The Spirit drifted over to the curb and eased to a stop. Paulie was an excellent rigger and one of the few I would trust to remote me anywhere, especially after more than twenty years hiding out. You get used to not trusting anyone when you have been under the radar that long.
This was stupid, in so many ways, but when Donna-probably my daughter-got in touch and told me that my grandson-probably-had been kidnapped, what choice did I have? I might be-well, over fifty years old anyway, but I still hope to live enough years that I don't want any more regrets following me around.
And, God help me, I couldn't resist being John Wayne just once in my life.
Through the windscreen, I saw the shop at the corner ahead, the last shop open in this part of Seattle at this time of night. Some of the apartment windows above the shops were lit, but most were dark, meaning either early risers or a lot of empty apartments. The streets almost looked clean, shining with the rain that had been falling all day and had just given up, probably for a short breather before starting again.
As soon as I stepped out of the little three-wheeler, the clock would start. If the kidnappers were late or if the deal didn't go down quick enough, we would all have more problems than we were ready to deal with. 4th and Pine was not the most happening part of downtown, but all of my contacts combined still gave me no hope of being able to spoof all of the cams, sniffers, ears, and other possible stuff that could be scattered all over the place here.
My best hope was that popping up unexpected, in a city far from my normal haunts in my runner days, would give me enough time to get the swap made and get my grandson out of here, before Humanis goons overran the drop point.
Frankly, I was tempted to blow it all off when the call came from Donna, but then she knew she was taking a chance of blowing my cover by calling in the first place, and the need was desperate enough that she used the one-off code I'd given her, so it had to be serious and I knew, at least, that it was her and not anyone I really had to worry about. Made a trap at least a little less likely.
About the time I dropped off the face of the Earth, she was just starting at Ares, a development manager in some lab or another, doing something that she couldn't talk about, but she probably was my daughter, so I had to leave a contact point with someone in case some of my old friends needed me. In the bosom of Ares, she was about as safe as she could be from anyone trying to pry the contact info out of her. Besides, only my really good friends knew she was probably my daughter: my name didn't appear anywhere on any of her records, so if I hadn't told someone myself, they wouldn't know. I trusted my closest friends to keep the secret and, since I am still alive, they must have.
I took a deep breath and popped the hatch. As I stepped out, I started a clock in my head. Packets were doubtless already flying and it was only a matter of time before one of those packets hooked up with a spider out in the Matrix somewhere and a whole world of crap would descend from the sky.
OK, I chose the place. Donna gave me the contact info for the exchange. Fortunately, the people who took the kid were smart enough to realize Donna had no hope of getting around Ares security, so they were willing to allow a go-between and the fact that the go-between was an old man with the beginnings of a serious belly seemed to go well with them.
Of course, the picture I let them see wasn't really me. Facial recognition software would have tied my face to my name and that would have been the game.
I patted my jacket and tapped the various pockets in my cargo pants.
And they said cargo pants would never come back in style. OK, so they were right, but all those pockets were still useful for carrying stuff. I just hoped it was enough.
I stepped on the sidewalk as the Spirit pulled back into the street and disappeared into the night. Paulie would lose it out there somewhere for a while, long enough that I would hopefully be able to crawl back into a hole somewhere before anyone could use it to track me down.
I shuffled down the sidewalk as fast as I could. Less time on the street, the less packets maybe, but any one packet could be enough.
The door of the shop swung easily and I slipped inside.
Lou's Gear-Up was just that: if you had the money, Lou had the gear. Looked like the Radio Shack when I was a kid. Aisles of stuff, from pods to comms to scanners to spy gear to just about every sort of electronic toy you could imagine. Bright, overhead fluorescents and an above-average security system. Bars over the windows.
I was here a good fifteen minutes earlier than I had told the kidnappers. I had some business to take care of first.
The guy behind the glassed-in counter was nondescript, a nobody. Early middle age, starting to bald, rounding in the belly even faster than I was, his practiced, eager-bland expression offset by a shrewd pair of eyes that looked me over carefully and dismissed me as mostly harmless.
I pulled out a credstick and stuck it under the guy's nose.
"Ten K nuyen. Crank your ECM as high as it'll go." I didn't care. Wasn't my nuyen. Donna wasn't stupid: her first call had been to Ares Internal Security. I'd asked for a half-dozen 10K credsticks and the AIS chick I worked with didn't even blink as she handed them over.
Naturally, he immediately became suspicious.
"Relax, dude," I said, "A guy is going to show up here, we're going to talk a little, then we leave. I just don't want anyone listening in, 'K?"
The little wheels in his head cranked for several seconds before he reached under the counter, came up with a packet of cheap hearing aid batteries and slid them across the counter. The guy was pretty good at this, but not good enough to keep me from seeing him snatch the 10K 'stick from my hand, palm it, and drop a different stick into the cash drawer. Good enough for the security cameras in the store, though.
He rang it up and handed me a paper receipt that showed a purchase of a whole five nuyens. The paper was brown around the edges. Must have been in the machine for a long time. No one used credsticks anymore.
Just old fossils, like me.
The guy smiled and stepped down to the end of the counter, where he tapped on the keyboard of a pretty hefty old deck. Then he nodded at me.
I didn't put a lot of DMSO on that credstick, so the rohypnol would seep into his bloodstream slowly. If I timed this right, the guy wouldn't remember much of anything but, more importantly, wouldn't be inclined to get involved in anything that was about to happen.
With luck, that also wouldn't be much, but why risk any more complications than I already had?
"Where are the personal secretaries?" I asked.
The guy had a sort of dreamy look on his face when he drifted back to my end of the counter and tapped the glass over a half-dozen handhelds on the top shelf.
"Which ones are secure?"
His hand wavered a bit as he pointed out the three at the end. I may have given him a bit more than I'd wanted. I just hoped he wouldn't pass out before the deal was done.
Now, there was a chance that just upping the security on the place was enough to trigger warning flags someplace. A chance, but who knew what sort of skull gear the kidnappers would be walking in with?
Five minutes early, an elf walked into the shop.
Nasty-looking elf. No apparent gear but what did he have in his head? He was alone and, if this was the guy, he was supposed to be alone, at least while we were in the shop. Can't say the purple hair and subcutaneous LEDs were exactly inconspicuous, but he was an elf.
I'd been underground for years. What did I know about fashion?
"You the man?" the elf asked me.
"If you got the kid," I said, "I am."
"Yeah, I got the kid. You got the stuff?"
What this was all about was something that Ares had cooked up in one of their labs, just simple corporate espionage. I give them the files, they give me my grandson. As long as they didn't tweak to the kid being my grandson, things would be just fine and very businesslike.
'Course, I'd get a bonus from Ares if I managed to get the boy back without handing over the files. And another bonus if I found out who this bunch of faeries were working for. Priority was the kid, though. Donna had apparently become pretty important to Ares and their primary interest was to keep her happy, more than anything else.
I stepped to one side and pointed out the three secure secretaries. "Pick one."
The elf looked at me like I was crazy. "Nobody uses that obsolete crap anymore."
"I do," I said, tapping the socket behind my ear. "Couple generations old. You want the data, it goes into the sec. When I get the kid, you get the sec released." I shrugged. "No other way to get it out of my head."
The elf peered at the three units. "Secure, eh? Double biometrics lock and the whole bit?"
I shrugged. "Sure. It all still works. That's why they still make them."
The nice thing about these little secure secretaries is that someone could dissect them but not before they overwrote the data ten or twelve times. The data would be secure enough for the next hour or two, long enough for me to collect the kid and get away, even if everything else went to hell.
Pointing at the Schraeder, the elf straightened up.
I stuck out my lower jaw and nodded. "Good choice. You know your gear."
Schraeder was a very minor player in the corporate world, but that meant they had to try harder. Rugged, reliable, and hard to spoof the security features. I waved the guy behind the counter over and indicated the Schraeder. He reached in and handed it over without even asking for payment.
I probably had given him too much of the roofie. Then again, he already had one of Ares' 10K sticks, so what the hey? He could afford to cover the cost of the Schraeder. Long as he didn't pass out on me.
Someone way back in the 20th Century had invented packaging that you could not open without power tools. It was good to see that they'd improved things since then. I nearly tore off a fingernail getting the damn package open.
The rear of the sec had half a dozen interfaces, none of them compatible with my old, old headware. I poked the sec under the slightly-crossed eyes of the counter guy. "What you got that interfaces to a MD-45?"
He weaved a little but finally a hand rose up and he pointed at a rotating kiosk farther back in the store.
But first.
I rubbed my thumb on the pad I'd glued onto my belt, getting a good dose of ruffie on it. Wouldn't hurt to make the elf relax a bit. Better if he relaxed a lot.
I put my thumb on the biometric pad of the sec and waited for the beep, then handed the unit to the elf.
Secs are pretty standard stuff. Nobody wants to have to relearn a new sec, so they all work alike. Feed the biometric reader, then set up your security.
The elf planted its thumb on the pad and waited for the beep.
I took the unit back. Now I had to stall a bit. It would take a few minutes for the drug to work its way into his system.
Fortunately, I didn't have to pretend that I was having trouble finding the right adapter. I knew there had to be one but damned if I could find it the first time through or the second. I must have turned that kiosk four of five times.
Naturally, the bloody thing was hiding behind a different adapter that someone had hung on the rack in the wrong place. And this one was also wrapped in Impenetrable Plastic.
I always carry my own cable and snapped it to the adapter and felt around behind my ear for the skin pad I had had grafted over the plug to my datalock-quite expensively, if I may say so. Then it was just plug and play.
Like I said, I had been a courier back in the day. Lots of fine storage in my skull, most of it secure in a datalock. All of it obsolete.
Good enough for me, though.
I was just about as obsolete. Tried my damnedest to keep my hands from shaking.
The clock I had started in my head when I got out of the Spirit was starting to get into the yellow zone. I had to push things along.
It still took nearly a minute to download the file. I understand it's significantly faster these days but I've got too many enemies from the old days to risk anyone working on my skull anymore.
The file automatically deleted itself from my skullware when the download completed. Standard courier model. I don't have any sort of access to that memory, either.
I tapped up the first page of the file in the secretary and locked it. Then I stuck in a password to freeze the display. Only the elf and I could access the secretary now, but the elf would need my password to change the display.
Before I had a chance to hand over the sec, the elf's face brightened. "Hey, you're Jacob McCandless. I heard of you. Weren't you with Echo Mirage? I heard you were dead."
No, I wasn't with EM. I was twelve back when they were changing the world, but something I've noticed over the years is that for people these days, anything that happened before they were born apparently had all happened at the same time. That damn elf probably thought we rode dinosaurs like the Flintstones.
Plus, my original name wasn't McCandless, but for the last thirty years I had used it. I stopped the clock I had running in my head. The piece-of-crap ECM in this place had not prevented this elf from getting a facial recognition search started and no doubt that search raised flags all over the place when the search hit on that name.
The elf knew my name and had accessed the Matrix to get it. I had to run, if I was going to get out of this intact, but I could not afford to panic this elf.
Or any of the confederates he no doubt had scattered around outside.
I laughed. "You must be a John Wayne fan."
"Who?"
Yeah. One thing about elves, if it isn't that artsy-fartsy airy-faery stuff, they thought it was too much like crap to be worthy of their attention. When I was a kid, I watched all of John Wayne's movies. On a 2D TV set, no less.
"OK," I said, "I showed you mine. Now you show me yours."
I'd told him when I'd talked to him that one time, I had to see the kid, in person, alive and well, and I'd be able to tell if it was some sort of simsense chameleon program. So the boy had to be somewhere close.
I just hoped he was on this side of the street.
Time was running out and I couldn't afford to run back and forth across the street too many times.
Now the elf decides it's time to talk.
"The kid anything to you?"
I felt like I was in the movie.
"Nope. I get paid to bring the kid home in one piece. If something happens to him, I don't get paid and I become cranky."
"I'm scared. You're a real badass."
Didn't have a clue, which was just as well. He might have been more careful if he had. Fortunately, I had spent a lot of nuyen making sure that sort of data had been purged from all of the pertinent files about me. At least, the files I could find.
"Yeah. Big time." I nodded toward the door. "The kid."
The elf shrugged and led the way.
Out the door, turned right, and into a door right next to the shop. Two steps up from the sidewalk, through the door, and onto a landing with a set of stairs that went up into the darkness.
Someone had knocked out all the lights.
Damned elves can see in the dark, but not old, fat men.
Well, not normal old, fat men. I had the best artificial eyes you could buy-twenty years ago. Not to mention ears, nose, and taste buds. All with full recording capability. Better than any other receipt a courier could provide.
Inside my head, I turned up the gain on the image intensifier and the darkness turned into green shadows rather than utter darkness. I nudged up the IR gain, too, though the only significant heat source was the elf.
I still put in a couple of theatrical stumbles on the steps, just to make it look like I was blind up here.
The door at the top of the stairs could have used some paint. The stairs turned the other way behind us, going farther up. I stepped through the door after the elf. No lights in this hallway, either, though a couple of doors had light showing underneath them, enough that I could nudge the intensifier image down a bit. Might need some reserve battery power later, so no reason to waste it.
On the other end of the hallway, I could just make out another door. Calling up a floor plan of the building from the Matrix, I saw that both sets of stairs went all the way to the roof and into the basement, so it wouldn't matter which I used when Escape and Evasion time came.
At the farthest door from the front of the building, the elf stopped and tapped, tapped, paused, then tapped one more time. It was one of the doors with light coming out from underneath. Could be a good thing. Maybe they weren't keeping the kid blindfolded and gagged.
As the door swung open, I saw that it was just gagged.
And tied to a chair.
With three other elves in the room.
You know, the stereotype of elves are all slender and brittle-looking. These three bruisers did not follow the stereotype. If they had been a little taller, a person might have been able to mistake them for orks.
They had to go.
Except for the chair, the rest of the apartment was empty. One light shone down from the ceiling fixture right in front of the hallway door. There were sockets in the ceiling in other parts of the big room and one in the ceiling of the kitchen that I could see, but rather than broken bulbs, it looked like the last tenant had taken them. Taken the plastic covers of all the electrical outlets, too. Some people.
"Let the kid go," I said. "Let me take a look at him."
The head elf looked at me for a moment, then nodded to the muscle. One of them touched the binders on the kid and they snapped open.
The kid immediately hopped out of the chair and started for the door.
Didn't get far.
One of the bruisers caught him by the back of the shirt and lifted him off the floor, legs still kicking, tossing him back toward the chair.
Got to give this to the kid, he was persistent. Three times he got caught before he gave it up. Granted, he was a kid, but given how easy he got caught each time, I'd have given up sooner. But finally, the kid stood there in front of the chair, panting, trying to pull the gag free.
"The gag," I said. I knew the kid could claw at that thing for years and never work it free.
The right touch and the gag popped free, too.
"He looks OK to me," the elf said, sneering.
Looked OK to me, too, but no reason not to make sure.
"How are you, kid? They treat you OK?"
In the John Wayne movie, the kid is dressed like a sissy but he says to John Wayne, "Sir? Are you my grandfather?" Now, I didn't really want the kid to mention that I might be related to him, but I doubted the kid had a clue-the only time I had ever seen the kid, he was barely a year old. But that "sir" part had always sounded good to me, maybe with a touch of defiance, refusing to knuckle under.
"Bite me, dickweed," the kid said.
Well, another lost John Wayne moment. At least the voiceprint matched.
Turning to the elf, I said, "Can't believe they want this back."
The elf just shrugged. "Password?"
This is the dangerous part of any such transaction. Outnumbered like this, they didn't have to let the kid go, or me either, once they had the password. In fact, if the extortion worked once, it might well work again. Who knows how many golden eggs the kid could lay for them?
I had to get things moving. Out there somewhere, some Humanis operatives were herding every asset they could get hold of in my direction.
They believed I had a bunch of dirt on them that they didn't want made public.
I did but it was well hidden because as long as I had it, I had a chance to live.
It wasn't going to go public until I was good and dead. It was that sort of information: wasn't going to expire any time soon.
Me, I had decided years before that I wasn't going to be taken alive. Not if I had a choice, anyway. One of my pants pocket contained an autoinjector full of ricin. Illegal as hell but arrest was the same as capture for me, to be avoided at all costs, so wtf.
The elf got a stricken look on his face. He looked at the bruisers and their eyes narrowed before they headed for the door. In seconds, all three of the big boys were gone.
