by Jak Koke
ONE WRONG MOVE COULD BE YOUR LAST
In the mission given him by the Dragon Dunkelzahn, Ryan Mercury promises to deliver the magical Dragon Heart safely to the metaplanes, where Thayla and her song are all that defend the earth against the onslaught of the Enemy. But when the protector of the world is swallowed by the Chasm, all hope for the future disappears with her. Now nothing stands between humanity and the greatest scourge the planet has ever known....
The Enemy bears unlimited power, all of it evil. With Thayla destroyed, and the metaplanes unprotected, the Enemy's army of flesh-shredding beasts is about to lay waste to the world. As the ultimate battle is waged between the forces of good and evil, Ryan and his dauntless shadowrunners have only two options: total victory or certain death....
BEYOND THE PALE
SHADOWRUN : 30
BEYOND THE PALE
Book 3 of the Dragon Heart Saga
Jak Koke
For my college professors,
Don Taylor and Richard Lyons, who taught me the basics of writing fiction.
And for my real world teachers,
Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who showed me how to make it my work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Steve Kenson for allowing me to use Talon, and Caroline Spector for loaning Aina to me. They add depth and focus to the novel. Credit should also go to Mike Mulvihill for his great help with the plots and characters in this trilogy, especially with regard to this final book.
My usual appreciation goes out to my readers, Jonathan Bond, Nicole Brown, Marsh Cassady, Seana Davidson, Jim Kitchen and Tom Lindell for insightful critiques of the manuscript. I’d like to extend a special thanks to my agent, Don Gerrard, and to Dorothy Jean Saint Germain for their welcome help in financial matters which arose during the writing of the manuscript. And finally, much gratitude goes to Donna Ippolito at FASA for excellent editing and for making this trilogy possible.
The year is 2057 . . .
And magic has returned to the earth after an absence of many thousands of years. What the Mayan calendar called the Fifth World has given way to the Sixth, a new cycle of magic, marked by the waking of the great dragon Ryumyo in the year 2011. The Sixth World is an age of magic and technology. An Awakened age.
The rising magic has caused the archaic races to re-emerge. Metahumanity. First came the elves, tall and slender with pointed ears and almond eyes. They were born to human parents, just as were dwarfs shortly thereafter. Then later came the orks and the trolls, some born changed, like elves and dwarfs, but others goblinized—transformed from human form into their true nature as the rising magic activated their DNA. Manifesting as larger bodies, heavily muscled with tusked mouths and warty skin.
Even the most ancient and intelligent of beings, the great dragons, have come out of their long hiding. Only a few of these creatures are known to exist, and most of them have chosen a life of isolation and secrecy. But some, able to assume human form, have integrated themselves into the affairs of metahumanity. They have used their ancient intellect, their powerful magic, and their innate cunning to ascend to positions of power. One is known to own and run Saeder-Krupp—the largest megacorporation in the world. Another—Dunkelzahn—is the most controversial creature ever to have been elected to the presidency of the United Canadian and American States. Dunkelzahn was assassinated in a mysterious explosion on 9 August 2057—the night of his inauguration.
The Sixth World is afar cry from the mundane environment of the Fifth. It is exotic and strange, a paradoxical blend of the scientific and the arcane. The advance of technology has reached a feverish pace. The distinction between man and machine is becoming blurred by the advent of direct neural interfacing. Cyberware. Machine and computer implants are commonplace, making metal of flesh, pulsing electrons into neurons at the speed of thought. People of the Sixth World are a new breed—stronger, smarter, faster. Less human.
The Matrix has grown like a phoenix out of the ashes of the old global computer network. A virtual world of computer-generated reality has emerged, a universe of electrons and CPU cycles controlled and manipulated by those with the fastest cyberdecks, with the hottest new code.
It is an era where information is power, where data and money are one and the same. Multinational megacorporations have replaced superpower governments as the true forces on the planet. In a world where cities have grown into huge sprawls of concrete and steel, walled-off corporate enclaves and massive arcologies have superseded two-car garages, vegetable gardens, and white picket fences. The megacorps exploit masses of wage-slaves for the profit of a lucky and ruthless few.
