Ariana oohed and aahed at the excitement in the air, already shaking off the darkness of the BTL-den’s astral shadow, her mood improved even further by the youth and confidence of the parking lot stunt-riders and their hangers-on. She drifted up through the roof and floated overhead, adding to the light show as she circled, spun, and clapped her hands. More than one pointy-eared mage noticed her, I can tell you that.
I rolled right up to the main warehouse entrance, in the center of the impromptu street carnival. My Ford was damn near the only car there, and I was almost late to the party, so I was gonna draw the eye either way; might as well get a good parking spot, right? Anyone who was anyone was on two wheels and had been there early, so I stuck out like a troll at a dwarf convention. I didn’t bother engaging the alarm system—if this crowd of smugglers and go-gangers wanted my wheels, they’d strip ’em down, security be damned—as I clambered out of my car and gave a leisurely stretch.
Ari stayed skyward and had some fun while I lit up a Target and headed toward the busted-off-the-rails loading door that served as a main entrance. Through our psychic link I felt her amusement, her awe at the fireworks, her joy at the raucous but energetic half-mob of young elves gathered around the place. The Ancients and Laésa both worked hard to make the people of Puyallup, especially of Tarislar, adore them. It was paying off tonight, with this gang meeting—hardly a secret, in a neighborhood like this—turning into the love child of a block party and a carnival. I let her have her fun, floating around and enjoying the all-too-rare positive vibes. Whatever made the kid happy made me…well…less unhappy, I guess.
Ariana wasn’t the only one enjoying herself, and being exuberant about it. A looming elf with a brilliant green mohawk waved as I sauntered up, nodding at him and trying my friendliest smile. Belial had been the chapter head of the Seattle Ancients for a couple years, and things were running pretty smoothly under him. He’d fought for the gang, fair and square, in some fancy elven challenge thing, wrestling the top spot away from Sting, who’d been a little more stand-offish. A half-dozen or so independent urban mercenaries—shadowrunners, y’know?—had dressed up like Ancients and done his work for the night, running some sort of race or scavenger hunt against Sting’s team. It had felt like half the district had been watching that challenge live, and you could still see spliced-together footage of his little gaggle of ‘champion’ shadowrunners running errands for him half the night, little security-drone movies touched up and distributed by Ancients hackers, adding to their rep. That was how Belial worked, though, inspiring that sort of nonsense, even from outsiders.
He was still just a kid—I wasn’t positive, but I pegged him at just about the twenty-five every elf looked—but he’d grown up here, and that counted for a lot in my book. He was all muscles and confidence; flashing white teeth, tan skin crawling with classic ink and nova-hot new bio-tats, chief among them a heraldic-style griffin on his chest.
“Hoi, chummer! We were starting to worry you were gonna miss the party!”
His handshake was as strong as you’d expect from his linebacker build and general enthusiasm. Belial didn’t do things halfway. He had conviction and charisma, and those two could take a gang warlord pretty far. He also had magic. I’d assensed the kid a time or two before, and the power rolled off him in waves. A Mystic Adept, he was a rare sort who was a spell-slinger and who’d also internalized their power, augmenting themselves from within even while influencing the world around them. They didn’t grow on trees, and he was a solid specimen. Lots of strength, lots of boldness, youthful energy. I couldn’t quite peg his Mentor—his totem, like? Source of his magical power, I mean—but it was easy to guess it was a pretty up-front martial sort. Dragonslayer, probably, or Wolf. That sort of thing. Brave, bold, brash.
Not like his sidekick.
“It’s not a party.” A darker Ancient slipped out of Belial’s shadow, all black leather, black hair, black disposition. “He’s an employee, and one barely punctual to a job site.”
“Rook.” My nod was barely perceptible and entirely insincere. “Always a pleasure.”
Rook was a mage, too, but a more conventional one. Spellcasting and summoning, standard stuff like used to come so easily to me, and Tír-trained for combat mojo, according to rumors. I bristled a bit at his attitude, but bolstered my magical appearance out of habit; tweaking the look of my own aura, just in case he took a peek, projecting far more power than I had. It was an old trick, ridging up like an alley cat trying to look big, and one I was pretty good at.
