Second Strike

by Tim C. Taylor

  My connection to Silverberg snapped when she frowned and looked away. Possibly because I was stripping off my sewage-soaked clothes. I don’t know why she was so coy. I’d even kept my briefs on for her benefit, though it really made no difference because I now stepped into one of Caccamo’s stealth suits, and if they didn’t make me invisible we would all be too dead to care about anything else.

  Silky had gone too hardcore, kick-ass special ops to consider personal comfort. She simply wrapped the stealth suit over her sodden clothes.

  And she was absolutely filthy. Silky looked more like a dirty human and less like the usual chalk golem, except for a band of white around her raccoon eyes, where her face mask had kept her clean from the worst of the sewage.

  Silverberg shuddered, and sealed herself in too.

  “Everyone ready?” she asked once we’d activated the suits.

  I gave a thumbs up and so did Silky. We are invisible by now, but the suits communicated with each other through entangled comms via an orbital relay, and I could see Silky and her thumbs up as a ghostly outline painted onto my visor.

  “Remember this is an FIA mission,” said Silverberg. “We all have evidence recorders, but I need to be the one to make the arrest if it is to stick. Your role is to enable my capture of Acting Governor Philamon Dutch, and our first task is to locate the bastard.”

  I checked the gun built into the suit. It fired low-impact darts that injected its target with either temporary paralysis or permanent death, depending on the firer’s command. Best of all, while the suit was invisible, so too was the weapon.

  “Okay,” said Silverberg. “NJ, check out the pavilion. Silky take the upper floor of the main building and I’ll take the lower floors.”

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Two-person buddy teams are the only practical size for this,” I explained.

  “And we’ve three,” said Silky. “You hang back, NJ, and watch our rear.”

  “No way,” said Silverberg. “We split up. Cover the ground more quickly.”

  We scrambled up and into an altar room still scarred by the gunfire the mayor’s guards had thrown at Caccamo. From there through the trees to the lawn, I took each step cautiously, expecting to topple over as easily as if Clewie were trying on fake humanoid limbs. But there was no need. The gravitic motors in the soles of our stealth outfits didn’t merely keep our feet off the ground, but constantly adjusted their thrust vector in support of our balance.

  Silverberg set off to the main building; Silky went with her.

  I watched their ghostly outlines for a few seconds, trying to remind myself how my quiet retirement to this sleepy frontier world had turned into this kind of dawn escapade.

  Then I followed, enjoying the sensation of floating over the perfectly manicured lawn.

  The suits were so cool. I was gonna bring down the acting governor and make him pay for his crimes, and he wouldn’t even be able to complain that we’d damaged his lawn in the process. Not a single blade was bent.

  Silverberg caught me looking down. “What’s the matter, McCall? Need to tie your bootlaces?”

  “Nice one,” I replied, but no amount of snark could dent my excitement. “Payback is gonna be such a satisfaction.”

  “Contact!” blurted Silky. “Bearing 121.”

  I peered at the direction she indicated with my augmented eyes. “It’s a patrol. Two humans and two dogs.”

  My suit intercepted the feed from my eyes and began to highlight the patrol, and their likely vector, in my visor. This was a long way short of the tactical map my combat AI used to give me; there was a much cruder AI somewhere in orbit coordinating our data and projecting the path of the patrol across our visors.

  “Ignore them,” said Silky. “Let’s move it, humans.” She broke into a jog, headed straight for the main residence on a route that almost put us on intercept with the patrol.

  At about ten feet away from the security team, one of the dogs raised its head and breathed in a sensory map of its surroundings.

  My heart was pounding, my body wet and sweating, and my two companions still wore clothes stained brown.

  The hound gave a satisfied doggy chuff and lowered its head.

  Either that dog was a lot cleverer than we were, or we’d passed undetected.

  I kept an eye on the patrol to make sure – checking our rear was my job, after all – and by the time I had convinced myself Caccamo’s stealth gear was as good as its promise, Silky and Silverberg were using their gravitic boost to ascend the front of the mayor’s palace.

