by Carl Sargent
“Bury Street.” Mohinder was emphatic. ‘She knows old Jen, the owner of a flophouse there. Takes her food and stuff sometimes. She used to work near there when she was still on the streets, I remember. If she’s gone that way, that’s where she’ll be. For sure.”
They were already piling into the car as Scirea and the dwarf joined them from the shadows. Mohinder was phoning his other samurai, telling them where to meet up. There was no time to drive around to pick them up now.
“Didn’t know you could get seven people into one of these things,” Francesca grumbled.
“Honey, you can’t. Come sit on my lap,” Mohinder suggested, licking his ups.
She scowled and opted for Rani’s instead.
* * *
The group of samurai whipped out of the darkness of an alleyway as the Saab hurtled down the road. The fire from their automatic weapons ripped into the car, but Geraint had installed a strobe blast that augmented the headlights. He flicked the anti-strobing window modulators as everyone inside the Saab ducked their heads and the back windows wound down. The windscreen could take one good burst for sure; after that it was down to luck and a prayer.
Then Geraint stopped the car on a dime. Because of the stroboscopic lighting one of the samurai couldn’t get out of the way in time, his cybereye mods become useless. From the impact Geraint guessed that he’d knocked the guy down, but he probably wasn’t out. The second samurai had taken an expertly directed burst from Rani’s Uzi as the car hurtled toward him, and the gaping holes in his body armor showed that ballistic had been no protection against the volley of bullets.
Though Serrin had a protective barrier spell running, the column of fire he saw shimmering down the street told him he wasn’t going to be able to keep sustaining the spell because he’d need his concentration somewhere else.
The third samurai was changing a clip, ready to pump lead into the back-seat passengers as they got out of the car, but he never got the chance. Scirea had his sleeves rolled up as the car entered the street, and the tube strapped to his forearm delivered a small metal globe straight into the samurai’s torso. It must be some kind of grenade, Rani thought, but she couldn’t guess what sort or how it was fired. The demitech worked, though. The samurai reeled back, sticky flame burning and licking across his clothes and body. His screams were like needles in her ears.
They poured out of the car, reflexes boosted to maximum one way or another. Others were working on pure unaugmented adrenaline, but they were all afire.
Serrin moved to the side of the road, into shadow, concentrating on combating the raging elemental bearing down upon them. Here we go again, he thought gloomily. Why do I seem to spend so much of my life trying to deal with these fraggers? Francesca moved to his side, covering him with her pistol.
On the side nearest the house they sought, Scirea backed up to the wall, pistol readied, a grenade in his left hand. He lobbed it down the street ahead of them, and a wall of smoke began to rise where it landed, some twenty yards away.
Good thinking, Geraint thought grimly. If that’s where their mage is, they may have other back-up there. They’ve probably got the equipment to see through the smoke, but maybe not all of them can. There were so many possibilities.
Mohinder had dispatched the injured samurai with one sweep of his hand razors across the man’s throat, but now his cybereyes were scanning the doorway, a machine pistol in one hand and the Predator in the other. Geraint was just behind him as Mohinder sprayed an armor-piercing clip through the closed door. Perhaps it was a scream they heard from inside, but it was impossible to tell beneath the rattle of the guns. A spurt of automatic fire burst into the road from a middle window of the three-story house, then all hell let loose at the far end of the street. Wild fire was streaming through the smoke, and everyone was grateful for the ballistic body armor they wore for protection. Ricochets pinged off the surface of the street.
“Get inside!” Geraint screamed, but that wouldn’t do for all of them. Francesca and the dwarf were returning fire into the open window of the house, the dwarf switching his attentions from the north end of the road where he’d been watching for any sneak strike from their rear. He seemed to move with effort into position to shoot back, and Francesca saw that his armor was shredded from bullets.
He’s been hit, she realized, with a sickening chill through her body. Then she saw the hint of a figure behind the flash of the automatic weapon, and she took extra care with her aim. If that slint was firing at the dwarf, it gave her a little edge. She got lucky; three close-timed Colt shots were enough to stop the chatter of the other man’s gun.
