Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  I looked up at the speaker. He was a tall, rail thin man with a silver ponytail and a pointed goatee. His clothes were incongruous, with blue canvas shoes, brand new brown work pants, and a threadbare button-down shirt. A paper bag sat tucked in the crook of his left arm. His right hand was behind his back. My first thought was ‘homeless,’ but he looked too well groomed to be living rough. There was also something familiar prodding my mind, as if I should recognize him from somewhere.

  “I’m accessing the storm sewer,” I said, as matter-of-fact as I could manage.

  He blinked for a moment. “I see.” I could almost see the gears grinding in his head. He hadn’t expected that reaction from me. Almost as of he’d expected me to recognize him too. This sent a frustrated cry through my hindbrain as it scrambled for the missing piece of information.

  “Carry on then.” He turned, carefully keeping whatever he had behind his back out of my direct line of sight. His reflection in the storefront behind him betrayed the two foot metal bar in his right hand. I pretended not to have noticed.

  “Might I ask what your name is?”

  “Sam Smith,” he lied.

  Every corner of my brain was screaming with alarms about his behavior, and that nagging irritation that I should recognize him from somewhere. But nothing he had done was overtly criminal. Why had he approached me? He must have thought I was here for him, or at least suspected it strongly enough to want to ambush me. But why? What was I...

  “Colt!” Xiv shouted, pointing at the figure in front of me. As I snapped out of my mental stupor, the metal rod telescoped both directions, extending to a six foot staff and cracking across my jaw. I tumbled into the gutter as red lightning crackled up the staff and discharged at Xiv. Xiv shot skyward, leaving the bolt to strike the window behind him. As glittering chunks of tempered glass rained down, the pieces clinked in my head. Sidonius Colt, one of the Rockstead escapees.

  I released my cable from the manhole cover and hopped to my feet. Colt spun the staff about, crackling red energy trailing from both ends. I ducked back, but the swing wasn’t aimed at me. The energy on the top of the staff picked up the manhole cover as if it were weightless and flung it into the air like an energized discus. Xiv tried to weave to the side, cut the cast iron slab banked in fight, tracking his move and slamming into his midriff. He crumpled to the ground in a heap, folded around the manhole cover. I took two steps towards where he landed and glanced back in time to see Colt retract his staff and hop down the now open storm drain. Despite my desire to pursue, I knew where my priorities lay. I ran to Xiv.

  “You okay?” I asked. By way of reply, Xiv snarled and shoved the manhole cover off of himself. He bounded down the pavement and into the open storm sewer, disappearing head first into the passageway. I made an inarticulate, frustrated noise and ran after him. The storm drain looked much like the passage nearer the river, but felt more cramped because I was trying to rush along at speed. Despite the rashness of rushing down into the tunnel, Xiv was at least sticking to the ceiling as he scurried along. I blinked in surprise as he took a sharp right, which would take him across First Street. The gap he passed through was a hole in the brickwork that looked like a structural failure. The collapsed ground in-between had been cleared of rubble, and there was a stone tunnel on the far side, running parallel to the sewer.

  I glanced to the left briefly, before spotting Xiv’s pale wings in the opposite direction. I ran after him. The tunnel angled downward, ringing with footsteps, both mine and Colt’s. In the larger space of the stone tunnel, I was finally able to run and started to catch up to the others. Light trickled in from the left at the bottom landing of the ramp. I saw Colt take the turn as we closed with him. A startled yelp and an animal snarl followed his disappearance from view.

  “Who released a giant mutant rodent?” Sidonius’ confused exclamation greeted Xiv and I as we emerged into the light. The room beyond was circular, with battery-powered lamps hanging from posts along the outer wall. The stones from which it was made were large blocks of pale gray rock. An open pit filled the center third of the chamber, the top of a darkened shaft descending into the deep. Colt had stopped shy of the pit, trying to push back a large creature with his staff. Standing almost as tall as he was, the white-furred creature had the distinct profile of a rodent, albeit at a much larger scale. The side of the haft was pressed against the back of its jaws, keeping the teeth away from Sidonius. Large, red eyes glared at the magic user as its ears flattened back. A chipped incisor reminded me of the tooth fragment pulled from the fire hydrant.

