Choose your enemies carefully s-2

by Robert N. Charrette

  He wanted to stay and watch the fun, but there wouldn't be much for him to see with the cameras out. Besides, he had places to be. He sent the go signal on ahead and slipped out of the ATT-Multifax system as stealthily as he had crept in.

  Glover watched the lights of the departing helicopter disappear into the distance. The craft was carrying Ashton to investigate the trouble at the ATT-Multifax complex. There had been no word from Wallace and something seemed to be amiss on the lower level where Glover had arranged for the storage of Hyde-White's prize captive. The disturbance might have nothing to do with the captive priest; there were enough targets throughout the complex to attract shadowrunners. The Circle had taken care of the rest of the priest's team and were still successfully blocking the Vatican's inquiries. It seemed unlikely that a second team would have been dispatched this soon, and the priest hadn't been in the country long enough to ally himself with other parties. Still, with Wallace out of touch, Glover didn't want to take any chances. If there was a threat to their interests, Ashton's magical muscle and his overly enhanced bodyguards would handle it.

  But until Wallace and Ashton returned, the Hawthornwaite Tower's magical defenses were weakened.

  With Carstairs' loss to the shadowrunners, the Circle had lost its best situated connection in the local government. The protection afforded their operations hadn't totally disappeared, but it had been reduced, forcing them to regroup. They had been using Carstairs' residence as their chief base of operations, and his death mandated that they seek a new location. Nearby living quarters for all members was desirable for mutual support, and easy access to the lower classes a vital necessity for the continuance of the ritual cycle. Plausible mundane world connections were needed, for the Circle was obliged to remain hidden until the power ritual cycle was completed.

  Brighton Centrum had seemed the perfect choice. Sir Winston Neville owned the land on which the Centrum was built, and besides being the leaseholder, he was a major stockholder in the holding corporation which administered the complex. The former archdruid's public connections with Gordon made it easy cover his transfer to the Complex beneath the guise of social affairs. Some of the Circle needed no special arrangements to move their operations to the Centrum. Hyde-White's GWN Corporation already maintained residential floors in the Hawthornwaite Tower, as did Ashton's Miltech Research. ATT had residences in all three towers, and it had been simple for Glover to invoke executive privilege to take a residence in the tower. Bringing Barnett's General Services in to replace the security corporation had only left Wallace without a business reason to be there, and she was rich enough to afford one of the luxury flats. Thus had the Circle gathered under one roof, with no one the wiser.

  A buzz from the telecom interrupted Glover's chain of thought. Barnett answered it, as was appropriate: the call tone had indicated the building security line. There was a hushed conversation, most of which Glover didn't hear clearly, but he had caught enough to be unsurprised when Barnett said, "I say, Glover. Security seems to be having a spot of trouble on the plaza level."

  "Why should it concern us?"

  "Well, really, I am not sure that it does." Barnett stroked his mustache in a nervous gesture that Glover found irritating. "We've been having a rash of alarms throughout the complex tonight. Most of them have been false, but this is most definitely not. Sec desk is reporting ten or more heavily armed intruders wreaking havoc on the lobby and mezzanine levels."

  "Have they attempted to force entry into the Tower proper?"

  Barnett shook his head. "Not as yet. Their violence is without pattern, and individuals are reported to be evidencing berserker fury, which has led Sec Desk to suggest that we are dealing with a flashmob outbreak. Personally, I find the scale of this assault disturbing." Glover was annoyed by the whining tone in Barnett's voice. "Then perhaps you had best attend to it personally."

  "But the Circle's anonymity…" "Will be safe," Glover finished for him. "You are a licensed druid and no one think twice if you defend your residence, especially in aiding a security corporation which you own." "Good point."

  Barnett demonstrated his concern by leaving the apartment posthaste. Glover returned his attention to the skyline. Ashton's helicopter had long since vanished. After a moment, Glover felt a presence at his back. Refocussing his gaze, he saw Sir Winston Neville's gaunt face reflected in the transparex.

