She dropped the half-gun and cradled her fingers, as if counting them. Seconds later, she ran. The group fell in behind her, only two risking a peek back to see if he had moved. Mamoru laughed in his head at their faces, though his outer calm did not soften. When the last of them vanished around the end of the alley, he went through the gate. A passage large enough for two trucks to pass side by side skirted the edge of the building, leading in a gradual curve past decrepit cargo containers stacked against the wall. He stepped around shallow standing pools, some striated with rainbow, and entered a courtyard that smelled of rust and chemicals.
At least I no longer taste dirt.
The little figure leaning against the door of a plain white hovercar struck him as another lost thirteen-year-old until she turned. Anna waited in the center of a space defined by the U-shaped warehouse, the collar of her coat up and hands in her pockets. She uncrossed her arms as he neared, shifting her weight off the car.
Mamoru walked up to her. “I expected you’d be inside out of the wind.”
“I-I’m not fond of large, disused warehouses. Was it much of a ballache?”
One eyebrow peeked over his mirrored wraparound glasses. “I am unfamiliar with that phrase.” He gestured in the direction of the gate. “What is an upsec?”
“Local thing, means someone from an upper class sector.” She looked him up and down. “Nice coat. Was it much of a problem getting the data?”
“It was a unique experience.” Mamoru moved close enough to kiss her. “You are tense.”
Anna glanced about at the roof. “Aurora insisted I bring a case of stimpaks. It’s never a good sign when a precog tells you to bring medical supplies.”
“Well then, I shall be as brief as I can.” He handed her a holodisk in a case. “Here is the information on your Division Zero man. I saw nothing in his records to indicate he has abilities beyond which the government is aware. From what Aurora has explained of… our kind, he seems to be lacking.”
She rolled her eyes. “Nothing at all?”
“No. Records and performance evaluations show him to be an unremarkable telekinetic, a few minor commendations and no disciplinary infractions except for showing disrespect to his superiors. The only unusual thing I found was an exemption to their rules that allowed him and his wife to serve as partners. Everything is on that disk. Their own files regard him as ‘below average’ in telekinetic force, but he appears to have an unusual talent for fine control. He seems normal.”
“Normal? Strange. Why would Lauren mention him?” Anna sighed. “I don’t understand that woman sometimes. Did you at least find anything useful in the P-SEC? Oh, wait, let me guess… you couldn’t get in?”
He took a second holodisk from his coat pocket. “There was a dragon, but I got past it.”
“Ooo.” She grabbed the box, tucking both into a metal case, which she placed in the car behind her.
“It appears C-Branch was attempting to clone someone. Does the name Ekaterina Myshkin mean anything? The project is dated twenty-five years ago, but listed as failed.”
“Did you live in a bubble? Oh”―she made a dismissive wave―“Japan… might as well be another damn planet. Myshkin was a famous psionic who escaped the ACC―a pyrokinetic. After she grew up, she did a lot of speeches and whatnot about how sorry they have it over there.”
Mamoru glanced at the roof to his left. “The records had images of a little girl floating in some manner of liquid. It seemed they disposed of her when the project was deemed impractical.”
“Was there any mention of where the facility was or what they did with it?”
“As far as the data indicated, somewhere out in a place called the Badlands. There was mention of a river. Mishi… Mossa…”
“Mississippi?” asked Anna.
“Yes, that. Their files indicated the entire compound burned to the ground.”
She smiled. “Well, at least she wasn’t wrong on that count.”
A sense of familiar urgency flooded Mamoru’s thoughts as his senses processed a soft scraping noise. Brilliant white light spread over his arms. He leapt the car, dragging her over the roof to the far side. Sharp pangs echoed as bullets ricocheted off the plate metal ground where he had been a second earlier. He landed, running at the warehouse, carrying her. Mamoru took four steps before he jumped at the entrance, spinning to shield her. Anna’s reaction to the first leap had barely started to show on her face when they crashed through the door, taking it from its hinges.
The impact sent them sliding over bare concrete floor, spinning. She held on, clutching two fistfuls of coat until they stopped moving. A flurry of bullets came through the wall, creating a running line of holes aglow from outside lights.
