Shadowrun: Deiable Assets

by Mel Odom

  “It won’t take Aztechnology long to figure out the river.” Hawke pulled up a map on his PAN and started considering the options. “They’ll work out where we’ve got to re-emerge and try to take us there.”

  “Null sheen. I’ve got foolies and a couple other surprises they don’t know about. They won’t like what they’re going to run into.” Flicker’s image ghosted onto the windshield briefly again. She smiled, then faded. “Of course, you might not like it either.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rachel’s senses reeled as she considered her present situation. The big man and his friend—Flicker, she remembered—weren’t there to save her and Professor Fredericks. Evidently keeping them from getting killed by the Aztechnology gunners was only part of the kidnapping scheme they’d put together. Moving stealthily, she slipped her Fairlight Caliban commlink from a thigh pocket and tried to open an emergency channel.

  “You can put your tech away, Miss Gordon.” Flicker spoke without turning around. “You’re not going to get a signal through my shielding.”

  The big man turned around in his seat and grabbed the commlink from her hand before she could put it away. He closed his fist and the device shattered with a sharp crack. When he opened his fist, broken pieces tumbled to the ATV’s floor.

  “Hey!” Rachel protested, reaching forward.

  “Behave,” the man said, blocking her hand. “Otherwise I’ll trank you, and you’ll wake up with a headache that’ll last for hours. Doesn’t make any difference to me.”

  Professor Fredericks grabbed her shoulders and eased her back. “Take it easy. We’re alive. That’s all that matters at the moment.”

  Forcing herself to calm down, Rachel leaned back in her seat and breathed out in frustration. She shrugged out of the professor’s grip. “Who hired you to kidnap us?”

  The big man turned his attention back to the view of the river channel. “I’ve got no idea, and I’m not answering any more questions.”

  Rachel wanted to fight, but she felt the jewel in her bag radiate calmness. Captured by the mystery the object offered, she removed it from the bag and studied it. The professor’s breath feathered against her shoulder as he leaned over and peered into the blue facets. She ran her fingers over the symbols, thinking some of them were starting to look familiar, the same way the scrolls did back in Professor Fredericks’s class months ago.

  “May I?” Professor Fredericks reached for the jewel.

  Despite the reluctance thrumming within her, Rachel held the artifact out for him to touch, but as soon as his fingers got within millimeters of the surface, a shimmer threw out cobalt embers. The hair on the back of Professor Fredericks’ hand stood on end and popped with static electricity. He pulled his hand back.

  The professor cursed beneath his breath, something Rachel had never before heard him do. He’d always seemed too mild-mannered for such behavior.

  He cleared his throat. “Rachel, would you try handing the jewel to me, please?”

  Carefully, though the action made her feel wrong inside, and she had to force herself to continue, Rachel attempted to put the artifact into Professor Fredericks’s waiting hand. This time, it didn’t even get as close before an electrical charge leaped out and lashed his open palm. Professor Fredericks cried out and jerked his hand back. Smoke curled up from his scorched flesh as a four-centimeter circle of blackened skin and blisters appeared immediately. The smell of cooked meat filled the cabin.

  “What is that?” His interest captured by the jewel, the big man reached back for it from the front seat.

  Stubbornly, Rachel wrapped the artifact in her arms, keeping it back from her kidnapper. He definitely wasn’t touching it.

  “Hawke!” Flicker warned, her voice blasting from the vehicle’s speaker. “Don’t touch that thing.”

  The big man halted, then withdrew his hand. His challenging gaze raked Rachel. “What is it?”

  “Mine,” Rachel said, the word coming out before she knew she was going to speak.

  “I don’t know,” Flicker answered. “I’ve scanned it with everything I’ve got. Whatever it is, it’s not tech.”

  Hawke glanced at Professor Fredericks, who was blowing on his injured hand. “It throws out energy,” the big man pointed out.

  “It’s not tech,” Flicker repeated.