  “Sleep tight, Philamon Dutch,” I said to myself. “It’s the last chance you’ll ever get.”

  — CHAPTER 60 —

  We fine-tuned our entry plan while we ran across the lawn. The open window on the upper floor was where I would have entered, but Silky insisted the invitation of an open portal could be a trap.

  I thought it could be the sign of a man with confidence in his security team wanting some fresh air on a warm night, but we deferred to Silky’s experience in assassinations and the like, and made instead for a locked window two rooms to the left.

  I was still new at this. In my world, when you make a sneak attack, you keep stealthy for as long as possible, and then you rain down explosions and noise and fake target signatures on your target, so they don’t know where to run or where to shoot, preferably because you’ve turned them into a trembling heap of nerves.

  Silky’s war hadn’t been like that. After a few moments’ work with a special toolset, which she shielded from view with her stealthed body, she slid the window open, and beckoned us in.

  “I’m feeding false data into the automatic security system,” she said when I joined the others in the unoccupied bedroom. “We’ll exfil with the target through the same window.”

  “And if this way is blocked?” queried Silverberg. “I want a contingency route.”

  Silky didn’t bother to reply, instead opening the bedroom door a mere fraction and poking a worm camera through the narrow opening that bled buttery light from the hallway beyond.

  “Rachel,” I explained, “if we can’t get back this way, then we’ve been discovered. And if that happens, we’re dead.”

  “Clear,” said Silky. She spoke in human tongue, and I was proud of the way with just one word she managed to convey a rich depth of meaning: keep it real, kids. Focus!

  We crept out into the plush hallway. A thick carpet, patterned with the city crest, and showing no signs of wear, would have cushioned our feet if we weren’t floating on the thrust vectors of our gravitic motors. Our way was lit by luminous panels set flush into the walls, which flickered in a suggestion of candlelight that was reflected in the many ornately framed mirrors.

  Most noteworthy of all were the doors with their handles fashioned from scrolled silver. Hopefully, the mayor was asleep behind one of these doors.

  Silky scanned through each one for life signs using the sensors built into our suits. I kept behind and scanned below, up, and behind the walls.

  Our little convoy travelled the length of the hallway, turned a right angle and then hit pay dirt.

  “One individual,” said Silky, pointing to a door without any close neighbors. “Human.”

  “Silky and I will stun the occupant,” said Silverberg. “McCall, ready the mayor’s stealthsuit.”

  “Roger that,” I replied but I kept the mayor’s suit wrapped in its invisible pouch, not wanting to reveal it until we were sure we’d caught the right man.

  I checked my gun was ready to fire and set to stun rounds, and then took a position to guard the door.

  Silverberg counted down and then the two women burst into the room.

  ——

  We thought we’d planned for everything.

  Stealth suits that didn’t bend grass and couldn’t be smelt out by guard dogs. Check.

  Kick-ass, special ops alien who could pass through security systems
like a Littorane swims through water. Yes, we’d remembered to bring one of those along too.

  Schaek had even given us something for the mayor’s personal force shield – a device that would shrink it down and turn it into a straitjacket. We couldn’t kill the mayor if he activated his force shield, but we could stuff him into the spare stealthsuit and return the way we’d come.

  No plan is foolproof, but I thought ours was pretty neat.

  Silverberg and Silky had closed the door behind them, and when it opened again, my eyes expected to see the two women carrying an unconscious mayor.

  Instead, it was Philamon Dutch himself who opened the door, his smile beaming. “Do join us, McCall.”

  My gaze took in Silky and Silverberg, their suits half-unfastened with head sections dangling down their shoulders, and their hands held high.

  What had gone wrong?

  Then I saw them. On either side of the enormous bedroom the size of a carrier hanger, nestled amongst armed guards, were two small figures who themselves wore stealth suits, now deactivated. Sensitive bands of translucent darkness wrapped across the front of their heads, in which eyes and other exquisite sensitive organs lurked. They were the best defense against stealth technology.

