The Shootout Solution Page 9

  Shirin winked at her teammate. “It’s actually because Roman flattens them like an iron.”

  King excused himself to the facilities, and they sat and drank and talked for a good while longer before he came back and pulled the team upstairs.

  * * *

  King reported that HQ had given the all-clear on the patch, the breach and ripple effects over. He debriefed the team in a room of their own while Maribel and Frank made funeral arrangements for Juan.

  The High Council had called the team back immediately, but King had convinced them the patch would be stronger if they stayed for the funeral.

  So that afternoon, the Genrenauts stood in their finest, un-blood-stained clothes with Maribel and Frank as the local priest held a service for Juan Louis Mendoza. The Genrenauts helped lower the casket, then watched as Maribel and Frank let a handful of dirt pass through their hands as they said goodbye to their brother.

  Leah stepped outside the moment, thinking about the shape of the story—beginning, middle, and end. Which brought them here, burying the dead alongside Mallery’s fallen posse.

  Once the caskets had been lowered to their final rest, the townsfolk lined up to thank Maribel.

  The whole town.

  Maribel had a receiving line four dozen folk long. Merchants, ranchers, the schoolmarm, the blacksmith, the two bankers left, and more.

  The team stood by as the town embraced Maribel and Frank as their own. Some folks came over to thank them as well, but King waved them off, saying, “Maribel’s the hero. We were just glad to help.”

  Leah watched the townsfolk with Maribel and her brother. “They’re not going anywhere, are they?”

  “Doubt it,” King said, arm bound in a sling under his duster, one sleeve hanging empty.

  When the townsfolk had said their piece, Maribel and Frank came to see the Genrenauts. Maribel’s vest sported a shiny new tin star.

  “So I reckon you’re staying, then,” King said.

  “When an entire town begs you to stay, you consider.”

  Frank added, “And they offered to build my restaurant for me. Right there on the rail line. Folks will come from either coast.”

  Maribel looked back to the graves. “I just wish Juan could have lived to see it.”

  “We’re going to call it Juan’s Café,” Frank said, squeezing his sister’s hand.

  “I think that’s a fine way to honor him,” King said. “It might be a long time before we make it back here. You look after this town now, you hear? I’ll make sure the Governor gets a full report so you’re not left on your own the next time trouble comes around.”

  Maribel settled into a wider stance, already embracing her role, like she took up more of the screen. “You got it. And make sure you look after each other too,” Maribel said.

  Roman and Shirin tipped their hats. Leah followed suit, and the four of them turned to walk off into the sunset, the cherry on top of the genre cake.

  Mission Accomplished.

  When the town was out of sight, the team turned and headed back to their ship.

  Along the way, Leah unloaded her backlog of questions.

  “So, what will happen to them now? If their story is done, do they disappear? If the whole world is supposed to be Western stories, what happens when your story is over?”

  “They keep going on. The people here have real lives, but everyone is always in the beginning, middle, or end of a story. They get their happily-ever-afters, too,” Shirin said.

  “We only ever see people in the middle,” King added. “When things run smooth, our presence actually disturbs the world more than it helps.”

  Roman said, “And regs dictate that we can’t stay in the field for longer than a week unless absolutely necessary.”

  Cresting a hill, they returned to the rock outcropping that disguised the ship. The illusory stone was a shade off from the ones around it. Or maybe that was her nascent genre-senses tipping her off. Another one for the question bucket.

  “Why a week?”

  “Stay on a world too long, and the place gets its hooks in you,” Roman said. “You start to get boxed in by the story—”

  “That’s enough about that,” King said, cutting him off. The team leader had a remote-looking device in black plastic and pushed a button. The Phase Manipulator image fizzled out of existence, revealing the dust-coated rocket ship.

  And the rest of the team’s disguises dropped at the same time. Leah looked down and saw her own skin again, saw Shirin and King back to their real appearances. She felt like she’d exhaled a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. She flexed her fingers and ran a hand over her arm.

