by E. J. Blaine
Someone produced a pair of bolt cutters and quickly snapped the lock. Two others hauled the grate out of the way and pointed flashlights down a shaft with iron rungs set into the side. The whole process had taken less than a minute. Jack was impressed.
After half the team had gone down, they sent Doc down, followed by Jack and Madden. Then the others brought up the rear. At the bottom, a long, roughhewn tunnel led off through the bedrock. Jack could easily picture men carrying heavy casks of whiskey down the pier from a boat in the dark, lowering them down the shaft with a portable winch, and then hauling them through these tunnels.
“Let’s move,” said Madden, and they set off with weapons ready, sweeping the tunnel ahead with flashlights.
Jack could feel the tension growing as they advanced. Then someone shouted, and a Tommy Gun roared in the tight space. Instantly, hearing became impossible. They were charging forward. There was a body on the floor ahead. Madden watched in amazement as it bubbled and vanished into a pile of bones. He looked at Jack in shock.
Jack nodded. Madden nodded back and gripped his gun tighter.
Then there was a bright flash, and an explosion rocked the tunnel. Jack saw one of Madden’s gangsters kneeling on the floor, shouting in anger as he fired his Thompson. Madden moved forward, and they followed him. At least three of their men were down, Jack realized, taken out by what must have been a grenade. Doc knelt by one and checked his pulse. Then she stood up again and shook her head.
Communications had broken down. The tunnel filled with smoke. Muzzle flashes sparkled in the darkness, and the flashlight beams picked out ghostly shapes all around them. They moved down the tunnel in a ragged group, firing at anything that moved. This was what the ground war had been like, Jack realized. Chaos, noise, and death, and the enemy that got you was the one you never even saw. He preferred his war in the air.
The tunnel opened into a large storage space with empty barrels stacked against the walls. Jack saw more smoking corpses of Silver Star fighters and a maze of tunnels and ramps.
Across the chamber, a large group of Silver Star men were gathered behind a pile of barrels, trading fire with Madden’s men. Then the first team poured in from a side tunnel, firing on the Silver Star defenders from their flank. Jack saw Duke charge in, firing in short, controlled bursts. Duke spotted Jack and gave him a wave, and then shot down a Silver Star soldier coming up from a lower level.
Madden had the battle itself well in hand. Jack realized they were doing little good here. It was more important that he and Doc find wherever the Silver Star was keeping their supply of poison. Jack looked around and saw a white lab coat on the floor with a cloud of smoke still rising from it. Nearby was a ramp leading down.
Jack grabbed Doc and led her that way. They made their way down, into a narrow corridor strung with lights and electrical wire. Someone popped out of a doorway and fired at them, but missed. Jack fired back and the man fell. Jack edged up to the doorway and then swept around the corner, leading with his pistols. The place was a storage room, full of crates whose labels said they held dried beef.
Farther down the passage, Jack spotted a sign painted on the wall. In German, it read, “Off limits. Chemical team only.” He pointed it out to Doc, and she nodded.
There was one more opening near the end of the corridor. Doc hurried to the doorway with her Tommy Gun leveled. Jack saw her open fire, then charge into the room. He followed with both his pistols ready.
The room was large and well-lit by electric bulbs strung along the ceiling. It was spotless, full of gleaming steel tables lined with complex networks of glass tubes and vessels on metal frames. Jack spotted a Silver Star scientist in a rubber apron, gloves, and mask swinging a crowbar. He smashed a complicated arrangement of glassware, spraying glittering fragments and colored liquid across the chamber.
Then a commando popped up from behind a table and leveled his gun at Doc. Jack opened up with both .45s, firing through the glassware. The commando fell back and began to smoke. Another scientist charged with a vial of liquid and was about to throw it when Doc cut him down.
That left one standing. Jack whirled back to stop the man with the crowbar from destroying the chemical setup. But he realized it wasn’t necessary. The man had sprayed himself with liquid from the tubing as he wrecked the setup. He had collapsed on the floor and was screaming as his skin turned black. Jack watched in horror as the man writhed and twitched. It was a horrible fate, even for one of the Silver Star.
