Never Deal with a Dragon
Page 39
“Shuttle will be here soon. You can relax.”
Hutten glanced around at the others waiting on the deck and hugged his briefcase to his chest. He leaned over and whispered to Crenshaw, “Some of these others are armed. Something must be wrong.”
“Don’t worry. It’s 2051. Anyone with a brain has a gun. Relax,” she said mildly. “Here comes the shuttle.”
The cabin hummed with the throb of engines as the Commuter’s wing tilted up from its forward flight configuration, turning the propellers into rotors for landing. Seeing the slanted walls of the Renraku arcology gleaming outside the windows, Jacqueline felt the heady anticipation of impending action.
With the grudging approval of his fellow runners, Sam had split the group into two teams. Jaq’s was arcology-bound to snatch the substitute Hutten before he boarded the shuttle. He would never reach the airport and the Renraku security ambush waiting for him and his sponsor. While she and Sam were arranging armament matters with Enterich, they had been informed that Haesslich was not going to be at the airport after all. The Dragon would leave the pick-up to his agents, taking delivery of his goods at, what was to him, a safer location—a deserted section of the United Oil dockyards. Sam had expressed relief to hear the news because it meant no bystanders would get hurt when he led the other team to Haesslich. It was his plan to confront the Dragon while Hart and Tessien dealt with the disappointed Renraku presence at the airport. He called it a minor justice.
She checked the clock on the bulkhead. The other team would be in their places by now. Sam’s decision to split the group’s effort had worried her at first, but it had resolved in a satisfactory fashion. Though Sam wouldn’t be in on the snatch, she had found a way to arrange things anyway. When all else failed, there was always the magic.
Jacqueline checked her companions’ readiness. Despite Ghost’s distaste for action involving the arcology, five of his tribesmen had volunteered to come along. They were calm enough, veteran street fighters who looked fierce in their warpaint. She decided they would be good brawlers, though their presence would not significantly affect the plan. Most of them were barely modified; only their leader, the one named Jason, might be a problem. She wished there’d been more time to learn the full extent of his modifications, but she preferred him to Ghost. Jason was not as bright and lacked his leader’s keen awareness, but she would still have to keep an eye on him.
Tsung, too. As the only other magician in the raiding party, she was a potential problem. So far, the mage had gone along blindly, seemingly unaware that Jacqueline’s Karen Montejac image was an illusion.
If Tsung got suspicious, she might probe deep enough to discern the second spell. It would spoil everything if she became aware of the other illusion Jaq would be using on the Renraku personnel. It was her master’s wish that Verner be blamed for the raid on the arcology. The illusion spell that would make Tsung appear to be Sam would handle that nicely. As Sam had been all business around Karen Montejac, Tsung was satisfied her latest conquest was safe from poaching and had shown little interest in Jaq. What a delight was Human arrogance and self-centeredness. It so often made Jaq’s life easier.
Once it was clear that some gutter muscle was going along, Jaq thought it politic to match their number with her own troops. She had brought only five of her own mercenaries, not counting the rigger crew who manned the aircraft. They all had corporate war experience and appropriate modifications suited to their specialties. Well-seasoned pros, they had settled quickly into a reasonable squad. Disliking subterfuge, they had balked when told to wear the synthleathers and warpaint of tribesmen, but they soon gave in, joking roughly about what people would do for money. They were good troopers. Ten professional mercs would have easily carved the standard Renraku landing pad guards even with minimal gunfire. A motley assault by ragged Sprawl Indians would be a less effective psychological shock. Jaq hoped she wouldn’t lose too many expensive mercs.
“ETA one minute,” the pilot announced over the cabin speaker.
Clatters and rustles filled the cabin as weapons were checked. Tsung smiled and gave Jaq a thumbs up, which she returned. Then the mage put on a headset. “Dodger,” she said into the pickup. After a moment, she repeated the name. Then she was frowning. “He was supposed to be in place to lock access to the landing pad.”
