Poison Agendas

by Stephen Kenson

  From where she stood atop the rise, Kellan concentrated, blocking out the melee below to focus on the maddened creature in its midst. She gathered power to her, shaping it with the force of her will, in the form she'd learned, infusing it with her intent. Draven clambered back to his feet to rush the beast again as it slashed and snapped at Orion. He was barely holding it at bay.

  The energy tingled along Kellan's skin until she was like a dam, holding back the power. When it reached the peak of its strength, she pointed at the creature and released the power, letting it leap from her like a bolt of lightning from a cloud to the ground. There was a flicker, barely visible in the mundane world, as the spell struck.

  The animal jerked and thrashed as if electrocuted, as the destructive magical power tore into the very fabric of its being. It howled in pain and rage, then hurled itself at Orion, who tried to get out of the way, but was borne down by the creature's furry bulk. The animal thrashed one more time, then lay still.

  "Orion!" Kellan yelled. She slid down the slope as quickly as possible, nearly falling as she knocked loose dirt and rocks getting to the old road below. Draven rushed to help the fallen elf. He grabbed the now-limp beast and rolled it off Orion just as Kellan reached them. The hilt of Orion's sword stuck out of the creature's chest, most of the blade buried inside it.

  Orion coughed and sputtered and sat up. He was covered with blood, wetly gleaming reddish-black in the shadows. He saw the concern on Kellan's face.

  "I'm all right." he said. "I'm all right. It's not my blood. I'm not hurt. What about Natokah?"

  Kellan turned to the fallen shaman as Midnight came down the slope and reached his side. Draven helped Orion to his feet, and the elf warrior went to pull his sword from the dead body.

  "What the frag is this thing?" Orion asked.

  "Greater wolverine." Draven said curtly. "Nasty bastards."

  "No drek." Orion said, yanking his sword loose.

  Kellan knelt at Natokah's side. There was a ragged tear in his jeans, soaked with blood and revealing an ugly wound. Three bloody slashes stretched from his shoulder down his chest, torn right through his heavy coat. Natokah's head was tipped back, his eyes only slightly open.

  Midnight knelt by the shaman's head. "He's in shock," she pronounced, unslinging her pack and opening it, "and still losing blood. Do you know any healing spells?" she asked Kellan. Kellan mutely shook her head.

  "We'll have to do this the old-fashioned way, then." Midnight opened up the medkit and took out a trauma-patch. Holding the wrapper in her teeth, she ripped open the package and pressed the adhesive patch against the side of the shaman's neck, the quickest place for the drugs to enter his system.

  "Get his coat off." Midnight ordered Kellan. "Make sure there aren't any more of those things out there." she instructed Orion and Draven. Orion wiped his sword on the dead wolverine's fur, but didn't sheath it as he and Draven moved out to secure the perimeter.

  Kellan finished working Natokah out of his coat, trying her best to not do any more damage. The slashes along his shoulder and chest were shallow cuts—his armor had blunted that attack. The bite on his thigh was bad. As Kellan eased him back on to the ground, Natokah moaned and stirred.

  "Easy, easy," Kellan said, "try not to move."

  His breath hissed out from between clenched teeth. "How bad is it?"

  "You'll live," Midnight said, "but you probably won't be walking for a while."

  "Well, I'll just make myself comfortable here, then."

  "We won't leave you." Kellan said.

  "You won't have to. Help me sit up."

  Kellan slid her hands under Natokah's shoulders and supported him into a sitting position. She felt him wince, but he didn't complain.

  "My bag." he said, and Kellan retrieved the fringed leather bag that had fallen nearby when Natokah tumbled down the slope. She held it open, and the shaman withdrew a smaller pouch filled with fragrant dried herbs. With sweat beading on his forehead and streaking the dirt and blood, he took out a small handful and clutched them in his closed fist. Then he began to sing.

