Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small

by Russell Zimmerman

  “You’re welcome,” Rook said with a smug grin sharp as a beak, and for a second, as the magic flowed from him, I thought I heard a raven’s wings flapping. The little bastard made it look so easy behind that mentor’s spirit-mask.

  “Wasn’t talking to you.” My jaw didn’t relax much as I growled out the words. Gotta give credit where it’s due, even when it tastes like crow. “But yeah. Fine.”

  We stood back to back, then, and as his effortless spells and my barking Colt bought us some space, I took it all in from behind the front sight of my gun. The world was madness and chaos, but I didn’t see it like that. I didn’t see it like anybody else, in fact. In ascending order, my own personal cocktail of addictions and augmentations saw to that; my mild nicotine high, my habitual WhiteBrite™ betel gum, my Lone Star bought-and-paid-for headware, and that Sideways mutation, the hyper attention it brought, the inflexible, impossible attention to detail, the high-contrast fascination with every tiny little thing, all the world in slow motion, like a trideo show with a broken controller. When other people saw chaos, I saw detail.

  So, yeah, it was a riot. A mad scramble of blood, sweat, gunfire, flashing blades, gang leathers, mohawks, scars, severed ears, elves and trolls in a crazy tangle. But I saw it all. In front of my cyberoptics, in the face of my gene-tweaked attention to detail, I caught every little thing.

  I couldn’t miss the gleam of chrome on the shoulder-spikes of Belial’s leather vest, the flash of his absurd claymore sword, the splash of trollish blood marring the gryphon tattoo on his chest. I saw Squire standing in Belial’s blood-soaked shadow, looking older, with a big Ruger wheelgun in both hands, lifting it in a proper stance just like I’d been taught before she was born, covering his flank with methodical, sure-eyed fire. I recognized the Ares logo on the spent shell casings as they arced gracefully from Flip’s arm-mounted cyberguns while she fired away on full auto, counted each one as it hit the ground, predicted when her subguns would go dry based on model number and spec-sheet information that flooded into my Transys cranial computer without me consciously asking for it. I saw Jackknife fold like his namesake, impossibly broken, sideways, attacked by a Spike who swung a stop sign like a baseball bat, complete with a wad of concrete still clinging to the base and giving his impromptu mace that much more power. My headware did the math, timing the chipped-quick draw and swing of Bushido Blitz, seeing it in slow motion but so smooth and fast it looked realtime, and I saw the light glint just so off the monofilament edge of his combat katana before it took a Spike’s head off, snicker-snack, in a single swing.

  A casual backhand snapped an Ancient’s neck and sent the skinny elven corpse flying, and I lined up my sights, my smartlink pip, and my red-hot instinct on her killer; the slide locked back on my Colt by the time the big troll slumped and fell to die.

  I cast a glance skyward instead of pulling out a fresh magazine. I wouldn’t need it.

  “Ari,” I said, smiling despite the madness all around.

  She swept out of the sky like a Valkyrie, face grim, heart set on killing. She was a good girl. A simple soul. All the best parts of me that I no longer had, normally bright and smiling, but even she had her limits, and wholesale slaughter was a sure way to rile her up.

  She fell onto the nearest knot of Spikes—all singed but whole after a wave of fire cast from Belial—and tore into them like a storm of shrapnel. Ariana wasn’t tied to any single element, not really, but she favored her home plane, earth. When angered, she was all flint, all obsidian, all steel talons and strong as a mountain. Two Spikes fell in bloody pieces before the third turned to attack her, and his point-blank shotgun blast ricocheted off like she was a bank vault door. She grabbed his horns and wrenched. His neck lost, for all his size and her lack of it, and he fell, dead.

  “Ari,” I tapped Rook’s shoulder, nodding for him to watch. He quirked one black eyebrow in irritation, but I wanted him—especially him—to see just what she could do.

  She flew, again. Rising, chrome-shining, to get a better vantage before she unleashed hell.

  As surely as Rook and me, the kid knew basic tactical doctrine. Trolls. Mana spells. Direct astral assaults, mental attacks rather than physical. Pure power. Death, neat.

