Shadowboxer

by Nicholas Pollotta

  “Fish?” suggested Thumbs.

  “Jets!” said Moonfeather, pointing a hand at the western screen.

  High in the corner of the view screen, almost off-camera, were three tiny shapes hovering in the air, motionless black birds with swept-back wings as if struggling against a powerful wind. The water below them was turbulent, nearly roiling. Lights sparkled from their noses. The rattling on the hull of the submarine continue nonstop.

  “Eagles!” identified Thumbs. “Aztlan patrol!”

  “Thank Yomi, no missiles yet,” said Delphia, nervously holstering his gun and drawing it again. Slap-slap. “Those jump-jets can trash this can in a tick.”

  “They must think we’re pirates!” growled Moonfeather.

  Thumbs rapped a hull with a knuckle. “Lady, we ARE pirates!”

  “Drek!” Delphia moved to a control console, staring helplessly at the array of buttons, switches, dials, levers, knobs, jackports, meters, telltales, and indicators. “This is a technophile’s wetdream. How can anybody run this thing? Eta gaijin motherfragging pirate hoopheads ... Silver, get us out of here!”

  Thumbs went over to the weapons console, touching this and moving that, proceeding with extreme care and achieving nothing.

  “Outrace a military jump-jet?” scoffed Moonfeather.

  Delphia motioned. “Straight down will do. A hundred meters and nothing they’ve got can touch us. Water is almost as good as dirt for stopping bullets.”

  “That would be artic if I could, but I’m sorry to tell you I can’t,” announced Silver over her shoulder. “The rigger setup is too tight, too specific. I can’t override it. Only that guy can get us out of here!”

  Sprawled by the map table, the rigger lay limply on the filthy deck, bubbling with every ragged breath.

  “Moonfeather, heal him!” ordered Delphia, pointing at the pirate with his Manhunter for no sane reason.

  “Gimme room,” she said, kneeling alongside the man. “Cat! His jaw is busted into pieces. Even when that dumb-hoop troll tries to take ’em alive, he still hits like a freaking express train.”

  “Thanks,” said Thumbs, flipping a switch. A whole row of lights came on, and as he touched one, they went out again.

  “Can you do it?” Delphia demanded.

  Moonfeather laid a glowing hand on his face and the bubbling slowed, but didn’t stop. “Yes, given time.”

  “Done.” Delphia spun about on his toes in martial arts stance. “Silver!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Send them our surrender. Full and unconditional.”

  19

  In the cockpit of the wing position Eagle, a young officer touched his ear, then his throat. “Spike to Hot Dog. Sir, I’m receiving a surrender request.”

  “Did not copy.” Hot Dog adjusted the gain on his helmet radio while staring at the pirate sub in the middle of a freaky cloud bank. As protective covering, it was laughable. “Come again? They’re asking to surrender?”

  “What cojones!” sneered Sky Dancer, glaring through the tiny cockpit windows of the third jump-jet. “Let’s toast these muchachos and glide, Capitan.”

  Touching the joystick, Spike put a burst of his nose guns into the waterline. The anti-personnel rounds did no appreciable damage. “Correction, Sky Dancer. They are surrendering to us.”

  “Hot bulldrek. Hot bulldrek on toast.”

  “Maybe we’ve hurt the ship with the Victories?”

  Watching the stream of their 10mm rounds take paint off the submarine’s conning tower, Hot Dog was not swayed. “Boat,” he corrected. “And I don’t know, companero. I’ve seen ’em sink from machine gun fire, the old ones anyway. The pressure and temperature of the deep sea make their armor brittle as glass over the decades. Some of them are only held together by mana, not rivets. But surrender?”

  “We sure they’re pirates?”

  “Got a skull and crossbones on the conning tower. What else could they be, Free Masons?”

  A barked laugh. “Point taken. Si, tell ’em to send the captain and rigger out in sixty or else we launch the Hellfires.”

  “Sir? We going to waste Hellfires on a sub?”

  Another burst. “Don’t be tonto. Of course not. We’ll use Stingrays. But you always threaten with your big stick.”

  “Understood, wing commander. I’ll relay the message.”

  * * *

  Silver spoke without moving, “They’re giving us sixty seconds or else.”

