Pecuniae Obediunt Omnia

A glossy, black, stretch limo pulled up outside Pecunia Tower. The priapic structure reared hundreds of stories up into the sky, gleaming chrome-silver in the sun to the point that it hurt the eye to look directly at it. Not an original feature of the city skyline, Pecunia Tower had been erected just a few months after the Disney Free Economic Zone was declared, and now stood in all its cyberpunk-aesthetic glory, dominating any view of the chaotic urban sprawl; a gaudy, glittering middle finger extended to the outside world, in spite of whom the D.F.E.Z. not only continued to exist, but prosper.

The heavily-armed doormen came to attention as the tower's front door (seamlessly blended into the building's exterior when closed) irised open with a barely audible hiss and a man… no, the man strode out. Tyrelle Brown, known to his associates as Mr. Money. At six-feet-seven-inches he towered over the professional mercenaries. He was classically handsome, broad shouldered, and muscled in a way which showed even through his immaculately-tailored silk suit. It was his genius which had built the financial empire which operated from the four-hundred-floor structure behind him, however the man responsible for the building in a more literal sense was just to his right.

Sam Song, operating under the name 'Mulciber', was a slender young man, technically still a teenager, and he dressed like it; a silk-screened tee-shirt with some band logo on it, baggy jeans, and a lot more jewelry than would normally be considered de rigueur for a man. In his right hand was a metal briefcase with an electronic lock. His shaggy mop of hair was sharply divided between black and white down the middle, and pressed to his head by the large, wireless, headphones he wore, pulsating with R.G.B. lights. He nodded his head to a tune only he could hear.

Bringing up the close rear was the truly massive form of Mr. Money's personal bodyguard, Dreadnaught. At eight feet in height the hulking metal man just barely cleared the top of the door-frame, and was almost as wide as he was tall; built like a cartoon caricature of a body-builder his skin bulged and rippled with impossibly huge muscles beneath, and his whole steel body shone in the sunlight only a little less brightly than the sky-scraper itself. His uniform consisted of a simple black get-up with a turtle-neck and a blazer, tailored to fit his gargantuan frame. The guards could feel the ground shake just ever-so-slightly with each footstep as he passed, and the limo's reinforced suspension creaked and groaned in protest as he stuffed himself into the back.

Inside the lounge-like passenger compartment of the vehicle Dreadnaught sat almost doubled over on the expensive leather upholstery. Mulciber stretched out with his feet up, twitching them in time to whatever song he was listening to, his metal case on the floor next to him. Mr. Money, without looking up from his phone tapped the boy on the shoulder.

"Get your god-damned shoes off my leather seats." He didn't raise his voice even slightly, but it still carried an authority that no amount of shouting could have replicated.

Sam sat up and mumbled something vaguely apologetic. Out of the thick, bullet-proof, tinted windows of the limo the menacing forms of the up-armoured S.U.V.s of Mr. Money's security detail could be seen forming up on either side of their boss's car. Tyrelle fired off another e-mail, then tucked his phone back into his jacket pocket.

"Now, one more time." He addressed the young man, motioning for him to remove his headphones.

Mulciber tapped the pause button on the side of the 'phones and pulled them down around his neck. Tyrelle went over the questions.

Again.

"Why are you there?"

"To show the investors the Tinker behind the buildings you're selling them." He patted the metal briefcase between his feet.

"And why are you not there?

"To talk."

"You are going to…?"

"...Sit still and be quiet and keep my mouth shut."

"...And if someone asks you a question or addresses you directly you will…?"

"...Let you answer for me."

"...And under what single circumstance will you talk?"

"If, and only if you explicitly instruct me to do so."

"Damn right. We do not want a repeat of the Disney Company meeting, do we?" He locked eyes with the young man, causing him to flinch and look down at his sneakers.

"...I just thought that you'd forgotten to mention…."

"Do we?"

"No, sir."

"Good. The last thing we want is for the investors to…." But he never got to finish that thought.

Mulciber blinked heavily two, three, four times. He shook his head. His vision was somewhat blurry and his ears were ringing. His shoulder hurt. In fact; several places on his body felt bruised. His head was swimming. Then, as the mental fog cleared he realised that everything was upside-down, and he was sprawled across the roof of the limo. Glass shards and sticky, sweet-smelling liquid were everywhere, as the bottles and crystal decanters of high-end liquor from the limo's mini-bar had not survived the crash. Looking around he saw that Mr. Money was already up; hunched over he was systematically trying the doors, with his Beretta M9 in his hand.

