Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (3 page)

As the woman picked herself up from the floor, her duster gaped open, revealing an athletic body clad in little more than weapon belts and amulets. She cursed softly as one of her feet caught on her scabbard. Sam stared at the weapon it held. Though he had never seen one before, he guessed that this ornate and intricately decorated object had to be a magesword. For the first time in his life, he stood in the presence of a magician. The idea brought cold sweat to his brow.

This was a most dangerous gang if one of them could perform actual magic.

"Where's the pilot?" the woman demanded of the Ork.

The big ugly jerked his head toward the forward door. 'Hiding up dere."

"Go get him moving. Those trigger-happy Raku goons aren't going to wait forever before bringing up the artillery to pry us out of here. We need to get off this synthetic mountain now."

The Ork gestured toward the back of the cabin with his gun. "Can't leave dem here on our ass."

"We'll watch them."

"Should geek dem now," the Ork grumbled around his tusks.

"No time to waste. Get to the pilot."

The Ork snarled, but the woman, who seemed to be the leader of the band, did not budge. Giving in, the Ork readied his weapon and threw open the door. When nothing happened, he slipped into the passageway. His bulk blocked view, but Sam could hear the faint voice of the craft's computer as it repeated over and over, "Please signify if you wish engine shutdown."

The woman ran her gaze over the carnage left by the short burst of gunfire that had followed her into the Commuter. The stench of death hung heavily in the cabin. Betty Tanaka lay sprawled across the bench seat, her blood soaking the cushions and splattering the wall and window behind it. Sitting on the floor by her side, oblivious to his own wound, Jiro held his dead wife's hand and wept. Mr. Toragama was a huddled, lifeless lump in the main aisle.

"No one has to get hurt. Take your seats and buckle in," the woman said quietly. When no one moved, she repeated the words in crisp Japanese.

Sam was amazed. Hadn't they already been hurt?

"And keep your hands in sight," the man added in broken Japanese. He emphasized his point with a slight shake of the Ingram machine gun in his left hand. The one he held in his right remained rock steady and aimed at Crenshaw.

"We're hosed real good," the Ork bellowed from the cockpit. "De flygirl had a window open and took a stray shot. She's ready for de meat locker."

The woman flicked a glance at the man, who nodded and moved to join the Ork. As he passed behind her, she reached under her duster and slid a short-barreled shotgun from a holster.

Sam tried to watch Crenshaw. The obvious attention the attackers were paying her suddenly lined up with the deference the Red Samurai had shown back in Tokyo. She was likely a special corporate operative, what the screamsheets liked to call a company man. He wondered if she would try something against the reduced odds. The magician looked exhausted, drained from using the powerful spell that killed the Barghest. That would surely slow her reactions enough to give the veteran Crenshaw an opening. The invader's leveled shotgun seemed to be threat enough to restrain Crenshaw, however. She complied with the orders, found relatively gore-free seat and buckled herself in.

Sam felt betrayed. Of them all, Crenshaw should have taken the lead. She was trained to deal with thugs like these. Why hadn't she protected her fellow employees instead of folding in the face of danger? What more could he be expected to do? Resignedly, he pulled Jiro away from his wife's corpse and into a seat, but the man seemed not to hear Sam's attempts at soothing phrases.

Sam was buckling himself in when the Amerindian called from the cockpit. "We've got real problems, Sally. This damn thing only has rigger controls."

"Told ya we shoulda brought Rabo," the Ork whined. "He coulda skimmed us out real wiz."

"Rabo's not here," Sally snapped. "The veetole's d0g-brain will never be able to get us past the patrols."

The two male invaders reentered the cabin, dragging the limp form of the pilot.

"We can use dese suits as hostages or shields," the Ork suggested with an evil grin, as he dumped the body on top of Mr. Toragama.

Sally's only reply was a look of disdain.

"What about the Elf?" the Amerindian asked. "Could he take us out by remote?"

"I don't know," she said. Taking a small black box from a pocket, she flipped up the screen and pulled out a cord, snapping it into the jack port on a bulkhead intercom panel. She tapped in a code.

"At your service," said a voice from the crackling intercom speaker. "Where are you? Your signal is quite poor."

