Men in Black International

by R. S. Belcher

  * * *

  The stretch limo picked him up in front of the hotel. Inside were Whistler and Skeeze. Luca was, thankfully, absent.

  “No trick cufflinks tonight?” Skeeze asked.

  H showed him his sleeves. “No cufflinks at all.” He patted the side of the case. “Phase case—works on a similar principle to the cufflinks—but it has a stable dimensional portal at the case’s opening. The whole cargo is in here.”

  “Good,” Whistler said. “The sooner we wrap this up, the sooner everyone gets paid.”

  Soon they arrived at a decrepit shipyard, a graveyard of unfinished ship hulls, mountains of rusted industrial steel, collapsing factories, and skeletal cranes. Their destination was a dilapidated freighter squatting in the black waters, the deck patrolled by guards armed with assault rifles and exotic alien weapons. The limo parked in front of a gangplank that had been extended from the freighter’s deck down to the dock.

  Skeeze led H up the gangplank, toward an open hatch and to a narrow set of stairs that took them below decks. As they descended into the ship’s hold, H saw weapons of every possible kind, from millions of different worlds. Massive interplanetary and exosolar missile systems, hover tanks, and huge robotic battle suits, crates of alien rifles, and torpedoes marked with the warning symbol for deadly biological weapons. He recognized a few engineering components that made him suspect that the ship was also spaceworthy. The sight of a poorly disguised hyperdrive engine as they passed an open door on the way down confirmed it.

  They reached the floor of the ship’s hold, a maze of crated weapons, and stopped when they came to a set of steps leading up to a metal catwalk. A cadre of armed mercenaries stood at the base of the stairs, eyeing H with trained suspicion. Above them on the catwalk, he could see Luca towering next to a shadowy humanoid form H figured for Stavros.

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet the Merchant of Death in person.” H’s voice echoed in the vast hold. “Big fan.”

  H handed the phase case to Skeeze, who set it on the floor and opened it. A warm, white light spilled out of the case, and Skeeze peered into the dimensional portal. He looked up smiling. “It’s all there, boss.”

  “I hope to quickly have payment in hand and be off the Love Boat,” H said to the shadowy, unmoving figure. Whistler came forward, pushing past H.

  “Boss, I’m the one who made this deal happen. I’d like that commission you and I discussed, now.”

  “Of course,” a voice came from the obscured figure. It wasn’t a man’s voice. “I hope you don’t mind getting paid in diamonds.” There was a blue flash of energy from the direction of the figure’s hand. It hit Whistler, and he screamed and writhed. H watched, horrified, as the arms dealer’s body twisted and contorted. His flesh was stripped away and his exposed bones began to crack and crystallize.

  Whistler’s screams ended seconds before the remains of his body—his skeleton, which was now pure diamond—clattered to the floor of the hold. “That’s your payment for bringing a cop to my doorstep,” the figure said, descending the stairs, still cradling the alien weapon. Luca was right behind her. She stepped into an island of light. It was Riza, her eyes bright and cruel. “Hi, baby!” She waved at H as she reached the floor and stood among the glittering remains of her dead lieutenant.

  She kicked Whistler’s diamond skull over to H’s feet. “Pretty cool, huh?” She slapped the alien rifle. “It’s one of my favorites. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, right?”

  “So, I guess you were waiting a few more dates before telling me anything about all this?” Guns pointed at him from every conceivable direction.

  “Don’t even.” There was anger in her eyes. “I found your neuralyzer in your room. When were you going to come clean and tell me you were MiB?”

  H began to say that he almost had, several times, but instead he said, “So, you run Daddy’s business for him these days, right? You are Nirous Stavros’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  “I am. Come on, let’s do the whole villain scene. I’ll give you the tour.” She snapped her fingers and the mercenaries herded H along to follow Riza and Luca, her shadow. They moved about the hold, past military munitions and arms and exotic experimental weapons created in defiance of every treaty H had ever heard of.

  “This place is like a Costco of death,” H said.

