[Nachtsteindorf; The Home of Erimyn and Rachael of the Siberians]
[Post-Mining Wilderness, Stockhausen Estate Territories]
CURRENT TIME: 20 July 2081, 0700 hours
Morning came far too quickly for the team. Gute Fee and Faust came out to the main room shortly after Tanzo started trying to pick up after the last night’s festivities—which roused Janus at the first clink of empty glasses in his hands. His hangover was going to make for a rough day, but he knew the importance of necessary stress relief.
“Anyone for omelets?” Rachael slinked into the room from a far chamber, heading straight to the kitchen area.
“Save me one.” Erimyn emerged from the same far room, a leather toolbelt draped across his midsection. “I’ve got construction duties this morning, but I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“What about you guys?” She began cracking eggs into a mixing bowl. “It will help with your heads and any sour stomachs.”
“Sure,” Janus responded. Some food would likely help pass the discomfort faster.
“No way.” Faust shook their head. “Although a nice tea with milk and honey would be class.”
“Count me in,” Hollywood added as he walked out from…the same far chamber where the gargoyles had come from. He was shirtless—again—and wearing one sock and one boot. Janus noted his wounds from the kludde attack were barely pink slivers of scar tissue. “I could murder some toast too, if that was marmalade I saw get unpacked last night.”
“It was,” Rachael replied warmly.
“I’ve got to get my shift started or Nicolas will band my wings for sure. I’ll catch up with everyone later.” Erimyn ran the back of his fingers down the edge of one of Rachael’s wings, and Janus could tell it was a cultural sign of deep affection. “Enjoy today, friends.” He disappeared out the front door.
“Oh hells,” Rachael growled a few seconds later, hefting a small satchel. “Anthony, can you come and watch this?”
“Anthony?” Tanzo asked. “Who’s—”
“Sure thing.” Hollywood popped over and picked up a spatula. “Do what you have to do, Rach.”
“That durak forgot his rivet bag again. Don’t let that butter burn, I’ll be right back.” She opened her wings wide and swept them together in a wind buffeting stroke, leaping up into the air to exit through the second-floor skylight opening.
The team waited exactly three seconds after her exit to turn all eyes on Hollywood.
“Did you…” Tanzo blurted out.
“Anthony?” Gute Fee gaped.
“…and I’m supposed to be the social manipulator?” Faust laughed.
“So…you okay?” Janus asked the elf. I’m not even sure how that works, but who am I to judge?
“In order.” Hollywood’s smile spoke volumes of his current mood, despite the interrogation from his team. “Yes, twice. There are times when a runner handle just isn’t appropriate. And Faust, you still are, because this wasn’t business, this was personal. And absolutely yes. I’m great.” He poured Faust that cup of tea they asked for. “You never know when you’ll catch that last bullet, step up to the wrong Sam, or check out in the worst of ways. Enjoy your life and the various beauty the world can offer you while you can, right?”
“That’s really prime, man,” Tanzo nodded. “I like the way you think.”
“Thanks.”
Back to work. Time to start building plan B, maybe even C. Just in case.
“All right,” said Janus. “We don’t know when the help Matthias is sending is going to show up, but we want to have our scruff together when it does.” He would have loved to be able to pull up some net resources and spreadsheets into AR, but words and a scratchpad would have to do. “First thing, we find out who’s been communicating with Abraham and get what they know about the incoming mystery. Secondly, be good guests. Whether we’re welcomed by the matron or not, this could be a lethally dangerous place to make enemies.”
“You’ll find no enemies within these walls,” Rachael said, announcing her presence as she landed in the room once more. “Unless you choose to do something stupid, of course.”
Damn, I never even heard her coming. How do they fly around and move so silently like that?
“Ask her, mate,” Faust urged Hollywood.
“Ask me what?”
“Hey Rach?” Hollywood began. “We were welcomed at the edge of town, and they said it was because Stockhausen told you guys we were coming. Things are a little iffy about who we can trust about things right now. Do you know who’s been contacting him about us?”
And, without the Grid, how?
“The matron’s groom, Nicolas.” Rachael took over arranging breakfast, playfully hip-checking Hollywood out of the way with a flirty wink. “Only he and members of Nachtsteindorf’s defense league are allowed to leave the crater without express permission, but they do so every day, thrice a day. While they are out, they check the comms tower and the eavesdrop box. Most of us can count on our hands and feet the number of outsiders who know how to leave messages there for us, so it is the safest connection to the world at large. In the cases of true emergency, there are always spiritual couriers.” She had to raise her voice slightly over the sound of the whisk repeatedly ringing against the side of the bowl. “But you of all people know that, volshebnik.” She looked directly at Janus. “Right?”
“Yes, of course.” Janus felt the slight red in his face. It wasn’t really a secret that he was a mage, but it wasn’t something he liked to advertise unless it would give him an edge. Control the narrative, control the outcome, he reminded himself as to why he held back so much from everyone; better to create questions whose answers can be made into assets than it was to be such an open book. It was why he learned early on to cloud even easily-assensible knowledge like his own Awakened nature—it just bothered him to be the target of any discussion he wasn’t steering properly. “I was just curious. Excuse me for a moment.”
Janus slipped out the front door to get a breath of fresh air and re-center himself. It was a beautiful day already. The pinkish-yellow glow of sunrise had only recently given way to the undeniably clear blue sky of mid-July.
While he still missed the hustle-and-bustle grayness of city life, Janus would have been lying to himself if he didn’t say that the world still held some surprising beauty out here in the wild places. Semi-translucent trails of nature spirits zooming here and there were a visual reminder of just how close to raw magic he was, as was the near constant faint tingle on his skin.
