Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  “Because names are power?” the mage taunted. “That’s superstition. Or hasn’t anyone told you that yet?”

  Concentrating, Luppas unleashed a mana bolt from his left hand, hurling it quickly. The spell appeared as a miniature fuschia eyekiller no longer than an average man’s hand. All spells in the astral took on the forms of animals the way he perceived them. Other mages saw them differently. He’d never questioned the differences, because magic was a thing sharpened by belief more than it was strengthened by knowledge.

  The astral creature took wing immediately, streaking for the other mage.

  Reacting instantly, the mage took a step back and raised the walking stick he carried. He put his other hand on it, pulling at the stick. Instantly it lengthened and thickened, becoming a fighting staff two meters long that glowed with the mage’s own simple yellow aura.

  The mana bolt in the form of the miniature eyekiller zoomed at the mage’s head. Before it could arrive, the staff struck it squarely, reducing it to a pyrotechnic burst that left neither ash nor smoke behind.

  The mage whirled the staff with a flourish and brought it to an instant stop in the perpendicular. He seized the edge of his cape with his free hand and bowed, never taking his eyes from Luppas. “The name, inquisitive one, is Cullen Trey.” Luppas recognized the name from his sojourns among the denizens of the Seattle sprawl. “You’ve got a big rep.”

  “And an even bigger heart,” Trey assured him. “Which is why I’m offering to let you walk away from this if you let my friends go.”

  Using his foci, Luppas reached forward, activating the weapon focus back on his meat body. The space before him shimmered, then a katana materialized in his hands.

  “Ah,” Trey mocked, seemingly not impressed by the weapon. “From the House of Ginsu.”

  “We’re going to play a little game,” Luppas stated, “you and I.” He walked toward the mage.

  “The sushi game, right?” Trey stood his ground, not making a move to defend. “Sushi loves me, sushi loves me not?”

  Close enough now, Luppas feinted. When Trey took the bait and went to block the thrust, he shifted the katana, striking at the juncture of neck and body, intending to end the fight quickly.

  Instead, Trey flipped the staff up and blocked the katana hard enough to send shivers down Luppas’s arms. Multicolored sparks flared as the two weapons met.

  Luppas stepped back, realizing the staff was neither an ordinary manifestation of astral energy nor an astral likeness of a weapon focus. It was ancient and powerful, something he would have liked to research for his own knowledge.

  Trey didn’t let the fight end, though. He stepped forward and took the initiative, striking out repeatedly and driving Luppas back before him.

  Luppas threw himself at the roof of the bar, flying through it and into the night sky, hovering only a dozen meters from the helo. When he looked down, he saw the Landrover pull into the lanes between the rows of parked cars and speed toward the forest. It was the one area he hadn’t been able to successfully close off. But then the shadowrunners weren’t supposed to be able to get free of the bar before he either had them or they were dead.

  He’d come prepared, though. He always did. Stretching out a hand, he spoke the words of binding, reaching through astral space to the place where he’d put the earth elemental on hold while back at his doss. “Gilyaremo, Earth-shaker, I bid you come.”

  Almost at once, the presence took shape in the astral before him. The spirit looked vaguely like a troll at first glance because of the girth and the horns on its head. But the horns were three in number, curving back from the temples and from the center of its forehead, going from a black luster to blood red in subtle shifts. The face was triangular, definitely bovine. At the end of the short, bowed legs were cloven hoofs. The body consisted of hard, carved white marble shot through with deep purple veins.

  “I await your command, Master Luppas,” the elemental said in baleful tones. The elemental’s binding hadn’t been a happy occasion, but Luppas had given it no choice.

  He pointed at the Landrover, pursued already by the helo. “Stop that vehicle.”

  “Yes, Master.” The elemental turned and streaked toward the Landrover.

  “Luppas!” Trey yelled out in challenge as he passed through the top of the bar, coming up quickly from below. A mana bolt ripped from his hand, shaping itself into a glowing obsidian torpedo shark that sped toward Luppas.

