by Mel Odom
I lost sight of her as she plunged below the roofline of a warehouse in front of him, I had to turn left to avoid the sudden dead end. A glance down at the BattleTac assured me that she was still mobile. The purple blip with the number 7 beside it that represented Laveau moved across the BattleTac monitor screen.
"You know how dese things work." Laveau went on.
I didn't know for sure how magic worked, though I'd studied a number of the concepts. While in the astral, a mage or voudoun houngan can whip around incredible distances and see any number of things, but reading is impossible and it's hard to know an exact location without a familiarity with the terrain. "Give me something to work with."
"I was in a round room, cher, on top of dis warehouse. But dere are so many warehouse, I couldn't tell you which one."
"Peg." I said. Ahead of me, another sec van slammed crossways in the street, blocking any further progress in that direction. A quick glance in the rear view mirror let me know another VaulTek sec vehicle was behind me, cutting me off.
"I'm searching." Peg replied.
I pinned the Patrol-One's accelerator to the floor, listening to the engine roar in protest. The throb in my wounded leg picked up the pace along with the acceleration. "Get down." I growled at Archangel as I pulled on the wheel and aimed it at the warehouse in front of us.
UPLOAD TO CONTINUE
61
[Chip file: Argent
Security access: ******—23:07:59/10-14-60]
UPLOAD CONTINUED
Location: Seattle Safehouse (recorded at a later time)
The plastisteel sheet metal wall of the warehouse caved in when the Patrol-One's reinforced bumper slammed into it. The vehicle was built to be a four-wheel-drive powered battering ram when it needed to be. Twisted sheets buckled around the vehicle, and a support strut gave a moment's pause before tearing away.
I sheared through two more supports on my way to the other side of the empty warehouse. The Patrol-One's headlights reflected a sickly green from the eyes of a rat horde clustered around the remains of a fresh corpse in the corner. They started to scurry away as I raced through.
The Patrol-One's reinforced window starred under the repeated impacts as it battered its way through the wall on the other side. A fine web work of cracks covered the panes, blurring vision.
Once we were safely through, I pulled hard right, my mind racing as I tried to keep everything straight.
By now the Devil Rat would be on the ground, hopefully in one piece.
"I found the location." Peg called over the commlink. "At least, I believe I did. It's the only building in the area with the architecture Laveau described."
"Light it up for me." I glanced at the BattleTac monitor on my wrist. The Patrol-One handled sluggishly for a moment till it cleared the jumbled plastisteel sheets from under its tires.
A gold hexagon formed on the BattleTac monitor, marking the location Peg had uncovered. I tapped a key, bringing up all the street markings. I also scanned the positions of the other members of the team, checking the life signs indicators. Everyone was still alive, still moving.
But I knew Ironaxe was out there waiting to change that. I accessed the commlink again, knowing we were about out of time there, too. "Summertrees, what kind of shape is that Rat in?"
The rigger's voice came on-line almost immediately, sounding resonant and distant, letting me know he'd jacked into the APC's cybersystems. "The gear here is all wiz. We missed the hole, but I'm getting there now." The sound of autofire rattled in the background of the comm-link, punctuating the roar of the Rat's engine.
"We're also attracting a lot of attention." Dane added.
I consulted the retina clock, knowing we were going to lose the sat-link in minutes. "Where are you?"
"Making my way to the exfiltration point. We're running hot on this one, Argent. It's time to slot it and go, chummer. If we don't have everything, call it a burn and let's buzz turbo anyway. Live to fight another day."
But I couldn't and I knew it. Those DNA samples spelled death for Sencio and her team. And maybe they could lead back to the team I'd put together for the run. That was a responsibility I couldn't ignore.
I put my foot on the brake and pulled into an alley. "Can you make it from here?" I asked Archangel.
The elven decker gave me a hard look. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going for DNA samples."
She hesitated, one hand on the door. "I—"
"No." I told her. "You'd only be in the way. It's a one person job if it works at all. And it's my responsibility."
