SHADOW
Atalanta approached Nueva York from the wilds of Brooklyn, where families of pickers sorted through the garbage dumps, and roared over Harlem, where sampans bobbed in the wash over piles of bricks left over from long-collapsed tenements. She banked and swung about to give a wide berth to the Citadel, a walled castle of Wall Street towers that thrust from the sea six kilometers from Central Manhattan—the North American headquarters of the High Companies, where Progeny had spent his last days of captivity before his death on Earth.
“Freetrader Atalanta,” Loris announced, “on Galilean Security business.” The Citadel would be watching Atalanta carefully, but Karil and Loris would be leaving her at the spaceport while they entered the city.
“Cleared for landing, Atalanta,” the Tower responded. “You are cleared by Nueva York Port Security.”
The ship settled to ground in the open field still called the Sheep Meadow. Karil and Loris armed themselves, always a good idea in Nueva York, and inserted the earbuds that would keep them in constant contact with Atty. They swung out of the hatch, which sealed shut behind them, and walked down the avenue, past the Lennonite Monument, into the city. The buildings towered over them, hung with rope-bridges and sunshades, shadowing the tents and hovels in the dark canyons below. It seemed liked hundreds of voices in dozens of languages echoed in the streets, as bicycles and rickshaws squeezed through the milling crowds. The Spaceport Headquarters of NYSD was close to the southern edge of what had once been parkland. They entered the building, which said NYPD on the outside. They were scanned and they checked their weapons. In a moment they were sitting before Captain Garcia.
“So, what does Galilean Security want in Nueva York?” he asked.
“We’re looking for someone called Shadow,” Loris said.
Captain Garcia laughed. “Who isn’t? I don’t suppose you can give me an idea what you want with her.”
“Sorry, Captain. Security business.”
“All right. I had no idea she was involved in interplanetary crime. You two were part of the Progeny business, I believe.”
“I can’t confirm that.”
“Of course not. Let me explain our situation here. First, there is what your Progeny Brown called the Fantasy Class, in the form of the High Companies on orbit and in the Citadel and in some of the classier buildings here and there. They have the Quasi-Police to protect them, and we have to do pretty much what they say. Then we have the Reality Class in the other buildings. We police them as well as we can, though the High Companies interfere with us when it’s in their interest. And then we have the Nightmare Class who live in the sewers and abandoned subway tunnels and the tent-cities in the alleyways. We pretty much ignore them.
“Shadow and her cronies work with them to be a thorn in our side, hijacking food and goods shipments and sometimes even robbing banks. Mostly she hides out down below. Mostly she steals from the Fantasy Class—what’s where the money is—and they in turn harass us about it. The fact is: we don’t want to go down there any more than the Quasi-Police do. We don’t want to end up somebody’s dinner. The creatures who live there don’t bother her. In fact, they help her because she helps them, obtaining items they can’t get without coming up into the sunlight. She’s some kind of albino, you know, and only comes out at night.”
“Why is it so difficult to catch her?” Loris asked. “She has support and probably knows her way around in the underground, but…”
“She’s a supersoldier. Near the close of the last war, the Quasi were breeding soldiers with amazing strength and enhanced senses. I’ve seen her take on a dozen of my men and wipe the floor with them. She was scheduled for termination because of her albinism, which they considered a genetic weakness, but she escaped and made her way alone across the continent and just disappeared into the caverns. She whipped those creatures down there, some of them cannibals and all of them half-animal, into a kind of army. If you can find her and secure her and take her away, I’ll be glad. We can tell the Quasi the Galilean grabbed her and took her off-planet and wash our hands of her. I’ll even send our files, such as they are, to your ship.”
***
Back on board, Atty showed them the meagre data the NYSD had sent and pointed out that a well-guarded shipment was coming in soon. It was one of those long-distance trucks with no drivers, powered by microwave from orbit, and surrounded by Quasi security—snipers, accompanying vehicles--under cover of darkness. It would be arriving through Brooklyn, where the crowds were not so thick, the streets less busy, then crossing the secured Brooklyn Bridge directly into the Citadel.
“However,” Atty said, “the subway system out there is not so well-known or well-patrolled as the system in Manhattan. If I were in control of the tunnels out that way, I’d try to grab the truck there and not let it anywhere near the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Karil and Loris looked at each other. “When is it scheduled to arrive?”
