. Drinks? Uh, please put that dart thrower away. House
rule on unholstered weapons, you see."

"Certainly." Dartboard pockets the unloaded dartgun, notices Sabenski
eyeing Nekoko. "I'll have spaghetti with meatballs, and a large milk."

"I'll go for the T-bone steak and a boilermaker". Sabenski winks at
the cat-waitress; a wink that was both friendly and lustful. The
waitress ignores the wink and moved into the crowd, toward the kitchen.

"Curb your hormones, huh? She's a walking target zone. ARES stuff."

"A girl can dream, can't she?"

------------------------------

Dartboard, Sabenski, and Timo are my characters, please don't use them
without permission except in cameo roles.

-Bill

"...a rathole in the space-time continuum..."
Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski: Dinner and a Show.
Message-ID: <20...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 8 Mar 91 03:02:32 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 97

What has gone before:

Dartboard and Sabenski have autopsied the organhunter
and examined the area, finding a few unsettling details.
They're now in the Chatsubo, eating dinner and watching the
show.

"How's the beef?"

"Pretty good, for soybean simulbeef." Sabenski sliced another chunk from
the
near-raw steak with a modified Ka-bar knife and chowed down on the red meat.

"Your hormones are going to get you into trouble. You really need to
control them. I wouldn't mind getting to know catgirl a lot better- but
I'm not going to risk my very precious skin by getting involved with
her romantically." Mendoza spun his fork in the spaghetti like a
professional Italian, and glanced again at the lithe figure moving
among the tables. "I'd like to die in bed- but not just yet."

"You never know unless you ask. It's not like there's a marker."

"Point. And it would be just my luck if she _were_ a dyke. Why is
it I'm always physically attracted to dykes?"

"Shows you have good taste."

"...and bad luck. Anyway, you figured out why the organlegger body
was in the stairwell, rather than up on the street?"

"Clue me in." Sabenski stuffed more steak into her mouth, past rows
of too-perfect teeth.

"Local scavengers- they find a body with a missing nose and three
bullet holes. It looks like an execution, which means the corpse might
still have some valuable personal effects. So the scavenger drags
it into the stairwell for a little cover while he riffles the pockets.
Probably only one scavenger since the body was dragged, not carried,
as we can tell from the bloodsmears."

"Wonbafuhhh." Sabenski swallowed the meat. "But what good is that?"

"It means the organhunter was probably working alone; if he had a
team either the entire body would have been removed entire or the body
would have been carried to a more aseptic location for cutting. That's
good to know; it's one less grudge out there waiting for me."

"But the contract out there for matching organs may still be active."

"We'll deal with that soon enough. We still have to consider how
that megabuck nose got into a streetperson's face."

"Traced the serial numbers yet?"

"We can do that as soon as we go back to my apartment."

"What can that nose do?"

"It's like a real nose, but better. Imagine having a sense of smell that
would put a bloodhound to shame. It could be handy for a field op. It
has at least a gas chromatograph and maybe more."

"So why not keep it? You seem to be doing a lot of field work lately.
Get some cutter to install it into your head."

"No way! You don't know where that nose has been! There are a lot of
very nasty things you can do with a nose. I wouldn't trust it." Dartboard
stabbed at a soya meatball with both knife and fork, a deadly example
of culinary crossfire.

"If you don't want the nose, I'll take it." Sabenski smiled again, like
a reptile.

"You're crazy."

"I'm not crazy, I'm a Marine."

"At least let me check it out first. Run diagnostics, checksum the roms,
xray it for tampering or booby-trap explosives triggered if the nose doesn't
recognize the brain it gets wired into. Much as I hate you, I'd
really hate to lose you because some cutter stuck a nose where it
didn't belong."

"Why John, I never knew you cared." Sabenski laid the sarcasm on as
thick as she could.

----------

Dartboard, Sabenski, and Col. Timothy are my characters; please don't
use them for other than cameos without asking first.

-Bill

"This is _intense_!"

Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski: Just Nosing around.
Message-ID: <21...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 16 Mar 91 02:15:14 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 177

What has gone before:

Dartboard and Sabenski have autopsied the organhunter
and determined to be "probably working alone, probably
a sociopath". Sabenski has expressed an interest in
keeping the gas-chromatograph nose owned by the organhunter.
We join the action at the dinner table in the Chatsubo.

"Dessert?" The waitress with the cat eyes held her pad and pen at
attention.

"Hot fudge sundae, extra nuts." Dartboard wiped his mouth with the paper
napkin.

"Irish coffee, extra scotch on the side." Sabenski's eyes roamed over the
waitress's slim body.

"I heard something really weird about you back in the O-club at Langley.
You declined most of the enhancements you were offered. Even eyes. Why?"

"Plausible deniability. I wanted to be able to blend in with all sorts
of folks. Believe it or not, there are still a lot of cultures on this
planet where a biosoft socket is a rarity. It's much easier to glue on
a fake biosoft socket than hide a real socket."

"Yeah, but even eyes. Hughes eyes don't show. You didn't get eyes until
they
brought you back from Columbia, and you didn't have a choice any more."

"My old eyes worked fine. I still wish I had them. There's lots of things
that trash electric eyes that don't bother real eyes. Same goes for
ear amps, biosofts, Noses, tremor detectors, all that enhanced sense stuff."

The cat-girl waitress returned. "Hot fudge for the gentleman, and
Irish coffee with scotch sidecar for the ... woman." She slid the
check onto the table, face down.

Sabenski sipped the coffee. "Why'd you volunteer for the neutrino
telescope? That doesn't sound like 'Mr. Natural'."

"I didn't have to lose anything to get the NT installed. The heartbeat
silencer came with the package, to get a stable platform to run the
NT sensor. Everything else Field ops get offered requires you lose
something
else first."

"So why doesn't everybody get NT?"

"Because NT is basically worthless. The NT can tell you in ten minutes what
you can see for yourself in ten seconds. During that time, anything moving
blurs out. The data analyzer people were hoping to make it run a lot
faster,
but they never succeeded. That I heard about, at least. Twenty million
dollars of Your Government Working For You..."

"But you used it in Columbia. Survived with it, I hear."

"I didn't have much else left. The Nicteau were damn sadistic."

"Any other use?"

"Only a few times. Nothing that couldn't have been done with another
tool."

Dartboard slides paper money from a hidden pocket to cover the check.
The pair move silently through the music of the Chatsubo night to
the swinging steel doorway, and out into the omnipresent nighttime drizzle.

-----

At Dartboard's apartment, Dartboard powers up his personal computer, opens
an ATA case, and spreads out a grey antistatic worksurface. He dons a face
shield, and motions Sabenski to do likewise. He sets up the pocket
fluroscope
and removes some fine tools, like watchmaker tools, from the ATA toolbox.

