Chapter Eight
Fight and Flight
Black Diamond Neighborhood
Auburn, Seattle
April 4, 2059
5:02 am
BOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!................................
The concussion grenade blew Sanders, the Mauss Chemical team scout, right off his feet and slammed him through a thin plywood wall across from the door. The force of the blast caused his eardrums to ring and bleed. He put his head between his legs and cursed violently even though he couldn't hear a thing.
"Booby trap." The team leader, a meaty man named Buchanan warned. "Pop smoke." He ordered. "Slice the pie."
The assault team filed into the main room. Of the five members, two proceeded left and swept the living room. Two more, including Buchanan, covered the hallway entrance. Sanders was still trying to pick himself up from the grenade. He was tagging along behind the rest. This annoyed Buchanan. He wanted his team to function at their upmost capability. Mistakes were not allowed under his watch.
Peters and Hernandez, the two primary assaulters of the group, pulled smoke grenades and tossed one into the living room and one into the hallway. The assault team were wearing thermographic goggles that allowed them to see past the dull haze of smoke that was already beginning to form.
"Main room clean." Peters reported.
"Hall." Buchanan lead the group into the hallway. Peters and Hernandez faced up the hall towards the bedrooms. Buchanan and the rear guard, a short stocky man named Davis, covered the kitchen. They had yet to run into any sign of the shadowrunners.
"Clear." Peters called.
"Clear." Davis added.
Buchanan chewed his lip. He was a little unsure what to do next. He expected to meet his opposition by now, but he hadn't. That worried him. He waited long enough for Sanders to rejoin the group before issuing anymore orders.
"You three take back rooms." Buchanan pointed to a door next to the kitchen. "We will take the garage."
"Yessir." Peters replied quickly as he lead Sanders and Hernandez down the hall.
The two assaulters and the scout checked each of the four rooms connected to the hallway. In one they found some kind of lounge. There were several cups of soycoffee sitting about. Steam still rose off the hot liquid. Another room held a bathroom with a simple toilet and shower. The room on the right end of the hall was a bedroom. There were a few small cots, but nothing much in the way of furniture. Each of the rooms were empty.
Peters used a battering ram on the last door on the hallway. The cheap composite of the door shattered allowing Peters and Hernandez to move in. Sanders kept watch in the hallway.
When the two assaulters entered the room, they immediately identified Michelle McVey sitting on a small cot. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back and she had been gagged. Michelle's vision was severely hampered by the smoke that was moving through the house. She couldn't make out much of the people that had knocked the door down. Michelle didn't realize that they were from Mauss Chemicals until Peters came into the room and started to undo her gag. Hernandez kept his gun on Michelle as a safety precaution. Just to make sure that the runners hadn't done something to her.
Peters pulled the gag of Michelle's mouth. "Mauss Chemical Special Teams, ma'am." He explained. "Do as we say."
Michelle looked at Peter, but her eyes focused on Hernandez. Her mouth dropped open in a silent scream as her eyes went wide.
Peters looked at her with confusion. "Ma'am?"
Blam!
Peters' head exploded in a mass of bone and gray matter. The contends of his head were splattered all over Michelle and the wall. Smiley had stuck his shotgun out from the closet that he was hiding in. He had grabbed Hernandez around the neck and racked his throat with spurs while the Franchi Spas-22 decapitated Peters.
Michelle let out a blood curdling scream.
Smiley shoved the still alive Hernandez against the wall. The company man had his hands at his throat and was slowly choking as blood clogged his windpipe. Smiley placed the barrel of his shotgun up against the side of Hernandez's head. Michelle looked away as Smiley pulled the trigger. The blast blew a hole through both Hernandez and the wall. Effectively covering the room and the eccentric samurai in a wave of crimson red.
The body slumped to the floor with a sloppy, wet sound. At almost the same time Sanders collapsed in the hallway. Michelle thought that he had met a gruesome end much like the other two men. However, on a closer look, he appeared to be sleeping.
Michelle screamed nevertheless.
"Awe, shaddup." Smiley cursed as he grabbed Michelle by the handcuffs. Lenny had ordered them to be applied. "It's not like they didn't have it coming."
Lenny and Gideon were waiting in the hallway when Smiley lead Michelle out. Shard was standing behind the two of them. Exactly how the runners had managed to avoid detection by the Mauss team was unknown to Michelle. In fact, she didn't want to know.
"All crispy, fearless leader." Smiley grinned as he thumbed new shells into his shotgun. "Who's next?" As the samurai grinned beads of red dripped form his rounded dimples. Chunks of gory tissue hanged loosely from his hair.
Lenny held up his hand. "We let the garage get cleaned out first."