“Tomorrow night. Judging by all the security, I’d guess it’s a prize worth taking. And a worthwhile challenge.”
The next night, Atalanta lifted off from the spaceport as if leaving the planet, headed across the river, flying low, and settled to the earth in an open dump that had once been a park. Pickers scattered in their wash, and then ignored them and returned to their searching. Atty tracked the truck coming into the city and displayed its progress on the bridge screen. It was shortly after midnight when the vehicle stopped at an intersection.
“That must be it,” she said. “They would not stop here if they could help it.”
Atalanta rose into the air and sped off to intercept the vehicle. They could see below that several Quasi-Police vehicles were on fire and the truck was gone. Atty could track it by an oil leak, apparently caused by a stray bullet. Atty followed and hovered over the street near the top floors of the tenements. She arrived just in time to see the truck turn into a garage-door in a building. They could see a tall figure in black standing on top of the cab, holding a device.
“She has interrupted the signal from the satellite and taken control,” Atty said. “She’s steering it now.”
“I’m impressed,” Loris laughed. “Land on top of the building.”
Atalanta did that. Karil and Loris hopped out onto the roof, sliced off the lock on the stairwell door with Karil’s laser, and crept down the stairs into a body-shop. The truck had driven through and down a ramp into a parking garage. Following the trail, they found the slope going deeper and deeper until they discovered the truck in the abandoned concourse of a disused subway tunnel. Suddenly, they were surrounded by spectral figures. Men and women dressed in filthy rags, with matted hair and blackened faces, appeared out of the dark and moved toward them. The stench of their bodies was overwhelming, and they held rusty sharpened blades. Karil and Loris lowered their weapons.
The figure on top of the truck dropped lightly to the garage floor. She removed the black mask that had hidden her face and was revealed as a tall woman with extremely white skin. She grasped the padlock in one hand and ripped it off the truck. The doors were flung open to reveal that the truck was filled with women and children. The spectral figures moved forward. Karil and Loris, recalling the stories of cannibals in the sewers, snatched up their lasers and turned to face the nightmare crowd.
Suddenly, the tall woman was at their side, snatching the weapons from Loris and Karil’s hands. They found themselves thrown to the ground and the woman was holding Karil’s laser on them. Loris, in a flash, reached back for her staff and found it ripped from her hands with lightning speed. A blow to the side of her head laid her out on the ground, and in the same move, Karil received a blow in the solar plexus that doubled him over. The woman put up her hand to stop the oncoming nightmare figures and they hung back. Then she returned to the truck and started to lift down the human cargo, two at a time. Others climbed down and they all stood, blinking in the dim light.
A number of people appeared from a tunnel and came forward to help Karil and Loris to their feet. One man, apparently the leader, spoke up. “Underground Railroad,” he said. “We’re taking these people to the Canadas.”
Karil and Loris looked at each other, still bent over from their injuries. “We thought...”
“I know. You thought they were going to be food,” he said.
“Yes.” Loris turned to the wrapped mummies in the shadows. “I’m sorry,” she said.
One of the figures came forward, not too close, and made a slight bow of the head. “We understand,” he said in a cultured voice that seemed strange coming from his ravaged face.
The woman returned to them. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Our pride is severely wounded,” Karil told her. “I would never have believed one person could take on both of us.”
“I’m rather more than that,” she laughed. Then her face went cold, and her vivid blue eyes darkened. “These truck-people were being taken to the slave brothel in the Citadel,” she said in a voice like steel. “I’ve been there.” She went over to converse with the people from the Underground Railroad, interrupted by hugs and thanks from the women and children. Then she returned, as the ragged scarecrows around them began to fade back into the dark.
“I’m the one they call Shadow, as you’ve probably guessed. If you want to come to my…lair, your ship can follow our movements easily enough.”
“Atty?”
“Yes, Loris. I can do that. I will continue to monitor the area.”
They were led down into the subway tunnels and were quickly lost. Eventually, they found themselves in a comfortable room, suffused in low light, with some quite fine furniture and plenty of books. They heard subway trains thundering just overhead. A number of other people appeared, and Shadow introduced her team, telling them of the successful mission. Shadow slipped off the black gauze hood and out fell a long mane of auburn hair that tumbled over her alabaster white shoulders.
