“I guess I wasn’t out that long, then,” I said. Even in the Sewer, an empty marshal’s station would get noticed.
“No.”
“Why didn’t you kill me? Roles reversed, I would have done for you.”
The look she gave me was pure hatred. Like I was a cockroach that had just crawled into her dead mother’s mouth as she lay in the coffin.
“I’m sure you would. Maybe I’ll kill you anyway.”
I laughed again. “A true-bluer like you? There’s no justice in cold-blooded murder.”
“You should know.”
I let her have her moment of smug satisfaction. “But anyway—let me go and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“So you can kill me? Fat chance.”
“Kill you? I have no intention of killing you. I’m here to fix a problem. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh.”
I took a moment to collect my thoughts. Darrow’s perspective on the puzzle fell into place fast. The top assassin in SynCorp steps into the Sewer asking after Deputy Marshal Glau Darrow, who’s bucked the Company’s directive to back off Blalock. In her mind, I was here to fix a problem all right: her.
“You think I’m here for you.”
“I don’t think anything,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m here for Blalock.” I could have played coy, but Darrow struck me as too sharp to buy whatever I’d come up with. “We’re here for the same reason, really.”
She paused to consider. “If you’re here, it’s because Tony Taulke wants Blalock dead. I’m here to take him in for corporate espionage. Those aren’t the same reason.”
“You were told to stand down.”
That made her eyes drop for half a heartbeat. They came back up with flames in them.
“I’m so tired of that crap,” she said. “We’re sworn to uphold the law—”
“Corporate law.” Watch it, Fischer. Stay out of the pulpit.
“Yes, corporate law!” Darrow started pacing. “And half the time, just like with Blalock, we’re denied our duty because Tony Taulke or some other faction leader decides they’re above the law!”
“Look, kid,” I said, “you know how this plays out. You’re already in seven kinds of trouble, but the situation’s still salvageable. I might even be able to help you out of the jam you’re in.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why would you help me?”
Good question. Darrow was nothing to me except a potential headache with Tony. But, cold-cocking notwithstanding, I liked her grit. She was bucking her orders to bring in a criminal just for the sake of serving the law. We might walk opposite sides of that legal street, but I could admire her dedication to duty. We were more alike than she’d cop to. No pun intended.
“Young love sets my heart aflutter,” I said by way of explanation.
Her forehead wrinkled as she translated. “Amin? You think I’m in love with Amin?”
“I think he’s in love with you. Your little crusade is gonna get him killed. You too.”
“Crusade? I’m doing my job!”
I was tempted to shout. Tempted to rail at the stupidity of Darrow’s idealism. But I really was starting to like her, maybe because she was such an idealist. Quietly, without venom, I said, “Your job is what the Company tells you it is.”
“My job is to enforce the law.”
“SynCorp is the law!”
Darrow’s eyes flared again, but her mouth shut up.
“There’s more going on here than you know,” I continued. “Blalock will never be taken alive. Whether it’s me or someone else that does him, he’ll get done. That’s why Tony sent the marshals home—to make sure Blalock is taken care of permanently.”
“What is it?” She sounded almost desperate to know. “What is going on?” Like knowing might somehow justify—literally—why she couldn’t do her job. Like knowing would give her permission to let Blalock get spaced, to turn a blind eye.
“Can’t tell you that,” I said. “It’d only make you more of a target than you already are.”
Darrow advanced, ready to get the story out of me one way or the other. Then, angry voices filtered in from outside. One of them was Mustafar’s. He was doing his I’m-the-marshal-you’re-looking-for bit.
I could tell in an instant it wouldn’t be enough.
“Cut my feet free,” I growled. “Now.”
She looked from me to my weapons on the table behind her, then toward the doorway and the ruckus outside. Mustafar’s defiance had begun to lose its authority. And from the sound of it, he was outnumbered.
“Darrow!”
But she was already moving for the door, drawing her stunner. With her off-hand, without looking back, she snagged my knife from the table and shot it in my direction. I ducked as it thunked into the wall behind me.