  “This is my inheritance.” She spread her arms wide. “A lifetime of death and destruction gathered together by Daddy, by General Nirous Stavros.” She paused, and her whole demeanor changed instantly. “Oh! You have to see them!” Riza almost squealed. The aisle was full of cages holding tiny, adorable aliens from countless worlds, packed in among the horrific weapons. “My babies!” Riza shouted, tapping on the cages as the tiny creatures acknowledged her presence with song, chirps, and trills.

  “I’ve collected them my whole life. Daddy would bring one back to me from every world he traveled to. Even my dear Luca came to me as a tiny little creature, so ugly he was adorable! You can see he kind of grew out of the whole adorable thing, but still, he loves me. I rescued him when your nasty Men in Black were hunting him down. I saved him, gave him a home.”

  Luca stared at the small cages and the tiny animals.

  “Is that how it was, mate?” H asked the giant bodyguard. Luca said nothing.

  “They love me.”

  “They’re your prisoners. If you love something, set it free.”

  Riza’s face hardened as she turned from her adorable charges. “And if it doesn’t come back, hunt it down and kill it.” She led him to another aisle.

  “All this is the end result of a career as a merchant of death. My father encountered every kind of weapon, every kind of war in his career—”

  “It wasn’t a career,” H interrupted, “it was a crime.”

  Riza turned. Her smile grew tighter; the glaze of craziness that H had seen in her eyes a few times over the past week reappeared.

  “Some unenlightened oafs thought as much,” she said. “They chased us off Tribrachia, called him a despot and a tyrant. They simply didn’t understand the primary underlying principle that the universe runs on: war.”

  “War is an abomination,” H said.

  “Wrong!” Riza made a noise like a quiz-show buzzer. “Life is war. From the viruses, microbes, and mutated cells that try to kill you from within, to the animals that fight and kill one another for resources, for dominance. It’s all war, and everybody, everybody is looking for an edge.”

  Riza paused in her wandering to stop at a coffin-like pod that was propped up between several pallets of crates and containers. “Take this little one-of-a-kind beauty.” She tapped the door of the pod. “A naturally occurring bioweapon. Its name is Bakklus. It’s a sentient, extra-dimensional organism that can only interact with our reality through a viral medium. It infects people to say hi, and it’s a nasty little bug, too—98.9 percent communicability within seconds of airborne contact.

  “Once it’s in you, it telepathically bonds with you. It can control your body and read your thoughts. Very handy for infiltration and pacifying populations… if you can afford it. After about three days, your immune system fights Bakklus off, but three days is long enough to invade a world, or put down a resistance, without a shot fired.

  “Dad managed to get his hands on Patient Zero and put him stasis.” She wiped away some of the condensation and slush on the door of the pod, and H could see a humanoid alien slumbering within. “He has sold off crippled strains of the original to clients over the years. Bakklus went along with it, because if the original strain in Patient Zero doesn’t get a chance to go free and telepathically bond with another host, the whole organism will become extinct in our space-time. It’s a brilliant setup, I have to say.”

  “It’s slavery,” H said, “and extortion, and genocide.”

  Riza shook her head as she cupped H’s cheek. “It’s business, darling. The rest is the parlance of politicians.”

  “That sounds like your father’s
words drilled into an innocent child. You didn’t want this life; he did.” H searched for the Riza he loved, but behind her eyes, he saw only the ruthless businesswoman, the Merchant of Death.

  “I told you my father began to make mistakes, to grow feeble. He was endangering our market share.” She held up the weapon she had used on Whistler. “I told you this was one of my faves. I used it on Daddy. I kept his skull. It sits on my desk. It’s sparkly, it’s a badass paperweight, and it’s a great motivational tool for the workforce.

  “This is my business, my life, now,” Riza said. “I do have daddy issues, to be sure, but he didn’t raise a fool.”

  “So why hide behind his name?” H asked. He had spotted something up ahead, and an idea was building in his mind.

  “Dad’s name and reputation are useful to keep the gnats off of me. Gnats like MiB, like you. Which I guess brings us to the close of our little tour… and of your life.”

