The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  Invisible to the social eye, he entered the back alley.

  Here, the pavement shone like a mirror under standing water, and the air stank of blacktop and mildew. The steam billowed through the vents, whistling as it escaped the undercity, and left clinging sheens of algae and moss up the sides of the towers. The perpetual rain fell through the man-made clouds, and spattered against the puddles and drains.

  With a humming-buzz, a lift car parted the white curtain. It flashed overhead, blue lights piercing the haze. Whorls of smoke and steam followed, blinded the electronic eyes.

  Halstead seized his moment, and slipped into the warm, clinging fog.

  It was nearly time.

  He placed his hand in his jacket, felt for the folds of faux-leather, and waited. When the door lock clicked, he raised his hand, as if he’d been pressing the buzzer.

  A place like this? It generated a lot of trash. Normally, the chute would take it to the compactor, but if the chute was jammed - say, by a chunk of grating snatched from an access hatch - someone low on the totem pole would have to haul the bags out by hand.

  On cue, the door swung wide.

  Silhouetted against the yellow-white of the kitchen, a young busboy stepped out, dragging a mass of black bags.

  Halstead blocked his path.

  With fierce indignation, he snapped, “Oh, thank God!” He lowered his left hand from the buzzer, and, with his right, produced a badge from his jacket. Before the kid’s eyes could adjust to the dripping twilight of the alley, Halstead shoved the badge into his face, and declared, “City health. I’m here for the inspection.”

  The busboy’s eyes went wide, and he staggered back, nearly tripped on his bags. Halstead pulled the badge back, flipped his wallet closed, and stepped past him. He strode into the storeroom, ignoring the stammered protests behind. It amazed him, sometimes, just how many places a man could get, with just an old base identicard, cheap suit, and little chutzpah.

  Halstead threaded the backrooms. With every step, he inspected. He scowled at the pots and burners. He harrumphed at the rehydrator. He met the eyes of cooks and waiters, made them turn away, but he never confronted the chef. With one half-loop, and a final flash of a badge, he stepped cleanly through the last door.

  The city night had been brilliant. The club was blinding.

  Behind the door, there had been a heartbeat. A murmured pulse. A grinding, compelling thud of a metastasized and platonic life. When Halstead pressed his hand against the handle, he’d felt the charge. Through five centimeters of soundproof barrier, through solid deadened plasteel, he’d felt the electricity crawl up his arm, move to his spine. The chill, the electricity, the Pandoran promise: beyond this door was distilled being.

  He pulled the door. The seal broke, and the wall of sound crashed over him.

  He swung it, wide, and the light washed all sensation away.

  It was like staggering into the sun, on the high desert. It was like plunging into roaring surf, on the raging sea.

  Blue light bathed the bar, from a hundred swinging lights. The spotlights spun, twirled, shifted - blue to red, green to purple, blinding white and glowing black. It wasn’t random. It couldn’t be. The patterns drew the eyes - to the dance floor! - to the horns! - to the bar!

  Fire burst from the slick-black counter, a pyrotechnic cocktail that drew a wave of cheers. The bartender, in slick gold and black, bowed behind the flames.

  The drumbeat, pounding, dominant, pushed over the club. The dance floor shifted, echoed back the lights - a holographic eruption that pushed between the pulse of the bodies, a digital wildfire that twirled in alien waves. The beat slowed, and the fire settled. The lights came down, cool blue once more, and drew attention to the stage.

  The band fell silent, their horns ready.

  Halstead stopped, tried to read the room. So much noise. So much chaos. He glanced up, into the shadows and mirrored balconies, where the directors must wait, with their monitor banks, metadata, and metrics. No human could move the crowd like this. Too distributed, too random. The lights on the floor instructed the dancers, but responded in kind. The spotlights reacted, and created, the hotspots.

  There. He saw it. Amid the murky depths, the holes in the lights, was the glow of a monitor, reflected from vid goggles. The goggles flashed, the network responded-

  With a creaking, accelerating drip-rip-ririri, the beat returned. The band responded, improvising to the digital drip. The sensors read the improvisation, applied mathematical derivations, and altered the beat to match. The band responded. The beat responded.

