Shadowboxer

by Nicholas Pollotta

  Passing between some foliage that he knew was artfully tracking his approach, he reached a frosted glass wall extending meters in every direction. The heavy doors swung open with a soft sigh of powerful hydraulics. He was obviously expected.

  Emile proceeded through and into the office, where he stood waiting for the doors to close behind him. The huge room was tastefully decorated in a somewhat antique style. Leather couches formed little conversation niches, while two walls of solid windows showed Miami sprawled around the towering home of Gunderson Corporation. Lester Parrish originals hung in illuminated frames on the other two walls, and the desk was a massive slab of cherry wood bigger than a Toyota Elite. An enormous telecom shared a wall with a woodburning fireplace made of tan bricks, the andirons and screen obviously of purest gold.

  Over by the bar pouring himself a cognac from a dusty bottle was a powerful, squat man with a military-style flat top crewcut. James J. Harvin.

  “Good evening, Mr. Harvin,” said Emile with a bow.

  “Emile,” said Harvin.

  Emile walked closer, but kept a polite distance. “Always a pleasure. How may I assist you this evening, Monsieur?” Harvin swirled the cognac in his glass, inspecting the color. The purest smoky caramel. “We are finding it necessary to reassign you, Emile.”

  “Indeed? Has there been a problem with my work? I knew that my failure to completely cure your ailment has caused you much distress . . .”

  Harvin dismissed that with a grunt. “Nothing like that, Emile. Your performance is exemplary, the best we’ve ever seen. No, we need your help in rectifying a special problem of great importance to Gunderson.”

  “An extra-corporate matter?” asked Emile.

  Harvin stoppered the 400-year old bottle of cognac. “No, nothing like that Seafront matter. This is an internal problem, but very delicate and extremely dangerous.” Amused, Emile gave a polite little snort and waved a hand at the city twinkling below them. Everything was dangerous in Miami.

  James Harvin moved to his desk and sat down behind it. “As per your contract, we will pay you for the additional risks.”

  Twelve of them. The thought came violently into his mind, and Emile nearly spoke the words aloud. He had difficulty breathing, and a cold clamminess unlike anything he’d ever experienced seemed to permeate his bones.

  “Emile?” asked Harvin in concern, a hand reaching for a control panel on the desktop.

  “I .. . am fine,” Emile said, taking a chair without asking permission. “Merely a headache. Perhaps too much of the good life, no? Hard work may be just the prescription needed. Something different to clear the cobwebs, eh?” Harvin studied the fluid in his glass once more as if searching for answers, then set it aside untasted. “Yes, Emile, but time is of the essence. You’ll leave in the morning, and you will likely be away from Miami for quite awhile.”

  “May I ask how long, Monsieur?”

  “Indeterminate.”

  Emile gave a small bow. “Whatever is required, Monsieur Harvin. I shall be glad to offer any assistance or service required.” As Harvin began to explain to Emile where he was going and why, the mage could not completely shake the sensation that had seized his very soul moments before. It had the taste of death.

  * * *

  On board the Manta, it was close to midnight when Silver finished with her work and jacked out of the CDP of the military submarine. She coiled the datacord and tucked it into a pocket of her blouse, then accessed the console-to-console function of her board and started sending messages.

  At the map table, Delphia gave a start as words began to scroll across the picture of the Atlantic Ocean. Thumbs at the weapons console did likewise, as did Moonfeather sitting cozily in the captain’s chair watching the tiny monitor built into the arm. Rigger at the navicom continued piloting the vessel unaware of the private conversations occurring around him.

  I HAVE FINISHED ACCESSING THE ONBOARD FILES, sent Silver in straight test. THERE IS NO MENTION ANYWHERE OF IRONHELL. NOR OF ANY PLACE MARKED A PRIME LOCATION TO RETURN TO IN CASE OF TROUBLE OR FOR SUPPLIES.

  At their posts, the other three runners frowned.

  SO I LOOKED FOR SOMETHING NOT LISTED IN THE FILES, she continued. AND THERE IT WAS. OR RATHER THERE IT WASN’T. SEVERAL LOCATIONS MARKED AS DEAD ZONES. AREAS NOT TO BE ENTERED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

  WYH? mistyped Thumbs.

  UNKNOWN.

  SO LET’S GO AND SEE, typed Moonfeather slowly.

