AEGIS Tales

by Todd Downing

  “I don’t believe you,” she concluded. “You think we don’t know you work with AEGIS? You think we are stupid? That we are weak?” She turned to one of the guards: “Go get the kit.” The guard opened the door and left. “He is going for more of the Martian Red we used before. Two more doses and we will know what we want, and you will be dead.” She stepped back and turned away.

  Suddenly, the lights dimmed dramatically, and from somewhere deep below him a thrum of vibration shook the floor. Fogarty jumped up and, lowering his shoulder, he drove himself into Song Li’s back and into the door. He swung the chair violently to his right, catching the remaining guard solidly in the midsection, breaking the chair, and, he hoped, a few ribs in the process. Snatching the gun away, he left the two moaning on the floor as he threw open the door and charged into the hallway, sending the surprised second guard and himself tumbling. The guard grabbed for the weapon, but had the wrong end, and Felix pulled the trigger. Three rounds hammered into the surprised man, and as he let go, his body shimmered and hissed then seemed to melt away leaving only a wisp of smoke and empty uniform behind.

  Nope, I guess I wasn’t seeing things. Cripes, this is pretty weird stuff. Gathering himself, he got to his feet and fired off a few rounds into the door from which he had just exited to discourage pursuit, and as an afterthought, snatched up the uniform jacket. He won’t be needing it. By now, as he dashed down the corridor, he could hear the shouts and footsteps of pursuers alerted by the gunfire.

  “Take him alive!” Song Li was shouting orders as troops began flooding into the area. “He went down the hall. It goes to the vault. And don’t spray bullets everywhere—that equipment is irreplaceable!” Particularly if the blueprints really have been destroyed, she thought.

  Felix crashed through another door and skidded to a stop just inches away from the edge of a catwalk encircling a cavernous space. Looking down could induce vertigo, as the excavation was at least two hundred feet deep, with a faint blue glow emanating from the center. The glow was synchronized with the hum, and also seemed to be coming from the bottom of the pit. It was by his estimation at least one hundred fifty feet wide. The surrounding walkway was dotted with ladders leading to more catwalks above and below the one upon which he was standing, and gave access to a bewildering array of plumbing and wiring. Vacuum tubes glowed orange in a multitude of circuits, providing half of the dim light available. Looking upward, it was another sixty feet to what he judged to be the ceiling. Centered above was what looked like a gigantic camera shutter. Here and there were a few lab-coated technicians peering at meters and gauges. One was tapping a tube with a pencil, smiling when it glowed to life. Slipping into the jacket, which was way too short on Fogarty, he noticed troopers beginning to appear on various catwalks. He imagined they couldn’t be far behind at this level, so he strode purposefully to the nearest ladder and began climbing.

  Song Li arched her back, rubbing at the ache and marching down the stairs to the control room, silently cursing her own carelessness. Fogarty was still at large, and she wasn’t looking forward to notifying the Black Dog that the plans may have been destroyed. While she was confident the prisoner would be recaptured, she was less certain about wringing information out of him—with or without drugs—and was fearful the project might suffer a significant setback. She knew one thing for certain though: she would not underestimate Mr. Fogarty again.

  Stepping onto the catwalk, Felix turned away from the nearest troopers and walked forward. Using this process, he managed to climb half a dozen levels and work his way almost completely opposite of where he had initially entered. He nodded perfunctorily to technicians as he passed, and they either ignored him or responded similarly. Guards, however, were working their way toward him relentlessly, systematically cutting off access to ladders and catwalks below him. They worked with implacability but no apparent urgency. He could understand why. There were only two remaining catwalks above him, each with only four ladders. The final one led to what looked like a gantry with a service platform, probably for repairs and maintenance of the shutter. Shedding the jacket, he headed toward the gantry. From there, at least, they could only come at him one at a time, so he could buy as much time as he had bullets. He snicked the machine gun into semi-automatic mode, slung it over his shoulder, and made what he expected would be the last climb he would ever make.

