Blackjack Messiah

by Ben Bequer

  “Don’t you have exploding arrows?” Dixie asked from behind me. Her eyes still had that emerald flare, and her voice strained with concentration.

  “I do, but the drones are moving too randomly. A living target is easier to lead than one dodging based on an algorithm. I miss and the boys get pulped.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and my eyes focused on the collection of drones in a way that the zoom didn’t allow. The world slowed down, not with the unnatural sway that accompanied drugs or telepathic meddling. There was nothing eerie or artificial about it. My eyes simply worked better. Drawing a small payload explosive, I fired without hesitation. The drone Powermaster asked me to kill exploded in a cloud of metal and fire.

  Invictus moved out of the way, though he seemed slower, less coordinated. It didn’t stop him from jumping off his good leg and batting a drone on his way out. It looked like a glancing blow, but it was enough to send the drone spinning off course, belching exhaust. I didn’t wait for him to get clear, destroying another drone with an explosive arrow. I drew again but the arrow slipped in my hands as my senses shifted to their normal perspective.

  Dixie’s delayed scream rang out in stereo, resounding through comms and my natural hearing. Another six-armed robot had two handfuls of her purple leather costume, one of her wrists was trapped in a pincer that looked like a vice. Sunlight glinted off the blade arms, as the robot prepared to slice through Dixie’s captured arm.

  “The fuck off her!” I said, jumping at the robot. I barely stopped the blade from taking Dixie’s arm off at the elbow by using the bow to deflect it. The bow snapped in two, the top half wrenched away as the robot twisted the blade on a gyroscopic joint. Grabbing the blade arm with my free hand, I tore it off the shoulder with a jerk. The blade swung in a dying pendulum, so I flipped the arm in my grip and rammed the broken end through the robot’s chest. Armor blunted some of the force, but it was never going to stand up to that kind of punishment. A couple of quick thrusts and I heard the rending metal cry of the arm punching through the robot’s back. It went immediately dormant, the remaining arms sagging as they released Dixie.

  Dixie leaned on the rail, head resting on crossed forearms, breathing heavy. Metal stairs rattled as Powermaster and Invictus bounded onto the catwalk running towards us. The other drones were piles of wreckage strewn on the floor, a couple of them on fire. I gave her a couple feet of space. Still cradling her head, she turned until our eyes met. I half thought she was crying, but her gaze was hard. “I’m fine.”

  “Dixie, you ok?” Invictus said, reaching us just before Powermaster. Dozens of tiny darts poked out of different spots on his chest and legs, with more lodged in his tetsubo. Blood dribbled from his mouth, staining his chin and the collar of his suit.

  “What happened to you?” I said.

  “Face planted trying to dodge those motherfuckers.” He looked at the remains of the six-armed robot and whistled between his teeth. “Good job, bro. Fucked that shit up.”

  Powermaster walked past me and placed a hand on Dixie’s back. “What happened?”

  “You put me up against damned robots, Terry.”

  “We need to be prepared for anything. You know that.”

  “My powers don’t work against robots. Why the hell would I even be on a mission with robots?”

  “You’re missing the point…”

  “The fuck I am. Your point was to impress him,” she said, waving a hand at me dismissively. “Our combat drills have never been this intense.”

  “When we sit down and break this down, you’ll understand why I did it this way. I promise.”

  Taking a deep breath, Dixie walked through us and down the catwalk stairs. She muttered under her breath, but I could hear her playing both sides of the argument. Her voice grew harsher as she walked to the firehouse, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  “She just needs to blow off some steam,” Powermaster said. “Get cleaned up. We meet in the conference room in an hour. Baj, maybe Stella can heal that gash.”

  “I had worse.”

  I thought we were going to leave together, but Powermaster shooed us away. Bajeera motioned for me to follow, but didn’t talk until we were out of earshot. “That wasn’t good.”

  “I felt a vibe. You think Dixie was right? About trying to impress me?”

