Callsign Cerberus

by Mark Ellis

  GRANT ran, shielding his eyes from the spraying columns of dirt and rock fountaining up all around him. Though his eyes were protected by his dark glasses, a shard of stone could shatter a lens and blind him, like poor Carthew. He pointed the Sin Eater back over his left shoulder and pressed the trigger. He had no idea if he hit anything.

  Dust and pulverized rock danced in fountains around him. Two subguns opened up in full-auto bursts, trying to chop him to pieces in a cross fire. Bullets snapped the air all around, sounding like steel whips. Ricochets whined and whistled.

  He felt two bullets skid along the Kevlar covering his hip, and he staggered. Something tugged at his collar, bit the heel of his right boot, but he kept running, waiting for either deliverance or death.

  KANE felt a twinge of guilt. It appeared as if the pair of blastermen was ignoring him completely and concentrating their pattern of fire on Grant. So far, not a single slug had buzzed his way.

  Taking and holding a deep breath, Kane jammed the cigar between his teeth and rose up from behind his stone barrier. He pointed the Sin Eater in the general direction of the two buildings and held down the trigger, firing a continuous left-to-right burst. Grant lurched toward him, running in a crouch.

  “Move!” Kane yelled.

  “What the hell do you think I’m doing!” Grant bellowed, twisting his body from one side to the other, running broken-field style.

  Smoke drifted in flat planes between the two structures. Kane doubted he would score any hits, but his fire spoiled the aims of the blastermen in the squats. The autofire from the windows stopped just as Grant angled his body in a dive that brought him up and over the top of the rock heap. Kane obligingly sidestepped. Grant hit the ground with a grunting curse, rolled to one knee and aimed his Sin Eater first at one window, then the other. His face glistened with perspiration, and his breath came in harsh pants.

  “Where are they?” Grant demanded breathlessly. “Who are they?”

  They heard the rapid crunch-crunch-crunch of boots on gravel behind them and whirled simultaneously. Boon raced toward them, coattails flapping, Sin Eater in hand.

  “Get down!” Grant shouted, waving at him.

  The bullets caught Boon high up on the left side of the throat, just below the hinge of his jaw, spinning him around on his toes like a dancer. Fistfuls of flesh and bone sheared away in a semi-liquid spray, and the severed carotid artery pumped out a bright jet of blood. Boon fell backward, and the bullets followed him down, kicking his body from side to side. The autofire ceased.

  “Goddammit!” Grant snarled, pounding a fist against the ground. “It was me they were after, not—”

  His lips tightened in a thin line, allowing no more words to escape. Anger was unprofessional and dangerous.

  “Yeah,” Kane said, back against the rock pile. “They’re after you, not me. But why?”

  “How the hell do I know” Grant’s voice was pitched low to disguise the quaver of fury and grief.

  “Then let’s by God find out.”

  Nodding tersely, Grant reached inside his coat for the trans-comm unit, pulling the pin mike from his lapel. “I’ll call for backup.”

  “Don’t,” Kane said. “Not yet.”

  Grant stared at him incredulously. “Not yet? Then when? When all the jolt-walkers, blaster-thugs and chop mongers in the Pits decide they want to buy into a piece of this action?”

  “We’ll call for backup after we nail these bastards. Not before.”

  Grant scowled. “Another one of your instincts?”

  “That’s right,” Kane replied. “This doesn’t add up, makes no sense at all. We’ve walked the Pits for years, on sweeps and on patrols. How many times have we been bushwhacked or shot at, let alone with autoblasters?”

  Grant exhaled grimly. “Hardly ever.”

  “Whoever these blastermen are, why choose you as the target?”

  “I’ve made enemies down here, I guess.”

  “No more than I have. This a contract kill on you and if he got in the way, on Boon. For some reason, my ass is sanctified.”

  “That’s just what Reeth said. Remember what happened to him?”

  “Very clearly. But I have a plan.”

  They shared a hasty, whispered conference, and then Kane slowly stood up. He made a careful visual survey of the zone and deliberately walked around the pile of broken stones and into the open, hands at his sides.

