Ghost Black

by Matthew S. Cox

  Muninn flared his wings, a span of almost seven feet, and balanced on Heitzenroeder’s shoulder as the man rotated to face her. His ‘I won before you even knew what the game was’ smile irritated her as much as it nudged her off balance. Her second instinct, metallurgical scan to check for implants―from the cybereyes she no longer had―generated an ‘unsupported vision mode’ error in annoying red letters along the bottom of her view.

  “So you have not come to steal the king’s crown from his head?” He held his arms up, a gesture part shrug, part invitation to hug.

  “If by that you mean kill you, I haven’t made up my mind yet.” She stopped walking a few steps from the narrow end of the table of weapons.

  As she neared, the indistinct dark spot on the front of his neck became apparent as a tattoo of the same smiling jester face plastered all over the area. Dark around his eyes could have been either cosmetics or another tattoo. Muninn’s wings folded; the animal’s unflinching glare seemed to bore into her soul. Fragments of conversation echoed everywhere, loudest from the four narrow streets leading out of the ‘park’ behind her to the west. She glanced at detonators and small limpet mines stacked among various weapons, the kind of things she once sought out men like him to buy. When she cringed away from the explosives, her gaze settled on a skull, two black candles, and a deck of large, ornate cards.

  “Ask whatever is on your mind.” He brought his hands together, fingertips touching.

  She couldn’t help but stare at the skull, wondering if it was real. “Jesters is an odd name for a gang that sells this kind of hardware.”

  Heitzenroeder walked to the edge of the table and set his hand upon the tarot deck. Never taking his eyes off her, he lifted it, shuffled, and set it back upon the table. His rogue’s grin deepened as he slid the top card away and turned it up to examine with a furtive flick of the eyes. A dark chuckle broke the silence. He threw his head back, laughing in a dark tone before tossing the card at her. The tarot twirled through the air in a fluttering arc. Risa ignored it, watching him, but he made no move to attack as the card landed with an audible pat in front of her. She risked a two-second glance down at an illustration of a medieval figure in a black cloak and jester’s cap clutching a scythe while seated upon a throne.

  “The last laugh is reserved for Death.” He covered his mouth with his thumb pressed to his index finger. A quiet chuckle grew to a laugh. “Do you find my tricks amusing?”

  “She is tí-zhèn,” rasped Muninn. “The errand girl of Colonel Tanais. Be wary.”

  “Ahh, grand.” Heitzenroeder gestured at the demolition electronics. “Death’s daughter shopping for toys?”

  Risa scowled. “One of your toys almost killed someone close to me. It malfunctioned―on purpose.”

  He leaned back, causing the raven to flare its wings, and pressed his fingers to his chest. “Poor naïve girl. The fool tells the joke; who the truth offends he cannot control”―he pointed at her, but didn’t so much as slow down for a breath―“I sell the party favors but how they’re served is not up to me.” Heitzenroeder made a gesture of wiping his hands. “Not my concern.”

  Risa growled in her throat. “The NTC-11 multi-channel you sold us was rigged to disregard the timer and trigger the charges as soon as the countdown started. If you didn’t try to kill her, someone wanted us to think you did.”

  Heitzenroeder flashed a pacifying smile. “Only a boor mixes business with pleasure. When someone gets on my bad side, I don’t make the poor sot pay for the instrument of my satisfaction.”

  The pleasantness in his expression faded to a glint of malice. His gaze flicked past her.

  Muninn emitted a weak croak of a caw.

  When he stepped to his left, Risa kicked on her speedware. Sniper behind me. She flung herself to her right in a dive for the ground while spinning to the rear. Azure muzzle flare bloomed in the dark of the passage connecting the courtyard to the central square. The spiraling projectile glided toward her, perceptibly moving at the speed of a brisk walk. Risa fired both Hotaru-6 pistols while falling, walking seven hits of ten shots up the man’s chest. Her last beam before her back struck the plastisteel floor nailed him in the throat. The incoming bullet glided two feet over her and struck the ground where it splattered as if made of liquid.