Rook was powerful, his magic strong, despite the black-chromed cyberarm he sported, and would probably only respect similarly strong magic. Everyone knew he brought Tír connections aplenty with him, and I wondered how my fake aura—or my actual aura, before losing so much of my power—might’ve compared to some of his high-ranked pals back home.
With that Tír upbringing and noble connections, though, came certain assumptions and attitudes that meant me and him butted heads. He was every bit the metaracial supremacist Belial wasn’t. Belial loved the Ancients and Tarislar, and that mostly meant he cared about elves. Rook loved himself and elvenkind, which mostly meant he happened to care about the Ancients and Tarislar. I’d heard talk of him being tangled up with some pretty radical Black Sun guys, but it was hard to find out that sort of thing for sure, and no one’d hired me to get to the bottom of it yet. He was definitely trouble. There was no mistaking a certain darkness ’round the eyes, something that told me his Mentor was a nasty piece of work, maybe even as dark as…well, let’s just say Rook wore menace like a fine silk suit.
I always kinda wondered how much of Rook’s loyalty was a matter of convenience instead of principle. Likewise, I wondered just how much worse things would get in Puyallup, even just down in Tarislar at the other end of the city, if we had to find out about his priorities the hard way.
Belial didn’t seem worried, though; Belial never seemed worried—that’d imply a lack of confidence about anything, ever. The bigger elf nearly knocked me down with an enthusiastic smack on the back, half-shoving me into the remains of the warehouse. He wasn’t dumb—Puyallup didn’t forgive stupidity, even when you weren’t trying to run the local chapter of an international go-gang—but he was simple. Honest. He came off as kind of a big lug, really, but one with the power and personality to pull it off.
I didn’t personally know any of the Laésa bosses in attendance, but that didn’t surprise me. The Ancients had set up shop in Seattle long ago. They lived here, worked here, partied here. They were a part of the Sprawl, acid green and mohawked, all youthful edge and brash sureness. The Laésa weren’t, didn’t want to be, weren’t interested. They were smugglers, yeah, and they recruited here, but that was about it. To the Laésa, Puyallup—hell, Seattle—was just a job. They ran stuff in and out, fueled up, and then just circled around to head back down I-5 to Portland for another go. Hell, half of ’em took a hit of that Tír Tairgire favorite of theirs, the drug that was their namesake, laes, all the time, so they barely remembered Tarislar, much less cared about it one way or the other. The drug immediately knocked folks out, wiped a couple hours’ of memories away, and was rare enough to be as expensive as all get out.
All three were elves, natch; heads shaved high up on the sides, Laésa ink beneath bristling hair just growing back in, one pinged as magical and another sported some obvious chrome. Flip, their chrome-limbed razorgirl and leader, introduced herself, flanked by Jackknife—their adept—and hell if I caught the last one’s name. Something in Sperethiel, but my linguasoft didn’t keep up. Arrow-Star, it sounded like? I decided I didn’t really care what poetic elvish name he’d picked out for himself, and got on with my life. I wasn’t sold on street names to begin with, but folks who self-identify like they’re in a fantasy flick just leave this palooka cold.
I didn’t know ’em, and didn’t really want to, and I was pretty sure they felt the same about me. Luckily for both of us, I was here on a pretty ceremonial pretense.
Elf? Check. Outsider? Check. That was all anyone really cared about. I didn’t have actual authority, I was just here to bear witness and collect a paycheck.
Belial and Rook were joined by a third Ancient I’d seen around the city before. Blitz, he called himself, and thanks to his big old Japanese sword and topknot, lots of the other locals called him Bushido. He was okay for an Ancient, also grew up here in Puyallup at least, both his folks’d been in the gang, instead of being a snooty Tír import like so many. He didn’t have any obvious hardware installed, and I didn’t sense a lick of magic to him.
Belial squared off against Flip, Rook glared at Jackknife, and that left Blitz and Arrow-Star, wingmen instead of real players, to give each other the hairy eyeball.
Lord, did these kids bicker.