“Can I interest you in a drink?” she asked.
“I’d say so,” Karil laughed. “I haven’t hurt this much since I was sparring with Loris and she got carried away.”
Shadow laughed gaily. “Sorry. I had to stop you as quickly as possible.”
She fixed them drinks and sat on the sofa facing them, tucking her long legs under her like a teen-age girl, which she could have been so far as they knew.
“So, why did you come all the way from Jupiter orbit to track me down? I have ears in the police force, and they told me about it.”
“We’re hoping you’ll join a team we’re putting together.” Loris explained the problem with Friendship Colony, their request for help from Professor Kelley, and the small elite team they were gathering. “Galilean Security has a file on you as a major thorn in the side of the authorities here.”
“I’m honoured, I think,” Shadow said. “Even intrigued, but what makes you think I would abandon my work here to join you.”
“A change, perhaps,” Karil said. “The opportunity to learn new skills. How to fight in other styles, other gravities, a broadening of horizons, a challenge. You seldom get a chance to meet your enemies face to face. They control Nueva York from orbit and through their proxies—the bloodlords they hire, the police they corrupt, mercenaries from the Interior. But we will be going toe to toe with Quasi-Police thugs with deadly skills and base motives. Here, you’re fighting a constant flood of corruption that never ends. I can see you have a well-trained team here, but the battle must be repetitive, and it never stops. I’m thinking you’ll return rewarded and rejuvenated.”
Shadow laughed out loud, and her eyes met Loris’s.
“Karil does the talking,” Loris said. “He’s very persuasive.”
“I imagine he is,” Shadow mumbled.
“Excuse me,” Atalanta broke in. “The police are at the door.”
“I was afraid of that,” Loris said. “They agreed to help us. They implied they would leave you to us to get you out of their hair. But they tracked us.”
“A ship like yours in the city,” Shadow said. “It couldn’t have been difficult to trace.” She leaped to her feet and threw on her silks. At the door, she met one of the denizens of darkness with a tracking device. She conferred with the man and returned to her guests. “The police will follow the lamp,” she said, “and it leaks radiation which they will track into the depths. They’ll never be seen again. I said I would be gone for a while. I want to take you up on your offer.”
“Excellent,” Loris said. “Atty, we’ll be joining you.”
“Yes, Loris.”
She turned to Shadow. “I assume you have a safe access to the roof.”
Shadow ducked behind a sofa and came out with a small backpack. “This is always ready for a quick exit.” She touched a sensor and a panel slid back to reveal a stash of weapons. Karil wished he could examine them at leisure, but Shadow snatched a pair of lasers and an automatic rifle and closed the panel again. He noticed that she strapped on the lasers with blinding speed and handled the BFG as if it weighed nothing.
“Follow me.” They could barely keep up with her as she took the stairs two at a time, making almost no sound. They burst out onto the roof of the tenement and Atty’s engines ignited. They ducked inside and headed for the bridge, Shadow looking quickly about with fascination as the drivers’ whine became a roar.
“Welcome aboard,” Atty crooned. “My name is Atalanta and I’ll be your getaway this evening.” She rose into the air and yawed away over the ramparts. She immediately picked up a tail of police cruisers in the street but lost them as she roared down the avenue. Streetlights flickered as she passed, and her wash raised the garbage from the streets into the police-cars’ view. The pursuers glided to the ground and flickered into silence. Atalanta struck out over the dumps and hovels that surrounded the borough, roared over the ruins of a bridge, banked to starboard and shot up a long river valley toward the mountains in the distance.
“This is travelling in style,” Shadow laughed.
“Thank you, Shadow,” Atty said. “You aint seen nothin’ yet.”
Once over the Canadian wilds, comfortably far from Neuva York, the sound of Atty’s engines changed from a roar to a whine again and she leaped for the night sky under scramjet power. Restrained in her acceleration couch, Shadow watched the great ballet of space stations and colonies scattered throughout the Lagrange point. Karil pointed out High Africa, where he had been born. Atty was careful not to approach too closely, but Shadow’s keen eyes could pick out the lush green jungles and plains within as the habitat revolved in the night.