Gathering fingerfuls of the ambient energy by dragging his hands through the air as if testing the strength of the wind, he brought them together to create a single ovoid of light in his hands, which he then squeezed until it burst into a wisp of glowing vapor. He inhaled the spreading mist, taking in the healing energy and letting it purify the toxin damage left behind by the eventful and joyous evening’s festivities.
The throb of his head slowed and soon abated, the shakiness in his hands steadied, and the nagging queasiness in his gut turned into normal hunger. He took another deep breath, this time just to feel the cool morning air pass through him. Without the hangover to mask it, he felt the dull ache of his datajack and processing kit once more as a constant anchor to the technological world he was also rooted to.
You can do this. No big deal.
A spear of post-sunrise sunlight seared through the tree line and washed over Janus’ face in a combination of unexpected blindness and welcome warmth. He closed his eyes, raised his chin up to bask in the glow. It was a pure, calming feeling the crushing, fast-paced life in the sprawl just didn’t really allow for.
If only I could bottle this for the street rats and the wageslaves, he mused. I might make more scratch than the BTL dealers.
But there was something else there, too. The powerful magical energy of this place threatened to force its way into him, tipping the scales of his constant internal struggle. His implants and augments normally acted like heatsinks against the arcane, but here in the depths of this ley line knot filled with the dual-natured, they were sponges trying to soak up a thunderstorm.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” A familiar feminine voice slipped into his ears. He opened his eyes to find Desirah the matron, standing next to him in a similar pose—except with her pearlescent wings outstretched like the sails of a pleasure yacht. “I wish I could give you our wings for just a moment, dear friend. There is nothing like soaking up the magic of a sunrise in the folds of your span. Nothing at all.”
“Good morning, Desirah.” He wanted to greet her appropriately for her station, even if she seemed to have bypassed the formals already. “Can I call you Desirah? Nicolas isn’t going to swoop in and crush my head like a strawmelon, is he?”
“No, of course not.” Her tone was friendly and amused. “He is on the perimeter pass this morning anyway. Even he cannot sense your oh-so-dishonorable behavior from several kilometers away.” She turned a genuine smile toward him. “Despite what he lets his congregation believe.”
“Congregation?”
“Oh yes, my beloved mate is ordained to teach the ways of the Kind to all the new broodlings and wayward cousins who come here. It is shocking how many of our young know nothing of the first generations, their plights, and how we overcame them. The Lodges have all but erased such things from common pools of knowledge that can be drawn upon, especially in the Americas. Our wing-limbed brethren rarely even know they have family on this side of the ocean, let alone a history here.”
“I’m sorry so many of the Lodges learned to be so unkind,” he said. “When humanity, and metahumanity, if I’m going to be honest, became open to magic again, like any other powerful asset…we went nuts trying to control it. They turned it into just another stock or coin to earn, trade, and eventually hoard. I’m thankful for the things my Lodge has taught me, but I can’t begin to excuse the things I know helped build their power base. It couldn’t have been easy for your kind, being born of the very thing the Lodges were created to possess and control. I can’t begin to know what it was like for you.”
“I sense you know more about our plight than you might think. During the scenting, I saw in you the roots of great magic. Great magic you choose to tether and stifle.” She began to slowly fold in her wings. “You may never know the pain of when they come for you and your kind, yoking them, chaining them, and binding their wings in bands of iron, but I recognize the bands and chains you have made for yourself.” She tapped a claw impossibly gently against the exposed ring of the datajack in his temple. “Why do you make a slave of your magical self in servitude of the technological one? You empower your own wardens in the prison of your soul.”
“You’re not wrong, but it isn’t like all that, either.” He let the magic within him to swell a bit, feeling the cold edges of his cyberware against the expanding warmth inside. “I’ve only let out everything I have in me a few times, and no matter how good it feels to pop the cork on that bottle…it always ends up badly for someone close to me.”
“This is why you put up your walls and keep these friends at arms’ length.”
“It’s not just them,” Janus admitted. “I don’t like to get too close to anyone on the job. What if I have to dig deep and let loose? Who benefits from that kind of unchecked power?”
“You do,” Desirah replied. “The part of you that wants to spread its wings.”
“Maybe.” Janus didn’t want to upset a powerful being, but in truth he also did not want to argue or even really disagree with her. He admired her for what he believed her to be: a selfless and wise leader. “But in the line of work I’ve chosen, I can’t leave that much up to chance anymore. My clients pay for certain results, results that—”
“Are secondary to the health and well-being of your magical self.” She cut him off, placing her hand upon his shoulder. “Turn your two halves more into a partnership, instead of one policing the other, and I can see a wonderful future for you. All of you. Which will, in turn, reflect in your work, and the clients will be breaking down your door to have you be a part in their endeavors. Much, as I have come to believe, as dear Matthias likely did to have you play your part?”
“Ugh, that’s not a ringing endorsement at the moment. This was supposed to be a much easier contract than it turned out to be.” Janus shook his head slowly. “And not one my full magical self could do anything about, either. It’s just been one complication after another.”
“Easier isn’t always better, my friend,” she said. “Without your complications, we would have never met.” Her smile, sharp teeth exposed just at a few points, was actually warming. “Which would have been a loss for us both, I believe.”
“Thanks, Desirah. That means a lot, especially from you.” He meant it.
“Breakfast is ready!” Rachael shouted out a side window.
“I should go eat,” said Janus. “We have no idea when Stockhausen’s people will get here.”
