“You okay?” asked Silver, stroking his head.
Bent over double, Thumbs wheezed an affirmative while gulping air and licking dry lips. Without hesitation, Delphia pulled out a flask and offered it to the troll. Thumbs gladly accepted the tiny container and drained it in a gulp.
“S-s-s-mooth,” he croaked weakly. “W-whatiz?”
“Cold coffee from the
Manta,
" Delphia replied, pocketing the flask. “I also have a PocketDoc. Think you need a stim or a trank?”
His bare chest heaving, Thumbs waved the suggestion aside.
“What happened to Moonfeather?” asked Silver, turning to Delphia. “Did you see anything?”
“She’s dead,” he said, moving to watch the street through a sagging window frame with gun in hand. “I saw it in my sunglasses behind us. They shot her once, she fried the guy, then they shot her six or seven times more.”
“Too bad.” Silver yanked the clip from the Seco and checked the load. Satisfied, she slammed it back in. “I didn’t like her, but shot six times . . . !”
“Seen . . . worse . . .” gasped Thumbs, holding his sides while trying to stand erect.
“Yeah?” she asked. “How?”
“N-netgun. Modified.”
“What do you mean? Electrified? Coated with poison?” Delphia sounded interested even as he peered around the side of the macadam rise, watching for pursuit. Oddly, there was none. He didn’t like that.
Taking a deep breath, Thumbs held it for a minute, then let it out slowly. “Ya know what monofilament is?” He was breathing almost normally now. “Hair-thin wires stronger than a steel I-beam and sharper than a razor?”
His companions both nodded.
“A chummer in Orlando did a run against Zeller Geo-Medical and got shot with a netgun and the net was made of monofilaments. When he tried to struggle free . . . pieces of him just kept falling off . . .” He made a face. “
Madre mia,
now that was nasty. The gleeb with the netgun called it a Julieanne, for some reason.”
Moving to the other side of the asphalt ridge, Delphia carefully peeked out through an irregular hole in the crumbling macadam. “You flatline him?”
“Natch. But first I shot him in the knees, stole his toy, and put four of the things on him.” A wolfish grin. “I enjoyed watching him die. Frag with my friends, and you’re fragging with me.”
“You make your own justice on the streets,” said Silver, sliding her padded bag off her shoulder.
Thumbs threw her a grin. “No bounce on that, pretty lady.”
“Yama,” said Delphia, holding up a hand in the universal sign of stop. “Somebody is coming this way.”
“Who? Where?” asked Silver, Seco at the ready.
“An elf,” said Thumbs, peeking over the ragged wall. “Where’d he come from?”
“I passed him while we were running. I saw him down another street, searching among the rubble.”
Dressed in utilitarian coveralls, the elf was standing in the middle of the courtyard, tall and thin like all of his race, the sides of his long blonde hair woven into decorative braids that hung from each temple in the latest Miami fashion. On his back was a plastic haversack, in one hand a wooden staff covered with living vines, and hunched on one of his shoulders was an albino ferret. Both of them were staring at a ragged piece of red cloth the elf held in his hand.
“Could be an outrider searching for us,” suggested Silver. “Drek! He’s got a staff!”
“Might be a mage,” agreed Thumbs, easing the safety on his Mossberg. With a jerk, he realized what he had just done and snicked it off once more. “Think we should light him up?”
“We just lost a mage,” said Delphia, tucking the Man-hunter into his belt holster and swinging the Predator around in front. “If he’s out here, it could mean he’s either hunting us, or being hunted himself.” Delphia turned off the laser spotter on his chatter gun. “Let’s give him a tick before we do something irreversible.
Hai?
"
Squat and heavy, the Mossberg CMDT leveled. “Natch.” Slim and polished, the Seco did the same. “Hush,” said Silver, creeping along the wall away from them. “I want to hear what he’s saying.”
“And to whom.”
