Target Rich Environment

  “You have never spoken of this important quest of yours, Decimus. Why do you have to go to the haunted mountains?”

  “I swore to avenge the murder of my teacher.”

  That was a worthy quest. “You do not seem to be in much of a hurry to get your revenge.”

  “That’s because it was my sister who murdered him.”

  “Oh . . .”

  Decimus placed another log on the fire. The smoke kept away the mosquitos. “A Kinjatsi master has a duty to his students, and the students to their master. A rival school desired a forbidden technique from an old world. Our teacher refused to share it . . . It is a long story. Just know there is no greater crime than treachery . . . I am the last of my school, and though they’re all gone, my duty remains.”

  Lavro was a warrior. He understood perfectly well what that meant.

  Which was why he was prepared to die in the morning.

  Praise Droth.

  He centered his mind and thought of nothing.

  At first light, Lavro opened his eyes.

  “I know now why you atlans clear your heads. It isn’t just for battle. After there is no noise, it is easier to think.”

  Decimus was already packing his gear. He didn’t look pleased to be doing so, but a promise was a promise. “That’s true,” he agreed. “Clarity helps in all aspects of life.”

  Which was why Lavro had an idea. “What will you do after you get your vengeance?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll survive. Aurelia was always the better student.”

  “But say you do . . .”

  “In that unlikely event?” Decimus paused as he rolled up his blanket. “Too much has been lost as it is. Kinjatsi should be a force for good. I would rebuild my master’s school.”

  Lavro stood up, took one of his unlit torches and stuck it into the remains of their fire. The dried reeds quickly caught. Decimus watched him curiously as Lavro carried the burning torch over to the bridge.

  “Then I will be your first student.”

  As the two Kinjatsi walked downstream toward the next crossing, the burning bridge collapsed into the Serenth River.

  AS A PROFESSIONAL WRITER who also has a reputation of being a role playing game nerd, I get requests to write in various game settings from a lot of different companies. However I don’t have time to take on most of them, but when Marc Tassin approached me about writing something in the Aetaltis game setting, I asked for a copy of the sourcebook. The background of the world turned out to be really interesting, so I agreed to take a shot at it.

  Writing in somebody else’s world is always a challenging experience, in that you are limited by the rules and conventions they’ve established, but it can be really rewarding too. In this case, all the authors invited to the anthology got a big list of possible topics to pick through, so we could claim our turf and not step on anyone else’s toes. On that list, one of the races, renowned for their stoic, stubborn outlook, worshipped what was basically a god of suffering and that was an intriguing idea—praise Droth—and then there were these dimension-hopping sort of Romans who had mystical warrior/ninja/Jedi/monks who had competing schools like something from a kung fu movie. It turned out that neither of those two ideas had been developed much.

  Luckily for me, neither of those had been claimed by the other authors yet. Good stories are all about making up interesting characters and then having them collide, and there were two perfectly good voices right there. Sometimes an author hears an idea, and our imagination just runs with it. That’s when writing in other people’s universes gets fun.

  As a result The Bridge is a pretty straightforward little fantasy story that I had a lot of fun with it.

  THE GRIMNOIR CHRONICLES: DETROIT CHRISTMAS

  This story was originally published in 2011 on the Baen Books website. It is set in the Grimnoir Chronicles universe and is a prequel to the novel Hard Magic. My goal with Jake Sullivan was to write a character who would feel right at home inside a Raymond Chandler story (or at least if Raymond Chandler had been writing contemporary urban fantasy about magical superheroes).

  December 25th, 1931

  DETROIT. One of the greatest cities in the world. The crossroads of industry and commerce. The American Paris, the City of Champions, Blimp Town, Motor City, call it what you want, it’s one crowded place. Nearly two million people live in Detroit, but as far as Jake Sullivan was aware, only a few of them were trying to kill him at that particular moment in time.

  Sure, there might have been others in Detroit that were gunning for him, as he wasn’t the type of man that made a lot of friends, but judging from the volume of gunfire pouring through the windows and puckering the walls . . . Six. There were only six shooters.

