Poison Agendas

by Stephen Kenson

  "Stay where you are." she commanded. Her voice carried easily over the noise of the LAV. Kellan realized it was because the voice was in her head, not her ears. "If you attempt to leave the area or if you take any hostile action toward the landing craft, we will respond with deadly force. Do you understand?"

  "Who the frag are you?" Orion demanded and the woman's image turned to regard him coldly.

  "Right now, I'm the woman who has about a million nuyen in ordnance aimed at you. Behave yourselves and I won't have to use it."

  The elf warrior fell silent. Apparently satisfied that they were going to obey, the woman's image faded out.

  The LAV banked in for a landing in the clearing. As it did so, Kellan could make out the red logo on its side: the stylized profile of an ancient Greek warrior wearing a plumed helmet.

  "These guys are Ares!" she called out to Midnight, who nodded gravely.

  Kellan's mind was racing. What was an Ares thunderbird doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Brickman worked for Knight Errant, which was a subsidiary of Ares Macrotechnology. Could he have sent the thunderbird and its crew as backup? If so, then why the hostile attitude? More importantly, how would Brickman even know where they were in order to send reinforcements?

  Kellan covered her face with her arm to ward off the backwash from the thunderbird's thrusters, which sent up a spray of dirt and dead leaves before the pilot cut the engines and the LAV settled onto the ground. The side hatch opened and the woman whose image they had seen emerged in the flesh, accompanied by a half-dozen armed men in similar camo jumpsuits with the Ares logo on the shoulder and right breast. They wore sealed helmets with heads-up displays and carried Ares-made assault rifles at the ready.

  "We are royally fragged." Draven muttered from somewhere behind Kellan as the troops approached.

  "Captain Anna O'Connor, Ares Firewatch Team Epsilon." she announced, looking them over. "Who's in charge of this little group?" Natokah looked like he was going to reply, but Kellan stepped forward.

  "I am."

  O'Connor's eyebrows raised slightly above the edge of her shades as she looked Kellan over.

  "Is that so?" she said. "Well then, would you like to explain who you are and what you're doing here?"

  Kellan shrugged. "We're tourists." she began, but O'Connor cut her off with a sharp gesture.

  "Cut the drek, kid." she said. "We know you're packing a lot more than camping gear, and we know some serious magic went down around here in the last twenty-four hours. Now we can play this one of two ways: either you can come clean and answer all of my questions, or I can drop all of you in a hole so deep and so dark that nobody will ever see you again. Wakarimasuka?"

  "I think the Salish-Shidhe authorities might have something to say about that." Natokah stated, but O'Connor shook her head.

  "No, they won't. I've got special authority to deal with certain . . . incidents in this area. As far as you're concerned, I'm God. Got it? Now, let's start again. Who are you, and what the frag are you doing here?"

  Kellan swallowed with some effort and glanced at Midnight for support. O'Connor gestured curtly to her men, who advanced on the runners, weapons at the ready.

  "Okay, okay!" Kellan said, "We're doing a job."

  "What kind of job?"

  "There . . . there was data on an old U.S. weapons cache." Kellan fumbled, nodding toward the excavated opening in the slope nearby. "We came looking for it."

  The Ares commander looked around the makeshift camp. "I don't see any weapons."

  "A guy named Zhade took them." Kellan replied.

  "He just walked in and took these weapons? By himself?" she asked. Kellan couldn't tell if the Ares captain believed her or not; O'Connor's face was as impassive as stone.

  "He was a spell-slinger." Kellan explained. "I think a shaman."

  That seemed to get O'Connor's attention. Her brow furrowed. "A shaman?" she repeated. "What kind?"

  Kellan shook her head but Natokah spoke up.

  "Toxic." he said quietly. O'Connor snorted.

  "Great," she muttered, "as if we didn't have enough to deal with." She turned to one of the men who stood nearby.

