Shadowrun 45 - Aftershock

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

  A small window popped up in Roland’s vision with a time date stamp in the lower left hand corner. It was a picture of the entry to the greenhouse, and the time was 0301 hours that morning. As he watched, four black-suited, masked figures clustered near the main greenhouse door, all of them hauling plants.

  “Satshot confirmed a modified, unmarked Hughes Stallion in our airspace at oh two hundred and fifty-four hours; that’s how they got on site. The suspects were well-informed about our security and knew exactly what they were going for. Probably knew we only had surveillance by the elevators.” A text list scrolled up next to the video feed, listing every missing plant. Roland’s steel-gray eyes widened as he read it, and he looked out the window so none of the other Plantech employees could see his reaction. “Frag it, Morgan, this is practically everything we sold to Shiawase last week! The Jap execs are gonna fry all our hoops if we don’t recover these plants ASAP.”

  “Believe me, I'm trying not to think about that right now—”

  “You fraggin’ well better! The biggest deal this agricorp has seen in the past decade, and now all of our careers are on the line ’cause a bunch of slags waltzed in and snatched our product from under our very noses! If we don’t save this deal you and I will be doing mall patrol until retirement, overseeing a bunch of drones or chasing down ork hooligans in the Barrens!”

  Morgan’s tone was crisp as he continued. “Yes sir. As I said, the suspects were not average smash and grab tech or info thieves. In fact, we might not have caught them at all if the internal alarm codes hadn’t changed, thereby alerting us to the broken window.”

  “Great, just what I always want to rely on for security— dumb luck.” Roland grimaced and shook his head as his subordinate continued.

  “My squad was on patrol, so we confirmed the intrusion and headed to level thirty. The greenhouse doors were supposed to be in auto lockdown, but one of the suspects cracked it, and they held us up at the elevator by shooting the door with an arrow—”

  “With a what?” Roland frowned. “Repeat that last sentence.”

  A picture of a broadhead arrow, broken in two pieces, flashed up on his image link.

  “Yeah, one of these jokers used a bow to shoot the elevator door so it wouldn’t open. K-Tog overrode the safety

  protocol and executed plan Beta to secure the corridor, but they were ready for us. Here’s a feed from an elevator cam. ” Roland watched the security feed from the cam, seeing Morgan’s pistol slide free from its holster, chamber a round, and fire into the air. “Drekking mages. Still, they didn’t shoot you when they had the chance?”

  “No, strangely enough. It was a fraggin’ good distraction, but my men responded exactly as they should have. K-Tog and Faraday turned to secure the area behind us, while Davis and Weiger stayed locked on the greenhouse doors. Unfortunately, one of the thieves was already in the hall by then.”

  Roland watched in silence as the unseen presence disabled the pair of point guards in under two seconds. “He’s fast, whoever he is.”

  “And he never showed up on our helmet cams. Apparently there’s a mage trick that can hide a person from cameras as well as people. And the little slag took out K-Tog, too; watch this.”

  The scene unfolded in front of him; Morgan, ultrasound optic down on his helmet, HK subgun snugged into his shoulder, aiming at empty air. A blur streaked in from the bottom of the screen and hit the weapon, knocking it off target for a second. As he struggled to bring the firearm back up, Morgan staggered from an unseen blow, while the troll was rocked back and forth from a series of impacts at the same time.

  Roland paused the feed. “What the frag is this? Is he taking you both on at once?”

  “No, the shot that took me out—what I remember of it— wasn’t from a fist or a foot. It was like the air itself solidified and hit me in the face. ”

  “I swear, drekking mages. And what’s even worse, we can’t even afford to hire one ourselves.” The sec chief activated the playback again, and watched a lithe figure almost punt the troll’s head off his shoulders before the camera went to static. He split his viewscreen and brought up the internal greenhouse view, an image from one of his men’s helmet cams. Switching it to thermal sight, Roland spotted what he was looking for under a long table; a crouched figure looking like it was punching air at the moment when

  Morgan got knocked into next week. “Both the mages are elven, one street mage, one adept, I’d bet your paycheck on it. Frag, with that kick, even for a troll, I’m surprised he’s in one piece. How’s our boy doing?”

