Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  A bubble of force around Jack swatted Neutrino out of the sky. Omicron ran from the crater he'd been standing in towards the water's edge. Nora tried to reach him, but bounced off a bubble planted in her path before being bubbled herself on the rebound. As he flung her into Jennifer, I realized Omicron never had more than two bubbles up at the same time-- one for each hand. I rushed in and yanked his left glove off. Omicron delivered a right hook with a force like a steamhammer; the impact sending me pinballing through a crowd of confused bots. The motion, however, sent Nora's bubble smashing through the marina clubhouse and all the way to the far side of the river, where she was dumped on a quay.

  I pulled the purloined glove on my left hand and mimicked the gesture Omicron performed when creating a bubble. I entrapped a rather confused bot, which I promptly used as a flail to smash its fellows. "Impudent brat," Omicron said. Seeing Jack hurtling towards him, Omicron bubbled himself. Jack's punch carved a notch in the pavement with the force bubble. A pair of uppercuts, one from Neutrino, and one from Jennifer, knocked the chestnut dragon on his back. Unbuttoning his coat with his free hand, Omicron reached inside and adjusted something on the underlying suit. His body was surrounded by a red aura, then started to glow red. He turned red and faded from sight. An instant later, the force bubble around him collapsed.

  Xiv glided in to where I stood amongst a field of shattered robots. "The dragons are down already, what do you want us to do?" he asked.

  "Help round up the cultists," I said. Xiv smiled his fanged smile and hurried off to engage in what had to be a satisfying bit of turnabout for him. "Stamp, check the other side of the river, see if Blue's hurt."

  "On it," Pam said, taking wing.

  "So we should have run faster?" Icerazor asked.

  "He just vanished!" Jack said. "I hate it when they do that!"

  "Disappearing villains are a common problem?" Ben asked.

  "Incessant," Jack said. "It's almost like they don't play fair."

  "For once," Ixa said, picking her way over bot parts, "I appear to have shown up when you haven't been hurt." I smiled, then looked at the bot in a bubble I still had, trying to figure out how to turn it off.

  "His gloves were the field generators?" Ben asked.

  "Seems that way. Anyone see how he dismissed the bubbles?" I eventually figured out the gesture. It was something between throwing the horns and the ASL for "bullshit." The confused bot stuck to its programming and raised its fists. Jack smashed it with one punch.

  "Are you going to keep that thing?" Ixa asked.

  "I don't know, it's kind of bulky, covers up my wrist computer and didn't come with a manual."

  "But it could still be useful."

  "We can figure that out after we've found a way to restrain three dragons," Neutrino said. "Right now, they are merely unconscious."

  "Right... uh..." Jack said. "Suggestions, anyone?" Neutrino shook his head and went back to looking for suitable materials.

  "We will also have to find a new hideout," I said. "Omicron knows where this one is." Pam flew back, setting Nora on the ground nearby. "How are you feeling?"

  "Like I went through the spin cycle," Nora said.

  "There doesn't seem to be anything broken," Pam said.

  "Okay, go help Xiv with the cultists. Don't break any."

  Part 25

  I really shouldn't be surprised that there were provisions for the long-term incarceration of shape-shifting dragon men. Well, not for that specific purpose, but suitable to contain them. Hard to say what they were going to be charged with-- conspiracy and accessory to murder, probably. It might not stick, but it would allow them to be restrained until their trial was concluded. Detective Esposito was not happy to find another mess of smashed Omicron Bots to clean up, tag, and haul into evidence. Luckily Neutrino commanded more of his respect than I did. Apparently it took fighting Japanese-made monsters, then saving the world a couple of times to earn it. Even more luckily, Cecil Townsend was able to testify as his identity was already public knowledge.

  We spent most of the night packing up the hideout, or at least our personal effects. I wasn't sure where we would move to, but we had to be ready when we figured something out. I ended up going through the school day like a zombie, barely cognizant of what was going on around me. I don't think I managed to learn anything. Worst of all, I almost missed the start of my date with Stephanie because I'd passed out on getting back from school. I rushed through getting ready and had to beg Icerazor to give me a lift since the bus would take far too long. I ended up agreeing to owe him an unspecified favor later.

  "You're in your school uniform," Stephanie said as I handed her a more intact marigold than the last flower I'd given her.

  "I haven't had a chance to change." While true, it also sounded better than "I have no fancy clothes." She was in a white dress and black flats. The simple attire looked suitable for a wide range of venues. Lacking any better place for it, she tucked the flower stem into the corner of her pocketbook so that the blossom itself hung out.

  "You also looked half-past dead today."

  "Yesterday was a bit busy, but I made it through." She smiled, putting me at ease, and took my arm, leading me down the street.

  "There's something I should probably mention before you start having to lie to me to maintain your cover," Stephanie said.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Let me put it this way, I'm sorry for laughing at you the first time you asked me out."

  I stopped as though I'd walked into a brick wall. "Ixa?"

  "That's why I gave you such specific advice. I was only mostly sure it was you."

