shadowrun 40 The Burning Time

by Stephen Kenson

  "Yes, sir," Armont said, then turned and walked away briskly.

  The window slid back into place, cutting off most of the sounds coming from outside the car. The uncomfortable silence inside was broken only by Otabi’s unintelligible muttering.

  "What did you give him?" Roy asked, reaching out to turn Otabi’s face toward him for a better look.

  "Leave him be," Gabriel said curtly. "I’ve already told you that the less you know about this, the better off you are. I suggest you sit back, relax, and keep quiet."

  Gabriel’s "suggestion" was obviously intended as a threat, and again Roy obeyed. He sat back against the Westwind’s plush upholstery and kept his mouth shut. Still, as Otabi’s head lolled back, Roy couldn’t help noticing a chip inserted into his datajack.

  That must be what had put him in this state, Roy thought. Not drugs, but some kind of simchip. Was he right about Otabi being addicted to sims or even to BTL? Or was Gabriel just using the chip to keep Otabi docile?

  Gabriel started up the Westwind and pulled smoothly away from the Cross Bio-Medical building. The car doors were locked, and Roy noticed that the controls were located where only the driver could access them. Obviously, the Westwind’s passengers weren’t going anywhere unless Gabriel wanted them to. If Greenleaf was bothered by the turn of events, he didn’t show it. He sat gazing calmly out the window.

  As they reached the exit, Roy noticed an unmarked Chevrolet-Nissan van pulling out of the research park just ahead of them. Gabriel fell in smoothly behind the van and kept pace with it as they drove out onto the main road. The mid-morning traffic was light, and they made good time. Gabriel stayed behind the van, glancing periodically into the rear and side-view mirrors. At one point, Roy started to turn to see if someone was following, but a word from Gabriel stopped him.

  They picked up the highway heading north, traveling away from Boston. Roy f decided there was only one other place they could be going. Sure enough, about twenty minutes later, they picked up Route 101 East to the airport in Manchester. Although Logan Airport handled most of the air traffic for the Boston metroplex, the Manchester Airport was a major subsidiary hub, particularly for business travelers in the upper New England states. Roy had flown into Manchester on his way to Boston, and now it looked like he was leaving the same way, although not quite in the manner he’d planned.

  When they got to the airport, the Westwind continued following the van, which did not stop at the terminal. It drove toward the hangars that corporations leased from the airport for privately owned aircraft. That made sense, Roy thought. It wasn’t like they could get Otabi past airport security in his condition.

  A Federated-Boeing Whitehorse cargo plane was parked in front of one hangars, its wings tilted up in takeoff and landing position. The CATco logo was emblazoned across the side of the wide-bodied plane, and its cargo bay door had been lowered from the tail of the plane to the tarmac. The passenger entrance was also open, with a wheeled stairway in place. The van pulled around to the tail, while Gabriel stopped the Westwind in front of the hangar and got out.

  "Come with me," he commanded Roy and Greenleaf. He gestured to two security guards near the plane, and the two burly metahumans came running, straining at the seams of their uniforms. They picked up Dan Otabi like a rag doll and helped carry him to the plane. Roy noticed the other uniformed Cross personnel unloading items from the back of the van onto the cargo platform. There were seven or eight silvery metal cylinders, each less than a meter tall and topped with a valve cap. Roy glimpsed a biohazard symbol and some writing on the side of one of the cylinders before Gabriel ushered him up the stairs to the plane. The passenger compartment was relatively small, yet roomier than the commercial jet he’d taken from Montreal, since there were fewer seats. The two metahumans hauled Otabi over to a seat and strapped him in, while Kilaro and Greenleaf also took seats and fastened their seatbelts.

  Gabriel stood by the doorway, stepping aside to let the metahumans exit the compartment. Roy looked out and saw the security personnel shutting the doors of the company van. The troll rapped on the back of the vehicle, which immediately began to drive off. The ork security guard climbed back up the stairs, ducking his head to fit his tall frame through the doorway.

  "All loaded up," he said to Gabriel, and then smashed his massive fist into the man’s solar plexus. Gabriel’s breath went out in a whoosh as he doubled over. The ork followed up immediately with an uppercut. Gabriel stumbled back against the bulkhead, then slid down to the floor.

