Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (33 page)

The sheer insanity of his situation clamped down on him like the creatures jaws had on his hand. He saw himself as another might. There he stood, a beautiful and exotic woman in his arms. Knee-deep in sewage, not a bullet to his name, and the blood of some creature that could have only come from a tabloid news story running down the wall of a tunnel, he saw himself like the hero of
American Ninja IX: Recomb Revenge.

What was worse, to him, was that his particular mental image of the moment almost made sense, because it only took into consideration the cosmetic conditions. What made it more bizarre was how Rajani had healed his leg and spoken through his mind and let him use her eyes.

Part of him hoped the whole adventure was a nightmare from which he could awaken, yet another part feared it was some hallucination Galbro was forcing into his brain.

Unfortunately, he decided, those two minority opinions safely bracketed the truth. Coyote had invoked the name Fiddleback to explain curious things that had happened in Phoenix. Now, here, in the darkness beneath an artificial island, another person had used the same name. And this time Sin had ample proof that something
very
strange was truly happening.

As suddenly as the creature had attacked him, Sin’s worldview shifted. Instead of seeing everything he knew as full and real, it all became like building facades on a movie set. Where he had assumed incompetence or petty jealousies as explanations for things going wrong, now he entertained the possibility that a Fiddleback might have been orchestrating disaster.

In an instant he saw that further down that path lay paranoia. He resisted, slowing his progress toward it, but he did not wholly withdraw from it.
Just because you’re
paranoid doesn’t mean there
aren’t
folks out to get you.

He smiled to himself.
And I
know
there are folks out to get
us, so I’d best get us out of here.

Think, Sin, think.From a corporate security review he’d done three years before, he knew Kimpunshima had
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one manhole every 50 meters. He also remembered that at its center there was an open, festival-like area that was generally found packed with tourists at night. Splashing on into the darkness, he headed away from the ocean.

Forty manholes in, and I should be in that area. May have to go a bit north, as well.

Rajani’s eyes came open and glowed gold. She stared at him for a second, then she blinked and the glow faded.

”Sin?”

“Easy, kid, I’ve got you. You’re okay.” He smiled at her even though he couldn’t see her. “I don’t know what that was, but it’s gone now.”

Her voice came in a weary whisper lacking even enough strength to echo from the walls. “It was from Fiddleback...one of his pets. He sent it to finish what they tried to do with you earlier.”

“Will he send another?”

Her hair brushed against his left hand as she shook her head. “He has been distracted.” She grabbed his left shoulder. “Here...we have to go up here.”

“What? There shouldn’t be anything here. It’s not far enough.”

“Up here.” She pointed up, and Sin saw a faint check-erboard pattern above them. “I have friends up there.”

“Can you stand?”

“I think so.”

He gently lowered her legs, but kept his left arm across her back. She looped her arms around his neck and hung on until she had her legs firmly beneath her. Sin smiled and gave her a hug. “Good. Now for the hard part.”

“Yes?”

“I can’t see a bloody thing. Put my hands on the ladder.”

She directed his hands to the metal ladder on the tunnel wall. Unlike the other one, it was not constructed of metal rebar rungs sunk into the concrete. This one felt to Sin like the lower end of a fire escape that had been removed from its original location and placed in the sewer. It shook a bit
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as he mounted it, and, as he neared the grating above, he saw it was made of wood. That confirmed to him that the opening was not an official one.

He pushed open the grate and slipped up into the dark basement. He felt so good about being out of the sewers that he never paused to consider what sort of place would want an open access point to the sewers in it.
She says she
has friends here.
He pulled Rajani up out of the hole, then lowered the grate back into place.

Letting her cling to his arm, he guided her up the narrow wooden staircase. As he got near the top, he heard raucous American music blaring through the door and found the thick smoke of cigarettes killed the sewer stink clinging to both of them.
Good, a public place.
“Almost home, kid.”

He pushed open the door and found himself in a dimly lit, cracked-tile corridor.It led past two bathrooms to the back of a smoke-choked bar. Sin swung his arm around Rajani’s shoulder and threw her a wink. “Let’s look casual, find your friends and go, okay?”

She nodded and slipped her left arm around his waist.

”Okay.”

From the amount of noise he heard in the corridor, Sin had assumed the place would be packed wall to wall with people. Stepping into the main room, he saw he’d equated the bone-cracking volume of the sound system with a need to compete with a crowd that didn’t exist. He knew the folks who had been there were there recently because their cigarettes still burned in ashtrays and the heads on various beers were still going down.

“Welcome to CaféMarie Celeste,“ he murmured.

Aside from a couple of barely visible people speaking in dark alcoves along the far wall, the last ofthebar’s patrons were streaming out between two lines of jeering
bosozoku
gang members. He immediately steered Rajani toward the door, willing to endure taunts and jibes to get out, but the gap closed down as they approached.

“These are your friends?”

Rajani shook her head.

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A smallish man with a gash on his shaved head dropped his Lennon glasses down to the end of his nose as he blocked their path.
“Baka-da!”

“What are you talking about?” Sin’s eyes narrowed.

”I’ve never seen you before, so how could I have done something stupid?”

The rat-faced man snarled at him. “Not you,
yanki!
The
mesu
did.” His dark-eyed gaze shifted back and forth between them. “Give her to me, and you won’t have trouble.”

“Namenna-yo!”Sin balled his fists. “This isn’t worth the pain you’ll feel.” The little man, with his gang fanning out behind him, looked more confident than Sin wanted to see.

Rajani moved away from him, then looked back toward the bathroom. “Sin, look out!”