  She glared and pointed—like a schoolgirl chastising a puppy—and a Spike stumbled, bled, and fell beneath an Ancient’s gun. She scowled again, sent out another wave of power, and another Spike died. She thrust out both hands, pushing a blast of pure mana from her, and it exploded to kill a few at once. Her brow furrowed in concentration, tongue sticking out ruby-red between her lips as she focused, and they just started falling. Here and there and everywhere, one by one or in small clusters where no elves were near enough to be threatened by broader spells, she dropped them.

  “Ari,” I raised my voice, sent a tug through our mental link.

  She shook her fist—childlike, again—at the trolls as they turn to ran, but dropped through space to land near me. Rook had left during the show and started mending fallen elves, which, I’ll be honest, ticked him up a notch in my book.

  “Good work, kiddo,” I said, and her smile lit up the darkness around us both. “But take it easy. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  Strain was strain, drain was drain, casting was casting. She had a tremendous capacity for it, but if she overdid it, she could still be hurt, even killed, by slinging too much mojo, too fast.

  “I knoooow,” she said, whining just a little, then that red lip stuck out in a pout. “But they were being mean, boss! To the elves!”

  “That they were.” Belial’s sonorous voice came from nowhere, suddenly beside us, Squire reloading just behind him and eyeballing Ariana like she was a pop star. “But you sure did put a stop to it, girl.”

  Her bronze-sheen deepened in a blush—a blush!—and she dug one toe into the earth like the girls in the Japanese cartoons she watched with Skip and Trace. Little Squire’s girlish awe turned to a scowl as pubescent jealousy reared up.

  “Go help the elves, kiddo,” I gave Ariana’s shoulder a squeeze, and nodded to…to everywhere. There were so many hurt, so many dying. “You did real good. Go do some more, okay?”

  “Yeah!” She was off like that, skipping on the air, eager to help, certain it would be enough. She had more than just my power. She had my optimism, my idealism, my charity.

  She flew off, and I slumped against a nearby wall. Belial took a second to make sure no one but Squire and I would notice, then leaned just as heavily on his claymore’s crossguard. His shoulders were so big they seemed to let the world down when they slumped from exhaustion.

  “Hell of a night,” he said, just before I could.

  “Hell of a night,” Flip said, one chrome arm gone below the elbow, leaking oil, but she didn’t seem to care. Belial had Squire, and Blitz and his dripping blade weren’t far off. Flip didn’t have a second or third anymore, and the few Laésa in sight were dead or being bandaged up, but she didn’t seem to care about that, either.

  She held out her good cyberhand.

  “A deal done. Signed in blood. Allies again, against their ilk.”

  Belial shook it, his huge hand dwarfing her chrome cyberdigits, but I couldn’t help but wonder who had more strength.

  “Sielle,” he said, barely needing my headware to tell me he was agreeing with ‘it is the way of things.’

  “Witnessed and done.” She nodded matter-of-factly, eyeballing me while she remembered Ariana. “Nice work, Mr. Kincaid. I don’t…I’m not sure how this would have gone without you here.”

  I offered my own hand to shake.

  “Friends call me Jimmy.”

  Then we stood there, the three of us, a couple dark Ancients looming protectively in nearby shadows, and just enjoyed being tired and almost-whole together.

  Belial left first, trusting Squire to struggle under his big sword, striding off to help with the healing. Flip left later, with Bushido Blitz walking on her weak side, gallant despite his ganger-swagger. I lit u
p a Target—with a lighter, the old-fashioned way, hell if that manabolt hadn’t taken the wind outta me—headed to my car, and just waited for Ariana to feel done helping.

  I’ve got as much patience as she does compassion, as it turns out. She didn’t come over until every elf had either bled out or had some magical mending.

  “You’re a good kid. I’m proud of you,” I said as I started up the Ford, dashboard coming to life.

  Like always, her smile lit up the place brighter than the console. We drove home, my payment from the elves tucked away for now, both in my checking account and snug in my glove compartment. You just never knew when Tír smugglers and their illicit goods’d come in handy.

  CHAPTER 3

  My apartment wasn’t much, maybe, but it’d been home for the better part of a decade, and after a night of blood, bullets, and screaming, it was plenty cozy.