  As he prepared his defenses, Luppas saw danger to the helo that the pilot didn’t. He abandoned the astral plane, returning to his meat body and hoping he was in time. The first explosion ripped into the helicopter as he opened his eyes back in the physical world.

  40

  Three armored troopers emerging from the bar spotted Skater and Elvis immediately.

  “Elvis,” Skater said, dropping into a slide that took him behind the heavy bulk of a Harley-Davidson Scorpion. Bullets smashed into the dressed-out street bike as sparks jumped. At least one round cored through the synthleather seat and sent padding flying.

  “Get down, omae,” Elvis said. He sat astride a Thundercloud Pinto all-terrain trike that had seen better days. Still, the big engine sounded throaty and strong. The samurai raised the Panther assault cannon in a one-handed grip.

  Skater felt the heat of the warhead buzzing by him. He tracked it instinctively, turning around just in time to see the superplast payload strike the chest of the lead man of a four-man team of Luppas’s troopers.

  The warhead turned the man into chunks of armor and bloody meat. The concussion scattered the three men behind him, knocking them from their feet.

  Elvis reloaded and fired again, managing to take out one more of their attackers before they retreated. “Ballistic armor,” the troll samurai snorted. “Nowhere near the same as impact-resistant. They’d have to be fragging tanks to stand against this baby.”

  Skater silently agreed, but he did it while he raced to the side of the Hyundai Offroader he’d chosen out of the collection of motorcycles. Most of them were street sleds and wouldn’t be able to handle the rough terrain they were going to have to navigate to make their escape. He sheathed the monofilament sword in the scabbard over his back and caught the small knife Elvis flipped at him. In a matter of seconds, he’d stripped the wires and jumped the ignition. The Offroader started with a growl.

  Straddling the Offroader, Skater twisted the accelerator and dropped the gear shift into first. He accessed the commlink. “Okay, Archangel, let’s buzz turbo!” The rear tire spun for just a moment, then caught traction. He was grimly aware of the helicopter above them.

  A surge of black-armored troops followed in the wake of the Landrover as Archangel pulled it into the parking lane. Evidently Luppas’s people had managed to locate it either by magical means or physical recon.

  Elvis fired another warhead into their path, striking one man full-on and blowing him back into two people behind him, sending the whole tangle of bodies crashing into a truck behind them.

  “Cover them,” Skater told Elvis. “I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”

  The troll nodded, dropping the Panther’s belt rig so it would hang within easy reach at his hip. He accelerated and shot away, the rear-drive twin back wheels spitting gravel.

  Skater planted a foot and pivoted. Bullets struck the bikes around him, reducing some of them to scrap. A spark caught fire somewhere behind him, and the motorcycles blew when he was meters away. The blast of warm air covered him like a blanket, bringing a false sense of security that went away as quickly as it came.

  The helicopter shot after the Landrover, dropping altitude as it brought the onboard miniguns on-line. Ruby aiming lasers darted across the back of the Landrover as it sped for the end of the parking lot and the ragged treeline beyond.

  Skater accessed the commlink, dodging between the uneven lines of cars, flaring out into a wing position to the Landrover’s right. Elvis was already covering the left. “Wheeler.”

  “Ye
ah,” the dwarf rigger responded, his voice edgy. He’d remained in place in the parking area, sitting quietly in the Tsarina and waiting to be brought into the action at the appropriate moment.

  “Light up the helicopter.” Skater scanned the edge of the parking lot some sixty meters away. The land had been bulldozed mostly flat for the parking lot, but the terrain beyond was hilly and heavily wooded. If they could make it into that, he was certain they could slip away.

  Skater spotted the tracer fire from the Vanquisher heavy machine gun Wheeler had concealed in a rear deck mount on the Tsarina as it arced into the sky after its target. The machine-gun fire pinpointed the helicopter’s tail rotor and assembly almost immediately.

  With the tail section blown away and already in flames, the helicopter lost control and plunged into the treeline ahead of the Landrover. When the spinning rotors touched the trees, the blades shattered, turning into a maelstrom of deadly projectiles. Bent and broken, the wreckage of the helicopter dropped listlessly into the forest as gravity claimed it again, turning the helicopter into a giant fireball before it hit the ground.