There was the terrible noise of screeching metal as Dreadnaught stood up to his full height, opening the armoured limousine like a pea-pod as he did so. Welded seams ripped and popped, and plates of tungsten-alloy and solid steel sheared under the superhuman force. Grabbing hold of either side of the hole he had just created, Dreadnought tore the floor of the limo in half laterally right down to the driver's compartment.

"I got you, boss." The towering metal hulk informed his employer.

From where he lay, still partially stunned, Mulciber could see the world outside of the limo was one of smoke and fire; a couple of the security S.U.V.s had also been hit by whatever-it-was that had overturned the limousine, and were on their sides, one in flames, but the others were even now forming a circle around the stricken vehicle. Gunfire lashed out from the surrounding buildings, thudding into the sides of the wrecked limo and smacking into the supposedly bullet-proof glass of the windows, causing them to immediately frost over with spiderweb fractures and deform alarmingly.

The security goons took up positions to return fire, using their vehicles as cover, and a shower of bullets pinged off Dreadnaught. The steel man barely even seemed to notice as he climbed out of the limo wreckage, but then his head whipped up and he lunged forward with a cry of;

"GET DOWN!!"

A trail of smoke lanced out from the upper story of one of the office buildings to their right and Dreadnaught threw himself towards it, attempting to hug the incoming projectile to himself. The R.P.G. detonated against his gargantuan, slab-chest. His efforts were only partially successful in containing the blast as Mulciber felt the muted concussion wave even from his position still lying in the remains of the limo. The smoke cleared to reveal Dreadnaught peeling the shredded remnants of his turtleneck sweater from his absurdly over-muscled torso with a look of annoyance.

"We gotta get you outta here, boss." He observed.

"Driver." Was Tyrelle's curt response, as he crouched in the shell of what used to be his limo, taking opportunistic shots at the enemy-occupied buildings with his pistol.

Dreadnought looked as though he wanted to object, but wordlessly stepped up to the driver's compartment of the upside-down vehicle. He popped the door off its reinforced hinges like a tupperware lid before gingerly helping the shocked, but still apparently alive and whole driver out. The uniformed man mumbled effusive thanks.

"Mulciber." Was Tyrelle's next word, addressed to the boy.

"Uh, yeah, boss, I'm okay. A little banged up but…."

"I can see you're fine, I'm asking if there's anything you can do, here."

For a brief moment the boy struggled to come up with a response.

"I… What? Can I do…? Oh yeah," He said, finally landing on sarcasm. "Just give me a day or two and I'll raise a nice apartment building for us to hole up in while we wait for all this to OW!!"

His boss reached over and cuffed him around the head.

"Focus." Tyrelle stated, raising his voice slightly over the ongoing gunfire. "Is there anything you can jury-rig with your seeds? Can you grow us some cover? Ideally something in the way of super-alloys."

"It doesn't work like that!" Whined Mulciber, flinching as another R.P.G. detonated nearby, this time set off mid-air by the limo door Dreadnaught had frisbied at it. "They're pre-made in the lab; that's when I decide what they grow into. All those…." He indicated the metal suitcase. "...Are just apartments, garages, shops, a couple of sewerage systems, they would all take hours at least to grow, and that's if they had all the right raw materials to draw from."

"You can make some adjustments in the field; I've seen you do it before."

"Yeah, but they don't really…."

"Look, kid, either you pull something out of your ass or this is shit is going to go south faster than fuckin' Santa Claus on take-off."

"I… I…." Mulciber curled up and hugged his knees, flinching as more bullets finally broke through one of the limo windows near him, showering the interior of the limo with tiny cubes of safety-glass. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, causing his heavy eyeliner to start to run. Tyrelle reached out again, and Sam flinched away, but this time the big man gently put his hand on the boy's shoulder and looked him in the eye.

"Look," He said. "Look at me. Never mind what else is going on, just look at me and take a deep breath."

Mulciber drew a shuddering breath, still on the verge of tears.

"Again." Said Tyrelle. "In… hold it… and out."

He breathed again, filling his lungs before expelling the air. He felt himself calm a little.

"Okay, now is there really nothing you can do for us here? Think carefully."

Mulciber closed his eyes and took another deep breath.

"I… maybe, let me see." He crawled over to the metal case, which was lying in a pool of expensive armagnac and shards of lead crystal.

"Attaboy." Tyrelle smiled.

