EPISODE 3-9: A legion of demons (angels)
Part I
In the present:
If you thought the Steiner-Davion alliance disrupted the political map of the Inner Sphere, spare a thought for what it did to the criminal one. Organized crime follows the paths of people and power, latches onto the veins of influence and money like a leech. Suddenly, new paths were opening between the Commonwealth and the Suns, people and money began moving in new ways, and the New Avalon triads and families, the Tharkad brotherhoods, and every gang in between slashed and clawed at each other in a scramble to the top of the new heap.
In our conflict-addicted times, the heat map of organized crime is nearly identical to one showing military deployments—just as money and power accrete around military commands and contracts, so too does the underworld.
Take either one of those maps (like I said, they are much the same). Zoom in here, in the system of New Avalon: one such point, glaringly white, incandescent even. Zoom in further, until individual grains of power become visible like salt crystals—the capital, the NAIS campus, the Guards Brigade HQ—but look now to the opposite side of the system. There, about the L3 Lagrangian point, on the opposite side of the system’s star from New Avalon.
It was called a SHEL—Space Habitat: Ecliptic/Langrangian—a 24-kilometer long, 6-kilometer diameter rotating cylinder of inhabitable atmosphere, attached to a great bowl of solar sail, and the unofficial black market capital of the New Avalon system.
Our DropShip—Derek Forrest’s Buccaneer—docked with one of the rings around the long tube’s center. Three of us stood in front of the airlock, waiting for it to cycle: Derek, myself, and Reina.
“And the government knows about this place?” Derek was asking.
“Yes, and yet they tolerate it,” said Reina. “Politicians, allowing crime to go unpunished? Shock horror, I know.”
“Some of them are regulars here?” I guessed.
“Those that have … interests you can’t indulge back on NA,” Reina nodded grimly.
“You grew up here?” Derek looked at Reina.
She nodded again.
“No place like home, huh?”
“Thank god.”
The airlock hissed slowly open. On the other side was a small antechamber, filled with about a dozen men. Most were dressed in black fatigues and combat boots, with light impact armor over their chests and upper arms, with stun sticks on one hip and pistols on the other. In the center was a tall, slim man, dressed in a grey suit and black turtleneck, leaning on a cane despite his youthful face. The face was familiar: narrow, angular jaw, aquiline nose, wavy black hair. Very familiar.
I felt Reina beside me suck a sudden breath and go completely rigid.
That man’s familiar face broke into a wide, toothy smile when he saw us. “Sister!” he said, and raised his arms as if to embrace Reina.
Reina stood statue-still. “Lucien,” she said icily.
“Come now, Alys, is that any way to greet family?” He kept his arms raised. “Come on, come on, step aboard, don’t wait for a formal invitation or we’ll all die of old age here. We’re not big on ceremony. So good to see you again. I see you brought your attack dog as well.” This last directed at me.
“Woof,” I agreed, following Reina/Alys through the airlock into the antechamber. “Alys?” I mouthed silently at her. She grimaced and shrugged.
The man named Lucien hobbled forward and enfolded Reina in a hug that she didn’t return. When he broke away, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Well, damndest thing, sis,” he grinned at her. “While you’ve been away, I seem to have become boss of the White Tigers. Isn’t that something?” He laughed as if this was quite the strangest coincidence he’d ever heard of. “But let’s not stand here jawing. Travel tubes are up in the hub, I’ll take you to my office and we can do all our catching up there. Oh, but first, your weapons.” Looking pointedly at me again.
A guard stepped forward, metal detector baton in one hand, which he ran up and down me with practiced precision. I slowly handed him my pistol, barrel up—a holdout Nambu needler, like the one I’d used on Galatea—as well as the vibro blade I’d taken from the real Reina. He placed both in a black pouch, which he fitted to his belt at the small of his back.
Lucien led the way, flanked on either side by black-clad guards. Another four fell in behind us, with the other six remaining in the airlock antechamber. From the airlock we went ‘up,’ away from the hull and towards the center of the habitat, climbing in zero gravity through a two-meter wide transparent tube. Looking down, we could see the curve of the habitat’s interior surface, cluttered with ramshackle buildings that seemed to roll endlessly beneath us. Near as I could tell, the landscape seemed to cycle around about once every two minutes or so.
“About 30,000 people, living in a simulated 0.9G down on the hull,” said Lucien, noticing my gaze. “Front and back halves rotate in opposite directions to cancel each other’s gyroscopic forces out. Ah, here we are.”
At the center of the hollow tube of the habitat were the travel tubes, a cluster of eight elevator-like shafts traversing the length of the station from top to bottom. Lucien led us to one labeled “EXECUTIVE,” inserted a card and pressed the button, and waved us inside with a bow and a flourish.