  "Lieutenant, take a detachment and investigate this site." she told him and he snapped a salute in return, then went to do as ordered. "You," she said, turning back to the shadowrunners, "will stay right here until we assess the situation, which will give me a chance to make sure you're thoroughly checked out."

  "For what?" Kellan asked, but she received no answer.

  While some of the Ares personnel went to investigate the bunker, O'Connor had the shadowrunners stripped of their equipment, then examined each of them astrally. Kellan couldn't tell what the Ares officer was looking for, however. By the time her men returned, O'Connor had completed her astral scans and seemed satisfied with the results. Leaving some men to guard the runners, she moved off to confer with her second-in-command. While they were talking, an officer from the LAV brought O'Connor a message. She turned away from the lieutenant to speak briefly into her throat mic.

  "What are they going to do with us?" Kellan asked Midnight, who was standing closest to her.

  "I don't know." she replied. "If we're lucky, maybe Brickman can pull some strings—if he doesn't just deny having hired us."

  "And if we're not lucky?"

  Midnight didn't get a chance to answer that question as Captain O'Connor approached them again.

  "Get them on board." she told the Ares guards, who gestured toward the LAV with their weapons.

  "Where are you taking us?" Kellan asked.

  "No talking—move!" one of the guards barked, his voice electronically filtered through speakers in his helmet. He gestured again with his rifle for emphasis, and Kellan had no choice but to move.

  As soon as the shadowrunners were on board, the LAV fired up its engines. One of the Ares guards pulled the exterior hatch shut with a thunk that sounded through the cabin like a death knell in Kellan's ears. Now, there was no question: her first independent run had ended in complete failure. All she could do now was wait, and hope to survive the outcome.

  Chapter 20

  The light in the dark room came from a fist-sized globe of greenish fire hovering about three meters above the floor. It cast a sickly glow over the accumulated trash, the rusting and decaying detritus of civilization that filled the room. The shaman Zhade bent over a workbench set against one wall, studying the maps laid out in front of him.

  The shadows squeaked and chittered, and beady eyes reflected the greenish light as they watched the shaman at work.

  "Soon, soon." Zhade murmured soothingly. "Everything is nearly ready." One gloved finger traced a path on the map, following a line he had drawn when the opportunity first presented itself.

  "Soon," he repeated, "a part of the infestation in the body of the Mother will be no more. They will be seeing their last sunrise." His hand came to rest on the canisters liberated from the tribal lands, lovingly caressing the cold metal and flaking paint.

  "I have everything I need now . . . everything."

  * * *

  To Kellan, it felt like the Ares LAV flew higher and faster than the Leapin' Lizard had on its way into Salish-Shidhe territory, though it was difficult to tell. The cabin had no windows, only blank flatscreen monitors. She assumed the Ares personnel had direct feeds from the HUD to their helmets, possibly even headware displays. She thought she caught a glimpse of light flickering behind the dark shades Captain O'Connor wore, too.

  Although the cabin was larger than the Lizard's, Kellan felt cramped and claustrophobic. Not only were there a good number more people crammed into it . . . Kellan had entered the Native American Nations a shadowrunner at the top of her game, and she was leaving them a prisoner. The guards had aggressively discouraged the shadowrunners from talking to each other, so Kellan just sat and stared at the wall, turning the whole thing over and over in her mind, trying to figure out where she'd gone wrong.

  You know where you
went wrong. You went wrong when you thought you were ready for this. She could barely admit it, even to herself. She wasn't ready to lead a team on her own. The disaster this run had become had proven it, and now her team was going to pay for her inexperience. Well, I had enough experience to know that it is the leader's responsibility to solve problems: I'm still this team’s leader, so it's up to me to find a solution to this situation. She closed her eyes and considered. What did she have that she could use to bargain or negotiate?

