Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  “I suppose,” I said, “That would mean you would prefer not to have a murder on your record. That doesn’t have any statute of limitations.”

  There was a pregnant pause in the vault as ‘Ptah’ contemplated my comment.

  “Take this escaped prisoner into custody and get off my property, ‘Hero’.” Ptah spat the last word the way one would a pejorative.

  “Mister Colt, this would be easier if you sent your guardian spirit away.”

  “What makes you think I’m surrendering?” Sidonius asked. The robots leaned into their rifles for emphasis. Colt’s eyes moved from bot to bot. “You really have become a bitter old man, haven’t you?”

  “I was always bitter. The old was inevitable,” Ptah said.

  “Alrez the Spellvine, go home.”

  Alrez folded his arms across his chest then bowed. He bowed deeply, until he literally folded over into himself. He folded again, and again, until he folded out of existence and disappeared. I got out a pair of zip ties and bound Sidonius’ wrists. Xiv picked up the caster’s paper bag as I hauled Colt to his feet. Under the unblinking gaze of the robots, we withdrew into the tunnel. The lights flickered out as the vault door swung slowly closed.

  “Well, shit,” Sidonius said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re about to start fighting me again,” I said.

  “No, the prudent step is to cut my losses and start talking about cutting a deal.”

  “Who could you possibly rat out?” I asked.

  “Well, there are the people who organized the breakout,” Sidonius said with a smile. “I’m sure you want them more than you want to pile additional years on my sentence.”

  “I don’t have the authority to agree to that, and I’m not letting you go.”

  “Oh, but I do see the interest. You and your Fund friends are going to find a sympathetic official to sign off on the agreement before shipping me back to Rockstead.”

  Sidonius was right. I just wish he wasn’t so smug about it. Saito had supported a provisional plea provided the information was actually worthwhile. Media, both new and old, missed the official arrest of Colt, but massed around his perp walk into the Federal building. While they were snapping pictures that would be plastered across their front pages within the hour, I was filling out paperwork. It was the inevitable outcome, telling the police, the BHA, and the Fund exactly what had gone down. I made sure to include the giant rodent. Saying I was supervising Xiv’s investigation of petty vandalism was easier to defend to a Fund that had put me on limited duty. The pain was worse now that the pills had worn off and there was no adrenaline to keep it at bay.

  I made Xiv sit right next to me, so he knew exactly what sort of paperwork our little excursion had caused. His penmanship was getting better, but I wouldn’t want him filling out federal forms. I don’t think he would be able to fit his letters in the minute spaces provided. An explanation of who demanded what was probably something he needed to know anyway. He looked very thoroughly bored by the time I turned the stacks over to the proper agencies. The drab, institutional green cinderblock walls of the federal building had few signs indicating where we needed to go. The dirty looks we got from the employees herded us more than any signage.

  I found the room where Saito was watching Colt’s interview on a monitor. On the screen was the back of the prosecutor’s head and a view of Sidonius reading through a sheaf of papers. Saito motioned to an empty chair nearby.

  “About the vault he was trying to get into-” I started.

  “Hrm?”

  “Are we going to follow up on it?”

  “Did you see anything in there that was actually criminal?”

  “I only saw sealed boxes and laser-armed robots.”

  “Given how long Ptah has been inactive, He’s unlikely to cause trouble in the near future. Without evidence of a new crime, the most we’d manage is to satisfy our curiosity as to his identity. Put it aside until the current crisis has passed.”

  I frowned, but couldn’t find grounds to argue with his priorities. Part of me was surprised he hadn’t yet chastised me for acting while on limited duty. I suppose that would come later. On the monitor, Colt picked up a pen and signed the papers in front of him.

  “So, where should I start?” Sidonius asked.

  “Lets begin with your connection to the plan and how you know the people involved,” the prosecutor said.

  “I don’t know how long you’ve been in this business, but on my side of the mirror, the old timers are the keepers of the secrets. We know things the brash children find very useful, such as who can provide what services. I wasn’t out long enough to properly exploit my contacts personally, but I was able to give pointers from behind bars. My primary point of contact was Ms. Dietrich, but you already know about her. Or so the news says. As Assistant Warden, she had plenty of access to the prisoners. Not hard to reach me.”

  “Keep going.”

  “I put her in touch with the new Red Death.”

  “Who?”

  “Blonde girl in a red dress, horned mask, likes to play with spirits. After Masquerade killed the last Red Death, she glommed on to the name. Great summoner, lousy fighter. I also put them in touch with Zlatan Molbrech. He’s an obsessive-compulsive data miner. Hordes information like mad. He’s also very good at picking up on patterns that might indicate when someone was moving something dangerous. Like, for instance, three iron casks sealed by Gottfried Witchbane said to contain malicious spirits.”

  “What is the Red Death’s real name?”

  “No idea. Real names have power on both sides of the mirror. You know an alter-ego, you control them until it becomes public. Works just as well with costumed criminals as it does with licensed heroes. She wasn’t fool enough to let that slip.”

  “What is this mirror you keep speaking of?”