Before her shadow left the room I could hear the sharp, potent punk! punk! punk! of stunner fire outside. Those marshals were both as good as dead. I didn’t know who the loudmouths were, but Mustafar must’ve drawn on them like he drew on me, and they’d responded in kind.
I yanked the knife from the wall and cut the rope binding my feet. As I levered myself up, my ankles screamed in protest. I’d been sitting too long. Fuck being over fifty.
I flicked the knife back under my wrist, spring loaded. Blood began to fill my feet again, and I loped to the table. I filled both hands, one with my stunner and the other with the .38. I had no intention of getting involved, not really, and maybe I could just sit here and wait it out and steal away after the marshals were dead.
Punk! punk! punk!
Punk! punk!
But if I waited and the new players weren’t friends, they’d be after me next. With all that shooting outside, I figured there must be at least a handful of them. Not good odds when you’re cornered in a bare room with no cover. If I joined Darrow and Mustafar, I’d at least have them on my side. The enemy of my enemy and all that. Better odds.
Killing the lights inside the little room, I knelt beside the doorway and darted my eyes around the corner to get my bearings. I was across the dark alleyway from Mustafar’s outpost in the same alcove Darrow must have jumped me from earlier. I spotted her behind a long, thin dumpster farther up the narrow alley. She was pinned down by fire coming from the near side. There was no sign of Mustafar.
Two of the shooters advancing on Darrow were crouched and moving from trash can to doorway. A third semi-strode down the middle of the alleyway like an Old West gunslinger.
Idiot.
I could flank them. They’d never see me coming, like I hadn’t seen Darrow. Or, I reminded myself, I could just melt into the wall and go my own way.
“Firing on members of the Marshals Service is a capital crime! Cease and desist and throw down your weapons!”
It was Darrow reading from the marshal’s manual again. I wonder if she really thought they’d obey her order or if she was just quoting herself some bravery.
Punk! punk! punk!
Their answer kept Darrow’s head down. To drive the point home, a fourth shooter engaged from the marshal’s booth. So, these guys weren’t dicking around. Mustafar must be dead. In a few seconds, one of the three gunslingers would draw a bead on Darrow. The closer they got to finishing that job, the clearer they made my escape route.
Sorry, Darrow. You were a good kid. At least she’d die true to the principles she’d lived by.
I edged out of the doorway, my knees joining my ankles’ chorus of complaints. I crept along the wall, Darrow’s defiance hurling the scripture of the law like bullets at the bad guys behind me. But as I passed the fourth shooter, the one in the booth, I finally registered something. Like the three moving in on Darrow, he was wearing corporate blue coveralls, the kind the factory workers on Mars wear. But we weren’t on Mars.
Punk! punk!
Those coveralls also happened to be the de facto uniform of the Resistance, since most of the movement’s Ghost
s came from the worker class. Why were they in Darkside shooting at—make that, killing—marshals at the same time the shit with Erkennen was going down?
I needed to know the answer to that question. Coincidence is too coincidental for my tastes.
I turned first on the one in the booth. He still hadn’t seen me and was being cavalier about his cover. My stunner showed him the virtue of awareness. The others were too distracted by their target to notice me killing their buddy.
Punk! punk!
Punk! punk! punk!
Only, their buddy in the booth wasn’t dead. I’d shot him point-blank and all it did was make him mad. My stunner had fired but to no effect.
Fuck! Never trust new tech!
He turned on me, drawing a bead.
Good thing I had my .38 in my other hand. The slug took him high in the chest, knocking him off his feet. If I hadn’t been in a hurry, I’d have kissed my old reliable.
The report from my pistol got the attention of the other three. Before the first mook turned, I shot him in the back. The second had spun and crouched, and I flattened on my stomach in the muck. Her stunner fired fine but missed its mark. My .38 didn’t. I watched Darrow take aim at the third guy and shoot him point-blank. Like the one in the booth, he seemed to shrug it off and turned on her. I did for him like the others, splitting his spine with a little old-fashioned lead.
