by Hodden, TE
Mitchell thought he made a fairly convincing henchman. He was dressed in a plaid shirt, tactical vest, and combat trousers, with a handgun on his hip, and a shotgun stowed in luggage. His pony tail was gone, sacrificed to the hair clippers for the sake of a short back and sides. His sunglasses had been swapped out for tactical goggles.
A few seats away Harris had blended straight into the crowd. The leathery old vulture had stopped shaving, and wore an eyepatch. He was dressed like a gardener, in worker’s trousers, and a plain long sleeved tee, under a short sleeved shirt. He wore a pistol under one arm, and a knife under the other.
Most the others on the transport submarine were dressed in a mix of military grade tactical wear, and casual clothes. Some were in Loyalty Colours. There were four guys and a girl in the garish pink and yellow of the Lollipop Man, and a couple of brooding thugs in the Harlequin’s face masks. There was even one guy still wearing the purple bodysuit of the Gladiator King, who had been dead since the seventies.
Eventually, after far too long, Hadal Outpost came into view.
The Outpost had once been an experimental mining platform, that had burrowed into the chasm wall in search of rich veins of rare earth metals.
Sometime around nineteen eighty the crew had cut off communications with the surface, and died of… well… nobody was quite sure what. Most people assumed it was something to do with the Lollipop man, who had claimed the outpost as his own, and tried to conquer the world from it twice. When he ended up in the electric chair (which, sadly, only stopped him from being a menace for a decade or so) it had changed hands a couple of times, before being established as an illicit black market trading ground, well out of the reach of any authorities.
The outer structures of Hadal were overlapping domes of ceramic plating, that clung to the wall of the trench like a wasp nest. There were bits of machinery that jutted out, and belched clouds of waste, that tumbled down into the dark.
The only way to get in to Hadal was to be a henchman, working for a Name of some repute.
As far as anybody on the submarine knew, Barney was Bobby Mallory, a low rent thug, in the employ of Mister Jackhammer.
The ruse seemed to be working so far, but there was a nasty little voice at the back of Barney’s mind, that kept wondering if they were just waiting to kill him down in the abyss, where he would never be found.
That thought made the suit quiver.
Outside the small porthole the submarine was aligning with one of the docking pylons.
The clangs and clunks of contact echoed around inside the submarine.
The hatch hissed open.
Barney braced, but the seawater didn’t come crashing in.
The attendant smiled at the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you would unbuckle your harnesses, and leave the vessel in an orderly manner, we hope to see you again soon.”
Barney grabbed his bag, and followed the crowd out of the airlock. He collected his shotgun on the other side of the guard post, and followed the crowd through the dank walkway, to the vast cavern. The cliffs of rusty, damp rock stretched on down forever. A web of walkways criss-crossed the cavern, connecting the many tunnels and burrows in the far wall.
Barney leant on the balustrade, and watched the comings and goings on the far side of the cavern. The tunnels were full of market stalls, run out of cargo containers, some stacked two or three high in places. A few storeys down there were bright lights, music, and cheer, that suggested a bar or casino.
Harris put a hand on Barney’s shoulder. “Beer?”
Barney nodded. “Good idea.”
*
Barney was only halfway down his first beer when the Broker invited herself to sit at the table, between him and Harris. She was maybe fifteen, scrawny, and pale, with bags under her eyes. Barney was willing to guess her life had seen a lot of hardship, and too few square meals.
“Hey,” she said, “what are you guys looking for? Magic will find it for you.”
Harris laughed. “Not you kid.”
“No?” The girl pouted. Her accent was all over the place. Mostly American, but with some odd inflections around the edges. “But I bet I can tell you where you can get it. For a small fee.” She smiled at Barney. “You want me to get lost too? That’d be a shame.”
Barney looked her up and down. “I don’t want to, kid, but our boss sent us here to buy information that… well… I don’t think the guy selling it would broker it through a kid.”
“Information?” The girl snorted. “Yeah? What do you want? I know people. I know the right people. Everybody needs to drink, or eat, sooner or later. They all know me.”
