by Kai O'Connal
Filthy things, he thought.
“They are—moving toward the loading dock,” she muttered.
“Good,” he said. “And is there anyone else in the building outside of the dock?”
The woman twitched and a spasm jerked her leg. “No—No one else. Please…master—may I return? It burns—it burns to leave my body in this place.”
“No,” he commanded, turning to face front. “You’ll stay until I tell you to return.”
Picking up a walkie-talkie, he depressed the talk button. “Captain Whitmore, it’s time to tighten the noose.”
Kyrie smashed open the door to the loading dock and burst inside. It was a big space with enough room for three semi trucks, although there was only one there at the moment. Five guards wearing light armor and armed with AK-97s stood chatting while four men in blue jumpsuits stacked piles of boxes on pallets and wrapped them in clear shipping wrap. A fifth jumpsuited man drove a forklift, placing the loaded pallets onto the truck.
Before the men could do more than gape at her noisy arrival, Kyrie squeezed off two short bursts. The first struck a guard in the chest, sending him falling backward into a pile of boxes. The second burst caught another guard in the shoulder, spinning him around before he fell to the floor.
She kept running and dashed behind a concrete pillar. A hail of gunfire erupted from the remaining guards’ weapons, pounding her cover and filling the air with dust.
Another rain of gunfire blasted the concrete. A heartbeat pause followed, and Kyrie used the opportunity to dash over to a pallet stacked with desks. She squeezed off two more bursts along the way, missing with the first, but clipping another guard with the second. The workers had already scattered, and the forklift operator had abandoned his vehicle halfway up the ramp onto the truck.
Kyrie squeezed her eyes shut and opened her mouth. She heard a familiar clink, followed by a loud pop and screams. Opening her eyes, Kyrie popped out, still approaching the guards. Two of them, including the one she’d hit in the shoulder, still had their hands up over their eyes. The third had his rifle up and ready. He opened fire.
Time slowed as her adept reflexes kicked in. Kyrie leaped off the ground, flipping through the air in a no-handed cartwheel. She felt the swish as the bullets cut past her, one coming close enough to brush her ankle, but none striking home. She hit the ground in a crouch and squeezed the trigger of her gun. The shooting guard fell.
“Drop your weapons if you want to live!” she shouted.
For a second there was only silence, then the clatter of weapons hitting the floor.
“Everyone into the corner now!” Kyrie shouted.
A scurry of activity followed as guards and workers alike hurried to the corner of the dock. Kyrie scanned the room once more, clearing the areas she couldn’t see when she’d first entered, then waved Elijah and Leung in.
Elijah trotted to the prisoners and pointed at a worker.
The man walked over, Elijah keeping him at a safe distance with the muzzle of his pistol.
As Elijah concentrated, Kyrie swore she saw a faint ripple in the air between the mage and the man. Elijah looked up, his gaze distant and unfocused. “Who do you work for?” he asked.
“Kourous Allied Shipping,” the man said. “W…w…we were hired by the Aleph Society to move this stuff.”
“Where did they tell you to take it?”
“It’s going to a warehouse at the Rolling Meadows facility.”
“When did they start the move?”
“I—I don’t know. A couple weeks ago, maybe? This was the last of it.”
Elijah lowered his hand and his shoulders slumped. Taking a deep breath, he turned to Kyrie.
“He was telling the truth,” Elijah said. “There’s nothing here.”
“Actually,” Leung called from one of the loaded pallets, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Elijah walked unsteadily over, and Kyrie, keeping her weapon trained on the prisoners, backed over to them as well. “What’d you find?” he asked, supporting himself on the boxes.
Leung had torn back a bit of the packing wrap off, revealing stacks of computers.
“You don’t seriously think they’d leave computers with valuable data on them just sitting here on a pallet?” Kyrie asked.
“Not on purpose,” Leung said, “but I powered this one up and did a quick scan. They used an off-the-shelf data wipe program. More importantly, it’s an off-the-shelf data wipe with a well-known security flaw. It may take me a little while, but I can probably recover a fair amount of data from these.”
“Maybe something’s finally going our way,” Kyrie said.
Elijah cursed, but didn’t immediately reply. Kyrie realized he’d missed the important detail in Pineapple’s report.
A message from Cao popped up in reply.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cao watched the mob approach. Despite the vehicle’s many upgrades, she knew Pineapple’s and her safety was a fragile thing. There was no way the thugs could get through the armored glass or the reinforced body, but with enough effort, a determined mob could roll a vehicle, even one this big. After that they’d probably set it on fire, turning the troll and her into the main course of a car-b-cue.
Pineapple crouched beside her, one massive hand resting on the back of the passenger seat, the other one holding his assault rifle. “I say we give the Professor three more seconds. After that, we go in whether he’s ready for us or not.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Cao said.
