“No geeking,” Khase said under his breath. “On my part, anyway.”
His other target was far more dexterous, leaping away and bringing the gun up to sight on Khase’s head. The elf tracked the barrel movement as he flicked his left arm out, his mind shunting the pain away as his monofilament whip hissed out and curled around the assault rifle’s banana magazine. He pulled, and the magazine casing fell apart, bullets clattering to the pavement. The sudden jerk also yanked the rifle off-target, and the thug squeezed the trigger in reflex, the lone bullet in the chamber firing harmlessly into the ground.
The wanna-be adept didn’t give up, however, flipping his rifle up and grabbing the barrel. He stepped forward and swung it like a baseball bat, clipping Khase’s leg. Then he threw the rifle at the elf, and while Khase ducked, he pulled a pistol, firing it and grazing the elf’s already-wounded arm.
The elf didn’t flinch, but his ears twitched when he heard a noise behind him. He turned his head just enough to keep the two thug brothers in his peripheral vision.
The brother Khase had just kicked was on his knees, palm pressed against the side of his head, free hand reaching for another gun. Before his fingers could close around the pistol’s butt, Khase launched himself, extending his leg in a ballet leap he had seen on a trivid last year. The toe of his boot clouted into the man’s forehead, dazing him. Landing beside him, Khase chopped the weaving pistol from his grip with one hand as he grabbed the punk’s jacket with his other. He spun around, hauling the man off his feet, shoving him through the air and into his brother. The two men collided, and Khase heard a loud crack as bone met bone. The men collapsed in a heap, a pistol flying as the second one dropped to the sidewalk, out cold.
“Two down.” Khase landed in the grass, crouched in a deep knee bend, arms straight out to his sides and seemingly oblivious to his own injuries.
The first man pushed himself to a sitting position, pointing a shaking finger at Khase. “You’re dead, elf. We went into this knowing we were only supposed to detain you. But the boss said it was okay if we had to geek one or two to get the job done. That makes this a wetwork job as far as I’m concerned.”
Given their recent performance, Khase wasn’t too worried, although he was aware of the trickle of blood running down his arm. “Kill me, and where will you sit with the plants?”
“Just fine.” The man nudged his downed brother with his shoe, relieved to hear him groan and know he was alive. “Like I said, there’s three more of your gang in that house. I'll get the plants from one of them.”
“Eron, you got to get to the ones in the house now!” This came from the first man Khase had struck, the older one with the long ponytail. Apparently he’d woken up. “You’d be deaf not to hear that.”
They all paused, hearing more gunshots coming from the front of the house.
“Don’t know what that’s about,” Ponytail continued. He tried to get to his feet, but couldn’t manage beyond making it to his hands and knees. “Thought we were the only team on this. Maybe the boss sent in backup.”
Khase instantly thought about his sister again. He wasn’t completely worried—in many respects she was far more formidable than he. But he was at least curious. Should see what’s going on out front. Have to end this fast. He sprung straight up, angled his body like a high diver and aimed for the man with the ponytail. The elfs torso cleared the man’s head and then Khase brought his legs down, both knees striking the man in the side of the skull and rendering him unconscious again. Khase landed on his hands, ignoring the flare of pain from his wounded arm and pushed off again, spinning in midair and coming down on the balls of his feet directly in front of the remaining man.
“Like I said—Eron. Two down.”
“Khase! Khase, you got him, neh?” It was a bellow, coming from the roof of the house.
“Null sheen! This piece of nutrisoy drek’s got nothing, Hood!” Khase glanced up to see the troll head toward the front of the house.
“Null sheen?” Khase’s last opponent gave him a malevolent sneer. “I won’t go down easy, elf. In fact, I won’t be going down at all. And, yeah, I’m awakened.” Of the three of them, he had looked the most adroit. The man raised his hands in a defensive martial arts pose, shifted his weight on the balls of his feet and locked eyes with the elf. “Shouldn’t have brought the guns in the first place.” He didn’t blink as he started circling Khase. “But my mother gave them to us. Sometimes we use them out of sentimentality.” He snapped a leg up and lashed out at Khase, striking the elf in the hip and sending him back a step.