Harris sipped his beer. “No offence kid, but if you were in our racket, you would have been killed to make sure you didn’t accidently boast about us to random strangers in a bar.”
“Oh!” Her eyes lit up. “You want Old Man Sylvester.”
Harris glowered at Barney.
Barney shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
The girl grinned. “Okay.”
Harris stared at the kid. “What’s your name?”
“Magic,” she said.
“Yeah?” Harris raised an eyebrow. “Is that what it says on your birth certificate?”
Magic rolled her eyes. “Don’t think I got one of those. What does it matter to you?”
Harris waved the comment away. “It doesn’t. You show us to your contact, and thirty seconds later, we’ll never see you again.”
“Won’t be another transport for forty eight hours,” Magic said. “You got a room?”
Barney sipped his beer. “Let me guess, you got a recommendation for that too?”
Magic smiled. “I can get you a good rate. You know how you want to kill time here?”
Barney looked to the bar, to the mingling crowd. A couple of Miss Clique’s cheerleaders were leaning on the bar, touting for alternative employment. Their plastic skin, and hair, gave them an uncanny, ageless beauty. One of them caught him looking, and bit her lip, as she looked away. He cleared his throat. “I have a few ideas.”
“Yeah?” Magic leant closer. “I bet I can hook you up with somebody who can make them better.”
Harris glowered at the girl. “One deal at a time. If you cross us, you won’t live long enough to care about our plans.”
*
Magic led them nine layers down, and through the long tunnel, to what had once been the working face of the mine, a perfectly round shaft, hundreds of yards across. A shanty town of portable cabins and converted cargo containers filled most the floor, and rose up around the walls on stepped layers.
As they crossed the floor, Barney glimpsed stalls selling arms, armour, cybernetics and technology of all kinds. There were cabins offering “bespoke tailored armour”, “strategic genetic advantages”, “enhanced soldier programmes” and (his personal favourite) “grenades shaped like whatever you want”. There were people bartering over personal flyers that looked too much like a bat, and which assault weapons could be made to look ‘more Goth’.
He saw a half dozen faces he was sure were meant to be in prison.
Harris saw them too, and shook his head a little, in a ‘don’t blow our cover’ kind of a way.
The rusting old excavator still loomed overhead. The central tower, and the bulk of the machinery were at the centre of the floor, the cutting arm stretched out one way, like a crane, the monstrous circular blade still lodged in the rockface. It was counter balanced by the squat and bulky control rooms.
Magic took them to the elevator up the tower, she smiled at the guard leaning against the door of the elevator.
He smiled back. “Hey Mac.”
The guard was closer to seven feet tall than six, and as broad across the shoulders. His skin was mottled grey, blue, and purple. His eyes and face betrayed his spliced genes. There was something inhuman mixed into his DNA. Maybe some barracuda, a dash of shark, and a hint of lantern fish. There were gills on his cheeks, and his eyes were dark and cold. He spoke
in an Australian accent, with a hint of smoke and gravel.
“Hey.” Magic gestured at Harris and Barney. “These guys want to speak to Sylvester. They want an appointment.”
The fishy guy held out his hand. “What kind of information are they looking for?”
Harris snarled. “The kind we don’t talk about to anybody else.”
Fishy-guy laughed. “Yeah, that’s the expensive kind. You need to pay a deposit to get through the door. You can settle the remainder with Mister S once he decides how much his time was worth.”
Harris nodded, and took a glass tube out from under his jacket, and let the fishy-guy get a good look at the microchip suspended in the clear, protective jelly. “Alien tech. Psionic AI chips.”
The guard took it. “This,” he said, “will do nicely.”
He tossed Magic a bundle of bank notes, and stepped aside, waving Harris and Barney into the elevator.
It rattled and clanked its way up to the control room.
The room had become an office. Oil paintings were hung from the mimic-panel, and the control desk was buried under piles of papers and junk. The equipment cabinet was stocked with drinks. Old paperback novels were stuffed into any surface that might act as a shelf.
