Shadowrun 46 - A Fistful of Data

by Stephen Dedman (v1. 0) (epub)

  The toxic turned its attention to the newcomer, and instantly recognized the shaman it was sent to destroy. Unable to break free of Boanerges’ magic, it engaged him, trying to suck the shaman’s power into itself. Boanerges held on; despite feeling weaker than he had at any time since before his initiation. He hadn’t fully recovered from his encounter with the first toxic spirit, or from the exhausting drain of the healing spells he’d been casting . . . but there seemed to be no other way to stop the monstrosity from attacking the Crypt’s mundane population, who had no defense at all against it.

  Yoko glanced at her teacher, wondering if he needed help, and then she heard the high-pitched screaming of children, and the clatter of automatic fire. Boanerges caught her gaze, and nodded minutely, and Yoko squeezed past him and ran toward the ramp. Another spirit re-formed into a nearly human shape to block her path, but the adept hit the physical form with all her strength, and more important, all her willpower. When the spirit didn’t immediately disintegrate, she continued to punch, ignoring the pain from her hands. The spirit, already hurt in its fray with Akira, hastily dematerialized and tried to slip past her in search of easier prey, but Yoko’s reach extended into the astral, and dealt it a final fatal blow.

  Yoko turned to look up the ramp. An ugly troll, halfway down from the surface, seemed even more monstrous in astral than he did to normal sight. Another toxic spirit hovered over Akira’s and Ms. Hotop’s acid-etched bodies, sticking to the hideous troll like a bodyguard. “Pretty pretty elf,” said the toxic shaman through loosened teeth, as he lurched toward her. “Pretty pretty skin. I like pretty-pretty skin.”

  Yoko didn’t reply.

  “Like the way it smells when it burns,” the troll continued, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks. “Like the sounds of the pretty pretty bubbles it makes as it blisters. Like the pretty pretty colors it turns.”

  Yoko faced him, her damaged hands at her sides. “You like it? Come here and get it, if you think you can.”

  Haz threw back his head to laugh—and in that fraction of a second, Yoko threw the first weapon she found in . her pocket, a pen, at the shaman’s right eye. Haz blinked reflexively, and the pen went through his leathery eyelid as well as the eyeball. Before he could react, Yoko closed the distance between them and hit him in the throat, crushing his larynx. As Haz began to drown in his own contaminated blood, Yoko hit him again with her other hand, breaking his neck and paralyzing him. Knowing that this might not be enough to stop him casting a spell, she slapped the end of the pen, pushing it into his brain. A toxic spirit engulfed her, but she ignored it as she delivered the coup de grace.

  Griffin, watching the Crypt through the rotodrone’s cameras as the machine patrolled the edges of the site, zoomed in on the four figures running from the top of the ramp. He fired a burst of gel rounds at them as they headed for the street, following it up with a concussion grenade. A fraction of a second before the grenade exploded, he did a double take and swore. If the rangefinder reading was correct, the tallest figure was no more than 140 centimeters tall—which meant they were either children or improbably skinny dwarves. The grenade landed between two of the runners, one of whom had already been brought down by a gel round. The other staggered a few meters more toward the sidewalk before collapsing, leaving two still running. “Griffin here,” he said rapidly into the radio. “Two heading for you—but they’re not armed, and they look like kids!”

  Wallace looked at the picture. “Tasers!” he commanded.

  Lewis, still kneeling over Easy’s dead body, immediately dropped his rifle and drew his stun gun as he looked up, scanning the ruins for signs of movement. Quinn switched her rifle to her left hand as she reached for her own stun gun. A girl stumbled onto the sidewalk on the east side; she looked around as darts flew past her from either direction, and dropped to the ground. A boy came running after her, was hit by Lewis’ second shot, and fell to the street, convulsing. Lewis ran toward them, his stun gun at the ready; no one else moved for several seconds. The mere pulled the dart out of the boy’s body and snapped plastic restraints around his feet, before turning his attention to the girl. She looked up anxiously, seeing her face reflected in his tinted visor. “Are you okay?” Lewis asked. When she didn’t answer, he holstered his stun gun and picked her up. “Caught both of them,” he said over the radio. “What do we do with them now?”

  “Is anybody else coming?” Quinn asked the rigger.

