Hunting Mink

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘True. There’s the basic level of street crime up in Deale and Churchton, but there’s not much to be done about that aside from supressing it. I’m not seeing anything new that’s organised.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll happen. Maybe the mess in Churchton is making the place unattractive.’

  ‘Huh. Maybe. How’s the calendar thing going, June?’

  June looked up from her magazine. ‘Pretty much settled. Shooting here is scheduled for the first week in November. Then we move to Miami the week after.’

  ‘Did you get Skadi on board for it?’

  June smirked. ‘We’re doing a couple set. Red and Skadi in not a lot of costume with bows. Ever actually seems pretty excited about doing it again.’

  ‘Huh. Can’t say I am, but I won’t be in front of the camera. That’s Twi’s job.’

  ‘Speaking of jobs,’ Cygnus said, getting to her feet, ‘shall we go hunt–’ She stopped suddenly, wincing.

  ‘Cygnus?’ June was on her feet and at her friend’s side in an instant.

  ‘It’s… I’m okay.’

  ‘You don’t look okay.’

  ‘I can hear… It’s like the voices, but it’s more… distinct. Just a sound, repeated over and over.’

  ‘You don’t normally hear them when you’re Cygnus.’

  ‘I know… Like I said, it’s not quite the same. It’s like… It sounds like an alarm.’

  ‘Are you okay to go out?’ Andrea asked.

  Cygnus was silent for a second. ‘Yeah. It was the shock of it that got me. It’s just background noise now.’

  ‘You should go see Hugh,’ June stated flatly.

  ‘I’ll see how it goes. Tomorrow was the deadline for calling him anyway. I’ll give it until the morning.’

  June frowned at her. ‘First thing. No stalling.’

  ‘I promise. If this keeps up, it might be sooner.’

  San Francisco, CA.

  The vagabond disguise took longer to get into, but no one looked at a middle-aged woman in scruffy clothes as she wandered the streets. It took prosthetics, a greying-black wig, and the worst posture her acting talents could provide to turn Mink into Hetty, but Hetty was now a known figure among the street people of San Francisco and could go anywhere Mink needed her to.

  Tonight she was wandering, watching, and chatting. Hetty had been something big in the movie business in L.A., according to Hetty, and always had some story to tell if anyone wanted to listen. Then the drugs had got her and she had dropped out, but she was always on the lookout for a cheap score so no one questioned her when she asked about new sources, or old ones.

  The old ones were back: that was the word on the street. Dealers who had vanished for a few weeks were back in their old spots. Mink had noticed a couple of new ones, replacements or additions. There were whispers of a lot more. The Nine Kings had picked up their trade as though there was nothing to worry about, as though no one was going to interfere with them ever again.

  To add to that were the other rumours. Someone had seen trucks driven by known lower-level tong members. Others had seen people unloading trucks. Equipment had been seen, but not understood. From what Mink had heard, yet more whispers, that equipment was for a new drug lab, but the reports had come from more than one location. Were they setting up two labs? Two labs suggested they were far too confident, unless they had something new they needed to compartmentalise…

  New Millennium City, MD, 10th October.

  Cygnus opened her eyes and groaned. The sounds in her head had kept her awake until after four in the morning when she had finally slipped into fitful sleep in one of the spare rooms. She could still hear them: they sounded like a short string of words, repeated over and over again, but what they were saying was beyond her.

  ‘You’re awake then?’ June said from the doorway. ‘Still there? The noises.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’ll call Hugh?’

  Cygnus was silent for a second, and then she swung her legs out of bed. ‘No.’

  ‘Penny…’

  ‘No. I’m going to find the source.’

  June frowned. ‘The source? You can do that?’

  Cygnus shrugged and started for the shower. She needed to wash the sleep out of her system. ‘Sure. I’ll just head in the direction that makes it louder.’

  San Francisco, CA, About Thirty Minutes Later.

  The radar cabin the UID had set up on the roof of the FTI research facility was a fairly quiet place. There was the gentle hum of electronics, the whir of fans, and the clink of the occasional coffee mug being put down. The screens displayed everything in the air within a hundred miles of the city, scheduled flights carrying a marker with their squawk idents. Everything neat and tidy.

