Agent Shield and Spaceman

She saw all and knew more. The place of knowledge looked exactly like the waking world in its details, its strangeness revealed only by implication. Looking down at her own body she knew she was dead. And yet the possibilities of her life were not entirely spent. She knew this too. Part of her wanted to simply slip back into her body and let the Charm of Utanghk do its work but she wasn’t ready to do that. D pulled away from her body and the sub. In the ghostly second sight of the place of knowledge she perceived the submarine had already moved some distance from the dying Delta Omega Base. She watched the sub pass beneath the dark vaults of ice and turned her attention to colossal structure shuddering above. Standing in front of it in the waking world, the station was simply a structure, impressive but also sterile. From within the place of knowledge she gained an appreciation for the effort that had gone into its creation. To see it brought low was an occasion not for celebration b...

It was immediately apparent they were traveling downwards, not up. Marcus wondered aloud what sort of transportation they were going to find at the bottom of the station. “A submarine,” Simplex answered matter-of-factually. “A submarine encased in ice?” “No,” Hugo said. “Open water.” “This whole station floats?” “Of course! That is what it is designed to do. No section of ice, however deep, could be guaranteed to support a structure this massive. What would happen if a freak warming spell intruded into the deep Antarctic? The builders of this place designed it to melt a hole through the ice into the cavern and float there like a rubber duck in a bathtub. This underside is a convenient place to store submarines, no?” “Very convenient,” D said sunnily. “Ah, we are coming to the first challenge of our escape from the Delta Omega.” Ahead of them, the corridor was blocked off by a set of heavy steel doors. Each door had a small round window mounted about eye level. Steam and condensation bl...

The force bubble was a nearly perfect one way reflector of energy; under ideal circumstances, the sphere should be able reflect a thermo-nuclear explosion. This was not an ideal circumstance; the closed hallways reflected the energy back on the bubble. This quickly raised the surface of the sphere past the melting point of steel. None of this heat reached the Starfire agents but it was enough to cause the floor to sag and buckle noticeably. All the while the eye was fixed on Shield, its pupil squeezed into a nearly imperceptible singularity of wrath directed at them. Shield knew that if he let the bubble down for a second all three of them would be incinerated in an instant, but the pain clawed more and more of his attention away. He could feel the tendons pulling from his muscles from the exertion. He felt something on his upper lip and wasn’t surprised to discover he had developed a nose bleed. Still he pressed on. He resisted. He endured. As the monster slowly pressed down on him wi...

Spaceman found it very easy to leave the station. His coterie of friends kept growing with each attempt at intervention until a kind of critical mass arrived. Whether or not he was a prisoner, or a Section Starfire agent, or a notorious addict became immaterial. Spaceman lead, and those looking to follow did so. Heading up from the bowels of the engineering deck, they passed by the cryptozoological section. It occurred to Spaceman that his escape would be that much easier if the personnel in the station had something distracting them. A command to Mr. Doubtful cut off the emergency power to the pens, cages, and corrals keeping the cryptids at bay. He figured the result would be a few sasquatch and sea serpents making a break for it. He hoped there were enough penguins in Antarctica to feed a new population of Big Feet. Big Foots? Spaceman chuckled to himself, bummed a cigarette from another engineer and directed his followers upwards. By the time they reached the main exit, the station...

The trio of agents quickly discerned that they were not be leaving the way they had come in. The Cryptozoologicals had turned the outer rim of the station into a slaughter house. Armed soldiers carrying rifles, machine guns, and the occasional heavy ordinance prowled the intersections. Whether AC or Red Brigade, no one seemed to be much in the mood for asking questions. Shooting was the order of the day. The agents snuck down the ring corridor for nearly an hour, but found no way outwards not blocked by paramilitaries or worse. D announced she would cast a ritual to find a way forward. Frankie and Shield lurked close by, hoping to get a warning shot off at least, if something discovered them. D withdrew from her bag a number of brass beads, a length of twined leather cord and copious amounts of red and ochre sand which she heaped in intricate kabbalistic patterns on the deck. She spoke in an indistinct voice, occasionally repeating the same word, mukthir. Pronouncing this word seemed t...

“So, let me get this straight,” said the technician, wiping a grubby, oil-stained sleeve across her brow. “You want us to let you into the control room. You want us to activate the over-pressure release command, while simultaneously shutting main valves B, C and E. Then, and this is the part that I really want to be clear about, you’re ordering us to stand back while the reactor overheats, melts down and carries the station down with it. Have I understood what you’re saying completely?” “Crazy orders, huh?” Col. Chapmann said, winningly. “There’s crazy and then there’s just plain insane. Who wants this done?” “The Command Director of the Anti-Cerebrists.” “He wouldn’t be able to get this past the executive committee. Who else?” “Sanislov Jarowski, Manuut Noruto, and Kethlen Von Delt.” “You’re just rattling off names.” “They’re the right names.” A voice came from further in the rattling clamor of the engine room. “Karla, does he have a work order?...

The three Section Starfire agents crossed another intersection and paused to get their bearings. Emerging from the tunnel they had been greeted by a thunderous alarm echoing through the corridors. There was another helpful map unhelpfully written in Cyrillic. Frankie knew a little Russian from his days in the CIA but couldn’t make much headway against imponderables such as “Section for the Dissemination of Critical Anti-revisionist Expulsion Media Center.” “That’s right up here,” D suggested, pointing at an obscure corner of the map. Shield, to Frankie: “Nothing that says ‘snake house,’ or ‘place where we keep dangerous reptiles’ or ‘Section Starfire Agents, please blow this lab up?’” “Well, there’s this group of labs right here that’s interesting. Not too far away.” “Yes?” “They have it labeled with jargon I’m not familiar with, ‘hidden-beast-study and relict-population-house. Russians usually save obscure words for things they want to keep extra mysterious.” ...

