“If they’re trying to kill us, they’re not doing a very good job.” Hammer yelled. “Those sound like pretty low-caliber rounds.”
“Maybe you’d prefer they used assault rifles!” Boom shouted back.
Hammer gave a tusky grin. “If they won’t, I will.” He pulled an AK-97 from underneath one of the bench seats and popped open one of the back doors of the van. Another volley of gunfire sounded, pattering off the back panels. Hammer waited for a pause in the fire, then threw the door open and responded with a long burst of his own, the muzzle-flash lighting up his face.
“Eat this, fraggers!” There followed a squealing of tires and the pursuing car swerved wildly. Hammer tracked his fire up along the hood, and bullets smashed into the tinted windshield, leaving silver spider-web patterns across it.
The car spun into a turn and crashed into a lamp post, which bent over the wreck, spitting sparks over the crumpled front of the car. The van continued down the road, leaving the scene behind.
“Nice work.” I said to Hammer, who gave a grunt of satisfaction at the sight of the wreck and pulled the van door closed.
“What the hell happened?” Val asked from the front seat as she negotiated quickly through the darkened streets.
“Beats the hell out of me.” I said, slumping down onto one of the bench seats. The after-effects of the effort from banishing the air elemental and putting the gunmen to sleep was catching up on me and my limbs were starting to tremble a bit. “Those guys sure as hell weren’t Manadyne security, or Knight Errant, either. Who were they, and how the hell did they know we were going to be there?”
“Rival shadowrunners?” Hammer asked. It happened sometimes. Shadow teams got hired for the same job and ran into each other, but it was rare.
“But why try to kill us?” Boom said.
“They weren’t runners.” Sloane put in, speaking for the first time since the start of the run. “And they weren’t trying to kill us, at least, not at first.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
Sloane pushed himself up to a sitting position in the back of the van. “The ones who jumped us in the computer vault were using gel rounds.” he said, gesturing to the dark stains on his armored jacket that I had taken to be blood. Some of the rounds had burst on impact, leaving their mark. “They didn’t want to hurt us too bad, from the looks of it.”
And the air elemental could have just rendered us unconscious, I thought. I originally figured an air elemental would do less damage to the computer equipment than, say, a fire or water elemental, but it was also the least lethal spirit to send to incapacitate a group you wanted taken alive.
“That still doesn’t explain who they are.” Hammer said, and an idea sprang to mind.
“Garnoff was talking to someone at the party.” I said. “A kobun from the Hiramatsu-
gumi
.”
“Yakuza?” Hammer said. “Those slags did look Japanese.. .”
“Makes sense.” Boom chimed in. “From what you said. Talon, it sounds like the yakuza have an interest in whatever Garnoff is doing. It might be something they don’t want Manadyne to know about, either. That’s why they sent their own people rather than trust Knight Errant to take care of things.”
“Frag, for all we know Garnoff
let
me overhear that conversation between him and Isogi. It was all a trap. But even if he did, how the frag did he know we would hit Manadyne
tonight
!”
Suddenly another thought came to mind. “Trouble. She said something about encountering some ice in the system.”
I keyed my headcom. “Comeback Two.” I said. “Comeback Two, come in. Are you there? Talk to me.” Static crackled over the line.
“Val, we need to get back to the safe house, right now. Trouble’s still not responding. She may be hurt, or . . .”
Val shook her head. “Talon, the first thing we need to do is stow this hunk of junk and find some alternate transportation.”
“But. . .”
“Listen, Trouble is my friend and I’ve known her longer than you have. She can take care of herself. There’s nothing we can do for her if Knight Errant picks us up. They may not have stopped us from leaving Manadyne, but you can be sure they’ve got this thing’s description and ID numbers out there already. I know a place where we can stash the van, then we can get back to the safe house. Either Trouble will be chill for a little longer, or else there’s nothing we can do for her.”
She was right. I nodded and let Val do her job. Feeling exhausted, I slumped back into my seat. I was tired of being jerked around by Garnoff, always being one step behind him. It was time to start fighting fire with fire.