“Perhaps he’s too busy to answer,” Jaq suggested.
“I don’t like it.”
“Like it or not, we’re committed.”
The Commuter’s landing lights had come on.
The landing lights speared down onto the pad, highlighting the dust kicked up by the twin rotors as the craft dropped lower. A white-suited woman walked into the cone projected by the nose light, waving glowing red direction wands. She backed up, leading the VTOL craft to a more centered position on the landing circle.
Crenshaw increased her glare compensation to peer through the brightness masking the aircraft. The Aztec sun design that marked the ship as belonging to Aztechnology’s shuttle service gleamed on the tail fin. The cabin door popped open as soon as the craft’s wheels touched down, and a tumble of figures exited.
“Verner,” she said aloud, recognizing the first person coming down the short ladder. He had taken the bait, the story she had planted with the Ork.
There were others, including one vaguely familiar woman who was not Hart. Crenshaw forget any question about the woman’s identity as she recognized several faces among the Indians pouring from the Commuter. She had no names for those faces, but she knew them well enough. One of them, the squat one with mirror eyes, was the leader of the slime who had raped her after the traitor and the others had left for their run. This was an unexpected bonus. If he survived the trap, the two of them would have a little reunion, but this time, she’d be the one with power.
“They’re here,” Crenshaw said into her communicator. “Take them. Take them all down.”
At her side, Hutten stiffened and stared at her with wide, dark eyes.
Jaq led her mercs out of the Commuter, spreading them to establish a perimeter and cover the aircraft against a rush from any direction. To any onlookers, the raiders would look like a troop of Indians led by the mage Tsung and her new paramour, the renegade Samuel Verner. As her mercs took their places, the people waiting behind the boarding barrier reacted to the invasion, but it was not the frenzied panic of a crowd. Instead, they split into small groups, drawing weapons as they moved. It was, as Jaq had feared, a trap. The single snatch was about to become a pitched battle.
“Code Alpha,” she shouted. All around her, the mercs put their counterplan into effect. Rawlins, the heavy weapons specialist, snapped down his target sight and braced his assault rifle. As the underslung grenade launcher dumped a full clip against the observation deck window, concrete and glass joined the shrapnel exploding into the deck and showering on the landing pad. A banshee wail assaulted Jaq’s ears as a stray fragment caromed off the whirling rotors of the Commuter.
Jaq smiled. There would be no snipers shooting down on them from the vantage of the observation deck. To her left, another of the mercs tossed smoke grenades, sending up billowing black clouds to screen the control center. Fugitive figures in white coveralls retreated through the growing black fog. The rest of the mercs laid down a fire pattern on the so-called passengers.
Tsung ran up and crouched at her side. “What in fragging hell do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s a trap,” Jaq said calmly. “The passengers are all security. Can’t you see their armor?”
Tsung snapped a glance. “Drek!”
“Grab Hutten,” Jaq ordered, pointing at the tall man standing amid the scattering bodies. “We’ll cover.”
Tsung waved Jason and the other Indians forward. With them in a wedge ahead of her, she followed in a crouching run.
Jaq smiled. A glorious bit of mayhem.
Crenshaw’s call came almost too late. The intruders opened fire as her people started to move. A few went down
in the first volley and more tumbled to the concrete when the explosions ripped open the face of the arcology.
“No!” Hutten screamed at her side. “No!”
“Get down, you fool,” Crenshaw ordered, putting a hand on his shoulder to drag him down.
With unsuspected ease, he batted free of her grip. Then his other hand snaked out, crumpling her clothes and the armor underneath as his fingers closed into a secure grip. Lifting her off her feet, his eyes were wild. “Betrayer! I won’t let you do this. Not now. Not now! He promised me a life of my own.”
