by Jak Koke
Jonathon got out of the car. "No," he said. "I can’t wait. We wait, we get killed. It’s time for a little turnaround. Come on, let’s go see The Fixx."
Synthia put a hand on his arm as she stood up from the limo. "Can I get into the trunk first, my suitcase? As much as I love Venny’s shirt, I’d like to change before we go in to dance among the shadows." She fluttered the tail of the massive shirt around her knees.
"Uh, good idea," Jonathon said, feeling conspicuously underclothed himself. The duster was beginning to chafe.
Venny got out of the other car and assumed a protective posture next to Jonathon. The big troll provided a good screen behind which they changed into more appropriate attire. "Just in case anyone wanders by," Synthia said.
To go under his duster, Jonathon chose jeans and a loose dark blue shirt with lots of pockets. Synthia put on her slitch-from-Hell outfit—black synthleather pants and matching jacket over a low-cut cherry-red halter. None of it was armored like Jonathon’s duster, but at least she looked the part.
A few minutes later, Jonathon led the way to the entrance. The building was an old jet hangar, built from thickly corrugated sheet metal covered with peeling white paint. It was huge, stretching up at least ten stories, and five times as long as it was tall. Facing them as they approached were the massive double doors of the original hangar, seven or more stories tall themselves, built to accommodate the giant jumbo jets of the last century.
Built into the massive hangar doors were smaller doors, one of which stood ajar, the sounds and lights of many people and music escaping through it. Jonathon headed for that one and was greeted by a heavily cybered dwarf woman wearing obvious body armor. "Greetings, chummers," she said. "Dexter said he’d be right out. Meanwhile, mingle or do biz or whatever you wish."
Exactly one-half of her head shone a brilliant chrome in the florescent lights. The other half was natural skin sprouting greasy black hair. "The rules are simple: weapons are allowed for demonstration purposes only. Kill anyone on the premises and you will be killed. We’re all professionals, and no one will tolerate a disruption of the biz. There will be no remorse."
She smiled to herself, then extended her cyberarm to Jonathon. "That’s the spiel I’ve got to give everyone," she said. "But with you it might be different. Everyone loves you. And I thought your riding in the last match was some of the most butt-kicking wiz moves I’ve ever seen."
"Thank you," Jonathon said, trying to push past her and into the hangar. Inside, he’d expected to see only an oil-stained concrete floor and steel girders holding up the sheet metal walls and roof. But Hemmingway had remodeled the interior.
A short set of stairs that looked like real wood led to a huge deck that surrounded a large indoor pool. Tall palm trees and flowering bushes surrounded the pool and made the place smell like a tropical paradise. Jonathon noticed that much of the roof, thirty or so meters overhead, had been replaced with tinted glass to let the sun in for the plant life. Remarkable, he thought.
About a hundred or more people spoke in hushed conversations in the shadows of the trees or sitting in private booths and tables along the walls. A massive bar served drinks at one end of the pool, and a few bikini-clad biffs and one or two steroid-muscled joyboys swam in the water, but Jonathon suspected they were being paid to contribute to the atmosphere. No professional shadowrunners would strip down and go swimming in a place of biz.
The chromed dwarf walked along with him. "So tell me . . ." she said. "What brings you here? You need some muscle? Some force to get back at Dougan Rose? Revenge for killing Tamara? I can’t believe he got away with that drek." She shook her head disparagingly. "Anyway, if you need someone, just let me know, ’cause I’m a top-rate samurai, and the price would be reasonable for a chummer like you ..."
"Look," Jonathon said finally, wanting to ask her if she ever shut up, "Dougan Rose will pay for what he’s done," he said. "I plan to get him in tomorrow night’s match. I’m just here to see Dexter." Jonathon saw a large golf cart making its way around the pool. "And here he comes. Thanks for the offer—"
"You can call me Halfchrome."
"Thanks, Halfchrome. I’ll let you know."
The vehicle rolled up to them. Much longer than a normal cart, it had five bench seats. At the wheel sat another ork who could have been a twin of Reece and his chummer by the main gate. Except this one was female and more heavily cybered. She looked quicker, smarter maybe. More deadly.