It could have been anything but I was sure something was going on outside and I was afraid I knew what it was.
"The password," the elf demanded.
"Hogwarts," I said. I'd loved those books when I was a kid.
Where the elf pulled that pistol from, I couldn't say. I would have sworn there hadn't been any place in his clothes lumpy enough to hide it, but there it was. "I told you to come alone."
"I did. What's going on?"
"One of my people is not responding."
Raising my hands to the level of my shoulders, I said, "No clue. I came for the kid. You got your file, I got the kid, I just want to go get my money."
For a few moments, I stared down the muzzle of the pistol the elf held on me, wondering if this might be it, finally, after all these years. My knees shook.
Geez, I'd been targeted by robocannon and I can't tell you the number of times I ran down a corridor dodging bullets. I was younger then.
For sure, I thought I wasn't going to get any older, but the elf displayed that slack-faced expression I had come to recognize. The ruffie had started to kick in.
Time for my secret weapon.
If you practice long enough, you can learn to walk quite normally with something not too large-or with too many sharp points-clamped between your butt cheeks. People doing a pat-down don't usually cram a hand in there.
I let the little metal tube slide down my leg as I turned off my eyes and ears for a moment.
The flash-bang exploded when it hit the floor.
Immediately, I turned the gain back up on my eyes and I reached out my hand and took the pistol from his hand.
"What is it? What's out there?" I said, as I jammed the muzzle up under the elf's chin.
"Ghouls. Maybe two dozen."
Crap. I hadn't thought anyone could get ghouls to do anything, but apparently the Humanis people were not only able to get over their aversion of meta-humans enough to use them as operatives but had found some way to convince ghouls to cooperate.
Maybe it was just a matter of making sure the ghouls had plenty of meta-human flesh to chew on. Ghouls liked that.
I thought about shooting the elf but why attract attention? At least, any more than the flash-bang already had.
So I kneed him in the groin and jabbed my fingers into a nerve nexus under his right arm. Dropped him like a rock. Nice thing about the martial arts is that they never go obsolete.
Dropping the pistol into one of the pockets of my pants, I snatched the secretary out of the elf's other hand and stuffed it into another pocket. Another chunk of change to me for preserving Ares' data.
I reached inside my waistband and pulled out two bundles of black plastic. Harnesses. Memory plastic.
Each bundle had a fist-sized disk of metal in the middle and I held one of those disks to my chest and pulled the slider on the side downwards.
The bundle undid itself and legs reached out like a startled spider, then wrapped themselves around me, making an effective harness as the plastic folded itself into the pre-programmed shape, the "legs" gripping each other in the middle of my back.
The kid had just stood there and watched as I had disarmed the elf and done the harness thing, but when I took the first step toward him, the kid turned on his heel and ran for it. Since I was between him and the hallway door, he had no choice but to head for the darkness and gloom of the kitchen.
I stepped up the gain on my eyes so I could see the doorway on the other side of the kitchen that either led into a bedroom or to a hallway that led to the bedroom. I had no idea if there was a back door to the place, but the kid didn't even know whether the kitchen was a dead end or not. Not that he had much choice.
He also didn't have much in the way of legs. Given a bigger start, he could have gotten away. No way my old legs would have been able to keep up with him but he was close enough that I only needed two steps to reach him.
I put the disk of the second harness in the middle of the kid's back and slid the switch. In a fraction of a second, I had him by the harness.
My old fingers almost let go, though. I think if the kid hadn't been startled by the flapping black legs whipping around him, he might have been gone and away. As it was, I held on by my fingertips and hoisted the kid off his feet.
I mentioned that I had seen the kid once before, when he was a year old. Needing a place to hide out I had hunted Donna up. Big surprise for her. Stayed with her for two days, until I could use my contacts to set up a new hidey-hole.
One of those days, she hoisted the kid out of his crib and handed him to me, telling me to hold him for a second while she changed the sheets.
I am not a kid-person. Didn't know what to do with my fellow kids when I was a kid and hadn't had anything to do with them afterwards.
Didn't know what to do with this kid, either. His face was screwed tight and he expressed his unhappiness with the general state of the universe by howling at the top of his lungs. If I had not been distracted trying to turn down the volume of my ears, maybe I wouldn't have gotten nailed, but the bugger planted a bunny-suited foot right in my huevos.
I almost puked then.
Now, ten years down the road, the little bastard cow-kicked me again, square in the nuts.
I almost puked.
But I didn't have time for that.
Ghouls. Elves. God knows what else.
Time for the escape plan.
I clicked the disk of the kid's harness onto the disk of mine. They were made to mesh and once they clicked, the kid was not going anywhere without me until I reached between us and hit the release.
His feet hammered on my knees and thighs.
Old muscles and bones don't like that. These days, I bruise just by thinking about it.
That's one of the places where I had not planned well. I should have had something to put the kid out but I didn't.
So it wasn't a perfect plan. Sue me.
Rather than going out the front, I turned toward the rear stairwell. Paulie would have another car at the end of the alley between 4th and 3rd. All I had to do was get to it.
The stairwell was pitch dark. I generally approve of efficiency, but if the elves had taken out the lights in this stairwell, too, I thought maybe they were overdoing it a bit. Still, that's what light amplifiers are for. I cranked up the gain on my eyes.
And the biggest, ugliest, droolingest ghoul I had ever even heard of was there, halfway up the flight of stairs. Apparently they can see in the dark, too. Or at least this one could.
That damned elf hit me from behind right then.
You know, when a man takes one in the nuts, he should lay on the floor for a while and pray for death.
Instead, that elf either had cast iron balls or some pretty good painkiller implants.
But again, the old reflexes saved me.
As the elf barreled into me, I bent my knees and sidestepped slightly, reaching up and grabbing his arm as he tried to get an arm-bar on my throat. One good twist of my body and his momentum sent him up and over my shoulder.
Wish I could have seen his face when he got his first look at the ghoul he was sailing right into.
Both of them went down, tumbling on the stairs in a ball of legs and teeth.
I didn't hang around to see which one was going to win the wrestling match, though I think the elf probably had the most motivation. It was highly unlikely he was going to try to eat the ghoul if he won, which was not at all true of the ghoul if it won instead.
Unfortunately, I am not a twenty-something anymore and the kid's weight put me off-center enough that I went down on one knee.
Hard.
The only good thing about pain is that the worse it is, the faster the body's endorphins kick in. At least long enough for me to fumble an autoinjector out of my pocket and jab it into the fleshy part of my leg.
The pain went from flashy sparkles of color in my vision to mere agony in seconds.
I'd only bought myself maybe ten minutes, though, before that knee was going to swell and lock up on me.
At the top of the first flight, the extra twenty kilos of kid strapped to my chest combined with fifty years of muscle atrophy to make my tired old heart hammer in my chest. The painkillers probably helped with that.
I never wanted to be a courier. I wanted to be a fighter. I had the knack and I trained, when I was young, in the martial arts. When the Awakening happened, I was one of the first kids in my school tested for magic. I spent my college money learning the adept magic.
But I fell in with the wrong bunch, signed the wrong contract, and by the time I got myself out of that, my head was full of silicon.
There wasn't much left of my magic.
I was on the third floor, I was sweating like a pig, and the damned kid was beating my poor knees to pulp.
Donna loved this kid. No way she could be a child of mine. A child of mine would have drowned this spawn the first chance she'd got.
Weak or not, I needed the old spells.
Never learned to do the spells without moving my lips, muttering the guiding instructions my old teacher gave me. Then again, I never had that much need for them, so I never really learned to do it the right way. Kept telling myself I would do the work, practice, and get better. I still do. Hope springs eternal.
I felt new strength running into my legs, into my chest. My heart rate slowed a bit but I was still puffing like a bellows as I made my way up the last four flights and onto the roof.
The way to make an op work is to have a plan. That plan should include a backup plan, in case things go to hell.
If there was any justice, there would appear to be three air conditioning units on the roof. The building plans would only show two but if my people had done their jobs, there would be three. I wanted the one closest to the alley.
I also wanted my heart to either to stop hammering so hard or to just give up, have the heart attack, and let me die. The spells had helped some. I had made it to the roof, even if I felt death breathing on the back of my neck.
Did I mention that the kid was howling at the top of his lungs the whole time?
Cargo pants are a good thing. I had scooped up the gag the elves had used as I scooted out of that apartment and had stuffed it into a pocket. Before I broke the handle off the roof door, I slapped the gag over the kid's mouth.
Good gear is worth every dime. I still have that gag, by the way.
That's the second error I made in my plan. Maybe I was still caught up in that John Wayne thing, but gag, hobbles, binders: those should have been in my kit. I'd been lucky that the elves were more experienced with kids than I was.
When I eased the door open, the roof was empty. One big flat expanse, covered with crushed limestone over a tar base.
And three AC units.
The only thing better than good gear is good contacts.
The kid was still drumming his heels on my poor knees and I knew that, if I lived through this, I'd be limping for weeks, as much from the kid as that jammed knee I took on the stairs. I just needed to limp another ten meters.
This last box looked just like an AC unit, felt like one. In the old days, we'd used these boxes to hide all sorts of stuff. Good place to stash extra gear, cache extra ammo, or hide stuff you'd stolen while you beat feet for freedom. No one looked twice at an AC box.
The kid kept bracing his feet against the edge of the unit and pushing off, which pissed me off until I turned around and backed into the unit, feeling around under the edge for the release.
I found the button and pushed it. As I stepped forward, to get out of the way, the kid threw himself to one side so hard I almost fell on my face.
Believe it or not, I actually panicked for a moment, afraid I was going to fall on the kid and hurt him.
Fortunately, I caught myself, though I twisted my ankle, and my foot folded underneath. I hopped a couple of times to catch my balance again, without putting any pressure on my foot, but it felt like I'd broken every bone in my foot and torn every tendon in my leg.
I hate getting old.
Behind me, the rustle of heavy fabric and a rush of air told me the balloon was inflating. Turning, I watched it pop free and rise above it, a dozen cables holding it to the box.
They make pretty fine plastics for all purposes these days, but cloth doesn't reflect radar and, filled with helium rather than hot air, it wouldn't show a heat signature either.
The kid jerked again and I caught myself on the already-damaged ankle.
"Goddamnit, kid," I growled, my eyes tearing up from the pain. "You act like you never want to see your mother again."
He stopped struggling, just like that.
Who'da thought it'd be that easy? Kids.
Once all the lines were clear and the balloon loomed over the box, I stepped over the edge and settled down inside it. What with the helium tanks, there wasn't much room for me and the kid. The frost on the tanks warned me not to touch them. Fire-burn, freezer-burn: burn is burn and it hurts. Avoid hurt.
In the middle of the floor of the box was a handle. One twist and the box came free of the roof and off we went, rising silently into the air.
I almost dared to breathe.
Until I heard the helicopters.
Maybe they were friendly, maybe not. Probably not.
Riding a balloon is deathly quiet. Since you move with the wind, there is no sound from that. You are far enough up that you don't hear much of anything from the ground.
I sat up enough to peer over the edge of the box and saw the lights of the city creeping by below us. All I could hope for was that without radar or IR to find us, the helicopters would fly right by.
Still, I reached over and eased open the valve on the nearest cannister. Helium hissed and I could feel the minutest rise of the balloon. The choppers will be low, looking for us, so the higher we went, the less likely they would find us.
Not to mention that having a helicopter blade slash the gasbag would change the ending of the story.
I settled back for the ride. I felt the kid shiver against my chest, and I looked down to see he had wrapped his arms around himself.
The bottom-most pocket on my right leg contained my first aid kit. Kind of silly to carry it, since most times you either got away clean or were leaving body parts behind, but I had a mylar survival blanket in the kit.
My ancient fingers almost fumbled enough to lose it but I managed to get it wrapped around us enough to save some heat. The kid didn't stop shivering, but the shakes weren't as bad.
My knee and ankle were both killing me, my body felt like I'd been pulled backwards through a knothole, and what I wanted more than anything else was a big glass of single malt.
But I'd pulled it off. Got the kid, kept the data.
Just needed to drift across Lake Washington and wait for AIS to pick us up.
The kid had fallen asleep against my chest, still shivering a little. But I had done it. Succeeded. Won.
That had seemed a lot more important when I was younger.
I got bored a lot of times, hiding out all these years, wishing there were some op I could join and feel a bit of that old excitement. Now, though, I just wanted to crawl back into my hole. I was way too old to be doing this stuff and whatever thrill it had had for me as a kid, it just scared me now.
Realized that I hadn't even asked the elf who'd hired him. Well, I never expected getting any name besides 'Johnson' anyway, even assuming the rohypnol would have made him talk.
I hate making mistakes. John Wayne didn't make stupid ones like that.
Could have made some use of the bonus from that, too, but I would have to settle for what I was going to collect when I turned the kid over.
All in all, though, I love it when a plan comes together.
Wish there were more of us still alive who remembered where that line came from. Wetwork By Stephen Dedman
Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels Shadowrun: A Fistful of Data; The Art of Arrow Cutting; Shadows Bite and Foreign Bodies, and more than 100 short stories published in an eclectic variety of magazines and anthologies. An avid GM, he has also written for GURPS and V amp;V, and has been shadowrunning since 1990. For more info, check out www.stephendedman.com.
The rain thundered down, as loud on the roof and sidewalks as hail and so thick that George White couldn't see the other side of Western Avenue through the ballistic glass panel in his door. He sighed, and wondered whether he should close early: Seattlites were accustomed to rain, of course, but he couldn't imagine anybody venturing out in weather like this to buy army surplus camping gear, or anything else he sold. He yawned, then started channel-hopping on the sports networks in the hope of finding either a good urban brawl game or a swimsuit special, until the door opened and someone hurried in. White looked up, his fat face bland as usual, and glanced at the customer. Unsurprisingly, he was wearing a long raincoat with a waterproof hood that hid most of his face.
A chiphead, thought White, or some other addict, with something to fence. And if he's desperate enough to come out in this weather, he really needs the nuyen fast. "Help you?" he asked cheerfully.
"I hope so," said the man, looking around the shop while he fiddled with the drawstring on his hood. "You sell guns and ammo, right?"
"I sell them, yes," said White warily as he grabbed the taser he kept under the counter. "If you have the right ID."
The man walked towards him. "I need some special stuff," he said quietly. "Mil-spec, hard to get. I heard you might have what I'm after. Didn't you used to be a supply sergeant?"
"Yeah, in the reserves. Do I know you from there? I'm not that good with faces." He looked the man up and down, re-assessing him. He seemed watchful, but not nervous, like someone who was used to guard duty. And he had weird parallel scars just above the top of his collar, as though he'd been clawed by something very nasty. No, not scars, White realized: rents. Open wounds, except that they weren't bleeding.
"No, it was just something I heard around the… traps."
White nodded slightly. "What do you want?"
"Caseless ammo for an M24A3 carbine. 6mm Gyrojet Plus. Any sort of missile launcher that works underwater. And other stuff-ration bars, inflatable boat, that sort of thing."
The merchant blinked. He had a long-standing policy of never asking a client why he wanted a particular item, but something about the man made him uneasy. "Going fishing?" he asked, his voice dry.
"You can't be too careful nowadays," came the reply. "Sea leeches, sea drakes, saltwater serpents, unicorn fish, torpedo sharks, kraken… it pays to be prepared."
The merchant relaxed. "I have a Spike in stock, heat-seeker, dual-purpose high explosive warhead, reduced backblast. I can get others, if you need more, but it'll take a few days. Same with the caseless. The gyrojet… sorry. I've never had one in here."
The man smiled. "Wrong," he said, pulling a revolver out of his coat before White could react. White barely had time to recognize the gun as a Taurus Multi-6 before the man shot him through the eye. • • •
Professor Magnusson stifled a yawn as he read through another freshman paper on magical theory. This one was a comparison of Paracelsus's description of undina in the Philosophia magna and Guazzo's classification of female water demons from the Compendium Maleficarum with the studies of water elementals and sea spirits by 21st century magicians. The writer, a pre-law student, had not the faintest spark of magical ability, but Magnusson suspected that if he didn't learn to summarize more concisely, he would be able to send judges and juries to sleep as effectively as if he'd used a stunball.