  It was different from the song he used to raise the river spirit. It was a quiet, soothing song that reminded Kellan of a lullaby. Continuing to sing, Natokah opened the hand holding the herbs and placed it flat against the wound on his leg. He inhaled sharply through clenched teeth and his muscles tensed, then relaxed. Kellan felt a familiar tingle of magic. She opened herself to the astral plane and watched as light spread out from Natokah's hand, extending across and merging with his aura. The places where his aura flickered and went dim grew bright again as the light washed over them.

  In a moment, the shaman removed his hand and sat up straight. Looking over his shoulder, Kellan could see the wound in his leg was almost healed. Through the bloody tear in his jeans showed only a moist pink line and some dried blood. The cuts on his chest were completely gone, replaced by smooth, unbroken skin.

  With some difficulty, the shaman got to his feet, Midnight and Kellan taking his elbows as he swayed.

  "Thanks." he said.

  "No problem. I think you should rest a while, though."

  "I won't argue with that." Natokah replied, leaning against a nearby tree. It was clear the healing spell had taken considerable effort.

  Draven came trotting up the logging road. "This area's clear." he announced.

  "Where's Orion?" Kellan looked around for the elf. A moment later, he appeared farther up the road and waved his teammates toward him.

  "Hey! Check this out!" he called. Kellan looked a question at Natokah, who nodded.

  "I'll be fine." he said. "Let's go."

  Orion led them to a wide, flat clearing on the other side of the rise. "Look here." he said, climbing a couple of steps onto a recent spill of dirt and rock.

  "There are some metal fragments mixed in with the rock. If we're close to the coordinates for the cache, then I think the entrance to the place might be right around here."

  Kellan consulted the GPS locator. "Orion's right." she said. "We're practically on top of it."

  "It looks like the military buried it after all." Midnight said, looking around. "If they mined the entire installation, there might not be anything left to find."

  "There's only one way to find out." Draven hefted his axe. "We've got to get inside."

  "There's no way we're doing that with anything smaller than a backhoe." Orion said. "Our camp shovels won't make a dent against all this." He took in the slope with a sweep of his arm.

  Kellan considered the rubble and thought about Lothan's lessons in summoning. She took a deep breath and, before she lost her courage, said, "I can get us in."

  "Yeah?" Orion asked.

  "Yeah. But it'll take time."

  The runners settled into the clearing to wait. Orion and Draven kept a watchful eye out for any other critters that might be lurking in the woods. Orion carefully cleaned his sword, and Draven his axe. Natokah sat cross-legged on the ground, meditating as the last rays of sunlight faded from the clearing.

  Kellan spent a few minutes searching through the files on her datapad to find the ritual for what she intended to do. After reading carefully through the information several times, she walked slowly around the clearing, looking for the best area in which to form the ritual circle. When she had chosen the area where she wanted to work, she returned to the pile of rubble and began choosing the rocks she would use to create the patterns and symbols she needed. It took more than an hour to collect enough stones. She started creating the pattern by placing the few crystals she carried at cardinal points around the circle, then used rocks to complete the circle, which was two meters in diameter—the smallest circle she could manage with the materials she was using. Next, she began creating the interior patterns, frequently consulting her datapad to make sure she was getting them right. As she worked, she muttered the words of the ritual over and over, practicing the cadence and tone recommended in the description. Finally, Kellan stood, dusted off her hands on
her pants and admired the result of her work.

  Busy working on the circle, Kellan didn't notice Midnight had disappeared until she glanced around the clearing and saw no sign of her. Then the elf emerged from around the bend in the road and gestured for Kellan to join her.

  "What is it?"

  "Come take a look at this." Midnight led Kellan back to where the dead wolverine lay. "I thought we should consider getting rid of this," she said, gesturing toward the corpse with her flashlight, "since it might start attracting the local scavengers once it got dark. When I looked it over, I noticed the condition it was in. Take a look. Notice anything unusual?"

  Kellan hunkered down next to the dead body. Although she'd never seen a greater wolverine before (or a lesser one, for that matter) she did notice something.