  From his perch on the gantry platform, the assemblage of guards looked like sailors dressing the deck of a naval vessel. The entire catwalk below him had one guard placed about every ten feet for the entire circumference. No one had attempted to climb toward his outpost, and no one had spoken to him. It was like the natives had surrounded his fort and were waiting to starve him out. The classic impasse—but why? He tried to imagine why they were waiting, and only two scenarios seemed to make any sense. One: They were waiting for someone, perhaps Song Li, or maybe that captain he could barely remember from his drugged stupor; or two: That was the sticker. What was two?

  One level below him and about a quarter of the diameter of the room away, a motor sprang to life, and he watched in horror as another gantry, in this case loaded with a boom lift, swung out over the chasm. When it was almost directly below him, two guards who had ridden it out stepped into the bucket and began an ascent toward his position.

  What is two? Why am I so important to them? Then it dawned on him. This machine is the blueprinted device. It must not be complete. And I can’t let them finish it. Now he scanned his surroundings with greater intensity. At their rate of climb, he figured he had less than a minute before he had to do something decisive. Looking at the controls of the platform he occupied, he noted a LEFT/RIGHT switch, an ON/OFF toggle, and another toggle marked HOME/ROOF. He toggled to the ON position, and assuming he was already in the home position, he toggled to ROOF. Immediately, his gantry slewed to the left. There was an agitated murmur among the guards on the catwalk below, and one of them stepped to a phone in the service wall near him. When the mechanism stopped, he looked up at a panel directly overhead. There were several more switches and buttons, but two caught his eye: REMOTE CONTROL LOCKOUT and IRIS OPEN. The second gantry with the guards was only a few dozen feet away, so Felix mashed the LOCKOUT button then hit IRIS OPEN.

  Instantly the roof leafs began to retract away, while the hum and vibrations from below began to intensify. The blue glow became almost unbearably bright. Several floors below, Song Li burst onto the catwalk and shouted to the guards, “Take him! Take him now!”

  The nearest troops began crawling up the gantry ladder; the bucket from below was close enough that the riders began to reach out for Fogarty.

  This is it—can’t wait! Felix fired at the closest man, watching him fizzle away, then slipped back to full-auto and began spraying hot lead downward at anyone unfortunate enough to be in front of the slugs.

  “Kill him!” Song Li screamed. “Kill him, kill him, kill him!”

  He was protected somewhat by the metal decking of the platform, but as he fired off his last rounds, he caught two himself. He tried to stanch the bleeding from his thigh, but the crackle of electrical circuits and the rending of metal threw him off-balance. He noticed pieces of catwalk whizzing by him—upwards—and through the iris opening. More rending, and a cry from the remaining man in the bucket sounded above the general noise, as it was torn from its mooring and shot upward. To his utter amazement, Felix felt himself falling skyward as well. Shooting past the lip of the roof, along with debris from collapsing equipment and a dozen or so bewildered Silver Star personnel, he looked down in wonder at the developing ruins a thousand feet below. Then the blue light faltered and winked out. He floated weightlessly for a moment, then began slowly drifting. Down, this time. Alice through the looking glass, indeed.

  A shadow blocked the sun as an airship hove into view. Smaller by two thirds than the Deadalus-class light recon airship, the Hermes was experimental, and had its landing boom fully extended. Wedged onto the end was Joe Frankels, with what
appeared to be a bullwhip in hand. “Hard a-port!” he bellowed to the pilot. He flicked the lash deftly and it wrapped neatly around Fogarty’s ankle. Joe pulled hard before his young agent’s fall could reach full speed, and dragged his wounded associate onto the boom with him. “Set her down!” he hollered, and though the ship was nose-heavy, the pilot executed a perfect near-ground approach. Before he lost consciousness, Felix noted with wonder swarms of AEGIS personnel already crawling like ants throughout the wreckage of the building.

  # # #

  Song Li and the Black Dog, who had just arrived from the Silver Shark, barely escaped with their lives. Neither was confident that they would last beyond their next encounter with Aleister Crowley. With the disastrous loss of the machine, and even worse, the blueprints, Projekt Abheben was dead. There would be no liftoff anytime soon. Song Li managed to avoid execution mainly because she had been out of the country when the plans had been lost, and the Black Dog returned to his vessel to nurse his wounds and build a darker grudge against AEGIS in general, and Felix Fogarty in particular.