Dartboard goes through the personal effects of the organhunter, selects
the unlabeled tape. He slides the tape into the clock-radio, and presses
PLAY.

"And so it did rain, for forty days and forty nights, and
all the world was covered, even unto the highest peaks..."

Dartboard pressed FASTFORWARD, held it a few seconds, and pressed PLAY
again.

"And so Judas took the silver, and brought it with him to
the garden of Gesthemane, where waited..."

Dartboard pressed EJECT. The tape pops out. "At least that fits. You
can listen to the whole thing if you want." Dartboard throws the tape
to Sabenski with disdain, as if the tape were rotten meat.

Dartboard slots his cryptochip and a blank data chip, and dials a
long-distancenumber. The number answers before the first ring, a double
chirp sounds,
indicating secure channel established, and a bored-sounding voice answers.

"Records."

"I need the print set, and documentation kit for Perkin-Elmer part..."
Dartboard reads the part number from the side of the organlegger's Nose.

"Anything else?"

"Yes; history of serial number..." Dartboard reads the Nose serial number
into the telephone.

"I'll need an ident for this. One moment." The phone clicks, and a
computer-generated voice responds.

"THREE FIVE THREE FIVE QUEBEC YANKEE"

Dartboard thinks for a moment, and replies "Eight nine zero ... xray".

The phone clicks again, and the bored person from records speaks.

"Got it. Sending now." The phone screams encrypted noise for several
minutes, then goes dead. Dartboard hangs up and unslots the chips.

Dartboard slots the data chip into his personal computer, pulls
up the Nose's history file... and reads.

"Sabenski, do you consider yourself a vengeful person?"

"I'd like to think so. Why?"

"Know a Marine Major named DiSandri?"

"No, I don't."

"The proper tense is "didn't" The Nose used to be DiSandri's. DiSandri was
assigned to CIA from USMC, got a little hardware, did a little field work.
Appears DiSandri was killed for the nose. His body was recovered, but sans
nase'."

"Semper fi..."

"I prefer to think of it as 'never send a Marine to do a man's work'.
Happens
all the time to jerks who forget that 'clandestine' means 'nobody notices'."

Dartboard pulls up the first image- a 3-D view of the assembled Nose.
Holding
the real Nose with a pair of long hemostats, he carefully X-rays the Nose
with
the fluroscope, turning it this way and that, verifying that the Nose on
the computer screen and the Nose on the fluoroscope screen are as identical
as can be. The fluoroscope image clearly shows the coiled gas-chromatograph
capillaries, and the tiny, powerful magnets of the mass spectrometer.

"Good, it doesn't seem to have been mechanically altered, and there aren't
any
booby-traps. Let's see what's in the Lazarus file." Dartboard jacks an
optical fiber from the computer into a port on the Nose. Obediently, the
Nose
spills back complete genetic blueprints of each of it's owners, as well as
the
dates and times of significant events like installation, removal, and death.

"There's the checksum; the Nose hasn't been tampered with. That's
DiSandri. There's whoever killed DiSandri. Very interesting... Here's
DiSandri's killer being killed, and that killer being killed by me. Boy,
this
Nose sure got around."

"So the Nose is clean, then?"

"Appears to be clean. I'd take it apart anyway to be sure. It needs a good
autoclaving, at the very least. Then it would be pretty safe."

"Well, seeing as the Nose _is_ Marine Corps property, I get first picks on
it."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Dartboard, Sabenski, and Timo are my characters. Please don't
use them except for cameos without permission.

-----

All four of us back at Langley agree that WE NEED MORE WHITE
CRYSTAL!
BRING HER BACK!

-Bill

"Fear is our _friend!_"
Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski: Green is not the color of life
Message-ID: <21...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 26 Mar 91 02:08:21 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 120

What has gone before:

Dartboard and Sabenski have investigated the gas chromatograph/
mass spectrometer Nose. The've found that the GC/MS nose was
as Dartboard suspected- military hardware, and that the original
user of the nose was a Marine Major named DiSandri, and that the
nose has been used by at least two other persons since.

"So can you install this thing, or do we need a professional?" Sabenski
practically drooled over the Nose.

"I wouldn't claim to be competent in neurosurgery for anything with a
brain larger than a walnut, but I suppose that includes Marines." Dartboard
smiles through the magnifying lenses, and takes a defensive pose.

"Very funny. Remember this the next time you need someone to watch your
back."

"Sorry. I've still got a ton of stuff inside this Nose to go over, and you
aren't helping. Why don't you just go home, get some sleep, and I'll call
you when I'm done."

"No tricks. I want that nose, and the Corps owns it."

"You know where I live. Close the door from the outside, OK?"

Sabenski glowers, but her Hughes eyeballs didn't include a builtin
weapon system. She moves to the door, silently as always. Dartboard
watches the door close, and turns back to the Nose.

Darboard continues to probe the Nose, both electronically and physically,
dumping various histocompatibility profiles and phenerome signatures that
had been loaded or marked as "of interest". The supercooled personal
computer accepts and stores the megabytes of information.

Dartboard hears a popping explosion, and then the sound
of gunfire, probably from a USMC-issue .45 automatic with fragmentation
rounds. Dartboard slaps the LOCK button on the computer and the screen
goes dark. Dartboard drops to the floor, and fires at the lightswitch.
The circuit box arcs blue-white, then the room plunges into darkness.
He yanks the fiber-optic from the Nose and pockets the nose in his
vest.

Dartboard flees to the darkened bathroom window, and kneeling in the
bathtub,
observes the scene below. Sabenski stands over the diesel motorcycle, in
a greenish cloud of foggy gas. She holds a .45 in her right hand, and
presses a tiny filter to her face with the left hand. Sabenski wavers and
falls to the ground, gasping.

Two figures weave from the streetcorner, taking cover behind lampposts and
trashcans. Both are carrying automatic shotguns with twenty-round flex
clips- Nicteau style clips. The figures move in offset timing, trained
to always have one member in a protected position to provide covering
fire while the other is moving and unshielded.

Dartboard checks the rest of the street- unoccupied. A third Nicteau is
down and dying by the streetcorner; probably the first victim of
Sabenski's gunfire. He draws his .45, and waits for either figure to
make the mistake of choosing cover that fails to protect the occupant
against attack from above.

The mistake comes. The first man stops behind a fire hydrant. The second
begins his run- from a telephone pole to a doorway- and Dartboard drops
him with a .45 RAP round in the forehead. The second man jerks his weapon
skyward with inhuman speed, and fires. Buckshot ricochets from the
cast-iron
bathtub bottom below Dartboard's feet.

