Agent Shield and Spaceman

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 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?...

“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...

D stood a few feet outside her body, watching the way her black hair flopped over her face. She was still lying at the bottom of a sizeable crater created by Marcus’ indestructible force bubble. She knew the cold would kill her soon but waited patiently for Frankie and Marcus to stir. Even if she could speak in a way they could hear, her encouragements or pleading would do little. Frankie bundled her up close to his chest and walked out of the crater. He saw the still flapping parachute from the biggest cargo crate and began walking towards it. Good. To their right was Marcus, cradling his arm, as he fought to remain upright. She knew an incantation that would knit bones and sponge away his pain but would need her fingers and mouth to produce it. The strands of hair from the ul-mara goddess had been an enormous drain, and she was too exhausted to remain in the driver’s seat of her own body. Marcus would have to endure until she had recovered. Going ahead, she made sure the lump in...

Shield struck out with his hand, but the man coming out of the door ducked, sending his fist into a bulkhead. He was typically adept at rolling his punches to avoid contact with the occasional broken finger, but without his braces, he couldn’t avoid the sudden flare of pain. A cluster of force bubbles popped into being, falling to the deck with a sound like loose change. One bubble apparently manifested inside the intercom, causing a shower of sparks to spray everywhere. The pilot grunted, side-stepped Shield’s next punch, and then placed a well-aimed kick into his gut. Shield slammed into Frankie, sending both men toppling to the deck. While the Section Starfire agents worked to disentangle themselves, the pilot escaped out of view. “Get off of me!” Frankie hollered, pushing Shield away. Marcus rolled to his feet, looked over the edge of the balcony to find the pilot leveling a pistol at him. He jerked back, a bullet clipping the metal railing. The sound of the gun was deafe...

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...

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...

Marcus awoke bound to a chair in a cold room that shook violently around him. Looking around, he found Agent Two-eyes watching him with the enthusiasm of a man observing mushrooms emerge from a lawn. “They put us on a transport plane,” Frankie said, his voice indistinct in the cacophony. “A C-130 from the sound of it.” “You’re alive,” Marcus said. “You sound surprised.” “I’m not the one who voluntarily wrestled a pack of snakes.” “Ah, they were pussy cats,” Frankie said. “I wouldn’t be in this chair if she hadn’t knocked me out.” His eyes flicked to the side, signifying to Marcus where this agent of sabotage could be found. Marcus leaned forward as much as his restraints allowed, catching sight of Agent D slumped in her own chair to Frankie’s right. Her eyes were closed but moved fitfully beneath the lids. “What happened to her?” “Who knows? Maybe she exhausted herself putting a spell on me, maybe she’s hibernating. I don’t have much experience w...

The young man was born in Dymi, a small village on the northern coast of the Peloponnesus. The village had seen its share of history down through the millennia but the young man considered it a relatively uneventful, drowsy corner of the world. He was born into a fisherman’s family and expected to join the fleet by his sixteenth year. Secretly, he thought he might have enjoyed that fate. His name was Nikolas and what he formerly wanted is of little concern to this story. One warm June morning Nikolas walked from his house to the coast. He had vague plans to meet up with friends there but if they hadn’t woken yet he would take a swim and find something else to occupy his time. He encountered a pleasant lemony fragrance on the air and took a detour through a olive grove to see if the linden trees had bloomed. The fragrance, however, led him from orchard to a lonely tree clutching the edge of an eroded cliff. The Adriatic Sea thundered below and Nikolas sat down to watch it. He ...

Watching the snakes descend, Marcus decided the moment to leave had arrived. Whether Two-eyes survived or not was out of his hands, but the mission had to succeed. D could fill out the lost agent report, he was going to trace the snakes back to their source. Luther Van Krossen was standing some distance behind the bleachers and Shield approached him about previous night’s offer of a tour. Van Krossen jumped at the chance to avoid witnessing the slaughter. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said holding open an access door behind the barn. “Gunther gets entirely too much pleasure out of these little events.” “I’m surprised they happen at all,” offered Shield. “Even in Texas this kind of thing must raise a few eyebrows.” “Fewer than you think,” he said but didn’t elaborate. The Thulewaite Pharmecutical factory was apparently contained underground. Suggesting this was a little unusual, Luther explained that the heat demands for their process were rather extreme. Indeed...

Spaceman reclined in one of the leather chairs towards the back of the room, entertaining potential customers with tales of old Morocco. Attuned to the ebb and flow of such gatherings, Spaceman took immediate notice of each disturbance, no matter how small. In the brief between one conversation and the next, a man had appeared by the bookcase, dressed almost entirely in black with a deep blue shirt open at the neck. Spaceman noticed other party-goers went to elaborate lengths to avoid contact with him, walking around him and talking through him as though they couldn’t see him at all. Spaceman also noted this interloper was staring back at him. Asking a debutante about the stranger, the girl confessed not knowing much about him other than his name: Nickolas Necropolis. “He’s a business associate from Greece,” said a nearby rancher hand rolling a cigarette. “Kind of an ugly reputation in these parts.” “Ugly?” Spaceman smiled, “And yet still invited to all the best parties.” ...

