Shadowrun 45 - Aftershock

by Jean Rabe, John Helfers (v1. 0) (epub)

  “Frag that! Those zakhans shot my ride!”

  She turned onto a fairly wide street that angled north, heading toward an old bus station, the outline of which Max could see a few blocks ahead. Beyond that, it led toward the heart of Everett, an effective dead end at an old warehouse. Max wanted to lose the cycles well before that. This early in the morning—in this part of the city— few cars were out, and those that were gave the Roadmaster and the cycles a wide berth, turning off on side streets and pulling over as if the ork’s van was a DocWagon speeding to a hospital.

  “Bullets, Hood! They’ve put bullet holes in my van. Busted out the windows. You’ve dented the roof with those longhorns of yours. Who’s gonna pay for this, huh? Who in all of—”

  “Faster, Max!” Khase cut in. “And they didn’t get all of your windows.” The elf brushed bits of glass off him and righted a few of the plants that had tipped over.

  “Faster, Max,” the ork parroted in a nasally tone. “Easy for you to say. I didn’t buy the van for speed.”

  “No drek, I think everyone knows that now. Look!” Sindje was still watching the cycles through the back window. They stayed several meters back, side by side, the riders appearing to converse among themselves. In the background, the other two riders held their tail positions. The front cycles stayed even for a moment, until the Roadmas-ter passed the old bus station and appeared to pull ahead just a little. Then the rider who’d pointed to his helmet steadied his bike with his left hand, holstered his gun, and extended his right arm, a trio of snap-blades springing from a forearm sheath. He twisted the accelerator and shot forward, coming up 011 the van’s left side and leaning over.

  “Tires!” Sindje shouted. “He’s going for the tires!”

  “What—where?” Max looked over to see the glint of steel as the cyclist raised his arm to rip into the Roadmas-ter’s engine compartment. “Oh, VUTl”

  At the same time, the second rider veered to the van’s right side, leaned forward until he could barely see above the handlebars as he aimed his machine pistol at the tires on his side.

  Sindje whirled to face her brother. “They’re going to—” Her words ended in a thump as she pitched forward, sliding into a cluster of foliage. Although not caught by surprise, Khase did have to steady himself against the wall as everything in the cargo area pitched forward.

  Max rammed her foot on the brakes, the Roadmaster shuddering as the antilock system clamped down. The sec guards blurred by, one rider slashing at the air with his snap-blades, the other shooting and hitting only pavement. The two cyclists decelerated as well, popping front wheelies as they spun their bikes around for another pass.

  Max spun the Roadmaster in a U-turn, tires screaming in protest against the rain-slick pavement, the powerplant seizing and threatening to quit. “Hood, we can’t take much more of this.” The ork growled deep in her throat, then swallowed hard when she heard metal grating on metal. “C’mon, baby,” she coaxed. “C’mon, c’mon.” Tromping the gas again, the van shot forward in the opposite direction before the cycles were able to catch up. The second pair of cycles split up to avoid the hurtling Roadmaster as it barreled straight for them. Max jerked the wheel and cut down a side street heading past the old bus station, side-swiping a dented Ford Americar double-parked in front of a dilapidated hotel.

  “Totaled, totaled, totaled!” Max hollered to no one in particular about her van, not the newly crumpled sedan. Smoke puffed from a crack in the hood, accompanied by a mechanical belching sound. “Hood, my van’s totaled!”

  The troll had no reply for that; he just continued to worry about the plants, hunched forward as much as possible, but not able to get his head below the level of the side windows. “Khase, Sinjde, do whatever you can to get these guys off us!”

  “Max!” Sindje was looking out the rear windows again. “Two still on us!”

  “I see ’em.” The ork glanced in her side mirror, a difficult feat now because it had been mangled from the impact with the Americar, and was dangling from one screw. The sec guards were a block back, one rearing up on the back wheel once more. “The milk run ended with the first bullet hole in my baby. Ain’t enough nuyen in the world for this job, Hood. Awwww, frag, frag, frag!”

  Engines roaring, the Stealths sandwiched the van between them, the rider with the blades slashing into the truck’s cowling to get at the engine, the one on the right drawing a bead on the rear tire again.

