Ragnarock (19 page)

"Hold it, Hammer." Talon put a hand on the ork's arm to keep him from launching himself at the elf. "Listen, Silverblade, we'll play it your way for now. We both want the same thing: to find out who wanted to knock off Lofwyr and why. If you want our help, you work with us. You may be used to playing lone wolf, but we're a team. We've got our own ways of doing things and we know our jobs."

"I certainly hope so." Silverblade said. "Because I would like to hire you."

"What?" chorused several voices at once. Silverblade smiled smugly and walked over to an overstuffed chair in one corner of the room. He sat down like a piano player in front of an audience. He leaned back and regarded the gathered shadowrunners over steepled fingers before replying.

"Yes, I would like to retain the services of your
team, Talon. As you have said, I am interested in
uncovering more about this plot against Lofwyr, and those I serve cannot provide me with the resources I might need. Therefore, I must make do with what is available."

"We don't work for free." Talon said.

"Of course you don't." Silverblade smiled slightly. "In addition to having helped save your lives . . ."

"Only after you knocked us out." Hammer grumbled.

"In addition to that," Silverblade continued, "and the use of these facilities"—he took in the whole room with a sweep of his hand—"I am prepared to compensate you. How much did Saeder-Krupp owe you before the . . . unfortunate incident?"

"A quarter-million nuyen." Talon said, without missing a beat.

The elf raised one eyebrow in a quizzical look, then smiled again.

"Really? Then you're better-paid than I thought. Or perhaps you're merely lying to me."

"You think so?" Boom asked.

The elf shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. I will pay your team twenty thousand nuyen to assist me in uncovering information about the person or persons behind this plot and dealing with them."

"Negotiable based on possible risk." Talon said.

"You're not in much of a position to negotiate, Talon." Silverblade replied. "I can still simply leave you to your fate, but agreed."

"And you'll give us some leeway to handle investigations ourselves?" Talon asked.

"Under my supervision, of course."

Talon glanced over at his chummers. There was no need for discussion. He could see their concerns written clearly in their eyes and their expressions. He turned back to Silverblade.

"We'll do it," he said, "on two conditions."

The elf gave him a leering smile. "Which are?"

"First,
I'm
in charge of this team, not you. You may be paying the bills, but you're not calling the shots around here."

"Very well." Speren said slowly. "And the other?"

"You help me recover my familiar, which you disrupted. If we're going to do this, we're going to need all the help we can get."

"Agreed."

"All right then." Talon said. "Let's get to work."

* * *

Silverblade showed Talon to a basement room in the building, where various hermetic magical supplies were stored. Talon took careful note of them. The ritual supplies in the room were suitable for performing all kinds of ritual sorcery and summoning different elemental spirits. The floor of the room was slate, ideal for drawing and painting hermetic circles. The air was musty, filled with the scents of chalk dust, earth, dried spices, and herbs.

Together, he and Silverblade astrally projected onto the metaplanes, the distant astral dwelling places of the spirits, home of Talon's familiar Aracos. The astral journey to the metaplane of air to retrieve Aracos from his temporary banishment seemed like a short jaunt to Talon. But in the physical world, he awoke to discover that the remainder of the night and part of the next day had passed, about eight hours while they were in a trance state, their spirits journeying. He groaned and stretched, feeling his joints pop, then got slowly to his feet. He saw Silverblade stir and open his eyes before pulling his legs under him and standing gracefully. There was a shimmer in the air and Aracos materialized in the form of a gray-furred wolf, which turned and growled at the elf.

"I don't think he likes me." Silverblade said.

"Can't imagine why." Talon replied. He put a hand on Aracos' fur to soothe him.

"Just let me take one bite out of him, boss."
the spirit spoke in Talon's mind.

"Sorry, chummer, but we need him for now."
Talon answered.
"He's our new Johnson."

A feeling of disgust came back at him. Talon returned a mental shrug, as if to say "what can we do about it?"

"I assume you can keep him under control?" Silverblade said, with a nod toward Aracos.

"Don't worry." Talon said. "He only goes after the people I tell him to. Shall we rejoin the others?"

"After you." Speren said with a smile and a courtly bow.

Talon walked out of the room and let Aracos watch his back.

* * *

"About time you two got back." Boom said when they returned to the main room. In the hours that had gone by, Talon's team had transformed the place into a base of operations. Trouble sat in one of the padded chairs, her deck cradled in her lap, tapping out a steady rhythm on the keys. A cable was plugged into her datajack, and her head was lolled back, not unlike Talon's own journeying trance, although her journey took her into the depths of the German Matrix. Val was working on a drone that was partly broken down on a blanket spread out on the floor. Boom and Hammer were checking the team's weapons and had the trideo unit in one corner of the room tuned to a twenty-four-hour news channel.

"Did we miss anything?" Talon said.

"Not too much." Boom said, gesturing toward the trideo with the gun he was cleaning. "There hasn't been much about Lofwyr on the news. Saeder-Krupp put out a press release this morning that the dragon was involved in some high-level meetings and that he'd canceled a meeting with some skags from the megaplex government, but that's it, no mention of a disturbance, much less an attack. And no trid footage of the dragon, of course. Trouble's been digging almost since you tranced out. She's only jacked out once to have something to eat. She said she had some leads, but she wanted to wait to see where they went. She'll give everyone an update at once."

"No problems?"

"Not a one. Whatever else you can say about the Tir, they've got a nice safe house." Boom said. Silverblade pointedly ignored the left-handed compliment. "No sign of Saeder-Krupp security of any kind. Of course, I can't say for sure when it comes to spooks and mages checking things out."

Silverblade closed his deep green eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

"There are no disruptions of the building's wards and protections." he said. "No signs of any intrusion. If there had been any while we quested, I would have known of it. We remain undiscovered, for the time being."