A squat, rubbery, elderly man, Sylvester, sat behind the desk, wearing tweed trousers, a cardigan, and light sports jacket, his receding hair swept back, his eyes sparkling with youthful mischief. “Ah! So… Who do we have here?” He pointed a scanner at them, and tapped at it with his palm. “I don’t know you, and… none of the databases know you. That is interesting.”
Barney smiled. “Our employer doesn’t like this place. He’s always worried there are too many… unreliable sources in the marketplace. He doesn’t want our operations to be scuttled just because one of them draws the wrong kind of attention and the whole place falls.”
“I see.” Sylvester looked up at them. “That’s… impressive.”
Harris smiled. “Enough to suggest we mean business?”
Sylvester held up his hands. “Let’s find out. What do you want?”
“Background information,” Barney said. “We think we have a way to blackmail an influential family. There is an unknown factor, that is… troubling. It could make it more viable to us, or it could mean this is an avenue that would bring more harm than profit. We want to know what it is, before we proceed.”
Sylvester cocked his head. “Oh?”
Harris sighed. “Elois Croft, the former first daughter, was kidnapped. It looks like Croft went to a lot of effort to cover up who was behind it, and to bury the reasons why. We know he was tied to the mob, in Florida, and we can use that, but… there was another player. She was infected with something, some kind of a fungus took root in her brain. It looks deliberate.”
Sylvester breathed through his teeth. “A fungus? What kind?”
Barney cleared his throat. “The other worldly kind.”
“Ah!” Sylvester nodded. “How many more of those microchips do you have?”
Harris set three more glass tubes on the desk.
Sylvester nodded. “Do you know anything else about this… fungus?”
“Yes.” Harris walked over to the window, and watched the market. “She was whipped out of the hospital in a hurry, before the doctors could get too good a look at it. We found witnesses who said it made her real angry, and real strong with these thick black veins…”
“I understand.” Sylvester leant back. Shadows fell over his eyes, and caught the crags of his face. “I fear you may not want to go down this path.”
“Oh?” Barney leant on the desk. “Is that all we paid to hear?”
Sylvester chuckled. “I suppose your employer might… have a bit of a temper if that was all you had to say?”
“A little,” Harris said, scratching at one of his scars. “Why don’t we want to go down the path?”
Sylvester breathed out, and lowered his voice. “For years now, I have been hearing… rumours and whispers… nothing solid, just… tittle tattle about somebody called Misrule. They are a player, outside the sphere of influence of Hadal, but… They are a big enough presence to make ripples when they move, and sometimes I have detected them.”
“What kind of ripples?” Barney asked.
“Like you said,” Sylvester whispered, “they made sure the crime families in Miami have been silenced, by carrot or stick, so to speak. And… some years ago I heard some rumours of a magic user being hired for a job through a Schism Way. A little while later, there were… scattered stories, of people in the circle, who got too close to something they shouldn’t have, and…”
“Being silenced?” Harris suggested.
Sylvester nodded. “It would seem that getting too close to Misrule is not a good idea.”
Harris took another of the circuits from under his jacket. “Somebody hired a magician to take them through a schism-way, and they came back with some kind of a fungus, that makes people faster, stronger, and…”
“Mean?” Sylvester offered.
“Yeah.” Harris grinned. “Where can we get something like that?”
Barney gave him a pleading look. “Trust me, dude. I’m going to want some kind of good news to go surface-side with, or… “
Sylvester took the chip. “Flintlock, out there, at the seven ‘o’clock position. Three tiers up.”
Harris nodded. “Well, thank you for that, at least.”
*
Magic caught up with them, as they were making their way up the stairs to the third layer of stalls.
“Hey!” She caught Barney’s wrist. “Did I take you to the right place?”
“You did,” Barney agreed.
“Do you want some company?” She laughed. “A little advice?”
“Sorry kid.” Barney offered her a smile. “This is business you don’t want to be mixed up in.”