  The errant blip, unmarked, at the extreme edge of the display caused the agent on watch to pause. Sometimes the system took a second to register the squawk code… With nothing after ten seconds, he highlighted the target with the curser and selected details. The object was already a tenth of the way into the monitored area. The blip was tagged with data… and the agent blinked. That had to be wrong. Was the system failing?

  Another ten seconds of indecision and the dot was at eighty miles. He grabbed his field radio. ‘Radar tower to command. Urgent. Over.’

  A voice responded, but apparently they did not think it was especially urgent. ‘Command here. What’s the problem? Over.’

  ‘Sir, I have an unidentified aircraft, very small, approaching from the east. It’s on a direct line for this facility and–’

  ‘Damn, Hodgin, the thing’s a hundred miles away. What’s so urgent? Over.’

  Hodgin swallowed, partially from annoyance. ‘That’s just it, sir. It’s not a hundred miles away. It’s now… less than twenty miles away, travelling at ten thousand feet, at Mach nine point five. Arrival time is ten seconds. Over.’

  ‘Shit! Carver to all operatives. Prepare for potential Ultrahuman threat. Full security lockdown. Move! Hodgin, where is it? Over.’

  Hodgin checked his screen. The dot flashed over the site half a mile to the south and kept going. He relaxed. ‘It went past, sir. Still moving west… Wait, it’s slowing. It’s slowing and turning. Looks like it’s wheeling around, sir, and it’s–’ He stopped as the loud crack of the hypersonic wave from the object thudded into the cabin. ‘It’s losing height while it circles, sir. I can’t be absolutely sure, but I think it’s coming here. Over.’

  ~~~

  Cygnus figured she could go faster, if she really needed to. She had drawn power away from her physical strength enhancement and poured it into more flight speed and some adaptations for high altitude, but she could have pushed higher. Coast to coast in thirty minutes seemed quite fast enough, and anyway it took almost five minutes to slow down.

  She knew she had passed the source of the signal as she crossed San Francisco Bay, but she was already over San Leandro by the time she registered the fact and began to put on the brakes and circle back. Swinging out past Napa, she circled in over the Golden Gate Bridge and did another pass over the city. Once again, the signal began to die away, slower this time, as she passed over the park on the south side of the city. And this time she had a strong feeling she knew pretty much where to look for the source of her discomfort.

  On the third circle, at three hundred feet, Cygnus spotted a lot of men in suits and bulletproof vests standing around something that looked like a warehouse on one of the docks in Hunter’s Point. That, she figured, was where she was going and it did not look like the reception was going to be friendly. She switched back to her usual power configuration before dropping in for a landing.

  There was the loud rattle of a lot of automatic weapons being readied as Cygnus landed on the dock outside the building. The alarm sound in her head, and it did sound like an alarm, or a distress call, was loud now. She looked around at the ring of agents with UID printed on their vests and frowned. Before she could speak, one of them decided to get in first.

  ‘Th
is is a restricted area,’ said a man. ‘You, Cygnus, are an unregistered Ultrahuman and if you do not leave immediately, I will arrest you.’

  ‘My registration is valid in the state of California,’ Cygnus replied, ‘and isn’t relevant anyway. I’m here on a private matter. I want to know what’s in that warehouse.’

  ‘That’s classified.’ The man raised his pistol, which Cygnus found amusing, and aimed it at her. ‘Vacate this area immediately or–’

  ‘What the Hell is going on?’ The voice came from behind the agent and Cygnus recognised it immediately. Bianca Fullerton marched out, stared at Cygnus for a second, and said, ‘Cygnus? What are you doing here?’

  ‘That’s my question,’ Cygnus replied. ‘You’ve got something in that building which has been screaming at me since about seven fifteen last night. I got far too little sleep, I can barely think for the noise in my head, and now these jerks are pissing me off. So stop doing whatever you’re doing or I’m going to break something.’

  Bianca frowned. ‘Seven fifteen… That’s eastern standard, right? That’d be about… Shit. Hugh!’

  ‘Hugh? Hugh Last is here?’ Cygnus got her answer in the form of the rumpled genius as he followed Bianca out of the building and through the scrum of agents.

