Cheap Suit

[Kazkin]

Tags: [Unknown]

Author's Note: This story is an expansion on the heads of staff for the marshals, lonestar, and blackshield, told from the perspective of Boris, leader of the marshals, as he reminisces about his past and the events leading up to where he is now. Detailed descriptions of Robert Ryan, chairman of lonestar, and some of the past history between Boris and Ayanda are explored. Enjoy.

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Another stack of paperwork.

The problem with heading the operations of a frontier police force is ninety percent of your work is strictly doing paperwork. It came in stacks, usually ranging from half to a full foot high. A lot of it was bureaucracy, place a stamp here to approve a requisition form from Lonestar, stamp here to acknowledge the monthly budget reports, stamp this to approve this month’s colony games. Sometimes something interesting would appear, an incident that grew heavily out of hand and became a whole uniform shit show by itself. Those would be worthwhile to read, a lot of times they’d be from the surface where things tended to happen in a lot more of a spectacular fashion. Boris was just beginning to read the latest top side report after finishing the first pile of paperwork before a single word caught his eye.

“Piglet”

An unusual word even if not exactly unknown, the report was discussing how a prospector and cargo tech got into a fight after a bout of heavy drinking. The first word offered was the one that caught his attention, the rapidly escalating slew of insults devolved into a fist fight and then shortly after a set of broken rib cages, cracked skull, and dislocated arm. Still, Boris was starting to lose interest, leaning back in his high-back leather chair as he peered around his office with a bored look. It was late, he thought, lighting up a cigar indifferently as he muttered the word “piglet” under his breath.

That had been his nickname when he was a kid, some decades ago. That was what his father had called him. Boris grew up on Mars originally, in the slums of the Olympus Mons where poor, stupid, unlucky, or drug addicted families eked out an existence in the Helium-3 mines. Mars may have been the seat of the federations power next to earth but human society demanded its slums, its bad areas, its shit holes where the rich and influential could go to engage in vice and sin while looking down on there fellow man. Mars was no different in that regard, after all, there was no social welfare to speak of so you worked and failures didn’t live long, often succumbing to the usual blights of the miserable under class. His fathers drug of choice was alcohol, Boris having never met his mother as she had died in childbirth, his old man was a brutal and vicious person. Boris was descended from an abhuman stock who were built to be large and powerful, his specific strain originally had a pompous title of demi-human but time and the way of evolution led to his type now being referred to as ogres. Given most of his type ended up in manual labor or the military, favored for their size and brute strength, it wasn’t really surprising, at least to Boris.

Growing up as one of the gifted sons of the far cast demi-humans was its own special kind of hell. Violence was exceedingly common and Boris didn’t really have any memories of his father where he wasn’t drunk, beating him, or complaining. His father could bitch like nobodies business. In all his years as a cop both on Sol and in Nadezhda Boris had never met a man who could bitch like his father. His father could see the bad in everything, he’d complain non-stop if you let him. Won the lottery? Those damn taxes. Good meal? Not enough damn sauce. Boris got him a beer from the kitchen without even being asked? Why the fuck didn’t you bring two? Boris almost smiled, leaning back further in his chair as he reminisced. He didn’t exactly hold any bitterness towards his father these days. Perhaps in his twenties and maybe early thirties he did, but now he understood what sort of man his father had been and that he was caught in his own pity spiral of mental illness made worse by poverty and chemical dependency.

Boris lost his father when he was the tender age of twelve. Mining accident of course, a tunnel collapsed and killed Boris Senior instantly. Boris hadn’t actually known for several days as one of his father’s friends, a man named Frederick, came to there rundown shithole of an apartment and picked Boris up. Boris had met Frederick before and Fred had known where Boris would be because Boris had never attended a day of school in his life. Ol’ Boris Senior kept his son around to do chores and take care of the things he was too lazy or drunk to handle himself.

To Boris the younger though, he remembered this day perfectly. Even now, the image was crystal clear in his mind. Boris had not ever seen anyone do any form of kindness that wasn’t transactional. Every time he got something from his father, be it food, praise, or just attention it came at a cost. Boris had to work extremely hard for even the most basic things and a child was as easily manipulated as an animal because children trusted their parents inherently. Frederick was one of his father’s drinking buddies and he’d have come around with “the boys” to play cards plenty of times. Often, Boris would stay in his room during these nights, because it was easier than standing his father’s ridicule to get a laugh from “the boys” as it were. Frederick never laughed though. He looked towards Boris with a kind of uneasy frown, one that Boris didn’t understand until he was much older, that Frederick understood that his father was a shit head and that fate had dealt the young ogre boy a shitty hand and Frederick wasn’t really in a position to do anything about it.

