Shadowrun 46 - A Fistful of Data

by Stephen Dedman (v1. 0) (epub)

  “No thanks,” said Sumatra. “How do we know you won’t take them as hostages? Come out with our hands up, or you kill the fraggin’ kids? No thanks.”

  Quinn tried hard to think of a persuasive answer to this, and finally said, less convincingly than she would have liked, “Of course we’d prefer it if you all came out with your hands up. That way nobody gets hurt, either on your side or ours. But we . . .” She drew a deep breath. “Do you really think we’d murder children?”

  “What do you think you’re doing by kicking them out of their fraggin’ home? Without any transport, and carryin’ everything they own on their backs? You think there’s any safe place to go around here, anywhere they wouldn’t be mugged for a couple of blankets and a change of clothes?”

  Carpenter stared through the telescopic sight at the body of the skinny elf and suddenly realized what was bothering him. His pistol was still clenched in his hand; no one had d ied to take it. That, he was sure, could mean only one of two things—either the gun was a toy, or the ork who’d just come out of the building was an illusion of some sort. Which meant that he was a magician, or somebody else down there was.

  Carpenter had never liked magicians. He remembered his mother telling him, Bible said thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, and he was pretty sure that applied to wizards as well. He was prepared to make an exception for Lori, because King and Wallace obviously liked her and Griffin seemed crazy about her, so what she was doing had to be more like faith healing or miracles or something, but he didn’t even feel comfortable around her, and not just because she was so fraggin’ pretty, maybe even prettier than Quinn, and he liked Quinn a whole lot.

  He sneered as the saw the ork walk back toward the ramp, standing proud and tall as though he owned the place. Had to be an illusion, he thought, and suddenly wondered, could you scare an illusion? Would it flinch if you fired at it?

  He smiled at the thought, then shook his head. Not at it;

  Wallace had ordered him not to shoot anybody. But near it . . . that must be okay. He aimed at a rusty drum a couple of meters behind the ork, and fired.

  His rifle was fitted with the best silencer available, and no sound came back to him as the bullet penetrated the barrel. The ork didn’t even hesitate. Carpenter aimed at another drum, this one where the ork would see it if it actually could see, and squeezed the trigger again. This time, there was a spurt as fluid began pouring out of the drum, and a gratifying reaction from the ork—it stared, apparently horrified, then vanished completely.

  Magnusson was close enough to the sniper nest to see the rifle barrel protruding from the side of the cooling tower. He hovered for a moment, chanting in Aramaic as a centering technique to reduce the drain from the spell, then cast a full-strength lightning bolt at the gun. Boanerges had told him that disabling the rifle was the priority; it was unlikely that the gunman would have any other weapons to hand with a long enough effective range to be a problem. Unusually, he hadn’t specifically said that he didn’t want the sniper harmed.

  The powerful charge hit the silencer and was conducted through the metal. The lenses in the telescopic sight shattered, the chambered round exploded, and the electronics in the smartgun system fused. The current was also carried through Carpenter’s metal lanyard to his belt, and through the wiring of his smartgun link, along his arm, up his neck, and all the way into his retinal link. He was flung backwards off the platform and hung there head down, dangling from the tethers that attached him to the platform, and blacked out without hearing the thunderclap.

  Sumatra’s body sat up suddenly, eyes wide with panic. “Toxic!” he yelled.

  8

  Boanerges, already pale from blood loss, looked as though he'd turned to bone. Yoko stared anxiously at him for a moment, then turned to Sumatra. “Where?” she demanded.

  “Upstairs,” said the rat shaman. “Some sort of water spirit—it was confined in one of the barrels, but that frag-gin’ idiot in the tower shot a hole in the barrel, didn’t he? I don’t know how powerful it is, but it’s real fraggin’ angry!” Boanerges nodded wearily. “I can’t fight it and concentrate on this spell. Go and tell Magnusson to get down; lie’s about to change back.”

  “Go out there? With that thing rampaging around?” “I’ll go out first, but I can’t fight it and be sure of maintaining the shapechange spell. I can’t concentrate on both things for long, and I’m nearly—”

  “Dead?” suggested Yoko heavily.

