Chapter 377 - Far Future Ch. 87 – The Offer They Couldn’t Refuse (1/2)

-Hi, Mom!-

#5, who often helped with Marktell stuff, looked over at the voice as I was carving and shooting my way through a company of Corrupted PG from someplace called Orkrivar, if the defaced colors and insignia were a proper guide. So far, I had seen representatives from at least a hundred different worlds in this Warpzone, definitely widening my horizons. The historians back home were having a tizzy trying to figure where they were all from.

We didn't stop and ask them, of course.

Blinkblinkblinkblink. Four Mark Nexii winked up in the Marktell. Of course, I recognized the sources: Cecilia, Bruna, Mahsh, and Trista Rantha. The Bad Girls. They had just synched up with one of my Marked who worked Downspire as a Courier.

The four of them were born with Talents that led them unequivocally towards the darker side of human nature. Knowing the Talents, and being quite unafraid of using them, they promptly went off to make Good use of them.

Cecilia was The Godmother, giving her a flat bonus to social interactions of all kinds with people with Evil mindsets. In short, crooks, criminals, and lawbreakers respected her without knowing why.

Bruna was a Thug, which meant a slender high-G nymphal had an imposing and brutal physical presence, which was rather hilarious. Well, it did mean a Hag was about to go off on you, and incipient violence got its own form of respect in the Underspire.

Mahsh was a Viper, which meant she lied with alacrity, was a coldblooded killer, and had a naturally sinister air which fit in well with that crowd.

Trista was a Femme Fatale, the seductive little piece of killer poison you'd die to put your hands on, unable to help yourself.

My Inigo self kept in partial contact with them through mutually rendered services, while most of their communication was through coded stuff on Boole social media, keeping any connections to other Ranthas to a minimum. Nymphals were far from unknown in the line of work they were in, so Ranthas didn't stand out as long as they chose to develop some cleavage... and they were certainly going to do that.

Their target had been the Themis, the all-female mafia that basically ran most facets of the entertainment industry in Underspire. Festhalls, clubs, prostitution, music, videos, dancing, exercise halls and massage parlors, most of the better eateries, and a good chunk of the recreational drug trade were all run by the Themis, who were Amazonian in attitude and appearance, with a suitably goth punk rocker leather cybertech vibe thrown on top of them. They were 2-3 grav rated, the 3g's being noticeably taller and brawnier than the 2g's.

The Themis defended their markets and territory savagely and unrelentingly against all comers who wanted the easy money and way to wash profits. While basically all the other mafia families wanted to snatch pieces of their pie, they seemed to have an estrogen/testosterone antipathy with the Skraelings and their manly-man physical culture, while possessing a rather terrifying knack to reach right into the heart of all the other mafias and influence key people at just the right times. They deftly exploited the sex trade and systems of favors and grudges-owed existing among the families, and topped it off with unstinting violence whenever their territory was infringed upon. They'd happily execute a whole crew of hot performers, or a brothel of high-end prostitutes, before allowing them to be taken over by another family.

This was mixed with the fact that the Themis entertainers were often the only ones allowed to perform or work in the territories of the other mafias, and those custom crews trained inside the other Houses were rarely allowed into those of their rivals... and if they went public, found themselves fighting head-on with the Themis behemoths. To say the competition was bloody was no misnomer whatsoever. A whole lot of bright young performers backed by the other Houses were unceremoniously fed into the soylent vats all the time, their musical and acting careers quite literally cut short.

There were more than a few Ranthas who'd gone into the entertainment arena, and were enjoying the very cutthroat reality of it, while their opponents found that combat-happy Hags with angelic voices made for nasty up-and-coming stars. Nymphals were all over in that industry, so they blended right in without a problem.

Instead of going in as performers, the Bad Girls went in as gangsters, forming a crew, getting themselves hired, and then making an explosive splash, in terms of blood and fire and scattered body parts. The Themis were about the most open-minded of the mafias about recruiting outsiders, especially if they were attractive women with bloody hands and lethal mindsets, and glommed onto the four sisters quickly.

I was aware that within three months, Cecilia was running a club, and within a year, a territory, all by serendipitous removals of other likely candidates and excessively successful performances against a broad array of those responsible for such actions. She took control of affairs and removed opponents and rivals by means fair and foul, overt and covert, and survived attempted removals by her superiors with aplomb and the sudden absences of those superiors. Her ambition was right out there, her ability was totally up to it, and her willingness to slaughter to achieve it could make even hardened mobsters take pause.

And now, the Bad Girls had connected their Markspaces to mine. That meant they'd done achieved what they meant to, and in doing so had made Ten and were unafraid of our Curse Resonance.

They weren't the first to achieve Ten, as the Warpzone was highly conductive to dramatically increased Karmic accrual, but seeing as they hadn't been in the Warpzone and had hit the goal, it was still damn impressive.

I /shook my head. -Do I even want to know, my little darlings?- I /asked them, which earned me some dry /laughter in response from all of them.

-We called up to invite you down to a meeting here with Duresia Miafona,- Cecilia /replied with that cold, smug, aristocratic dagger-in-the-smile manner that just came naturally to her.

I ran that through multiple memories, mostly Inigo's, who stole from and for a bunch of those people all the time. -She's one of the Family Matriarchs, right? Why would she want to speak with me?- I /asked curiously.

-Oh, she doesn't. The rest of the Matriarchs, namely Bruna, Mahsh, Trista, and myself, are inviting you down to meet her and take control of the family.-

I thought about all the implications of that. -Were they as rotten at the top as you expected?-

-One outright Amourean eternally reborn into the body of a new member of her bloodline on death. Two Telepath bodyhoppers who could jump into Themis bodies without side effects. One cyberpath using transfer protocols for the same. And one Possessed Dop who ate and replaced all her successors for the last thousand years. That one is yours, by the way,- Cecilia /answered with icy surety.

Ah ha. -And you've got control of their Vats.-

-We do. Would Mother like to come and upgrade the Themis bloodlines?- Trista broke in with a simpering tone.

-I think she would!- I /admitted. -Give me a couple hours. I'm a few thousand miles into the Zone, and have to cross several boundaries as I chain-teleport out.- I'd set concealed Foci at all such steps, vastly extending Chalice's range as we hopped from one to the next, but some of the boundary zones were several miles across, and even with the Interdicted 'tunnel' Briggs and I had established, I wasn't going to try and Teleport past them.

-She's waiting for you,- Cecilia's cold smile /replied, and the active Markdoors went quiet.

I could see beyond them into the Markspaces beyond, and the hundreds of mostly women and some young men who the Bad Girls had recruited, young and ambitious and wanting more out of life than the powers-that-be had been willing to give them. A good chunk were young Themis vatters, completely blown away by the mental presences of the girls, and naturally just as ambitious as the other Themis whose genetics they were derived from.

Probably dominated by the original bloodlines of the four Matriarchs. I smiled coldly as I cut out the cable-tendons of a Walker, and Beat crashed in on the other leg and bent it savagely sideways. All the gyroscopes in the world weren't going to help it keep its balance, and it crashed to the ground, where Chalice and Beat cut off its weapon-arms, hit opposite sides of its pilot-pod to pop off the bubble, and when the tentacle-sprouting pilot screamed at us with feelers for eyes, three of my Tails put spikes in his skull, throat, and heart to shut that mess up.