Frederick had done something when Boris lost his old man though. He took Boris down to the rage cage, the only sporting event anyone in the slums gave a single fuck about. Pit fighting was a competitive sport and hustlers and bookies plied a trade that moved as many credits as the factories all the workers toiled themselves to death in. Frederick took Boris there to watch a few games, the young ogre boy a bit dazed by the whole event. Frederick hadn’t told him his dad was dead yet, instead he told him his father was out of town for a day and that Frederick was there to check on him. Boris knew that was a lie, on some level, but who could pass up a ticket to the rage cage? Frederick got him a front row seat and bought him what was likely the greasiest refried stove shoveled bacon fries he had ever tasted in his entire life.

It was of course the best damn food he had ever eaten, clogged arteries and all. But as young Boris ate, he was still profoundly struck by the actions of Frederick. When Boris wanted food or (more often) wanted to get something more than a scrap when ordering take out for his father, there was a whole song and dance they’d do. His father would remind him how he ate too much, how he was a growing boy but all he was eating was putting them into poverty. He’d say how grateful his son should be and more importantly how he could be doing more around the house. There’d be a list of new chores, new duties, and things young Boris would be doing to pay his father back or else he’d be getting one hell of a beating. Frederick on the other hand, didn’t even ask if he was hungry, he bought him a massive plate of bacon fries and a carbonated soda to wash it down.

He had been utterly struck dumb by the casual way that Frederick did that, how kind the man had been to a kid he barely knew. It was the first time that Boris could remember anyone doing something nice to him without a second thought and it was then that the seeds of who Boris would later come to be were planted. It was the happiest he had been in his entire life, marred only by learning the next day that his father had passed after Frederick took young Boris back to his own home to make sure he was taken care of. Being poor, without parents, uneducated, and even at the young age of twelve able to bench two hundred pounds it was to nobodies surprise when Frederick, incapable of taking care of Boris, enlisted him in one of the many federation military academies.

The now adult Boris chuckled, reaching into his desk and pulling out a bottle of bourbon to add to his cigar, pouring himself a shot from a fine glass cup as he thought fondly of his first day at the academy and where he was first called piglet by someone who wasn’t his father. Boris himself was tested and given a physical and very quickly placed within the more violence-orientated of the federations many academies. Young Boris was given the choice between police or military and naively wanting to help people chose the police officer corps where he was shunted in with several other boys, some from families, some from legacies of existing or retired officers, and some like him as nothing more than a ward of the state.

The first day Boris learned two things, lined up with the other boys for inspection. The first was he was bigger and stronger than any boy there, his towering ogrish mass nearly letting him meet his instructors gaze at eye level. The second was that Ayanda was going to be his best friend. Ayanda, now the blackshield brigadier of the colony of Nadezhda, first met Boris as they lined up next to each other at first roll call. Where Boris was huge, short haired, pink of skin and a hulking lad Ayandi was slight, short, and in every single way a lot more average. What Boris learned later as an adult was the waiting for inspection was intentional and that all the boys were being observed. This was done to determine what social groups would quickly form and without fail one of the more bullying types of boys made his move. Boris was huge, ugly, and looked like he could snap any potential bully in half. Ayanda, however, was not only small for his age but was also purely human and African to boot. Yet, when the brutish bully moved to make his first sneering insult before shoving the thin black lad Boris intervened in the only way he was taught.

One set of knocked out teeth later the would be bully was lying on the floor with Boris standing over him in grim silence. The now adult Boris chuckled at the memory, at how the now injured lad and his wounded pride started calling Boris and Ayanda the piglet and the niglet. He took a long draw from his cigar as he remembered the glance he exchanged with Ayanda, how from that point forward that single exchange of looks made them the best of friends in the easy way young boys do. This was further cemented when the instructor arrived and the quick witted Ayanda explained what happened in great detail, earning Boris a mark of excellence for defending another and for the skill of the strike while he stood there in dumb silence.

Boris may have been exceedingly strong, but he was quite unlearned and his years at the academy placed him only as a lowly rank and file police officer in the same slums he was born when he turned eighteen. Other boys, such as Ayanda, began life as officers and similar ranked positions, but to Boris he was content to just be on the front line of things helping people. His work had its ups and downs, first as a patrol cop and later as a detective, the years passing in a blur of cases and paperwork before he was promoted to the riot team division. Through out the years he had always kept in touch with Ayanda, usually by email, the men rarely seeing each other but being the best of friends in academy both always made an effort to pass word along. He hadn’t seen Ayanda in anything other than holovid calls until the riot of bones some eight years after they both left academy.