Doc shot him with the Tommy Gun. The man lapsed into stillness for a moment and seemed at peace until his body began to smoke and hiss.
They looked around the chamber, but nobody was left.
“Don’t let anybody in here,” Doc shouted. “I’ll get some samples.”
Doc put on protective gear she found hanging nearby while Jack guarded the doorway. The shooting was fading, he realized. It was nearly over. He hoped their side had won. Then he heard Deadeye calling, “Jack! Doc!”
“Down here,” Jack shouted.
Deadeye ran down the corridor. “You guys okay?”
Jack nodded.
“They’re finished,” said Deadeye. “They gave as good as they got, though. Bunch of our side killed. Madden’s not happy. Says he’s going to blow the place so nobody else can use it.”
“That’s probably not a bad idea,” said Jack. “Everything okay, Doc?”
Doc was carefully pouring liquids into vials and putting them into a padded leather carrying case she’d found. “They burned their notes,” she said in annoyance. “Tossed a flare into the filing cabinet, probably as soon as the shooting started. But they didn’t get everything.”
She closed the case and slung it over her shoulder. “Hopefully I can learn something from this.”
They headed back out to the main chamber. Madden wasn’t wasting any time on his vow to blow the place up. The Silver Star had apparently left behind a significant cache of explosives, and Madden’s men were already setting them and running wires out the tunnel.
Madden stood near the middle of the chamber, surrounded by empty Silver Star uniforms and piles of bones. “Who the hell were these guys?” Madden snapped when he saw Jack and Doc. “Nobody just…melts when you waste them!”
“They do,” said Doc. “We think it’s Crowley absorbing their life force.”
“Yeah, you didn’t mention they were goddamn magic, did you?” Madden kicked a pile of bones. “All I need. But you got what you wanted, right? That’s all that matters.”
“If we can identify their poison, we’re going to save a lot of lives,” said Doc. “You did a good thing tonight.”
“Yeah, don’t let that get around,” said Madden. “Folks will think I’m a soft touch or something. Now get out of Hell’s Kitchen. And don’t come back.”
###
His number was M-115. He had a normal name, but that didn’t matter anymore. His name was of no use to the Silver Star. He was their tool, and he was dying.
He stumbled through the door of a tenement basement a few blocks from the former base. He staggered inside and pushed the door shut with one hand. His other hand was clutched against his midsection, and blood pulsed between his splayed fingertips. He was cold, and he hurt. He knew his time was short. But he had one more duty to fulfill before he passed into the next world.
He stumbled to a carefully arranged pile of wooden crates and moved them aside to reveal a portable radio set. It was wired into the wall for power and to an antenna on the roof. The controls were simple; it could transmit on only one frequency. He thumbed a switch and leaned close to the microphone.
“M-115 to mothership,” he gasped. “M-115 to mothership. Come in mothership.”
There was only static in reply, for so long he wondered if the radio was broken. But then a woman’s voice came back, a voice he would know anywhere. A voice that terrified him even in his dreams. The voice of Maria Blutig.
“M-115?” she snapped. “What are you doing on
the emergency channel? Why you?”
“Hell’s Kitchen base is wiped out,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m the last, escaped to warn you.”
She swore, then said, “Who was it? AEGIS?”
“AEGIS,” he gasped, feeling himself sinking toward the floor. “With…gangsters to fight. But it was AEGIS. They were after the DL-26.”
“Was it destroyed or did it fall into their hands?”
“Don’t know,” he said faintly. “Maybe captured. What if they…trace it…find…”
“Hah, let them come,” Blutig said through the radio’s static hiss. “If they find their way here, so much the better. We’ll destroy them.”
But M-115 didn’t hear this last threat. He was a smoking pile of bones on the floor beside the radio.