"Good." Talon said. "Now, is there anything to eat in this place?"

After he'd polished off a couple of sandwiches put together from the house's well-stocked larder, he began to feel much more grounded. He was nearly always hungry after any long magical operation. Such things took a lot of energy, and food helped to replenish him and clear away the heady after-effects of using a lot of magic. As he finished up, he heard Trouble stir as she tapped a few final keys on her cyberdeck, logging off the Matrix with a flourish.

"Evening, boys." she said to Talon and Silverblade, looking up from her chair with a grin. "Looks like you chummers are just in time. I think I've got us a lead on who might be setting themselves up as dragonslayers."

16

"I've got good news and bad news." Trouble said to the rest of the team gathered around the room, all intently focused on her and the information she'd gathered.

"Good news first." Talon said.

"The good news is Lofwyr isn't dead. First thing I did was crack into Saeder-Krupp—not an easy task since their systems are seriously on alert, but I know a few back doors here and there." Talon doubted it was anywhere near as easy as Trouble made it sound, but she definitely knew her business. Trouble was one of the best deckers Talon had ever worked with, and that was saying a lot.

"What did you get?" he asked.

"It seems that Lofwyr managed to survive whatever the crystal tried to do to him, so we're not looking at another dead dragon."

"Great. What's the bad news?" Talon asked.

"The bad news is that Lofwyr isn't dead, but he
hasn't regained consciousness since the crystal attacked him like you described. Saeder-Krupp has called in all sorts of paranaturalists and parabiologists for top-secret meetings and examinations, very hush-hush. Their preliminary findings are that the dragon is in some kind of coma. His life signs are stable, but at a very low level, and he's completely unresponsive. Of course, the findings are only preliminary, and nobody really knows a whole lot about dragon biology. A lot of it is probably guesswork on their part."

"So Lofwyr could bloody well be brain-dead, for all we know." Boom said.

"Right." Trouble said. "Which could be almost as bad, if not worse, than him being dead-dead. Rumors have already started up on the 'trix that something happened at the S-K arcology last night, but nobody knows what. Saeder-Krupp is keeping a tight lid on the whole thing: no leaks to the media, top security on the arcology. Still, some people have twigged onto the fact that
something
happened out at the arcology, but, of course, nobody's talking. Speculation is starting to run rampant. I already saw some posts from people saying they think whatever is happening is somehow connected to Dunkelzahn's assassination, that somebody may be gunning for great dragons."

"What about Dr. Goronay?" Silverblade inquired. It was the first time he'd spoken during the briefing, and Trouble glanced over at Talon for a second before answering. The elf was a stranger among them, but Trouble didn't allow that to affect her professionalism.

"It looks like Talon may be right. S-K had an autopsy done on what was left of Goronay after Lofwyr flamed him. From the sound of it, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot left, but they did find some of his cyberware, along with evidence that he may have been slotting BTLs, or something similar."

"Which suggests that he
was
conditioned by someone else somehow." Talon said.

"Right. The only question is who?" Boom said.

"That's where things start to get interesting." Trouble told him. "I figured that somebody must have hooked Goronay on BTLs, because none of the psych profile we dug up indicated any addictive behavior patterns or likelihood of getting involved in that drek. It also doesn't explain the stuff Talon and Boom said he was spouting when he went off. Somebody must have programmed that into him at some point.

"So I did some more digging, using BTL-based mind programming as my basic search parameter, looking for someone who might have had an ax to grind with Lofwyr, Saeder-Krupp, or even Goronay himself. Guess what I came up with."

"Runenthing." Talon said.

"Almost, but not quite. I found a file on the Shadowland boards about an organization that calls itself Winternight. Ever heard of them?"

"Yeah, I read that file." Talon said. "They're some sort of terrorist group, aren't they? Obsessed with bringing about the Norse 'twilight of the gods' so they can end this nasty world and start another one, right?"

"Got it in one." Trouble said. "Not only that but, according to the file, Winternight uses specialized BTL chips to brainwash people into working for them. The chips are completely addictive, and carry encoded subliminal programming instructions."

"The twilight of the gods." Boom said. "That's what Goronay said before Lofwyr cracked him. He said 'The judgment of the gods is upon you, serpent. The twilight of the gods is upon us all.' "

"You're right!" Talon said. He was always impressed by Boom's memory. "That fits with Winternight's M.O. exactly."

"It gets better." Trouble went on. "Seems Winternight is heavily into Norse/Germanic mythology and imagery, not unlike der Runenthing. Apparently, there are suspected ties between Winternight and various German terrorist organizations, like Alt Welt, which oppose Saeder-Krupp's plans for European Restoration and support Europa Dividus."

"Brackhaus said that S-K had pegged Zoller as a member of Alt Welt." Talon said. "What if he was right? What if Zoller
does
have ties with Alt Welt in some way?"

"No." Silverblade broke in. "That is unlikely. Alt Welt does not even truly exist. The organization is a blind, a front organization used by different terrorist groups to cover their true activities in Europe and elsewhere. The most recent intelligence reports suggested that Alt Welt was being used as a cover for der Nachtmachen some years ago, but that organization is also defunct. A covert operation ended their
involvement in European politics."

"Maybe somebody is still using Alt Welt as a front," Val put in, "somebody like this Winternight."

"Zoller is high up in Runenthing," Talon mused, "and S-K suspected him of involvement with Alt Welt, so it sounds like he's our link. Runenthing is strongly nationalistic and opposed to Saeder-Krupp's restoration plans. They're suspected of links to terrorist activities, and it was Zoller that Goronay came to with the crystal. We suspected Goronay was looking to sell it, but what if he was simply programmed to bring it to Zoller as part of the whole plan?"