by John Helfers
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SHADOWRUN: SPELLS & CHROME
Edited by John Helfers
©2010 The Topps Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Shadowrun: Spells & Chrome, Shadowrun and the Topps logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of the Topps Company, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. Catalyst Game Labs and the Catalyst Game Labs logo are trademarks of InMediaRes Productions LLC. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the Copyright Owner, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
Published by Catalyst Game Labs,
an imprint of InMediaRes Productions, LLC
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Introduction
By John Helfers
Welcome to what is hopefully the first of many new anthologies of original Shadowrun short fiction. Before I talk about what a delight it was to edit this collection (it was) or tantalize those of you still reading this introduction with glowing hints of the wonderful stories you’ll find inside (they are), I have a brief confession to make, and here seems to be the right place and time to do it, so here goes:
Until recently, I have had a love/hate relationship with the role-playing game of Shadowrun.
Having been a gamer since dinosaurs walked the earth (can anyone say D&D Expert Rules Boxed Set?), I’ve wandered in and out of dozens of RPGs, enjoying some, shaking my head at others. I was first introduced to Shadowrun Second Edition back in college, when the Internet had barely progressed past the gleam in hundreds of computer engineers’ eyes, and the technology bonanza we possess today was also unknown (I wrote my term papers on a Macintosh Classic, with ye olde 9-inch monochrome display).
Since I was also a rapacious fantasy and science fiction reader, I thought a game that combined these elements would be totally cool. And certain things were, like the setting; a depressing, post-punk future Seattle, where magic and science mixed, mashed, and moshed together. Can’t miss, right?
But the mechanics of the game, oh, the mechanics. Having never been really mathematically-gifted in the first place, the Shadowrun Second Edition rules made me seriously consider switching my major from English to statistics, or at least sneak a higher-math class into my curriculum to try and get a handle on what was going on in a typical game session. As I recall, the low point was reached when it took our group an entire evening to play one round of combat. (As I said, this was Second Edition).
I drifted away from Shadowrun after than, but a part of me always pined for what might have been, and any time anyone brought up the game, my reply would always be a combination of longing and annoyance: “yeah, loved the setting, hated the rules.”
Of course, all popular games evolve (or else they become less popular, and go into the great circular file), and Shadowrun was no different. I was pleased to see that the Third Edition addressed a lot of my issues with the rules, and Fourth Edition marked a quantum step forward for the RPG itself. Bigger. Darker. Meaner. With more cool characters, cool tech and even more cool magic. All of which makes it more fun to play, naturally.
But enough of my shameless plugging for the Shadowrun RPG. This introduction is supposed to be about original Shadowrun fiction. Fortunately, my experience with that aspect of SR has been extremely positive. It occurred when my good friend Jean Rabe called me a few years ago and said she had been offered a chance to write a Shadowrun novel, but her other commitments were making it problematic to accept doing the book. She then asked if I would like to co-write the book with her. After a microsecond, I said yes, resulting in Aftershock, the fifth book in the final six-book series from Roc Books.
Writing with Jean was tremendous fun, and what was more fun was diving head-first into the Sixth World and being able to do what I wanted to do in the world without having to worry about whether I had a large enough dice pool to accomplish it. The book itself was a true collaboration, with everything from the plot to the characters to each chapter written and reviewed by both of us, and so seamless that when I pick up the published version now, I can’t tell where her writing stops and mine starts, or vice versa.
More than likely it was that book that brought me to the attention of Catalyst Game Labs (well, that, and I also edit fiction for them for the BattleTech website BattleCorps) to edit this anthology, which has been my second wonderful experience working with Shadowrun. I’d like to thank all of the contributing authors, for handing in superlative stories under an incredibly tight deadline, and also incorporating the cool, new elements of the Fourth Edition game world as well. Featuring new tech like Augmented Reality, which seamlessly melds reality and the Matrix into a new paradigm; to new characters like the Technomancer, who can enter the Matrix without a commlink; and new locales for shadowrunning, such as the nasty, lethal, Third World metropolis of Lagos, in darkest Africa; every story was a delight to read, and every author here a delight to work with.
I hope you’ll agree as you plunge into the following sixteen stories that cover the entire gamut of what the Sixth World has to offer. From a tale that has our not-quite-heroic character playing both sides against—himself, to a story that goes into the heart of darkness that is Lagos, and the choices made just trying to survive in the soul-crushing city, to an exotic excursion beneath the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii to confront a dark entity in the blue depths. We’ve even included a blast from the past, a classic Shadowrun story by one of the masters of Shadowrun, Michael A. Stackpole. Bottom line, there’s enough guns, spells and cyberware to satisfy the biggest fan.
