‘A lot of them. They knew about Cygnus. They knew who I was before my eyes changed, but that was different. They’d been tracking me since birth. But I don’t ask unless I really need to know, and you already know I won’t reveal it if I do know. I also issued standing orders that identities were not for sale, no matter what the price.’
‘And they’ll all obey that order?’
‘Uh-huh. They worship me. Pretty much literally. I embody the entity that’s been at the centre of their… cult for millennia. Admittedly, it’s a bit of a weird relationship since they’re scared stiff of me.’
‘A cult to appease the darkness. There have been religions like that for as long as people have had religion. It’s not that weird.’
Andrea grinned. ‘I figure most of them haven’t had an actual goddess who comes to their office to say hi.’
‘Sure?’
‘Uh… no. Um, could you move away a little or kiss me?’
Bianca looked into Andrea’s dark eyes for a second, then she tilted her head slightly and placed a dainty kiss on Andrea’s lips before turning back to the monitors.
‘That was mean,’ Andrea said. ‘I’m going to tell Damian you smooched me in the Mink Cave.’
‘Fair enough, he’s bound to think that’s a euphemism and, given he’s a man, he’ll just ask if he can watch.’
‘Yeah…’ Andrea agreed resignedly. ‘But we’d have to invite Jacob over. It’s only fair.’
‘Sounds like an awesome double date to me!’
~~~
‘Night Shift is snooping around Chinatown,’ Twilight said. ‘I’ve set an imp to keep an eye on him.’
‘Can you spare one?’ Bianca asked over the radio.
‘I have ten of them searching the building. Putting more in seems like a waste of resources.’
‘Oh. Well, yes. You can call on a lot of them then?’
‘I’ve never run out. I’m not really sure how many of them I can deploy at once.’
‘Okay. So, Night Shift is still hunting Mink, which isn’t that surprising, I guess.’
Twilight shook her head absently. ‘No, he doesn’t give up that easily. He could be a problem if he notices us going into this place. You’re sure he didn’t see you planting the cameras?’
‘Pretty sure. I think he’d have come after me if he had.’
‘Probably true. All the feeds are working?’
‘We have a good view of all the exits. I’ve got recognition software collecting licence plates on the car park entrance. There’s going to be a lot of those in the morning and most are going to be boring office workers.’
‘I can get the Court to run them anyway. Never know what might come up. That said, I think our principals are going to be inside and staying there.’
There was a pause and then Bianca asked, ‘You think the assassin is in there?’
‘Well, I would be. She hit Snapshot and Fuego to get you to come to her and we’ve been hitting Nine Kings facilities. This is the next one to take out, so…’
‘Good. Maybe we can get this all resolved in one go.’
20th October.
‘That’s one of them,’ Cygnus said. ‘I’m sure of it. That’s one of the girls I saw being taken to Blutadler’s lab.’
‘From the looks of it,’ Andrea said, ‘he did to her what he did to that agent you caught at FTI. Um… The purpose seems to be different though.’
Cygnus pushed the image of the girl on her knees before Zhu out of her head, looked at the toast she was holding, and dropped that onto her plate. ‘Yeah. And if Zhu isn’t this Jade Flame character, then he’s certainly an unpleasant bastard. How can someone want a woman with no initiative?’
‘Control freak,’ June said. ‘Plus, there’s no way she’s going to give away any of his secrets.’ She picked up her coffee mug and got to her feet. ‘I’ll go relieve Bianca. It’s about time for you two to go into the office.’
‘I’ll be down shortly to keep you company,’ Andrea said as June walked away.
‘Well, we established that there’s nothing much above ground, aside from Zhu’s sordid little love nest,’ Cygnus went on.
‘Uh-huh, but the imps located a hidden door in the basement. I’m going to send them hunting past that tonight. If Blutadler is in that building, I’m betting he’s down there.’
‘Another hidden, underground base. Wonderful.’
‘Maybe it’s something to do with Nazis and bunkers. I heard Nazis were really into bunkers.’
