SHADOWRUN.
NEVER TRUST AN ELF.
ROBERT N. CHARRETTE.
PROLOGUE.
"Pain is a useful tool, Mr. Kern." The muscles of Kern"s neck complained as he turned his head to look at the speaker, who was tall and thin, suspiciously thin. Kern could distinguish little else because of the way the other man stood silhouetted against the light. Squinting against the glare, he made out the elongated shape of the man"s ears and the slant of his eyes, and knew that this was no man but an elf. Kern spat at him, but the sputum sizzled and vanished without ever touching either the impeccable suit or the dark skin of the elf. Protective magic, no doubt.
"An unnecessary display, Mr. Kern." Those dark, slanted eyes twinkled for a moment. "I am aware of your antipathy."
Kern was restrained in some fashion he could not see, but nothing seemed to restrain his voice. "Slot yourself, elf."
"My name is Urdli, Mr. Kern." That didn"t mean anything to Kern. The name might not even be real. The face certainly wasn"t familiar. The sure thing was that this Urdli had Kern at a severe disadvantage. But that could change.
"We are going to get to know each other quite well, Mr. Kern. Or rather, 7 am going to get to know you. Through pain, I will come to know you." "Know thyself, weedeater." "A clever play on Aristotle"s maxim, Mr. Kern. Perhaps you will be comforted to know that this course will not be without pain for me as well." Somehow Kern doubted that. "My heart bleeds."
"Not yet, Mr. Kern. Not yet." The elf"s matter-of-fact tone seemed a promise that Kern"s offhanded remark might become a literal truth. Kern"s body tried to shudder, but was balked. Neither could he act on his desire to leap up and run. Though he could sense his limbs well enough, he had not the slightest command over them. He was helpless, held immobile by the elf"s magic.
Well, at least the elf had left him his mind and his voice. Too bad he wasn"t a magician himself. But then, Kern supposed, the elf would not have left him his voice. "You"re looking for trouble messing with me, weed-eater. Don"t you know who I am?"
"Of course I do, Mr. Kern. That is why you are here."
Kern felt a strange sensation on his feet. A light touch, then another, and another. The sensation spread, flowing up his legs like worms crawling over his flesh. There seemed to be dozens of them squirming invisibly over him. The phantom slithering advanced past his knees, up his thighs, and then the first of the ghostly worms reached his crotch. Then they all bit him, and he screamed. The ghost worms vanished at his shout. The pain they had caused was minor; Kern had been as much surprised as hurt. He was in darkness, and he realized that time had pa.s.sed. Opening his eyes, he stared venomously at the elf. Urdli regarded him blandly as if he were some sort of experiment.
"You have a strong will for a mundane human, Mr. Kern. Your master chose well."
"If you know who I work for, then you know you"re in deep drek."
The hint of a smile touched Urdli"s wide-lipped mouth. "Do not comfort yourself with the false hope that you will be rescued, Mr. Kern. No one knows that we have you. Your a.s.sociates at Saeder-Krupp believe you dead."
Kern told himself that the elf s a.s.sertion was unlikely. His people would know, wouldn"t they? Suddenly he wasn"t sure. How could he be? He didn"t remember much of his capture. A flash and some thunder, or maybe the loud noises echoing in his head had come from gunfire. He remembered Eunice screaming, her face all b.l.o.o.d.y. Was she still alive, too, another of the elf"s prisoners? They"d been on a trip. Obviously, they had not reached their destination. His people had to know he had been taken. "They"ll come for me."
"As I said, Mr. Kern, a false hope. To them you are no more. Your only hope of life lies in cooperation."
Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely. If Saeder-Krupp thought him dead, he might as well be dead. Without the support of his corporation, he had no protection and no one to avenge him. This elf would have no fear of killing Kern once he got what he wanted. No matter what hints Urdli threw out of letting Kern live if he cooperated, Kern could tell that the elf was lying. If he had intended to permit his captive to live, he would never have started with torture.
As if the thought had given them birth, new ghost worms began to crawl up Kern"s legs. This time they touched his hands as well, curling around his fingers and slithering up his arms. He tried to steel himself for their bite, but they only continued crawling. Another moment, and he readied himself again, certain the time had come, but still they just crawled. It was a cruel game, but he played it anyway. When they finally bit, he had no time to feel surprise that he had misjudged the timing. He only had time for the pain. The darkness and dissociation came again. He knew time had pa.s.sed. He had been thinking of his job with Saeder-Krupp. His own thoughts, or the results of Ur-dli"s probings? Had he talked? If so, about what?
When he opened his eyes again, another elf was present. Kern didn"t remember his arrival.
