shadowrun 40 The Burning Time

by Stephen Kenson

  They’d only been on the ground a few minutes, but even with Trouble running interference with metroplex air-traffic control, they might have been detected. Fortunately, Knight Errant Security handled police duties for the Boston plex. Though they were known as a hoop-kicking paramilitary outfit, Knight Errant was also a subsidiary of Ares Macrotechnology out of Detroit. And their number one corporate rival was none other than Cross Applied Technologies.

  CATco would be reluctant to trust the local authorities to handle the matter of a missing cargo plane, preferring to keep it "in the family." They would more than likely invoke corporate extraterritoriality as a member of the Corporate Court. Since the Rox was technically a zero-zone outside the plex’s jurisdiction, and Cross property was like that belonging to a foreign nation, the company could keep Knight Errant out of their business. That ought to slow things down enough that the only thing Cross security would find when they tracked down the missing Whitehorse was a dead end. It was one of the main reasons Talon had been willing to try such a risky plan. It had worked, at least so far.

  He hopped into the passenger side of the van, and Valkyrie drove deeper into the Rox. The van was a bit cramped with Boom and Hammer in the back seat and their six unexpected guests laid out cold in back.

  "Let’s take them to the chapel," Talon said to Val. With a nod, she turned at the next corner.

  Talon keyed open his commlink. "Trouble, how are we doing with security?"

  Her voice came in clearly over the link. "Null sheen, from the look of it," she said. "I concealed your movements from metroplex air-traffic, so they haven’t got any clear radar. Of course, they’ll figure out the landing site based on your previous vector when they pick up the Whitehorse again. Looks like Cross is still trying to figure out exactly what happened, and you were right about them putting the brakes on Knight Errant. It was the first thing they did when you entered metroplex airspace. I’d say we’re clear."

  Talon smiled. "Good work, Trouble. Meet us at the chapel. We’re going to keep our uninvited guests there until the heat dies down, then we’ll dump them and call this thing a wrap."

  "Will do," Trouble said. "Out."

  The chapel was actually an old Catholic church in South Boston, damaged during the quake and the Bloody Thursday riots. Boom had "acquired" it shortly after Talon returned to Boston from DeeCee, and it had served as one of their safe houses since then. They were using it today because they were planning to retire it soon rather than make some expensive repairs. Compromising its security by bringing outsiders there was no longer a big concern. If Cross found out about it, the team would simply move on to another.

  The building was constructed mostly of heavy stone. The windows were boarded up or covered with heavy sheets of construction plastic to replace the once-splendid stained glass. Anything else of value had long since been stripped by squatters and junk dealers. That left a stone shell with a few small rooms in the back and a good-sized basement. Stocked with the right supplies, it could keep a team of shadowrunners going for several weeks, though Talon didn’t plan to spend that much time there. The heat would die down after a day or two, and they would let their prisoners go.

  The van pulled up to the back doors, which were protected with rusting chains and padlocks, along with "KEEP OUT" signs posted on the walls. Talon got out, fishing in his pocket for the keys to the doors, then stopped at a flash of movement at the corner of the building. His trained reflexes went on alert, expecting an ambush. Was it possible that Cross security had found them, he wondered? Then he saw who the shadowy figure was.

  Jase! The familiar features gazed back at him, exactly the same as nearly fifteen years before.

  Talon turned and sprinted toward him. "Jase!" he shouted, but the figure ducked around the corner, disappearing into a flood of light as if he’d walked into a bright passageway. Still calling his name, Talon followed Jase around the corner, and nearly ran into a car driving down the alley. The driver slammed on the brakes, which gave an ear-splitting squeal. Talon tried to do the same, but he hit the front of the car and rolled onto the hood before smashing into the windshield. The car stopped, and he rolled forward to keep from being thrown to the ground. He was a little banged up, but not seriously hurt.

