Ultrahuman 01 - Ugly (11 page)

‘Slaves!’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Twilight hissed. ‘You think every girl in a brothel is there by choice? They bring them in from Europe, Asia. Lot of Soviet Bloc citizens want to get out and once they’re here the Tonaldos can do pretty much whatever they want with them. You really are new at this.’

‘Well… yes.’

‘But you’ve heard of DeWitt?’

‘I… came across them. John Tonaldo’s on their board. What are you planning?’

The offer of help was implicit. Twilight looked around at the bimbo in the swimsuit. ‘I work alone.’

Penny frowned at her. ‘There’s a lot of men down there. I bet they’re armed. I’m strong, I fly, I’m bulletproof…’

‘I saw, that was a thirty-eight, a Chief’s Special. They’ve got MAC-Tens, fully automatic.’

‘And you’ve got a sword.’

Penny could tell she had made a point because Twilight changed the subject. ‘I don’t
know
there’s anything wrong with that shipment.’

‘Except it’s kind of late for moving boxes.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, you’re sneaky and I’m bulletproof. I’ll create a distraction, you find out what’s in the boxes.’

‘You’re certainly distracting. Did you pick that costume to make sure you’d stand out? It just about glows.’

‘I didn’t design it. I’d probably have gone for something more subtle. Maybe, I don’t know, a PVC catsuit?’

Twilight grunted a response. ‘Okay, go distract them… Uh, what do I call you?’

‘Cygnus.’

‘Right. I’m Twilight.’

Penny lifted off from the roof, pushing back from the edge. ‘I know. See you later.’

She swept back, circling around the building and then back in from the side. She had seen around ten men from the rooftop. There could have been more, but not many. None of them had had visible weapons, but she was going to take Twilight’s word on them having some. If they were just unloading machine parts, then surely they were not going to need guns. That had to indicate something was going on.

Dropping to the tarmac beside one of the trucks, she put on her best smile and walked around into full view. ‘Hey guys. Hope you’re getting paid overtime for this. I mean, it’s after midnight and…’

The response tended to indicate the men were up to no good. ‘Freak! Get her!’ was followed almost immediately by weapons being pulled from under coats. Penny lifted quickly into the air, twisting around in one of the moves Bobby had shown her, her boot swinging around to hit one of the soon-to-be gunmen. She clocked him in the side of the head, and he went down like a sack of bricks.

‘You
sure
you want to do that?’ Penny yelled. It came out as a bit of a roar, actually. She almost impressed herself.

Apparently she did not impress the criminals; they opened fire. She was going to have to work on that. Right now she was more concerned with dodging. There was a real need for dodging. Not that it was working as well as she might have hoped. She felt bullets hitting home as she wheeled in the sky, but the firing was wild as they tried to follow her flying in loops above the loading dock. None of them were paying attention to the crates. Penny spotted Twilight with a crowbar beside one of them, though how the girl had got down from the roof that fast was beyond her. Some sort of super ninja acrobatic trick maybe.

It took all of three seconds before the firing stopped. Penny had no clue why until she wheeled around and saw ten men changing the magazines on their guns. They had been firing a lot of ammo, very fast. She banked, swung down, and ploughed through the crowd. There were three of them in the way and she barely felt the impacts, but when she turned around again two of them were down and the third was reeling on his feet.

The firing started again, along with cries of pain and the sudden cutting off of streams of bullets. Penny twisted in the air to see that Twilight had joined the fray. She was swinging a pair of what Penny took to be expanding batons, and using them with an expert precision and speed which Penny found amazing. She had taken down three of the goons before the others even noticed there were two Ultras for them to deal with, and by then they had exhausted their ammunition supply. Three of the remaining four dropped their guns, two pulling knives, and went for Twilight.

The last was struggling to get a new mag in his Ingram. Penny swooped down, grabbed him under the arms, and hefted him into the nearest packing crate. There was a loud crash and the sound of metal skittering across tarmac. Penny turned…

And there was Twilight standing over the fallen men, pressing the ends of her batons against a crate to close them.

‘Oh,’ Penny said. ‘You hardly left me any.’

‘Six to four, it’s not a bad split.’

‘Huh.’ Penny glanced at the broken crate. ‘They’re shipping rifles?!’ There were several of them scattered around, and Penny had no idea what they were.