Anna rolled off him and ducked behind a dead forklift. “Are these for you or for me?”
Mamoru sprang up and moved behind a metal roof support. “I do not know.”
A pair of fist-sized orbs, jet-black with dim green lenses, floated through an already-broken window, gliding in a sweeping turn to the center of the room. One pivoted at Mamoru, searing a burn into the column over his head with a bright green laser. Two loud snaps came in rapid succession, resounding through the cavernous building. Hair-thin threads of lightning burned the air between Anna’s outstretched hand and the spheres. Mamoru jumped at the gun-like noise, and pressed himself against the post as the metal balls fell to the ground with dull clanks.
Anna looked over the top of the cargo loader and locked eyes with him.
You watch that side. I’ll get this one.
Her voice in his mind made him jump, wincing from the perceived volume. She sank out of sight behind a stack of plastisteel cargo boxes covered in plastic tarp. Mamoru drew the katana in a loose grip that did not trigger the vibro inducer, and waited.
Shadows slipped over grimy glass as silent bodies seemed to fly from the ground to the roof. Mamoru’s shoulders simmered with energy as he drew on his power to bolster his senses. Thinking of it as chi had ritualized the process. With the mysticism removed, it took effect in half the time. Creaking ran through the walls from the pressure of the wind. Other sounds filtered through the wind, now an overbearing howl. The distinct sense of people creeping over the roof led his gaze past a dozen broken lamps to an elevated catwalk.
Several spots of molten metal glowed on the ceiling, brilliant in the dark to his enhanced sight. From each two-inch hole, something black slipped in and hit the floor with a click, followed by skittering.
“Pixie, small spiders. Poison,” said Mamoru as he moved away from the column.
She stood a second before as one came scurrying out of the dark. Mamoru advanced towards the stairs that led to the elevated walkway, body aglow. A mouse-sized metal spider sprang at his face. He moved at such speed time appeared to stretch to a halt around him. The dripping needle-fangs glistened, bearing droplets of pale green liquid. Mamoru slashed it to the side. Another leapt from behind him. He brought his blade across his neck, catching the tiny assassin before it could bite. With a flick, he threw it into the air and cut it in half on the way down
Sparks flashed to the right. One thread of lightning appeared in a jagged arc, vanished, and reappeared in a different shape. Another arachnid flung itself to its destruction against his sword. One ran up a column, turned, and tensed to leap sidelong at him. It never made it off the post, pinned by a stab through its orb-like abdomen. The katana squealed like a quenched blade as the steel beam battled its hypersonic oscillation. A flash of sparks and greasy, black smoke puffed out of it.
A figure in black dropped through a roof hatch, landing on the catwalk with a short rifle at the ready. Hissing drew his gaze up to where several orange melt-circles appeared on the ceiling, arranged around the room. They surrounded where he had been seconds earlier. His rush for the stairs put him right under one.
Anna let off an incoherent shout of rage. Two rapid arcs flashed, connecting wires on the ceiling to her back an instant before an arm-thick shaft
of white lightning from her hand launched the catwalk man into the wall twenty feet away. Crackling sparks burst out from the point of impact before he peeled away and fell. The smoking body did not move after landing, aside from erratic twitching.
Mamoru raised an eyebrow at her.
Before he could say anything, five metal discs fell from the ceiling, each ridden by a man on a rappelling line. A burst of kinetic focus launched Mamoru at the one hovering fifteen feet over his head. An upward stab through the chest proved fatal, leaving the assassin dangling on a wire fixed to a harness. The others fired as he landed. A few stray shots spattered the distant wall with the corpse’s blood. Mamoru leapt for cover behind one of the roof supports, flattening himself behind it as several tried to shoot through concrete-covered steel.
The room erupted in a flicker of shimmering blue and white. Flashes, screams, and harsh buzzing forced Mamoru to relax his boosted senses. Automatic fire erupted behind him. Anna’s cries of “shit, shit, shit, shit” barely made it to his ears over the roar.