  Roy tensed in his seat and thought he saw Greenleaf about to try something, but the ork moved quicker than the eye could follow. Suddenly there was a gun in his hand, a very big gun, leveled in their direction.

  "Don’t move," he said. "Don’t even blink."

  Roy sat staring into the dark bore of the hand-cannon, not doubting in the least that the ork was dead serious. He heard the muffled sound of gunfire—like air guns, or weapons with silencers—from outside the plane, but he didn’t dare turn his head to look. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Greenleaf, who looked like he was going to faint. Perhaps the elven mage wasn’t so unflappable after all.

  The ork was reaching for the door to the crew cabin when suddenly the air around him seemed to thicken, becoming a yellow-greenish smoke. The big ork began to cough and choke like he was being hit with tear gas, and Roy glanced around, wondering where it was coming from. Were the security guards using gas to drive them out of the plane?

  But the gas didn’t expand. It stayed close to the ork’s big bulk, swirling around him. He fell back against the door and raised his gun. Roy ducked down as the gun went off with a dull "whump" that echoed through the cabin.

  That was when he saw Greenleaf stand up, and Roy realized this must be another of the mage’s air spirits, like the one destroyed by intruders. The elf murmured something too softly for Roy to hear as he leveled his hand toward the struggling ork.

  Even as he did, a silvery-furred wolf appeared out of nowhere and slammed into Greenleaf, knocking him into the aisle between the seats. Another man, a human this time, came charging into the cabin. He, too, was clad in Cross security coveralls, and he held a pistol in his left hand. In his right was a gleaming dagger that he raked through the noxious mist surrounding the ork. The vapor parted neatly up the middle and began to disperse. It slid off the ork and gathered into a small cloud. Roy thought he could see a pair of glowing eyes in the middle of the cloud, glaring at the man with the knife. The man thrust his dagger into the center of the cloud, and it instantly broke up and began to disperse.

  Then the man reached out to help the ork steady himself. "You okay?" he asked. When the ork nodded and waved him away, the human turned back to the passenger cabin.

  Roy glanced over and saw Greenleaf pinned under the wolf, which was standing on his chest. The man went over to the mage and, without a word, raised his pistol and shot him in the chest. Roy flinched at his cold efficiency as the man turned toward him. He wore a small silver loop through his right ear, and Roy saw the telltale gleam of a datajack behind it.

  "Unless you want the same, stay down and stay quiet," the man said.

  Roy slumped into his seat and offered no resistance. He glanced again at Greenleaf, expecting to see a bloody wound, but instead he saw a tiny dart sticking out of the elf’s skinny chest. A tranq-dart, Roy thought. So, these shadowrunners weren’t quite as ruthless as they seemed. Either that, or they wanted their captives alive for some reason. Roy didn’t find that particularly comforting.

  The ork opened the door to the flight deck and dragged the pilot and co-pilot out. As he brought them into the passenger cabin, the troll "security guard" and a human woman entered. The woman moved quickly to the flight deck, and then the troll pulled the door shut.

  "Get going, Val!" the man with the dagger said, then turned back to the ork and the troll. "Take care of them," he ordered, indicating Kilaro and then the troll came into the passenger compartment, shutting the door behind him.


  The two metahumans picked up Gabriel and Greenleaf and put them into their seats, fastening seatbelts around them, then indicated that Roy and the flight crew do the same. From outside, Roy heard the sound of the Whitehorse’s turbo-props firing up. He looked and saw a CATco van approaching along the perimeter road, possibly the same van they’d followed here. It was about a hundred meters away as the Whitehorse began lifting off the tarmac and rising straight up into the air.

  The plane climbed to well over a hundred meters before the tilt-wings rotated, turning the turbo-props. They shot forward and continued to climb up and away from the airport. The two metahumans kept their weapons trained on their captives, while the human who seemed to be their leader stood at the head of the cabin. He seemed to be lost in thought or listening to something no one else could hear, probably talking to a confederate via a headware radio or comm system. Roy saw his lips move slightly, as if he was sub-vocalizing into an internal pick-up.