5:04
Buchanan and Davis stormed into the garage like a pair of gestapo. They flew down the short flight of stairs and onto the ancient concrete floor. They were surrounded by a vast collection of junk and spare parts. They saw no one. Only the ghostly presence of the Bison and it appeared cold and empty. They both swept the room with thermographic goggles, looking for their expected opposition. The thermos were thrown off by the presence of heat from a recent wielding job and the warm engine of the runners vehicle.
"What the hell?" Davis said.
Buchanan was confused. The shadowrunners would not have left their vehicle behind. They were still here somewhere. But where?
"Search the van." He ordered.
No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than the lights in the garage cut off. Buchanan and Davis found themselves in a pitch black room that was scattered with debris. Their goggles offered them some vision, but not much.
"Back to back." Buchanan ordered as he stepped back to where he thought Davis was. Instead, he tripped over the remains of an old microwave and stumbled into a pile of papers. Buchanan flopped around for a moment as he tried to regain his footing. He looked like a child that had been pushed into a puddle.
Where the hell is Davis, Buchanan thought to himself.
An empty silence settled over the garage. Buchanan thought he saw something move, a shadow against the darkness. His goggles picked up a trace of heat.
"Davis, report." He scorned.
Upon glancing to his left he noticed a heat signature. He brought his gun around and was about to warn the person to surrender, but he stopped. He recognized the outline and approached the figure.
"Davis?" Buchanan said as he shook his companion. Davis was leaning against a wall with his gun held lazily in his hand. "Davis, wake up!"
Buchanan pushed Davis over. The body's head slumped limply. A deep red gash ran from the neck to beneath his ribs. Buchanan was horrified. Even as he touched his teammate, Davis's head nearly fell right off. The only thing holding it on was the tether of muscle, skin, and bone.
"God..." He said to himself.
Buchanan spun around and clicked the safety off his gun. He was about to pepper the garage with fire when a figure slid out of the darkness. A heavy impact slammed up against the gun and knocked it right out of his hands. Buchanan cursed as was about to go for his backup pistol when the shadowy figure brought something flashing up.
A thunk hit against his lower leg and Buchanan felt himself falling. He had lost his leg below the knee. He thought about screaming, but forced his concentration on his training. He pulled the pistol from it's shoulder holster and pointed at what he thought was his attacker. He squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet flying off. Just as he was about to fire again, a mono-edge sliced through his hand. It severed three of his fingers and clipped the pistol from his grasp.
This time Buchanan screamed. He didn't care how he looked doing it. He forgot about his training. Though he did send his good hand after his combat knife. His only hope was that he could get the knife out in time.
A foot came down on his injured right hand. It stamped the hand down and held it in place. The tip of a sword stabbed through the forearm on Buchanan's left arm, rooting it in place. Another foot suddenly connected with his face, nearly knocking the goggles off.
Buchanan tried to shake his senses back into focus. Blood was pouring from a deep gash about his eye. The kick had ruined one of the lenses on the goggles. The remains of the lense had made the cut.
He managed to focus in on the figure that had attacked him. The ghostly assassin was crouched above him. One foot against his right hand, holding it down. The sword stabbed through his left arm, keeping it in place. A knee on his gut, further keeping Buchanan immobile.
Buchanan coughed horridly, suppressing a call for help. The figure tilted its head, appearing to contemplate Buchanan's situation.
Buchanan grunted. "What the frag are you waiting for?" He managed, sounding like the voice of a man with lung cancer.
The figure straightened up. Buchanan noticed this and braced himself for the end. He shut his eyes and was ready to give up his mangled body. Instead, the figure grasped for something on his hip. Buchanan felt the cold muzzle beneath his neck. It was probably a gun. Then the trigger snapped, a brief sound of compressed air, and Buchanan faded to black.
5:08 am
Montague hummed silently to himself. The shadowrunners had managed to take out a Mauss Chemical's recovery team in less than five minutes. That told the mage something about their capabilities. It also reminded him about the precautions the runners had taken.
When he first arrived on the scene, Montague had planned to let Mauss go after Michelle first. He could easily get her away from the corporate team if they succeed. However, just because the team failed didn't mean that they didn't leave anything behind. Their failure had revealed a great deal about the tactics the shadowrunneres employed. Montague made notes on everything he witnessed.
The runners had setup booby traps on all the outside doors. From what Montague could gather, these traps were very simple. Nothing more than a grenade held in a can. A line was tied around the grenade and ran across a doorway. When the line was tripped, it would pull the grenade out of the can and cause it to go off.