  “Heck, chief, you know K-Tog—he’d come to work with a broken jaw and no one would know until he ordered soup in the cafeteria. He’ll be all right. Next, their hacker scummed the elevator camera and turned it off. The suspects then dressed in the guards’ uniforms and brought their haul down to the main floor, where that drekhead Conner told them to go ahead and take the plants to the safe room. Instead, they took a different elevator and hauled hoop to the garage, where they had a cargo van waiting, and left by the main gate—”

  “Hold up, hold up, one thing at a time. First”—Roland reviewed the video until he found what he was looking for, a shot of all four intruders by the greenhouse’s main elevator door. He zoomed in on the troll’s head, his face hidden by a mask, but his horns left uncovered—“this guy’s horns sweep back, while K-Tog’s point forward. Did Conner tell you how he missed that pertinent bit of info?”

  “Yeah, I spotted that, too. He said the troll had me over his shoulder and passed me off to the Crashcart guys, and Conner was focusing on the intruders still upstairs. The guy also knew our sec regulation about securing all plants in the event of a penetration. Conner was about to order the fake squad back up with him when a request for backup came over our radios.”

  Another file opened up, and an audible readout line burst into a red zig-zagging visual of noise as Roland listened to the assistance request from Squad Two, complete with the background sounds of a pitched firelight. “So they hauled your out-cold meat down with them, then broadcast a false call for help?”

  “Yeah, according to Conner it sounded like all hell was breaking loose up there, and without monitors in the greenhouse itself, it was a reasonable assumption. They headed up and found the rest of my squad down. By the time they scrambled guards to the garage level to intercept, the thieves were already gone. ”

  “How in the frag did they get out of the garage when you guys had a level-three lockdown on the entire building?” Roland tried to keep his subvocalized voice in check, but his anger came through loud and clear.

  Morgan’s tone reflected his utter confusion, but Roland took no chances, activating his internal voice-stress analyzer as his lieutenant answered. “Boss, I wish I could answer that one. According to Central, I was the one who had his retina scanned at oh three hundred and seven hours, and the computer registered my voice responding to the system’s query about the sec issue with an almost perfect accuracy level. Voiceprints have always been around, but we’ve only heard rumors of a ret-copy program for years. I didn’t think anything of this high quality had filtered down to the street yet.”

  The security chief checked the results of the program’s scan: 98.6 percent chance that the sec man told the truth. “Well, apparently it has now—get someone on the matrix to check out who may have sold that program in the past month, and find out who the buyer was.”

  ‘‘Right, sir. The cycle teams already had been activated as per SOP, and they caught the target vehicle coming out of the garage, an Ares Roadmaster. Central records say the plate of the van was registered to an overnight repair crew, and was scheduled to be in the building until six this morning. I'm downloading the schedule file to you now.” Morgan sucked in a breath and continued. “They gave chase and attempted to disable the suspect vehicle to save the plants, as per standard orders. Every rider said they beat the frag out of the Roadmaster, but the suspects disabled both teams—again, not killing anyone, although
three of our crew suffered minor injuries in the pursuit—and escaped. We’re negotiating to get the security cam feeds from the chase route, but Lone Star has been jacking us around—” “You leave them to me, I’ll have that feed in the next hour.” Roland tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What else you got?”

  “The vehicle was traced to the Historic District, but vanished in the alley maze down there. Paint traces from a car the Roadmaster sideswiped turned out to be your basic primer coat. Tire remnants are also standard run-flats, you can buy them at any one of a hundred places in the city.” “Vehicle’s probably scrap or a new reef in the bay by now.” Roland checked his list of salvage yards. “Still, have Conner begin calling the junkyards in every 'burb about a beat-to-drek Roadmaster in primer gray. Pass along the plate, for all the good it’ll do. It’ll probably be the last order he gets from me, and I want it to suit his abilities.” “Canvas teams in the area have turned up nothing so far—it’s like the runners vanished off the map completely. ” Morgan’s voice already held a hint of defeat, but he kept it together.