  AGREED, sent Delphia. ANY LOCATION SEEM MORE FORBIDDEN THAN ANOTHER?

  NEGATIVE, Silver replied. IT’S A CRAP SHOOT. THEY COULD BE A LOT OF THINGS. SUPPLY RENDEZVOUS POINTS, SECRET REFUELING STATIONS, AMMO DUMPS. OR ANY ONE OF THEM COULD BE THE IRONHELL HQ.

  WHAT ABOUT THEIR SHAPES? sent Thumbs, hunting and pecking the keys with one finger. ANY OF THEM PERFECT CIRCLES OR SQUARES OR SUCH?

  QUERY? asked Moonfeather.

  AN IRREGULAR SHAPE WOULD INDICATE A NATURAL LOCATION SUCH AS A VOLCANO OR MESA, sent Delphia. BUT A PERFECT SHAPE WOULD DENOTE AN ARBITRARY DESIGNATION.

  CHECKING, Silver returned. YES, HERE’S ONE PERFECT CIRCLE, NEAR THE BERMUDA TRENCH.

  GOOD, typed Delphia. PLEASE GIVE ME A POINT EXACTLY THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF THE AREA FROM OUR CURRENT LOCATION.

  MOMENT. A moment passed. ON BOARD MAP REFERENCE 19.5-4A.

  LET’S SEE IF WE CAN GET A RESPONSE FROM OUR PIRATE. “Rigger, we’re going to map reference 19.5-4A. Please set a straight course there. No deviations.”

  “You sure about that?” asked Rigger. Both of his augmented hands were on the steering wheel, while the manual controls on his console constantly moved into different positions without his touching them. “That’ll take us awfully close to the war zone.”

  THE WHAT? typed Thumbs.

  Moonfeather sent, WAR ZONE? WHOSE WAR AND WITH WHOM?

  BEATS ME, answered Silver. BUT I’LL LOOK FOR ANY ADDITIONAL REFERENCES.

  Blanking his screen, Delphia shrugged. “We’ll have to chance it. It’s a prime location for the Yamato."

  “As you say, Skip,” Rigger responded. “Grid reference 19.5-4A it is, sir.”

  “Oh, chosen a name yet?”

  “Yes.” The man gave an embarrassed grin. “Boomer.”

  “Ah.” Delphia went back to scouring the map as he spoke. “As in lowering the boom?”

  Rigger hid his annoyance. Didn’t these slags know anything? A boomer was slang for a missile ship. What the Manta used to be before IronHell tore out her guts and made her a raider instead of a deadly attack sub. From race horse to plow horse with one snip. But all that could change once more when this Delphia cobber was dead, and the boat was Rigger’s to command. And he certainly knew better than to believe they were actually searching for the long lost Emperor Yamato.

  “Exactly, Skip.” Boomer grinned. “Exactly.”

  22

  Silent and invisible in the dark waters, the Manta hovered over the stygian plain like a black dirigible in endless night. Her running lights were extinguished, the liquid crystal display on the conning tower blanked, the housed propellor beating soft and slow, active sensors off, passive sensors boosted to maximum.

  Two thousand meters away, hovering at the same depth, was a small orange submersible about the size of a semi-trailer. It carried the insignia of Gunderson Corporation. Its every light was ablaze, its two mechanical arms extended as if offering an embrace. Fluorescent cables dangled from its open belly, extending all the way down to the ocean floor some three hundred meters below the craft. The ends of the rope were tied off to illuminate mooring assemblies anchored in the rock-hard sand of the seabed. Waddling away from the lines were tiny yellow dots bobbing along in comical slow motion, like bad animation or astronauts walking on the moon.

  On the quiet bridge of the Manta, Silver adjusted the magnification on the main screen and the view zoomed in closer. The figures were encased in bulky suits of armor resembling yellow spacesuits with smooth louvered sleeves and balloon joints. The armored
figures were hauling what appeared to be centuries-old wooden chests into the wreck of a two-masted surface ship lying on its side in the silt, the hull of the sailing ship half hidden by a copse of seaweed. Only tattered streamers remained of the huge canvas masts, and gaping holes dotted its side. But the gilded name of the vessel was still faintly discernible on its aft, below the captain’s quarters and along its bow under the mermaid figurehead. That noble wooden protector was still intact among the waters that had long ago claimed her craft and crew.