This new elf was neither as tall nor as thin as Urdli, but he would never be mistaken for an ordinary human. His face was handsome, almost beautiful. His hair was spun of fine silver, his eyes a molten gold, and his fair skin almost alabaster in its sheeri and tone. He had that ageless look of the cla.s.sic elven meta-type. He might have stepped from a fairy tale save that, like Urdli, he wore a business suit of the most fashionable cut.
Kern didn"t want to believe that he recognized this elf. The implications were too much. The worms came again, squirming up his limbs. "Strip him." It was the new elf who spoke. "You are impatient," Urdli said, his tone that of a teacher"s commenting on a student"s performance. "Maybe I just don"t like playing with him." "Playing?" Urdli turned to his companion and the worms vanished. "I am not playing. There is an order to all things, even to what we do here."
"Just hurry up," the silver-haired elf snapped, his expression stony.
"If I were to "hurry up," the knowledge this man carries might be damaged. He is only a human, after all."
"We must know." "And we shall," Urdli a.s.sured him. "Soon," the newcomer insisted. Annoyance crept into Urdli"s voice. "Would you care to do this yourself?"
The silver hair was barely ruffled when its owner shook his head. "You have far more experience in these matters."
"Then perhaps you will trust me to know the best course."
The fair-skinned elf said nothing. Instead he turned and stalked from the room.
Kern watched the retreating back of Glasgian Oak-forest, Prince of Tir Tairngire. Glasgian was son and heir to Prince Aithne, a prominent member of the Tir Tairngire Council of Princes. If Glasgian"s presence meant the council was involved, there would be only one release for Kern. Death. His last hope for salvation departed with Prince Glasgian.
The worms returned.
Glasgian did not like waiting, but he liked being present even less. Three days pa.s.sed before he reen-tered the darkened chamber. A long time of enforced patience, considering the nature of the information the man could provide. And, given the possibility that an investigation could uncover their deception, time might be in short supply. If the master of Saeder-Krupp became suspicious, he would act and they would lose the prize. The sooner they had what they wanted from this Saeder-Krupp tool, the sooner they could act and, thereby, avoid any interference from the tool"s owner.
He found Urdli stripped naked and sitting in the center of a chalked circle. The Australian elf no longer looked like a dapper businessman; rather he looked like an aborigine from some old vid doc.u.mentary of the last century. On thongs around his neck and waist he wore bones and other scavengings of the natural world. More danced on bracelets when he waved his arms. Stripes and whorls of ocher and drab gray stood out against the darkness of Urdli"s skin, the paint streaked where sweat had carved channels through the symbols.
In the center of a chamber stinking of incense, hu- man sweat, excrement, and other odors that hinted at even less savory things, Kern hung suspended.
Mundanely, Glasgian could see no supports. It was only by concentrating on his arcane senses that he could perceive the tall, gangly-limbed beings that held the man. The human in their grasp was covered in segmented things that glowed in an eerie blue color as they slithered over his body, occasionally gnawing their way beneath the skin and disappearing even from Glasgian"s astral sight. Seemingly aware of his observation, the beings holding the human turned their narrow, solemn faces toward him. Discomfited by their stare, Glasgian shifted back to mundane perceptions. He took a moment to compose himself, then addressed Urdli. "Has he talked?" "Quite a bit."
Not a useful response. "What we want to know?" "Much that touches on the matter." Exasperated, Glasgian prompted, "And?" "It is as we thought." "Then let"s get on with it."
"In time," Urdli said. "In time. There is an order to all things."
Urdli gestured and Kern screamed. The human"s screeching clawed at Glasgian"s spine. If he had talked and told Urdli what they needed to know, what was the point? There was no time for self-indulgence.
Glasgian looked down at Urdli. The dark-skinned elf was concentrating on the human, whose screams changed tone each time the dark elf gestured. But Urdli was asking Kern no questions.
Stepping up to Kern, Glasgian lifted one hand toward the man"s head as a blade hissed out from its sheath in the cuff of his jacket. The next instant he drove the tapered steel into the man"s eye, through the socket, and into the brain. The screaming stopped as the man spasmed and went limp.
"Ill-done," Urdli said softly. "I was not finished." Glasgian stared at the old elf. "This is not the time for fun and games." "Indeed. It is not."
Urdli"s midnight eyes bore into Glasgian"s with an intensity Glasgian had only ever seen among the elders.
There was challenge in those dark pools, challenge and reproval. Glasgian bridled, his anger stiffening him. He had no need to bow to this elf; he was a prince of Tir Tairngire, the scion of the Oakfor-est line, with a heritage as old as Urdli"s own. One day he would sit on the council. Who was this Urdli to question that? True, Urdli was an elder, but age was not everything. They were working toward the same goal, and Glasgian"s methods were as valid as Urdli"s. Perhaps more so. The old elf only seemed interested in plodding along, but the Sixth World was not one to reward dawdlers. Whatever Urdli might have been once, he lived in the Sixth World now. Being born of that world, Glasgian knew it better than did the Australian.
