“No!” the Hatter snapped. “We own that land. If we let squatters think that they have a right to it just because they were there before we were, what sort of precedent would that set?”
Wallace counted to ten silently before he could trust himself to speak civilly. “Any special instructions on what I should do with the bodies?”
“Leave them where they are. You’re close enough to Hell’s Kitchen that Lone Star won’t be a problem. We’re going to be demolishing the building anyway; we can bury them underneath it. Just make sure you move all the survivors out of the immediate area.” He yawned. “There’s a squat near Petrowski Farms, isn’t there, with a soup kitchen? Dump them there, if you can get them all into your van. When do you think you’ll have the place secured?”
The mercenary chewed his bushy mustache. “Twenty-one hundred hours, if you want us to clear any out booby traps.
Maybe an hour earlier if you’d rather do that yourself.” He looked around as Lori leaned over the seat, her expression haunted. “ ’Scuse me a second.” He put the phone on hold. “Trouble?”
“Carpenter’s shot one of the squatters. A thirteen-year-old elf boy. Carpenter says he was armed.”
The ork groaned. “What do the squatters say?”
“ They say he’s dead.”
7
8-ball and Patty had set up an improvised pistol range at the back of the Crypt by rearranging some of the temporary walls and makeshift furniture, making sure there was no one who might be hit by bullets passing through the partitions. Then they’d given every squatter five rounds of gel ammunition, handed them Lankin’s silenced Fichetti, and watched them shoot. The dwarf watched silently as Leila fired her five shots, managing to hit the roughly human-shaped form painted on the far wall of the gallery with every one—three of them in the chest. “Not bad,” he said encouragingly. She looked at the grouping, then slid a throwing knife out of her sleeve and threw it, hitting the target in the right eye.
8-ball grinned, then tried to look stern. “I hope you have another knife,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, as though he were stupid to have thought otherwise.
“More than one?”
“Want to frisk me and find out?”
The dwarf was still trying to think of a safe reply when Lankin walked up and squatted beside him. “You seem to know this Wallace pretty well, 8-ball,” he said. “Well enough to predict what he’s going to do?”
8-ball considered this as he watched Leila walk up to the target and extract her knife. “I know what he was planning to do. What he’ll do now that he knows I’m here . . .”
I le shrugged.
“What do you think he had planned?”
“He usually starts off by sending drones overhead so he knows where the sentries are, to make sure it’s not an ambush. Mute shot down his first drone, but he’ll have more— armed, probably. He has a mage in his team, so she’ll have checked out the area from astral as well. He approached from the north because Carpenter was watching from the south, so we have to watch our backs all the time.” He smiled at Leila as she walked out. “He knows he has enough people to take and hold the ground level, so he’ll do that first. He’ll be watching all the exits, and he’ll also be looking for places to drop in a gas grenade in case he decides to stun us or smoke us out. I’m not saying he’ll do it, but he might, and those helmets have air filters built m as standard. They’ll be carrying concussion grenades, loo—but they’re using jacketed ammo, not gel, and if they see anyone with a ranged weapon, they’ll give them one warning before they shoot, but they won’t wait long for a reply. They might use the tasers if they see someone with nothing more than a club or a knife, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
“Anyway, they’ll take the ground level—and we might as well let them, because it’s too difficult to defend—then probably repeat the procedure, sending drones down and some watchers, until they know what sort of force they’re likely to meet. Wallace doesn’t like wasting money, but he’d rather lose any number of drones than a soldier. Then, maybe, they’ll come down in force. Of course, if he wants to surprise us ... I don’t know what he’ll do. Let Quinn lead the attack, maybe.” He shuddered.
“What is she likely to do?”
“I wish I knew ... no, scratch that. I’m not sure I do want to know.” He looked up at the water-stained concrete of the ceiling. “Do you think the guys who bought this place are going to care if the roof’s intact? You wouldn’t exactly need a bunker buster to bring it down on top of us.”
