Voyage of the Sanguine Shadow 1: Shadow Galactic (3 page)

“Poverty
is the mother of crime.” –Marcus Aurelius

Streets crossed under the curving
highway now, and business parks appeared in ever-greater numbers.  The wide
road inclined as it straightened and cut through a mountain rise.  Gavin’s
truck easily climbed the final pass that led to their destination.

They began their descent, and Van Alder swept into
view before them.  It was an artfully crafted puzzle cube of soaring
structures, layered highways and airways.  Van Alder was famous for its colossal
spherical trees that soared high overhead, held aloft by numerous curved and
papery trunks, each a jagged skyscraper unto itself.  Street lamps cast gentle
illumination upon charcoal-smudged corners, upon seas of glass, steel, stone
and plastic.  Sky cars zipped by in diffuse lanes overhead, while commuter and
delivery shuttles lumbered toward airdocks nestled in the vaulted labyrinth.

Takeo whistled quietly.  “Wow.  I will never get
over just how big this place feels.”

Gavin mentally agreed.  “I wouldn’t mind living
here.”  He turned, and they both lurched forward.  “The hell?” growled Gavin,
as his Rhino halved its speed.  The engine regulator cheerfully engaged against
his will, and a bright orange traffic grid indicator lit up his dash near the
speedometer.  “When did they lock down ground traffic?”

“Not sure,” answered Takeo.  “Last month, I
think?  I remember reading somewhere that they were planning to lay the
groundwork for another Velocity Pass service, like they did on Terra.  This is
one of the many reasons I don’t drive.”

“I hate the Traffic Ministry.  I’ll never pay
fifteen credits a month for the ‘privilege’ of speeding.”

Takeo raised his brow.  “I have an idea.”  He twisted
around to glance at the bench behind him.  “Fogg, wake up.  We need your
skills.”

Fogg switched on and promptly hovered in place. 
He printed, “How can I help?”

“Can you disable the engine regulator?”

Gavin looked nervous.  “Can’t I get arrested for
that?”

Takeo shook his head.  “You won’t.  Trust me.”

“I’ll lose my scholarship if I go to jail,” Gavin
insisted.

“You’re not going to lose your scholarship.”

Fogg dispersed and flowed into the truck’s
dashboard vents.  A gentle haze formed around Gavin’s pickup.  As they drove at
sensible speeds alongside the rest of the traffic, Fogg got to work on the
vehicle’s computer systems.  A moment later, a series of cheerfully descending
notes chimed, and the traffic grid indicator light blinked off.

“Here we go,” Gavin exhaled.  Gripping the wheel
with renewed focus, he raced along the roads, bobbing and weaving through
traffic.  Takeo smiled as he swayed with the tight turns and sudden changes in
speed, the weightless moments when Gavin took the occasional hill just a bit
too fast.

“You really should try for your pilot’s license,”
he teased.

Gavin cast his friend a sidelong glance.  “I can’t
afford it.”

“But you can afford this truck you hardly ever
drive?”

“I’m driving it now,” Gavin countered, and he
jammed a hard left, pressing Takeo firmly against his door.  “Besides, even if
I got my license, I’ll never be able to afford anything that can fly.”

Takeo shrugged as soon as the turn was complete. 
Up ahead, Supernova Express came into view.  “You could always pick up some
extra work with my dad.  He pays well, once you’ve proven yourself.”

Gavin laughed.  “And spend my life getting shot at
by psychotic xenos?  No thanks.”

“If you switch your major to biochem, it could be
a lucrative move.”  He nodded toward Gavin.  “We could really use someone in
forensics.”

Gavin slowed down and parked against the curb in
the first open space he found, a few blocks away from the club.  Its thumping
music could be faintly heard as he let his truck idle, and he regarded Takeo. 
“Let it go, Takeo.  I’m probably not even going to graduate.  You and I both
know that.”  He switched off his truck, and the doors slid open.  “Let’s go
find Taryn.”

Fogg took the form of a mechanical pup and
scampered along as Gavin and Takeo made their way closer.

Up ahead, huddled near a payphone under a shadowy
overhang, two hooded fellows took note of them and moved quickly away, deeper
into the darkness of a shuttered restaurant.  “Such subtlety,” Takeo mocked,
and he rested his hand near the small of his back.  He whispered to Gavin,
“Whatever those guys have to say, don’t talk to them.”

“Why not?” Gavin asked, as one of the hooded men
stepped back into view, his hands in his pockets.

