Shadowboxer

by Nicholas Pollotta

  Tail abristle, Grand screamed as Emile jerked awake, his jaw working as he tried to clear his throat and breath. Air .. . there was no air! His lungs were laboring, but nothing was happening. It was as if the bathysphere had been pumped clear and he was in vacuum. No air! Gasping and choking, he fumbled with the control panel set overhead, unable to believe the dials showing that the sphere was full of good air at proper pressure and that oxygen and carbon dioxide levels were normal. The feeder lines from the surface must be clogged!

  With the blood pounding in his ears, Emile couldn’t hear if the regenerator was working or not, and no visible parts were moving to show its operation. Escape filled his mind. Yes, that was it! He must reach the surface! Clawing off his seat belt, he staggered to the hatch. In mindless terror he began to beat weakly on the wheel, trying to escape from the underwater coffin. Grand raced before him and stood defiant before the hatch, hissing at his master, but Emile swatted the ferret aside. All thoughts were gone except for the burning need to breath in cool sweet air one last time. A single breath, a spoonful, a sip of air .. . oh, spirits, please ... please ... !

  * * *

  Ducking under a red-hot pipe, and dodging around an array of steaming vats festooned with hissing hoses, Delphia rounded the corner of a thumping machine with numerous dials and readouts to find himself in a dead end before a massive freezer. Easing open the insulated door, he peeked inside and saw only darkness, the section of floor lit by the light behind him thick with dust and cobwebs. As he turned, the others arrived.

  “Any sign of pursuit?” asked Delphia, closing, but not shutting the door.

  Last in line, Moonfeather shook her head inside her helmet. “We’re clear. If anybody was after us, we lost ’em on the pipe.”

  “Excellent.” Walking into the freezer, Delphia popped the seals on his waist, and bent over to lower the top half of the Jym suit to the floor as quietly as possible. “Let’s ditch these suits in here,” he said.

  “Sounds good.” Thumbs popped his helmet and vigorously began scratching his nose. “Ah! Been wanting to do that for hours.”

  “Doesn’t look like anybody has used this place for years,” noted Moonfeather, joining them in the dim interior of the big box. “We can always reclaim the suits if we need to.

  These things must be worth a fortune.”

  “My idea exactly,” said Delphia, stepping out of the lower half of the armor.

  “Hey, where’s Boomer?” asked Silver, glancing about.

  “Drek! We must have lost him in the gutting machine,” said Thumbs, checking outside the freezer. “No sign of him. Should we go back?”

  “Frag that,” muttered Moonfeather, stepping out of her suit and then shaking out her red hair. She checked the charge on the stun baton and stuffed it into a belt around her waist. “I don’t think he knows where IronHell is, and he sure as drek doesn’t know what this place is, so who needs him?”

  “And if he’s caught?” demanded Silver, standing alongside her suit, carefully freeing her Fuchi from its nest of wires. “Then his head explodes,” Moonfeather said.

  “With reservations, I concur,” said Delphia thoughtfully, unlimbering the Predator from the leg of his Jym. “He was only an asset aboard the submarine. If he was still with us, we would be forced to terminate him ourselves.”

  “Then it’s good he’s not here.”

  “Wherever here is,” observed Silver, shouldering her bulky bag.

  “That blimp breeder thought we were pirates,” said Thumbs slowly. “So this place can’t be IronHell.”

  “Indubitably,” agreed Delphia. “And from the foreman’s severely antagonistic response, we may infer that the inhabitants of this bubblecity are not on good terms with the seagoing palliards.”

  With her Remington pump-action in hand, Moonfeather draped the partially loaded bandolier of shells over her chest. “However, the local gov might know where IronHell is,” she offered.

  “Get me to a jack or a telecom and I’ll download the whole fragging city grid,” said Silver confidently, checking the clip in her Seco. “I’ve got programs that can strip a grid to the bare boards.”

  Delphia tested the VPR2 and his Manhunter. Slip-slap. “That will take time. Which would require privacy. Even if we can find something, our credsticks are probably useless down here.”

  “This is terra incognito,” agreed Moonfeather, jingling a bracelet.