  “Not unless they’re invisible,” Griffin replied. “There’s three unconscious on their patch—two kids and a woman.” He zoomed in on the two children who’d been knocked down by the concussion grenade. “Lori, you awake?”

  “No, but I can probably wake her if it’s important,” said Wallace.

  “Well, if she could take a look in astral, make sure the others are still alive . . .”

  The commander repressed a sigh. “Lewis? Make sure (hose kids don’t go anywhere; Crabbe will come pick them up. If they’re okay, we’ll put them in the Nomad until we know what the frag is going on. Griffin, see if you can raise 8-ball—but keep watching that ramp.”

  Boanerges could feel the magical power being drained from him and his physical strength beginning to fail; his vision blurred, and even breathing felt as painful as bones breaking. The toxic spirit seemed to be made of nothing but gangrenous sinew and berserk rage, and Boanerges had little of Yoko’s fighting skill. When the monstrosity was finally disrupted, Boanerges had to fight off the urge to lie down and rest. He staggered forward to the ramp and peered up toward the exit. He was in time to see Yoko disrupt another of the toxic spirits with a power blow backed by the strength of her will and charisma—and to see her collapse as the last remaining spirit retaliated with a blast of corrosive slime. The physical form loomed over her for a moment and continued to spray her with toxins. Boanerges hesitated, then looked at the other bodies on the ramp. Angie Hotop’s aura showed that she was scarcely alive, perhaps even clinically dead. The body near hers was even more terribly damaged, barely recognizable as Rove. Akira, lying a meter farther up the ramp, was unconscious, but his aura was stronger. The troll was as cold and dead as the concrete he lay on. Yoko’s aura revealed that she was still alive, barely, but the toxic spirit was obviously determined to keep damaging her body until there was no hope of healing her. Desperate to save her, Boanerges ran up the ramp toward them. To his amazement, the spirit dematerialized and slipped into the concrete floor.

  Boanerges knelt over Yoko’s body, aware that the toxic might be waiting in ambush, but he would rather risk anything than leave Yoko lying there. He cast a stabilizing spell, not caring that the fight with the toxics had left him so weak that he could barely manage to channel the needed mana, and without pausing to meditate to reduce the drain. Blood poured out of his ears as he concentrated, and as Yoko’s heart began beating again, his own slowed . . . slowed . . . stopped.

  11

  Cutter Czarnecki walked past Beef Patty’s bed, the largest in the clinic, and picked up her chart. He took care to avoid her legs, both of which hung over the end. Most of the clinic’s secondhand equipment had been made long before UGE, when few patients grew to more than two meters tall; even elves and orks found the beds uncomfortably short, and Czarnecki was glad he’d never had a giant come to him as an inpatient.

  Czarnecki sniffed. Like all good healers, he knew that smells could tell as much about a patient’s health as the way they looked or sounded—and this acrid stink, cutting sharply through the disinfectant smell of the clinic and the mustiness of the damp and sunless Crypt, was new and extremely worrying. Still staring at the chart, the doctor reached for Patty’s hand in the hope of finding a pulse through her dermal plating, and recoiled from the touch of something that felt wrong even through his latex gloves. He looked at his patient and saw something crouched over her body—something with the look of a corpse that had lain in wet ground too long, with eyes the color of a Staphylococcus aureus infection. His years as a street doc had al
most completely cured Czarnecki of squeamishness, but he found himself gagging as the toxic spirit seemed to decay into a seething gray-green ooze, covering Patty’s bandage-shrouded face and chest. He stumbled back until he bumped into the next bed, then looked over his shoulder.

  Mish had returned to her medicine lodge, and Jinx was on her lunch break, but Magnusson was sleeping on the army-surplus cot in the far corner. Czarnecki unclenched his teeth long enough to gulp out, “Maggie!” but the mage didn’t stir.

  The toxic spirit’s lambent eyes fixed themselves on Czar-necki’s, and the ork felt a blast of fear worse even than the nausea. He tried to climb backwards over the bed, which collapsed underneath him with a metallic clatter. Magnusson rolled over and opened his eyes. He snapped out the first few words of an Aramaic exorcism ritual, then cast a spiritbolt spell that disrupted the toxic instantly, leaving nothing behind but a residual stench and fresh wounds on Patty’s body and face.