Lankin also looked up, and his face turned slightly green.
“I still have no idea why anyone would go to the expense of buying this pit. Would she do that?”
“She might threaten to, and I wouldn’t want to call her bluff. And this ‘pit’ is my alma mater, college boy.” Lankin straightened up. “No offense,” he said insincerely. “That was a pretty good job of negotiation you did out there, by the way.”
“Don’t know if it’ll do any good,” said 8-ball with a shrug. “Wallace isn’t the problem. I wish I knew who hired him.”
“Ratty’s working on that,” said Lankin. “I don’t know how much he’ll find.”
“Where is he?”
“Using the jackpoint near the library.”
“I think I’ll see how he’s doing. ’Scuse me.”
Ratatosk was sitting on the library’s cardboard floor with his legs folded into a lotus position. The space was barely six feet square and was defined by curtains of heavy material hung from the ceiling. The library’s contents consisted of three or four dozen well-used hardcopy books, an equal number of datachips along with a battered reader, a small collection of telesma, an enchanting kit and a cracked vase holding three dusty dried flowers—some resident’s idea of decorating—all arranged on shelves built from concrete blocks and particleboard. He was jacked into his deck, and his eyes were closed. 8-ball peered at the small vidscreen, which showed the shimmering interior of a datastore from Ratatosk’s point of view, then cleared his throat loudly.
“Yes?” the decker asked a moment later, his voice coming both from his lips and the deck’s speaker.
“Shouldn't someone be guarding your body?”
“I knew you were there, didn’t I?”
“What if you set off an alarm and they trace you?” “What're they going to do? Send in troops?” Ratatosk smiled, though his eyes remained closed.
“Okay, then. What if you hit some black IC and need the doc?”
“Unlikely. The stuff I’m scanning now is strictly low security. Did you want something?”
“Do you know who hired Wallace yet?”
“No.”
8-ball sat down, leaning up against one of the rickety bookshelves. “I thought of some leads you could try following up. Those vehicles and the drone that Mute took out might belong to Griffin, or they might belong to the employer. Same with the weapons, but not the barghests. They would have trained those fraggers themselves. And transporting dangerous animals like those . . . that’d be difficult to do without leaving a trace.”
“True,” said the elf. “Any idea where they would have come from?”
“They could’ve been working anywhere, but their home base is somewhere in the Confederated American States. Try the airports around Memphis. Probably flew out in the last forty-eight hours.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up. Thanks.”
“No problem. Um . . . d’you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“No. I can always refuse to answer.”
8-ball smiled. “Why are you here? You didn’t grow up here, and I’ve never seen you hide here or come here for healing . . .”
“Yoko asked for my help.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes. We were lovers for a while. She knows that if she asks for my help, I’ll come running.”
The dw'arf raised his eyebrows. “That must keep you busy,” he said dryly. “They say you have a pretty bi
g harem.”
Ratatosk didn’t reply.
“So what’s the story with Lankin?”
“You’ll have to ask him. Or Yoko.”
8-ball snorted. “No, thanks.”
“All I know is that they were lovers once, too; I don’t know when. I’ve heard that she left him, and that that was a first for him and he’s never completely gotten over it. But that may just be idle gossip. I can’t think of any other reason why he’d be here.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Not a problem. I’ll let you know if I find out anything about the barghests.”
8-ball nodded. “If the meres get in, can you use a gun? Someone told me you were a pacifist.”
Ratatosk raised his cyberarm, palm out to show the smartlink, then extended his spur. “I used to be, until some fragger shot me with an assault cannon. Ten or twenty centimeters to the right, it would’ve blown my heart out through my spine. After that, I thought that since I was in a dangerous biz, I’d better be dangerous too.”