  “So don’t leave anything behind,” said Thumbs, cradling his Mossberg in the crook of a tattooed arm. “We might need it.”

  “Natch.”

  “Done and done.”

  “Arctic. Let’s blow.”

  Weapons at the ready, the four moved quietly through the deserted processing machinery, keeping a careful watch out for guards or vidcams as they headed for the first door marked Exit. It had a retinal scanner, but Silver and her Fuchi busted through that in a few ticks with a UniBlink program and they were gone.

  28

  Stopping behind a big vibrating reactor with lots of pipes, Boomer caught his breath and waited to see if anybody was behind him. After a few ticks, he decided it was safe and broke the seal on his helmet. Almost instantly he regretted the act. The air in the food processing plant was hideous, thick with the stink of decaying flesh and rotting guts. Davy, it was worse than a bilge full of ripe corpses!

  Breathing in tiny sniffs, he forced himself to acclimatize to the stench and soon was out of the Jym suit. His clothes stuck to his skin with dried sweat, but he luxuriated in a good stretch, savoring the freedom of movement.

  That stopped as a fusillade of bullets sprayed the wall above him, punching a line of holes in the metal. “Go static!” boomed a norm in a guard uniform. The guard came closer, boots and badge polished bright. “And keep ’em raised.”

  Slowly, Boomer lowered his arms, forcing himself to stay calm, think icy, and breathe regularly. Be calm, goddammit!

  “I said raise ya hands, gleeb, or get cacked,” growled the guard, the multiple barrels of his tripistol spinning in readiness.

  “You will lower that gun and speak politely to me. I am a pirate rigger,” said Boomer, displaying his hands, but not raising them in the surrender act. “From the submarine Manta, and I will speak with your sector chief immediately.”

  “Yeah?” sneered the guard in contempt, “Or what?”

  Trying to feel in control of the situation, Boomer smiled genially. “Or else the next thing you see will be an armor-piercing torpedo the size of a school bus coming through that freaking dome outside.”

  Chewing air, the guard hesitated, clearly unsure of what to do next. “If this is a trick . . .” he started.

  Boomer cut him off. “Get on the blower, tin star, and let me speak with your boss, now!”

  Never lowering the barrels of his weapon, the guard took a handset from his belt and lifted it. “Hey, Central! Ya hear me? Well, I got me another Streeter claiming to be a pirate. What’s this month’s code phrase?” He listened and nodded. “Gotcha. Hold on.”

  “Okay, gleeb,” he said in low tones. “Tell me what he just said, and if ya get one word wrong, I’ll blow your stinking head off.”

  His temples starting to throb, Boomer breathed deeply, forcing himself to be calm. I am not in danger of capture, he mentally told himself again and again. I am in charge. This man will obey me. There is no danger of capture. No danger.

  “Well?” shouted the guard impatiently, thrusting the tribarrel closer. “Tell me!”

  “Many are the leaves fallen,” spoke Boomer softly, “but few the trees which stand the winter.”

  His face going ashen, the guard released the trigger of his weapon, the triple barrels slowing to a stop. “Sorry, sir,” he said, hurriedly holstering the gun. “But I had to check, ya know? Some chummers fake being pirates to try ’n avoid going beyond the wall.”

  “Hope you zap ’em,” said Boomer, feeling the tension in his head ease.

  “Yes, sir. Always have. We got a treaty,
you guys and us, and Old Dome keeps its side.” It obviously hurt, but the guard managed to force a friendly grin. “Anything ya need . . . sir?”

  “Yar,” snapped Boomer. “I want clean rags and an escort to the next food shipment to be picked up by IronHell.”

  “Absolutely, sir,” growled the guard.

  “And have a crew bring along the Jym.”

  “No prob. My pleasure, sir. Happy to do it.” The guard checked the watch on his pinkie. “If we hurry, maybe we can get you on today’s shipment. It leaves in less than an hour.”

  “Good.”

  “Don’t know about your friends, though. Where are they?”

  “Who?” Boomer blinked at the word. “Oh, those gleebs aren't with me. They may pretend to be pirates, but I have no idea who or what they really are. Hard data. I strongly suggest you hunt the jimps like rabid devil rats and slit ’em into chum. Especially the mage.”