Crenshaw struggled in his grip. Bracing against his arm, she threw a break grip into his elbow. As her hand struck an unyielding surface, she felt a shock of pain. Hutten wasn’t modified; his madness must have spasm-locked his muscles beyond the leverage she could apply. There was no time for this. So far the invaders had kept their fire away from them, afraid to hit their treasure, but sooner or later a marksman would take her off Hutten’s hands. Even spasmed muscles couldn’t work if they were sliced; she extended her hand razors and raked them down Hutten’s forearm.
Blood flowed over tattered clothing, but his grip never slackened. She struck again and again, not caring if she had to turn his arm into hamburger before he let go. His sleeve shredded to rags, and she saw the damage she was doing. Then her fear of being shot escalated to horror as she realized that the wounds were closing almost as fast as she made them.
This was not a man!
Panic threatened to overwhelm her, but she fought it back. Hutten had snarled when she cut him. If that meant he could feel pain, he was not invincible. She lashed her foot into his groin, knowing that he did at least one thing like a man.
Hutten whuffed in pain and surprise. He bent at the waist, enough that Crenshaw’s second kick went wide and landed on the side of his knee. The leg buckled and the two of them went down. Crenshaw rolled away and came to her feet in a crouch.
Her antagonist landed sprawled, holding his genitals. One foot lay supported by the curb of the waiting area. Without hesitation, she stomped down, satisfied to hear the bone break. Hutten howled.
No, not invulnerable.
The firefight raged around them. Her scan took in the smoking observation deck. That was going to be trouble. She had to minimize her own exposure, both to the shooting and to the repercussions. She bent over the writhing Hutten.
“You’ve earned this, whatever you are,” she said, drawing her knife from the sheath at the back of her neck. The monofilament line grafted to its cutting edge would cut through almost anything, even the polysteel cord that bound Hutten’s briefcase to the locked band on his wrist. She applied the blade to his arm and smiled at his scream.
Shaking the severed hand free of the still-sealed band, she started for the end of the pad, keeping low enough that the boarding area fences provided cover. The service door that was her destination would get her back into the arcology without passing through the firefight, which had intensified with the belated arrival of the Red Samurai reserves.
Crenshaw was reaching for the door control when something slammed her from behind. She hit the concrete hard, scraping painfully across its rough surface. The case’s bloodied grip slipped from her fingers and skidded along beside her to stop, teetering, on the edge of the landing pad. She rolled over, ready to deal with whatever runner had caught her, then froze.
Hutten, teeth bared, held her ankle in an iron grip. He laid his no longer bleeding stump across her shin. As he snapped her leg bones, he said, “We’ll start with this.”
Crenshaw didn’t scream until she saw the splintered edges of bone emerge through her skin. Heedless of the pain, she scrambled back, crashing into the fence that kept her from hurtling over the edge. Her frantic motion overturned the briefcase and it slipped, taking the fall from which the rail had saved her.
Hutten moved forward faster than she thought possible, but instead of attacking her again, he leaned over the railing and wailed. She turned her head in time to see the case hit a projection at a lower level and shatter open, spreading a debris of cassettes and chips to the wind. Hutten collapsed, bent over the fence.
A little leverage was all it would take to flip him. As her hand touched his ankle, he revived and slapped her away. Crenshaw tasted blood from her split lip. He reached down, hauled her up by the hair, and slammed her against the wall, pinning one arm against the hard surface.
“That was my ticket to life,” he screamed into her face.
Despite her leg and his speed, she was sure she still could get away if he was blind. She flicked out the razors on her free hand and raised her arm to strike, only to feel them slice into her own palm as he squeezed her fingers into a fist. Pale, but immensely strong despite its childlike size, his new hand crushed her bones and ground them together.
He wrenched her up again and swung her out and over the abyss. In a last act of defiance, she spat into his face. He licked the mixed blood and spittle from his face with a tongue that seemed inordinately long before releasing his grip.