  "Talon, my god!" Trouble said as she jumped out of the car and rushed over to him. "Are you okay? I tried to stop, but—"

  "Did you see him?" Talon interrupted. He levered himself into a sitting position on the hood as Val and Boom also came rushing around the corner.

  "See who? All I saw was you nearly getting turned into roadkill." Then Trouble’s face paled slightly. "It was Jase again, wasn’t it?"

  Talon nodded. "I saw him, as plain as day."

  "Maybe it was someone else," Trouble began, "a squatter, or—"

  "It was him," Talon insisted. "I know it. Damn it, I’m not crazy. It was him."

  "Nobody’s saying you are, term," Boom said, helping Talon down off the hood of the ZX. "But whoever it was, he’s gone now, and we’ve got some other things to deal with."

  "Yeah," Talon said, glancing around one final time. "Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get our new friends inside."

  But once the prisoners were secure, Talon knew what he had to do. This thing with Jase had him turned inside out, and he was going to find out what the frag was really going on.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Roy Kilaro slowly regained consciousness, vaguely remembering a strange dream about being a corporate agent investigating espionage, then confronting a group of shadowrunners aboard a Cross-owned plane before. . .shadowrunners! The plane!

  As he bolted awake, a hand touched his shoulder. He spun to see who it was in the dank, musty room where he was lying on the floor. It was dark, and he didn’t recognize the man’s face.

  "Easy," the man said. "Take it easy. Everything’s okay. You’re all right, for now. I’m Frank Connell."

  As his vision and his head began to clear, Roy recognized the pilot of the Whitehorse, who’d been dragged out of the cabin by the shadowrunners. He dropped his hand, which had been raised to strike out, and looked around.

  There wasn’t much to see. It looked like they were in some sort of basement. On one side, a set of old wooden stairs led up to a closed door. On the other side, what looked like an old metal bulkhead was at the top of a set of concrete stairs. Some thin foam pads had been laid out on the bare concrete, which was covered with a thin layer of dust and dirt. He could see exposed metal pipes and insulation between the ceiling beams. The only light was the glow of a couple of small chemical lanterns.

  "Where are we?" Roy asked, slowly getting to his feet. Everyone else from the plane was there. Sitting nearby were the pilot and the co-pilot. Dan Otabi sat huddled against one wall, hugging his knees to his chest and not moving. Cary Greenleaf sat near him, looking equally despondent. Gabriel, who had been examining the bulkhead, came down the stairs.

  "We don’t know where we are," he said in a low voice. "Probably somewhere in the Boston plex, since that’s where we landed. According to my headclock, we’ve only been unconscious for a few hours. That door up there is locked and probably guarded, and the bulkhead door looks like it’s been welded shut. There’s no way out of here."

  "What about magic?" Roy asked.

  Greenleaf shook his head. "I’m a security mage," he said. "I don’t know the kind of spells that could get us out of this. Besides, we’re being watched."

  "What?" Roy said.

  The elf nodded. "Up there," he said, and pointed at the opposite wall, near the ceiling. "There’s some kind of spirit up there in astral space. A pretty powerful one from the look of it, and it’s keeping an eye on us. It can hear everything we say. If I try to use magic, it will know and probably react before I even finish casting a spell."

  "Can’t you banish it or something?" Roy asked.

  Greenleaf paused, and seemed to be listening for a moment. "It told me that wouldn’t be a good idea, Mr. Kilaro. Its master is close a
t hand and would know. If I even attempted magic, it would, quote, kick my skinny hoop around the block, unquote."

  "It can talk?"

  "It’s quite intelligent," the mage said. He stopped and looked up toward the empty space. "And he doesn’t like being called ‘it’. He’s probably the street mage’s familiar."

  "So, what are we going to do?" Roy asked.

  "Nothing, for now," Gabriel said.

  "Nothing? But. . ."

