by Logan Jacobs
“No,” Grizz interrupted. “She just wants it to be you and me. She made that very, very clear.”
“Well, I have no clue how to get back to that place,” I said and held up my hands.
“Neophor doesn’t want to meet at her domicile,” Grizz said. “She wants to meet at a cafe in the SaanTee Mall.”
“That’s fucking weird,” I said.
“Yes, indeed, I thought so as well,” Grizz agreed. “She wanted it to be a very public place. Havak, she sounded scared for her life.”
“Jesus, well, it’s a fucking day for that for sure,” I sighed heavily. So much for a relaxing day before the next match. Where I would be all alone.
“You can explain on the way, I’ve already hailed us a taxi,” Grizz said and we made our way outside to the waiting hover-cab.
“Great, just let me grab one thing,” I said and ran over to our weapons locker. I thought about what I needed for a second and then punched in the code. A second later the locker opened and a tray full what I’d ordered slid out.
A very sleek, compact, jet black pistol sat in the center of the tray with a self-adhering pressure holster and three double-A battery looking cylinders.
The gun resembled a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield subcompact handgun but with rounded edges and bars along where the slide would have been that glowed dark red. It was a handy little number called a Helix Mini-Talon. The whole thing was just over six inches long and only weighed half a pound. It fired a laser induced plasma channel that was very good at putting compact holes in things very accurately up to about fifty yards away. The battery looking things were extra energy cells and each one was good for twenty-five shots.
I picked up the holster and stuck it right in the small of my back. It was made from a self-adhering polymer and fit as snugly as any belted holster. I picked up the Mini-Talon, checked the charge on the energy cell, and then slid it into the holster. Then I grabbed the three extra power cells and put them in my pocket.
My jacket was on a hook near the locker room, and I shirked into it before meeting Grizz at the door. “After my morning, I’m not going out unarmed again.”
We walked through the Hall of Champions and then hopped in the cab that was waiting for us on the sidewalk.
“So, I had a very interesting lunch with Trillium Vou,” I said once the hover-cab had pulled away from the curb. I then proceeded to give Grizz the rundown on how Trillium had hired Darry to make a special self-defense weapon for her.
“That does indeed sound like Darry,” Grizz commented with fond remembrance. “He worked his hardest even for someone he despised if it was for a good reason.”
“Dude, that was just the beginning of the story,” I said and shook my head. I continued the tale of her recent mystery stalker and her team's inability to track him down and how she said Darry was almost done with what she asked for the night before he was found dead.
“Havak!” Grizz growled excitedly. “That is a wonderful lead. Maybe this combined with what Neophor has will solve his murder.”
“Well, I may have had a chance and blown it already,” I sighed. “Trillium’s stalker showed up at her studio and tried to attack her. I got in the way and ended up chasing the dude through most of the hallways and a few catwalks of the building, but he got lucky and got away. I’m sorry.”
“It is okay, Marc,” Grizz reassured me kindly. “You handled a surprise situation very well against what must have been a very formidable opponent from what Trillium described.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” I replied and rubbed my still sore nose. “He wasn’t that skilled. He couldn't fight for shit, and I was able to disarm him fairly easily. And then he bolted. Almost like he was afraid. When I caught him he fucking panicked, which was how I got my nose messed up. He gave the name Toe-Massi when he was taunting Trillium.”
“Something does not add up here, Havak,” Grizz pondered.
“I know,” I said and thought about it more myself. “Like, if this guy was such a badass that she needed some brand new state-of-the art under the skin body armor, why did he give up and run so easily?”
“We will make sure to ask this Toe-Massi when we catch him,” Grizz promised. “Let us see if what Neophor has can lead us to this man.”
“Yeah,” I said and then fell into silence for the rest of the trip. We had just enough information at the moment to be dangerous. We had treads with no idea where they led, if anywhere. Our instinct was to try to tie the threads together but that could lead to a false conclusion. Or make us miss another thread entirely. It was starting to feel like one big tangled ball of string, and I didn’t know how the fuck to sew.
