Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  The ork woman on the prep table obviously wasn’t Coleman January or Norris Caber. Skater turned his attention to the three laden gurneys.

  “Turn into ice right there, you son of a slitch!” a man’s voice warned.

  * * *

  “Who’s in the fragging stairwell?” Kyler Luppas demanded as he reloaded the Colt M-23 assault rifle while taking cover in the doorway on the eleventh floor of the Mariah Building. The plastiglass window at the end of the hall overlooked Ainsworth Street. He could see the red-and white-striped sawhorses blocking off the street and the gleam of the downtown advertising lights beyond.

  “Knight Errant,” Octavius replied, leaning out and firing a quick burst that left someone screaming in pain.

  “Control,” Luppas called over the tacticom, “this is Speed-ball One. I’ve got Knight Errant people here trying to crawl up my hoop. If you don’t find a way to back them off, we’re going to leave a lot of dead down here.”

  “Understood, One.”

  Luppas cursed in Sperethiel with real feeling. “Six, what about that screamer that got tripped?”

  “Pure sim-scream. We went through those offices like krill-filler through a ghoul and turned up null.”

  “Diversion,” Octavius said. “These people have the building wired to an extent.”

  “If Knight Errant hasn’t passed them and we haven’t encountered them,” Luppas said, “that leaves the funeral home as the only place they could be.” He ripped a AFR-7 flash grenade from his second’s combat harness, yanked the pin, and flung it out into the stairwell.

  Two ticks later, the flash-bang went off with the sound of thunder and an arc of lightning.

  Luppas wheeled around the doorway and plunged into the fire escape. A group of Knight Errant secmen struggled to overcome the flash-bang’s effects, reeling on the stairs over two of their own dead.

  The Colt M-23 rattled death in Luppas’s hands as he ran down the stairs. He aimed at their necks below the bulletproof face shields they wore, and their legs where the body armor stopped. His rounds chopped into the Knight Errant officers and sent them spinning.

  Luppas hit the ninth-floor landing without breaking stride. Smashing through the doors, he encountered overflow from the funeral home. There were too many people to get past.

  “Get down on the floor!” he yelled. He triggered a ragged line across the acoustic tiles of the ceiling for emphasis. “Now!”

  The funeral mourners dropped instantly. Luppas shot through the head of an ork who tried to bring a pistol on line, killing the woman behind the target.

  Octavius killed four more people, only two of them armed.

  By the time the corpses hit the floor, Luppas was closing in on the double doors leading to the embalming room in the back. He felt certain the body was still there. If the shadowrunners had entered the area, there would have been signs of gunplay.

  Maybe he had them too. The possibility made him smile in anticipation.

  11

  A broad man in mortician black stood in front of Skater, an Ingram Warrior 10 machine pistol cupped in both hands. He was young, surprisingly tan. “Don’t know what you are planning on doing here, fragger, but it stops now.”

  Skater kept himself under control, thinking that Wheeler was there, thinking how much Emma needed him, thinking that he wished there was some other way to make the money they needed.

  Gunshots sounded from far away, echoing into the embalming room. The mortician glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back around, Wheeler dropped down along a length of climbing cable in the vault and shot him with a DMSO gel bullet. The gamma-scopolamine-laced dimethyl sulfoxide was strong enough and fast enough to knock a man out between heartbeats. Unconscious, the man toppled to the floor.

  The dwarf rigger strode into the room, sweat leaking down his face under his protective goggles and dripping into his dirt-encrusted beard. He kept the Squirt in his hand as he hopped up onto the embalming table. “Have you found Coleman January yet?”

  Skater ripped the sheet off the first gurney and was relieved when he found the corpse there. He didn’t have to see what the others held. “Yeah.”

  “We ain’t exactly got all night for this.” Wheeler took care not to step on the dead woman on the table as he attached a wire cable to the chrome ball mounted on the ceiling sporting articulated arms. The cable ran into the crematorium vault.

