Other ideas

<snip>
"Easy," Pornsak explained, "The box creates a vacuum if opened all the way. Anything in its path gets sucked inside and trapped. We tell him that the container is filled with drugs or guns or drugs and guns. He opens it up to take a peek and hey presto, canned squid."

"This could work." Cass said.

"Vlurka gmurg." Tanaka agreed.
</snip>

“Except...” Cass grimaced. Dick seemed like a decent enough kind of guy, so she didn’t really want to rain on his parade. “This just assumes that he’s an idiot. What happens if he says something along the lines of ‘Why don’t you open that box that’s quite obviously not a bomb, and hand me the head?”

“Schleegh neeshhh” Tanaka grumbled “Glaarph glawwwagh” his speech was getting better

“Yeah, she can be like this” Plisken agreed.

Dick was silent for a moment “How about we wrap it up and give it to him as a present?”

“It’s still a bit suspect, isn’t it?”

“Well, what’s your suggestion?” Plisken demanded “It’s easy to knock a plan down but what are your ideas?”

“Well,” Cass shrugged “it’s a choice between running away; killing the squid, or killing the cop.

“My take is that if a cop is offering a reward for offing some guy to a bunch of gullible off-worlders, he’s either bent, desperate, or both. In either case, it’s good blackmail material and we can probably go back to him to negotiate a better rate and get access to the sort of equipment we’ll need to tackle that guy and his ‘droid

“Failing that, who’s going to miss a bent cop? - If we kill him, there may be other more lucrative jobs coming from Mr. Tentacle Face, once we’ve proven we have a certain degree of moral flexibility, if you know what I mean?”

“Speak for yourself” Plisken said, hotly.

“So we kill the squid guy” Cass said, tiredly “Who, as far as we know, is just a reclusive loon with a few enemies and a penchant for brains”

“He eats brains” Dick said “He’s got to be evil, right?”

“Or just someone without teeth?”

“So if a quantum reality box isn’t going to work, how do we kill him?”

“Sneak back and collapse his cave with a load of explosives?”

Dick was beginning to have a few reservations about the sort of person that he had rescued “And where are we going to get the explosives from?”

“The bent cop?” Cass said “I’m still up for killing him. There’ll be less of an evidence trail, and people will just assume he got what he deserved”

“I don’t know” Plisken shook his head ”I don’t like this”

“Oh, quit bellyaching - We’ve done worse”

“Like what?”

“Well... I...” Cass frowned “I’ve done worse!”

“How does that not surprise me?” Belvedyr said, acidly.

“Yeah, fine” Cass snapped “Those are my suggestions. Has anyone got any better ideas?”


<tag>
Just a few other ideas to play with - anyone got any others, or shall we go with the quantum box?
</tag>