Dartboard shifts his aim and fires again. The RAP round strikes the
Nicteau gunman in the throat, but fails to detonate and passes through
the soft tissues of the neck. The gunman staggers backward and fires
into the sky, spasming on the trigger of the automatic shotgun. Dartboard
fires again at the gunman's jaw; the round detonates and blows the gunman's
head into a wide red-and-gray smear on the sidewalk.

Dartboard checks the street again, pulls on his work coat, and charges the
stairs down to street level. On the way down, he pulls a compact
respirator across his nose and mouth. At the doorway, Dartboard checks
the street a third time, and sprints to Sabenski, .45 at the ready.

The greenish mist has dissipated, but Dartboard takes no chances. He drags
the coughing Sabenski back into the building. The coughing weakens, and
Sabenski sags.

Dartboard pulls an atropine injector from Sabenski's battle jacket and
presses
it to Sabenski's thigh. The injector sighs and injects a measured dose
of nerve-gas antidote.

Sabenski continues to deteriorate. Her hands move to her throat.
Between coughs, she tries to speak. "Can't breathe. Eyes blurry.
Skin burning. Doesn't feel like neuro."

Dartboard looks more closely. Sabenski's skin is waxy and reddened,
and her hair falls in clumps. Her battle jacket tears at the seams
as he carries her. Her pistol shows blotchy corrosion breaking through
the deep-green camoflage bluing. Even her eyes are cloudy, like
cataracts. Sabenski seems to have aged fifty years in as many seconds.

Dartboard jolts in recognition; Sabenski's eyes are like his own-
optical glass and gallium arsenide. The glass itself is etched and pocked.
Etched by the green fog Dartboard had seen from above- a fluorine gas
grenade, a Nicteau weapon of choice to quickly disable the senses and
battle gear of an augmented fighter.

If your automation keeps a kills scorecard and a paramutual connect,
you'd notice that 3-0 was about to change to 3-1 and the odds on
Sabenski were getting very long indeed.

-----

Dartboard, Sabenski, Timo, and DiSandri are my characters; please don't
use them for anything larger than cameo appearances without permission.

-----

"Try to never run out of altitude, airspeed, and luck all at the same
time!Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski: tracheotomy
Message-ID: <21...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 3 Apr 91 02:23:50 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 83

What has gone before:

Sabenski has been hit by a corrosive gas grenade, and is
down and dying. Dartboard's deeveed the two visible members
of the hit squad and has pulled Sabenski back into the
building.

The fluorine gas grenade has dissipated, but Sabenski is slowly dying.
The fluorine has etched and corroded everything in the burst zone, and
Sabenski's breathing is getting weaker, wheezing through her swelling
throat, over her blistering tongue and between her waxy lips and
fluorine-corroded teeth.

Sabenski is choking to death. Clearly an emergency tracheotomy is in
order. Dartboard pulls the autopsy scalpel from his field kit. The blade
is
still smudged with blood from the organlegger dissection- probably
contaminated
with a dozen blood-borne diseases.

Dartboard thinks for a moment, then frisks Sabenski's right leg. Sabenski's
Ka-bar knife is secure in the watertight calf sheath. Dartboard jerks
the knife free, and finds a meticulously honed blade, cleaned just a few
hours ago when Sabenski finished her steak dinner, and protected
from the corrosive fluorine by the watertight sheath.

Dartboard finds the other essential piece of of tooling he needs; a simple
ballpoint pen. He pulls the filler from the pen and grasps the tube between
his teeth.

Dartboard checks the visible street one last time, and holsters his .45
ACP. He runs his right hand over Sabenski's throat, searching for the
narrow groove in the cartilage rings directly below the larynx. Memorizing
the position of the groove, he pinches the skin over Sabenski's throat,
and makes a vertical slit in the skin. He spreads the incision and
cuts again, horizontally, betweeen the larynx and the cricoid cartilage.
Unfortunately, the knife does not penetrate into the airway- something
blocks the way. Dartboard peers into the gap- and sees a glint of metal
at the bottom of the incision. A tracheal armor tube, surgically placed
to protect the windpipe of a combat trooper- and now keeping Dartboard
from opening an airway for Sabenski to breathe.

Dartboard positions the heavy Ka-bar and strikes the handle. The armor
tube flexes and recovers. He attempts again, but the thin tubular armor
refuses to cut.

Dartboard sighs for a moment. _There must be a way._ Sabenski wheezes
weakly.

Dartboard pulls his .45. Sabenski sees the camoflaged steel pistol, sighs
and
closes her eyes, expecting only to recieve a quick, painless, honorable
warrior's death. Dartboard, however, is neither a warrior nor given
toward death, however honorable. He jacks the slide and ejects a
cartridge. He extracts the projectile and RAP booster with a hemostat from
his autopsy kit, and dumps the tailcone propellant to the floor.

Dartboard searches for Sabenski's .45, ejects the clip, and loads the
cartridge containing only the primer. He presses the muzzle against the
tracheal armor tube, and releases the safety. Sabenski feels the cold
metal at her neck. She opens her eyes and sees the blurry pistol at her
throat, tries weakly to move the weapon to her forehead.

Sabenski prepares herself to die. She considers how she should
curse Dartboard for his cruelty, prolonging her dying agony. She recalls
Dartboard's throat shots on the organlegger and the Nicteau gunner,
and wonders why Dartboard would torture her so in her final minutes.

Dartboard fires.

The primer charge drives a hole through the tantalum armor tube. Sabenski
jerks with the nervous spasm, and then inhales. The first breath is
full of primer smoke, and she coughs, but then Sabenski finds that
she can breathe again, through the hole in her metal throat.

-----

Dartboard, Sabenski, Timo, Gerard, etc. are my characters. Please
don't use them without permission, except in cameos.

-----

"I forgot to take my memory pills!"
Subject: Dartboard and Sabenski: A time to ponder....
Message-ID: <22...@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 10 Apr 91 23:08:52 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 191

What has gone before:

Sabenski has been hit with a fluorine gas grenade, and
required an emergency tracheotomy. Unfortunately, Sabenski
had an anti-garrote subcutaneous armor tube installed, which
nearly costs her life. We join the action after Dartboard
completes some minor shaped-charge surgery.

Sabenski's breathing eases and becomes more regular. She pulls a small
talkie from a thigh pocket, a field operations emergency comm set. The
surface is pitted by the fluorine gas, but the LCD shows operational status.

Sabenski holds the talkie to her mouth and keys the mike. Two chirps, a
secure
channel. Sabenski speaks, or rather, tries to speak, for no sound issues
from the swollen mouth. Dartboard chuckles and pulls the talkie from her
fingers.

"You can't talk without a working larynx. Allow me."

Dartboard keys the talkie and speaks again.

"Center, Center, this is Lucky, this is Lucky. Need forward controller."

The talkie falls silent, then a southern twang comes forth.