  Yanking the corpse from the gurney, Skater pulled a Duraflex ascent harness from his backpack and quickly belted it around the dead man. He dragged the corpse into the vault.

  The other end of the cable Wheeler was attaching to the embalming robot came down from the top of the exhaust duct, looped through the block and tackle bolted to the wall near the exit almost at rooftop level.

  Skater ran the metal hook through the Duraflex harness on the dead man and fastened it back to the cable. A quick jerk to test it satisfied him it would hold. “Ready.”

  Wheeler jumped off the embalming table and raced to an emergency power unit. He used a small crowbar to pry the cover off, snapping bolts. “Soon as I get some extra juice to this unit and bring it back on-line, we’re wiz.”

  “Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink, “the bogey team has invaded Shastakovich’s!”

  A shotgun detonated outside, the basso boom of the big bore instantly familiar. Twin chatters of assault rifles followed almost immediately.

  The double doors were the only point of egress into the embalming room. The looped handles lined up neatly, but had no locks.

  Skater took out his pry bar and shoved it through the looped handles. A heartbeat later, muffled voices—tight and controlled—drifted under the doors.

  “Let’s slot it out of here,” Wheeler said. “Everything’s wiz.” He brandished a remote control as he ran to the crematorium vault.

  Skater fell in behind the dwarf, the Predator in his hand.

  Wheeler pointed the remote control at the embalming robot. Instantly, the chrome ball began to revolve, gaining speed and taking up slack in the cable.

  Coleman January/Norris Caber’s lifeless body jerked beside Skater, then started rapidly rising to the top of the exhaust duct. Metal shrieked through metal.

  Catching hold of the harness holding the dead man, Wheeler rode up with him. “Let’s go, Jack. You try climbing four stories on your own, you’ll be dead before you reach the rooftop.” He clipped on another line to the harness, guiding it down to Skater.

  Just as Skater was reaching for the second cable, combined bursts of auto-fire raked the double doors to the embalming room. Wood splinters rained inside the room like confetti, and bullets bounced from the myriad metal surfaces. He missed the second cable and it rose up out of his reach while he took cover.

  “Jack!” Wheeler called.

  Skater watched the dwarf and the dead man rise steadily away from him as the gunfire continued, sending a handful of bullets ricocheting into the vault. One of them hit him in the left calf, initiating a shock of pain throughout his body.

  * * *

  Luppas dumped the empty clip from the assault rifle on the carpeted floor and gazed at the bullet-riddled double doors in front of him as he slipped a fresh clip into place. “No return fire,” he said.

  “I heard voices in there,” Octavius said.

  Luppas nodded. He had too. And the shrill of metal still grated. His headache still throbbed, but he was riding the adrenaline high as well now. It kept him going despite the drain of making magic. “They’ve blocked the door.”

  Octavius bared a feral grin and held up a spherical grenade. “Not for long.” He pulled the pin with his teeth and tossed it at the doors.

  Luppas took cover behind the pews at the same time Octavius did. From under the pews, he watched two Knight Errant officers rush into the room and take up offensive positions.

  “Come out with your hands up,” one of them ordered, “and you won’t—”

  The rest of his threat and promise vanished in the su
dden roar of the exploding grenade. The concussion was enough to rip the doors from their hinges and blow the Knight Errant secmen off their feet.

  Luppas glanced at the doors. Both had been reduced to kindling, blown nearly free of their hinges. He went left, knowing from all the years they’d been together that his second would go right automatically.

  The grenade had fragged over nearly everything in the embalming room. The way the four corpses were ripped to bloody shreds, it was hard to know if the people they were after had died in the blast.

  Movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention. His head swiveled in that direction as he threw a hand out to warn Octavius and started moving for cover himself. Both of them fired at the movement.

  Then it was gone, leaving the vault empty.

  “Somebody was in there,” his second said.

  Luppas circled the room, looking at the dead faces. “Speedball Eight, this is One.”

  “Eight copies, One.”