  We had been looking for this creature when we’d stumbled onto Colt, I was just a little uncertain of which of the two I should go after. Xiv showed no hesitation and bounded towards them. Sidonius delivered a side kick to Xiv’s chest, sending him tumbling back. He turned to lever the giant rodent into position between him and us. The creature pushed off of the staff and tripped over Xiv, sprawling on the stone. It hissed and snarled in frustration. The rodent began snapping at Xiv, and he pushed its muzzle away. Colt stood as straight as he could holding the staff upright before him.

  “Are you actually going to fight us here?” I asked.

  “Don’t be silly, boy,” Sidonius said. Garnet lightning coruscated along the staff, then crawled up his arms to spread crackling wings of energy from his shoulders. He tipped back, the wings catching air as he plunged into the pit. I rushed forward as Xiv managed to shove the creature off. Snarling, snapping teeth surged towards my shin. I danced away from the bite. The attack proved to be a feint, as it shoulder-checked me while I was on one foot. I tried to regain my footing, but the absence of a floor where my foot came down proved to be a bit of a problem.

  Tumbling into the void, I fired my line launcher into the ceiling. A sharp jerk on my shoulder drew a yelp from me as my fall was arrested. I slammed against the far wall of the pit, then swung back into the empty space. I let out a slow breath as I continued to swing back and forth, no longer having the momentum to hit the walls. I looked down. The pit sank for another hundred feet or so before turning into a horizontal tunnel. A faint red glow faded down the tunnel as Colt retreated.

  Xiv began crawling down the side of the pit.

  “Are you going after Colt?” I asked.

  Xiv tipped his head to face me. “The creature is just a big mouse,” Xiv said. “Colt is a real bad guy, and he’s up to something.”

  I tried to shrug. “Fair enough.” I spooled out more cable and lowered myself to the bottom of the pit. I landed in two inches of rank, stagnant water. I retracted the cable as Xiv glided down. He clung to the wall rather than stand in the water. The tunnel was carved into the bedrock under New Port Arthur, with an arched shape, but clearly machine-bored. The walls were dry. I guess the water came from the leaky storm drain. I headed off down the tunnel, the darkness kept at bay by the amplification from my artificial eye. A distant, garnet light showed where Sidonius was.

  As I ran in that direction, a slight rise in the slope of the floor brought me to the edge of the pool of standing water. My footfalls stopped splashing and started echoing down the tunnel. A voice scratched at the back of my mind, reminding me that I was only hearing one set of footsteps.

  Sidonius had stopped.

  The garnet light was not from his wings, as he’d dismissed those long before. It was from an arcane mark he was drawing across the air between us. I caught an expletive on my tongue before I uttered it as the mark began oozing tarry black slime that congealed into a puddle on the floor. The puddle grew into a blob, and the blob rose, taking a less amorphous form. Ivory bones burst from the blob, forming skeletal wings before the tarry substance stitched in the bat-like membranes. Gelling into a humanoid shape, arms appeared, folded across the chest. The middle finger of each hand was instead a long, ivory claw that ended in a short hook. It
s hands appeared to be wrapped in charcoal cloth, matching its trousers. Oily, matted hair streamed back from its head as the face formed into an oval charcoal mask. A seam split the mask vertically, with a glowing red dot at eye-level.

  A voice, wet and slippery seemed to slither out of the very air around us. “You rang?” it asked.

  “Alrez the Spellvine, I have a task for you,” Colt said in a commanding tone.

  “Sidonius,” Alrez hissed, “It has been some time.”

  “Do not let them follow me.”

  “Is that all?” Alrez asked, his head cocking to the side.

  Part 16

  Sidonius did not go far, there was a door not unlike a bank vault in appearance that blocked the tunnel a dozen yards further down. Alrez stood in the middle of the tunnel, his arms crossed in a pose used for corpses awaiting burial. The glowing red mote trapped in the seam of his mask scrutinized us as his wings fluttered in a nonexistent breeze. I stood ready, waiting his attack, but he did not move. I straightened up, somewhat miffed at his inaction.