  I'm pretty sure I turned rather bright red at that moment. I scratched the back of my head.

  "At least I'm consistent," I said. "You do a good job hiding your accent."

  She dropped the accent. "I figured I didn't want anything distinctive about my voice giving me away," she said in her Ixa voice.

  "I like the accent. It's one of your many attractive features."

  Stephanie shook her head. "You're clumsy when you try to be complimentary."

  I noticed we were approaching the awning of Poole's. "I can't afford Poole's."

  "Well, Van der Veer is a very dutch name. I'll cover dinner if you cover the movie."

  "That's still a bit uneven."

  "You can make it up some other way." We approached the back of a short line for the Maitre D'. By habit, my eyes wandered the crowd and the street outside.

  "Am I just paranoid, or is that green van out of place?" I asked, motioning towards a vehicle that sat idling near the corner.

  "It does look a little beat up, but a lot of the people who work in this area can't afford to live here," Stephanie said. "Could just be waiting to pick up someone." Without any gadgets, I couldn't see what was going on inside the van, but it had tweaked my paranoia. The line shortened, leaving only one group in front of us. It looked to be an elderly gent, a trophy wife and a daughter older than the wife. The daughter looked at her stepmother with obvious disdain as the younger woman prattled on about a series of trips they were planning on taking. I could see the daughter envisioning the family fortunes evaporating with every word. With a screech of tires, the van shot past us and slewed onto the sidewalk. A gaggle of figures in work clothes and masks, men and women alike, burst from the van. They opened up with a flurry of Taser shots. I narrowly ducked aside as the darts flew past. Stephanie wasn't so lucky, nor was the trophy wife or the Maitre D'.

  The second wave laid into us with nightsticks and stun guns. Moving mostly by instinct, I disarmed one of the men with nightsticks and cracked it across the jaw of a beefy woman with a stun gun. As I jammed the end into the gut of the original wielder, my entire back seized up, coursing with thousands of volts. The Taser-shooter who'd missed me had
reloaded and taken a second shot. As I sank to my knees, I decided that I really didn't like electroshock weapons. The stun gun to my ribs didn't improve that opinion any. As a nightstick struck across my face, spiraling me to the pavement, I mused on the difference a day makes.

  "Leave the girls," a voice called, "We're done with the females. Just take her boyfriend."

  "Who are you?" the old man stammered. I felt myself being cuffed and dragged over the bumper of the van.

  "The Morlock Society is fed up," a different voice said, "If left to the politicians, they'd sacrifice the poor. No more, it's time the rich were sacrificed to protect the world!"

  "Shut it!" the first assailant said. "No speeches." Regaining enough of my senses to act, I kicked the speechifying assailant in the head, trying to wrench free from those holding me by the arms. The beefy woman with the stun gun shocked me on the inner thigh, far too close to my groin for comfort. "Load up and move!" the leader called. I was dragged the rest of the way into the van as the Morlock Society piled in. With so many hands and weapons, my struggles grew futile. I was soon bound, gagged, and hooded.

  "What are you doing blurting out who we are?" one of the other passengers in the now-moving van called.

  "We need to put fear in the hearts of the upper crust," the speech-maker said.

  "No," the leader said, "We need to operate without the authorities trying to bring us in."

  "How many do we have left?" a gruff woman's voice asked.

  "That's almost all Zsh-ya was asking for," the leader said. "When his demands drop to 'just give my people back', the government should comply."

  "And if they don't?" the speech-maker asked.

  "We'll think of something. In the meantime, dose this one, he's got too much fight in him." The mass of Morlocks pinned me to the floor of the van as a cold alcohol swab cleaned a patch of my neck. It was followed by the sting of a needle delivering a chemical coma, or a close approximation thereof.

  The voices in my head started arguing before my senses came back. That damned analytical me said I shouldn't hate the Morlock Society, but pity them, because they were ruled by their fear. My moral compass screamed that they were abducting people off the street to hand over to a known slaver, and should be stopped. My fear asked what Zsh-ya planned to do with the two thousand people he'd demanded. It was all a confused jumble of thoughts, interspersed with a chemical haze. The Morlock Society hadn't sounded like a well-oiled machine, but I guessed they'd been formed in the wake of Zsh-ya's first pronouncement. That didn't leave a lot of time to gel.

  If they'd been targeting the rich, boy did they botch with me. Did they? I'd been wearing the uniform of a school costing fifty grand a year, waiting in line for one of the priciest restaurants in town. Objectively, anyone looking at me would have said "that guy is from a rich family." And the evidence, short of my bank balance, would back them up. I knew rich people, but I wasn't one of them. The haze faded ever so slowly. The first thing to come back was the sense of smell. I smelled sweat, probably my own. I was on a flat surface in a semi-fetal position. There was a slight humming in the air. Machinery of some sort, distant, muffled. Prying open my eyes, I found the surface to be an off-white shade, much like bone. Its texture and structure also resembled the denser part of a long bone. But I'm fairly sure it was made of polymer.