* * *
“Here is where they were killed, little one,” said Emile, his senses stretched far beyond the physical limits of his meat body. The shattered visions of his dreams were clearer at this location, the anguished spirits of the long gone finally able to plead their plight to a receptive mind. “Yes, I hear you ... all of you. Twelve shamans and mages. They gathered you together to perform a great task, a . . .” He closed his eyes and tightened his hand into a white-knuckled fist around the tatter of cloth. “A masking, yes, a cloaking of some kind to hide a large cold thing.”
Grand snarled and hissed.
“Yes, then Gunderson killed you.” Emile grimaced sadly. “Harsh coin, indeed, for a job well done. But they shall pay for this betrayal.”
What he saw next was unexpected. At first he wasn’t sure whether the raven-haired norm was real or part of the visions he’d been seeing.
“More likely killed to hide the location of the item,” she said, lowering the muzzle of her Seco. “The corp zapped them to hide the location of the coldframe.”
Emile stared at her, watching her aura flicker and dance in the artificial lights of the immense dome.
“Yes, it is true. But how do you know this, decker?” he demanded.
“We found it out in the deeps,” said a troll, coming up to join her. The male was also armed, heavily chromed, and covered with gang tattoos, yet Emile sensed no immediate danger from him. “They probably thought it was the only way to keep the location of the supercomputer secret.”
“What fools,” Emile said. “Three may keep a secret only if two are dead.”
“They also did it to remove any mages from this place,” said a norm male, stepping from behind a crumbled section of sewer pipe. This male wore a badly rumpled suit and was also armed.
“He’s alone,” the man said to his companions.
Annoyed, Grand chittered in response, and Emile scratched him reassuringly under the chin. “Why would they want to do that?” he asked.
“Mages carry power in their minds. They cannot be unarmed. Twelve mages . . . you did say twelve, correct? That’s a fragging army in a slave society.”
“Slaves, yes, I have seen that, felt that,” Emile said slowly. “I must admit, I do not like this place, or those who hold it in their power.”
“I’m with you, chummer,” said the troll. “If you don’t like these hoopheads, then you’re jake in my chip.”
“How were they killed?” asked the fem. “Zapping a dozen mages is no easy task.”
Emile shrugged. “I do not know. They seem to have suffocated in a white cloud of bitter cold, so cold they could not move or speak.”
“Liquid nitrogen,” announced the norm in the suit. “We’ve seen it before. The city hit ’em with a stream of liquid nitrogen. Like the Snowballs used to stop inquisitive subs. Case-hardened steel becomes brittle as glass when the stuff hits. Flesh crystallizes in a nano.”
Emile looked deep into the norm. Grand bared his teeth. “I see that what you speak is true.
Mon dieu,
what a terrible way to perish. They . . . yes, they were still alive afterward, trapped inside frozen bodies until touched and then they crumbled into dust.”
“No death is good,” said the norm, holstering one of his weapons.
“But how do you know all this?” asked the troll nervously.
“How shall I say?” Emile paused, trying to think how to explain one of the mysteries of magic. “Under certain circumstances, places of violent death retain . .. vibrations, disturbances in the astral plane, residual emanations that can be detected by one with magical abilities.”
Emile gave them the closest he could come to a smile under the circumstances. “Pray excuse my lack of manners. It has been a most trying day.” He gave a bow. “I am Emile de Coultier Ceccion.” There came a short hiss. “Ah, yes. And this, of course, is Grand.”
“Grant?” asked the decker, smiling at the ferret. Grand purred in response. A good omen that.
“Grand, with a ‘D’,” corrected Emile, enunciating carefully. “His full name is West One Hundred Fifty-seventh Street And Grand Ave. It’s where we found each other.” A wan smile. “Grand for short.”
“Gotcha.”
“Both of us were formerly employees of the Gunderson Corporation.”
“But no more, eh?” asked the troll, relaxing his shoulders. Emile scowled. “Indeed, not. They must pay. The one who ordered the slaughter must suffer.”
“We wish you much luck,” said the suit, “but we’re here on biz. Once we get what we came for, we’re gone.”
“Escape may prove to be impossible. Given time, they will capture us all. It is a small city.”
“We have the means at our disposal,” said the suit.
“A means of departure?” Emile asked eagerly.
“Yes.”