Sin whirled and only caught part of the meaty punch coming in at his head. It clipped him hard, striking sparks into his vision. He felt his knees turn to water, and blood began to drip from his nose. He braced himself to kiss the floor, but he never hit it, and he couldn’t figure out why.

Then he felt the pressure on his back and saw the arm connected to the hand that had a massive amount of his shirt in its grasp. He followed the leather-swathed arm as it swelled on up into a body that looked big enough to be two sumo wrestlers grafted together. The head on it had flat, gray eyes and looked like it had grown up in a bucket mold, with the short neck it sat on being wider than the any part of the head.

“Bukkoroshiteyaru!“The man holding him smiled with a mouth full of brown, picket-fence teeth. He raised his left fist. “I punch you until you die!”

The fist started down but never connected. Halfway to its target another arm reached over the biker’s shoulder, and a hand closed around the fist. Muscles bunched on this new arm, and bones cracked in the fist. The interlop-ing hand then shoved down and mashed the broken hand into a table top.

With a twist of the arm, Bat spun the fat biker around and smashed him in the mouth with an elbow, forcing him to let Sin drop to the floor. Releasing the shattered fist, Bat grabbed the big man around the back of his bull neck and
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brought his head down to meet Bat’s rising knee. The biker collapsed to the floor, moaning. Bat stomped down on his outstretched right arm, snapping its bones cleanly, then planted a hard kick in the man’s ribs.

Smiling demonically Bat beckoned the other bikers forward. “Themantoldyounottomess withhim. Nowyou know why. C’mon, girls, I’m almost done with your friend, and I ain’t even broke a sweat yet.”

Natch stepped from one of the alcoves with a Beretta automatic pointing toward the bikers. “Don’t worry, you won’t suffer...much.”

Bat took a step forward, and the
bosozoku
gang broke running.

Sin sat up and dabbed at the blood from his nose with his left sleeve as they crowded out the door. “Never thought I’d be happy to see you, Mr. Kabat.”

“If I’d known you worked so well as bait, MacNeal, I’d have worn the boots with steel toes.” Bat grabbed the unconscious biker and bashed his head into tables and chairs on the way to the door, then he tossed him out into the street. He looked out for a second, then smiled. “They got courage on the other side of the street.”

Rajani frowned as she helped Sin to his feet. “Do you think they will try to jump us?”

“Hope so,” Bat nodded grimly.

Jesus Christ!Sin used a napkin from the bar to wipe the blood off his face. “At the risk of spoiling your fun, I’d just as soon get out of here.” He looked at the little bartender trembling in the corner.
“Denwa, arimas’ka?”

The man brought him the phone, and Sin punched a number in. The man at the other end answered it after one ring. “Yes, Kazuo, this is Sinclair. I am with friends, and I need a ride. I don’t know where, but someone here does.

Thanks.” Sin held the receiver out to the bartender.

The little man took it and started speaking very fast as Sin turned to the others. “Kazuo will get us out of here, and then we have to meet with Hal and some others as quickly as possible.”

Natch tucked her pistol away. “Why the rush?”

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“Because, Natch, the place I just left is the place Coyote send me to locate.” Sin tasted blood on his lips. “Between Rajani and me, I’ve learned enough to know that it’s a breeding ground for this Fiddleback and a legion of loonies.”

“Fine, but why the urgency?”

“Because one of those budding loonies is the emperor’s grandson.” He rubbed the puncture marks on his right wrist.”From what I’ve been told, letting Fiddleback get his hands on him is roughly equivalent to looping a new ammo belt into a minigun. As none of us—hell, none of the world—is on that team, I’d like to do everything I can to frustrate Fiddleback one more time.”

Acquire, imprint, kill!Mickey stood in darkness with his feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent and weight forward on the balls of his feet.
Acquire, imprint, kill!
His arms hung down at his sides with his fingers stiffened into a spearhead.
Acquire, imprint, kill!

The lights slowly came up in the room, and Mickey found himself facing a host of misshapen, hunched figures. They bulged with muscles and carried clubs and swords in the massive hands that lurked at the end of improbably long arms. Oversized jaws and out-thrusted muzzles contrasted with mismatched eyes and haphazardly set ears to make the pointy heads bottom-heavy.

«Magilla Gorilla, but bad.»

«That’s it exactly, Mickey. They have been bad.»The little man’s voice soothed away the concerns sparked by the cartoon connection Mickey had made.
«They were
bad, and you must punish them.»

“They have no hats.” Mickey smiled as he spoke, his new face and jaw making it possible for him to pronounce words that had previously proved impossible for him.

«Hats?»

Mickey nodded carefully. “Magilla Gorilla has a hat.

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Why don’t they have hats?”

»Hats. They lost them, Mickey. This is why they were bad.»

“Bad. Punish.”

«Precisely, Mickey.»A tone sounded and the dozen screaming Koman charged at him in a frenzied knot.

«Mickey, ignore.»

The bestial Koman surrounded him and smashed the clubs down on his head and shoulders. Mickey felt the impacts and heard them, but remained detached. He knew the knife thrust to his abdomen had split skin and had to hurt, but he channeled the pain away, as he had been instructed. The loud crack of a club against his right kneecap numbed his whole right leg, but he pushed the panic away.

«Now, Mickey, you may defend yourself. Sequence normally. Start with Claw! Go!»

Acquire.Mickey turned his head and scanned the group. He assessed them in terms of threat potential based on their weapons, size, skill, disposition, apparent intelligence, range and state of health. As one part of his brain sorted through the candidates and assigned them threat-assessment levels, another part searched through known-enemy templates and searched for the one that fit the Koman. Having fought them before, he came up with the original template he had memorized and visualized it as modified by supplementary data.