He was wondering how to put this politely-or at least, politely enough that he wouldn't be sued-when he heard a knock on the door. "It's open," he said, not at all unhappy at the interruption. He smiled, and closed the computer file as he saw Kenda Reyes walk in. Though her black hair, dark eyes and bronzed complexion revealed her Sioux ancestry, her presence always seemed to brighten any room. Maybe it was her powerful aura leaking through into the normal visual spectrum-or maybe, he admitted to himself, it's just my imagination. No matter. "Hi," he said, leaning back in his chair.
"Hi," she replied, less cheerfully.
"Problems?"
"I was wondering if you had any news on my funding application."
Magnusson's smile faded slightly. "I'm afraid not, but unofficially, I don't think they're going to grant you another extension. The dean says the faculty simply doesn't have the money."
"We don't need much."
"There are also other people who want to use the submarine. But I think the real problem is the liability. Some of the creatures you're looking at can be dangerous, and if anything goes wrong, it's not going to be easy getting someone out there to help you."
"Or cheap."
"True," he admitted. "Are you still trying for corporate sponsorship?"
Reyes shook her head. "Gaeatronics are the only ones who've shown any interest, and they have a backlog of applications. It could take years. If we can't survey the islands all year round, how are we going to find out about migratory species that visit them?"
Her professor shrugged. He hated to disappoint Reyes, a Sea totem shaman of considerable talent-but he also knew that the paranormal ecology of the San Juan Islands, her current obsession, wasn't considered a particularly high priority by either the School of Magic or the College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences. It didn't help that their respective deans loathed each other, and had pet research projects of their own. "Paul's out there now, isn't he?"
"Yes, on Battleship Island. We can do without the sub if we have to, but we'd still need money for food."
"I'll do what I can. Unfortunately, they don't allow influence or truth spells at faculty meetings."
Reyes smiled. "Thanks. I'll call Paul and let him know." • • •
Marcus Shawn looked down at the body behind the counter, hoping to assense some clue that would lead back to the fence's murder. "George White, also known as Picket," intoned the homicide detective. "Small time fence, bought and sold a lot of guns. No great loss: he screwed up a lot of cases for us."
"How?" Shawn asked her, without much interest.
"One gun he bought and sold was used in three murders by three different owners. You can imagine how hard that made getting a conviction for any of them. And, of course, even when we persuaded Picket that it was in his interest to talk, his recordkeeping wasn't what you'd call helpful."
Shawn, one of Knight Errant's most gifted forensic mages, looked around the store. "So not much chance of telling what's been taken?"
"Fuck-all, I think," said the detective. "He probably hasn't done a stocktake since he bought the place, and if there is an inventory on his system, it's going to be cased in enough ice to sink the Titanic. Same with anything from the security cameras. We'll let the hackers have a go at it, but I don't see it as a high priority. Any idea of the time of death?"
"There's no aura, and rigor has well and truly set in, so at least twelve hours. No insect activity, though, so it probably happened after sunset. It looks as though the shop was still open when it happened, so probably before eleven last night…" He opened his case and removed a rectal thermometer. "I can give you a better estimate in a minute, but I won't know for sure until we get him back to the lab."
"It started pissing down sometime after four," she reminded him, "and didn't let up much until sunrise. Visibility less than a meter. If it happened after that, I don't think we can expect much help from witnesses. Not unless they could breathe water." • • •
Magnusson, clad in an old bathrobe, walked into his combined kitchen and alchemy lab and did a double-take when he saw an attractive leather-clad woman and bald black dwarf sitting at the breakfast bar. Mute smiled slightly at his expression. "Sorry," she said. "I knocked, but no one answered, so I let myself in."
The mage bit back a testy reply: Mute, he knew well, was an expert at not making any noise, and at getting into places that were supposed to be off-limits. "What's up?" he asked.
"We have a job," said the dwarf, "and we'd like some magical back-up."
Magnusson sighed as he filled the kettle. "I'm flattered, but I haven't been on a shadowrun in years-decades, even. Get someone younger." He glanced at Mute. "Where's that leopard shaman girlfriend of yours?"
"Denver. And she's not as good as you-well, not at this kind of thing."
"What kind of thing? Do you want tea? Coffee?"
"Coffee, thanks," said 8-Ball. "The job's… well, it's sort of an extraction, except that we have to find him first, which is why I thought you could help. Problem is, he's cybered to the max and possibly beyond, and he's very good at hiding. One of the top scorers in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training."
Magnusson leaned back against the kitchen counter. "Who is he?"
"His name is Lucas Fletcher, but his friends call him Thresher," 8-Ball answered. "He's a former Navy SEAL who volunteered to test out new Saeder-Krupp military-grade biotech and cyberware, something called Project Ultramarine. Among other things, they gave him gills, more durable than the old OXSYS implants, and cyberlegs with waterjet engines in the shins."
The professor closed his eyes. "What else?"
"Some new form of specially streamlined orthoskin. Enhanced senses, to cope with the underwater environment-sonar, thermographic vision, that sort of thing. Retractable fins. And a lot of other military grade implants-wired reflexes, adrenaline pump, digestive expansion, synthacardium, muscle mods, boosters, compensators, and possibly some headware as well. Zurich knows more about it than I do, and he's trying to see what else he can dig up."
"What went wrong?"
"What?"
"Why is Fletcher hiding?"
"He killed his wife and his lieutenant, then ran," said the dwarf. "NCIS isn't being all that helpful when it comes to details, but they've confirmed that both victims were found in the bedroom of Fletcher's house. It looks as though the wife and the lieutenant were having an affair, and the lieutenant may even have tricked Fletcher into 'volunteering' for Ultramarine just to get him out of the way for a while. Whether that's true or not, it's pretty clear that it was Fletcher who shot them: their forensics matched the rifling marks to a Multi-6 he owned. The gun safe is empty, and that had a print scanner maglock. Then he disappeared.
"They found his car in the parking lot in Gig Harbor, and they think he stole a boat there, an old Aztech Nightrunner. Disabled the RFIDs, of course, and it hasn't turned up yet.
"The navy wants him back, even though they think he's gone rogue, and so does SK, but he's been missing for nearly a week now and word has gotten out. SK is offering a reward: sixty thou, half in nuyen, half in shares. Are you in?"
"Probably not," Magnusson replied. "Why can't they track him down through his implants? Aren't they online?"
Mute and 8-Ball glanced at each other, and the dwarf grimaced. "All his cyberware has a stealth mode-an override that prevents anyone hacking into any of it and taking control, or even locating it. The Navy won't tell us anything more'n that, neither will SK, but Zurich's heard that he can take himself offline any time he's conscious. That way, no one can find him or send him false data when he's doing anything covert…but if he's wounded and blacks out, the override switches off, and the Navy can find him and bring him back in."
"What if he's asleep?"
"I'm not sure… but if he sleeps somewhere which is well enough insulated, he should be okay. Like in a Faraday cage."
"Or underwater," added Mute.
"And?" asked Magnusson, sensing that there was still more they weren't telling him.
8-Ball hesitated. "The Navy thinks the implants have made him paranoid and given him a hair trigger-a worse one than he had before. And the same Multi-6 he used to kill his wife was used to kill Picket, night before last."
"Picket?"
"The fence," explained Mute. "George White, Western War Surplus. Bought and sold a lot of guns, and other gear. You never dealt with him?"
"No," said the magician, coldly. "I never needed money that badly. Or guns. And I still don't. So unless you can give me a better reason than that, count me out."
"Oh, come on, Maggie," said 8-Ball, lightly. "It's never been just about the nuyen. It'll be fun."
"I helped defend the Crypt because of my oath to the coven," said Magnusson, "and I'd do it again, if necessary. But I won't do wetwork; I'm not a hired assassin." The kettle boiled, and switched itself off. He grabbed three mugs from hooks above the stove, slammed them down on the counter. "Besides, the Navy will be looking for him, so will SK, and Knight Errant… and from the sound of it, so will other shadowrunners. And the first two of those will have material links for him, even if the others don't, and wagemages, and other resources. So what makes you think you can get there first?"
"He's already managed to evade them for five days," Mute replied. "I don't know enough about magic to know exactly how, but as Ball said, he's trained in SERE-and nowadays, that includes evading an astral search as well as an electronic or visual one."
"And he trained alongside at least some of the people who'll be looking for him," said the dwarf, nodding. "He'll be expecting the Navy, and probably the SKs, and maybe even Lone Star… but he won't be expecting us.
"The Navy seems to think he's hiding somewhere away from people, either in the water or close to it-somewhere with enough life to mask his aura.. Saeder-Krupp think he's left the UCAS completely, maybe with the help of some of his old shipmates, which is why they've called in runners. If he did leave, though, he must've stowed away or paid a people smuggler, because he's too easily recognized to have caught a passenger flight. And if he's still in town, well, we know the hiding places here better than anyone in SK or the Navy. But it'd speed things up if someone could summon up a few smart watcher spirits…besides, the Knight Errant forensic mage who's working the case is a former student of yours. Marcus Shawn."
The magician handed Mute her mug of tea, and spooned sugar into his own. "What makes you think Marcus is going to tell me anything that isn't on the record?"
"Because he wants to find Picket's killer," said Mute quietly. "And he knows you can help."
Magnusson sipped at his tea. "Okay," he said. "I'll call him. But that's all. I'm not going to kill, or run a greater than usual risk of being killed, just for money. I have too much other work to do." • • •
The forensic report from Marcus Shawn arrived in Magnusson's commlink's inbox while he was teaching his three o'clock class in basic conjuring. He glanced at it when he returned to his office before forwarding it to Mute and diving into a thesis on the role of different industrial pollutants on the formation of toxic water spirits. He was staring at a table of statistics when Reyes knocked on his door, but his pleasure at being interrupted was short-lived. "What's wrong?"
"I can't reach Paul. He's not answered his commlink all morning. Have you heard from him?"
"No. Could he have forgotten to recharge the battery?" asked Magnusson, who knew all too well how academics could lose track of time when obsessed with their research.
"Maybe. But I sent a watcher out to the island to find him. It couldn't."
"Isn't he in a hide?"
"Yes, but the watcher knows where it is. He said he wasn't there. He might be out in the field, but he should have taken his comm with him."
"The islands are far enough away that a watcher wouldn't have much time to do a search if he wasn't in the hide," the professor pointed out. "Especially if he was looking on one of the other islands. Or he might be in the sub."
"Possibly," she said, uncertainly. "I'll keep trying. Thanks."
It was raining again when Jimmy Kaminsky returned to his tiny apartment after the end of his shift. The sunlight had been almost completely blotted out by storm clouds, and when he switched on the low-watt light and saw the dark-skinned woman sitting on his sofa-bed, his first thought was that he was hallucinating in his eagerness to get to his porn collection. An instant later, he recognized her, and his spirits deflated like a bullet-riddled airship. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, wishing he hadn't shut the door behind him.
Mute glanced around the room, and her nose wrinkled. "Just visiting, fortunately. I need some information."
"Blow me."
She brought her hand out from behind a cushion and pointed a slivergun at his chest. "Would you care to rephrase that?"
Kaminksy closed his eyes. "I don't know anything."
"George White, also known as Picket. Murdered in his shop, Western War Surplus, on Monday night."
"You don't think I had anything to do with that, do you? I hardly knew the guy!"
"How did you know him? Through the Moon Traps?"
The survivalist hesitated, then nodded. "He came along to meetings sometimes. He sold us stuff cheap, that's all."
"What sort of stuff?"
"Survival gear. MREs, camo, weapons, stuff for our shelters…"
"Did he have a shelter of his own?"
"Apart from his shop? I don't think so."
"Did he know about anyone else's?"
Kaminsky bit his lip. "You think we published a guidebook or something? He might have known about a few, though we were only supposed to know the exact locations of three, in case one of us was captured and talked."
Mute managed not to smile. "What about Lucas Fletcher?"
"Doesn't ring any bells," said Kaminsky, uneasily.
"Think. He's a Navy Seal, if that helps." She reached into her pocket and drew out a photographic print of Fletcher pre-surgery, which she threw like a shuriken. Kaminsky ducked, then cautiously bent down to pick it up.
"Nope," he said, after a moment's thought. "But we weren't the only ones who did business with Picket. He had friends in the military, too-that's how he got a lot of his stuff."
"Would they have known he was in the club?"
"Dunno. Maybe. Why?"
"Knight Errant thinks he killed Picket. He may have taken some stuff from the shop-ammo, weapons, survival gear-but they don't know how much. Did Picket have anything of value there?"
"Doubt it. Anything he could sell, he did, soon as he could find a buyer."
"Would he have sold a list of names and addresses? Fallout shelters, places to hide?"
"He might have," Kaminsky admitted. "He liked money. But I dunno."
"Think," said Mute, firmly, looking at him along the gunsight. "You're a survivalist, aren't you? Think of this as improving your chances of survival." • • •
Magnusson spent the evening at home, nuking himself a meal, and reading academic journals while listening to Beethoven symphonies and stroking his pet cat (not a familiar, despite rumors to the contrary). He slept badly, dreaming of surgery that turned into autopsies, and arrived at university barely in time for his first class, resorting to a makeover spell instead of a shave and eye-drops. Fortunately, he had enough seniority at the university to be able to avoid teaching on Friday afternoons, when all but the most obsessive students were thinking of better things they could be doing.
Friday night was no more restful than the night before, and on Saturday, he went to the gym for a workout, a sauna and a swim, something he hadn't done since his brief spurt of anxiety at turning fifty, a year before. He even looked in his sock drawer to make sure the Roomsweeper 8-Ball had given him ten years before was still there, then removed the gel rounds and dry-fired the gun a few times to be sure his fingers remembered how.
When a tearful Kenda called him on Sunday afternoon to say that the body of a male elf had washed up on a beach on Shaw Island and that Paul's parents were flying out there to make a positive identification, he listened carefully, then phoned Marcus Shawn. • • •
"How did you know he'd been murdered?" asked Shawn as he sat down in Magnusson's office. "The body had been in the water nearly three days; after the fish and the birds finished with it, we're lucky there was enough of the head left that we could ID him with dental records. If the dart hadn't stuck in his spine, we might not have found any proof he was killed."
"I didn't know," said Magnusson. "I just… it was somewhere between a hunch and paranoia. I didn't even know him all that well; he was in one of my classes as an undergraduate, but I hardly saw him after that. But his partner-research partner and girlfriend-is one of the faculty's research assistants. Best student I've had since you dropped out."
"I didn't 'drop out'," said Shawn, slightly nettled. "I just didn't want to be an ivory tower academic. When I'm your age, maybe I'll feel different, but someone has to do field work!"
"I know," the professor replied. "I'm sorry… you were saying something about a dart?"
"A flechette. It took us a while to identify it: it's from an M24A3."
Magnusson looked politely blank.
"It's a special carbine designed for underwater use. Takes caseless ammo. The Navy uses them, but not many of them make it to the street."
The professor's face turned pale as he thought. "The Navy… do they know about this?"
"I haven't told them," said Shawn. "I don't know about the coroner. There are NCIS agents in town, investigating the George White case, but they're not telling us anything, so she probably won't have mentioned it. Why?"
"White sold military weapons, didn't he?"
"Yes. You think there's a connection between them?"
"I don't know," said Magnusson. That was strictly true, but he had a sinking feeling that the man who'd killed White had also murdered Santos… and that if he'd agreed to help 8-ball and Mute, Santos might still be alive.
"It's not much of a lead, anyway," Shawn replied, "Even if it is the same killer, there are hundreds of islands in that archipelago large enough for him to hide on, if he hasn't moved on, and most of them are Salish-Sidhe territory, out of our jurisdiction. Getting permission for a search would take days, maybe weeks, and it might just be a red herring." He looked at his former teacher's gloomy expression, then at his wristwatch. He knew that Magnusson had learned more magic on the streets than in the university, and rightly suspected that he'd run the shadows in his younger days. Unlike many in Lone Star, Shawn had nothing against shadowrunners per se, except when they created extra work for him (usually in the form of crime scenes, and corpses needing to be autopsied). "I'm due in court at eleven," he said, "have to testify in another case which might take all day. I can put this on the backburner until tomorrow, and call NCIS then, suggest that they search those islands that they can without causing an international incident. Let me know if you find anything or if there's anything I can do to help."
"I will," Magnusson promised, then walked Shawn to the exit. On his way back to the office, he stopped at the alchemy lab storeroom and picked out a collection of talismans and elemental binding foci. • • •
Zurich leaned over the gunwale of the Nightrunner and vomited. Mute, at the helm, glanced back over her shoulder and said, "I thought you were used to boats!"