He followed through immediately, darting in and chopping at Khase’s wounded arm. Then he jumped back, circled again and came in from the other side with a roundhouse kick that the elf blocked on the thigh. Again the man retreated, staying out of Khase’s reach. Twice more he successfully used the roundhouse and moved away.
Khase stayed on his feet and nodded, mentally upgrading his adversary’s ability as he studied the man’s moves. He considered the whip for a moment; his left arm was burning, his hip and leg ached, and the whip was looking lethally appealing. “Who hired you? Who’s this boss you talk about?”
The man waggled a finger and made a tsk-tsking sound. “Mom taught me never to tell.”
“Sure don’t think a lot of the guns she gave you.” Khase glanced at the weapons strewn all over. The chatter bought him time to further study his opponent and push his pain to the back of his mind.
“I’ll pick ’em up and polish ’em later. Mom’ll never know.” He winked at the elf, the gesture meant to unnerve him.
It almost succeeded. The muscles in Khase’s legs hunched and he made a move to spring, but stopped himself. Eron had shifted position, and wasn’t holding his hands in any of the usual martial arts postures Khase recognized. Looking closer, he spotted a thin, almost invisible wire stretched between the man’s hands. A monofilament garrote? Khase touched his neck and shook his head.
“Oh, mom’ll know you’ve been careless all right, Eron. She’ll have to pick up you and your brother . . . and your snoozing playmate with the ponytail.”
“My uncle,” the man said. “Mom’s favorite brother. I’ll use your face to polish his boots when I’m finished with you.” Then he was in the air, leading with a flying kick aimed at Khase’s chest. He was fast, the air whistling around the material in his pants, the late afternoon sun “learning off the metal plate on his boot heel.
“That’d hurt if it connected.” Watching the man tense, Khase stepped aside as the boot shot past his face, the material in his skinsuit making a shushing noise against the man’s pantleg. In the same motion he raised his wounded arm and brought the edge of his hand down in a knife-hand blow against the man’s abdomen. Khase connected. The elf struck with all the strength he’d gathered, no longer worrying if he accidentally geeked his assailant, and stopped the man cold in midair, following through to slam him down on the ground. He felt flesh and bone yield under his strike and sensed that he’d fractured several ribs and ruptured the man’s spleen, maybe a few other organs as well. All of it was treatable, but he’d never be as good as new. Eron’s face froze in shock, and only a slight mewling noise could be heard as he slipped into unconsciousness.
A feral grin on his face, Khase held his wounded arm and loped across the grass, following the ornamental sidewalk that would take him to the front of the house.
Sindje released another stun ball, this one targeting four men running toward the north side of the house, their subguns chattering in short, controlled bursts as they peppered the windows and roof as they advanced.
“Mustn’t let you sneak up on us.” The ball caught the four and dropped them in a heap.
Then she focused on the man who was shouting orders, and was now standing by one of the Typhoons. She’d heard someone call him Mr. Ators. The name wasn’t familiar, but she figured he was in charge, and he presented a risk by his authority and by that linked smart gun he was toting. He’d be the better s
hot among the security guards standing, and so he must be dealt with now.
A variation of the stun ball, she decided, as she focused on her heart, each beat fueling the globe of mana burning brightly in her mind. The globe suddenly appeared hovering in front of her face, her fingers reaching up to tickle its surface and to find pleasure in the energy that crackled wildly inside of it. One more heartbeat ticked off and she mentally hurled the energy at the sec leader, the globe turning into a shimmering stroke of ephemeral lightning that shot unerringly at him even as he tried to roll out of the way. A stun bolt would do nicely, particularly since Hood demanded no fatalities.
The bolt struck him squarely in the chest at the same moment he was bringing up the big subgun to fire at her ... and at the same moment an arrow arced down from the roof to land at his feet, releasing a sticky net that trapped his legs and brought him to his knees. Pitching forward, stunned from her magic, he landed face-first in the gooey net mass.
