Evil Ascending

by Michael A. Stackpole

  He pushed open the grate and slipped up into the dark basement. He felt so good about being out of the sewers that he never paused to consider what sort of place would want an open access point to the sewers in it. She says she has friends here. He pulled Rajani up out of the hole, then lowered the grate back into place.

  Letting her cling to his arm, he guided her up the narrow wooden staircase. As he got near the top, he heard raucous American music blaring through the door and found the thick smoke of cigarettes killed the sewer stink clinging to both of them. Good, a public place. "Almost home, kid."

  He pushed open the door and found himself in a dimly lit, cracked-tile corridor. It led past two bathrooms to the back of a smoke-choked bar. Sin swung his arm around Rajani's shoulder and threw her a wink. "Let's look casual, find your friends and go, okay?"

  She nodded and slipped her left arm around his waist. "Okay."

  From the amount of noise he heard in the corridor, Sin had assumed the place would be packed wall to wall with people. Stepping into the main room, he saw he'd equated the bone-cracking volume of the sound system with a need to compete with a crowd that didn't exist. He knew the folks who had been there were there recently because their cigarettes still burned in ashtrays and the heads on various beers were still going down.

  "Welcome to Café Marie Celeste," he murmured.

  Aside from a couple of barely visible people speaking in dark alcoves along the far wall, the last of the bar's patrons were streaming out between two lines of jeering bosozoku gang members. He immediately steered Rajani toward the door, willing to endure taunts and jibes to get out, but the gap closed down as they approached.

  "These are your friends?"

  Rajani shook her head.

  A smallish man with a gash on his shaved head dropped his Lennon glasses down to the end of his nose as he blocked their path. "Baka-da!"

  "What are you talking about?" Sin's eyes narrowed. "I've never seen you before, so how could I have done something stupid?"

  The rat-faced man snarled at him. "Not you, yanki! The mesu did." His dark-eyed gaze shifted back and forth between them. "Give her to me, and you won't have trouble."

  "Namenna-yo!" Sin balled his fists. "This isn't worth the pain you'll feel." The little man, with his gang fanning out behind him, looked more confident than Sin wanted to see.

  Rajani moved away from him, then looked back toward the bathroom. "Sin, look out!"

  Sin whirled and only caught part of the meaty punch coming in at his head. It clipped him hard, striking sparks into his vision. He felt his knees turn to water, and blood began to drip from his nose. He braced himself to kiss the floor, but he never hit it, and he couldn't figure out why.

  Then he felt the pressure on his back and saw the arm connected to the hand that had a massive amount of his shirt in its grasp. He followed the leather-swathed arm as it swelled on up into a body that looked big enough to be two sumo wrestlers grafted together. The head on it had flat, gray eyes and looked like it had grown up in a bucket mold, with the short neck it sat on being wider than any part of the head.

  "Bukkoroshite yaru!" The man holding him smiled with a mouth full of brown, picket-fence teeth. He raised his left fist. "I punch you until you die!"

  The fist started down but never connected. Halfway to its target another arm reached over the biker's shoulder, and a hand closed around the fist. Muscles bunched on this new arm, and bones cracked in the fist. The interloping hand then shoved down and mashed the broken hand into a table top.

  With a twist of the arm, Bat spun the fat biker around and smashed him in the mouth with an elbow, forcing him to let Sin drop to the floor. Releasing the shattered fist, Bat grabbed the big man around the back of his bull neck and brought his head down to meet Bat's rising knee. The biker collapsed to the floor, moaning. Bat stomped down on his outstretched right arm, snapping its bones cleanly, then planted a hard kick in the man's ribs.

  Smiling demonically Bat beckoned the other bikers forward. "The man told you not to mess with him. Now you know why. C'mon, girls, I'm almost done with your friend, and I ain't even broke a sweat yet."

  Natch stepped from one of the alcoves with a Beretta automatic pointing toward the bikers. "Don't worry, you won't suffer . . . much."

  Bat took a step forward, and the bosozoku gang broke running.

  Sin sat up and dabbed at the blood from his nose with his left sleeve as they crowded out the door. "Never thought I'd be happy to see you, Mr. Kabat."