Next to the ork sat a human male with peroxide-white hair and the acne-ridden skin of a teenager. He wore synthleather pants and a tank top, but his skin was tattooed everywhere except his head. Tattooed with arcane symbols.
Venny whispered in Jonathon’s ear, "Mage. Probably responsible for the water elementals we saw on guard by the road in."
Jonathon shivered. He hadn’t seen any elementals.
In the second seat was Dexter Hemmingway. He was a thinning human who looked to be in his late fifties, though he was rumored to be much older. Graying brown hair, gaunt face etched with hairline wrinkles. His face seemed to have undergone many cosmetic operations and Jonathon suspected that his eyes were cyber even though carefully masked to look natural.
The man stepped out to greet them. "Jonathon!" he said. "What a great surprise to see you here."
"Dexter," Jonathon said. "I appreciate your hospitality. This is—"
"Venice Jones I know," Dexter said. "And Synthia Stone is familiar to me, but I don’t know . . ."
"Grids Desmond," Jonathon said. "A very good friend of Tamara’s."
Dexter frowned. "I’m sorry about what happened to her." Then he waved at them. "Come, let’s speak in private. Get on."
Hemmingway’s cart took them past the pool and down a concrete path behind the trees to a guarded gate. As they rode, Jonathon told Hemmingway why they’d come, that he needed a decker and some muscle to help him raid the office of a corporate exec. Grids knew how to get there, but was unwilling to risk running the Matrix.
Past the gate was a ramp down to a tunnel that passed below the water outside and through several more checkpoints before emerging up into another renovated hangar. And by that time, Hemmingway had assured Jonathon that his needs would easily be met.
"Good," Jonathon said. "Then we’ll make the run right away, before daybreak."
"Null persp, my friend," Hemmingway said. "I’ll arrange for whatever you need. I’m more than happy to oblige. Nothing, you see. Nothing is too much for my star rider."
34
The hour was up and Michaelson still hadn’t heard a word from Cinnamon. He’d packed a few things and pretended nothing was amiss as he listened to the deep thwup of the Hughes Airstar landing on the pad outside.
He turned to get his briefcase and bid Hans Brackhaus goodbye as if nothing strange were happening. But Brackhaus was nowhere to be found. Gone.
And as he walked out to the helipad, Ruger and the combat mage—Firnulan—falling into step behind him, he wondered about his new life in Essen. Perhaps he would get to see his wife again, perhaps not. He'd made arrangements with his contacts in Berlin to have her kidnapped and transferred to MCT custody. If he couldn’t get a message through to stop that from happening, he might never see her again.
The thought twisted his heart with agony, the kind of breath-stopping apprehension he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Not since his early years in the corp, the days when he used to second-guess his every move, wondering if his boldness would suddenly bring down Lofwyr’s anger. He’d heard plenty of stories about the dragon’s wrath and how it was known to dismember underlings in a rage.
But Michaelson’s boldness had caused him to advance, both his creativity and his ruthlessness been rewarded. Spirits, he’d devoted his entire fragging existence to Saeder-Krupp. But he’d always hated being under the constant, unblinking reptilian gaze of the worm. He could hardly bear the terror that one day he, too, would suffer from a massive claw slicing across his midsection to spill his guts.
Now it looked like that might happen.
Michaelson calmed himself and ducked as he made his way across the painted circle toward the chopper. A uniformed human woman with blond hair pulled into a ponytail waved at him to hurry over.
When Ruger looked up at her, he hesitated for a second. "Hey, you’re not the usual team—"
By then it was too late. The blonde had an Ingram SMG in her hand and was firing.
Firnulan started to cast some sort of spell, but he jerked as a staccato barrage of bullets pierced his body armor. The bullets came from the pilot’s seat where a large blackskinned human sat, shaved head and a serious, barely human look on his sweating face.
Firnulan went down, but Ruger refused to fall even though he’d been hit. He tried to shield Michaelson. "Run," he yelled. "Get back inside!" The troll pulled an automatic shotgun from under his tux coat. "Backup’s coming!" Michaelson couldn’t move. He heard a ka-thunk come from the black man’s position, then a second later the hotel behind them exploded in flame, throwing him face-first onto the painted concrete.
