‘I am not an invalid,’ Cygnus said. ‘Even a semi one. Let’s go see San Francisco.’
~~~
‘Okay,’ Cygnus said as they walked out of the diner, ‘so that was a little weird.’
‘I expect they don’t get Ultras from other cities coming in every day,’ June said. ‘Gotta grab that autograph while you can, right?’
‘Right… Hopefully we won’t have too much of that while we’re moving. Your town, Bianca. Where are we going?’
‘Oh… Um, you know how hard it is to give a tour of the place you live, right? I mean, what would you do if you were giving me a tour of New Millennium City?’
‘I have no idea. I still haven’t figured out why anyone holidays there. No historic landmarks, it’s too new. I guess there’s the tower, and Deale Harbour’s sort of…’
‘It’s got authentic, dirty charm,’ June said. ‘Plus, you’d be with Cygnus and maybe Twilight so it’s unlikely you’d get mugged.’
‘Garden spot,’ Bianca said, grinning. ‘Well, unless you want to do the shopping thing… Thought not. We’ll take a cable car up to Chinatown. That’s a pretty classic tourist thing to do.’
June giggled. ‘A streetcar named tourism.’
‘You two will be aboard it. There’ll be some desire.’
‘Well, I– Oh!’ Both Cygnus and Bianca looked around at June’s exclamation and she pointed at a newspaper dispenser on the corner they had just arrived at. The headline visible in the stand was ‘Mink Still Hunted.’
‘Slow news day,’ Bianca said.
‘But I thought Mink was one of the good guys?’
‘So am I,’ Cygnus replied. ‘Didn’t stop me being wanted for murder.’
‘So is Mink,’ Bianca said, setting off again as the light changed. ‘Supposedly, she killed Snapshot, one of the Stars.’
‘Supposedly?’
‘Her signature weapon is a thing called a rope dart. You might have seen them in martial arts movies. Kind of like a knife on a length of rope. Snapshot was killed with one, and that’s about the only evidence that Mink did it that I’ve heard of. Elaine knows more about it.’
‘Well, anyone could get their hands on one of those.’
‘Agreed, though using one against a reasonably proficient gunman is another matter. I learned how to do the… Uh, I suppose the art version is the best way to describe it. You know that thing where you have a flaming ball on the end of a rope and swing it around making pretty patterns in the air?’
‘I’ve seen it done, sure. You can do that?’
‘I am a woman of many talents. That one’s a cool party trick, but it’s difficult to do right. Using one of those things as a weapon takes some dedication. That said, I think it’s a setup.’
‘That’s what I’d suspect from what Elaine said about her,’ June said.
Bianca nodded. ‘She dealt the local tong, uh, the SFPD calls them Red Flag, a couple of pretty serious blows around the end of July, beginning of August. Damian was in on one of the busts. Human trafficking thing. They went really quiet all last month. Both Damian and Elaine commented on it. Then, suddenly, Mink is wanted for murder and Red Flag is back in business.’
‘And no one is doing anything about it?’
‘Well… There’s a task force assigned to the tong, and you know what Damian thinks of them. Lament won’t look past the fact she hates Mink. Fuego is kind of a law and order freak so if there’s a warrant for Mink’s arrest, he’ll be hunting her, even if he doesn’t necessarily think she’s guilty. Bonehead follows Fuego’s lead. The Stars aren’t exactly Hell on organised crime anyway.’
Cygnus frowned. ‘I’d look into it myself, but I’ve no idea where to start.’
‘No one expects you to. Except you, maybe. I’m pretty sure that Mink is trying to sort this out. She might not be able to show her masked face without someone making her life a misery, but I suspect she’s doing what she can.’
13th October.
Herman Kopf sat in the back of a van which had the logo of a Chinese laundry on its sides, watching a pair of monitors with some interest. The situation was not entirely ideal, but Kopf felt it was necessary to further his goals. The range on the radio control system in his new zombies was, with the right base station equipment, quite acceptable: ten miles in a clear environment, rather less in a city. However, when utilising the video capability, that range was significantly less. Even using a reduced sampling rate, which he was, he had had to get closer than he would have wished to the target site.