  At first, Skater thought the screech of metal was coming from the helicopter, then he realized it came from his left. Swiveling his head, braking quickly to avoid an Americar pulling out in front of him, then zooming around it, he glanced at the Landrover. Even with the infrared vision, he barely made out the thing that suddenly rose up from the parking lot and brought the big vehicle to a stop.

  The creature stood almost five meters tall and was easily over half that wide. It was vaguely man-shaped, formed of the earth and gravel of the parking lot. There was no neck, but it gave the appearance of having a head that squared off and ran directly into the trunk of its body. Two powerful arms as broad across as a normal human’s chest shoved against the front of the Landrover, halting it even though the vehicle’s four wheels churned the ground. The legs looked like bridge-support pillars, braced to take on the weight, momentum, and drive of the vehicle it blocked.

  “Fragging earth elemental,” Duran snarled. “Gotta be Luppas. Anybody eyeballed that browncone? Manage to get a double-ought enema up his hoop, we won’t have to drek with this walking gravel pit.” He opened the door and stepped out to face the monster with his shotgun. He fired two rounds.

  The creature opened its gash of a mouth and roared in response. The shotgun pellets had no effect at all.

  Skater brought the Offroader to a halt. On the other side of the Landrover, Elvis skidded to a stop on the Pinto. The trike’s light illuminated the huge elemental.

  “Back up,” Skater ordered. “Try to break free and go around it.”

  Archangel reversed the transmission and stomped the accelerator. All four of the Landrover’s tires dug in. None of them got anywhere. Every chunk of gravel or ripped earth that slapped into the elemental was added to its bulk. Its appearance changed into something more humanlike with each passing second as it manifested itself on the physical plane more completely.

  “I can’t,” Archangel said. Before she could say another word, the ground acted like it had suddenly turned liquid under the Landrover, swallowing it down, centimeters at a time. The elemental continued shoving the vehicle into the opening grave.

  41

  Slipping back into his meat body, Kylar Luppas felt the first crush of the explosions that quaked through the helo. The sounds came afterward, battering him in a rush. Flesh and blood were slow to respond even with adrenaline hitting his system because he’d been away from his body for an extended time. Combating Cullen Trey on the astral plane had dwindled his reserves, the drain on them made even worse with the effort of keeping the other spells going.

  Buffeted by the explosion, Luppas smashed against the bulwark beside the warped door. The barrier spell he’d woven around himself prevented any real damage, but it tested his focus. The barrier would protect him from most physical damage, but was no protection at all from Trey’s continued attacks from the astral plane if they were based on another level than the physical. Another moment, though, and he added a mana barrier to his defenses, activating spell locks for both.

  He looked out the door, watching the ground come up quickly, at an aggressive angle because the craft had rolled over partially on its side. The twisted branches of the trees clawed for the helo as it dropped into their deadly embrace.

  Knowing he was almost out of time even then, Luppas flung himself through the cargo hold, tucking himself into a ball to avoid the careening mass of metal gone way past any control or predictability. Once he was clear of the wreckage, he levitated himself, slowing his fall and gaining control over his direction.

  In the next moment, the helo struck the treeline and shivered into thousands of pieces. Shrapnel struck but didn’t penetrate the invisible barrier cocoon wrapped around Luppas. Rainbow-colored pyrotechnics shot out from the impacts, visible only to Luppas or anyone else able to assense the astral.

  Holding steady at twenty meters above the ground, Luppas aimed himself back in the direction of the bar. He scanned the battlefield with a practiced and calculating eye. The shadowrunners had come closer to breaking through than he’d thought possible. The earth elemental stood in front of the fleeing Landrover, shoving the vehicle down into the firmament as it used its powers to engulf its target.

  At the other end of the parking lot, Octavius ordered the three blocking vehicles into motion again. Traffic fleeing from the bar had stalled out, backing down from the guns aboard the mercenaries’ craft. Still, there remained places to jockey around the abandoned cars and trucks.