Color drained from her face as the anger took her. I'd had no right saying that, and we both knew it. But I wasn' t going to be responsible forgetting her flatlined. "Damn you, Argent." She dropped my Ingram on the seat.
"Later." I said.
She got out of the Patrol-One and jogged into the shadows, following the directions given by the BattleTac.
I started the Patrol-One rolling, picking up a VaulTek security vehicle and three motorcycles that pulled onto my back trail. None of them appeared to have seen Archangel getting out. I pulled across the street so that the passengerside window looked back the way I'd come. Then I thumbed the window down with the electronic keypad and unleashed a burst at the lead motorcyclist to make sure I kept their attention.
The bullets knocked dust from the bike's front wheel, but it was a runflat tire and didn't deflate. I brought the cross hairs up and targeted the slag's helmet. The bullet-proofing kept the rounds from penetrating, but didn't take away all the impact. His head danced to the ballistic mambo and he went out of control.
I didn't wait to see what happened. I put my foot down hard and streaked for the site Peg had lit up. The sec vehicle behind me managed to overtake me and ram me, but the Patrol-One shrugged the effort off, hardly shuddering at all.
Since tracing DNA samples was mage work, it was a wiz bet that there'd be one or more spellworms at the site. I also knew Laveau hadn't come into the run alone.
She'd spent most of the last few days creating govis to hold the worker loas who were making the run with her. I accessed the commlink. "Laveau, there are going to be mageslaves at the site. Could you run interference for me?"
"Dis already be done, cher. Just you keep your head down, and Ogoun be dere in two shakes of a dead lamb's tail."
I didn't respond to that bit of advice. With the sec vehicles on my tail and VaulTek every bit as capable of outfitting their people with armor piercing rounds as anyone else, I had no margin for error.
Then there was nothing left because the sky lit up with arriving helos. My low-light vision marked the aiming lasers of several weapons. I counted at least five of them before I had to bring my attention back to the road. Even then, the Patrol-One slammed into the side of a warehouse and nearly jerked out of my control. "Peg, who the frag are these people?" The sure touch and the strength of my cyberarms helped me keep the Patrol-One shiny-side up.
"I'm checking, but I can't verify. It looks like Nakatomi's and Villiers's people."
I'd been wondering when they were going to make it in. With Archangel taking out their sat-links, they'd had no choice but to chance an on-site visual recon. Both of them were fighting for the same secret, the same edge over Ironaxe. The arriving helos drew groundfire as soon as they were within range, and they weren't shy about returning it either.
A glance at the BattleTac confirmed that I was on top of my destination. Checking ahead, I spotted the warehouse ahead and to the left, the second floor round instead of rectangular.
I reached for the weapons control pad to the left of the wheel, keying up the control menu for the turret gun I'd spotted when I checked out the console. Machinery whirred behind me, pushing the turret up to bare the Vigilant rotary cannon mounted there. Cross hairs pulsed through the Patrol-One's webbed windshield and I used the thumb toggle to line up the shot on the target. When it was there, I fired.
The cannon round smashed against the warehouse's front wall. I'd
expected it to be blown apart. Instead, it held up under the explosion, the incendiary force spending itself in a flaming wave meters from the wall. I almost pulled my foot from the accelerator and hit the brake, thinking I'd pile the Patrol-One up against that wall as well.
Then I heard Laveau over the commlink, her voice sounding strange and distant. "It's okay, cher. You ain't alone, you."
Without warning, Laveau levitated in front of me, approaching the building faster than the Patrol-One. I barely made her out as she moved, but noted the strange stiffness to her movements that told me she'd been mounted by one of the loas.
She drew back a hand and a huge fireball made up of massed coals formed in her palm. She threw the fireball against the front of the building. Green sparks raced like lightning. For a moment, the fireball hung in the air several centimeters from the building. Then, all at once, the fireball crunched into the building and punched on through.