But in the shadows of the mammoth corporate arcologies live the SINless. Those without System Identification Numbers are not recognized by the machinery of society, by the bureaucracy that has grown so massive and complex that nobody understands it completely. Among the SINless are the shadowrunners, traffickers in stolen data and hot information, mercenaries of the street—discreet, effective, and untraceable.
* * *
The Sixth World is full of surprises, not the least of which is the recent discovery of a Locus by Aztechnology, a megacorporation with a dark and bloody core. The Locus serves as a focus for metahuman sacrifices. It gives the puppeteers who control Aztechnology the power they need to construct their metaplanar bridge to the tzitzimine—demons who live off torture and suffering. When the bridge is completed, the demons will come into this world and ravage it. Aztechnology believes it will be rewarded as the tzitzimine scourge the land, bringing a millennium of pain.
Only Ryan Mercury can stop them. He is an undercover operative who worked for the recently assassinated great dragon, Dunkelzahn. Ryan must take the Dragon Heart—a magical item of immeasurable power—to the metaplanar bridge and give it to Thayla, whose song protects the world from the demons she calls the Enemy. The Dragon Heart will give Thayla the power to destroy the bridge.
Recently, Thayla’s power over the bridge was breached by Señor Oscuro, an agent of Aztechnology. And at the same time Ryan Mercury struggled to overcome the selfish personality inside that inspired him to keep the Dragon Heart for himself. The evil part of him that allowed the cyberzombie, Burnout, to steal the artifact.
Ryan defeated Burnout, throwing him into the depths of Hells Canyon, but the cyberzombie reached out and snatched the Dragon Heart. Burnout plummeted into the chasm, taking the salvation of the world with him.
* * *
As the cyberzombie fell into the canyon, the powerful spirit, Lethe, possessed him in order to protect the Dragon Heart. Like Ryan, Lethe wanted to get the artifact to Thayla, but the spirit had seen Ryan claim the Heart for his own and had decided that Ryan could not be trusted.
Falling into Hells Canyon, Lethe found himself caught inside the cybermantic magic that kept Burnout's own spirit from leaving. Over time, the spirits of Lethe and Burnout grew connected; Burnout gave Lethe a physical presence and allowed him to be in contact with the Dragon Heart. And Lethe expanded Burnout’s spirit, bringing him back from the edge of sanity, stabilizing his psyche.
Ryan tracked the possessed cyberzombie, but was unable to defeat him and retrieve the Dragon Heart. In the final confrontation between Ryan and Burnout, they fought to a stalemate until Ryan sacrificed himself in order to get the Dragon Heart back.
It was Lethe who intervened, using the power of the Dragon Heart to save Ryan at the last second. During the fight, the spirit saw the truth that Ryan no longer desired to keep the Heart for himself. That Ryan was willing to give his very life to complete the mission given him by Dunkelzahn—to carry the artifact to Thayla.
Now, however, Ryan knows that in order to finish the mission, he will have to contact ancient and powerful beings. He know
s he must come head to head against the purest evil. This is the only way he can prevent the Enemy from coming across prematurely and ravaging the world.
Señor Oscuro and his pawns have already burned their wedge of darkness into Thayla’s light. They are poised to attack her until her song is silenced. Until she is dead and they can finish building their bridge to oblivion.
Now that Ryan has the Dragon Heart, he must get it to Thayla before she is buried under Oscuro’s onslaught. Ryan is unwavering in his commitment to his mission. He knows it will take more than he’s ever given, perhaps more than he can give.
Perhaps more even than his life.
Prologue
His name was Billy Madson, and he was a boy in the body of a machine.
A boy with a guardian angel hovering around him. Protecting him. Calming him when the vicious memories came rushing back, the violence and the killing. Memories of his previous incarnation—a cyberzombie who was called Burnout.
