Dealer's Choice
It was a goddamn underground fairy land. The chamber was lit by some kind of natural phosphorescence in half a dozen muted pastel shades of pink and green. It was at least fifty feet tall and more than twice as long. Its walls were multicolored flowstone. Huge stalactites bigger around than Ray could reach flowed down from the ceiling. The ones in the center of the chamber met their opposite numbers, equally impressive stalagmites, in solid masses of living rock. Interspersed around the giants hanging from the ceiling were hundreds of smaller stalactites, little rock icicles dangling like frozen rain on Christmas day. Bats wheeled around the formations near the ceiling, casting darting, silent shadows that were difficult to distinguish from the animals themselves.
Ray’s powerful flashlight cut through the shadows as he cast its beam carefully about the columnar rock formations sprouting from floor and ceiling. As far as he could tell there were no traps, nor were any of Bloat’s minions lurking in ambush. He turned back toward the party and waved them forward.
“It’s beautiful,” Danny said.
“Yes,” Battle replied, unimpressed. “It’s odd, though.” He reached out and touched a ribbon of flowstone. “These rock formations appear natural, but they would have needed thousands of years to form. These caverns haven’t even been here for months.”
“Bloat’s power” Ray began, and interrupted himself with a wordless shout.
He hurtled toward Danny, leapt, and swung out with his arm above her head. Flesh hit stone, and he absorbed the pain and minor bruising without even changing expression as he batted away the small stalactite so that it fell harmlessly to the floor. If he hadn’t blocked it, it would have hit Danny right on the head.
“That would have speared rue for sure,” she said.
Ray felt himself smiling at her, then he whirled at Nemo’s startled cry. The Monster was pointing at the stalactite that Ray had knocked aside. For a moment it blurred as it lay there on the ground; then it shifted shape, changing into a naked, nasty-looking gray creature that seemed to be all teeth and claws.
Everyone watched, startled, as the creature leapt to its feet, snarled, and threw itself at Puckett. It fastened itself on Puckett’s leg and took a big bite.
The dead ace never changed expression. He just reached down and pulled the thing off his leg. It smoked from the acid he exuded from his palms as he twisted its ugly little head right off.
“What the hell” Battle said, then another stalactite fell from the ceiling and landed right by him. Within seconds it too turned into a twisted, gray gargoyle with slavering fangs and a nasty disposition. It leapt at Battle, who jumped backward, shouting for Puckett.
The ace was slow to react. The gargoyle would have had Battle if the agent hadn’t dodged behind a thick stalagmite. Danny put her shotgun to her hip and let loose a three-round blast and the gargoyle disappeared in a splatter of bloodless gray flesh.
“Look out!” Boyd called.
Ray glanced upward. It was raining the goddamn things. Stalactites were falling from the ceiling like icicles knocked off a roof edge by a bored kid. And when they hit the ground they all turned into the gray little creatures whose only purpose in life seemed to be to bite.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Ray shouted, and they all began to run.
Ray took a glancing blow to his shoulder that scoured off a patch of flesh. Puckett took a direct hit to the head, but it didn’t seem to bother him any. One of the advantages, Ray thought, of being dead. Battle and Danny also took a couple of glancing blows, but their Kevlar armor protected them from any serious damage.
The gargoyles the stalactites turned into, however, were something else indeed.
Within moments there were two score of the things, nipping and biting at their heels. Nemo, trying to run, tripped and fell, and half a dozen of the things swarmed him. Ray dived in, kicking and punching at the little bastards as fast as he could. Fortunately, they broke easily. Unfortunately, they could bite like pit-bulls, and as Ray found out when one fastened onto his right calf, their slobber burned like acid.
“Shit!” He pulled Nemo to his feet. “You okay?”
The Monster was bitten about the left arm and right thigh, but he nodded. Ray turned to face more of their tiny assailants, snarling, and drew the Ingram machine pistol he had holstered at his hip. He let go a long burst that cut the little creatures down like a scythe through a wheat field. Danny joined them, her automatic shotgun sweeping a clear swath through them, and they put themselves back to back, with Nemo towering above them in the middle.
