Shadowrun 46 - A Fistful of Data

by Stephen Dedman (v1. 0) (epub)

  Hartz had nearly reached the top of the cooling tower when Lori manifested on the platform above him. “Frag!” he snapped, gripping the rope tightly. “You nearly gave me a coronary!”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Wallace told me to see whether Carpenter was alive.”

  “And?”

  “His aura says he is, though he’s in bad shape. He’s been hit by some sort of spell that did a lot of physical damage. Probably a lightning bolt.”

  Hartz sniffed. There was a faint odor of ozone, as well as burnt flesh, gunfire and an approaching rainstorm. “Can you help him?”

  “I can stabilize him; I’m not sure I can do much more than that without getting him to a hospital.” The sniper was a poor candidate for magical healing even under ideal circumstances; he’d had so much cyberware implanted over the years that he barely had any essence remaining. “And you’ll need to get him down first.”

  The ogre swore again as he clambered up onto the tilted platform. “Can’t we just call DocWagon? This sounds like a job for a medevac chopper.”

  “We have to get him down first,” she said firmly. “Our employer doesn’t want us drawing attention to this place. Unless you can think of a good cover story.”

  Hartz grunted as he hauled Carpenter back over the platform’s low railing, thankful for the extra strength his muscle replacements lent him. “Not one that anybody would believe,” he admitted. “Y’know, it’s days like this I almost wish I’d never slugged that sergeant.”

  Dutch stared as Kat fell over, and looked around to see where the attack was coming from. When he saw a tall man sprinting across the road toward the Crypt, it took him half a second to link the two events together and, despite his boosted reflexes, another quarter second to bring his gun to his shoulder and aim at the intruder. “Halt!” he shouted. “Who—”

  The man glanced at him without breaking his stride, and Dutch found himself fighting to stay awake. He blinked, (hen looked around to see where his target had gone. To his surprise, the man was still on the road, moving more slowly than before. Dutch wondered if he’d been hit by the same spell, or gas, or whatever was affecting him . . . “Stop!” he yelled.

  Magnusson looked at the sentry, who was still standing— if a little unsteadily. He froze for an instant, then fell to the ground in the hope that the mercenary wouldn’t shoot a man who was already down.

  The ork peered at him uncertainly, and lowered the gun. Magnusson risked another stunbolt, muttering in Aramaic in the hope of reducing the drain to a manageable level, and was relieved to see the mere pitch forward and collapse full length onto the road. The magician picked himself up and staggered wearily onto the sidewalk despite his legs feeling like water and his feet like lead bricks. Climbing over the knee-high wall of the derelict warehouse required an almost superhuman effort, and once on the other side, the urge to lie down on the compost heap was almost overpowering. He continued to stumble along, doing his best to avoid the beds of herbs, chard, carrots and potato plants, until he snagged his foot on a trip wire and landed face-first in mud. When he looked up, his vision seemed to be filled by the muzzle of a rifle.

  “Maggie?” said a wonderfully familiar voice somewhere in the distance. “Frag, Prof, you look like drek. Are you okay?”

  Wallace ground his teeth as yet another report came in of a man down, and glanced at the tactical map projected on the windshield’s heads-up display. Crabbe and Hartz were bringing Carpenter back, Griffin was still too far away to be of any assistance . .. He called to Lori, who appeared a moment later. “Are you okay to go out again?”

  “What is it this time?” she asked.

  “Not what—who. Kat and Dutch. They’re both down. Sounds like it’s the same magician. Some truce.”

  “Carpenter was the first to break it,” said Lori flatly.

  Wallace shrugged. “I remember a preacher in Sunday school told me that if everyone believed in ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ the whole world would end up blind and toothless. I guess Carpenter was asleep that morning.”

  The mage looked at his tusks and attempted to smile. “I don’t think anyone could ever accuse you of being toothless.”

  The ork snorted. “That’s not what worries me. If it comes down to a war of attrition, I think they may be winning.”