  Max pushed her foot against the floorboard and the Ares’ tires howled. More smoke belched from a crack in the hood, some puffing in through a vent near the glove box, the acrid scent competing with the fragrance of the plants.

  “Vut, vut, vut!” The ork pounded her fist against the steering wheel, the horn sounding angrily and not subsiding. “Frag, frag, frag.” The horn continued to bleat as the van plunged through the intersection, narrowly avoiding a construction truck lumbering past. “Somebody take them out, or I’m gonna!”

  “Shut that horn off!” Sindje was doing her best to concentrate, trying to tap some magic to help. “Should have done this earlier,” she hissed to herself. The van bounced over another pothole and the elf lost her balance, falling against a tray of plants but righting herself immediately. “I said shut that cachu horn off!”

  “Drek, drek, drek.” Max pounded on the steering wheel again, in time with her words. But the horn persisted, mixed now with the sound of a siren.

  “Lone Star?” Khase wondered, a frightened look crossing his face. He saw flashing red lights out the back of the van, but they were too high for a Lone Star car or cycle. He caught a glimpse of a DocWagon cutting down a side street and moving out of sight in a heartbeat.

  Max spun the van around again, careening off an old C-N Jackrabbit and losing the front bumper in a screech of twisted metal. The impact put the Roadmaster on a collision course with a building marked for demolition. Wrestling for control of the stubborn cargo truck, she whipped past the building, missing it by a hairsbreadth, and headed south.

  “Head for Everett,” Khase suggested. “Lose them in the boxy blocks!”

  Sindje heard the DocWagon siren fading, heard the Roadmaster’s horn still wailing, though softer now, as if it was losing its voice. She heard her brother polishing his role as a backseat driver, heard Hood gack up something as he brushed some dirt back into a pot. Then all she heard was her heart beating.

  It was so difficult to concentrate with all the jostling, but somehow she forced it. For an instant, it felt as if she were folding in upon herself, becoming smaller and smaller and impossibly heavy. Of course, she wasn’t physically changing, she was just focusing on her “center,” as she called it, that part of her that burned with magical energy. She envisioned herself a sunlike ball, denser than anything, impervious to the gunshots that threatened to intrude and the shattering of more glass. It must have been the window in the back door that shattered, because she vaguely registered something stinging her face—like ice crystals in a winter storm. And she vaguely registered her brother calling to her in a worried voice.

  Then she thrust all those small distracting noises away and ignored the sting of the glass slivers in her cheeks. There was only the bright ball she had become. Warm and strong, she coerced the psychokinetic force within it to come out and play.

  Join me?

  In response the ball burned brighter in the back of her mind.

  “Where are you going?” This came from Hood. “Max, do you have any idea where you’re driving?”

  “At the moment, no. Past the park now. Chinatown maybe.”

  “No, I said lose them in Everett! North!” Khase had given up on bracing the plants and used his elbow to knock the last bits of glass away from the edges of the back window. “Down by the bay. Lots of little side streets there.”

  “I’m driving here!” The ork drummed her fist against the steering wheel. The horn still wailed.

  Shall we play? Sindje suggested.

  The elf’s eyes snapped open, wid
e and glowing and searching the sidewalks behind the speeding van. She held the energy in her mind, sensing it crackle like a straining fire. Indeed, it was willing to play this very early morning.

  Yes, I’ll play, the ball crackled.

  A moment, she told it, feeling it grow more intense. A moment more.

  The cycles were catching up to the van again, which listed to the left as the rear tire, stressed beyond endurance, collapsed with a bang! The horn was still bleating, a whimpering sound now, almost mournful.

  A moment.

  The van was only a handful of meters ahead of the sec guards now, who were side by side again and conspiring.

  Now!

  “No!” Khase began crawling out the back window, monofilament whip unspooling from his modified glove. “The other two caught up with us again! All four are on our tail!”

  Let’s play!

