Full Version: The Samaritan
I hope it's all right to post this here. It is a short piece of fiction I wrote for a character introduction. Please enjoy and feel free to comment, positive or negative.
“You shoulda seen The Samaritan last night, Spanner. He was amazing!”
The dwarf rigger looked up at his ork friend. “Up to his usual tricks?”
“You bet,” Razz replied then paused to take a drink. The ork slammed an empty beer glass down on the bar and loudly demanded another as was his usual manner. Then he turned back to his diminutive partner. “Get this, we had Zoot open a fifteen minute window in their security, so Big C dropped us on the roof and we got in no problem. It was way late so we got down to the computer room without seeing any of the night-shift guards. I tell ya man, they were running a skeleton crew or something, cuz there was like no one there.” The bartender arrived with another glass for Razz. The ork nodded his thanks and began to guzzle it, his story aborted for the moment.
“So it was just you and Samaritan on the inside?” Spanner asked between sips of his own gin and tonic.
Razz set down his now half-full beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, just him and me. So we wuz sittin in the computer room, I was running a detect life spell to keep anybody from sneaking up on us and Samaritan was loading Zoot’s program into the mainframe so we could get the info we needed to get paid, y’know. Anyway, our fifteen minutes of freedom was about half gone when the program cheeses out on us. I mean it totally fragged-up.”
Spanner was really interested now. He’d heard hundreds of run stories in his time, told hundreds too. If there was one thing he’d learned from them, it was that runs that got messed up were the most interesting ones. “What’d you do, mate. Did you have to abort?”
“No way man,” Razz replied after a gulp of beer. “I got a little nervous, you know. I don’t know drek about computers and when one starts making the noises that thing did, I just want to freak out, but Samaritan was all frosty. He looks at me and says, ‘Don’t worry, Zoot told me what to do if this happens.’ So I’m watchin him and he pulls out this big freaking knife and jams it into the freaking computer.”
“He stuck a knife into the mainframe?”
“Yeah man, he did, and I just about died from the shock. I’m thinking, drek, Samaritan just lost it and I ain’t gonna get paid, right? Then he pushes the knife handle down and pops off the access panel. And I say, ‘Damn, Samaritan you coulda told me that’s all you were doing.’ And that dickhead just gives me that little smile of his then goes back to rootin around inside the computer.”
Spanner smirked; he’d seen the Samaritan’s “little smile” more than a few times himself. Sometimes that guy had a pretty sick sense of humor. “So he was going after the hardware?”
“Yeah. That fragger Zoot told him that if the program didn’t work, then we could grab the hard drive and get the info out of it manually. He just wanted to see if his new mojo could melt corporate IC or not.” The ork scowled. “Those drekheads coulda told me though, saved me a lotta grief. Anyhow, Samaritan finds the module we need and yanks it out, and the drek hits the fan.”
“It was rigged?”
“Yeah, man. As soon as he pulled it out, bunch of alarms started going off. So we hightail it outta there, but as soon as we get back to the stairwell to go back to the roof, a friggin drone is waiting for us and starts spitting at us with its loogie gun. One shot skims my side and sticks my arm to my chest, but I manage to put up a bullet barrier before it can hit us with any more.”
“It was in the stairwell?” Spanner asked. As a rigger he was always happy to hear about drones and vehicles.
“Yeah, hanging from a fragging track that ran around the outside wall off the stairwell. We’d seen it on the way down, but couldn’t figure out what it was for, so we forgot about it. So...uh, where was I?”
“You’d just put up a magical barrier to block the glue gun.”
“Oh yeah,” the ork said. “The beer must be getting to me. So the drone couldn’t hit us anymore, but we couldn’t go up the stairs either, so we had to go down. Damn man, I’ve never done fifteen stories worth of steps so fast in my life. We didn’t see any more drones, but we ran into a few guards on like the fifth floor, but they must not be gettin paid very much, cuz they got out of our way real fast after the Samaritan fired a couple smartgun bursts over their heads. We busted out the stairway into the parking garage at the exact same time their high threat response team showed up.”
“Damn,” Spanner whistled.