"Boats, yes," said the dwarf. "Seas, no. I learned to sail on Lake Geneva."
"Oh." Mute turned to Magnusson. "You okay?"
The magician nodded. Now that the peaks of the San Juan Islands were in sight, he was busily conjuring watcher spirits and sending them to search the archipelago. The first, he directed towards the hide on Battleship Island, where Paul Santos had camped. If Fletcher had found it, he might well be taking advantage of its rather primitive comforts; if not, then much of Santos's equipment might still be there, including his cameras and computers. Magnusson dispatched another four watchers to the larger uninhabited islands in the archipelago, but without much hope: even at high tide, there were more than a hundred islands and another few hundred rocks large enough to make good hiding places, and the heavily forested areas provided good cover for astral vision as well as the normal spectrum and infra-red, especially for a heavily-cybered man trained in evasion.
Mute powered down the multi-fuel engine and started up the quieter electric motor, slowing the boat down to little more than walking speed as they sailed into Haro Strait. Zurich stopped retching long enough to toss a microskimmer drone off the boat, while 8-ball stared at the 3D map on his commlink screen. "Orcas Island… Skull Island… Deadman Island… Cemetery Island… Victim Island… Massacre Bay… Smallpox Bay… Deadman Bay… Suicide Cliff… another Skull Island… hell, who had the naming rights to this place? Edgar Allan Poe?"
"Do we know where Santos was killed?" asked Mute.
"I've run a simulation of the tides," said Zurich. "He must have been either killed or dumped in the water for the current to have carried him where it did, but without an exact time of death, all I have is probabilities. Sorry."
"Battleship Island's over there," said Magnusson, pointing at a tall pine that resembled a mast. "Could his body have come from near there?"
"From the north side… it's possible. More likely it was further east, in deeper water."
Mute nodded, and headed northeast to circle the island. Magnusson's watcher spirits returned, but none had anything to report. Gloomily, the magician asked Mute to stop the boat close to shore so that he could astrally project into the camouflaged hide and search it, and then the forest, more thoroughly: watchers, he knew, wouldn't recognize a clue unless they were given a detailed description beforehand, and he didn't want to send the water elemental he'd bound to his service on a job he could do at least as well himself. He sat down in the seat next to Mute's, adjusted his floatation vest and fastened his seatbelt; then, his consciousness flew towards the island, leaving his physical body behind.
Zurich looked at his commlink at the datafeed from his microskimmer. "Anyone else get the feeling we're looking for a needle in a couple of hundred haystacks? What if he's not even here any-" He stumbled as a wave hit the boat. "-ulp-'scuse me-" He leaned over the gunwale and opened his mouth to throw up, then yelled in pain and staggered backwards. 8-Ball stared at him, and saw the finned tail of a flechette protruding from his cheek, which was bleeding profusely.
"Shit!" he yelled, as Zurich keeled over. "The bastard must-"
Mute turned around, and kicked her boosted reflexes into high gear so that the world seemed to slow down as if its batteries were running low.
"-beee riii-g"
She flung off her vest and hastily grabbed her spear gun."-tuuunnndddrrruuusss-"
– and dived into the sea, activating the oxygenating spell tattooed on her body in the same instant as Thresher's heatseeker rocket hit the Nightrunner's engine and the explosion blew the stern of the boat to splinters. • • •
Magnusson looked around the hide-an artfully camouflaged tent roughly the size of a small van, with the cameras and other gear leaving just enough floor space for a troll-sized inflated mattress and sleeping bag. It didn't quite have the aura of a happy home, but there was no astral residue from violence or death inside the shelter, suggesting that Thresher probably had never found the place and that Santos had left it voluntarily…and probably not very long before his murder, if Magnusson was any judge. The scientific equipment still had the psychic patina of something often used with great care as well as eagerness, and even a certain degree of love. As he left the shelter, trying to follow the faint astral impressions of Santos's footprints, the professor found himself regretting that he hadn't known the parazoologist better.
He was halfway to the shore when the shock hit his astral body, sending it reeling in pain. • • •
Mute drew her smartlinked Fukubi with her right hand, and scanned the area for a heat trace from Thresher's weapons. She spotted the contrail from the rocket before she saw the well-disguised shape of her human target; Thresher had dropped the launcher tube and swum away from it, then unslung his M24A3 and fired.
A needle-sharp flechette tore through Mute's lightly armored bodysuit and into the flesh of her right shoulder. The rangefinder in her cybereyes told her that the SEAL was nearly fifty metres away, much too far for either of her weapons to be of much use; she returned fire with the Fukubi anyway, in the hope of spoiling his aim, but none of the shots came within a metre of hitting him, and they had lost most of their force before they even came close.
Thresher grinned as Mute swam towards him as fast as she could, weaving through the water like a dolphin and being careful to present the smallest possible target and squeezing off single shots in the hope of distracting him. She knew the carbine's mag held thirty shots, but she could only hope that he didn't have enough ammunition left that he could waste it. If she could just get close enough to fire the speargun… • • •
8-Ball sprayed a bandage onto Zurich's face, sealing the puncture made by the flechette and stopping the blood loss, then hooked the medkit up to his friend's biomonitor before dragging him over to where Magnusson's meatbody was floating. His inflated vest kept him the right way up, but he'd had to ditch his backpack, gunbelt and most of his weapons to keep his face above water. It hadn't been an easy choice.
Unlike Zurich, the magician had been sitting far enough from the explosion that he didn't seem to have been badly wounded-the back of his seat had absorbed most of the fragments, and 8-ball had cut him free of the wreck before it sank. Magnusson was still staring sightlessly at the dark clouds above him when the rain began to fall onto his face and Zurich's, and onto 8-Ball's hairless scalp. The dwarf checked the pulse in his throat yet again, unsure whether there was anything else he could do to help any of them, and sighed with relief when the magician suddenly turned to face him. "What happened?" asked Magnusson.
"He shot Zurich, then blew up the boat," said the dwarf.
"Mute?"
"Went after him. Took the power head and your talisman."
Magnusson nodded. "Can you make it back to shore? We're sitting ducks here."
"I'll try. You?"
"I'll see if Mute needs help." He cast an Oxygenate spell on himself, commanded his bound elemental to sustain it, and slipped out of his lined coat and flotation vest and into the depths.
The magician's astral vision allowed him to see underwater more clearly than even the best cybereyes, though the sea was teeming with life that shone in the astral like fireflies. Thresher, by contrast, was little more than a shadow, so heavily cybered and modified that he barely had a recognizable aura; only the murderous intent he radiated made it clear that he was actually alive. Magnusson cast a stunball spell at him; Thresher, his adrenaline pump having already kicked in, remained utterly unfazed. His next shot hit Mute below the collarbone, but she continued to press on, watching the rangefinder reading superimposed on the crosshairs on her retinal display as she closed the distance between herself and her target. Thirty-eight metres… thirty-seven… thirty-six…
Magnusson cast a levitation spell on Thresher's carbine, trying to wrest it from his grasp. The SEAL managed to retain his hold on the weapon, but the magician did succeed in deflecting the gun upwards so that the next burst missed Mute, and in distracting him while she swam near enough to fire the speargun. Thresher looked towards her an instant too late to dodge the dart, and it slammed into his chest hard enough to detonate the power head. Flechettes ripped into his armored wetsuit and toughened orthoskin at point-blank range, missing his heart but tearing a hole in his left lung.
Thresher released his grip on the rifle and clapped a hand over the bubbling wound, trying to hold it shut. As Mute neared, he drew his underwater pistol and fired the last three rounds, hitting her twice. Then he drew his fighting knife while he waited for her to come within melee range-but instead of returning fire, Mute drifted down towards the sea floor. Thresher watched her until he was convinced she wasn't merely feigning unconsciousness, then activated the jets in his leg and shot up towards Magnusson, spearing him in the stomach. • • •
8-Ball sighed with relief as his flailing feet finally touched wet sand. The inexpert swimmer staggered the last few meters before dropping Zurich on the shore of Battleship Island, then collapsed beside him, staring up at the sky and gasping for breath. A few seconds later, he sat up, checked the medkit screen to see whether there was anything more he could do for Zurich while they waited for DocWagon, then patted himself down in the hope of finding some weapons he hadn't discarded. It didn't take long to discover that all he had was his neck knife and a signal flare. He would have sworn long and loudly, but he didn't have the energy to spare. • • •
The force of the collision lifted both Magnusson and Thresher partly out of the water, and when the SEAL cut the power to his jets, both of their heads remained above the surface. They stared at each other, almost nose to nose, for a few seconds, before Thresher removed the knife and began to laugh. "You should've stayed home. You're way out of your depth-but me, I'm in my element."
"Maybe," Magnusson gasped weakly, "but you're in my elemental."
"Wha-" Thresher drew back his knife for a killing blow, and the water spirit engulfed and bound him, lifting him and spinning him around in a towering vortex far above the magician. Magnusson watched the SEAL struggle for a moment, and realized that he couldn't drown and was protected against cold and possibly even against the great crushing pressure that the powerful elemental could generate. He thought quickly, then ordered the spirit to hurl him towards the island.
The elemental obeyed: like a small but powerful tsunami, it sped across the sea, releasing Thresher just as it reached the shoreline and propelling him into the trunk of a lodgepole pine with damaging force. The SEAL picked himself up, taking two unsteady steps on his finned feet, then fell face-down into the mud. He picked himself up with some difficulty, then turned his head to see a pair of boots less than a meter away. He looked up, and saw 8-Ball standing over him, brandishing a piece of driftwood the approximate size and shape of an executioner's axe. The dwarf grinned, then brought the heavy cudgel down on Thresher's head with all of his strength. • • •
When Magnusson swam ashore three minutes later, carrying Mute and assisted by the water elemental, 8-ball was sitting beside his unconscious foe. Thresher's wrists and ankles were bound together with duct tape from Zurich's pocket, and 8-Ball had donned his web belt and was admiring his gyrojet pistol. He looked up as Magnusson, chanting in Aramaic to center himself and reduce the drain of his magic use, gently lay Mute down on the sand. "Is she okay?" he asked.
The magician nodded wearily.
"You?"
Magnusson sat down, and looked at Zurich, raising an eyebrow.
"Stable," said the weapons master. "I've called DocWagon, and they should be here soon."
"You?
"Never felt better," said 8-Ball, grinning. "Just been SEAL clubbing."
Magnusson groaned at the pun, and lay down on the beach.
"Mute said you were the best," the dwarf said, more seriously. "She was right."
The magician didn't reply.
"We've got another job coming up," 8-Ball continued. "Datasteal from Mitsuhama's magical research. Should be interesting. You want in?"
Magnusson stared up at the sky, then closed his eyes. He planned to secretly give his share of the reward for Thresher to Kenda Reyes so that she could continue her research, but he knew it might not be enough. "Maybe," he said. "But only if it doesn't involve any wetwork." The Good Fight By Marc Tassin
Marc Tassin was enthralled by books from an early age. He marveled that a collection of letters on a page could sweep a person away to another world, change the course of a life, or evoke any number of emotional and intellectual responses. The power of this literary alchemy is what inspired him to try his hand at writing, although it is the joy of sharing his work with others that drives him today. Marc lives in a small town just outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife, Tanya, and their two children.
"Outta the way, grandpa."
The two gangers muscled past Kaine, shoving him aside as they struggled out to the waiting GAZ-P pickup with the decade old trid console. Near the apartment building steps, groups of people, most still in their pajamas, stood huddled together. Some were crying, some stared steely-eyed at the gang members, while others just watched in quiet resignation.
Kaine ignored it all. He shoved his hands a little further into the pockets of his battered trench and made his way past the huddled masses, up the steps, and into the decaying apartment building he'd made his squat a couple of years back.
Inside, he stepped around another ganger who had the young couple from 4C at gunpoint and pinned against the wall. They were wearing their links, and they punched shaking fingers at the air in front of them.
"That's right," the ganger said. "And transfer those trid speakers too. If any of you slots get it in your head to call Knight Errant, I want it nice and clear that you sold us this stuff."
"Can't beat the price!" shouted another ganger as he went past with an armful of clothing.
Kaine had seen this before. Gang hits a building at night, forces everybody outside, and cleans out their squats. The twist on this one is that they force all the residents to legally sell the stuff to the gangers for a song using their links. The gangers pay a couple of nuyen and walk away with a pile of stuff. And of course none of the folks they hit have enough nuyen or status to prove otherwise. Instead they just eat it and move on, saving that call to Knight Errant for important stuff, like murder. Course here in Detroit, anyone outside "the Wall" knows it's a lucky break if the Knights show up even for that. Kaine had seen a corpse rot in an alley for a week before a Knight Errant cruiser finally appeared to check it out.
Kaine made it to his apartment unmolested. An old man in a battered trench coat was easy to ignore. Granted, he was a little bulkier than most men his age, and the hard lines of his face, half-hidden in the shadows of his wide-brimmed hat, might have given the punks pause. Fortunately, gangers weren't known for their observation skills.
The door to his squat hung by one hinge, and the new maglock he'd installed a couple weeks earlier lay on the floor, twisted and bent. Frowning, Kaine stepped over the wreckage and surveyed the damage. As expected, it was his old trid he'd seen them hauling out. The soy processor was gone too, as well as the projection window he'd picked up last year. They hadn't taken his collection of turn of the century CDs, but probably not knowing what they were they'd made sure to smash the hell out of them. Kaine grimaced as he stepped over the glittering shards of his collector's edition copy of the Best of the White Stripes.
None of that concerned him. It wasn't the first time he'd had to start over, and it wouldn't be the last. He'd made provisions for this sort of thing and had more than enough nuyen to cover it. Even the CDs weren't a big deal. Hunting for them in the various online auction houses was more than half the fun anyhow.
Kaine was worried about something more important.
He reached the bedroom and found exactly what he was afraid of. Lying on the floor in a slowly expanding pool of blood lay Alvin. Alvin was a mixed breed, but he'd had the look and temperament of a lab. Kind, happy, a friend who would never turn on you. Not only that, but he was an honest-to-god dog. Not some vat job or Japanese clone or Chinese synthound. It didn't take a vet to tell Kaine the old boy was done for.
Kaine stooped beside Alvin and ran his gloved hand along the dog's side. Glassy, dead eyes stared up at him, the hound's pink tongue lolling out to one side and streaked with red. Kaine heard footsteps behind him.
"Watchoo doin', old man?"
He recognized the voice as that of the ganger he'd stepped around coming in.
"You didn't have to shoot him," Kaine said without turning. "He was a good dog. He wouldn't have hurt anyone."
Kaine heard the distinctive slide and snap of an MP-5 cocking lever moving into firing position.
"Shut yer slot," the ganger growled. "Grab yer link, and get out here. We got business to do."
Kaine's vision blurred, and he felt an old itch in his back that he'd almost forgotten about. He'd put up with a lot of shit over the years, but this was too much. These little bastards didn't respect anything. It was going to be the same damn thing again and again and again.
Kaine stood, avoiding any sudden moves. Instead of turning, he stepped to the nightstand.
"I need my medicine," he said, reaching for the drawer.
"Get away from there!"
Still facing the nightstand Kaine froze but continued speaking, his voice calm and low, "I need my heart medicine. If I die, who's gonna do the transaction?"
The ganger took a long moment to think about this. Kaine gave him time to puzzle it out.
"Fine! Grab yer shit, and let's go," the ganger yelled.
Kaine opened the drawer and reached inside. Turning his hand over, he reached up and grasped the Ares Predator he kept secured there with MagnoTape.
With a sharp mental command he hadn't used in almost eight years, Kaine tripped his wired reflexes. The jolt to his system was one part excruciating pain and one part ecstasy. The world slowed to a crawl as his body was ripped from the realm of normal human perception and into a place where nanoseconds stretched out long enough to make a blink a temporary blackout.
As he spun around he could see that the ganger was wired too. Most likely he had one of those new Mitsuhama rigs. Twice as fast and half the cost of the ancient hardwire Renraku system Kaine was running. The ganger opened up with his SMG, but Kaine was already dropping to a crouch. The stream of bullets perforated the wall behind him, cutting his favorite Poker Dogs painting in two. The ganger was all jitter and no jive. Like a drivers ed student behind the wheel of a Lamborghini.
As Kaine dropped he brought the predator around, popped the safety, and squeezed the trigger once, twice.