  # # #

  From his bed in the HQ infirmary, Felix doodled on a piece of paper. He looked up as his boss entered the ward and headed his way.

  “Hi, boss. Listen, my report is this―‘anti gravity machine seems to work’.”

  That elicited a guffaw from the section chief. “Well, the doc says you’ll heal up just fine. She said something about ‘just a flesh wound’, but it was a pretty close shave there, young man.” Joe Frankels was glad his young genius was safely ensconced away from the prying eyes of the Silver Star.

  “Yep. I was pretty sure my ticket had been punched. I’m sure glad the Hermes was operational.”

  “About that—perhaps we shouldn’t mention we used it just yet. Let’s just call it a shakedown.”

  “Okay.” Felix raised an eyebrow. “And are we similarly circumspect about your prowess with a bullwhip?”

  “Nope. Another life, another time, but not a secret. It’s too bad about the blueprints, though. That was quite a show.”

  “What about the blueprints?”

  “Well, before surgery, you did say they were lost.”

  “Actually, I said I burned them, not that they were lost.”

  A quizzical look came over Frankels. “What other options are there?”

  Felix handed him the doodle he had been scribbling on the paper. Joe studied it for a moment, then a broad smile broke over his face.

  “Photographic memory?” Frankels asked. Fogarty nodded. “I had no idea. How much did you get?”

  “Every single page, soup to nuts. Plus having been inside their machine, I have most of what they will need to get started on the practical assembly. It’s all stored right up here.” He tapped his finger to his temple.

  “Excellent!” Joe rubbed his hands together gleefully. “We need a better nickname for you than resident genius. How about wunderkind?”

  “Please, I beg of you, not German!”

  “Very well,” Frankels considered for a moment, “how about Miror Hominis?”

  Fogarty grinned, “I’ll accept that!”

  Three days later, the blueprints in the person of “Wonder Man” were on their way to Menlo Park.

  Mind Mists

  by Dan Heinrich

  It could just be that narrowly escaping an assassin in San Francisco was making him paranoid. Knowing a Shanghai tong sent a hitman across the ocean just for him had that effect. And the ensuing mix of train and plane travel to cross the country in just under 48 hours had left him exhausted. It was perfectly reasonable that David Li was jumping at shadows.

  He reminded himself that particular tong had no established presence here in New York. Still...the Chinese man standing across the street from David’s Tribeca brownstone was acting so nonchalant he was actually calling attention to himself. He was only two blocks west of Chinatown, close enough that the occasional Chinese person wasn’t remarkable. David lived here without incident. But the ones who did cross the invisible boundary of Mulberry Street usually had a purpose besides smoking in an alley and looking up and down the street. And at 6 a.m.? Maybe a little paranoia was needed.

  David casually unlocked the door and entered his brownstone. As soon as the door closed he moved. His bag went behind the stairs leading up and he strode quickly down the hall to a set of short stairs leading down. The super kept the basement locked, but David had long learned the trick of this deadbolt. He concentrated and his psychic power flared to life. In his mind, he could feel the deadbolt, the tumblers, the knob as if he were touching them. He gave a push with his power, the knob turned, the tumblers fell and the deadbolt slid open. Less time than if he’d used a key. He closed and locked the door and hop stepped across the basement. Small barred windows at street level let enough early morning light to see. Across the room was a door to the street. Another deadbolt, one he re-locked from the outside. He was now catty corner from the watcher, with the building between them.

  David jogged two blocks to circle behind his watcher. As he got within half a block of the alley, David slowed and planned his next step. There were several ways to take this mystery man down, but he quickly discarded the flashy ones. For many reasons, David did not like to advertise his abilities, so no showy gimmicks. It was also possible this man was innocent and David was misreading the whole situation. Deniability was needed.