‘Huh. Maybe, but somehow I don’t think this was Blutadler’s choice. If Zhu, or whoever is at the top of the Nine Kings, is starting to panic, then they’d want their latest cash cow in as secure a place as they could put him. And we have two reasons to stop him. There’s the Excelsior, and if they’re turning girls into slaves, we have to stop that before they go into production.’ Cygnus frowned. ‘We should have hit Blutadler’s lab straight away.’
‘Second-guessing isn’t going to help anything, Cygnus. Those girls were probably past saving before we even discovered the place, and we probably delayed that production stage.’
‘I hope so.’ Cygnus sighed and picked up her cold toast. ‘I really hope so.’
~~~
Your colleague has returned to the room.
Cygnus’s eyes flicked to the message, written in a language she should not be able to read, a series of ideograms which she also knew were only one of the possible methods of transcribing the language into a written form.
‘You can see what I’m thinking, right?’ Cygnus formed the words carefully in her head: a direct question without vocalisation.
The chair you are sitting in is equipped with a neural interface system.
‘And you want to know what the result of Hugh’s meeting was?’
Yes.
‘How did the meeting go, Hugh?’ Cygnus said aloud.
There was a short pause and then, ‘I’ll ask you how you knew I was back later. Would you come out? I need to discuss that with you.’
That did not sound promising.
‘Well… Don’t give up yet,’ Cygnus thought at the computer and then worked her way out of the chair. ‘On my way,’ she said aloud.
‘We have decided,’ Doctor Ultimate said once they were alone in one of the offices at the back of the building, ‘that the safest, and most efficient, method of continuing our study of the vessel would be to dismantle it.’
‘Oh,’ Cygnus said.
‘The hull plating absorbed the majority of the radiation and so is emitting most of the radiation. We can increase the safety of those working on individual systems by a significant amount by taking everything out of the hull.’
‘Uh… yes.’
‘Obviously, our task would be easier if we could have the cooperation of the ship’s computer.’
‘I guess, yeah.’
‘To facilitate this, as an incentive, if you will, it has been agreed that we should attempt to transplant the computer core and surrounding systems to your house. If you are willing to accept that, of course.’
Cygnus blinked. ‘Uh…’
‘There is some possibility of failure. However, I am relatively confident that Elaine and I, with a little help from some other Union members, should be able to integrate the necessary power and data interconnections.’
‘You want to transplant an alien computer into my house?’
Ultimate nodded. ‘Yes. You seem to be the only person it will talk to anyway. I suspect it knows more about you than you do. You in, uh, a previous sense. Did that make any sense at all?’
‘Yeah. I think so anyway. So… You want me to ask the computer to help pull its ship apart on the promise that you’ll try to install it in my house so it can keep on talking to me?’
‘Under your house… reinforced bunker not a problem… access an issue, power, data connectivity, security…’
‘Starting to ramble a little, Hugh. Okay, I’ll talk to it. I think it knows the ship is done for so it
may agree. You’d better give me some more details. It’s going to want as much information as I can give it.’
‘Well, yes,’ Ultimate replied. ‘If I were trusting my life to someone I barely knew, I would want details too.’
~~~
‘And that’s about it,’ Cygnus said. ‘If you help us, then they’ll try to rebuild you where I live. You won’t have a ship anymore, but… um…’
‘I agree,’ the computer said.
‘Just like that? No questions? No second thoughts?’
‘I was built and programmed to serve you. I was built and programmed to serve you in whatever capacity you might wish.’
‘Well, not me. I mean, Rho built you.’
‘I was built to serve the Guardian Rho was an incarnation of. You are that Guardian. I was built to serve you.’
Cygnus frowned. ‘Right. Of course.’
‘Additionally, Rho would not have cared enough about my well-being to exhibit the concern you do. My assessment of the situation suggests that serving this incarnation will be more rewarding than the last.’
‘Uh… thanks. You understand that something could go wrong? They might not be able to get you working again when they move you.’
‘I understand. My assessment of your colleagues suggests that they will do their best to succeed and are capable of achieving their goal. And there is one other factor: what do I have to lose?’
~~~
‘Cars go in, cars come out,’ June said. ‘Mostly they look like office workers.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Bianca replied while watching the same screens as June. ‘About half of them are coming up registered to suspected tong members. If you’re going to have a cover business, not everyone needs to know what it’s covering.’