  Sindje formed the psychokinetic force into a lightning bolt, invisible to all but her. It lanced from her mind and struck a streetlight a meter behind the van, shearing through it like a monofilament chainsaw would drop a tree. The pole tipped over and clanged into the street, throwing up a shower of sparks. Another bolt sliced through a light on the opposite side, sending down another barricade. It was called a powerbolt spell, the most potent magic she had mastered. It could have easily taken out the guards, but Sindje couldn’t risk incapacitating the riders and causing them to fall from their bikes, or geeking them outright. Their team didn’t kill—even accidentally. She already knew from this manic chase that the sec guards were skilled enough to stop the cycles before hitting the fallen streetlights.

  They’d drive around the poles, she was certain. In fact, they were doing that just now, all four of them, riding up on the sidewalk, two on each side, swerving around streetlights, trash cans, a broken rocking chair and a three-legged table someone had set out for the garbage collector.

  Added to the drain her earlier casting had taken out of her, the powerbolt weakened her considerably—the price one paid for using magic—but Sindje would have coerced the mana into action again had she not heard the roof creak above her. She twisted her head. No sign of her brother.

  “Khase?”

  “He went up top.” Hood gestured with the tip of a horn. “Now how ’bout you make sure those plants don’t spill.”

  She grudgingly took Khase’s place, back up against a tray, chin tucked to her neck but eyes glaring up at the troll. “Some run. Some . . . ouch!” She bit her lip as the left rear rim ground against the curb, leaving a trail of sparks behind. The van jumped again when Max took a sharp right down Jefferson. Sindje looked to the back window, fearful Khase might be pitched from the roof and she’d see him fall.

  “He’s all right,” Hood grunted. “You know this is a piece of cake for him.”

  On the roof, Khase kept his balance with ease, shifting his weight when the van turned, bending his knees as he moved to the rear edge. The rain had faded to early morning mist, though the roof was slippery with accumulated water. The street looked haunted, with faint lights glowing from the windows of an office supply company, a large furniture store and a bar making the pavement glisten darkly. Loud music spilled from an open window, some bluesy piece that he couldn’t make out because of the shrieking sound the rim was making and the whine from the cycles. Above, a comely elf in a silky robe and nothing else leaned over the railing of a third story fire escape balcony, watching the chase. Khase’s deep green eyes met hers, and he winked as the van rounded a corner into another block, this one darker and with fewer streetlights.

  “Dear sister, what a fine idea you had to slow our pursuers.” Khase extended his monofilament whip to its illegally modified full length of five meters. Stepping to the right side of the Ares, he cracked it at an approaching streetlight. The lightweight wire wrapped around the pole, with the weight at the end hitting it with a clank. As soon as he heard that, Khase pulled the monofilament back, the wire biting into the pressed metal as the friction from its movement spun it through the pole. Cut through, the streetlight toppled as neatly as the ones felled by Sindje’s spell had, hitting the street in the path of two of the cycles. The motion, coupled with the rain on the roof, almost toppled him, and he crouched to stay standing.

  One of the riders managed to jump the pole, but the second was not so lucky. The front wheel ran into the improvised barrier, and he flew over the handlebars, tumbling to a stop in the road. Khase cringed, but let out a deep breath when he saw the man get to his knees and remove his helmet. The second pair of guards farther back hopped on the sidewalks and sped around the pole. One of them gunned his Stealth again and drew up to the corner of the van, the rider drawing a Colt Manhunter and aiming the heavy pistol at Khase.

  “Now that isn’t very nice at all.” In one fluid motion, the elf reached down and grabbed the edge where the van’s back window had been, flipped over and landed on the back bumper, which creaked under his feet, threatening to tear loose. With his free arm he cracked his whip at the approaching guard, wrapping it around the barrel off the gun and yanking it out of his hand. Khase snaked the whip out twice more. The first strike split the aerodynamic windshield of the Stealth in half, the second used the weight to

  chop off the left handlebar. Two chunks of metal clattered to the pavement as the guard steadied his wobbling cycle while he reached in his jacket for another pistol, this one an Ares Predator IV.