“A moment, before you go?” The matron shook slightly to settle her cape-train wings, took his hands in hers, and enclosed them around something small he could feel in his palm. “Take this. A little piece of Nachtsteindorf to refresh your memory about our little talk, when the buzz and the lights and the steel-skinned titans of the big city cast their shadow over your magical self. Look at this and remember when you could still feel your wings.”
They parted company, one headed off to see to the needs of her followers, and the other standing on a porch, looking down at his clasped hands. Opening them, he found a single piece of broken chain, a few centimeters long, made from weathered and worn black iron.
“What is this?” he called out to her.
“It’s the link that broke when Nicolas gave me my freedom.” She smiled over the folds of wing at her shoulder. “Perhaps someday it can do the same for you.”
The team’s day moved quickly once it got moving. It was nearly 1900 hours when Nicolas’ enormous wingspan blocked out the sun as he and two of his subordinates swooped across the sky, circled once, and then plummeted to the street to alight around Janus and Tanzo.
They all land without a sound, Janus noted, and tucked it away in the “facts that might cause nightmares in future sleep” section of his mind.
“A vehicle has approached,” Nicolas stated. “Geoff Michale is greeting them at the ridge and will escort them to the gate. You should gather your team to meet with them there. Should this vehicle contain more surprises than just Mister Stockhausen’s help, you may want to be nearby when he arrives.”
With that, the three hulks of muscle leaped back up into air, popping open their wings at the peak of their jump and soaring away.
Janus felt his breath catch when the gargoyles took flight. I will never get used to seeing them do that. “Let’s go find the others.”
“I can’t believe it.” Tanzo grinned like a child on his birthday, and Janus’ natural pragmatism and healthy amount of shadowrunner jadedness saw it as naiveté. “This whole K-Code nightmare is almost over.”
Is it? He thought of the next few weeks, maybe months of Tanzo Nakajima’s life…and saw him multi-jacked to AR cubicles, corporate testing grounds, and never far from an access point. Long hours, few breaks, and no doubt numerous “helpful memory jogging” mind probes. If the K-Code is as good as he made it seem, they won’t let it rest until they’ve scraped every last one and zero of use out of his skull.
“Yeah,” Janus said. “Almost.”
The two of them jogged around the village, spreading the word quickly to get the shadowrunners to meet at the gate as soon as possible. They met with Faust, who was having some moonshine with a painter named Raul, then they found Hollywood having a nice candlelit dinner with their house hosts. He was very reluctant to leave, but they understood he had to.
Gute Fee was already at the gates when the rest got there. She was leaning against the inside of the arch, discussing the finer points of strength-over-finesse fighting with the guardsman, Paco.
The rumble of a large vehicle coming down the pathway caught everyone’s attention, as did the row of hyper-bright floodlights across its roof as the rolling beast came into view. It was a Rhino, sporting a ton of Ares-made modifications for off-road travel, and could probably withstand a small militia’s worth of aggressive firepower.
And that’s just the outside. Janus wished he could take a quick digital peek under the hood; it likely had hundreds of thousands of nuyen in its rigging and control systems alone.
“Mister Stockhausen sent me.” A voice echoed from a speaker fitted to the vehicle. “Are you safe, Mister Nakajima?”
“He is our guest,” Geoff said. “Please turn off your engine and come out.”
A striking blond woman in an expensive-looking suit stepped out of the driver’s side door, making a show of open hands. She passed a wide, welcoming smile to the shadowrunners, walking toward them directly—but was stopped almost immediately by Geoff’s muscular arm. She was not about to be allowed inside without hearing the tenets and the rules.
“Does that look like a team-level extraction device to you?” Faust whispered to Janus while the gargoyle ran her through the standard before-you-enter speech.
“Going to be awfully cramped in there, that’s for sure,” Janus replied. So much of this has been hand-picked for our team, why leave out the details now?
“And don’t let her happiness fool you, mate.” Faust sniffed the air. “She’s nervous as hell.”
Good. Gives us better leverage.
“Let’s bounce, right?” Hollywood hefted his pack and took a step toward the vehicle, but Janus caught his arm. “What?”
“I’ve seen too many of these evacs go south at the last minute.” Janus let his eyes flicker over to Paco’s guardhouse. “She comes to us. That way we’re all playing by the same safety measures.”
The newcomer agreed to the rules of Nachtsteindorf, and Geoff was showing her through the gates in no time. As she had no firearms to give to Paco, she walked straight over to the team and opened her arms in the best impression of a used auto salesperson welcoming someone to their car lot.
“Mister Nakajima!” she exclaimed, getting ready to throw her arms around him in a friendly embrace.
“Whoa, Jane Doe.” Gute Fee stepped in the way of her approach, gently pushing Tanzo back a few steps. “Not so fast.”
“We need some real credentials, chum,” Janus said, holding out his hand for some kind of data device, since the null aspect of the crater made it so they could not just do a digital transfer. “No SINfo, no meet. You know the drill.”
“Mister Stockhausen said you guys would be hard asses,” she laughed. “And we appreciate it. Professional. Truly, truly professional.” She opened her jacket and started fishing for something inside. “I get it. I mean, I really do get it. Especially with what Mister Nakajima means to us. Can’t be too careful, can we?” Her eyes lit up, and she produced a datachip between her fingers. “Here you go. Access code is Mars underscore thirteen.”
Janus peeled the auxiliary chipslot of his datajack back and paused with her chip a few centimeters from the access point. “Fee?”
“Boss?” the troll acknowledged.
“If this thing sparks me up or fries me out in any way…” Janus locked eyes with the corporate agent. “Rip off this wageslave’s arm and beat her with it until she can’t remember who we are. We clear?”
“That isn’t—” she weakly protested.