‘Proceed into the building,’ Kopf said into a microphone set on the bench in front of him. ‘Remember, you are to attempt to remain unobtrusive. Act naturally.’
On the screens, a door was opened and then the scene shifted around, and then Kopf forgot all about potential risks. There on his screens was the vessel he had been tracking for months. He had been working on a way of tracking Cygnus. She had an absolutely unique cosmic energy signature and he wanted to use it to arrange for her capture. Instead, he had detected something similar, but not identical, which he could not explain. He had been trying to work out exactly where it was coming from and how to get to it when it had started moving. Someone had got there first, but that was not going to be the end of it. Oh no.
‘Good. Now I want you to get every angle and detail you can. Move!’
~~~
‘His name,’ Cygnus said, ‘was Rho Ashigna. He belonged to a race called the Naranth.’ She was standing before the cryo-chamber they were using to store the alien’s body when they were not working on it, looking up into the large eyes.
‘Do you know where he came from?’ Doctor Ultimate asked from behind her.
‘Uh, their home world, originally. I don’t know where that is. Maybe the ship’s computer can help. Otherwise I’ll dig around in his memories for it later. It’s a bit weird looking at his memories. He could see heat. Those tiny eyes are infrared receptors. So when I look at what he saw, it’s a little difficult to work out what I’m looking at, if it’s just a visual memory.’
‘Interesting.’ Ultimate was wearing an amused expression. ‘We had worked out that those secondary eyes were for infrared. Rattlesnakes have something similar, perhaps less well developed. Your account of his memories confirms both our findings and your story.’ He turned and gave a pointed look at Carver. The agent frowned.
‘Yeah, well…’ Cygnus went on, oblivious to the exchange. ‘I get the impression that Narantha was a cold place. I guess infrared vision would be a good hunting adaptation when they were evolving.’
‘Perhaps a reduced level of incident light from their star,’ Ultimate suggested. ‘The light would be dimmer.’
‘It doesn’t seem to– Ah, but it wouldn’t, would it? I’m seeing through his eyes, and they’re adapted to his world’s sunlight. Plus the infrared.’
‘Indeed.’ Ultimate still sounded amused and Cygnus turned away from the body of her last host to look at him.
‘Seriously,’ Cygnus said, ‘it’s weird having an alien’s memories hanging around. When I say he had a thing for females with a hot abdomen, I really mean it.’
Ultimate let out a bark of laughter. Behind him, Alice giggled. Even Carver managed a grin, but he said, ‘Have we any way of knowing that these… alien memories are safe? She could be affected by them in some way.’
Cygnus nodded. ‘Don’t think I haven’t thought of that myself. That worried me before I had the memories, sort of. The actual memories only come when I want them and… It’s like I’m a step removed from them. I know he was in horrible pain from the radiation when he died, but it’s like the pain and anguish are coming at me through a filter. I don’t think they affect me, but being a Guardian does.’
‘A programmed sense of responsibility,’ Ultimate said. ‘Not exactly a bad thing.’
‘Assuming it’s a responsibility to humans,’ Carver said.
‘It is,’ Cygnus stated flatly. ‘That’s what I bring to the mix. I’m the part of th
e combined entity that decides my priorities. Each Guardian, each incarnation of each Guardian, is a little different because they each have a different host.’
‘All right. I’ll have to take your word for that at the moment. Do you know what he was doing in our neighbourhood?’
‘No…’ Cygnus frowned. ‘I’ll dig around and see what I can find out.’
‘Excellent,’ Ultimate said. ‘Perhaps you could try talking to the computer now? It may be able to give us an assessment of the damage the vessel has taken, an indication of possible radiation hazards in other parts of the ship, etcetera.’
Cygnus gave him a shrug. ‘Well, I can ask, I guess.’
~~~
In his van, Kopf sat up suddenly as he saw Cygnus, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, emerge from one of the other rooms in the building.
He had positioned his drone at the rear of the control area so that he could examine the instrument readouts. That had provided more information than just the external view, but it was clear that the investigation of the ship had not proceeded very far as yet. That was good. The less Ultimate knew, the better.
Now Cygnus was on the scene. That suggested a link between the vessel and the Ultra. He had suspected it, given the similarities in energy signature, but the fact that she was there made the evidence far stronger.