  "Now shall we tell Hyde-White, archdruid?" Neville asked petulantly. Glover frowned.

  Archdruid indeed. The title he had coveted for so long had a hollow ring these days. While Glover wore the title, the members of the Circle always seemed to look to Hyde-White for direction. Without a struggle, the fat old man had leeched the leadership role and prestige from Glover. How had Hyde-White managed it without Glover noticing? He never missed a power shift in ATT and had always moved with the flow to increase his own influence. So, what had happened within the Circle? Without the fat old man actually present, Glover was still master of the others, so Glover was not totally without influence. Hyde-White was foolish in allowing Glover to garner the lion's share of the power their rituals raised; one day that shortsightedness would turn around and bite him. Glover would not stay first in the Circle in name only. He may have missed the opening pitch, but the wickets weren't down yet.

  "Archdruid?" Neville prompted.

  Glover shook himself free of his brooding and turned to his questioner. Neville stepped back, apparently startled by something he saw in Glover's face.

  "I just thought that," Neville began. "I meana151if there is a significant danger, he should know.''

  ' 'And show weakness by running to him over some petty problem that most likely has nothing to do with the Circle? You don't know him half as well as I do, Sir Winston. You would only earn his scorn."

  "And if it does concern tie Circle?"

  "Then we shall resolve it and present him with the evidence of our efficiency. We captured the priest without his involvement, as you recall. We shall show him that the Circle is no longer weak."

  And I will have shown that I no longer need his strength.

  Sam could see some kind of commotion at the base of Hawthornwaite Tower. Flashes of light from heavy weapons fire and magical blasts lit the sky with the sudden violence of summer lightning. The arcane bolts were coming from inside the building, which most likely meant that one or more of the druids was involved. The Centrum's security company had no onstaff magical talent, relying on quick response from the municipal police forces. Sam was pleased. The istraction would only make his job easier, perhaps changing the odds of success from utterly impossible to only mostly impossible.

  He banked the Fledermaus, sending it in a wide curve around the western tower. Locking the maneuver into the autopilot, he relaxed and sent himself down into trance to free his astral body. Any warning his reconnaissance might give now would be minimal. He ghosted through the target floor and found nothing alive. The thing coiled on the sanctum's arcane dome hissed at him, but did nothing to impede him. As he passed through an area set aside as an office, a communications device buzzed, demanding attention. An immediate response cut off its strident complaint. There had been a telecom in the sanctuary; HydeWhite must have answered the call from there.

  He rejoined his body as the Fledermaus finished its turn. Sam called up an overlay graphic to the headsup display and confirmed the target floor. Dipping the nose of the craft, he headed in.

  One hundred meters from the tower he switched on the auxiliary motors, giving the three craft the extra power they'd need to deal with the updrafts around the building. His screech transmission to Willie was answered at once. Sam blew the armament covers, sending fragments of radar-absorbent panels fluttering toward the ground, then cut the trailing craft free. They'd be under Willie's control for the final approach; there was no longer any need to maintain comm silence.

  "Fifty meters, Willie."

  "Affirm."

  "Launch on three."

  "Wilco."
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br />   "One. Two. Three"

  The Fledermaus bucked as it launched the single air-to-surface missile slung under its belly. Flashes of fire lit the cockpit from either side as the remotely piloted craft launched their missiles simultaneously.

  The floor-to-ceiling transparex windows of the target floor dissolved into millions of fragments under the hammer blows of the triple explosion. Sam fought the controls as the backblast washed over the Fledermaus. Somehow he managed the keep on the flight path. An updraft caught the craft just as its nose reached where the windows had been. The tail drifted forward and one wing dipped. Dipped and caught against the building. The 'Maus slewed around, flopping hard on its belly. The light craft bounced, then came down again on its nose, balancing precariously. Sam, hanging in the safety harness, saw one of the other craft nose up as it crossed their newly made threshold and kiss the ceiling inside the residence. The collision canceled its momentum. The Fledermaus's tail was still hanging outside. With a grinding roar, the craft slid backwards and out into space again. Sam could picture it tumbling toward the plaza.