  “M-m-mage?”

  “Def. A shaman, sings for Cat. However, I will be happy to give you a full physical description, along with their names, weapons, and known abilities.” Boomer could also have told the city stars how to track the Jym suits using their internal security systems, but that would reveal way too much of what IronHell knew about the dometown defenses.

  Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “That is, I’ll download once I’m safely away from here and those fragging killer Snowballs out there.” He gestured with a thumb.

  Drawing his weapon, the guard pulled the trigger. The triple barrels rotated up to speed with a whine, and a stuttering stream of highvelocity rounds violently slammed the pirate back against the wall of the chem reactor, tearing his body into bloody chunks. After reloading, the badge waited until the decapitated head messily exploded, then grabbed his handset and hit Transmit.

  “Hello, Central? I just killed the pirate. Had to. He said a forbidden word. Yeah, that one. He also said the other invaders aren’t pirates, which makes it a cybernetic lock they are. We better twig those yobos double pronto.”

  Nervously, the guard glanced around at the catwalks above this level, the laser spot of his tribarrel searching for any movements in the shadows. “And one of them is a mage” he added softly with a shudder.

  * * *

  Less than an hour later, a group of workers in bright orange Gunderson Corporation Jym suits waddled out from Low Dome on their regular duty schedule. Heading for the sea-going equivalent of tractors and combines, nine of the suits carried the regulation two tanks of compressed air on their backs. But one of the group carried the unusual number of three. As the group chatted with each other over their short-range Gertrudes, one suit went casually off by itself into the tall deep weed beds. A moment later, there was a brief flurry of motion as something small and metallic streaked away over the lush farmland, moving toward the distant mountains at an incredible velocity. When the Jym suit returned, it was carrying only two tanks of air.

  Nobody seemed to notice.

  * * *

  Unrolling a bolt of red carpet over the perforated steel flooring on the dome, the orange-uniformed crew cycled down a ladder attached to the ceiling, and one technician climbed up quickly. Checking the validity of the magnetic seal, he released the mechanical lock and spun the wheel on the top hatch. The circular slab of metal swung off on a silent pivot flange. Set within a recessed area a good meter in height was another hatch with a similar locking wheel, both moist with sea water. Rapping three times, then three times more, on the second hatch, the technician undid the second mechanical lock and spun the wheel, undogging the smaller hatch. This one swung upward, exposing a sternfaced Emile standing like a statue on the other side, pack on his back, wand in hand and Grand glowering from a shoulder. Dumbfounded, the norm was unable to speak for awhile. Emile was not surprised at his reaction.

  “Hello, sir,” said the norm, swallowing hard. “Please follow me, sir.” And he quickly descended to clear the way.

  Primly exiting the bathysphere, Emile climbed down to the red carpet. Wide-eyed stares greeted his appearance, and Grand chittered unhappily as his eyes darted about. Emile was standing in a small undersea dome, its flat ceiling dotted with six pressure hatches identical with the one he had just used. The curved walls were ringed with thick portholes, clusters of air tanks, and puncture repair kits every two meters. The strip of carpet underfoot led to a half-circle tunnel extending off into the distance. A group of people were standing in the mouth of the well-lit tube; a norm male in a standard business suit, a norm female in a severe business dress, no jewelry, and three hulking trolls in full combat armor and sporting Mossberg SMGs with grenade launchers. Two of the metahumans had chromed eyes, the third was wearing darkly tinted wraparound glasses of unknown function. But Emile suspected they were of military origin.

  “W-welcome to Old Dome, Monsieur Ceccion,” said the suit, giving a stiff bow from the waist. His pronunciation wasn’t bad: Ses-shun, he said firmly. “I am Dan Robinson, executive vice president of Gunderson Oceanographic Industries. A pleasure, sir. A real pleasure.”

  Emile said nothing, concentrating on his breathing. The noise filled his ears like gusting thunder. Yes, this place was near the source of his feelings of suffocation and nightmares. Very near.

  As the staff began unloading the luggage and equipment boxes, Robinson gave a forced smile. “And this is my assistant, Rebecca Thomas.”