The riot of bones, nicknamed by the tabloids, was a rare event on Mars where riots were largely unheard of. It began over a game of football, the regional players of the Olympus Mons “Lighteners” going against the players of the Valles Marineris “Sledgepackers”. Problems first began before they even started, as both teams choose there players along a racial bias, with those of the Mons primarily being sablekyne and those of Valles being akula. Both were chosen selectively for their brawn and this year was the first time in history that the Valles team finally hit the planetary super bowl. Adding to this stew of already high tensions for the underdog story was the visitors from outside of Mars returning to support not only there team, but there race as well, much to the newscasters and politicos distaste at such a display of bias but no less something they graciously exploited for views and clout.

One bad call, one foul that one side took exception with at a pivotal point in the game kicked off a riot as the players of Olympus scored there final goal to swipe away victory. A drunk and riled up crowd started a few fights, some drunk akula or sablekyne saying the wrong thing and a punch is thrown. Then their buddy sees this and he throws a punch so his buddies start throwing punches and the whole thing snowballs from there. Boris and his fellow officers in the riot division were deployed before the now brawling crowd even left the stadium. Threat assessment monitors adjusted crowd trajectory and strategy on the fly as ten burly men in riot gear are flown by hovercraft in what amounts to a tank firing rubber grape shot. One of many deploying in every street, every choke point, and ever vector from which the drunken brawlers could do damage to the good people of Mars.

Riots were rare and what was more rare was a riot that wasn’t over in several minutes with how prepared the federation forces were. However, most riots were done by humans and abhumans, not akula or sablekyne. Boris had his commlink abuzz with robotic voices offering advice and commands scrambling to adjust to new data. A rubber bullet from a shotgun or a properly applied truncheon could effectively take down most humans in two or three hits at most, but a frenzied akula or just a natural sablekyne would tank ten shots to the head and laugh. Boris wondered if the transport tank’s primary cannon could down a sablekyne with its grapefruit sized rubber shot and his unease grew. This was a situation that could and would cause extensive damage to the city and likely a few deaths if not handled fast.

When the hovercraft landed, Boris and his fellow officers filed out, nearly everyone of them either an akula, sablekyne, or similarly hulking abhuman like himself. They formed a shield wall and began to advance on the crowd at the other side of the street. The rioters, seeing a common enemy, stopped fighting each other and began advancing on the police line. They were vastly outnumbered, but those within the riot division were trained for this type of combat and the worst that could happen. The riotors had already separated into multiple roving crowds by this point and the squad Boris was with was facing roughly fifty or so in a wide street. With only ten men they’d be forced to circle the wagons as the crowd naturally began to encircle them.

What the rioters didn’t know was that each member of the riot squad was using electrified stun batons and a force reactive shield while impact resistant armors stim systems flooded each officer with combat drugs. Such chemical stims were often frowned upon, seen as risky and dangerous to use, but rare situations like this required it and the riot division was one of the few outfits equipped with automated stim systems. Half of the crowd was drunk, already frenzied, or injured from earlier brawls. The fight was now a matter of breaking those with energy left in them and better trained and better coordinated police would do it in ten minutes at most. The smile of present day Boris faded as his reminiscing came to this moment. The effects of stimulant use often impaired judgment, these things saved only for situations that absolutely needed it, such as non-lethally fighting alien races naturally adapted to not only excel at this type of combat but endure it with ease. This riot had been called the “riot of bones” because after action reports recorded the highest number of broken bones in one day than any in Mars history and Boris was responsible for his fair share.

It was only when the crowd was starting to break apart that he heard the gunfire. It was distant and loud, far enough away for him to know if it was someone trying to kill him he’d be dead in a few seconds. Instead the akula he was fighting slumped to the ground unconscious. Six more bangs in rapid succession followed and half a dozen rioters dropped. At first Boris thought they were dead before he saw the spent rubber bullets chambered in what he recognized as fifty caliber at a glance. The crowd suddenly panicked now. Riot police were one thing but a sniper was now lurking somewhere and three more bangs dropped two frenzied akula where they stood. What was left of the standing rioters quickly turned and fled, only one escaping as whatever rubber bullet angel of sleep put down the rest with a single clean head-shot each.

Boris looked for the sniper and spotted him, high up on a building two blocks down, giving a little wave to the ogre. Boris immediately knew it was Ayanda, his gut telling him that because of the cheeky wave and the fact the only person he knew that was that capable of a sniper was his best friend. The federation had deployed the military to help quell the riot and Ayanda must have been deposited on a roof to over watch his small squad. He laughed then, hating the panicked drug-induced wheeze that came out from his body being so over hyped on stimulants and adrenaline, but his fellow officers offered there own wheezes before new orders came through there commlinks and they shouldered there batons before moving on to the next street.