  “Fucked if I know. Terry is pretty much an open book, but this thing he’s got going with you is not what anyone here signed up for. Like, me, I don’t give a shit. I seen shitheads of all shapes and sizes, and you ain’t bad at all. But Roy is old school. Locked up a lot of shitheads in his time.”

  “Him I get, but what about Dixie? She didn’t seem to know what she was doing.”

  “Come on man, I ain’t making jokes, but how the fuck you expect Dixie to fight? You know what real fighting is. It’s fucking grueling and tiring. You and me? We got superhuman stamina. Big girl like her? She’s powerful as fuck, but she ain’t going to lay a beat down on anyone.”

  Plucking a dart out of his chest, he handed it to me. “Coated in some kind of sedative, made me numb at the touch. They probably wouldn’t have even gotten through your hide, but they messed me up.”

  “You still kicked the shit out of those drones.”

  He rolled the dart between his thumb and index finger before flicking it over his shoulder. “Yeah, cause Dixie was doing her thing. I don’t get it at all, but she can mess with your body. For bad and for good. She kept me moving even though I was pumped full of that crap.”

  “She did something to me too, made it easier for me to see, to focus.”

  “Exactly! It’s always like that. Nothing flashy, no explosions or any of that shit. Her powers are more…”

  “Subtle,” I finished.

  “That’s it! Subtle.”

  My leg was aching again by the time we reached the locker room. I could hear the muffled sounds of running water from the ladies side and guessed Dixie was in the shower. I peeled off the suit, babying the leg as I stacked everything neatly. The suit was sweaty and smelled, but I still hung it because I had no idea where the laundry room was, if there was one at all.

  I walked into the common room to find Dixie waving her hands around the wound on Bajeera’s chin. Purple energy leaked from around her eyes, and as I inched closer, I saw the edges of the gash pull towards one another. The flesh intertwined in thin ropes that pulled tighter until the wound was gone, the skin looked fresh as if nothing had happened to it.

  Dixie took a step back and Bajeera rubbed at the newly healed skin. “Thanks, Stella.”

  She paused at his earnestness but held out a closed fist that he bumped lightly. “No problem. Don’t waste the whole day rotting your brain out on that game.”

  “Not the whole day, only most of it,” he said. “See you at debrief.” He got up from the couch and walked past me, holding out the same fist. “Hit me, dude,” he said, and I complied.

  Dixie wasted no time with niceties, pointing at the couch. I sat and she tipped my chin up so I could look her in the eye. “So I heard you have a chronic pain in your leg.”

  “It’s on my upper thigh,” I said.

  “Well, don’t just sit there. Let me see it.”

  I blushed. It was reflexive and silly, but I couldn’t help it. A big smile lit up her face and touched her eyes. It changed everything about her, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “First Bajeera acts like a normal grownup for a full minute,” she said. “And now I find out the world’s worst villain is modest. I love today.”

  “Nothing wrong with a little modesty,” I said, reflecting on the number of times total strangers had seen me naked the past couple of years. I literally could not finish a fight fully clothed. I hiked my jeans just low enough to reveal my wound and felt like a toddler potty training.

  She hissed between her teeth as she ran a finger along the scar. “What the hell did this to you?”

  “A crazy woman with a magic spear,” I said, rolling a little so she co
uld see the matching scar on the back of my leg. “Ran me through the hamstring.”

  “It looks pretty well healed,” she said. “You mind if I touch you?”

  “By all means,” I said, and she ran her hands over the wounds. Her eyes glowed purple and her face relaxed, though I could tell she was concentrating. I wasn’t sure what she was doing until I felt a warm throb at the center of my thigh. It began in the middle and spread outward, encompassing my leg all the way down to the knee. It was like sunlight taking the edge off a cold day.

  The warmth faded slowly, leaving behind a neutral state I hadn’t been able to enjoy for weeks. The leg didn’t hurt, nor my knee or hip. She took a step back, and I stood, pulling up my jeans. I took an experimental step and felt nothing. I took two more and ended it with a high jump that didn’t hurt, even as I landed.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said. “Thank you for this.”

