Black Knight 02 - Back in Black (25 page)

Puffing on the ‘stik, Munk leaned his head against the wall and gazed down at the club. Damn dwarven dance club. What the hell did genetically-engineered dwarves need a dance club for? He smirked, picturing a room full of meter high, bearded dwarves jumping around like Bernie V. Hotdog. And that idiot name: Stiltzkin’s Dance Club. Munk couldn’t understand dwarves. Hell, he couldn’t understand any gennies. He wondered what it was like before genetic engineering. Back when none of the goons like Grue, or pleasers like Earless, or dwarves, or drudges – or any of the other neohumans – existed. Things were a lot simpler then, he guessed. The only problems back then were humans, and they caused enough for the entire planet all by themselves.

A shadow appeared around the far corner on the next block. A short shadow pushing stolidly through the throngs of nighttime street roamers: raggedly clad welfare sponges wandering about aimlessly, gawking tourists from distant metroplexes, ganger wannabes, revelers, jump-suited drudges hurrying to catch the transit. All of them swerved to avoid the purposeful figure.

Munk stepped farther back into the darkness of the empty apartment. He crushed the cigarette pack and threw it to the floor. “Another dwarf coming.”

Grue ducked out of the bathroom, water dripping from his wet, whitening hair and flowing down the deep wrinkles of his rough scarred face. He crept over to the window, hardly making a noise despite his size. Earless followed the goon, mimicking the man’s low stance, and thankfully silent for once.

Grue knelt and peered over the sill. He gazed through the cracked duropane, down across Dresden Drive at a dwarf striding up the sidewalk. The dim light of the streetlamps kept his face in shadows; he wore a hat and had pulled his duster high around his neck. The faint ember of a nicostick glowed in the darkness beneath the hat.

“Hey,” Munk whispered, “that hat looks familiar…”

The goon adjusted his cyber-optics, zooming in on the dwarf as he approached Stiltzkin’s. The light from the blinking neon sign provided enough illumination to identify the newcomer, and Grue saw that the clean-shaven dwarf was not smoking a nicostick but had a short cigar clamped firmly between thin lips. The dwarf looked up at the sign and shook his head in seeming disgust. He threw the cigar to the ground as he entered, pushing aside a mind-numbed, scantily clad patch-head begging by the door.

Grue’s face fell. He turned around and leaned against the wall with a moan, putting a hand to his forehead and scratching around at the shining neuroport on his temple.

“Damn,” he muttered.

Earless scampered over. “Was that him? Huh? Was that our target?”

“No,” Grue replied, “that was trouble.”

Munk recognized fear in Grue’s voice, something that he rarely heard. It made his own gut ache.

“Who was it?”

Grue sighed. “Noose.”

“Crap…” Munk slumped against the wall.

“Noose?” Earless squeaked, looking back and forth between the goon and the human. Even in her buzzed condition she could see the effect that name had on her two friends. “Big freaking deal. He’s just another dirt-eating gimli. We’ll smear him, too. No problem. He’s gone. History. Deader than a Kennedy!”

Munk ignored the pleaser. “Smith never said nothing about Noose being involved,” he muttered.

“What the hell is he doing at a dance club, anyway?” Grue asked of no one in particular.

Earless laughed, the tune to an old song still playing in her head. “Dead dwarves don’t dance! Woo! Woo!”

“Shut up, Earless!” Grue growled, no longer in any mood to tolerate her antics.

Earless turned away, but continued to sing under her breath. “…unless they’re zombies, ghouls, or bloodsucking vamps…”

“What’re we going to do, Grue?” Munk asked.

“How the hell should I know? I just need to think!”

Earless moved to the far side of the room, humming and dancing, hopping from foot to foot, her long blonde hair swirling. Grue watched her, eyes narrowed, and inexplicably found himself noting the complete symmetry and grace of the pleaser’s movements. Genetic failure was slowly tearing through her body, destroying brain cells, upsetting internal organs, and degrading molecular cohesion, but she still had the light-footed movements of a neohuman genetically engineered and bred for perfection, performance, and pleasure. Her long spare frame looked like a praying mantis in motion, sped up and unnerving.

