Hunting Shadows
By
Fade
Chapter 6
30 hours to go:
Four hours later Silk was asleep on one of the green army surplus cots that Peter had sent over, and Mercury was droopily filling in the sections of the circle that she could do without Silk’s help. Four shamans had shown up, but since they couldn’t aid in the construction of a hermetic circle, Mercury had figured it would be best for them to start working on creating a magical ward around the building. The ward would serve to stop anyone from being able to magically find people on the inside of the building.
The leader of the shaman, Two Claws, had nodded when Mercury had finished explaining what she wanted, and then set about getting his people ready. The two dog shaman had begun constructing a medicine lodge, while the wolf shaman and raven shaman had begun dancing and chanting to start gathering the magical energies they would need.
Peter was planning on trying to sow as much confusion as possible while extracting the mother and daughter. Ideally everyone, including Mr. Yoshimo, would think that the extraction was a kidnaping, but there was always a chance that the other yakuza boss would decide to use the ritual samples he had captured to kill the mother and daughter with a powerful sending.
With six magic users in the building, four of who were chanting and dancing very loudly, as well as the presence of Vixen, Ox and two other razors, the previously empty warehouse was anything but. Peter had sent over all the supplies the group would need, everything from food and water, to ammunition and changes of clothes.
Mercury realized that she had spaced out, and came back to the present to find that she was swaying from slide to side in time to the chanting coming from the four shaman. I’d better go sleep before I topple over and ruin part of the circle.
The tired elf had enough presence of mind to call Peter before she climbed into another cot. “Peter, I don’t know where the rest of the mages you promised me are, but there is no way the girl and I can do this by ourselves. Get someone else over here to help, or we’ll never finish in time to do more than just hear how the spoiled little slitch was found strangled to death under mysterious circumstances.”
_____
After Hammer had returned from his successful meet with Gabriel he, Shiver, and Shadow had gotten plenty of sleep in preparation for the coming activities. Peter had provided all three with special sneak suits designed to mask heat emissions, while simultaneously blending in with their surroundings. Hammer had been reading up on the capabilities of the equipment and was quite frankly impressed. The suits had a ruthenium layer on the outside, which would change colors and texture according to the amount of electricity that it was sent by the processor mounted in the back of the suit.
The computer was powered by a pair of batteries which had a life of about half of an hour. Once the batteries were exhausted, the ruthenium would assume a uniform black color. Until that happened though, the computer would take constant readings from the micro cameras on the outside of the suit, and adjust the suit to blend in almost perfectly with its surroundings. There were a couple of imperfections in the system of course. The wearer’s eyes couldn’t be covered, and the material usually required a couple of seconds to adjust when the wearer moved.
The second layer of material was a sound absorbing weave that was designed to confuse sonic goggles. Sonic goggles had originally been little more than a novelty, but had received amazing market interest when people realized that they were an effective way of spotting people running around under an invisibility spell, or with some kind of technology goodie like ruthenium suits. Now it was not at all uncommon for one of the members of a guard patrol to be wearing some kind of sonic device. The guards typically didn’t like it because the technology wasn’t refined enough yet to provide them with more than some rough silhouettes, but you could still hit something while wearing the goggles if you had a smart link on your weapon. Hammer hadn’t realized that anyone had come up with a way to defeat sonic vision, had initially been very skeptical about the idea.
Peter had hurriedly explained that the material absorbed enough of the sonic pulses to blur the wearer’s outline enough that as long as they didn’t move they probably wouldn’t be caught. The biggest problem was the fact that the person wearing the suit couldn’t hear anything from inside. A pair of sound pickups, one mounted on the front of the suit, and one on the back helped alleviate this problem, at the cost of compromising the visual and sonic camouflage slightly.
The fixer left muttering about needing to set up a meet with someone to get the mages some additional help. Hammer shook his head amusedly before turning back to continue reading up on the new equipment he would be using that night.
The next layer of material consisted of a very efficient thermoinsulator. It made wearing the suit very uncomfortable for more than a few minutes at a time, but it almost completely eliminated a person’s heat signature. Hammer wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the extreme temperatures wearing the suit would generate, but figured that it was better than having to fight every guard in the house.
The final layer consisted of a Kevlar cloth that should stop just about anything smaller than a submachine gun round. That didn’t comfort Hammer all that much because if they were seen, it was almost guaranteed that they would be shot at with all kinds of things that the suit wouldn’t stop. On the other hand the troll reflected, it might be better to die than come back with any damage to one of Peter’s precious new suits. The fixer had agreed that the three going in for the ritual samples needed to draw the smallest amount of attention possible, and that the suits were the best way for that to happen, but he had politely informed Hammer that the suits were currently worth over half a million nuyen apiece, and that “if they are broken when you get back, you just bought them.”
_____
22 Hours to go:
Silk woke up feeling like she’d had way too much to drink the night before, but she knew that it was just the effects of all the energies she had expended working on the circle. The elf half rolled, half fell out of the cot she had been sleeping in, dreading going back to work on the preparations for the ritual sorcery that was supposed to take place in a matter of just eight or nine hours.
Mercury was in a deep sleep, looking so good that Silk wanted to go mess her hair up some more. It just wasn’t right for someone to look that good after putting in the kind of work that Silk had seen the other elf put in on the circle the night before.
All thoughts of sabotaging her new friend’s good looks flew from Silk’s mind when she looked over to the circle and saw someone bending over it with a stick of chalk. “What are you doing, you’ll ruin our work!”
The man with the chalk turned around with a tired smile. Silk was so taken in with the other’s electric blue eyes that she almost didn’t hear his reply to her outburst. “Actually, one might say that I’m improving upon it, or at the very least finishing it up.”
Carefully placing the chalk where it wouldn’t roll onto the blue and black of the circle, the mage extended his hand. “Allow me to introduce myself, you may call me Winterhawk. I presume that you are Silk?”