“Damn straight, damn,” Razz agreed. “So they pile out of their van and start blazin away at us. I thought we were toast right there. I was feelin a little drained from my spell casting and I knew I couldn’t throw up a barrier that would block that much firepower, but Samaritan tackled me and got us both out of the way behind somebody’s Americar.” Another pause for beer, then Razz continued. “I tell you chummer; those boys at ARS Security are a bunch of trigger happy hoop-holes. No demand to surrender or nothing, they just turned that car into Swiss cheese. I took a chance and popped my head up long enough to drop a guy with a mana bolt, but then the Samaritan pulled me back down, said he spotted a way out. So we wait a couple more seconds and the rate of bad-guy fire drops off as like half of them start running out of ammo. Them we pop up and each burn off a clip in their general direction while we run for the exit.”
“Did you get any of the fraggers?”
The ork shook his head, “Couldn’t tell, man. I was running so fast the other way, just firing my TMP over my shoulder. So me and Samaritan hit the emergency exit he saw and we bust out into the alley behind the building. I look and down at the end I can see Big C’s van, he had remoted it over to the building as a back-up incase we had to go out the bottom floor instead of the roof. Good thing him and the Samaritan are all about back-up plans.”
Spanner snorted, “I’m surprised that old van was able to make it more than a block.”
“Yeah I know, but that piece of drek van looked like a fraggin limo to me, it was my sweet ticket outta there. So we both tear hoop down the alley cuz we know that the drekheads with the guns are right behind us and I am so focused on getting to the van that I almost trip over a homeless guy.”
Spanner laughed, “What was he doing there?”
“I dunno, man. I ain’t homeless. He musta been sleeping there or something. Anyway if the Samaritan hadn’t caught me I woulda done a nice face plant and the fraggers woulda put a few bullets in my hoop. So we keep going and it’s just about this time that bullets start chasing us, chewing up the ground at our feet and flyin past our heads. I got to the van first and dove in the sliding door on the side and I look around and the Samaritan ain’t with me. I find him, but I think I’m seein things cuz he’s runnin back the way we came.”
“Back down the alley?” the dwarf asked with alarm.
“Hell yeah,” Razz replied. “I still can’t believe it, but that dumb keeb was running back down the alley towards the bunch of idiots who’d been trying to kill us for the past coupla minutes. So I watch him and he’s ziggin and zaggin and he ain’t getting hit. He fires back at ‘em with his Ingram, but it only spits out five or six rounds because he ain’t had time to reload it. So he drops it and lets it hang by its strap and pulls out his Deputy and starts shooting at them with that. Them he stops running and bends over. I think he got hit, but then he stands back up and he’s holdin something.”
“Oh, did he drop the computer piece?”
“No, man. He had that in a bag on his belt, he didn’t lose it. He was holdin something a lot bigger.”
“Well what was it?” Spanner was on the edge of his barstool.
“It was the fraggin homeless guy. Apparently he’d gotten up after I tripped over his legs and he got himself shot by the ARS drekheads.”
“Wait,” Spanner said. He couldn’t believe it. “I know the Samaritan’s a good guy and all, always giving money to poor people and helping out at that soup kitchen in the barrens, but you’re telling me he took on a pissed-off, trigger happy HTR team by himself, just to pull a homeless fragger out of that alley?”
Razz raised his hands and adopted a solemn expression. “I swear on my life that’s what happened, man. The Samaritan ran back into a fraggin wall of bullets and grabbed this guy, then carried him back out and threw him in the van and made Big C drive us to the nearest clinic to get the guy patched up before we did anything else.”
“And the Samaritan didn’t get hurt?”
“Not a fraggin scratch. His jacket even had a few holes in it, and there were some powder burns on his skin, but nothing a couple band-aids and shower wouldn’t take care of.”
“That’s pretty fraggin unbelievable,” Spanner said in awe.
“Yeah, no drek, chummer. And Samaritan even paid the homeless guy’s hospital bill. He says that when the old guy gets better he’s gonna try to get him into some kind of recovery program they have down at the place he volunteers at.”
“Fraggin heart of gold.”
“You said it man,” Razz agreed as he finally finished his beer. “I guess that’s why we call him the Samaritan.”