  Imps.

  “Yes, indeed,” said the mayor, guessing my interest, and sounding annoyingly confident for someone talking to an invisible person. “To the best of my knowledge, there are only two imps in the whole of the city. Naturally, after the recent unpleasantness when the lawful governor was murdered, I made them an offer to work for me they didn’t dare refuse. They saw you creeping along the hallway on tiptoe. Tiptoe! Most endearing, McCall. And slow enough for them to summon help with seconds to spare. Did you know I was woken by my response team banging on my window? Such a rush, and you! You are a treasure, McCall, and like any treasure there is a time to be hoarded and a time to be spent. Sadly for you, it is to be the latter.”

  When one of the imps undid my helmet and deactivated my suit, the mayor put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “You have lived a long and troubled existence, Ndeki. All that is over now. Welcome to the final day of your life.”

  “Sorry, NJ,” Silverberg said, as I followed the mayor into the room. “We’re dead.”

  That was undoubtedly true, but I was thinking of the best way to make my exit. I didn’t get a feeling the policewoman was thinking the same way.

  Silky would. I looked her way, hoping for a connection. Maybe together we could take the mayor with us down to hell?

  Guns were everywhere, tracking my every move. Didn’t matter because they looked small caliber and I was an Assault Marine. It took a lot of stopping power to put me down.

  To my astonishment, Silky ignored my attempts to attract her attention and instead began peeling off her stealthsuit, slowly and deliberately.

  She threw the mayor a demure look, obviously hoping to catch his notice.

  She did that all right.

  “Oh, Silky,” I mumbled. “Don’t.” I knew what she was up to. She’d talked of offering herself as bait to the mayor’s obsessions. It made my guts churn to watch her attempt to seductively lift her soiled shirt.

  But I bit down my disgust and edged closer to the mayor. This distraction could work. If I could just grab his neck. A good twist and a snap of neck vertebrae and he’d never bother anyone again.

  But he put a restraining hand on Silky.

  “You marry ugliness and beauty in perfect and delicious combination,” he said with relish. “I want to taste your disgusting alienness on my tongue. But you are not to be my fatal weakness. Oh, no, my dear. That is not how this works.”

  He beckoned one of his heavies with a nod. “Restrain the Marine. Prepare him for our entertainment in the Morning Room. I have decided McCall shall enjoy the demon’s pleasure.”

  — CHAPTER 61 —

  “I researched your species,” the mayor told Silky, “and I can see your weakness, Kurlei.” The veck pointed at me.

  I wanted to bite his finger off, but my head was gripped tightly by a piece of sculpture. It was an unwelcome new experience for me, but the mayor had taken great pride in explaining that most of the ornaments and sculptures in his residence doubled as devices of torture or pleasure.

  “I don’t care about him,” Silky protested. “I’m better off without the human dragging me down.”

  The mayor leaned in close to the alien woman, the proximity clearly exciting him, making him tremble. “Nice try,” he said, “but I’m not buying.”

  He whirled around to face me. “What you think, Mr. McCall? Is your wife deserting you in your darkest hour?”

  I spat in his face.

  He slapped mine hard enough for my vision to blur.

  I reckon I had the best of that exchange.

  “I forget myself,” said the mayor, “and have sunk back down to my humble roots. Not that I am ashamed to have been a Marine, to be one still.”

  “You’re no Marine, Philamon Dutch.”

  “Oh, but I am. And yet I must learn to comport myself differently amongst the civilian elite. Apparently, with fellow humans it is a faux pas to discuss their private business with wives and husbands, but it is de rigueur to seduce said spouses and pretend nothing is going on, when in reality the upper echelons of the entire city are indulging in illicit affairs as we speak. It’s all they ever seem to do, and a large part of why they are so ineffectual. Nonetheless, I shall speak of your wife no more, though I shall certainly seduce her later. Perhaps we should move to a more neutral topic of conversation? My furnishings, McCall. Does my Morning Room delight you?”