The cab set down next to a giant, multi-level, partially outdoor shopping mall that must have covered five square city blocks and was ten stories high. Oh, and it was also teaming with just about every type of alien imaginable.
“Good lord,” I blurted out.
“Yes, SaanTee Mall,” Grizz grumbled. “A monstrosity of commercialistic waste. A wretched hive of greed and consumption.”
“Okay, settle down there Karl Marx,” I joked as we got out of the cab and started to make our way through the myriad of eager shoppers.
“Who is Karl Marx?”
“Communist,” I replied. “Thought that all goods and wealth should be shared equally by everyone. Or, by the state actually.”
“Lofty ideal,” Grizz said as he mulled it over. “Alas, would never work in a million years. Greed is universal, and there will always be someone willing to abuse the kindness of others.”
“Word,” I agreed.
We made our way to a small outdoor cafe on the fourth level of the mall. A hoodie wearing figure at a table way in the corner of the veranda waved to us.
Neophor didn’t look anything like she had the day before. She’d gone to great lengths to hide her techno-organic appearance with the hoodie, gloves and very dark sunglasses.
“Don’t like the sun?” I asked kinda snarkily as Grizz and I sat.
“Very funny, Marc Havak,” Neophor said, her modulated voice full of apprehension and fear. “My appearance tends to draw attention on the best of days. And today is not one of those days.”
“What do you have for us, TechnoWitch?” Grizz asked point blank. “I was not prepared for our rendezvous so soon, but a deal is a deal. I hope whatever arcane technology enables our liaison can handle the sheer power that I bring to all sexual couplings.”
“Yeah, we can forget about that,” Neophor said as she glanced around nervously. “I’m going to give you this info and then I don’t ever want to see the two of you ever again.”
“Okay, okay,” I said and tried to calm her down. “Just give us the unencrypted drive back, and we’ll be on our way.”
“It’s not that simple, you dolt,” Neophor spat out at me. “In order to decrypt the drive I had to... ingest it would be the easiest way to describe it, so that my body's inherent subroutines could go to work on the code, even when I’m asleep. The information is in my head now thanks to you, and I don’t know how to get it out. Because I don’t want it.”
“Good lord, is like naked pics or something?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“No, Havak,” Neophor said with deadly seriousness. “The information I have coursing through my neural synapses, like some kind of apocalyptic premonition, could bring the Crucible of Carnage to its knees and throw the mega-verse into utter chaos.”
“Well then, let us unburden your load, Neophor,” Grizz said gravely. “What is it you have to tell us?”
“It all begins with tie--” she started to say and then stopped abruptly because the side of her head exploded in a shower of sparks, fiber optic wire, and green blood. Her voice trailed off in a high-pitched whine like the sound of a hard drive meeting a very ugly end. She still continued to try to speak, her mouth moving up and down, until another shot smashed into her cheek and took the other half of her head with it on the way out.
The rounds had been silent, and it
wasn’t until another patron at the cafe saw the mangled mass of wires, blood, and silicon brains and began to scream did all hell break loose.
Before Neophor’s body hit the ground I had shot out of my chair and dove for cover behind the relative safety of a very large, stone, planter that held two story tall palm trees. The Mini-Talon appeared in my right hand, and I instantly started to scan the upper levels for where the shot had come from.
Grizz still sat at the table as he looked down at Neophor’s corpse. He didn’t feel the need to take cover because, well, because he was a fucking hologram.
“Hey, Grizz,” I shouted over to him. “Can you see where those shots came from?”
He stood calmly and walked over to my position. Grizz was a quivering ball of holographic rage and was barely keeping it contained.
“They came from up there,” he said through gritted teeth and pointed at the top of a mag-lev elevator that was slowly ascending through the air one floor above us. On top of it, laying prone, was a sniper with a long thin rifle stretched out in front of him. The sniper was all in black and had on a face mask with a white alien skull painted on it.