  “There’ll be time for a proper debrief when we’re back in HQ. Shirin, get our preflight going. Roman, the walk-around, and take the newbie with you.”

  Roman and Leah broke off and took a wide arc around the hill to approach the ship at ninety degrees to everyone else.

  The Afrikaaner slipped back into teacher mode. “We go wide in case someone’s been camping on the ship. We have proximity alarms, but even those can be disabled. Coming up on the ship, one, preferably two, members of the team do a visual inspection of the ship, looking for any holes in the fuselage, loose bolting, anything that seems out of order.”

  “Like a commercial flight, then?” Leah said, remembering the safety videos from the last time she’d gone home to visit her family. As far as she could tell, the ship looked fine, for an inter-dimensional snub-nosed rocket-ship. Still, anything that could keep them from having to deal with that amount of turbulence on the way back was worth a thorough check.

  Roman ran his hands over the hull of the ship, feeling the seams. He sidestepped his way around the ship, tracking the base of the ship’s trunk, where the tripod fin-legs splayed out from the body. “Any flight, really. Unless the pilot’s lazy. And of course, when we have to get off-world in a hurry, that walk-around gets pretty cursory.”

  “And how often do you have to jet out like that?”

  Roman opened a panel below the hatch and booted up a green-scale screen. “More often than I’d like, but not as often as you’d think. King’s team has the highest completion rate in the organization. He’s thorough, and he gets first pick of prospective recruits.”

  “How old is this ship?” Leah asked, pointing to the aged display.

  “This one’s fifteen years old. Most ships serve for about twenty years before they’re retired. It’s a Mark III. The Mark IVs are just now going into service at the Hong Kong and Mumbai bases.”

  “And where do we get all of this tech?” she asked.

  Roman responded with a thin smile. “We, eh?”

  “Hey, I risked life and limb, I think I’ve earned a we.”

  “So do I.” Roman tapped at the console, the screen scrolling through dozens of lines of text. “Most of the tech comes from subsidiaries owned by the High Council. The workers don’t know what they’re making, everything is subdivided out, double-blind, then assembled at each base.”

  “Sounds absolutely Soviet.”

  “It’s the best way to keep everyone safe. What we do is bigger than countries, bigger than economics, it’s a literal world-saving kind of mission. But it’s easiest if almost no one knows about it and they go about their lives happily oblivious. The blowback we’d get if the truth got out . . .” Roman shook his head.

  “I can imagine Badger News going to town with something like this.”

  “Most people wouldn’t even be able to appreciate the stakes, and even if they could, we’d immediately see people trying to travel between worlds for kicks, and others blaming every little social ill on some screw-up by a Genrenaut team.”

  Leah could just imagine what some politicians might do with the truth, let alone religious zealots. You’d see whole religions pop up or metamorphose into something new and probably even more bizarre. “Got it. Sacred burden, sworn to secrecy, all that jazz.”

  “Hey, the pay’s good,” Roman said. “Wo
rth not being able to tell anyone I date what I really do.”

  “What do you tell them?”

  “I work in a lab.”

  “That King’s go-to?”

  “It is. Ninety-nine percent of folks don’t know enough science to poke a hole in the cover, and those that do, we distract with theoretical quantum physics and doctoral lit crit from King. It’s not even really a lie. We’re using a different version of the many worlds theory.”

  “Positing a relationship between parallel dimensions instead of individual emergence and digression, I guess.” Her physics class had been at 2 p.m. Much better.

  “Right in one. I was never much for science. You’ll want to go to Shirin or King for the detailed breakdown. Or buy Preeti a drink and let her go to town. She’s got a doctorate in Dimensional Theory.”

  “I disbelieve that that is a real thing in which one can get a degree.”

  “Officially, no. But the High Council funds a special shadow department at top universities around the world. It’s where they recruit most of their tech and science staff.”

