by John Helfers
Kaine cursed himself for what he was about to do, but something sparked deep inside him that he hadn’t felt in a long time. As he stepped back through the door of 4D, everyone stopped talking.
“I’m not saying you won’t all die, but if we’re gonna do this, let’s at least get you some real weapons.”
• • •
A small group of them stood in the boiler room of the apartment building. Kaine reached behind the boiler and hauled out a heavy sledgehammer.
“A sledgehammer? That’s what we’re going to fight them with?” the annoying teenager from 2H asked.
Kaine glared at him and resisted smacking him upside the head.
“No, kid,” he growled.
With a swing that sent the others scrambling back out of the way, he brought the hammer around and smashed it into the cinder block wall. The blocks cracked, and with two more swings he smashed a good-sized hole. Shining a flashlight into the gap, the thin beam revealed a closet sized room filled wall-to-wall with rifles, pistols, sub-machine guns, boxes of ammo, and even a small crate of grenades.
“We’re gonna fight with those.”
• • •
He spent the next hour handing out weapons and showing folks how to use them. As he tore the plexiwrap from an Uzi III and handed it to a kid that couldn’t have been more than fifteen, the kid asked “They’re still in plastic. Are they brand new?”
“No, I sealed them so they’d be ready to fire without prep if I needed them.”
“How long have they been down here?” the kid asked.
“I don’t know. Ten, eleven years?” Kaine said, pulling the last of the plexiwrap from the next weapon.
“But you only moved in here two years ago,” the kid said.
“Fer cryin’ out loud, kid. what are you, trying out for the Knight Errant investigative squad?”
The kid looked at his feet and kicked at the dust.
“I’ll admit,” the young guy from 4C said, holding a Defiance T-250 shotgun like it would bite him if he grabbed it too hard. “I’m kind of curious about that too.”
Kaine sighed.
“Before I retired, it was useful in my line of work to have places where you could run if things went bad. When I was looking for a squat, this just seemed like a decent place to settle.”
The kid waved the Uzi toward the hole in the wall and said, “So you hid all this stuff there back in the 60’s? That’s cool. It’s like Prime Runners.”
Kaine glared at the kid, reached out, and pushed the barrel of the Uzi, which was currently pointing straight at him, down toward the ground.
“Yeah, and they’re all freakin’ loaded, so do me a favor and keep it pointed away from me.”
• • •
About an hour later they had gathered in the empty apartment again. The crowd was smaller this time. The one bit of sound advice Kaine’s neighbors had listened to was to send the families with young kids away. The only exception was Elise, the ex-army reservist. Her mother took the kids, and Elise stayed behind. Kaine wouldn’t say he wasn’t pleased. It would suck if the kids had to grow up without a mom, but he needed anyone who actually knew what they were doing with a gun here.
He turned to the trucker and a couple of his big buddies.
“Let’s go over it again. You three are on the front door. You gotta keep them from breaking through, and if they do you need to hold them until we can regroup on the main floor.”
The men nodded, readjusting their grips on their weapons. Kaine had given them the two mono-blades from the dead gangers and a shock baton from his own collection. They looked like they could fight, but if the gangers were carrying anything heavy they’d be little more than a speed bump. Of course they didn’t need to know that. He turned to the next group.
“You eight are going to take positions in the upper story windows. Four front. Four back. Even if it looks like we’re getting hit heavy from one side, I want two of you to hold to your side at all times. Let’s not get fooled by a feint. When firing, never take more than three shots from any position, then move to the next. It’ll make it hard for the gangers to know how many we’ve got and where to shoot.”
He turned to Elise.
“Elise. You’re my second. I want you on the roof where you can perform physical overwatch. I also want you to take the grenades. You’ll be our air support.”
He turned to the rest of the group.
“What Elise says is law. Like I told you up front, you need to do exactly as you’re told if this is going to work. You go running off on your own or playing this like some Neil the Ork Barbarian sim and we’re all dead. The only chance we have of making it through this alive is if we work together. Got it?”
Everyone nodded.
“What’s our status, Darius?”
The skinny kid from the top floor was swiping wild patterns through the air in front of him, his eyes twitching between AR windows only he could see.
“It’s Shadowpanther,” the kid corrected him, never taking his eyes off his virtual displays.
Kaine sighed. Darius had informed him that Shadowpanther was his Shadowrunner name. Ever since the trouble started he’d insisted that everyone use it. “Whatever, kid, Just give me a damn status report.”
“They’re three blocks off but moving slowly. Looks like they’re stopping to pick people up along the way.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-three, no, twenty-four now. Five cars. Almost everyone has guns.”
Kaine didn’t show any sign of it, but he was impressed. The kid’s old link had been decent, but not up to the sort of matrix work they needed. Kaine had hauled an old deck out of his cache. It had belonged to Spindle, a decker he’d run with in the 50’s. Last he’d heard Spindle went down with all the other unlucky bastards in the crash of ‘64. Kaine figured Spindle wouldn’t mind if the kid cannibalized the deck and its software.