"Lucky, Lucky, this is Center. I need an ID."

"Center, this is Lucky. I'm Leutenant Colonel John Mendoza, and
I'm using your Captain Sabenski's comm set. She's down, and needs
extraction now. My ID is one five nine three five six one one zero. Over."

"Lucky, this is Center. Who's your commanding officer?"

"Center, this is Lucky. Confirm with Colonel John Timothy, IAC". Dead air
for
perhaps twenty seconds, then the controller's voice sounds again. "Ah,
Lucky,
this is Center. Sir, what do you need?" The new-found level of respect in
the
controller's voice was is lost on Sabenski.

"Center, this is Lucky. I need evac under air cover for one wounded."
Dartboard directs the Center controller through the city map, and gives the
street corner nearest the apartment building. "Be advised, the landing zone
has
possible hostiles."

"Lucky, this is Center. Are diverting training flight to your aid.
ETA is six minutes ten seconds. Can you mark the LZ?"

Sabenski obviously hears this, for she pulls an orange smoke stick from
a shin pocket. Dartboard grins. "Center control, this is Lucky.
Orange smoke on the LZ whenever you want it. Over."

"Lucky, this is center. I'm handing you off to the sortie commander.
Good luck, sir."

"Center control, this is Lucky, thanks."

The talkie beeps twice, and a new voice speaks, backgrounded by the whine of
a
turbine and the slap of helicopter blades. "Lucky, this is Victor three.
We are five minutes to horizon line. What's the threat disposition?"

"Victor three, this is lucky. Threat is unknown. Sorry, dudes. Keep your
gunships low and fast. Anything that isn't me or the casualty is possibly
hostile. Noncombatants may be in the area. Orange smoke on the LZ whenever
you want it."

"Lucky, this is Victor three. Understood. Will call back when we hit
the horizon line."

Dartboard pulls his .45 ACP from the holster again. He checks the street
outside carefully, then moves to the door, searching for the Nicteau that
may or may not be there.

Nothing in the street moves. Dartboard waits. Four minutes later, he
returns to Sabenski.

"Time to move, if you can. Choppers here soon." Sabenski nods, and
Dartboard
helps her to her feet. Sabenski's breathing speeds again, the air wheezing
in and out of the small hole in her throat. Dartboard half-carries her to
the apartment building doorway. He checks the street again.

No change. Nothing moving.

Through the door, holding Sabenski up with the left arm, .45 ACP leveled in
the right hand. Sabenski sags. Dartboard drags her toward the corner, his
head swiveling left and right, searching for the Nicteau he expects behind
every corner, in every shadow.

The talkie beeps. "Lucky, lucky, this is Victor Three. We're at the LZ
horizon. Orange smoke anytime." Dartboard props Sabenski against a
telephone
pole, and pulls the smoke stick from Sabenski's pocket with his left hand.
He
pulls the pin with his teeth, and tosses the smokestick left-handed into the
center of the crossroads. His right hand continues to hold his .45 ACP.

The choppers come in fast and low. The flying ambulance dives toward the
street, between the buildings, and pulls to a hover over the smokestick.
Dartboard drags Sabenski to the hovering chopper. Overhead, three gunships
orbit.

As Dartboard and Sabenski reach the hovering chopper, four enlisted reach
from
the doors and pull the pair into the chopper by force. The chopper, never
having touched skid to terrain, growls and pulls upward, away from the
landing zone. Total time is less than five seconds, a textbook-perfect
extraction.

Two medics start working over Sabenski- then notice the strange hole in her
throat, with the buckled throat armor. "Nasty. I can't find the exit
wound."

Dartboard interrupts the medics. "That's not a wound, that's a tracheotomy.
She's been gassed with a corrosive and needs respiration support."

"um, yeah. OK." One medic gives an injection of anti-inflammatory, and
the other opens a saline drip line. "Who did the trach job?"

"I did."

"You a doctor?"

"Not of medicine."

"Thought it looked a little amateurish."

The ambulance and gunships fly north at high speed. "Base in three
minutes."
Dartboard remembers the "stay-cold" order- too late. He addresses the
pilot,
a young second leutenant.

"You'll have to drop me off somewhere else."

"Colonel? Sir?"

"Technically, I'm I hazard. Set me down far away from the base."

The pilot goes a bit white, and jumps to conclusions. "I can drop you in
the downzone firing range. You can explode there if you want. Can you
hold it that long?"

Dartboard chooses not to argue the point. "Do it."

"Don't move around much down there, sir. There are unexploded mines and
cluster bombs in this area. We'll lower you on the cable."

The ambulance flew over a field, churned with craters, showing only a
few discouraged weeds and algae-filled puddles.

"Put me in a fresh new crater, one with no weeds in it."

"Yes sir."

"Come back and pick me up when you're done with the Captain." He jerked a
thumb at Sabenski.

"Yes sir." The leutenant sounds more than a little apprehensive.

"Relax, son. If there was going to be a problem, we'd both be dead already.
This is just a technicality." The leutenant doesn't seem reasured.

Dartboard steps into the cable sling, and swings out into nothing. The
cable reels out, stops several yards above the surface. Dartboard
mutters a curse against static electricity, and slides slowly from the
sling.

Dartboard hits the ground as lightly as he can. Nothing happens, no sound
of arming mines or antipersonnel cluster-bomblets. He relaxes. The
helicopter pulls upward and away.

"Well, I guess I've got some time to myself". Dartboard pulls the Nose
from one pocket, and stares at it. "Why are you worth so damn much to the
Nicteau?"

The Nose stands mute.
Subject: Dartboard and the Shrink
Message-ID: <22...@shlump.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 21 May 91 23:44:42 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 99

What has gone before:

Dartboard has been dropped off in the middle of a
minefield by his friends (yes, his friends!) while
the surgeons work over Sabenski. Meanwhile, the brain
trust at Langley has decided that Dartboard needs an
assistant/trainee- namely Sabenski. The knowledge
that Dartboard and Sabenski "have personality conflicts"
does
not enter into the Langley equation whatsoever.

Five hours standing in the middle of a minefield. Without even a
cheap paperback thriller. Timothy would be paying full rate for this
one, that was a sure thing. Dartboard considers his bank accounts,
and continues to stare at the local assortment of nondescript pebbles.

The combat talkie in Dartboard's coat pocket vibrates. He thumbs
the switch, and was greeted by a single chirp. Dartboard slots a
cryptochip and answers.

"Hello?"

"You're going to give me the psi interview _now_? Don't you think
I might be a little 'indisposed toward hostility'?"

"Good point. If I pass, what then?"

"Sounds good. It'll be nice to have a working liver again. Do I
still have to take Sabenski?"

"Bugger. Anything else?"

"Right. Mendoza out."

