Hunting Mink

by Niall Teasdale

  Going downstairs wearing only a smile was a risk: Damian did not need to work until the evening and Bianca needed to be in soon, but might not want to if he touched her, which he would. Still, she did it, and his eyes followed her every step as she walked from the foot of the stairs toward the kitchen where he was making toast and coffee. The morning news, playing on the TV, was forgotten.

  ‘You are temptation on long legs,’ Damian said as she stopped across the counter from him.

  ‘Are you complaining?’ Bianca asked.

  ‘Do I look like a moron?’

  ‘No, you look like a man–’ Bianca stopped and whirled around, her eyes on the screen.

  ‘…is recovering in hospital after receiving multiple stab wounds. Doctors have indicated that a full recovery is expected, and that Fuego is conscious. Detective Kuff of the SFPD stated this morning that Mink is the only suspect in the case and that police continue to look for her.’

  ‘Damn!’ Bianca said. ‘I have to go. Elaine’s going to be off her game, if she isn’t at the hospital.’

  ‘Another one Mink’s supposed to have attacked?’ Damian said. ‘Either I really misjudged her or someone’s got it in for her.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Bianca glanced back at him. ‘Sorry to cut and run.’

  ‘Go. I was only going to try to make you late for work anyway.’

  Bianca flashed him a smile and started for the stairs. ‘I would have let you.’

  ~~~

  ‘She wasn’t really trying to kill him,’ Andrea stated.

  ‘Really?’ Elaine asked. ‘You could’ve fooled me.’

  ‘She stabbed him twice in the chest, Elaine. Yes, it could have been fatal, but with Snapshot she went for the throat. Mink’s already wanted for murder, so there was no need to add a second. This is just keeping the momentum going and incidentally weakening the Stars.’

  ‘She’s right, Elaine,’ Bianca said. ‘Fuego was lucky, but she had plenty of time to make sure if she really wanted him dead.’

  Elaine frowned and then nodded. ‘Lucky Cygnus was nearby is what he was. Thanks. Again.’

  ‘You can stop thanking me any time,’ Cygnus replied. ‘If I’d nailed the assassin, then I’d allow you some boot-licking.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Lament probably won’t thank you so I figure I need to do double-duty. He’s recovering. I guess that’s the main thing. No brain damage and he’ll be up and about in a few days. I managed to persuade Lament to move into one of the rooms at HQ until this woman’s caught.’

  ‘She’s the next logical target,’ Andrea said. ‘Bonehead would be a tough hit, Muse lives on Alcatraz Island already, and you’ve got FTI security and Ultramech. Lament is easy and, theoretically at least, taking her out would significantly damage the Stars.’

  ‘Huh, if I was going to frame Mink for murder, I’d have gone for Lament first,’ Elaine said, managing a grin. ‘Mink and Lament get on like a house on fire. As in, don’t stand too close or you’ll go up in the flames too.’

  ‘Snapshot was easy to draw out. The assassin went for the lowest-hanging fruit. She will have studied the patrol pattern Fuego and Bonehead use, but I suspect actually hitting Fuego was spur of the moment. There’s no way she could have known they would split up and Bonehead is too much of an obstacle for her to ignore.’

  ‘Yeah… I guess we should get back to work.’

  ‘You’re sure you’re up to this?’ Bianca asked.

  ‘It’ll take my mind off what could have happened. Fuego’s okay. I could do worse than keeping busy.’ With that, Elaine started off toward the control area and Cygnus followed.

  ‘I’ll port back to the house,’ Andrea said. ‘Are you okay, Bianca?’

  ‘Yeah, why wouldn’t I be? I was worried about Elaine, but… No, everything’s as good as you could expect.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Does make you wonder what could happen to make things worse though.’

  Andrea smiled. ‘Oh, I could think of any number of things…’

  ~~~

  Marcie Chou watched her latest customer fill in a rental form with her best customer-facing smile fixed on her face. She practised that smile in front of the mirror at night to be sure it was perfect, just before using her expensive, tooth-whitening toothpaste. Marcie had a smile which could dazzle onlookers at a hundred paces. Her latest customer had not seemed to notice.