Spaceman liked riding in cars. Not driving them, that required concentration. But to be able to sit back in the decadent embrace of soft leather, the pulse of acceleration launching him from one place to another, automobiles offered a sensation second only to junk. Speaking of which… He snuck a hand into the left breast pocket of his seersucker jacket to withdraw a blue lacquer snuff box. Once applied to each nostril, the china brown flattened his thoughts into a weightless, trembling membrane, and he spared no more consideration of the armed goons hunched to either side of him in the back of the Rolls Royce. He sat serene in the palm of God, sweet darkness lapping against his skin. From a certain perspective, Thulewaite’s decision to send armed escorts was a good sign. Gunther was more of a royalist than the typical Texan plutocrat; things that fell into his domain belonged to him and elicited his responsibility to guard his possessions. Spaceman fe...

The inside of the Spiny Toad was a poorly lit haze of beer signs, sweaty back-lit faces and pool cues held like ceremonial spears. Agent Shield wound his way through the locals, careful not to make waves. Melissa did not help him in this. She had done something in the car, thrown some kind of switch. The men in the tavern watched her pass with keen intensity. He followed at enough distance to make sure the interest was casual, not professional. Shield set up station at the far end of the bar. The bartender, a whiskered, half-bald man cowboy set down two trays of peanuts and waited expectantly. “What do you have on draft?” asked Shield. “Beer,” said the bartender and if he meant this as a joke, his face betrayed no sign. “The local beer then.” He nodded hesitantly, as though Shield had offered to repaint his house. “You won’t like it.” “Why, because it’s strong?” “No, because it tastes like piss. We have...

Frankie held up a folder of Melvin Lain and tried to believe in him.  Melvin was a new identity, not too storied, consisting of a folder only a few documents thick. There were suggestions on make-up and accent, sketches of personal past, and vast areas left to the ingenuity of the agent. Virgin territory. Well, Frankie thought to himself, Melvin is supposed to be wealthy so let’s go about making him look the part. He put a few tailored suits together on the bed and mixed around bow ties, cummerbunds, and cufflinks until he had something that looked so bland and dismal it had to have cost a million bucks. He’d be made the instant he put on anything that didn’t belong on him; Melvin was nouveau riche, a Detroit technocrat with ambitions of joining the jet set. He wasn’t going to “get it” yet. He made sure the suit almost fit him but the glasses he chose were unfashionably thick and didn’t match the shape of his face. He exfoliated his hands and applied liberal amounts of moistu...

“It will not doubt be a relief to you, Mr. Duncan, that your wife is nearly finished.” Agent LeHaze, now Mrs. Duncan, applied the last touch of mascara to her eyelashes and pulled back from the vanity. Marcus glanced over, aware they were running behind but determined not to show it. He had finally gotten word from D and they would need to rush to meet the rendez-vous. Tugging at the cummerbund, Shield grimaced. “Oodles.” LeHaze had been fidgeting with her makeup and dress all night in preparation for going out. Shield didn’t quite see what the big deal was. They were meeting Agent D at the Spiny Toad, a little roadhouse just inside the town limits. Agent D had flown into Dallas last night, she was liable to be exhausted. “The plan,” he said, to fill the room with a sound other than female agent’s pacing, “Is to meet her at the rendezvous point, establish mission parameters and follow first contact procedures. There should be no complications. This ...

The touchdown in Dallas went without incident. Equally unproblematic was the trip south by government vehicle to Waco. The town was uncharming, reminding Marcus of all the dusty locales he had tried to forget over the years, including his own benighted hometown in Upstate New York. Dull, self-satisfied types milling about in taverns and crisscrossing from the same dozen or so shops. People too ignorant to know what was being done in their name, too dumb to care. Marcus drove to a better part of the town and pulled into a long driveway. Their destination was hid by a stand of old birch trees; an impressively ornate red mansion, done in an American Gothic style with black trim and a battalion of statuary dotting the lawn. A valet assumed responsibility for their ride and luggage, while the three of them, Marcus, Frankie, LeHaze, headed into the interior of the Crimson Elephant Courtyard. The inside was no less imposing. Every square inch of wall was either covered...

Frankie leaned against the walls of the elevator, his heart rate returning to an even thrum. By the time the doors opened, he was back to copacetic, ready to face the world. Mullihan’s cavernous underground garage was filled with domestic sedans, in the standard browns, blues, and greys. His own vehicle stood in a distant corner, a spot purposely chosen as far from the entering and exiting traffic as possible. Frankie didn’t drive a sedan. He drove a red Shelby Cobra, with white exhaust pipes nestled low along its frame. He loved this car – considered it one of the truly great masterpieces of human creation. The Cobra could roar from 0 to 60 in the span of a few heart beats and take curves like it was on rails. Put it on a ramp and gun the engine, Frankie figured he had a better than even chance to beat Apollo to the moon. Even as his footsteps echoed back to him, his smile faded though. A figure stepped from behind a concrete pillar, and even though she wore a ...