shadowrun 40 The Burning Time (13 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talon nodded. "We set with the Whitehorse?"

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

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

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

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