The dwarf rigger looked up at his ork friend. “Up to his usual tricks?”
“You bet,” Razz replied then paused to take a drink. The ork slammed an empty beer glass down on the bar and loudly demanded another as was his usual manner. Then he turned back to his diminutive partner. “Get this, we had Zoot open a fifteen minute window in their security, so Big C dropped us on the roof and we got in no problem. It was way late so we got down to the computer room without seeing any of the night-shift guards. I tell ya man, they were running a skeleton crew or something, cuz there was like no one there.” The bartender arrived with another glass for Razz. The ork nodded his thanks and began to guzzle it, his story aborted for the moment.
“So it was just you and Samaritan on the inside?” Spanner asked between sips of his own gin and tonic.
Razz set down his now half-full beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, just him and me. So we wuz sittin in the computer room, I was running a detect life spell to keep anybody from sneaking up on us and Samaritan was loading Zoot’s program into the mainframe so we could get the info we needed to get paid, y’know. Anyway, our fifteen minutes of freedom was about half gone when the program cheeses out on us. I mean it totally fragged-up.”
Spanner was really interested now. He’d heard hundreds of run stories in his time, told hundreds too. If there was one thing he’d learned from them, it was that runs that got messed up were the most interesting ones. “What’d you do, mate. Did you have to abort?”
“No way man,” Razz replied after a gulp of beer. “I got a little nervous, you know. I don’t know drek about computers and when one starts making the noises that thing did, I just want to freak out, but Samaritan was all frosty. He looks at me and says, ‘Don’t worry, Zoot told me what to do if this happens.’ So I’m watchin him and he pulls out this big freaking knife and jams it into the freaking computer.”
“He stuck a knife into the mainframe?”
“Yeah man, he did, and I just about died from the shock. I’m thinking, drek, Samaritan just lost it and I ain’t gonna get paid, right? Then he pushes the knife handle down and pops off the access panel. And I say, ‘Damn, Samaritan you coulda told me that’s all you were doing.’ And that dickhead just gives me that little smile of his then goes back to rootin around inside the computer.”
Spanner smirked; he’d seen the Samaritan’s “little smile” more than a few times himself. Sometimes that guy had a pretty sick sense of humor. “So he was going after the hardware?”
“Yeah. That fragger Zoot told him that if the program didn’t work, then we could grab the hard drive and get the info out of it manually. He just wanted to see if his new mojo could melt corporate IC or not.” The ork scowled. “Those drekheads coulda told me though, saved me a lotta grief. Anyhow, Samaritan finds the module we need and yanks it out, and the drek hits the fan.”
“It was rigged?”
“Yeah, man. As soon as he pulled it out, bunch of alarms started going off. So we hightail it outta there, but as soon as we get back to the stairwell to go back to the roof, a friggin drone is waiting for us and starts spitting at us with its loogie gun. One shot skims my side and sticks my arm to my chest, but I manage to put up a bullet barrier before it can hit us with any more.”
“It was in the stairwell?” Spanner asked. As a rigger he was always happy to hear about drones and vehicles.
“Yeah, hanging from a fragging track that ran around the outside wall off the stairwell. We’d seen it on the way down, but couldn’t figure out what it was for, so we forgot about it. So...uh, where was I?”
“You’d just put up a magical barrier to block the glue gun.”
“Oh yeah,” the ork said. “The beer must be getting to me. So the drone couldn’t hit us anymore, but we couldn’t go up the stairs either, so we had to go down. Damn man, I’ve never done fifteen stories worth of steps so fast in my life. We didn’t see any more drones, but we ran into a few guards on like the fifth floor, but they must not be gettin paid very much, cuz they got out of our way real fast after the Samaritan fired a couple smartgun bursts over their heads. We busted out the stairway into the parking garage at the exact same time their high threat response team showed up.”
“Damn,” Spanner whistled.