  There's Brickman, she thought. Brickman worked for a subsidiary of Ares, and Ares had captured them. Maybe dropping Brickman's name could get them out of this, if Captain O'Connor believed they were working for him. Of course, Brickman said he would disavow Kellan and her team if they were caught, so it was possible mentioning him would get them nothing. It would get even worse if Brickman was already implicated in something. In that case, confirming they were working for him would do more harm than good.

  Brickman was the only leverage Kellan could think of, but she didn't want to waste the chance that he could help them by giving his name to O'Connor. If a connection with Brickman would get them in trouble, Kellan needed to know it. If Brickman could pull strings to help them out, she needed to get word to him. Of course, if he had set them up, then going to him directly would be dangerous. Assuming Kellan had the means to contact him at all . . .

  It’s useless, she thought angrily. Lothan was right. She should have listened to the troll mage when he came to her that night in her apartment, to warn her about Midnight and taking on this run. He—

  That's it! It took every ounce of self control she possessed to keep her eyes closed, to slump against her seat like she'd gone to sleep. She figured it wouldn't take much to convince the guards that she was exhausted, given the way her body ached and what she knew she must look like on just a few hours sleep after all they'd gone through.

  She took a deep breath and gently let it out, the tiny sound covered by the muffled thrumming of the engines. She concentrated.

  The sensation was always like letting yourself fall. Kellan imagined it was like overcoming the natural aversion to jumping off a diving board or out of a plane, even if you knew there was water or a parachute to break your fall. She suddenly felt weightless, and there was a blur of light and motion, then she was soaring.

  Kellan floated high in the air. She could see the rolling green of the land below, the night sky dappled with stars overhead. She looked around and saw the t-bird flying away, its running lights blinking. It took a moment to orient herself. Then she realized it was the first time she'd used astral projection from inside a moving vehicle—and one moving pretty fast, at that.

  Of course—when I left my body, my astral form stayed at rest. The LAV passed right through me and kept going. Carrying her teammates, and her physical body, on toward their destination, wherever that was.

  O'Connor had surely noticed Kellan's departure, but apparently wasn't going to try to stop her. Of course, she had Kellan's body as the perfect hostage, knowing Kellan had to return eventually.

  Kellan hoped she could find her body again. She'd learned the technique for returning to her body from Lothan, but she'd never before had to find her physical form—she'd only projected from a known and fixed location. Kellan couldn't afford to get lost, because she only had a limited time away from her body. Once the astral form left the physical form, the body began to die.

  If I die, I'm not taking anyone with me.

  Kellan soared higher. The earth dropped away below her, until she could see the glow of cities and towns, and even roads spread out like a map. She oriented on familiar landmarks and, with the speed of thought, arced toward the Seattle Metroplex, covering hundreds of kilometers in a matter of a few minutes.

  Once she reached the metroplex, it was easy to navigate her way to a particular house on Capitol Hill. She slowed and approached the shimmering wards covering the walls of the building, placing one ghostly hand against them and sending out a call, like a psychic knock on the door. The seconds seemed to drag past, then the surface of the ward rippled and parted, forming a gateway that allowed her to enter.

  She found Lothan in his study, as she'd expected. She couldn't tell if she'd awakened him from a sound sleep or if he was maintaining his typical nocturnal habits; he seemed completely unperturbed by her interruption, and unsurprised to see her.

  "Yes, Kellan, what is it?"

  Kellan hovered in the middle of the room for a moment. "Lothan, I—I need your help. I don't have much time."

  Her mentor's demeanor changed immediately. He turned from whatever it was he was reading on his desk to face Kellan directly.

  "Tell me, then," he said, "quickly."

  So she did. She told Lothan about getting backing for the run from Brickman, arranging to get into Salish-Shidhe territory, finding the chemical weapons, their encounter with the shaman Zhade, and the arrival of the Ares team. She braced herself for a lecture, a few acerbic words of recrimination—even for Lothan to dismiss her tale of woe and send her on her way, telling her she'd made her bed and now had to lie in it.

  The troll mage did none of those things. Instead, he immediately got to his feet, picked up his staff from its customary resting place and lifted his heavy overcoat from its hook.