  He could handle that.

  “Enough! I said enough!” The gunfire tapered off. One last angry bullet bounced off his cover with a clang. “You still alive in there?”

  The seven-hundred-pound chunk of steel plate he’d picked up to use as a shield had worked better than expected. Sullivan checked his body for holes, and finding no more than usual, shouted back, “Yeah, but your boys ain’t. You ready to surrender yet, Johnny? The cops will be here any minute.”

  “You’ll be an icicle before then.”

  The temperature was dropping fast, which meant that Snowball was out there too. Both Maplethorpe brothers were Actives, which was just his rotten luck. Sullivan’s teeth began to chatter. He had to finish this before the Icebox could freeze him out. At this range, a clean shot could freeze him solid, but behind cover . . . even a really powerful Icebox wouldn’t be able to steal more than ten degrees a minute from a room this big, but it had already been cold to begin with. That didn’t leave Sullivan much time.

  “Kidnapping, murder.” He needed to goad them into coming after him. It was his only chance. “You boys been busy.”

  “Throw ’em on the list. They can only send me to the gas chamber once,” Johnny Bones shouted back through the broken windows. “Are you the Heavy? Is this the legendary Heavy Jake Sullivan, J. Edgar Hoover’s pet Active?”

  Sullivan didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “Heard you been looking for my crew. How’d you find us? I thought you Heavies was supposed to be stupid?”

  “Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while, Johnny.” Sullivan picked up the giant Lewis machinegun from the floor with one shaking hand. It was a good thing he’d already been wearing gloves or he would’ve left skin on the freezing metal. “You ready to go to prison?”

  “You know all about that from what I hear. So how’s Rockville this time of year?”

  The infamous prison for actively magical criminals was in Montana. Sullivan had been an inmate there for six long years. “Cold. Very cold.” Some of Johnny Bones’ men were going to try to flank him while they were talking. He knew because that’s what he would’ve ordered if their situations had been reversed. Sullivan picked the most likely window, pointed the Lewis at it, and waited. “You’ll get used to it. Your brother will be nice and comfy, though.”

  “We can make a deal,” Johnny shouted, trying to keep Sullivan distracted. “It don’t have to be like this, with you all blue and frozen stuck to the floor. How about I let you walk out of here, pay you enough to make it worth your time? We’ll call it my present to you. ’Tis the season and all that jazz. I’m in a giving mood. What do you say?”

  Someone moved on the other side of the window. Sullivan held down the trigger and let the Lewis roar. Bricks exploded into dust and glass shattered. The man on the other side went down hard.

  That left five.

  “I’d say you gotta do better than that.”

  Johnny Bones Maplethorpe ordered his remaining men to open fire and bullets ricocheted off the steel plate. Jake Sullivan was pinned down in a room that was rapidly turning into a walk in freezer by a gang of hardened criminals led by a vicious Shard. It was one hell of a way to spend Christmas.

  Two Days Earlier

  ?
??SO, MR. SULLIVAN, you got any plans this Christmas?”

  Sullivan finished counting out the January rent money and passed it over. It was the last ten dollars he had to his name. Paying work had been sporadic lately. “Nothing in particular, ma’am.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Brooks said. His landlord owned the entire building and the diner downstairs. It was obvious the old woman didn’t like her tenant much, but Jake Sullivan always paid his rent on time. “I don’t want any loudness or carrying on. I know how you Irish get during the holidays with the devil drink.”

  “Why, Mrs. Brooks, alcoholic beverages are illegal.”

  “I know all about your disdain for the law, Mr. Sullivan.” Mrs. Brooks eyed him suspiciously, then glanced around the office, as if expecting to see a distillery hidden in a corner. Instead there was only a battered secondhand desk, a couple of sturdy wooden chairs, a bedraggled couch, and a few book shelves. “It’s only my strong upbringing that’s allowed me to forgive your horrific criminal history and your unseemly magic.”