Now what had she been doing back there…
‘Go to the back room Cygnus and Ultimate just came from,’ he commanded.
~~~
Elaine, in her camera-equipped radiation suit, was already in the cockpit when Cygnus crawled in. ‘You’re going to try the computer?’ Elaine asked, her voice dulled by her helmet.
‘Yup.’ Cygnus slid around the flight chair, got to her feet, and sat down. ‘Here goes nothing.’ She lay back and, almost immediately, multiple holographic displays appeared around her. ‘Are you getting all that, Hugh?’ she asked.
She had a headset, but they were relying on Elaine’s suit for visuals. Both women heard, ‘I am. We’re recording everything. Please proceed.’
‘Okay…’ Cygnus shifted to the as-yet-unnamed language Rho had spoken. ‘Computer?’
‘Awaiting your command,’ a voice responded into Cygnus’s head while matching text scrolled over one of the displays.
‘Did it answer?’ Elaine asked.
‘Uh-huh. That’s not going to record. And I guess you wouldn’t understand it anyway… Computer, damage report.’ Schematics of the ship appeared with areas marked in different colours, and the text scrolled. ‘Uh, forward hull breached, ECM can’t be contacted, power failure to primary communications and sensor array, same to the main drives. No contact with the port turret. Aft reactor is fully functional, but the mid-section one is gone and there’s a note on radiation detected in that area. Some damage to the avionics and secondary communications. Everything else is functional.’ She paused, examining some of the other displays. ‘Computer, show me detail on sensor display twelve.’
‘What–’ Elaine began and then stopped. ‘That’s a camera view of the bioscience room.’
‘That’s two camera views of the bioscience room combined in a stereo image. I didn’t see a three-D video camera in there, and it’s operating at less than a quarter of standard video frame rates.’
‘We don’t have such a camera,’ Doctor Ultimate said. ‘We may have a spy.’
~~~
‘An unknown species, certainly,’ Kopf mused as he watched his screens. ‘Secondary eyes, unusual physiology. Highly unlikely that this is any form of human. The vessel is definitely alien. I must–’
He stopped at the sound of a door being opened coming through the speakers. Then words. ‘Suzman? What the Hell are you doing?’
Kopf gave it a second’s thought. ‘Take out your pistol and shoot yourself in the head.’
The images on his screens shifted slightly before turning to snow.
~~~
‘I got the computer to trace the source of the incoming signal,’ Cygnus said, ‘but by the time I could get there…’
‘Gone, of course,’ Doctor Ultimate said. ‘Eliminate his tool and vacate the area. However, his chosen means of elimination leads me to the conclusion… and obviously some form of nanotechnology. Relatively simple really. Why is everyone looking at me like that?’
‘You missed the middle of the explanation, dear,’ Alice supplied.
‘Ah. Sorry.’ Ultimate took a deep breath.
‘What happened to Suzman?’ Carver snapped. ‘That man has been under my command for five years. He was loyal.’
‘He was being controlled.’
Carver frowned. ‘Controlled?’
‘A radio transmitter was embedded in the base of his skull. The bullet did considerable damage to his brain, but we were able to determine that certain areas of it were damaged before the bullet went through. Essentially, his ability to make decisions was eliminated, burned out of his head.’ There was a pause and then. ‘Did I skip anything there?’
‘No, Hugh,’ Alice told him. ‘That was fine.’
‘Good.’
‘Someone turned him into a… zombie slave?’ Cygnus asked.
‘Yes. I recognise some of the components. They have a rather specific construction signature which I last saw in some of the components sent to me for analysis after your foray against Ghostfire.’
‘The Blood Zombies.’
‘Yes.’
‘Blutadler.’ The chill in Cygnus’s voice made Alice’s eyes widen. Carver took a step back. ‘I need to make a call,’ Cygnus said. ‘Bianca, could I possibly ask you to arrange another flight from New Millennium City?’
‘Uh… sure,’ Bianca said as Cygnus stalked out of the control area, heading for a phone. Bianca looked around at the others. ‘Could someone explain what a Blutadler is?’
~~~
‘You’re sure she doesn’t need the jet?’ Bianca asked.