Twin thunderclaps roared. The first bullet caught the ganger square in the chest and sent his arms flying out in front of him. The second round hit right between the eyes, snapping the ganger's neck back and coating the room behind him with a design that would have made Jackson Pollock jealous.
Kaine had already crossed the room before the body hit the floor. His hat flew off, revealing the wiry brush cut he'd worn since serving in the UCAS Marines back in the '30s. The only difference was that it had faded to a steel gray over the past few decades.
Kaine stopped beside the body and looked at the corpse.
"You can steal the things a man holds dear. You can burn down his home. You can even take a man's life. But never, ever, fuck with a man's dog."
By the time Kaine reached the apartment door, he could hear the shit hitting the fan. The gangers were shouting to one another, kids were crying, and some lady had started screaming. In retrospect he probably should have let it go. This was exactly the sort of attention he'd spent the last fifteen years avoiding.
But Alvin had been a good dog. He couldn't let that one go. Didn't make much difference at this point. His foot was well into it. Only option now was to see it through to the end.
Still in his apartment, Kaine heard footsteps coming down the hall toward his place. He shrugged out of his trench coat leaving him in jeans, a black Troika Death t-shirt, and sensible brown work shoes. He had a good build for a man of sixty, thanks in no small part to the 70% of his body that had been replaced with chrome. Not the slick "looks like real skin!" crap Runners were getting these days. It was hardcore; polished steel, exposed pistons, buff it with Turtle Wax chrome. Not even the retro-rustic crap the gangers were getting into recently could compare.
Kaine flexed feeling the rotors in his joints whirr, and he called up a status report via the HUD in his cybereyes. Everything was either yellow or green, meaning it would work well enough for what he was about to do. It felt good to fire up the old systems again. Real good.
Kaine dove out the door, rolling into the hall and coming up next to the stairs. Two gangers, both armed with old model HKs, skittered to a stop as he appeared. Before they could activate their wires, Kaine had the Predator up and firing. The first ganger dropped before he could figure out what the hell was happening. The one behind him only managed to get a single shot off before the unexpected arrival of a chunk of hot lead in his skull interrupted his concentration.
Kaine ducked in time to avoid the ganger's bullets, but they hit the banister beside him, peppering him with a hail of splinters. By the time he got to his feet, two more gangers had hit the hallway.
"What the hell?" the first one gasped. "This fucker is chromed."
Kaine sprinted towards them.
Or he would have, if his right knee hadn't gone redline. The whole mechanism locked up, his HUD squealing an alarm, and Kaine took two stumbling steps forward. Reaching out with his free hand, he grabbed one of the banister's pillars just in time to keep from falling.
In a stroke of the same good luck that had kept him alive all those years back in Seattle, the boys at the door didn't have guns. Of course, in a stroke of the same bad luck that had forced him into hiding in the first place, they were carrying something just as bad.
Monofilament swords.
He hesitated for half a second, wondering again just what the hell he was doing. He might as well put up a flag out front with his face on it. The smart thing to do would be to get out now, before things got any worse.
But damn it, Alvin had been a good dog.
As his system tried to reboot his left knee, Kaine brought up his pistol. A single shot took the first ganger down, but he knew the second would be on top of him before he could fire again. Instead, he pivoted to the side just as the ganger got close. As the ganger passed, the mono-molecular edge of the blade cut harmlessly through the air instead of slicing his arm off.
Kaine gave his wires another kick, even though he knew full well that's probably what screwed up his knee, and brought the Predator around. The ganger recovered at the same moment, and he swung his blade at Kaine. Before Kaine could get the shot off the ganger's blade sliced through the end of the Predator's barrel.
"Shit," Kaine growled, tossing the now worthless chunk of metal away.
The ganger, shocked by his own success, didn't react quickly enough. It gave Kaine the time he needed. Willing the chrome in his left arm up to full power he ripped the pillar loose from the stairs with a crack. Pivoting on his locked knee, he brought it around and jammed the jagged end of it straight into the ganger's face. The ganger dropped his blade and stumbled backward, hands clasped to his bleeding face. Kaine limped after him, and with a swift blow to the ganger's neck dropped him to the floor, lifeless.
From outside, Kaine heard shouts and cheers.
He limped down the hall to the building entrance, his damn knee still not turning over. With tires squealing, the last two gangers peeled off down the street in their GAZ-P, crap tumbling out of the back as it skidded around the corner and disappeared. Kaine's neighbors rushed to him, clapping him on the back, and shouting their thanks.
Kaine grimaced.
Everyone gathered in the empty apartment at 4D. Kaine had finally gotten his knee to reboot, but it was still running on the edge of red. He sat on an empty crate, listening to the crowd of people arguing over what to do.
"We don't need to do anything," the young man from 4C insisted. "Those guys won't come back here."
A number of people nodded, making noises of agreement.
"I don't know," an older woman from the apartment above Kaine's replied. "I think the best thing we can do is move on. Find somewhere else."
A few folks mumbled their assent, but others began arguing against this. Kaine could see the argument that had been going round and round for the last twenty minutes was building up steam again. He couldn't take much more of it.
"She's right," he shouted, his hard, gravelly voice cutting through the noise. The crowd went silent.
"Didn't you see the markings on those kids?" he asked. "They're New Chamber Boys, the biggest, best-armed gang on the west side of the wall. You think those boys are just going to run home, and that'll be that? Hell, no. They're going to go back to whatever shithole they crawled out of, they're going to get a whole bunch of their friends, a lot more guns, and they're going to come back here to teach everyone a lesson."
A low murmur ran through the crowd.
"This is all your fault," a middle aged guy in a shirt and tie growled at Kaine.
"You're right," Kaine said. "This is my fault. I should have let it go, but I didn't. For that, I'm sorry. The only smart thing to do is get out of here."
"Sorry?"
The voice was soft, wavering. It cracked a bit at the end of the word, and Kaine knew it was Madam Hilda. The ancient ork woman, draped in the multi-colored crocheted shawl she always wore, shuffled forward. The people around her stepped out of the way, and as she passed, the gnarled stick she used for a cane rapped the floor with surprising strength.
"You're sorry that you refused to be degraded by those beasts? You're sorry that you did what more of us should do? Or perhaps you're sorry that you didn't kill them all, the only apology I'd be willing to accept, I might add?"
She limped right over to Kaine and glared at him.
"Look, lady. I hear you. I really do, but let's be serious. If these folks stay here, they're gonna get slaughtered."
"No way," the young man from 4C said. "I'm done being the whipping boy for every damn slot in this city. I'm gonna stay and fight. I've got a gun."
"Same here," rumbled the big truck driver from 5E. "I'm sick of bein' some gang's bitch. I ain't movin'."
More people spoke up, and a murmur of agreement ran through the crowd.
Kaine looked around and gave a hard laugh.
"You people are crazy. That's not how the world works. It beats you up, and if you manage to live through it, you get up and start again. Keep your head down and your mouth shut, and you just might make it. I already apologized for screwing this up, and that's all I've got to offer. Go have your little war if you want, but count me out."
As Kaine left he heard someone say "We don't need him" and the group began making plans for their defense.
Out in the hall, Kaine stopped. He heard the voice of the old, wheelchair-bound guy from 7D offering his shotgun. He heard the pretty welfare mom with five kids mention a year in the UCAS Army Reserve. He heard the skinny kid from the top floor offer to hack the building and help coordinate.
Kaine frowned. If they went through with it, those people were dead. They were brave, and their hearts were in the right place, but they weren't killers. Not one of them knew, except maybe the Army Reserve lady, what it really meant to kill. Worse, he doubted many of them knew what it meant to watch the guy next to you die.
It'd be a bloodbath, the gang would tear them apart, and tomorrow he'd read a two-line story about it, six pages down in the Detroit Free Press police blotter.
Kaine leaned against the wall, taking some of the weight off his bad knee. He wondered if the old lady was right. He'd spent the last fifteen years "playing it safe," and what had it got him? A long string of crappy squats in the worst neighborhoods the UCAS had to offer, a list of dead friends as long as his arm, and the pleasure of having his dog shot by a bunch of snot-nosed brats from the ass end of Detroit.
Kaine cursed himself for what he was about to do, but something sparked deep inside him that he hadn't felt in a long time. As he stepped back through the door of 4D, everyone stopped talking.
"I'm not saying you won't all die, but if we're gonna do this, let's at least get you some real weapons." • • •
A small group of them stood in the boiler room of the apartment building. Kaine reached behind the boiler and hauled out a heavy sledgehammer.
"A sledgehammer? That's what we're going to fight them with?" the annoying teenager from 2H asked.
Kaine glared at him and resisted smacking him upside the head.
"No, kid," he growled.
With a swing that sent the others scrambling back out of the way, he brought the hammer around and smashed it into the cinder block wall. The blocks cracked, and with two more swings he smashed a good-sized hole. Shining a flashlight into the gap, the thin beam revealed a closet sized room filled wall-to-wall with rifles, pistols, sub-machine guns, boxes of ammo, and even a small crate of grenades.
"We're gonna fight with those." • • •
He spent the next hour handing out weapons and showing folks how to use them. As he tore the plexiwrap from an Uzi III and handed it to a kid that couldn't have been more than fifteen, the kid asked "They're still in plastic. Are they brand new?"
"No, I sealed them so they'd be ready to fire without prep if I needed them."
"How long have they been down here?" the kid asked.
"I don't know. Ten, eleven years?" Kaine said, pulling the last of the plexiwrap from the next weapon.
"But you only moved in here two years ago," the kid said.
"Fer cryin' out loud, kid. what are you, trying out for the Knight Errant investigative squad?"
The kid looked at his feet and kicked at the dust.
"I'll admit," the young guy from 4C said, holding a Defiance T-250 shotgun like it would bite him if he grabbed it too hard. "I'm kind of curious about that too."
Kaine sighed.
"Before I retired, it was useful in my line of work to have places where you could run if things went bad. When I was looking for a squat, this just seemed like a decent place to settle."
The kid waved the Uzi toward the hole in the wall and said, "So you hid all this stuff there back in the 60's? That's cool. It's like Prime Runners."
Kaine glared at the kid, reached out, and pushed the barrel of the Uzi, which was currently pointing straight at him, down toward the ground.
"Yeah, and they're all freakin' loaded, so do me a favor and keep it pointed away from me." • • •
About an hour later they had gathered in the empty apartment again. The crowd was smaller this time. The one bit of sound advice Kaine's neighbors had listened to was to send the families with young kids away. The only exception was Elise, the ex-army reservist. Her mother took the kids, and Elise stayed behind. Kaine wouldn't say he wasn't pleased. It would suck if the kids had to grow up without a mom, but he needed anyone who actually knew what they were doing with a gun here.
He turned to the trucker and a couple of his big buddies.
"Let's go over it again. You three are on the front door. You gotta keep them from breaking through, and if they do you need to hold them until we can regroup on the main floor."
The men nodded, readjusting their grips on their weapons. Kaine had given them the two mono-blades from the dead gangers and a shock baton from his own collection. They looked like they could fight, but if the gangers were carrying anything heavy they'd be little more than a speed bump. Of course they didn't need to know that. He turned to the next group.
"You eight are going to take positions in the upper story windows. Four front. Four back. Even if it looks like we're getting hit heavy from one side, I want two of you to hold to your side at all times. Let's not get fooled by a feint. When firing, never take more than three shots from any position, then move to the next. It'll make it hard for the gangers to know how many we've got and where to shoot."
He turned to Elise.
"Elise. You're my second. I want you on the roof where you can perform physical overwatch. I also want you to take the grenades. You'll be our air support."
He turned to the rest of the group.
"What Elise says is law. Like I told you up front, you need to do exactly as you're told if this is going to work. You go running off on your own or playing this like some Neil the Ork Barbarian sim and we're all dead. The only chance we have of making it through this alive is if we work together. Got it?"
Everyone nodded.
"What's our status, Darius?"
The skinny kid from the top floor was swiping wild patterns through the air in front of him, his eyes twitching between AR windows only he could see.
"It's Shadowpanther," the kid corrected him, never taking his eyes off his virtual displays.
Kaine sighed. Darius had informed him that Shadowpanther was his Shadowrunner name. Ever since the trouble started he'd insisted that everyone use it. "Whatever, kid, Just give me a damn status report."
"They're three blocks off but moving slowly. Looks like they're stopping to pick people up along the way."
"How many?"
"Twenty-three, no, twenty-four now. Five cars. Almost everyone has guns."
Kaine didn't show any sign of it, but he was impressed. The kid's old link had been decent, but not up to the sort of matrix work they needed. Kaine had hauled an old deck out of his cache. It had belonged to Spindle, a decker he'd run with in the 50's. Last he'd heard Spindle went down with all the other unlucky bastards in the crash of '64. Kaine figured Spindle wouldn't mind if the kid cannibalized the deck and its software.
Despite the age of the stuff, the young hacker had managed to cobble together a decent set of cut and control apps, certainly better than what he'd been using before. In less than an hour the kid had hacked the local sec-net, giving them a blanket view of the surrounding neighborhood. Shadowpanther definitely had potential.
"O.K. We've got less than twenty before they get here," he said, looking at the dozen or so people he hadn't addressed yet. "I want three of you with Elise on the roof. The rest of you run support for the other positions. Keep moving. We don't want anyone getting pinned down. And if things really go south, use the holes we cut through the walls to the other buildings to get the hell out. No one goes down with this ship."
The people nodded, sweat beading on foreheads, hands gripping and re-gripping the weapons they carried.
"All right," Kaine said, wondering how the hell they'd pull this off without everyone getting killed. "Let's get into position."
There was the soft sound of someone clearing their throat in the back of the room, followed by a familiar: shuffle, thump, pause, shuffle, thump, pause.
"And where should I be?" Madam Hilda asked as she stepped into the light.
Kaine grimaced. He'd personally put her on the step-van that had left with the last load of kids and parents.
"Crimeny, Hilda. What are you still doing here?"
"This is my home too, young man. I intend to defend it."
Kaine walked over to her and kneeled so he could look her in the eye. In reality he was probably ten years older than her, but the biological clocks on orks tended to run fast, making an ork "fifty" equivalent to a human "eighty." Still, somehow, she seemed to have already gathered all the wisdom an extra thirty years would have granted her. It made him all the more frustrated that she was still there.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat it, Hilda. You're not going to help. If anything, you're going to be a liability. Now I have to give up a couple of our fighters to get you out of here."
For a second her face hardened, and it seemed that fire flared in her eyes. The shadows around them grew darker, and Kaine felt a chill run down his spine. He knew the feeling, something he hadn't felt since he'd run with Eagle, a shaman out of the NAN.
The strange sensation faded.
"Judge me not by my size," she said, a mischievous grin on her face.
"You old buzzard," he chuckled. "You've been holding out on us. All right, you take the roof with Elise and Shadowpanther."
He turned to the assembled group and shouted, "Let's go people! Move out!"
Looking around as his neighbors hurried off to their positions, Kaine wondered if they might just pull this off after all. • • •
Kaine had a clear view of the ganger army from his vantage point on the roof. Over thirty of them, armed to the teeth and mad as hell. When they'd waltzed up to the front door, a volley of fire from the building had sent them scurrying back behind their vehicles. They clearly hadn't expected that, although Kaine had to remind his people to be careful about ammo. Wouldn't do to empty their mags before the real fighting even started. In the meantime, it forced the gangers to fall back and come up with a new plan.
Kaine mentally adjusted the telescopic sights on his cybereyes to zoom in on the gang's leader. He was a troll, nearly eight feet tall, his horns sawed off to stumps. Kaine was certain the GE minigun sitting in the back of the GAZ-P belonged to him. Even the concrete walls of their building wouldn't be a hell of a lot of protection against that thing.
With a mental command, Kaine clicked on his comm and sub-vocalized, "Spot the troll hiding behind the GAZ-P. He's got cover right now so don't waste your ammo, but you see him reach into the back of that truck, unload on him with everything you've got."
Lights blinked in the AR in front of Kaine as the others acknowledged his orders.
"Sir! I'm still concerned that I can't get your link on the overhead," Darius whispered behind him.
Kaine flicked off his cybereyes and turned to face the nervous hacker.
"Listen, kid. I keep telling you, I like to stay under the radar. I've got fifty nuyen that says they've got at least two hackers running overwatch and trying to pin us."