  The landlord talked a big game, but both of them knew that she’d rent to anybody who could pay in these tough times, and that included convicted felons, less popular types of Actives, or anybody else for that matter. The old lady would rent a room to the Chairman himself if he had ten dollars ready on the twenty-third of each month. “And I won’t forget it,” Sullivan said.

  Mrs. Brooks stepped back and examined the words painted on his door. “Why would someone like you go into this kind of business anyway?”

  “I like puzzles . . .” Sullivan said honestly. “Anything else I can do for you, ma’am?” and before she could even answer he was already closing the door on her. “No? Wonderful. Merry Christmas. Good bye.”

  The sign on the door read Sullivan Security and Investigations. His last security job had been intimidating the union strikers at the UBF plant. Good work that, standing around earning money because you had a reputation for being able to crush a man’s skull with a thought. It had paid well, too, but that had been months ago. The last investigation job had meant confirming to an angry wife that her husband liked prostitutes. The final bit of money from that one had just paid the rent.

  There was other work out there. There always was for a man with his skills, whether physical or magical, but Sullivan was an honest man, and he preferred honest work. There was a difference between being a felon and being a crook, and Jake Sullivan was no crook.

  Then there were the government jobs. . . . The monetary payment on those was meager, but completing them meant he got to stay out of Rockville. Sullivan sat behind his desk and reread the recent Bureau of Investigation telegram. It was a bulletin on the notorious Maplethorpe brothers. Their gang had recently gotten shot up in a robbery in Albion, and it was believed they were hiding in Detroit. A Shard and an Icebox, with Power to spare, armed, and extremely dangerous, wanted for bank robbery and murder. The telegram said a BI representative would be in touch if it was felt his services would be needed.

  The terms of his early release specified that he needed to assist in the apprehension of five Active fugitives. He wondered idly if the Maplethorpes would count as two. . . . As long as the government’s terms hung over his head, he would never truly be free. Sullivan crumpled the telegram and tossed it in the waste basket. Nothing usually came of the telegrams.

  The first client for the month of December arrived just before noon on the 23rd. Sullivan had been reading a Popular Mechanics article about a British Cog named Turing and his controversial attempt to build a mechanical man capable of reasoning, when there had been a delicate knock on the door.

  Like all Gravity Spikers—or Heavies as most folks insisted on calling magicals of his type—Sullivan’s Power enabled him to manipulate the forces of gravity. He was just much better at it than everyone else. A quick surge of Power enabled him to see the nearby world as it really was, shades of mass, density, and force, and it told him that there was a single body in the hallway, approximately one hundred and twenty pounds.

  Hopeful that it might be business related, he quickly saw to it that both he and the office were presentable before answering. He stubbed out his cigarette and hid the magazine in his desk. Sullivan checked the mirror, fixed his tie, and ran a comb through his hair. He was built like a bull, had the face of an anvil, and wasn’t particularly well-spoken, but that was no excuse to not present well.

  The lady in the hall certainly knew how to present well. She was good-looking, mid-twenties, brunette, and petite. She was wearing a blue dress, ten minks’ worth of coat, and shoes that cost more than all of Sullivan’s earthly possessions combined. “I need a private detective,” she stated, having to crane her neck to see since he was over a foot taller than she. “Are you Heavy Jake Sullivan?”

  “That’s me.” He didn’t much care for the nickname, but it would do. At least that meant she knew he was an Active and was okay with the fact. It wasn’t the kind of thing you advertised to most respectable clients. The general attitude was that Heavies were good for lifting things and that was about it. “Please come in.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sullivan.” Her blue eyes were red from crying. Her manner was resigned and tired.

  He closed the door behind her. She was graceful, like a dancer, as she walked in and took a seat. He went to the other side of the desk and settled into his massively reinforced chair. Sullivan weighed far more than he appeared to, a byproduct of his magical experimentation, and he’d gotten tired of breaking chairs.

  “So what brings you to this neighborhood?”