‘That’s what she said,’ Cygnus replied. ‘She was going to make some arrangements and then come over. Honestly, I’m not sure how. She can’t shadow step to places she hasn’t been unless she can see where she’s going.’
‘I would imagine she’s called a friend.’ Ultimate said, his eyes on his displays.
‘A friend?’ Bianca looked puzzled, and had the feeling that was happening a lot recently.
‘Indeed. She’s probably–’ He stopped, his eyes on one display which had suddenly gone crazy. ‘I’ll wait for the introductions.’
Light blazed through the room. You could sort of tell who had met this phenomenon before since Cygnus, Ultimate, and Alice just shaded their eyes while everyone else gasped or looked away. When the light was gone, there were two figures standing just in front of the control area’s monitor bank. One carried a suitcase and had a sword on her back, while the other was wearing a red, tabard-like dress which barely hid the body beneath.
‘Good evening, Twilight, Viviane,’ Ultimate said. ‘Welcome to San Francisco.’
Andrea smiled. ‘Thank you, Hugh. And thanks, Viviane. I’ll travel with you again. The door-to-door service is excellent.’
Viviane looked around. A number of UID agents were looking mildly shocked at the sight of her. She ignored them. ‘At least this is a spacious room. Hello, Alice, Cygnus. So this is the new toy you’ve found to play with, Hugh?’
‘It is,’ Ultimate replied. ‘An actual crashed UFO rather than one of those conspiracy theory ones. Though, thanks to Cygnus, it’s less unidentified.’
‘Hmm…’ Viviane stepped around the displays and raised her hand toward Cygnus. Carver, beside the white-haired heroine, cringed, but Cygnus just stood there and smiled as light danced around Viviane’s fingers. ‘You’ll want to reassess her classification, Hugh,’ Viviane said. ‘She’s off the charts.’
Carver looked around at Cygnus. ‘She’s a magnitude five?’
‘On the standard one to five scale? She’s a fifteen.’
Now Cygnus did look surprised. ‘Seriously?’
Vi
viane shrugged. ‘My analysis is not as precise as Hugh’s machine.’
‘More naked time in the bright light?’ Cygnus sagged and Alice patted her on the shoulder.
‘Surely you knew that was coming?’ Alice asked. ‘Hugh hasn’t got to use his “trust me, I’m a doctor” line in months.’
‘That can wait,’ Andrea said. ‘You’re sure Blutadler is here in San Francisco?’
‘Sure?’ Ultimate said. ‘No, but the evidence rather suggests that he is. He showed considerable interest in Cygnus. This vessel appears to be where her powers came from, and its technology has a signature not unlike hers. I believe he may have detected the same emissions I did and has followed them here.’
‘I looked him up in our databases,’ Carver said. ‘Aside from some rather unsavoury habits regarding corpses, he doesn’t seem that much of a threat.’
‘He is resourceful, determined, and obsessed with Ultrahuman genetics. And he has managed to infiltrate a spy into this building already.’
‘He also seems to have a talent for picking friends who are a threat,’ Cygnus added. ‘I think he’ll have got himself support from at least one local Ultrahuman villain.’
‘Okay…’ Carver frowned. ‘I’ll get people on to compiling a list of possible associates. Maybe we can–’
‘Don’t bother,’ Andrea said. ‘I’ll make some enquiries in the morning. Then I’m going to find him, and I’m going to bury him.’
~~~
‘Strip.’ The rather imperative command was issued by June as she fiddled with some sort of handheld gadget with a broad, glazed port on one end of it.
‘Sorry?’ Cygnus asked.
‘Your clothes, remove them. I need a scan of your body so I can input it to the design package.’
‘Uh… here?’ Cygnus looked around Bianca’s lounge, and at Bianca and Andrea who were sitting on a sofa and looking amused.
June lifted her eyes and looked at her friend. ‘It’s not like everyone here hasn’t seen everything you’ve got already.’
‘She’s got a point, Cygnus,’ Bianca said. ‘Give me a second to close the blinds.’
A minute or so later, Cygnus was standing in the open area near the porch with her arms held out and her feet a regulation eighteen inches apart while June ran a green, scanning laser beam over her.
Hunting Mink Page 21