  She tapped her momentum, rolling out of her landing into a reverse somersault. When she came upright again, a fist-sized black orb wobbled toward her; Heitzenroeder hung near-frozen in time, his right arm outstretched from lobbing the grenade. Muninn’s wings beat in slow motion, lifting the great raven from his master’s shoulder. Risa threw her weight backward and flung her right leg up, catching the grenade in a bicycle kick that launched it off to the side. She flipped over with the maneuver and oozed flat on her front like a liquid cat, landing a half-second before the explosive careened into the bay window of a facing residence.

  Cobweb cracks raced across the glass amid the delicate clinking of fragments as the black orb punched a hole and fell out of sight inside. Distorted screams lasted another second before a dull whump preceded a flash of light, and pulverized window snowed outward in a haze of glimmering frost crystals.

  Risa aimed at Heitzenroeder, hesitating only because he had information she still needed. He swung his arm to the side, a gesture to add speed to his leap for cover. Two men and a young woman came running in from the north chamber. The white-haired man had a rifle, the other two raised smaller submachine guns. Risa shoved her arms down, catapulting herself up on her feet. She darted to her left, not confident any of the lawn partitions could stop bullets better than her armor.

  The speed at which Risa moved caused the lavender-haired woman and the Jester with the rifle to lose their killing zeal, which melted to panic. The other man standing between them fired his sub-machine gun at the spot of ground where she’d been five seconds before to her perception, a quarter-second to them. She triggered twice from her main hand, putting two emerald streaks into the thug’s chest before any sign of realization that she’d moved appeared on his face.

  With the other two skidding on their heels and starting to twist away, Risa felt no need to murder. Dread fear of tí-zhèn showed on their faces; they wouldn’t return. She surged ahead, vaulting over the table. Muninn came out of nowhere behind her, sinking his talons into her back. The claws failed to pierce her suit, though the beast did secure a grip on her weapons harness that arrested her leap before her boots touched down. Shock at the raven being strong enough to carry her aloft triggered a two-second fit of kicking and flailing. Her flight curved around, heading for the tunnel that led to the southeast corner of HB-17, and a large collection of angry voices.

  Risa pointed her laser pistol back over her shoulder and fired blind. Talons released her to free fall. She landed in a forward roll and scurried behind one of the partitions; Muninn, right wing smoking, careened downward and crashed through the window of another residence.

  After three seconds of silence, a weak rasp emanated from the darkness inside. “Bitch.”

  She blinked.

  Another woman, almost seven feet tall and thin, came charging out of the southern passage with a broadsword clutched in two hands. She looked high, a touch insane, and wore no armor. Jester symbols adorned her black shirt and long coat, but none of it would stop a laser. If Risa had learned one thing in her years of infiltration work for the MLF, it was never to take a sight like that at face value. Anyone willing to charge into a gunfight with a sword probably had some reason to believe they could survive it―a reason she had no interest in discovering.

  Three shots put the charging gladiator down; the large woman rolled to a halt on her back, stifling an agonized scream with a clenched jaw. Risa kept aiming until the wounded Jester dragged herself back the way she came, coughing up blood. The abandoned broadsword glinted in the weak glow of a few LED work lights dangling loose from open ceiling panels.

  Huh. No rage? No ’ware? Maybe some people really are that stupid. She sprang upr
ight, aiming around as she yelled, “Heitz! Tell your people to back off. They’re not tall enough to ride this ride.”

  Muninn dragged himself to the doorway; milk-white fluid leaked from a three-inch hole in the leading edge of his left wing, rimmed by charred feathers.

  Of course. The bird’s synthetic. She pointed a gun at the raven, and he scooted backwards out of sight.

  She stomped closer to the building she believed Heitzenroeder had gone into. Augmented ears picked up the word ‘tí-zhèn’ whispered from all three tunnels out of the section. Most seemed to think the Jesters had pissed off someone with deep pockets and hired her. A slight majority wanted no part of dealing with a ‘pro.’ For once, being thought of as an expensive assassin didn’t strike her as repugnant. In a paradoxical way, it prevented her from having to kill more people.

  Risa leaned back and rammed her boot into the door, knocking a brown Epoxil slab off its rails. The residence, a pre-furnished affair, employed a style several decades old, lending the place the feel of a holo-vid set rather than someone’s actual house. A green wingback chair sat in the far-right corner, farthest from the front, opposite a powder-blue couch. Besides a coffee table made of two superimposed triangles, like a pair of arrowheads flying in opposite directions, the living room held nothing else. She crept inside, right hand pistol pointed forward at an archway leading to a kitchen, while her left hand covered a passage to another room.