  “If it comes down to magic, they will,” said Lori, suddenly serious. “I’ve had a look at the plants they’re growing on their roof. Some of them are food, but there’s a remarkably healthy herb garden in there as well—the sort of herbs that talismongers pay a fortune for. And the soil’s been magically cleansed of contamination, and that takes meta-magic. You remember that we were told this place is a school? I think they’re teaching magic; there’s at least three magicians down there, and I don’t know how many more we might be facing.” She shrugged. “I’ll go check on the sentries.”

  Magnusson collapsed face-first onto a mattress in the corridor and lay there for a moment, then rolled over and looked up at the trio who’d helped him down the ramp— 8-ball, Pinhead Pierce and a human teenager he didn’t recognize. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “Don’t mention it,” said the dwarf, looking at the object he’d had to pry from the magician’s fingers. “Where did you get this?”

  “Block south of here. What is it?”

  “Looks like the instrument package from a Condor drone,” 8-ball replied. “Crane would know for sure.”

  “Can we find out who owns it? Are there any serial numbers inside, or anything like that?”

  “Should be, if they haven’t been removed. Are you okay?”

  Magnusson shook his head. “Nothing a lot of sleep won’t fix.”

  “You’ve got about ten hours. If you’re lucky.”

  The magician closed his eyes. “How’s Boanerges?” “Fragged. Looks even worse than you,” said Pierce with his usual level of diplomacy.

  “Mish and the doc are looking after him,” said 8-ball as reassuringly as he could. “Sumatra’s conjured up a couple of watchers and is taking a break. Pierce can you take this to Crane and Zurich and ask them to have a look at it? Akira, can you go to the kitchen, get me some drinking water?” He watched the teenagers leave and shook his head. “Yoko’s standing guard, keeping a watch in astral. That toxic really took it out of Boanerges, so we’d better hope they don’t hit us with anything magical. Not for a few hours, at least.”

  The magician closed his eyes. “Should we start evacuating the kids? The ones who can stand the sunlight, at least?”

  “If it was up to me . . . yes. If Wallace says he’ll take them to another squat, then I believe him. We might even persuade him to run the elves and the orks somewhere they’ll be welcome.”

  “You think it’ll come to that?”

  “I think they’ll be safer somewhere else than here, and I’d like to give them that option. I know Boanerges is a big fan of Gandhi—you know, the nonviolence guy—but I don’t think passive resistance is going to work this time. If I were you, I’d start packing up the library and the enchanting stuff, maybe even as much of the hospital as we can. Or you get ready to kill everyone who comes down that ramp. Either way, I think we should get the kids out now.”

  Crane and Zurich sat on opposite sides of a folding table under a magnifying lamp (both scrounged from a bring-out-your-trash day in Auburn) taking the instrument package apart with their multi-tools, while Pinhead Pierce pedaled a jury-rigged bicycle generator to power the lamp. The Crypt’s electricity supply was mostly drawn from the few working streetlights in the area; it was notoriously unreliable, and much of it was consumed by the small refrigerators in the clinic and the kitchen. Czarnecki had commandeered all of the library’s fully charged battery-powered lamps for the surgery, leaving readers with nothing but candles. Zurich had insisted on having reliable light for the precision work he needed to do, so he’d dragged the bicycle generator from the kitchen into the library, hooked it up to the lamp and drafted Pierce to provide the energy.


  “It’s from a Condor, all right,” said the rigger. “Some interesting modifications to the sensor package, too. That radar looks military, but it’s not standard UCAS issue.”

  “Hmm.” They continued dismantling the electronics, noting the serial numbers they found, until Zurich did a double take and held the radar unit closer to the magnifying lens, comparing it to diagrams displayed on his retinal link.

  “You’re right. This interrupter is an Aztechnology design, but it’s Aztlan mil-spec, not meant for corp or civilian use.” Crane nodded. “They’re mercenaries,” he said. “They could have stolen the equipment, salvaged it, bought it on the black market ... If you looked at all the components in all the drones I’ve used over the years, you’d think I’d been everywhere.”