  Synchron. That’s what the kids called it. It just sounded like chaos to him.

  Whatever.

  He pushed the useless thoughts away. Everyone had their poison. He wasn’t here to judge the music.

  Halstead stepped into the crowd, as the singer picked up her mic. He threaded the floor, his steps in time to the pulse. The human sea rose, and he moved. It fell, and he consolidated. It was a tide, and he was an experience swimmer.

  The singer began her wordless crooning, undulating her voice over the mass. Smoke billowed over the crowds, red and gold. The lasers swung, the projectors blazed. Sculptures of heat and light spun through the air. A wall rose before him, grey-purple lit through with gold. Despite himself, he stumbled. He broke the rhythm of the mass.

  Light shone over him, questioning yellow. He let himself bob with the flow. The digital inquisitor drifted away, seeking some greater variation from the baseline.

  He felt, but didn’t hear, his own grumble, as he slipped along the smoky wall. Better the diversion, than the pierce the ‘wall’, and draw more attention.

  He needed to get to the opposite wall. His target wouldn’t be on the floor, with the teaming sea. His target wouldn’t be at the bar, drinking stunt-mixers from glowing flutes. He glanced aside, to the yawning black beyond the stage, to the hole in the sound, where people watched, instead of danced. His target would be there, in some shadow-cloaked booth, watching but unwatchable. Adjacent to the action, but impartial. He felt the familiar scowl begin to spread on his lips. He could feel the whiskers brush along the skin. Predictable.

  He reached the railing, solid brass under his whithered knuckles. He gripped it, a little harder than he’d meant. It was an anchor, inside the digital maelstrom. Something real in the haze. He followed it, willed himself to take his hand back. When you’re on a boat, you walk like a sailor.

  The music peaked, again. The heat rose. White light flashed. The ground trembled. Halstead persevered. He kept his face from the dark beyond. He threaded the edge of the chaos.

  He reached a step. Then another. He descended, into the cool dark.

  He stepped through an arched pillar. Another. The sound was peeled away, in waves, until it remained only as a memory of the drowning fury.

  The light faded, and the world faded into a fuzzy blue-black. Subtle lines emerged. Black leather couches. Deep crimson carpets. Brass handrails. A waiter, with a tray of neon blue drinks. A pusher, with a subtle show of powder. A hooker, with a flash of synthflesh leg, smoother than anything natural born. Halstead pushed past them all, and drifted to the canyons between the tiers of oyster-shell booths. Somewhere he could see, and not be seen. Just like his mark.

  He waited, feeling the deep waves of the music push through him, through the soft floors and cold walls. Forms drifted around him, a hundred faces in a thousand masks. The air stank, the heady mix of smoke, perfume, sweat, and liquor. The distant crackle of electricity. The stale remains of sex and vomit.

  This place made him sick.

  He glanced at the moving aisles, the gaps in the oyster booths. Gray haired elite threw money after beauty. Lust vied with proximity to power, as the beat snaked through deals and dealers. Anything went, nothing meant. An ephemeral economy of night, where everyone got what they wanted.

  Drink. Be merry. Pray the cake-eating mob doesn’t peel back the walls.

  His eyes adjusted, Halstead slipped down t
he aisle. The angles weren’t right, here. Too many eyes. Too many ways to be seen, not just be ‘be seen, here’. It wasn’t right.

  He slid past old money. Past the drawn and tucked faces of skinjobs, who looked half-way twenty and half-way eighty. Past undersecretaries and executives, dealers and producers. He ducked past a posturing fights and fighting postures. Past hidden hands and creeping fingers. Past handshake deals and mutual understanding.

  There.

  He saw his target.

  Upon an elevated terrace, half-hidden from view, half-prominent before the crowds, sat a crescent booth. From there, a VIP could be visible, or invisible, depending on angle. From the front steps, he could hold court. From the back, no one would see who came or went. It was the kind of perfect position that a couple decades of fighting had long told him wasn’t worth holding, because of it’s sheer risk. Everyone would see that high ground. Everyone would contest it. Only a fool would stake out upon it, instead of denying it, and taking better position in the fog.