  “The divide in the powered community. Heroes, convicts, Blue Cards, Red Cards, we mirror each other. The similarities are uncanny when you start to look for them.”

  “Back to the matter at hand,” the prosecutor said.

  “Dietrich was the one who brought in the fools from the Final Star as an added layer of obfuscation. Chumps who prostrate themselves before dragons.” Sidonius snorted.

  “So, who were they trying to get out of Rockstead?”

  “No one.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dietrich is trying to kill Thedron. She couldn’t do that when his spirit was partly anchored within the containment field at Rockstead. She needed to unchain him so that he could be killed, and enough of a distraction to send anyone who might be after her on the wrong trail. Since dropping the containment field would restore the prisoners’ powers anyway, it was just natural to fake a jailbreak. Knowing there would be real escapees just added to the verisimilitude. That’s why I was on my own from the moment the collars went slack.”

  “Why does Dietrich want to kill Thedron?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Colt said.

  “And where are Dietrich and the Red Death now?”

  “If I were you, I’d ask Molbrech that question. He’ll be easier to find, and he might just be able to tell you. Though you’ll likely have to pry it from his computers instead.”

  Part 17

  What Sidonius failed to mention was that Zlatan Molbrech’s day job was as a lighthouse keeper on a desolate little rock in the North Atlantic. He owned that rock and a couple of smaller, even more barren rocks, in its immediate vicinity. We stared at the map on the monitor with a protracted silence. Logically, a digital information broker could be anywhere with a decent connection, and it was a miracle he was even in the country. A silver-haired Federal agent named Frazier stared over our shoulders as we mulled the matter over.

  “If he has anywhere near as much hardware as the convict implie
d, it’d take ages to seize and process the machines before we’re going to get meaningful information,” Frazier said.

  “Getting started on the process would be the first step,” Saito said. Frazier gave a nod and stepped out. I had the strong suspicion that there had been more communicated in the words left unsaid than in what was actually spoken. If they told us to go in, or even explicitly approved it, a good lawyer could get more than a few judges to throw out anything we found. So, it behooved a prudent agent to play dumb and not even acknowledge that we were likely to go after the information in the most expedient manner possible.

  I could see why people hated the way we operated. I wished we had more to go on than the word of an escaped convict. It was entirely possible that Sidonius had a grudge against Zlatan, but the size of the fiber pipe going to that island said he might just be telling the truth. It wasn’t dark either, but it was encrypted. At least, Shiva said it was. I shoved the thoughts from my head with the memory of Tekton’s severed leg and the running battle through Alabama that ended with Michelangelo out of his cell. It only squelched most of the doubt. Sidonius was the weak link.

  “Are you going to need a ride?” Saito asked, rising from his seat.

  “Our team car is parked by the river, so yes.”

  “Come then.” He walked from the room and I followed, with Xiv not far behind. We took the elevator down to the parking garage and signed out at the security booth there. Saito’s car was a simple green sedan, unremarkable and uninteresting to look at. It was not particularly new nor particularly old. We got in, and he started the engine. “How well are you feeling?” Saito asked.

  “Probably not well enough to go toe to toe with Michelangelo again, but I assume you’re asking if I’m up to looking into Molbrech.”

  “A high profile event like the breakout has emboldened the criminal element, because they presume we’ll be too busy to go after them. It has strained our capacity.”

  “I should be able to manage,” I said.

  “There’s someone who should be able to help you sift through the mass of information Molbrech has. He owes us a lot of community service, but the ink on his sidekick permit is barely dry. He’s never been in the field, at least not with us.”

  “Who is it?”

  “You may recall an incident at Seven Twenty-Two Walker, followed by another at Sterling Towers-”

  “You’re talking about Dekker.”

  “He’s Scion of Anubis now, Jester took him on as a sidekick.”

  “Isn’t it a little improper to tell me that?”

  “The fact would not remain a secret for more than half a second after you met him again. I want to forestall any issues between the two of you. This has been a difficult transition for him, and he is not well-versed in Community norms yet.”

  “Is he still a robot?”

  “No, Jester got him back into his own body. I didn’t ask how, though I’m told Scion is not undead.”

  “So, how are we getting to the east coast?”

  “I’m still working on that. I’ll check in on the transit pool. They may have taken some of the specialized gear out of storage.”

  My mask hid the eyebrow I raised at the term ‘specialized gear’. What sort of vehicles would qualify for such a moniker?

  I didn’t have to wait long for the answer. It was a jet, sitting on the helipad atop Tower Two of Sterling Towers. It was also only about the size of a minivan. The tiny little thing didn’t look like it should fly. The shape was wrong. The wing proportions were off. There was no sign of the fuel tank. The stylized ‘A’ on the side told me where it had come from. However foul-mouthed and bitter he was, Walter Arroyo was still a genius who’d made a great many things for the Community Fund. It felt a little off using his own personal prototype, but a VTOL craft would cut out a number of stops on the path to Zlatan’s lighthouse. However useful the jet might have been to get people to Alabama, from what I gathered, it had been locked up in mothballs.