  Czarnecki untangled himself from the mess on the floor and bent over the troll, examining her wounds. “These look like acid burns,” he said. “What was that? Some sort of elemental?”

  “A toxic water spirit,” replied Magnusson, sitting up and swinging his feet off the cot. “Swamp or river, I think. You’d better get Boanerges; he knows more healing spells than I do.” He hastily conjured up a watcher spirit and sent it off with an order to fetch the street shaman. “How bad is she?”

  “She’s stopped breathing. I think she inhaled enough of that stuff to drown her—and I hate to think how much damage it’s done to her lungs, even if it’s not still in there. It isn’t, is it?” He fished his stethoscope out of his coat and listened for a heartbeat. “Nothing,” he said, making the word sound like a curse. “I’m going to try CPR—unless you have a better idea?”

  Magnusson shook his head, watching helplessly as Czarnecki pounded on the troll’s armored chest, then looked up as Crane rushed into the clinic. “Quick!” the rigger panted. “Something’s . . . Yoko’s badly . . . burned, I think . . . and Akira and Rove and the teacher and . . . Boanerges is ... is ... I think he’s dead.”

  The mage turned pale. “Boanerges is dead?”

  “I think so.”

  “Where are they?”

  “On the ramp. I didn’t know whether we should move them.”

  “Do the burns look like this?” asked Czarnecki. “I’m going to have to open the chest.”

  “Yeah. They look like that. You’ve got to—”

  “One patient at a time, please,” said the ork. “There’s a tray of surgical implements in the autoclave. Can you bring it here?”

  “The what?”

  “I know what an autoclave is,” said Magnusson, “but if there’s anything that can be done for Boanerges ... I think that should take priority.”

  “Don’t tell—”

  “He knows more healing spells than the rest of us combined; what we know, he taught us. If we can save his life, how many more can he save?”

  Czarnecki scowled at him, but he straightened up and nodded. “Okay. I’ll come. Someone had better get Mish and Jinx.” He grabbed his black bag, and wearily followed the others as they hurried back to the ramp.

  “I put the kids in the Nomad, like you said,” muttered Crabbe as he clambered back into the Step-Van and removed his helmet.

  Wallace nodded. “Did you lock it?”

  “ ’Course. I guessed that was why you wanted ’em in there, not the other piece of drek that just drove up.” He looked at Wallace, his expression unusually grave. “And I picked up the body of the girl that got shot, too.” “Dead?”

  “Yeah. When Quinn shoots somebody, she don’t frag around. Little hole right in the temple, exit wound big as my hand.”

  Wallace looked at the troll’s gauntlet and decided that had to be an exaggeration. “Where did you put her?” “Beside the other van. We got a body bag for her? Normal size?”

  “Sure.”

  “She’s still holding on to that Roomsweeper. Don’t think I can get it out of her hand without breaking her fingers, but I took the ammo out. Here.” He held out a fistful of gel rounds. “They’re all there. She hadn’t fired the frag-gin’ thing.”

  Wallace didn’t reply.

  “Lewis’s in a bad way,” the troll continued. “You want me to relieve him?”

  “How bad?”

  “He’s holding on to his stun gun like it was some sort of . . . drek, what do they call them holy things?” “Cross?” suggested Hartz, without opening his eyes. “Icon?” replied Wallace.

  “Whatever. I don’t think he’s going to pick up his rifle again anytime soon, and as for firing it . . He shook his head.

  The commander grimaced. Crabbe was barely literate, and in most situations he tended to rely on his strength, toughness and intimidating appearance. This and his broad hillbilly accent led most people to underestimate the troll’s intelligence; but he was a good judge of character, and difficult to fool. “Thanks. I’ll tell him you’re coming.”

  “I’ll bag that body first.” He donned his helmet again. “It’s hard to tell now, shape her face is in, but Lewis thinks she wasn’t any more’n fifteen. Looks even younger to me, but what do I know ’bout human girls?”

  Wallace nodded. “The body bags are in with the chem-suits.” He watched as the troll opened the ammo box and removed one bag from the pack, then closed the box quietly to avoid waking Lori, Dutch and Kat. As soon as Crabbe had closed the door behind him, Hartz turned to his commander and said, “We going to do anything about the kids on their side of the sidewalk?”