  “I am officially down the rabbit hole, aren’t I?”

  “Pretty much. But you’ve handled yourself pretty well. Last newbie we had lost his lunch two hours into the first mission.”

  “Was that you?” Leah asked.

  Roman shut the panel. “No, but I didn’t fare much better. That was Tommy Suarez.”

  Wash out of the Genrenauts, get an HBO special. Not a bad retirement plan.

  Roman looked the ship up and down, then said, “We’re good. Let’s go home.”

  Epilogue: Sign on the Dotted Line

  The trip back from Western world was far smoother than the way over. There was some chop as they crossed back through the rainbows-on-black sky of the space between dimensions, but on the shake-o-meter, it registered as Bumpy rather than Vomit-Cannon.

  As Leah stepped out of the ship and onto the stairs built into the hatch, a support team of ten techs greeted the team. The techs converged on the ship like flies on a corpse. Science flies.

  “How’s Mallery?” King asked as soon as he touched down.

  One of the techs said, “She’s out of surgery and recovering. I’ll let the nurses know to expect you. Council will want your report first.”

  “I imagine they’ll understand if I check in with medical first,” King said, waving the bandaged arm. “How did Louis’s team fare?”

  Leah tried to squirrel these details away, loose puzzle pieces to be assembled later, when she knew more about this brilliant and mad place.

  “Last report said that they were on level twenty of the tower, under heavy fire.”

  “Something is definitely going on,” Shirin said, the last out of the ship.

  “I’ll report to the Council once medical has cleared me, you three head over to see Mallery. I want familiar faces greeting her when she wakes up, let her know we finished the job.”

  “Come on, Kid,” Roman said. “It’s only fair to show you what happens when things don’t go as smoothly as they did for us.”

  “That was smooth?” Leah asked.

  * * *

  Roman double-timed it toward the medical wing. Leah had to jog to keep up with Shirin, who was only a couple of inches taller and yet managed to power walk almost as fast as Roman. The doctors had taken King off to another room, away from recovery.

  The trio was greeted by a middle-aged nurse—a black woman who looked like she’d been up for twenty or so hours, wearing blue scrubs and bright pink Crocs.

  “She’s awake, but only one of you should go in at a time. Don’t let her move. She lost a lot of blood.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Rachelle,” Roman said, moving immediately to the door.

  “I guess he’s going first,” Leah said.

  Rachelle said, “He’s usually the one with the gunshot wounds. This is a nice change of pace.” She turned on one foot and returned to her station, filled with file folders and a pair of flat-panel screens. How often did the Genrenauts get hurt that they needed their own medical facility? Though with the focus on secrecy Roman had indicated, it made sense to make their HQ its own contained facility, a one-stop world-saving shop.

  Shirin put a hand on Leah’s shoulder. “While we’re here, let me take you on the tour and show you what we’re up against. Roman will come get us when he’s done.”

  “I assume they’re close, then?” Leah asked, treading right over the matter of propriety.

  “She’s like a little sister to him.”

  “This is one of those ‘team-is-like-your-family’ things, isn’t it?”

  “Right in one.” Shirin walked over to the next room. She double-checked the chart and said, “This is Eve. She caught a poisoned arrow running from an enraged tribe defending its sacred artifact in the Pulp world.”

  “Will she be okay?”

  “We hope so. The poison isn’t known on Earth Prime, but we think she’s past the worst of it.”

  “Yikes. How many teams are there, here?”

  Shirin continued down the hall “We’ve got thirteen Genrenauts on staff at this base, enough to form three teams if we all have to mobilize at once. But right now, we’re down three agents. The third is Perry here—he lost a duel with the Baron of Farthingmunster, trying to defend the honor of the Lady Whipton.”

  “Regency world?” Leah hazarded. Shirin nodded.

  “This job doesn’t usually have this high a casualty rate, right?” Leah asked. “You mentioned that something is off.”