  “We’ve heard so much about you, Monsieur Ceccion,” said the female, sweat trickling down her face. “I certainly hope you will enjoy your stay here.”

  Again Emile did not respond, but thumped the flooring with his wand as if to test its solidity. The grilled metal tanged musically and Grand hissed at the noise. The orange jumpsuits paused in the unloading, but Thomas brusquely motioned them back to work. “Ms. Harvin sends her regrets that she is not able to greet you personally,” said Robinson, his artificial smile weakening. “But she asked me to communicate her regards. I trust your trip went well?”

  “Survival was achieved,” said Emile, feeling as if he was only linked to this plane of existence by the sheer force of his will.

  The norm assumed a quizzical expression. “Come again, please?”

  Ignoring the breeder, Emile walked to a porthole and looked outside. The stupendous bubblecity was visible beyond the lush hexacres of green farm land, with jagged mountains faintly discernible in the far distance. Beyond the rocky sentinels was the ultimate blackness, darker than even interstellar space where a trillion blazing stars tried to banish the eternal night. Down here, there was no light, except for the rare phosphorescence of exotic tubers from the depths and what Substitute suns humanity brought along with them.

  “You did not kill them here,” Emile said quietly, turning away from the vista. “Not here, no.”

  The suits exchanged nervous looks, smiles gone completely.

  Wetting his lips, Robinson hurried over. “Please, sir, accompany me to the elevators and we will discuss this in private,” he whispered, stern and quick.

  “No.” Emile walked away from the annoyance. Long tail lashing, Grand growled unhappily as they entered the tunnel and found the slidewalk. As they stepped onto the ribbed matting, the endless belt activated at their weight and started to move slowly off, gently accelerating to a casual speed.

  The tunnel all around Emile was very well illuminated by indirect lighting. Sitting on the surface of the seabed, the tunnel was forged of steelloy rings thicker than an ork, with titanium-reinforced ceramic sheets in quadruple layers. Only the visible interior was of standard macroplas, gaily painted in murals depicting the wonders and delights of the sea. Emile did not know how he was aware of these details, not yet anyway, but he sensed that the answer, and many more answers to questions unasked, lay ahead of him, deep within the bubblecity.

  A manicured hand roughly jerked him around, and Emile found himself face to face with the suit again.

  “What are you on, drugs? Chips?” demanded Robinson hotly. “This is outrageous
behavior! Mr. Harvin himself sent you, mage, and this is how you arrive? Fried like a gutterkin?”

  “Be quiet,” Emile commanded, gesturing with his vine-covered wand. The length of the wood seemed to glow for a tick.

  Curling a lip, Robinson moved his mouth and lips in pantomime but not a sound came out. Not a squeak. Recoiling, the norm gave a silent scream and backed away from the elf, the motion of the slidewalk carrying them quickly apart.

  “Guards, stay with our guest,” ordered Thomas, stepping between Emile and the Gunderson executive, holding up her briefcase as if was some kind of protective shield. “I’ll take care of Mr. Robinson.”

  “Understood, m’am,” answered the troll with sunglasses, and the armored trio briskly walked alongside the slidewalk as it whisked Emile along. He did not mind their company, as he sensed these soldiers had nothing to do with the slaughter.

  Overhead, a neon script sign hanging from the ceiling proclaimed that it was two klicks till the city customs inspection. Listening and watching, Emile saw that every quarter-klick he passed a band of discoloration spanning the entire floor. He knew those to be the tops of pressure bulkheads, veined barriers of thick resilient materials that would automatically activate if the tunnel lost pressure or became punctured. For an industrial installation, purely interested in the peaceful exploitation of the natural resources of the ocean depths, the dometown certainly seemed to be armored for war.

  Shifting his backpack, Emile stepped off the slidewalk at Immigration, and breezed past Customs as if their guards and fences were merely decorations. Stunned faces were everywhere and nobody made a move to stop him. Walking through a lobby, he bypassed the elevators going to Old Dome and proceeded onto a bare promenade. The Low Dome spread out before him, and Emile was forced to blink away his distorted vision. But that didn't help it as it had before. He still saw the world as mixed images, a dozen facets of the shifting skyline, the moving buildings, the shifting dome overhead.