Heat flared at his back and he risked a glance. Laverty was wreathed in an aura of fire, with strange, dull silver splotches hanging in the air around him. An automatic weapon opened up from the kitchen, where a new—what was he? number eleven?—gunman stood. His ineffectual fire showed Kham that the silver splotches were slugs that had halted and melted in midair.
The kitchen gunman went down in a burst from someone in the main room. Kham didn't bother to see who fired; he was obviously a friend. Diving for the weapon of the man he had killed, Kham used his momentum on hitting the floor to roll away fast as he snatched the gun.
The three raiders still in the room started firing in concert. Fortunately, they seemed to be ignoring Kham, concentrating their fire on Laverty. Taking down the mage first was standard strategy, but the elf wasn't making it easy for them. He stood still within his protective flames, light flickering over his head like a video transmission breaking up. Then the fourth joined in and the elf's magic couldn't handle it. He spun, spraying blood, and crumpled to the floor.
Kham crawled to the edge of the couch he was using for cover and pumped bullets at the raiders. Two went down, but the other two grabbed cover of their own. Something whirled over his head and as he jerked down, he saw a raider coming back down the stairs behind him. The woman had removed her hood, which let Kham see her look of bewilderment as the shuriken embedded itself in her forehead. She slumped forward, but probably never having seen what killed her.
Gunfire sounded from upstairs. Too many floors up to be the four—no, three now—Kham had seen go up; they couldn't have climbed that fast. That meant that another squad of raiders had also hit from the roof. He should have expected that; these guys were pros. The gunman he had seen in the kitchen and the sounds of combat from the back of the building said that they had come in the back way, too.
Sheila appeared at the top of the stairs, wrestling with someone dressed in combat armor and climbing harness—one of the rooftop squad. Grappling, the two of them crashed through the banister and landed in a heap on the floor. Sheila was on top. but she didn't get up. There was no time to see if she was dead or merely stunned.
A raider staggered through the arch from the kitchen and Kham cut him down. Not smart of him to expose himself like that. Kham's eyes widened as Lissa's favorite carving knife fell from the man's back and clattered to the floor when he hit.
Kham was up instantly, roaring and charging across the main room. The surviving raiders popped up to fire at him, but he didn't care. Lissa needed him. Miraculously, he made it to the kitchen. Behind him he could hear short bursts from the small-caliber weapon that had taken down the first raider through the kitchen arch. Ahead of him he heard and saw a vicious melee, orks of all ages tangling in close combat with a handful of raiders.
A highly chromed razorguy stood throttling a purple-faced Teresa with one hand and batting away kids with his razor-tipped free hand. Kham took aim with his automatic, but the gun clicked empty, so he tossed it away and threw himself at the razorguy.
As Kham smashed into him, they both went down, Teresa falling bonelessly beside them. Biting down hard into the first part of the guy that came near his mouth, Kham felt his tusks grate on metal, slide until they found soft meat, then sink in. The raider howled and slashed at him. The guy's claws sliced across Kham's arm, shredding his shirt and drawing blood, but Kham didn't care. He slammed his own chromed fist into the man's face, shattering his jaw. Kham couldn't afford to stop; the guy was probably hyped in one way or another and if he could get the initiative, he'd cut Kham to ribbons. Kham swung again and again, feeling muscle and bone turn to pulp under his pounding.
At last the razorguy stopped struggling. Kham hit him one last time to be sure, then crouched over the body. Warily he watched for another opponent as he searched for Lissa and the kids amid the carnage. There were no more raiders in sight, and the only sounds were the sobs and moans of the wounded.
Dead raiders lay scattered about the kitchen. They didn't matter to Kham. All he cared about was that orks lay dead. Far too many. Kham saw Komiko crouched protectively over her dead children, tears streaming down her face. But he knew she would not grieve for them long; her entrails lay spread and trampled on the floor beside her. Her killer had paid for his failure to kill her outright; he lay at her feet, his throat torn out.