  "Its fur is all patchy." she observed. "And those scabs . . ." There were large places on the creature's hide where the hair had sloughed off, leaving red welts and scabs behind.

  "I think it was diseased." Midnight said. "That might be why it attacked us."

  "Or it just thought we looked like dinner."

  "Or maybe it was infected with something, or poisoned by something."

  "Poison?" Kellan paused, thinking about it for a minute, then glanced up at Midnight. "Like, from being around chemical weapons?"

  Midnight shrugged. "I don't know. But we should be careful. If stuff is leaking into the environment around here, we might be up against more than we bargained for. And Natokah didn't clean out his wounds before he healed them, either."

  "Frag. That might be a problem." Kellan said. "I'll tell him."

  Natokah listened carefully to Kellan's description of the wolverine's condition and her concerns about the effects of its bite. "My healing magic will protect me from infection," he said confidently, "but it is worrisome that the creature was so ill."

  "I'm concerned that it might have been affected by something in the weapons cache." Kellan persisted.

  "That is a possibility." he agreed. "We should wear breather masks when we open this up."

  Kellan nodded.

  Everything was ready. Kellan stepped carefully to the center of the ritual circle. She compared the diagram to the reference in her datapad one last time, just to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. She thumbed the display to the words of the ritual, just in case she lost her place as she chanted. She took a deep breath, blew it slowly out, and thought to herself, Well, here goes.

  The chants were slow and sonorous, different from the ones Lothan had used in his demonstration. The intonation rose and fell, and Kellan drifted into a light trance. She focused on the strength and firmness of the earth beneath her feet, and on the ebb and flow of astral energies all around her. As she chanted, she realized Natokah was right—there was something unsettling about the mana in this place. She tried to ignore her feeling of unease and concentrate on the ritual.

  She scattered dust to the north, south, east and west. She chanted names of power and stamped her foot on the ground, as if to wake it from a deep slumber. She gathered the mana slowly, painstakingly, molding it to her will and her need. Sweat rolled down her nose and chin. She ignored it, chanting the words, focusing on the earth, shaping the power. Then she spoke the final words of the ritual.

  "By the power of air, by the power of fire, by the waters of the deep, and the depths of the earth, I conjure and charge you, arise! Arise and truly do my will! For as I will, so it shall be!"

  With those words, Kellan stamped her foot one last time, and a faint tremor seemed to shake the ground. The rich earth in front of her, just outside the circle, rippled and bulged upward. Tearing free of roots and trailing plants, a troll-like figure rose, made of rocky soil. At its full height, it towered over Kellan. Its head was blunt and squared, like a rough-hewn statue, its eyes pools of unfathomable shadow.

  "What is your wish?" it asked in a voice like grinding gravel.

  Kellan took a deep breath to steady herself. She felt like she'd been running for hours. She pointed to the slope covering the entrance to the weapons cache. "Clear away the obstacles in our path." she said in a firm voice. The earthen figure regarded her for a moment, then bowed its head.

  "As you command." the elemental replied, and then it turned toward the slope and bent to its appointed task. The shadowrunners watched in silence. Like a living digging machine, it shoved aside dirt and rock, revealing larger chunks of twisted and charred metal in the rubble. In a matter of minutes, the spirit stepped away from a dark opening into the earth, edged with broken concrete and twisted metal. It turned back to Kellan.

  "My task is complete." it announced. When Kellan nodded her agreement, the elemental seemed to sigh and its earthen body suddenly collapsed, becoming an inert pile of rock and soil once more. The spirit animating it returned to wherever it called home. Kellan felt a huge adrenaline rush from successfully summoning the earth elemental. She grinned broadly at her team.

  "All right. We're in."

  Chapter 18

  Reminding the others to put on their breather masks, Kellan pulled hers out of her pack and started toward the dark opening. Midnight stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  "Let me go first."