‘I guess.’ The company June had worked in with Penny had had a number of secrets and very few of the employees had known about them until the place was raided. ‘One interesting thing came up…’ Reaching over to a keyboard, June tapped keys and an image appeared on one of the monitors: an Asian woman, short and attractive with her black hair plaited into a rope down her back. ‘According to your facial recognition software, that’s an Ultra known as Cherry Blossom. A minor psychic.’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen her before. She’s freelance, but she’s been known to work with the Kings.’ Bianca grinned. ‘You’ve got the hang of my system pretty quickly.’
‘Well, before I was a nationally famous model, I was a damn good personal assistant. This thing is a bit more complex than the systems I used then, but it’s still just a new system to learn. And we’ve been at this for hours.’
Bianca laughed. ‘I should have got a June years ago.’
‘Well, it hasn’t just been me. Andrea’s been down here just as long. Hey, maybe you need a teenage sidekick. You could rope Marie into this. You’d teach her all your crime-fighting secrets and train her in martial arts. Put her in a jailbait costume and call her Mouse, and…’ June stopped, looking at the expression on Bianca’s face. ‘I can see you’re not buying into this idea.’
‘Mouse?’
‘Well, Shrew is obviously out and Ferret seems a bit… meh. Mouse is cute.’
‘Just… no.’
‘Well,’ June said, trying very hard to keep her face straight, ‘okay. I think you’re missing out on a great idea, but…’
‘I’m going to go make some food,’ Bianca said. ‘I’ll be down to take over in a bit.’
‘Okay.’ June waited until Bianca was on the stairs before adding, ‘I’ll just scrap the Mouse costume ideas then.’
Bianca fled up the stairs before June could elaborate.
~~~
Cygnus spotted the imp crouching beside Twilight, little red beady eyes watching the newcomer as she descended to the rooftop. It meant Twilight wanted Cygnus to see something.
‘I’m here,’ Cygnus said. ‘What do you have?’
Twilight looked at the imp. ‘Show her.’
The creature gibbered, the sounds resolving into an image: an old man in a lab coat, barely anything in the way of hair, and so very familiar.
‘I wanted to be sure,’ Twilight said. ‘You saw him. I’ve only ever seen photographs and heard descriptions.’
‘It’s him,’ Cygnus said. ‘Blutadler. Kopf. Whatever, it’s him. Where is he?’
‘About five floors down in a sub-basement. There’s a cargo elevator from the car park and a staircase. I need to go through all the images and figure out what the best way in will be.’
‘Opposition?’
‘He’s got ten Blood Zombies around him. There are a couple of dozen tong enforcer types on the floor above who will probably respond. That Yin Xian assassin is down there. She looks kind of bored. I checked and Zhu is still up in his apartment with his slave and a couple more enforcers on guard.’
Cygnus nodded. ‘Okay, we go back to Bianca’s place and plan this out. I’ll see if I can hook it up so that everyone can be involved.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Oh yeah. Everyone…’
~~~
‘This is so cool!’ June was almost bouncing as she looked around the dark, obsidian-floored mindscape Andrea and Twilight shared. ‘Okay, so the looming black clouds are a little menacing, but… That’s the other you?’
‘That’s… the Darkness,’ Andrea said, looking across the chasm within her mind to the swirling, black mists. ‘My dark side, I guess.’
‘When most people talk about having a “dark side,”’ Bianca said, ‘it’s usually a little more metaphorical.’
‘Most people don’t have three different sets of thoughts working away at once,’ Twilight said, grinning.
‘A valid point. Okay, so we’re all in your head. You’re okay handling the link, Cygnus?’
‘Comfortable at the moment,’ Cygnus replied. ‘I’ll let you know if it gets stressful.’
‘Right, so why are we in here?’
‘Because,’ Andrea said, ‘in here, both me and Twi are able to talk, and we can call up the stuff I got from the imps for you guys to see.’
‘And June would have sulked if I hadn’t joined her in,’ Cygnus added.
‘I sure would,’ June said happily, ‘but I might be useful since I’ve seen a lot of the people going in and out of the building today.’
‘That’s also true. Andrea, what do we have?’