Despite the age of the stuff, the young hacker had managed to cobble together a decent set of cut and control apps, certainly better than what he’d been using before. In less than an hour the kid had hacked the local sec-net, giving them a blanket view of the surrounding neighborhood. Shadowpanther definitely had potential.
“O.K. We’ve got less than twenty before they get here,” he said, looking at the dozen or so people he hadn’t addressed yet. “I want three of you with Elise on the roof. The rest of you run support for the other positions. Keep moving. We don’t want anyone getting pinned down. And if things really go south, use the holes we cut through the walls to the other buildings to get the hell out. No one goes down with this ship.”
The people nodded, sweat beading on foreheads, hands gripping and re-gripping the weapons they carried.
“All right,” Kaine said, wondering how the hell they’d pull this off without everyone getting killed. “Let’s get into position.”
There was the soft sound of someone clearing their throat in the back of the room, followed by a familiar: shuffle, thump, pause, shuffle, thump, pause.
“And where should I be?” Madam Hilda asked as she stepped into the light.
Kaine grimaced. He’d personally put her on the step-van that had left with the last load of kids and parents.
“Crimeny, Hilda. What are you still doing here?”
“This is my home too, young man. I intend to defend it.”
Kaine walked over to her and kneeled so he could look her in the eye. In reality he was probably ten years older than her, but the biological clocks on orks tended to run fast, making an ork “fifty” equivalent to a human “eighty.” Still, somehow, she seemed to have already gathered all the wisdom an extra thirty years would have granted her. It made him all the more frustrated that she was still there.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Hilda. You’re not going to help. If anything, you’re going to be a liability. Now I have to give up a couple of our fighters to get you out of here.”
For a second her face hardened, and it seemed tha
t fire flared in her eyes. The shadows around them grew darker, and Kaine felt a chill run down his spine. He knew the feeling, something he hadn’t felt since he’d run with Eagle, a shaman out of the NAN.
The strange sensation faded.
“Judge me not by my size,” she said, a mischievous grin on her face.
“You old buzzard,” he chuckled. “You’ve been holding out on us. All right, you take the roof with Elise and Shadowpanther.”
He turned to the assembled group and shouted, “Let’s go people! Move out!”
Looking around as his neighbors hurried off to their positions, Kaine wondered if they might just pull this off after all.
• • •
Kaine had a clear view of the ganger army from his vantage point on the roof. Over thirty of them, armed to the teeth and mad as hell. When they’d waltzed up to the front door, a volley of fire from the building had sent them scurrying back behind their vehicles. They clearly hadn’t expected that, although Kaine had to remind his people to be careful about ammo. Wouldn’t do to empty their mags before the real fighting even started. In the meantime, it forced the gangers to fall back and come up with a new plan.
Kaine mentally adjusted the telescopic sights on his cybereyes to zoom in on the gang’s leader. He was a troll, nearly eight feet tall, his horns sawed off to stumps. Kaine was certain the GE minigun sitting in the back of the GAZ-P belonged to him. Even the concrete walls of their building wouldn’t be a hell of a lot of protection against that thing.
With a mental command, Kaine clicked on his comm and sub-vocalized, “Spot the troll hiding behind the GAZ-P. He’s got cover right now so don’t waste your ammo, but you see him reach into the back of that truck, unload on him with everything you’ve got.”
Lights blinked in the AR in front of Kaine as the others acknowledged his orders.
“Sir! I’m still concerned that I can’t get your link on the overhead,” Darius whispered behind him.
Kaine flicked off his cybereyes and turned to face the nervous hacker.
“Listen, kid. I keep telling you, I like to stay under the radar. I’ve got fifty nuyen that says they’ve got at least two hackers running overwatch and trying to pin us.”
Elise moved over next to them.
“So they must know how many we’ve got in here and where we are,” she said.
Kaine shook his head. “No. That scramble script Darius pulled from the deck is old but damn good. To anyone outside, this building’ll be nothing but a big black box. But when I go out there I don’t want them to see me coming.”
“You’re going out?” asked Elise, her eyes wide.
Kaine flagged two red blips on the exterior overhead that showed where the gangers were, and he transmitted it across the LAN to her.
“See those two? They’re mages. If anyone is going to screw things up for us, it’s them. They’re not going to stick their heads out where we can get a shot at them, so somebody has to go out and get them. I’d rather they not know I’m coming until the bullet hits them.”
“They’re forming up!” one of the lookouts hissed through his link.
“O.K. folks, showtime,” Kaine called back.
Looking over the edge, he saw the gangers spreading out and gathering into small groups. Suddenly, two groups that had been hidden behind the cars popped up, weapons at the ready.
“Everyone down!” Kaine shouted over his comm, dropping behind the short, concrete wall that ran along the edge of the roof.
Thunder exploded as the gangers opened up. Bullets screamed overhead, smashed through windows, cracked against the walls. It seemed like minutes went by, and the firing didn’t let up.
Kaine signaled to Elise. She nodded and lobbed a pair of grenades over the edge. The firing stopped, followed by two ear-pounding booms that echoed between the buildings.
“NOW!” shouted Kaine.
All around him, the fighters on the roof popped up and started firing. Below them, gun barrels appeared in half the windows of the apartment and opened fire as well. Kaine, meanwhile, dashed toward the back of the building. Hilda was there, waiting.