Silk absentmindedly took Winterhawk’s hand trying to get past the fatigue still clouding her mind to understand what exactly was going on. “Peter sent you over to help?”
The human’s eyebrows raised a little, seeming to take slight exception to being ‘sent’ anywhere. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Without getting into all the dry details, Peter contacted a mutual acquaintance, who asked if I would come over and provide assistance.”
At that moment, Vixen came in to make sure that nothing was amiss. “Hoi Silk, glad to see you’re back in the land of the living. Looks like you’ve met Winterhawk eh?”
Silk nodded tiredly at the petite razor as the mage bent down to look at the circle. “This is great, you finished the circle out the exact way that I was going to.”
Winterhawk nodded. “It looked like you planned to do the Folman variation on Si-lin’s pattern. I’m familiar with Folman’s work, so I went ahead and finished up the drawing of the circle. Peter obtained the services of two more mages, one of them an individual by the name of Two Stroke. I asked him to get the rest of the ritual materials. I figured based on your circle construction that something with crystals would be the best way to go.”
Silk nodded slowly, a little amazed at Winterhawk’s knowledge. The elf hadn’t had met any mages working the shadows who weren’t mostly self taught, or instructed on an apprentice master set up. Winterhawk however had obviously undergone fairly rigorous formal instruction, probably somewhere in England judging by his accent.
The other mage smiled as if reading Silk’s mind. “I had all the benefits of a gentleman’s education in England. You on the other hand I would wager have received extensive training somewhere in Tir Tairngire.”
Silk felt herself go a little white, a sign that Winterhawk correctly interpreted as meaning that he had gotten a little close for comfort. There are after all only two places that she could have gotten such training in the Tir. Through that airy, self-righteous school sponsored by the Council of Princes, or through the Tir military. The military doesn’t worry about things like academic recognition, so since she recognized Folman and Si-lin, it is a fairly safe bet that she didn’t go through the military.
“You don’t have to dignify that with a response of course, we wouldn’t want anyone to figure out your secret identity,” commented the mage dryly in an attempt to diffuse the situation. Luckily, Mercury chose that moment to start stirring, and both of the other mages walked over to see if she needed anything. An bottle of water, and two aspirin later the beautiful elf was on her feet and examining Winterhawk’s work on the circle.
“This is amazing, was that how you planned on finishing it?”
Silk nodded increasingly glad that Winterhawk had shown up to help finish the circle. The novice runner understood the theory behind constructing a circle of this size, but she hadn’t ever done it. Winterhawk’s approval helped assure her that everything had been done correctly.
“Yeah, that is pretty much what I had in mind.”
***
Hammer and Shiver watched Shadow creep around a hardwood-paneled corner. The two razors had their suits partway open, trying to bleed off some of the heat that had accumulated as the suits had been sealed during their initial infiltration of the house.
The shape shifter, almost invisible as he stealthily crossed the plushly-carpeted hall, looked carefully for cameras and other security devices. The trio of runners had taken nearly twenty minutes to make it inside the elegant compound that the head of the Seattle yakuza called home. That meant that there was only ten minutes of battery life remaining in the suits, so Hammer was getting nervous about whether or not they would be able to make it back out of the house without being seen.
A quiet ‘clear’ came over the radio from Shadow, so Hammer and Shiver turned off their suits and quietly began moving down the hall in the direction the shape shifter had taken. The big troll had to suppress a desire to chuckle when he turned and looked at Shiver. The heat damping of the elf’s suit meant that although Hammer could now see his friend, his eyes weren’t picking anything up on the thermal range except for around Shiver’s face, and chest. The result was that the elf appeared very washed out except for the areas where the suit was unfastened, which seemed to glow because of how hot they were. Not every day that you see a head and chest float above the ground apparently unsupported by anything.
As the pair of razors neared a branch in the corridor, the air next to the right wall seemed to shimmer. The hardwood paneling rippled, and then a pair of eyes seemed to materialize as Shadow looked at them. The shape shifter paused, seemingly listening for footsteps, and then reached back and turned his suit off.
The three runners had penetrated far enough into the house that they shouldn’t have to deal with more than one or two guards. Asako had explained that Yoshimo hadn’t desired large numbers of armed men patrolling the inside of the house because it would have caused too many questions by his wife and daughters. Instead, the interior of the house was heavily covered by a variety of cameras and other electrical intruder detection systems, leaving the guards to protect the outside of the compound.
The plan now called for two of Peter’s deckers to break into the compound’s computer systems and replace the video feeds from the cameras with feeds from previous time periods. Hammer was familiar with having to work with teammates that weren’t in sight, but just like always was still a little nervous about the possibility that the deckers wouldn’t come through for him.
***
Smoke crept through the crystalline host with all of his masking programs running at full priority on his deck. The decker had spent the last three hours slowly infiltrating the corner of the matrix that corresponded with the house that three poor fraggers Peter had hired were trying to break into.
Smoke currently was setting up programs to make the various security devices effectively blind. The cameras would just replay the data that they had seen for the past two hours. The runner finished the last set of surveillance devices in the current node, and moved on to the last node.
As the decker’s surroundings blurred to those of the destination node, he realized that there was someone else in the node already. Freezing to make sure that his deck had plenty of processing power to use towards his masking programs, Smoke watched the other decker stroll slowly through the node, checking the ice, browsing data, and making sure that everything was as it should be. Smoke examined the other’s persona, that of a crystal, nearly transparent girl as it bent down to watch one of the cameras.
The other decker seemed to be over stretching his or her processor capabilities slightly, a sure sign of a beginner. When a decker created a persona for his virtual self, they had to decide how much detail their deck would broadcast to the corner of the matrix that they happened to be inhabiting. Generally, the more time one spent in the matrix, the more detailed they tried to make their persona. The problem was that all that detail had to be broadcast by the user’s deck. All that information tended to eat up the processing time on a deck, meaning that the decker couldn’t use that processing muscle for other things.