  I ignored the provocation and considered again the room in which we were held, but I could see no exit routes other than the door into the hallway – at which three armed guards were stationed – and a glass panel that looked out over a miniature garden, which sloped down to the manicured lawn that steamed in the early morning sun. Beyond lay the shimmering silver of the ornamental lake, and beyond that a domed pavilion, all of which looked very pretty but none of which helped me.

  The mayor rested a hand on the statue that gripped me and looked at me in disappointment. “Have you nothing to say about my beautiful demon?”

  Yes… the demon. I was trying not to think about the statue wrought in a dull black metal in whose embrace I was caught. Oh, I’m sure she was a magnificent piece of sculpture, a humanoid and very feminine figure with a subtly otherworldly cut to her face, and a not so subtle adaptation to her coccyx, which extended behind and curled around her shoulder, long lengths of fused metal vertebrae bifurcating repeatedly before curling around into a web of filigree fingers, into which her prey was secured with the aid of adjustable screws to her tail tips.

  My head was held fast in the grip of the demon tail, which also wrapped itself around my left thigh.

  Unlike the statues on the lawn, displaying their beauty for all to see in static poses, the demon was lunging to her left, reaching out with one taloned hand that gripped me around one buttock, with the mayor threatening that if I didn’t behave, the hand that held me there could be swapped out for an alternative that would secure me in an altogether more invasive manner.

  “Yes,” I eventually answered him. “Your demon speaks to me. She says you cannot bond normally with women. Did you have a difficult relationship with your mommy, Philamon?”

  The mayor merely shrugged. “You attempt to make an intelligent reference to the repeating motif of the beautiful demon woman.”

  “You enjoy torturing women,” said Silverberg.

  It was crazy, but I smiled to hear her voice. With my field of vision so restricted by the tail’s grip, I hadn’t been sure Silverberg was still there. She sounded as if she had regained a little spirit, which cheered me.

  “Thank you for your intriguing suggestion,” said the mayor, walking over to Silverberg. I cringed at the dull thud as he punched her, and again at the sound of the Earther woman collapsing, gasping for breath.

  “No,�
� said the mayor. “That did nothing for me. Did you enjoy that, Silverberg?”

  She could only groan.

  “How disappointing. You’re wrong, you see. I don’t enjoy torturing any more than the next person. But I love to watch my beauties inflict pain, and now I seem to have three of you to play with. Where to begin?”

  “Your mind is diseased,” said Silky. “Even for a human.”

  I quailed inwardly. Please, Silky, don’t make him hit you too.

  But Dutch seemed pleased by the interruption. “Diseased? Perhaps, but I am happy. Take my beautiful demon here. She’s going to kill your husband and we’re going to have a wonderful time appreciating her work.”

  He opened a cabinet stood against the wall and took out an ornately carved wooden box. “Been wanting to try this out for simply ages.”

  He placed the box on a glass table in my field of view. I didn’t recognize the device cushioned inside the folds of green velvet, but it was constructed from the same black metal as the demon.

  “It’s a clockwork crossbow,” explained the mayor, strapping the device over the demon’s right wrist and the taloned index finger that extended to within inches of my chest.

  “There,” said the mayor, after adjusting the demon’s hand, so the dart-armed finger was now millimeters away from my skin. “A lot of work to set up, but artwork of this caliber demands a little effort to unlock its pleasures. This is a clockwork timer, set to thirty seconds. When the time is up, the bolt will fire. But where will it hit you?”

  He flicked a switch hidden in the demon’s tail that made her right arm move in an elliptical orbit, drawing the finger with the spring-loaded bolt over my chest up to my collarbone, and down to my navel before returning.

  With a snap like a pistol shot, the mayor set off the clockwork timer.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  “What’s it to be first?” he asked. “A critical wound or merely a painful one?” Dutch wasn’t talking to me; I think he was addressing Silky. “Well, my dear, your Marine is tough, I know.” He touched his scarred cheek. “I took a few wounds myself in the war, and I’m still around to enjoy your terror.”