Shadowboxer
For Two Bears, a dwarf mercenary accustomed to running the shadows, the job sounded like an easy way to make a huge stack of cash: track down and discover the meaning of the word "IronHell." But when the decker he approaches for help gets her brain fried on the Matrix, Two Bears knows he's up to his stout, little shoulders in drek.
Realizing that lronHell must be the title of something—or somebody—very powerful, Two Bears looks for some backup to make sure he gets through this job alive. He lines up a street troll called Thumbs, a slick decker named Silver, a suit-wearing samurai called Delphia, and Moonfeather, a magic-wielding disciple of the Cat totem. Together they blast their way through a stream of megacorp operatives, giant meta-beasts, and high-tech pirates, desperate to unravel the incredible secret of IronHell—before it unravels the world....
From the kitchen, safely behind the fridge, Two Bears put another burst of the silenced Crusader into one of his opponents and tried again to reach the Vindicator minigun lying so temptingly in the middle of the fire fight.
On the other side of the conflict, the air above the combatants shimmered and buzzed from whatever the two shamans were doing to each other. Then a thundering rainbow filled the room as the stained glass window shattered into a million knives, the shards swirling madly about, slicing everything and everybody into ribbons. Some of the enemy screamed as they were disassembled and the balcony torn to pieces.
“Got them!” shouted Moonfeather.
Forgoing the Vindicator, Two Bear dashed headlong from the kitchen, skirting the riddled wall and reaching the hallway door. Yanking it open, he stopped with a jerk. The blade of a Japanese short sword had flashed, and blood was spraying the floor. His blood....
SHADOWRUN : 25
SHADOWBOXER
Nick Pollotta
To Alexander Dumas, the master of adventure
SHADOWBOXER: noun, antiquarian twentieth-century military slang referring to deadly combat with an unknown or highly elusive enemy.
WorldWide Word Watch,
2058 update.
02:50 AM Eastern Standard, 13 June 2058
Biscayne Bay, Miami, at the extreme northern territory of the Caribbean League
A trembling hand broke through the full moon, sending ripples of dancing silver across the water’s oily surface. Steadily, a human hand rose from the polluted Biscayne Bay to grasp hold of a rusty iron cleat attached to the old weathered wood of the oceanside dock.
Painfully levering himself onto the splintery planks, Blackjack Terhune barely managed to roll over away from the ragged oak edge. With a groan, he peeled the scuba mask off his sweating face. Alive. He was still alive! Unlike everybody else on the hellish run. Fragging drek, it had been like walking naked into a meat grinder. Worse.
He cast the mask aside, and heard it splash back into the stinking brine. Then he began to perform a combat ritual over his military jumpsuit, hands red from the toxic chemicals in the sea. Boot knife gone, Belgium 9 derringer gone, the big Ares Predator gone—when had THAT happened?—ammo clips long emptied, night goggles burned out by that fragging Shatogunda mage, and the Narcoject pistol used to jimmy open an elevator shaft door.
Nothing remained of the equipment so carefully gathered in his years on the street. Even Laura’s precious Fuchi cyberdeck had been sacrificed as a simple bludgeon over that
ork guard’s head. The dumb frag probably never expected
any decker to be that desperate. Who would? Laura herself had seemed surprised when she did it. Wham! Chips and blood flew everywhere as the merc went down for the count. Then Blackjack and the deckless decker made it out of the hellhole to reach the safety of the waiting helo and away they soared, secure and safe.
Choking on a bitter laugh, he lay back weakly on the ancient wood of the dock, drinking in lungfuls of night air. The cold water ran rivulets off his bodysuit, the armor plating covering his vital kill zones now badly dented.
Safe. Ha. They’d been anything but freaking safe. Pure pluperfect hell, it had been. Who knew a purely local corporation like Shatogunda would have surface-to-air missile capabilities? His team’s helo was blown out from under them even before they could make visual contact with their offshore boat. He and Laura had spotted the fiery dart streaking toward the helo, and jumped just in time. Big George didn’t.
Underwater, they dropped everything they could and started swimming for the seawall to reach the open ocean beyond. They were only meters away, they could see it, hear the waves breaking over the coral, when the pack of chipped sharks was suddenly around them, circling closer and closer. Blackjack hadn’t even known a fish-microchip interface was possible!
Neither had Laura Redbird, gauging from her blood-curdling scream as they took her down. If he could’ve done anything to save her, he would have, even if it meant his own life. But when four great whites each grab a limb and start playing tug-o-war, the victim’s already dead. All he could do was use it as a distraction while he crawled over the ragged, razor-sharp coral of the reef and escape into Biscayne Bay, where the sharks couldn’t physically follow.
Chipped sharks. What psycho would want to chip sharks! Drek, and that was only one of the many things wrong with this run. One of the thousands. The glint of searchlights off the chrome-plated jack in her temple was the last he saw of Laura. Blind rage almost made him strike back at the man-eaters, but with only bare hands as a weapon and ork and
norm guards on the way in paramilitary hovercraft bristling
with automatic weapons, brutal logic overcame his fury. Blackjack reluctantly used her flesh to buy him time to escape.