  My feet were bare. I didn't normally go around without socks, so the skin-to-skin contact of a heel in an arch was out of place. Forcing a greater movement, I bent my neck to look towards myself. From the looks of it, I'd been dressed in an Ygnaza singlet redesigned for human anatomy. It lacked the flap that went over the head, and luckily didn't seem to love to show off body details the way a hero suit does. I rolled onto my back and looked up. I was in a hexagonal room whose walls were formed from the same piece of material as the floor. The room was capped with a clear cover. Around the edges ran a series of dim lights. Above me, there was a hexagonal pattern on the off-white ceiling. More cells, hundreds of them. No, thousands. I was alone in my room with no furniture, just the six walls, the floor and ceiling.

  I had to be in the hold of the Ygnaza ship. What a way to visit space. At least it was more spacious than the slaves got on the middle passage. I lay there, letting whatever I'd been drugged with metabolize. Ixa would have immediately called for help. I'm not sure who her first call would have been to, but whoever it was had arrived too late to catch me on Earth. She would have also gotten the van's plates if she could. That would give a clue to who the Morlock Society was, assuming either the plates or the van wasn't stolen. The nightsticks and Tasers they'd used were police issue. Did they have members on the force? Possible, but not a given. Anyone could buy those.

  Could I get out of this cell? The cap looked to be about twelve feet from the floor, and the angle of the corners was obtuse, making it unsuited for climbing. The molded walls were smooth; not slick-smooth, but nothing that could be gripped. I'd even bet the porosity prevented suckers from getting a good grip. A gecko could climb it, but I lacked that ability. The Ygnaza were prepared for a slaving mission, and at first blush, chances for escape weren't promising.

  A camera drone with four lifter fans and a gem-like metallic eye drifted overhead. It didn't pause, but if it were checking the stock, there was little reason to. My guess was, the thing was no more than a foot across. It continued on out of sight, leaving me with nothing to look at except the same static architecture. A slow dread of realization crawled through me. They might not realize that the Morlock Society was nabbing people to give to Zsh-ya. Whether or not they did, it might not be a good idea to tell Dad, as my predicament might throw him off of his game. If it came down to the choice of having to destroy Zsh-ya's ship and sacrifice everyone on board to save the world... I shuddered.

  That would not be plan A, but at these stakes, it might not be off the table.

  It wasn't the danger so much as my inability to do anything that had me starting to get worked up. I stared at the tessellated ceiling and tried to come up with a plan. I had no tools, no help, and no ideas. The drone came back again. I flipped it off out of spite. It paused. Standing up, I stared at the faceted metal eye. It resembled the implant Zsh-ya had, probably built to emulate the image created by the Ygnaza eye sac. The staring contest with the drone ended when the collar of my singlet shocked me, sending me crumpling to the floor of the cell. The drone continued on.

  I took a closer look at the yellow trim on the singlet. I couldn't see the collar, but it felt as rigid as the cuffs. Each was probably part of an active prisoner restraint system that the overseers could trigger from a safe distance. A few prods of the defiant stock to show who's in charge wasn't out of the ordinary. Could it be used to my advantage somehow? I wracked my brain for inspiration. None was forthcoming. I tested my teeth against the fabric of the singlet. It did not yield, and tasted like rubber. It had some elasticity, but it was hard to get a grip on it with my teeth to try to inflict any real damage. Not that I knew what I'd do if I managed to tear it.

  Would anything make the Ygnaza open my cell? Self-harm possibly, but I'd have to inflict the kind of injury that would make them worry. That would seriously compromise my ability to fight once they did. Could I fake it? I'd need a source of blood that exceeded the severity of the actual injury involved. As I contemplated the possibilities, I knew I was going to regret the plan that came to mind. Moving close to a wall, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and slammed my face into it.

  My poor nose delivered, giving up an ample supply of blood, more than I'd hoped for. I set about painting my throat and wrists as if I'd been clawing at the restraints and planted a few bloody hand prints nearby for good measure. Then I lay still upon the floor and waited for the drone to pass again. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the glitter of its camera as it passed overhead. It practically screeched to a halt over my cell. I didn't react, waiting for real action.
Some time passed before a hovering platform appeared over my cell with a pack of Ygnaza on it. They looked down at me, but I continued to lay still. A muffled warbling reached my ears. I could only guess that they were debating what to do. I all but prayed for them to open the cell and fish me out.

  The platform moved over my cell and clamped down on the edges of the lid. Lifting the massive block of transparent material out of the way, it let in a rush of cool air. The Ygnaza extended telescoping poles into the cell. When the poles came close to the rings at the hems of my singlet, they were drawn in, solidly linking up. Whether it was magnetic or some other effect, I wasn't sure. I stayed limp as they hauled me up, the telescoping rods shortening. They flopped me onto their floating platform. They warbled to each other again as I didn't react. One leaned in close to examine the injuries. Remembering the bony mass at the center of their heads, I punched him in the eye sac instead. He stumbled back, wailing. Taking hold of the rod connected to my wrist, I pushed the Ygnaza holding it off the platform and into my old cell. It landed with a wet splat.