  “And took the future of our company with them.” Roland rubbed his goateed chin as he considered the slim list of options available to him. A small, blinking red light appeared in the upper right quadrant of his vision. Frag, he thought. Well, like I didn’t know that was coming.

  “All right, finish your sweep of the garage, then retrace the chase route—take the uninjured rider with you—see if you can pick up anything the teams might have missed. Get someone you trust to review the files on every employee. Look for anything unusual, high debt, repossession, medical bills, divorce, whatever oddities you can find.”

  “You suspect an inside job?”

  “The way they penetrated our perimeter so easily, you bet your hoop I do. I gotta see the Old Man, so check in with me when you’re done.”

  “Affirmative, and—good luck,” Morgan replied.

  “Yeah, luck to you, too.” Roland walked through the foliage to the open elevator doors, ignoring the whispers trailing behind him. Inside, one button on the panel was lit. Roland pressed it. The doors closed with only a minor hitch as the arrow hole in the door appeared in front of him. Roland ran his fingers around the edges of the perforation, shaking his head as his other hand dropped to the butt of the holstered Browning Max-Power on his thigh. Takes all kinds, he thought.

  The elevator stopped moving, and Roland stepped out, aware that he was now several dozen meters below ground, and never comfortable with the feeling. There was only one way to go, down a polished black marble corridor that led to a pair of closed double doors. The squeak of the sec chief’s combat boots against the floor echoed in the passageway. When he was two meters from the doors, they swung inward without a sound. Roland kept moving, his feet now sinking into plush carpet. There was no natural light to be seen anywhere, but plants climbed all four walls, fed by artificial cold lights.

  “Mr. Ators. Please, sit down.”

  Roland had seen the head of Plantech, Jefferay Siskind, about a dozen times during his ten-year stint as head of security, and had been in this office seven times, by his recollection. Jefferay always addressed everyone he spoke to formally; the sec men had a long-running bet among them that he even called his own mother Mrs. Siskind. But in all that time, Roland had never been invited to sit down. With a barely perceptible pause in his stride, he walked to a leather wingback chair and settled in.

  Jefferay leaned forward, his paper-white skin, pale red eyes and pointed ears giving him the appearance of an elf that had just spent the past ten years in a snowstorm. A maverick among the rest of his kind, the albino had founded Plantech three decades ago to research and develop allergen-free foods, with a secondary goal of creating safer drought and insect-resistant crops. He was one of that rare, vanishing breed in the Sixth World—an altruist.

  But even altruists have to eat, and pay salaries and fund R and D departments, Roland thought. Hence the deal with Shiawase, which had been very interested in some of the more exotic hybrids Plantech had developed during the past four years. They had made an overture toward buying the entire company, but Siskind had dissuaded them without either side losing face, an impressive accomplishment. Shiawase had contracted to purchase the plants that had been in the greenhouse. The same plants that had been stolen exactly two hours and seventeen minutes ago.

  Siskind shot the cuffs of his beige linen suit and rested his forearms on the bare desktop in front of him. “There’s no need to apprise me of the situation, I know exactly where we stand in regard to our missing product.” Despite his appearance, the elf’s voice sounded normal—polished and smooth, with a hint of British prep school in it.

  Although Roland respected his boss—part of the reason he took the gig in the first place—he wasn’t about to kiss his hoop, either. “Yes, sir. My report on the break-in will be ready for you in twenty—”

  Siskind waved at him to be quiet. “Other than the immediate dismissal of Mr. Conner for his inattention to detail, there will be no disciplinary action against your security squads. I’m afraid that, despite their best efforts, they were simply outmatched. Assuming we come out of this intact, I’ll expect your updated report on the feasibility of hiring at least one corporate mage for security. And maybe, just maybe, I will consider putting some monitors in the greenhouse.”

  Roland’s fingers flexed on the arms of his chair, waiting for the CEO to continue.