Secondly the runners seemed to have anticipated an attack on them. They already had their positions picked out when the Mauss team entered. Montague knew that this was because the runners had the elfish mage. The mage sent out watcher spirits to watch for anyone that broke a perimeter around the house. Montague also thought that the spirits were watching for any ritual magic that was used to locate Michelle McVey
What interested Montague the most was how the shadowrunners had managed to avoid detection when the Mauss team moved through the house. Montague suspected magic, but he was still unsure. He knew that Mauss had equipped it's personal with smoke grenades and thermographic goggles. The goggles made most invisibility spells useless because they detected the heat given off by living bodies. Yet he knew that the elf had used a spell.
Montague smiled.
A spell that had cloaked the runners not only from visible light, but from infrared of the thermograph. A manipulation of the Art like that wasn't found in any book. It was a unique quality that Montague would not mind learning for himself.
The shadowrunners pulled out of the house less than six minutes after the attack had begun. From what Montague gathered, the runners had slaughtered the opposition. A DocWagon crew hired by the company moved in as soon as the runners moved out. They found three dead company men, another that was in serious condition, and a third that was asleep of all things.
Mauss Chemicals had given pursuit as soon as the runners left. Unfortunately they lost the Bison nearly an ten minutes later in the twisting streets of Auburn.
Montague did not lose the runners. A mistake that Mauss had made since the beginning of the extraction was their failure to deploy magical assets. This allowed the runners to escape the condoplex and elude the recovery team. That mistake would not be repeated by Montague. He sent forth Sirrish, an Air Elemental that he had conjured a long time ago. The spirit would follow the runners no matter where they went. At the same time, the spirit was of a sufficient force not to let itself get caught.
Highway 18
South of Renton, Seattle
5:38 am
"It was a setup." Gideon grumbled. "Clear as I ever did see one."
"That's impossible, they had no idea we would be there. We didn't even know we would be there until yesterday." Shard interjected.
"Then someone sold us out."
"We don't know that."
Lenny shook his head. Since the team had managed to lose their pursuit there had been an ongoing argument about how Mauss Chemicals traced them to the safehouse. Gideon kept saying that it was a setup and one of their contacts had sold them out. Shard didn't know what to think. She didn't want to jump to any conclusions.
Finally Lenny got tired of all the petty bickering. "That's enough, you too." He said sternly. "If you want to argue about who might've sold us out, then do it later."
Gideon stiffened his lower lip, letting his tusks protrude. "How do you think they tracked us down?"
Lenny thought for a second, then gave a meaningful glance at Riggs.
Riggs shook his head. "I know what you thinking, Lenny, and I say no. No body followed us and I made drekking sure of that. We were clear from the moment we came out of Glow City."
"Yes, and if someone had followed us from Bellevue, why did they wait so long to attack?" Shard asked. "We were at the safehouse long enough to prepare ourselves."
Gideon grunted. "If we had been followed from the get-go, they would've smacked us the second we made it. Surprise and overcome."
"But they didn't." Lenny cut them off before anyone could say anything else. Only Riggs, Shard, and Gideon seemed to be focused on the discussion. Smiley seemed indifferent to it. Nightsky stayed in the back with his eye on Michelle McVey.
"Then what did they do, bossman?" Riggs wondered.
Lenny put his hand to his chin. "Bug?"
"Impossible!" Riggs denied. "The Bison's clean. I ran a check when we stopped at the safehouse. I don't even see how they could've got one on the van anyway."
"What about everybody else?"
Riggs didn't have any answer for that.
"Okay," Lenny unfolded his arms. "Gideon, get out the scanner and sweep each of us and our gear. Just to be on the safe side."
Gideon mumbled something as he fumbled the Bug Scanner out of a locker in the back of the Bison. He switched it own and checked each of the runners. Then he went back and checked over all the gear. Michelle watched silently as the ork worked.
"What about Big Bertha, Riggs?"
"I doubt she would have anything. I spent most of the morning fixing the bloody rack on her. I would've noticed anything funny."
Gideon came back up to Lenny. He switched the scanner off and laid it across his lap. "Everybody is clean."
Lenny nodded. He could figure it out. How had they found them?
"Shard?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think they used magic?"
Shard shook her head. "No, I had my watchers up. Nothing magical touched us."
Then what? Lenny's mind continued to wonder. His eyes eventually made contact with Michelle McVey. She visibly flinched when he looked at her. Lenny's eyes were filled with a sudden light of betrayal and determination.
"Michelle." He said in monotone.
She seemed worried. "What?"
He pointed a finger at her. "Scan her, Gid."
Gid looked over his shoulder at Michelle. "We changed her clothes already. I burned them back at the safehouse."
Michelle seemed to crawl up her seat a little.
"I don't care, Gid, scan her."
Gideon shrugged and switched the scanner back on. He went up to Michelle and ran the scanner over her. Michelle looked nervous. That nervous look made Lenny wonder if she was hiding anything. When the bug scanner started beeping, Lenny's eyes perked up.