Dartboard thumbs the talkie to standby, and surveys the sky. In a
few moments a heavy chopper, a flying ambulance painted with a red
cross, climbs into his field of view. The chopper hovers above Dartboard
and drops a long slingline.

"<CLICK> PUT THE SLING ON AND BUCKLE IN TIGHT. <CLICK>"

Dartboard dons the lift sling, yanks the straps tight, and gives the
fist-over-fist signal indicating that he is ready to be lifted aboard.

Instead of activating the winch, the heavy chopper grabs air and flies
out toward the southeast. Four heavy gunships join the entourage- all
behind the ambulance, in a double-trail formation. Almost as though
the ambulance was considered hostile.

Dartboard considers this observation as he dangles from the long slingline.
The chopper flies nearly ten miles away, to a grassy parklike area,
surrounded in trees. A golf course, from the looks of it.

The chopper decends to the center of the grass... a golfcourse green,
including the cup and flag. Near the center of the green, there is a
card table, two executive-style chairs, a portable wet bar, and a pair of
floor lamps, powered by extension cords snaking across the green. A figure
wearing medical-group fatigues and carrying a briefcase sits in one of
the chairs.

Surreal, yes. Dartboard scans the wooded periphery. He picks out two
human snipers and three robotic snipers, all carefully hidden in the
woods, all trained on himself. The fairway grass itself is laden with
tiny antipersonnel mines. Dartboard doesn't bother examining the sandtrap
nor the water hazards. This is obviously a mantrap, and the golf course
is the killing zone. The chopper lowers him onto the green, none too
gently.

"<CLICK> UNCLIP AND CLEAR THE SLINGLINE <CLICK>"

Dartboard releases the sling and walks toward the furniture setting. The
flying ambulance grabs air and wheels away, out of the line of fire. The
four gunship choppers take up a circular assault formation. The figure
stands, becomes clearly female, and speaks in a calm voice.

"Colonel Mendoza, I presume? I am Dr. Shapiro. I believe we have an
appointment for some testing today?"

"Don't you consider this environment a little atypical, doctor ?"

"Only as atypical as your case, John. Would you like some refreshment
first, or shall we get on with it?"

-----

Dartboard/Mendoza, Sabenski, Timothy, and Shapiro are my characters.
Please don't use without permission.

Sorry to be off a.c.c for so long. "Issues arose", as Dartboard would
put it.

COME ON ARES RESCUE PLOT!!!

-Bill

"But then again, who does?"
Subject: Dartboard on the Green
Message-ID: <22...@shlump.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 28 May 91 20:36:35 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 130

What has gone before:

Dartboard has been dropped off by helo in the middle
of a booby-trapped golf course, to be psychoanalyzed
and assessed with respect to "a continuing undirected
psionic hazard". Dr. Shirley Shapiro is officiating...

"First, let's get the paperwork and officialese out of the way. I am
here to examine you and make a judgement concerning whether you
constitute a continuing hazard to other persons or property. Toward
that end, I may harass or threaten you during the course of the
examination. Do you understand that these actions are taken solely
to provide the most accurate apprasal of your mental state?"

"I do."

"Do you understand that a significant level of psychological stress
is to be expected during the course of this examination, and that
your withdrawal from this examination constitutes just cause for
presumption of failure of the examination?"

"I do."

"Do you agree to release and hold harmless the Government of the
United States, its subdivisions, and it's employees, for any
mental or physical injury you may sustain during this examination?"

"I do."

"Sign here."

Dartboard signs Shapiro's clipboard release form, and slides the
clipboard back across the desk to Shapiro.

"Please understand that there is nothing personal in this, John. This
is my job. We intend to study the anti-psi drug and the AP-overdose
mechanism; anything you can tell us about the psychological effects
will be very useful to us."

"Understood."

Shapiro stands and walks to the portable wet bar. "I assume you noticed
the assets in place in the woods. This golf green is the center of a
killing zone approximately one-half mile in diameter. The fairway and rough
are mined, there are a number of troopers and servo-driven weapons placed
in concealment, and we have two flights of heavy gunships operating
overhead. If you fail this examination, we will have no choice but
to terminate you. You will, of course, be listed as "killed in the line
of duty. Please don't bother trying to escape."

Dartboard went for the baldfaced lie. "Furthest thing from my mind."

Shapiro walks back to the office chair, and sits. "According to your service
record, you have often refused augmentation surgery. Why?"

"Because I believe that augmentation is counterproductive to covert
field agent operations."

"You contend that an augmented agent is inferior to an unaugmented agent?"

"An augmented agent is easier to detect and neutralize than an unaugmented
agent."

"Do you deny that your capture by the Nicteau might have been avoided
if you had been augmented before deployment?"

"That is a possibility."

"Then why did you refuse the augmentation?"

"I considered the odds to be more favorable without the augmentation."

"But you had previously recieved implants for neutrino sensitivity and
have subsequently constructed and installed electromagnetic weapon systems.
Aren't you being inconsistent?"

"Neither of those augmentations is noticeable by unaided humans. They do
not significantly increase my chances of detection during field work."

Shapiro pauses as she realizes that her current line of questioning is
not bearing fruit. "Did you send Sabenski out of your apartment into
the gas-grenade ambush?"

"Not intentionally. I sent her out of my apartment because she was
distracting me."

"If you had been augmented, would you not have detected the ambush
before Sabenski was injured?"

"No. Sabenski is an augmented and trained combat trooper, and was
ambushed regardless."

"You said that Sabenski was distracting you. Was this perhaps more
accurate to say that you found Sabenski sexually appealing and were
rebuffed by her?"

"No. I do not find Sabenski sexually appealing."

"Ah, so then perhaps we see the truth. You sent Sabenski away from
your apartment because you were not attracted to her. Colonel, are
you a homosexual?"

"No, I am not a homosexual. I am an intellectual."

"So you consider Sabenski to be your intellectual inferior?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Do you feel this way about other people? Colonel Timothy, perhaps?"

"An interesting question... Are we here to discuss Timothy's
mental capabilities, or mine?"

Shapiro winces at the turnabout in the examination. "Very good.
I'll be more careful."

"Much more careful." Dartboard winks at Shapiro, and Shapiro
winces again.

<...to be continued>

---------------------------

"Surrounded by insurmountable opportunities"

Summary: Dartboard's back!
Keywords: Dartboard Shapiro Golfcourse
Message-ID: <23...@shlump.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 27 Jun 91 02:29:58 GMT
Sender: newsd...@shlump.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 168

What has gone before:

Dartboard is being "psychologically examined" by Dr. Shapiro,
in the middle of a golf course. Snipers, helicopter gunships,
and mine fields ring the area. Why? Because Langley is afraid
Dartboard is still an "Undirected Psionic Hazard" and they intend
to kill him off if he is still psionically dangerous. While
Shapiro plays Senator McCarthy attempting to anger Dartboard,
Dartboard keeps his wits and begins to turn the tables.