  “That’s why King has to report right away. The disturbances on the story worlds have gotten bigger, like a dimensional monsoon season. And when we try to put things back on track, the worlds fight back, harder. I’ve never seen anything like it. The Council is taking a measured stance, not officially acknowledging that anything is wrong, but King is worried. That’s why he went ahead and brought you in. We’re getting short-staffed, having trouble keeping up with all of the disturbances.”

  “Sounds like an awesome time to start the job.”

  Shirin crossed her arms. “Come on. You’re telling me you’d rather go back to working reception?”

  “Hey, the only danger there is dying of boredom.”

  “Uh-huh. We’ll see about that. In the meantime, let’s head to the break room. I could use some coffee that doesn’t taste like it was brewed with molasses.”

  * * *

  After all the fuss about reporting immediately, King ended up standing at attention for twenty minutes in the broadcasting room, waiting for the High Council to call in.

  The bullet had gone straight through the meat of his arm. He’d be shooting lefty for a while, but Dr. Douglas said it wouldn’t take too long to heal, especially if they deployed on story-worlds like Action or Science Fiction that had rapid recovery.

  King stood at the focal point between the three wide-screen flat-panel monitors that filled one wall of the room. Behind him and on both sides were the servers, processors, and transmission equipment to live-cast at three angles at high-fidelity across the world, while never being able to tell him where exactly his superiors were speaking to him from. He guessed they were based in Europe, but he’d always met the Councilors here, at his base, or at European HQ outside of London. But the London team was as in the dark as he was about where the Councilors really lived.

  It’d been like that the whole thirty years he’d been with the organization, one of the first Genrenauts recruited by the Council during their initial expansion.

  The screens changed from flat black to the loading screens, showing the array of dozens of worlds in their orbits around Earth, each marked by its official symbol. Pistols, hearts, fans, swords, magnifying lens, prayer beads, and so on. His team’s beat was a small selection of the dozens of story worlds the Genrenauts patrolled and protected.

  The title screen dropped, revealing five shadowed figures. They always stood in shadow, seeing King but never being seen during meetings. It’d been the same fiv
e of them, as near as he could tell, the entire thirty years. He’d only ever met three of the High Council. The other two, the most senior, never made public appearances. King had taken it as the eccentricity of the rich, germophobia, or something. They were a constant—inaccessible, unbending, but just.

  The Council’s leader, Gisler, spoke from the middle of the screen. “Angstrom King. Report.”

  “The breach has been patched, Councilor.”

  King unpacked the mission in exhaustive detail, relating Mallery’s initial patch attempt, the complication, and his team’s response, down to Leah’s impressive first outing and the resolution, solidifying Maribel Mendoza as a hero and securing the town.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was done.

  “What is your agent’s status?” another councilor asked.

  “Mallery York is in serious but stable condition. She’s the third operative from this base to be critically injured in the last month. I’m concerned about the nature of these recent breaches—”

  D’Arienzo, friendliest of the Council, cut King off. “We are aware of your concerns, and the reports from team leaders about these so-called aberrations in the breaches. Our science division is investigating the readings, but thus far, we have no reason to believe that this is anything other than a seasonal high tide of dimensional disturbances—”

  “With all due respect, Councilor—”

  Gisler cut him off. “Respect means not interrupting your superiors.”

  Status. Respect. Propriety. His own team called him a stick in the mud, but if they only knew the Council . . .

  D’Arienzo continued. “We thank you for your efforts, and for your report. Debrief your team and stand down to ready status.”

  “Understood,” King said. And with that, the call dropped, the screens going blank.

  “Pricks,” King said under his breath once he was certain nothing would pick up his back talk.

  Which was outside the room and ten paces down the hallway.

  But that was the way of things. The Council were mysterious and aloof. But without them, none of this would be possible. They’d discovered dimensional breaches and travel between the worlds, and kept their eyes on the big picture, maintaining the delicate balance between dozens of worlds. They had earned the right to dictate terms.