Ray risked a glance at Boyd. She — or he — had been remarkably untouched so far. He wondered if being the center of the mind shield was protecting her from the little bastards.
“Make for the other side of the chamber,” Ray shouted above the blasting, echoing roars of gunfire. He — or she — nodded, and started off. Battle and Puckett had also gone back to back, Battle beating off the waves of attacking gargoyles with bursts from his assault rifle, Puckett using his hands to mangle them, his acid to burn them.
It seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before they fought their way to the door at the end of the chamber and collapsed outside the room where the beasts were unwilling, or unable, to follow.
“All right!” Ray shouted. He was still jazzed from the fight and the adrenaline running through his system. He stopped and shook his fist at the group of slavering gargoyles crowded around the doorway, unable to pass through it. They immediately turned back to stone. “Ugly little bastards,” Ray sniffed.
Battle was breathing heavily. “Let’s tend our wounds,” he said, shrugging out of his pack and rummaging through it for his first-aid kit. He paused to snarl, “That fat freak bastard is going to pay for this.”
“Pay?” Danny said.
“Pay the ultimate price.” Battle glared at her, glared at everyone. “He’s dead, stinking meat, and he doesn’t even know it.”
“I thought we were supposed to capture him,” Danny said.
“And then do what with him?” Battle sneered. “Haul him off to jail? His fat carcass is too big for any cell. Plus he’s much too powerful to keep under lock and key. Look around yourself.” Battle gestured at the caverns. “How could we imprison a mind capable of doing all this?” He shook his head. “No. The freak has to die.”
As if to emphasize his point he rammed a fresh magazine into his assault rifle and stared at the team as if daring anyone to contradict him.
“All this ridiculous fighting isn’t as interesting as watching Bloat do things,” Travnicek said. “I’m damned near getting bored.” He was reclining on the fantastic winged-dragon couch that Bloat had provided for his bunker room.
Modular Man didn’t want to know. “Snotman is getting close,” he said.
“Snotman!” Travnicek sprang up from the couch, waved his arms, the cilia at the ends of his hands waving. The android was surprised by the vehemence of Travnicek’s reaction.
“He’s broken in at the Jersey Gate. He’s destroyed everything in his path, and I don’t think he can be stopped. Bloat’s too tired to do anything. Perhaps it’s time to leave.”
“Run from that little fuck? Never!” Agitated, Travnicek jumped up onto the ceiling and began pacing back and forth.
“Sir. I can’t stop him.”
“You know what that bastard did. He helped Typhoid Croyd try to assassinate me!”
‘But you didn’t die.” Modular Man spoke rapidly. “You evolved…” Carefully. “To this higher form.”
“No thanks to him,” Travnicek said. He seemed disinclined to follow Modular Man’s desperate logic and insincere flattery. He jabbed an arm at Modular Man, and the cilia writhed into a pointing-finger shape. “Dispose of Snotman. That’s an order.”
The android knew he was dead.
“How?” he said. “He’s immune to any form of attack I can launch.”
“Use your imagination.”
“I don’t have an imagina
tion.”
“Hah. You got that right, toaster.” Travnicek paused. “He eats energy, right? So don’t give him any.”
“How do I fight him without —”
Travnicek, still on the ceiling, leaned closer to the android. His voice was harsh. “Are you a shooter or a shootee, toaster? A winner or loser? That’s what you gotta decide.’ He waved a hand. “Now go do your job.”
Modular Man turned about and left through the hatch, and Travnicek dogged it shut behind him.
He tried to think about running away. His programming wouldn’t let the thoughts progress very far.
He flew out of the tower, then began heading toward the Jersey Gate.
He swung wide of the causeway for the present, and swept over the gate, moving quickly so that no one would get off a shot. The gatehouse was rubble, with armored vehicles roaring as they climbed over the pile of stone and brick. The two fighting vehicles captured by the jokers were smoldering wrecks. The smell of burning flesh mingled with the smell of hot metal and rose into the sky over the gate.