“A reliable means?”
“No,” said the suit stonily. “A means, yes, but it will not be easy or simple to leave.”
“How honest. Excellent,” beamed Emile, watching the
empty streets. “Perhaps we can come to some arrangement.
Assist me in my task and I shall assist you.”
“And what’re you going to do?” asked the decker. “Kill the entire City Guard who set the trap?”
“Oh no,” he declaimed. “They were merely the weapon, not the one who pulled the trigger. I will seek out the norm who runs this city. The one who gave the orders. Barbara Harvin.”
The troll gave a whistle. “A wetjob like that’s gonna be a tough one. She’s bound to have a lot of guards with a lot of guns. And a superslick coldframe to run her security systems.”
“True,” said Emile, looking at the dome above them. “But I am her only mage, a critical lack in her defenses. Plus, I believe that I can promise a distraction that will keep the City Guards very busy for quite awhile.”
“Then maybe we can cut a deal,” said the suit. “We’re here on a data steal and the info we want is inside the coldframe.”
“But it’s too powerful for me,” said the decker. “We need to turn it off so I can download the files from the auxiliary buffer zone. The backup data storage, you know. And the cut-off controls have to be in her office.”
“Where I can deal with her personally,” said Emile. “So, it appears we are fellow travelers. Both of our destinations end at the same terminus. Shall we work together?” He offered his hand and they each shook it in turn. Emile assensed that he could trust them for the moment, but decided not to let down his guard. They needed him now, but later would be another matter.
“Done and done. I’m Thumbs,” said the troll, jerking one toward himself. “The decker is Silver, Captain QuickDraw over there is Delphia.”
“Hello.”
“
Konichiwa
.”
“Holy drek, they found us again,” spat Silver. “Incoming!” Thumbs and Delphia spun about. Coming down the littered street running along the edge of the dome wall five motorcycles were speeding toward them, the riders hunched forward as they raced closer, silent as ghosts in a dream.
“Spread out. Get some cover,” snapped Delphia. “Conserve ammo. Short burst, no hose jobs.”
“Check.”
“Natch.”
“There is no need for such preparations,” said Emile, holding his staff tight in both hands. His head was cocked slightly to one side as though listening to something only he could hear.
“What the frag are you talking about?” demanded Thumbs, slapping a fresh clip into the Mossberg. “Those are fully armed OffRoaders!”
Emile shrugged with Gallic elegance. “Are they?
Ça ne fait rien
. The distraction is about to begin.”
Delphia stopped in the act of crouching behind a cracked engine block red with rust. “Distraction?”
“Have to be a fragging motherless big one to stop those gleebs,” snorted Thumbs grimly, kneeling and aiming carefully.
“It is,” said Emile, as the ground underneath them rocked and bucked. A thundering concussion boomed over the ruins, slamming the motorcycles to the roadway, two of them skidding off and one hitting a brick wall to whoof into flames.
“What the frag was that?” demanded Silver.
Emile merely pointed a finger upward.
As she looked, a star blossomed in the glassy sky, a rosy fireball that sent thin cracks radiating outward from the point of impact on the dome as the muffled blast slapped her in the face with a warm wind. As the blast was doused by the sea, the fissures swiftly closed. Then faint rods of light lanced out from the base of the bubblecity into the murky distance, the feeble beams steadily increasing in brilliance until shimmering with unleashed power like tortured rainbows. More explosions appeared in the sea, and sirens started a banshee shriek over the city.
“Pirates,” whispered Thumbs.
Darkness crashed down as the city turned off every light. Only the pearlescent sheen of the dome offered any illumination.
“To make the place less of a target,” reasoned Delphia, smiling broadly. “And giving us a perfect window of opportunity!”
“Almost perfect,” countered Silver. “What if it’s only a sortie, not a full attack?”
“She is correct,” Emile said. “Time may be short.” Down the street, the City Guards were stumbling about, trying to remount their Hyundais. “May I suggest we steal those bikes,” said Emile, brandishing his wand. There was a click and blades snapped out of either end. “It will save us much time traveling to Old Dome.”