  “I’m in the embalming room and I’m looking at a big vault.” Two dead faces down, and neither of them were Norris Caber or the man and dwarf he’d seen in the stairwell.

  “The crematorium,” Eight replied. He carried the deck containing all the specs on the building.

  “It has ductwork,” Luppas said, gazing up through the disrupted acoustic tile and seeing the metal sheath plunge up through the floor above. “Where does it lead?”

  “To the rooftop, sir.”

  “Damn,” Luppas snarled, closing on the vault at once. “Get someone back up to the rooftop. Air support, get those guns trained on the roof. If we can’t persuade those people to surrender, kill them!”

  * * *

  When the gunfire slowed for a moment, Skater threw himself at the pitons embedded in the wall. His boosted reflexes gave him the speed he needed as long as he kept his head. So far, the wound to his leg throbbed painfully but didn’t impede movement. Warm blood slopped into his boot.

  Wheeler, unable to stop the rise of the cable, glanced down at him. “C’mon, Jack.”

  Skater scrabbled for the next handhold as he pushed off with a foot. He made it to the next one, then found the cable tantalizingly close. Hurling himself outward, he caught the cable in one hand and felt just for a moment that he’d pulled his arm from its socket.

  Then an explosion detonated, filling the exhaust duct with noise.

  Temporarily deafened by the blast, buffeted by the concussion, Skater almost lost his grip. They were two stories up and he didn’t know if he’d have survived the fall. He kept his hand tight, but one of the electromagnetic gloves shook free of his backpack and went tumbling down. Before it had time to do more than come to a sudden stop, gunfire ripped into the crematorium vault and tore the glove apart.

  Skater accessed the commlink. “Elvis. Move out.”

  “You’re not clear,” the troll grumbled. From the way his voice echoed, Skater knew the street samurai was down in the sewers a few blocks down Ainsworth Street.

  “If you’re not at the rendezvous when we need you,” Skater replied, “we’re dead.”

  “I scan you, chummer. Null sweat. I’ll be there. Just make sure you and the halfer make it too.”

  “They may be waiting on the rooftop,” Wheeler said on the heels of the troll.

  “I know.” Skater couldn’t say anything more. It was 02:19:29 a.m. According to their estimations, they still had ten minutes before everything went to hell. Spirits, when he’d walked away from Emma tonight to make the run, part of him had admitted that it might be the last time he ever saw her. But he hadn’t expected it to feel like this.

  Ten meters from the top, Wheeler triggered the plastic explosives he’d shoved in around the rooftop screen. A flaring explosion ripped through the duct, and in the next instant the screen was gone.

  When the corpse hit the end of the block and tackle, the cable snapped taut and started slowly pulling the block and tackle from the wall. The Duraflex harness tightened up, pulling the dead man’s arms back so it looked like he was drawing a deep breath. Screeches sounded as the bolts sheared, then the block and tackle yanked from the duct wall and went tumbling down. The cable flopped and flipped like a dying naga.

  Skater grabbed the nearest piton and held on, using only one hand while he grabbed the corpse’s clothing with the other. He hoped the material wouldn’t rip, then hoped the severed head wouldn’t fall the rest of the way off as he tripped the harness’s quick release and pulled the body free of the straps before the cable could yank it from his hands.

  Wheeler climbed over the edge of the duct onto the rooftop, grimacing when he brushed up against the heated metal. He reached back in for the dead man, taking up some of the weight off Skater instantly.

  Once he was on the rooftop himself, Skater said, “Get the rest of the gear and set up.” He put his feet against the duct and pulled as hard as he could, the muscles in his back and arms and shoulders protesting.

  Bullets flamed past him as he dragged the corpse over the edge of the duct. He felt the vibrations thrill through the flesh as some of the rounds hit the dead man. “We’re made!” he yelled to Wheeler.

  The dwarf removed a housing from an air-conditioning motor, giving it a quick tug to free it from the spot welds he’d done two days ago after Skater had designed the extraction. He took up the Connor grapple gun from inside, then fisted the folded frame of the collapsible Artemis Industries hang glider. Unlike the Artemis Nightglider, the collapsible version wasn’t capable of sustained flight, but it had the same low-noise, radar-absorbing mesh skin in anthracite black.

