Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (4 page)

"Think it was on the ground too long?" Sally asked.

"We'll know soon enough if it was," he replied.

In the silence that followed, Sam could hear the Ork changing magazines for his HK227. The other two followed his example, then silence fell again.

It was less than a minute before the Ork complained, "We can't just haul dis lot down de street."

"Cog is sending a car."

"We're supposed to wait around? Frag it! If de badges or de Raku samurai are on our tail, we're meat sitting here."

"We can't move our guests safely without a car," Sally insisted.

"So who needs dem? We're back on our own turf. De're dead weight now." The Ork's slight emphasis on "dead" made it clear what he considered the proper way of disposing of the Renraku prisoners.

"I think you underestimate their value."

"'We did de job we was paid for. And we got de disks dat Ghost grabbed. Dat's plenty. You're looking for too many extra creds."

"I have expenses to meet."

"I ain't paying your expenses with my life."

"You want to buzz now? Give me your credstick and I'll give you your cut," Sally said, holding out her hand. "Of course, you'll only get the standard one on ten for leaving before the goods are fenced."

Sam could feel the tension mount as the magician and the Ork stared into one another's eyes. Finally, the Ork looked away. He shrugged, mumbling, "Job's a job."

"Sally smiled. "Don't worry, Kham. This one's going to finish just fine."

The Ork snapped her a sullen look as if he had heard it all before, then he vanished, grumbling, into the dark interior of the building.

While they waited, Sam looked after Jiro's wound as best he could, ripping up a piece of his own shirt for a bandage. The salaryman seemed dazed by the loss of his wife and still said not a word as Sam worked over him. Having done what he could, Sam sat down cross-legged on the filthy floor, his thoughts as dark as the room.

Ghost appeared in the doorway again, startling Sam, who had not seen the Amerindian leave.

"Car's here."

Sally gestured to the door with her shotgun. "Let's go."

The car was a stretched Toyota Elite, its opacity-controlled polymer windows set to dark. The driver's window was down and a broad-faced Korean kid grinned a gap-toothed invitation. He flipped a switch and the rear door yawned wide.

The Renraku employees climbed in, taking the plush synthleather and velvet seat while Sally and the Ork settled into jumpseats facing their prisoners. Ghost Maker slipped into the front seat on the passenger side.

As soon as the doors closed, the driver babbled something in a street dialect from which Sam only made out the name Cog. Sally nodded and switched on the audio deck. The voice that came out was rich and deep.

"Your friend's call caught me just in time, Ms. Tsung. I've been unavoidably called out of town, but I am most happy to provide this small service before I leave. The driver is one of my regulars. You may rely on his discretion."

There was no more to the message, but Sally seemed satisfied with its content. At least the noises she made to the driver sounded agreeable.

The privacy panel slid up from the seat, cutting off Sam's view of the street ahead and the driver's rearview screen. The blackened windows wrapped them away from the world and held them in silence as the vehicle proceeded on its twisty path through the Barrens. Only once did something from outside impinge on them as a heavy thump struck the right rear quarter panel. Their captors remained unperturbed.

Perhaps an hour later, the car slowed and the privacy panel dropped, revealing a litter-strewn alley lit fitfully by the intermittent violet flashes of a neon sign just out of sight on the cross-street ahead.

The doors opened on both sides, but the car did not stop.

"Out," Sally ordered.

Were they being released? Sam could hardly believe it. Crenshaw was up and out the door while Sam was still struggling to extract himself from the embrace of the soft cushions. The Ork's foot helped him on his way, sending him sprawling headfirst into a noisome pile of trash. Sam emerged in time to see Sally leap gracefully from the car and five shadowy figures scramble into the vehicle. The doors snapped shut just before the Toyota cleared the alley mouth. It turned left, away from the neon sign, and was gone.

So, their captors were not releasing them, after all. In fact, their numbers had grown. At least a dozen youths, male and female, were in the alley with them. In the flickering light, he could see that many wore fringed and beaded garments, and all wore feathers in their headbands. The smallest of the bunch sauntered up to the tall shape of the street samurai. A flash of neon threw his features into silhouette, revealing a profile as hawklike as that of the man he addressed.