“Crystal.” Fee rolled her shoulders and her neck in anticipation, vertebrae popping like small-caliber pistol shots.
Here we go. Janus slid the data chip into the slot and inputted the proper code, and pages of verified connection data rolled across his cybereyes’ HUD.
Switching on his internal synaptic boost to be able to process all of this, Janus couldn’t help but be a little impressed with the level of detail. It was obviously put together by someone who knew there would be no Matrix access, as every fact and piece of identification came with two standard proofing facts, visual aids, and everything a decker might otherwise look up as research on someone’s SIN.
Well, Miss Amanda Duphrayne, attaché to the European sector nine of the Morrigan Financial Co-operative…
“Checks out, Miss Duphrayne.” Janus ejected the chip and ignored her outstretched hand, pocketing it instead. Sorry, Amanda, your paper trail of an identity could be useful in the future. “Now we can talk about how you’re getting us the hell back to Stockhausen.”
“About that.” Amanda sidestepped Gute Fee’s still-outstretched arm. “Is there somewhere we can sit and talk? All of us?”
That is never a good sign.
“Geoff?” Faust sounded calm, but Janus could tell they smelled or sensed something strange, too. “Is there a place where our guest can have a sit down and a chit-chat with us?”
“Right over here.” The gargoyle led them over to a small group of benches and tables just a few meters from the stacked stones of the wall. Always polite, Geoff gave a slight bow and started to walk away. “I’ll give you some privacy, my friends.”
Janus leaned in to him and whispered, “Don’t go too far. I’m not feeling too prime about this. We might need you.”
He nodded. “I’ll stay close.”
The team—all but Gute Fee, who stood stoically behind Amanda—gathered around one of the tables. Tanzo took the place immediately across from her, but Janus had him scoot down one spot so he could look her in the eye, showing her who was really in charge.
“All right, Amanda.” Unlike when dealing with the matron, which was a point of unguarded honesty, Janus used the corpo’s first name as a tool to help maintain control over the situation. “What is the wrinkle in this plan to aid us that has you so nervous?”
“Yeah, I can almost taste your flop sweat in the air,” Faust piled on. “What’s got you so scared?”
“Frag that,” said Hollywood. “I don’t care about her nerves. I just want to know when we’re heading out.” Normally so smooth, he was being as blunt and subtle as Fee’s mace.
“Well.” She swallowed hard. “That’s the thing. I wasn’t sent here for all of you.” She pointed at Tanzo. “Just for him.”
There it is. Janus sucked air through his teeth. I should have seen this coming. He gets the package and we get left out in the wild, drawing the aim off.
“This isn’t a team extraction?” he asked.
“I was assigned that the asset, Mister Nakajima, was the only priority. I was instructed by Mister Stockhausen to assure you that your accounts and compensation terms would all still be met upon the asset’s return, but that he is my only priority. Hence the Rhino and not something a little more teamy.” She chewed her lower lip. “I’m only supposed to leave here with Mister Nakajima.”
“Herr Stockhausen forgot about us?” Gute Fee sounded legitimately hurt.
“No,” Janus said coldly. “He didn’t forget anything. He wants Tanzo to start helping him with the K-Code as soon as possible, and having to deal with getting all of us back in one piece is adding more risk to what has revealed itself to be a far more dangerous situation for everyone involved.”
“You know about the Code?” asked Amanda. “That makes things a little easier to explain. While I don’t share his opinions about the method of delivery…” She tapped her fingernail on the table. “The K-Code is too important, too powerful, to risk that a group of run-and-gun freelancers wouldn’t sell him out to the next highest bidder. We’re talking billions here.”
“He did make it sound like it would save Stockhausen’s company.”
“Save it?” She scoffed incredulously. “He’ll be flush for as long as he wants if he just sells it to the highest offering organization. If he has Nakajima teach him how to use it properly, this code would set Stockhausen up as a global power. And that’s just the financial implications! Using it militarily? Wars could be won before anyone even picked up a gun. Exploration and transportation studies would be safe enough to start the space program again. I’m telling you, this thing, if put into the right hands with the right application of ambition, could revolutionize everything.” She placed her hands palm-down on the table to punctuate her following statement. “That is why I’m here for him and not all of you.”
Tanzo sighed. “Well frag me sideways.”
Janus leaned in toward her slightly, “If it truly is that important, then you can go ahead and take us with you to make sure he gets there safe and sound. Listen here, Amanda. We might seem like little more than freelancers who flip-flop allegiances at the sound of a cash transfer, but our reputation as professionals goes way deeper than any amount of money flashed across our optics.”
“Well, not any amount of money…” Hollywood laughed, and Janus ignored it as a joke and not a point of questionable loyalty.
“Look,” he continued, “that Rhino isn’t ideal for us to ride back to Castle Vampenstein, but those ATVs barely made it this far, and packing into the cargo area of that thing is a far-stretch better plan that having us try to walk back across that stretch of wilderness when you know we’d be hunted by both the beasts of the wild and the agents of those parties who don’t know we don’t have Tanzo with us anymore. So, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to stand up, head on over to your rig, and send a simple message to our common employer.”
Janus called an aetheric glow to his fingertips and drummed them on the table, a trickle of energy crossing the woodgrain like rivulets of spilled drink to Amanda’s fingertips, which soaked them up like a sponge. When he was sure his influencing dweomer had taken effect, he finished his directions. “We are all coming back with Nakajima. Code or no code, that is the job, and we’re going to see Tanzo safely back, even if it means two days in an uncomfortably tight off-roader with a corpo wager like yourself at the helm.”
“I would…” she paused, the spell clashing with the reality of the situation. “But there is no need. He is already aware of everything you just said.”