  I shucked off my lined coat and suit, stripping down to my skivvies and an undershirt while I stretched out aches and a long day’s worth of stiffness. Ari hummed cheerily as she fluttered in my wake, picking up the clothes, then effortlessly cleaning and changing them—she liked different colors all the time—with little Fashion-manipulation spells. By the time I’d grabbed a beer and downed half of it on the way to my sheet-crumpled bed, she had my suit hanging neatly from the coat rack near the door, ready for me to wear whenever I got up.

  “Computer, calendar me,” I said out loud even though I didn’t need to, my headware commlink humming out of standby mode to project onto my cyberoptics.

  Aw, dammit. The elf-troll tangle had kept me up later than I’d planned, and it was already—technically—early morning instead of late night. I had a noon expedition, and that meant not nearly long enough to sleep off the day’s gunfights and exhaustion.

  “Dismissed.” I gave a jaunty little salute to my vanishing schedule with the beer bottle before swigging the last of it. Ari hovered around the apartment doing lots of nothing; I stretched out to sleep.

  Like most of the time, it wasn’t any good. Dreams came to me, bright and full of life, contrasting with the monochrome shades of old-movie reality I tried to wrap myself up in day to day. I remembered dreaming about my dad, the lantern-jawed old man, salt-and-pepper crew cut, perpetual frown, crow’s feet around his eyes because he never looked anywhere so much as squinted and glared. I dreamed about my mom, whose face I sometimes didn’t quite remember any more, gone these thirty years now, give or take. I dreamed about my youth, my promise, my squandered tomorrows that had turned into wasted yesterdays.

  I dreamed about fangs in the dark. I dreamed about the claws of ghouls and the flashing yellow teeth of darker, older things. I dreamed about my own blood being torn from my throat, dreamed about my Talent being taken with it, dreamed about how damned hard it had been to muster up a proper spell in the years and years since.

  I dreamed about Turbo Bunny and her curves and our chips, about Hard Exit and Lone Star throwing me away, about layers of ash that turned the whole world to shades of gray, inside and out. I dreamed about Ariana, flitting around with power I used to have, that I’d invested in her before having mine taken away, and about how sometimes instead of being proud of her, I was jealous that she still had it.

  I woke up, eventually, to see the world in old-timey blacks and whites again, Ari tut-tutting in the kitchen, using Magic Fingers—for some reason—to stumble her way through cooking me breakfast.

  “Kiddo.” I said, trying to sound gentle instead of gravel-rough. “What’re you doing?”

  “I’m not tou-ching thiiiiiings.” She beamed at me with her best little sly smile, which wasn’t really sly. She waggled her fingers at me in a little wave, and a pan of eggs wavered as her small telekinetic spell responded. Grease spattered a bit, and I shook my head.

  “Yooooou said ‘I can take care of myself,’” her sing-song went dour and bass, her smile turned to a frown and a furrowed brow. “’Grr,’ you said, ‘I’m Mister Tough Guy Kincaid, I don’t want Ari making a mess in the kitchen. No touching the kitchen, Ari!’ was what you said. So I’m not!”

  Her triumphant arm-flinging, a goal-score celebration she’d swiped from Urban Brawl or something, sent a half-gallon of soymilk flying off the counter on one side, knocked my little one-cup coffeemaker into the sink full of dishes with her other arm.

  “Mmmmmmmagic fffffffffingers,” she proclaimed triumphantly, waving at me with the pan of sizzling eggs without touching it, as though I’d forgotten what the spell was, how it worked, or hadn’t already recogni—ahh, this friggin’ kid.

  “So I’m still cooking, but not touching anything! I’m following the rules, but still doing what I want, get it? Like you said!”

  “Okay, Ari,” I shook my head again, laughing. “I’ll…thanks. I’m gonna shower. Breakfast looks great, have it ready when I’m done, okay?”

  She giggled and twirled, as helpful as I was selfish, and went back to work on her culinary masterpiece. I cleaned up, considered a shave, decided—as I did about nine times out of ten—against it. Something was burning by the time I had my suit back on, and Ariana dove across the apartment to present me a plate of things-that-used-to-be-groceries as I settled into my desk. Things that weren’t raw were burned, and her eager attempts with the salt and pepper shakers had just made it worse. She looked at me, hopefully.