"Hoi, Ghost Who Walks Inside. Welcome home."

He knew he ought to be hungry, but he couldn't feel it. The sight of the bowl of krill wafers and soycakes their captors had left the night before only turned his stomach. The water bag, however, was flattened and limp, almost empty. Water he must have, even this tepid, foul-tasting stuff.

The day had passed in a sweaty haze. Their captors had left them in a room with a single door and windows sealed with opaque rigiplastic sheets. A little light crept through where one of the panels had lost a corner. Sam's attempts to peep though were rewarded with a limited view of graffiti-covered bricks. He recognized the general pattern of the taunts and protection slogans, but found the gang's symbols unrecognizable. It was still enough to confirm his suspicions that this turf belonged to a gang of Amerindians.

Jiro moaned, awake again. The salaryman had been drifting in and out of fitful sleep for hours now. "What is happening?" he murmured groggily. "I do not understand."

Crenshaw harumphed her annoyance. "Quit your whining. It gets on my nerves."

The woman's utter lack of feeling was getting on Sam's nerves. "I suppose you don't object to what's happened."

"I've been in worse situations."

"How could it be worse?" Jiro moaned. "Betty is dead."

"You could be dead," Crenshaw retorted.

"Perhaps that would be better."

"Don't talk that way, Jiro," Sam said.

"What difference does it make?" Jiro said listlessly. "We will be killed by these . . . these . . . terrorists."

"Terrorists!" Crenshaw scoffed. "Kid, you don't know the meaning of the word. These clowns are garden-variety shadowrunners. Their best card is that street mage, but they're still petty criminals hiding from the bright lights of the corporate world and scavenging whatever pickings they can. They're human rats."

"Even if they are not terrorists, they still hide from the law," Jiro said weakly. "How can they let us go when we have seen their faces and heard their names?"

"Don't matter much," Crenshaw shrugged. "The names are just street names, and the faces can be changed easily enough. These runners have no records in the databanks, so what's to trace? They'll let us go if we behave ourselves. All we've got to do is wait."

"Wait? The only end is death," Jiro said in a flat voice. He lay down again and was asleep in moments. Sam wondered how the man did that. Crenshaw picked a soycake off the plate on the floor.

"You should eat, kid."

"I'm not hungry."

"Your loss."

Crenshaw popped the cake into her mouth and wolfed down a few krill wafers before upending the water container and draining it. Sam was appalled at her selfishness. Suddenly he wanted to be someplace else. Any place. Just so long as he was away from the suffocating presence of his fellows.

He got to his feet and began pacing. Crenshaw watched him for a while, but soon lost interest and closed her eyes. Shortly thereafter, she began to snore.

Sam wanted to escape more than ever.

Without hope, he tried the door and was surprised to find it opened to his touch. Cautiously, he swung it wide. The outer room was as bare and dilapidated as the inner. Sally lay asleep along the inner wall. The door to the hall was open and he could see two of the gang's warriors standing guard. They were chatting quietly in a language he didn't understand.

This room had windows to the outside world. Desperate for fresh air, Sam moved to the open one, beyond which a fire escape formed an inviting balcony. He was halfway through the frame before he noticed Ghost standing on the iron grillwork, leaning against the wall.

"Wouldn't be thinking of leaving, would you?"

Sam stammered a negative response, surprised to realize he hadn't been thinking of escape. Though he wanted to get away from his fellow Renraku employees, he had not thought of abandoning them. "I just wanted to get some air."

"You're welcome to your fill of what passes for it around here." The samurai seemed pensive as he leaned back against the wall and looked out across the sunset-painted stretch of battered tenements. Ghost said no more until Sam was beside him. "You really are a strange one."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for one thing, you weren't lying about trying to leave."

"I couldn't run out on the others."

"
So ka
," Ghost said with a knowing nod. "I can understand loyalty to your friends."

"They're not my friends," Sam blurted. To the samurai's raised eyebrow, he added, "We're all Renraku."

"
So ka
. The bond to the tribe is even stronger.