  The terrain passed quickly beneath them, then the pilot took the Whitehorse up to a mid-range cruising altitude, and the landscape below turned into a collection of children’s toys. There were no signs of pursuit or interference that Roy could see or hear.

  "Trouble says we’re clear at the moment," the leader said to the two metahumans. "She’s working on masking our approach through metroplex airspace so we don’t run into any problems."

  "What. . .what do you want with us?" Roy asked. Suddenly the eyes of all three shadowrunners were on him, and he swallowed hard.

  "We don’t want anything with you, chummer," the leader said. "We’ve got what we want. I wanted to leave all of you back at the airport, but circumstances forced us to alter our plans slightly. If you’ll just cooperate and don’t give us any grief, you get to walk away from this in one piece. You have my word on that."

  His eyes narrowed, and his voice hardened. "On the other hand. . .well, let’s just say it’ll be better if you play nice, so ka?"

  He holstered his pistol and sheathed his dagger, then stripped off the Cross uniform and tossed it aside. He wore regular street clothes underneath.

  The leader turned to the ork and the troll and sad, "Keep an on them." Then he spoke to the silvery wolf, which stood patiently in the aisle. "Make sure he doesn’t try anything else, Aracos."

  Roy watched in amazement as the wolf nodded knowingly and flashed a wolfish grin before settling on its haunches next to Greenleaf’s seat. After the leader disappeared into the forward cabin, a dead silence fell over the passenger cabin

  After a bit, Roy could see the skyline of downtown Boston in the distance. It looked to him like the plane was banking to the west in an arc around the outskirts of the plex. Traffic below thinned out as they crossed over the Roxbury district, which he knew the locals referred to as "the Rox." Most of it had been abandoned by the city around the turn of the century, when the earthquake that leveled New York City also did some damage to the Boston area. He’d heard that the Rox was still inhabited by society’s castoffs: gangs, the SINless, the poor, the homeless, and criminals like shadowrunners.

  The plane began to descend over the area, coming in so steeply that Roy thought the pilot might have lost control or was planning to crash-land the Whitehorse for some reason.

  Gabriel recovered consciousness as they began to descend, a livid bruise already purpling along the side of his jaw. He stayed quiet, keeping his eyes on the armed shadowrunners as the ground drew closer. Roy knew that looking to him for help was pointless. Even if Gabriel did have the power to act against a group of armed shadowrunners, Roy suspected he was smart enough to protect his own skin.

  About a hundred meters above an empty lot left behind by some demolished buildings, the plane’s wings tilted. It hovered over the ground, almost at a complete stop, then slowly descended into a cleared area just large enough to accommodate the cargo-lifter. The turbo-fans whined down from their full power, but kept running as the leader emerged from the flight cabin.

  He opened the outer door of the passenger compartment and lowered the stairs to the ground. The ork immediately went out and descended the stairs while the leader turned back to his captives.

  "All of you, out," he said, gesturing toward the door. Slowly, they unfastened their safety belts and stood up. The shadowrunners directed Gabriel and Roy to help move the unconscious Greenleaf, while the captain and co-pilot helped move Otabi under the watchful eyes of the shadowrunners. When they were on the ground again, Roy saw a dark van waiting, concealed behind a half-demolished wall. The woman who’d piloted the Whitehorse opened the van’s back door, and the ork and troll got everyone loaded into it.

  As the three drew slim pistols, Roy was seized with the urge to bolt and run. The pistols chuffed once, then twice. He felt a slight sting where the tranq-dart struck him in the chest before he slumped to the floor, his world fading to black.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Three people, two men and a woman, emerged from the rubble of the demolished buildings around the clearing where the Whitehorse had landed. Talon kept his hands near his weapons as he approached from around the wings, but not too close to startle the newcomers. He was certain that the surrounding rubble concealed more than the three he saw, and that they would try to ambush the shadowrunners if things didn’t go their way. It was what he would have done if the situation were reversed.

  The cargo door of the Whitehorse was down, and the silvery metal cylinders stacked on it were in plain sight. Anyone could see that gunshots from Talon’s position stood a good chance of puncturing one or more of them. He hoped that would help to keep things civil.

  He stepped forward while the rest of the team loaded their unwanted captives into the van, which was concealed behind a half-collapsed wall. He kept his hands in plain view and relaxed as the two men and the woman approached.