  “There is no need to embellish the situation, Mr. Ators. I’m sure you know that with the failure of the dwarf citrus tree program, combined with the Norwegian root blight that killed half of our foreign programs, along with the flooding on the African coast that completely wiped out our subsidiary and its dry rice project, this licensing deal with Shiawase was our last chance to keep Plantech in one piece. Although we have all the necessary data ready for them, the deal’s conclusion is contingent on delivering live samples of every plant they had purchased. Without those, the deal is off. and without that payment, Plantech will go bankrupt, and I will have to sell off our assets and let everyone go. Or Shiawase might be bold enough to demand my company as restitution for the missing samples. Neither of these outcomes is acceptable.”

  Roland prided himself on keeping a straight face, although the sinking feeling in his stomach threatened to turn into a whirlpool of acid. Good-bye stock options, good-bye pension, good-bye everything. Plantech would be chopped up like a plump hydroponic carrot, its pieces thrown to a slavering pack of corps looking to profit off the dead agricorp’s carcass.

  “Therefore, the course of action is clear. You have approximately twenty-nine hours to track down and recover the missing plants. Naturally. Lone Star cannot be involved in this—if they were to get wind of the fact that biotech was loose on the street, even plants as benign as ours, their reaction would be very unfavorable. Do whatever you can to recover those plants, Mr. Ators. That is all.”

  “Yes, sir, I already have everyone on the problem. We’ll do everything we can.”

  “I have no doubt you will. The very survival of our company rests on your capable shoulders. I’ve opened a private number on your commlink that will connect you with me at any time of the day or evening. Keep me informed of your progress.”

  Roland stood, knowing the meeting was at an end. “Yes, sir.” He walked out of the dim, oppressive office, craving a breath of fresh air. The elevator doors opened for him, and he stabbed the lobby floor button, tapping his foot and staring at the ceiling. On the way up, he dialed a number on his commlink.

  “Hi honey, it’s me . . . yeah, we’ve got a situation down here at the corp ... I know, I know, nothing usually ever happens here, but I’ve got to stick around for a while, make sure everything is taken care of. Um, I might not be home until late this evening, just wanted you to know. Yes, I’ll grab something here. We’ll have to review the plans for the cottage over the weekend. I know, I’ll be there as soon as I can ... I love you, too . . . see you
later.”

  He killed the connection and dialed another number. “Could you patch me through to Sergeant Jhones Redrock? Yes, I’ll take his voice mail, thanks. Jhones? It’s me, Roland. I need a favor, and I want to discuss it face-to-face. Meet me at the diner at nine thirty this morning if you can, but call me only if you can’t. I hope to see you there. I’ll stick around for a bit in case you don’t get this message right away.”

  Roland closed the commlink connection and walked into the lobby, heading for the elevators that led to his office on the twentieth floor. The sick feeling in his gut had been burned away by a cold ball of rage at the street slags that had done this to his corp, and jeopardized everything he and hundreds of others had worked so hard for. One way or another, they’re gonna pay, he vowed to himself.

  6

  9:03:46 a.m.

  Hood looked around the kitchen, his three-meter-tall frame eerily reflected in the mirrorlike surface of the equally tall refrigerator. All of the appliances had brushed aluminum surfaces, thereby presenting various likenesses and angles of the troll. It reminded him of when he had visited a carnival house of mirrors in his childhood, and made him vow—again—to have a redecorator stop by. He wondered, for probably the millionth time, what he’d look like if he had been born human instead of one of the metatypes that had appeared when magic returned to the world.

  “Certainly not as comely as my bumpy self,” he said, also probably for the millionth time. Odd to think of himself without the magnificent, curled horns and impressive row of teeth, or the muscles upon muscles that strained the seams of his skinsuit.

  He’d changed out of the tight black suit he wore during the early-morning run and now wore beige cotton trousers and a tropical print short-sleeve shirt, both on the baggy side and both more than a little worn from age. He fancied that the clothes made him look like a beach bum, but they were comfortable and he wouldn’t mind getting them dirty from working with the plants. After today, though, he would throw them away.