Mamoru frowned at the rifle dropped by the man he killed. He rushed out of cover and headed for the gun, shifting the katana to his left hand. Two charred corpses hung from the ceiling, still smoldering while another assassin faced sideways, a wavering flare of blue muzzle fire belching from the front of his rifle. The cargo mover Anna huddled behind flaked away in pieces. Every so often, a geyser of fluid burst from an impact hole. Mamoru dropped to a knee slide when he noticed the last assassin had been waiting for him.
Searing pain lanced through his left shoulder, another bullet whispered past his ear. He skidded to a stop with the dead man’s assault rifle between his legs, frozen. The foreign emotion of fear invaded his mind as he found himself gazing at the maw of a gun with nowhere to hide.
The assassin corrected his aim, but plummeted to the ground, trailed by a severed climbing cord. His sudden fall sent his second burst wild. Bullets clanked and plinked among the rafters in a shower of sparks. Mamoru wasted no time pondering his luck and seized the firearm. He held it as if it were made of animal waste, scrunching his nose while pointing it with one arm toward the man shooting at Anna. His borrowed weapon dragged his arm upward as he squeezed the trigger, raking a trail of bright holes in the wall, but coming nowhere near the target. The shot did however provide enough of a threat to distract the man away from her.
Iridescent flames gathered along Mamoru’s arms as a rush of psionic energy permeated his muscles. He tossed the rifle aside with a contemptuous frown and gathered the katana in both hands as he leapt. Gunfire rang out in a series of pops. Individual bullets spiraled through the air below him, sailing at the spot of floor from which he’d jumped.
Mamoru crested the arc of his leap as the man who fell took a firing position. He, too, aimed as if his target was still on the ground. The assassin reacted to Mamoru’s charge too late, only starting to look up as the katana took his head.
A distant flash preceded a man’s scream behind him, followed by a staccato ripple of tiny explosions. Mamoru ceased concentrating on the tiring boost, allowing time to return to normal, and glanced behind him. The assassin who would have killed him had the cord not snapped twitched and convulsed. His right arm ended midway between elbow and wrist in a spurting bloody stump, and that side of his face ceased to exist. From the look of it, his pistol’s ammunition had detonated right out of the magazine. Small bits of fire danced on his chest along the scar of a lightning path.
Anna emerged from her hiding place, staggering. Her left hand, pale and bloody, squeezed her right shoulder. A series of low-intensity sparks shot from her outstretched arm, knocking the last man about like an electric piñata.
“You miserable son of a bitch.” She growled. A long-burning tendril of energy connected her hand to his chest.
He shrieked, begging for his life in Japanese.
Mamoru stretched to his full height, picking at a hole near his left collarbone. “I think they were here for me.”
Anna splayed her fingers apart, five discrete streams of electricity lapped at the body until bloody foam oozed out of the facemask and he went still. Her anger gave way to disgust, and she stumbled over to Mamoru.
“I… hate that smell. I’m never going to get used to it.” She fumbled in her pocket and handed Mamoru three small, red cylinders. “These are―”
“I am familiar with stimpaks. My former employer manufactures stim suits.”
Mamoru opened his coat and pushed his shirt aside, amazed that he had not lost the use of his left arm. A bullet had gone straight through him, leaving only a small wound channel. A half-inch closer to inside and it would have shattered the bone.
“They’re using indirium rounds, armor piercing.” Anna peeled clothing away from her shoulder and stuck herself with three stimpaks, one after the next. “Damn, Aurora…” She winced. “Couldn’t have suggested we meet another damn day? No, of course not, that’s less fun.”
After applying a few autoinjectors to his chest, Mamoru tugged his shirt back into place. “It is not her fault she…” He stared at her with a disbelieving expression. “…sees the future.”
Anna smiled. “At least you are starting to come ‘round to understanding.”
He went from body to body, tearing their masks away. All were Japanese, some with the dark lines of obvious cybernetic enhancements showing in their skin. Dim green light still shone from one man’s silver left eye.
“Anyone you know?” asked Anna while rolling her shoulder with a grimace.
“No.” He scowled at the holes in the roof, exhaling with relief. “No one I know. You seem pleased.”