  DOS stared in gape-mouthed astonishment as the Mag sauntered casually in his direction. The dumb bastard had his Sin Eater in hand, but he held it against his leg.

  Reflexively his finger tightened on the trigger of the mini-Uzi, and it required a conscious effort to relax it. Grant hunkered down behind the heap of masonry and brick, safely sheltered from his and Uno’s fire. The man they had been ordered to spare strode single-mindedly forward, as if he were strolling along the promenade of a high-tower, still puffing on a cigar.

  Dos bit back a groan of despair and murmured, “What the fuck am I supposed expected to do now?”

  THE furious hammering of the autoblaster echoed from the window ahead of Kane and above him. Dirt divots jumped into the air. His measured stride didn’t falter, but he repressed a smile of relief. He had gambled correctly. For whatever reason, the hit-team was under orders to spare his life, though the blastermen weren’t above trying to scare him off.

  Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw Grant peering anxiously around the base of the masonry mound. Kane saluted him with one finger to the nose. The “one-percent” salute was a gesture he and Grant reserved for high-risk undertakings with small ratios of success. The two men shared the half-serious belief that ninety-nine percent of things that went awry could be anticipated and compensated for. There was always a one-percent margin of error and playing against that margin could have deadly consequences.

  As Kane expected, the interior of the squat was a gutted shell. In the stagnant air he detected the smell of old cook fires. The walls of the individual rooms had long ago been demolished. The light was dim but modified by the indirect illumination of the setting sun, peeping through a ragged gap in the domed roof.

  The second floor was not much more than a rickety platform supported by a pair of square wooden pillars. A crude homemade ladder stretched from the ground to a square opening eight feet above.

  Calmly Kane said, “Throw down your blaster and come down, hands behind your head.”

  There was no reply, but he heard the creak and squeak of floorboards.

  “Look,” Kane said reasonably, “I’m not coming up there, so you’re going to have to come down here. I promise not to shoot you. Magistrate’s mercy.”

  He thought he heard a nervous intake of breath, then another creak of wood. Kane counted silently to thirty, figuring half a minute was sufficient time for the man to review his situation and reach a logical decision.

  At thirty, he announced, “All right, then. This way is more fun, anyhow.”

  Stepping deeper into the gloomy interior, Kane levelled the Sin Eater and pressed the trigger. The high-velocity, heavy-calibre rounds tore across the room and ripped savagely into the support posts right where the areas of dry rot were the most evident. The building filled with thunder and the sharp sweet smell of cordite. Spent shell casings arced up and clattered down. Sections of the posts dissolved in sprays of splinters.

  Kane played the bullet stream over the pair of wooden pillars as if he were washing them down with a water hose. Amid mushy cracks and snaps, the entire second-floor platform tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, then cascaded down entirely. The whole building trembled with the violence of the crash.

  Kane glimpsed a man frantically scrabbling to maintain his balance, feet kicking wildly as if he were running in place. He uttered a hoarse cry as the floor collapsed beneath him. Kane stepped aside as the man struck the floor gracelessly
and with breath-robbing force. He tumbled head over heels, the mini-Uzi spinning away and disappearing into a puffing cloud of duraplast dust and rotted-wood particles.

  The fall slammed all the air out of the man’s lungs, and his mouth opened and closed in shuddery silent gasps, like a fish stranded on dry land. Glazed eyes took in the dark figure of Kane looming out of the gloom, and his hand streaked for the long knife scabbarded at his waist.

  Kane stomped down hard on the hand, breaking and grinding the delicate metacarpal bones beneath his heel. The blasterman tried to scream, but he didn’t have the breath for it. Only an aspirated gargle issued from his mouth.

  Grant’s voice reached him from outside. “Kane! What’s going on in there?”

  “A little renovating,” Kane called. “Just stay there.”

  He reached down and hauled the blasterman to his feet by gripping the collar of his jacket. The lenses of his glasses easily penetrated the dust-clogged murk, and he recognized the man, or least what he was, if not who.

