In the center of the room, what looked like eight or so different pieces of gold appeared in the air. They quickly grew in size and moved towards each other.
I saw gold and silver and white followed by a burst of light.
And then 19-10 stood before us.
I had never seen him before, but I didn’t need a photo to know the armored form was in fact the assassin Zadeck had mentioned at the Athletic Gentleman’s Club.
He was maybe seven feet tall, about half as wide as a normal Colmarian male, with four arms that appeared to have ball and socket joints at shoulder, elbow, and wrist. It shimmered like a polished gold mirror. The armor had no front or back, with the knees, arms, and feet being bi-directional.
The helmet had the spherical shape of a Colmarian’s but was devoid of features save for thin black lines that modulated spasmodically. I did not know where he was gazing or if he was at all.
But I didn’t guess he came to admire the plants.
“Crap!” I yelled.
I got to my feet and pulled out a shotgun with my left hand and a pistol with my right.
I saw 19-10’s arms and hands spin and array themselves with blinding speed. His three-fingered hands all had some kind of small pistol or firearm attached at the back.
Bshzow!
The weapons all fired at the same time.
I unloaded my guns at 19-10.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The three Ank all slid to the ground from their chairs. Each had been shot in the left leg at the same location by 19-10’s guns.
I had shot… nothing. The wall opposite me.
19-10 was gone.
I spun around the room looking for him, waiting for him to pop back and attack.
The door burst open and I turned my guns on it. Two Reserve guards stood in the door with their weapons drawn.
“Get these men to safety. A small room. The elevator!”
I’m sure the guards thought I had shot their employers. It was unlikely they guessed a teleporting battlesuit did it since those weren’t exactly known to exist.
“Do as he says,” one of the Ank said, and even shot, he sounded just as sweet as when he had been unshot.
We had a dozen guards covering the elevator, a dozen more outside. Ten Stair Boys patrolled the immediate area. Two medical technicians and I were in the elevator.
The elevator was locked on the bottom floor so it could handle the weight.
The technicians patched the Ank and confirmed the wounds were not life-threatening.
As I thought about the attack, it made less and less sense. From a fixed position 19-10 had shot three targets at the exact same time in the exact same locations on their bodies: their upper left thighs. That alone required vast skill, as 19-10 was not close to being equidistant from them all, so each pistol had to be aimed independently at a different angle.
But if he could pull off shots like that, he could just as easily have killed them instead of aiming for the legs.
Was it a taunt? A challenge? A warning? I sure as hell didn’t come close to hitting him with my return fire. He probably disappeared a good second and a half before I fired, which was a lifetime in a gun battle ten feet apart.
The weapons he used weren’t all that dangerous—for guns. I guessed they would have done nothing to me. They didn’t even cause major wounds to the Ank, who weren’t exactly a hardy species. Is that why he didn’t shoot at me?
I explained to the local guards as much as I could about the assassin and recommended attacking on sight. I also posted ten of my Stair Boys as extra security.
I had doubted Zadeck’s description of 19-10. People loved their tall tales. There were plenty about me.
But I couldn’t teleport into a locked room, shoot three guys, and teleport out in the blink of an eye.
CHAPTER 13
“What do you know about Messahn battlesuits?” I asked Delovoa at his compound.
He was wearing a fluffy robe and fluffy slippers. Come to think of it, he seemed to always wear a dressing gown and slippers now. I guess if you could pull it off, why not?
“Promise you won’t get mad,” he said sheepishly.
“If you have to start with that, you know I’ll get mad.”
Delovoa had really poor judgment sometimes. He had gotten us into trouble in the past due to his curiosity and not thinking things through. I had petitioned the city to lock him away in this block not just for his safety, but for ours.
Not only was he too valuable to lose, he was too careless to be loose.
Delovoa once had top secret clearance in the Navy. If anyone on Belvaille knew about 19-10, it was him.
“Well,” he began, tugging at the cords of his robe. “Someone came to me a few months ago asking for some chrodite-399 and information on a Messahn battlesuit. Chrodite is an isotope, a kind of metal. It decays over time and powers the Messahn armor you encountered.”
“And you gave it to him?” I yelled. “You have that metal now?”
Delovoa reached around to the back of his robes.
“Yeah, I have some. Let’s see… it’s in my butt.”
“What?”
“I just told you it’s radioactive. No, I don’t have any. But I informed him about the project that created the armor. It was instituted right at the end of the Confederation and apparently was created for use by clones. As only they could handle all the sensors and fit inside. Like most of the later year war projects, it was funded by the Ank.”
“Ironic it comes back to shoot them. But clones are stupid, right?” Delovoa and I had dealt with clones some decades ago. He had even dissected some.
“Single-minded of purpose might be a better description. They can handle simple tasks and instructions. If he was really designed to be an assassin, then he would be doing what he was created to do. I said the Ank traders were the best way to get some chrodite, if any still existed.”
I grunted in exasperation.
“You gave all that information to an assassin who just shot three Ank?” Delovoa really did lack wisdom.
“Three Ank were attacked?”
“Yeah, I haven’t told anyone. I don’t want there to be a panic.”
“Did he steal any chrodite?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “What did the person look like you explained all this to?”
“I don’t know. Normal. Man. Colmarian.”
“Not this tall and this wide with four arms?” I asked, indicating with my hands the approximate dimensions of 19-10.
“Not at all,” he said.
“But wait a minute, even a single-minded clone wouldn’t be taking on contracts. And travelling. Or coming to talk to you.”
“Yeah. He probably only understands how to kill people.”
“But he didn’t kill them. He purposefully injured them. And not even badly.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know. The other thing is that the armor can portal,” Delovoa said.
“I could have told you that. He blipped in, fired, blipped out. Do you know how it works? Even a-drives are supposed to be huge. I was exposed to a Portal before and it almost turned me inside-out even though I was blocks away from it. This one was nothing. Just some bright light.”
“I don’t know how Portals work,” Delovoa said.
“What are you talking about? You fix our Portals.”
“I’m a mechanic. I tighten screws and weld cracks. I know the engineering of a Portal. I don’t have the faintest concept of the physics involved. I doubt there is any one person in the galaxy who knows that anymore.”