Two bloodied ork bodies, one still breathing, lay in front of the pantry door, a trio of dead raiders entangled with them. Kham kicked the raider corpses out of the way and eased the grievously wounded Guido to a position that let him breathe easier. The kid tried to talk.
"Don't," Kham told him. "Take it easy."
The kid ignored him. "Good fight. Cyg okay?"
Cyg lay dead before Guido's eyes and Kham knew the kid wasn't seeing anything anymore. "She's fine. Ya did good."
"Thanks, Dad."
Kham almost corrected him, then thought better of it.
"Hi, Mom," was the last thing Guido said.
As Kham laid the dead warrior down and closed his eyes, he heard muffled whispers through the pantry door. Ork voices, worried but alive. With great relief, he opened the door and saw Lissa and his children huddled inside with the other survivors; Guido and Cyg had bought them their lives. Lissa threw herself into his arms and he hugged her close. But only for a moment.
"Keep everybody here till I tell ya it's clear," he said, snatching up one of the raiders' guns and handing it to her. Tully appropriated one for himself. "Stay quiet."
He closed them into the pantry again and grabbed a dead man's weapon for himself. Satisfied that his family was safe for the moment, Kham returned to the main room. Ratstomper called from the stairs, "You okay down here?"
Kham didn't know how to answer that question, so he asked his own. "Any more up dere?"
"Got 'em all."
Main room, kitchen, upstairs: all clear. It was over, then. "Take care of da wounded."
"They ain't got any."
"I meant ours, drekhead."
Ratstomper ran back up the stairs. Kham looked around the main room. Neko was nowhere to be seen, but Dodger was helping a pale and shaky Laverty to his feet. The decker was solicitous, even forgetting to talk in his hokey cant. Laverty's smile was forced as he assured his friend that he would be well. Kham doubted it, until he saw that what would have been lethal wounds for an ordinary person were already healing. The strange broken-video flicker over Laverty's head continued.
"Ya okay?" Kham asked.
"I'll live," Laverty replied. "This has been a costly exercise in humanity."
"Dese slags from dat bad boy you was warning us about?"
"Have you other enemies who would mount such a raid?"
"Nah. Least don't tink so. Maybe dey was after elves?"
"If they were, I would have known. Also, they would have come better prepared for my magic."
"Looked like dey was almost prepared enough."
"Not quite enough." Laverty eased out of Dodger's supporting arm. "I must go now."
"Dere may be more outside."
Laverty closed his eyes for a moment, then said, "No. It's safe. However, the upper floors of this structure are in flames. You had best get the survivors out of here, Kham."
"Then let us leave," Dodger urged.
Laverty nodded slowly, and accepted Dodger's help as he limped toward the door.
"Ya got a car or sumpin' nearby?"
"Something, Sir Tusk."
"Watch dat elf, chummer," Kham said to Laverty. "He don't drive real good."
"Dodger will do fine," Laverty assured him.
A weak voice rose from the pile of bodies near the door.
"Dodger?"
The elf stiffened at the sound of his name. Slowly he looked down at the wounded raider. The guy was an old man, running on cyberware and booster drugs, but the blood that covered him said he wouldn't be running anymore.
"I used to know a kid called Dodger. We used to run together."
"Hello, Zi
p."
"Hunh. Zip. Yeah that's me. That's what they used to call me. Ain't Zip anymore." He coughed, and there was blood in the phlegm that dribbled down his chin. "Ain't much of anything anymore."
"He's dying," Laverty whispered to Dodger.
Dodger looked at Laverty, then at the wounded raider. In a voice even softer than Laverty's, he whispered, "Goodbye, Zip." Then he hustled Laverty out the door.
Kham moved over to the raider. If he was still alive, maybe he would talk. Throwing off the corpse that lay across the man's legs, Kham then heaved him into a sitting position. The wounded raider groaned under the mistreatment. Kham had no sympathy. This guy didn't deserve any.
"Who sent ya?"