  He was a tall man with a trim body, even if he had to be in his forties, maybe even fifties. Marcie was young enough to consider anyone over forty as a probable retirement home resident. His close-cropped, black hair had a touch of grey in it, and there were lines around his eyes. He was not exactly a handsome man, but he was certainly attractive, if not Marcie’s type. He had a slightly Roman nose and a strong jaw, none of which detracted from his looks, but his blue eyes had ice in them and Marcie had had to suppress a shiver when he had first looked at her.

  Nodding, he signed the bottom of the form and passed it across the desk along with a platinum charge card. Marcie continued to smile as she stepped over to her terminal with the form and tapped in the details. Her smile weakened a little.

  ‘Sorry, sir… You’re Eric B. Hoffman?’ Marcie asked.

  ‘That’s what it says. Is there a problem?’ He had a strong voice with a New York accent.

  ‘No, sir. No problem. It’s just… Isn’t that the real name of Night Shift?’

  ‘It’s not a secret,’ Hoffman replied. ‘I’ll be needing that car, young lady.’

  ‘Yes, sir. O-of course.’ Marcie typed faster. ‘Could I get you to sign something else after I’ve got this input for you? If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’

  Hoffman frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Anything really. It’s for my little brother. He’s a huge fan.’

  Hoffman sighed. ‘Yeah. Sure. Not a problem.’

  To Marcie, it sounded like that was a great big lie, but her brother would kill for that autograph… Marcie put her smile on overdrive and typed as fast as she could move her fingers.

  ~~~

  Bianca frowned at the ringing phone. ‘Who’s calling at this hour? This is going to be bad news…’ She lifted the handset and held it to her ear. ‘Bianca Fullerton… Uh, okay. Please hold.’ She tapped the mute button and held the handset out to Andrea. ‘He says he’s your lawyer.’

  Andrea raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay…’ Then she turned mute off and said, ‘Morgan here.’

  ‘Miss Morgan, it’s Peter Shaftsbury. Are you able to talk?’

  ‘Yeah, go ahead. Some problem?’

  ‘More of a warning, Grand Master. We’ve had several snippets of information come in this evening concerning Eric Bruce Hoffman, Night Shift.’

  ‘Him? Why would– Wait, he’s in San Francisco?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. He arrived this afternoon on a flight from Chicago. He has been to the SFPD homicide unit and has been asking various contacts about Mink.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you, Shaftsbury. Excellent work.’

  ‘My pleasure, Grand Master. Have a good night.’

  Andrea hit the disconnect button on the handset and handed it back to Bianca. A ‘good night,’ huh? They had already decided not to bother going out looking for the assassin. She was good enough to make that task into a fruitless one, and Andrea had resources which could be deployed to keep a watch for her anyway: there were a dozen shadow imps stationed around Chinatown with orders to follow the woman and report where she went to afterward. So they were all at Bianca’s place, watching a movie.

  Everyone was looking questioningly at her, so Andrea said, ‘You remember you said something about what could happen to make things worse, and I said I could think of a number of things?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bianca replied, ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, one of the things which wasn’t on my list was Night Shift turning up in San Francisco to hunt Mink.’

  ‘Oh… crap.’

  ‘That’s not a good thing?’ June asked. ‘I mean, isn’t he supposed to
be one of the good guys?’

  ‘He is,’ Cygnus said, ‘but he’s supposed to be a bit of an asshole. I was vaguely surprised he didn’t come after me when I was accused of killing Bobby.’

  ‘He has… issues with Ultras,’ Andrea said. ‘Especially Ultras who go rogue. I mean, he doesn’t go easy on the straight villains, but if a hero-type goes bad… He gets tunnel vision. Oh, and you can forget supposed to be: he is an asshole. Roger met him once at a convention. Hoffman’s into collecting rare comics about a certain dark, brooding detective in a cape.’

  ‘He is? Isn’t that a bit… Well, I suppose they’re both wealthy vigilante types. Do you think he’s really going to be a problem? I mean, we couldn’t find Mink. She obviously doesn’t want to be found.’

  ‘No,’ Andrea said, nodding slowly. ‘She doesn’t want to be found or I think she’d have made herself known by now.’

  ‘She’s always been very secretive,’ Bianca put in, almost defensively.

  ‘Yes, so I’ve heard, but we need to start nailing this down. I want Blutadler, but beyond that there’s the possibility of Excelsior hitting the streets again and this Yin Xian assassin putting the Stars out one by one. Mink needs help, whether she wants to admit it or not.’