As the three dead bodies settled into the sludge, silence was a strange sound after all that killing. Darrow darted forward from her hiding place, running past me.
“You’re welcome,” I said to her wind.
The Alliance
“Amin!”
I could hear the anguish in her voice. I left her to it. I was more interested in the corpses at my feet anyway and why my stunner had misfired.
Blood from the three assassins leaked bright red into the gray muck. I kicked each in a kidney to make sure they were all good and dead. Not a grunt among them.
I noticed some of the resident Sewer rats poking their heads out of their holes. A few of them were pointing feeders our way. The Real Story gives those high-definition cameras away to anyone who wants one. They keep the show’s insatiable video feed streaming 24/7. It wouldn’t do to have my face all over the Basement, so I turned my back on the locals and knelt to get a closer look at the deaders.
They wore blue coveralls, all right. Two men, one woman. Nothing particularly remarkable about them, except … I picked up a weapon caked in gray shit and turned it over. A stunner, a Mark II by the looks of it. The Mark IIs were still pre-market. No one was supposed to have them. I was still carrying the Mark I, and reluctantly at that. But this new model—no one was supposed to have these yet. Hell I didn’t even have one.
That made me curiouser. I unzipped one of the fellow’s coveralls. Underneath, he was wearing finer sweat catchers than a Martian factory worker could afford. I looked at his shoes. Same story. These guys weren’t displaced Resistance types a long way from home. These guys—and one gal—were professionals.
“Mustafar’s dead,” Darrow said behind me. I could tell by her voice that her eyes were getting wet. “And for what? Why?”
That same desperate need-to-know from earlier. I glanced sideways over my shoulder. “These guys weren’t Ghosts.” I wrinkled a lip at the irony.
There was a pause. “Why do you say that?”
“Too well dressed. Too well armed. See those pieces?” I gestured at the stunners laying in the sludge. “Pre-market. Ghosts use the cast-off weapons they can scrounge from reclamation. No way they could get their hands on pre-market tech like this. I doubt these are even on the black market yet.”
“Maybe a patron—”
“He buy them silk undies too? And these coveralls—they’re thicker than you’d expect for factory grunts moonlighting as terrorists. A heavier weave. Dyed to look like Martian worker duds, but more than that.” Something tickled the back of my brain. Multiple things, actually, like puzzle pieces trying to fit together.
Darrow peered over my shoulder. “I see what you mean.” The no-nonsense marshal had displaced the grieving woman in her voice. “What’s that?”
“What?”
She pointed at the neck of the woman lying next to the man I’d unzipped. I reached over and pulled the gal’s collar down to get a better look. “Huh.” Those puzzle pieces seemed magnetized. They wanted to come together, but they weren’t quite ready to yet.
“Huh what…”
“That’s the Greek letter Epsilon.”
Darrow stared at me.
“You should read more, Marshal,” I smirked. “Epsilon is the Erkennen brand. All their operatives wear it tattooed to a body part. It’s like their secret handshake.” These assassins were on Ra’uf Erkennen’s payroll. That explained how they had access to the Mark IIs, since the Erkennens supplied the Company’s tech.
Darrow’s eyes dawned. “You mean the Erkennen Faction sent a hit squad—”
“—to kill you. Yeah.” I stopped there. She could do the rest herself.
“To keep me from tracking down Blalock. Because I wouldn’t give up.”
“Dressed like Ghosts. So any video that made it to the Basement,” I said, nodding to the evermore curious rats in their doorways, “would make it look like the Resistance had hit the marshal’s station. Two birds, one stone. The Erkennens stop you from messing in their business and the Resistance gets blamed, which makes SynCorp the victim. It’s a headliner of a news story, tailor-made for CorpNet.”
I stood and cursed my cracking knees. The Erkennens had gone to a lot of trouble to shut down Darrow and her puppy-dog lover. It didn’t quite square with the risk they’d taken to do it.