  Muninn offered a dry caw from outside. Risa didn’t pay him much attention; the bird couldn’t fly much indoors, and if he had an implanted laser, he would’ve used it already.

  The back of the green chair exploded in a cloud of white stuffing. Two gunshots preceded two slugs slapping her in the chest. Winded, she stumbled against the wall. Hands grabbed the chair from behind and hurled it at her, fouling her attempt to shoot back. One ill-aimed laser blast scored the side and lit it on fire. She got her arms up to block most of the impact, but by the time she shoved it aside, Heitzenroeder had made it three-quarters of the way across the room. She raised her pistols, but aborted the shot to duck a swing from two twelve-inch plastisteel claws protruding from his clenched fist.

  She braced for the ear-splitting screech of vibroblades, but much to her shock, none came. He’s got normal claws? His blades shredded drywall at the level her head used to be. Risa leapt back, shooting him twice in the chest. Emerald lasers melted holes in his coat and filled the air with the awful stench of melting plastic. One side effect of laser weapons on armor―no impact force. A slug could knock the wind out of an armored target, but focused light did nothing if it didn’t pierce.

  Heitzenroeder laughed, though the sound turned demonic by her accelerated perception of time. She considered a headshot, simple given range and speedware, but that would guarantee she never found out who wanted to kill Genevieve. She took a deep breath, the motion of which dislodged the two bullets stuck to her chest. They rolled away from the dense, rubbery material and fell with a click to the ground.

  She put a streak of laser past his left ear, and corrected her aim. “Who?”

  He grinned. “Oh, you wouldn’t shoot me in the face, would you? I’m too handsome. Only a barbarian destroys art.”

  “It’ll make a small hole. They can patch it for the wake.” Risa squinted. “Besides, your bird called me a bitch.”

  “Well, he is a good judge of―”

  A crunch came from behind.

  Speedware surged, seeming to freeze time. Risa swiveled to her left and fired at a man lining up a rifle shot on her from the window. Both laser blasts caught him in the cheeks, launching an explosion of steaming bloody gore out the back of his head as well as his eye sockets. The distraction allowed Heitzenroeder to lunge with his blades; Risa crossed her arms to catch his downward strike at the wrist. She recovered her balance from the force of his strike and flung her weight forward while hooking her leg behind his, tripping him backwards.

  He flowed from falling into a capoeira-like spin, kicking her legs out from under her. Speedware ramped to the limit, she seemed to hang in midair. Already, he thrust his blades at the spot he expected her head to be when she landed. Without her augments, she’d have been dead before realizing he’d taken her legs out. She twisted her body and kicked out to change the angle of her fall. Rather than stab her in the skull, his blades gouged the floor. She landed flat on top of him, but leapt to her feet before he could perceive the motion.

  A kick slapped her boot across his face before he seemed to notice she wasn’t where he expected her to be, though he didn’t move much from the hit. He sat up in a motion that would’ve been inhumanly fast to someone without speedware, and tried to wrap his arms around her legs. She leapt away, leaving him sitting on the floor hugging himself.

  “Oh, fuck this. You’re not gonna give me anything useful.” She aimed both guns at his head. “Is Death still laughing?”

  “Wait.” He raised his left hand as if trying to stop traffic. The face he made would’ve been appropriate for her walking in on him cheating… and might’ve smoothed things over. “Perhaps I have underestimated your capabilities.”

  Muninn let off a low caw. “Perhaps.”

  Heitzenroeder gave the bird the bird.

  “I’m listening.” She scowled over the pistols’ iron sights at his striking blue eyes.

  “A trade. Information for my hide remaining free of unwanted holes.” He flashed the same roguish grin that made her feel like she owed Pavo an apology.

  “Dismissing me proved harder than you thought, so now you’re trying a trick?”

  He retracted the blades protruding from his right fist, and chuckled with a shake of his head. “No tricks. I’ve got a certain degree of pride, but you’re a bit more than what I’m used to dealing with. I’ve got Death’s PID, but I’m not all that keen on meeting him yet.”