  "If I'd known you worked so well as bait, MacNeal, I'd have worn the boots with steel toes." Bat grabbed the unconscious biker and bashed his head into tables and chairs on the way to the door, then he tossed him out into the street. He looked out for a second, then smiled. "They got courage on the other side of the street."

  Rajani frowned as she helped Sin to his feet. "Do you think they will try to jump us?"

  "Hope so," Bat nodded grimly.

  Jesus Christ! Sin used a napkin from the bar to wipe the blood off his face. "At the risk of spoiling your fun, I'd just as soon get out of here." He looked at the little bartender trembling in the corner. "Denwa, arimas'ka?"

  The man brought him the phone, and Sin punched a number in. The man at the other end answered it after one ring. "Yes, Kazuo, this is Sinclair. I am with friends, and I need a ride. I don't know where, but someone here does. Thanks." Sin held the receiver out to the bartender.

  The little man took it and started speaking very fast as Sin turned to the others. "Kazuo will get us out of here, and then we have to meet with Hal and some others as quickly as possible."

  Natch tucked her pistol away. "Why the rush?"

  "Because, Natch, the place I just left is the place Coyote send me to locate." Sin tasted blood on his lips. "Between Rajani and me, I've learned enough to know that it's a breeding ground for this Fiddleback and a legion of loonies."

  "Fine, but why the urgency?"

  "Because one of those budding loonies is the emperor's grandson." He rubbed the puncture marks on his right wrist. "From what I've been told, letting Fiddleback get his hands on him is roughly equivalent to looping a new ammo belt into a minigun. As none of us—hell, none of the world—is on that team, I'd like to do everything I can to frustrate Fiddleback one more time."

  Acquire, imprint, kill! Mickey stood in darkness with his feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent and weight forward on the balls of his feet. Acquire, imprint, kill! His arms hung down at his sides with his fingers stiffened into a spearhead. Acquire, imprint, kill!

  The lights slowly came up in the room, and Mickey found himself facing a host of misshapen, hunched figures. They bulged with muscles and carried clubs and swords in the massive hands that lurked at the end of improbably long arms. Oversized jaws and outthrust muzzles contrasted with mismatched eyes and haphazardly set ears to make the pointy heads bottom-heavy.

  «Magilla Gorilla, but bad.»

  «That's it exactly, Mickey. They have been bad.» The little man's voice soothed away the concerns sparked by the cartoon connection Mickey had made. «They were bad, and you must punish them.»

  "They have no hats." Mickey smiled as he spoke, his new face and jaw making it possible for him to pronounce words that had previously proved impossible for him.

  «Hats?»

  Mickey nodded carefully. "Magilla Gorilla has a hat. Why don't they have hats?"

  «Hats. They lost them, Mickey. This is why they were bad.»

  "Bad. Punish."

  «Precisely, Mickey.» A tone sounded and the dozen screaming Koman charged at him in a frenzied knot. «Mickey, ignore.»

  The bestial Koman surrounded him and smashed the clubs down on his head and shoulders. Mickey felt the impacts and heard them, but remained detached. He knew the knife thrust to his abdomen had split skin and had to hurt, but he channeled the pain away, as he had been instructed. The loud crack of a club against his right kneecap numbed his whole right leg, but he pushed the panic away.

&nb
sp; «Now, Mickey, you may defend yourself. Sequence normally. Start with Claw! Go!»

  Acquire. Mickey turned his head and scanned the group. He assessed them in terms of threat potential based on their weapons, size, skill, disposition, apparent intelligence, range and state of health. As one part of his brain sorted through the candidates and assigned them threat-assessment levels, another part searched through known-enemy templates and searched for the one that fit the Koman. Having fought them before, he came up with the original template he had memorized and visualized it as modified by supplementary data.

  The Koman with a bloodied knife to his right won the designation as primary target. Mickey merged his image with the template. Red dots covered the Koman at forehead, throat and the center of its chest, showing areas of vulnerability. Imprint. Mickey's right hand contracted, fingers hooking halfway in, palm pulling perpendicular to the forearm.

  Kill.