"Let's consider your behavior when you took the anti-psi syrup. Did you
or did you not arm your tactical nuclear weapons and proceed to
a privately owned site?"

"Yes, I did."

"Did you consider that you were endangering perhaps thousands of civilians?"

"I am authorized to endanger civilians if necessary."

"Do you consider the risk worthwhile?"

"Yes. I might add that Colonel Timothy and the NSC concurred."

"But weren't six nuclear weapons excessive? Wouldn't one have been more
than enough?"

"Undecideable. However, if by carrying six warheads I can avoid using any
warheads, then six warheads are the right number to carry. There is a
psychological warfare issue here."

"But wouldn't conventional weapons, or even tailored gas have been
adequate?"

"You miss the point. Am-243 warheads show up very distinctively on
any sort of radiological instrument- sensing Americium in those quantities
strongly implies presence of a tactical nuclear warhead. Neither
conventional weapons nor chemical weapons propagate as distinctive a
signature as the Am-243 radiation. Consider the radiation spectra as
a warning coloration that I was armed."

"Colonel Mendoza, this is getting nowhere. Let me try another method."

Shapiro snaps open her briefcase, and pulls a .45 service automatic and
a thin scrapbook. She slides the scrapbook across the card table to
Dartboard.

"Please open the book, Colonel, and describe to me in detail what you see
on each page."

Dartboard opens the unmarked olive-drab scrapbook, and notes the format-
a single large photograph, under thin plastic, on each right-hand page,
while the left-hand pages are blank.

"Nazi extermination camp- Treblinka, I believe. Probably taken within
a few hours of liberation. Two unclothed, severely emaciated young adult
male subjects shown. Time and subjects unidentified."

"Soviet gulag prisoner cell. No subjects visible. Date and time
unknown."

"South vietnamese 'tiger cage' torture cell. Time around noon.
Subject is a young female oriental, about twelve. Date probably
late 1969 or early 1970. Cell has been freshly limed"

Dartboard turns page after page of atrocity, giving a cold and precise
description of each scene of brutality. He arrives at the last page.

"Nicteau prisoner torture site, Guatemalian jungle. Taken August 17,
2041, probably sometime in mid-morning, probably by Major David Cosworth
or troops under his command. Subject is then-Captain John Mendoza,
suffering
from multiple septic puncture wounds to all bodily surfaces, eyes, and
genitalia from Nicteau torturers, as well as starvation and severe
dehydration."

"Is that all?"

"Captain Mendoza survived the incident." Dartboard stares at Shapiro,
right in the eyes, and cracks the slightest smile. Shapiro shakes
off the stare, notices the smile, and recoils.

"But that's YOU tied to the wall! It's YOU with the darts in your
eyeballs and the running sores! Don't you FEEL anything? Aren't you
even HUMAN? "

"Business is business." Dartboard turns with a start to stare into
space directly behind Shapiro. He shouts "Hello, GENERAL".

Shapiro snaps to attention- eyes ahead, back ramrod-straight. Dartboard
remains seated.

"Sit down, Corporal Shapiro of Special Talents and Psionics. You've
been, as they say, 'made'."

Shapiro turns around, sees no general approaching. She stares
at Dartboard. "How did you know?" Shapiro begins to stammer.

"You're not a psychiatrist- first, the questions you asked were right out
of the psychological interrogation manual, not standard psych questions,
even for a 'rough interrogation'."

"You've memorized the book?"

"I wrote that book."

Shapiro slumps into the chair.

"Second, you allowed yourself to become rattled. No Intellegence-trained
officer would allow that- they're trained against it. Psi group is
trained to attempt rapport with their subjects- which gave away that
you were attached to S.T. and P."

"Third, you fell for the 'Hello, General' routine. This implies you are
definitely enlisted, probably no higher than corporal, definitely not
commissioned officer- which all MDs and PhD's in the service are."

"Fourth, consider the mission- if I were still active as an undirected
and uncontrolled psionic hazard, you would be dead, and soon thereafter
so would I; at least that's the plan. Therefore, you are almost certainly
a volunteer, someone with a low but nonzero psionic potential, someone
expendable, Your mission was to try to get me to kill you. Fortunately,
you failed."

Shapiro stares at the card table. "So what do I do now, Colonel?
Report that I blew it, that you saw through me?"

"Yes. First of all, it's the truth. Second, I think that Colonel
Timothy was expecting something like this to happen- and he would be
curious to know what _did_ happen if he doesn't get a report saying
what he expects."

"Colonel, you were almost wrong on one point. I'm defending my thesis
in thirteen days, then I _will_ be a PhD, with an automatic promotion to
warrant officer, and a gauranteed shot at commissioned officer candidate
school."

"Congratulations! Can I come to your thesis defense and ask questions?"

"No! God, no! You'd shred me!"

"Trust me, I'm well behaved in civilized situations."

"You must have forgotten what academia is like, Colonel. It may be a lot
of things, but it sure isn't civilized."

-----

Sorry for the delay in this update to Dartboard- but little things like
work situation and a downright broken love-life intruded.

Please don't use Dartboard, Sabenski, Shapiro, Timothy, etc. without my
permission.

-----

My nomination for "Best Recent Alt.Cyberpunk.Chatsubo Posting" - the
last installment of Nekoko crashing the helicopter into Puget sound!
Having some familiarity with such beasts, I can only say BRAVO! You
have done your homework well! I could almost smell the bearings
cooking and the sprag clutch screaming! And it's a GOOD READ, TOO!

-Bill

"Turpentine, acetone, benzine..."

Subject: Dartboard checks into the hospital
Message-ID: <1991Oct3.0...@ryn.mro4.dec.com>
Date: 3 Oct 91 02:22:50 GMT
Sender: ne...@ryn.mro4.dec.com (USENET News System)
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 81

What has gone before:

Dartboard (Lt. Col. John Mendoza) has just been psychologically
"examined" by Corporal Shapiro of Special Talents and Psionics.
Dartboard passed the test, and is now conversing with Shapiro
while waiting for the helicopter pickup. Shapiro reveals that
her graduate school education is nearly complete.

"Thesis defense in two weeks, eh?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me the topic, or is it a classified thesis?"

"Not classified. Archaeology. Late Mesopotamia. Ishtarian myth
and magic."

"Ah, I definitely should go then."

"You're kidding."

"Check it yourself. Read my dossier again."

Shapiro opens the manila folder again, and reads the second page. "Bugger!
You did an archaeology thesis too! Middle Egyptian criminology!"

"There's nothing like archaeology to get one used to putting together
all the pieces of a puzzle. That's what Intellegence and Analysis is all
about. The gizmos are just toys for the guys who think they're James Bond."