“Where are you taking me?” Spaceman asked his two escorts. One of the human robots, the one to his right, briefly glanced at him, the other blindly trudged forward. The Section Starfire agent wanted to believe the former, who he thought of as Mr. Doubtful, had retained some degree of his humanity. “Is this the way to my quarters?” Again Mr. Doubtful glanced over, a puzzled expression passing through his blue eyes like a passing cloud. “You are not permitted to talk,” the other one said, who Spaceman thought of as Mr. Glower. “Who said?” Mr. Glower stopped and went over to Mr. Doubtful. They touched heads briefly and then, without comment, resumed their trek down the endless corridors. Mr. Doubtful still looked perplexed, like he was trying to figure out whether he’d left his car lights on. They were passing through some underused section of the station, where fewer people appeared and those visible all wore venom rigs. If he was going to make his move...

In gloom of early morning, the base appeared as a long sloping wall, embedded in the ice. Frankie had suggested abandoning the snow tank several rises back to make a more stealthy approach to the headquarters of the AC’s. There were three layers of security between them and the outside of the station but none of them looked overly formidable. The big problem was there didn’t seem any obvious gate for them to enter. At least none left unguarded by any less than a platoon of AC henchman. “I’m surprised they brought this much security out here,” Frankie whispered. “Got to keep out the penguins,” Shield replied. D gestured for the binoculars. Adjusting the focusing wheel, she got a good view of the buildings surrounding the structure. “That shack off to the left, did either of you find it peculiar?” “Seems far from the airstrip and not tall enough for a guard tower.” Frankie pointed out a few low dome-like structures just beyond the anomalous shack. “Those are muni...

Spaceman entered the final double doors having a pretty good idea what he’d find. He was completely wrong. The room was smaller for one thing. A man like Necropolis, who had impressed Spaceman with the grandeur and indefatigable determination of his ideas, seemed the type to go for a palatial pent-house. Not so. The room was large, but not impressively. It was also unusually stark, the burnished steel walls of the rest of the station left unadorned. A single desk occupied the far wall, noticeably turned away from the small port-hole like window on the opposite side of the room. Aside from a few books, the only other object of note was a small wooden chest. And, of course, Necropolis. The change he had noticed on the tarmac had reached some kind of apotheosis within his quarters. He had become a shriveled prune, his skin stretched tight across his nearly bald scalp, puckered into myriad wrinkles and folds around his mouth. His body had collapsed into itself, nearly l...

After a few hours, the guards came back. They found Spaceman huddled in one corner of the room, shaking violently. Oblivious to his sickness, they hauled him to his feet and marched him out the door. Even if he had wanted to ask them questions, their venom rigs suggested the answers wouldn’t be terribly illuminating. He bided his time, keeping his mind open and free of judgement. In dealing with people, Spaceman preferred two general strategies. The first was talking, and the other was listening. Talking was for emergencies, listening was for everything else. Most people Spaceman knew thought of listening as a passive act, a reception of information. It was not. An aggressive listener could often accomplish much with little more than an open and accepting demeanor. You just had to find the right moment to listen and the right moment to ask a question. The elevator he and the guards used was impressive. The walls were done in brushed steel, with neon mounted in glass panels th...

Spaceman followed as Necropolis stalked over to Simplex. “What is the meaning of bringing that women here?” he asked. Simplex followed Necropolis’ gesture and shrugged. “She was a part of the plan. It seemed reasonable to have her on hand as we approach its fruition.” “And you were aware of her involvement in the American Intelligence service?” “Of course,” Simplex seemed genuinely baffled by Necropolis’ questions. “That’s the point of a double-agent, don’t you think?” “Exactly,” Necropolis said, turning to Suliman. His eyes had taken on a different, more appraising cast. “Now that we have that obvious point established, let’s revisit your own identity.” “Rasheed Suliman,” Spaceman said. “Importer/exporter of-“ “That’s not who you are,” Necropolis shook his head as though embarrassed for Spaceman. “If you were, in fact, Rasheed Suliman, you would currently be lying in a shallow grave outside of Waco, Texas.” “Ah,” Spaceman said, suddenly feeling ...

The form of the Delta Omega base came before its function. The shape, the massive disk lying on the flat uninterrupted plane, appealed immensely to its architect Igori Splendov. How had this come to be? Igori was unable to answer. He saw limitless possibilities in the disk, the power of the curving walls. There were the several appealing and beautiful mathematical concepts embodied in its form. Why its very circumference contained his favorite number, pi. In contrast to the United States with its polygonal military hive, the USSR would have the more human, the more enlightened, wheel. There was something rational, welcoming, and universal about this shape. He would explain this to anyone who’d listen. He saw a modular living space to open up the wastes of Siberia. He saw smaller disks submerged beneath the arctic ice, silently monitoring enemy submarines. Disks could be brought to the moon, transported to the Mare Traquillitatis one wedge at a time. No matter how cold the environm...

Spaceman had just finished another martini when the pilot announced the plane had reached its destination. Looking out the window, he didn’t see anything suggesting a destination. What he saw, what he had been seeing for hours, was the icy wastes of Antarctica. Necropolis looked bored as the plane banked for its descent. Only then did Spaceman catch sight of where they were going. “The Delta Omega base,” said Necropolis. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Shaped like a gigantic hockey puck, the Delta Omega base was roughly the same size as the Pentagon. Instead of rings of office buildings, the Delta Omega base consisted of a single immense dome. Equipment sheds and guard emplacements surrounded it, all dwarfed by the scale of the base. Some distance beyond lay the airstrip, in reality little more than a patch of level ice. Landing could be interesting. “How could you have built this thing?” “Oh, building is not so difficult,” said Necropolis. “Designing: that was the chal...