Flip started in and Belial laughed out loud, Rook sneered, Jackknife looked like he was about to spit in the Tír-born elf’s face, Blitz glared, and just on and on and on. They chattered and bitched at each other, switching back and forth from English to Cityspeak to Sperethiel to all three, bastard-tongues all woven together and borrowing words—mostly curses—from whatever was handy and sounded mean.
My Transys headware and the linguasoft I’d slotted tried to keep up, helpfully scrolling translations across my field of view, but mostly I didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t words I was there for, it was actions. I’ve got some hot mods running and a pretty top-end bit of hardware implanted, and between various bits of data—watching for thermal spikes that mirrored regular blushes, my cyberoptics tagging the various weapons these gangers bristled with, low-range heartrate and blood pressure monitors, my PeopleWatcher software scanning for dilated pupils and the like—and my own experience, I just watched to make sure they were all pissed, but peaceful.
You spend enough time in a town like mine, you get to learn how it feels when violence is coming, same as some folks get a creak in their bones before a storm. Random Puyallup bullshit, someone chipped outta his head or just off his nutter, sure, that still blindsides you. But premeditated stuff? Gang hits, bounties on folks, the moment a staredown turns into a stabbing? You get a sense for that.
My dad had the same knack. Spent nearly his whole life working in prisons, and always had the feel for when the shit was gonna clog the damned fan. I’d picked up on it, too, but not until after Pop had died. In my intemperate youth, my magical Talent made me cocky. I hadn’t appreciated Dad’s hard work and Mom’s loss the right ways; I’d just been all about good grades, scholarships, praise for the quirk of genetics that’d given me my mojo. I hadn’t learned how to smell violence coming until too late, until I’d lost so much, until I’d had to make do with the leftovers of my old power. I’d learned the hard way, but I’d learned.
So it wasn’t coming tonight, not from these jokers. A half-dozen crabby elves, arguing over turf and trade rights, nattering like old ladies, complaining about who had what smuggling route first, bickering over the fair street price for their laes-laced goodies, complaining about undercutting the competition, tagging over signs, blaming each other for the incidental violence that came as a side-effect of their lifestyle choices. They were like a bunch of teenagers, fighting over who was taking someone to prom, I swear. Blitz’d cut up some Laésa guys who’d tried to work him over, Flip had put a couple slugs into an Ancient out alone one night, and back and forth they’d started to escalate, but tonight they were just complaining, airing grievances, they were genuinely here to try and put a stop to it. No. No, neither crew was about to really throw down. I didn’t have to worry.
Then I felt it. Sniffed it on the breeze, heard it, my violence-sense tingled, I dunno. A different sound came from out front, from the couple-dozen elves lounging, bragging, showing off and getting high. The bike noises changed, the laughter stopped, the madcap teenagers stopped howling at the moon and started squalling in pain and anger.
I felt Ariana’s first concerned tug on our mental link, and looked up to see her flying through a cut-short fireworks display, just before I heard the first chattering autofire.
The attack started almost quietly because they’d opened with axes and machetes and that sort of thing. They didn’t let loose with the guns and grenades until after their fast-charging assault crew got a couple scalps for themselves, standing over the dismembered corpses of a little knot of Laésa couriers. Say what you will about the Spikes—the all-troll gang, the one with the rabid hate-on for elves—but that was almost sneaky of them. Their idea of a sidearm was a combat shotgun, their version of a rifle was a squad automatic; they knew it would be anything but quiet once they went for their guns.
I felt my ally spirit change moods through our psychic tether as she watched that first wave of Laésa fall. Ariana was worried about her new ‘friends,’ then sad, then angry. Me, I skipped right to the last one.
My Colt was out as the first trolls rushed straight for the warehouse in a ragged ‘v’ formation, a madman with an oversized, screaming chainsaw in the lead. Most of the Spikes were content to slaughter the work-a-day schmucks here in this elven ghetto, out for body count and body count alone. Some of their more manic members were trying to go big and take out their long-time rivals’ leadership; Belial was the biggest target in Seattle to these jokers, and, just my luck, me standing right next to him.
