20
4:50:17 p.m.
Drekkin’ lovely!” Sindje stood in the doorway and motioned frantically to her brother. “I said there’s more of ’em coming at us from the front! A lot more. They’re armored. They got guns—lots of ’em. They’ve got us ringed in here!”
Hood let out a roar loud enough to rattle the windows. “No geeking, understand? No geeking!” He swept the bow off his back in one fluid movement and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, each step screaming in protest at his weight.
“Frag it, tad, we need to be getting out of here, not deeper into the house!” Khase thrust the philodendron at Max. “Here. You hold this. You don’t have a weapon.” He unreeled his monofilament whip off his wrist and raced to the kitchen’s back door, nimbly hurdling what was left of the table and chairs and clearing a narrow breakfast bar in one smooth leap. As soon as his first foot hit the floor, he pistoned his other one into the door, slamming the first intruder square in the face. The man, on the far side of middle age, had just come up a short flight of crumbling cement steps and now tumbled back down them. The submachine gun he had leveled at the door flew from his hands and clattered on what was left of a backyard sidewalk. The safety off, the impact caused the Uzi to fire a burst—-bullets striking the back of the house and sending chunks of wood flying at the two black-clad men who had been close behind him.
The two were so similar in build and mien that Khase guessed they were brothers. Their lips curled in unison, and one of them barked: “Give up the plants, elf, and you might live.”
“Only brought a little one with us.” Khase flicked his wrist and the whip snaked out in threat. “Tad thought we should stash them someplace else for insurance. I guess we really needed that policy.”
The men dropped back a few more steps, standing shoulder to shoulder, knees slightly bent and guns pointed at Khase’s chest. The adept imagined he felt the red dots from their laser sights centered on his chest, but that was unimportant right now. He was as calm as ever, centered in the moment.
“Tell us where you’ve hidden the plants and we can all go our separate ways.” This came from the man whose eyes were darker blue, the same one who’d spoken a moment before.
“Like I believe that.” Another flick of his wrist and the elf sent the whip forward, the tendril glimmering in the late afternoon sun. Khase had intended to catch both men’s guns and shear them in half. But they surprised him, springing forward like gymnasts as they ducked under his attempted strike. Before he could curl the whip around again, they had grabbed their fallen comrade and pulled him out of harm’s way. All while they kept the guns pointed at Khase.
“Awakened,” Khase muttered. “Adepts. But I doubt very good ones, or you wouldn’t be toting guns to a fight.” He could tell by the way they moved that he faced two men with skills vaguely similar to his own. “Not wholly skilled, and certainly not on my level.”
“Marty’s out cold!” Dark Eyes hollered. “Take him!” He raised his gun a few centimeters and fired at Khase. The elf sidestepped the bullet and vaulted down the steps toward them as more siding splintered away and pelted his shoulders.
“Not supposed to geek them, remember? Boss said just keep ’em here,” the other one, bent over their unconscious third, said.
“It’s okay to waste this one. There are three more inside who’ll talk. We’ll keep them three here until Lone Star arrives.”
There was another burst of gunfire, but this came from the front of the house. It was followed by another, this one deeper and more sustained.
“Sindje!” Khase feared for his sister and half turned back; the instant of panic giving the two men an uncommon moment of advantage over the elf. Dark Eyes fired again, aiming for a kill shot in the chest, but even distracted the adept twisted out of the way, the bullet catching him in the left arm.
“No geeking, eh?” Khase’s eyes narrowed to needle-fine slits. “We’ll see about that, Hood.”
Inside the house Max looked uncertainly between the plant in her hand and Sindje at the front door. “No weapon, Khase said. Nope, didn’t bring a gun. Don’t like using ’em.” Softer: “All I got in my pocket is some shampoo and two bars of oatmeal soap.”
She set the plant down and headed behind the stairs, spotting a door that took a strong tug to open because the wood had warped in the frame. A rickety set of steps stretched into the shadows.