Experienced matrix users, the kind who’s lives depended on how quickly they could respond to threats, generally avoided adding any extra detail. Smoke’s persona was a featureless cloud that occupied a minimal amount of his CPU time. The crystal girl would have been a fairly good persona if the decker had left things simple enough. The highlights and reflections to the girl, all done on both the outside and the interior of the figure, were enough to almost max out her processor if she moved very quickly.
Fairly secure that the other decker was inexperienced enough not to find him, Smoke simply waited for the two seconds it took the other to leave. Here’s to hoping that whoever that is doesn’t find the tampering that I did on all those cameras.
***
16 Hours to go:
Silk looked up in relief as the boys came into the warehouse. Shadow was all but dragging himself across the floor, while Shiver was looking decidedly worn out, although he paused to throw her wink that made her smile in return. Even Hammer was definitely tired, indicating that the infiltration must have been quite a bit worse than the runners had expected it to be. The mage didn’t have time to talk to them though because Peter was chomping at the bit for her to get started with the tracing ritual.
The mage was very nervous about the upcoming hours. Of the five people who would be involved, only Winterhawk had extensive experience with conducting rituals of this size. Two Stroke had performed a few rituals by himself, while Mercury had never performed a ritual with more than two people, and the last guy, Blue Blood didn’t have any more experience than Two Stroke. Maybe the fact that he is almost clueless when it comes to these kind of slow sorceries will be enough to humble that arrogant aristocrat so that the rest of us don’t kill him. Winterhawk is a little snobbish too, but at least can back everything up with his skills.
Because Silk had the second best grounding in the theory of what the group was about to do, Winterhawk had asked her to play the second lead in the ceremony. Winterhawk opened the vial of blood, and poured it into a crystal bowl as he gestured for Silk to have everyone assume their designated spots.
The elf checked to make sure that the other three mages were positioned exactly at the cardinal points before assuming her position at the north spot of the compass. Winterhawk shot Silk one of his dry British smiles and then began the ritual.
The crystal globes stationed at various points in the circle started glowing a soft blue color as Winterhawk sent fine tendrils of energy to the circle. Silk quickly lost track of what Winterhawk was doing as she focused on her duties. After Winterhawk handled the initial energizing of the circle, he turned the process over to Silk. The human runner gathered in the other two men to fuel his sorceries, leaving Mercury to Silk, a small kindness that the elf noticed. He didn’t make me work with Blue Blood, that pointy-eared aristocrat would probably shirk at every turn. Silk knew that probably wasn’t true, but was glad that she got to work with Mercury nevertheless.
Accepting the amazing amounts of power flowing in from Mercury, Silk began augmenting them with her own energies, and pouring it into the circle to focus and amplify Winterhawk’s work. As more power flowed into the circle, the light in the globes deepened to a darker blue, almost black, and arcs of energy began to spring from globe to globe.
As the power levels in the circle reached an optimal level, Silk split her attention, feeding in part of the energies at her command to Winterhawk, while using the remainder to maintain the power level of the circle.
As Silk fed energies into Winterhawk, she had a second to examine what he was doing. The other mage was feeding power into the crystal bowl containing the little girl’s blood. The matrix of mana that the other mage was creating was like a huge buildup of negative electricity. Once the negative potential reached a high enough level, the magical energy would arc to the little girl, the only place similar enough to ground out the energy.
In an normal situation, the amount of energy that was required to find someone was relatively low, and the process was correspondingly simple. The further someone was from the ritual site though, the more power was required, and the more difficult the ceremony. The better the ritual sample, the easier it was to establish similarity. In this case, the kidnappers had probably erected a powerful ward and placed the little girl, Kiko, inside it, so the amount of power that the mages would have to raise was almost certainly going to be more than a standard ritual, and the matrix that Winterhawk was building would have to be almost perfect. Following the electricity analogy, a ward acted like a huge resistor. In order to overcome the added resistance, the mages were going to have to create a huge difference in magical potential, while stopping the energy from grounding out to someone else in a false match.
11 Hours to go
Five hours later, Silk found herself swaying from the lotus position she had assumed partway through the ritual. The elf was having a hard time keeping track of the various things that she was supposed to monitor as the ritual’s second. Try as hard as Silk might to prevent it, she found that the magic level of the circle was not quite optimal. Surges in it’s power level meant that Winterhawk was having to work much harder in to keep the magical construct based on the ritual sample building smoothly. The normally impeccable appearance of the handsome human was anything but. The stylish gray silk shirt that Winterhawk had started the ritual with was now completely soaked through with sweat. The electric blue eyes that had originally noticed every change around the mage now seemed to listlessly gaze at the center of the circle, focusing on nothing but increasing the power of the ritual. Winterhawk no longer even looked up when Silk allowed the circle to fluctuate too much, instead tapping his hand on the ground in annoyance.
The rest of the mages fared even worse. Two Stroke and Blueblood weren’t channeling energies into Silk, so she didn’t know how close they were to collapse, but they looked nearly exhausted. In contrast, Mercury was sending her energies, so Silk had a pretty good idea of just how tired the other elf was. The previously gorgeous mage had maintained an amazingly consistent flow of magic for hour after hour, significantly more energy than Silk could have hoped to provide had their positions been reversed. Now however Mercury was sending energy in uneven spurts, first too much then not enough. Silk didn’t think the other mage had more than about twenty minutes before she would pass out from extended drain.
Silk had seen many tracing rituals in school, but never something of this magnitude. Usually the magical energy, the sameness, or the sense of the person that they were looking for manifested itself in very subtle ways. A hint of a favorite perfume, a sense that someone else was in the room, soft sounds that almost sounded like the individual they were seeking.