As if in answer, Elijah’s reply popped up.
Pineapple grinned. “’Bout damn time. Let’s hit it!”
Cao jammed down the accelerator. The van’s tires squealed, causing the nearest Human Brigade goons to dive for cover. They roared out of the alley, scattering more of the thugs, but Cao could see even more red dots on her AR display heading toward their position. A couple of the blips were moving at high speed—those people weren’t on foot.
Cao knew she needed to jump into full VR if she was going to pull this off, but she hesitated. Pineapple was right beside her. There was no way she’d hide it from him.
“Truck!” yelled the troll.
Cao whipped the wheel to one side just in time to dodge a rusty, old truck that roared out of the ruins of parking garage and nearly sideswiped them.
“Dammit!” she said. “I’m going to jump in, but do me a favor?”
“Yeah, sure,” Pineapple said, bracing himself as Cao whipped the vehicle back onto a straight course. “What is it?”
“Don’t look at me.” Without waiting for a response, she plunged her mind into the van’s systems.
Cao became the van. She felt the heat radiating through the rear tires, a memory of her sudden acceleration out of the alley. She breathed deep of the air pumping through the intake manifold, relished the feel of it flowing into the piston chamber, savored the delicious mist of diesel fuel mingling with it, and shuddered with the percussive explosion as the spark plug triggered, plunging the piston back down and filling her with power.
>
Cao slid around a corner, cutting precariously close to the concrete base of a street light, but accelerated at the last moment to transform the momentum into even stronger forward motion. One of her wheels slammed into a pothole, and Cao winced with pain as the jolt was transformed into a physical impact on her body.
A new blip appeared in her AR and swung behind them to follow.
Cao felt Pineapple slide open the rear door’s gun port. A wash of heat whispered through her systems at his touch, and then again as he grasped one of the support posts to steady himself as she dodged a knot of Brigade thugs on foot.
Dammit, girl, she thought. Now’s not the time.
As if to drive the point home, a rain of cinder blocks poured down from the upper floors of the building she was passing. She avoided most of them, but one slammed hard into her hood, nearly knocking the wind out of her. With regret, she bumped the sensory dampers up a couple levels. She had to risk a certain amount of negative bio-feedback to gain the advantages of being jumped in, but she tended to keep the feedback protocols set to maximum sensitivity—it was usually just more fun that way, except when running through shit like this.
Cao checked the AR map again as she tore down the road, wondering why, amid all the activity, one blip was standing conspicuously still.
General Rijkard watched his AR as the operation commenced. A voice crackled over his walkie talkie.
“General! The trogs broke free and are heading for the compound. We need more men to stop them.”
“Keep the pressure on, but don’t worry about stopping them,” he replied. “We’ll trap them inside, and deal with all of them there.”
“Yes, sir.”
General Rijkard smiled with satisfaction as he watched the AR blips converge on the compound.
Elijah glanced at the AR overlay map to check Cao and Pineapple’s progress. It would take them another minute or two to reach the compound. Leung was already working on the gate, so he turned to Kyrie.
“Herd the prisoners into the trailer and lock them inside.”
“You sure? I think these guys just work for the shipping company. At least if they’re out here they can run when the Brigade shows up.”
Elijah considered it, but shook his head. “We can’t risk them getting in our way. They knew the risks when they took their job.”
Kyrie nodded, then ran over and started shouting orders at the prisoners. Elijah kept cutting computers loose from the packing wrap. Leung wanted as many as they could get. There was no telling which one would have the intel they were looking for, or how many they’d need to piece together something useful. The hacker ran up beside him and started ripping the wrap away as well.
“Gate open?” Elijah said.
“Working on it,” Leung said as he hefted one of the larger boxes loose from the stack. “It’s slow, but it should be open in time.”
“Goddammit!” Pineapple shouted. “That gate’s not gonna open in time.”
They were still a block away, but through his cybereyes’ telescopic vision, he saw the gate barely inching along.
A spray of bullets raked the back of the van. Pineapple shoved the muzzle of his Ares Alpha out the rear gun port and squeezed off three short bursts at the men in the back of the pickup. Every round hit its target.
As the three dead gunmen tumbled off the back of the pickup truck, Pineapple shoved his fist through the gun port and raised his middle finger at their pursuers. “Ha! Not so eager to follow us now, eh?” A sudden swerve forced him to pull his arm in and grab the roof to avoid falling over. “Hey, you’re ruining the moment.”
Pineapple smiled. He liked giving Cao a hard time, but in truth he marveled at how well she handled the vehicle. She was as good as any rigger he’d worked with. Checking that no one else was following them, he worked his way to the front.