“What? How?” Janus didn’t get surprised in the field very often—and he didn’t take well to surprises.
“Boss? You see that?” Fee was looking up at the sky, but Janus was too focused on this new aspect of the discussion with Amanda to pay attention just then.
“Just in case you or the gargoyles decided to do something rash,” said Amanda, “I’ve been streamcasting this whole conversation to Stockhausen’s man in Berlin.”
That isn’t possible. Not inside the null zone.
“Hey, Janus? I’m picking up something weird…” Faust tried to get his attention, but this new twist had him baffled enough to simply hold up a finger to have them wait a moment.
“How?” The decker part of him was about to be extremely upset if there was some kind of new tech loophole or software or upgrade he didn’t know about that got around the null. “Everything in the crater is signal death. Your transmission would be data salad at best.”
“Not if I keep the Rhino in my open line of connection,” she explained. “The data tether is close enough that I can send to it with only a little distortion, and the upgraded Matrix carrier node on it has had no problem keeping satellite and local signal at sprawl-strength. I’ve kept in touch with the digital router, as is standard on all contract discussions, ever since I got here.”
That means a signal has been broadcast for anyone looking to hear, and what is heard can be found—
That was when Janus’ microtuned ears heard the hum of a drone engine nearby, and the snapsh of a suppressed, high-caliber round being fired.
“Sniper!” Janus’ synaptic booster kicked on, and it gave him enough of a triangulation edge using the sound waves to grab Tanzo by the shoulders and simply fall backward off the bench like a pair of SCUBA divers dropping off the side of a boat.
The bullet passed through the space Tanzo had just occupied and hit Amanda square in her chest.
The round was designed to kill an unarmored target, entering her body with a small blossom of blood above a shattered sternum—but triggering a compression-based detonation inside the organ cavity, turning everything from heart, lungs, and upper GI tract into a homogenous paste before blasting out the back of her by opening a fist-sized escape route. Thankfully, she didn’t even have time to feel anything before her life was painting the ground behind her.
Hollywood’s eyes shifted into their chrome, flash-compensating battle mode, and he rolled away from the table, coming up to his feet armed with the small pistol from his smuggling compartment, which he quickly slid shut with the other hand.
Faust dove for cover, but they were peering out over the tree line with their preternaturally sharp eyes, trying to find the attacker—or attackers.
“Paco!” Gute Fee started running toward the guardhouse. “Open the box! We need our heat!”
“Are you okay?” Janus said to Tanzo as they wriggled away from the bench, table, and slumped body of Amanda Duphrayne. “Are you hit?”
“N-no.” Tanzo was as pale as chalk. “I don’t think so.”
“Good.” Janus switched on his eye enhancements and began to pull magical energy toward himself. This had better not be just a big setup from the beginning, he groaned mentally, not again. “Stay low, try to get to those stones for cover.”
Small geysers of rocky soil erupted nearby; the hit-drone was taking somewhat random shots in their direction—which meant it was being rig-driven from someone close enough to overcome the null zone issues. It also probably was not alone.
Janus swept his vision over the edge of the forested ridge, and his suspicions were correct. A half-dozen heat signatures moving like a paramilitary unit—probably some kind of corp mercs—were approaching the wall area, with one hanging back, hunkered down. That’s probably the drone rigger, he calculated. If I could only get to the Rhino…
Hollywood saw them too, and rattled off a few shots into the brush to keep their heads down. Paco looked furious at the elf for having a secreted firearm, but the circumstances surrounding them all at the moment seemed a little more important—so the gargoyle continued to spin the combination wheel on the lockbox in his guardhouse.
There were shouts and cries from deeper within Nachtsteindorf, but the chaos came on too fast and it seemed help wasn’t going to be coming along faster than things were escalating.
“I need to get to the Rhino!” Janus called to his team.
“I’ll see what I can do!” Faust answered, rolling and flipping like a gymnast—a skillset Janus was not aware they had—until they were kneeling in the growing pool of Amanda’s viscera. Faust began to rifle through the corpse’s clever folds-upon-folds fashion choice.
The air suddenly filled with small arms fire as the hidden mercenaries found their lane of attack. Inside Janus’ battle calculations and compartmentalization, he deciphered the sounds of submachine guns and maybe one assault rifle; likely nothing heavy enough to worry the troll, unless they had special munitions, too.
“Geoff!” Fee growled, ducking behind the gate arch as a bullet shattered the stone and sent fragments bouncing off her skin. “Tell Nicolas! Get help!”
“He already knows.” Geoff raised the edge of his wing to make a shield of sorts, placing his opposite hand—suddenly flaring to life with magical energies—on the inside. Bullets struck his wing like water droplets, splashing against the glow of his flesh and falling to the ground. He could not fly in such a stance, but as long as that shielding spell remained potent, he was drawing a lot of fire.
“Found it!” Faust lifted their gore-gloved hand to show a set of AR tag ignition and security keys, likely those matching the armored vehicle just a few dozen meters away. There was a loud, unsuppressed crack of high-caliber firepower and the table next to their head exploded in wooden fragments. “Whoa!”
“The rigger!” Janus pointed to the upper ridge where the back field mercenary was hiding and probably making their life hell with that hit-drone. “Somebody has to redlist that guy if we’re going to push this line of scrimmage!”
“Here!” Paco grunted, hefting Gute Fee’s heavy revolver and tossing it to the troll. In his other hand he held Faust’s sliver gun and Hollywood’s gun belt.
“Even I can’t get that shot!” Hollywood emptied his pistol’s small magazine into the brush as suppressing fire.