  “The Santa Cordova," murmured Delphia. “Spanish. Looks like she got sunk by cannon fire. See those impact holes?”

  “You know ships?” asked Boomer in surprise.

  “I know explosives,” Delphia replied.

  “Swell,” said Thumbs, sucking a tusk. “Next question, what the frag are they doing?”

  Boomer laughed. “They’re putting chests of gold into the wreck, what else?”

  “Into?” Moonfeather sat upright and studied the screen set above the map table.

  It was Delphia who answered. “Dinkers! They’re corporate dinkers.”

  “Sussed,” smiled Boomer, adjusting the trim of the boat against the currents.

  “Dinkers? Oh, fake antiques,” said Silver, baring her teeth. “I get it. Whenever they find a sunken ship hundreds of years old with nothing of value in its hold, they quickly manufacture gold coins and lost treasures, then hide the stuff inside.” Moonfeather grinned as understanding dawned. “Then they ‘return’ with a vidcrew and record ‘discovering’ the treasure?” She laughed. “Spirits, that is clever. The base metal is only worth, say, four hundred nuyen a pound on the Tokyo exchange. But as antiques, the coins are a hundred times more valuable!”

  “Typical megacorp drek,” grumbled Thumbs, rubbing his forearm. “Cheating everybody and making a profit from it.”

  “What are those things, power armor of some kind?” asked Silver, zooming in on one of the waddling lumps.

  Boomer punched a button on his console and a side screen displayed a beginner’s tutorial on the equipment. “Jym suits,” he told them. “Don’t know what the name means. Whatever it originally stood for is long forgotten. They’re built to withstand the pressure at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Why don’t the corp gleebs just send down a sub?” Delphia asked.

  “There’s not a sub in the world that could go down there,” said Boomer. “The pressure would crush us flat as a sand dollar. See?” He pointed at a wall monitor of odd design, a simple dial with a free-swinging needle to indicate external pressure. It was hovering just above a red patch.

  “And we’re hundreds of meters higher,” gulped Thumbs, studying the dial. “I thought that thing was something for the engines. Manifold pressure or some drek like that. Or temperature.”

  “Engine gauges are over there. And deeper than half a klick the whole fragging ocean is at zero Celsius. Although no ice forms ’cause of the pressure. No, that gauge shows our external hull pressure. We’re currently at five hundred meters, with a static weight of seven hundred kilograms per square centimeter.”

  Seven keys per centimeter? The runners looked at each other. It was as if they suddenly felt the awful staggering weight of the entire cold ocean pressing in on them from every side.

  “Pressure goes up fast down here,” said Thumbs, adjusting the strap of the Mossberg hanging across his chest.

  “Roughly seven kilos psi every ten meters.” Boomer glanced at the quivering indicator needle. “Another hundred meters down and we’ll start hearing creaks and groans. Another hundred after that, welded seams split, rivets pop out like caseless rounds, and then it’s pancake time.”

  “Whoa,” said Moonfeather, crossing her arms over the bandolier of ammunition she wore. “You mean those divers can go places this sub can’t?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Bulldrek.”

  Boomer shrugged. “Something to do with surface area versus displacement. I’m no scientist. Under normal circumstances, the Manta here can only descend to a maximum depth of six hundred meters. Jym suits can naturally reach four.”

  “Thousand?”

  “Yar. And that’s the bottom. Well, aside from the deeps, like the Trench—don’t think that has a bottom.”

  Delphia worried his moustache. “Most impressive,” he said. “Do we have any of those Jym suits?”

  “Sure, aft in Storage A, near the conning tower. Got a dozen patched together from spare parts stolen off ships or found in the wreckage of corp fights. Not SOTA by a long shot.” Boomer grinned craftily. “On the other hand, they were free.”

  “Interesting,” murmured Delphia. “Purely for exploration and rescue, or do they have any military applications?”

  A bitter laugh. “Captain, there ain’t nothing on this bucket that doesn’t have a military use except the toothpaste.”

  “Why?” asked Moonfeather pointedly. “What’s there to fight about down here? Fishing rights?”

  “Got an hour?” snorted Boomer, looking at her reflection in the dark green glass of the deactivated radar screen. “Drek, ocean has more untapped natural resources than all the dry land put together. Oil, coal, diamonds, steel, drugs, medicine .. . Weird pressure makes alloys tougher and cheaper than diakote, and there’s enough fragging food to feed the whole freaking world twice over. And more lost goodies than you can shake a cutlass at. What’s down here? Everything, little biscuit, absolutely everything.”

