the_last_resort | Belloq Log

His Orion “friends” told him that this was the place to go to find the sort of person he was looking for—a person who didn’t ask too many questions when given the proper amount of ~~money~~ incentive. They even gave him a list of names and descriptions to help him find someone who would take him out into the forest to explore, and look the other way if he should happen to stumble across an archaeological find that he didn’t want to report to the Preservation authorities.

He peered through the smoky room, noted a collection of people nearby laughing and playing darts, throwing the sharp little projectiles at a picture of…no, he couldn’t tell who it was anymore. Too many holes. Carefully staying out of the path of the darts, he went to the bar and ordered a drink from the dog-faced bartender.

Niko wasn't playing darts at that moment, but he was watching his "side" play them, sat playfully up on one of the higher drinking tables and dangling his legs off the side. Somehow he managed to do that and hold his glowering look. It was a talent.

After the Andorian playing took his shot, he was in the group of a couple of Krogan and a Klingon that cheered for him. He thumped the Klingon's chest armor before he hopped down and went to get some more beer for himself.

On his way he passed Belloq. "Hey, I remember you. The Frenchman. How are you, man?"

Belloq nodded and smiled at his fellow foreigner. Although in this place, "foreign" started to take on a whole different meaning. A man with a different accent didn't feel so foreign when some of the other people had antennae, or fur, or scales.

"Very well, thank you. Planning a little expedition soon. Actually, I'd like to talk to you about it. Some friends of mine know some friends of yours and your name came up as a good man for a job. Let me buy you your drink. You can call me Dr. Belloq, or Rene if you prefer."

Or apparently came from a different universe where your city didn't just have a different name as what someone else would call it, it was a different thing, a different time altogether.

But Niko adapted well as he always did and he responded to Belloq with a bright sort of, "Sure!" Who was he to turn down a free drink. He had a seat, deciding he should probably call him Rene if he wanted to work with him, unless he turned around and insulted his intelligence.

Belloq orders a beer for himself and throws down a few emeralds to pay for both his and Niko's drinks. It isn't the sort of drink he'd normally chose, but he shudders to think of what the wine might be like in a place like this, and beer was relatively difficult to ruin for him, if only because he wasn't fond of it in the best of circumstances. But it was wet, and had alcohol in it, and that was good enough for him.

"I need a guide to take me out into the forest. Someone who won't mention it to the authorities if I should accidentally forget to report any archaeological finds. I've heard that you may be just what I'm looking for. You'll be paid, of course."

"Well, at least you don't dance around a subject." He was glad he was still sober for the business portion of the conversation, anyway. He tried to make a point of that.

"It is technically my legal job here." He leaned his elbows on the bar. "It puts it at a lot of risk. All I am good for is using a gun and driving. It's the only job I can do, and so far I haven't done that kind of business.

"It doesn't mean that I won't, but you'll have to give me something that makes it worth it."

"Time is precious. We have so very little of it on this earth and I prefer not to waste it. I heard from my green friends about your other job here, and now you about mine, too. It's much simpler this way. We can speak freely."

Belloq shifted on his bar stool so he could move a little closer to Niko, speak to him over the noise of the pub.

"Driving is all you have to do. Drive, and look the other way now and then when you're not driving. No one gets hurt and you get five hundred emeralds. If I get caught later..." He shrugged phlegmatically. "...you could just say that you were busy taking a piss behind a tree and saw nothing. I wouldn't rat you out." And his Orion benefactors have promised to pay any fines or bail fees he might incur.

"And what if it's something that's a little larger than normal." Niko knew not all the items out there were small- that skeleton for one.

But he really, really wanted to get that ship of his own. He didn't want to be stuck forever doing guide work just for the chance; he had to pay his way through flight training anyway.

There was plenty of this to go around, right?

"Alright," he turned and looked away, off at the darts game, not feeling especially proud of himself as he turned a glass in his fingers. "As long as your loyal. I'll do my part, so long as it's just driving. And if I tell you to find someone else, I won't rat you out. But if I'm out, I'm out. Agreed?"

Belloq shrugged. "Take a very long piss?" he suggested. But in truth, anything that was too big for him to carry out himself, he'd flag its location for later retrieval rather than trying to haul it out then and there.

"There may be more money in it for you if you were willing to be further involved." And help Belloq remove and secretly smuggle out larger artifacts. "But I would have to clear it with my friends."

He held out his hand to Niko, offering a handshake to seal the deal. "For now, all you need do is drive, no strings attached, you can change your mind any time. I don't rat you out and you don't rat me out. Agreed."

"I would have to clear it with mine, too. I get in trouble, they get my back. But they'd get pissed if I got in trouble by doing things without telling them."

He finally took a drink of his beer.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same, ah?" Except patrol. Oddly enough, he's liked most of the security guys he's met. They seemed to be doing their jobs just fine and weren't using it to stamp power into other people's faces.

"It's comforting, in a way. Every culture, even out here on strange planets, has crime, people who want to acquire what they don't have. It is a uniting force, a shared experience."

Greed: the universal constant.

"As Jean Jacques Rousseau said, it is the price we pay for civilization."

"There are always people that want something that they're told that they can't have for the good of everyone. And they're willing to go through everyone else to get it.

"Be wary of your bosses. Even the warriors I side with are honorable, but money is their constant. Yours, I'm not so sure of what dealings they do but you should be careful. I hear the price for pulling away can be high." He actually sounded a little bit concerned as he warned him.