I hope you enjoy these all-new stories that explore the gloom of the dark, seamy world that is—and always will be—Shadowrun.
Trade Secrets
By Jason M. Hardy
Renowned as a womanizer on par with Don Juan and Casanova, Jason M. Hardy is alleged to have coded his seduction secrets in his works of fiction. If read properly, books like The Scorpion Jar, Drops of Corruption, and The Last Charge could help you avoid ever being lonely again. A similar code has been found in his short stories published on BattleCorps.com and other places, but sadly, those works were found to conceal nothing more than casserole recipes.
Information was being transmitted by a hundred PANs, and all of it was fake.
At least, that’s what Vitriol figured. Broadcasting your real identity—or whatever passed for the actual identity of the people here who didn’t have anything that cou
ld be called a real name—was like showing up to a masquerade in a t-shirt and jeans. It displayed a tacky lack of imagination.
Visually, the room was a mishmash. Not only did everyone have their own distinct AR augmentation, but many of them were showing off by altering the club’s AR overlay. The Clean Heart sported Roman bath décor that was almost entirely virtual—any poor sap without augmented vision would see nothing more than a big, concrete-walled room with a plywood bar over in one corner and benches that looked like they were made from broken chalkboards. With augmented vision, though, the full glory of an ancient bath came to view. Steam rose from a pile of heated rocks across from the bar, benches made of light-colored granite were scattered here and there, and a bartender in a fluffy white robe slid back and forth and served drinks in glasses that sweated condensation.
But here and there, the theme altered. Around Agares, the steam drifting through the room turned to smoke rising above the hellfire that circled his feet. After every step that MidKnight took, black poppies grew, bloomed, and died in the footprints he left behind. And the corner of the room where Blood Sister sat didn’t look like a Roman bath at all, but rather like the shadowy corner of a medieval cathedral.
Vitriol thought most of it was pointless. It’s not as if their alteration of the AR overlay did them any good. They weren’t breaking into any forbidden nodes, they weren’t accessing secret information, they were just playing around with a graphics program to show they could. Vitriol didn’t bother with any of that nonsense. Sure, he’d disguised his PAN, but all he did was erase it, so anyone who looked for identifier tags on him would see a void, like trying to look into a black hole. He was there, his tags weren’t. Effective, subtle, and not work intensive. Vitriol, unlike a lot of hackers, never felt like putting much time or effort into showing off. Blood Sister was pretty much his opposite, always walking around with her own private show like a goddamned performance artist. She was annoying as hell—but she was also one of the best, which was why she got away with it.
Vitriol wandered around the room like a man without a plan. Other people were playing the room like a piano, going from person to person in a particular order dictated by music only they could hear. It looked like a lot of work, the way they did things. All these coded conversations, subtle insinuations, sly gestures. All so much bullshit. Get in, do what you need to do, get out. That’s how you deal with systems, and that’s how Vitriol planned to handle this gathering. The way he figured it, the less time he spent playing everyone else’s game, the less likely he was to be played.
He knew that he was about the only one in the room who looked impatient. Most of the people at these sphinx parties spent a lot of effort to look cool and unhurried, like they didn’t need to be there, which was even more bullshit because if they didn’t need to be there, then why were they there? For fun? Sphinx parties weren’t fun. Everyone was too busy trying to find out what everyone else knew to actually enjoy themselves.
That was the trick of sphinx parties. No one knew how the invitations came out, but you didn’t get one—or so the story went—unless you had some juicy piece of info that most people didn’t know, but lots of people could use. So everyone here was hungry, everyone wanted what everyone else had, but they weren’t about to show it. They kept their faces cool and impassive, and kept the real meat of the evening, the information everyone wanted, electronically coded and out of sight.
Vitriol didn’t want to play their game. He wanted to do what he came to do, say what he came to say, and get the hell out. He’d be direct, blunt, straightforward. At a place like this, that was enough to make him a legend. Or at least notorious.
He started walking toward Blood Sister, pressing through the group of people that was always around her without actually being near her. They’d look at the architecture of her AR overlay, they’d admire the textures and the shadows and the way she managed to incorporate the light sources around her into the lighting of her overlay, but they’d keep their distance from the woman herself. With her black cowl and face that was blank, chalky white except for a pair of dark eyes that continually wept blood, Blood Sister had a way of discouraging contact.
He tried pushing one of Blood Sister’s fangirls out of his way, but when he reached out to shove the little ivy-covered woman out of his way, his hand went right through her. She was all AR. He had been ready to give her a good shove, so when he didn’t contact anything he lost his balance and stumbled, moving away from Blood Sister.