“You won’t have to.” Geoff smelled the air and grinned maliciously.
For the first time since he stepped foot in Nachtsteindorf, Janus saw the terrifying monstrous side in their hosts.
Ah…the cavalry. Janus’ augmented ears picked up the woosh of large, winged creatures soaring across the evening sky, and he spared a glance upward just in time. A huge blur shot out of the town and up the ridge, a shining single-edged axe in its hand. Nicolas!
His wingmates lowered their pitch and descended into the gunmen. Like two-meter-tall rockets made of flesh, bone, and armor, they disappeared into the foliage. It was hard to see exactly what was happening, but from the bloodcurdling screams and the momentary change in the enemy’s firing patterns, the gargoyle defenders were earning their name.
Nicolas didn’t stop at the front line of mercs, however. He spun his enormous bulk like a rifle bullet, passing within a meter of where the hit-drone hovered in the air, its secondary weapons rattling off little lead droplets on the crypto’s ridged head and craggy shoulders. As he passed, his tail swung out behind him and crashed into the remote-controlled gun platform.
The cluster of dense spikes tore a huge chunk of metal plating—and the entire sniper rifle—off the drone’s side, causing it to spin erratically in place like a sparking, smoking, anti-gravity top.
While it wasn’t enough to completely destroy the thing, the strike was exactly the opening the shadowrunners needed.
“Now!” Janus barked at his team.
The test of a good and skillful mission team was the ability to read one another’s actions. You had to know which actions were likely to be next, predict the movements and needs of the rest of the team. One member out of ammo? Cover them and allow them to reposition while reloading. Someone prepared for a tactical advance? Lay down suppressing fire while making yourself a more attractive—yet hopefully harder to hit—target in order for both of you to gain ground. Good teams can work all of these options out in virtual sims or tactical discussions.
Great teams do it instinctually.
Faust pushed toward the guardhouse and their awaiting weapon, tossing the activator key to Janus, who caught it as he surged forward toward the Rhino. One merc managed to fire off a three-round burst at Janus just as he vaulted over the low stone wall, but the merc was turned to a collapsing red ruin by two of Fee’s booming hand-cannon rounds punching fist-sized holes in their hip and chest.
Hollywood ran like an elven superhero out of a pulp action vid, holding his signature cowboy hat with one hand as he tucked into a foot-first baseball slide, his spurs sparking dazzlingly off the cement as he ended at Paco’s feet inside the guardhouse.
“Come to daddy,” he said, still lying on his back. He waggled his eyebrows at the gargoyle and put both his hands up like a toddler wanting to be picked up, opening and closing his hands in the universal sign of impatience.
“We will have words about—” Paco dropped the gun belt onto the awaiting elf.
“Yeah, yeah, all the sorries when I’m done justifying the means, okay?” Hollywood snatched his long-barreled revolver out of the air, rolled into a firing crouch within the doorway, kissed his weapon and whispered, “Welcome home, baby.” He squeezed off a single shot; the round punched through the wrist of the only merc he could get a decent angle on.
“Aaarnngh!” his target cried, the weight of his submachine gun pulling his hand down to swing by shredded tendons and tethering blood vessels from his ruined wrist. Luckily for him, there was a sword-wielding gargoyle standing right beside him to mercifully end his suffering with an organ-puncturing downward thrust.
Great job, team. Janus noted how well everyone was working together, but this mess wasn’t over yet.
From his new vantage point next to the Rhino, while he was trying to get the access keys to register and open the door, he could see two of the mercs getting the better of one of Nicolas’ gargoyles. Their SMGs were having little effect on the cryptos’ dense skin, so they had switched to much higher-punching .45s and were in the process of bringing one of the winged swordsmen to their knees with several shots to the flanks and ribcage.
When that gargoyle fell, there was a sudden eruption of sound from all around. It was a dirge unlike anything Janus had heard before.
Every gargoyle within 100 meters or so—even those who weren’t involved in the combat at all—all opened up their mouths and let out a droning howl. The release of pain was so apparent in that sound that everyone paused for a second. It started loud and piercing, like the wail of a coyote, and rolled and reverberated into the lung-rattling groan of stones settling after an earthquake.
Janus snapped himself back to the moment, that sound still echoing in his mind and likely would for a long, long time. “Got it!” The access keys finally made the connection, and the door popped open, allowing him to hop inside and enjoy the staccato pinging of bullets off the vehicle’s armored hull.
Damn, she wasn’t joking. This vehicle sacrificed almost a third of its empty space, already tight for the team, and gave it all to upgraded tech components. He took a quick survey of the inside of the vehicle. It was a tight fit for four, cramped for five—probably impossible if one of those five was Gute Fee. There was a strange chair-like thing covered in cables and plastic sacks in the back taking up a large chunk of space. Janus didn’t recognize what it might be, but it looked halfway medical in nature. If he had net access, he could do a shadownet image search, but that wasn’t an option inside Nachtsteindorf. Damn this null…zone?
That’s when it hit him. Amanda said the Rhino had a signal booster in it, and they weren’t actually in the village anymore. All he had to do was punch through the vehicle’s firewall and he’d be grid-hopping and data-jacking again.
Even as Janus slid his tether into the dashboard and the sister cable into his temple, bridging everything through his cyberdeck, he knew this could take a minute or so—which could mean life or death for his team, who were fighting professional hit-mercs, and Tanzo—who was trying to be the smallest target he could behind whatever cover he could find.
The shadowrunners were all snapping off shots at targets that presented themselves, but did so without giving the damaged hit-drone a line of fire with its remaining firepower. One round sliced a trench in Fee’s upper arm, causing a lot of superficial bleeding, but it was enough to be able to recognize the rounds they were using would turn an unarmored Tanzo into roadkill pretty easily.