  “Not enough,” said Moonfeather, her hands shimmering over the supine pirate. “He’s not conscious yet.”

  “I’ll give ’em or else,” snarled Thumbs. The controls were unfamiliar to him, but the basic operation seemed similar to any defense console. And thankfully, the switches and buttons were clearly marked. Made sense because it would be all too easy to flip the wrong switch in the heat of battle and get the crew geeked instead of the enemy. So everything was clearly labeled to try and keep friendly-fire accidents to a min. Cross hairs formed on the screen, and an indicator showed that the accumulators were fully powered. “Main gun is ready!”

  “Great,” said Delphia, sliding into the captain’s chair. “What is it?”

  “Let’s find out,” said Thumbs, and he pressed the stud.

  A shimmering, multicolored beam of coherent light lanced out from off-screen and missed the foremost hovering jump-jet by the thickness of a coat of paint. The heat flash of the beam’s passage through the atmosphere caused severe turbulence, and the fighter wavered, wobbling to recover its balance. Thumbs fired again, and the Eagle silently formed a fireball of truly impressive proportions. “Got one. I got one,” said Thumbs.

  “Hey! The other two are backing off,” announced Silver, watching the radar screen.

  “Getting combat room,” corrected Delphia grimly. “They’ll be back in half a tick.”

  “So I’ll zap ’em again,” smirked Thumbs. He beamed in pleasure at the console. “Here I am with my hands on the trigger of an Ares Firelance, and my mother said I’d never amount to anything.”

  A low moan came from the sprawled rigger, his face no longer an imprint of the troll’s boot. “Kill the lights,” snapped Moonfeather, stepping away from the norm. “He’s coming around.”

  * * *

  Struggling back to consciousness, Rigger saw that the bridge was black, only the emergency chemical lights dimly showing vague forms here and there. The air smelled fresh, with only faint lingering traces of that weird mist and death.

  “Wazhappened?” asked Rigger. “Cap?”

  “We’re under attack by Aztlan jump-jets,” said a muffled voice in the darkness. “Get us the frag out of here or we’re all meat for Davy!”

  “Firelance?” he asked as somebody really big helped him to the navicom.

  “It’s damaged,” said the gruff voice. Sluggishly, Rigger grabbed hold of the control surface at the main board and started boosting systems.

  “Dive, damn ya. Dive!”

  Rigger slumped into the seat and grabbed the controls. The pattern of lights radically changed to indicate rigger control, but that was all.

  “Well?” barked the figure in the captain’s chair.

  “You’re not the captain,” said Rigger coldly.

  A tense tick passed, then the lights snapped on. Rigger saw a troll and three norms: two women, one guy. All of them had weapons not pointing in his direction.

  “No I’m not,” the norm in the suit admitted. “We’re a snatch team. Your captain was going rogue, so we geeked your crew and took the sub for ourselves.”

  “Would have done you too,” the troll chimed in from behind the map table. “But our own rigger got cracked in the takeover.”

  “Bloody smeg,” Rigger said. “So you swabs’re in complete control?”

  “Yes,” said a woman’s voice over the ceiling speakers. Rigger flinched. “A decker, eh?”

  The black-haired woman sitting at the navicom paused to wave a hand briefly. “So, okay, who’s outside?”

>   “Aztlan Eagle with a major hard-on for this ship,” said the redhead in the tiger-stripe leotard.

  “Boat,” Rigger said, his face hard and determined. “And how the frag do I know any of this is the pure quill?”

  “We’re from IronHell,” said the guy in the skipper’s chair. He gave a sneer. “Good enough. I’m Rigger.”

  “I’m Delphia.”

  “Thumbs.”

  “Moonfeather.”

  “Silver,” said the decker, then as the radar screen began to beep more incessantly, “they’re coming back!”

  “Dive, motherfragger!” shouted Delphia. “Now!”

  “Aye, aye. Down we go!” Klaxons sounded over the vessel, announcing a crash dive. Swirling water flowed past the multiple screens of the Manta and daylight was replaced by the greenish hue of the upper levels of the ocean. What sounded like hard rain or hail peppered the conning tower.

