Shadowrun: Spells & Chrome (30 page)

Unlike Zurich, the magician had been sitting far enough from the explosion that he didn’t seem to have been badly wounded—the back of his seat had absorbed most of the fragments, and 8-ball had cut him free of the wreck before it sank. Magnusson was still staring sightlessly at the dark clouds above him when the rain began to fall onto his face and Zurich’s, and onto 8-Ball’s hairless scalp. The dwarf checked the pulse in his throat yet again, unsure whether there was anything else he could do to help any of them, and sighed with relief when the magician suddenly turned to face him. “What happened?” asked Magnusson.

“He shot Zurich, then blew up the boat,” said the dwarf.

“Mute?”

“Went after him. Took the power head and your talisman.”

Magnusson nodded. “Can you make it back to shore? We’re sitting ducks here.”

“I’ll try. You?”

“I’ll see if Mute needs help.” He cast an Oxygenate spell on himself, commanded his bound elemental to sustain it, and slipped out of his lined coat and flotation vest and into the depths.

The magician’s astral vision allowed him to see underwater more clearly than even the best cybereyes, though the sea was teeming with life that shone in the astral like fireflies. Thresher, by contrast, was little more than a shadow, so heavily cybered and modified that he barely had a recognizable aura; only the murderous intent he radiated made it clear that he was actually alive. Magnusson cast a stunball spell at him; Thresher, his adrenaline pump having already kicked in, remained utterly unfazed. His next shot hit Mute below the collarbone, but she continued to press on, watching the rangefinder reading superimposed on the crosshairs on her retinal display as she closed the distance between herself and her target. Thirty-eight metres … thirty-seven … thirty-six …

Magnusson cast a levitation spell on Thresher’s carbine, trying to wrest it from his grasp. The SEAL managed to retain his hold on the weapon, but the magician did succeed in deflecting the gun upwards so that the next burst missed Mute, and in distracting him while she swam near enough to fire the speargun. Thresher looked towards her an instant too late to dodge the dart, and it slammed into his chest hard enough to detonate the power head. Flechettes ripped into his armored wetsuit and toughened orthoskin at point-blank range, missing his heart but tearing a hole in his left lung.

Thresher released his grip on the rifle and clapped a hand over the bubbling wound, trying to hold it shut. As Mute neared, he drew his underwater pistol and fired the last three rounds, hitting her twice. Then he drew his fighting knife while he waited for her to come within melee range—but instead of returning fire, Mute drifted down towards the sea floor. Thresher watched her until he was convinced she wasn’t merely feigning unconsciousness, then activated the jets in his leg and shot up towards Magnusson, spearing him in the stomach.

•
•
•

8-Ball sighed with relief as his flailing feet finally touched wet sand. The inexpert swimmer staggered the last few meters before dropping Zurich on the shore of Battleship Island, then collapsed beside him, staring up at the sky and gasping for breath. A few seconds later, he sat up, checked the medkit screen to see whether there was anything more he could do for Zurich while they waited for DocWagon, then patted himself down in the hope of finding some weapons he hadn’t discarded. It didn’t take long to discover that all he had was his neck knife and a signal flare. He would have sworn long and loudly, but he didn’t have the energy to spare.

•
•
•

The force of the collision lifted both Magnusson and Thresher partly out of the water, and when the SEAL cut the power to his jets, both of their heads remained above the surface. They stared at each other, almost nose to nose, for a few seconds, before Thresher removed the knife and began to laugh. “You should’ve stayed home. You’re way out of your depth—but me, I’m in my element.”

“Maybe,” Magnusson gasped weakly, “but you’re in
my
elemental.”

“Wha—” Thresher drew back his knife for a killing blow, and the water spirit engulfed and bound him, lifting him and spinning him around in a towering vortex far above the magician. Magnusson watched the SEAL struggle for a moment, and realized that he couldn’t drown and was protected against cold and possibly even against the great crushing pressure that the powerful elemental could generate. He thought quickly, then ordered the spirit to hurl him towards the island.