  H needed to buy time and a dozen feet. He turned to Riza and approached her. Her men and Luca all moved to intervene, but Riza stopped them with a gesture. H walked past her a few feet and then turned back to her. “I have to compliment you on your acting skills. I really believed you when we were together, believed that was the real you.”

  “Wow. Coming from someone trained to lie for a living, that’s high praise,” she said.

  H took the opportunity to make his way a few more steps backward. Riza was close now.

  “I never lied about how you made me feel.” H didn’t hide the pain in his eyes. For a moment, Riza’s ice queen act disappeared, and H saw how much this was hurting her too. He hated what had to come next, but this was his only chance.

  In a single movement, H shoved Riza backward, hard. He didn’t like pushing a woman, but he had to get her in the clear to keep her safe. H jumped, grabbing the edge of a group of large crates that were stacked precariously on the massive shelves. The crates came crashing down, starting an avalanche of boxes, pallets, and collapsing shelving. H launched himself off the shelf on the opposite side of the avalanche from Riza and her men.

  Luca lifted Riza to her feet. If H hadn’t shoved her backward, she would be dead now.

  “Find him, all of you!” H heard her shout. “Bring him to me!” She didn’t sound very grateful.

  The mercenaries moved through the ship’s hold, searching. Several groups of Riza’s men moved past H without seeing him. H had considered cracking open one of the cases of weapons all around him, but he was pretty sure he’d be found out before he could activate anything. And some of them could vaporize the whole coastline. He knew of only one weapon in the hold that he could activate quickly and quietly in the time he had. Now, he just hoped it would cooperate.

  He backtracked as quietly as he could to the aisle with the medical stasis pod. H looked about to make sure it was all clear as he switched off the stasis generator and opened the pod’s door. He smiled at the occupant as they came around. “Morning, mate. I have a proposition for you…”

  * * *

  It was almost too easy for them to find H, crashing about in the stacks of weapons. He was struggling to put together a gun from a wooden crate he had broken into when Luca found him.

  “It had to be you,” H said, and charged the massive Tarantian, smashing him in the face with the steel barrel of the weapon he was trying to assemble. The barrel bent with the impact, but Luca didn’t even blink.

  Luca’s fist shot out, and H narrowly ducked under it, driving a staccato pattern of punches into Luca’s stomach. It was like punching a mountain. Luca backhanded H and sent the agent airborne for a good twenty feet. H slid to a stop near the edge of the corridor.

  He climbed to his feet to run but found a dozen of Riza’s mercenaries behind him, weapons trained on him. He looked back in the direction of Luca in time to see the bodyguard’s boulder-like fist headed straight for his face.

  H saw a strobe of light and then darkness. The last thing he heard was Luca’s voice saying, “That’s for breaking her heart, MiB scum.”

  * * *

  Luca dragged the semi-aware H back to the stair landing. H groaned as Luca pulled him to his feet.

  “Well, now that hide and seek is over,” Riza said, “gentlemen, prepare to earn your pay.”

  The mercenaries raised their weapons, ready to incinerate H.

  “There’s no way that I can convince you to walk away from all this?” H said. “I was prepared to do that for you; I truly was. The underlying principle of the universe isn’t war, Riza. It’s love.”

  “I wish you were right.” Her voice was softer now. “But we both have our duties and our destinies.” She kissed H sweetly, deeply, then stepped away from him. The mercenaries prepared to fire. “Any last words?”

  “Yeah,” H said. “Bakklus, mate, now would be a good time.”

  “Fire!” Riza shouted. Nothing happened. The mercenaries all stood as still as statues, their fingers frozen on their triggers, panic behind their eyes. Riza tried to bring up her own gun, but her body refused to obey.

  Be still, a voice in her head said. Don’t struggle. Luca seemed unaffected by whatever this was. He looked around and saw H smiling as one of the mercenaries handed his rifle over to the agent willingly. H powered up the rifle to maximum and aimed it at Luca.

  “Don’t try it. You’re not that tough.” Klaxons went off all over the ship, and there was the distant sound of gunfire from the deck, far above. “And that would be MiB, right on time.”