Shootees lay scattered under the rubble, sprawled in little clumps through Liberty Park and under the treads of the vehicles. Soldier shootees lay outside in the street.
Modular Man, floating high in the fog, soared along the causeway. The military, sensibly, had declined to follow Snotman up the long, narrow causeway, designed as a death trap for advancing troops. Still keeping high in the fog, Modular Man moved along until he came to the fifty-foot gap in the causeway that Bloat had created. Snotman, Detroit Steel, and Danny Shepherd were standing uncertainly at the end of it.
Go home, the android mentally urged. Go back and get a boat and let me think.
Instead Detroit Steel turned toward Snotman and began hitting him. Strong piston-powered punches, hammer blows, vicious uppercuts, all rained on Snotman’s unaffected body. The young man remained motionless, not reacting in any way, absorbing energy.
The android tried to think of what to do. Rush down, push Snotman into the water?
Useless. He wouldn’t be pushed: he’d just suck the energy off the shove and shoot it back at him.
Snotman gave a signal, and Detroit Steel stopped hitting. Snotman bent and, as effortlessly as if he were picking up an inflated punching bag, lifted Detroit Steel from the ground.
The android stared.
Snotman held Detroit Steel over his head as if the armored giant were a medicine ball.
And threw him.
Detroit Steel arrowed through the fog like the heaviest, clumsiest flying ace in history. He landed with a clang in the middle of the roadway ten feet beyond the gap.
Detroit Steel had been providing Snotman’s energy. The two were now apart.
Modular Man took instant advantage.
He dove on Detroit Steel, both weapons firing, before the giant could rise to his feet. A blizzard of sparks flew from Detroit Steel’s armor as bullets and the maser struck home. The android kept his attention on Snotman and calculated the ace’s response — when the timing seemed right Modular Man added lateral power and commenced evasive maneuvers. Bolts of energy sizzled close to him.
The android arced up into the fog, swept around to a new quarter, descended on Detroit Steel again. The giant had risen to one knee. Bullets flailed the roadway around him, precise bursts of microwave energy scorched the reflective armor. Snotman fired another blast, failed to hit his fast-moving target.
Snotman was powerful, but he was firing by eye, without any advanced targeting systems.
Shooter or shootee, the android thought.
He rose up, rolled, came again. His fire hammered Detroit Steel to the ground. Some part of the giant exploded in a burst of vaporized hydraulic fluid.
Snotman didn’t bother to fire; instead he trotted back a distance down the causeway, sprinted to the gap, and flung himself across.
His aim wasn’t as good this time: he dropped too fast and slammed into a bridge abutment beneath the broken causeway. He dug fingers into the stonework, the gray rock crumbling away under his energy-charged fingers, then began hauling himself up to the causeway.
Danny Shepherd was left behind, on the wrong side of the gap.
During that time the android continued a rain of fire on Detroit Steel. Danny tried a few shots with her rifle, but Modular Man easily evaded them.
When Snotman’s head appeared above the edge of the broken causeway, Modular Man rose into the air and disappeared.
He hadn’t hurt Snotman at all. Even trying to hurt him would be a bad idea.
The last time they had met, Modular Man fought him with the exact same tactics, ignoring Snotman as much as possible and concentrating his attack on Croyd. But at that time Mr. Gravemold had been available to fight Snotman, and with a power that was effective against Snotman’s ability to absorb and convert energy.
Somehow Modular Man was going to have to come up with an equivalent of Mr. Gravemold. He was going to have to stop Snotman nonviolently.
He pictured joker commandos rushing Snotman and smothering him in a pile of mattresses. The picture did not convince.
Smothering wasn’t a bad idea, though. Especially when you considered that the alternative was to become a shootee.
The Turtle came hurtling up out of the fog, and almost ran into the flying elephant.
The green steel curve of his shell broke the surface of Bloat’s pea soup like a submarine breaking surface, and Elephant Girl was careening down at him, gray ears flapping wildly. She loomed up like an oncoming bus in his forward screens, and Tom had to bank the shell hard to avoid the collision. Up on top, he heard Danny yelp, but the safety net held her securely in place. The elephant vanished into the fog below him.