"Who's 'James Bond' ? "

An ambulance chopper circles the golf green. Shapiro and Dartboard motion
it to one side. The chopper hovers, six inches above the green, the pilot
overtly cautious of unexploded mines nearby. A medical orderly motions
the two into the chopper. They sit and the wide blades grab air as
the chopper climbs for altitude.

"I promise not to ask any difficult questions."

"OK, you can come to the defense. University of Wisconsin, Terma Hall,
room 330. Second monday from today."

"Good luck."

"Thanks."

The chopper sinks toward a helipad on the military hospital grounds.
A pair of orderlies awaits, each with a wheelchair. The chopper grounds,
and the orderlies hustle Dartboard and Shapiro into the chairs, and
wheel them to the emergency room door. Within seconds they are separated,
tagged, and wheeled to well-equipped hospital rooms.

Dartboard examines himself in the mirror. His face is smudged with dirt,
his
overcoat and boots streaked with mud. Telltale stains of cordite mixed with
Sabenski's blood smear the underside of his fingernails. Grease smears from
the chopper lift cable streak his forearms and coat front. His five
o'clock
shadow looks more like an 7-am shadow. How long has it been since Sabenski
visited him at his apartment? Fourteen hours? He pats his pockets down.
The
Nose is safe, his .45 ACP is safe, the rest of his kit is in order.

Taking his usual initiative, Dartboard strips off his dirty clothes and
steps
into the exam room shower. Clean hot water, germicidal soap, and shampoo
greet him.

-----

Sorry again, my droogies, but life dealt me very harshly these past months.
For those of you who grok such things, I was dealt the hanged man inverted,
followed by the tower, inverted. And THEN my newsfeed broke! Yes, there
was even one part where I said "and this is the part where I die." and
meant it.

Don't ask me what happened. I can't talk about it.

-Bill

"The universe is _intensely_ beautiful."

Subject: Dartboard prepped for surgery
Message-ID: <28...@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 7 Oct 91 21:47:37 GMT
Sender: ne...@nntpd.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 193

What has gone before:

Dartboard and Shapiro have been retrieved from the "test zone"
(a heavily mined and booby-trapped golf course), and are now
in the base hospital. Dartboard's due for a kidney-and-liver
transplant, and Shapiro's in to have her brain examined for
shipping damage. We join the action as Dartboard showers...

Over the rush of the shower, Dartboard hears a knock at the examination room
door.

"Come in. It doesn't lock."

"Colonel Mendez, I'm Dr. Weston, and I'll be performing your transplant
tomorrow. I'd like to do an examination before then, so please rinse and
we'll
get it over with as quickly as possible."

Dartboard rinses the green antibacterial soap from his body, turns off the
soothing, steaming hot water, and steps from the shower into a towel
extended
to him by a rather sourpuss female nurse.

"Thank you. Please have a seat, Colonel." Weston takes a small tape
recorder
from his pocket, activates it, and places it on the countertop. Pulling on
a pair of rubber gloves, he speaks by rote.

"Pre-operative examination of Leutenant Colonel John Mendez..."

"That's 'Mendoza'"

"Mendoza, by William Weston, MD. Time is fifteen-ten zulu. Subject is
scheduled for transplant of liver and kidneys for...um...". Weston
briefly checks his clipboard. "...chronic chemical poisoning. No hazard to
operating room personnel."

Weston turns to his clipboard checklist.

"Colonel, is your complaint liver and kidney failure?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any allergies?"

"No." Weston scribbles an X on the clipboard.

"Are you presently taking any medication?"

"No." Weston scribbles another X.

"Do you have any non-integrated prosthesis?"

"Not at this point." Another X.

"Do you have any of the following; contact lenses, dentures, partial
bridgework, tracheostomal tube, or implanted thoracic armor?"

"No." Another X.

"Do you have any integrated autonomous prosthesis, such as an anticapture
self-destruct unit, transponder with request-fire capability, target tracker
with an integral weapons system, or other weapon system capable of operating
after termination of brain function?"

"No. I'm not wired to be a zombie."

"Good. Undead wirehead troopers with fully automatic weapons always
gave me the willies." Another X on the clipboard.

"Now for the physical part. Nurse, fetch my stethoscope from the
refrigerator. Heh, that's a joke, Colonel. Anyway, cough." Weston presses
a
chrome stehtoscope to Dartboard's chest. "Turn your head and cough again.
Close your eyes, make two fists. Now keep your eyes closed, open your
fists,
and clap your hands together. Good. Open your eyes."

Weston removes a small instrument from his pocket, and uses it to
examine Dartboard's eyes "Damn. Can't tell beans about the circulatory
system from some damn Zeiss CCD."

"Not Zeiss. Fairchild."

Weston shrugs. "It's not labeled on this side." He inserts another
instrument
into Dartboard's ear, pokes a bit. "Moderate jaundice. You need the new
liver. I'm not so sure about the kidneys." Weston checks blood pressure
and
reflexes in a way so casual as to be almost perfunctory.

"Please describe any other prosthesis or previous surgeries and conditions
you feel may impact your medical treatment."

"Are you opening from the front?

"Yes."

"Be careful of the canisters below the diaphragm, below the liver, and under
the sternum."

"Weapons?"

"Yes. And sensors."

"What are they?"

"What's your clearance?"

"Nocopy Eyesonly"

"Sorry."

"Well, can they be safed?"

"Yes. They are now. They require a specific sequence of muscle tenses to
arm, and a different sequence to fire."

"Um. Understood." Weston scribbles a further note on the clipboard, then
passes the board to Dartboard. "Please sign the release form here." Weston
indicates an absurdly small signature space at the bottom of an absurdly
crowded form. Dartboard signs.

"Fine. The nurse will be by tonight just before bedtime with a sleepy
box. We'll jack you in and you'll be asleep in no time."

"I don't have an external jack."

"Colonel??"

"The jack is covert. It's below the skin, right here." Dartboard points
to a spot on his left shoulder, a well-protected notch between the muscles
and bones.

"Well, forget that. We'll be by with a sopoforic, then. Don't expect or
try
to wake up until after the operation is done; you should fall asleep tonight
with the expectation of waking up tomorrow evening with a new liver and
kidneys. Whatever else we see that needs an immediate fix, we'll take care
of.
Figure you'll be up and around within a couple of days, and back out in the
field within a week."

"Anything else."

"Any information on someone I brought in a few hours ago? A Major Sabenski,
tactical type. Gas attack victim."

"I wouldn't know. You can check with the floor nurse if you want to."

"Thanks. See you tomorrow."

"We hope."

-----

The duty nurse enters the room to find Mendoza puzzling over a prosthetic
nose.

"Bedtime, Sir."