  The man in the lead was young. Hell, they all were, Talon thought. Not one looked over twenty-five—and probably not likely to see thirty. The shadows were a dangerous business, considered a young person’s game. At thirty-one, Talon was an old man to many other runners. Some shadowrunners were older than he was, but not many.

  The lead man had curly dark brown hair and a boyish, freckled face, but his cold eyes must have seen a lifetime of hardship. He wore a brick-red leather jacket that showed the stiffness of armor plating in spots.

  Talon didn’t recognize any gang colors. Johnsons—corporate and otherwise—often used gangs as go-betweens or messengers. He figured this was one of those times.

  "You’ve got the data?" the young man asked, without bothering to introduce himself or his companions. Any names he gave would be a lie anyway.

  Talon reached slowly into his pocket and produced a small clear-plastic case. In it was an optical chip containing the data they’d liberated from the Cross Bio-Med facility last night. He held it up so the man could see, but he didn’t hold it out to him.

  "The payment?" Talon countered, and the young man took a slim, plastic wand from his jacket pocket.

  After the two items changed hands, Talon slotted the credstick into his portable data reader, where the numbers glowed on the screen. His counterpart did the same with the chip, though Talon couldn’t imagine how he would know whether or not the data was genuine. He’d looked it over himself as a matter of course, and it was all complex chemical diagrams and equations. Still, the guy seemed satisfied, as was Talon. The proper amount was on the stick, along with the confirmation codes their Johnson had given for the run. These were the legit "couriers" for the goods.

  "All yours," Talon said, stepping aside to let them at the canisters on the cargo pad. "But make it quick. We can’t afford to stay here much longer."

  That was no lie. As it was, Talon wasn’t crazy about conducting this part of the run in daylight. Standing around in the open, even in the Rox, was an invitation to trouble. The sooner they got everything wrapped up, the better he would feel.

  The lead man gave a low whistle, and more people emerged fr
om concealment to assist in moving the canisters. Talon saw that he’d guessed most of their locations, although one or two surprised him. He assumed a few more still hid within the rubble. They quickly began to unload the canisters from the cargo pad and carried them off.

  There was probably an entrance to the catacombs around here, Talon thought. Numerous abandoned subway and maintenance tunnels ran under parts of the metroplex, particularly the Rox. They were home to all manner of people, and all manner of things, as Talon knew from experience.

  As the men finished their work, the woman walked up to Talon. She had long red hair, deep blue eyes, and a curvy, athletic figure barely concealed by her rough clothes. She produced another credstick from the pocket of her short jacket and held it out to Talon.

  "A small bonus," she said, "for a job well done."

  Talon took the stick and got a better look at her. A chill shuddered through him as she turned and walked away without another word.

  Man, she’s a creepy one, he thought. He wasn’t usually affected by the attitudes of the people he encountered in the course of a shadowrun. They tended to be unpleasant and, like this crew, pretty hardened. But the feeling of sheer contempt that radiated off the woman was so strong that Talon could feel it even without the use of his mystical senses. Still, he was used to being looked down upon as an "alley runner" and "street scum" by people a lot loftier than some ganger slitch with a chip on her shoulder. He shrugged and slotted the second credstick, which showed a tidy little bonus on it, as promised. It made the hassle of the run well worth it.

  Talon pocketed the credsticks and the data-reader as the gangers began to leave. Boom came up as the last of them disappeared from sight.

  "Ready to hit the road, term?" he asked. "We’re all packed up."

  Talon nodded. "We set with the Whitehorse?"

  "Val’s taken care of it," Boom said. "Look." They both turned as the cargo-plane’s turbo-fans began to rev up with a loud whine, kicking up a cloud of dust and sand as it lifted off. It rose above the tops of the buildings, then the wings tilted into flight mode. The Whitehorse turned east, still climbing into the overcast sky. There was no one on board, of course, but Val had programmed the plane’s dog-brain to fly across the metroplex, then out over the ocean. Either someone would manage to intercept it or override the dog-brain (which would be difficult, at best), or it would run out of fuel and crash hundreds of kilometers out to sea, where nobody would ever find it. Either way, it wasn’t anything the runners had to worry about.