  Moonfeather scowled at the epithet, but refrained from commenting.

  “I wonder why there aren’t any underwater cities then,” rumbled Thumbs thoughtfully.

  Boomer returned to his board and said nothing.

  “Oh, there are,” said Silver unexpectedly. She unjacked and swiveled her chair about. Her Seco lay on the console behind her. “I’ve talked online with deckers from dome-towns off Seattle and Jersey. Just little places, couple hundred chummers and no more than thirty meters down at the max. Mostly they do farming and fishing. Tap some oil.

  “No, wait,” she added, touching her cheek. “There’s a big domecity off the CalFree Zone. Kalamari Incorporated. It’s a hundred or more meters deep and has fifteen thousand folks, plus. They do genetic research, I think. And fishing, of course.”

  “Japan’s are much bigger,” Delphia said with a note of pride. “They have at least one farming arcology in the shallow seas off the main island, with a bubbletown permanently housing its population. I’ve seen reports from the Imperial Navy debating the wisdom of such, as the place is impossible to defend properly. Even with diakote coverings, a single salvo of armor-piercing torpedoes will destroy the protective bubble and a billion-nuyen installation is gone.”

  “Well, we’re not going to find any of those down here,” said Silver, swiveling back to her screens. “If an armored sub can only reach six hundred, no dometown could possibly survive the pressure.”

  “True enough. I’ve never seen one,” said Boomer, not facing them directly.

  Conversation slowed as each person became absorbed in his or her own thoughts. Then a ventilation fan clicked on with a whir, making everybody jump.

  “Let’s go, there’s nothing here,” said Delphia, hoisting the Crusader onto one shoulder. “Silver, was this the ..."

  He left the sentence hanging and she shook her head no. “Boomer, continue on original course and heading.”

  “Aye, aye,” said Boomer, returning his augmented hands to the control surfaces. The perforated deck below them took on a gentle cant as the Manta angled off in a new direction, building speed as the orange submersible dwindled on the aft and port screens.

  * * *

  A hundred klicks away, and six hundred meters straight upward, a rubber life raft bobbed in the low swells of the open sea. The sun was hot overhead and the surface water devoid of any sign of land or other ships to the empty horizon three klicks away in every direction.

  There were two occupants, young norms. Both were sho
eless and only partially clothed in loose garments, and already flushed red with the beginning of serious sunburns.

  “Whaddaya mean, no?” raged Attila at the slave, sitting bolt upright in the dingy. His dirty silk robe was knotted about his waist.

  Ruby tugged down her oversized T-shirt and glared at him defiantly. “You may have gotten us off that ship, but I grabbed the water and food and it’s mine! Mine, do you hear me? Mine! You can’t have any.”

  “No, you’re mine!” he shouted, brandishing a fat barrel flare pistol. “I bought you, and I own you!”

  “Own this, jackanape,” she said making a gesture.

  “You slitch!” screamed Attila as he leveled the flare gun, which she promptly kicked out of his hand. The gun discharged from the impact, sending a sizzling round high into the brilliant daylight sky, where the exploding charge was virtually invisible. The empty gun hit the water way out of reach, and sank instantly.

  With a scream of rage, Attila dove forward, going for her throat with both hands. Ruby whipped out her homemade plastic shiv and stabbed for his stomach. He dodged, she missed, and the two collided, cursing and wrestling, food containers splashing into the sea as they fought over possession of the razor-sharp knife in their inflatable rubber raft. Nearby, a shark fin cut the water and began to circle the bouncing dingy. But the two cursing combatants were much too busy to notice the presence of the third killer. Not yet anyway.

  Far below the surface of the sea, lunchtime came and went on the Manta, with the runners taking turns getting chow, somebody always watching Boomer. During the break, Thumbs readied his Mossberg and checked the brig of the boat to see if there were any guests. But the iron box with its leg irons and wall-mounted neck clamps was empty of guests, alive or dead.

  On his way back to the bridge, however, Thumbs did note that all the escape pods were missing. Unless, of course, the ship ... the boat, frag it, simply didn’t carry any. Who knew? If cleanliness was any indication, the pirates had been rather lax about maintenance. Then again, logically, even if they survived a wreck or something and got rescued at sea, they might still have their heads explode, so why bother?