  ‘Let me just check I have the facts,’ Ultimate said. ‘You have been subjected to some form of telepathic assault since nineteen fifteen eastern standard time last night, Cygnus. It is still continuing, and you have managed to trace it back to here. Correct?’

  Cygnus looked at him for a second, nodded, and then reconsidered. ‘Okay, actually, I’ve been “subject to some form of telepathic assault” since, uh, about the twenty-fourth of last month. I was able to block it out until last night when it suddenly got louder, and very specific. It seems like it’s an alarm or distress call now.’

  ‘Seems like?’

  ‘It’s… Hard to explain. It’s like it’s in some alien language. I’ve been hearing it on and off since I got my powers and… And this isn’t explaining what you’re doing that’s giving me a headache.’

  ‘No. I think you should come in and see.’

  ‘No!’ That was the agent who seemed to be in charge. ‘Cygnus is under investigation by the UID. Her registration has been revoked. You can’t read her in on–’

  It was quite possible that no one there had ever seen Hugh Last, Doctor Ultimate, lose his temper. Cygnus never had, and she had seen him more than frustrated once or twice. He was a man who frequently had six different things running in his brain in parallel and could exceed that limit when he really thought it was important. He had an intellect beyond anyone else on the planet. Right now, all of that was focussed on being annoyed.

  ‘Do you want to be the cause of a major diplomatic incident, Senior Special Agent Carver!’ Ultimate roared. Carver’s eyes widened. ‘This operation is under Union of Ultrahumans authority. We agreed to allow the US government to have the UID secure this location out of expediency. We brought the vessel here because FTI has the best technology and facilities available for its study. We can, and will, remove it to another location if needed. And right now, I am feeling a dire need to do so, right after I convene a meeting of the Union Council to discuss sanctions against the United States.’

  Carver’s mouth opened, but sound failed to emerge. His gun continued its slow fall to his side.

  Doctor Ultimate nodded and continued more calmly. ‘Cygnus is an associate member of the UoU and, as such, can be called on for action or consultancy as required. She is clearly linked in some way to our mysterious ship and I am requesting that she consult on the matter. Do you have any further objections, Senior Special Agent?’

  Carver rallied enough to say, ‘For form’s sake, I wish to state that I object to Cygnus being brought in on this project.’

  ‘Your objection is duly noted. Cygnus, please follow me.’ Ultimate turned and started for the door.

  Bianca closed the gap as Cygnus started to follow and fell into step beside the blonde heroine. ‘You gave them a bit of a scare. Mach nine point five. I didn’t know you could fly that fast.’

  ‘That’s what speed I was doing?’ Cygnus asked. ‘I didn’t know either. Um… “mysterious ship?”’

  ‘Come inside and have a look.’

  Unsure of exactly what to expect, Cygnus walked into the large, open space within the building and found herself looking at a broken spacecraft. It had to be a spacecraft, or some weird, experimental aircraft. It was dart-shaped with stubby, backswept wings. At the end of one of the wings was what looked like some sort of gun mount. There had been the same on the other wing at some point, but now there was nothing but sheared-off metal. The nose of the streamlined craft looked as though someone had decided to slow it down by flying it into a mountain. The weird thing was that it seemed somehow familiar.

  Set around the craft, about ten feet out at all points, were portable metal railings with radiation warning signs on every one of them. That did not exactly bode well.

  ‘It’s alien?’ Cygnus asked.

  ‘It’s alien,’ Bianca replied. ‘We’re pretty clear on that now. We got back the genome analysis of the pilot.’ She paused. ‘That’s the dead pilot. He didn’t survive the crash.’

  ‘Where did you find it? When?’ Cygnus had followed Bianca and Ultimate to the control area by now. Most of the screens seemed to be showing various camera views of the vessel. She could see that there was a large breach under the nose on the port side, away from them. The rest of the displays were a mystery.

  ‘I started detecting an unusual cosmic energy signature on September the thirteenth,’ Ultimate said. ‘I narrowed it down to a point beneath the Southern Ocean and requested that Aquarian check it out.’

  ‘Do you know how long it had been down there?’

  ‘Not exactly. Our best guess is between eighteen months and two years.’