  “It’s a complicated injury,” she said. “I haven’t seen anything like it. I’m no doctor, but my abilities let me get the feel of things like this.”

  “Whatever you did is allowing me to walk pain-free. I’ll take it.”

  “If it hurts again, come back and see me. And wear shorts.”

  “You got it.”

  “Debrief is in twenty minutes, I suggest you get a shower. You smell.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The After-Report

  I had time to shower and grab sandwiches that sat in a ring on a tray with a clear plastic cover. There was a variety and I ended up with turkey and swiss with some mustard. I took enough to make a foot long, sticking them on a paper plate before filling a red plastic cup full of ice and soda. I got to the conference room with a couple of minutes to spare and found that I was the last to arrive.

  I thought it would be smaller, but the conference room was built with space in mind. Instead of one long table, there were half a dozen rectangular tables set out in a grid. A large whiteboard was mounted on the wall, and a projector hung from the ceiling in a metal frame. The projector was casting an image of what looked like our bootleg warehouse, the whiteboard acting as a screen. Nina chatted with Terry as I came in, giving me a little half wink without diverting her attention from their conversation. Dixie sat at the front, a spiral notebook and a couple of pens in front of her, texting on her phone. Bajeera sat near the back munching on tortilla chips, a huge mound of salsa threatening to tip the paper plate over. I found a place in the middle, feeling very much like a freshman on the first day of school.

  Terry and Nina spoke long enough for me to finish half the sandwiches. Finding a table of her own, Nina took a seat and stretched out, reclining. Terry tapped at his cellphone and the lights dimmed, the projected image gaining substance. “Let’s get started.”

  Tapping at the phone again, we watched a video playback of the entire training exercise from the moment he clicked his watch until Dixie walked away. It was a multi-camera affair with a couple of different angles, including gun cams on the drones. The first thing that struck me was how short it was. The whole thing took less than ten minutes. There were a couple of good shots of Bajeera using his tetsubo defensively. His striking power with the thing was impressive as well. Terry was every bit the marksman I was with his energy blasts, and he had an almost uncanny ability to take advantage of angles and cover. Where Bajeera had taken a ton of punishment, Terry hadn’t been shot once.

  Nobody spoke as the video played through once, then again. After the second watch, the lights came back on and Terry said, “Any opening thoughts?”

  “Yeah boss,” Bajeera said. “Good job with the drones. Those bastards were tough.”

  Dixie snorted a little, scribbling in her notebook, while still paying attention to Terry. “Thanks, Baj. Roy and I worked hard on that little surprise. Anything else?”

  I had questions, but I wanted to see how the session played out, so I held my tongue. Nobody spoke, and after a couple of seconds of dead air, Terry said, “First things first, Bajeera. You need to work on evasive maneuvering, especially in open spaces. You took far too many hits.”

  “That’s my job,” Bajeera said. “I get shot up so you guys have space to take down the bad guys. It worked like that today.”

  “The drones were programmed with a very basic combat suite,” Terry said. “And the bad guys don’t usually shoot tranq darts. That said, you blocked a lot of shots with your tetsubo. Your reaction drills with Roy are showing results.”

  “Don’t tell him that,” Bajeera said. “He’s going to start shooting three arrows at me at the same time.”

  Terry smiled at that and said, “Dixie, your range has gotten much better. Good job keeping Baj up and moving. Those darts should have put him on his butt.”

  If she was swayed by the compliment, it didn’t show in her posture. Terry stiffened at her flat affect, but he plowed ahead. “There were a couple of issues with the spider bots that were troubling though.”

  Dixie stopped her scribbling and laid the pen down with a sharp clack that was thunderous in the suddenly stifling room. I thought she was using her powers for a second, except that I heard her speak. “No use sugar coating it. The stupid robot got the drop on me. I was helpless to stop it.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Terry said, and I respected the lack trepidation in his voice despite being on the defensive. “We’ve discussed your situational awareness, even while focusing with your power. It’s a challenge, Stella, but in the long run, it’s going to keep you alive.”

  “I know,” she said. I was expecting fireworks, but the defeat in her voice broke my heart.