Now though, with the amount of power being fed into the ritual, the sense of the little girl was almost palpable. Silk kept hearing light giggles in her mind, and the smell of orchids was strong enough to nearly overpower the tang of ozone created by the blue discharges from crystal to crystal. The mage didn’t imagine that any kind of electronic device would pick it up the smell, but it was strong enough now that she had even heard Ox comment on it. The center of the circle shimmered slightly, almost creating a form three and a half feet tall. There wasn’t anyone there, but if Silk closed her eyes and turned around, she could point straight at the distortion. It felt like someone was there. Black hair, innocent eyes, a bright smile.
Even knowing that the whole thing was the manifestation of tremendous magical energies, energies keyed exactly to a unique individual, Silk found herself a little disturbed. Some part of her seemed to scream that her senses were being fooled, that there wasn’t anything there, even while the rest of her cried out that there was something inside the shimmer.
Winterhawk chose that moment to look up and examine the other four magic users. Silk tiredly wondered why the human’s eyes weren’t as bloodshot as everyone else’s, but before the mage could follow up on the thought, the ritual succeeded. The magic that had been building up for hours finally grounded out to the little girl. Looking at the circle with her astral sight, Silk saw a glowing bar running from the circle off to the west.
Silk saw Winterhawk’s astral form leave his body and follow the fading line. Silk quickly slipped loose of her physical form and followed the other mage. Twenty minutes later the two mages returned to find that the other mages had passed out. Winterhawk yelled for Ox, as he started drawing a map to the building where the little girl was being held.
As the enormous human gillette ran over Winterhawk handed him the map. “The unfortunate is located right there,” mumbled the mage as he collapsed into the cot.
***
Hammer was once again extremely grateful for the sleep regulator that he had gotten installed early on in his running career. Three hours of sleep, and seven liters of Thirst Aid TM had managed to get him over the worst of the dehydration that he had been suffering from.
Shiver had a sleep regulator too, so a similar amount of sleep, and about a third as much liquids had the elf back up to nearly 100 percent. Shadow had recovered from the dehydration within about half an hour due to his magical nature, but without a sleep regulator, still needed approximately eight hours of sleep to feel fully rested, and consequently was a little tired.
Ready or not the team, minus Silk who was currently about two steps above comatose, was scheduled to go back to the yakuza mansion and extract two unwilling targets. The sneak suits were charged back up and ready to go, but Hammer had decided that they would just get in the way on this run. There wouldn’t really be a way to keep the females concealed on the way back out, so the runners best bet was speed and misdirection. Peter had hired several other teams to break into the compound simultaneously going after a variety of targets designed to create the necessary confusion as to what was really going on.
Consequently, Hammer wanted to go in much more aggressively than he had previously. The team would be concentrating on speed, downing any guards they encountered with narcojet rounds. Hammer still wanted to avoid detection if at all possible, but for the normally cautious troll, the plan was the next closest thing to going in with guns blazing-all after having sent a card to the target telling them to expect problems.
***
Eagle Eye strolled calmly up the last flight of grimy, sagging stairs to the building’s roof. The elf pretended confusion and disorientation as he looked for hidden cameras. Satisfied that he was safe from observation, the sniper dropped the facade and pulled out a set of tools.
Thirty seconds later the alarm to the emergency exit had been bypassed, and Eagle Eye was on the roof. The building was in a poor enough section of town that the sniper figured that any drones observing him would assume he was just another low threat hoodlum sneaking to the top of the building to slot a chip, overdose on crack, or just get away from smoke detectors and light up something cancer causing.
In an effort to re-enforce the image, the elf lit a cigarette as he sat with his back against a wall. Locating the target window, the sniper began refining his plan. The shades were drawn of course, but that was according to plan. By the time the sniper needed to start taking out targets he would be able to see what he needed.
_____
Mist walked nonchalantly down the hall, making careful observation of any places where he would hide a camera if he was trying to make sure that nobody snuck up on him. The human had learned long ago that people will assume things about you if you fill in a couple of the details for them. Consequently the runner held a piece of paper in his hand and kept comparing it to the doors he walked past. The deception was helped by the fact that half of the doors no longer had any visible apartment numbers on them. To the casual, and even the paranoid observer Mist would just look like someone trying to meet a new acquaintance at their place. The runner had even dressed like someone slumming to avoid undue attention.
Secure that he would be dismissed out of hand by the people who’s suspicion he didn’t want to arouse, Mist had then turned to how to fool the cameras. A call to a mage that the runner had worked for before, and three thousand nuyen had been sufficient to get a electronic invisibility spell cast on him. During the four hours that the mage had promised to maintain the spell Mist was completely invisible to any electronic device.
By the time the spell had expired, Mist did done a complete pass through the building, noting the positions of all the cameras, and carefully modified all but a few. A tiny clamp, some volatile memory, and a very simple processor was enough to take the information flowing from the cameras and modify it slightly.
The clamp directed the information up to the processor, which started storing the video stream in the volatile memory. In two hours, the processor would start sending the stored images instead of the actual camera feed. Fifteen minutes after the little girl’s captors stopped receiving accurate information, they would get hit by something that they wouldn’t even see coming.
_____
6 Hours to go
Chatter loaded up his shotgun, Alice. The big troll loved his gun more than just about anything else in the world. The custom weapon was nearly three times the size of normal shotgun. Chatter had a friend that loaded special ammunition for the weapon. The heavier grain bullets were propelled by an equivalently greater amount of explosives, meaning that every shot had more than enough punch to take down a gorilla.
Chatter hadn’t ever hit it big enough to have the kind of top of the line cyberware that Hammer or Shiver had. The troll had some dermal armor, wired reflexes, and a smartlink, but mostly he just relied on sheer guts and the destruction that Alice dished out so easily.
The runner had developed his reputation as an independent that could be hired to work with a dependable team that needed some extra muscle. Today Chatter was working with a pair of dog shamans. It was usually risking working with a team that you didn’t know, part of the reason that independents usually suffered from ulcers, and extremely short life expectancies. Peter had a reputation as a straight shooter though, and dog shamans were always loyal to a fault, so Chatter felt less nervous than usual about the job.