  ‘Uh… okay.’ Penny had become Cygnus on December twenty-first twenty twelve, which was within that time range, and Cygnus was starting to get a bad feeling…

  ‘The important thing, I believe, is that the vessel was raised to the surface on September twenty-fourth.’

  ‘When I noticed the increase in… telepathic noise.’

  Ultimate nodded. ‘And at approximately sixteen fifteen last night, Elaine Ellis was doing our initial survey of the ship’s interior. Upon attempting to open a panel on one of the walls, she triggered a sudden increase in the ship’s cosmic energy output. A large and modulated signal was emitted.’

  ‘And there’s a three-hour time difference… That ship is shouting at me. Elaine triggered some sort of alarm, and I’m receiving it.’ Cygnus paused. ‘I need to go in.’

  Ultimate nodded. ‘I suspect that would be the next logical step.’

  ‘You’ll need a suit,’ Elaine said. ‘The ship’s radioactive.’

  Cygnus blinked. She had noticed neither Elaine nor Alice standing there watching. ‘Hi, Elaine. Hi, Alice. Sorry, I didn’t even… I feel like someone’s screaming in my ears and I can’t even cover them to block it out. I don’t need a suit. I can screen out radiation.’

  ‘Cygnus is extremely adaptable,’ Ultimate said, smiling. ‘It seems you’ve been practising.’

  ‘I’m getting pretty good at it. It’s still mostly automatic adaptation to the environment or copying something I’ve seen another Ultra do, but I’m getting there. How do I get in?’

  ‘Through that breach in the forward hull,’ Elaine supplied. ‘There’s a duct in there you have to crawl through. That gets you into the cockpit.’

  ‘I’m assuming the dead alien’s been removed?’

  ‘Oh yeah. He was in a sealed suit so there’s not even any blood.’

  Cygnus started for the barriers. ‘Well, that’s something.’ She realigned her powers as she walked, adding radiation resistance to her normal toughness. It looked like there were going to be a few jagged edges in there so she figured toughened skin might be a good idea.


  ‘At least you won’t get your ass stuck in the duct,’ Elaine called after her.

  ‘Ha! What about my boobs?’

  ‘Might be a problem…’

  It was not. Not much anyway. Cygnus was glad her body was unnaturally flexible as she turned the corner at the end and started up into the cockpit, but she managed it, crawling out under the flight chair and looking around. There was the door at the back, but…

  The chair seemed to beckon to her. It felt like that was where she needed to be. Again, it seemed somehow familiar, as though she had sat there before. Gingerly, she settled herself onto the seat. Nothing happened as she sat down, so she swung her legs up and then lay back onto the reclined seat, looking up through the scuffed, dirty canopy at the ceiling of the building and the camera which had been set up to look down into the cockpit.

  Nothing happened for about ten seconds and she was about to get up again when, without warning, the sound in her head changed and a display, a hologram, appeared in front of her. Symbols appeared: glyphs of some kind which, presumably, said something in whatever language the pilot had used. The sounds became more distinct, more like words, but they were still in a language Cygnus had never learned. Or… maybe she had forgotten it.

  The display cleared and then more alien words appeared, this time flashing in a slow pulse. Cygnus just had time to register the message, if not understand it, before pain seared through her brain. No, not pain exactly, but the sudden shock of it made her cry out and her eyes jammed shut. Light flared behind her eyelids, flickering and shifting between colours and patterns. Noise hit her like a wave, shouted alien words that smashed into her mind like hammers.

  As quickly as it had started, the assault stopped. She heard ‘Adjustment complete’ but the words made no sense and all she could really think of was getting out. She tumbled off the chair, found the duct, and somehow managed to crawl through it to the electronics bay. Staggering, she made her way out of the ship, coming to a halt at the barriers where she propped herself up on one feeling dazed and disoriented.

  Shaking her head, Cygnus looked up. The room was in chaos. Two-thirds of the agents, including Carver, were lying on the floor, kneeling, or just standing there staring. Some were wearing weird smiles, as though they were having some sort of religious experience, and others just seemed stunned. Elaine was holding Bianca up as she wobbled on her feet, blinking. What had happened? Had the ship done something to them as well?