Who Hunts the Hunter (2 page)

The cabin comes into view, sitting in a snowy clearing ringed by soaring white-dusted pines. Before the cabin lurks a boxy air-cushion vehicle, a Mostrans hovertruck, lying belly-down in the snow. In front of the ACV’s cab stands a tall lanky figure, a male in gray and white camo, holding a fully outfitted assault rifle. The kevlar mask over his face and the hood covering his head do nothing to hide his elven scent. Nor that of the two elven females just then stepping out of the cabin, carrying a large gray case.

Smells in the air tell Tikki that her cub is outside the cabin. Where? Very near. Near enough for her to see it plainly, and yet all she sees are the elves and that large gray case.

Instinct fills in the blanks.
Her
cub
is
in
that
case!

Tikki hurtles toward the elves. The two females hustle the gray case toward the cargo door of the Mostrans. The male retreats a few steps. Their smells are watchful and wary and hint of a rising tension like fear. Tikki is barely ten meters away when the pod atop the Mostrans’ cab snaps open, revealing an autocannon, already tracking.

The first stammering burst batters her chest and head. Hide splits, ribs crack. Something unseen tears at her right eye. She staggers and slips on a patch of ice. The Mostrans’ turbine begins keening louder. The female elves heft the gray case in through the ACV’s cargo door. Tikki seizes the crystalline earth in her paws and hurls herself forward. A second burst batters her flank and snaps her right hind leg. She tumbles down and scrambles up. The male elf points his rifle. The glaring light of a laser-sight flashes across Tikki’s face like fire. The rifle clatters, the autocannon stammers. She’s struck in the head, shoulder, and body. The impacts pitch her off-balance and send her sprawling. A final assault leaves her blind in both eyes, ears ringing, blood boiling into her mouth.

The cargo door on the Mostrans bangs closed. Tikki drags herself up. Another burst of the autocannon nearly tugs her right foreleg from her shoulder. She sags into the snow, gulping air in huge gurgling breaths. The Mostrans whines, ice and snow swirl through the air like sleet, and the vehicle rushes away.

With it goes the scent of the cub.

Tikki opens her mouth to roar, but the pain is overpowering and she is sliding down through nothingness into the great unending dark of a vast pit.

2

The sign glares in stroboscopic color:

WELCOME TO NEW BRONX
PLAZA SITE OF THE VILLIERS ARCOLOGY
A NEXUS OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY & VALUE

The plaza extends for blocks in every direction. The walls of the Villiers Axcology rise forty stories into the neon-lit night. The massive project has been plagued by delays like the terrorist bomb that left a blackened wound in one wall. The skeletal framework of supporting steel rises another twenty or thirty stories above the walls, but never seems to attain its zenith.

In the time it’s taken for the arc to reach this stage of near-half-completion, a horde of condoplexes and office towers have risen around the plaza and along the banks of the Harlem River. People are calling it a renaissance, the revitalization of a part of the South Bronx that’s been decaying for decades, ravaged by gangs, infested with vicious devil rats. Bandit wonders if that’s so. This is the year 2056 and the masters of the corporate over-world, the likely engineers of this renaissance, have never seemed particularly altruistic.

Most of the people living in the new plexes and working in the new towers look like salarymen and execs from Manhattan. So do the thousands of suits now crossing the gold-hued tiles of the plaza. Promo skimmers drifting by overhead and the laser adverts gleaming in midair proclaim the amazing values inherent in whole body re-fits, custom apparel, executive limousines, and high-rent security condos. If the SINless and the indigent have any place in this so-called “renaissance,” Bandit can’t see it. But that is the way of the world. Or so it seems.