‘Caseless ammunition rifles,’ Twilight told her. ‘They’re a WTC design. Austrian, I think. Electronic ignition, high impact, high accuracy. Those aren’t what bothers me.’

‘Then…?’

Twilight waved for her to follow and led her to the crate she had opened. Penny looked in to see several tubular launchers and matching rocket grenades.

‘These are Soviet. Armour-piercing explosive rounds,’ Twilight said. ‘The Tonaldos don’t deal weapons domestically, so they wanted these for themselves.’

‘What would they want with grenade launchers? No, wait… I was told that some group from the south side was trying to move in on their territory.’

Twilight nodded. ‘For a rookie you’re well informed. I’d heard the same thing. Looks like David Tonaldo’s taking it seriously.’

‘Yeah,’ Penny agreed, frowning, ‘seriously enough to go to war.’

‘He’s not a very nice person. Ruthless, manipulative… Look, the cops are on their way. You can have the collar. I’ve got things to do.’

Penny looked around at the fallen bodies. ‘Why not share it? We make a good team.’

‘I work alone,’ Twilight stated flatly.

Penny turned around to argue, but Twilight was nowhere to be seen.

13
^th
September.

‘John Tonaldo?’ Red looked at Penny with narrowed eyes. ‘What do you want with that creep?’

‘Well, nothing,’ Penny replied. ‘He’s just come up in a couple of conversations recently.’

‘He’s on the board of a company our employer is doing the books for,’ June said. ‘If it’s dirty…’

‘Well,’ Red said, looking reluctant to continue. She sighed. ‘If it was David it could go either way, but John… Whatever this company is, it’s a cover for something.’

‘Yeah, well they were smuggling weapons into Deale Harbour on Wednesday morning,’ Penny said. ‘Me and a girl called Twilight stopped them. Well, mostly she stopped them and I distracted them, but… Well, they were stopped.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Guns, rocket launchers…’

Red frowned. ‘That’s… not good. Twilight… Not sure I’ve heard the name.’

‘She didn’t exactly seem like the type to come to a club,’ Penny replied. ‘Then again, I’m not
really
the type to come out to a club…’

~~~

Andrea spotted Cygnus sitting at the bar as soon as she walked into the room. For a fraction of a second she thought about turning around and leaving, but that would mean having to come up with an excuse Zoe would believe. ‘I left the gas on,’ was probably not going to cut it. Besides, Cygnus had never seen her face. How was she going to match up the girl in the off-the-shoulder top and the tight jeans with the mop of black hair to the PVC-clad ninja she had met a few days ago?

No. Play it cool, don’t worry. Just a girl out with her friend on a Friday night. She followed Zoe toward the bar to get drinks.

The blonde super-bimbo was sitting with Red and another girl who nature had endowed with breasts to make up for the lack of brains. That was unfair. The rookie was naive and stacked, but she had seemed like she was bright enough. There was enough light behind the brunette’s eyes to suggest she was not that stupid. Andrea decided she was probably just feeling inadequate.

Also slightly less secure. Red looked her way and nodded as she stood behind Zoe waiting for the drinks. Red knew the truth about her. Not exactly who she was, but she knew there was something about her and they had had ‘the talk’ the first time Andrea had come here. The hostess had not asked many questions, just enough to decide Andrea was not going to be a problem. There had been a slight undercurrent of something else as well, but Andrea did not swing that way. From the looks of it, Cygnus’ friend, the brunette, did.

‘You know her?’ Zoe whispered. ‘The Red Huntress?’

‘We talked once.’

‘Oh wow. She’s amazing. Did you ever see that calendar she did? It must be really great talking to an Ultra just… casual like.’

‘Yeah, oh it is… Really special.’

‘I don’t think I’d be able to. I’d go all blabber-mouthed and make a fool of myself.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Sometimes having a secret identity could be hilarious.

~~~

Penny noticed the girl with the black hair nodding toward Red. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar. Very vaguely. Nothing she could put a finger on. Penny figured she was around five-nine; the heels on the white slouch boots were not especially high. The tight jeans and off-the-shoulder, midriff-baring, lacy top showed off a trim, tightly muscled body with long, slim legs. Not that much of a chest, but what was there was firm even without a bra. Her skin was tanned or naturally dusky. The face tended to the triangular; hollowed cheeks and a fairly narrow chin did the most for that impression. Dark brown eyes, a tangled mop of black hair… Maybe ‘tousled’ was a better description. The girl had a wide mouth which made her lips look narrower, but they were quite full. Her nose was fairly long and quite narrow.