The angel surrounded and buoyed Billy. The angel was the only reason Billy still lived. The angel’s name was Lethe, and he had saved Billy’s life. He had shown Billy the images of terrible beauty, blinding light and a song that brought tears to the boy’s eyes. A voice of such power and purity that even Lethe’s memory of it, filtered through Billy’s mechanical body and into the recesses of Billy’s mind, had moved him back from the edge of death.
Back among the living.
Now, Billy lay on his back, shackled unceremoniously to a metal operating table. Technicians and doctors had probed and studied him, apparently interested in the technology of his body. A few hours ago, they had left the room, leaving him attached to machines that monitored his brain patterns and the electrical activity of his cyberware.
The room was quite secure, he knew. His mind had automatically analyzed it for avenues of escape. He had done this without thinking, the possible scenarios running like a subroutine in the back of his mind, and he had marveled at himself for it.
I am built to kill and to destroy. A combat machine.
“Someone’s coming,” Lethe said, his soothing voice dropping into Billy’s mind through a device in his cybernetics called the IMS—Invoked Memory Stimulator.
Billy opened his eyes to the darkened room. It was night, and moonlight shone through the barred and fenced-over windows, the crisscrossed shadows rippling over the floor and table next to him. Like hatch-marked silver.
“Not the same as before,” Lethe said. “I sense stealth and barely contained aggression in those who approach.”
Billy yanked at the heavy bands that anchored his legs, arms, chest, and head to the table, but he couldn’t even turn his head, and much of his connection to his cybernetics had been disrupted by the doctors. “Can you tell if they’re coming to kill us?”
Billy sensed laughter through the IMS. “No, my friend, I cannot read minds. I can only sense auras. Here they come.”
The door to the room opened and someone entered, perhaps several people. Billy could hear them only when he cranked up the sensitivity on his cybernetic ears to their maximum. He could sense the slight pressure shift in the room as well.
“Señor, aqui!" The words were barely audible, subvocalized into a throat mic or headware, but Billy understood what they meant. “Over here, sir.”
The Azzies have found me, finally.
Several people surrounded him. Billy couldn’t see them and suspected that they had hidden themselves magically. He felt pressure against his chest and a compartment popped open. Then something was jacked into him, running diagnostics.
Billy knew that in his past life as the cyberzombie, Burnout, this had happened to him on a regular basis. Just a routine systems check. The portable deck was speaking to his brain, telling him exactly which parts were malfunctioning, which parts worked, and how much damage he had sustained in his quest to destroy Ryan Mercury.
A quest that now seemed so distant, so remote as to be unimportant. In fact, it was Ryan Mercury who had brought Burnout so close to death that he had lost his identity. Or rediscovered it. His previous incarnation had died in the massive fire in Dunkelzahn’s arboretum only hours ago, and Billy was not sad about it.
Perhaps Ryan Mercury did me a favor by almost killing me.
The irony did not escape Billy.
The diagnostic program indicated that his homing signal had been destroyed, probably when he had fallen into Hells Canyon. Another confrontation with Mercury that seemed like eons ago even though it had only been a week or so.
“Remarkable,” whispered one of the invisible people standing over him. “He has sustained a huge amount of abuse, but he lives on. I think we should abort termination and take him back with us.”
“Sí, ” came the response.
The paralysis started in his toes and moved up rapidly, system by system through his knees, legs, waist. Up through his torso and chest it traveled, the sheer absence of feeling. No tingling numbness, just a digital erasure of his sensory perception.
His taste turned off with a click, then his sight, hearing, until finally he was alone inside a vast ocean of darkness. A brain in a sensory deprivation tank.
Lethe, he thought.
Yes, Billy?
Could you show me Thayla again?
Billy felt the spirit smile inside and suddenly the darkness gave way to a brilliant light. The silence yielded to the glorious song of the goddess Thayla who stood on a cracked plane of rock. The light shone from her like a beacon against the darkness, a wondrous sun in the blackest firmament. The song and the light were one and the same. Her voice rang out, rising and falling in beautiful melodious waves, washing over him like warm surf. Until he cared not who he was and why he was there.