“Huh?” She pouted. “Why? What are you asking about?”
Harris sighed. “We can’t tell you that.”
She scowled. “I could help.”
“Yeah?” Barney grinned. “How about I look you up later, when I need to kill time? Where can I find you? Back at the bar?”
Magic shook her head. “That place stays open all hours. When other places open, nobody goes there.” She rocked on her feet. “Look for me at Dregs, and I will show you where to find anything you like.”
She slipped away, into the crowd.
“Persistent,” Barney said, “isn’t she?”
Harris shrugged. “Maybe she can keep you out of trouble.”
“Hey!” Barney yelped.
They followed the walkway from beneath the cutting arm, counter clockwise, until they were almost behind the tower. One of the container cabins was decorated with graffiti to read: “Flintlock’s Otherworldly Imports.”
They ducked inside. Behind a counter and mesh shield were shelves stacked with trinkets and artefacts, salvaged from alien space craft, and other realms. Fairy-Wisps swarmed in jars, live-crystals pulsed and rippled, an eternal flame was trapped in a glass orb, and there were countless skulls, bones, and bits of junk Barney couldn’t begin to identify.
The suit squirmed uncomfortably.
There was also a woman, curvy and becoming, with lilac-grey skin, almond eyes, and no hair. Baby blue tattoos curled around her pointed ears, and down her long slender neck. She wore a pair of blue overalls over a faded tee shirt. She looked suspiciously between Harris and Barney.
Then at the rucksack that contained Barney’s armour.
Her lips curled into a snarl as she snatched up a shotgun and placed it purposefully on the counter. “Whatever is moving around in your bag stays there.”
“Okay,” Barney said, holding up his hands. “Are you Flintlock?”
She stared at him. “Yes.”
Harris stepped over to the counter. “We want to buy some information.”
She sniffed. “Oh?”
Harris nodded. “We heard rumours that you went… off world,
and came back with something…”
“Yeah.” She lit a cigarette. “I do that a lot.”
“A fungus.” Harris watched her. “It makes people faster, and stronger. We want it.”
“No, you don’t,” Flintlock promised.
“Yes,” Barney promised, “we do. We have a problem with a Yeoman.”
Flintlock laughed. “A what?”
“A Yeoman,” Barney said. “Annoying English types, who patrol the schism-ways between worlds, and police the frontiers.”
She laughed again. “I know what they were. Before they were hunted down and wiped out.” Her eyes narrowed. “No… you’re serious?”
“Deadly,” Harris said. “There’s one left. He works with the Honour Guard. We need an advantage. Your fungus¬”
“Isn’t it,” Flintlock said. “It isn’t what you think. If you want an advantage, I can find you one, but not that.”
Barney stared at her. “You didn’t seem to have any qualms getting it for Misrule.”
“Any qualms?” Flintlock growled. “I didn’t have any¬”
She stopped and stared at the door, reaching for her shotgun.
Barney ran to the door and hoisted it open. Magic was sprinting off down the walkway.
Harris glowered. “Crafty little minx, isn’t she? Resourceful.”
Flintlock stepped out onto the walkway, and stared after the girl. “She heard us. She heard you say that damned name.”
“Misrule?” Harris asked.
Flintlock jabbed her shotgun under his chin. “Get out of here! Before you get me killed!”
Barney looked at her. “Why? What are you afraid of?”
Flintlock’s nostrils flared. “Just go.”
Barney nodded, and walked away. Harris kept up.
“How do we play it now?” Barney asked.
“Watch the trader,” Harris said. “Stick with her. See who comes to make trouble for her.”
“And you’ll follow Magic?” Barney suggested.
Harris nodded. “I’ll go see who she reports this to.”
00010
Echo rode in the back of the car, spread out with her feet up on the seat, singing along to the radio. The two Thrall on the front seats stared at the road ahead, wearing bright, amiable smiles. They were healthy, young, athletic, and painfully beautiful types, with wholesome smiles.