He was a Skalle Furia.
They were an intergalactic terrorist organization hell bent on bringing down the Crucible of Carnage. I’d tangled with a bunch of them a month or so ago when they’d made an attempt on the President during his visit.
The sniper was too far away for a clean shot, but as it turned out, he solved that problem for me by standing and jumping off the top of the elevator to land on our level forty feet away. He was a stout fuck, because the jump hardly seemed to phase him at all. The Skalle Furia pressed a button on his sniper rifle, and the thing shimmered in his hand and suddenly became an assault rifle which he promptly used to open fire on me.
Green energy blasts danced all around me and kicked up large chunks of the stone planter, and I had to duck back down to keep from getting my head blown off. Pedestrians panicked and started running in all directions which made a clear shot all but impossible.
“Havak, I suggest you do something,” Grizz commented. “There are innocents here who stand a good chance of getting injured or dying the longer that coward behind a mask keeps shooting.”
“Well aware, Grizz,” I huffed as I shuffled around to the far side of the planter. “Draw his attention would ya?”
“With pleasure,” Grizz sneered and leapt over the planter to rush the Skalle
Furia.
Even though I’m sure the bastard knew Grizz was only an elaborate trick of light, seeing a six-foot-six-inch-tall, two-hundred-and-sixty pound alien with big ram horns on the side of his head charging at you is enough to make anyone take pause. The Skalle Furia couldn’t help himself from taking a few steps back as he tried to get out of Grizz’s way.
As soon as he did, I popped up from behind the planter and squeezed off two quick shots from the Mini-Talon. The dark red plasma bolts flew true and slammed into the Skalle Furia’s chest where they proceeded to burn neat, quarter sized holes all the way through his torso at the speed of light. He fell to the ground, quite dead.
“Good work, Havak, I wish I could do more to aid you in the fight, but alas--”
Grizz was cut off because he was tackled to the ground by another hologram.
I stared in utter, slack jawed amazement.
The other hologram looked just like a Skalle Furia but was made from hyper activated light particles. The two of them rolled through several tables, passing through them like ghosts, until they disappeared through the wall of the cafe.
It took a minute for my brain to start to fire again, and I looked around to see if anyone else saw what I just saw. If anyone did, they didn’t say anything. Mostly because they were all busy running for their lives.
“Grizz?” I called out as I started to walk toward the wall they had disappeared through. “Buddy? You okay?”
As if to answer, the body of the holographic Skalla Furia flew back out through the wall and landed in a heap on the ground. It struggled to get to its feet and turned to go in the opposite direction.
“Rrraaaawwrrrr!” Grizz wailed and then his body leaped through the wall and landed behind the Skalle Furia Hologram. Grizz grabbed the guy, picked him up over his head, and slammed him to the ground with what in the real world would have been bone shattering force. Grizz then reached down and snapped the Furia Holo’s neck. The body slumped and then began to dematerialize in pixelated blocks in front of us until it was all but gone.
“Holy fucking shit!” I cried as I rushed over to Grizz’s side. “What the fuck was that?”
“A holo-assassin,” Grizz said through heaving breaths. Then he turned and smiled at me. It was a smile that would send grizzly bears running. “I had heard of them but they were little more than a rumor. They are programs that can actually harm me. And I them, apparently. I very sincerely hope they send more, whoever they are.”
“Well buddy, you may have just gotten your wish,” I said and rolled my eyes. Six more Skalle Furia Holos, or as I just started to call them in my head, SFHs appeared around Grizz. They were big fuckers too. Still not as big as my trainer, but pretty fucking big. “And, here are some more for me to play with too.”
Six more real Skalle Furia goons ran up the escalators from a lower level, all of them armed, all of them ready to end my day in a hurry.
I sprinted for all I was worth straight at them with my arm stretched out before me as it spit superheated ions at the space terrorists. They hadn’t expected that, and I was able to take down two of them before they recovered and began to return fire.