The elemental obeyed: like a small but powerful tsunami, it sped across the sea, releasing Thresher just as it reached the shoreline and propelling him into the trunk of a lodgepole pine with damaging force. The SEAL picked himself up, taking two unsteady steps on his finned feet, then fell face-down into the mud. He picked himself up with some difficulty, then turned his head to see a pair of boots less than a meter away. He looked up, and saw 8-Ball standing over him, brandishing a piece of driftwood the approximate size and shape of an executioner’s axe. The dwarf grinned, then brought the heavy cudgel down on Thresher’s head with all of his strength.

•
•
•

When Magnusson swam ashore three minutes later, carrying Mute and assisted by the water elemental, 8-ball was sitting beside his unconscious foe. Thresher’s wrists and ankles were bound together with duct tape from Zurich’s pocket, and 8-Ball had donned his web belt and was admiring his gyrojet pistol. He looked up as Magnusson, chanting in Aramaic to center himself and reduce the drain of his magic use, gently lay Mute down on the sand. “Is she okay?” he asked.

The magician nodded wearily.

“You?”

Magnusson sat down, and looked at Zurich, raising an eyebrow.

“Stable,” said the weapons master. “I’ve called DocWagon, and they should be here soon.”

“You?

“Never felt better,” said 8-Ball, grinning. “Just been SEAL clubbing.”

Magnusson groaned at the pun, and lay down on the beach.

“Mute said you were the best,” the dwarf said, more seriously. “She was right.”

The magician didn’t reply.

“We’ve got another job coming up,” 8-Ball continued. “Datasteal from Mitsuhama’s magical research. Should be interesting. You want in?”

Magnusson stared up at the sky, then closed his eyes. He planned to secretly give his share of the reward for Thresher to Kenda Reyes so that she could continue her research, but he knew it might not be enough. “Maybe,” he said. “But only if it doesn’t involve any wetwork.”

The Good Fight

By Marc Tassin

Marc Tassin was enthralled by books from an early age. He marveled that a collection of letters on a page could sweep a person away to another world, change the course of a life, or evoke any number of emotional and intellectual responses. The power of this literary alchemy is what inspired him to try his hand at writing, although it is the joy of sharing his work with others that drives him today. Marc lives in a small town just outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife, Tanya, and their two children.

“Outta the way, grandpa.”

The two gangers muscled past Kaine, shoving him aside as they struggled out to the waiting GAZ-P pickup with the decade old trid console. Near the apartment building steps, groups of people, most still in their pajamas, stood huddled together. Some were crying, some stared steely-eyed at the gang members, while others just watched in quiet resignation.

Kaine ignored it all. He shoved his hands a little further into the pockets of his battered trench and made his way past the huddled masses, up the steps, and into the decaying apartment building he’d made his squat a couple of years back.

Inside, he stepped around another ganger who had the young couple from 4C at gunpoint and pinned against the wall. They were wearing their links, and they punched shaking fingers at the air in front of them.

“That’s right,” the ganger said. “And transfer those trid speakers too. If any of you slots get it in your head to call Knight Errant, I want it nice and clear that you sold us this stuff.”

“Can’t beat the price!” shouted another ganger as he went past with an armful of clothing.

Kaine had seen this before. Gang hits a building at night, forces everybody outside, and cleans out their squats. The twist on this one is that they force all the residents to legally sell the stuff to the gangers for a song using their links. The gangers pay a couple of nuyen and walk away with a pile of stuff. And of course none of the folks they hit have enough nuyen or status to prove otherwise. Instead they just eat it and move on, saving that call to Knight Errant for important stuff, like murder. Course here in Detroit, anyone outside “the Wall” knows it’s a lucky break if the Knights show up even for that. Kaine had seen a corpse rot in an alley for a week before a Knight Errant cruiser finally appeared to check it out.

Kaine made it to his apartment unmolested. An old man in a battered trench coat was easy to ignore. Granted, he was a little bulkier than most men his age, and the hard lines of his face, half-hidden in the shadows of his wide-brimmed hat, might have given the punks pause. Fortunately, gangers weren’t known for their observation skills.