Didn’t bring a gun. But I never come to a party unarmed. She tapped her finger to her temple and quickly but gingerly went down, ignoring the little voice in her head that pointed out if things went to drek, she could be trapped down there. I'll just have to make sure that don’t happen.
At the small window near the front entrance, Sindje watched a familiar-looking troll and what looked like two squads of men pour out of three vehicles—two of them dark green Renraku Typhoons with small, tasteful Plantech logos on the side doors. The other was a current-year Mitsubishi Nightsky Limited. The people getting out of the limo included a frumpy-looking woman in an ash gray trench coat; a large, older man in a Plantech uniform, body armor, and helmet; another man similarly dressed beside him; and a smallish, impeccably-dressed Japanese fellow.
“Fraggin’ shaman,” Sindje hissed. “Smell the magic in him from here. But how did they find us?” She stared incredulously as she counted twenty-one in all. “A small drekkin’ army. Didn’t know we’d stirred up that much trouble.” Then she forced her fear and anger aside and felt for the mana that coursed through her.
“No geeking, huh?” Sindje slammed her eyes shut and felt her mind wrap around the blue-white ball of mana she gathered to her. The process seemed to take minutes, but it was actually instantaneous. Her thoughts held the ball suspended in front of her, hands rising until her fingertips touched the underside, feeling the peculiar, arcane sensation against her skin. She balanced the ball on her index fingers, rolling it back and forth, tossing it ever-so-lightly and catching it again and again, as all the while it grew larger and brighter and crackled with an energy she supplied.
At the same time, the Plantech folks assembled on the front lawn. They looked pro, spreading out to cover the left and right flanks, each man ready to advance with his sec brothers.
“All right, Hood. No geeking.”
They were close enough for Sindje to hear the command. “Advance on the house.” This came from the big man who had climbed out of the limo. A dark object whirred down to land on the lawn, and the combat mage ducked, knowing what was about to happen. There was a loud series of bangs, and white light glowed for several seconds outside. It was Hood’s signal.
Time to get this started. As the men closed, Sindje straightened and used her mental fingertips to shove the ball forward, like a child would throw it to a playmate.
“Mage!” shouted one of the men near the shaman. “Incoming!” The rest of his words were lost in the pulsing hum of the energy ball that grew even larger as it struck the man’s armored chest. The ball became translucent, still faintly blue with motes of white light sparkling like the sun hitting water. It was so large now it enveloped the man, motes sparkling on the exposed skin of his face, and it also expanded to encompass the surprised shaman, her real target.
The shaman had started casting a spell, and Sindje was pleased that she had been able to keep him from getting it off. The man next to the shaman slung his gun and tried to break free of the energy; his arms waving furiously at first, then slower and slower. He crumpled in a heap as the energy ball doubled in size, then doubled again, the blue-white sphere giving off enough light to illuminate the entire block. The frumpy woman dropped right away. The older man had dived away and rolled, coming to a stop near the Nightsky, his subgun still out and trying to find a target. The ball continued spreading outward, swallowing five more of the Plantech guards before they could evade it, including the troll she remembered had been called K-Tog. It rendered them all unconscious.
Sindje’s stun ball spell physically and mental
ly drained her. She likened releasing one to running a twenty kilometer race. Normally she’d rest after calling forth such taxing magic, but there was no time now. She reached inside herself and began manifesting another blue-white ball, feeling the slow burn as drawing the mana so soon again began exacting its price on her.
Upstairs, Hood kicked in the first door he came to. It was empty. He’d hoped to find the corpse Sindje mentioned, but he’d look for that later. First piece of business was to see just who had come to pay them a call. The floor creaked in argument as he stomped to the window that overlooked the front lawn. It was one of the bulletproof glass windows not boarded up, and Hood rammed his elbow against it—hard. The window cracked, but didn’t shatter, and it took a second hit to get it to pop out of its frame and fall to the lawn below.
The troll immediately spotted the two Plantech Typhoons; they had his Bison sandwiched between them, so it wouldn’t be able to get out. He whistled in appreciation at the Nightsky.