The elevator car was cylindrical, carpeted, with semicircular plush leather sofas arranged about the rim. Looking up at the ceiling, I could see an identical arrangement of furniture there, for when the car accelerated in the other direction. Lucien floated over to one, waved us to another. “We’ll get a touch of gravity when we get underway. Make yourselves comfortable.” Two guards stood by the elevator control panel, two more on either side of Lucien.
Sure enough, acceleration pressed lightly down on us as the car jetted away from the boarding platform, and Lucien crossed his legs with a sigh.
“Nice place you have here,” I offered.
He smiled coldly. “It’s not all drug dens and hitmen—”
“Those are just kind of a hobby, are they?”
“—we have a number of legitimate enterprises run through, aha, ‘shell’ companies.” His mouth quirked in amusement at his own joke.
“Shell companies? SHEL companies? Reina, are you sure you’re related to this guy?”
“Sadly, yes.”
“Oh, between us we can drop that ‘Reina’ nonsense,” he sniffed. “How’ve you been Alys?”
Reina-who-was-Alys sat ramrod straight at the edge of the sofa. “On the run from my murderous doppelganger,” she said. “That was your work?”
He smiled and nodded. “Guilty!”
“You let her off the leash. Why?”
“Why, to bring you back to us, of course, little sister. I knew you’d come back when threatened.”
“Most people just send a postcard,” I offered. He didn’t even glance at me.
“After our late, dearly departed leader accidentally shot himself—such tragedy—I knew I wanted to make some changes,” he explained. “The times are changing, the triads must change with them. This business with the Commonwealth, for instance. We need a toehold on their side of the border. We need muscle to protect it.”
“After what we survived, what we endured as kids under these people,” Reina/Alys shook her head. “After all that, when you climbed to the top you just, what, decided to keep on doing exactly what they had before?”
“Well, now that I’m here, I can see what good sense it all made. Including keeping the real Reina around—always useful to have someone you can wield as a weapon, eh?” he winked at her.
“I think he might be talking about me again,” I put in helpfully.
Reina/Alys sighed and put her fingers to her temples. “What do you want, brother?”
“What do I want?” he repeated. “I want to have my cake, and eat it too. I want stability and continuity, but at the same time I want the Tigers to grow and expand. I want to maintain my position amid the reshuffling and reordering of the landscape that the Federated-Commonwealth alliance will bring. I want an army to enforce and defend that position.”
“And what, you thought she would scare me into joining you? Into agreeing to let you use the Black Arrows?”
Lucien’s smile faded, and he gripped the top of his cane with both hands. “We gave you the best education any human can aspire to, opportunities not one millionth of a percent of people ever experience, dear sister.” Those last words came out between bared teeth. “And how did you repay us? By turning your back on us, by suddenly vanishing into the cosmic night. You owe us, Alys, but more than that, you belong with us.”
“Not anymore.”
“No? Who do you belong with then? This ravening dog you call a lieutenant?” He took one hand from the cane, and waved it in my direction. “Have you seen what he’s been up to in your absence? Have you seen the scores of broken and mutilated bodies he’s used to pave his trail after you? You may think me cruel, little sister, but at least I’m human—he is a monster, a wolf in human skin. Violence follows him like a shadow.”
I shrugged modestly. “Hey, I don’t like to brag.”
The elevator car slowed as it approached the ‘nose’ end of the habitat, opposite the station-keeping thrusters and solar sail. “End of the road,” Lucien said, standing. “Don’t be stubborn now, Alys. Before you said ‘No’ definitively, there’s someone I think you should talk to.”
Reina/Alys reluctantly stood, and I followed. Aware of the guards now standing uncomfortably close.
The elevator doors slid open, revealing another landing platform, two guards. And the grim, red-scarred face of Reina Paradis.
“What the hell is she doing here Lucien?” Reina/Alys gasped, one foot still inside the elevator.
“That depends very much on how our conversation goes. Sister.” Lucien was no longer smiling.
“Aric,” Reina/Alys twisted towards me. “Come on, we’re going back.”
“Oh, I’m afraid your dog isn’t going anywhere,” said Lucien, and nodded to the guards.
Two grabbed Reina/Alys as she howled, stamping down on the foot of one that tried to grab her from behind, twisting under the arm of the other charging from the front, striking him under the chin and sending him reeling back.
And the elevator doors slammed shut, leaving me inside the car with four armed guards. The car pinged politely and dropped away, heading back towards the center of the habitat, and the five of us gently sank towards what had been the ceiling.
“Going down, huh?” I asked, mildly.
“Going to hell.” One of the guards growled, and then the two behind me had each taken hold of one arm and the two in front were drawing their stun sticks.
