Marc’s truck was right where he had left it, double-parked in a loading zone at the bottom of the short tower. The Accord wasn’t big on personally-owned vehicles, but there were always a few, so most buildings dedicated a couple of floors of the big towers to landing bays.
He had brought a simple panel truck tonight, painted on the outside with the name and phone number of a local plumbing service as a way to vanish into the scenery. Let the fools drive around in big, black limousines that screamed “I’m important. Somebody arrest me!”
He would settle for a quiet time in the shadows, building his power up until he could simply explode out and take what he wanted. Liamssen’s notes on what she had done to Dankworth would be invaluable for that.
What little extra did they think would give that man the edge he needed to take on Maximus?
The girls were carrying the rogue geneticist towards the back of the truck as he approached. Zorge had gone ahead and was sitting up front with the driver for the word to move.
Lights suddenly appeared at the near edge of the garage as an auto-taxi landed and deposited two figures on the balcony apron outside. Something about them just had Marc’s hackles up, so he crouched down, carefully setting Dankworth’s body behind a window-washing repulsor craft.
The two were Vanir, and the way the female walked just screamed cop as Marc watched. When she passed into the internal light from the darkness outside, Marc also saw the badge on her chest.
For a moment, his rage burned crimson at the thought he had been betrayed by someone in his organization, but he stopped himself cold. Cops looking for him would have surrounded the building with heavy teams and be storming the place right now, so maybe they had just gotten lucky tip and arrived too late to keep him from his prize?
“You there,” the woman cop yelled as she saw Maiair and Yooyar, carrying a body between them in unfortunate circumstances. “Stop and hands in the air. Police!”
One of the reasons Marc had chosen a Vanir as his final form, in addition to the amazing physical size, were the reflexes.
Warreth were gliders, with human-like upper arms that had been extended and flattened into wings that ran along past their hands. They were more like bats that way, and couldn’t truly fly, not like the Elohynn. But that latter race was a true hexapod, a body that could usually pass for human in dim light, plus wings like an angel, except they hinged down instead of up.
The two Vanir cops had guns out and pointed before either sister could even consider dropping their package. Zorge was up front, probably with the door closed. He would suddenly find a stunner in his ear, if he wasn’t paying attention.
And the cops were coming up at a bad angle for anyone in the cab to see them before it was too late.
Good thing Marc was sneakier than everyone else.
He pulled out his pistol and adjusted it to the highest settings. The beam attenuated with distance, and this would be a pretty long shot for a hand-held stunner. But he only needed to soften them up enough that they couldn’t evade follow-up shots.
“What’s going on here?” the woman cop yelled in an angry voice as she closed.
Her partner was a few steps back and to one side, concentrating on the rest of the garage and possible ambushes. Like Marc.
He decided to take the male first, trusting that he had enough cover to protect himself from the female cop. Yooyar would also be able to get involved if the cop stopped covering her.
Marc stayed perfectly still, aware that Vanir, like humans, had eyesight keyed to motion and color. He measured the shot in his head and watched the two cops come to rest, too far away for the sisters to attack them, but close enough to track everything happening with the truck.
The male risked a glance the other direction.
Marc exploded into motion, raising his pistol into view and triggering the shot almost before he had the barrel down, trusting that the gun itself needed a fraction of a second from the trigger pull to the primary coil energizing. About the same amount of time it took a bullet to exit a barrel under the high pressure of burning cordite.
The shot was a little high, but still tagged the male cop in the shoulder. Hopefully, it would be enough, because Marc was already tracking on the woman.
She was spinning in his direction, targeting on sound as her eyes searched for him.
Time slowed to molasses on a Nova Jersey winter day.
Marc fired.
She fired.
Marc felt the brush of her stunner, like the kiss of a tree branch whipping by, but most of it went into the vehicle in front of him. Still, his eyesight grayed out for a moment.
He fired a second shot blind. Memory said he had gotten her harder than she had gotten him, with that first shot, but he had never seen anyone with reflexes as good as his.
He needed an Empress like her, one of these days, but a modified human. Still, he had a pattern upon which to base that future wife, if he got out of this situation alive.
A third shot rang out as Marc’s vision cleared.
A fourth.
Silence.
Marc managed to make out the scene.
The cop was unconscious. Both cops.
Maiair had gotten her pistol out and taken both cops down by herself, once he had distracted them.
Marc made a note to pay better attention to the older Warreth sister. She was making herself look better and better as a potential second-in-command for the organization, just as her younger sister was turning into a dangerous gunsel.
Maybe he really did need a harem after all, as a way to bind them more fully to the throne he intended to create.
“Good job,” Marc said as he holstered his pistol and gathered up Dankworth’s body.
“What do we do with them?” Maiair asked, covering them with her pistol anyway.
“Bring them along,” Marc decided. “If they’re here, there’s a leak in the organization, and we need to plug it. I’ll find out what they know before we work on the other two.”
Marc deposited the Field Agent into the back of the van as Zorge emerged, eyes wide with surprise.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You missed all the fun, old man,” Yooyar’s sarcastic tones could have been used to paint a building.
“Constables?” Zorge inspected them as he helped Maiair lift the female. “How’d they find us?”
“That’s your job, Zorge,” Marc said coldly. “Find out who talked and have them brought to me for punishment.”
“Yes, sir,” the Nari spymaster nodded.
Marc pulled the unconscious male to the van and then lifted him inside, noting that the man was skinny, but still a solid block of mass. Older cop, wearing the insignia of a Senior Constable, what Marc would have called Detective Sergeant back home,
Nothing else was moving in the garage.
Before they lifted off, Marc pulled the pocketcomms from both cops and tossed them under a nearby car, aware of how easily they could be tracked, if someone was suspicious. The rest of their belongings went into a sack someone had grabbed: guns, badges, wallets, handcuffs.
Accord cops used cuffs that keyed on bio-signature, rather than the old-fashioned iron key. Marc assumed that a competent cop would put herself and her partner into the tiny, electronic brain, so using their own cuffs on them was a mere annoyance, rather than a useful tool.
Still, they would be out for a while. Long enough to get back to the warehouse he had been using as a base.
After that, he would have all the time in the world, and all sorts of interesting tools, to torture these four for all the information they had, like squeezing a sponge completely dry, before he discarded them onto the ashheap of history.