Elise moved over next to them.
"So they must know how many we've got in here and where we are," she said.
Kaine shook his head. "No. That scramble script Darius pulled from the deck is old but damn good. To anyone outside, this building'll be nothing but a big black box. But when I go out there I don't want them to see me coming."
"You're going out?" asked Elise, her eyes wide.
Kaine flagged two red blips on the exterior overhead that showed where the gangers were, and he transmitted it across the LAN to her.
"See those two? They're mages. If anyone is going to screw things up for us, it's them. They're not going to stick their heads out where we can get a shot at them, so somebody has to go out and get them. I'd rather they not know I'm coming until the bullet hits them."
"They're forming up!" one of the lookouts hissed through his link.
"O.K. folks, showtime," Kaine called back.
Looking over the edge, he saw the gangers spreading out and gathering into small groups. Suddenly, two groups that had been hidden behind the cars popped up, weapons at the ready.
"Everyone down!" Kaine shouted over his comm, dropping behind the short, concrete wall that ran along the edge of the roof.
Thunder exploded as the gangers opened up. Bullets screamed overhead, smashed through windows, cracked against the walls. It seemed like minutes went by, and the firing didn't let up.
Kaine signaled to Elise. She nodded and lobbed a pair of grenades over the edge. The firing stopped, followed by two ear-pounding booms that echoed between the buildings.
"NOW!" shouted Kaine.
All around him, the fighters on the roof popped up and started firing. Below them, gun barrels appeared in half the windows of the apartment and opened fire as well. Kaine, meanwhile, dashed toward the back of the building. Hilda was there, waiting.
"If you're gonna use some of that juju, grandma, now's the time."
"Who you calling grandma, old man," she said, giving him a sly grin.
Kaine gave her a half smile, shook his head, and kept moving to where he'd secured a length of rope to a pipe. As he grabbed the rope and hopped over the side he heard Hilda chanting followed by the sound of roaring flame. Looking up he just caught a glimpse of a large, humanoid shape made completely of fire.
He was suddenly very glad she was on their side.
Drawing on skills he hadn't used in ages, Kaine rappelled down the side of the building in perfect silence, touching down on the pavement without a sound. The alley was dark. Nothing moved. Nevertheless, Kaine doubted he was alone. Gangers weren't the smartest guys around, but they weren't stupid. The stupid ones didn't last long.
Kaine thanked his lucky stars he'd managed to squeeze into his old stealth suit. He wouldn't call the fit comfortable, but the matte black fabric with its heat canceling mesh made sure that he stayed hidden, even from thermographic vision.
Assuming he wanted to stay hidden. He rapped his hand on the side of a dumpster, and ducked back as the expected burst of gunfire erupted from the other side of the alley. Bullets whistled and clanged off the metal. From above, he heard shots fire. He was pleased. The men at the rear had followed his instructions and held their position, although he doubted they would hit anything. It was too dark, and they were too inexperienced, but he had the necessary cover fire to get past the rear guards. Kaine dashed down the alley, little more than a shadow in the night. Firing his reflexes up to full, he sprinted away at superhuman speed.
"Report on the gangers in the alley." Kaine subvocalized.
"Holding," Darius' voice rang back over the AR.
He'd gotten past undetected. The easy part was done. From the front of the building he heard what sounded like a war. Hell, it was a war. Automatic weapons fire, the boom of shotguns, the reverberating thunder of grenades, and a high pitched screech of something not of this world tore the night air.
A strange calm fell over Kaine. For the first time in ages he felt like he was where he belonged. He knew who he was, what he was supposed to do. A smile crept across his lips as all the excuses he'd told himself back in '57 about why he had to go into hiding melted away.
Everybody makes mistakes, he thought, still grinning. Time to make up for lost time. • • •
Emerging from the alley at the front of the buildings, Kaine got his first clear view of the battle. The gangers were pinned down behind their vehicles. The gunfire coming from the building was light but constant, exactly as he'd instructed. Now and then, Elise dropped a grenade into the middle of it all. The goal at this point wasn't to take the gang out, just make them think really hard about whether rushing the building was a good idea.
Of course the main attraction was the elementals. Hilda's enormous fire elemental was locked in combat with an earth elemental and an air elemental. The air elemental spiraled around the battle like a tiny tornado, tossing dust and debris and taking an occasional swipe at the fire elemental. The earth elemental grappled directly with the fire elemental, trying to force its way past the fire spirit to the building. As the fire elemental batted the earth elemental back, Kaine whistled under his breath. Hilda had some serious mojo.
Scanning the gangers and matching them to the overlay Darius was transmitting, he re-tagged the shamans. If he could get across the road, he could get behind their line. The problem was the streetlights.
"Darius. Kill the streetlights on the west side of the building."
"Um, I'm not sure how to do that. I can brighten them and dim them and stuff, but I don't think I can turn them off."
Kaine cursed and wracked his brain, trying to remember something that might help. He remembered a run his team had done on a Renraku research center a long time ago.
"O.K., don't worry about turning them off. Just crank them up. All the way. Past redline if you can."
The lights flared, and Kaine's cybereyes worked overtime to compensate. After a few seconds of blinding, white light, the bulbs started to blow. Moments later, the street was dark.
"Nice work, kid."
"Whoa! That was awesome," Darius replied.
Kaine didn't wait. He dashed across the street. Halfway to the other side a beeping alerted him that his knee was hitting red again. Kaine cursed the old hardware, but he didn't stop. He reached the other side, apparently without drawing attention to himself, and crouched behind some trash cans. Peering over the cans, he saw the gangers. They were focused on the building.
He spotted one of the mages sitting behind an old Ford Americar, his back against the front tire. The mage's eyes were squeezed shut, and he was rocking and muttering. Kaine knew that look. The guy was struggling to keep his elemental under control. Looking up, he saw Hilda's fire elemental getting forced back. The ganger mage might not have full control over his elemental, but the tide was definitely turning against Kaine's people.
Not ready to reveal his position just yet, Kaine weighed his options. Even with the battle raging, gunfire coming from behind the lines might grab somebody's attention. Reaching behind his back, he popped the mini-crossbow he carried from its mount and pulled a bolt from the pocket on his thigh.
Doesn't need to be state of the art to kill ya, Kaine thought.
He raised the crossbow, his cybereyes' smart assist locking onto the mage, and he squeezed the trigger. With only the slightest whisper, the bolt flew through the air and made a little pop as it embedded itself in the side of the mage's head. The mage slumped over, and when Kaine looked under the car again he saw the air elemental blow away like smoke on the wind.
One down, he thought. And not a moment too soon.
With a scream and a sudden stench of sulfur, Hilda's fire elemental exploded. The earth elemental had plowed straight through it. Fire swirled around the stone creature for a moment, and then wicked away in a shower of sparks. The gangers let out a cheer, and with a command from their leader they charged. The earth elemental headed straight for the door.
Kaine was thankful that he'd outfitted the door guards with the hand weapons. They weren't much, but it was a hell of a lot better than fighting that thing with their bare hands. Eagle had once tried to explain to Kaine why normal weapons didn't do much against elementals, but Kaine had gotten bored and dozed off. He didn't care about the ins and outs of it. He just needed to know how to kill the damn things.
With any luck, Kaine might take out the other mage, and thus banish the elemental, before the monster managed to do too much damage. Kaine rechecked the second mage's position and started creeping along behind the gangers' cars. Except for a few wounded, the rest of them had rushed the building.
Check that, Kaine thought. Almost all the gangers.
Just as Kaine was about to round the bumper of a rusty Hermes delivery van, he spotted the massive troll leader with two other gangers. As the troll watched the battle, the two gangers worked furiously to mount the troll's mini gun on him. Kaine peeked under the Hermes and saw the earth elemental crushing the front door of the building. A stream of gangers poured in behind it.
Shit!
There was no real choice. He had to take out that minigun and hope to hell that those boys inside could handle the elemental. Dropping his crossbow, he drew his matched set of Cavalier Deputy pistols.
Kaine popped his reflexes and stepped out from behind the van. He cursed when he found that he didn't have a clean shot on the troll. His cybereyes locked on the two gangers helping their leader instead. Via the smartlinks on his pistols and palms, his arms and weapons snapped up into perfect firing positions. He squeezed the triggers, felt the rounds spiral down the barrels, and heard the pop as twin silver bullets cracked through the sound barrier and exited the gun. A nanosecond later two wet, red holes appeared in the foreheads of the gangers, and they dropped to the ground.
The troll, his minigun already in its harness, spun to face Kaine and pulled the trigger. Kaine winced when he saw that the barrels were already spinning. He knew what was coming. The angry squawk of a couple hundred rounds exiting the gun almost simultaneously echoed in the night air. Kaine barely rolled back behind the van in time.
The screech of his AR alarms was the only notification Kaine had that he'd been hit. Praying the readout was wrong, he looked to his left. It wasn't wrong. The stream of bullets had sheared his left arm off just below the shoulder. The glittering chrome appendage lay twitching on the ground, one of his Deputies still gripped in the hand.
The troll laughed, a rough, awful sound as hard as the minigun's bullets. At the same time, a cacophony of shouts and screams blasted through Kaine's comm. Over the chaos he heard Elise shouting orders while Darius cried out positions. Kaine shut it off. There was nothing he could do for them now.
"I don't know who you are, omae," the troll called out, "but you do not fuck with the New Chamber Boys!"
In the background he heard the whir of the minigun's barrel still spinning, ready to spew forth another stream of pure death.
"Fuck you," Kaine spat, still crouched behind the Hermes. Conversation under fire had never been his strong suit.
The minigun squawked again. The screech of rending metal filled the air, and a shower of sparks rained on Kaine. When the noise stopped, Kaine looked up and found that the troll had cut the back side of the van in half with the gun. Had he been standing, he'd already be dead. From across the street he heard an explosion detonate inside the building.
Kaine growled. There was no way in hell he was going down cowering in the shadows. He'd already spent the last fifteen years doing that.
Bypassing the failsafes, Kaine popped his wires into full overload. The burn that raged through his nerve endings was agonizing, and he smelled the sizzle of flesh as the wires went into meltdown. Kaine launched himself from behind the van. The troll was ready, and Kaine watched as in slow motion the huge metahuman squeezed the trigger on the minigun. The bullets streamed toward him like a glittering ribbon of mercury.
Kaine brought up the Deputy. At this speed, even his smartlink wasn't keeping up. He ignored it and lined up the shot along the gun's iron sights. He pulled the trigger, and the big pistol bucked in his hand. The cybernetic muscles in his arm locked down and compensated for the recoil. The stream of lead from the minigun sliced through his shoulder. Pain dampers shut down all sensation, and Kaine squinted through the mist of blood that sprayed off the wound.
Kaine squeezed again. A second silver bullet roared out of the pistol, riding the wake of the first.
Without warning, Kaine's AR went solid red, and the world exploded back into real time. He slammed into the ground on the stump of his left arm and skidded across the pavement. A shower of mortar and concrete rained down on him. Through the dust, he caught sight of the troll reeling backwards, still clutching the minigun's trigger and spraying the building behind them with bullets as he tumbled over like an oak tree in a windstorm.
As the troll's lifeless body slammed into the ground, the minigun finally stopped screaming. Kaine rested on the ground for a second, catching his breath and listening to the slowing whine as the minigun barrels came to a stop. He clicked on his comm, one of the only systems he had that was still functioning.
"ALL AROUND US…"
"…get back to the…"
"…GEEAAAAH…"
"…Hilda won't come with us…"
"Run! Run!"
Kaine let his head drop to the concrete. He couldn't let it end like this.
He struggled to get to his feet but slipped in something warm and wet and fell back to the ground. His head spun and black spots were forming before his eyes. Looking down, he saw a pool of blood under him. At first he thought it was from one of the gangers he'd taken out, or maybe the troll. As an afterthought he looked at his own body.
A jagged saw line cut from his shoulder down a few inches into his chest.
"Fuck," he gasped, and collapsed. • • •
Kaine was surprised when he woke up, more by the fact that he woke up at all than the events going on around him. Not that what he woke up to wasn't surprising. He was still lying on the street it seemed, soaked in blood, but he felt a strange sense of calm. It took him a minute to realize that it wasn't a natural calm but rather the result of a shit load of drugs pouring through his system.
Looking around he saw two medics in white coveralls leaning over him, wielding strange instruments and shouting things like "lung is collapsed" and "I need blood over here, now." Kaine tried to sit up, but one of the medics pushed him gently back.
"It's alright, sir. We're from DocWagon. You're going to be O.K."
DocWagon? he thought. Then he remembered the DocWagon contract he signed up for all those years ago. He smiled, remembering when Spindle told him he should pay better attention to his bank accounts. Apparently he'd still been paying for the damn service all this time.
The scent of antiseptic was heavy in the air, but there was another, stronger odor; the chemical stench of a burning building. He turned his head and spotted his apartment building between the gangers' ruined cars. It was wrapped in flames, and black smoke billowed into the night sky.
Off to the side, he spotted a small knot of people gathered, watching. There was Elise, and the young couple from 4C, the big trucker, and a few other folks he'd never really gotten to know. And Darius.
Shadowpanther, he thought and smiled.
Maybe it was the drugs, but the strangest thing struck him. As he looked at them, he didn't see looks of defeat on their faces. It wasn't even pain, or loss.
It was pride.
The sort of pride a person feels when they aren't anyone's slave. When they no longer have to bend over and take it from any asshole that wants to keep them down.
The sort of pride that keeps a person human.
Darius still punched at the air in front of him. Suddenly Kaine heard a screech, and an avatar that looked like a panther-man version of Darius popped up in the air in front of him.
"Found you," Shadowpanther said, grinning like a kid who just beat his dad at Virtuaball for the first time.
"Nice work, kid," Kaine whispered, smiling back at him.
"We just wanted to say thank you, Kaine. From all of us."
"No, kid," Kaine whispered. "Thank you."
"He's delirious," one of the medics shouted. "Vitals are weak-let's get him on the chopper."
"Good-bye, Kaine," Shadowpanther said, and faded away.
"See ya kid."
The DocWagon med techs lifted Kaine onto a stretcher, and a moment later they wheeled him into the stark white interior of some sort of medevac chopper. As the chopper lifted off, and one of the med techs slid the side door shut, Kaine caught one last glimpse of the inferno that used to be his home.
And he could just make out a small group of silhouettes, standing tall before the flames. Snake in the City By Jennifer Harding
Jennifer Harding has contributed to many of the SR4 sourcebooks, including her favorite sourcebook so far, Feral Cities (featuring Lagos). She has a degree in Creative Writing from Linfield College. A long time fan, she began shadowrunning in 1995 and still manages to fit in a weekly game-although these days, her gaming group all have mortgages, careers, and children who occasionally eat her lucky D6.
"I said no," Mamba said to the four orks surrounding her, each radiating swaggering machismo. The Igbo gangers ruled the streets of Lagos, but she'd already paid out all the naira she had buying information. She had nothing left for the gangers' bribe-at least, nothing she was willing to barter with. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Two of the orks moved to flank her, kicking her instincts into high gear. She didn't like feeling crowded. She didn't like loud, ham-fisted men. And she really didn't like being seen as helpless.
"No naira, no problem," said the biggest ork, the one Mamba already had pegged as the head of the group. "We make other deal, eh, boys?" The other three laughed. The street was crowded, but the people, always wary of the gangers, had left a clear space around the four burly orks and the one petite woman. Mamba coldly figured the odds; they had AK-97s, but they weren't bringing them up. Either they were confident they had their prey outgunned and intimidated, or they hoped not to kill her before they'd had their fun. They had the advantage in reach and muscle mass, but she had invested a lot in bioware; what she lacked in size, she made up for in quickness and agility-not to mention her forearm blades. If they continued to press her, she'd show them just how stupid-
The Igbo to her left reached out one huge hand and slapped her on the ass. In an instant, her cold calculation disappeared. Mamba didn't even blink as she sprung for the leader. She punched him in the throat with a fist made stronger than any normal human's, the dense bones of her hand crushing his windpipe before any of the four could react. He dropped his AK-97 to reach for his throat; already dead, but too stupid to realize it. Mamba spun and dropped, kicking out to shatter the knee of the ganger to her left. As she completed the movement, she tensed her forearms in a carefully-trained reflex, flicking out her forearm blades, and swiping out both arms to slice the third ganger, who was finally bringing his AK up. One cut went directly through his wrist, his hand flying off, still holding the assault rifle, blood spraying the air in a steaming arc. The other cut sliced him open across his gut, intestines spilling out into the filthy, red dirt of the road.