He merely wanted to stay forever.
Lethe’s memory of Thayla was flawless, the sensation of the experience overwhelming Billy until he knew that he must join his guardian angel in his quest to help Thayla. The beauty must not be destroyed.
But we’re in no position to help, he thought. When we wake, we will be in Aztlan.
If we wake.
23 August 2057
1
Ryan Mercury woke. The fragments of his dream crashing through his skull like broken shards of a ceramic sculpture. A shattered nightmare of sharp edges and cold, hard clay.
Ryan shivered. The pre-dawn air filtered crisp and cool over his body as he slipped out of bed and walked across the chilly marble of his recovery room. In the aftermath of his confrontation with Burnout, he had been given a small, quiet room in the west wing of Dunkelzahn’s Georgetown mansion.
Ryan had recently used the Dragon Heart, which sat on the night stand next to his bed, to heal the bullet wound in his chest and the burns that covered his entire body. Now it was time to see what he looked like.
As he moved across the cold floor, he stared into the full-length mirror at his dark reflection—an apparition of shadows. A tattered mummy fluttering in the dim light cast by the reddening sky outside.
Ryan stood tall, trying to forget the dream, trying to discard the images of the horrible creatures attacking the goddess, ripping into her luminous flesh, like acid-soaked razors into unmarred skin.
With effort, he pushed the memory of their putrid stench from his mind and focused on the immediate. He looked at his reflection in the mirror as he slowly peeled off the bandages. He unwound the white gauze carefully, feeling no pain as the dried fabric pulled away from his healed skin. The Dragon Heart had worked its wonderful magic, bringing him to full strength in the passage of only one night.
Ryan’s body emerged in front of him from beneath the bandages. A two-meter chunk of humanity, dense and strongly muscled. Ryan was pure flesh, no cybernetic or biological augmentation. He gained all his extraordinary strength and quickness from well-toned natural muscle and reflexes that were enhanced by magic. Magic that came from the Silent Way—the physical adept path he had learned from the great dragon Dunkelzahn.
His hair caught the dim ligh
t from outside, its auburn color reflecting red. And as he leaned in close to examine his face, he saw that his silver-flecked blue eyes were clear. All the bloodshot fatigue had been washed away by the Dragon Heart’s magic.
Amazing, he thought.
Tiny hairline scars crisscrossed the flesh of his shoulders and head, left over from the cuts made by flying glass shrapnel. It was difficult to believe that it had all happened last night. His confrontation of Damien Knight, his battle with Burnout, his effort to save Nadja. The explosion that had nearly killed him.
Ryan finished unwinding the bandages, feeling like a freshly emerged butterfly, his new skin sensitive and cold in the slight breeze that blew in through the open window. He threw the bandages on the bed and dressed in a piycra nightsuit.
Since I can't sleep anyway, he thought, I might as well get up and run through some katas.
As he pulled a dark shirt over his head, his wristphone rang. He walked to the bedside table, picked it up, and looked at the tiny screen to see who was calling.
The code for Jane-in-the-box flashed across the top of the screen. Jane-in-the-box was the human woman who had been Dunkelzahn’s decker for many years. Now that the dragon was dead, she worked for Nadja Daviar and the Draco Foundation. And sometimes, she ran the Matrix for Assets Incorporated, Ryan’s team of shadowrunners.
Ryan strapped the phone to his wrist and punched the Connect button.
Jane’s persona appeared—a cartoon image of a blonde human woman with pouting red lips, giant blue eyes, and huge breasts encased in red vinyl. Ryan knew that the real Jane, who decked from a physical location deep underground in Dunkelzahn’s Lake Louise lair, looked nothing like the icon on his small screen. She was rail-thin and somewhat homely, had an acerbic wit and a razor-sharp intellect.
Jane smiled. “Quicksilver,” she said. “You’re awake, and I must say that you look none the worse for almost dying just a few hours ago.”