“Got a smoke?” asked the stranger, his companion
close behind him.  He glanced this way and that.  Other shadows loomed deeper
within the shuttered restaurant.

Gavin answered, “Not on me,” and he felt a sharp
jab to his arm as Takeo nudged him along.  “Sorry.  Good luck.”

“Slow down,” a deep voice rumbled, and a massive
creature of stone skin stomped into view from further down the walk.  The
others swept in behind Gavin and Takeo as they regarded the stone man.  “Really
could’ve used that smoke.  What else you got?”

“One or two things,” Takeo growled, and he pulled
Gavin stumbling to the wall.  In a flash, he produced a heavy revolver that had
been tucked into the back of his pants, and he leveled it fearlessly at the
stone man.  “You are all leaving, now!”

“I don’t think so,” snarled the stone man, and he
charged.

Takeo squeezed the trigger twice, and two shots
struck their mark, near where the heart would be on a human, but only a shower
of sparks rained down from the stone assailant’s chest.  Two more hooded
figures bolted from the deeper shadows, as the first two lunged.  Takeo gripped
and swung a hooded man around, sent him careening into the stone attacker.  A
blur of kicks and punches, and two more toppled with a crunch to the ground.

“Fogg, I could use some help!” urged Takeo, as the
mechanical pup playfully dodged the swirling melee.

Gavin threw all his might into a punch aimed at
the fourth hooded man.  It failed to connect, and he found himself cast to the
ground, his feet swept out from under him.  His head spun as his back struck
the concrete, knocking the wind out of him.

Several loud pops filled the night air, flashes of
light as bullets streaked through the darkness.  Gavin heard joints crack, saw
guns and knives hit the ground as he tried to regain his senses.  He rolled
away just in time for the stone man’s fist to crash down on where his chest had
been a moment earlier.  Another pop from Takeo’s gun resulted merely in a
waterfall of embers.

Grimacing, his lungs on fire, Gavin forced himself
to breathe in and struggled back to his feet.  He watched the stone man stomp
toward his friend.  Takeo dove behind a trash bin, but the attacker smashed it
flat with his massive fists, sending garbage in every direction.

Gavin opened his mouth to shout, but a raspy
squeak came out.  Clearing his throat, he finally bellowed, “
Maugal
!”

The stone attacker paused, and it pivoted to
regard him.

Glad for the reprieve, Takeo bolted to the space
behind an unhitched semi-truck and set to reloading his pistol.

“You’re a maugal, right?”  Gavin took in the
towering, pitted and cracked, blue stone skin of the thing that now lumbered
inexorably toward him.  The other four attackers writhed slowly on the ground,
moaning in pain.  To Gavin’s surprise, Takeo jumped protectively between Gavin
and the moving slab, his gun leveled.  Fogg trotted to his human’s feet and
promptly sat.

“I’m impressed,” spat the maugal.  “You even got
the pronunciation right.”

Gavin slipped past Takeo and pushed against the
attacker’s chin with his loosely balled fist.  “Hey, beautiful,” he grinned,
and he slowly shook his head as the monolithic thug focused on him.  His heart
pounded in his ears.  “I’ve never actually seen a living maugal.  Word on the
wire is the Union’s done with you.”

“Choose your next words carefully, bludder,”
seethed the glowering, blue cliff face.  “This doesn’t have to be painless.”  One
of the human attackers hunched up to his knees, leaned over on his hands, and
Takeo promptly kicked him out cold.  “Call off your guard dog.”

“He’s my friend,
ghyl’la sorna
(Old Maugal
slang meaning, “One who serves as a warning to others.”  Highly offensive).  Not
my guard dog.  Look, you’re an ancient, noble thing, and the wonders you’ve
seen would put any one of us humans to shame.  We’re beneath you.  Far beneath
you, but here you are, relying on human trash just to get by.”  Gavin held the
maugal’s baleful glare, though it demanded every scrap of courage he had to do
so. His voice cracked slightly as he whispered, “How disgraceful.”

It snarled, “Now it’s personal!”  And it drew back
an earthen fist.

“You’ve killed me,” announced Gavin.  “I’m dead on
the ground.”

“
You’re about to be
!” it roared.

He shook his head.  “No, maugal, I’m dead!  We
both are.  Takeo and I are two red stains on the drive.  Dead as dead.”

One of the hooded thugs weakly gripped his gun,
and trembling, pointed it at Gavin, but the maugal backhanded the battered
assailant into a nearby parcel truck hard enough to dent its side.  “I can
handle these two pieces of worthless bludder drek without your help!”