  “The sentient virus.” Riza was still trying to move. “Bakklus. You… let it infect you?”

  “I did. I told it I’d free it, if it helped me shut you down, and it agreed.”

  “It was stupid to trust you,” Riza spat. “You’re a liar.”

  “It read my mind,” H said. “It knew I was telling it the truth.”

  The sounds of battle above grew closer. H saw the fear on Riza’s face, even though she was trying to hide it.

  “I knew you were MiB from the start,” Riza said. “I knew you were here to bust me, to wreck everything. I could have killed you dozens of times over the last week.”

  “Why didn’t you?” H asked, stepping closer to her but keeping Luca covered.

  “You know why.”

  “I thought I did.” He could see the pain in her eyes.

  “I know you think this is me saying anything to get out of this, but I really do care about you, and I know you care about me, too. Go on, ask your viral buddy, ask him to read my mind.”

  H thought to the strain of Bakklus in his body, and it spoke to the strain in Riza’s. Then, it said in H’s mind, Yeah, she’s got it bad for you. She’s homicidal and scary crazy, bro, but she’s got it bad for you.

  H regarded Riza. “You were going to gun me down?”

  Riza nodded. The gunfire above became sporadic. H heard MiB agents ordering mercenaries to drop their weapons.

  “And I would have cried for you every single night for the rest of my life. You have feelings for me, and you’re busting me. I’d say that makes us even.”

  Black-suited MiB agents were moving quickly through the upper levels of the freighter.

  “Bakklus,” H said. “Let Riza go, please.”

  What? Are you serious, H? Bakklus asked. I can see your mind, of course you’re serious. She’s got some evil thoughts rattling up in there with the hearts, and the unicorns, and the space puppies, man.

  “I know,” H said, “and if she tries to act on them, you shut her down, as long as you are in there.” H turned to Riza and plucked the alien weapon out of her hands. She was able to move again. “I’m confiscating your inventory and letting you off with a warning this time.” H used his best stern-cop voice. “But next time…” Riza stepped closer. Their eyes kissed and held for as long as they could.

  “Next time.” Riza smiled. “You know there will be a next time, right?”

  “Counting on it.”

  “It’s a date, then.” She brushed his cheek with her th
ird hand. The sounds of the approaching MiB team were almost on top of them.

  “Get her out of here,” H told Luca.

  The massive Tarantian scooped his charge up and leapt into the darkness of the crowded hold, lost to the scrutiny of the light.

  * * *

  The night air was a relief to H after his time below decks. He leaned against the rail and watched the MiB forces mop up from the raid. Support agents carried wave after wave of weapons to waiting secure transports. Riza’s mercenaries, passive under Bakklus’s direction, waited in a line to be processed and incarcerated. H spied Skeeze hastily trying to cut a deal with one of the senior agents as he was led away, still under the influence of Bakklus.

  He tried to cut a deal with me, too, Bakklus chuckled. Oh, don’t be so alarmed, H. What could he possibly offer me? I’ve got everything I want now I’m free.

  “A good bust.” High T joined H on the deck. The two old friends turned away from the circus and watched the black water of the sea lap at the pier’s posts and the freighter’s hull. “I see great things in you, H. I have since the night we met. MiB needs agents like you. Who knows, one day you might even save the world.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” H said. “This is my duty, my destiny. I was stupid to think I could be anything else.”

  “You weren’t stupid. You were human. That’s a very important requirement to do this job day in, day out.” They were both silent for a while and then High T said, “Still, it’s a shame Riza Stavros got away.” There was a hint of a smile on his old partner’s face. He smiled back, but his heart felt bruised.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” H said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  High T patted his friend on the back. “Of course you won’t.” The wry smile was still on his face as he walked away. “You’ll make brand new ones.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Sam Matthews, my editor with Titan Books, and all the other terrific folks at Titan and Sony. To my agent, Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency. To Greg Cox, an amazing writer, a stellar editor, and a great person. And to Susan Lystlund and Sandra Wheeler for invaluable editorial assistance in the writing of this book.