  “So I caught you unaware. You feed me some dustblow, gear up, and I wind up having to do this whole dance all over again. The Front doesn’t like being fucked. Did you screw us over or did the guy who picked up the hardware arrange for it to be hacked?”

  “Absolute sincerity.” He coughed. “It was a guy named Staanek.”

  “Lars?” Risa narrowed her eyes. “That’s not possible. Lars is after me, and I wasn’t doing demo work back then. When you gave us the rigged detonator, I was still a kid.”

  In the doorway, Muninn pecked at his wing; the laser hole already seemed smaller.

  Heitzenroeder shrugged, stood, and dusted himself off. “That’s the name they used. You got one of those somatic things?”

  Risa activated it with a thought. Lines and graphs appeared around his head. “Yeah.”

  “Lars Staanek offered us a buttload of credits to shortfuse the MLF. Not only did he pay for the hardware, he added a healthy discretion payoff. He wanted us to do damage to the MLF, so it would’ve been stupid to tell the guy who picked the device up it was rigged.”

  Despite whining about the headband’s low-res camera with an exclamation point in a yellow triangle, the somatic system detected no stress flags to indicate a lie. Risa lowered her arms. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Muninn stretched his hurt wing, a few streaks of white synthetic blood the only trace of a prior wound.

  Risa glanced at the dead guy lying on the ground twenty or so feet from the window. Do I believe his life matters less than Gen’s? She scowled at Heitzenroeder. He went lethal first; the body count’s his. “I’ve heard about you.”

  “Pleasant comments, I hope.” He smiled, clasping the lapels of his trench coat.

  She considered holstering her guns, but decided against it. “Not exactly. Words like capricious, vengeful, arrogant, and mildly insane were used. I’m not sure I trust this is over.”

  He put a hand over his chest as if shot. “Miss… you wound me.” His sapphire eyes glimmered with mischief. “Though, I can’t say you’ve been misled. My opinion relies in large part on who learns the source of your information. I am not an un
reasonable man.”

  “I’m so deep in secrets, I can’t even tell what truth is anymore.” Risa drifted to the door.

  Muninn whispered, “Death doth cloak herself with innocence.”

  Heitzenroeder chuckled. “He has a point. I’ve got a feeling ol’ Lars isn’t long for this world.” His mirth faded to an icy stare. “Don’t tell him I sent you.”

  She stopped. “Are you afraid of ghosts?”

  “No.” He flicked the safety on his handgun and tucked it under his coat. “Microphones.”

  Risa smiled. “You see through the bird.”

  Heitzenroeder laughed.

  She eyed the green chair. “Nice shot. I didn’t see that coming.”

  He bowed with a flourish. “I noticed you didn’t ask me for a guarantee of safe passage out.”

  “That would imply I’m at all worried. If your Jesters want to commit suicide, who am I to stop them?”

  The best dustblow has a foundation of truth.

  Outside, the courtyard hung in fatal silence. A dead sniper slumped in the west-leading tunnel, and a few bodies littered the immediate area. Moans came from the house where the grenade went off. She felt a little better at the proof it was a stun bomb and not a fragmentation charge. Her boosted hearing caught Heitzenroeder advising the Jesters not to attack her. As a sign of truce, she put her guns back in the harness, but kept her senses wide open.

  Claws first, questions later.

  She walked past the sniper, holding her breath to avoid the smell of laser-charred meat. Pavo’s assessment of the Jesters proved true; almost no training, but the man had a fifteen-thousand-credit Metkiy rifle, top of the line ACC military gear, the kind of thing their soldiers had to buy with their own money. Three dozen glaring faces lurked in the shadowy periphery of the park square, men and women all seeming a pin drop away from violence. The giant raven glided in to land on the thickest branch of the largest tree. Perhaps the presence of the bird kept them at bay. Or he’s waiting for me to be vulnerable. Men like that don’t surrender. Fear he’d come back for revenge at a bad time made her think of Kree. Should I have killed him anyway? When she continued east down the next corridor to the westernmost grid square, Muninn glided on ebon wings to a landing atop the wall made of doors. From the inside, the way to open it was as obvious as a glowing control panel in a dark room.