Ruger fired twice before he went down. The first shot should’ve hit the blonde, but she dodged to the side in a blur of motion. The second one did get her, catching her leg. A blast of such strength should’ve taken her limb completely off, but all it did was toss her out of the way. Her black synthleather pants ripped into tiny shreds to reveal form-fitting body armor beneath.
She cried out as the blast threw her to the ground. "Frag it, Hendrix! I’m down."
The black man stepped out of the helo, his movements just as fast as the biff’s, but jerky like a robot’s. The big gun in his hand barked as he chewed even larger holes into the gore-spattered bodies of Ruger and Firnulan.
Then with one hand, he reached down and lifted Michaelson off the ground.
"We’re from Cinnamon," he whispered. "Get in." Michaelson picked up his fallen briefcase and obeyed. "Layla, can you walk?" the black man asked the blonde. "Maybe," came the response. And as he helped her into the seat next to Michaelson, she said, "Let’s move, I hear people coming."
"Check," said Hendrix.
Michaelson looked back at what was left of the entrance to the penthouse. The doors were gone and part of the entry had collapsed to the floor, swathed in a wall of flame that blocked the hall behind from view.
Then the black man jumped into the front seat and the helo lifted into the air. "Strap yourself in," he said. "This ain’t no luxury ride."
"Yeah," the blonde said. "We might encounter some turbulence." She gave a short, sharp laugh.
The helo dropped abruptly as if on cue, and Michaelson strapped himself in. The next ten or fifteen minutes were spent hiding from and out-maneuvering pursuing aircraft until Hendrix finally brought them down in the Harbor District down by Long Beach, an area Michaelson recognized as the Barrens.
Not a nice place at all.
"This is where you’re going to hide me?" he asked.
The blonde, who’d started to cut away her pants to get a look at her wound, glanced up at him. "Welcome to the fragging free world, Mr. Michaelson," she said. "May your brief stay be a joy ride and a half." Then she broke into a long eerie laugh that sent a shiver of ice through Michaelson's very bones.
35
When Jonathon saw Hemmingway’s home, he forgot about the run on Michaelson, forgot about the hiss in his head. For the space of several heartbeats, he simply stood in awe.
The jet hangar was as large as the first one—thick, corrugated metal walls over a frame of huge steel girders. Except in this one, lush ivy climbed the girders. The metal roof and walls held expansive windows of tinted, one-way glass. Hazy, blue moonlight shone through the skylight.
But it was the building inside the hangar that took Jonathon’s breath away. Hemmingway had brought in dirt and planted grass and trees over tiny rolling hills. But here there was no pool, no deck.
Here, a castle stood in the center of the hangar—an old-style French chateau from the age of knights and lords and drek. A fragging castle! There was no moat, but it had a draw bridge and a portcullis and wrought iron bars over the leaded-glass windows.
"Do you like my humble home?" asked Hemmingway, the finely etched lines of his face bunching as he smiled. "I had it brought over from the Loire Valley, stone by stone, and reassembled. Cheaper than you might think; castles sure don’t cost what they used to." He chuckled.
Both Synthia and Grids stared in awe. Only Venny didn’t react; he remained impassive as ever, his gaze on the kid mage and the samurai in the cart’s front seat. They drove through the front gate into a medieval courtyard complete with suits of armor and fluttering banners.
"I’ll have Montgomery set up some rooms for you," Hemmingway said.
"Thank you, Dexter," Jonathon said. "But I’m anxious to get on with this next bit."
"Ah, of course," Hemmingway said. "Shadowrunning."
"Yes."
"All right, let’s sit down in the library and discuss what you need, but I do insist that you stay here until after the match tonight."
"It would be my pleasure," Jonathon said. "After the run, we’ll stay as long as you’ll have us."
Hemmingway smiled. "Excellent."
Less than an hour later, Jonathon had assembled a team and the equipment they needed. One of the runners, a human street samurai called Samantha, had run on the Venice Beach Hilton before. A veteran runner, all padded up in form-fitting body armor, she was ready to rock and roll at any moment. She helped Jonathon and Grids, who’d actually seen the inside of Michaelson’s suite, to formulate a plan.