"Dere, cher." Laveau said over the commlink. "Now de way is made clear. You be—"
Her voice cut off and the silence inside my head told me we'd just lost the sat-link Peg had arranged. I was alone, with only the living or dying to do.
END UPLOAD
62
Argent drove the Patrol-One into the weakened side of the building, exploding through the wall and skidding across the open expanse of plasticrete floor. His move-by-wire systems caused reaction problems because his body kept trying to move independently of the vehicle. He maintained control with difficulty, fighting the Patrol-One as well as his own body. He scanned the interior of the building.
Stairs to his left led up to the second floor. Laid out in a half-moon cut-out, the second floor overlooked the first, leaving a lot of open space. A dozen men occupied the second floor, surrounding tactical decks and equipment.
Argent slipped the transmission into first gear again and powered toward the stairs. Before he reached them, one of the sec vehicles and two of the surviving motorcycles roared through the opening he'd torn in the building's side. Autofire rattled the rear of the Patrol-One, and some of the armor-piercing rounds cored through.
Less than three meters away from the stairs, the plasticrete floor and a section of it surged up as a mound of earth broke through to the surface. It was proof enough that some of the people present were mages. Argent had no time for evasion.
The Patrol-One shuddered to a stop when it hit the earthen barrier. The front end collapsed and the engine dropped out onto the ground as the collision safety features took over. In the next heartbeat, the pursuing sec vehicle slammed into Argent, barring escape in that direction even if the Patrol-One had still remained operational.
The Vigilance rotary cannon, though, was still working. Argent thumbed the keypad, watching the gunsight trying to manifest itself on the shattered remnants of the windshield. The cross hairs never locked in. Flipping another toggle, Argent shifted the cannon over to manual control.
He lined up the shot from sight judgment. The distance made the target even more accessible. A few of the men on the second floor noticed the cannon turret turning in their direction and yelled out warnings to the others. They started to clear from the tables.
Without hesitation, Argent thumbed the FIRE button. The Patrol-One shuddered as the cannon belched out a deadly round. The resulting explosion was almost instantaneous, whipping across the second floor and dropping flaming sections of it free. Before he could fire again, an incendiary force hammered the turret, twisting it out of shape.
The crash against the earthen wall had jammed the door and Argent wasn't able to open it easily.
Ramming his shoulder into the door, he knocked it off its hinges and dropped out onto the plasticrete floor with the Ingrams in his hands.
A semicircle of secmen fanned out behind the Patrol-One, firing at him. Argent squeezed the triggers of his weapons, rattling off short, telling bursts that knocked his opponents off their feet. Their return fire smacked against the light military armor, gouging it and slapping pieces from it. He felt another armor piercing round core through the flesh and blood part of his shoulder where his right cyberarm was connected, dangerously close to the control module that kept it working. Another pair of bullets cut through his cyberarm, leaving a buzzing sensation that signaled damage in their wake.
He aimed for feet and hands, areas where the secguards' armor didn't fully cover. And he geeked them when he could. In seconds, he was out of ammo for the Ingrams, and had broken the advancing line of VaulTek secguards.
Turning, gliding on legs powered by the move-by-wire systems and his own adrenaline, he let the Ingrams drop to the ends of the Whipit slings. As he started up the stairs behind him, he drew the Savalette Guardian and a Cougar Fine Blade fighting knife with a 30-centimeter blade.
A secman ran to the top of the stairs in front of the big shadowrunner, thinking to cut him off.
Argent raised the Guardian and put a pair of armor-piercing rounds into the man's face. The corpse fell backward.
By the time Argent reached the top of the stairs, smoke from the pools of fire left behind by the cannon round obscured some of the area. He scanned the floor, taking in the damage, listening to the gunfire coming from below as the secguards on the first floor tried to mount an offensive.
A mage stepped out of the smoke, hands working frantically in front of him.
Argent tried to bring the Guardian up, but suddenly it felt too fragging heavy at the end of his arm. Then he stopped moving entirely as the spell paralyzed him.