“Damn straight, damn,” Razz agreed. “So they pile out of their van and start blazin away at us. I thought we were toast right there. I was feelin a little drained from my spell casting and I knew I couldn’t throw up a barrier that would block that much firepower, but Samaritan tackled me and got us both out of the way behind somebody’s Americar.” Another pause for beer, then Razz continued. “I tell you chummer; those boys at ARS Security are a bunch of trigger happy hoop-holes. No demand to surrender or nothing, they just turned that car into Swiss cheese. I took a chance and popped my head up long enough to drop a guy with a mana bolt, but then the Samaritan pulled me back down, said he spotted a way out. So we wait a couple more seconds and the rate of bad-guy fire drops off as like half of them start running out of ammo. Them we pop up and each burn off a clip in their general direction while we run for the exit.”
“Did you get any of the fraggers?”
The ork shook his head, “Couldn’t tell, man. I was running so fast the other way, just firing my TMP over my shoulder. So me and Samaritan hit the emergency exit he saw and we bust out into the alley behind the building. I look and down at the end I can see Big C’s van, he had remoted it over to the building as a back-up incase we had to go out the bottom floor instead of the roof. Good thing him and the Samaritan are all about back-up plans.”
Spanner snorted, “I’m surprised that old van was able to make it more than a block.”
“Yeah I know, but that piece of drek van looked like a fraggin limo to me, it was my sweet ticket outta there. So we both tear hoop down the alley cuz we know that the drekheads with the guns are right behind us and I am so focused on getting to the van that I almost trip over a homeless guy.”
Spanner laughed, “What was he doing there?”
“I dunno, man. I ain’t homeless. He musta been sleeping there or something. Anyway if the Samaritan hadn’t caught me I woulda done a nice face plant and the fraggers woulda put a few bullets in my hoop. So we keep going and it’s just about this time that bullets start chasing us, chewing up the ground at our feet and flyin past our heads. I got to the van first and dove in the sliding door on the side and I look around and the Samaritan ain’t with me. I find him, but I think I’m seein things cuz he’s runnin back the way we came.”
“Back down the alley?” the dwarf asked with alarm.
“Hell yeah,” Razz replied. “I still can’t believe it, but that dumb keeb was running back down the alley towards the bunch of idiots who’d been trying to kill us for the past coupla minutes. So I watch him and he’s ziggin and zaggin and he ain’t getting hit. He fires back at ‘em with his Ingram, but it only spits out five or six rounds because he ain’t had time to reload it. So he drops it and lets it hang by its strap and pulls out his Deputy and starts shooting at them with that. Them he stops running and bends over. I think he got hit, but then he stands back up and he’s holdin something.”
“Oh, did he drop the computer piece?”
“No, man. He had that in a bag on his belt, he didn’t lose it. He was holdin something a lot bigger.”
“Well what was it?” Spanner was on the edge of his barstool.
“It was the fraggin homeless guy. Apparently he’d gotten up after I tripped over his legs and he got himself shot by the ARS drekheads.”
“Wait,” Spanner said. He couldn’t believe it. “I know the Samaritan’s a good guy and all, always giving money to poor people and helping out at that soup kitchen in the barrens, but you’re telling me he took on a pissed-off, trigger happy HTR team by himself, just to pull a homeless fragger out of that alley?”
Razz raised his hands and adopted a solemn expression. “I swear on my life that’s what happened, man. The Samaritan ran back into a fraggin wall of bullets and grabbed this guy, then carried him back out and threw him in the van and made Big C drive us to the nearest clinic to get the guy patched up before we did anything else.”
“And the Samaritan didn’t get hurt?”
“Not a fraggin scratch. His jacket even had a few holes in it, and there were some powder burns on his skin, but nothing a couple band-aids and shower wouldn’t take care of.”
“That’s pretty fraggin unbelievable,” Spanner said in awe.
“Yeah, no drek, chummer. And Samaritan even paid the homeless guy’s hospital bill. He says that when the old guy gets better he’s gonna try to get him into some kind of recovery program they have down at the place he volunteers at.”
“Fraggin heart of gold.”
“You said it man,” Razz agreed as he finally finished his beer. “I guess that’s why we call him the Samaritan.”
No comments at all? C'mon guys. At least tell me if you thought it was any good or not.
It was pretty well written. 
Line breaks would've been nice, and as far as introductions go, it lays out the character pretty well.
Ok guys, thanks. And I'll work on the line breaks next time I post something.
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