They met afterwards for drinks, most of the military and police division members went to the same academy after all and the most brutal riot of the century was quelled within an hour with minimal property damage and plenty of rioters arrested or hospitalized. What struck Boris at the time as rather amusing, as he and Ayanda knocked back drinks, was how it was like nothing had ever changed between them. Eight years had passed since they last saw each other in person and here they were talking like no time had passed at all between the academy and now. Ayanda told him about his rise in the ranks of the military as a peerless sniper, quickly moving from an officer position behind a desk to a field operations commander noted for his exceptional aim and tactical thinking. Boris, likewise, shared that he was up for promotion to regional commander of this precinct due to his performance reviews and years of solid police work both as a detective and a beat cop. They shared all the little details, the coming and goings of life before Boris asked Ayanda when they’d next have a chance to share a drink.

That was the only time that night that Ayanda wasn’t smiling, the thin african man glancing away as he shrugged. He told Boris that’d he was shipping out to pluto and that was that. Boris didn’t need years of police training to tell him that Ayanda couldn’t say and shipping out to pluto was a euphemism in the academy for anyone promoted to a black site position. Deep space black sites were where the things that oiled the cogs of the empire and were better left out of the public eye happened. It was where plans for rebellious rabble-rousers, enemies of the empire both domestic and external, and prisoners of war were dealt with in the brutal vicious fashion that forged the Sol Federations legacy as the galaxies big bad bogey man. Boris just sipped his drink and asked no further questions. After that night he neither spoke nor saw Ayanda again for nearly two decades.

It wasn’t until he had been promoted to regional provost marshal of the Sol star sector that he heard from Ayanda through none of than Robert Ryan, notorious trillionaire playboy and perhaps the richest non-politician in the Terran federation. Present day Boris sighed, now that was a man he would never understand. Boris didn’t like Robert the first time he met him and still doesn’t quite like him now. Robert was a gregarious man, he was thoughtful, kind, always knew just what to say and what joke to make. He was also devious, a man who saw markets, connections, and profits in places that nobody else could.

Boris often wondered if Robert was the smartest man on the present day colony because he was the only one who didn’t get caught doing the things he wanted kept secret. Unlike the director or even himself and Ayanda, Robert didn’t make enemies and those he did were either bought or dealt with through his many shell corporations, secondary proxies, or by whatever organization was currently a problem through internal bribes. Most on the colony didn’t realize that Robert had nearly half the void wolves in this sector on his pay roll and none of the void wolves working for him even knew he signed there paychecks. But Boris was more than alright with that because Robert was forthcoming with his business dealings to the local provost marshal and it was all done in the name of colony safety, both here on the planet and the few holdings in space they had.

This was often times a necessity and between the dealings of Robert, the missionary work of Augustine, and Ayanda’s more clandestine actions they kept the colony from being under constant threat, be it from pirates, the confederacy, or the excelsior. None of that, however, made Boris like Ryan and what it came down to was how Ryan wore his suits.

Boris had met many businessmen and politicos in his time, be they higher ranking police officials or military personnel in his days as a federation lap dog or be it the people he was investigating and arresting. What they all had in common was they way they treated there suits. A poor or struggling businessmen would often times buy a very expensive suit, something he couldn’t afford, because he wanted to present himself as wealthier than he actually was and it showed in how he wore it, how he acted with care for his clothes.

On the converse end, the wealthier a man got the more casual he treated his expensive suits because he had many and they could be replaced. Once or twice Boris would see a man in even a cheap suit get angry if he caused a stain on his clothes while he ate. If his cuff links caught or scratched on the desk as they went over paperwork. There was a care that simply wasn’t there the wealthier a man got until you reached a specific tipping point. The exceedingly wealthy would buy suits as a status symbol, the kind of designer clothes and materials that cost so much they’d dent even the wealthiest mans wallet. The ultra wealthy however, the kind of men who could buy entire star systems on a whim, they’d wear cheap suits. They knew they didn’t need to show off and so they dressed purely for comfort alone, seeking whatever felt right over whatever high priced label could be slapped onto some fashion disaster that cost more than most men make in a decade. Money and reputation was enough and when they walked into a room dressed in cargo shorts and a simple T-shirt there was no need for introduction, men would bow and kowtow as if they walked in wearing a suit of armor made of diamonds all the same.