The dwarf was urgently plastering patches on his side, but Francesca screamed at him to take cover. It was brave of him, trying to get to her to protect her, but he could hardly walk and she knew he was gravely hurt. Two men with pistols, one also hefting a ridiculous-looking axe, were running toward them from the end of the street. Francesca was leveling her gun again, but the dwarf croaked the word “Friends” to reassure her. Thank heavens the cavalry is here, she thought.
The elemental came roaring through the smoke just as Mohinder crashed the door open enough for Scirea to lob a grenade through it. The Italian reeled back as he took a chestful of shots, then collapsed lifelessly onto the ground like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut.
Mohinder waved Geraint and Rani back as the grenade blast exploded in the room, sending shards of glass and splinters of wood flying everywhere. It was a minor miracle none of Geraint’s team was blinded by the stuff, but somehow they’d all managed to turn their faces away just in time. Mohinder was the first in after a Uzi sweep by Rani had cleared whatever might still be alive in there.
Serrin was struggling desperately. He clutched at another spell focus and poured himself into denying its force, grinding it down, forcing it away into banishment.
Francesca was emptying her gun into the smoke, hoping for the best. She had a horrible feeling some amorphous forms were beginning to storm through from behind the blinding brilliance of the flame pillar. Just then, one of the reinforcements dropped to his knees as the axeman waved comically and toppled over backward. People were coming out of the smoke, but the kneeling man’s launched grenade turned the ones in the front to mincemeat. Frag me, she thought as her stomach lurched sickeningly, this is one heavy-duty business.
Automatic fire ripped through plaswood floorboards as the heavy gunners fired through the ceiling. Geraint screamed at them to stop, they were trying to prevent Mary Kelly being killed.
“Too late for that, term,” Mohinder yelled at the top of his voice as he slammed a new clip into the machine pistol. Rani moved to cover him as he headed up the stairs to the landing. They seemed to be working well together, each covering the other at just right moment. A troll slumped in the stairwell was playing possum, feigning death, but that couldn’t save him. Just to be sure, Mohinder emptied the rest of the Predator’s clip into the body. The troll twitched to death in a blood-spattered spasm.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Mohinder kicked down the last door on the top floor. Rani darted out from behind him to empty the last of her magazine into the elf by the window before he could complete his spell. That left two of them standing over the hideous, eviscerated body, staring at the three people in the doorway. For the tiniest instant, they were frozen as if in an old still photo: one bloodied corpse between them on the filthy mattress and an elf off to the side, with an expression of fatal surprise on his face and a half-dozen holes in his torso.
The cloaked man was middle-aged, flabby-faced, a bushy. positively Victorian mustache wavering above full, fleshy lips. His hands were still twitching, the fingers and hand razors covered in gore. The black bag lying on its side by his feet had disgorged its collection of surgical scalpels, scissors, saws, and retractors across the floor; now they were abstract, shining slivers glinting amid pools of deep crimson gore.
The samurai next to him was a surprise: neatly be-suited, almost all
machine. Yet he stood still, the ghost of a smile playing over his features until the burst from Geraint’s heavy pistol ripped away his jacket. Some flesh remained, but not much. He slumped to the floor very slowly, his legs collapsing under him, pistol falling from the lifeless hand.
The three assailants edged around the monster by the mattress.
“Got you, you rakking bastard,” Geraint yelled in an ecstasy of victory as the man backed up against the far wall. His face was expressionless, already dead. His teeth and jaw ground together and he collapsed in a heap.
“Drek? Bloody suicide implant,” Mohinder roared.
They were all fumbling at the medkit but it was too late.
“Mohinder, get back outside and cover the others.” Geraint ordered. “We can’t do anything else here,” He was searching furiously for any ID on the bodies. The Ripper was beyond any medkit now.