Belloq smiled ruefully. "I'm used to unpleasant bosses. I've been contracted by the Nazi leadership in Germany many times in the last few years, and they are not nice people. But they pay very well. The same, I think, is true of the Orions."

He raised his glass in a sort of salute to Niko.

"But the warning is appreciated nevertheless. You're a strangely good man, Mr. Bellic, for a criminal. I like you."

"Well, shit man. Considering your other contractors. You sound like you really need to be careful. I'll ah, take it as a compliment. With a very low bar that I am required to hop over."

He actually made a sound effect and a gesture for "hopping", before he finished with another drink.

A laugh burst out from Belloq at Niko's little demonstration of low bar hopping.

"I'm glad you enjoy the benefit of my low standards," he said with the laugh still lingering on his features.

"Out of curiosity, does Germany succeed in creating a new Reich, as they plan?" He shrugged. "It doesn't matter much to me personally, one way or another. They pay well, and if they succeed I'll continue as their contractor, if they don't I'll find others to hire me. But I am curious."

"Oh, believe me, it would have mattered. The moment someone displeased them they were put in camps." He was aware, dimly, that not everyone knew about the camps. The Poles were Slavs, too, and the Third Reich had had a terrible impact on the Serbs (who were a people widely known to not let anything go).

"No, they pissed off the Americans finally, and they dropped bombs on their Japanese allies. Big bombs. Ones that wiped out entire cities and left the ground ruined. As for the Germans, they were caught with camps where they took people they didn't like, starved them and burned them, murdered their children. Some even kept tattooed skin to make pillows."

Niko raises that thick brow of his and gestures around. "You'll be lucky that they don't. If you can untangle yourself before they are caught. I have worked for some bad people, it would be better for you to run from men that throw lives away like that. Not just shoot them down but draw it out, enjoy it, draw pleasure from it."

Belloq tapped his fingers against his glass, thinking.

"There is a particular German with whom I've often worked. A Gestapo man, Major Toht he is called. He's just the sort of person you describe: brutal, barbaric, no sense of beauty or real appreciation for the artifacts I acquire for him and his masters. He's the sort of man who would smash a two-thousand year old kylix just to prove that he can destroy whatever he wants. But he is efficient, very efficient."

He took a long drink from his glass, then made a face at the bitter, hoppy taste.

"I sometimes wonder if I ever shot at him across a poppy field back in 1916. I shot at a lot of Germans back then.

"You see, that's why it doesn't matter who wins and who loses. If the Nazis conquer Europe, yes, I'm sure it will be brutal and there will be many killings. But if they lose their coming war, do the killings stop, the wars? If they lose, maybe the Germans just come back yet again; third time's the charm they say. Or maybe it's someone else next time, the Britons or the Russians who decide that their Empires need expanding. In the end, the only thing that changes is who does the killing and who is being killed. Minor details. Better then to stand outside it all as a freelancer, shifting with the changing tides."

"You say that now, but freelancer will not save you. It doesn't save anyone, in the end."

Niko shook his head. "It's not about stopping war forever. That is impossible. Changing the planet is a grand, dream. Egotistical, born from people that have always had too much and used it in wrong ways.

"But it is about principle. One man can stand for himself and say that he will not put up with this bullshit and leave it. You should consider that. Especially since these men you work for are led by a man that will kill himself when he is cornered."

"The Americans are assholes, but they will have more money. For a while, anyway. The old Italian families, too. They will always have money."

"Once again you prove yourself to be an uncommon criminal," Belloq said. He found himself reassessing his scruffy, newly-hired driver. He wasn't sure if, in the long run, this streak of morality was a good thing or a bad thing.

"The Americans have Dr. Jones." He said the name with special emphasis. "But the Italians...I like Italians. They appreciate art and history and wine there."

"Well, it's not exactly the path that I would have chosen for myself. But as you noted, the world works in a certain way, and I learned to fight from a very young age. I am to this as you are to history, to artefacts.

"I'm not an artist, I don't thrill in it. But I'm good at it. And it is, on occasion, satisfying. Especially when I can hold those that fuck with me accountable." Then, changing subjects, he hummed on the idea of Italians. His recent experiences weren't fantastic, but he could say this. "They also make some beautiful, fiery women." With sharp goddamn teeth.

Belloq grinned at Niko's last comment. "That is something I can definitely agree with. And another point in Italy's favor."

His face sobered then. "So what's the particular bullshit that was more than you were willing to put up with. The way you spoke, it didn't sound abstract."

"It isn't really a story meant for a good time. Come on, lets not talk about wars anymore. We're here, on an alien planet with all kinds of alien assholes and new problems! You might as well have fun with them." He shifted away from the unpleasant topic, elbowing Belloq enough to jostle him.

Belloq accepted the jostle and the rebuff of his question. He switched topics easily, with an agreeable nod.

"Have you see the Asari women? The rumors I've heard...very interesting."

"I have. Is pretty much true. They don't have to do very much. One of them sang to me, and I came out feeling pretty good. Not good good. But ah... satisfied, I guess. I usually don't get that kind of sleep unless I got someone next to me, you know?"

Though there was a bit of awkwardness in that, more often than not lately, it was a short and irritable sniper.

"Someone should make gramophone recordings. They could make a fortune."

He finished his drink with a final gulp and gestured to the dog-faced bartender for another.

"Having someone to share your bed with is a fine thing. It's a thing that I don't have as often as I'd like. Beds are few and far between in the places my work takes me, good company even more so."

Belloq Log

Pugsy's

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