“Do you think Noose knows about the hit?” Munk asked.

“How could he?” Grue answered, breaking away from his near trance. “Hell, I don’t think he even likes Salvino.”

“Then what’s he doing here?”

“Slumming? Dancing? Does it matter?” Grue rubbed his forehead, trying to relieve a sudden headache.

“Noose dancing?” Munk shook his head incredulously. “No way.”

Earless ceased her own dancing and froze in place, one leg in the air, arms spread out. “Who? Noose slumming with dirt-eaters? Nah. I heard he likes humans.”

Neither Grue nor Munk replied. Earless returned to prancing about the room, singing under her breath.

“I think we got the target,” Munk said.

Grue slowly turned and watched the street. Another dwarf approached from the opposite direction, dodging a speeding bicyclist. The goon’s cyber-eyes quickly tagged this one as Albert Salvino, neohuman rights activist and their target.

“That’s the bird.” Grue nodded.

Earless stopped dancing and ran to the second window. “Where? Where?”

“Shut up!” Munk barked.

Salvino walked down the busy sidewalk, hands in the pockets of a long gray overcoat. He tossed something to the begging patch-head and entered the club. Faint snips of music escaped through the door.

Munk and Grue exchanged glances.

“Let’s get the gear.” Earless jumped up, singing and laughing. “Time to dead some dwarves!”

“Well?” Munk looked at the goon.

Grue frowned. “We don’t have any choice. We got the advance, we gotta do the biz.”

“What about Noose?”

Grue hesitated, his mind a jumble. “This is biz. He got in the way. You think he’d worry about us getting blown to kibbles and bits by one of his bombs?”

Munk shook his head.

“Let’s get the gear.” Grue lumbered to the far side of the room where three large black tuffplast cases rested against the wall. He crouched and opened one. Inside, a foam depression cuddled a matte black Global Arms Violator assault cannon. He picked it up, and selected three large magazines of explosive ammunition. He loaded one into the cannon, and put the strap over his shoulder.

Munk opened another case and removed an Akbar man-portable surface-to-surface missile launcher.
 

Earless jumped over to Munk and tugged at the missile launcher. “Hey! That’s mine! I shoot that one!”

Munk struggled with the skinny pleaser. “Get away, Earless! Back off!”

“It’s mine! Mine, I tell you!”

Grue yanked Earless away and pressed her firmly against a wall. “You get the grenade launcher, Earless! You ain’t checked out on the Akbar.”

“What the hell do you need to know? Aim and shoot. A crap-eating null-brain could do it.”

Grue leaned in close to her drawn pale face. “Snag the Thumper and get ready!”

Earless cowered under the much larger goon, but finally shrugged her compliance. She moped to the last case and unpacked the third heavy weapon.

Grue and Munk moved back to the windows, their weapons fully armed.

“What about Noose?” Munk asked again, the strain in his voice revealing his apprehension.

“What about him?” Grue shot Munk an angry glance. “In a few seconds he’ll be dead.”

Earless reflexively sang, “Dead dwarves–”

“Shut up!” Munk interrupted.

Grue opened the window and Munk knelt before it, shouldering the missile launcher. The subdued whine of electric minicars speeding past intruded into the room. Munk sighted on the front of the club, the thermal imaging showing him blurry red forms of the gyrating dwarf dancers inside, the tottering patch-head at the front door, and the wandering passersby.

“Ready, Grue.”

Grue lifted the cannon to his chest, took aim. “When I say–”

The thump of a grenade launcher interrupted him, and an instant later a loud explosion sounded across the street. He looked at Earless, who had fired out the other window.

“Woo! Woo! Boom!” She laughed, firing again and again. “Now serving flame-broiled dirt-eater!”

“What the hell?” Munk stared at the crazy pleaser.