The run supposedly consisted of getting a little girl out of an apartment. The mages were supposed to shield the little girl from the violence that was about to happen, and a sniper was waiting to support the team through one of the windows.
Chatter had been ready to refuse the run until Peter had promised additional backup. The tiny human had resisted giving the troll any more information than that there would be a considerable distraction occurring at the same time as the troll came through the door.
The runner was still ready to walk out on the job until Peter had finally told him exactly what was going down. In the end, the troll was satisfied as to the amount and form of backup that the team would be receiving. Gabriel, the fixer providing the backup, had a small but quickly growing reputation for fielding a team that could handle any run. Chatter was actually looking forward to seeing exactly how the run was going to go down.
Looking over to the two dog shamans, Spike and Heather, Chatter assured himself they were ready before he led the way up the stairs.
***
Hammer watched Shadow sneak up to the guards at the gate. Shiver was slightly behind the shape shifter. Exactly on schedule, an explosion went off on the other side of the compound. As the guards turned to see if they could see anything, the two razors shot them with narcojet rounds. Shadow had reached the pair before they hit the ground, ready to catch the bodies, or deal with the possibility that one of the guards wouldn’t succumb to the chemicals due to some kind to cyberware or bioware.
The precaution proved unnecessary, and the shape shifter simply eased the two guards to the ground. Hammer was moving by this time, even as Shadow hit the door with a spinning back thrust kick, shattering the lock and flinging it open.
The shape shifter entered the first building at a run, followed five feet back by Hammer, and then Shiver. Thirty seconds into the complex, the first set of guards heard them coming and set up an ambush.
There was a very good reason that Hammer had placed Shadow in the front. The shape shifter had his combat sense operating at peak levels. Rounding a corner, he could hear the heartbeats of Hammer and Shiver behind him. The slight movement of air in the hall seemed almost gale-like, as the runner approached another corner. A very subtle texture difference in the heat image of the wall, combined with a funny itch between his shoulder blades was sufficient to let the physad know that there was someone waiting for him to come around the corner.
Already moving an nearly full speed, Shadow decided to just try and surprise his ambushers. The shape shifter dived around the corner, rolling back to his feet a split second after two bursts of fire tore into the wall behind him. Before Shadow could bring his pistol around, Hammer and Shiver had arrived. Hammer smoothly shot the first guard, while Shiver, only a step behind shot the second.
***
Chatter walked as quietly down the creaking, grimy hall as he was able, but could tell that the two mages were more than a little worried that the opposition would hear them through the decaying walls. The troll had told them that Peter’s early recon of the target had indicated that whoever was inside was using white noise generators, and that they didn’t need to worry, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Most of the runners out there never stop to think that although those things stop people from eavesdropping by bouncing a laser off of your window, they also tend to drown out any noise that might alert you that someone was about to break your door down.
Having arrived at the door in question, Chatter waited for Spike and Heather to take flanking positions, while he gave Alice one last check. Once everyone was ready, the troll activated his headset radio, and let Gabriel’s semi-mysterious backup forces know that he was moving. “In position, moving in 3, 2, 1.”
As Chatter finished his countdown, he let loose with a shot from Alice. The heavy wooden door to the apartment was pretty sturdy, likely one of the reasons that the op force had chosen the location, but it was no match for the furry of the shotgun’s custom load. At the extreme short range from which the shot was taken, the projectiles hadn’t had a chance to begin dispersing very much. The lead spheres shattered the locks, and punched a hole in the door about thirty centimeters in diameter.
As Chatter quickly stepped through the door, he cocked the shotgun, looking for another target. Heather was only a half a step behind the troll, a spell at the ready, looking for the little girl. The first blast had continued to spread out after tearing through the door, and had hit two of the guards, who were now lying on the threadbare carpet.
The troll’s natural heat vision picked up a small hot spot on the plaster of the living room wall, as he saw two guards come around the corner. Before the runners could do anything else, they heard the windows shatter.
_____
Eagle Eye was peering through his thermographic scope as he heard the ground team make their move. The scope narrowed his field of vision down quite a bit, so even though he was waiting for the backup they had been promised to arrive, he initially didn’t realize what had happened. The curtains moved slightly as if someone had walked past them, or thrown open a door. A split second later, a black form had filled the sniper’s field of vision, flying through the window.
The black clad runner actually grabbed the curtains as he or she crashed through the window, tearing them free of the wall while rolling to absorb excess momentum.
_____
Chatter heard glass break in both rooms as he drew a bead on the two guards rounding the corner. Right on time, just like Peter promised. I can’t believe they jumped from the top of the building. The troll estimated how far the rounds would scatter from this distance, and fired through the wall hoping to take down any hostiles that were waiting for him to come into the other room.
_____
The slim runner had hit the release from the rope just before entering the window. Coming up from a roll, the black clad figure saw one of the guards’ heads explode as the sniper began acquiring targets.
A quick spell of shielding was designed to ensured that the little girl was safe , but almost proved to be too late as the two remaining guards turned their assault rifles on her. As the runner tried to gather the energies required for a spell to neutralize the remaining hostiles, a deafening blast tore through the wall on the other side of the target, reducing the two remaining yakuza members to lifeless lumps.
Hearing two clicks on the radio designed to link the two runners, the black-clad runner knew that the other half of the apartment was secured. Double clicking his own radio in response, the runner fixed an anchoring device to the window, and rappelled out of the apartment as the troll came into the room.
***
Smoke was back in the matrix, trying to confuse the security forces assigned to the house. Since the meat assets were making a noisy entrance this time, it was the decker’s job to trigger as many of the alarms as he could so that nobody really know where the attacks were coming from.
Just because the physical op was noisy didn’t mean that the matrix op needed to be loud and flashy. Consequently, the decker had spent the last two hours once again sneaking into the crystalline castle that represented the like host, and setting up a variety of false alarms, all set to trigger promptly at 1:12 am. This time the decker wasn’t alone though. Peter had sprung for a decker named Spider to help out since Smoke would be more exposed on this run.