  Mickey's hand struck with blinding speed. His fingers penetrated the Koman's flesh before the creature had a chance to realize Mickey had even begun to move. Leaning in toward the Koman, Mickey pushed his hand through the beast's sternum, snapping off the ends of a half-dozen ribs. As the bone fragments shredded the Koman's lungs and started them hissing, Mickey mashed its heart against its spine. His hand contracted as he encountered bone, and his arm retracted, taking four vertebrae with it.

  The first Koman collapsed with the upper half of his torso folding backward and blood spraying out of the hole in his chest. Mickey turned back away from him, stiffening his left hand into a spearhead. Acquire. Moving to the left, he spotted a Koman with a rapier. His mental template fused with the Koman. Imprint.

  Kill!

  With the skill of a championship fencer, Mickey arched his back to avoid a thrust, then stabbed his left hand at the Koman's eyes. His fingers pushed past them, shattering the bones behind the orbits. If the bone shards being driven through the Koman's brain had not been enough to kill him, Mickey's spearhand thrust going all the way to touch the back of the skull would have accomplished the job easily.

  Mickey pulled his hand free with a sucking thwok, then spun. He acquired a target as he pivoted on his left leg and knotted his right hand into a hammer-fist. He imprinted his target as it missed an overhead stroke with a baseball bat. He brought his right hand through and killed the Koman by blasting its left ear beyond the midline of its skull and driving its body into another Koman.

  Acquire, imprint, kill. Mickey worked his way through the axe and awl shapes, then moved to the more complex double-strike forms that required both hands, like hammer and anvil, nut and bolt and turnabout. Two elbow strikes, a kick and a ram's-head strike finished the rest of the Koman, then Mickey resumed his original stance.

  The blood dripping from his hands ran down his legs to the growing puddle at his feet.

  The small man came out of the darkness surrounding the combat arena and wore a pleased smile on his face. He snapped his fingers, and a large green orb on a leathery green stalk dropped down and hovered five feet above the ground. The scaled flesh surrounding it peeled back, and a translucent membrane slid diagonally away. It revealed a star-pupiled eyeball with a red circle iris. The eye tracked right, then down and left, then down and right, repeating the process until it had scanned him from head to toe.

  The little man nodded appreciatively. "You did an excellent job, Mickey. Your forms were all correct. You have studied well." He squatted down and watched the bruising on Mickey's knee disappear. "Your recovery rate is fantastic. You are perfect."

  Mickey smiled broadly. "Now I go home? Now I see Dorothy?"

  The little man rested his right elbow in this left hand and tapped his teeth with a finger. "Soon, Mickey, very soon. There are only a couple more things you have to do, then I shall return you home." He smiled, and Mickey's disappointment vanished. "And, believe me, everyone will remember your homecoming for a long, long time."

  The maelstrom of emotions swirling through the room made Rajani feel dizzy. "Please, stop it, all of you."

  Sin and Colonel Nagashita both looked up from the map over which they had been arguing. Behind them, Kazuo and Bat both looked surprised at her outburst. Only Hal, standing near the street map with a Silva rolling map scaler, appeared to understand what had made her angry. Natch looked up from cleaning her pistol, and Jytte remained at the computer terminal in the corner of the room.

  Sin frowned and wiped his sweaty brow with his shirtsleeve. "What's the matter, Rajani?"

  She got a feeling of genuine concern and care from him, which made it easier for her to speak. "You are all working at cross-purposes." She pointed at Nagashita. "You resent Sin's planning because you believe this is a problem your command should have been given to handle from the start. You also don't like Mr. Takagi and his people being brought in on this. You are purposefully ignoring the gravity of the situation."

  Sin nodded, then froze as she glared at him. "And you, Sin, you are just as guilty. You are angry because of having been shot. You also resent Colonel Nagashita because you think he's trying to take over this operation. You are ignoring the fact that he and his people have had vast amounts of training in this sort of thing, especially after the incident in the Olympics two years ago. You are pushing the use of the Yakuza as a diversionary force for the most part because it will work, but a little because their presence needles Colonel Nagashita."

