A Scuffle for a Wrinkle, pt 3
a science fiction caper
Last time we heard from Vonnel and his crew, he had just cornered Hein Brausley, who had a briefcase with the wrinkler inside. All he needed was the password, and the priceless device would be theirs…
A Scuffle for Wrinkle, part 3
Vonnel twisted the man's right arm behind him and planted his own forearm firmly upon the man’s throat, rendering screaming impossible. With his free hand he leveled his taser at the man’s face.
“I will play no games with you, Hein. Give me the wrinkler device.”
The man did not respond at once, calm eyes scanning Vonnel. He twisted harder, and Hein Brausley winced.
“You mean the Thinedom quanta trans-phys device? It's in the case. Let me get it. I know the password.”
“No, tell me the password. Now.”
Brausley rattled off a list of twelve random alphanumeric symbols, and Vonnel punched them in with his free hand. A series of low warning beeps met the attempt. Angered, Vonnel pressed Brausley against the wall, intensifying the pressure on his throat, and demanded, “Tell me how to open it, or lose your life. Your choice, make it fast.”
Fear rose into Prime Executive Brausley’s eyes, and he stammered, “Ummm… oh! Try the key! My lower left pocket.” He gestured with his eyes as best as he could.
Vonnel reached down and felt his hand around within the fabric, never removing his gaze from the Hein’s face. He emerged with a small silicone cylinder with a shiny metallic end.
“That’s it. Ummm….. wave it over the lock, then type in the password.” Vonnel did as instructed, still using only his free hand, but nothing happened. He leveled a death glare on the man, and Hein Brausley’s knees began to quiver.
“I… I don’t understand… It should work.” He took a breath and steadied himself. Catching Vonnel’s eyes with his own, he implored, “If you kill me, all I ask is you be humane. I have lived a good, long life.”
Vonnel shoved him to the floor, still holding the taser to his head. “Shut up, old man. Do that, and you will live.” Vonnel fetched his searing tool, and with one hand, applied it to the titanium case. It popped open almost instantly, taking both men aback. Within were armfuls of fresh paper and other odd office supplies. Vonnel dumped the entire contents onto the floor and rooted through them, but found nothing remotely resembling the wrinkler. He shot an accusing scowl at Brausley, who sat staring wide-eyed at the case, mumbling to himself.
“That’s not my case. It’s not--where's the microtache? The force field agent? The grasking transmitter?” He turned his stricken gaze upon Vonnel. “That’s not my case.” His tone defied belief. The loss of those items portended the demise of his illustrious career.
Vonnel searched the depths of his dark brown eyes for several moments before nodding. The man was speaking the truth. A cold sweat broke out on his head. He turned again to the man, who seemed to be going in and out of shock. “Could anyone have swapped cases with you? Is there any time where you set it down, if only for a moment? Think, man, think!”
“I… I…” he shook his head slowly, and then halted. His face lit up. “Yes! In the ascender just now! It was on the floor the whole time.”
“Did anybody enter the ascender at any time, outside of you and your guards?”
Hein Brausley considered for a second, then shook his head in defeat. “We were alone.”
“Hey Jestu!” Vonnel called via Crancom.
“Yo, boss.”
“See anything suspicious? Anything at all?”
Jestu laughed. “You mean like us? No, all’s well down here.”
“How ‘bout you, Piro? See anything out of the ordinary?”
“I ain’t no grasking preschooler, you soiled pair of sub-britches. Let me do my job, and I’ll tell you when I see somethin’ out of the ordinary. How ‘bout dat?”
Nothing suspicious. Vonnel contemplated the scenario. Four guards are going with him, Jestu had said.
“Gregario! How’s it goin’?”
“Good, good, cap’ain! We in the water room now, they helpin’ me!” Vonnel assumed it would be better to not ask.
“How many guards are with you? Be careful now, be sure what you say is right.”
“Uhhh…. three.”
“Three? Are you certain?”
“Yessir.”
“Were there any more earlier, one that may have walked away?”
“No, I shoo’ of it. Just these three. Baldy, chimp, and slappy.”
Again, better not to ask.
“Keep doin’ what you’re doin’, Gregario. Good job.”
“Yessa! Thankya mighty, cap’ain!”
Three, from four. The culprit was a guard.
“Jestu, keep a look out. Someone has the case, and he may be coming your way. Could be dressed as one of the guards.”
“Grask! That’s bad news. My eyes are peeled, keep me informed.”
Vonnel turned to Hein Brausley. “You’re comin’ with me.”
“What? Why?” He struggled to his feet, and followed his mum abductor out the door.
A guard stood on the opposite side, blissfully unaware. Vonnel incapacitated him with a chop to the neck. He dragged the body from the main hall into the quarters, then rushed down the hall, motioning for Brausley to follow. Brausley, stunned by the swift removal of his lone remaining guard, unglued his eyes from the prone body and ran after Vonnel.