  A fool, or a man who saw more value in the symbolism of holding, than of the risk of taking. A king, in his own realm.

  Halstead took the back stairs.

  The first bouncer was obvious, the kind of suit-and-tie enforcer favored by any princeling. Halstead stepped past him, along the shadows, and waited for the music to draw his eyes-

  He was on the stairs.

  The gap was temporary. The suit saw him in an instant.

  Halstead climbed one step. Two. He heard the gasp, the command, “Stop!”

  A second bouncer stepped out, ahead of him, in the gap at the top of the stairs. A third flanked. He raced forward, aimed for the gap between them.

  A hand brushed at his back. A failed grab.

  He broke free, into the clear and blinding light-

  Hands grabbed him, pushed him back, towards the tunnel-

  He called out, “Mike! We need to talk!”

  There was a motion. A brush of fabric, as someone leaned from the shadow to see. Another voice rose, calm and authoritative, masking just a hint of surprise, “Let him go.”

  The hands released him, and he stumbled forward. Someone caught him, didn’t let him fall.

  He rose, brushed his shirt, and shot a withering glare to the thugs about him. Only then, when they retreated, did he give his attention to the man who’d spoken. There, in the shadows of the booth, sat Michael Raschel, the Internal Security Agency’s soul-rotted apparatchik of the century.

  Raschel leaned back into his booth, the folds of his suit blended into the crushed leather. Just above his brow, the razor’s edge of stagelight rested. The line bisected the booth. Light above, shadow below. Halstead stood, half blind. Raschel, though, rested in solace. He smirked, as his fingers worked out the drumbeat on the table, behind an array of empty scotch tumblers and just-sampled food. His face was as worn, sharp eyes set inside of armored flaps of a brow. He shook his head, to some internal joke, and glanced to his companion.

  Beside him, adorned in cerulean gauze, a city princess giggled along with his smile. She ran her right hand over the flat of his coat, and pulled him closer with her left. She fawned, and tugged at him, doused herself in his transubstantiated power. Raschel just grinned, wider, his eyes locked on Halstead, telling the punchline to a joke only the two of them could understand.

  For the second time that night, Halstead felt the oily filth running down his back, like he’d just bathed in the putrid river. He resisted the urge to shudder, or to snap, and he said, calmly, to the young woman, “Excuse me. Ma’am. He and I have business.”

  She glanced to him, drunken eyes ablur. She smiled, like she would to her poodle, and turned away.

  Raschel freed his arm, and motioned towards the table, “Please, have a seat! You should have called - I’d have gotten you in.” He laughed, at that.

  Halstead bit back a furious howl. He reached into his coat, and produced a datapad. He tapped it, let the screen glow in the shadows, and tossed it onto the table.

  Raschel ignored it, and stared him down. He said, politely, “Thessa, this is Bill. He’s an old friend. Bill, this is Eyra. She’s just leaving.”

  She nodded, absently. A moment later, her eyes widened. She snapped her head about, stared hard at Raschel, a question formed on her neon lips. Raschel waved her away, a credit chit between his fingers.

  She didn’t take it when she stormed away.

  Halstead let her pass, stumbling, her belongings under her arm. She cursed him as she went, some blur of newspeak insults he hadn’t the care to decipher. When he turned back, Raschel was still smiling. Halstead demanded, “Are you having fun?”

  Raschel shrugged, innocently. “The Party life is a party life, Bill.” He motioned, again, towards a chair, below the division of light. “Long time, no see. How’s retirement?”

  “It’s been thirty two days!” Halstead said. “You son of a bitch! You looked me in the eyes. You smiled. You said you were sorry. You knew!”

  Raschel’s voice dropped, took on an edge. He said, “Woah, there. Calm down, buddy. Have a seat. Have a drink. Talk quietly. Or I will slap you in cuffs, friend or not.” His smile never faded.

  Halstead pulled up a chair, and sat down. It was time to play ball.