The demons were hot on Radha’s tail.
There must have twenty of them. Tom didn’t have the time to count. A dozen armored mermen rode on giant carp, the tips of their swordfish lances red with blood. Other monstrosities out of Bosch flew with them: a toad with long clawed legs, a cat-demon, a thing half dinosaur and half unicorn, a naked featherless bird. They cried out to each other in high, thin, inhuman voices.
They’re not real, Tom told himself. They’re not human. It made all the difference.
He thought of a hand, reached out, grabbed the foremost merman, and squeezed. The creature seemed to implode. Scales, fish guts, and black ichor oozed between Tom’s imaginary fingers. Green fire flared, and suddenly the thing was gone, as if it had never been. He grabbed another.
Danny was firing. Torn heard the steady chatter of her M-16, saw the head of the cat-demon explode. But there were too damn many of the things, closing in from all sides now. Tom felt panic stirring in his guts.
Then Elephant Girl burst up out of the sea of fog, right among the demons.
A lance was embedded in her throat, and blood ran sluggishly from a dozen deep slashes in her thick gray skin. The wounds just seemed to make her mad. On her back, Corporal Danny blazed away freely with a side arm.
Radha crashed through the charging mermen. A toss of her head sent a tusk right through the featherless bird. Her charge unseated two fish-knights. As they fell, she lifted her trunk and trumpeted her rage.
The toad-man leapt off his carp onto the elephant’s head, but no sooner did he land than Radha had him with her trunk. She flung him down into the fog, and Tom heard his high, shrill scream for long seconds after he was lost to sight.
After that, he was too busy with his own demons to pay attention. They came to him from all sides, but inside his shell he was untouchable. He crushed them with his teke, knocked them off their fish, ripped them in half. It was the Swarm War all over again. Their lances shattered harmlessly against his armor; their necks snapped like twigs between his invisible fingers.
It was over in seconds. All of a sudden they were alone in the morning sky, the fog churning restlessly beneath them. He hovered, breathing hard. His hands were shaking. Elephant Girl circled the shell, huge ears flapping slowly. Corporal Danny was bent over,
holding her shoulder, but Tom couldn’t see a wound. He glanced at the overhead screen, at his own Danny.
Her face was drawn and tight, one hand grasping her shoulder. Blood trickled out between her fingers. She forced a pained smile. “Lanced by a fish,” she said. “How humiliating.”
“I’m taking you back,” Tom announced. “Tell Radha to follow us in.”
Danny nodded, biting her lip against the pain.
Elephant Girl came around, heading north.
“Leaving so soon?” a woman’s voice shouted down from above them. “The party’s just started.”
Startled, Tom pushed his chair around in a hard circle, scanning screens, looking for a new enemy.
She was directly overhead, blue and white against the sky, her cape rippling with the wind. Relief swept over him. He turned his speakers up, zoomed in. “MISTRAL,” he called out.
She smiled. “Guess again,” she called lightly.
The wind hit the shell like a giant’s fist.
Ray took a deep breath at the threshold of the next chamber and paused, more in annoyance than anything else. He was getting tired of this shit. He waited, listening, and from faintly inside the room he heard odd little noises, the tinkle of metal scraping across metal, like he had never heard before.
Fuck it, he thought, and went in.
He glanced at the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, but they seemed inclined to stay in place. He moved forward, using the columnar masses of stalagmites surging up from the floor as cover. Tongues of flame were dancing in a cleared area in the center of the room, casting shifting patterns of shadow upon the rock formations and the men sitting in a circle around the campfire.
The sounds of metal tinkling against metal came from their chain-mail armor and the clashing of their curved, scabbarded swords.
Why the hell, Ray thought, did Bloat arm his guards with medieval shit? These men should have real weapons.
And then one of them stood and turned toward Ray and the ace saw their faces for the first time, and he realized that they weren’t men.