The man's head sagged, so Kham grabbed him by the jaw, tilted his head back up, and repeated the question. The man coughed, a sick sound. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked at Kham.
"That was him, wasn't it? The boost makes you see things sometimes. Things that ain't there. Dead and gone. It was him, though. I'm not crazy."
"Nah, you ain't crazy. You're dead. Why not do sometin' good 'fore ya go, and tell me who sent ya?"
"What's the point?"
Neko appeared at Kham's left and addressed the old man. "Perhaps you would do it for your old friend Dodger? You were chummers, weren't you? You could say that it was for old times' sake, that you were doing a chummer a good turn."
The raider's attempt at a laugh was mangled by his coughing. "Chummers. Yeah. Real good chummers," he said dreamily. Kham could see that the man was slipping. Without warning the raider reached up and grabbed the lapel of Kham's fatigue jacket, his grip insistent, though weak. "Stick with your own kind, chummer. It's the wave of the future."
The raider went slack, his pain-etched features relaxing. The wrinkles were still there, lines that showed years of travail, years that were now over.
"Kham. the building is burning. We must leave." Kham looked up. "Drek! Get everybody out!"
"Where shall we go, Kham?"
"Frag, catboy, I don't know. Hide out somewhere."
"Lady Tsung's?"
"Fragging hell, not now. We got trouble."
"I am aware of that. I thought she was your friend. Would she not help?"
"I ain't dragging dis mess ta her doorstep. Look, ya know Cog, right? Well, one of his places is over on Maple Valley and Francis Lane. Can ya find dat?" Neko nodded. Kham suspected that the catboy had no idea about the location, but that he would find it. Whichever. It didn't matter. What mattered was that they lie low. Maybe if they were out of sight, the fragging elves behind the attack would forget about them. That was the way it worked in the shadows.
"Perhaps we can meet later. Lay plans to deal with our hunter."
Smoke was starting to drift down the stairs, heralding the arrival of Ratstomper and the wounded from upstairs. Kham sent Ratstomper to get Kham's family and the rest, then turned to Neko. "Look, catboy. I got no interest in a war. Go see Cog and he'll take care 'a ya. Okay? Get lost."
Neko stood up straight, then made a stiff bow. Kham turned his back on the kid's damned Japanese formality. There were things he needed to get before he left. He ran for the stairs.
"Sayonara, Kham-san."
Kham glanced back, but only for an instant. Through the smoke and flames he could not see if the catboy was still standing where he'd left him, or if he was doing the smart thing and saving his own hide. He hoped it was the latter; the kid was annoying at times and a little spooky at others, but he was mostly okay. Kham grabbed for the banister, but the flame-eaten wood came off in his hand. No more time to worry about the catboy. Time to start worrying about himself.
11
Lissa cried all night, and so did Shandra and Jord. Tully made like a man, but he still held tight to his father as long as he was awake. It wasn't till the boy was asleep that the tears began to flow. Kham neither cried nor slept. When the last of his family had drifted off to sleep, he went to the window and looked out.
From the upper floor of the abandoned tenement to which they had fled, he could see the hall, or rather the flames that clawed the sky. They lit the sky to the west, brighter than the approaching dawn did the eastern horizon. The plex firemen had finally arrived three hours ago, but it was only after the conflagration had spread to the neighboring structures. But this was the Barrens, and Orktown at that. Those brave civic heroes didn't bother to fight the blaze; they merely worked to confine it to a single block. Not much would be left of the block; the fire was well beyond what the local volunteer fire teams could handle.
Kham watched it burn, seeing his life and all he had built go up in smoke.
Sheila was dead. Like John Parker, she'd been one of his first runners. He'd lost count of the times they'd saved each other's butts in a hot run. She wouldn't be at his back anymore.
Ellie and Tump, the kids on watch, had been killed before they could sound a warning. Their deaths had been quick and clean, very professional, but they were dead nonetheless. Ellie had been barely ten and just coming into her full growth.
Cyg was gone, too. And Guido had joined his dad. Teresa. Komiko. Jed. Bill. Jiro. Charlie . . .
