Blackjack Messiah

by Ben Bequer

  “Boys, there’s no need to get testy,” Terry said.

  “I’m just fine, Terr,” Roy said. “But big boy needs to understand that we aren’t holding his hand. He starts learning how we do things, today.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I growled. “I’ve been saving the world for a while now.”

  “Way I hear it, you’re basically saving it from yourself or shit you caused.”

  “That’s enough!”

  The words echoed off the tall ceiling and into silence as both Roy and I gaped at Terry. I expected anger, based on his tone, but saw a weariness that drained the argument from my soul. Roy sagged at the shoulders, and I caught just how tired he was as well. I opened my mouth, but Terry held out both hands, warding off the foolishness begging to escape.

  “Roy, Dale is different from the other rookies we’ve taken in. We all know he has a past, but throwing it in his face is not going make the adjustment any easier. Right?”

  Roy nodded and grumbled.

  “Dale, we all know you’ve been in some tough scrapes, but the job is different here. Trying to apply all the lessons you’ve learned previously could do more harm than good. Agreed?”

  Exhaling a deeply held breath, I said, “That makes sense.”

  Terry nodded as if these were temporarily forgotten truths being reintroduced to us. Stepping from between us, he said, “Roy, get some shuteye. Dale, you’re with me.”

  We parted ways without another word, but I could feel Roy’s irritation even after he went out of sight around a corner. Terry led me into the common room where Bajeera slept sprawled out on the couch, his snores the unbroken buzz of an active beehive. A game controller was on the floor near his hands, a large bag of chips and a drained two liter of soda sitting next to it. The bottle lay on its side, the cap near the base of the large screen television.

  I expected the locker room to be our next step, but instead, Terry guided me towards another offshoot room that I missed during my original tour. I heard the sound of radio calls before we stepped through the door. Five big screen monitors were mounted on walls with gyroscoping arms that allowed them to be repositioned with ease. Thick cabling snaked from behind them cleanly encased in thick plastic rings, zip tied at junctures, leading to a thick plastic block that was obviously a signal splitter that itself was plugged into computer tower that sat in its own cradle.

  Dixie sat in the room’s lone chair. She wore a microphone rig with an earpiece hidden by her hair. Fingers ran over the keyboard with practiced skill, and she spoke in clipped tones using police code I didn’t understand. Her voice was a little shrill, but still had a warm component to it that instantly set me at ease. She had yet to say a word to me, and I already liked her. She finished her conversation and doffed the earpiece, turning towards us with a smile.

  “I’m Stella,” she said, extending a hand. “Call me Dixie out in the field or Terry gets his panties in a bunch.”

  “We wouldn’t want that,” I said. Her hands were lotioned soft and smelled of lilac, her nails painted blue except the ring fingers which were metallic purple. Her grip was strong and she held it a moment too long before letting go. “So do I call you Shadowshaft or Blackjack?”

  “Stella,” Terry said.

  “Oh stop it, Terry. I’m just playing. We all know the deal. Well, who knows what’s banging around in Bajeera’s empty head?”

  “I wanted to show Shadowshaft the monitor womb,” Terry said, emphasizing my cover name. “He’s going to take monitor duty this evening.”

  Stella looked past me, and at that moment I ceased to exist. Slight pressure built in my ears and it took a moment to realize that her lips were moving. I didn’t understand a word of it, the base tones reached my ears as if fighting their way through cotton. I looked between Stella and Terry, and though her face remained pleasant, her eyes were dark chips that studied me. I also noticed a strange purple tinge to her sclera that was unsettling.

  Terry looked embattled, and though I wasn’t privy to the details, his posture spoke of a man who had been fighting the same battle on different fronts for a long time. He kept his arms tight into his chest, every gesture controlled, but he set his feet wide, left foot forward, a stance I learned training with Focus. When I spoke, I heard the words only as a deep reverberation in my own head. “Guy, this is kind of freaking me out.”