Used the flesh of a lover one last time. He felt dirty inside as if he’d been drinking chem slime in the sea. What he wouldn’t give for a DocWagon team to come and fly him away to some warm clean hospital full of people anxious to make him stop hurting. Or a friendly shaman to sing a healing song over him. Arctic. Yeah, and if wishes were drek the sewers would be heaven. Stop ya whining, chummer. Still work to do. This run wasn’t over yet. No, not quite yet. One more thing to do.
When some of his strength returned, Blackjack forced open the velcro of the bodysuit and began to peel it off. The ballistic material stuck to him in several places and had to be painfully pulled free. His body was a mass of bruises and bleeding cuts already starting to swell in spots. No chance of infection after the sea water got in, but poisoning was a fair bet. He’d already applied a slap patch to the throbbing bullet hole in his shoulder, but the polluted Atlantic had weakened the adhesive and it was starting to come away. Diluted, the metaphamines that had kept him awake and able to swim against the fragging current were finally wearing off. Only pure raw adrenaline was keeping him awake now. “And hate, let’s not forget hate,” he told himself bitterly.
Wearing only briefs, Blackjack struggled to his sore feet and staggered toward the small blue light that had been his goal for the past four hours as he’d followed the seawall to the south. Faintly illuminated by the tiny indigo bulb set in the wall above it was the warehouse’s riveted steel door. So stained and marred from the constant acid rains this year that the ancient sign reading “Honest Bob’s Boat Rentals” was almost obliterated. But the palm scanner recognized his handprint and the massive portal swung open silently. He and the others would have rendezvoused here if any of them had made it.
Stumbling as he stepped into the darkness, Blackjack pushed the huge door shut behind him and the internal lights came on automatically with blinding force. Momentarily stunned, he stood there blinking against the harsh intrusion. If there was going to be a doublecross, this was the perfect spot. A pimple-faced ganger with a two-nuyen zipgun could take him now. Not that he’d be good for much. He was so fragged to drek that even the orgarileggers wouldn’t
want him.
Tense ticks passed in dripping silence. As his vision slowly returned, he looked around the shoreline warehouse stuffed to the ceiling with marine equipment: bales of nets, bundles of oars, canvas net, sleeved props, and similar equipment. Tools designed a thousand years ago, but as viable today as ever. Equipment so basic it couldn’t be improved. No matter what the techies said, ya can’t improve a nail with a microchip. End of discussion.
A slim path wound through the towering jumbles of marine equipment. Exhausted, Blackjack lurched from crate to crate, trying to keep one hand on the dank plastic boxes for support. Finally he reached a huge pile of plastene bags that sat pooled in the harsh light of an EverBright in an open area of the warehouse. A momentary flicker told him that even the independent power packs of those supposedly eternal light bulbs could weaken with age.
Clumsily, Blackjack dug into the packs, tossing aside unneeded civilian clothes for dead friends until he found the medical supplies he was looking for. He awkwardly used his left hand to rig a sling for his right arm, then began to bite off strips of adhesive to tape his busted ribs. Try as they might, those hellhounds hadn’t been able to use their flame breath to hurt his team through the protection song of their shaman, Iron Jimmy, and as the beasts charged closer, his Ares Predator had made short work of them. But the bodies of the dead hounds had continued on through the air by sheer inertia, slamming into them like sledgehammers. Blackjack heard Jimmy’s neck snap before he went down under the onslaught.
With his chest now bound tight, the agony of breathing lessened to mere discomfort. He pawed deeper into the bag and found a fresh trauma patch, which he slapped onto his bullet wound, plus a few stim patches he applied to undamaged areas of his arms. He inhaled sharply as the organic plastic sterilized and sealed the huge hole, the taste of olives filling his mouth as the DMSO rushed healants through his body.
There was only one more thing to find now, and then he spied the small black box prominently marked with a red cross. He held it in his hand and checked to see what
the Pocket Doc was set for. Damn things only held six
ampoules of anything—ya had to load ’em for what you thought would go wrong. Imperfect—but they were a lot more versatile than simple medkits because the things could make their own limited medical decisions. A readout on the side displayed painkillers, stims, antibacs, antitox, and some other stuff he had trouble focusing his eyes to read.
Blackjack clumsily activated the computerized physician and held it to his side. The robotic device hummed in consultation as it ascertained his condition, then began a long series of hisses, pumping god-knows-what into his system. Finally, the Doc went quiet and he tossed the precious device away, too tired to care. It crashed in the shadows, breaking apart and spilling out its electronic guts.
Soon, a tingling wave of relief washed over him and he felt his head miraculously clear. Back on line. Looking in one of the other equipment bags for a spare gun, he found a couple of amber bottles instead. No surprise, considering how much Big George had loved his booze. No drugs or chips for him. Here’s to you, George! Blackjack tried not to think about all he and the elf had been through, and that now he’d never see Big George again.
Blackjack pulled one of the bottles out, startled to see that it wasn’t cheap synathol, but honest-to-frag, scotch. Something called Irish Mist, with a dated label, import seal, and everything! Not caring where the gift came from, he worked off the twist cap with his teeth, and generously poured the single malt down his throat. The chill left his stomach and he was just starting to feel almost human again when a figure stepped from the shadows. It was only partially visible beyond the circle of light, and all he could make out clearly were the shoes and a hand-held case of some sort.