"We're cornered in a veetole, with a handful of Raku employees. Pilot's dead and the damn ship is rigger only. Can you get into the autopilot and fly us out?"

"I wish it were otherwise, Sweet Lady, but what you ask I cannot do. I'm a decker, not a rigger. I don't have the wiring to control the aircraft.

"I do suggest that you find an alternate means of transportation. And quickly. Their deckers are starting to move now and my position becomes more precarious by the microsecond. I have been able to isolate the communication attempts by the varlets who pursue you, but I fear that central security will soon become aware of the blind spot in their coverage. Even maintaining this communications link is a danger."

"There must be something that you can do, hotshot," the Amerindian insisted.

"As you have had to abandon the planned route out, there s very little." The Elf's faint voice paused. "Perhaps one of the passengers is a rigger."

Suddenly, Sam felt the group's attention focus on him, all yes on his datajack.

"What's your name, boy?" Sally asked.

"Samuel Verner."

"Well, Verner, are you a rigger?' the Amerindian demanded.

Should he lie? If he did, could the magician read his mind and know? Perhaps he could pretend to have trouble with the aircraft. If he could delay these brigands long enough, Renraku security would catch them. But surely not without a fight. Two people had already died for simply being in the way. Sam shook his head slowly. "It's a datajack. I'm a researcher."

"You ever flown anything?"

"Gliders. Used to have a Mitsubishi Flutterer."

"Great," moaned the Ork. "A toy pilot. I'd rather trust de dog-brain."

From the intercom, the Elf's faint voice spoke. "Oh thou great lump of flesh, the boy might not be a rigger, but he does have some experience in flying. His input could add the necessary randomness to the autopilot's rather limited repertoire of behaviors. Even if he is no pilot, it might give you enough edge."

"That's right." It was the Amerindian who spoke up. "We might have a chance if the Elf could redirect their anti-air and send some of the patrols on the wrong vector."

Sally looked thoughtful for the briefest of moments.

"Well, Dodger. Can you do that?"

The intercom crackled softly as the Elf considered the plan. "It will not be easy, given that they are on alert, but I shall endeavor to do as you wish, Fair Lady."

"Then it's time to fly," she announced. "All right, Verner. Up front."

Sam looked to his fellow Renraku employees for support, Jiro's eyes were locked on the body of his wife, and Crenshaw's face was wholly noncommittal. As for the dead, they were offering no advice. He unbuckled his seatbelt and stood.

The cockpit stank as much of blood and feces as the cabin. Trying to ignore the blood that stained the pilot couch, Sam lowered himself into it. The Amerindian slid into the co-pilot's seat.

"I am called Ghost Maker in some parts," he said. "I may not be a pilot, but I know something about this stuff. Try anything and we will find ourselves relying only on the autopilot.
Wakarimasu-ka
?

"I understand."

"Good. Jack in and get us going."

Sam slid the datacord from its nesting place in the control panel. He had never been given the limited-accent familiarization exercises with the datajack that the doctor had recommended on the day after his operation. He was scared. He had heard how a rigger melded with his machine, becoming a brain to direct the body of the vehicle. He had also heard that some couldn't handle the transition, losing their minds in communion with the soulless machine.

This machine was built strictly for rigger operation, a monument to the hubris so common among the pilots of powerful machinery. No one without a datajack could do more than request a destination and departure time from the autopilot. Hardly the way to make a fast getaway.

These brigands wanted Sam to jack in and override the decision-making functions of the autopilot. Without the special vehicle control implants that would link a pilot's cortex to the operations of the machine, he could do little more than make decisions about direction, flight altitudes, and when to take off or land. The autopilot would still do the flying. Without him in the link, though, the Commuter would communicate with Seattle air traffic control, following some controller's directives and restricting itself to well-defined flight paths and low-risk maneuvers and speeds. The invaders wanted him to make their escape easier, and they cared little what it might cost him.

Sam understood that this hookup would allow him access to only a limited selection of controls, but it still seemed a dangerous risk. Sensing the man beside him becoming impatient, however, he decided that not jacking in would soon become an even greater risk.