Chapter 7
Jack and the others were picked up by BOI agents three blocks outside Hell’s Kitchen. They found themselves back at the BOI offices being debriefed until well past dawn. They decided not to conceal anything but answered the increasingly detailed questions honestly and completely. To Jack’s surprise, the agents didn’t react, either to their descriptions of supernatural events or to their report of what amounted to a major military action in the middle of New York City. They simply took careful notes, occasionally asked for clarification, then thanked the crew for their help and released them.
By the time they returned to the AEGIS facility in New Jersey, it was mid-morning. Several highly placed AEGIS officials, and Edison himself, were waiting to congratulate them on smashing the Silver Star cell in Hell’s Kitchen.
“A lot of people are going to breathe easier because of what you’ve done,” Edison told them.
But Doc pointed out that their victory was only temporary. “They were running experiments on the poison,” she said, “refining it, making it more dangerous. There’s no reason to think that lab was the only one. And we still don’t know where it came from. As long as the source is out there, there’s nothing stopping them from regrouping and trying again. If we want to stop this for good, we need to know what this stuff is, how it works, where they found it. We’ve got a long way to go.”
Then she took her collection of samples and disappeared into the facility’s lab.
Before he left, Edison took Jack aside.
“Dorothy’s worn out,” he said. “She needs to get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack agreed. “We all do after last night. But I don’t think there’s much we can do about that. You know how she is about things like this.”
Edison’s thoughts went elsewhere for a moment. Jack remembered that he’d been a good friend of Colonel Starr, Doc’s late husband.
“I do indeed,” Edison said at last. “But she’s no good to anybody if she runs herself into the ground. Keep an eye on her, Captain. Because of what happened to her, she’s not going to think about what she’s doing. She’ll push herself too hard. She’ll take chances. She’ll be so focused on pushing ahead that she’ll miss things coming at her from the sides. She’ll need you and the others to watch out for her.”
“We’ll do that, sir,” Jack reassured him.
As Edison’s car pulled away, Jack stood watching it. The old man was right, he thought. But Doc’s lab was her domain. Nothing would happen there that wasn’t under her control, and he was of little use to her there. The best way to protect her was to keep watch over the rest of the facility. They’d bloodied the Silver Star’s nose, and Crowley would be looking for revenge.
He walked back to the enormous hangar, eyes glancing up at the sky.
They didn’t see much of Doc for the next few days. She had a cot brought into the lab and started taking short naps there while waiting for results from one experiment or another. She emerged a couple times to grab something to eat and answer questions about her progress in muttered scientific language that nobody else understood. Then she’d vanish back into the lab again.
Jack and the others did what they could. They supported Doc when she let them. Mostly, they worked on getting the Daedalus refitted and ready for action.
It was another two days later, after a full night spent locked in the lab, that Doc emerged. Jack and the rest of the crew were having breakfast. They looked up and realized she was standing in the kitchen doorway. She was obviously exhausted, but there was no mistaking her expression. Jack knew she had it before she spoke.
“Do we have an airship?” she asked.
“Oh, we’ve got a crackerjack of an airship,” Rivets said with a grin. “Do we have someplace to go?”
“I think so,” said Doc. “Someone call Edison and tell him we’ll be out to talk. After I’ve had breakfast. Good lord, I’m starving.”
###
Once again they met with Edison and a handful of other AEGIS people in Edison’s conservatory. Doc had center stage. Jack and the rest stood back near the windows. Jack glanced out across the lawn where a squirrel capered in the sunlight.
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen,” Doc was saying. “It’s naturally in liquid form, not a solid dissolved in a carrier for dosing. And it doesn’t produce any harmful vapors, thankfully. So the gas masks weren’t necessary. Simple protective clothing is enough. As long as you don’t get the liquid on your skin, you can work with it.”
If you did get it on your skin, though…Jack remembered the Silver Star scientist who’d smashed the refining apparatus. The man Doc had shot as a mercy. It had been hard to watch anyone, even one of the Silver Star, go through that.