The decker was staying in the system, trying to stop the resident yak decker from figuring out what had been done to the system. Fifteen seconds after the alarms started going off, Smoke got an alert through the link he had set up to Spider. The host blurred around Smoke as he went to the neighboring node in an effort to help the other decker.
The entire host went to full alert as Smoke got to the node, meaning that the IC was now looking more closely at everything that went by. Smoke’s sleazing program didn’t pass the security test under the higher alert status, and he felt his construct slow down as the host reclassified him as hostile.
Two black snakes materialized on the translucent walls, and slithered towards Smoke. The decker ran a process-masking program, trying to make his processes look like routine system requests again. The program was partially successful, and the decker felt himself speed up as the system allowed his processes through with less hassle.
Smoke brought up a shielding program as the first snake struck at his construct. The program managed to reroute the attack to some non-critical part of the host, giving the decker enough time for his deck to load up an attack prog.
The second intrusion countermeasure had gotten up to speed, and the black viper sunk its fangs into the translucent cloud. Smoke tweaked his attack program to try and scramble the IC’s attack processes, and one of the swirls in his construct took on a black edge, just before the snake’s venom started flowing into him.
Some of the hostile instructions made it past the protections built into Smoke’s deck, and his brain started telling his body conflicting things. The decker’s heartbeat went through the roof, increasing his blood flow, even as the arteries and veins in his legs tightened down. A corner of Smoke’s mind realized that his blood pressure was dangerously high, and that his heart was under so much stress, that he was in danger of suffering a heart attack.
Knowing that he had very limited time before he would be dead, Smoke launched an attack on the snake that had him in its teeth. The black-edged swirl spun out of the cloud, and sliced into the snake. Smoke smiled as the snake released him, and started twitching in confusion.
Smoke tweaked his defensive program again as the last snake struck at him again. The program succeeded in defeating the attack, and Smoke ran his attack program again. Smoke ran under the assumption that it was always best to avoid a fight whenever possible, but he carried one of the best attack programs around just in case he couldn’t avoid confrontation. A slight change to the parameters he was sending the program meant that this time, it was trying to completely hang the processes powering the IC. The prog hit the snake, freezing it.
As he felt his heart slow down, and the muscles in his legs relax, Smoke smiled and floated over to the frozen program. The equivalent to a electronic kick caused the snake to shatter into dark crystalline shards.
_____
Shadow came around another corner to find three guards ready and waiting for him. The shape shifter dove to the side as the guard furthest from him brought up a Ingram smart gun and opened up on full auto.
Hammer saw bullets tear into the wall inches behind Shadow as the shape shifter rolled in an attempt to minimize the target he was presenting to the shooter. The troll brought his narcojet pistol up as he rounded the corner at a full run, and drew a bead on the nearest guard.
A soft cough, and Hammer saw a dart impact in the razor’s throat. Shiver edged around the corner and took a shot at another guard as Shadow came out of his roll and ran towards the gillettes.
Hammer could hear his pistol ejecting the spent case, and chambering another dart, but to the hyped up samurai it all seemed to be happening in extreme slow motion. One of the other guards now had a weapon up, and was pulling the trigger. Hammer tried to change course suddenly to avoid the bullets that were about to come his way, but in a rare moment of oversight, didn’t take the rug under his feet into account.
The designers of most high-class objects of art tend not to worry about things like racial equality, or the plight of the average troll. In fact many of them refuse to think about trolls at all other than to offer thanks to whatever they considered holy that they had not been born one of the ugly creatures. Some of them would have been down right incensed at the idea of a troll, an ork, or even a dwarf coming near their work.
Consequently, the rug’s designer had never considered things like the difference in weight between an average human, and an average troll. Hammer’s 250 kg of weight was suddenly shifted as he tried to change directions. The forces involved in forcing an object with Hammer’s inertia to accelerate to a velocity of one meter per second, in one tenth of a second were enough to give the average physics student nightmares. In this case, the blue designer rug proved unequal to the task for which it had been constructed, and ripped, causing Hammer’s knee to buckle as he tried to change direction and throw his opponents aim off.
Shiver saw Hammer fall, as the elf’s pistol finished cycling a new dart into the chamber. The razor took another shot, this time hitting the last guard, the one that hadn’t been drugged yet. As Shadow neared the guards, Shiver realized that none of the hostile gillettes had started slowing down yet. Some kind of blood filters, thought the elf as he started running towards the opposition.
Shadow curbed his desire to draw steel as he was closing with the guards. Peter had been very explicit about the need to avoid killing any of Yoshimo’s men, and the shape shifter had resolved to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.
The samurai nearest to Shadow slapped a new clip in his weapon, and tried to bring it around to aim at the shape shifter. The flashy trids, like Night Runners TM and Equalizer TM were replete with instances where the hero rushed an armed adversary, and managed to close with his target without getting shot. In real life, that was nearly impossible to do. The person with the gun had all the advantages. When you know where your target is headed (pretty much straight at you) and the target is getting closer all the time, it is hard to miss, especially if you are capable of aiming and firing seven partially aimed bullets in less than 2.5 seconds.
Consequently, the yakuza guard fully expected to be able to cut the physad in half before the other was able to cover the fifteen feet that separated them. What the guard didn’t count on was the fact that Shadow was fully 30 percent faster than the human, and possessed of the same kind of balance and grace that one usually associates with felines.
As the weapon came around, Shadow was watching the guard. The shape shifter’s combat sense was already letting him know he was in danger, but Shadow kept running in a straight line until the Ingram was pointed at him. As if in three-quarter speed, Shadow saw the gillette’s eyes tighten slightly, indicating that the other was bout to pull the trigger. Shadow pushed off with powerful legs an instant before the trigger was depressed, launching himself towards the wall. To the amazement of the guard, the seven round burst passed below his target, who was now running along the wall. As the yakuza member tried to bring his submachine gun around, Shadow reached him, knocking the weapon down and away.