She gestured at the dead. “This is what we have to look forward to here. I don’t mean to be callous, but I made a few friends. I keep hoping they don’t have the balls to cross the pond… again.” After a dire glare at the man who shot her, she put on a smile for Mamoru. “So, whereabouts was this facility that burned?”
“Northeastern Badlands, near the river. They marked the project as a total loss, but there was evidence of some manner of ongoing search.”
“Brilliant. There’s only one more thing left for you to do. Then we will be masters of our own destiny, no longer hiding like rats in the dark.” She took a small case from her pocket, offering it. “This disc contains what information we have thus far been able to gather about the ship.”
The sadness in her voice stalled his surge of irritation. “More?”
She put a hand on his arm. “Archon wants to take us away from a world that hates and fears us. There is a military starship, the CSS Angel, that’s recently been completed. We are going to steal it, and hopefully find a world where we no longer need to be ashamed of what we are.”
Mamoru turned the holodisk case over, watching the light play off the smooth, black plastic. “Why go to all that trouble? Why not migrate to a colony world in the usual manner?”
“Because.” She gestured with both hands, as if it was that obvious. “Established colonies come with the same prejudices that exist on Earth. Add to it, some of us don’t trust being helpless in stasis tanks for the trip. We can use the Angel as a place to live until we find a planet.”
“Planets with natural Earthlike conditions are rare. Most are the result of terraforming. Your plan relies on a degree of optimism I find impractical.”
“That’s another reason he wants the Angel. It’s so large we could live on it for at least two generations if we have to. By then, if we cannot find somewhere to go, we will select one of the smaller colonies. There is also talk of using it as a bargaining chip, trading it back to the government in exchange for sovereignty rights on a small colony. Archon has everything sussed out.”
“I do not know about living on a starship for the rest of my life. There is no nature, no spirits.” He quieted, gazing at the sky through the holes in the roof. “What about my request?”
“He’s looking into it. I assure you, he always keeps his word.” She glanced at the door. “I’
ll be in contact in a few days when the time is right.”
“It seems you leave me little choice.” Mamoru closed his eyes. “Very well.”
The echo of Anna’s boots grew distant and stopped with the sound of a car door closing. He did not move, even as the whine of her hovercar moved up and over the building, followed by intense cyan light shifting among the still-smoking portals cut by the assassins. Soon, the ion drive noise faded to silence.
Mamoru waited.
After a minute, he smiled. “Thank you.”
A surprised gasp echoed from a few meters behind.
“That line did not fail on its own.”
“I did not want them to succeed, but I have killed myself,” said Sadako.
He opened his eyes as he spun. She had come within a few steps, staring downcast at a patch of blood. Black material split open as her head covering receded and absorbed into the metal ring at the collar of her suit.
“No, you have not.” Mamoru moved to her, cradling her cheek in his hand. “They have no power over you.”
She reached up and clasped his wrist. “They have put death in my head, Mamoru. When they realize what I have done…” She sniffled. “Do you even remember me?”
“Each night, I hear your screams as they carried you off.” He looked down, eyes watering.
A tear ran from her eye onto his hand, over his fingers. “They were going to train me to pleasure men, but I tried to escape. I was caught, but I got far enough to impress them. They reassigned me as a spy. To be owned by those who murdered my parents… I―” She fell against him, sobbing for a moment. “I want them to set it off. I cannot do this anymore. I cannot live as a slave.”
“Sister, you are free. You no longer need wear the name of your captors’ clan. You are not Kuroyama, you are Saitō.”
She looked to the side, failing to contain her tears. “I know you are not my blood.”
“Mother told you to keep your distance, but you did not listen. I regret the circumstances of our first reunion, when they sent you to test our security. I did not enjoy injuring you, but I could not fail Minamoto in such a public way. I am sorry for our third meeting. It pained me to harm you again, but I could not do what you wanted. I could not kill the last family I have.” He remained quiet for a moment. “You are my blood, Sadako. She was as much my mother as yours. It is a father we do not share.”
Grey Ronin (The Awakened Book 3) Page 28