  The pressure was gone as if it never existed. Terry and Stella were still focused on each other, but in the end, I guess Terry won because Stella shrugged and said, “Your shift starts at six this evening.”

  “That’s no problem,” I said. “What did you do to me?”

  “I’m sorry about that, hon. I needed to talk to Terry privately, and it felt more polite to do that than asking you to leave.”

  “Your power is to screw with people’s senses?”

  “I can use them that way. We can get into it later. I hear you’re quite the scientist.”

  “I’m an engineer, but I know a little about a lot.”

  “I teach science at the local high school, chem and physics, so I feel the same way.”

  She popped the earbud back on and scrolled through something with the mouse. Properly dismissed, Terry waved me out of the room and we headed towards the locker room. He was quiet and his gait was stiff. As we passed through the common room, Bajeera was sitting up on the couch, controller in hand. He waved at us but missed Terry’s look as we left him behind.

  “He play a lot of that game?” I said.

  “Job is high stress, it’s how Baj decompresses.”

  “So, monitor duty?”

  “It’s how all the rookies cut their teeth. We take shifts of course, but you’ll get more than the others, which will make Baj happy. He’s been on double duty for a year.”

  Terry took me to the locker room as part of the tour. It was meant for more people, but the All-Stars took the extra room and created a more generous area for the team. Each of us had a double wide six-foot tall locker to hold whatever they needed. Mine had a placard with my name on it.

  “We took a cue from Roy when we had it built,” Terry said. “Superdynamic sent a digital handprint for us to encode, so it should open for you.”

  The handprint lock was too small for my whole hand, but it read my palm print and clicked open, the doors swinging out to reveal hanging shelves that swung downwards as the doors spread wider. A closet bar with hangars extended across the width of the locker. There were shelves and cubbies carved all along the length and width of the closet, including a thickly walled safe with its own combination.

  “This is great,” I said. “The safe is a nice touch.”

  “Roy suggested it. Said you might have some ordinance that would be better stored in a separate container. That one can absorb a lot of punishment.”

  “It really is perfect.”

  Checking the time on his phone, Terry said, “You got about an hour to yourself. After that is training. Suit up and meet us out back.”

  He left me standing there without a chance to reply. Training. Huh?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Training, Training and More Training

  An hour went fast when you had a lot to do. By the time I got everything stored and arranged how I liked, it was time to pull everything out and get ready. The new suit was an adventure, mostly because the full face mask had been built with shorter hair in mind. Cutting a slit in Superdynamic’s special cloth almost made me late to the practice field, but passing myself in the mirror, I had to admit I looked good.

  One of the benefits of my ridiculous cover name is that it saved me from the dayglo colors heroes seemed to prefer. Can’t be Shadowshaft running around in reds and yellows. Black was out because of my old suit, but we settled on a nice washed out charcoal, which was closer to grey with black accent lines that gave the whole thing a clean look. The mask covered my whole face, except my eyes which were covered with goggles. They linked to my computer watch, still tied to Superdynamic’s satellite
link. I wore my Asskickers and anyone who thought I shouldn’t could dive straight to hell. My bow was a lightweight marvel, all next-generation materials to complement a design that dated back to the dark ages. I didn’t like it. Old yew and painstaking craftsmanship were the only way I ever liked my bows. Maybe, if Roy and I didn’t kill each other, I’d take him up on his offer to make me one.

  The training area was the same field Roy used for target practice, but this time, Bajeera was setting up boxes and crates to create a maze. Hefting them on large wooden pallets, he was organizing them in ten-foot tall columns. The biggest surprise was the rolling catwalks that Dixie pushed through the patchy dirt and grass, connecting one to another, creating a right angle. It looked expansive and strangely deliberate. Toeing a little thrust out of my rocket boots, I rose high enough to get a downward angle on the setup and smiled.

  A comms request popped up on my goggles, and I recognized the code Terry had emailed me earlier that day. Toggling an affirmative, his voice rang in my ears. “Come on down and help us finish.”