Bandit sits along the curvilinear base of the fountain dedicated to some ancient samurai with paired swords and multiple rings. He plays his wooden flute and watches the passing suits. The song he plays flows from within. The magic he makes is subtle but persuasive, enticing, enchanting. The suit who pauses to drop a few bits of corporate scrip into the begging bowl at Bandit’s side turns to go, but pauses again to stare at the bowl, then drops a few more notes. Bandit nods his head in a particular way, as if in thanks, and plays a particular strain on his flute. The suit hesitates, adds a silver credstick to the collection in the bowl, then goes on his way. That, too, is the way of the world.

The way of the world is the way of nature, and the ways of Raccoon are as much a part of nature as anything else in nature: people, animals, mountains, and streams. Cities and deserts. Nuyen and New Guinea. Raccoon is of course a sort of thief. He prefers strategy and tricks to any kind of confrontation, because violence between thinking creatures is wasteful of the energies of life and, possibly, an affront to nature itself. Raccoon goes his own way, seeking value and things of interest, such as items of power, useful in his special brand of magic. Petty thefts are usually beneath him. But when the means of the theft are clever and the ends are good, well . . . that changes everything. To persuade a salaryman, perhaps one of the corporate elite, to give up his nuyen for the sake of the poor ... well, that is a good trick, indeed.

There is only one small problem with it.

A faint glimmer in the air catches Bandit’s eye. He shifts to astral perception. The small spirit he finds crouching beside his begging bowl takes the form of a raccoon. This is the watcher he assigned to watch the astral terrain in the vicinity of the fountain.

The spirit points."
Master,
look
!"

Bandit looks.

Through the thousand auras of the suits moving around him burn a few that are particularly bright, hot with anger and resolve and the readiness to do violence. Bandit does not need to see the gray and black uniforms of corporate security forces to know who these people are, or what they intend to do. He has no System Identification Number, no corporate ID. He is on a plaza that Villiers International defends like its own exclusive property. The guards always come. It is part of the way of things, part of nature.

But the guards will be several more moments forcing their way through the evening crowds. There is time. Bandit lays a folded paper dragon on the base of the fountain. A small thing of great beauty in exchange for all the money he’s collected. A fair exchange. More than fair. For Raccoon need not give anything for what he takes, and this time he takes only money. Money may have its uses, but it is essentially valueless scraps of paper or small bits of metal with electronic encoding. Of no use in magic whatever.

“Out of the way!” a voice bellows.

Quickly then, Bandit stuffs money and credsticks into the pockets of his long coat, grabs the begging bowl and runs.

“YOU!” someone shouts."HALT!”

The guards are close and the crowds are densely packed. Bandit points his flute and whispers a word. Discreetly, a winding path opens before him as people, like currents in a stream, shift just slightly out of his way. And like currents passing around a tree limb or rock, they rejoin into a single waterway to his rear.

“
Above
you,
Master
!” a voice whispers in his ear.

From out of the neon-stroked night comes the silent form of a helicopter with flashing red and amber beacons. Bandit knows it comes for him. He has eluded the forces protecting this plaza many times before. Experience teaches that it is the way of megacorporations to become annoyed with those who evade their guards, and so they commit more resources each time he comes.

But Bandit is ready. He’s prepared. At a word, the round golden cover to a utility access shaft jerks from its recess in the tiled floor of the plaza. Bandit climbs down into the shaft, grips the sides of the ladder there with hands and feet, and drops at speed to the floor of the tunnel below.

“
Uh
-
oh
," his watcher whispers.

The tunnel is about two meters across, lit by panels in the ceiling and lined with conduits and pipes. As Bandit steps back from the ladder, he turns and faces a squad of waiting guards, orks, massive and heavily armed. There are five of them and they stand in a semicircle that backs him against the tunnel wall.

“Gotcha,” says one.

Bandit nods, and says, “Don’t shoot.”

The magic triggers instantly. A cloud of blazing white boils up around him and expands to fill the tunnel. Guards shout. Bandit ducks beneath grasping hands and dodges around turning, stumbling bodies. He slips free and runs.

Raccoon would be pleased.

“Where is he?”