"I know." Dartboard notices the evening duty nurse is a much younger and
prettier creature than the harpie from the morning's examination. Her
nametag
reads 'Nina Fredlesa'. Dartboard drops the Nose back into his overcoat
pocket,
and places the coat in the closet.

"This is a secure area, sir. No one will bother your kit."

"Thanks. Pill or injection?"

"Just a pill."

"See you day after tomorrow."

"Yes, sir."

Dartboard drops off into a quiet chemical sleep, punctuated only with the
occasional intrusion of mesopotamian gods, giant electric Noses, and nubile
blonde swedish nurses.

------------------------

No action, you say? Just you wait!

Dartboard/Mendoza, Sabenski, Shapiro, Weston, Fredlesa, Timothy etc. are
all my characters; please don't use them without permission except in
trivial cameos.

----------

My nomination for the two hottest postings of the last week:

Beer Goggles ('Ski is Right On!)
The fellow in Cairo (See you in Kahn Il-Kahleel!)

"I am first going to tell you a little bit about the country called
Tibet"
Subject: Dartboard goes under the knife...
Message-ID: <28...@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 15 Oct 91 20:32:14 GMT
Sender: ne...@nntpd.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Turing Police
Lines: 147

What has gone before:
Dartboard has checked into the base hospital for his
new liver and kidneys. Dr. Weston will be operating.
We join the action in the hospital at 8:00 AM local time.

Two orderlies enter the room. Dartboard lies drugged on the hospital
bed.

"At ease, Colonel."

"Why do you say that? He can't understand you. He's in la-la land."

"Don't count on it. Check his prints."

The short orderly presses a flat panelled electronic clipboard to
Dartboard's
thumb. The clipboard chirps twice, an affirmation of identity.

"Checks."

"Time for a new liver and kidneys, Colonel. And this time, try going
for the top-shelf scotch. Fewer carcinogens in the good stuff."

"Whatever he drank, it was under orders. See, he's line-of-duty, not
veterans administration." The short orderly points to the electronic
clipboard.

The two orderlies slide the unconcious Dartboard onto the gurney and
wheel him through the corridors to the operating room.

Weston is already present. He pulls Dartboard's eye open and shines a tiny
penlight into Dartboard's unseeing eyes. "Damn! Did the same thing
yesterday."

A gray-haired Medical Reserves major named Morton at the anaesthesiology
position nods. "'lectric eyes fool you every time. Gotta watch it. When
I
did residency, you could tell everything from the pupil response and the
feel
of the carotid. Now you can't tell anything without a computer
second-guessing you."

Morton puts a breathing mask over Dartboard's face, and starts a flow of
cyclopropane mixed with oxygen. A nurse places a needle into Dartboard's
left
arm, centered in the medial vein, and starts a flow of saline. "Drip open"
she
announces to the anaestesiologist.

Morton taps Dartboard's throat, then pulls the breathing mask off. He
quickly slides a clear plastic tube into Dartboard's mounth and down
Dartboard's trachea. Morton connects the endotracheal tube to a
respirator. "Time for the morphine."

The nurse injects a premeasured ampoule of predissolved morphine into
the vein drip line. Morton nods to Weston. "Give him two minutes,
then you can open."

Weston checks the temperature of the new liver and kidneys in a
perfusion tank. The tank is slowly warming the tissues so that
the liver and kidneys will be hit just below body temperature
when Weston plans to be ready to connect them.

Weston takes a tiny blood sample from the perfusion tank, and another
sample from Dartboard. He drops them both into a portable type analyzer.
A few seconds later, the analyzer reports the compatibilty of the two
samples.

On the operating table, Dartboard's nose twitches. Morton takes a start.
"Hold it." Dartboard's skin is becoming reddened. "He's having an adverse.
Give him ten of Naxalone STAT." The nurse fumbles the ampule, drops it.

The ampule shatters on the floor. The nurse injects another ampule.

Morton cuts the cyclopropane and begins feeding pure oxygen to Dartboard.
Dartboard's nose twitches again, then both his nose and leg twitch.

"Convulsions. Give him 200 milligrams Dilantin." The nurse injects
the Dilantin without trouble.

The entire right side of Dartboard's body spasms and twitches. Morton
cradles
Dartboard's head and shoulders, keeping the oxygen tube from kinking or
pulling
free. Unseen by any in the operating room, Dartboard's chest-implanted
electromagnetic pulse generator interprets the rhythmic tensings as a
power-level setting command, and begins cycling up.

Morton motions the two nurses to raise sidepads on the operating table to
prevent Dartboard from accidentally falling from the table.

Dartboard's body shakes again, both sides this time, his knees pulling up
almost to his chest.

The EMP generator fires. Driven by a collapsing magnetic field, the
expendable antenna implanted in the tip of Dartboard's little finger turns
to a
directed pulse of magnetically pinched plasma. The synthetic skin covering
the antenna chars and vaporizes. Steam, char, and blood spray an operating
room wall; the lights flicker; the gantry-mounted EKG oscilloscope flashes
and goes dark. The respirator switches from service power to an internal
backup battery and signals a powerfail alarm.

"What the HELL was that?" Morton stares at Weston, and then at Dartboard's
bleeding hand.

Morton orders another hundred milligrams of Dilantin, his voice strains,
then cracks. Morton reaches inside his operating gown, finds a pillbottle,
and motions one of the nurses over. "Get me one, please."

Weston looks again at Morton. "You feel OK, Jim?"

"I'll be, uh, I don't know. I think I'll ..." Morton grimaces in pain.
"You better call in-house. It feels like a heart attack."

"Lie down. Nurse, code 99. Jim, _lie_ _down_." Weston moves to the head
of the operating table and silences the horn on respirator. "Jim, if
you don't lie down, I'm going to order you out of the room."

Three residents slam into the operating room doors, still pulling on
gloves and mask. Weston shouts. "You, monitor vitals on the patient.
The other two of you, monitor Dr. Morton and get him down to Cardiac.
Suspect heart attack."

"What happened to the EKG?"

"It's out. So's a lot of other electrics. I think we had an electrical
short and a fire."

A resident puts an oxygen mask of Morton's nose. "Dr. Morton, how
do you feel?"

"Angina. Bad. Feels like it was before I had the pacemaker."

"Just relax and breathe deeply. We'll get you down to Cardiac."

Dartboard's hand hangs from the edge of the operating table, slowly dripping
blood. Occasionally, when the convulsions hit the right sequence, a bright
electric arc jumps between the buried electrodes in the charred fingertip.

-----

Dartboard/Mendoza, Sabenski, Fredersen, Shapiro, Weston, Morton, Timo, and
Fredlesa are my characters. Please don't use them without permission.

-Bill

-----

"If you could see what your eyes have seen."

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