Vonnel headed for the stairs. The faux guard must have used the ped method of floor jumping. The question was: Had he gone up one level, and exited the way Vonnel had entered, through roof access? If so, he may already be gone, spirited away aboard a jetcraft. Or, had he gone down one, and then used the descender on Floor B? Unlikely, for a handful of Brausley’s guards lingered in the lobby. One could recognize him; the risk was too great.
He rounded the last corner, the door to the stairs a seventy foot sprint ahead. Behind him, he heard wheezing and heavy running.
He smiled. Brausley followed. He knew he would. Not by coercion, for Vonnel was in no position to force him to follow, but by volition. Brausley needed that case back, or life as he knew it became a dream.
The door to the stairs slid open and a man stepped through. And suddenly everything clicked into place. The man wore business attire rather than the garb of the guards, but Vonnel knew he had his man. It was not the spherical titanium case that gave it away, but rather his face. A face belonging to a man Vonnel knew all too well: Gracian Salkor.
Nemesis to Vonnel for as long as the sky is wide. Perpetrator of more crimes than even himself; greater heists, mind-boggling infiltration, a cunning without equal. Even if Vonnel had not seen his arrogant mug in every waking dream, he would not have forgotten it. Slick silver hair, combed straight back; dashing blue eyes, ever hidden behind oval platinum-rimmed spectacles; slim athletic build, with the agility of a gazelle; aquiline nose and triangular jaw; thin lips perpetually upturned in a smirk--as they were now. Vonnel could practically hear the pieces fall into place.
With amazing swiftness, Vonnel holstered his taser and removed his pistol. The two masterminds leveled their weapons on each other simultaneously, neither quicker than the other. At the same time, Vonnel’s left hand went to his visor and depressed a button. He flickered for an instant, like a faulty hologram. Periphery infringement shield: activated, his visor flashed across his eyes.
Vonnel grinned. Nothing could harm him now.
“Well,” Gracian bellowed out, amused, in his lilting regional drawl. “It seems two old enemies find themselves at an impasse, locked in an epic showdown. Who will fire first? Who will survive? Will it be a shoot-out for the ages, immortalized in the annals of our times? Or will one conquer and leave the other a smoldering heap?” He spoke like an announcer on the digi-screen, bold and portentous.
Vonnel ignored him, never lowering his pistol from the chattering form by the stairwell.
“Toss over the case and we call it a truce, Gracian.”
Gracian emitted a hearty laugh and wiped a tear from his eye with the hand bearing the case. “Oh, Von, old buddy, you really whack the ol’ funny bone hard, doncha?” He chuckled some more. The aerodynamic, metallic-blue pistol in his hand never wavered.
Vonnel, not being prone to Gracian's brand of humor, sustained the determined look.
“What do you have to offer me in return, dear friend?” Gracian continued. “You take the case, and do you give me that which I desire?”
“What is it you desire?”
“Do you not know?” he asked with a believable level of incredulity. “How can he not know?” he mumbled to himself aloud. “Ah, well, no matter. You do not know! So shall it remain. Now, would you mind? I would like to make my leave.”
“You still have the case. You make one move, and I shoot you. Don’t think for a moment that I’ll hesitate.”
Gracian raised his eyebrows and vibrated his own weapon in his hand. “Hello! I have a gun, too! You fire, I fire, we all lay down together, immersed in our own mire.”
Vonnel smiled in spite of himself. “Go ahead and fire. See if I care. But I assure you, it will be you lying down, not I.”
Gracian scoffed. “Do you really think that silly invisible protection, or force field, or whatever it is they call it these days, can save you?” With his left hand, he dug at his belt and removed a bullet. Long and slender, platinum-colored, with a faint phosphorous glow. It swam in his fingers.
“Modern technology, ain’t it wonderful?” he boasted with a degree of irony. “This projectile has been specifically designed to penetrate that marvelous force field you wear about yourself like an emperor’s robe. Now, it ain’t instantaneous or nothing, but tis thorough all the same. Once it enters the domain of periphery interference, you can figure five seconds till impact. And there ain’t no stopping it, either, brothah. ‘Course, you could always turn off your little rig, and that would relieve you of any suspense. Choice is yours to ponder, Von.”
Vonnel’s instincts urged disbelief, but a doubt gnawed at his mind. Could it be true? Why not?
“You lie,” he said in a monotone.
Gracian shrugged. “So be it. I lie.” He flashed a vicious smile. “Would you like to know for sure?”
After a moment of silence, in which only the heavy inhalations of Brausley, hiding in a doorwell somewhere behind Vonnel, could be heard, Gracian laughed. “Then we are truly at an impasse. I cannot shoot you, for your shield will delay the bullet sufficiently that you could shoot me repeatedly. But you cannot shoot me either, for you know I am a crack shot, and never miss. And since your shield is all but useless…. Therefore, I shall take my leave.” He bowed, never removing his eyes nor his gun from Vonnel. “Tauzhé.”