  “So?” I started.

  “What?” Alrez asked, his voice as smarmy as it was slippery.

  “You’re just going to stand there?”

  “My task is to prevent you from acting. If all I need to to accomplish that is stand here, then why should I do more?”

  “What are you?” Xiv asked.

  “Spirit. Demon. Parallel planar entity. Unholy agglomeration of magical residues. What term you wish to use does not matter to me, clone.”

  Xiv blinked in surprise. ‘Clone’ was not the first thing that people thought of upon meeting him. It was technically accurate, but there was no way for Alrez to know that. So how did he know?

  “Subject Fourteen. Not exactly a name to inspire dread, now is it?” Alrez asked. “Or is it Xavier Isaac Vogel now?”

  “It’s Xiv!” the dragon boy barked.

  “Of course.” Alrez’s red gaze turned to me. “Shadowdemon, or is it-” He ducked my fist, his voice cutting off before he could utter any of my secrets where Sidonius could hear them. His leg came up in a motion that was physically impossible for anyone with a skeleton. The bend resembling a knee hit my chest with a wet deformation. His tarry consistency soaked much of the impact, but it still delivered enough force the drive me back. His wet laugh sounded like someone choking on blood. “You don’t like your own name? Is that why you collect so many?” Alrez was standing on one leg, ‘knee’ at face level, his foot dangling in the air in front of his hip. His arms were still crossed in front of his chest.

  “You’re toying with us.”

  “I’m bored,” Alrez said. “I have to find my fun where I can.” He uncrossed his arms and launched himself at me. He was fast, but I was faster. He would not have landed a hit if not for the fluid elasticity of his form giving him a longer reach than my reflexes accounted for. His claws though, were quite solid. A pair of backhanded blows sent me sprawling on the stone floor. With an almost nonchalant crane kick, Alrez knocked Xiv into the wall.

  I whispered, knowing Xiv would hear me and hoping Alrez would not. “Get Colt.” Wrapping myself in shadows, I surged upwards. I slammed Alrez into the ceiling with the crack of breaking rock and the splat of wet gelatin on stone. A flurry of claw slashes and pseudopod slams hammered me down into the air in the middle of the tunnel as he fought for the space to reform. As I seized both of his claws, he began to buffet me with his wings, regaining some of his lost structural definition. Yanking Alrez off the ceiling, I twisted around and rushed us into the floor of the tunnel as fast as I could accelerate in the available space. He splattered again, resembling a Rorschach test in tar on slate.

  Alrez reformed his head first, turning the blank mask to face me.

  “Boom,” Alrez said.

  Before I could wonder what he meant, the shock wave reverberated down the tunnel, hurling me up into the web of cracks we’d made in the ceiling before. I was embedded into the rock in a shower of small stones. Two spears of tarry material shot up out of the puddle that was Alrez. They wrapped about each other in a helix as he quickly reconstituted his physical form. I started to peel myself out of the crater in the ceiling, but his fist shot up into my midriff, the arm elongating several times its original length.

  “Oh, did you think ‘the Spellvine’ was just a colorful appellation?” Red lightning coruscated up Alrez’s arm and burned off shadowstuff, drawing a cry of pain from my lips. I slashed through his stretched arm with my own claws, severing the tarry strand. The lower span snapped back, reabsorbing into Alrez’s body. The upper portion fell to the floor wetly. Alrez stepped on the separated component and drew it back into himself. It didn’t take him long, but it bought me enough time to extract myself from the ceiling. I landed in a low crouch only to be greeted by a hurricane of hammer blows as Alrez spun about, producing more arms with which to pummel me back. I turtled up behind my forearms, taking the torrent of fists as my boots slid back along the stone.

  The solid ‘clunk, clunk, clunk’ of electromagnetically retracted steel bolts drew a respite. The vault door rumbled back in a flashing chorus of amber warning lights. The massive metal door swung inwards. The dark void beyond was illuminated in a series of buzzing snaps as the lights kicked on. Flickering at first, they resolved to a steady glow. Sidonius picked up his staff and calmly strode through, paper bag in the crook of his arm. Xiv let out a frustrated cry. He was tied to the ground with tethers of garnet lightning. With a snap of his wings, Alrez repositioned himself to the threshold of the vault. Unbidden, a curse actually crossed my lips.