“Squire!” I heard the burly elf shout as I was lining up my sights, and saw a flicker of motion in the corner of my eyes as I started to unload. I poured three shots, four, five, into the chest of the oncoming Spike—why didn’t he even stop laughing?!—but I might as well’ve been trying to down a rhino with a pellet gun. Maybe it was bulk and dermal plating, maybe armor, maybe it was Kamikaze or some other combat drug, maybe he was an adept, maybe he was just a damned psycho, but there was no way my pistol was dropping this guy.
Fine. Bullets weren’t gonna do it, so mojo it would have to. I heard Rook chanting in Sperethiel and saw power flashing from his eyes and hands, and followed suit. Lone Star tactical sorcery doctrine was simple where the larger metaspecies were concerned, and I figured the Tír Tairngire Peace Force—and don’t it say something about Elfyland, that they use ninja commando black ops combat mages as cops, not just soldiers?—had a similar rule; pour on the mana. Insulated clothes could protect you against magical lightning or fire, chem-treatments could help against summoned waves of acid, purely physical spells could be defended against through purely physical means, and the Spikes certainly had ‘purely physical’ at their disposal. The mental, however, a spiritual assault, a direct infusion of concentrated magical force, an attack aimed at the aura, not the body?
Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t gonna hop on the Humanis bandwagon and pull an ‘all trogs are stupid’ card, but let’s just say that as a general tendency, they’re a lot tougher physically than mentally, yeah?
I kept my Colt handy, but my off-hand came up from my belt with my wand at the ready. Time slowed down a tick while I mustered up the power I’d need, while I fell inside myself almost like in the old days. I saw every casually-busted piece of wall tumbling through the air, counted the yellow teeth inside this big bastard’s face, saw the pointed ears he wore around his neck, my headware and Sideways and the strange attentive distortion that comes from casting, really casting, brought it all into stark detail.
“Teloch,” I barked at him, wand leveled. Enochian was a trick up my sleeve. A street shaman I know calls the technique ‘achieving oneness with ancient traditions,’ when she recited her tribal tongue. Jerks like Rook liked to chant in Sperethiel, calling it channeling their innately elven sorcerous power. Back at U-Dub, professors had told us that the proper enunciation in Latin granted scientific precision to our casting. Different folks had different names for it, different theories for it, different tricks for it—and not all of ’em were languages, even—but we all agreed that it worked.
Centering, it’s called. “Death,” I’d said.
It worked. Maybe better’n any spell I’d cast in a long while, it worked.
> The magic rolled from me, poured through me, seeped my own strength and turned it into a flickering bolt of pure mana crashing against the troll, plucking at the threads of his aura, his very self. Armor didn’t work. Dermal plating didn’t work. Sheer mass, laced bones, tough hide didn’t work. You just hurt.
The troll staggered and spat blood, yellow eyes going bloodshot and rolling mad in his head like a horse in an old Western trid.
A decade or two back, I’d’ve killed him with it. Hell, on most days I could’ve dropped him and all his buddies close by, just poured it on with a single casting, killed the lot of ’em and barely broken a sweat. Instead, I felt a wave of cold wash over me now, even after the single-target spell, my own life force having to fuel even the simplest of magics.
I didn’t feel the pain that accompanied the overcasting ravaging my system—I couldn’t, my Sideways gene-treatment had seen to that—but my Corpsman biomonitor let me know about the nervous system disruption, my elevated heart rate, the spike in my blood pressure.
“Thanks a lot.” I gritted my teeth and prepared to cast again. Stupid Corpsman. No shit, my blood pressure was up. The fuckin’ troll was still coming!
A ripple in reality soared away from a black cyberhand, single finger extended. The visible distortion, a wave of raw power, crashed into the troll without a sound, save the big ganger’s whoosh of stolen breath. Had I been watching on the astral plane—in full color, not the monochrome of my custom optics—I’d have seen his aura go ragged at the edges, then fray, then vanish as a string was tugged. In realspace, I just saw him bleed from every visible hole, cough out a spray of lung-bright redness, then fall over, dead.
Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small Page 3