  “It’s my fault,” I blurted out. Everyone turned to me, and I had never been so keenly aware of how deep my foot was lodged in my mouth. Time to double down. “I couldn’t track the fliers to line up a good shot, even with my goggles. Dixie had to split her focus to help me, and it got her tagged. I should have been watching her back.”

  “There is something to that,” Terry said. “But Stella also has to develop an awareness of her surroundings, not just for her but for the team.”

  Stella turned to me and shrugged, but nodded in the end. “I’ll work on it Terr.”

  “Thanks, Stella. Good work overall. That brings us to you, Shadowshaft.”

  “Can I just be Dale right now,” I said. “Call me Gary if you really have to, anything but Shadowshaft.”

  Whatever leftover tension permeating the room melted as we shared a laugh. Even Stella flashed a genuine smile, her laughter musical. When it died down, Terry said, “Good instincts pegging that first drone. I was going blast it, but you were quicker on the trigger. When you and Roy get synced up, it’s going to be pretty scary. There is another matter we have to discuss and it’s a biggie.”

  Using his phone to fast forward the video, he found the part where I beat the second six-armed robot. I didn’t watch myself work often, and seeing how easily I destroyed the thing was a little scary. Freezing the video just past the point where I tore the robot’s arm off, Terry said, “You cannot use your super strength out in the field, Dale. I cannot stress how important this is.”

  Arguments by the dozen populated in my head and my fomenting belligerence must have been obvious to behold because Terry forestalled it with a gesture. “I know. You did a good thing. But it wasn’t the right thing, at least not in your situation. If we are going to have any chance of keeping your secret under wraps, you have to play ball. Hang back and shoot arrows. Follow orders, do what the team needs.”

  “I can’t sit by and watch you guys get killed for the sake of being Shadowshaft. I won’t do it.”

  “I get it, but an archer with super strength? Literally, nobody else comes to mind. It won’t take much for some enterprising person to get a hint about what we’re doing. It all falls apart if you can’t show some discretion. Can I count on you?”

  A furnace burnt in my chest, fueled by the futility of my argument. Try as I might, I couldn’t deny the basic logic. “You can
count on me.”

  “Thank you, Dale. That’s it for the rough part. You guys have the rest of the day to yourselves, but I emailed new duties and altered the monitor duty schedule to reflect Dale’s entry into the rotation. Congrats Baj, you’re officially not the new guy anymore.”

  “Thank all the fucking deities on all the planes physical and astral,” Bajeera said. “I was missing all the good raids listening to cops and dispatch eat shit all night.”

  “Training tomorrow at 11:00,” Terry said. “After that, we’ll do the post-mortem. I got to get home early today, so if nobody needs anything else?”

  Taking our silence as a negative, Terry packed up his phone and clipboard and left. Stella stopped by Nina’s table for a short moment, taking her hand and squeezing it hard. They shared a word and then Stella followed Terry out the door. Nina took the chair next to mine. “So how was your first day?” she said.

  “Not bad I guess. I wasn’t expecting the drones. Terry is a sneaky bastard.”

  “He can be. It’s a good quality when applied correctly. How’s the leg?”

  “Heard about that?”

  “Maddie mentioned it. Told me it was nagging you.”

  “Stella did her thing, and it’s feeling one hundred percent better.”

  “You know, all of this is leading somewhere.”

  “Huh?”

  “The warehouse, the drones, Terry is preparing us.”

  “It’s been heavily implied that I should wait for the briefing like a good soldier.”

  “Terry’s a good leader, but I’m a shitty follower. We’re still putting things together, but it looks like human traffickers are using KC as a waystation.”

  “No shit? When do we crack some skulls?”

  “We’re working with law enforcement to get the details hammered out, but rumor has it the whole thing is being headed up by a super, maybe two.”

  “So he’s putting us through our paces.”

  Tapping her nose with an index finger, she pointed at me. “You got it. That’s why he was on you about maintaining your cover. Cops are going to be there, probably the feds too. You’re going to have to fly low on this one.”