“Now how’d they find out about us?” He forced down his curiosity and anger. “Doesn’t matter. They’re not going to catch us.” He reached over his shoulder, thick fingers dancing across the tops of his arrows, the fletchings telling him which one he wanted. He pulled one out, nocked it to his bowstring and fired.
The arrow landed near the sidewalk, in the heart of the throng of men, and set off a sun-bright explosion of light, a deafening noise and the thick stench of sulfur. It was meant only to blind and deafen the men and make them sick, and thereby gain Hood a small measure of time to get a better position.
He held his bow out the window and then squeezed himself out the frame, cursing as jagged splinters of wood shredded his blazer. Shouldering the bow, Hood dug his fingernails into the siding, clawing his way up the house and onto the roof. As he hoisted himself up, he knocked the gutter loose in the process, and felt the edge of the roof sag beneath his feet, but it didn’t give way.
From his lofty vantage he could easily see the men in the front yard, though he couldn’t tell if any had made it under the overhang and onto the porch. He counted twenty-one, then spotted a shimmering blue-white globe appear and disappear, leaving six men, a troll and a woman lying stunned across the Kentucky-Seven.
The troll grunted in satisfaction. “Good work, Sindje.”
The rest of the men wore body-armor uniforms just like the Plantech security guards had, and they toted identical submachine guns, with various models of pistols in holsters at their sides. Half of them were wearing visors, which rendered them immune to the light of Hood’s flare arrows. One man stood back by the limo, an older human with a riot helmet and a subgun in his hand. He pointed up at Hood and barked orders at the men, one arm gesturing to his left to get them to spread out.
“I’d say you're in charge. And that makes you my target.”
The troll selected an appropriate arrow and fired, just as the Plantech security forces opened up on the house.
In the basement, Max relied on her natural lowlight vision. Faint light spilled in through a couple of window wells, but it wasn’t enough, given the depth of the basement and the curtains of spiderwebs that hung from every rafter. She wasn't worried, however, moving easily through the dimness like it was daylight.
“Vut, vut, vut.” She moved aside one mass of webs to find sticky tendrils still clinging to her arm and dreads. Shaking her head and spitting to get the webs away from her mouth, she made her way to the nearest wall and started looking.
“Buunda! Gotta have a power box, a mainframe, something. Don’t care how old this place is, it’s gotta have something.”
She heard bursts of gunfire coming from the back of the house, shouts coming from the front. From high overhead she heard the creak of wood and, based on past runs, figured it was Hood moving around.
“Fraggin’ troll chews on me for getting our pay doubled. Chews on me! Should’ve been down on his knees saying ‘thank you, ma’am.’ Should’ve been tripled, our pay. No, four times the original offer. Five, mebbe.” She moved quickly over a hard-packed dirt floor. “Frag, this place is older than cement.”
Rats squeaked, and she heard faint scratching sounds as they scurried to the far corners. Max was so intent on searching the walls she nearly stepped on a dead rat the size of a small house cat and stumbled over a broken workbench.
“Buunda, buunda, buunda! Place smells worse than I do.” She sniffed under her armpit, made a gagging sound and mentally shut down her olfactory boosters. “Should’ve done that the second I hit the bottom step. I’m gonna borrow Hood’s fancy shower when this is through.” She paused and pawed through another veil of webs. “Provided we manage to live through this—ah, here’s what I’m looking for.” A pause: “But not what I wanted to find.”
The ork frowned as she popped open the metal plate on the house’s mainframe. It was at least twenty years old, making it way outdated, but still the most modern thing she’d spotted in the house so far.
“Hmmm, expensive for the time. But a piece of crap now.” She noted a charred spot along the right edge, a panel blown. Her eyes glimmered in the dark as she reached into the pouch at her side and pulled out a cable. With a flick of her wrist, she threaded the plug on, then slipped one end into the lowest slot of the mainframe, and the jack behind her ear. “Hate these antique things that use wires.”
She felt a faint tingle of power.