  “You’re one of old Guana Teague’s strong-arms,” Kane said. “Which one are you—Uno or Dos?”

  The strong-arm’s lips writhed, and he dragged oxygen into his lungs. Cradling his broken hand, he managed to husk out, “Dos.”

  “Who’s in the other building?”

  “Uno.”

  “Talkative as all hell, aren’t we?”

  “Huh?”

  Kane pulled the strong-arm in front of him, stepping back half a pace. He trained the Sin Eater on the small of the man’s back, but he didn’t touch him with it. He knew never to get that close with a gun, only with a knife. A professional could easily stamp down hard on his instep and pivot around to whop his pistol aside.

  “We’re moving out” Kane said. “Slow. You stop when I tell you to, or I’ll stop you. Permanently.”

  Raising his voice, he called, “Grant! We’re coming out! Don’t shoot me by accident.”

  Grant shouted back, voice full of impatience, “After what you’ve put me through, it wouldn’t be any damn accident!”

  Kane and Dos edged out of the squat, facing the opposite building.

  “Hey, Uno,” Kane said loudly, “I’ve got your brother here, so why don’t you come down and talk this over?”

  Dos mumbled something in a peevish tone.

  “What?” Kane inquired.

  “I said he’s not my fuckin’ brother.”

  “Dos says you’re not his fucking brother,” Kane called. “Even without that familial connection, I’m presuming you don’t want me to kill him. Right?”

  After a long moment, an uncertain voice wafted from the window. “Right. Guess so.”

  “Can I come out now?” demanded Grant.

  Raising his voice, Kane shouted, “Hey, Uno! Grant wants to know if he can come out now.”

  There was another long moment of silence from the second floor. “Yeah. Sure. Guess so.”

  Cautiously Grant straightened up from behind his stone-littered shelter, Sin Eater aimed at the window. He began a careful crab-walk toward Kane and the strong-arm, eyes and blaster not wavering from the second floor of the squat.

  To Dos, Kane asked, “Why did Guana order this chill? And why Grant?”

  The strong-arm shrugged. “I just follow orders.”

  “As do we all. Where’d you get the blasters?”

  Dos shrugged again.

  “Who’s the girl?”

  “Girl?”

  “The albino girl.”

  “That’s Domi.”

  “She works for Guana, too?”

  Dos hesitated. “Sort of.”

  “Well, you sort of killed a Magistrate, so maybe I’ll just sort of kill you—unless you and Uno start singing without me having to prompt you.”

  Grant stopped his advance and shouted angrily up at the window. “Better come down, you rad-blasted mongrel! You don’t want me to come in after you!”

  The darkness beyond the window snapped flame and noise. Slugs ripped across the ground, and Grant, roaring a curse, hurled his body backward and down. As he fell, he worked the trigger of the Sin Eater, snap-shooting at the muzzle-flash. He missed.

  Uno didn’t. The bullets from the mini-Uzi stitched a straight line across the ground, chewing up the turf, spitting up gravel, tracking and intersecting with Dos.

  The strong-arm screamed and toppled backward, arms windmilling. Staggering under his weight, Kane felt a storm of bullets striking Dos’s body, as if a work gang pounded his torso with sledgehammers.

  With slugs kicking up dirt all around him, Kane tried to fling the inert body aside and raise the Sin Eater. Something hard and hot smashed across his forehead and sent him flailing back. He felt himself falling, suddenly blinded by a fiery wetness. Dos fell on top of him, pinning him to the ground.

  The stutter of the autoblaster ceased, but the trip-hammer roar of Grant’s Sin Eater continued for a few seconds, then there was silence.

  Kane lay beneath the bullet-riddled body, not moving, not even breathing. He was astounded that he was breathing and not thoroughly dead. He heard the rapid scutter of running feet, and then Grant leaned over him. He heaved Dos’ body up and rolled it aside.

  “Hell, Kane, don’t you be dead—”

  Kane lurched into a sitting position, swiping at the scarlet liquid streaming warmly down his face. “I’m not. Let’s get him.”