“What have you learned about the actual mechanism?” one of the AEGIS men asked. “How does it kill?” Jack hadn’t met the man, but he gave off a medical air.
Doc shook her head. “All I know is what I’ve seen in the field. I was trying to isolate the chemicals, not test it on living tissue. I do know it has several alkaloids and proteins associated with plant-based cardio toxins. We know it sets off a cascade effect that drastically alters pH and body chemistry in general. It interrupts nervous system signaling throughout the body—though perversely enough, apparently not pain transmission to the brain. It’s hideous.”
The doctor was about to press her for more detail, but Edison broke in. “Thank you, Dorothy. I think the important question is, where does it come from? We need to trace this thing back to its source. Wherever that is, we’ll find a significant Silver Star presence, and we have to crush them there if we want to stop this thing.”
Doc nodded. “I said it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen. That’s not entirely true. This is many, many times stronger, but there are plant toxins that have some of these effects in very reduced form, that are used in folk medicine in northern India.”
“India?” Edison looked surprised.
“There are medical traditions there going back thousands of years,” Doc explained. “They’re based on Buddhist or Hindu writings mainly. And on folk knowledge of local plants and medicinal herbs.”
“Are you saying that’s where this came from?” Edison pressed.
“That’s my best guess, though I’m not very confident about it. But I’ve been reading copies of some old medical texts from the region. They describe substances that do things similar to what our toxin does being used to re-balance humors in the body. Some of the methods are almost alchemical in nature. The healers combine herbs with metals and various calcinates. It’s really quite fascinating. In one process copper is beaten into thin sheets, then heated and repeatedly plunged into cow urine…”
Doc stopped suddenly, realizing she was getting carried away with her subject.
“Well, it’s very complicated. I know that’s not a lot to go on, but it’s the only lead I’ve been able to find.”
“We do know the Silver Star’s done a lot of research into Indian and Tibetan magics,” said Jack. “If they picked up on these medicines, they might have found a way to refine them, distill them down into something much more deadly.”
“And that’s a frightening prospect,” Edison agree
d. “I think it’s worth investigating at any rate. Do we have any resources in Northern India at the moment?”
The AEGIS men around him shook their heads. “There’s a field team in Egypt,” one of them said, exasperation in his voice. “That’s as close as we get. I’ve been saying we need to be recruiting outside just the States and Europe.”
“All right, Edward,” said Edison. “Your point’s taken. What can we do now?”
“I know someone on the ground there,” said Doc. “Dr. Christopher Rhys. He runs a field station in the Uttarakhand region. He’s the one who got me those books I mentioned. He’s the authority on the sowa-rigpa and rasa shastra traditions. The only westerner who’s seen some of these things being done. I think he can help us.”
“Well then I suppose it’s settled,” said Edison. “Daedalus will deploy to northern India, to this…”
“Uttarakhand,” Doc finished. “It’s a district in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s very remote country.”
“And you’ll be on your own,” said Edison. “AEGIS doesn’t have anyone in the area to help you if you run into difficulty.”
“That’s what the Daedalus is for,” Jack reminded them. “To get us to places where nobody else can go.”
“That, she is,” Edison said with a smile. “How are the upgrades going, Mr. Holloway? Is Daedalus ready to fly?”
Jack noticed Rivets puff out his chest and stand up a little straighter. “Damn right, she’s ready. She’ll take you anywhere in the world you want to be,” he said. “Faster than anybody else can get you there too.”
“Very well, then,” said Edison. “Start drawing up a supply manifest. You can depart for India as soon as you’re prepared.”
###
It was three days later when Jack was satisfied that the ship was ready and the last of the stores had been loaded aboard. They moved the Daedalus out of the hangar, and into a bright and clear summer morning. It was a perfect day for flying, Jack thought. The ship seemed to sense that it was time to leave the dark hangar behind and get back into the sky where she belonged. She gleamed in the morning sun. The sound of the engines had an eagerness to it.