“Let’s give you a little boost.” She pulled a thin splicer cable from the pouch and tugged one of the wires free that tied her hair. As the crackle of gunfire continued outside, and Hood kept creaking around upstairs, she threaded the cables into her deck. Frag, they’re gonna bring Lone Star down on us in spades, they keep this up.
The tingle of added power grew stronger, and she felt the electrons start their merry dance along the inside of her skull. She imagined they were getting ready for a race, all jumpy and straining at the gate. The Belmont Stakes waiting to be played out at this little run-down mansion at the tip of Ballard.
“And they’re off!” Max leaned against a mold-speckled, water-stained wall, oblivious to a veil of spiderwebs she knocked free that fluttered down around her. draping over her back like a gossamer-thin fairy cape.
The gunfire continued.
The roof high above creaked.
The rats squeaked and scurried in the darkest corners.
And Max strained, via the house’s old mainframe, to find the vehicles outside the house. She knew better than to connect to the city’s grid-link street system with its Black Ice. Not enough time, and not with this old equipment..
Through her decksuit she pulled down a schematic of the neighborhood, crossing it with a quickly borrowed real-time satellite image. It was as good a picture as she could have received if she had been floating over the house like a Sindje-apparition. No, a better and more reliable picture, she told herself, as it was provided by technology rather than magic. Her view let her get a good look at the vehicles outside.
Max loved vans and RVs—because her father taught her about engines, and he’d been her one fond memory of childhood. She liked vans especially because of the roominess, the versatility for different runs. She liked the power of the engines, whether they ran on the city’s grid or guzzled a gas-mix. And there were four RVs near this house, all of them with computer-assist engines.
Hood’s big Bison was easy to pick out. There were two other RVs near it, Typhoons wedged so close that the Bison wouldn’t be able to move unless it muscled its way out. She figured the Bison had the power, but the bumpers and fenders wouldn’t fare well, and that would be too heavy a loss for such a beautiful machine. A gleaming Mitsubishi Nightsky next to the RVs made her breath catch for a moment, but she forced herself to move on. There was another van behind the house, in the nearby supermarket parking lot. It had its motor running, and she would contend with it first—easier.
Max had the latest model vehicle control rig implant and could hack just about anything with wheels with it. And though it
worked best when she was jacked directly into a vehicle, she had picked up a few modifications that let her do some driving from a distance.
Her fingers typed air, sending directions through her commlink and into the house’s system. In an instant she was connected to everything—to the Typhoons, the Bison, the limo that she was drooling over, her thoughts finally activating the gas pedal of the gray van in the back parking lot as she put it into reverse. She maneuvered it out of the parking space, then drove it off the lot and down a side street past the grocer’s for several blocks. It was a clumsy effort, for even with the satellite image she couldn’t see all the obstacles. Once Max thought the van had hit a tree or a signpost, and decided that she had taken it far enough, quickly pulling it to a curb and turning off the engine.
Perhaps Hood would let her take the Bison through that neighborhood when this was all over. Cruise past that new gray van. By now it was likely that the men who’d driven that van here wouldn’t be capable of driving it for some time. And it would go a long way in replacing her demolished Roadmaster. Now, on to the matter of the two Typhoons and the Mitsubishi limo. No worry about parking one of them someplace else to retrieve later. She had her heart set on that streamlined, dolphin-gray beauty.
“My new ride,” Max purred.
21
4:51:20 p.m.
Hey, our van!” One of the brothers facing Khase glanced over his shoulder in time to see their gray van back out of the grocer’s parking lot and trundle out of sight.
The moment of surprise was on Khase’s side this time, and he blurred into motion. His honed body moving almost by reflex, he flipped toward and over both men, extending his legs like he was coming off a vault. At the same time he retracted his whip and drove his arms down, fingers stretching toward the guns. He grasped only one barrel, which he wrenched up and flung away. As he completed his arc, his heel slammed into the head of the man with the lost gun. The whip would have been easier and allow him to keep a distance, but it was also much deadlier— more than capable of slicing a man in two and injuring himself in the process.
Shadowrun 45 - Aftershock Page 16