“Like a bug in a spider’s web. Oh, he’ll have bad dreams for weeks. And his boys’ll never let him live it down."’ Then Sindje was instantly serious again as several remaining members of the Plantech security force started firing at her. She hit the floor as streams of bullets chewed into the doorframe and walls. She heard excited voices outside talking to each other.
“Boss said try to keep them alive, ’least ’til we get the plants back!”
“The boss is down! Maybe dead!” someone shot back. “1 ain’t risking my neck for a few ferns just ’cause Ators said no killing! ’Sides, if we don’t geek that mage, we don’t stand a chance. All units open fire!”
A second volley completely shattered the doorframe, and a high-explosive round cut through the front of the house, sending a belch of plaster dust and flame into the air when it impacted on the wall behind Sindje and blew a second opening into the dining room. The model train high on the living room shelf tottered and fell.
Duckwalking, Sindje crouched behind the picture window. only half of which was boarded up. She’d momentarily lost her focus amid the hail of bullets, but she was at it again, nurturing her magical spark and calling up another spell—the one she’d used on the streetlights in the early hours of this morning. If the Plantech security guards were playing with deadly force, she had no chance but to match them. As the mana grew warm, spreading from her chest down her arms and to the palms of her hands, she visualized twin globes forming. Aimed right, they’d take out the rest of the force, very likely killing the weaker men because of the jolt it would give to their hearts. The magic would take her out, too, as she was putting everything she had into it. She knew she could well be useless after this, but she had no choice.
As she peeked up through the window to spot her targets, her breath caught. One arrow after another lanced into the lawn. Hood rapid firing from the roof. The first was another flare arrow, meant to blind the rest of the men without visors. The second, third and fourth were more of the sticky nets that held them in place. A fifth struck the limo; it had an explosive head, and as the arrow tip penetrated the metal hood, it detonated. The resulting blast rocked the cul-de-sac and spun the Plantech men’s heads. Pieces of the car rained down on the guards Sindje’d stunned and the ones netted by Hood’s arrows.
That bit of pyrotechnics gave Hood and Sindje another precious few moments. More arrows thudded into the ground—more nets, more flashes. A concussion grenade followed, and another that emitted a greenish-gray smoke followed close behind.
Screams cut through the air—not from the men Sindje and Hood were dispatching, but from neighbors who were standing on porches and sidewalks, pointing and hollering, too afraid and too curious to run.
“Didn’t know tad packed munitions. Thought he was all peaceable and drek.” Sindje took a deep breath and let the globes dissipate; she didn’t need the lethal spell anymore. Her energy started to return, but she was still weak. Pressing her palms against the windowsill, she eased herself up, brushed the plaster dust off her shoulders and walked to the shattered doorframe.
“Call Lone Star!” Someone across the street shouted.
“I already did!” This came from a woman standing under a gaudy string of decorations on her porch. “They’re on their way.”
“You okay, Sindje?”
The elf shuffled out onto the porch and looked up. Hood was on the edge of the roof, staring down. She nodded and mouthed: Fine and double-dandy.
“I’m gonna check on that body you saw. Then we have to get out.”
“And quick,” she added. She carefully picked her way down the front porch steps and onto the walk, not wanting to get caught in the sticky nets, turning when she heard Khase’s feet slapping against the sidewalk. “What the? . ....” She faced the street again when she saw the Typhoon in front of Hood’s Bison peel away, scraping against the burning remains of the Nightsky and knocking over a trash bin as it went speeding down the narrow street. “No one’s driving it.”
Inside, Hood turned the body over with the tip of his boot. An older man, human, eyes slanted just a little to hint at an Oriental parent or grandparent. The death had been painful and came as a surprise, judging by the expression on the man’s face. Fingers not calloused, but stained faintly green.