  The mercenary rigs plowed through the citizen’s vehicles, taking little damage themselves due to the heavy armor that made them almost as durable as any light tank Luppas had commanded in the Desert Wars. A limping troll went down beneath the bumper of one of the cars, and the vehicle moved on. The troll remained a twisted version of herself in the truck’s wake.

  Luppas gathered his flagging strength for another magical assault. He assensed the Landrover, detecting the man inside. He hovered closer, relying on his barrier spells to keep him safe. There, through the back glass of the Landrover, he saw the man who’d talked with Skater. Chanting, using the Art to the best of his ability, Luppas read what he could from the man, probing his mind harshly. Trey’s five friends were easy to assense as to what they were, if not necessarily who. He immediately recognized the fact that the seventh man didn’t belong with them. And he’d seen them talking to the man from adversarial positions.

  There wasn’t time for Luppas to gain much information. But in the space of a second, he had what he judged he needed. The woman who’d hired the man had left an LTG number and a time to get in touch with her.

  Luppas shaped the mana dart in his mind, preparing it and making sure it would serve his purpose. He recognized Quint Duran then as the big ork hunkered next to the sinking Landrover for cover. Duran fired repeatedly and broke the ranks of the approaching ground troops in spite of Octavius’s efforts.

  The Landrover lunged, trying to escape the grave that opened around it. The earth elemental roared with rage, then drew back a big arm that had a shaped boulder for a fist at the end of it. With a cry of savage glee, it banged the boulder-fist onto the Landrover’s hood, smashing the surface down and scoring it with long tears.

  Luppas sent the mana dart winging on its way, watching as the sword-bearing motorcycle rider closed on the earth elemental and Cullen Trey swung free of the Landrover, staggering enough to let him know that the mystical battle had been draining for the human as well.

  42

  Standing on the Offroader’s footpegs, his fist twisted tightly around the accelerator, Skater raced at the earth elemental. In the last few seconds, it had absorbed enough debris from the parking lot and from the dirt and rock being slung by the Landrover’s wheels to grow another meter and a half.

  At nearly seven meters in height, fully half that in breadth, the elemental seemed impossible to distract from its prey. Blunt features
that looked as rudimentary as a child might make formed a ragged expression of maniacal joy.

  Skater knew they had to get the Landrover free. Holding steady, he swept the sword up in his left hand, relying on his skill and his boosted reflexes as he neared the creature. The Landrover’s engine roared, banishing all other noise. Even communication over the commlink was difficult.

  “You’re crazy, kid,” Duran said. “Back off. We’ll bail.”

  “Jack,” Archangel said. “Don’t.”

  All they needed was just the thinnest sliver of a chance. Skater knew he had the elemental’s attention when the cone-shaped head grated around on its rock-encrusted stump of a neck. It lifted its boulder fist from the front of the Landrover, almost succeeding in smashing out the windshield with its latest effort, and shrugged a blocky shoulder around. The fist came up before it, looking like a giant hammer carved from a quarry wall.

  Skater twisted his accelerator, revving up the rpms. The Offroader responded immediately. As he came within reach of the elemental, he struck at its knee with the sword, almost at waist-level for him due to the creature’s size.

  Although not magical in nature, Skater knew his attack would have an effect on the creature. When elementals manifested on the physical plane, they became vulnerable to physical attacks. Bullets and launched weapons wouldn’t touch them, Trey had once explained during a venture not so long ago, nor anything that was activated without an attacker’s personal skill behind it. Swords and knives worked, but generally elementals could merely shrug off the effects of those; the same for throwing axes and arrows from bows that weren’t crossbows. A crossbow tended to be too independent of a user’s will, where a bow took real skill to use. And courage to stand in the face of such a foe.

  Sparks flashed from the monofilament edge as it struck rock. But the keen edge sliced on through the appendage, although the resulting impact against Skater’s arm felt like it pulled his shoulder out of its socket. The sword pulling free of the earth elemental almost yanked him from the Offroader’s seat.