In the heat of the moment, Pineapple forgot Cao’s request and looked down at the rigger. Jacked into the machine, her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open. Thick, ropes of drool dripped from the corners of her mouth, dribbling down her neck and pooling at the hem of her shirt. He remembered something a friend had told him about goblins, that one of the side effects of their transformation was heavy drooling. Pineapple shrugged, wondering why she cared. She and he were what they were. No sense trying to hide it—or hiding from it.
Glancing up, Pineapple saw that the gate was definitely not open enough for them to get through.
Inside the loading dock, Kyrie heard the screech of metal on metal from outside. She winced, picturing what the noise meant for Cao’s van. Checking to make sure all the prisoners were inside the trailer, she slammed the door closed, and shot the lock home. She jogged over to where Leung and Elijah were still pulling computers from the pallet.
“Thought you were working on that gate?” she asked.
“I keep telling you guys.” Leung grabbed a computer from Elijah and placed it on a nearby pile. “These systems are positively ancient. I can only work with the tools I’m given.”
The roar of an engine, the squeal of tires, and the blast of an air horn announced Cao and Pineapple’s arrival.
“Grab a computer and start loading.” Elijah picked one up and ran for the door. Kyrie followed his lead. Before they reached the door, it opened and Pineapple ducked through.
“Gimme those.” He grabbed the pair of computers and ducked back out the door.
“Hey,” Leung yelled, chasing the troll out the door with another computer under his arm. “Be careful. Smash the drives and I won’t be able to recover anything!”
Half a dozen trips later, they’d filled most of the available space in Cao’s van. Each time Kyrie took a computer out, she saw more Brigade thugs entering the compound. Most were on foot, but several rode in old, battered cars or rust-riddled trucks. So far, they were keeping their distance. “This is not good.”
Elijah trotted up behind her. “Just get those computers loaded. If we don’t get the info we need from them, we might end up here another week or more.”
“Good point.” She set another computer in the van.
When they were down to the last load, Pineapple stayed with Cao while Kyrie went back in with Elijah and Leung. As they each grabbed another computer, she could hear the voices of the growing mob outside. It was a dull, angry rumble, the sound of at least several dozen people itching for a fight. She frowned. “What are they waiting for? Why aren’t they charging in here to rip this place down?”
Leung glanced at Elijah as he walked to the door. Kyrie narrowed her eyes and locked them on the mage as well. “What the hell is going on?”
“Let’s just get these in the van, okay?”
Kyrie cut him off in three quick steps. “No way. I know that look. What aren’t you telling us?”
Elijah shouldered past her. “I had to do some fast talking, all right? But it will work out.”
The noise from outside suddenly dropped off.
“That can’t be good.” Kyrie looked toward the door.
There was an electric pop, a quick squelch of feedback, and then a voice spoke, amplified through the tinny speaker of an old-fashioned bullhorn.
“Attention Elijah and company. This is General Rijkard. I would like to thank you for your cooperation in securing this location for us.”
“We should probably get in the van,” Leung said. “Now.”
The three rushed out to the waiting van, careful to keep it between them and the mob. Peering around a corner of the vehicle, Kyrie saw the Human Brigade thugs in a semi-circle about fi
fty yards out from the loading dock. Between the human wall and a barrier of carefully positioned cars, the motley army had them completely blocked in. In the middle of the curve of cars stood Rijkard, standing unprotected in front of a heavily-armored SUV. He raised the bullhorn again.
“We have, as one would expect from men of honor, fulfilled our end of the bargain.”
“Kyrie,” Pineapple called from the van’s open door. “Computer.”
She handed it to the troll, then climbed inside where Leung and Elijah were waiting. Cao was sitting in the driver’s seat, hands gripping the wheel.
“Shit,” she said, shaking her head. “This is really bad.”
“And so,” Rijkard’s voice echoed around them through the van’s speakers, “I now request that you fulfill your part of our agreement. We’ll give you one minute.” Another squeal of feedback and a loud click as the bullhorn shut off.
“What the hell’s he talking about?” Cao turned to look at Elijah, puzzlement obvious on her face. “You didn’t say there was anything else to this deal.”
“There wasn’t. Not at first. I had to make a deal, but I want to be clear that this wasn’t my idea.”
“What?” Kyrie said. “What wasn’t your idea?”
Elijah inhaled. “I want you all to understand; no matter how bad this sounds, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think we’d make it out. And I mean all of us, okay? Remember that.”
Kyrie felt a twinge of sympathy for Elijah, because she could tell that whatever he was talking about was twisting his insides pretty thoroughly. But she wasn’t about to express it until she found out just what he had done.
“Just say it,” she said. “Say what it is.”
“What the hell did you promise them?” Cao asked.