“If you’re gonna use some of that juju, grandma, now’s the time.”
“Who you calling grandma, old man,” she said, giving him a sly grin.
Kaine gave her a half smile, shook his head, and kept moving to where he’d secured a length of rope to a pipe. As he grabbed the rope and hopped over the side he heard Hilda chanting followed by the sound of roaring flame. Looking up he just caught a glimpse of a large, humanoid shape made completely of fire.
He was suddenly very glad she was on their side.
Drawing on skills he hadn’t used in ages, Kaine rappelled down the side of the building in perfect silence, touching down on the pavement without a sound. The alley was dark. Nothing moved. Nevertheless, Kaine doubted he was alone. Gangers weren’t the smartest guys around, but they weren’t stupid. The stupid ones didn’t last long.
Kaine thanked his lucky stars he’d managed to squeeze into his old stealth suit. He wouldn’t call the fit comfortable, but the matte black fabric with its heat canceling mesh made sure that he stayed hidden, even from thermographic vision.
Assuming he wanted to stay hidden. He rapped his hand on the side of a dumpster, and ducked back as the expected burst of gunfire erupted from the other side of the alley. Bullets whistled and clanged off the metal. From above, he heard shots fire. He was pleased. The men at the rear had followed his instructions and held their position, although he doubted they would hit anything. It was too dark, and they were too inexperienced, but he had the necessary cover fire to get past the rear guards. Kaine dashed down the alley, little more than a shadow in the night. Firing his reflexes up to full, he sprinted away at superhuman speed.
“Report on the gangers in the alley.” Kaine subvocalized.
“Holding,” Darius’ voice rang back over the AR.
He’d gotten past undetected. The easy part was done. From the front of the building he heard what sounded like a war. Hell, it was a war. Automatic weapons fire, the boom of shotguns, the reverberating thunder of grenades, and a high pitched screech of something not of this world tore the night air.
A strange calm fell over Kaine. For the first time in ages he felt like he was where he belonged. He knew who he was, what he was supposed to do. A smile crept across his lips as all the excuses he’d told himself back in ‘57 about why he had to go into hiding melted away.
Everybody makes mistakes, he thought, still grinning. Time to make up for lost time.
• • •
Emerging from the alley at the front of the buildings, Kaine got his first clear view of the battle. The gangers were pinned down behind their vehicles. The gunfire coming from the building was light but constant, exactly as he’d instructed. Now and then, Elise dropped a grenade into the middle of it all. The goal at this point wasn’t to take the gang out, just make them think really hard about whether rushing the building was a good idea.
Of course the main attraction was the elementals. Hilda’s enormous fire elemental was locked in combat with an earth elemental and an air elemental. The air elemental spiraled around the battle like a tiny tornado, tossing dust and debris and taking an occasional swipe at the fire elemental. The earth elemental grappled directly with the fire elemental, trying to force its way past the fire spirit to the building. As the fire elemental batted the earth elemental back, Kaine whistled under his breath. Hilda had some serious mojo.
Scanning the gangers and matching them to the overlay Darius was transmitting, he re-tagged the shamans. If he could get across the road, he could get behind their line. The problem was the streetlights.
“Darius. Kill the streetlights on the west side of the building.”
“Um, I’m not sure how to do that. I can brighten them and dim them and stuff, but I don’t think I can turn them off.”
Kaine cursed and wracked his brain, trying to remember something that might help. He remem
bered a run his team had done on a Renraku research center a long time ago.
“O.K., don’t worry about turning them off. Just crank them up. All the way. Past redline if you can.”
The lights flared, and Kaine’s cybereyes worked overtime to compensate. After a few seconds of blinding, white light, the bulbs started to blow. Moments later, the street was dark.
“Nice work, kid.”
“Whoa! That was awesome,” Darius replied.
Kaine didn’t wait. He dashed across the street. Halfway to the other side a beeping alerted him that his knee was hitting red again. Kaine cursed the old hardware, but he didn’t stop. He reached the other side, apparently without drawing attention to himself, and crouched behind some trash cans. Peering over the cans, he saw the gangers. They were focused on the building.
He spotted one of the mages sitting behind an old Ford Americar, his back against the front tire. The mage’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he was rocking and muttering. Kaine knew that look. The guy was struggling to keep his elemental under control. Looking up, he saw Hilda’s fire elemental getting forced back. The ganger mage might not have full control over his elemental, but the tide was definitely turning against Kaine’s people.
Not ready to reveal his position just yet, Kaine weighed his options. Even with the battle raging, gunfire coming from behind the lines might grab somebody’s attention. Reaching behind his back, he popped the mini-crossbow he carried from its mount and pulled a bolt from the pocket on his thigh.
Doesn’t need to be state of the art to kill ya, Kaine thought.
He raised the crossbow, his cybereyes’ smart assist locking onto the mage, and he squeezed the trigger. With only the slightest whisper, the bolt flew through the air and made a little pop as it embedded itself in the side of the mage’s head. The mage slumped over, and when Kaine looked under the car again he saw the air elemental blow away like smoke on the wind.