I threw myself backwards, ramming the two behind me against the elevator glass as the other two charged forward, used the leverage to flip up from the shoulders, one of my feet connecting with a charging guard’s head with a crack, the stun baton from the other whistling beneath me and into the abdomen of the one who’d grabbed my right arm.
The stun stick crackled and spat electricity, jolting the guard into a twitching seizure, letting me wrench one arm free, pivot and slam the heel of my hand against the underside of the jaw of the man still holding my other arm.
The guard I’d kicked was the one who’d taken my gun and knife. They were there, in a pouch on his back as he sat up on the floor, shaking his head woozily. I grabbed it, tearing it away. Then the one who still had his stick was swinging at me again. I ducked, the baton connected with the elevator controls. There was a flash, an electronic shriek and the elevator suddenly juddered to a halt.
Deceleration flung us all into the air. Lost my grip on the bag, watched it go spinning. Tried to swim after it in zero G. It tumbled just beyond my fingertips.
Impact as two guards launched themselves at me from the floor, one catching my legs, the other getting an arm around my chest. Caught a glancing punch along the side of my face. The three of us went whirling, tumbling against the roof, hit, bounced back down into the middle of the elevator car. Back down towards the two with drawn stun sticks, who grinned in anticipation.
Back-up motors kicked in, and the elevator lurched into motion again.
The three of us slammed back down, the guards on my legs and chest underneath, me on top. The impact stunned both of them, let me flip back onto my feet. Something falling—the gun bag. Grabbed it as the other two guards came forward again. No time to open the zipper—just felt for the shape of the vibro-blade inside, hit the power switch. White-hot blade slashed straight through the black material, right into the stomach of the guard nearest guard.
As he blinked, unbelieving, feeling the wound, I got a grip on the knife, stabbed him in the chest, the throat, through the eye. Used the body as a shield as the other one swung at me, let the gasping, dying man take the stun stick blow, then kicked the body away, the two going down in a tangle of limbs.
The other two had drawn their guns, murderous-looking needler pistols. I dropped to the floor as both fired, lips peeled back in pain as three flechettes found my shoulder, hearing the staccato crack as hundreds more quills struck the elevator glass and stuck there, leaving it bristling like a startled porcupine.
My own holdout needler was there on the floor, where it had fallen from the bag. I grabbed it, rolled, fired once from the prone position, tearing one guard’s legs to ribbons. As he dropped I was up, firing, hitting the other in the chest—where the needles simply stuck into the armor without effect—then the head.
One still moaning on the floor, clutching at his knees. I stood over him, fired once, downwards. He stopped moaning. The last one staggered to his feet from under the body of his companion, fumbling at his waist for his gun. Let him look up, see the barrel of the pistol I had pointed at his head. Then pulled the trigger.
The spikes went right through him, pinning the body against the side of the elevator car, left him hanging there like a ragged, blood-drenched scarecrow.
I tossed the now-empty holdout needler away, and then reached up to pluck the three needles from my shoulder, like pulling shards of glass, each coming free with a tiny cloud of blood. Picked up two of the guards’ pistols, stuck one in my waistband, kept the other in my hand.
The emergency system that had activated the back-up motors brought us coasting to a stop at the next travel tube station.
A recorded, feminine voice said, “This car is out of service. Please debark here and change to another tube.” The doors chimed gently open.
I swam out of the car into the micro-gravity of the station, leaving a bubbly wake of blood as I went. A crowd of people looking at me first in puzzlement, then growing horror. Someone screamed, and they began to claw past each other to escape.
I hit the ‘up’ button, then smiled and waved my needler at the three people inside when the doors swished open. “Your stop, I think,” I told them. They scrambled off. The inside was a lot less plush that the executive transit tube, bare floor and ceiling and stirrup-shaped straps around the edge rather than sofas. I punched the button for the top floor.
The station where Reina/Alys and her brother had gotten off was empty. One wall was marked with the distinctive comet-shaped burns left by laser fire. A thin trail of blood led to one of the spoke tunnels connecting the central transit tubes to the outer rim of the station. I floated down cautiously, keeping the needler out in front of me, hauling myself along by my other hand.
Something bumped against the edge of the tunnel up ahead. I made out a foot, black-booted. One of the guards. As I passed him, I saw his throat had been cut. His partner was at the bottom of the tunnel, looking like he’d been attacked by a bear, every inch of exposed skin torn and gashed.
The corridor at the bottom was under gravity, and at the end of it a door. I flattened myself on the bulkhead beside it and pushed it open. An expensive office, waarwood desk, black leather furniture, a rug of something large and tawny. Two feet stuck from behind the desk.
I snapped around the door, covered the corners. Empty. Walked in a wide circle around the desk without getting too close, and saw who lay there.
I sighed, and crouched down beside them. “The conversation went well, I take it?”