  Gabriel held up a hand for silence. "There’s nothing we can do, Kilaro, except wait and be patient. If these shadowrunners had wanted to kill us, we would never have woken up. They could just as easily have used live ammo on us in the van or on board the plane. They want us alive for some reason. For now, we’ve got to wait and find out what that reason is. . ."

  There was a clicking of locks as the door at the top of the stairs opened, letting in a shaft of light. Silhouetted were the dark-skinned ork and the street mage Kilaro had taken to be the leader of the shadowrunners. They closed the door and descended the stairs, both of them holding weapons.

  This time they weren’t carrying dart-guns, and Roy felt a chill of fear. The mage held a slim pistol, while the ork cradled a stubby submachine gun in one arm. Roy wondered if he and the others were about to be executed. He heard Otabi whimper behind him, but Gabriel’s face was as impassive as stone.

  The ork stood near the foot of the stairs, protecting the mage, who stepped forward. His gun was still leveled, but he didn’t get any closer.

  "Before you try to do anything stupid, I should warn you that my chummer here is faster than a cat on speed and three times as mean. He’ll drill you full of holes before you can take even two steps. Don’t do anything stupid and you’ll get out of this alive. If not, we’ll have to kill you."

  He glanced over at Greenleaf. "My ally tells me you’re already aware of the wards around this place and of him watching you. You were smart not to test either one of them. Give me your word that you won’t try to, and we won’t have to keep you drugged unconscious."

  The elf cringed slightly. He looked up at the wall and then at the mage and then up at the wall again. "I won’t cause any trouble," he said in a small voice.

  "Good," the street mage said.

  "What do you want with us?" the pilot of the Whitehorse asked.

  "With you? Nothing," the mage said. "You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were planning to clear all of you out before taking the Whitehorse, but the Cross security response-time was a little better than we expected. We hadn’t planned on there being so many people on board, either. Especially him." He nodded his head toward Otabi, who cringed against the wall. "So we had to take you all with us."

  "Isn’t Otabi working with you?" Roy asked, feeling completely confused.

  "Not exactly," Gabriel said before the street mage could answer. "Otabi has been conditioned with a special type of simsense chip to believe he’s a corporate agent working undercover as a shadowrunner. He thought he was working with them, and in a way he was—though he’s rather confused at the moment."

  "That’ll pass," the mage said. "The chip wasn’t designed to do any permanent damage, although I can’t speak to Otabi’s habit."

  "How nice of you," Roy sneered, then remembered he was treading on thin ice. Here he was mouthing off to a hardened criminal holding a gun pointed in his direction.

  The mage’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "I’m not here to discuss our methods with you," he said. "I’m simply telling you how it’s going to be. If you cooperate and don’t frag with us, you’ll get out of here alive and in one piece. If you don’t, then things will get messy. It’s that simple. Whatever you may think, we’re not in the business of wetwork, so don’t give us a reason to kill you, so ka?"

  Everyone except Gabriel nodded, but the mage seemed satisfied. He slid the bag he was carrying off his shoulder and tossed it onto the floor.

  "That has food and water packs—survival rations. If you’ve got a problem with that, you can take it up with the management."

  He took a step back, then turned and began ascending the stairs. The ork was still there, keeping an eye out as the mage went up. Then he sidestepped and backed up the stairs, watching them the whole time.

  The mage rapped on the door, and it opened. He and the ork passed through, then the door closed and locked behind them.

  Roy looked up at the empty space where Greenleaf said he’d seen the spirit, then moved toward the bag. Otabi began to sob softly in the corner.

  "Who wants something to eat?" Roy asked.

  Soon they were sitting on the pads and eating the foil-packed rations, which they washed down with mouthfuls of tepid water that tasted like plastic. Roy tried to get Dan Otabi to eat or drink something, but he refused. He stayed curled up against the wall, occasionally muttering or whimpering and brushing his fingers over his datajack like he wanted to be sure it was still there.

  "C’mon," Roy said. "You’re not doing yourself any good."