  “I still think it’s worth checking these serial numbers,” the dwarf replied. He looked over at Ratatosk, who was sitting on the floor still plugged into the Crypt’s only jack-point. When the elf didn’t acknowledge that he’d heard them, Zurich slid down from his chair and walked over to look at the screen on the deck. Instead of the view of the Matrix that he’d expected to see, the monitor showed greatly accelerated video of cases and crates being loaded into vans. The camera angle was too high for Zurich to spot any landmarks, and after watching for nearly a minute, he asked loudly, “What is this?”

  “Sea-Tac,” said Ratatosk, not looking at him. “8-ball suggested I check to see if anyone transported any bar-ghests from the CAS. You can’t do something like that without a drekload of official paperwork, so if you know where to look, it’s not difficult to find the paper trail and start tracking back.”

  “Any luck so far?”

  “A little. They flew in on a commercial cargo flight, landed just after three a.m. Signed over to an Elvis Carpenter, who had all the papers he needed to get them in and out without a quarantine period. That can’t have been cheap, but he paid it himself with a certified credstick. I’m just hoping I don’t have to go looking through his bank records to see who paid him. If he’s one of the meres, he’ll have accounts in datahavens with ultraviolet security codes. Got it!” he chortled, as the video slowed down to halfnormal speed.

  “Got what?” asked the sweaty Pierce, still laboring away on the bike.

  Zurich peered at the small screen. Two heavy mesh cages were being loaded by forklift onto the back of a dark gray Gaz-Willys Nomad. “Can you get the license?” he asked.

  “Working on it,” said Ratatosk, keying in instructions. Physical security at international airports was better than that on most federal buildings and some military bases, with all vehicles going in and out having to pass through at least three automated checkpoints and the records being kept indefinitely. So the data they wanted existed, but accessing one of these datafiles was difficult, and risky even for a decker of Ratatosk’s skill; deleting or editing one was nearly impossible as well as pointless, because multiple backups existed in carefully isolated systems. If they could get to the info, it would be accurate. “Just hope it’s not rented.”

  “We have some serial numbers from the drone that Mute shot down,” said Zurich. “I’ll leave them on the table; can you check those when you’ve finished?”

  “Okay.”

  “Can I stop now?” asked Pierce.

  While the Crypt’s internal structure seemed perfectly chaotic, an astute observer would have noticed a few patterns. Humans, the least likely to be susceptible to sunlight, tended to cluster in the cubicles nearest the bottom of the ramp. Most elves set up their quarters along the west wall, while orks and trolls gathered in the southeast corner. As a . result, the height of the doorframes and the lengths of the improvised beds tended to increase the farther they were from the ramp, which sometimes gave newcomers the strange feeling that they were shrinking as they walked away from the light.

  Akira’s room was a fairly typical single sleeping cubicle: roughly two meters by three, with its walls and bed improvised from pallets and crates. The inner walls were lined with several thicknesses of posters for a little soundproofing and, unlike some, they actually reached the mottled ceiling. The dirty concrete floor was covered with flattened cartons; the curtain across the doorway was an old microfiber blanket worn too thin to provide much warmth. The mattress on the narrow bed was a slab of plastic foam; the pillow, a calico bag stuffed with rags; the bedding, a sheet, a stolen Japanese flag, a thermal blanket and whatever spare clothing he had that didn’t smell too bad. Lankin had borrowed the room so he could check his investments on his pocket secretary in privacy, and was considering buying more Mitsuhama shares when the “Incoming Call: Gardiner” message scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

  Lankin hesitated for a fraction of a second before activating the scrambler and accepting the call: it was rarely a good idea to keep a fixer waiting. “Yes?”

  “Lankin? Johnson wants a PR on the FB job.”

  The elf was too good an actor to wince or let his smile falter. “I’m recruiting another member for the team. A good covert ops spesh who can get into the factory ahead of us, or get us out if things turn ugly. The job’ll happen on schedule.” Lankin was masquerading as a highly placed civil servant from the Caribbean League, in Seattle to buy a Federated-Boeing Executive Commuter with military armor. The plan was for him to smuggle a rigger into the factory to steal the plane and fly it to Cascade Ork territory, with a decker and a mage doing their best to stop it being tracked electronically or magically.

  “It’d better: you need the nuyen. Who’s the spesh?” “Mute.”