  “You can’t fight a toxic spirit with cannons or kata,” Boanerges told her. “And Jinx and Mish don’t have enough training.” He turned to Sumatra. “Tell Magnusson to get back here as quickly as he can, because if I can’t beat it, it’ll be up to the two of you.”

  The rat shaman nodded, though his expression suggested he was trying to swallow something not meant for human consumption. He lay back down, and his astral form floated out of his body again, then waited cautiously at the bottom of the ramp until he saw Boanerges’ aura ascend above the ruins and confront the spirit.

  The toxic spirit had taken the form of a great mud-colored water serpent, as though in deliberate parody of Boanerges’ totem. No, not a serpent, Sumatra realized. An enormous leech. There was no sign of Boanerges’ watcher spirits, and the rat shaman guessed that they'd already been destroyed by the monster. Revolted, Sumatra sped away toward the cooling tower in search of Magnusson.

  Boanerges grabbed the front end of the spirit and squeezed, just behind where the head would be if it were a snake, and the creature whipped around and wrapped its tail around Boanerges’ throat. “This is not your domain,” said Boanerges. “Go!”

  “It was,” replied the toxic, in a voice like a handful of poisonous mud. “And it will be again, very soon.”

  Magnusson was five meters above the potholed road when Sumatra manifested in front of him. “Get down!” the ork said, frantically waving his arms. “Bo—”

  Magnusson didn’t wait to hear the rest of the sentence, but he wasted a second looking for a softer place to land, and suddenly realized that he was no longer a bird. He landed heavily on all fours, feeling the breath jarred out of him by the impact, and crouched there waiting for the power of speech to return and making a mental note to learn a catfall or levitation spell. “Wha—what’s happened?”

  “There’s a toxic spirit. Boanerges is trying to banish it, but I don’t think he’s winning.”

  The mage nodded and rolled over onto his back. “Watch my meat. I’ll—”

  “Are you crazy?” the shaman spluttered. “You can’t leave your body here, unguarded!”

  “We’re half a klick from the Crypt,” said Magnusson, breathing hard. “Even if I could run that far, I’d get there too late to be of any help. Either I leave my meat here, or you’ll have to go back and fight the toxic.”

  Sumatra looked at the mage and realized that he was right. Magnusson was a forty-some-year-old academic, a professor of hermetic magic; he hadn’t worked the shadows since before his first marriage, nearly twenty years ago, and he’d never been an athlete. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll go. My meat’s back there, anyway.”

  Magnusson merely nodded, picked himself up off the street, and brushed himself down. “Good luck,” he said, but Sumatra was already gone.

  Boanerges gritted his teeth as the toxic spirit slithered out of his grasp, leaving his hand feeling diseased. The creature tightened its grip on his throat, and the shaman’s attempts to grab it failed. Boanerges felt himself weakening; apart from his wounds, he was nearly exhausted from the effort of maintaining the shapechange spell for so long. He continued to struggle, knowing that while he and the toxic were locked in astral combat, it would be unable to attack anyone else . . . and with only a few magically talented novices available to try to stop it, it might be able to do the mercenaries’ job for them, sending many of the Crypt’s denizens fleeing and killing the rest.

  Boanerges felt his vision start to blur and darken as his magical power ebbed u
nder the spirit’s onslaught. It had wrapped loops around his wrist, now, as well as his throat, and his attempts to dislodge it were having no apparent effect. He rallied his remaining strength and brought his hands up to his face, then bit into the creature. The taste of its astral form was foul enough to send a shock through his body—it was like trying to eat a burning tire flavored with cyanide—but the monster seemed to burst in his mouth like a blister, and the loops around his hands retracted. Even the stranglehold eased slightly for a moment, and the shaman thought he might have damaged the spirit badly enough that it would flee and try to regenerate. But instead, the toxic wound itself more tightly around his throat. Boanerges clawed at it, but this merely seemed to sear his fingers as though he was stirring acid with his bare hands.