“Hold still, señorita,” Paco said, holding a glowing hand over the injured arm. When he pulled away, the wound was bloody and slick—but was freshly healed scar tissue beneath.
“Danke,” she said, wiping the spilled blood off her newly healed arm with the opposite hand and flicking it to the ground with a whip of her fingers.
“Ahhh!” A stray stitching of rounds fractured the stone Janus urged Tanzo to hide behind. “Are we winning, or are we fragged!?!”
“Can’t we be both, mate?” Faust shouted back, belly-crawling from their cover to duck down behind the wall—just a few meters from the open door on the Rhino. “Just keep your bloody head down and let us do our job!”
“Nobody else has to die!” One of the mercs shouted, their voice booming through some kind of audio broadcaster. “Just send out the grid-jock and we can all go home.”
Except Tanzo, Janus mentally noted. Not going to happen.
Inside the Rhino, he continued to work his digital magic. The firewall and IC Amanda’s corporate deckers had installed were surprisingly thorough, and were doing a remarkable job keeping him out of the system. It would be so much easier if he had her access passwords.
Or…
He pulled out Amanda’s SINfo datachip and slapped it into his port. While his original plan was to use all of her info to fake documents, route messages, maybe skim a little corporate blackmail if need be, the chip might actually be useful now. A SINfo loadout like this would have required her to give lots of permissions and encryption openings in order to create the resource his processor was currently scouring. Not everyone goes back and erases the metadata from the AR inputs, and if he was lucky…
Yes! There it was, all her 1s and 0s laid out like ingredients to make a cake, and he was about to mix up something truly special using her identity flags. Janus never had a true addiction—something his NeoNet shopping history might contradict—but he suddenly understood how it must feel for a Beetlehead or chem-junkie to get their fix. The rush of Matrix access flooded down through the Rhino’s booster, into his deck, to become a storm of information at the edge of his synaptic booster. At the speed of thought, he started patching information to useful sections of his storage capacity, accessed the vehicular functions of the Rhino, and started the search for whatever the hell that chair thing was. I’m back, chummers.
“Get the package on wheels, team!” Janus’ voice boomed out of the Rhino’s speaker system and the vehicle’s engine thrummed to life.
“You heard the man.” Faust reached into their jacket and produced two thin plastic tubes about the length of a drumstick and as big around as twice their thumb. Striking one against the other, the ends of both flared into a neon green flame and bubbled out tremendous amounts of deep blue smoke. Throwing the smokers into the path between the mercs and the team, Faust then gestured for Tanzo to get up and run to the Rhino.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Fee growled.
Come on Fee, you got this. Janus watched her in action, and was once again thankful Harkon had lined her up for the team. He knew her troll eyes were able to perceive the poorly masked mercs’ heat signatures through the smoke as well or better than his own cybereyes—and he took a staggered gasp when one made the motions of throwing something at the Rhino; most likely a grenade. She pulled the trigger on her last round in the current loader, which meant she had none left apart from some scattered shells in her backpack. The shot hit low, forcing the merc to double over as he tossed the explosive. It didn’t go very far, but it did land near where Faust was helping guide Tanzo into the vehicle.
“No!” Geoff leaped, his wings opening to help glide the distance, putting his whole body between the grenade and Faust. When it detonated, the gargoyle took the worst of the high-fragmentation payload up and down his back, tearing the thin parts of his wings to ribbons as he crashed clumsily to the ground. He may or may not have been dead, but it wasn’t looking good just by the amount of thick brown blood pooling all around him.
“ENOUGH!” Nicolas’ voice was like thunder as he dropped from the sky, catching the damaged hit-drone in the claws of one foot on his descent so his landing. It was the first time Janus noted a gargoyle made a sound when landing—crushing the hovering ovoid like a metallic coconut beneath it. In the mighty crypto’s outstretched arm, clutched around the neck in one thick-fingered hand, was one of the mercs, bloodied but not dead. “Nachtsteindorf is a sanctuary! There has been enough killing here today. NO MORE!”
>Get to the Rhino, Janus messaged to everyone, triggering the side door to slide open. Between the close proximity and the Rhino’s booster, he knew everyone got it—even Fee, who turned her wrist to see the readout on her wristview. >We can’t stay here. All we’re doing is endangering our friends if we stick around.
“One step ahead of you, el jefe,” Hollywood laughed, stepping inside the Rhino.
“Like the post…” Faust helped a very frightened Tanzo in and hopped in after. “I always deliver.” They paused, looking back at the medical apparatus taking up so much room in the altered cabin.
“Yeah.” Janus saw their eyes land on the device. “I’m still trying to figure out what they were going to do with that.”
“Fraggin’ corpo scum.” Faust shook their head. “That’s a coma couch, mate. You sit down, they plug you in, and boom, it’s night-night until they unplug you. Those cats were going to sleep you the whole way, Tanzo.”
“What I miss?” Fee said, out of breath as she leaned into the side of the Rhino. “Ooh, tight fit, huh?”
Outside, Nicolas was still trying to take control of the situation—to no avail. The few remaining mercs continued to shoot at the vehicle and at the gargoyles, neither having much effect. He was forced to cut down an ork trying to shove his pistol in his face, and the drone-rigger squirmed and wriggled like a worm on a hook in Nicolas’ grip.
“He can’t…be allowed…” the merc rigger choked out, struggling enough to get his hand to touch some blinking lights on his opposite forearm. “…to get away.”
Oh frag. If they can’t have him…
Janus picked up the burst tracking signal as it linked up from a preset mobile platform over a mile away.