  Thank you, Lord. That could have been me.

  His own craft rocked backwards, its precarious balance disturbed by the rush of air chasing the plummeting Fledermaus. Sam's teeth slammed together as his aircraft crashed to rest in a horizontal attitude. Half-dazed, he flicked the harness's quick release with one hand and with the other triggered the explosive charges that blew the canopy open.

  He crawled shakily from the wreckage of his Fledermaus, eyes flying across the area in search of any opposition. Finding no immediate threats, he checked the status of the third craft. The other 'Maus had made a perfect landing and was discharging its cargo. A dozen rigger drones rolled down the extended ramp.

  Each drone ran on four fat, deeply treaded tires and looked remarkably like a child's radio-controlled toy. But no child had ever had such a toy. The drones were armored with ceramic composite plates and armed with fully automatic pistols mounted in extendable turrets. Each was equipped with a dog-brain that allowed it limited tactical responses when the rigger wasn't directly controlling it. The expert system wasn't a great shot or a canny fighter, but the drones would make good pillboxes capable of suppressive fire. Their small size made them difficult targets.

  Once off the ramp, each drone turned in a different direction. Most were headed for the entrances to the residence level; their job was to limit reinforcements for Hyde-White. Some stolidly climbed up and across obstructions, proceeding in direct lines to their stations. Others whizzed around debris, taking corners as if they were driven by tiny, demented road rally drivers. Sam thought he knew which ones Willie was running. Within thirty seconds, only three remained in sight, and they had taken up station in a triangle with Sam at the center. Their turrets swiveled to allow gun and camera sight to cover a circular field of fire.

  Smoke from the missile explosions filled the air, cutting visibility. Sam crouched, trying to keep his head below the smoke. He had to move cautiously; there were plenty of places to hide in the warren of living spaces that made up the residence level and no guarantee that Hyde-White was still in the sanctum.

  Sam drew the Lethe. If by some chance Janice had been present in the sanctum and was now roaming the floor, he didn't want to shoot and kill her. Once he had a better idea where the opposition was, there would be time to shift to the heavy Ares Predator filling the holster on his left hip.

  The stalk through the apartment was slow, lengthened by Sam's caution. The metroplex's night sounds were distant. They faded from Sam's awareness. Only what was near at hand mattered. He stepped carefully, trying to move silently. He listened for the slightest sound. The drones escorting him hummed almost inaudibly.

  "Bogey. North Quarter," Willie announced suddenly in his ear reciever causing him to jump. "Tally ho!"

  A short burst of weapons fire ruptured the silence, followed almost immediately by a howl of pain. More gunfire followed, and the sound of a heavy body crashing into things, but there were no more vocalizations. There was a crack like thunder and a flare of light washed the ceiling in the north quadrant.

  "Drek. Oh drek!" Willie wailed in his ear.

  Sam's escort drones swiveled their turrets and surged forward. As the last one careened out of sight around a corner, more gunfire erupted.

  Sam arrived at a waist-high partition and ducked behind it. Cautiously raising his head, he got a glimpse of the battle. The drones were racing about, dodging beneath and behind blood-spattered furniture while taking pot shots at Hyde-White, who was dodging with surprising agility. He too was using the residence's furnishings as cover while he sought a clear shot at the whizzing drones. The fat druid looked uninjured, and his right hand glowed with some kind of spell held in readiness to cast.

  Before Sam could decide on a course of action, Hyde-White spun and faced a drone that had backed itself into a corner. Disdaining to use his prepared spell, the fat druid reached out with a stubby-fingered hand and grabbed. With a casual flip he smashed it into the opposite wall. The drone split open on impact, scattering innards like shrapnel. With a sizzling pop, it tumbled from the drone-shaped dent in the wall and landed sparking on a couch. The fabric began to smoulder.