  "It doesn’t matter," Otabi moaned. "It’s hopeless. They’ll never let us go. Not after we’ve seen them and know who they are."

  "Hey, he’s got a point there," said Simms, the Whitehorse co-pilot. "How do we know they’ll really let us go, now that we know what they look like and all?"

  Gabriel snorted and shook his head like someone dealing with an ignorant child. "They’re shadowrunners," he said, as if that explained everything. "It doesn’t matter what we’ve seen. They can easily change their appearance even if we’ve seen what they really they look like. The names are just street names, and these people don’t even exist as far as the rest of society is concerned. Knowing their names or what they look like doesn’t matter because they’ll just disappear back into the shadows when this is all over."

  "What about you?" asked Frank Connell, the pilot. "I thought it was your job to protect us from people like them. Isn’t that what you Special Security people do?"

  "Keep your voice down," Gabriel said. "And I am protecting you by telling you to stay calm and keep your head. This isn’t a game, and ‘these people’ you’re talking about are professional criminals."

  "And you still think they’re going to just let us go?"

  "Yes, as long as we do what they say. Shadowrunners have their own code of conduct, and there’s no reason for them to kill us. It’s not what they’re being paid for, and it has the potential to cause them a lot of trouble. They’ll release us as soon as things quiet down. They’ve got no use for us as hostages. They’ve already got what they want, and they know that the company doesn’t negotiate with criminals."

  Yeah, Roy thought, they hire them to work Special Security instead. How different were Seraphim black ops from what these shadowrunners did? Still, he thought Gabriel should have a secret ace up his sleeve, like a hero in one of Dan Otabi’s sims. Apparently, the others did, too. They expected the company—and its representative—to take care of them. Gabriel and Greenleaf’s helplessness—or unwillingness—to do anything about the situation came as something of a shock.

  In the end, all they could do was wait and hope that the shadowrunners were as principled as Gabriel seemed to think they were.

  "So?" Boom asked as Talon and Hammer came into the small kitchen at the back of the church. They’d outfitted it with some camp equipment to make it reasonably functional. Talon turned one of the chairs around and sat down, leaning over the back of it while Hammer raided the cooler for a can of beer. He set his Ingram smartgun on the countertop, then popped the can open and took a long swig.

  "I don’t think they’re going to give us any problems," Talon said, "but we still have to keep an eye on them."

  "A company man and a mage," Boom said. "I don’t like it."

  "The mage won’t be any trouble. Aracos and I both checked him over. He’s not that hot, but he knows enough not to frag around. He knows that Aracos is watching and that if he tries anything, Aracos will be all over him like flies on drek. Plus, he’s
a wagemage, not really trained for combat or infiltration stuff. I checked out his aura and he’s justifiably scared. They all are."

  "What about the company man?" Hammer asked. "He didn’t look scared to me."

  "You’re right. He’s the only one who’s not afraid of us. He’s a mystery, a real iceman. He’s good at hiding his feelings. Even reading his aura didn’t tell me much. He’s got the most cyber of anyone in that room, but not more than Hammer, or even Boom. He seems pretty confident, but for the moment, he’s cooperating."

  "That being the operative term," Trouble said from the opposite side of the table. She’d been going through their prisoners’ few possessions—mostly wallets and credsticks, along with the company man’s briefcase and sidearm.

  "His ID says he’s Mr. Gabriel, with Cross Special Security," she said, fingering the ID case. "Seraphim. That could mean they’ve been on to us for a while."

  "If that was true, they’d have found us already," Boom said, "or hit us harder at the airport or even when we pulled the datasteal. I doubt the Seraphim sent him. It’s more likely an agent routinely looking into a break-in like the one we staged. I mean, that was the response we wanted, right? To get the company to think their project was threatened so they’d move the biosamples to where we could get at them?"

  "Boom’s right," Talon said. "Things went pretty much according to plan, so I don’t think the Seraphim is on to us." He gestured toward the items on the table. "Have you checked over everything?"