  “Don’t you start,” Wallace growled. Hartz was known for his ruthlessness, his short fuse and his antipathy toward children. Wallace didn’t quite believe the rumors that the ogre had once eaten a prisoner of war when their rations ran low, but he’d never seen him worry about the welfare of an enemy before.

  “It’s just you know Lewis’s going to ask.”

  The commander nodded, and activated his radio. “Griffin? You got through to 8-ball yet?”

  “No answer,” the rigger replied.

  “Tell him I want a meet. I want to know what’s going on. They can send someone in astral if they don’t trust us not to shoot.”

  “Will do.”

  Wallace closed the channel and looked at Hartz. “Given the choice of letting them take care of their own wounded and wandering onto their territory—which 8-ball and the magicians are bound to have booby trapped—to get their people and use up our medical resources taking care of them . . .”

  The ogre held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not arguing. I just thought I'd mention it before Lew—”

  “Duly noted,” Wallace replied, cutting him off. The ogre subsided, closing his eyes again.

  Czarnecki held a mirror over Boanerges’ mouth while he listened through his stethoscope in the hope of finding at least a faint heartbeat. “I think he’s gone,” he muttered. “No carotid pulse, no evidence of respiration, and bleeding from the ears is never a good sign.” He put the mirror away and took a tiny flashlight and a cotton swab out of his black bag, then shone the light into the snake shaman’s all-too-human-looking eyes. He tried turning his head from side to side, then ran the swab lightly over the corneas. “Pupils don’t restrict, no oculocephalic or corneal reflexes . .. How’s his aura?”

  Mish peered over his shoulder, her tears splashing onto Boanerges’ chest. “I can’t see one.” She looked around at Jinx and Magnusson, who shook their heads.

  “I’ll slap a trauma patch on him, though I don’t think it’ll do any good,” said Czarnecki. “What do you think happened?”

  “He was badly wounded by the toxic spirits, and he cast a spell that required him to channel more mana than his body could take,” said Magnusson gravely. “I think he must have cast a stabilizing spell on Yoko. Her aura still shows traces of it. How is she?”

  “She’ll live. Those chemical burns look nasty, but they’re already beginning to heal.” He reached for her wri
st and saw her gold-plated DocWagon bracelet. “Pity Boanerges doesn’t have one of these. Should I call them, get them to pick her up? They have better facilities than I do.”

  “Do you think they’ll land here?” asked Jinx. “Doesn’t this count as corporate territory now?”

  “If they park or land in the street, we can probably persuade the meres to let us carry her that far,” said Czar-necki. “They’re supposed to be getting us out of here, dead or alive. Maggie? I guess you’re in command now. What do you say?”

  “Me?”

  “You were initiated into the coven at the same time as Yoko, right?”

  “Yes, but she’s been through more degrees of . . .” He trailed off. “I’m an academic, not a combat mage! What about 8-ball? He knows tactics, and he knows the people outside; he’s been doing a good job negotiating with them . . .”

  No one spoke.

  “He’s not dead too, is he?”

  “No,” said Jinx. “I saw him in the kitchen on the way here.”

  Magnusson sighed with relief. “Okay. Crane, go and get everyone we need for a war council in the medicine lodge, ASAP, and I’ll hand command over to 8-ball there. And get someone to stand guard here, and the strongest stretcher bearers you can. We’re taking these people back to the clinic.” He turned to Mish and Jinx. “What healing spells do you know?”

  “Antidote, cure disease, and healing,” said Mish between sobs. “Boanerges was teaching me a diagnosis spell, but he . . .” She choked, and wiped her eyes.

  Jinx shrugged. “I can treat recent injuries, but that’s all.” “Same here. Remind me to learn that stabilizing spell if we get out of here alive.” Magnusson bit his lip. “Okay, triage time. I’m going to call DoeWagon and see if they can help Boanerges. I’ll pay whatever it costs. Doc, your first priority is keeping him alive until they get here. If you can, he can save . . . well, Snake alone knows how many more. But if you think we can heal Yoko ourselves and there’s half a chance that she’ll come around before sunset that way . . . then she stays here.”