With a flurry of fingers Mulciber entered the password on the locking mechanism and flipped open the catches. The case opened with a faint hiss, revealing dark foam padding with rows of little nooks carved into it. Each nook held a device roughly the size and shape of a hen's egg, made of dull, lead-coloured metal. In the top half of the case, also nestled in its foam housing, was a machine resembling a cross between a cordless drill and a Star Trek Next Generation-style hand phaser. Mulciber grabbed one of the eggs and the drill-phaser, pressing the 'drill bit' into a small jack at the top of the little spheroid. He thumbed his way through various options menus on the little screen on the back of the machine.

"I can't change what they grow into." He explained, as Tyrelle returned to taking pot-shots at their assailants."But I can make adjustments to the scale, and what materials they should take from their environment. They're only supposed to be relatively small changes, but if I tune the rest of the structure correctly ...."

He lapsed back into engrossed silence for another minute of frantic activity, reprogramming first one, then another of the building seeds. When he had about half-a-dozen ready to go he pulled out his pocket knife and sliced across the cream leather of the seat next to him. Peeling the leather off the upholstery he used it as a bag to hold the seeds and bound it at the top with another strip of leather.

"HEY DREADNAUGHT!" He yelled over the cacophony of the battle.

"WHAT?" The steel giant shouted back without looking, raking the building across the street with a fifty-caliber machine gun he'd pulled from the wreckage of one of the trashed S.U.V.s.

"CAN YOU THROW THIS INTO THAT BUILDING OVER THERE?"

Finally succeeding in attracting Dreadnaught's attention Sam tossed the leather pouch to him. Effortlessly wielding the machine gun in one hand Dreadnaught caught the bag with the other.

"SURE, I GUESS. WHAT IS IT?"

"TIME IS A FACTOR, DREADS, IT'S ON A THIRTY SECOND TIMER!"

"OH SHIT!!"

Dropping the machine gun, the metal man heaved the package in a baseball pitch across the road and through one of the shattered windows on the ground floor of the office building from which the majority of the enemy's fire was coming.

For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then the gunfire from the building dropped off noticeably, followed shortly by crashing and screaming. A crowd of men dressed in vaguely paramilitary get-ups began to flee from the structure via whatever openings they could find; windows, doors, holes in the wall. Many were picked off by Mr. Money's security team, still hunkered down behind their armoured humvees. Then the crashing increased in volume, and the whole office building shuddered. Walls cracked and what glass remained in the exterior windows shattered out explosively. A wave of oven heat rolled out of the building; a tell-tale sign of nano-scale work being done quickly. Miniature buildings could be seen growing out of the office, like architectural tumours. They looked wrong, like someone had taken whatever rubble was lying around and smooshed it like plasticine into the shape of apartment buildings. They themselves were collapsing even as they formed, and the office building followed suit, with a mid-demolition explosion on one of its upper floors giving evidence of the fate of the R.P.G. team.

Mulciber leaped to his feet, arms in the air.

"IT WORKED!! IT WORKED! EAT IT, DICKBAGS!!!! YEAH! OHJESUSFUCK!!!!" He quickly ducked back into the wrecked limousine as a shot from one of the other enemy groups in a different building missed him by a gnat's whisker.

Now that they were no longer surrounded on all sides, and the enemy had lost both their R.P.G. support and the lion's share of their numbers the tactical situation was looking up. Tyrelle shouted to one of his security men.

"Sergeant? Take Baker and Charlie squad and clear that building." He gestured to the apartment block from which Mulciber had just been shot at. "Dreadnaught?" The metal giant re-shouldered the fifty-cal and turned to his employer. "You take the offices over there." Dreadnought set off at a jog through the steady hail of bullets coming from the other office building that their attackers had evidently requisitioned. "Able squad? With me. Bring the humvee around, we still have a meeting to get to."

The armoured S.U.V. lumbered around to the wreckage of the limo, keeping itself between the remaining enemy forces and the limo's occupants, then Mr. Money, Mulciber and the still-trembling limo driver piled into the back and the over-crowded vehicle peeled off, slaloming around the piles of rubble clogging the road.

Clutching the now partially empty metal case to his chest, Mulciber heard Dreadnaught crying out:

"I FUKCIN' LOVE THIS JOB!!"

Before he crashed straight through the wall of the office building and the gunfire renewed in earnest.

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Pub: 18 Jun 2025 18:24 UTC

Edit: 13 Jul 2025 04:00 UTC

Views: 54