  I hurried to where Xiv was bound and looked for a way to free him. I’d seen similar magic used by our own people, but I had no clue where to start with undoing it. It turned out I didn’t have to. Quickly cast at Xiv, it was also quickly starting to erode. The energy dissipated back to wherever it had come from. Xiv set his jaw in his best impression of a determined expression and rose to his feet. Alrez merely cocked his head at us and returned to the upright corpse pose he’d started the fight in.

  “Well, we’re closer,” I said. Close enough to get a look at the contents of the vault. It was a huge chamber carved out of the bedrock, the roof held up by ribs of reinforced concrete and a lattice of carbon fiber spall curtains. It was stacked full of crates, shelves, palettes of boxes, and whole shipping containers. Sidonius strode down a metal staircase to the main aisle, a space wide enough to drive trucks down. The whir of electric motors and the scrape of metal on stone stopped the battlecaster in his tracks.

  “There’s no way,” Colt said.

  “You didn’t think I’d leave this place undefended, did you, Sidonius?” a resonant, artificial voice asked.

  “I’m only here for what’s mine, Ptah!”

  “You were the one stupid enough to get caught.” Spindly, humanoid robots in black enamel somersaulted onto the tops of shelving units, drawing bead on Colt with the laser rifles in their hands.

  “Alrez the Spellvine, I have a task for you,” Sidonius said. “Protect me.” Colt ran for cover as Alrez flew into the vault. The only sound of the lasers firing was the pop of stone chips as the rock they hit vaporized. With the door unguarded, I ran in. Shadowstuff boiled in the light, giving me a fuzzier outline, but the overheads were insufficient to purge it all. Alrez smashed into the first of the robots, but its unyielding metallic frame didn’t buckle, and he merely gummed it up. Its mechanical head rotated to face the tarry creature before electricity coruscated through the pair of figures. From the Spellvine’s outcry, it hadn’t been his doing. The smell of melted plastic and ozone filled the air.

  Alrez staggered back from the smoldering carcass of the robot that had burned out its own power systems to hurt him. Popping bubbles and billows of smoke marked where the fire from the other robots struck his tarry form. More robots climbed out of storage containers an
d rolled their joints as if limbering up. Their lasers snapped up and joined the fusillade of abuse being poured into Alrez. With a snap of his wings, he called a shower of prismatic shards into orbit around him. No more than glittering optical illusions, they still diffused and diffracted the beams, granting him a reprieve.

  I caught Sidonius’ staff as he swung it for my face. The beam of blinding light bursting from his other hand burned away the shadowstuff cloaking me. Before he could follow-through, Xiv tackled Colt from the side. The two crashed into a stack of shelves before tumbling to the floor. The dragon boy landed a punch to the side of Sidonius’ face, and another. Before he could land a third, Alrez swooped in and ripped him off the downed caster. The two rolled down the aisle in a tangle of wings. The march of metallic feet marked the approach of the robot guards. The most basic of bipedal frames, they bore their rifles with a fluid ease most models lacked. Their simple stares were no more than sets of cheap camera lenses set into egg-shaped heads, but there were a score of them.

  A gout of flame sent the Spellvine scurrying back, beating his body to smother the burning bits. Xiv hopped to his feet, pausing at the sight of squads of silicon-brained soldiers circling us. I pointed the staff at the still supine Sidonius.

  “Who’s storage space is this?” I asked.

  “Someone who does not like trespassers,” the artificial voice said, emerging from all of the robots at once.

  “That doesn’t narrow it down,” I said. The laser rifles that turned in my direction stilled my tongue a bit.

  “Ptah, I only came for what’s mine,” Colt said.

  “You never paid, Sidonius. That makes it unsold inventory.”

  “Do you really want me pissed and spilling what I know to the Fund?”

  “Three words: Statute. Of. Limitations. The last expired years ago.”