  In spite of the man’s attempts to kill him, Khase admired his aptitude at managing the cycle with only one handlebar. Let’s see how well you do with nothing to hold on to, he thought, flicking his whip out again and cutting off the rest of the steering mechanism. The bike wobbled and slid sideways across the street, fenders and wheels scraping and screeching, the rider rolling free and coming up with a shredded uniform and the Predator IV still in his hand. In obvious pain, he still tried to get off a shot at Khase, but the van lumbered out of range before he could fire.

  Only two sec guards left.

  The van listed farther over, riding completely on a rim now, the tire shredded roadkill strewn along the curb. The steel against the street made the sound of a muted chain-saw, sparks flying and sending up the scent of something that settled uncomfortably in Khase’s mouth. The elf reeled in the whip, and grabbed the bottom of the open rear window with one hand, ignoring a stab of pain in his palm. Then he reached down and grabbed the rear bumper, wrenching it off its mount with a grunt. He looked up to see the third guard leveling a pistol at him.

  Khase waggled his eyebrows at the guard and smiled. He was close enough to see the shocked look on the sec man’s face before the adept launched the bumper into the air with all his strength. The guard tried to brake, but moving at eighty kilometers an hour, he had no chance of avoiding the missile. The bumper bounced into his Stealth’s front wheel, locking it with an abrupt jolt. The rider pitched head over heels into the street, rolling to a motionless heap by the side of the road.

  Three down, one to go, Khase thought as he retracted his whip. But the Roadmaster was severely disabled, and the lone cyclist was trailing it with ease, staying far enough out of range of the elf. “Max, you gotta step it up, or this guy’s gonna dog us all night!”

  “She won’t go any faster—we’re lucky to still be moving at all!” The ork yelled back at him.

  That gives me an idea. “Gun it, and hit the brakes when ~

  I say!” The adept tensed, readying himself. Somehow Max coaxed a burst of speed from the valiant Ares, and the cyclist accelerated to keep within range. The last guard drew his pistol and lowered it at the cargo hauler.

  “Now!”

  Max stomped on the brakes again, and the Roadmaster burned tread as it squealed to a stop. Caught by surprise, the guard braked as well, but not fast enough. The Stealth nearly stood on its front wheel as the street bike wobbled to a stop before it hit the rear of the van.

  Gripping the window ledge with both hands, Khase whipped his legs out and back, extending his body to its
full 1.8-meter length. The soles of his boots struck the guard’s helmet with a satisfying crunch, knocking him off the bike and onto the pavement. The Stealth lurched to one side before falling over and spinning to a stop in the middle of the street. Meanwhile, Khase used the kinetic energy from nailing the guard to rebound back into the window of the Roadmaster, landing on his feet in one fluid motion.

  “Perhaps there is such a thing as luck after all.” Khase directed this to Hood, who was having a difficult time keeping the plants upright given that the van was now so off balance. “We’re clear, tad.”

  Max grumbled something they couldn’t understand, then she turned onto a recently repaved avenue, driving several blocks before finding a dark alley. Sirens erupted from not too far off, and she jumped out of the cab, motioning for Khase and Hood to come with her.

  “You two, put your backs into it,” the ork snapped, carrying an undersized spare. The troll and elf looked at each other, then each leaned against the corner of the Roadmaster and heaved up with all their strength, lifting the battered rim off the ground. Max went to work with a tire iron, spinning nuts off with ease.

  “More than one.” Max nodded toward the wailing sirens. “Four, I count. Not DocWagons, either. I’m sure it’s Lone Star. We made enough of a ruckus for an army of go-gangers, and also drove by an open bar. Someone probably called it in.”

  Arms straining with effort, Khase thought about the woman leaning over the fire escape railing. It’s possible she reported us, he thought, even after getting a glimpse of my natural charm. “They’ll find us here. Easy to track the scrape in the street from the rim. Won’t need tech to follow our trail.”

  “Van’s totaled. Totaled, totaled, totaled.” The words were a mantra. “My cut of this run won’t replace her. Not enough nuyen by a long shot.” The ork gestured to the right rear body fender, hanging loose and thoroughly pitted and dented, pointed to where the back bumper used to be, where bits of the window glass hung to the edges of the frame, bloody in one spot from where Khase had cut his hand. “Grill’s gone, and the front bumper, too. Bullet holes everywhere.”