  Hawke scowled and drew back warily. “I hate magic.”

  Magic? The idea whipped through Rachel. All her life, she’d considered herself to be one of the lucky ones. She’d had friends who had studied magic, but when she’d been tested, she’d never had any true aptitude. She was, thankfully, blessedly, normal.

  But this artifact was magic. And she was the only one who could touch it. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she hung onto all the possibilities it presented.

  Whatever else it proved to be, the jewel was hers. She was certain of that.

  “I just lost my last outside drone.” Flicker relayed the information emotionlessly. “One of the helos shot it down, so I can’t see the Azzies anymore.”

  “Were they following us?”

  “Yeah. Along the surface. Either they’ve got maps of the area, or they’re equipped with ground-penetrating radar. Either one of those is bad, but if they’re just using maps, they have to guess at where we are. That gives us a slight edge of unpredictability.”

  The ATV hurtled down the dark underground passage, running with the swift river current.

  Hawke reached under his seat and came up with a med slap-patch that he handed to Professor Fredericks. Then he turned back around and fell silent.

  The professor put the slap-patch on his hand, waited for the pain-relieving chems to kick in. All the while, he studied Rachel with a covetous gleam in his eyes.

  As Rachel gazed into the murky blue depths of the artifact, she felt the creature’s presence on the other side of some unknown barrier. It seemed close enough to touch, but she was afraid to do that because she felt its hunger for vengeance.

  Even though Hawke knew Flicker would be keeping an eye on the young woman in the back seat, he watched Rachel’s reflection in the transplas window. Her image was captured against the frosted glow of the bright beams carving through the dark river depths ahead of them.

  “Breathe slower.” Flicker’s voice came softly over his commlink.

  “I am breathing slow.” Her awareness of the tension filling him irritated him. But she was queen of everything inside the ATV. She monitored everyone through the seat sensors. She knew exactly how he was feeling. Even if her tech hadn’t ratted him out, she knew him well enough to guess what was going on.

  “You’re not breathing out enough. If you keep on like you are right now, you’re going to hyperventilate.”

  Hawke didn’t bother arguing, or pointing out that his onboard autonomy regulator would adjust his breathing and scrub away the CO2 building up in his lungs. He nodded, and wished they still had the drone in place so they’d know where the Azzie helos were.

  Four objects sped from the ATV, cutting through the water like torpedoes. Trackers automatically showed up on the transplas window, but Hawke knew those were for his benefit. Flicker already knew where they were going.

  “Another set of drones,” Flicker said. “Maybe we won’t know where the Azzie helos are, but we’ll have some idea of what’s waiting up ahead of us. The Pacific Ocean’s only 732 meters away. Then we’re going to be exposed.”

  Hawke tested his restraints once more. So far the channel had widened, and their speed had picked up to thirty-seven KPH. Every now and again, the ATV still caught a glancing blow against the limestone walls that rocked the vehicle and echoed within the cabin.

  “You know you might not be able to keep this vehicle.” Hawke knew Flicker got attached to her rides. To her, they were more than tools. They were her creations.

  “I knew that coming into this. That’s why I’m going to charge you for the loss of equipment—and for the upgrades I’ve got in mind for the next one—if I lose
this one.”

  “So, I guess now would be the wrong time to tell you this run’s caught me short on cred.”

  “I can float you a loan, chummer. I just won an Aztlan smuggler’s run, remember?”

  The cocky attitude in her voice was ersatz, but it made Hawke smile. “I do remember, and I also know you’ll be charging me interest. Kind of takes the relief out of the equation.”

  “I will charge interest, so don’t dawdle on the payment.” Her voice tightened, became more serious again. “Hang on. We’re hitting ocean in three seconds.”

  Hawke braced himself, gritting his teeth and trying not to wonder, if the river let out deeply below sea level, if the ATV would implode. No matter how well built a vehicle was, once it got down far enough, it would crush like a blown eggshell under the increased pressure of the deep.