  Skater stayed low and pulled the corpse over to the side of the building, joining Wheeler as the dwarf readied the grapple gun.

  The threatening whop-whop-whop of helicopter rotors slammed a powerful gust of wind over the rooftop.

  Fisting the Predator, Skater leveled his sights over the approaching helicopter. He squeezed off rounds as quickly as he could, knowing they wouldn’t penetrate the composite glazing over the craft’s nose, but they might buy a few seconds. He accessed the commlink. “Trey.”

  “A moment more, chummer.” Trey sounded distant, wired-tight.

  Bullets sparked as they hit the helicopter’s nose. Skater fired the Predator dry, then grabbed a smoke grenade from the backpack.

  The helicopter pilot didn’t appear too discomfitted by the barrage of fire. He juked his craft around, elevating slightly and bringing the cannon to bear.

  A hiss of compressed air jetted from the grapple gun that Wheeler hefted, followed a heartbeat later by the sound of the internal drum taking up slack.

  “Let’s go,” Wheeler said.

  Skater popped the top of a smoke grenade and tossed it only a few meters away. He knew the helicopter would probably have infrared or thermographic circuitry, but the hot particles from the smoker would blur even those readings. When it detonated with a loud pop, the smoke grenade belched out an indigo cloud that reduced visibility so much that Skater could barely make out the hand in front of his face.

  The helicopter came closer, settling over the area and using the rotorwash to disperse the smoke. Men yelling orders to each other let Skater know the hunters were closing in for the kill.

  Skater turned and helped Wheeler secure the dead man to the hang glider’s cargo drag line. Then he and the dwarf grabbed the airframe and stepped to the edge of the building. He glanced up, realizing for the first time that the hang glider was attached to the grapple cable but the wings weren’t out.

  Glancing out at Ainsworth Street before them, Skater saw that the grappling hook had sunk into the street as planned nearly one hundred fifty meters away, only a few meters from the manhole cover that Duran and Elvis had surrounded with street repair sawhorses less than an hour ago. The cable felt taut, but the incline and the speed they’d generate from a leap on top of the fourteen-story building might be enough to geek them both when they hit the other end without the wings slowing them down.

  “T
he glider’s not deployed!” Skater yelled.

  “It’ll deploy!” Wheeler shouted back. “Trust me! We go too fragging slow, we’ll just be a slotting big clay pigeon! Now let’s go!”

  Bullets cracked near their position, slamming into the unit they’d used as cover. One of them hit Skater’s bulletproof armor over his left kidney with bruising force. He staggered as he started forward with Wheeler.

  Together, they stepped over the side of the building. And then dropped quick as a g-string in a low-class strip bar.

  12

  Luppas shoved his way to the rooftop of the Mariah Building and swung around, keying off the exchanges between his team. He spotted the cloud of smoke immediately. He ran toward it, breathing hard and taking cover where he could.

  “Pilot, this is Speedball One,” Luppas said. “Where are they?” He gained another two meters, closing on the smoke cloud with the assault rifle leading the way.

  A hesitation followed. “I haven’t found them yet.”

  “Cease fire!” Luppas ordered. He glanced at his chron. 02:20:52 a.m. He was right on top of them; they couldn’t have gone far.

  Instantly, the gunfire stopped, leaving only the street noises and the rapid hammer of the helicopter rotors.

  “Speedball One, this is Control. I have your targets in sight at the south side of the building.”

  Luppas was in motion at once, racing toward the building’s edge twenty meters from the dispersing smoke cloud in case Fishbein’s satlink hadn’t picked up everyone that had come out on the rooftop. Peering over, he spotted the grapple cable slanting down at a dangerous angle to Ainsworth Street just beyond the sawhorses.

  Three figures dangled from the cable nearly forty meters below, curving the grapple line with their combined weight.