Gideon checked the readings. "She's hot."
Lenny openly cursed. "Frag it, it was on the mark all along." He turned to Riggs. "What have you got to cut the signal?"
"Null presp, bossman. I've had ECM running since we left Auburn. I'll pull up some white noise and a jammer then beef up the flux of it all if it makes you feel any better."
"It does, Riggs, give me everything you got."
"What about her?" Gideon grumbled, motioning a metal hand at Michelle McVey.
"Get the scanner and search her. I want that tap off of this van now."
"You can't be serious!" Michelle scorned. "You want to strip search me?! I won't have it! Not by you people!"
Lenny groaned. The last thing he needed was a corporate wage slave who was suddenly bashful and scornful. He could not blame her. "Michelle, you have a bug on you. That's how Mauss was able to find us at the safehouse. That bug must be disposed of right now. It's only the electronics onboard the Bison that have kept them from finding us now."
"I you think that I'm going to let--"
"I didn't say this was a choice." Lenny motioned towards Shard. "Shard, go with Gideon. I want her searched and I want to clean and I want it ten seconds ago." His words carried a sense of force that they hadn't before. Shard and Gideon lead Michelle to the back of the van without another word. Fortunately Michelle kept her protests to a bear minimum.
"You think she been holding out on us?" Riggs mused.
Lenny shook his head. "I don't know."
"All I know is that she is colder than a patch of snow." Smiley grinned. "Course I'd be willing to fix that given the chance."
Lenny held his hand up. "She stays clean. We're going to keep her that way until the meet. Then it's out of our hands."
"Seems like a waste to me."
"That's you problem, Smiley." Lenny warned. "Remember that roughing her up won't help out the paycheck. Leave her alone."
Smiley sighed. "Yes, fearless leader."
A few moments later Gideon came back from searching Michelle McVey. He had a stern look on his rough features. This could only mean that he had found the bug, but there was something he didn't like about it.
"Well?" Lenny asked.
"We found the bug."
"And?"
"It's not going to be a snap to remove."
Lenny's eyes dashed across the floor. "How so?"
"Me and Shard searched that suit best we could, but the scanner kept picking something up. We couldn't figure where it was." Gideon explained. "But we got it. Thanks to a little reasoning and some of Shard's mojo, we think we figured it out."
"What was it?"
"She's been implanted with a transceiver in the back of her neck at the base of her skull. Fragging high-tech piece of drek. The things been sending burst transmissions on her position ever since we extracted her. That's how they tracked us."
"You mean it's inside her?" Nightsky sounded a bit confused.
"Like cyberware, only this is the kind that wasn't willingly put in. I don't think she knew about it, but there's no way to be sure about that fact." Gideon grunted.
Lenny looked at the ork. "We got to get it out of her."
Gid nodded. "Only way to get it out is to cut it out."
Those were harsh words. Lenny hoped that Michelle had not heard that. It would only make her frightened. To Smiley those words rang a bell in that shadowy mind of his. He looked up at Lenny and Gideon with an insane grin on his face.
"Anybody call for some elective surgery?" The samurai popped his spurs. "I'm sure I could get it out."
Lenny scuffed at the eccentric samurai. "We need her in one piece, Smiley."
"Then let me take her to Simms."
At that moment, Shard stepped up front and heard Smiley's words about taking Michelle to Dr. Simms. She was appalled at this. Simms was a black market organ legger who had implanted most of Smiley's cybernetics. One only had to look at Smiley to know the effects of some of his works.
"Smiley," Shard said coldly. "There is no way in the name of the spirits that you are taking her to Simms. He'll butcher her."
Smiley grinned, not seeming to care.
"Keep your voice down, Shard." Lenny warned.
Shard lowered her head. "Sorry."
"We're not going to take her to Simms. He's too far away in the first place." Lenny said. "And we aren't going to perform elective surgery in here."
Gideon crossed his arms. Apparently he was unhappy with the decision. "We got to get that bug out. One way or the other."
"I know, Gid, and I know how to deal with that."
"How?"
"We'll take her to Ramon. He'll get the bug out and be gentle about it."
Gideon fingered his tusk. "You sure he'd be willing to let the suit in his place? She's still transmitting. Ramon might be more friendly than Simms, but he's not an idiot."
"No, but Ramon has a price. He'll do anything if the nuyen is right and you know that." Lenny pulled out his phone. "Plus I think I know just where to find him."
Like this chapter? Then go on to the NEXT CHAPTER. Had enough of this story? Try going back to the Fiction Index and find something else. Thoughts, rants, comments? Email me and tell what you thought about it.