Even worse, he stepped near a dwarf who was sitting at the bar, tossing shot after shot of bourbon down his throat and then tossing shot glass after shot glass over his shoulder, keeping the cleaning staff busy (most of the décor was virtual, but no respectable club, no matter how high tech, ever settled for serving virtual booze). Vitriol tried to dodge out of the dwarf’s line of sight, but he was too slow. The dwarf saw him and nodded, looking far too enthusiastic.
“Gemmel,” Vitriol said flatly.
“V!” the dwarf said, in a voice far too high and nasal to suit his rough, black-bearded face. The shiny, silver woman sitting next to Gemmel saw her chance to escape and slipped away. “Been too long, too long, way too long. Where the hell have you been, omae, what have you been up to? I haven’t heard anything about you, which must be good, because when you’re doing it right people aren’t talking about it, you know what I’m saying? So you’re doing it right, right?”
“I’m trying to,” Vitriol said, then gritted his teeth and made himself ask Gemmel a rejoinder. “You?”
“Oh, things are great, great, great, you know? I just finished a job, it was a good job, a nice little smash and grab, you know? I mean, I like the undercover sneaking around shit as much as the next guy, but sometimes it’s really refreshing to just go in and do what you want to do and not give a shit who sees you do it, am I right?”
Vitriol could just give Gemmel a slight nod and the dwarf would keep talking, keeping him here when he didn’t want to be. He stuck his hands in his pockets and hoped his body language looked impatient. But if Gemmel noticed, he didn’t care.
The dwarf talked and talked while Vitriol scanned the room, and he saw that the crowd around Blood Sister had thinned. He had a chance, but he might lose it if he took time to politely disengage from Gemmel. But why bother being polite to someone he didn’t care about?
He walked away while the dwarf was in mid-sentence.
He strode up to Blood Sister, wondering how long it would take her to see him. She’d recognize him, of course—his hair was now stubbly instead of the bald-scalp look he’d had since he last saw her, but he didn’t think that made him look much different. He didn’t stand out in this group, however, so it might take some time for her to find him among the freaks.
As it turned out, it didn’t take long. He was about five meters away from her when her dark eyes narrowed, squeezing out extra-large drops of blood that ran slowly down her white cheeks.
“Hi,” Vitriol said.
The cathedral arch above Blood Sister shook, trembling like an earthquake had just hit the place. Vitriol looked up and instinctively raised his hands over his head, even though he wasn’t in any danger.
The archway fell apart quickly, stone crumbling and falling onto and through Vitriol. The first chunks hit the club floor and stayed there, then more chunks came down, then more and more, far more than had been in Blood Sister’s display, until Vitriol was completely surrounded by chunks of AR stone.
Bunch of bullshit, he thought, and swept all the rocks away without so much as a gesture. He cleaned the overlay around him until it was once again just himself in his dingy t-shirt and tattered canvas pants.
“Not happy to see me?” he said lightly. Blood Sister did not reply, but the reconstructed archway over her head was already starting to tremble.
“All right, all right, fine. I’ll go,” Vitriol said. It hadn’t been much of a conversation, but it had been enough. “I only dropped by to say hello, anyway.”
<
br /> He turned around and walked toward the exit, hoping he could make it out clean. But there was a demon in his way.
From a distance, Agares did not look all that frightening or even demonic, except for the sharp-toothed crocodile he rode (the crocodile was nothing more than overlay, but Agares still moved like he was riding the nonexistent beast. Vitriol had to admit it was a pretty good trick). Agares had no wings, no forked tail, none of the traditional accoutrements of demonhood except for the reddish sheen of his skin and the nubby horns on his forehead. Once you got closer, though, and saw the eyes blazing out from under the old demon’s protruding brow, you gained a full appreciation for the art of Agares’ overlay. The face was a wonder of malevolence, with high, sharp cheekbones, a cruel, smirking mouth, and a gaze that cut into you with an almost audible whistle of air.
Vitriol thought the whole package was a little pathetic. In his experience, anyone who worked so hard to look intimidating was overcompensating for something.
“Agares, you old fart,” Vitriol said cheerfully. “Did you bring some sulphurous fumes of hell with you, or were you just eating broccoli?”
The crocodile slowly turned to look at Vitriol, but the demon did not move a muscle—except to speak.
“You should stay away from my sister,” The hiss of his voice blended almost completely with the steam rising from the AR rocks.
“Oh, you’re not related. She’s only your sister in the sense that all nuns go to hell. So you’re colleagues, nothing more.”
“You should stay away from her,” Agares repeated.
“And if I don’t?”
Fire burned deep behind Agares’ eyes, and his lips curled in a tight smile. He stood slowly, then took a step to his left. He was no longer riding his crocodile.
The demon said only one word. “Execute.”
The crocodile moved forward.