But Mohinder waved Rani outside instead. Scanning the scene, he saw something bizarre happening to the Ripper’s body. It was beginning to decompose before their very eyes, at an impossibly rapid rate. The flesh lost definition and form, deliquescing into a heap of shapeless tissue. Geraint was astounded, staggering back from the horribly degrading corpse. For an instant he almost didn’t notice that the scanner he’d brought in was indicating that this monster had no headware chips.
“Oh God,” he moaned softly. “How are we ever going to prove what happened here?” His mind was racing. “The police-”
Mohinder jerked back from him. “No way, term. No police. They’ll be here in a tick, but none of my people are gonna wait around to greet them.”
Geraint nodded numbly, thinking there was wisdom in the samurai’s words. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to explain his presence at this gory scene tonight. It was time to grab up the evidence and run for it.
When they got outside, they found three of their own dead. The troll from Mohinder’s group had never arrived and Scirea they knew about, but the dwarf had bought it while unleashing one final burst of shots at the samurai who’d come running out of the smoke. Rani had arrived at the door of the house just in time to cut the last one down as she fired at his flank. Of the reinforcements, the axeman had breathed his last and the grenade expert had made off into the night as soon as the shooting stopped.
Can’t blame him, Francesca thought. He’s done his job. Saved my life, too. Go on home, man. You’ve earned it.
Serrin was unconscious, having succumbed to the drain of dispelling the elemental. Francesca had taken a ricochet in her calf, but she smiled wanly at Geraint’s concern. “My turn to visit your doctor, I guess.” She was also aware that the ballistic armor over most of her lower body was shot to ribbons. She was lucky that all she got was a leg wound, and she knew it-but that didn’t stop it from hurting plenty.
Mohinder and Geraint ran back upstairs to frantically search the samurai while an exhausted Rani helped Serrin and Francesca into the back seat of the Saab. They didn’t have to worry about the opposition, but the all-too-predictable sirens were beginning to wail in the distance.
Coming back down again, Geraint thought the flop-house looked like something out of a war flick: six dead bodies littered the blood-soaked Street. a couple more sprawled in the distance, and the house was equally full of corpses.
No, Geraint thought, I don’t think we want to be here when the police arrive.
* * *
“He’ll live,” Francesca reassured them. Serrin’s breathing was shallow but regular, and it was obvious that he would come around eventually. Her own wound was still bleeding even after the application of a trauma patch, but the additional hemostatics seemed to be doing the job slowly. It would leave a nasty stain in Gemini’s car, though.
Oh, well, time to get another one anyway. Geraini thought, scowling through his fatigue. In the meantime this one would need a spray of paint. He was sure the Saab had taken damage from the automatics, damage that would be somewhat hard to explain.
“We got a little bit of ID from those goons,” he told the others as they rode along. “It might be enough. The pistols will be licensed and that should do it. The tissue samples I took from the samurai and the mage upstairs may help, too, but it’s a damn nuisance my portacam got shot up. I never even noticed it. If I could have gotten pictures of the Ripper and his victim, we’d have been home free.”
Mohinder turned to him and smiled his reptile’s grin. “Null perspiration,” he said, his eyes squinting slyly.
“What do you mean?” Geraint asked.
The samurai stared at Geraint with his unblinking cybereyes. “I got a video link, man, It’s all in here,” he said, tapping his skull. “Got a minute’s worth. All it takes is a downloader link and then it’s on your screen, term.”
Geraint relaxed back into the plush driver’s seat and smiled broadly. “Mohinder, you just earned yourself one hell of a bonus. It’s enough. More than enough.”
“We’ve got them.”
33
By four that morning most of the follow-up was complete. They were all still pumped up from the rage of battle, and Francesca’s calf wound had responded well to the slap patch Geraint had taken from his safe.
Serrin was still groggy when he finally came to, but so ravenously hungry that he devoured two huge bacon and egg sandwiches. He felt a lot better, but the whole business surprised him. Drain didn’t usually affect him that way. Most times, he felt like the walking dead for at least a day or two after serious draining.