The dwarf smiled crookedly. “A wise foreign policy.” He walked back to Boanerges’ medicine lodge, where Yoko was meditating. “We need to do something about the sniper,” she said as soon as she saw him. “He’s not only keeping us pinned down, he’s really bad for morale with Pike’s body out there. Sumatra went into the astral and checked out the cooling tower; he’s there, all right, but he’s behind cover, and it’s almost a kilometer away. You’re the weapons specialist; what do we have that has that sort of range?”
“Only the assault cannon. Or magic. Either way, he has the drop on us—unless there’s another exit he doesn’t know about?”
“We could clear the stairwell, given time, but that would give the meres another way in. Sumatra has an invisibility spell; if he can maintain that long enough, it would give someone a chance to get out and take a shot at this . . . Carpenter?”
8-ball nodded. “It had better take only one shot. If Carpenter gets a chance to return fire . . .”
“How good are you with an assault cannon?”
“Not as good as Patty. Maybe half as good as Carpenter is with a rifle.”
“Patty’s too badly wounded. It’s going to have to be someone who’s faster than this sniper—and not so big that it takes four of us to carry her back in if she’s hit.”
“Then I guess it’s me,” said 8-ball unhappily, “unless someone has a spell that’ll take him down and keep him down for at least the next twelve hours?”
Yoko looked up as she heard footsteps on the dirt floor outside. Pierce and Boanerges entered the lodge a moment luler, the ork propping up the wounded shaman. “Mute a ml Jinx are still out there, and Pike, and we can’t bring them back in until we do something about that sniper,” Boanerges mumbled.
Yoko shook her head. “He has a clear shot at anyone who goes up the ramp.”
"Maybe not that clear,” said 8-ball. “Sensei, how tall nrc you?”
What? One eighty-five or so. Why?”
And Pike was two meters or thereabouts. If the sniper’s ■.hooting through a chink in the wall, and around what’s nil standing upstairs, I think he’s got a pretty restricted Held of fire. He hasn’t taken a shot at me, and I don’t think that’s because he recognizes me; I suspect he can’t see anything that doesn’t raise its head above the level of the drums we’ve got around the place.”
“You’re suggesting that when we go outside, we should crawl around on our bellies?”
"Well, Napoleon said that an army marches on its stomach.”
The shaman winced at the pun. “That’s—”
“('an you get a clear shot at himT' asked Yoko. “Without him seeing you?”
“II' 1 can blow a big enough hole in the side of that lower . . .”
“I have a better idea,” said Boanerges. “Does the tower have a roof?”
“No,” said the dwarf after a moment’s thought. “It’s basically a big chimney. Why?”
“Then we can get a clear shot. Where’s Magnusson?”
Carpenter listened sullenly to the reprimands, then repeated, “They killed King. I heard you say so. Somebody had to—”
“He isn’t dead The dogs are dead, sure, but he’s only sleeping! They hit him with some sort of stun spell, that’s all!”
The sniper was silent for a moment as he absorbed this. “No drek, Chief? Honest?”
“Ask Lori, if you don’t believe me,” said Wallace, careful not to raise his voice. “What exactly did you hear Quinn say?”
Carpenter blinked. “She said he was down. King, I mean. He loved them dogs,” he muttered.
“I know, but . . . don’t shoot anyone else until I give you the order. Okay?”
“Okay, Chief. Over and out.”
Wallace leaned back in the Step-Van’s passenger seat and stared at the ceiling. “What a fraggin’ mess,” he muttered.
“I don’t understand,” said Lori.
The ork turned his head to look at her. She was the squad’s newest recruit, and he realized that she might not have been told some of the details of his history. “King’s his cousin,” he said. “Or second cousin, I think, but they were more like brothers. King’s real name is Carpenter, too; Elvis Carpenter. That’s why people been calling him King since we were in school; Carpenter was usually known as Woody.
“Anyway, the three of us grew up together. King’s older by a couple of years, but he taught us how to swim, how to fish, how to track animals and live off the land, how to shoot . . . “ He grimaced. “Actually, Woody was a better shot about five seconds after he first picked up a gun than King is ever likely to be. He was a pretty smart kid too— at least compared to King and me— until some fraggin’ idiot shot him in the head. Since then . . .”