“There!
There
!”

“
GET’IM
!”

Guards emerge from the cloud and charge along in pursuit. Bandit turns a corner and runs into a secondary tunnel. Barely three meters ahead waits a corp mage in a long black robe marked with mystic insignia. The mage lifts her arms in a posture of spellcasting. Bandit points a finger at her and shoots. The mage sneezes, her magic misfires. Bandit ducks and lunges forward, past the mage’s side. An explosion roars at his back. Someone screams in agony. Bandit feels the heat of the blast on the back of his neck, but keeps on running.

Magic both simple and fast has advantages over complex sorcery. That is something the mages from the high towers of the corporate over-world never seem to grasp.

The guards keep on coming.

Bandit darts around another corner. The new tunnel ends suddenly, three meters in, blocked off by a panel marked with red and yellow warning stripes. This was not here before.

Bandit puzzles.

The new panel looks made of steel. It is marked with the logo of Villiers’ security forces, Bandit notes. On the astral plane, magic swirls around it incessantly. The panel is warded and the ward is powerful. It is probably impenetrable in the time Bandit has left, and that is rather annoying.

“
Master,
behind
you
!"

Boot heels ring loudly, charging near. Bandit looks back to see three massive ork guards rounding the corner behind him. They stop just a meter or two away and point their weapons at him.

“You’re under arrest, spellboy,” one says, grinning.

“Mage,” says another, sneering.

Bandit nods understanding. He is no mage, but mundanes rarely see the distinction. He is a
shaman
. He follows Raccoon.
He
has about as much in common with mages as artists have with scientists. He could try to explain that, but would rather not waste the time."Be one with the world.”

“Huh?” the leading ork grunts.

Bandit turns and steps to his right. The eyes of a mundane would see him stepping through the wall of the tunnel and disappearing from sight. That is a sort of illusion. The guards gape and exclaim, but hesitate to follow. By the time they figure out what happened Bandit will be long gone.

Once again, the guards have been outwitted by guileful Raccoon. That, too, is in the way of things. Only now Bandit’s little secret, his secret opening, has been compromised. He compresses his lips and frowns.

“Damn.”

3

The sun is long gone when vision returns.

Tikki’s fur is caked with dried blood, and the snow around her is splashed with her own gore, but her hide is whole once more, and her bones mended. Her musculature comes to life twitching and flexing. With a rumbling breath that threatens to explode into a ferocious roar, Tikki bolts to her feet, charges the cabin, and smashes through the cabin door. Then no doubt can remain. The cub is gone.

She roars with the fury burning inside her, but abruptly stops. Experience warns her. She has been in this position before—opposed by two-legs, assaulted by humans, crossed by orks and elves. Confronted by treachery and guile and forced to deal with it. With the rising moon, instinct cries for vengeance, and yet she knows that this is not the way.

To succeed, to prevail in the world of two-legs, she must face down the savagery of her instincts and use her mind. She must think. Analyze. Consider. Decide what is the best course to follow and what paths to avoid.

She steps outside, stares into the gray dark of the night. The air is thick with the stink of the Mostrans. The ACV's fans have blasted a clear trail through the snow. The smells and the trail will linger for many hours, perhaps even days. She will follow; but, first she steps back into the cabin. There are things she must examine and things she must decide.

The cabin is ancient: rough-hewn walls of seasoned wood, a scattering of leaves, and the needles of pines. The stench of elves hangs in the air. Tikki drinks it in, draws the scents all the way into her lungs, for she wants them burned into her memory, remembered so clearly that she will recognize the faintest trace wafting past her on a fleeting zephyr of air. She walks to the low mound of dog hides in one corner and buries her nose in it, smelling the traces her cub has left behind. She will remember that, too.

She will hunt the elves, hunt them till either she is dead or the cub is again at her side. Should she find the cub dead, she will maul the elves, destroy them, tear them to pieces, then leave their meat for the crows.