There was coffee, of course, and Shadow sucked on a bulb of delicious brew as Karil tossed off stories of his childhood exploring the savannah, hunting lions with the natives, crashlanding on Earth, travelling across the deserts of America, rescuing Progeny from the Citadel of Nueva York, fighting alongside the Martian rebels, travelling to far Jupiter and Saturn—all in his practiced, soothing voice as his hands roamed over his console like a concert pianist’s.
Eventually, she found the ship settling into the dust on the gray surface of Luna, in the shadow of a crater. The whole of the blue paradise of Earth slipped below the crater walls and the ship fell silent. It was a silence such as Shadow had never experienced.
“I imagine you don’t need much sleep with your enhanced metabolism,” Loris said. “But we’re exhausted. I’ll show you the facilities.” Shadow was shown the galley and the spare stateroom that had been set up for her, with the bedbag attached to what was now the deck and would later be a wall in free-fall. Karil was shooed off to bed so Loris could explain to Shadow how the head worked—a brilliant bit of plumbing that functioned in any gravity or no gravity at all but was much more complicated for women. She found Shadow some sort of sleepwear to wear in a cupboard.
“You’d better wear clothing or Karil will never get anything done,” Loris laughed. “Trust me.”
Shadow held up the garment before her. It took Loris’s breath away.
“Is it coincidence that this matches my eyes?”
“It belonged to Johanna. She had blue eyes too.”
“She’s not here anymore?”
“She died,” Loris said. “On Ganymede. A few years back. Shortly after I met Karil.”
“I’m sorry,” Shadow said, and put her hand on Loris’ arm.
“So am I,” Loris said simply.
“Perhaps I should not wear this.”
“No,” Loris said. “You look gorgeous. Nobody would believe you’re as deadly as a snake.”
She turned away and returned to her own quarters and slipped into the bag with Karil.
“I think you should train Shadow to shoot in one-sixth gee tomorrow. She should pick that up quickly and we can move on to hand-to-hand.”
“Okay.”
“Lights out, Atty.”
“Good night, Loris,” Atalanta said quietly.
Karil slid over and wrapped his arms around Loris. She gasped and a tear rolled down her cheek.
“How the hell do you know?” she asked.
“The sound of your voice, Lor. And I looked into those eyes too. Affected me the same way.”
“She’s not a real albino,” Loris said. “Or she’s had her eyes and hair-color changed. She’s a lot stronger than Johanna, but she has a similar fighting style. It gave me a start.”
“Kelley said we were going to have to kill people,” Karil said. “He didn’t say we were going to have our hearts broken again.”
***
In the morning, though there was not enough change in the light level to make a difference, Karil and Loris found Shadow already up and making coffee.
“Atty showed me how,” she said. “I don’t need much sleep normally. My metabolism functions at a high level and then I crash deeply for a short time. But it did take a while for me to get to sleep. Luna is way too quiet. Nueva York is full of noise, even when you’re deep underground.” She put out two cups for Karil and Loris.
“We can do without sleep for a long time if we need to,” Loris said. “But that’s because we trained to do that. Just like we trained to function in any gravity—except Jupiter. The cyborg roustabouts have to be bred for it.”
“I wasn’t bred as a super-soldier,” Shadow said matter-of-factly as she sat down, “but I was enhanced. I was taken away from my parents and shipped off to a special school. I guess they never found out what happened to me. I had lots of training and all kinds of injections.”
“We kind of noticed,” Karil said, “when you beat the crap out of both of us, in one move, so fast we barely saw you coming.”
“The survival rate,” Loris said, “must have been low.”
“There were schools all over High Company territory on Earth, surrounded by unmarked graves. I was one of the lucky ones who survived. That was supposed to engender loyalty to the High Companies, but all my friends disappeared and all it engendered was hatred. Friendship was considered a failure.” For a moment, her blue eyes became dark and piercing. “Apparently, I took out a number of my instructors when I left. I don't remember that, except in my dreams sometimes.”
“You’ve probably got a bigger body count than we do,” Karil said. “Though you look like an angel.”
Shadow put her hand on his. “So, what have you got to teach me today to make me a better killer?”