  “You came highly recommended.” The lady glanced around the room. There was a single light bulb wired into the ceiling and the whole place seemed dingy and small. It was times like this that he wished he could afford a real office instead of this rotten dive. Judging by her getup, she could hire whoever she felt like, but apparently she was undeterred by the shabbiness of her host or his office. “I need your help.”

  “Sure,” he answered. “I’m afraid I didn’t get your name.”

  “Emily Fordyce. I’m here about my husband.”

  So it was another jilted wife case. The rock on her wedding ring was huge, but in his experience the size of the rock seldom corresponded to a husband’s loyalty. “I’ll be glad to help, Mrs. Fordyce. What’s wrong with your husband?”

  “He’s missing,” she answered with a sniff. “He was abducted.”

  Sullivan perked up. His day had just become far more interesting. “Really?” She was obviously money, so he asked the logical question. “Has there been a ransom demand?”

  “There’s been no ransom, and the police say that he’s certainly dead.”

  Sullivan urged her to start from the beginning. Arthur Fordyce had not returned from his office days ago. Yesterday his automobile had been found in a ditch just outside of the city, where it had been hidden by the snow. A great deal of dried blood had been found on the seat. The car was otherwise undamaged.

  Emily became increasingly upset as she spoke. Sullivan offered her a smoke to calm her nerves, but she turned him down. He took one for himself. “Your husband have enemies?”

  “Oh, no. Everyone loved Arthur. He was a sweetheart.”

  “He gamble? Owe anyone money?” She shook her head in the negative. Those minks didn’t buy themselves. “What did he do for a living?”

  “He was a Healer.”

  Sullivan stopped, match hovering just below his suddenly forgotten cigarette. “A Healer?”

  Emily nodded. “He’s an Active and very skilled. He works freelance, fixing anyone that can afford his services. The finest families in the city have used him.”

  Healers of any kind were rare; Active Healers with significant amounts of Power were especially so. They were talking about somebody who could cure any illness or mend any wound with a touch. Someone who was literally worth more than their weight in gold. “I’ve never actually spoken to a real live Healer . . . Who were your husband’s recent clients?”

&nb
sp; “Arthur didn’t speak about many of them. You see . . . sometimes influential people need to be discreet. . . .” Rich guys with syphilis, went unsaid. “I know he did do a Healing for an unsavory man recently who may be some sort of criminal. His name was something Horowitz.”

  That was a bad sign if it was who he was thinking of. Abraham Horowitz was a local legend amongst the bootleggers, but it did give him a place to start. Sullivan spent the next hour learning everything he could about the last days of Arthur Fordyce. When he’d exhausted his questions and Emily looked like she would begin crying again, Sullivan decided that she needed to get home.

  “Yes, that’s probably a good idea, but we’ve not yet talked about your fee. . . . Whatever it normally is, double it. I’m prepared to write you a check in advance.”

  He’d need operating money, but his pride didn’t like taking money for work unperformed. “That’s not necessary, ma’am.”

  “I’ve got more bank accounts than husbands. Just find him.”

  “All right, then. I’ll do my best, Mrs. Fordyce,” Sullivan promised.

  Emily pulled a handkerchief out of her purse and dabbed her eyes. “I know you will, Mr. Sullivan. You came highly recommended.”

  Sullivan certainly hadn’t performed many jobs in her neck of the wood. The Fordyces lived over on mansion row in Woodbridge. “Who recommended me?”

  “Arthur, of course.”

  Sullivan didn’t know what to make of that response. “Your missing husband . . .”

  “I’m sorry, that must sound rather crazy.” His expression must have confirmed the idea. “Not recently obviously. No, it was because of a newspaper article several months ago. It said you helped the government capture some Active madman.”

  “I know the one.” He had gotten a brief mention in the papers after he’d helped the BI arrest Crusher Marceau in Hot Springs. There had been no mention of Jake being a recently released convict, thankfully, because that would have sent J. Edgar Hoover into an apocalyptic fit.