"When you"re cleaned up, join me upstairs," Glasgian said, breaking off his stare.
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left the chamber, wanting only to be out of there. For one thing, he had to change his own clothes; the stench of the chamber permeated them. Not only that, but the d.a.m.ned human had bled all over his sleeve.
PART 1.
Easy Money
1.
The haze over Puyallup Barrens was thick, as usual. The sun, sinking toward the Olympic Mountains on the other side of the Sound, was already starting its evening display. Kham squinted at it. The sun was playing hide-and-seek among the clouds, but dark would not come for an hour or so. Not that he was worried-he was ork and orks were made for the night-but if he kept on now, he"d be home before dark. He wasn"t sure he wanted to get there so soon.
Slowing his pace, he looked around for a patch of quiet, a doorway or an alley mouth with a good view of the street. Halfway down the block he found one, an old theater complete with a marquee that would shelter him in case of a shower. He scanned the graffiti on the wall. Hotbloods turf, by the signs. Zerosweat. He was neutral to them right now. They wouldn"t mind him taking up their s.p.a.ce, as long as he was ready to vacate the moment they showed up. He moved into the shadow under the marquee, feeling the coolness of the coming night already hanging in the darkened air. Settling in, he leaned back against the chill stone.
Things hadn"t gone well today. Not that they"d been bad, but not good was bad today. No nuyen to dump onto Lissa"s credstick. Everything was dry. Dry, dry, dry. n.o.body talking and n.o.body doing.
Worse, n.o.body running. Leastways, as far as his contacts could tell him. To go looking day wise had been an act of pure desperation, but he still had not turned up a speck of work, and no work meant no cred. The prospect of going home to Lissa without fresh cred was not very appealing.
She would be all over him about it. Probably start ragging him again to sign up with a corp or the fed army. Didn"t she know that either of those options would mean he wouldn"t be around much? Yeah, he supposed she did. Maybe that"s what she wanted. She hadn"t eased off since he came back from old Doc Smith"s place with the replacements.
He looked down at the chromed cybernetic hand protruding from his right sleeve. It wasn"t state-of-the-art, but it worked. He had almost died the day he lost that hand. What would have happened then? Where would that have left Lissa? Worse, what about the kids? At least he was still around, still able to protect and provide for them. Right, he thought, like today. Well, most of the time anyway.
He stared sullenly down the street, watching the locals and the day trippers. Cullen Avenue was one of the nicer parts of Carbonado, lots of well-fortified shops. The business day was coming to a close, and this stretch of Cullen was a real nightwise place. A few of the daywise folks were starting their scurry toward their nice, safe homes. He could see in their hasty pace and frequent glances at the sinking sun that they didn"t find the prospect of gathering twilight nearly as comforting as he did.
The streets were crowded still. Most of the folks were still just folks, going about their business, but a few among them were heralds of the nightwise types that would soon haunt these same streets. A beefy ork girl was hooking on the next corner, while across the way a trio of bedraggled chipheads were begging. There would be more of both soon. Then a knot of leatherclad dwarfs came strutting past.
Dressed in Ironmonger colors, they scoped Kham out as they approached. He gave them a smile, showing just a little of his upper tusks, and rubbed his broken lower tusk with a chromed thumb. The short, burly one behind the leader whispered something into his warlord"s ear and they kept on moving.
By far the bulk of the crowd were breeders, stupid, puny, thin-skinned norms. They and the occasional elf scurried along the sidewalk, heading for whatever they called security for the night. The norms were being bright, since they weren"t nightwise. Elves could see in the dark as well as any ork, but Kham supposed they were being bright, too. None of the Barrens that hedged in any of the megacity sprawls were kind or gentle places after dark.
And Puyallup Barrens, one of the two sp.a.w.ned by the Seattle sprawl, was no different. An urban backwater like Puyallup was n.o.body"s first choice for a home, maybe everybody"s last. That"s why so many orks like Kham ended up here. Forced into the places n.o.body else wanted. Forced to scratch andsc.r.a.pe to get by. Forced out of the nice places because they weren"t powerful enough to object. Or didn"t have enough political clout. Or firepower. Or whatever it took to hold onto the good places.
Kham had grown up here and survived. So far. He had survived the gangs, the hate, the riots, and everything else the Barrens had thrown at him. And he"d thrived, clawing his way to the top of the gangs and eventually putting together an alliance of gangs that had ruled Carbonado. Past history, he mused.
Gangs were kid stuff, and he wasn"t a kid anymore. He had reached his full growth and would be twenty in a few years. Twenty!
He didn"t really want to think about that. It was much better to dream of the day he"d be living in style.