  I ate it.

  Because screw you, that’s what you do when a kid like Ari makes you breakfast. It doesn’t matter how tough you act to the rest of the world, being a man means letting a kid win at thumb wrestling, loving how your gal looks in any dress in the world, and eating what’s put in front of you by someone who means well and can’t cook. The world’s got rules, and some of ’em, even I follow.

  I choked down the breakfast with a couple cups of joe, waking me up and washing out the ashy, salty flavor. I used the old touchscreen built into my desk to check a half-dozen different emails and a couple local news sites—it felt good to work at a desk, sometimes, instead of out of my own cranial implants—but nothing urgent came up that would let me duck today’s scheduled work. I had a few emails, a few follow-ups, a few bills coming overdue. I skimmed and skipped, not really paying attention. The Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora wanted their dues, like they always did. An old professor—also an Order member—emailed me, probably to let me know dues were late. Skip and Trace had forwarded me some spam email about their favorite trid-show. Nothing good. Nothing that couldn’t wait, so it was time to go to work. Ari was still beaming and humming cheery tunes when we took off, across town, in my snarling, ugly Ford.

  I had a job to do. A simple private investigator gig, the sort that put the runny eggs and charred bacon on my table and kept a roof over my head. Henry Archibald Weazely wasn’t a bad guy, but he’d been a pretty lousy husband, according to Darlene. Both were human, both were Puyallup kids grown up a few blocks from me, neither were real trouble or real treasure. Weazely worked for the city sanitation office, a maintenance drone-jockey for Eta Engineering, and he’d invested a few too many paychecks in the ponies for his ex-wife’s liking. Sounded like their tumultuous relationship, unsteady since high school, was rocky again. He was backed up on alimony, she came to me and offered my usual rate if I got him to cough it up, and so here I was, hitting the bricks.

  I visited a couple of likely spots, putting forth a good faith effort at getting my name and face out there. If I know anything, I know Puyallup. I know the people here, and most of them know me right back. They know I ain’t a cop. They know if I’m after someone, it’s either not serious enough for the cops to get involved, or it’s serious enough the cops don’t want a piece of it. They know I play fair. They know I do what I can to help. They know I give the guys I’m after a fair shake, depending on why I’m after ’em, and they know the sort of favors I carry, the sort of favors I offer, for decent data. Puyallup has a dozen places to look for a guy like Hank Weazely, and I’ve been into all of ’em. I’ve backed up the bouncers when they’ve ne
eded it, figured out who was ripping off the owner after hours when they’ve called me, helped the waitresses with kids in trouble or boyfriends who needed a talking-to, or sometimes more.

  I’ve got a name in Puyallup. Weazely? Weazely’s got debts.

  He wasn’t an idiot. He drank a little too much and he had the pony fever, bad, but he wasn’t born stupid. Booze made him dumb, betting made him dumber. I quirked an eyebrow when a bookie told me how much Weazely owed—owed big names in this city—and I shook my head when I got it confirmed by Georgia, a Gianelli soldier who owed me a favor.

  Great. So I didn’t just have to find him, I had to find him first. You start getting into five-digit debts with people like the Gianelli family, and suddenly you’ve got a lot more to worry about than an angry ex-wife.

  It didn’t take me long to trade my name for his debts, to get a couple of likely folks to point me in a couple of likely directions. I’d given myself until noon to go looking for him ’cause I knew he got off his swingy night-shift late, and would be out and about, himself, late morning and early afternoon. I knew enough of his habits to know where to go tracking him, and I knew enough folks in this city to make tracking him easy.

  Which brings me to Pornutopia. Despite the sign, gentlemen didn’t come to the Pornutopia Gentleman’s Club, surprise surprise. It did not offer a particularly clean establishment, or the sort of environment gentlemen were normally found in, no. What it did offer was a wide range of dames from an assortment of metaracial backgrounds, both real and digital for the chip-slotting crowd. Pornutopia offered a breakfast buffet that ran twenty-four seven. Pornutopia offered bookies and live trid coverage of horse races and other sporting events that ran whenever the breakfast buffet did.