  The interior compartment was maybe three feet wide, and could fit three people. It was separate from the cockpit, which had a conventional layout for the pilot. Passengers didn’t have the luxury of real seats, and had to strap themselves to the wall and floor. There wasn’t enough room to stand up anyway, so I helped Xiv buckle in before strapping myself down. Dekker arrived at the only entrance to the passenger compartment, the back hatch. He still had a lanky build, and his sandy-brown hair was neatly combed. He was dressed in a hero suit with gold lines and a tactical vest covered in pouches. On either sleeve was a gold circle containing the stylized profile of a jackal’s head wearing sunglasses. He wore similar sunglasses with round, cobalt-blue lenses. He did not look surprised to see me, more resigned. Closing the hatch behind him, Dekker strapped himself in.

  “What are the sunglasses for?” I asked.

  Wordlessly, Dekker raised the glasses and stared at me, his eyes glowing with purple light. He pushed them back into place and turned his attention to the wall with a sigh. The engines whined as the little aircraft lifted straight up off the roof. Without missing a beat, it shot into a lateral flight. After the minutes started to tick by, Dekker sighed again.

  “Is the Fund afraid I’m harboring a grudge against you?” Dekker asked.

  “They do worry about that possibility.”

  “I’m more worried about you holding a grudge against me.”

  “Given what you’ve been through, that would be pointlessly vindictive,” I said.

  “So we’re starting over?”

  “Seems like a good plan to me.”

  “Then are you going to introduce our third member over there?” Dekker asked.

  “This is Xiv, I let him out of a box, and now he’s my sidekick.”

  Xiv stuck out his tongue at me, and I laughed. On paper, he had been Nora’s sidekick, but when she and Ben moved out of state, we changed Xiv to being my sidekick. I don’t know who took over being Ben’s mentor, but it wasn’t Nora.

  “You made that up,” Dekker said.

  “No, it’s all true, it’s just the least significant part of the story,” I said.

  “Next year, I can go solo,” Xiv said.

  “You know you’d miss the team.” I doubted Xiv would ever seriously go off on his own. And that was before I even factored in the difficulty in financially supporting himself with the impediment to normal employment his appearance gave him. I chided myself for being mentally cruel, but it was hard not to notice. Xiv laughed. There was another lapse into silence.

  “How long is this flight?” Dekker asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can the pilot hear us?”

  “Yes,” the pilot said.

  “What is the estimated flight time?” I asked.

  “Give or take three hours. Provided we can find the island without too much trouble.”

  “That wouldn’t be so bad if we had chairs,” Dekker said.

  “I could pull blackout gees to get up to cruising speed faster, if you prefer.”

  “No, I’m good.”

  The lack of seats did prove to be the most annoying part of the flight, and it was getting uncomfortably hard to sit in the cramped confines of the jet. There wasn’t a whole lot of space to move around, and with other people in the compartment, it was pretty much impossible anyway. The sun set while we were in flight, and the turbulence picked up as we started to slow down. I flipped open the screen on my wrist computer and called up the map of the island. Xiv and Dekker leaned over to see the screen. The island was shaped a bit like a lumpy potato when viewed from overhead. The contour lines showed sharp inclines. The building sat on the southeast coast, facing the shipping lanes. On the northwest, there was a span of level ground where the pilot could let us off. There was a blinking rectangle there to that effect.

>   “The objective is to get to the computers and find any information he might have on Dietrich and the Red Death. First step is recon. Xiv, I want you to look for points of entry. Scion, stick by me until we’ve got the lay of the land.”

  “Fun,” Dekker said. I decided to ignore the comment.

  “It’s not big enough to set down with the winds we’ve got,” the pilot said. “I’m going to have to keep the engines going while you deploy, then dust off and loiter.”

  “Copy,” I said. If I’d had the foresight to sync up my wrist computer with the plane, I’d have a view of our approach, but instead, I had the static map. I shut it down and closed the screen. We fell into a hover and unhooked from the restraints. The wobbling of the aircraft had me worried as the rear hatch opened. I guessed the pilot had a control switch, even though we’d manually moved it earlier.

  “Oh, joy,” Dekker said, looking down.

  “I can’t get any lower,” the pilot said.

  Dekker hopped out. It was no more than ten feet to the ground, and he rolled the landing just fine, though the wet, rocky surface didn’t look terribly inviting. I jumped down, and Xiv glided after me. The pilot closed the hatch and peeled off into the howling gale. A wave crashed into the rocks and sprayed us with droplets of sea water. The pulsating sweep of the high-powered lantern atop the lighthouse cast flashes of light over the ground around us. It was wet, barren rock. The contour lines of the map on the computer screen had disguised the steep, jagged shape of the terrain. It simply hadn’t been mapped to the resolution to catch the jutting spars that didn’t touch the next elevation on its scale. The roar of the surf made it hard to hear what was going on. Aside from the beacon, the placid stars and Dekker’s eyes were the only light sources.

  “Is it normal to go to such awful places?” Dekker asked.