The mage slave grinned, then slammed across the room with crushing force and dropped to the floor.
The paralysis left Argent immediately. Turning, he spotted Laveau levitating on a level with the second floor. Her posture was ramrod stiff, letting him know that she' d been mounted by one of the loa she'd called in to help during the run. She carried a short sword in one hand. Her eyes looked like they were rolled up in her head, but he had no doubts that she could see him.
"You are free again, human." a deep, cold voice said from Laveau's lips. "Mambo Laveau says you are to come immediately. They await you."
The address let Argent know Laveau had been fully possessed by the loa she had named as Ogoun. He reloaded the Ingrams, staying out of sight from the gunners below. The slap of leather against plastisteel warned him of secguards racing up the stairs. "Can you get a message back to her?" he asked the towering loa.
"She hears you now."
"Laveau, get back to the team and get them moving." Argent said. "I'll catch up."
"That is not acceptable." Laveau's loa suddenly blazed flames, creating a fiery halo. It threw an arm toward the group of men racing up the stairs. A huge fireball formed in the air, growing five meters across before it slammed into the secguards and scattered their flaming bodies.
"It's going to have to be." Argent growled. "Even if I started back now, it would hold them up too long.
They need to buzz turbo now."
The loa-mounted mambo reached for him, levitating closer. "Not acceptable."
Knowing he could fight the loa on a physical level since it had manifested itself, the big shadowrunner slapped the hand way. Even then, the force only moved the hand a few centimeters. "Fight me and you may get me geeked because I'm not going till I'm ready. And if you fail to get Laveau back soon enough, you may get her geeked as well."
The loa snarled in anger, then levitated for the nearest window filled with broken panes of plastiglass.
Lungs burning from sucking down the smoke-laden air, trying to meet the need for oxygen in his system, Argent scanned the floor. The loa's fireball had not only taken out the secguards, but it had slagged the stairs as well. Moving forward, he found a wagemage, knowing the man for what he was by the fetishes he wore and the cut of his clothing.
Argent pressed the snout of an Ingram into the wage-mage's face. "Tell me where the DNA samples of the runners are or I'll geek you right here."
The wagemage was young and scared. A trickle
of blood wormed from his nose and across his lips.
"Portable freezer unit."
"Where?"
The wagemage pointed.
Glancing through the smoke, Argent spotted the wheeled portable freezer. It canted back against the wall, obviously blown there from the cannon round, the door not fully closed anymore. He left the wagemage laying on the floor and crossed the room.
Before he reached it, the window nearby exploded inward, shattered by withering machine gun fire.
63
Argent dove to safety, narrowly avoiding the stream of machine gun fire that tore chunks from the plasticrete floor. Vibrations moved throughout the floor with the crescendo of impacts. He came up with the Ingrams firing, both of them locked onto the helo hovering outside the window.
His initial bursts cut holes in the helo's tail, then swept across the door gunner mounted in the cargo hold.
The gunner's body shivered as the bullets hit him, and he sprawled in the grip of the door gunner safety rig.
Then the ceiling window above Argent's head came apart. The big shadowrunner whirled, still lying on the ground, and raised the machine pistols to the latest threat. His mind raced, seeking the possibilities, selecting the greatest likelihood as a cybered man from the helo had leaped onto the top of the building and come crashing through the plastiglass.
He recognized the armored form in front of him, the face barely discernible through the helmet. Aaron Bear-stalker was the number two man in Ironaxe's corporation, and was almost as heavily cybered as the VaulTek CEO.
Moving inhumanly fast, Bearstalker chopped at Argent with a short sword. Argent caught a glimmer of light as the sword streaked for his hands, realizing that the sword carried a monofilament edge that could shear through his cyberlimbs like butter. There was no time to shoot and save his hands at the same time.
He tried to pull his hands back, but the sword whistled through the Ingrams, lopping them off just short of his knuckles.
Argent dropped the useless machine pistols and rolled to one side as the sword came at him again. The mono-filament edge bit deeply into the floor.