No, not ringing bells. ‘You know the brunette?’ Penny asked Red.

‘We talked,’ Red replied, which meant she was an Ultra of some sort. ‘I’d have liked to know her a lot better, but I don’t go where I’m not wanted. Besides, if I’d hooked up with her I might not have met June.’

‘Not been in town long then?’

‘Couldn’t say, but she first came here… about a month before you did. Uh… Andrea. Yeah, that was the name.’

‘She
is
cute,’ June put in. ‘Kind of serious though, for a Friday night.’

Andrea did look as though she had no real plans to have a good time. Her friend looked like she would make up for both of them, and the whispered conversation suggested they were talking about the little group at the end of the bar.

‘Don’t know the blonde,’ Red said, ‘but she’s a civilian.’

Penny turned away. ‘So it looks like the Tonaldos are setting up a war chest. This gang from the south must be pressing pretty hard.’

Red frowned and then sighed. ‘I’ve still got some contacts I can ask. I’ll see if I can dig anything up. This is
not
what we suggested you get involved with this soon.’

‘I know, but it kind of fell…’

‘Fell into your lap, yeah. Stick to keeping a lid on things. The Tonaldos are, mostly, a known quantity. No Ultras in their ranks, they don’t like them. This other bunch… Well, they’re an unknown quantity.’

Penny nodded. ‘Thanks for digging for me. I feel like I should go looking for this Twilight. Something about her… I don’t know, but it sort of felt fortuitous that we met. If I find her again, I don’t want to go empty-handed.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. You want to stay here tonight? June is and there’s still the spare room…’

Penny gave her a grin. ‘Thanks. I brought my costume. I thought I’d spend the day overflying the city. I can get a feel for it in daylight and then I’ll be less likely to get lost at night.’

Red gave June a look. ‘She’s not just a pretty face, is she?’

‘No, she’s not,’ June replied, and there was just a hint of something other than pride in her voice which Penny could not quite figure out.

~~~

Penny felt a back against hers and turned to apologise. She had been backing up; her fault. She found herself looking slightly downward into a pair of dark brown eyes.

‘Sorry,’ she said, smiling, ‘my bad. You’re Andrea, right?’

Andrea raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s right… Oh, Red Huntress remembered my name?’

Penny nodded. ‘I guess I should introduce myself as Cygnus.’

‘You guess?’

‘It’s kind of new. Not used to it yet. Are you, uh, active?’

Andrea made a show of checking around them, though she was actually pretty sure that Zoe, the only person she did
not
want hearing the conversation, was in the back. Then she shook her head. There was no point in denying she was an Ultra, not when Cygnus obviously knew, but she could lie about the rest. ‘I don’t have…’ She lifted her hand, wiggling her fingers. ‘Not the kind that’s useful anyway. I know I show up on the Huntress’ radar, or whatever she has, but I’m not that kind of Ultra.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Unless I’m a late bloomer or something.’

Penny grinned. ‘I was.’ There were generally two ways you could end up exhibiting powers and Penny was of the opinion that she fell into the second. Some people manifested at puberty and as people started
wanting
powers, more people were doing that. A few even started before then, but only a very few. The X-class Ultras: mutants. The other way was some sort of trauma, which tended to produce powers related to the thing that caused them. Accidentals: A-class like Penny. Penny figured a degree of invulnerability after being hit by a space rock sounded right. Of course the shape-changing did not really fit into that concept, but… Well, every theory had its flaws.

‘I don’t think so’ Andrea replied. ‘I think I’m going to be just a little bit Ultra all my life. Can’t say it bothers me.’

‘Well, nice meeting you.’ Penny turned, starting for the back of the club where the restrooms where.

‘Yeah,’ Andrea said, ‘nice meeting you too.’

14
^th
September.

With the club closing and everyone who remained starting to filter out, Andrea spotted Red and Cygnus, and the brunette, still chatting at the bar. She knew the proprietor lived above her shop, so to speak, and it looked like all three would be staying the night. Not that she was going to judge. She was of the firm opinion that what you got up to in your off time was no one’s concern but your own, unless it hurt someone else, but she had not taken Cygnus for the type.