***
Shadow was impressed by the versatility of Atalanta’s design. The drivers were tucked under the wings, and the bridge, the mess, and the two cabins were in the bow, leaving the major part of the flying wing design as two cargo holds linked by a roomy air-lock and cargo-ramp in the stern. There was no cargo at all this trip and the locks that connected the holds were opened so that the entire width of the ship, from wingtip to wingtip, became a shooting range. Cargo bags were filled with other cargo bags at one end to provide targets very much like the hay-bales that serve the same role on Earth.
Loris sat back to watch as Karil drilled Shadow on shooting in one-sixth gravity. They lay down on their stomachs on mats at one end of the range and picked up the ballistic rifles that were part of Atty’s arsenal.
“I’ll take a couple of shots,” Karil said, “and then you.”
Quickly, almost casually, he put half a dozen bullets into the very centre of the target. Shadow’s were all high, and she was astonished. Missing the target was something that never happened to her.
“In this fraction of gravity,” Karil said, “bullets hardly drop at all. There’s no arc to speak of. They work almost like laser-fire, straight into the target. Unless your target is a mile away. But that’s a different story and takes a lot of practice.”
Shadow slammed in another clip and her aim was perfect this time. Karil was impressed. “You did that perfectly.”
“Well, you said it was like laser-fire. I just thought of it that way.”
“Your mind works fast,” Karil told her. “Let’s try something else.”
They went forward, closer to the target. Atalanta projected images all around them, as if they were in a forest. Karil and Shadow strapped on automatic pistols in holsters.
“If you were surprised on a forest trail, you’d have to get your weapon in your hand, draw a bead on your adversary, and kill or stop him before he could kill or stop you.”
“Quick-draw, like in the Westerns.”
“Yes, exactly.” I can attach weights to this gun or to a laser to simulate three different gravities. Wait for it.”
A bad guy appeared on the wall, coming from concealment. Karil drew like lightning and put a bullet straight into his heart, but Shadow’s shot, though even faster than his, was wild.
She laughed. “I grabbed that gun as if it were six times its weight and lost control. How do you keep control?”
“Practice. Like everything else. Try again. Atty?”
As before, she was faster than Karil, but this time she hit the target.
“You’ve got a mind like a steel trap,” he said. “And hand muscles I will never have. And you can fine-tune those muscles as you use them, with lightning speed and…fine control.”
He seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment and then shook his head as if to clear it. She laughed, guessing where his mind had wandered. They heard Loris chuckling in the distance.
“Atty,” she said, “disengage the firing mechanism and use targeting lasers only.”
Karil backed away and he and Shadow faced each other across the hold. Loris clapped her hands, and they drew. Shadow was always faster, but Karil’s laser-dot always appeared over her heart and hers was off. After a few minutes, however, that changed. It seemed to Karil that the gun leaped into her hand of its own accord and the dot appeared before he could get his weapon out of its holster. He added weights to her gun, and it made no difference. Karil threw up his hands.
“I’m glad they didn’t succeed in creating a whole army like you.” Then he remembered that all her friends had died. But she came forward and kissed Karil on the cheek. The change from stone-cold killer to sweet little girl made his head spin.
Loris was grinning, very amused. “All right,” Karil said. “See what you can do.”
After lunch,” Loris said. “I’ll need my strength.”
***
Following lunch, which was a jolly affair, with Karil and Loris teasing each other about age and declining skills and Shadow listening with a grin on her face, they prepared one of the holds with mats, knowing there would be some hard falls. Loris and Shadow put their hair up and faced each other in their skin-tight shipsuits.
They began with Loris’s favorite kendo-pikes, and Loris held her own for quite a while. Karil began watching the clattering ballet as a thing of beauty, and then he was alarmed, as the women clearly began raising welts on each other’s bodies. That something as beautiful as Shadow’s alabaster skin should be covered with ugly welts made him hurt, as if he were watching a fine sculpture being vandalized. Then he was ashamed of that thought. Then he was ashamed of the shame.
Loris threw down her stick, unzipped her shipsuit, and wriggled out of it. Shadow did the same, without hesitation. Their bodies were glowing with perspiration.
“Oh God,” Karil said to himself.