The front of the dance club erupted as the thermal grenades ripped it apart. Pieces of the patch-head splattered across the front of the building, while several other victims squirmed on the street, their flesh melting. Panic crashed onto the street, the calm night crowd suddenly transformed into a screaming horde, hysterically running in every direction.

“Dead dwarves don’t dance!” Earless screamed. “‘Cept zombies, ghouls, and bloodsucking vamps!” She hopped up and down, red flashes from the explosions illuminating the eager bloodlust etched across her face.

Grue hit Munk on the shoulder, and ducked behind the wall. “Hurry up! Those incendiaries won’t do any good until you blow away the wall! Fire!”

Munk turned back to the dance club. The smoke and showering debris did little to interfere with his aim. He caressed the trigger, and felt the high-explosive missile vault from his weapon. He took cover beneath the window.

A brilliant flash filled the room, the duropane windows shattering inward as the room shook and the air rumbled. Amid the shower of shattered plastic, Earless was spun backward by the blast, the grenade launcher flying from her hands. She hit the far wall and fell motionless to the floor.

Before the last shards of plastic tinkled to the floor, Grue stepped around and leveled his cannon. Smoke and flames concealed much of the club, but at least half of it was gone. It was his job to take down the rest with his cannon. He pulled the trigger and sent round after round into the ruins of Stiltzkin’s Dance Club. At least a dozen smoldering bodies lay in the street, like the torn and broken rag dolls of an angry little girl. An overturned minicar spun slowly to a stop against the curb.

Grue emptied the magazine, dropped it to the floor, and loaded a second. Coldly oblivious to the flailing bodies visible through the smoke and flames, he concentrated on laying down a carpet of fire that left no corner of the club untouched.

While the goon continued to fire, Munk dropped the missile launcher and ran to the prone genny.

“Dead…” Earless muttered as he rolled her onto her back. “…dancing dead dwarves…” A long shard of duropane protruded from the pleaser’s neck, blood streaming around it and onto the floor. Her neohuman identification coding, a dim subdermal gloprint at the base of her neck, glimmered faintly beneath the blood. Munk grimaced and pulled a spray bottle from his pocket.

“Stupid patch-head…” he muttered, pulling the shard from her neck and quickly coating the wound with coagulant spray. Earless struggled, screaming and jerking spasmodically. Munk tossed the spray can to the floor and tried to hold her limbs steady.

“Grue! Get over here!”

The goon sent a last round into the flaming wreckage across the street and dropped the cannon. He hurried over to his companions.

“What happened?”

“Idiot didn’t duck when I fired the missile and got caught in the blast,” Munk explained. “Hold her down so I can sedate her.”

Grue knelt and easily held the pleaser steady. Munk yanked the narcotic turbo patch from her neck then pulled a tranq patch from his pocket and applied it to her skin. Within seconds her struggles weakened, and her flailing limbs collapsed.

“I’ll get her down to the van. You finish up here.” Grue lifted Earless into his arms and carried her out the door.

Munk gathered the scattered weapons and threw them into their cases, locking them securely. As he recovered the missile launcher, he looked out the window.

Virtually nothing remained of Stiltzkin's. Only a few sections of walls still stood, and most of the roof had collapsed. Blazing fires consumed piles of rubble, as well as lumps that had been short neohumans. A flaming dwarf crawled toward the entrance. Burning debris littered the street, raising plumes of smoke into the air. Screams of agony and fear filled the night.

Munk turned away. He toted the weapon cases down the stairs and out to the van where Grue helped throw them into the back. They jumped in and drove down the back alley, away from the glare and misery of the street.

2

Groaning, Noose pushed the toilet seat off his chest and dragged himself across the wet tiled floor. The walls of the restroom crumbled and burned, the shattered toilets and sinks spraying fountains of water. Plastic and porcelain debris littered the floor, as well as globs of fecal muck disgorged from ruptured sewage pipes. He extricated himself from the tangled mass of mutilated toilet stalls and pulled himself to his feet.