  “Better.” Raschel admitted. His voice brightened, and he asked, “How’d you get in, anyway? Health inspector shit?”

  Halstead gave a slight shrug.

  “Jesus. These fucking clowns.” He glanced out, over the lip of his balcony, to the pulsing sea below. “If you’d have just called… I could have gotten you something from the kitchen. Right now, it’s drinks only. They say this place has the best cocktails in town. I’d say they’re top five.”

  “I’m good.” Halstead said. “Talk.”

  “About what?” Raschel asked, innocently. “You’re being a bit vague.”

  “You damn well know.”

  Raschel nodded, and took a drink from his tumbler. He let the amber sit on his tongue for a moment. Closed his eyes. When he swallowed, he breathed, deeply. Only then did he answer, “Look, Bill, we’ve done a lot of stuff. You’ll have to be specific, or I might confess to the wrong thing.” He tilted his tumbler, weighed it, and added, “Not saying it wouldn’t be true. Just not pertinent.” He paused, and glanced to his half-eaten meal. “You want some crab?”

  Halstead waved the question away. “No. I’m fine. What’s not fine is on that tablet.”

  Raschel glanced to it, with mock surprise, as if he hadn’t noticed it, before.

  Halstead said, “I was down at the office today. Came back to fill out some paperwork I missed-”

  “How is that retirement, anyway? I'd love to try it, but there's just so much going on at the office-”

  “-and when I stopped in, there was an order. Postdated. It was a silent move. Shuffled men and material. Sent them to an abandoned complex out in the middle of the Hub. Looks like someone needed a lot of firepower, and two whole companies of our best and brightest. Now, that was interesting, but, hey, I'm retired, so I forwarded it along to Brigadier Harper. But, what do you know, it auto-returned to me. Said like it needs my personal approval. On top of that, the date stamp is junk, and keeps saying it's two months ago.”

  “Computer glitch. Did you call tech support?” Raschel made a show out of dipping a biscuit into the pool of butter, in the most nonchalant way possible.

  “Don't bullshit me. That's a damn draw-up for some black op. It has Agency prints all over it. I checked it with Newman, and he stonewalled me. Now, he's a slimy sonuvabitch, but we both know he’s not clever enough for this shit. The whole operation is completely black, every soldier involved is on leave, on-call, or away for training. All the equipment is unmarked, fell off between shipments. The whole thing might as well not exist, and my name is on it. This must have taken months of scheming, planning, plotting - a complete disregard for all chains of command, structure, or integrity. Naturally, I thought of you.”

  “I see my rep
utation is unsullied.” Raschel said.

  “Why did you need my name?”

  “Pull.” Raschel stated. His smile faded, and his voice dropped. He said, “Everything I say is completely off record here. You've got clout. A lot of the damn cowboys still floating around in the flag ranks-”

  “Good, honest soldiers, you mean? People you can't compromise?”

  “-think you're some sort of wunderkind. If they only knew-”

  “Don't you dare.” Halstead hissed.

  Raschel put down his fork, becoming deadly serious. He said, “I need their approval. An order from you, that got delayed by a glitch in the system, why, the good old boys club would not only move that equipment right into place, they'd even keep it off record for me. Probably do it just to spite me. Harper's good, but he doesn't make friends. Too many rules. Too stodgy. Too much stick in the ass. But for you, they'd walk through hell, and leave a tip at the fucking Gates of Dis.”

  “Why?” Halstead demanded.

  “A mission. The kind you don't want to do anymore. Bad people in a bad place doing bad things, who need worse things done to them.”

  “So hit them. That’s what we do. Why the full black?”

  “Mission priorities. It’s a midnight run, Retired Colonel, and I’ve said far too much.” Raschel dabbed his napkin on his face. “You should try the crab. It's really fantastic.”

  “I don’t want any of the goddamn crab, Michael.”

  “No, really. It's good.” He glanced again, towards the singer, amid her twisting pillars of light. “I meant what I said. At the dinner. I’m sorry about what happened.” He turned back, and added, “And I don't want to bother your retirement. So just sign off on this damn thing, and enjoy golf.”