  Then, suddenly, the thing seemed to disintegrate. Boanerges turned around, expecting to thank Sumatra, or Magnusson . . . but instead, he saw the astral form of a stranger, a moon-faced young elf woman with shoulder-length black hair. “Thanks . . he gasped.

  The astral form smiled, becoming prettier in the process. “Don’t mention it. Lucky I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “Okay, I was spying on you, and I saw . . . no, it was as though I smelled that . . . What was that thing?”

  “A toxic spirit. Either it was trapped inside that barrel somehow, or the toxic spill was enough to attract it.”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen one before. You looked as though you needed help.” Boanerges didn’t need to ask whether the mage had summoned it; it was obvious from her aura that her only contact with it had been the coup de grace she’d just delivered. “Yes,” he said. “I—”

  Sumatra’s astral form suddenly came hurtling through the sky at the speed of thought and rammed into the elf mage like an avalanche.

  Hartz trudged into the cooling tower, stared up toward the iron-gray sky with his eyes set to maximum telescopic magnification, then reached for the small military-grade binoculars in his pocket. Carpenter still hung from his tether, the ruined rifle dangling from the lanyard on his belt. Hartz looked at him through the binoculars, shook his head despairingly and subvocalized into his headware microphone, “Chief?”

  “Here.”

  “Carpenter’s . . . well, he’s either dead or unconscious. I’m going to climb up and see, but he’s not looking good.” “What happened?”

  “Fragged if I know. No sign of a bullet hole. Magic, maybe.”

  Wallace grimaced and looked at Lori’s motionless body. He’d have to wait for her astral form to return before he could send her out to check on the sniper. “You sure the area’s secure?”

  “I think so. Nobody’s shot at me yet.”

  “Okay. I’ll have Lori scan the area as soon as I can;

  she’ll be able to tell whether he’s dead.” He shook his head. Griffin hadn’t returned from his run to the hospital, which meant there was only the one van—and moving that away from the site would leave everyone there with no aid station and no backup. “Can you carry him back here if lie’s still alive?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Good. I’ll send—” He looked around the cargo bay. “Crabbe over with a medkit. Over and out.”

  The troll scrambled to his feet, keeping his head bowed lo avoid banging it on the Step-Van’s ceiling, and reached for his helmet. Wallace glanced at his wristcomp: 0806;— just over eleven hours left before they went in, and three men down already. He wondered how much of his squad would still be in fighting trim by sunset.

  Lori was too startled to defend herself from the unexpected attack, but she quickly recovered and was about to liit her assailant with all her strength when Boanerges shouted, “No! Stop!”

  Both combatants paused and stared at him. “She’s one of—” the ork began.

  “She just banished the toxic,” said Boanerges. “She may have saved my life.” He turned to the elf mage. “Again, Ihank you, and my apologies.”

  The mage hesitated. “Don’t mention it. If that thing had sluck around, it would’ve been bad for everyone. And I don’t want to have to kill any of you. But we’ve said we’ll see this place evacuated one way or the other, and we will.” Boanerges nodded. “I believe you,” he said unhappily. “But I’d rather we keep the truce as long as we can.” He looked at Sumatra grimly.

  The rat shaman wasn’t stupid. “My apologies,” he said, holding his arms wide as though being crucified. “If you want a free shot . . .”

  Lori hesitated, then shook her head. “You’re his teacher?” she asked Boanerges.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can see why he tried to defend you. Apology accepted.”

  “Thank you,” said Boanerges, and Sumatra followed suit a few seconds later, though without the same warmth. The snake shaman’s astral form returned to his meatbody, and Lori and Sumatra’s astral forms were left watching each other warily for a few seconds.

  “He’s not going to give this place up,” said the ork. “You’ll have to carry him out. Are you prepared to do that?”

  “Are you prepared to see him killed over a worthless piece of land?”

  “He’s my teacher, and I took an oath to defend the coven he leads. And if this land is so worthless, why is somebody paying you to kill for it?”