They seized each other, tall and supremely muscled, one as dark as a Hindu goddess, the other as white as a Grecian marble statue. Their braids had largely come undone. They freed their locks and shook them out, one as black and glossy as a panther’s pelt, the other like a river of lava on an arctic landscape. It brought tears to his eyes, not to mention other physical responses. They launched themselves upon each other, an irresistible force and an immovable object. One after another was thrown to the floor and leaped to her feet. They seemed like some carving by a French Animalia sculptor. Karil remembered one in the palace at High Africa, portraying a tiger attacking a bull, and it almost moved, it was so muscular and exquisite. Soon it became clear that Loris was, for once in her life, outclassed. She hit the floor over and over, rolled to her feet and attacked again. He had seen her toss large men aside like sacks of grain, as if they had no control over themselves, which was often the case. But it seemed now that Shadow was playing with her, like a lioness roughing up her cub. He wondered who was training who.
Karil stood and walked toward them.
“Karil,” Atty said. “Perhaps…”
“She’s struggling, Atty.”
He thought he was coming up on Shadow’s blind side, but she whirled, snatched him off his feet, and tossed him away. He scrambled to his feet as Shadow turned back to Loris, but suddenly she was raining blows upon him and driving him back. He could tell she was pulling her punches, but it was still too much for him. Finally, she tossed him halfway across the hold, and when he tried to scramble to his feet again, his legs collapsed beneath him, and he could not rise. Loris fell upon Shadow’s neck and embraced her, panting, to put a stop to it. For a while, they stood in each other’s embrace. Their locks cascaded over their glistening backs.
“I’m glad that’s over,” Atty said.
Finally, Karil was able to stand, and he rushed to Loris’s side. Her legs were a bit wobbly, and he put her arm over his shoulder.
“We need a nice hot shower, Atty,” he said.
“Yes, Karil, and would you like a cold one for yourself?"
Shadow followed them into the shower room, biting her lip and looking very solicitous. Karil helped Loris off with her briefs and dragged her into the shower. He stripped off his shipsuit and tossed it away. Loris put her forehead against the bulkhead and sighed as the hot water poured down over her body, viscous in the slight gravity. Karil felt the hard knots in her muscles and kneaded them with his expert hands, examining the welts that were beginning to appear. He found Shadow, stripped, stepping in beside him and massaging Loris’s body with her incredibly strong hands. With Karil on one side and Shadow on the other, Loris sighed with the pleasure of their touch.
“Your boy here,” Shadow whispered, “seems to know his way around a massage.”
She chuckled. “I could tell you stories.”
“I’d like to hear them.” Shadow whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry, Loris. I kind of got carried away.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just a little to the left. I haven’t had a workout like that in a long time. No offense, Karil.”
“None taken. We can’t surprise each other anymore. Everything I know about hand-to-hand you taught me.” He dared to glance down at Shadow’s body. The angry red welts were fading away and the soft alabaster flesh was returning. “Are you healing already?”
“One of the advantages of being a freak.”
“Don’t ever say that,” Loris said. “It was the High Companies that messed with you, and what they created was not a freak, whatever their intentions, but a creature of power and beauty.”
In answer, Shadow took the older woman’s face in her hands and kissed her warmly on the lips.
“No, no, no,” Karil mumbled.
Shadow laughed merrily and kissed him too. “Jesus, do you think I came along just to learn how to fight? I’ve heard about you two.”
***
In the morning, they were sore from the previous day’s workout, but glowing from the previous night’s workout. Karil was still snoring, exhausted, but when Loris opened her eyes, she felt Shadow’s lips on the back of her neck.
“Good morning, Loris,” Shadow said in her ear.
Loris mumbled incoherently in response, in her usual early morning way.
“Last night,” Shadow said. “Did you teach him how to do that?” She was irritatingly chipper, and probably nearly healed, Loris thought.
“No,” Loris responded, stretching her long body. “I taught him how to make war, not love. He just really likes women, that’s all.”
Atalanta had started the coffee, and the scent began to bring Loris around. They had to be spaceborne soon, for the long trip to the Belt. Loris gave Shadow a kiss, threw off the covers, and padded off to the head. Shadow watched her go, appreciating her tight body, then turned over to wake up Karil. She found part of him already awake.