What was the point?
They were all dead.
Gone.
His nose suddenly picked up a faint scent, and he whuffed a couple of times to be sure. The creaky floor would have betrayed anyone entering the room, and the scent was nearby. That left only one spot. He craned his head around and looked up at the roof.
Above him a small, slender shadow crouched on the coping.
"Whatcha doing up dere, catboy?"
"We need to talk, Kham-san."
"Den get down here so we ain't making a spectacle fer anybody."
Neko began to fuss with something at his belt, and Kham stepped back into the room, away from the window, to make room. The next moment Neko swung through the window with a faint rustle of fabric, landing softly on his feet. A deft flick of his wrist sent a ripple along the line from which he had swung, dislodging the hook he had attached to the coping. Kham barely saw it as it whipped back into a small box the catboy carried, but he heard the whine of the automatic line reel.
"The cyber mercs are dead," Neko said without preamble.
That made sense. If the bad guy was as dangerous as Laverty implied and if he wanted the orks gone, he'd want all the runners gone, all at once. That would be the best way, because it wouldn't give them any time to work against him. Still, it could be just coincidence that both the raid on the hall and the deaths of the cyberguys had happened on the same night. "Howddya know it was dem?"
"How many pairs of twinned razorguys are operating in this plex?"
"Just dem, I guess."
"Seems likely. Therefore, it must be their bodies spoken of in the evening trid news."
Coincidence didn't seem likely any more. Any enemy that could arrange simultaneous hits across the plex was a powerful one. "What about Greerson?" Neko's reply was hesitant, almost as if he were embarrassed. "I don't know. Cog thinks he left town."
"But he might be dead," said Ratstomper. She had come in from the other room. The rest of the survivors—all red-eyed from smoke, crying, and lack of sleep—were crowded in the doorway. New crying burst out as soon as Ratstomper spoke.
"Shut up, drekhead. You're panicking da kids."
"I ain't worried about them. I'm worried about me. If the halfer's dead too, we're all that's left." Ratstomper's voice was shrill with fear. She'd never been one of the tougher ones. "They'll come after us!"
"I said shut up!" Kham cuffed her and Ratstomper stumbled back into the wall. She snuffled a few times and one tear rolled down her left cheek, but at least now she was quiet. The group's morale was too fragile to let her go on stoking their fears. "We don't know if da halfer's dead or not. We don't even know if it was da elves hit our place. And we don't know who did da chrome twins."
"It is likely that Greerson is dead," Neko said. "It fits with the red-haired elf's warning."
Kham's rage seemed to have absolutely no effect on Neko. He responded calmly, as if he were addressing a bunch of suits in a corp conference room somewhere. "I believe the red-haired elf was correct when he said that our enemy didn't expect him to be present when the raiders hit the hall. The raiders were all mundane, a suitable force to take out a place full of orks, but insufficient to deal with magical support. It was only because of the magical distraction provided by Dodger's friend that we were able to achieve surprise and turn the tables on them."
"Yer awful sweet on dat red elf."
"I believe he was trying to help us."
Even if he was, Kham knew that the elf was doing it for his own purposes, whatever they were. "He had his reasons."
"Of that I am sure," Neko agreed. "But whatever they are, they worked to our benefit. We must accept that."
"So whatcha suggestin'? That we run ta him fer help?"
"Iie. I do not believe that it would be forthcoming."
Kham narrowed his eyes and squinted at the catboy. The kid was ahead of him tonight; he already had a plan. "Den what ya got have in mind?"
"Cog is willing to help."
Kham knew about that kind of help. "For a fee."
"Of course."
The wry expression on Neko's face said that he knew about that kind of help, too. And why shouldn't he? For all that he looked like a kid, he'd been running the shadows. Kham knew how fast that made one aware of the realities of life. Still, there were unanswered—drek, unasked—questions here. Suspiciously, Kham asked. "He offered?"
Never Trust an Elf Page 9