The second guard had continued to fire at Hammer, scoring with a three-round burst as the troll came out of his roll, while the last guard concentrated on taking Shiver down. As two bullets cut through the elf’s armor, Shadow landed on the ground, and launched a blistering attack on the nearest guard. The guard had tried to bring his weapon back up, so Shadow continued the motion, pulling the firearm up, and slamming the stock into the razor’s face. As the razor shifted back with the force of the blow, Shadow kicked him in his now-exposed groin. This reversed the motion of the guard, causing him to bend at the waist as Shadow grabbed his opponent’s head and brought it down to meet the shape shifter’s rising knee.
As the guard started to fall to the floor, Shadow pulled the guard’s katana from the sheath across his back, and turned to meet the second guard. By the time the first guard had hit the floor unconscious, Shadow’s next opponent had stopped shooting at Hammer, and drawn his own dikoted sword.
By now, the last guard realized that for whatever reason, none of the runners were going to open up on him with anything heavier than the useless narcojet pistols, so he also drew a black katana, smiling at the prospect of settling the conflict with blades. Shiver pulled his own katana from its sheath, but was pessimistic about how the high-carbon steel would hold up in a fight against a weapon that was coated with a super-dense layer of diamond, that narrowed to just 30 or 40 atoms in width at the edges.
A master swordsman would be able to use his ultra-sharp, nearly destructible weapon to destroy Shiver’s katana, leaving the elf weaponless, and at an even more severe disadvantage. Forcing his concerns aside, Shiver faced off against the guard.
Shadow slowed his breathing as his opponent shifted stance slightly. The shape shifter knew that the fact that nearly everyone was using such deadly weapons, meant that the fight would be exceptionally abrupt. The physad let all the thoughts that were clamoring for his attention flow through him, and welcomed the nothingness that came after. The guard opposing Shadow held his weapon in a high ready position, seemingly motionless, waiting for the shape shifter to give himself away. The physad slowly moved closer, trying to bait his opponent into attacking. As the shape shifter crossed some line only visible to the guard, the other blurred into motion impossibly fast.
Shadow had been unprepared for the speed with which the human moved, a speed which was only a hair slower that the shape shifter’s best. In another fighter, that surprise would have been deadly, but the shape shifter’s combat sense had warned him that the attack was coming an instant before it had been launched. Even with his superior speed, there was no way for Shadow to completely dodge the attack, so he parried the blow with his borrowed katana, directing the slash slightly to the left, before lashing out with a kick that shattered his opponent’s knee.
Shiver saw Shadow’s opponent start to fall, and he heard Hammer moving around behind him, but he stayed focused on the gillette in front of him. The elf didn’t want to strike the first blow because the odds were heavily in favor of his opponent being able to land a solid blow, destroying Shiver’s weaker weapon. It is a good thing that dikoting is so hard to get a hold of. I would hate to face weapons like this on a consistent basis.
The guard picked that instant to attack, slicing his weapon through a slashing attack that was virtually guaranteed to cut through anything it met. Shiver jumped back, barely dodging the black katana, which caught part of the elf’s armor, cutting cleanly through with only the slightest tug. Before Shiver could launch any kind of riposte, the guard was executing another attack, one aimed at the elf’s neck.
For the next ten seconds, Shiver found himself pressed to avoid sudden death at the hands of the guard. The elf’s superior speed had been enough to keep him from serious harm, but his weapon was six inches shorter, and his armor was almost as tattered as his patience.
Shadow let his opponent’s leg start to collapse, before using his now superior leverage and position to bat the other’s katana away, and kick him just hard enough to send him over the edge into unconsciousness.
Shiver barely deflected another attack, one that took six more inches off of the end of his weapon. As the razor set up for another attack, Shiver lost patience, and sprung towards the human. The elf saw the black blade arcing towards him, knew that he hadn’t been quite fast enough, but tried to get inside the arc of the blow nevertheless.
Suddenly, there was a whistling sound, and a soft thunk from behind the guard. The smooth motion of the blade stopped for an instant, as if the razor’s muscles had rebelled against him. Shiver took advantage of that split second pause to finish closing with his opponent. An impossibly quick blow seemed to lick towards the gillette’s arm, removing the hand holding the deadly black katana, before streaking to the human’s stomach. With an air of contempt, Shiver then head butted his opponent, causing the maimed razor to fall to the ground senseless, the knife that Shadow had thrown to interrupt the gillette’s attack, still sticking out of his back.
Shiver then dropped his nearly useless katana, extending and retracting his hand razors a couple of times as he stared thoughtfully at the fallen guard. As the elf bent down and reached towards the other’s neck, Shadow ran to the human, pulling a medkit, and an adhesive trauma patch from beneath his coat. Watching the shape shifter slide between him and the guard, Shiver shook his head. “No time, finish him, grab females, go.”
When the physad didn’t respond, instead applying the trauma patch in an effort to stop the bleeding from the human’s arm, Shiver grabbed Shadow’s shoulder. The shape shifter turned on his teammate with a low growl that made the normally fearless elf pause. Shadow’s eyes had a feral fire to them that Shiver hadn’t ever seen before. “Nobody is supposed to die this time. Back off.”
Hammer finally made it over to the two runners. The troll’s pain editor was on, so his knee didn’t actually hurt, but he was limping to avoid having the damaged joint fold on him. “Shiver, continue on to the target, Shadow will follow as soon as the guard is stabilized. I’ll start back now so as to avoid slowing you down on the way out.”
Shadow turned back to the guard, applying the medkit to the human’s stomach wound. The kit’s computer diagnosed the patient’s condition, and then applied a sealant to the gash, and administered sedatives and painkillers.
Hammer watched Shiver go through the door, and then shared a worried frown with Shadow before turning and hobbling back they way they had just come.