  The water suddenly brightened ahead of them, then they were awash in the ocean currents, jerking ninety degrees to the north to follow the coastal waters. The immediate change in direction shoved Hawke against the vehicle’s door. A high-pitched yelp came from the ATV’s rear seats. At first Hawke thought it belonged to the young woman, but it was the professor who’d lost his nerve.

  “It’s okay,” Flicker said. “We’re fine. It’ll just take a minute to adjust.”

  The propeller engines torqued, and shivers ran through the ATV as Flicker made the necessary adjustments. Under her steady control, the vehicle came about smoothly and headed west. All around them, on the other side of the transplas window, fish and sea creatures darted in all directions to get out of their way.

  The cavern mouth they’d shot out of quickly faded from view. The sea floor beneath them slanted sharply down, becoming darker till it turned a vivid, impenetrable black. Hawke peered through the windows, looking for the Azzie submersibles he half-expected to be lying in wait. He couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t closing in.

  “I thought we were headed south to Amazonia,” he said.

  “Not yet. We have to get away from the coast first.”

  “Are you sonar-equipped?” he asked.

  Flicker laughed. “Do you have six exit strategies for every ambush you walk into?”

  Before he could answer, the forward windshield pulsed again, and an orange sonar schematic appeared. More overlays showed views and intel from the four drones around them. There was so much information, Hawke didn’t know how Flicker kept up with it all. He felt a headache coming on.

  “Seventeen hundred klicks, huh?” Hawke made it a point to breathe in and out, in and out. “How many hours is that?”

  “I can do up to thirty knots in the water. Not as fast as everything topside, but the ATV’s pretty nimble.”

  Hawke worked out the math. “At thirty knots, getting to Amazonia’s gonna take a long time.”

  “Good thing we’re not taking the ATV the whole way, then, huh?”

  “Then how are we getting there?”

  “I’m calling in a favor. Remember when I told you that you weren’t going to like this?” Flicker’s image formed over the sonar readout and she smiled at him.

  Before Hawke could respond, a warning beacon chirped and the light inside the cabin turned red. “Is that the Azzies?”

  “Yeah. They found us quicker than I thought they would.”

  Streaming lines of air bubbles, small barrels dropped into the water around them. Recognizing them for what they were, Hawke started to yell a warning, but the depth charges all exploded in quick succession, with the resulting turbulence wreaking havoc on the ATV.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Remaining calm, despite the fact that he was suddenly hanging upside down in the ATV, Hawke blinked, letting the implant enhancements in his eyes quickly correct against the bright detonations of the depth charges.

  “Just your luck when it goes bad,” Flicker accused. “You would have a group of Azzie helos equipped for maritime warfare around to come busting down on us.”

  Hawke didn’t even bother to protest, but he started wondering even more about what made the young woman so valuable. It looked like he was getting shorted on the contract cred from Mr. Johnson, but Aztechnology was pulling out all the stops to get her.

  And why had the corp waited ’til now to go in hard after Rachel Gordon? They’d had her practically dossing down with them for the last few weeks. What had changed? The artifact the woman held onto came immediately to mind, and he wished he knew more about it.

  Hawke jerked again as Flicker guided them through another series of near misses. The ATV darted and dodged and dived like an agile sea turtle, gaining and losing depth to the point where he started worrying they were going to get the bends from the sudden changes.

  “The cabin’s pressurized,” Flicker told him. They’d worked together closely enough for long enough that she could almost read his mind. “The atmosphere in here remains constant. Depth changes aren’t going to affect us.” She paused. “As long as we stay inside.”

  The depth indicator showed they were 127.3 meters down.

  With the oxygen filtration mods done to his lungs, Hawke knew he could make the slow return to the ocean’s surface. He figured Flicker would have deep-sea equipment for herself.