With a howl, the fourth ganger fired, forcing Mamba to dodge, augmented reflexes screaming into overdrive as she dove between his legs and leapt back to her feet. As he spun to track her, his gun sprayed bullets on the crowded street and screams erupted as men and women dropped. The ganger was still roaring, and Mamba stabbed at him. The ork was quick and her strike missed his vitals, but the blade sliced through his hand-taking a few fingers with it-and locked behind the trigger, forcing the gun to go silent. With one of her hands trapped, the ork gave a feral grin, and he pulled out a large machete with his left hand, arcing it towards her.
Parrying the machete with her own slim, left-handed blade, Black Mamba's 'link buzzed an incoming call. She didn't answer, but it didn't matter; her 'link opened the connection anyway.
"Mamba, you're late," a women's voice said into her ear.
The ork swung at her again, making her arch into a back-bend to avoid him, dragging the gun they both stubbornly held onto down to put him off balance. Two more Igbo ran through the crowd, AKs ready. They couldn't fire at her without risking hitting the other ganger, so they slung back their guns and pulled out wicked-looking knives. Damn Igbo. They were like vermin out here, coming out of the woodwork.
"Mamba, did you hear me?" the woman continued.
"Shit, Pharisee, kinda busy here," Mamba sent through her 'link, panting, dancing over a dead ork. While the other two entered the fray, the ork she was entangled with came at her again. She retracted the forearm blade stuck in his AK and sidestepped his latest attack. He half-fell, unbalanced by her action, and she used the distraction to face the new orks, parrying with her remaining blade as one struck at her. The other ork swung at her, and she dropped back, barely avoiding having her guts spilled into the filthy street. Her right forearm blade flicked out again and she brought it up.
"What's going on? Damn it, why'd you take off your AR glasses?" Pharisee demanded. "I knew I should have gotten you the AR contacts."
Mamba parried another blow, using the man's own strike to slide her blades up his own and spear him through the hand. Blood welled up, and as she pulled out her blade with a wet, sucking sound, it began to fountain. She twisted around him and followed through by slicing his throat so deeply she almost cut his head off. His body toppled. The two gangers still standing looked at her, blood splattered, dual blades running red from their companions' blood. Mamba flicked them at the ground to get rid of the worst of the gore. At that, one ganger turned and ran through the screaming crowds. After a second's hesitation, the other followed. Mamba stood, gasping, the acrid Lagos air burning her throat and bringing tears to her eyes. She hated this city sometimes. She stepped over the bodies and to the man who'd dared to touch her. He was holding his shattered leg, white bone showing through the ripped black flesh and flowing red blood. He whimpered as he looked up at her.
"I said no," she said, then slit his throat.
She took a second to look around. People were screaming; some, no doubt, injured or killed by the Igbo's indiscriminant aim.
"Mamba," Pharisee shouted into her ear. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Sorry, Pharisee," Mamba panted, suddenly breathless. "Ran out of money. Be right there." She quickly flipped through the dead ork's pockets, sparing just a second to grab a handful of naira tokens. The crowd around her was still in chaos, wounded people still screaming, not realizing the danger had passed. Mamba slipped into the crowd and began running.
The slums of Lagos were crowded with pedestrians, dark faces showing the stamp of a dozen different tribes, most dressed in colorful fabrics, men peddling their wares in the crowd, women clustered together for safety. Modified motorbikes wove through the people, while dozens of cars crept along, children and grown men alike attempting to sell the passengers anything from bags of water to electronics. Hemming everything in, squat cinderblock buildings stood two stories over the dirt streets, covered with a grimy coating of red dust from the harsh December winds that plagued the city. Everything stunk of rot, garbage, and the acrid smoke belched out from the factories.
The hovel she'd secured was just a few streets over. Frustrated with the crowded streets, Mamba cut through tight alleys, balancing on narrow boards that lay over the thick muck of the alleys. Part swamp mud, part garbage, and part human waste, the stench from the black muck was overpowering. Mamba had left her breather with Pharisee, not wanting to look too much like an oyibos, a foreigner. Unfortunately, the disguise she'd taken for this job had been enough to peg her as one anyway, and a target for every opportunistic ganger on the streets. Her normal ebony skin wouldn't have drawn attention, but the exotic Native American face and chestnut-colored skin of her stolen identity stuck out in the Lagosian slums.
"Pharisee, you better be packed and ready," Mamba said into her 'link.
"What have you done now?" the technomancer asked.
"Cut down a few Igbo," Mamba sent as she worked on managing her breathing. Even her bioware enhanced muscles needed clean air to function properly. A tracheal filter would be useful, if I ever manage to salvage my rep from this fucked-up job.
The guards at the front of the squat "hotel" looked at her askance, but she brushed past them without a word. No doubt, the Igbo would start looking for the oyibos woman who'd hurt their gangers. The way the Area Boy gang had their network of informants, it wouldn't take long. She had to get Pharisee and move out… fast.
"We're leaving," Mamba announced, when she got to Pharisee's room. "I just need to change."
The Egyptian woman looked over at Mamba, then shook her head.
"I thought you were going shopping," she said, but Mamba had already brushed past her, into her own tiny room. Calculating the time, she stripped out of the bloody clothing, then used a ratty cloth and lukewarm water from a bottle to wipe away the blood on her face and hands. With more care, she cleaned her forearm blades. Luckily, Mamba had a few more outfits in the luggage she'd stolen, despite her general distaste for the clothing. Armor would've been nice, but not with the ID she'd stolen. God, she hated playing this part.
Once she was mostly clean and dressed, Mamba felt the wave of nausea coming. Sweating, she fought it down. A flashback hit her; a crowd of men, the smell of sun-baked clay, the pain of her cheek shattering under a huge fist. Mamba closed her eyes, forced herself to visualize the four Igbo today, bleeding, dead, helpless. Forced the flashback away with the image of today's fight, the feeling of their blood spilling over her hands. I'm not helpless anymore.
"Mamba?" Pharisee was standing in the doorway, a backpack slung over one shoulder, her fingers gripping the blue hand amulet at her throat. "You okay?"
Mamba took a deep gulp of air, felt it scour her throat. "Yeah." • • •
The trip to Lagos Island involved getting an okada, one of the narrow, modified motorbikes common to the feral city. Mamba dealt with this with cool practicality; she stole one, leaving the driver lying in the street with a broken nose. Pharisee sat behind her, arms clenched around Mamba's waist, eyes closed as she skillfully wove through the thick traffic, cutting through pedestrians and zipping down the narrow, stinking alleys when the vehicle traffic grew too slow for her taste.
"Our employer wants to talk to you," Pharisee said after Mamba had come to a stop on the Eko bridge. The Eko was one of two ways onto the secured enclave of Lagos Island, and even the modified motorbikes couldn't get through the packed traffic clogging it. The heavily guarded gates on the island side of the bridge were clogged by the jam of Lagosians who wanted on the island enclave. "He's been calling for the last hour."
Mamba jerked her head. "You talk to him." She'd replaced her AR glasses and breather, part of her oyibos disguise that would prove valuable on the island enclave. For once, the damn disguise would come in useful: as a foreigner, she'd be able to get past the guards with few questions. Unfortunately, the Eko bridge was a heavy spam site. Clusters of garish ads-everything from bridgeside vendors selling palm wine to whores advertising their services-cluttering her view.
Pharisee made a rude noise. "What am I supposed to tell him?"
"Tell him the job's screwed six ways to hell, that asshole Nubian stole the artifacts, and there's no fucking way we can rob Lekan's mansion with just the two of us. And I want my face back."
Mamba heard Pharisee swear in Arabic, then suddenly a connection was opened in Mamba's AR view, the Johnson's very annoyed icon staring at her in the AR window. Behind the translucent man, Mamba saw the packed bridge and the crowds of Lagosians. Pharisee had done some techno thing to get all the spam to drop out of sight.
"Damn it, Pharisee," Mamba muttered, as the AR image sprung to life in her view. "Stop hacking my 'link."
"Buy a better firewall," Pharisee replied. Mamba snorted. "Sweet goddess, was that a laugh?" Pharisee asked.
"Black Mamba," Mr. Johnson's icon said. "I've been waiting for your report."
"Well, fu-" Mamba felt Pharisee jab her in the ribs. She cleared her throat. "We've continued onto Lagos to finish the job, sir. I should have more to report later."
"And the artifacts? My gift to the Yoruba king, to gain me admittance to his auction next month? You have them?"
"Ah," Mamba stared straight through the translucent icon, to the gleaming highrises of Lagos Island. The land of promise for much of West Africa. "Unfortunately, we lost the trail on the artifacts. We're exploring other options."
"In other words, after you'd stolen them, someone else knocked you out, took the artifacts, and left you high-and-dry in the middle of the desert," Pharisee interjected. "You want to tell him how I came to the rescue when those Apep goons realized you weren't Dr. Madeira?"
Mamba gritted her teeth.
"Black Mamba, your reputation is excellent. I'd hate to find my trust in your abilities unwarranted," Mr. Johnson replied. The warning was clear. In the shadows, you lived and died by your reputation.
"Understood," Mamba replied. Mr. Johnson cut the connection. Mamba's AR view was once again flooded with spam.
As they moved slowly through the traffic, Pharisee asked, "So, do you have a plan? Or are we really screwed?"
"Six ways to hell," Mamba muttered. • • •
She left Pharisee at a tiny park on the exclusive Victoria Island. The Egyptian woman would be safe enough there. Polite and well-armed guards patrolled the island enclave, and anyone bothering an oyibos woman would find themselves facing a squad of security goons. No one would bother her as she did her techno thing and hacked into the mansion of the Yoruba "ambassador" to Lagos. The very foreignness which made the women so vulnerable in the feral slums of mainland Lagos was a magic charm here. Even the air was cleaner, the streets made of well maintained pavement, the buildings sparkling with thousands of reinforced-glass windows.
A completely different world.
The mansion was in the quiet suburban area of Victoria Island. Masses of well-tended, flowering vines grew on every wall lining the streets in the upscale neighborhood, scenting the hot air with a sweet, floral fragrance that covered the stench of the city beyond. Vehicle traffic was light and orderly, pedestrian traffic heavier, but just as polite as they walked down sidewalks shaded by trees and vine-covered walls. The walls all stood two stories tall, pristine white showing beneath the thick greenery. Wide iron gates forged in fanciful designs were guarded by heavily armed men, sweat rolling down their impassive faces as they stood statue-still in the hot December sun, unaugmented eyes hidden by dark glasses. No AK-97s here; those were the guns of the slums, the gangers and the common masses. These guards-and by proxy, their masters-played a blatant game of one-upmanship. If one house was guarded by men with chromed Colt Cobra TZ-118 submachine guns, their neighbor would have upgraded HK Urban Combats with pearl handles and gold-alloy chasing. It was an arms race for the pampered wealthy, an amusing game, nothing more.
Black Mamba thought it was sickening.
The guards ignored her as she leisurely walked down the clean-swept sidewalks, passing within arms' reach of them. She wore the perfect camouflage for the island enclave: an embedded RFID chip that proclaimed her ID, a commlink broadcasting a valid SIN-even if it wasn't hers-and skin dyed chestnut, with a face shaped to mimic Sioux heritage. Had she looked like herself, they'd have watched her behind those dark glasses, and no doubt one or two island guards would have followed her as she meandered along the streets, ready to hassle her if she paused too long in any one spot.
Her AR glasses served a dual purpose, blocking the harsh sun while they displayed images. The map she'd bought for a thousand naira from a Festac Town hacker was displayed in her lower view, a birds-eye view of the streets she was navigating. There were lots of maps of Victoria Island available to purchase legally, but none of them listed who lived in each walled-off mansion. And none of them mentioned that Olabode Lekan lived behind the vine-covered walls of 12 Adua Street.
I'm in the system, Pharisee messaged Mamba, the text scrolling across her AR view. Cameras embedded in the walls. I can see you now. You forgot to brush your hair, by the way.
Mamba scowled, but ran a hand through the tangles. Luckily, Dr. Madeira had chosen a very short cut for her silky, black hair.
Six guards stood outside the wrought-iron gate at 12 Adua Street, each holding an Ares HVAR with military precision. The gate itself had a clever arrangement of garden-soil filled boxes attached to its base, supporting verdant twining vines, heavy with scarlet flowers, on the gate itself. It was an attractive way to block the only view into the inner courtyard from the street.
Mamba gritted her teeth and continued to walk down the street, pretending to admire the colorful flowers draping the walls. A flock of bright mini-parrots started to squawk in a tree two houses down from Lekan's mansion. Mamba paused beside the tree, pretending to take a video of the birds with her commlink. Surreptitiously, she continued to scan Lekan's walls, looking for a weakness.
Pharisee transmitted the inner view of the courtyard and mansion. Mamba saw a dozen more guards standing at attention inside the gates.
Looks impossible, the technomancer texted. Sensors in every wall. No drones, but I see where they've got some caged beasties. Probably use them to patrol at night.
"Shit," Mamba muttered, staring back at the place. Olabode Lekan had the invitations to the auction in his mansion; she'd bought that information dearly enough. Goddamned physical invitations. Without the two ancient, sacrificial knives to buy his goodwill, they'd have to steal an invitation for their employer. Mamba analyzed the data Pharisee was sending her while she inspected the neighborhood, trying to find the weak point. She didn't see one.
If she hadn't had been watching so closely, she'd have missed the man standing a block down, watching the same gates. As it was, her gaze passed over him once before snapping back.
His face was mostly hidden behind oversized black glasses and a fashionable breather, but she recognized him from the cocky way he stood, the breadth of his shoulders under a bright red shirt. When he turned his head, the line of his skull, under the tightly braided rows of black hair, triggered her memory.
Pure rage had her taking a half-step towards him before cool logic overrode her instincts and had her turning away.
Slipping into a group of women, Mamba crossed the street and worked her way past where the Nubian stood, keeping him in her sight. Screw breaking into Lekan's mansion. If Medjay was here, then perhaps the knives were, too. And if they weren't, well, he'd know where they'd gone, wouldn't he?
Mamba? Pharisee asked, Where are you going?
"I found someone who needs to die," Mamba replied, baring her teeth.
What? Who? Mamba!
Mamba ignored the technomancer.
After a few more minutes, Medjay turned back down Adua, going towards the island's busier commercial center. She shadowed him, using every bit of her skill and inborn abilities to blend into the crowds of shoppers and upscale residents. The Nubian wasn't a beginner at this himself, and Mamba found herself reluctantly enjoying the challenge of shadowing a professional.
Eventually, he ended up on Anmadu Bello road, the main thoroughfare, where the streets were packed with residents and foreigners alike. When Medjay walked through the gleaming front doors of the Federal Palace hotel, Mamba paused at a street vendor selling iced drinks.
"I'm at the Federal Palace hotel, Pharisee," Mamba told the technomancer. "I need you to hack the hotel."
"I'm on my way," Pharisee replied. "Don't do anything stupid before I get there."
The busy AR signage on Anmadu Bello overwhelmed Mamba's view for a second, until she reset the stupid 'link to weed out the spam. The frozen-drink vendor had a brightly colored menu available in AR; Mamba picked a frozen limeade and made the 5 nuyen transfer. Drink in hand, she settled down on a bench under a shade tree and pondered the hotel while waiting for Pharisee. To drink the iced limeade, she had to unclip her breather. The air was harsh, gritty from the hot Hamattan winds, carrying a faint hint of the stench of the lagoons: putrid vegetation, stagnant water, and rotting fish. The iced drink tasted like heaven by comparison. The hotel had several public AROs broadcasting and she began to browse them idly as she enjoyed her drink. The prices were high, as she'd expected for a hotel on the exclusive Victoria Island enclave, and the history was boring as hell. She browsed through the hotel's amenities for a few minutes, clicking open panoramic AR views of various hotel suites and even the hotel's layout. Security procedures looked standard, with MAD scanners at the front doors. Mamba sighed. When no one was watching, she slid off her forearm snap-blades and stowed them under a dense, flowering bush. Idiot wageslaves didn't see a thing. Mamba had finished her drink by the time Pharisee arrived, the plump Egyptian woman puffing from the long walk and the heat.