She fell, knowing that she would reach terminal velocity unless she hit a projection. There wouldn’t be much left to put back together. Her only hope was to black out before she struck.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
One wall blinked, its images of the battle on Landing Pad 23 replaced by a detail of a racing woman pursued by a limping man who moved with uncanny speed. As he closed and they struggled, a briefcase toppled over the edge of the platform. It smashed against a projection and opened, scattering circuit boards and computer chips to the wind.
Darkness assaulted Dodger’s senses as his hostess’s cloak billowed out of its own accord, masking her and everything else from his sight. A keening wail overwhelmed the sounds of the firefight, and over all the cacophony, he heard her voice.
“Lost. For myself, no hope. Gone. Fled. For my scattered self, gone.”
His sight returned and she had vanished.
The mad kaleidoscope began again, images racing across the facets. Within seconds, the tumult faltered as individual panels went dark or flared to stark white. Groups of panels froze
en masse in blocks, crosses, or stepped triangles. Each geometric portrayed a different scene, but all the panels making up one shape displayed the same image. One showed a gold-eyed man struggling to free himself from fallen debris in a smoking room scattered with bodies. Another displayed a small cubicle where an emaciated decker lay sprawled across his board, the flesh around his datajack blackened. A third, which Dodger at first took to be a rebroadcast, was a window on the Renraku air traffic monitor center where the staff was casually sitting around. In the back of the scene, Dodger could see the reaction force pilots in their ready room, drinking, eating, and playing cards. Their wall clock showed the current time. There were other scenes from around the arcology as well, and they too showed no alarm. Then the facets of the floor froze in unison, having returned to Pad 23, where the Trojan shuttle was rising into the sky.
The fireball flared into being on the Renraku arcology’s left flank. Three of the undercover guards were torched to cinders and a pair of over-eager Red Samurai were blown back, smoking, to their squad’s position at the building entrance.
“Good shooting, Tsung,” Jaq called out.
Tsung waved back and pointed at the remaining guards on the landing field. Jaq nodded and directed her mercs to pour on the fire. Tsung needed cover to catch Hutten.
Their target had gone down in a struggle with one of the Raku guards. Jaq hadn’t expected the guard to come out on top, but she had. For a while, that is. Then Hutten chased her down and threw her from the platform. Now he stood there, looking bewildered.
When Sally reached him, his initial reaction was wary. She said something to him, but with the din of combat Jaq couldn’t hear. It must have been words to the effect of, “We’re here to rescue you,” because Hutten looked at the Commuter, nodded, and lit out toward the aircraft. Sally and the Indians beat a fighting retreat.
Debris, litter, and masonry skittered across the platform like autumn leaves before the wind. Luggage rolled on wheels or tipped end over end to race dropped weapons and loose tools to the growing wall in front of the Commuter. It was a meter high when Hutten hurdled it. It had grown to two meters when Tsung, intent on the pursuit, slammed into it. Three of the Indians went down before she could lead them through the smoke clouds and around to the sheltered side.
By then, Jaq had gotten Hutten on board and recalled her four remaining mercs. She was closing the hatch when Tsung spotted her.
“Wait for us,” Tsung called, racing for the aircraft.
Jaq gave the order to lift. “Sorry, Tsung. I’ve got a delivery to make. Have fun with the Samurai.”
Tsung and the Indians made a leap for the Commuter’s landing gear as the VTOL rose from the landing pad. One of the Indians, Jason, managed a grip, but a quick response from the pilot shook him free. Jaq watched the Indian land hard and lie stunned. Tsung knelt next to him, gesturing with glowing hands. Her eyes were fixed on the Commuter as it climbed.
Jaq mustered her spell defenses to protect the aircraft and the pilot, only to feel the energies slide past and strike elsewhere. Jaq spun to find Hutten sprawled on the floor of the cabin. The mercs were drawing away in disgust as his skin bubbled and flowed.
“Have fun yourself, bitch,” Sally’s voice said over the radio link.