  Rajani let her own anxiety filter into her words. "You, Mr. Takagi, want to help because of your sense of duty to the imperial family. You are also thinking that this could give your people an entrée into Kimpunshima and perhaps even a chance to destroy the bosozoku group that has been annoying your uncle."

  She just looked at Bat and shivered.

  Sin looked down at his shoes in embarrassment. "You're right, Rajani." His head came up again as he looked at the IDC leader. "Colonel, let's table our problems until we have Ryuhito out and safe."

  "Hai." The small, sharp-eyed man nodded curtly and unfolded his arms. Kazuo Takagi nodded in agreement, and Hal smiled. Only Bat remained untouched by her appeal.

  "Then, if this meets with your approval, this is what I propose." Sin pointed on the map of the Galactic Brotherhood Institute at the patio from which he had left the grounds. "We have a wall breach here, which they're going to have to devote a lot of attention to. Kazuo, your people need to arrive here and put on a big show of force. Be aware they're armed with some heavy weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, LAW rockets and even some SAWs. I don't know where they got them, but I've not got a hard time imagining a network of true believers within all sorts of corporations around the world. Be careful, and, if/when the shooting starts, you head in here."

  Kazuo nodded. "Wakarimasu. Colonel, is that acceptable to you?"

  Nagashita nodded. "Having you attract their attention is good. Your people, when they come in, will wear blue armbands so my people will not shoot them, yes?"

  "Hai."

  "Good." Sin shifted to the front of the GBI building. "This is the weakest spot in the GBI defenses. The public lobby has lots of glass, and the auditorium is clear, so even if an alarm is sounded and help arrives, the defenders won't have any place to hide. Aside from the book kiosks, there is no cover. We will get in quietly.

  "Now this door here," he said as he tapped the map, "leads straight into their secure area. This is their spine, and it gives us instant access to the rest of the complex. I can get us through the door, then we have teams locate Ryuhito, secure him and get him out."

  Colonel Nagashita's eyes nearly closed as he frowned. "I do not like the fact that our strike into the complex is predicated on your being able to breach this secure door. You said it has a Tojicorp Hogosha security door and palmprint reader. I think it we will have to blow it."

  Sin shook his head. "Rajani, toss me that room service menu, please."

  She took the laminated menu from the table and brought it over to him. Sin flipped it open to the room service section and
smiled. "Kobe's finest. We're in, trust me."

  Jytte hit a key on her console. "By retrotracing through the Lorica system, I have penetrated the GBI computer system at the most basic levels. They are in the midst of notifying the people who were scheduled to show up for a meeting tonight that it has been postponed."

  "Good." Sin looked over at Colonel Nagashita. "This plan will work, trust me."

  "I am afraid any trust I might have had for you vanished three years ago, Mr. MacNeal." Nagashita pulled himself up to his full height and gave Sin a stare harsh enough for Rajani to feel it. "However, I serve one who trusts you. Your plan has merit, and we will employ it."

  "We're cooking with microwaves now. Jytte, can you access any higher computer functions from here?"

  She shook her head in response, giving off waves of frustration. "This level allows for some administrative functions, presumably so field representatives can make appointments and add people to schedules from remote locations. I have tried to gain upper-level access, but they may have a cut-out system in place to prevent tampering."

  Rajani frowned. "Cut-out?"

  Jytte gave Rajani a quick, mechanical smile. "Data transfers from this basic system to the higher-level system may require an operator to physically move a storage medium, like a WORM disk from one network to another. For orders going down from higher to lower, the higher system can always call the lower on the same sort of access line as we are using."

  The blonde woman closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough that Rajani caught no impressions or emotions from her at all. Jytte's fingers drifted to the keypad, then began hitting keys in short, sharp bursts. Her whole body stiffened for five seconds, and no one in the room so much as breathed. Then she typed another, longer sequence into the machine and sat back.

  "The key to WORM disks is that they hold far more information than even the most busy system could ever handle. WORM means 'write once, read many' and this disk in the drive currently has been in use for the past month. To make their system ultrasecure, they should destroy the disk after each transfer, but financial analysts do not see that as economical. I will read all the data and see if there is a mention of upper-level access."