Ryan was an exception to this. He wore a white button down shirt made from the silk strands of a reaper spiders web, each button a diamond stud so flawless and without imperfection an amateur jeweler might mistake it for zirconium. The overcoat that came with it was a deep brown-red tan because it was made from the skin of a render patriarch, fashioned into a stylish jacket so crisp and sturdy that it could reflect a shot from an anti-material rifle. Sewn into the interior was a polymer graphite mesh reinforced with durasteel plates treated with a special compound that made them flexible and thin without losing a single bit of its protective power. That jacket alone could survive a tank shell hitting it without so much as a scratch.

Completing this look was a set of slacks threaded from the sinew of a xenomorph queen’s spine. Or, more accurately, fourteen spines to get enough sinew for the black set of slacks held up by a belt of leather cut from the skin of a croaker lord mutant that doubled in size before turning albino and nearly killing half the mercenaries Ryan had sent out to collect its skin. Most ostentatious of all was the belt buckle, what appeared to be a yellow diamond the size of a fist and encased in durasteel buckle was actually the core shard of a super-matter crystal cut and treated to become an inert gem that still had the power of a nuclear explosive that Ryan now wore as an ornament for his groin. His boots, fashioned in the style of a frontier cowboy, were black scales taken from a dream daemon pulled out of deep maintenance. A chitin-like coating for his feet that were as armored as his jacket and complete with golden spurs capped with the same flawless diamonds his shirt buttons were.

Yet, last but not least, were his cuff-links. Boris estimated that Ryan’s suit could buy a single high production planet from just the materials alone. His cuff-links, however, could buy a star system, maybe two. Genuine blue-space crystals, not the kind a lucky scientist could get from causing an entropic decay and killing whatever bluespace mutant arrived. No, Ryan had two blue-space crystals of such flawless power that they alone could move a titan class federation warship from one end of the universe to the other in a single day before the crash happened. These gem stones could buy the entire colony, the federation, and even the colonies allies and still have money left over to purchase half the Xiang Jiang and maybe whats left of Greysons to top it off.

And Ryan wore all this like it was a cheap suit.

Boris poured himself another shot of bourbon. He never liked Ryan because of that single reason, because a man of his wealth and status would do something so ostentatious and then treat it as an after thought. Boris understood, however, that this was done on purpose. This flair was to convince those dealing with Robert that he was nothing more than a greedy materialist who had a taste for the expensive and nothing else. Boris was fairly sure that he was the only person who knew that Robert had a PhD in behavioral science and sociology in addition to his other academic awards in business. All the flair was for show, a display strictly for his business and Boris didn’t like it one bit. It wasn’t genuine to him, a veteran cop of many years who dealt with all sorts of greedy men who’d do anything for money and status.

Yet, the ogre resolved, he had to admit that Robert was perhaps the least cynical and most hopeful of any of the faction heads. Ryan founded this colony because he was an idealist, not solely for tax evasion as his enemies in the federation claimed in their impudent bid to smear the mans reputation. Ryan had this wide eyed idealist vision of a planet free of the ever increasing regulation of government interference. Ryan had won Boris over with his spiel when he first pitched this idea to him, some years ago back in Boris’ office on Mars. Ryan spoke with a breathless enthusiasm for what they could make. A world where science, industry, and markets could be beyond the necessity of violence and war. He weaved tales of the common man and the aristocrat being freed from the shackles of big government and given the equal opportunity they all deserved. He spoke of a free haven that he would create, with only the laws and regulations it needed and he wanted Boris to write said laws because, as Ryan put it, the ogre wanted to be a good man and Ryan knew he needed good men to uphold the constant battle between corruption and justice. Boris would not have agreed, in fact he was leaning towards arresting Ryan then and there for sedation as he weighed it over in his mind, until Ryan said he already convinced Ayanda to join him.

Boris could have punched him right then, because he knew he was being manipulated by that move. But he also knew that Ayanda wouldn’t have ever agreed unless he also believed in Ryan’s vision for a place where men could be as free as it was humanely possible. The starry eyed idealist, the trillionaire playboy known for moving more money between his hands in a day than most star systems made in a year, had convinced his best friend that they could make there own little colony where men could be free to do business, to live and die without selling there souls to the federations war machine. Reluctantly, Boris agreed, and the rest was history.

The ogre poured himself a third shot as he thought it over. He didn’t like Ryan, sure, but maybe he was warming to his naive idealism. The colony was far from perfect, but was the federation ever any different? At least here, he was contributing to something he could honestly feel he was apart of. Maybe that was ego, he thought, before he drank the last of his bourbon.