Jonathon’s headclock read 04:46:55 am when they lifted off—Jonathon pilot-rigging the jet-assisted Hughes Stallion helo. Synthia had insisted she come along as combat mage; Venny accompanied Jonathon as bodyguard, but Grids remained behind.
Grids wanted to set up his simsense equipment and his cyberdeck so that Goofy could continue crunching on the Magus File conversion. But he also planned to ride shotgun with the decker Jonathon had hired, a young kid who went by the handle of Noodle.
Halfchrome was brought in because Samantha trusted her; the two of them were the muscle. Jonathon had provided them with a choice of weaponry and ammo from Hemmingway’s storehouse.
The whine of the Hughes helo rose like a wave of goose pimples over Jonathon. Then the rotors reached a deep harmonic pulse as he lifted off the tarmac. Thwup. Thwup. Thwup. The Stallion was a creature of metal and macroglass, a beast of sound and fury, modified with jet engines to give it that extra push in a flat-out run.
Jonathon rose to fifty meters and kicked in the jets. The whine of the turbines raised hackles on his neck as he flew the metal insect out across the flooded concrete that was LAX. The sky was a deep predawn blue, lightening ever-so-slightly on his right as he flew north along the coast.
Besides the macroglass frontshield, Jonathon had 360-degree sensors and cameras, letting him see and feel the surrounding airspace. A thrill of adrenaline pulsed through him as he rocketed the helo past a huge water-desalting plant and out over the open water, swaying left, then right beneath its rotors, testing the yaw and pitch.
Damn, it's good to be flying again, he thought.
"Grids," Jonathon said. "We’re enroute. ETA Venice Hilton twelve minutes."
Grids’s voice came into Jonathon’s head. "Copy," he said. "Noodle and I are in position." He sounded apprehensive, almost scared.
"How you holdin’ up?" Jonathon asked.
"Shoulder’s okay, but. . ." Grids trailed off.
Jonathon waited until it was obvious the other man wasn’t going to finish his sentence. "Yeah, I miss her too," he said.
Grids was silent and Jonathon was suddenly flooded with memories of flying. The test craft he’d flown with Tamara were much more powerful and destructive than this helo, but the feel of the wind caressing his fuselage was the same. The bounce of turbulent air, the screaming fire of the turbines, rumbling like excess distortion through his met
al body; all were similar. Except that Tamara wasn’t there to share it.
Now she’s gone.
Jonathon gritted his teeth against the memories and bowed the Hughes. He throttled up the jets and dropped down toward the water’s surface, almost touching the breaking waves full of sludge and debris.
The water changed as he passed the last desalinization plant and the arcing line of buoys that held an underwater micro-net to keep debris and garbage out of the area. Venice Beach lay clean and pulsing with life even this early in the AM.
Jonathon banked right and climbed, spotting the Venice Hilton—a shiny blue steel and mirrored glass building, elegant and dark against the backdrop of towering arcologies behind it. He brought the onboard cameras online and focused on the penthouse helipad.
The roof of the hotel was unoccupied, nobody in sight. Excellent.
"Grids, one minute approach," Jonathon said. "What do the internal cameras show?"
"Jonathon, you’re not going to like this."
"Tell me anyway."
"All sec cameras covering the helipad are blacked out. Security reports a fire as the cause, but I’ve heard that drekking excuse one too many times."
"What about inside?"
"That’s odd too. No one’s home at our Mr. Michaelson’s, and security seems way too porous. Noodle thinks something’s going down, and I agree."
"Copy, Grids. I’ll keep that in mind."
Jonathon swung the Hughes steeply left and down, zooming his camera-eyes on the roof below as he brought his machine toward the helipad. "We’re going in," he told everyone. "Prep for landing and assault."
The low-light cameras showed that Grids was right. Not only had some sort of fire recently burned the drek out of the outside entrance to the penthouse, but it looked to Jonathon as if an explosion had been the cause of the fire. He saw chunks of fallen wall. Melted macroplast finish strewn like rubble. The thermographic filters revealed residual heat from the structure.
What the frag? This explosion had happened not long ago. Synthia slumped in the passenger seat, just for a second, before sitting up and turning to Jonathon. "Something’s going on in the astral," she said. "I can’t get through the drek around the penthouse. It could be a ward of some kind, but it’s probably just a mana bramble."