By that time, I’d reached a large, square support beam that kept the upper levels from crashing down on us and slid around the back side of it just as laser blasts sparked off the ground behind me.
Just before I disappeared around the side I saw Grizz in fierce combat with the SFHs who had drawn holographic swords and began to press their attack. Grizz looked positively maniacally gleeful as he drew his own long sword from its place on his back and faced off against the six of them.
“Come on you dogs,” Grizz taunted them. “Come and taste the end of my blade.”
That was the last I saw as the pillar cut off my view, and I had to focus on my own Skalle Furia problem. I stood with my back against the pillar and held my Mini-Talon in a close Center Axis Relock high position with the barrell at my chest and parallel to my shoulders. I took a deep breath and waited with my heart pounding adrenaline spiked blood furiously through my veins.
I didn’t have to wait long.
A Skalle goon’s skull mask clad head poked around the left side of the pillar. I pulled the trigger, and a hole appeared in said skull. Without looking I extended my gun arm in the opposite direction and pulled the trigger again before dropping into a crouch. As I had expected they’d tried a pincer move and another of the goons had been approaching on my right. He ended up with a hole through his neck, which he clutched and scrabbled at as he tried to breathe. The super-heated plasma cauterized the wounds as it passed through the body so there was no blood but that didn’t mean it was any less gruesome. I reached out and grabbed him and used him as a makeshift shield as I came out from the cover of the pillar.
The remaining two Skalle Furia goons had held back, ready to provide cover fire for their buddies. It was a mistake. They should have all charged me at once.
I controlled the choking goon with my left hand as I held my gun right next to his head and fired at his two buddies. There was no honor among terrorists because they had no compunction about lighting him up with their sub-machine guns. I let him take a few hits and then rolled to my left as I continued to fire my own pistol.
My shots hit their targets, and the last of the Skalle Furia goons crumpled to the ground.
I spun to turn my attention back to Grizz to see how he fared and watched as he cut the last two of the SFHs in half. They split apart amid a shower of pixels and winked form existence.
“Co
me on big guy, let’s get the hell out of the open,” I said as I jogged over to him.
“Ha! Combat! Yes!” He roared and resheathed his long sword. “How I have missed this!”
“It is kinda crazy to see you in battle,” I admitted. “But, I really don’t want to be out here if any more of those assholes show up.”
“Let them, I say,” Grizz boasted full of holographic blood lust. “But you are correct. We should find someplace with more suitable surroundings.”
“Come on,” I urged again and started to walk toward what looked like a very large department store, which once we entered, was exactly what it was. It was full of displays for clothes, perfume, shoes, home improvement, cookware, and even sporting goods. Alien mannequins for several races of beings were displayed all about wearing the latest fashions. “Okay… Now we need to find an exit. Maybe it’s over near the ladies lingerie?”
I started to move us off in that direction when a bunch of Opposer gang members blocked our path. The Opposers looked like the Baseball Furies from The Warriors, and I’d gone up against them a couple of months ago when I’d gotten on the bad side of a no good rat-bastard gang boss. Who was actually a four foot tall rat. This was turning into a regular Havak Badguys Greatest hits.
“I swear to god if a fucking sand worm shows up I’m losing my shit,” I muttered mostly to myself. The Opposers were all armed with staffs that looked very much like metal baseball bats and as far as I could tell, nothing else. Shame on them for bringing bats to a gunfight. I started to bring my Mini-Talon up to let them know the error of their ways when one of them tossed a small baseball sized sphere in the air and wacked with his bat. It was a line drive right toward my fucking head, and I fired instinctively.
The Ar’Gwyn made sure my aim was perfect and the plasma blast hit the ball dead on.
To my surprise, instead of blowing up, it just stopped in mid-air as it absorbed the energy blast. Then it emitted a pulse of dark red light that washed over the entire inside of the store. When the flash died off the sphere dropped to the ground.
I looked over at Grizz, shrugged, raised my gun, aimed at the closest Opposer and pulled the trigger.