  Sam was startled by the druid's display of strength. Belying their toylike appearance, the drones weighed almost twenty kilograms apiece. They were not easy to toss around, and the druid had thrown one with sufficient strength to crack it open.

  Sam's stomach flipflopped. The last time he had seen a man display such strength, the "man" had not been a man at all, but a dragon concealed within a shapeshifting spell. Allowing Willie's drones to carry the fight, he slipped into astral perception.

  In his altered perspective, the attacking drones begame blurs of murderous intent, their clean-lined mechanical appearance replaced by a fuzzy presence of intent and purpose. As machines the drones were not truly present on the astral planes. But Hyde-White, a living being, remained clear in Sam's eyes. The fat druid glowed with raw power. It was a dazzling aura, but in its tone and strength unlike anything Sam had seen before in a human.

  One of the drones must have caught the druid cleanly with a burst for he suddenly staggered backwards. A smaller man might have been dropped by the impact of the bullets, but the massive Hyde-White only reeled. Sam expected to see the man's torso splattered all over his fancy wall hangings, and the live glow of his astral spirit dimmed and dying. What he did see frightened him badly. Hyde-White's astral glow remained steady and strong. The image Sam saw looked like a double exposure he had once seen in an old photograph collection. There were two Hyde-Whites occupying the same space, the sharply defined astral image and the increasingly tattered flesh form. Sam saw muscles tear, bones shatter, and blood burst forth from the flesh form to stain the room incarnadine. But the druid did not fall. Torn skin crawled and flayed muscles writhed as though imbued with lives of their own. Splintered bones swayed together to disappear under closing wounds. New flesh spread across gaps where chunks of muscle had been torn away. Once the process began, Hyde-White regenerated the wounds caused by the drone's gunfire as soon as they were made.

  Despite the fat druid's appearance, Sam could no longer believe the fat druid was human. Whatever Hyde-White was, he was invulnerable to physical damage. Sam's throat tightened with fear.

  The explosion on the side of the tower was the cue for which Hart had waited. She settled the butt of the Conner firmly against her shoulder and sighted in. Fifteen pounds of pressure on the trigger ignited the propellant. The grapple gun kicked into her shoulder as it sent its alloy missile two hundred meters across the gap between the towers.

  The missile struck cleanly and buried its head in the concrete wall. Moving quickly, she attached the carry line to the tension wire and to the takeup reel. She hit the go button and rechecked her gear as the winch reeled in the thin line and dragged the heavier weight-carrying wire through the pulley on the attached grapnel and back to itself. When the loadbearing w
ire returned, she attached it to the anchored winch. She slipped the wheels of the pulley slide between the now-parallel strands of wire, snapped the cover down tight, and attached the safety wire. Reversing the winch, she tightened the line and tested the grapnel's grip. It stayed firm at four times her weight, so she slacked the tension back.

  The gunfire from within the residential level, though nearer, was barely louder than the increasingly sporadic noise from the plaza. There was no time left to waste. She sat on the coping and got a good grip on the handle bar of the pulley slide. She pushed off with her feet and started herself on the slide down to the Hawthornwaite Tower.

  Glover felt the tremor in the building. He didn't know what it meant, but he felt sure that it wasn't a result of the ruckus at plaza level. The source of the vibration was somewhere above the level he was on.

  "What was that?" Neville asked fearfully.

  Glover didn't bother to look at the old fool.

  "We must tell Hyde-White."

  He may be dead already, Glover thought. He found himself wondering if that would be a bad thing, and after a surprisingly short moment of indecision, decided that it would. The fat old man was still necessary if they were to achieve their goal of restoring the land.

  Barnett's office did not offer the full range of surveillance monitors available to the security desk in the main operations center, but the telecom controls allowed an operator to route input through the telecom itself or one of the two wall screens. Glover took advantage of the access afforded to Barnett's station and demanded data on the status of the GWN floors. The computer showed no contact with the security systems on those floors. The condition was flagged with an immediate response request that had gone unanswered, since the building security forces were engaged in the battle on the lower levels.