***
Smoke made it to the node where his ally was locked in battle only to find that Spider was facing off against two deckers instead of the one that they had been led to believe covered the house. The crystal girl was back, wielding a translucent sword, but joined by a tall, thin, blue-skinned man with a pistol.
Spider wasn’t looking too good, his icon was starting to blur around the edges, a pretty good indication that his deck was taking damage. Masked, Smoke drifted over to the blue man, the one that looked the most dangerous, he modified the parameters under which his attack program was running. The black edged swirl launched out, raking across the man’s back as the crystal girl scored a devastating hit on Spider.
The tarantula icon locked twitching around the clear sword, unmoving as the hostile decker’s attack program attempted to kill the decker by sending deadly instructions into his body through his own hardware.
The blue man spun around, giving his sensor programs greater priority on his deck’s CPU in an effort to pierce the masking that his attacker was running. Smoke froze for a second, hoping that his program would be able to strong enough for him to remain hidden, but as soon as the girl turned up her sensors, his CPU headed towards full utilization, indicating that he wasn’t going to have any such luck.
***
Shadow had finished up with the fallen guard, and followed Shiver into the suite of rooms looking for the two targets. The mother had been easy to find, the sound of her panicked breathing had been audible between the bursts of sound from the alarms. Shiver had darted the woman before either runner had thought to find out where her daughter was, so now the two were looking for the last target, hoping that they wouldn’t run into more substantial resistance.
_____
Smoke was nursing his attack and defensive programs in an effort to get everything he could out of them, but it was looking like he was going to loose the fight. That of course presupposes that my deck isn’t going to overheat and catch fire before one of these two kills me.
The system was starting to purge itself of all the Trojan horses that he’d carefully place in it in preparation for this run. That meant that the meat security would be finally starting to figure out what was going on, not a good development for the runners on the inside. Smoke’s rep depended on making sure that none of what was happening happened, but without Spider to help him, there wasn’t any way he was going to be able to beat these two deckers, even if the girl was a total novice.
Smoke wanted to try and jack out of the system, but if he did that both deckers could turn their attention to fixing the host, meaning that the meat security would know what was actually going on that much quicker. The decker had no choice but to try and hang in the system for as long as possible in an effort to minimize the hit his reputation was going to take when word got out how badly this run was being fragged up.
***
Hammer was struggling. Most of the guards were still running around trying to cover all the false alarms that were going off, but it looked like they had been able to re-establish radio communication with each other, and he had encountered more and more guards moving in purposeful groups instead of blundering about by themselves. It was obvious that the matrix backup hadn’t been able to perform as expected, leading to the security forces regaining their composure much faster than anticipated.
The troll had managed to largely avoid confrontation, but it was getting much more difficult, especially with his mobility so limited. Hammer ducked around a corner only to realize that he had just avoided the same pair of guards seconds earlier, and that he could hear another group of two or three approaching from the opposite direction.
A an overheard murmur into a radio was enough to confirm the troll’s suspicions. They know I’m here, and they are trying to herd me into a location where they can overwhelm me with a minimum of loss to their people.
After a split second’s hesitation, Hammer dropped his narcojet into a pocket, pulled out a pair of Uzi III’s, and prepared to try and take down the closest group. I don’t really have much chance, but I’ll at least take as many out as possible so that Shiver and Shadow have a chance to make it out.
***
Smoke felt another attack get past the hardening on his deck, and start to send electrical impulses along his nervous system in an effort to confuse his heart and send it into defib. The decker managed to hit the blue man with a slow program that convinced the host that the other decker was a hostile intruder, but the host would only be able to hinder the decker for a few seconds, and it was the crystal girl that currently had her sword through the runner.
***
Shadow and Shiver left the mother where she was in an effort to speed up their search for the last target. The information that Asako had given them indicated that the girl slept in the same suite of rooms as the parents, but the yakuza members hadn’t ever been allowed into the inner parts of the house in an attempt to keep Yoshimo’s family ignorant, and consequently Asako didn’t know exactly where to find the girl’s bedroom.
Shiver imagined that a normal seventeen year old would have run to her mother upon hearing the strobbing alarms, but for some reason this one hadn’t, so they were conducting a rapid room by room search. Shadow threw a door open to find a Japanese girl stretched out on the bed. The shape shifter noticed two things almost simultaneously, first that the door he had just thrown open hit the wall with the kind of dead thump that indicated that a white noise generator was being used in the lavishly-furnished room, and the young lady was jacked into a shiny black deck.
Shadow yelled for Shiver as the shape shifter ran over to the bed. The girl seemed to hear his approach, but was so deeply involved in whatever was happening on the matrix that she didn’t even open her eyes. The physad shrugged, and then quickly pulled the data cable out of her skull jack, wincing slightly, as the dump shock hit her, and she went into convulsions.
Soft brown eyes looked up in astonishment for a moment before the girl passed out, and Shadow picked her up and slung her over his left shoulder.
***
Smoke couldn’t believe it when he saw the crystal girl suddenly derez, and her icon shatter into a thousand pieces. Suddenly freed from the attack program that had been trying to kill him, the decker turned his full attention on the blue man who was just now coming back to full speed.
The security decker was pretty good, but without his newbie backup, he just couldn’t keep up with the runner, who quickly burned him with a succession of high powered attacks. Within two or three seconds, Smoke had fried his opposition’s brain. Take that for what you did to Spider you stupid piece of yak garbage. I don’t care if the prospectus said that we weren’t supposed to kill anyone, I’ve had it with this zero lethality crap. Peter can keep that stupid bonus. Now for keeping this run from getting any more hosed, so I can stop my rep from going into the drekker
Freed from worries about deckers and ice, Smoke quickly began messing with the host, killing the radio relay for the meat forces, and then sending out new orders that appeared to be legitimate. Within thirty seconds, the decker had everyone inside the building completely confused, and an open route out for the runners.
__________
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