  “Brace for evasive maneuvers,” announced Rigger. The perforated deck tilted as the submarine angled off in the sea, moving to port, slowing and then accelerating to starboard. The sea went dark, then became grass-green, emerald, jade, brown, and finally black as the vessel plunged deeper.

  “One hundred meters,” croaked Silver, a silhouette from the rainbow lights of the control board. Instantly, a sizzling hiss sounded from the built-in speakers of the sonar console, followed by a deep thrum.

  “Missile,” said Silver, as a dull boom shook the sub.

  The hissing came again, closer. Then further away.

  Manhunter in hand, Delphia walked from one wall of controls to the other in a few steps. “They seem to be firing blindly.”

  “Thank the gods for small favors,” noted Thumbs wryly, powering down the Firelance.

  “D-directions?” asked Rigger, slurring the word a bit. He found it necessary to squint and keep moving further away from, then closer to, the board.

  “You okay?” asked Thumbs.

  “On l-line and cooking.”

  Delphia grunted. “Head for home, but go deep.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  A barrage of pings sounded from the sonar board. “Incoming!”

  “Odd, doesn’t sound like a missile,” Rigger said, tilting his head.

  “Some sort of canister, or barrel,” said Silver.

  Thumbs rumbled, “Depth charges?”

  “Could be.”

  Ever darkening, the rectangular views of the sea ringed the bridge. Beautiful, endless. On the aft monitor were two sinking canisters, discernible by the trail of air bubbles each left to the surface.

  “Where the frag are the aft torpedoes?” demanded Thumbs, a hint of anxiety tinging his voice.

  “The Manta doesn’t have any.”

  “No rear torps?” sputtered Thumbs. “But that’s stupid!”

  “I agree,” stated Rigger, commanding the engines to maximum speed. The shaft bearings on the main rod were starting to overheat, but that was just too damn bad. Whatever those canister were, they had trouble with a capital T written all over ’em.

  “However, it does not alter the reality that we don’t have any.”

  “Drek!”

  In precise mirror movements of each other, the two canisters reached the 300-meter depth and both burst apart in globular explosions. Darting out of the force bubbles came two sleek needles riding fiery exhaust cones.

  “Underwater missiles?” squeaked Thumbs. “B-b-b-but that’s impossible! Can’t be done!”

  “Go tell them that,” snapped Moonfeather, both hands clenching the arms of her appropriated chair.

  “Bull. No missile exhaust will work underwater.”

  “Yes, it can,” said Delphia softly. “Because there it is.” The aft screens showed the things as black dots surrounded by a halo of savage fire.

  “Range, two thousand meters,” announced Silver. “Blast! Radio waves won’t travel underwater. I can’t even try to seize control of them.”

  “Gertrude,” said Rigger in explanation, redlining the engines to emergency status.

  “What? Huh?”

  “Later. Bilge, look at ’em travel! Never seen anything move like that underwater.”

  “Rigger, top speed of the sub, please,” said Delphia calmly.

  “Nothing faster in the sea,” boasted Rigger proudly, puffing his chest. “Sixty-five klicks per hour!”

  Moonfeather snorted in contempt. “My Suzuki scooter is faster!”

  “But it doesn’t weigh five kilotons,” said Thumbs.

  Delphia ignored them. “Speed of the Azzie missiles?”

  “Two hundred klicks,” Rigger said, astonished. He boosted the ship’s computer to double check the figures coming from the defense CDP. But the integers were solid.

  “Two hundred,” he repeated, looking sick. “They’re too damn fast for the old Manta! We’re dead meat on a stick. Davy, here we come!”

  “Can we lighten the load for more speed?” asked Thumbs, swiveling his chair.

  “Throw stuff in their path, make them explode prematurely?”

  “Not without opening the main cargo hatches, which would effectively slow our speed to zero for a couple of minutes,” answered Silver. “A tactic not highly recommended for continued existence.”

  Thumbs sighed. “Been nice knowing ya, Silver.”

  Thrusting out a hand, Silver flashed a smile at the troll. “Been nice running with you, chummer.”

  “I’ll save you a seat in hell, amiga.”