“And you have,” said Gavin, his tone almost
soothing.  “Now what happens?”

“I kill you!”

He shook his head.  “We’ve established that.  Now
what?”

“I… kill.  I…”

“Right, we’re dead.  What a mess!”  Gavin held his
opponent’s stone gaze.  He leaned in and asked, “Now what?”

“I… take your things.”

“Wrong.  Ever heard of Hohiro Sato?  Probably not,
so I’ll tell you.  He works for the Yubitsume’s
oyabun
.  Pretty
important guy.”  He glanced toward Takeo.  “That’s his dad.  There’s a gene key
linked to his gun that sent out a distress signal the instant he squeezed off
that first round.  A Yakuza fire team is already en route.”  He straightened. 
“Sure, you might start sifting through whatever’s left of us, but it’s hard to
find anything that’s even intact when one of us humans gets struck by a ton of
stone.  Simple physics.  And then you’ll have his blood all over you, and trust
me, they will not stop looking for you until you’ve been broken.  You’re an old
stone, maugal.  Probably fresh off a prison rock, am I right?”

It regarded Gavin as if it had just suddenly become
aware of his existence, and its shoulders avalanched down to slump.  “But…”

He rested his hand on the maugal’s neck.  “Go to
ground.  Keep low and hop on a shuttle to someplace deep in the dark, maybe one
of the new colonies.”  He regarded the remaining thugs as they stirred.  “Leave
them.  You’re better than that, better than them.  Plus, I think you killed
one.”  Gavin nodded toward the limp heap at the base of the dented parcel
truck.

“Right,” growled the monolith.

“Go,” urged Gavin.  “I saved your life, and you
spared me mine.  That’s square in my book.”

The maugal straightened and smiled steeply with a
flicker of dignity.  It stomped back toward the shadows.  “Thanks.”  It paused
and turned around.  “I won’t see you again, bludder,” it added before vanishing
from sight.

Gavin exhaled, relieved, and he glanced to his stunned
companion.

Takeo stared at him with wide eyes, his mouth
slightly open.  “How…?”

“I’ll explain after we’re back on the road.”  He
nodded toward the looming stone edifice of Supernova Express before turning
sharp eyes to his friend.  “Wait.  When the hell did you start carrying a gun?”

Takeo regarded the three surviving attackers. 
“I’ve always carried a gun.  You just never noticed.”

“Are you serious?” 

His friend nodded.  “Since I was sixteen.  My
father insisted on it.  I’m going to ask these guys a few questions before the
police arrive.”  One by one, Takeo dragged the assailants to the curb and
retrieved a bundle of zip ties from Gavin’s toolbox.  After he had bound their
hands behind their backs and their feet at the ankles, he returned to Gavin’s
side.  Fogg took the form of a parking meter crowned by a rotating blue and red
lamp.  “Go get her.”

Bright light flashed from the east as the sun
crested the horizon, and it lit up Afskya’s indigo sky.

Gavin nodded and clapped Takeo’s arm.  “We’ll be
right back.”  He turned and hurried along the sidewalk, closing quickly on the
club.

He slowed as he approached the front doors, where
a bulky, horned male rhidorm served as bouncer.  Around the corner of the
building near a pair of trash bins, Gavin noticed a huddle of people keeping
out of sight.  His eyes flitted over the shadowed group.  A very tall woman
whispered, “It’s not an exact science, Captain.  He’ll be here… eventually. 
Trust me.”  Her eyes tracked directly to him, and she held his gaze.

Gavin looked uneasily away, but he felt her eyes
fixed upon him.  “Hey, Chris,” he said to the cornuted rhidorm bouncer, and he
nodded.  He rushed the last few steps to the entrance.

“Hey, Gavin,” rumbled the bouncer, and he pulled
the door open.  Thumping dance anthems roared out into the night.  “That your
friend shooting off fireworks in the alley?”

He chuckled in response and nodded.  “Something
like that.”

Chris’s thick, gray skin wrinkled deeply as he
winked.  “Go on in.”

Gavin stepped through, and the door closed behind
him.  A young woman with matted blonde dreadlocks waved him past the ticket
booth, and he muttered his thanks.  He scanned the foyer for Taryn.

He hardly had time to seek before she stumbled
into him.  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she breathed.  “The guy I came here with
was a total creeper.  He was literally all over me.”  She paused.  “OK, not
literally, but you get the idea.”