“We should have the tissue sample results by about six,” Geraint was saying. “The mage will be licensed, surely, and we’ll get a match with the official sample archive. That I can pull. Yes, Francesca, another Cambridge pal. The old college tie’s a wonderful thing. He smiled broadly, the knots of tension within him easing as they completed each step on the way to finally resolving the whole sad affair.
“Added to that, we’ll be able to check the gun licenses through a contact in the Home Office. That should pin something down, too. They wiped the internal chip IDs. but overlooked the ID on one of the pistol barrels. That really was most careless. Between the mage and the gun, I think we have Transys on the rack now. Add in all the other stuff, and they’re going to take a beating. We’ve done it.”
“Enough to give to the police?” Francesca asked.
“Rakk the police” he muttered, almost to himself. “No, I’ve been thinking about it. There’s a young lady from OzNet… We’ll give the story to her. Maybe OzNet’s only a plazzy little trid channel, but when they splash this story, the rest of the media will sit up and take notice.” He was tapping out her telecom code already.
“Then we’ll supply duplicate data to the police. They’ll be able to DNA-type the elf-that is, if they suspect he’s a mage. We did take his spell focuses away with us so it might not be quite so obvious. But they’ll be so slow with their inquiries that-oh, hello? Christine? Hi, it’s Geraint. Yes, the Welsh-yes, Cambridge, yes. I know its an ungodly hour of the morning, but I’ve a huge story for you. Exclusive, yes. We’ll have the last of the evidence ready for you around six this morning. If you want to make a name for yourself, girl, be here just after then. You’re guaranteed a promotion for this one.”
He gave her his address, then rang off. “Time to get it all assembled in a nice, clean order,” he said. “That chip must have been something really strange. I couldn’t scan it at all. It’s a pity, but I don’t think we really had the time to cut off the head and bring it with us.”
“Geraint, please!” Francesca was appalled.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to… Oh, what the hell, we left a whole streetful of bloody bodies and now we’re worrying about niceties of language? Pah.”
Mohinder had downloaded his video recording well before the results from the lab came through. He took the fat cash payment and stuffed the twenty thousand into his pocket, grinning broadly. Then he told Geraint where he might find him should he ever need help again. He even bowed to Rani on the way out.
“Got to hand it to you, girl,” Mohinder said. “You’ve come up in the world. Guess we might not see each other again for a while?” He wondered where she might be when all this was done.
“Oh, I’ll be around and about, Mohinder. I won’t forget tonight.” They hugged, friends, maybe even equals.
“Hey,” he said, in a parting shot, “wasn’t that as much fun as you can have with your clothes on?” Rani giggled; she’d seen that trid show, too. Mohinder closed the door behind him carefully.
* * *
The telecom beeped at a quarter to six. It was Geraint’s contact in the genetics lab at Imperial College.
“Morning, Geraint. Thanks for the charitable donation. We’ll put that toward the metagene research project. You’re most generous.”
“You’re welcome, Richard. Now, tell me what you got.”
“Well, a courier is on the way with formal confirmation of the data and samples, but in summary, here’s how it goes. The metahuman was a magician, licensed to a corporation. But first, is this line safe?”
“You can speak freely. I’ve got more precautions against bugging than you can imagine. Retroactive phasing scramblers. And more,” Geraint breezed.
“Good. His name is Pieren Featherbrook, age thirty. lives in-”
“Yes, yes.” Geraint was impatient, “That’lI be in the data you’ve sent over. Who did he work for?”
“Transys Neuronet.” It was a moment of absolute, exquisite beauty.
Geraint was delighted. “Thanks, Richard. That just about ties it up.” He paused for a small gloat of pleasure. Oh boy, have we got them now.
“The other one, well, that was a problem. And very strange. Tissue was almost completely degraded by a fungal mycotoxic agent, but we had just enough. Can’t make any ID from the link we have with officialdom, for which help many thanks, but there’s something very weird indeed.”