  But that left the professor and Rachel Gordon as soon-to-be lost cargo. The ocean would take them, and if it didn’t and they managed to reach the surface, decompression sickness would kill them or leave them permanently damaged. No cargo delivery, no payout. That potential loss didn’t bother him as much as the two dying. He told himself they stood a better chance with Flicker and him than if they’d stayed back at the dig site.

  Another trio of depth charges exploded and rolled the ATV sideways again.

  “Do you have any surface to air weapons?” Hawke wanted some way to strike back. He hated being helpless.

  “I exhausted them keeping you alive back there at the dig. Except for machine guns, I’m empty. And machine guns aren’t going to work while we’re submerged.”

  “You could surface, take a few shots.” The idea of being up in the open air, above the ocean, was appealing.

  “No. Just give me another few minutes. I’m working on something.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not the only one I’ve done runs with, omae. Now shut up and let me call in a favor from a guy I know is somewhere out here. It’s just a question of if he feels like taking on the Azzies to help me out.”

  Hawke curbed the instant need to query her about who she was talking about. He knew they each had people the other didn’t know about. That was how they worked.

  For several long minutes, Flicker ran the underwater gauntlet, somehow avoiding the descending depth charges just enough to keep from taking too much damage. Still, the ATV shook and shivered, twisted and twirled like a leaf in a typhoon from her piloting and from the concussive waves.

  “There’s a leak!” the professor squawked from the back.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Hawke spotted a steady stream of water spraying into the cabin from one of the transplas window seals. Growling a curse, he reached under the seat for the repair kit he’d noticed there when getting the med kit. Grabbing a tube of sealant, he freed his seat restraints and got up.

  Strangely calm, like she was somewhere else, and this was just a simsense she could end at any time, Rachel watched her big captor climb out of his seat and start applying the sealant to the high-pressure leak that had opened in the vehicle’s roof. The ATV’s integrity was rapidly degrading. She felt the truth of that, even though she didn’t know how she knew.

  She was also suddenly aware of a trio of depth charges angling directly toward them that Flicker wasn’t going to be able to avoid. The rigger’s sudden fear shattered the icy cool she kept. She changed the direction of the ATV, but there was no way the vehicle was going to make the necessary clearance to escape the explosives.

  The blue jewel glowed in Rachel’s hands. She felt the heat of it, almost hot enough to burn, and listened
to the shrill cry of whatever was contained within it. But some of its power leaked through, filling Rachel up to the point where she thought she might burst.

  Needing to get the energy out of her body, Rachel maintained enough presence of mind to direct it at the depth charges. She saw the shimmering blue stream speed through the ocean, then envelop the explosives. In the blink of an eye, the depth charges withered and turned to useless flotsam.

  “How—how did you do that?” Flicker asked, communicating through the speaker closest to Rachel.

  Staring at the gray detritus that scattered before the ATV and tapped against the transplas windshield, Rachel shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  The artifact vibrated in Rachel’s hands, and somehow, she knew the unleashing of the energy had pleased whatever was inside it. She closed her eyes, held the jewel tightly, and willed it to stay calm.

  “Flicker!” Hawke struggled to squeeze more nanobot fixative into the micro-fissure that had opened up in the ATV’s armored skin. The gray-green goop spread easily across the surface as the nanites adhered to the metal and ceramic blend, held for just a moment, then got blasted away. The pressure was powerful enough now to lacerate Hawke’s flesh. “The sealant’s not holding!”

  Before he finished speaking, another series of depth charges went off nearby and swirled the ATV around like it was in a blender. Two more micro-fissures spurted into the cabin and he knew the vehicle’s integrity was only minutes away from collapsing. The atmosphere pressure had to be getting affected, too.

  The ATV dipped and arrowed down, plunging more deeply into the sea. Around them, the water turned bluer and bluer, edging into black.

  “Flicker!” Hawke barely controlled the fear of the ocean raging within him. He hated the thought of drowning, of being crushed with no way to fight back. If he was going to die, he wanted an opponent to battle, someone or something he could take on physically.