"Are you in the hotel's system?" Mamba asked her, as the woman stared longingly at the frozen drink stand. When the technomancer nodded, Mamba stood and strode up to the hotel. Pharisee reluctantly followed.
Armed men stood in a line by the front door, wearing snappy blue uniforms with gold pin striping and matching breathers. Even their Ares Alphas were the same bright blue; obviously someone's idea of a well-coordinated security team. Mamba rolled her eyes as she stepped through the revolving door and into the blessedly cool lobby. Gold-veined marble floors were topped by plush blue carpets, while teak tables held massive urns of star-gazer lilies, their scent almost overpowering. Mamba looked around, didn't see Medjay anywhere in the main lobby. She glanced casually into the dimly lit lounge to the left, but it was almost completely empty. She didn't remember him as being the bar-type, anyway.
"What exactly are we doing here?" Pharisee asked.
"Human male, one-point-eight meters tall, black skin, black hair in braids. Red shirt over tan pants, silver breather, black glasses. Just came in a few minutes ago. Can you find him?" Mamba asked, scanning the lobby.
"Um…" Pharisee got that far-off look, the one Mamba associated with her hacking. "Mr. Marius Jay, room 804," she said, after a few seconds. "Why?"
"Bastard's the one who narcojected me at the Apep dig, stole the knives, and left me to take the blame," Mamba muttered.
"The knives you'd just stolen yourself," Pharisee pointed out, with a raised eyebrow. "After you'd killed Dr. Madeira and taken her place at the dig."
"Details," Mamba replied, waving her hand. "Let's go."
They didn't have a pass for the elevators, but the doors still slid open when they approached. Normally, Mamba didn't like working with other people. Still, a hacker-in this case, a technomancer-could be damn useful at times.
Medjay used to take care of the hacking when they'd worked together.
Pharisee directed the elevator to take them up to the eighth floor.
The hall was carpeted, the walls covered with brocaded wallpaper, gilt-edged mirrors reflecting the light from crystal wall sconces. Mamba sneered at the luxurious indulgences of the rich, blocking off any slight longing she might have otherwise felt. Luxury made you soft. Weak. Easy prey.
Room 804 had a wood-paneled door with a maglock. Mamba raised an eyebrow, and Pharisee shook her head.
"Are you planning on killing this guy now?" the technomancer asked, piping the question over Mamba's 'link and into her earpiece.
"Stop hacking my commlink," Mamba replied. "And stand back when I open the door."
Pharisee stared at the maglock, concentrating. Mamba tried to imagine Medjay, what he would do. Would he recognize her? With a different skin color and silky straight hair, her eyes hidden behind the dark glasses, most people wouldn't see anything other than a Native American woman.
The Nubian wasn't most people, however. Still, Mamba unclipped her breather and popped out her earpiece, then handed both items and her AR glasses over to Pharisee. The technomancer gave her a startled look.
The light on the maglock flicked from red to green. Mamba put her hand on the door knob, took a breath, then slammed the door open.
The Nubian was just coming out of the bathroom, and for one shocked second, he stared at the unfamiliar woman bursting into his room. The shock didn't last. He had the same lightning quick reflexes she did. Hell, they'd gotten their synaptic boosters at the same clinic, at the same time. By the time Mamba was through the door, Medjay had dropped into a crouch, ready to engage.
She came at him cautiously. She prided herself on fighting with cold calculation, not hot rage. He didn't have any weapons on him, unless they were hiding under the towel he'd tied around his waist.
Mamba's own blades were tucked under a bush outside the hotel.
A matched fight, then.
Mamba acted first. She kicked out, spinning, her foot passing a hairsbreadth away from his face. Medjay sprung back, landing on his hands, his feet kicking out and hitting her in the thigh. Mamba took the hit and spun with it, using the momentum to snap a kidney punch at his exposed right side as he sprung forward and back onto his feet. He blocked her shot almost effortlessly, then snapped his left arm up barely in time to block a second jab.
"Dr. Madeira?" he said, puzzled, and Mamba felt her rage kick up, infuriated that he didn't recognize her, hatred of her assumed face pouring out as she attacked him. Her cold calculation dissolved under her fury and impotence. She made a quick jab to his throat, which he blocked, using the motion to slam her shoulder. She fell back with the hit, using the energy to spin around him, punching at his face. He dodged left and back, coming up against the wall. Mamba's momentum had her fist blowing past his face and into the wall, hard enough she felt the plaster crack. Her body slammed against his.
Pressed together for one startled moment, she felt Medjay tense, knew the moment he realized it was her.
She followed the revelation with a solid punch to the gut, but pressed so close, there was no real energy behind the blow. He slid out and away, spinning and swinging out a foot to crush her knee. She foiled him by throwing herself to the right almost too fast to see.
He countered with a lightning quick blow to her face. She jerked her head to the side, not quite quick enough, and his fist connected with her cheekbone, a burning sting of pain. She punched him solidly in the shoulder, but he turned with the blow, using the motion to twist her arm up and behind her, sliding his other hand down her free arm and pinning it, too. He jerked her close to him, her back pressed against his chest. His breath was hot against her aching cheek. For a heartbeat, two, they held the close embrace.
"Sweet Mamba," he said in his rich whiskey and cream voice, just a trace of London accent left after all these years. "The face is new, but the moves are the same."
"Asshole," she spat at him, as she strained to break the hold. "You poached, stole my score, and left me stuck with this face."
"Just a job," he said, taking a kick to the shin that would've crippled an unaugmented man. "Isn't that what you always say?"
In answer, Mamba slammed her head back, cracking it against his collarbone, felt the old injury give a little. Surprisingly, Medjay dropped.
Mamba spun to finish the fight, but Medjay was sprawled on his back, his brown cybereyes glazed over, limbs limp. She looked up to see Pharisee standing with her back to the closed door, a small pistol in her hand.
"Gamma-scopaline," the technomancer said, as Mamba shot her a murderous glare. "Sorry. You two were starting to embarrass me. Maybe I should've just gone out and put up the 'do not disturb' sign?"
Mamba was still flushed with hot, bubbling anger. She hoped it was anger. "Shut up," she managed.
Pharisee just raised an eyebrow. "Sweet Mamba?" She waited a second, to see if Mamba would rise to the bait. "I take it you know each other?"
Mamba shook her head, attempting to clear out the heat, to find her cold, rational center.
"He's the one who stole those knives. If he doesn't have them in here, then we'll just wait, ask him who he gave them too," Mamba said. "And hope they weren't for his master," she added under her breath.
Mamba began to search the room, methodically going through the Nubian's things. The technomancer stood over his limp body.
"He smells nice," she said, as she fastidiously draped the towel-which had fallen off in the fight-back over his hips. "Easy on the eyes, too. What's the story?"
"No story. We worked together a while back. On a job. After the job, we went our separate ways," Mamba said, dumping out his small valise and ripping through the lining.
"What's his name?" Pharisee asked, curious. Mamba hated how curious the damn woman could be.
Mamba shrugged. "Don't remember."
"Mm-hm," Pharisee replied. "Right."
Mamba looked at the Egyptian woman, her eyes cold. "He's a Knight of Rage. Heard the term?" Pharisee narrowed her eyes, looking down at the unconscious man. "Exactly. He's loyal to his master, and no one else. I wasn't willing to be recruited," Mamba sneered. "Didn't want to be a bitch on Celedyr's leash," she said.
Pharisee didn't reply to that. Mamba turned her back on her partner to search through the hotel room. After Mamba had finished ransacking the room, she stood, her hands on her hips.
"Nothing. Damn it," she said.
Pharisee was relaxing in a chair, legs crossed. She looked around the trashed room. "Feel better?"
Mamba shot an annoyed glance to the technomancer. "I was doing my job," she said through gritted teeth. "Looking for the knives. Remember those?"
"Oh, is that why we're here?" Pharisee asked snidely, looking back down at where the man lay, paralyzed and barely conscious, his black skin stretched taut over his muscles. At the look Mamba shot her, she cleared her throat. "Then why didn't you check the safe first?"
"Safe?" Mamba asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Oops. Did I forget to mention the safe?" Pharisee pointed to a flat section of the wall, where a small mirror hung. Mamba went to it, stared for a moment, then saw the tiny switch. Physical, not wireless. Only in Lagos.
She flicked the switch and the mirror slid aside. A small biometric palm print reader made her swear. She glanced back at Pharisee.
"It's not wireless," the technomancer said. "And I don't have my electronics kit here. You sold it, remember?"
Mamba looked back to where Medjay was stretched out on the floor. She'd already tucked one of his knives-conveniently stored beside his bed-through her belt. Mamba walked back over to the man. His hands were long-fingered, elegant. Like an artist's, she'd thought once, not like the fat fingered hands of the men she remembered from her broken childhood. She knelt beside him.
Pharisee watched in mute horror.
Mamba picked his left hand up, slid the knife out of the sheath, and set it against his skin. His hand was warm, the fingers callused. She had a brief flashback, a memory of his clever fingers stroking her cheek, of her turning her head to place a kiss on his palm. The memory came with a stab of some unexpected emotion. Guilt was an uncomfortable feeling, longing even more so. Black Mamba dropped Medjay's hand as though it had burned her, singed her with things she didn't want to face. She scowled up at Pharisee.
"I swear, if you ever tell anyone about this, I'll kill you," she said, setting down the knife and awkwardly grabbing the man, grunting as she lifted his limp weight. She supported his weight and shoved his hand against the palm reader, then dropped him unceremoniously to the floor. The safe popped open with a little click.
Inside, the small plastic case was waiting for her. She slipped it out, opened it. The two ancient knives were snug inside, nestled in the soft velvet lining. Mamba snapped the case closed again, slid it under her shirt, against her back.
"Let's go," Mamba said to Pharisee.
"What about-"
"Let's hope we can get off this damn island before he wakes up," Mamba replied, curt. Without a backward glance, she left the room. Another minute to wait for the elevator, then down to the wide lobby. Before they went through the doors, Mamba looked over at Pharisee. "How'd you get your little gun through the MAD scanner?" she asked, curious.
Pharisee just raised an eyebrow, then walked through the scanners and back out into the harsh December winds.
Mamba followed. "Stay here," she ordered the technomancer, pointing to the bench outside the hotel. Mamba took back her breather, earpiece, and AR glasses. "My blades are under that bush. If things get ugly, bring them to me. Otherwise-"
"I know, I know, don't hack your 'link," Pharisee muttered, "As if you could stop me," she said under her breath as she went towards the iced drink vendor.
Mamba shook her head at the technomancer's back. Pragmatically, she snapped her breather on and retraced her steps back to Adua Street and Olabode Lekan's well-guarded mansion.
The drug would last an hour, maybe two at the best. She planned on being off Victoria Island well before then. She was already regretting the impulse that prevented her from killing Medjay, or at least maiming him. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she told herself. She shied away from thinking about why she'd left him alive and whole in his hotel, and as a result, was feeling more than a little pissed when she stopped in front of the guards at number 12 Adua Street.
"I'm hear to see Lekan," she said, curtly, to the man closest to the gate. He was Yoruba, so she repeated herself in his language. Sometimes playing the foreigner card worked, sometimes it didn't. In her current mood, she'd be just as happy taking his gun and mowing all them down before they could react. Carefully, she tamped down the anger. Emotion got you killed in this line of work. There was no room for moods.
The guard just stared at her.
"Tell him Dr. Sierra Madeira is here," she said. "He'll want to see me."
The guard didn't speak, but Mamba bet he was sending a message via his 'link. After a moment, he nodded to her, his expression slightly more polite. A clever, meta-human sized door swung open in the center of the vine-covered gate. The guard in front of it stepped to the side, and with a jerk of his head, motioned her through.
She went in.
The courtyard was laid out in muted red bricks, in a concentric circle around a large reflecting pool. Trees cast some shade, but there was little in the way of gardens or bushes. Nowhere to find cover, a portion of her mind observed. More armed guards, decked out in full security armor, stood around the courtyard. The mansion was set back, a square building that glowed white in the harsh sunlight. Windows glinted, like crystals, and the entire building was sparkling clean. That, more than the size of the building or the small army of men, spoke of real wealth in Lagos. A human man in dun-colored robes approached her, followed by two heavy-set orks in military grade armor.
"Dr. Madeira? If you'll please follow me," he said in English, then turned back towards the broad, double door of the mansion. She followed him up some shallow steps to the doors. Once she'd stepped through, the two orks slid the doors shut with a quiet click.
The man in the robes paused once they were inside the cool building. "I must ask you to relinquish any weapons," he said, politely. The two orks beside him gave unspoken force to his words.
Mamba slid out the plastic case from under her shirt, using very slow and deliberate motions.
"These aren't weapons," she said, flicking the case open. "But something I believe Lekan would like to see."
"If I may?" the man replied, holding out his hands. Mamba reluctantly handed over the case. She'd already lost the damn things once. Now, she was this close to finishing the job she'd given up as a lost cause. But she felt the press of time. Every minute that passed, Medjay would be closer to recovery. He was an able enough hacker, when he used those damn skillsofts. How long would it take him to track her down?
And why hadn't she thought of that when she had the opportunity to slit his throat? Why hadn't she at least left him tied up? She shied away from acknowledging the answer to that question.
The man in the robe took the case, then smiled and led her though the soaring three-story entrance hall, down a dimly lit hall, and into a richly appointed office.
A human male, with wrinkled black skin and a tight cap of snowy-white hair, sat behind a large, polished wood desk. He wore richly textured woven robes, in a variety of bright colors. Olabode Lekan looked every bit the distinguished statesman, and nothing like the warlord he really was.
Once Mamba was in the room, the man in the dun robes carefully handed Lekan the plastic case, then left, closing the doors behind him. The two orks remained in the room, standing at attention. Two more guards, trolls that Mamba could tell were cybered to the gills just by watching them twitch, stood behind Lekan.
Lekan opened the case without speaking to her. He raised one white eyebrow at the two ancient knives, then clicked the case closed and sat it on the desk in front of him. He looked Mamba over.
"Dr. Madeira has been reported missing by the Apep Consortium in Cairo," he began. His voice was rich and full, almost too robust for the small office; a voice meant to be giving speeches, not addressing low-life shadowrunners. "And at the same time, rumors are that an unnamed Apep dig site was hit by thieves. This, coupled with the fact that Dr. Madeira has no biological augmentations, certainly not to the level and quality of your own, presents an interesting mystery."
Mamba inclined her head. "I've been employed to bring those artifacts to Oni Adegoke," she said. "My employer heard about the Oni's upcoming auction, and wanted to-" she struggled to phrase it politely. "-to send a gesture of good-will."
Lekan tipped his head, considering her. Black Mamba wondered if he was using a spell, emotion-mapping software, or just his judgment. She hated losing control of a situation.
"I see you appear truthful," he said.
Mamba let out a breath.
"Very well. I'll accept this gift on behalf of the Oni. In exchange, I'd be happy to offer you a gift for your employer." The old man stood, more graceful than his age would lead her to believe, and went to a small safe at the back of the room. When he returned, he dropped a small stack of ivory disks on the desk. "Tokens," he said, gesturing to the disks. "Each one will admit one person to the auction. Your employer can contact me directly for more details, if he-or she-wishes." He said it with distaste. The message was clear; don't send any more shadowrunners.
Mamba picked up the small disks. There were five. She nodded to the old man, but he'd already dismissed her. Mamba bristled, but the odds were still against her… and she did have a job to finish.
She was escorted out of the mansion, back out to the street, the vine-covered gate closing behind her.
It'd been just over an hour since they'd left the Nubian in his room. He was probably awake by now. Or would be soon.
Mamba began walking back to where she left Pharisee.
"Everything's frosty," the technomancer said. "I watched through your AR glasses' camera. I can't believe we did it."
"Stop hacking my commlink," Mamba retorted. "And we still have to get these damn tokens back to our employer. Hell, we still have to get out of Lagos. Before Medjay catches us."
"Oh, is that his name?" Pharisee teased.
Mamba ignored her, her mind already calculating, planning the next move. She was in control again. Catch an okada to the mainland, and from there to the airport. Getting through Lagos without tangling with the Igbo-who were probably still out for her blood-would be challenging. Getting out of Lagos before Medjay found her would likely be even more impossible.
Without realizing it, as she walked down the manicured streets and back to the dangerous blight of the feral city, Black Mamba smiled. Out of civilization; back to her comfort zone.
And towards a good fight.