  Kellan thought about insisting on being first, but then acknowledged that Midnight's expertise in getting into—and out of—places was the reason she invited her along in the first place. Kellan followed close behind, along with the other shadowrunners, who had their weapons at the ready. Orion held his sword in his right hand, a pistol in his left. Kellan drew her weapon as well, and carried a flashlight with her free hand.

  Inside the opening was a concrete bunker. Kellan saw cracks and burn marks along the entrance. "Looks like they set off explosives to bury the entrance."

  "Fortunately, they didn't do a very good job of it." Midnight replied from up ahead. "Either they didn't have the time to destroy the entire place, or they didn't want to risk damaging whatever was inside."

  "Maybe they planned to come back." Orion said. "I've always been told that the UCAS assumed they would figure out the magic behind the Ghost Dance eventually."

  "That never happened." Natokah replied with a note of pride in his voice.

  The space immediately past the entrance was a square, concrete-lined tunnel that extended farther into the earth. Kellan played her light along the ceiling, showing lighting panels mounted in the corners, their fixtures shattered by the blast that buried the entrance.

  "Hold it a second." Midnight called back, and the team stopped where they were. Kellan could hear her breath rasping inside her filter mask. Nobody said a word as they stood there.

  "All right, it's clear."

  They stepped forward so that the beam from Kellan's flashlight reached to where Midnight stood, in front of a doorway that was about two meters wide and three meters tall, covered by a heavy folding door of steel locked across the passage. Midnight was examining the flatscreen console embedded in the wall beside the door.

  "Useless." she pronounced. "There's no power. On the good side, that means no alarms, but it also means no way to operate the security system or the door mechanisms."

  Draven stowed his weapon and interlaced his fingers, cracking his knuckles. "We'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way, then." Crouching down in front of the door, he grabbed its bottom edge and heaved upward with all his might. The door didn't budge. Draven tried again, muscles bulging, grunting from the effort, but still nothing.

  "Not a chance." Midnight said. "That door is locked down tight. You're not getting it open that way."

  "What about using magic?" Orion suggested. Before Kellan could answer, Midnight did.

  "Not a good idea, unless you know exactly the right spell. There's a better way—which doesn't involve as much effort, either." The elf set down her pack and dug into an interior pocket. In a moment, she came up with what looked like a large tube of toothpaste. She unscrewed the cap and began squeezing a steady line of a sticky white pas
te on the door. She applied the substance a hand's width from the edge of the door, tracing an unbroken line about a meter and a half long and just over two meters high.

  "Thermite paste." she explained, stepping back from the door. She took a small lighter from a pocket of her vest and ignited one end of the white paste. It caught with a faint sputter of sparks and began to slowly burn with an intense heat. Where the paste burned, it cut neatly through the metal. It took several minutes for the thermite paste to burn entirely around the shape Midnight had created, during which time she pressed a small suction cup with a handle to the upper part of the cut-out section, locking it in place with a twist. As the thermite burned out, she nodded to the dwarf.

  "Draven?"

  Taking hold of the handle, he lifted the cut-out section free from the door.

  "Be careful of the edges." Midnight warned him. "They're still hot."

  Draven set the section of the door aside and Kellan shined her flashlight beam past him into the space beyond.

  It was a good-sized room, at least ten meters across, walled in concrete, with a flat ceiling some three meters above. Much of the room was bare, its floor spotted with dark stains and covered with scattered rubble and discarded packing material. Against the far wall were a number of metal canisters, stacked onto metal racks and covered with a thin layer of dust.

  "That's it?" Orion said, looking into the room. "What is this stuff?"

  Kellan was disappointed as well. She hadn't been sure what to expect, but from this perspective it looked like the facility had been cleaned out before it was abandoned.

  "Let's have a look." Midnight said, stepping into the room. Kellan and the others stepped through as well, glancing around warily. As Midnight approached the canisters, Orion cocked his head, like he was trying to identify a distant sound. He said urgently, "Get out of the doorway." waving Draven and Natokah toward the side of the room as they stepped through the entrance. He caught Kellan's arm and gently pushed her toward the wall.