Despite her sensible advice, I was sure Val was as worried about Trouble as I was, maybe more. We made good time from Route 128 toward the Rox. We stashed the damaged van in a garage Val knew near the highway, then took Val’s heavily modified Ford-Canada Bison truck to the safe house. Sloane and Hammer parted company with us at the garage. Hammer wanted to find out more about the team that attacked us at Manadyne and get a feel for how the corp and the authorities were reacting to the intrusion. I wished him luck.
“Take good care of Trouble.” he said, leaving unsaid the possibility that she was beyond anyone’s care.
Val drove quickly through the streets of Roxbury to get to the safe house, and other traffic quickly cleared the way for the heavy off-road truck. I headed up the stairs and deactivated the security system to get inside.
I found Trouble slumped over her cyberdeck. There was no blood, no outward sign of injury. I turned my vision inward, probing her aura with my astral senses. She was alive, but unconscious, the power of the intrusion countermeasures hidden in the Manadyne system too powerful for the defensive filters programmed into her cyberdeck. Her aura was strong, and I let out a sigh of relief. She was in no physical danger, but what might the ice have done to her mind?
Boom and Val came into the safe house as I prepared to move Trouble from the chair where she was slumped.
“Give me a hand.” I said and Boom picked Trouble up in his arms as if she weighed almost nothing. He carried her over to the ratty couch and set her there gently, with a look of concern on his face. Val stood by silently, watching.
“Sorry about this.” I said softly to Trouble as I knelt by the couch. I gently touched my fingertips to her forehead and whispered the words of a spell.
I entered Trouble’s mind and found a chaotic jumble of images: the electronic vista of the Matrix, seen through her eyes as she waited for the connection to the isolated Manadyne system to open up. A neon tunnel through the blackness of cyberspace as she flew down the connection to the cold-storage system. Surprise and shock at the heavy layers of ice protecting the system, highly sophisticated programs, but not deadly ones. A struggle. Trouble being overwhelmed by a horde of ice, dragging her down, down into blackness.
I reached out and tried to still the storm of images, bringing a sense of peace and calm to her mind. I looked carefully for any damage and found none. Her thoughts indicated nothing more than a deep sleep. There was something else, but it didn’t look like damage from ice. I brushed along the edges of it, not wanting to invade Trouble’s privacy any more than I already had. I looked around carefully and noted some things for future reference.
After what seemed like an eternity, I withdrew from Trouble’s mind and opened my eyes. My muscles felt cramped and my hands shook a bit from the strain of the spell. Boom was immediately at my side, helping me to my feet. Val pressed a cup of something warm into my hands, and I sipped the sweet soykaf gratefully.
“How long?” I asked Boom.
“About twenty minutes or so.” the troll said.
It seemed like days. I collapsed into the chair Trouble had vacated by the table and sipped the soykaf some more. “She’s fine.” I said. “The ice didn’t do any damage, just knocked her for a loop. All she needs is to sleep it off.”
“I’d recommend the same thing for you.” Val said. She brought out a blanket and laid it carefully over Trouble, making sure she was covered. “Gel rounds. Non-lethal ice. No response by Knight Errant yet. It sure seems like someone is trying to make things easy on us.”
“Yeah.” I said, “that’s what’s worrying me.” I pushed myself out of the chair with some effort. “I think I’m going to take your advice and crash for a little while. Boom, there’s something I need you to do.”
I explained what I had in mind to the troll, and he said he’d do what he could, but made no promises. With that, I crawled onto a cot in the corner of the safehouse, without even removing my boots or my armored jacket. The last thing I remembered was someone draping a blanket over me before sleep claimed me.
I woke feeling considerably better and heard someone coming into the safehouse. I was totally awake in an instant, but I relaxed when I saw Boom closing the door behind him, carrying several paper sacks that gave off a smell that made my mouth water and my stomach rumble. I had no idea how long it had been since I’d last eaten. Hammer and Sloane came in behind him, looking pretty tired. I felt a bit guilty for sleeping while everyone else kept working.
“Rise and shine.” the troll said, spreading the contents of the sacks on the card table in the middle of the room. “Breakfast is served.”