Andrea nodded and a number of figures appeared around them: people seen by the imps while they searched the building. ‘I figure we have two principal targets.’ She pointed to the image of Professor Blutadler. ‘Kopf is down in a sub-basement with a load of troops and the Yin Xian assassin. He’s who me and Cygnus are after. Up on the top floor is Zhu, but I think more importantly for you, Bianca, that’s where he’s got a secured records office with its own computer system. That probably has everything you need to nail the Nine Kings to a wall, clear Mink, and probably get most of the TAATF locked up.’
‘If I go in for that,’ Bianca said, ‘the assassin is going to come up after me. She’s here to kill Mink.’
‘Yeah, so let’s use that. You go in through the roof access.’ An image appeared showing a door up on the roof and the viewpoint then moved through the door into a stairwell, down the stairs, and out into a corridor. ‘From here, you can get to either the front door of his apartment or some sort of servants’ entrance at the back. Both have guards, but they look like normal street thugs.’
Bianca nodded. ‘Smoke grenade in the front lobby, and then I’ll loop around to the back. If I’m lucky, I can flank them and it’ll make more noise. That’s assuming your idea is to attract the assassin’s attention.’
‘Uh-huh. That gets her out of the way downstairs. Then Twi and Cygnus will hit Blutadler’s lab.’
‘He’ll be expecting it,’ Cygnus said. ‘He’s going to have something down there he thinks can counter us.’
‘He’s got various things in there,’ Twilight said. ‘Gun-things, gadget-things. They could do anything.’
‘Yeah,’ Andrea countered, ‘but he’s never shown much of an inclination to weapon manufacturing and he wants to capture Cygnus, not obliterate her.’
‘He won’t be so gentle with you,’ Cygnus pointed out. ‘He’ll have some sort of light weapon for you.’
‘The secret weapon there is that he hasn’t seen the new me. He’ll be trying to counter what he doesn’t know.’
‘True… We go over what we know in detail and lock this plan down?’
‘Yes. I think we should do this tonight. Aim to go in around two a.m.’
‘Good,’ Bianca said. ‘I want to get this done. If it means taking out the Nine Kings finally, so much the better.’
21st October.
Cygnus pulled out of her dive a few yards above the roof of the Zhu Holdings building and Mink let out the breath she had been holding.
‘I do actually have some training in aerobatics,’ Cygnus said, giggling softly.
‘I’m not used to flying when it’s not in an aircraft,’ Mink replied.
‘I find that funny. I get nervous when I’m not under my own power.’ Cygnus set Mink down on the rooftop and looked around. ‘Okay, we’re here.’
‘Twilight’s in position at the base of the building,’ June’s voice replied. ‘So far, so good.’
Mink was busy examining the door of the access turret. ‘Okay… Ten minutes, tops, to get through the security on this.’ She produced a small kit from somewhere in her costume and set it down on the felt to begin work.
‘I’ll hold up here until you’re in,’ Cygnus said. ‘Just in case we need to adjust the plan.’
‘Yeah, well, no plan ever survives contact with reality…’
~~~
Behind the faceplate of his helmet, Eric Hoffman smiled. Staking out the Zhu Holdings building had been a bit of a longshot, but he had spotted Cygnus in the air in that region earlier in the evening and the company’s name had come up in some of the evidence collected at the drug lab Mink had raided with the two New Millennium ‘heroines.’ The UID investigation made those two suspect, and working with Mink was just icing: Night Shift had three rogues to take down tonight.
He examined the building as he went over his evidence. The local anti-gang task force had been fairly open regarding the threat posed by the Red Flag tong and they had rejected the link with Zhu Holdings as either incidental or a blind. Maybe one of the companies in the group was somehow linked, but Mister Zhu was a respected, if reclusive, businessman. He had arranged for the TAATF to receive information on a number of the smaller gangs in the past. Zhu wanted organised crime out of the Chinese community, a laudable goal. He funded outreach programmes for youths looking to join street gangs. No, Zhu Holdings did not deserve to be hit by Mink and her two cohorts. Maybe Mink was actually working with Red Flag… No, that did not fit with the raid on the lab… Unless it was actually a rival’s lab…
Hunting Mink Page 30