  Oblivious to them, Moonfeather had by now spread her arms wide and begun to sing. The words were inarticulate, merely soft crooning noises, and then she began to slap her hands as a backbeat, bracelets tinkling. The music was rough, but as if in response, the sub lurched forward and half the instrument boards flashed bright red.

  “What the frag is she doing?” demanded Rigger. Then he added, “Whatever it is, don’t let her stop!”

  “Speed, one hundred forty knots!” shouted Silver. “No, one forty-five, no, one forty-eight. Way to go, Cat!”

  Delphia stroked his moustache as if it could help increase their velocity. “Engine status,” he demanded. “Can they take the awful pressure?”

  “Turbines have dropped to nineten thousand rpms.”

  “Dropped?”

  “How is this possible?” asked Thumbs, intently watching the missiles. “They’re still coming, but a frag of a lot slower.”

  “External pressure on the side of our hull is nineteen tons per square centimeter,” read off Rigger, speaking carefully. Goddamn, his jaw really hurt.

  “Pressure on the front of the hull is fifteen psi,” finished Silver. “That’s air pressure.”

  “She summoned a water elemental to move the ocean out of our way,” said Delphia, smiling at the crooning shaman, who seemed to be in another world just then. “Would only have to do it for a meter or so, maybe less.”

  “A traveling pocket of air that we endlessly charge into,” smirked Thumbs. “Mega arctic. Ice IV.”

  Silver added, “More important, it’s working.”

  “Yes and no,” said Rigger, feeling a wave of weakness wash over him. Nerves or reaction from his beating, it made no difference now. “Moon lady bought us time, but that’s it. Ya see, if those things are Interceptors, they’ll have fantastic speed but only for very short ranges. Distance sacrificed for max velocity.”

  “Great!”

  He went on. “However, if those are HKs, hunter/killers, they may be holding back to try to force us to show them where our home base is, then they cut loose with their full speed and pierce our hull like it was cheap origami.”

  “Which?” demanded Delphia, clenched fists in his lap. “How will we know?”

  Concentrating on his console, Rigger shrugged. “When we die, or live.”

  “Any armor on the sub?” asked Thumbs, rubbing his forearm.

  “Sure. Forty millimeters of the best around. Outer armor is forty millimeters flexible impact alloy, cushioning wall halfmeter of power cells, inner
hull fifteen millimeters beryllium steelloy composition.”

  A tusky grin. “Hey, sounds good to me!”

  “Are you saying that we can survive a direct hit?” asked Delphia.

  Coaxing the engines back to maximum, Rigger actually laughed. “Survive a hit? Zero reality. Don’t you swabs know anything about subs?”

  “Know enough to seize this one,” snarled Thumbs.

  “No offense meant. However, even normal torps could toast a boat this size if they hit. Motherfragging nasty things, some sort of gelatin, epoxy, thermite combo.”

  “Underwater napalm?”

  “Dunno. But it clings to anything hit like it was alive and peaks at 2k Kelvin.”

  “That’s the temp of the sun!” said Thumbs.

  A shrug. “If you say so. I’m no techie, just a rigger.”

  “Must be a thermitic reaction,” declared Silver, eyelids closed, chemical formulas scrolling on the screens of the console. “Salt water would actually feed the chemical reaction, not slow it down.”

  “Accepted,” snapped Delphia, watching the missiles creep ever closer and closer. “So what can stop it if they hit?”

  “Nothing in science or magic can do that,” stated Silver. “Thermite is a one hundred abso-fragging-lutely unstoppable chemical reaction.”

  “Nothing? So if those thing hit. ..”

  “We die. End of trans.”

  20

  High above Miami, Emile Ceccion dropped his silver spoon with a clatter and started to choke on his clear soup. Managing somehow to swallow the boullion, he gasped for air like a fish out of water. Merde! Breathe, he couldn’t breathe! The air before him swam and filled with the image of other elves dying for lack of air. They lay sprawled like winter leaves on the ruined streets of the sprawl. Many held wands or fetishes, and all had a strip of red cloth tied about their left arm. A symbol? A badge? Then even as he watched they crumbled into dust.

  Mon dieu! Heart pounding, Emile called out to his familiar under the table. Grand yipped in response, startling Emile so violently that he jerked forward in his chair, nearly tumbling out onto the plush carpeted floor of the penthouse.