I called up a time-display on my headware, and a cool blue number appeared, glowing at the corner of my vision. It was 11:14:03 A.M.
Over a late breakfast of hotcakes, soy sausages, and coffee we talked about the aftermath of the Manadyne business. Trouble was awake and feeling no ill-effects from her Matrix run the previous night.
“Even my deck looks clean.” she said. “But I still want to run some more diagnostics to make sure there aren't any nasty surprises hidden there.”
“That’s the thing I don’t get.” I said, spearing another soy link with my fork. “Everything that happened says that Garnoff, or somebody,
knew
we were going to hit Manadyne last night. Yakuza or not, the people who jumped us weren’t regular security or Knight Errant. They must have known we were coming. Yet they only used gel rounds. They must have wanted to take us alive.”
“Dead men tell no tales.” Sloane said. “They probably wanted some bodies to interrogate.”
“Maybe.” I said, “but who were they, and why did they want to capture us?”
“Don't know about the why.” Hammer said. He and Boom were each putting away as much food as the rest of us combined. “But I’ve got some more scan on the who. Word on the street is that the op was set up by the Hiramatsu-
gumi
, just like you suspected, Talon. Seems the oyabun is none too pleased with how things turned out. I’ll bet some yak fingers are coming off over this one.”
“Then it’s definitely yakuza.” I said slowly. “And that means Garnoff. The question is: what’s the yakuza’s real interest in all of this? They’ve got some kind of deal going with Garnoff, obviously. Do the Boston yaks have any other ties to Manadyne?”
“They don’t, as far as I know.” Trouble said, “but I found somebody who does: MCT.” Mitsuhama Computer Technologies was one of the top megacorporations in the world. They were best known for their computer hardware and software products, but MCT was also one of the major corporations in the field of magical research and development. There were also persistent rumors linking MCT with the yakuza.
“Mitsuhama and Manadyne are working together on a top-secret research project involving exploration and mapping of the astral plane.” Trouble continued. “And guess who’s the head of that project? None other than Dr. Anton Garnoff. It seems Mitsuhama has a fair amount of money invested in the whole thing.”
“And Garnoff was talking to a Hiramatsu kobun at the Manadyne party the other night about his project.” I thought aloud. “MCT is running some scam behind Manadyne’s back, and Garnoff is in on it. That explains why he’d call in the yakuza rather than turn to corporate security. He doesn’t want Manadyne to know what he’s up to.”
“Talon, didn’t you go to MIT&T on an MCT scholarship?” Trouble asked. “Maybe that’s the connection. Maybe it’s Mitsuhama that’s pulling Garnoff’s strings.” I shrugged. “Still doesn’t explain why MCT would be interested in me, or what it has to do with Garnoff’s pet project.”
“Wait a second.” Val interrupted as she came in from the kitchen, carrying another pot of soykaf. “If MCT paid for you to go to school, why aren’t you working for them right now? Most of those corporate education deals usually involve some kind of lifetime contract, don’t they?”
“Yeah, they do.” I said. “But I managed to get out of it. I arranged to get caught cheating on a major exam and the Institute expelled me. I had to pay back all the money the corp sank into my education up to that point as part of the contract’s default clause, but I’d already been doing some shadowrunning on the side and had enough nuyen stashed away. I handed it over to MCT and we were quits, although I'm sure they weren’t happy about it. It was all legal. . . technically.”
“Why did you do it?” Trouble asked.
Boom glanced over at me sympathetically, and I turned to Trouble. “You found out that Jason Vale died because of gang violence.” I said. “That’s true, as far as it goes. While I was in school I was doing some shadowrunning on the side, strictly small-time stuff back then. A run on an MCT subsidiary netted me more than just the data we went in after. I also found out that Mitsuhama paid to have Jase killed so they could recruit another wagemage off the streets: me. Jase was my teacher, he . . . meant a lot to me. After he died, there was nothing tying me to Southie, so I took MCT’s scholarship offer. When I found out the truth, I had to get out. I couldn’t work for the corp that killed Jase. I never found out who was involved, but I never worked for MCT after that.”