  Spitting the squashed ruin of the cigar from his mouth, Kane came to his feet in an enraged rush, and nearly fell as a wave of dizziness swept over him. His head began to throb in agonizing cadence with his pulse. Grant caught him and manhandled him down behind the masonry pile.

  “Bastard’s gone by now,” Grant rasped, probing at the wound on Kane’s forehead with his fingers. “We’ll get him. A graze, that’s all. Probably caught one that went through Dos’ shit-for-brains, so it was already partly deflected.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel a whole lot better.” Kane pushed Grant’s hand away and sluiced the flow of blood from his eyes.

  “So much for your guess they were after me and that your overconfident ass was sacrosanct.”

  Kane started to shake his head, and then thought better of it. “I was still right. Uno wasn’t aiming at me. He was trying to silence Dos.”

  Grant glanced over at the strong-arm’s bullet-smashed head. “He did more than try.”

  He glanced behind him at Boon’s body, lying spread-eagled and motionless, bled almost white. A ribbon of blood, black in the fading light, had meandered several feet from his neck, gleaming dully on the ground.

  Grant sighed heavily. “Can we call for backup now?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE RED SUN of the dying workday washed the promenade with the colour of old blood. People still crowded the walkway, going to the elevators to begin late shifts, coming through the entrance gate, heading to their homes.

  Morales had been waiting for nearly half an hour. Following Salvo’s order, he wore a dark green, untailored bodysuit and fiddled with the lamps in the evergreen trees, trying to look as if he knew what he was doing. He felt faintly insulted that Salvo had instructed him to dress as a custodian. Sure, he was of dark olive complexion with a square, stump-legged physique, but in his opinion he looked nothing like a typical outrunner.

  He couldn’t deny that his great-grandparents had been outrunners, from one of the Western Islands, but inasmuch as his great-grandfather was an accomplished stonemason and was instrumental in erecting the Administrative Monolith, his family had been granted citizenship. Of course, that was before the approval requirements tightened.

  So, now Morales stood in the decorative tree line and did his best to look like an outrunner custodian and not a Mag Intel officer. He became irrationally annoyed when none of the passing people spared him so much as a second glance. He refused to admit
that he fit the profile.

  He grew more impatient, more irritated the longer he waited. Then, finally, he saw the woman. The pix he had called up from a personnel file hadn’t really done her justice.

  There was no denying Brigid Baptiste’s striking appearance, and it went well with her brisk, almost manly stride.

  Her blue bodysuit conformed to every curve of her tall, willowy body. Even with her hair pinned up in a constraining bun and the quaint eyeglasses perched on the bridge of her nose, Morales could understand why Kane had made a midnight visit to her apartment. Evidently Salvo did not.

  Morales waited until she passed through the gate, on her way to the elevator, before he climbed out from the tree line. He walked casually along the promenade toward the apartment blocks. He had memorized the woman’s number and found her place easily. Of course, the door was unlocked.

  Brigid Baptiste’s apartment was as simple and utilitarian as his own, except his was substantially smaller. He lived three levels below, so the size difference was understandable, but nonetheless irritating.

  The curtains were drawn across the three back windows, so only a dim light filled the place. He groped his way to the bedroom, found the bedside lamp and switched it on. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see, much less the “anything” Salvo had commanded him to find. The room smelled of aromatic soap, with a faint whiff of roses.

  Morales made a quick circuit of the apartment, opening and closing drawers, peeking into food canisters, even inspecting the contents of the small refrigerator in the kitchenette. The place was very clean, almost compulsively tidy. That certainly wasn’t out of the ordinary, since archivists possessed rigidly regimented personalities.

  Careful not to leave anything out of place, he returned to the bedroom. On the bedside table he saw a framed photo, which at first he assumed was a pix of Baptiste herself. Then he realized the woman in the photograph was a bit older, but the resemblance was startling. She was beaming at the camera, with a wide, pearly smile. Morales wondered if Baptiste looked that heart-achingly beautiful when— or if—she smiled.