  I flew the rest of the way, landing close to where Bajeera set down another pallet of wooden crates. Terry stepped next to me, clipboard in hand, a small ream of paper clipped to it. The top page held the design we were making drawn by hand on graph paper in thick-lined pencil. “See that catwalk over there?” he said, pointing. “Join it with the ones already placed. There are metal clamps clipped to it, use them to connect the ramps together.”

  “We’re building an open-air warehouse?” I said.

  “Yes, we are. I’ll explain it all once we’re done.”

  I wanted to ask more questions, but he looked up at me, the eyeholes of his mask made of that strange material that allowed them to iris open or closed despite being made of plastic. I always found it unsettling to see flat blank eyes emote. In this case, they narrowed a little, the slight tilt of his head begging for a challenge.

  I avoided the trap, rolling the last two catwalks into place and clamping them together to complete a full rectangular walkway accessible by four separate stairs. Looking from the top down, the warehouse wasn’t built to scale, but it was a fair representation of the layout. Large open areas to move the products, intersections, and alleyways that could fit a loading vehicle if necessary. There were even a couple of big hand trucks and smaller dollies lined up against an imaginary wall.

  We gathered around Terry who held the clipboard out so we could all see. “Today we’re going to work on target classification. We’re a little undermanned, but Nina and Roy have done these drills before, so they will catch up. What we have here is a smaller replica of a warehouse at the docks.”

  Flipping through the papers, he came to an overhead satellite view of the area. On one page was the warehouse circled in marker, sitting in a row of similar looking warehouses. On the following page was a picture of the warehouse’s innards as taken by what was probably thermal imaging. The layout we built was almost exact. “Scattered throughout are targets painted with an X. The X can only be seen with special devices.”

  Unclipping a laser pointer from his belt, he handed one to Bajeera and one to Dixie. “The X is not large so we have to sweep the warehouse. Tag the proper targets with one of our trackers and move on.”

  “What frequency does it run on?” I said, taking the one Terry handed to me and scanning it with my goggles.

  “Not sure,” Terry said.

  “I wasn’t asking you,” I said, trying not to sound smug as my goggles pinpointed the light frequency. “Blacklight man, really?”

  “They were easy to get,” Terry said. “And the paint wasn’t expensive either.”

  “Shit, boss, you should’ve just asked me,” Bajeera said. “I got all the natural paint you need.”

  “Bajeera, you are disgusting,” Stella said, shaking her head.

  “Admit it, you love me,” Bajeera said, though it was clear from Stella’s expression she did not.

  “Invictus, Dixie, focus on the exercise,” Terry said. “Let’s show Shadowshaft the right way to do things.”

  Dixie stared holes through Invictus who looked at his feet and said, “Right boss, sorry.”

  Terry dropped a plastic cylinder in my hand, about the size of a roll of dimes. “Powermaster, Invictus. Powermaster. We shouldn’t be out there broadcasting our hierarchy. Give away as little as possible.”

  “Got you, Powermaster.”

  “These are the trackers. You each have ten. They were not cheap, so try and keep them nice.”

  Terry flipped back to the top page of his clipboard. “We’ll go by twos. Bajeera and I will cover the ground level. Shadowshaft and Dixie will work the catwalks. Scan and mark. I’ve estimated this exercise should take twenty minutes. Let’s see if we can beat that.”

  Pulling away his left sleeve, Terry revealed a wristwatch, the face on the underside of his forearm. Pinching it between two fingers, he pressed, and the watch chirped. “All-Stars, go!”

  Powermaster led Invictus towards where the doors would have been if the warehouse had walls. I looked up and made a quick estimate then held a hand for Dixie. “May I?”

  She smiled nervously but took my hand. “Lead the way, rookie.”

  Slipping an arm around her generous waist, I flew us to where I thought a window would be. It was cheating a little, but it’s what I would do if the place had walls. Gently landing on the catwalk I let Dixie go, surprised to see her stagger for a step or two. “You ok?” I said.

  Using my shoulder for support, she gathered herself. Her breathing was fast, but what I thought was fear was actually excitement. “I never flew like that before. That was amazing!”