  Gardiner actually looked impressed. “How big a cut does she want?”

  “We’re negotiating now. And I may have found the perfect people for that job in LA next month. A weapons specialist and a warrior adept. I’ll tell you more later.”

  Griffin pulled up behind the Step-Van and was greeted by an obviously irritated Wallace. “About time you got back,” the ork growled, and nodded at the Nomad. “Can that make a return trip on autopilot?”

  The rigger shook his head. “On these roads? No way. After it gets to the highway, maybe.”

  “Frag. Okay, set it for manual. King’ll have to drive; I need you here. I want a drone up in the sky as soon as you can put it up there—one that can shoot back, if necessary. We’ve had another three men taken out since you left.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I fraggin’ wish. Kat and Dutch have been hit with some sort of sleep spell, not a scratch on ’em, but Carpenter . . . something fraggin’ near fried him. Lori’s managed to stabilize him, but she’s exhausted; I asked her to wake up the sleeping beauties, and she said that if she tried, she’d probably fall over too. So we’ve put Carpenter in a stabilization unit and I’m letting Lori rest up, because we’re bound to need her again.”

  “King’s awake?”

  “Not yet, but he’s had more time to sleep it off, and I can’t spare anyone else. ’Sides, you know King. Ordering him to drive Carpenter to the hospital is probably the only way to stop him going redshirt and rushing into that place to find the fragger who cast the spell. And then I’d be another man down, and I’d have to tell both of their mothers.”

  “King has a mother?”

  His commander glared at him. “Yeah. And you don’t want her angrv at you, believe me.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “And 8-ball will have some nasty little surprise waiting for whoever’s first down that ramp—assuming they can get past that sentry. That’s why I want it to be another drone, not one of the squad. Got that?”

  Griffin nodded. “1 can have a rotodrone in the air in four minutes. Light machine gun and grenade launcher. What sort of grenades should I load?”

  The ork sighed. “Concussion and neurostun. And gel rounds—for now. Did they give us gel rounds for the machine gun?”

  “I’ll check. I know we asked for them.”

  “You sound as though you don’t trust our employers.” “Have we ever had one who gave us exactly what w
e said we needed to do a job and didn’t try to cut costs somewhere?”

  Wallace thought about this for a moment. “I don’t remember one,” he admitted. “But I don’t think Mr. Fedorov is spending his own nuyen, and this stuff isn’t war surplus. Most of it’s too new. I smell corp money behind this, and lots of it.”

  “Me too.” The rigger looked around at the wasteland. “Who do you think 8-ball’s really working for?”

  * * *

  Despite his injuries and obvious signs of exhaustion, Boanerges insisted they meet in his magically shielded medicine lodge rather than Czarnecki’s clinic. 8-ball looked uneasily at the shaman’s bandaged head and his unusually dull eyes, then at the way Magnusson leaned on the lodge’s elaborately painted wall. “How is Patty?” asked Yoko.

  “Mish is watching her,” said Czarnecki, his tone and expression making it clear that he believed that he should be—and watching Boanerges as well. “She cast a healing spell on her, and I taped her ribs and wired her jaw. Fortunately, her lungs seem undamaged, and I don’t think she’s lost much blood.”

  “Is she conscious?” asked Boanerges.

  “She was. I wanted to call DocWagon, but she won’t leave until you do. I had to give her a sedative to stop her coming to this meeting, even though she can’t talk.”

  “How soon will she be able to move?” asked Lankin. “She could probably fall out of bed without magical assistance,” said the medic coldly.

  “I’m not talking about fighting,” said Lankin. “Could she walk a few blocks, then drive?”

  “In a few hours, maybe. Why?”

  “Her van’s parked a few blocks away,” Lankin replied. “If we’re not going to trust the meres to take the kids to safety, she could drive them. It would keep her out of danger, too, and free up a bed for the next patient.”

  Boanerges opened his eyes a little more widely. “You think we need to start evacuating?”

  “I think we’ll have to. The best we can hope for is to negotiate for some form of compensation. How many of those meres do you think we’re likely to be able to kill if they come storming down the ramp?”