  I wish I knew, thought Lori. Instead of answering the question, she flew back to the Step-Van and her physical form. Wallace looked around when he heard her move, and waited for her report.

  “They were just attacked by a toxic spirit,” she said. “I think it was attracted by a chemical spill—a stray shot must have hit one of the barrels. I helped them banish it; it was a danger to us, as well.”

  Wallace didn’t answer.

  “The watchers they had up as guards over the entrance have gone. I’m sure they’ll put new ones up before long, but they seem to be running out of magic—and magicians.” Wallace grunted. “Can you get down into the bunker, see who and what is there?”

  “I don’t know. They probably have someone watching the entrance in astral, and there’s enough pure earth on their roof that I’d have to plow my way through it—not to mention the four hermetic circles drawn up top. And wouldn’t that be violating the cease-fire?”

  Wallace shrugged. “I don’t know, but it probably isn’t worth the risk. Hartz just radioed in; Carpenter’s unconscious, maybe dead. Can you go and check on him? And if there’s no watchers guarding the entrance when you come back, tell me.”

  Magnusson walked cautiously through the ruined buildings, using his astral vision to peer into every shadow in search of possible threats—not just meres, but also scavengers, thrillers, devil rats and feral dogs. He was wearing his oldest pair of jeans and a hooded gray sweatshirt, both safely nondescript but cleaner than the average squatters’ usual garb. And an observant eye would have noticed that lie looked well fed and well groomed, and wore sturdy walking boots of real leather. He might as well have been carrying a neon sign saying “Mug me” in three languages. He wished he’d thought to bring a gun and wear heavier armor: he wasn’t much of a shot, but the black-handled ritual knife that he wore on a thong around his neck had a blade barely longer than his middle finger, and you couldn’t bluff with lightning bolts and stunball spells unless your attacker already knew you were a magician.

  He was picking his way through the weeds and rubble of I he abandoned recycling plant a block south of the Crypt when something crunched loudly underfoot. He froze, then looked down. It was a piece of toughened transparent plastic, with a vaguely streamlined shape, and appeared not to have been there long. He squatted down to examine it; he’d heard that Mute had brought down an ultralight drone, and (his was very likely a part of it. And drones were often armed. He looked around in the hope of finding a usable weapon, and caught sight of a dull metallic sheen amid a patch of weeds. As quietly as he could, he walked over to where the object lay and picked it up. It was roughly the same size and sha
pe as two medium-sized plates, and there was something oddly familiar about it. He thought for a moment, and realized why: it reminded him of one of his favorite stories, “A Saucer of Loneliness.”

  Magnusson smiled, and examined the object more closely. There were lenses set into one side, and snapped-off plastic struts—one of them long enough to serve as a handle, so that the thing could be wielded like a mace. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it had more reach than his knife, and one of the technical types in the Crypt might be able to get some useful information from it. Feeling slightly more confident, he crept up to a pile of rubble on the northern edge of the Crypt and cautiously scanned the area. There were two mercenaries standing guard, one on either southern corner of the block: there was a clear line of sight between them, and Magnusson rightly suspected they could also be seen by their counterparts on the northern corners.

  Wishing that he’d learned an invisibility spell, or that he was protected against gunfire by a quickened deflection spell like Yoko and Boanerges (his hard-won ability to reflect spells back on their caster wouldn’t save him from bullets), he sized up the guards and calculated his chances of being able to run between them and make it to the ramp without being gunned down. They were depressingly small, but bringing at least one of the sentries down with a sleep spell would improve the odds. Unfortunately, his centering technique required speaking aloud and drawing attention to himself, so he ruled that out, and there was no safe place where he could see both of them at once, so a stunball was—

  One of the sentries glanced in his direction. Magnusson wasn’t sure whether the mere had seen him—the visored helmet made it difficult to tell—but it spurred him into action. Without bothering with centering measures to reduce drain, he cast a powerful stunbolt at the human, who immediately collapsed. Without waiting to see how the other mere would respond, Magnusson scrambled out past the rubble and into the street, running faster than he’d done in more than twenty years.