  Powermaster and Invictus arrived at the maze just behind us. I could hear Powermaster directing Invictus towards the first set of boxes as he looked up at us. I couldn’t see his expression but again, those weird blank eye plates narrowed at me and he shook his head shining the blacklight at a stack of crates. They were taking the lower stacked crates, so Dixie and I started high.

  Boots clomping on the metal ramp, I got to my first stack of boxes. Waving the blacklight across the surface of the box, I saw the X almost immediately. Taking a tracker the size of a shirt button out of my pouch, I slapped it on the crate. It stuck, a small red light blinking. Dixie was past me at the next set of crates, I caught her eye and she shook her head. Moving around her to the next set of boxes, I heard Invictus whoop in elation and assumed he found one.

  I didn’t find an X on any of the next three stacks I examined and was about to turn the corner when the box I was facing shuddered. I took a step back and unslung my bow as it shook again, this time accompanied by the splintering of wood.

  “You ok, baby?” Dixie said, taking a step closer.

  I waved her away and nocked a barb-tipped arrow, stepping between her and the box, opening my line of fire. I heard a deep whirring sound from inside the box and stepped closer to Dixie, arrow ready. The crate danced in place for a moment, irregular, hollow thuds tapping out a menacing beat. I heard wood crack, but I didn’t realize it was not the crate in front of us until I heard Invictus cry out in surprise.

  Turning my head, I saw him retreating from the remains of a crate, his tetsubo drawn and ready. A pair of flying drones hovered above him, while another rolled towards him on tank treads. None were larger than a watermelon, but the fliers had miniguns mounted to their undercarriages, and the roller had twin turrets that looked real enough. I didn’t think. Pivoting at the hips, I loosed the arrow. It struck one of the fliers in its engine, snapping the arrow in half, but driving the barbed tip through the hull. There was a sputter and a puff of black smoke, then the drone dipped down unable to maintain altitude.

  I had another arrow ready as the drones opened fire on Invictus. He dodged, moving pretty fast for such a big guy, avoiding some of the fire, blocking more of it with his tetsubo. Rolling behind another stack of crates, I lost sight of him and was ready to fire again when the crate near me blew open in a storm of
wood and splinters. A robot shook its way out of the remains with six flexible joints, two of them ending in nasty looking pincers, two in serrated blades, the final two in five-fingered hands. It stepped onto the catwalk, bending the railings as it balanced on a pair of spider legs as another set of legs telescoped out of hidden housings along its lower half.

  I fired an arrow at it, but those mechanical arms whirred in a complete revolution around a center joint. The arrow was destroyed in a blender of metal as the robot came at us, the four legs carrying it with surprising speed. Dixie had backed up to the far corner of the catwalk, opening space for me to move. Emerald energy flared in her eyes, but I had no idea what that meant.

  Drawing a different arrow, I aimed lower and fired. As I suspected, the robot was able to cover its lower half with the same flailing defense. Instead of spinning off into uselessness, the arrowhead detonated with a small poof, and the robot was covered in high-grade adhesive. Its progress halted in a small chorus of protesting limbs and grinding joints. There was a little play in the robot’s movement, but the goop restricted it to a short rocking motion.

  “They fucking got me pinned!” Invictus screamed into the comms. “I took a shot in the leg, it’s fucking useless.”

  Two more flying drones had joined the small cadre that attacked Invictus. He was backed up against an overturned set of crates. I zoomed in and saw a hunk of grease and metal a few yards from him, shredded tank treads proof that it had once been the rolling drone. A lance of yellow-white energy split another one of the fliers into a pair of inert halves that fell to the ground and were silent.

  “Shadowshaft, take the one to your top left,” Powermaster said. “Invictus, get ready to move.”

  The drones flitted through the air, their fire a fusillade that Invictus blocked with his tetsubo while hobbling around on what looked like a dead leg. I fired another arrow, but the drone moved at the last second, and instead of hitting the engine casing, it struck a rounded area of the drone’s hull and spun off.