Vonnel opened his mouth and shut it, gestured a threat with his gun and relinquished. Gracian was right. An impasse it was.
As Gracian reached for the button to shut the sliding door, a large shadow emerged from the stairs to his back. The shadow lifted both its arms behind its right shoulder, and in its grasp could be seen another large shadow, a square mass of blackness. The human shadow swung the square shadow, impacting with the back of Gracian’s neck like a bat to a ball. Gracian’s head jerked forward, his eyes pitched upwards, and case, gun, and glasses all sprawled across the hallway as his body collapsed to the tile with a thud.
Gregario emerged from the shadows brandishing a black metal briefcase and a toothy grin. Vonnel pounced on the spherical case, while Brausley abandoned his hiding post with tentative steps towards Vonnel, eyes darting from the metallic blue gun on the floor to Vonnel hunched over the case, punching in the numbers and waving the cylindrical key over its face. Vonnel looked up long enough to stare at Gregario in wonder.
“How in all of Enns did you get down there? And where’d ya get that case?”
“See, Captain, we was all in the water room, and I’s doing a real good job of convincing them guards and all, and….”
Vonnel held up his hand as the round case slung open. “You know what? Never mind. It’s probably better not to know. Just… good job, Gregario. Excellent job.”
Gregario’s lips parted so wide a jetcraft could have passed between them. “Thanka, Captain! Thanka whole lot!”
Gracian’s eyes fluttered, unseeing in a blur of concussion, and his hand slithered into his pocket. Vonnel caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and drew his weapon, but before he could fire, Gracian vanished. Hein Brausley gasped, and Vonnel frantically shuffled through the contents of the case. Many gadgets and peripherals crossed his fingertips, but not the wrinkler. It was gone, and Gracian Salkor with it.
In his furious panic, Vonnel grabbed Brausley by the collar and yanked him to himself. “Why did he come back?” he spit into the executive’s face. “Do you know?” He shook him, his own pertinacious eyes glowing with an unnatural fervor, holding the dilated eyes of the Hein transfixed.
“Uhhh… uhhh… yeah.” He pointed to the floor, by the case. “That’s what he wanted!”
Vonnel let go, reached down, and picked up the cylindrical key. “Why would he want this?” he said, with growing control. “The case was open; the prize taken. Why would he need the key?”
Hein Brausley grinned sheepishly. “Because it’s not the key to the case. The password opens that. The key is for personalizing the Thinedom quanta trans-phys device.”
“The wrinkler? Do you mean… that Gracian didn’t decide where he went?” He considered for a moment. “That you did?”
Brausley’s eyes darted to and fro. “Well, sort of. He pushed the button, of course. Since that particular device was programmed to my Crancom, it found the closest destination in my mind, and sent him there.”
Vonnel’s lips parted in a pleased smile. Excitement had returned. He clasped both of Hein Brausley’s hands, and petitioned him. “Tell me you were thinking of your quarters. Come on, tell me he’s close!”
Brausley’s face turned a dark shade of crimson, and he cleared his throat. “To be honest, I must say I was thinking of skipping this place. I think I sent him to… to the garage.”
Vonnel’s countenance dropped like a dog's face when it's yelled at. He stomped about the hall, bellowing, “Grasking tage son of a rini qatok blinal mule-poker go to Enns! Why were you thinking of the garage of all places! Tage! This place has a garage?”
Hein Brausley gave a meek nod and jerked his thumb to his right. “It’s next door.”
Vonnel transmitted to the entire team, firmly and with control that he did not feel. “Abort mission. Target is fled, net will tighten. I repeat, abort mission!”
He glared at Gregario, who stood facing him with a wide toothy grin. “I said abort! Get the move on!”
Gregario’s smile vanished. “I ain’t hear a thing, Captain.” He appeared on the verge of tears.
Vonnel remembered the Crancom jammer. “No, no, of course not. Sorry. Just get outta here, will ya? Don’t get yourself caught, you hear? We need you back.” He held Gregario’s melon in his hands, and kissed it. Gregario beamed and ran for the stairs.
Vonnel in turn rushed past Brausley, who was busy gathering the contents of his case. He looked up at Vonnel as he passed, watching his figure retreat around the corner, back towards the ascender. Vonnel saw the look, and understood. As soon as he was gone, Crancom would return and the net would tighten to a stranglehold. So be it.
“Jestu, I’m coming. Have my hov ready to glide, would ya?”
“Already on it.”
Until next time, be good and Happy New Year, Undersiders! Leave a comment, tell your friends, hit like, and of course, subscribe!