  ~~~

  Damian noticed the silence falling over the bullpen and lifted his head from his paperwork. The reason for the wave of quiet became obvious: a tall figure in black armour with a blank faceplate to its backswept helmet was striding down the aisle between the desks. The further he walked, the further the silence spread, though Damian had noticed it earlier than his neighbours.

  ‘Shit, isn’t that–’ The words came from Damian’s right, but he ignored them. Night Shift was stopping at his desk.

  ‘Detective Inman?’ The voice had a slightly hollow quality, the result of passing through the helmet no doubt, but it shifted the quality of the sound into the slightly sinister.

  ‘That’s me,’ Damian replied.

  A gloved hand was thrust toward him. ‘I’m Night Shift.’

  Damian took the hand. ‘Uh, yes, I know who you are. How can I help you?’

  ‘I understand that you were involved in a human trafficking bust recently?’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘I’m hoping that you might be able to give me a lead on the Ultrahuman known as Mink. She’s wanted for murder.’

  Damian sat back in his seat. ‘Sorry, can’t help you.’

  ‘Can’t, or won’t?’

  The faceplate was unreadable, but the implication was there. Damian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Can’t. Mink overheard me getting the information which led me to the docks and decided to follow me. I didn’t contact her. She didn’t provide me with a means of contacting her; she just saved my butt and a lot of scared women.’

  ‘My understanding is that Ultramech did most of the work.’

  ‘Then your understanding is wrong. And he wouldn’t have been there at all if she hadn’t called him in. Perhaps you should ask the Stars whether they know how to contact her. Now, this is Vice, not Homicide, and I have a lot of paperwork to get through.’

  Night Shift leaned forward slightly. ‘If you do find any information on Mink, I would expect–’

  ‘I would communicate it through proper channels to Detective Kuff.’

  There was silence for a second, and then Night Shift turned on his heel. ‘I’ll find her, Detective Inman.’ Then he was marching back the way he had come.

  ‘Yeah,’ Damian said, looking back to his reports, ‘when Hell freezes over.’

  17th October.

  It was just after midnight when the buzzer on the phone announced that Elaine had arrived. Bianca had been a bit quiet ever since Andrea had told her about Night Shift until, around eleven, there had been sudden activity. Bianca had called Elaine and asked her to come over, and she had told everyone else that she needed to tell them something, but only when Elaine was there. Andrea had nodded and accepted this with equanimity; Cygnus and June were significantly more curious.

  ‘Okay,’ Elaine said. ‘I’m here. Ultramech is outside on guard. What’s going on?’

  ‘You know Night Shift is in town looking for Mink?’ Bianca asked.

  ‘Yeah, we got a call asking if someone would meet him. I think he’s going to HQ tomorrow to talk to Lament.’

  ‘Oh to be a fly on the wall. Never mind. This is getting out of hand. We’ve got one dead Star, one in the hospital, the possibility of Excelsior hitting the streets, and let’s not forget this Blutadler guy’s interest in the ship at FTI.’

  ‘Okay…’

  ‘Cygnus and Twilight need to contact Mink. So…’

  Elaine raised an eyebrow. ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well… Your choice.’

  Nodding, Bianca turned around and started for the back of the house. ‘Everyone, this way, if you would.’

  At the back of the house, behind the kitchen area, was a small utility room with a washing machine, a dryer, and a huge freezer. It also had storage for cleaning products and a few bundles of toilet rolls, and a blank, concrete wall at the far end. Bianca walked to the wall and pressed on it. A panel, which was apparently just disguised as concrete, hinged open to reveal a palm plate which Bianca used. Then a door-sized section of wall receded smoothly away from them before sliding off to the right and revealing a flight of stairs leading down under the house. Bianca started down.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ June said as she started down. ‘Why don’t either of you have a secret, underground base?’