Sticking the Mark II in a coat pocket, I gave her a minute to think it all over while I made the rounds to pick up the others’ weapons. They wouldn’t be needing them anymore, and I could resell them for a decent price after all this was over. Hell, maybe I’d start the black market for the Mark IIs.
“Amin’s dead.”
“Yeah,” I said, not unkindly. I hate conversation as a rule. Sometimes I hate the silence more.
“Because of me.”
And sometimes, silence is exactly what’s called for.
“They failed,” Darrow said.
“Failed? Well, yeah. You’re still alive.” Which reminded me … I looked around and, other than the eyes peering around corners, the corridor was empty. “The Service will send officers soon from the up-top. The first videos have probably already hit the Basement. Wheels are in motion here, Darrow. We need to beat feet. The marshals that come now won’t be your friends.”
“They failed,” she said as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said, “because I’m going after Blalock anyway.” Darrow glanced back at the booth. I could see Mustafar’s marshal-booted feet around the lip of the doorway, heels up. “Amin’s death has to mean something.”
“Actually, it doesn’t,” I said. When she turned her flamers on me again, I tried not to feel bad. “Hell, we don’t even know where Blalock is.”
“I do.” Darrow tossed it out like it wasn’t the million-dollar answer to my prayers that it was.
I pulled her off to the side of the corridor, hopefully out of earshot of any expensive sound-catching equipment being aimed our way by the Basement trolls. “You know where Blalock is?” I whispered. That would certainly explain why the Erkennens had sent the hit squad dressed like Ghosts. They’d do anything to keep their little secret till they were ready to spring their trap on Tony.
“Yeah,” she said, regaining some of her marshal moxie. “I know exactly where he is. And I’m not telling you shit, Fischer. You go your way. I’ll go mine.” She started to pull away and I stopped her. I got her stunner stuck in my gut for my trouble. Somehow, despite what I’d just seen in the shootout, I knew hers would work on me. That’s just my goddamned luck.
“Hold up there, Marshal. Hear me out.”
“Make it fast. You said yourself, we’re about to
have more company. And I have business to attend to.”
“You need my help. Not only do you have the Erkennens gunning for you, but your own Service is out to rein you in.”
“And it smells like shit down here. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Point is—gunning for Blalock on your own ends just one way: you join Mustafar, forever embracing in the cold arms of Mother Universe.”
When she glanced back at the marshal’s booth, I knew I had her. What she said next didn’t make a damned bit of difference, even when she burned me with those flamers again when she said it.
“I’ll never work with you. Let them come and take me. Let the Erkennens kill me. At least I’ll die—”
“Yeah, yeah, true to your goddamned ideals,” I said. Darrow tried to jerk her arm free and I yanked her back against the Sewer’s wall.
“Do that again, Fischer, and to hell with due process. I’ll kill you right here and now.”
She would, too. I could see clear intent behind the flames. She’d already tossed out the marshal’s manual to focus on what justice demanded: wergild in blood for Mustafar. At this point, I was in her way. I gambled and let her go. A little trust might go a long way. She didn’t bolt.
“Listen to me, Darrow. You might get to Blalock. And then what? He’ll never stand trial because no one—no one—wants him to stand trial. Not the Taulkes. Not the Erkennens.”
“Why wouldn’t the Erkennens want him to be arrested? He stole their tech!”
“No one stole anything!” I hissed. Mindful of the watchers, I pointed my .38 at the ceiling down the alley and fired off a round. More like turtles than rats, the locals pulled back inside their holes.
“This was all some kind of set-up by Ra’uf Erkennen. Whatever Blalock did, they let him do it—for their own reasons.” I shook my head. “This is the bigger picture you never get to see, Darrow. And someone like you? Be glad of it.”
The look on her face told me that wasn’t enough. She was just confused. Overwhelmed. Not thinking or not able to think. I grabbed her arm again and dragged her closer to the booth, away from the rats. They were getting brave again.
Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology Page 21