"My people here would never be called a tribe by those fancy ethnologists who wet their pants over the back-to-the-land dreamers out there beyond the plex. Those white-coats would call my kin a gang. But that doesn't make them any less a family, a tribe that takes care of its own.

"We're not like the Reds that live out in the Salish-Shidhe. Those dreamers can't see that life in the world these days means life in a city. Red Men have to take to the concrete the way they took to the horse, or we will pass from the land entirely.

"Since the Whites came, some of us have fought them, some have welcomed them. Didn't make much difference in the end. We lost control of the land and ended in misery, despair, and poverty. And then they threw us into the camps, where they tried to strip away our souls."

Sam could see the pain in the man's face. Ghost was too young to have been in those death camps that had been President Jarman's attempt at a final solution to the Indian problem, but he seemed to feel the anguish of the camps as his own.

"When Howling Coyote came down from the hills with his Great Ghost Dance, he sure handed the Whites a surprise. Made the Man realize that Reds weren't going to take it anymore. Broke their technology with his magic, he did. But that was then. The Whites have magic now, too, but some of my people don't want to face it.

"The old men who led the Dance don't understand what it did for us. It didn't banish the White Man, as advertised, or the Black Man, or the Yellow Man. They're still here. And so are their cities and works—weakened maybe, and pushed back by the magic and the power of the Awakened—but far from beaten. What the Dance really did was give us breathing room. It gave us a chance to beat the others at their own game.

"It ain't going to be easy. It's going to take real warriorship, but my people are ready for that challenge. We'll show them. In the end, we will win. But to win, we have to survive, and surviving means nuyen. You ain't got the bucks, the Man don't listen. There's lots of loose creds waiting around for shadowrunners to liberate."

Ghost fell silent, seemingly exhausted by the long string of words. Sam didn't know what motivated the man to speak so, but the speech gave him hope that these were not bloody-minded thugs who would as soon kill them as look at them. He began to think it was possible he might get out of this predicament alive.

Ghost's next words startled him even more than had his confidences.

"Why am I talking to you?" the Amerindian snorted.

"I don't know. Maybe you needed someone to listen to you."

"Don't need no drek from some soft Anglo corporate," Ghost said gruffly. Giving the darkening skies a last look, he ordered Sam back inside.

The samurai's sudden mood shift left Sam again unsure of what he faced among these shadowrunners. Nothing they said was exactly as Sam understood it to be. It made sense one minute, only to become totally alien the next. They seemed to live in another world. Confused, he climbed awkwardly back into the squat.

An Elf had arrived while he had been on the balcony. He sat cross-legged in a corner, his attention on a data-reader in his lap. From the jacks on his left temple, Sam surmised that the Elf was the decker who had been riding Matrix cover on last night's shadowrun.

Sally still lay on the foam pad that was the room's only furniture, but she was awake. She looked rested now, the hollow circles of exhaustion gone from her eyes. Ghost shouldered Sam out of the way and passed through a doorway hidden by a curtain that Sam had taken as a decorative wall hanging. The samurai returned with a tray of cold tofu and steaming soykaf, which he brought to Sally. She thanked him with a sad smile.

"I'm getting too old for this, Ghost."

It seemed an old story between them.

"Drink your soy." Ghost waited while she drained half the cup. "You haven't told us yet what you plan for the Raku."

"Avaunt, Lord Musclebrain," the Elf ordered from his corner. "The fair Lady Tsung needs her rest before pressing on with this sordid business. You street samurai are all alike—no proper sensibilities, no understanding of delicate persons or sense of timing.

"All you want to do is flex your muscles. Once you impress us with your hyped resources, you only stay long enough to grab your blood money before scurrying back to your squalid dens."

Thin, sparkling needles slid from beneath the fingernails of Ghost's right hand. Sam guessed the Elf was pushing the limits of the Amerindian's tolerance, imposing on his hospitality. Sally laid a hand on the samurai's back, out of sight of the Elf. The needles vanished.

"Can it, Dodger," she said. "Ghost's not pushing. A decision has to be made."

The Elf huffed his annoyance at the rebuff. Satisfied, Ghost walked to the window and stared out while Sally put her tray aside and sat up straighter. "So what's on the disks we pulled?"