  "Return to your body as quickly as you can, and don't leave it again until you hear from me. Let me look into a few things. Just sit tight and don't try anything foolish." She turned to leave and Lothan called after her.

  "And Kellan?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Don't worry. Everything will be all right."

  She paused for a moment, taking in the sober look of confidence on the old troll's lined face, then she nodded.

  "Thanks, Lothan."

  Slipping out through the wards on the house, Kellan concentrated on feeling the familiar pulse of her heart, the heaviness of her limbs. She focused and felt the faint, almost infinitesimal tug of her physical form, the unbreakable connection between body and spirit, and began to home in on it.

  It was slower going than Kellan expected. She cast around often, trying to make sure she was going the right way, careful to not overshoot in any direction. The lights of the metroplex faded in the distance, giving way to the wilderness of the tribal lands. Finally, she saw the running lights of the LAV in the distance. The closer she got, the stronger she felt the connection to her body, like it was drawing her in. In a rush, she flew into the thunderbird, the world spun, and she opened her eyes.

  "Welcome back." Captain O'Connor said in an acid tone, glaring at Kellan from across the cabin. "I was wondering if you were going to bother to return, or if you'd checked out for good."

  "I said she would be back." Orion defended her, but Kellan could hear the relief in his voice.

  "So, did you have a nice trip?" The Ares mage held Kellan's gaze for long minutes before she shrugged. "Doesn't matter, really, whether you tipped someone off or were trying to call in reinforcements. Frankly, I don't give a flying frag about whatever game you're playing. Once I deliver you to Seattle, you're not my problem anymore."

  "Seattle?" Kellan asked.

  "Naturally. Where did you think we were going? I told you, I've got a job to finish back in Hell's Canyon, so I'm making you somebody else's problem."

  Chapter 21

  It only took a few hours for the Ares t-bird to arrive in the Seattle Metroplex. Landing clearance was arranged—not at Sea-Tac Airport, but at a private airfield owned and operated by Ares for corporate commuter flights.

  The shadowrunners were ushered out of the thunderbird into an almost featureless room, the door closed and locked behind them.

  "What do you think they're—?" Orion began, but Midnight hushed him with a shake of her head and a finger held to her lips. She waved that finger toward the ceiling vaguely, indicating there might be listening devices in the room. It was likely they were being observed, and that someone was just waiting for them to say something interesting. The sh
adowrunners all got the message: better to remain silent than to give away what little they might be able to bargain with later.

  So they sat and waited in silence. Kellan considered using astral projection again but decided not to risk it. O'Connor might not have been interested in stopping her, but the magical security of the Ares facility might feel differently. Plus, there was no one besides Lothan to contact. So they waited.

  When the door of the room opened again, Simon Brickman stood there, a thunderous look distorting his usually bland expression. Rather than the fashionable business attire Kellan had seen him in previously, he was dressed in dark jeans and a close-fitting tee-shirt under a synthleather jacket equipped with armored padding and inserts. Dark shades covered his eyes, and he wore black wrist-length gloves.

  "Come with me." he ordered, and turned away from the open door.

  "What about our gear?" Orion asked, and Brickman spun back.

  "Do not make me regret getting you out of here." he said through clenched teeth. He turned and walked away. Brickman led them into one of the airfield administrative buildings and straight to a conference room. The runners were surprised to find Lothan waiting there. The troll mage stood on the far side of the table, leaning on his staff, because none of the chairs were large enough for him.

  Brickman closed the door behind them and made sure the blinds fully covered the windows. Then he took a small triangular device from the inside pocket of his jacket, checked its readout, and set it against the door just over the knob, where it clung with a click.

  "Sit." he said, as if he were speaking to a bad dog, and pointed at the conference table. The shadowrunners warily sat in the chairs closest to Brickman.

  "This has been quite possibly the worst frag-up to which I've ever been connected." Brickman began.