  The choice is obvious, he thought. He checked his coat pocket. His bag of fired ceramic marbles was open, in easy reach of his mental powers. I do love taking down tough guys with a kid’s toy.

  He reached the edge of the alley and peeked around the corner. Usual detritus, but nothing of note except for the man lighting another cigarette. David waited a moment for the watcher to take his first drag then turn his attention back to the building. Racing down the alley, David focused on moving quietly. He didn’t see the loose pebble he kicked but he heard it as soon as it clanged off one of the metal garbage cans. The watcher heard it too. He turned and started to reach under his coat. Even though David had botched his approach he had the drop on this guy.

  David flexed his power and a colorful marble shot out of his pocket, striking the watcher in the temple. The marble was small enough and moving at enough speed that the mystery man literally had no idea what hit him. David blunted the force of impact so the watcher was only stunned. (It was too easy to fling these marbles so hard they did serious damage.) David ran the rest of the way down the alley as the watcher struggled to stay upright with his hand still in his coat.

  By the time David got to him, the man had managed to draw a .38 but couldn’t hold it steady. A quick surge of mental power and the gun fell to the ground. David came to a stop and picked it up.

  “Hey, buddy, you okay? Here, you dropped this.” David pressed the business end of the gun in the man’s stomach. That got his attention, even through his marble-induced fog. This guy was probably ten years older than David, average height, dark hair. Pretty unremarkable except for the long scar on his right side stretching up from the shirt collar all the way to his ear, ending with a missing lobe. Lovely.

  Ear Scar stared back silently. David pushed the gun deeper into his belly. “What are you doing here?”

  The man spat a slew of words in Cantonese. Most of the tongs in Chinatown spoke it. David didn’t. David replied in Mandarin and got a blank look in return. He really needed to just learn Cantonese already. It was going to get him in trouble one day.

  “English.” The tough was starting to look defiant instead of dazed or scared. David slowly lowered the gun from the man’s gut to his groin. “Why are you here?”

  The man slowly looked to where the gun was pointing and took a slow breath. “Stay away from the girl. She’s safe. She’ll be home soon.”

  “What girl? Who sent you?”

  “Stay away and you’ll live a good long life.” The man grinned a crooked grin. David felt confused and let his guard down. Ear Scar grabbed the gun and quickly brough
t it up into David’s face. David stretched his power, feeling the barrel, the chamber, the safety. He slid the safety on. Ear Scar pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Now he looked confused. David smiled sympathetically.

  “Oops,” David said then kneed Ear Scar in the groin. David grabbed the gun hand and slammed it against the alley wall three times. On the third slam, the man dropped the gun. David used his right hand to grab Ear Scar’s throat and slam his head against the wall.

  “Who sent you?” The thug shook his head. “Fine.” David let go of the man’s hand and delivered a left cross to the side of the head. Ear Scar went down. David took a quick look down the street but for the moment, nobody was around. He pulled Ear Scar deeper into the alley and quickly searched his pockets.

  Leather wallet. Seventeen bucks in it, no ID. Cocktail napkin with a golden dragon, head surrounded by smoke and gold characters: 心靈迷霧. Xinling Miwu—Mind Mists—was an opium den run by the Golden Dragon tong. There was hastily scrawled writing on the napkin. He struggled to decipher the poor penmanship and then realized it was just a grocery list. And one key. Probably for an apartment or boarding house or whatever. Now what?

  David thought for a moment then calmly removed the goon’s clothes, leaving him in gartered socks, boxers and a dirty undershirt. He emptied the bullets from the gun and pocketed them. He picked up the clothes, left the wallet, gun, key and list, then crossed the street and down the alley of his own building. He dumped everything into separate garbage cans.

  He re-entered the building, grabbed his suitcase, and climbed the three floors to his apartment. Did Ear Scar get the wrong building? Did something happen while he was gone? Or was this related to AEGIS? His trip to Shanghai had been his first job for the Allied Enterprise Group for International Security in their secret war against the occultists of the Silver Star. A war he would love to leave behind but he had a feeling that he was in—for good. Too little information and too tired. Sleep first.