As Sam snugged the plug into the jack in his temple, pain flashed through his skull, but faded swiftly. Like an afterimage, dials and control information appeared in his mind, projected onto his optic nerve by the aircraft's computer. He could shift his head and "see" different portions of the imaginary control panel. Spotting the
help
panel, he reached out toward it, mentally "pressing" the button. The computer fed him instructions on basic aircraft operation. The machine's voice in his head was cold and alien, unlike the tones it gave through the speakers. The uncanny nature of his rapport with the Commuter unnerved him and the back of his skull began to ache.

Bullets pattered against the armored cockpit glass in a hasty rhythm seconded by the Amerindian's urgent, "Get moving!"

Sam reached out to the control yoke. Whether it was real or a computer simulation, he no longer knew. He ordered the engines to rev, and pulled back. The counter-rotating blades of the Commuter's twin engines spun faster, quickly creating enough lift for the craft to clear the pad. With the autopilot doing the real flying, Sam commanded the Commuter up into the night sky.

"Where to?" he asked Ghost Maker.

"North over the plex. For now."

Sam complied.

They had been in flight for five minutes when Sam decided that the anti-aircraft missiles he had been expecting were not coming after all. The Elf was evidently as good as his word. Calling up the radar, Sam could find nothing that looked like pursuit. He was equally surprised at the lack of challenges from the Seattle Metroplex air traffic controllers. The Elf decker must have inserted a flight plan into their computers as well, concealing the hijacked shuttle VTOL among the normal traffic.

They were passing over a suburban residential district when Ghost Maker ordered Sam to extinguish the running lights and change course to head for the Redmond Barrens, that desolate sprawl of shanty towns and abandoned buildings. The autopilot attempted to turn the lights back on, but Sam overrode it.

As they headed across the district, the lights of the apartments and homes of corporate salarymen became rarer, replaced by the garish neon and corpse-gray glow of advertising tridscreens near the edge of the Barrens. Out beyond the commercial zone, the lights were few.

Sam watched the Amerindian scan the darkness below. He wondered if his captor had augmented eyes to go along with his reflexes. Most of the adventurers and muscleboys who called themselves street samurai did. This Ghost Maker was certainly one of that breed.

"Lower," Ghost commanded.

As Sam directed the Commuter to comply, the autopilot whined, "Altitude becoming dangerously low. Do you intend a landing?"

"Shut it up."

Sam flipped the rocker switch to silence the cabin voice. "Are we landing?"

"Not yet. Head northeast."

Sam adjusted the craft's heading, telling the autopilot that landing was not imminent and that the altitude was intentional.

They flew for another ten minutes, making several more course changes, some to avoid the burnt-out shells of buildings and others to satisfy some unknown whim of Ghost Maker. When the samurai finally gave the order to land, Sam was glad to engage the Commuter's automatic landing routine. The long minutes of dodging the darkened hulks had worn him down to where, even had he been familiar with the aircraft, he would not have wished to land it manually.

"Damn it! Kill the lights," the samurai snapped as the autopilot engaged the landing lights.

Startled by the man's vehemence, Sam complied, cancelling almost as quickly the Commuter's complaints about safety and FAA regulations. The VTOL settled unevenly on a field of rubble, close by a row of boarded-up tenements. The samurai popped the jack from Sam's head and urged him out of the pilot's seat. Sam reached to cut the engines.

"Leave them."

Sam shrugged and headed for the cabin. The others had already deplaned, leaving the interior empty save for the dead.

"Why can't you just leave us alone?" he heard Jiro say.

The response came from the Ork. "Let's just call it a little insurance."

The Renraku employees were hustled into one of the derelict buildings just as the Commuter lifted off again. From the doorless entryway, Sam watched as the VTOL went straight up until well clear of the low buildings, then turned south and shifted to horizontal flight mode. The Commuter climbed away into the sky, its dark bulk eclipsing the few stars that shone through the breaks in the cloud cover. A shadow ship, crewed by ghosts.

The samurai materialized in the the doorway, silhouetted briefly before slipping inside. Once safe in the darkness, he spoke. "The veetole's on its way out to sea."