…no one can!
“Fee?” Janus said quickly, keeping his composure despite what he knew was on its way. “Tear that damned chair out, don’t be gentle, and then everybody strap in. I think things are going to get very messy very quick.”
The troll reached in, and soon the screech of rending metal could be heard as she reconfigured the passenger compartment to her liking.
Estimated twelve seconds.
“Nicolas,” Janus said over the speakers as the team did the proper rearranging of the furniture in the back, “drop that ork and get to safety. Give Desirah our thanks, and I hope we meet up again someday—but you need to go, now!”
“All set, Janus,” Faust exhaled nervously, having heard his warning to the gargoyles. “Or as much as we can be for…exactly what are we rabbiting from this time?”
Everyone was belted in one of the seats. Everyone except Gute Fee, who sat cross-legged in the very back, right where the coma couch had been previously bolted down. Everyone gave Janus the silent approval to bug out, and he threw the Rhino in reverse. It lurched to life, spitting gravel from beneath its specialized off-roading wheels.
Four seconds.
That’s when they heard it.
The high-pitched whine of multiple turbine engines all singing their way toward the crater. Too small to be a true aircraft, too big to be a common surveillance UMAC…it fell into that rare category of drone only the corps could afford. The kind that carried military-grade munitions.
“Hold on, everybody,” Janus said, spinning the Rhino around toward the road out and flooring the accelerator. “It’s about to get bumpy.”
“Hey.” Hollywood looked out the side window at the growing drop-off on the inside edge of the path. “I didn’t just survive a firefight with corp wetworkers to die in a vehicle mishap. Maybe ease up on the juice?”
“You’ll thank me in two…one…” Janus hoped Nicolas and the others heeded his warning.
There was a silvery streak the shape of a large arrowhead, like one of those ancient shields historic knights carried when jousting, that passed by overhead. As it did so, a dozen small ports opened up on its underbelly. From those ports emerged twice that number of round-tipped cylinders, each one about a half-meter in length. The cylinders fell and their own thrusters ignited, sending the whole payload zooming toward the ground in an efficient, mathematically calculated carpeting pattern that began at the side of the crater, walking down across the roadway, into the clearing, and then all across the wall, gate, guardhouse, and 100 meters in all directions.
Too close… too close…
The resulting plumes of blue-hot flame and debris expanded into a tide of destruction and heat the team could feel inside the Rhino. It was impossibly bright, the commercial flash compensation built into Janus’ cybereyes still forcing him to turn away to avoid burning the image in his HUD. It was the kind of strike that would be seen for 50 kilometers in every direction, and Nachtsteindorf would no doubt have to double and redouble their efforts to stay unnoticed in the days and weeks to come. Someone would come to investigate, that was for sure.
I hope you guys make it, crypto chummers. Janus had time to spare them a quick thought before the concussion wave hit the back of the Rhino. All the air collapsing in on itself when the burn took off caused a huge wall of force to expand out from the impacts, much like dropping a huge rock into a still pond causes waves when the water swallows it up. The whole vehicle started to shake and sway, and it took every bit of Janus’ mediocre driving skills to stay on the increasingly thinner roadway back to the top of the crater.
Checking the rear cam, he saw everything behind them was fire, smoke, and debris. Janus could see some dark winged shapes flying erratically in the growing cloud, and he hoped it was emergency aids and not burning Kind he was seeing the silhouettes of.
A few more seconds of fishtailing and close calls at the edges of the crater path, and the Rhino crested the lip of the crater and was back on the outdoor trails. Adrenaline tingled in his veins. His datajack was not coded for vehicle rigging, and the hotwired connection to the signal-boosted Rhino was causing it to get palpably hot in the side of his head.
“Are we clear?” Faust asked, looking out the window at the trees and quarry ridges blurring by. “Did we make it?”
Let’s make sure. Janus implanted his ghosting program into the Rhino’s GPS and tracking macros, then rerouted the signal booster’s juice to make it clock double-time. “I’ve got us running like a phantom,” he said. “Even that strike drone shouldn’t be able to see us.”
“You look maxed and taxed, boss.” Hollywood tipped up the brim of his hat. “We can’t have you go burnin’ out on us. How long can you keep it up?”
As long as I have to. “Let’s get a little further away and then I’ll loop it.” Hollywood was right; if Janus kept up like this for too long, he could risk a nasty backlash from all the noise, or worse—he could overclock his gear and damage something utterly impossible to get fixed or replaced out here in the AGS. Who knew what a slab-doc would charge for a new port in this part of the world?
“Just be careful.” Tanzo looked absolutely exhausted. “And…thank you.”
“Just doin’ our jobs, mate.” Faust patted the coder’s knee. “We’re professionals, remember!”
“You know what I mean.” Tanzo slumped slightly forward as he rocked back and forth with the suspension of the Rhino. “You guys didn’t sign up for all of this. You could have glassed me to those mercenaries back there, but you didn’t. You put your meat on the line…again…for what really has turned out to be a bug in your system.” He chuckled. “If I was on quality assurance for the code that is our relationship, I’d have flagged me as a fatal error and started a full-version autopsy.”
“We have a job to do,” Janus reassured him. “Only cowards and amateurs cut and run when the whys and hows get a little tangled.”
“And Gute Fee is no coward!” she exclaimed.
“We’ll see it through.” Janus forced a smile. “Even when things get FUBARed.”
“And hells, man.” Hollywood slapped his own thigh. “Think of it this way. It can’t get any worse, right? Nowhere to go but up.”
Fragging Hollywood, thought Janus. Why’d you have to go and tempt fate like that?