He saw Lori’s shocked expression slowly mutate into something much worse—pity. “You?” she said.
“Yep. Hunting accident. I’ve been looking after him ever since. So’s King, even though it wasn’t his fault. Well, okay, it was his father’s gun I was using, and he probably shouldn’t have taken it, but still . .
“You both feel responsible.”
“Fraggin’ right we feel responsible. And now I’m responsible for the kid he just killed.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m the CO. I gave him that gun and put him there. I should’ve known what he’d do when he heard that King was down; I did know. That makes me responsible, in my book. Hartz!”
I’he ogre appeared behind Lori a moment later. “Yeah, ( hief?”
“You patched up?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. I’m going to tell Carpenter to stand down. You’ll be relieving him.”
Yoko waved to Sumatra, who was lying down in the cor-i idor between Boanerges’ and Mish’s medicine lodges. The ork closed his eyes, and his aura traveled out of his body, manifesting at the top of the ramp. Carpenter aimed at the astral form and his finger tightened on the trigger; but Wallace had commanded him not to shoot, and he never disobeyed a direct order. The ork didn’t seem to be armed, anyway, nor doing anything at all threatening ... He was just walking around, occasionally glancing up at the sky as he slowly made his way to the street.
“No one has shot at him yet,” said Magnusson. “Let’s do this.”
“Are you sure you can maintain this spell?” Yoko asked Hoanerges, as Magnusson shed his lined coat. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Boanerges nodded. Magnusson gritted his teeth while he still had them, and waited for the spell to take effect. The medicine lodge seemed to be growing, and its colors shifting down the spectrum. He took a few seconds to reorient himself, then flapped his wings experimentally, then jumped, flapped again and managed to perch on Yoko’s hand. “Are you sure you can fly all the way to the tower?” she asked. “And don’t say ‘Nevermore.’ ”
The raven dipped its head once and flew away—quickly, if a little awkwardly. Yoko looked at the two magicians and sighed.
There were th
ree meres positioned along the north side of the block, and all aimed their rifles at Sumatra’s form as it reached the sidewalk. He held his palms up, showing that he was unarmed, and looked at Quinn. The mere was so heavily wired that her aura was barely visible, but the rat shaman could almost smell her hostility. “A question from Boanerges,” he said. “He apologizes for not being able to speak to you himself, but he’s still in surgery after being shot. Could you let us pick up the body of the kid your sniper killed?”
Quinn’s jaw tightened. “You’re sure he’s dead?” “Boanerges took a look at him in astral. So did I. No aura left. He’s fraggin’ dead, all right.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“I don’t know,” the ork admitted with a shrug. “There’s no earth around here deep enough for a grave, but we can’t just leave him lying around. We’ll improvise some sort of coffin, I guess, until we can work something out . . . unless you could lend us a body bag? Extra large?”
“I think we can do that,” said Quinn through gritted teeth.
“And the sniper?”
“We've already told him to hold his fire until he’s fired upon.”
“Thank you. Also, some of our people wish to leave now—mostly children, and some of their parents. Will you promise them safe passage?”
Magnusson flew over the wasteland between the Crypt and the tower, staying low in case Boanerges failed to maintain the spell and he suddenly found himself back in human form. The shaman was an old friend of his, as well as head of their coven, so he trusted him . . . but Magnusson had treated Boanerges’ wounds, and he wasn’t sure that the shaman was as fully recovered as he claimed. He kept flying as fast as he could, looking down only when he saw movement through his peripheral vision. He spared a quick glance at the meres positioned around the block, hoping that none of them would waste a shot firing at him.
“Safe passage? If they’re unarmed, we’ll do even better than that,” said the mere coolly. “We’ll give them an escort. Where do they wish to go?”
Shadowrun 46 - A Fistful of Data Page 8