The door to his squat hung by one hinge, and the new maglock he’d installed a couple weeks earlier lay on the floor, twisted and bent. Frowning, Kaine stepped over the wreckage and surveyed the damage. As expected, it was his old trid he’d seen them hauling out. The soy processor was gone too, as well as the projection window he’d picked up last year. They hadn’t taken his collection of turn of the century CDs, but probably not knowing what they were they’d made sure to smash the hell out of them. Kaine grimaced as he stepped over the glittering shards of his collector’s edition copy of the
Best of the White Stripes
.

None of that concerned him. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to start over, and it wouldn’t be the last. He’d made provisions for this sort of thing and had more than enough nuyen to cover it. Even the CDs weren’t a big deal. Hunting for them in the various online auction houses was more than half the fun anyhow.

Kaine was worried about something more important.

He reached the bedroom and found exactly what he was afraid of. Lying on the floor in a slowly expanding pool of blood lay Alvin. Alvin was a mixed breed, but he’d had the look and temperament of a lab. Kind, happy, a friend who would never turn on you. Not only that, but he was an honest-to-god dog. Not some vat job or Japanese clone or Chinese synthound. It didn’t take a vet to tell Kaine the old boy was done for.

Kaine stooped beside Alvin and ran his gloved hand along the dog’s side. Glassy, dead eyes stared up at him, the hound’s pink tongue lolling out to one side and streaked with red. Kaine heard footsteps behind him.

“Watchoo doin’, old man?”

He recognized the voice as that of the ganger he’d stepped around coming in.

“You didn’t have to shoot him,” Kaine said without turning. “He was a good dog. He wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

Kaine heard the distinctive slide and snap of an MP-5 cocking lever moving into firing position.

“Shut yer slot,” the ganger growled. “Grab yer link, and get out here. We got business to do.”

Kaine’s vision blurred, and he felt an old itch in his back that he’d almost forgotten about. He’d put up with a lot of shit over the years, but this was too much. These little bastards didn’t respect anything. It was going to be the same damn thing again and again and again.

Kaine stood, avoiding any sudden moves. Instead of turning, he stepped to the nightstand.

“I need my medicine,” he said, reaching for the drawer.

“Get away from there!”

Still facing the nightstand Kaine froze but continued speaking, his voice calm and low, “I need my heart medicine. If I die, who’s gonna do the transaction?”

The ganger took a long moment to think about this. Kaine gave him time to puzzle it out.

“Fine! Grab yer shit, and let’s go,” the ganger yelled.

Kaine opened the drawer and reached inside. Turning his hand over, he reached up and grasped the Ares Predator he kept secured there with MagnoTape.

With a sharp mental command he hadn’t used in almost eight years, Kaine tripped his wired reflexes. The jolt to his system was one part excruciating pain and one part ecstasy. The world slowed to a crawl as his body was ripped from the realm of normal human perception and into a place where nanoseconds stretched out long enough to make a blink a temporary blackout.

As he spun around he could see that the ganger was wired too. Most likely he had one of those new Mitsuhama rigs. Twice as fast and half the cost of the ancient hardwire Renraku system Kaine was running. The ganger opened up with his SMG, but Kaine was already dropping to a crouch. The stream of bullets perforated the wall behind him, cutting his favorite Poker Dogs painting in two. The ganger was all jitter and no jive. Like a drivers ed student behind the wheel of a Lamborghini.

As Kaine dropped he brought the predator around, popped the safety, and squeezed the trigger once, twice.

Twin thunderclaps roared. The first bullet caught the ganger square in the chest and sent his arms flying out in front of him. The second round hit right between the eyes, snapping the ganger’s neck back and coating the room behind him with a design that would have made Jackson Pollock jealous.

Kaine had already crossed the room before the body hit the floor. His hat flew off, revealing the wiry brush cut he’d worn since serving in the UCAS Marines back in the ’30s. The only difference was that it had faded to a steel gray over the past few decades.

Kaine stopped beside the body and looked at the corpse.

“You can steal the things a man holds dear. You can burn down his home. You can even take a man’s life. But
never, ever,
fuck with a man’s dog.”

•
•
•

By the time Kaine reached the apartment door, he could hear the shit hitting the fan. The gangers were shouting to one another, kids were crying, and some lady had started screaming. In retrospect he probably should have let it go. This was exactly the sort of attention he’d spent the last fifteen years avoiding.