“Ah, if I had cybereyes.” Then he’d be able to record an image of the corpse and consult some databank to glean an ID. “But I have a good memory.” He stared long and hard at the face so he could describe it to Max, who could look through records stashed in various corners of the matrix. Or Sindje could maybe magically pull a picture from his mind if that didn’t work.
Hood knelt, just beyond the pool of blood, and spotted dirt on the man's shirt. Rich potting soil from the look of it, with a few of those crystals the troll had noticed in the plants they stole. The troll wanted to examine everything more closely, but there wasn’t time. He closed the man’s eyelids, rose and glanced out the window into the yard, seeing the three men Khase had taken out, one lying at an odd and disturbing angle. They weren’t dressed like the men in the front, though that alone didn't mean they weren’t Plantech security.
“No, definitely not Plantech,” Hood decided after another moment, catching sight of the gray ponytail. He knew a trained security force likely wouldn’t allow a hairstyle like that. All of the other men had high and tight cuts. Besides, he doubted the Plantech force would have sent only three to the back of the house—and without the body armor the rest of them were wearing. “So who?”
He’d puzzle it all out later. Now they had to get out of here. He knew Lone Star was coming in answer to a neighbor’s call, and Plantech had probably called for backup, too. He started down the stairs, just as he heard Max racing up the steps from the basement.
“Vut, vut, VUT!”
The ork had extended herself into the Typhoon in front of Hood’s Bison, her mind—through her implants— manipulating the starter. The engine purred to life, and for a moment she reconsidered. Perhaps she would indeed take this one down a side street and come back for it later— come back for it and the gray van, repaint them both and start her own little fleet. After all, she had such trouble holding on to vehicles; maybe a backup would be a grand idea.
Then the Nightsky exploded, the flare as it went up painting a bright red-gold dot on her satmap as the lustrous limousine disintegrated in a fiery ball of wreckage.
“Aww, now who did that?” She mentally punched the pedal, and through the mainframe saw the city’s grid and drove the Typhoon along it. A little too fast, she scolded herself, as it didn’t handle quite as smoothly as the gray van. The Typhoon scraped the remains of the limo and hit something else. A trash bin? A motorcycle? She couldn’t get a clear enough image from the uplink. Then she took it straight down the street, past that big fancy yellow house with all the security systems and the fisheye windows, past the buckled sections of sidewalk. When she spun it into someone’s driveway, missing the intersection she’d aimed for, she released the pedal and turned off the engine. Maybe she wo
uld come back for it, if possible.
“Now we’ve got a little room to move.” She tried to turn over the engine in the Bison, get it ready for their exit, but her mind couldn’t manipulate the controls. Too many safety measures, and one of them might give her a backlash if she wasn’t careful. “Fine, Hood’s got the key. He can start it.”
Max pulled the cables, took a last look around the basement and through a veil of gossamer webs spied something a few meters past the mainframe.
“What?” She tugged down the curtain, sputtering when some caught on her tusks and left a horrid taste in her mouth. “What in the name of. . . .” She stared at it for exactly one second—at a box on the wall, at the pale blinking lights at the bottom of the console, nearly invisible before she pulled down the webbing. The lights were blinking faster and faster now.
Her eyes grew wide with the realization.
“Bomb!” She hurled herself toward the basement steps, taking them three at a time as she raced for the upstairs. “Bomb! A very big bomb!”
She nearly plowed into Hood as she turned the corner and headed into the dining room. The troll had just cleared the last step from upstairs.
“Bomb!” Max hollered again. Then she was tugging at
Hood’s arm, then running past him. “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!”'
The troll hesitated only for a heartbeat, and then he was on her heels, his footfalls thundering across the floor. He kicked aside scraps of furniture and stepped on a rusted toy boxcar on route to the front door, crushing it flat as he ran.
Max waved her arms as she jumped down the front steps and did her best to avoid the sticky nets and fallen, groaning security guards. “Bomb, keeblers!” She shot toward the Bison, the elves picking up the pace behind her. “Hurry! Go, go, go!”
Shadowrun 45 - Aftershock Page 17