  ‘I have a castle in Italy,’ Andrea pointed out. ‘And it’s got secret cellars of unfathomable darkness.’

  ‘That’s more like a Fortress of Solitude deal. Except you’ve got Lena and Mia there. This is the Mink Cave.’

  It was, sort of. It looked like a bunker more than a cave. Heavily reinforced concrete walls surrounded a space which had to run under half the house, and there were doors off it leading who knew where. Part of the space was taken up by a huge computer system which appeared to feed into an enormous rack of monitors set against one wall with a desk in front of them, complete with a large, black, leather chair. Under the staircase was a glass case containing costumes, a pair of bracers, and several rope darts. Off to their right was an open area fitted with cushioned mats and featuring a combat dummy of some sort.

  Bianca checked that the door above was closed and sealed and then she said, ‘So, yeah, I’m Mink.’ Then she frowned and pointed an accusatory finger at Andrea. ‘And you knew!’

  Cygnus and June were looking sort of surprised, though it had had a little time to wear off after the revelation had become pretty obvious as soon as the secret door opened. Andrea was looking around with interest and no surprise at all.

  ‘She did?’ Elaine said, her eyes widening.

  ‘Oh, of course she did,’ June replied.

  ‘Yeah,’ Cygnus agreed. ‘It’s kind of hard to keep a secret from Twilight if she thinks she needs to know about it.’

  June looked around at Andrea. ‘Your… contacts told you?’

  ‘The Shadow Court,’ Andrea said. ‘If Bianca’s going to trust us with this, then I think we can be more direct about ourselves. Bianca already knows Cygnus’s big secret.’

  ‘She does?’ Elaine asked. ‘I’m starting to feel left out.’

  ‘Come over for a drink or something tomorrow night,’ Cygnus said. ‘You can meet my alter ego then. I’m not doing it now. So, what are we going to do now?’

  ‘Well,’ Bianca said, ‘I’m going to get you all registered on the palm scanner. That way Andrea or June can use the computers down here if they need to, and the communications suite. I think we need to get organised. So we’ll do that, and then we can sit down and work out how we’re going to handle everything.’

  ‘And the coffee machine,’ Elaine said, ‘is through that door over there.’

  ‘I’ll start it brewing,’ June said. ‘I think we’re going to need it.’

 
~~~

  ‘I kind of feel sorry for the computer,’ Cygnus said. She was sitting in the pilot’s chair in the ship, helping Elaine and, remotely, Doctor Ultimate go over the engineering schematics she had managed to get out of the system.

  ‘In what way?’ Elaine asked.

  ‘Well… It’s intelligent. I’m not sure about its emotional capabilities, but I get the feeling it’s kind of sad. I think it’s worked out the ship is done for and it’s… The only purpose it has is running this ship and serving the pilot. Serving the Guardian who owns it.’

  ‘Which is basically you. I mean, it has to have security protocols. It wouldn’t just open up the way it has if I spoke to it.’

  ‘No, probably not. It recognised the same Guardian in a new shape. We must have unique energy signatures.’

  ‘That’s not unlikely,’ Doctor Ultimate said over their headsets. ‘The method you described of the original creation of the Guardians would suggest some individuality. I’m going to consult with our other collaborators over the disposition of the ship’s components next week. We may be able to do something… suitable with the computer.’

  ‘I think it would appreciate that.’ Cygnus noted a message appearing at one side of one of the displays and decided not to mention it to Elaine or Ultimate.

  The message said: I would appreciate it, yes.

  ~~~

  ‘Hey, Marie, got a minute?’ Bianca stood in Marie’s doorway, looking in. For a teenager, Marie’s ‘room’ was quite something. Technically, it was a small suite: reception room, bedroom, and private bathroom. It had taken Bianca’s intercession to get Marie moved into it. Bianca thought a teenage girl needed space and had had one of the suites when she was growing up.

  Marie looked around from her desk, which was under the large window of the reception room; Marie had turned that room into a sort of lounge/office. ‘Just doing some homework. An official break would be nice.’

  Bianca grinned. ‘Official. Right.’ She stepped into the room and closed the door, and Marie raised an eyebrow.