But style meant nuyen, which again brought him back 14.15.to the reality that he"d not done very well at collecting any today.
There weren"t many ways for an ork to pile up the nuyen. Sure, he could have gone into the fed army or one of the private corp ones, something he"d considered when younger, much younger; but hearing Black Jim"s stories when Jim came home to the neighborhood on leave from the feds, Kham knew that the regimented life was not for him. He"d thought about it long and hard, and the only conclusion he could reach was that if you can"t make your nuyen legally, you gotta do it illegally.
Once he"d reached that conclusion, he hadn"t wasted time. He"d started to put the gang to decent use and done a few small jobs, smart stuff that was practically built into the system, like looting the corp trucks running along 412, and only taking what couldn"t be traced. After they"d made a couple of hits, his fixer had realized that Kham wasn"t just another stupid ork kid out to break some heads, and so he"d turned him on to Sally Tsung"s ring. Lady Tsung introduced Kham to the lucrative life of shadowrunning, and one payoff was all it took for him to see the light; corp snitching just couldn"t compare. He"d dropped the gangs and signed on with Lady Tsung.
His hard-built alliance had crumbled while he attended to other matters, but he hadn"t cried. He"d worked to build the gang, using it to his advantage while still the boss, but he didn"t need it anymore. Nothing wrong with that. That was the way the world worked. You grabbed what you could, held on as long as you needed it, and when something better came along, you grabbed that instead. Had to keep the nuyen flowing in. Had to look out for yourself.
Shadowrunning offered almost everything the gangs had. There was action, excitement, and firepower- lots of firepower on the right run. The only thing miss- :.
ing was the pbwer and the respect, the chance to make a difference on your turf, and all the chummers looking up to you. Then again, maybe running the shadows did offer those things, but in a different way.
A runner could make a difference, but it was subtler, excepting of course the differences to your cred balance. Those differences were truly truly sig-at least when the nu-yen was rolling in. And the respect was there too. The scuzboys and streetrats like those Ironmongers gave wide berth to Kham now that word was about that he played in the big leagues. It was the personal stuff that wasn"t there. Sure, he had his guys, and they were some of the best rocking orks ever to pack big guns, but they were runners like him and mostly loyal to the biggest buck. They weren"t his the way the gang had been.
Drek! He was supposed to be thinking about the future, not the past. Only old guys found the pastbrighter than the future and Kham was not an old guy yet!
Kham heaved himself up, ready to be on his way, when some old fool plowed into him. Kham swung a hard backhand, then realized halfway through the swipe that the idiot wouldn"t have gotten close enough to collide if Kham hadn"t already dismissed him as a threat. Kham pulled his punch, but he stiil bounced the guy into the wall. Catching him on the rebound off the brick, Kham recognized the slag, and his condition.
"You"re blasted, Kittle George." "Huh?" The gray-haired ork frowned as he tried to bring his vision into focus. "Kha-"
Kham heaved him upright in time to avoid getting splashed when Kittle George started to vomit. Kham watched in disgust. This was how old orks ended up.
Kittle George swayed erect and staggered on down the street. Too drunk to walk a straight line, he car- 16.omed off the street folk he pa.s.sed as he stumbled along the sidewalk. Kham caught up with him in a few strides, grabbed an arm, and hauled him erect.
"Ya oughta go home, Georgie."
"Am goin" home," Kittle George slurred.
"Yer home"s da odder way."
Kittle George looked around confusedly, then squinted at Kham. "I knew tha"."
Kham shook his head sadly. "Ya want me ta walk ya dere?" He didn"t really want to, but he thought he should offer. Kittle George was ork, too, and orks had to stick together. Besides, walking Georgie home would mean putting off going home himself for a bit longer, i They strolled along the streets, Kham keeping his pace to something Kittle George could manage. Taking the offered bottle, Kham took the swig required of friendship, then managed to drop the bottle.
Accidentally, of course. Then he had to drop it again before the brittle plastic would shatter. Georgie cried over the loss, embarra.s.sing Kham, but fortunately he didn"t recognize anyone in the crowds that flooded around them. He got Kittle George underway again.
The old ork started mumbling a long list of complaints. Life hadn"t been treating him very well. But that was no surprise. He was ork. What did life have for orks besides trouble anyway?
They had reached Kittle George"s place, a condemned tenement just like the others lining the streets. The Seattle metroplex government had condemned it, then left it; lacking the money to trash it, they certainly did not have enough to replace it. People still lived there because it offered a roof and walls. The rent was cheap, too. Kittle George had prime s.p.a.ce in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the warmest spot in an unheated building during the winter. Kittle George had company 17 then; but it was still autumn and the neighbors hadn"t moved in yet. - "Ya gonna be okay, Georgie?"
"Yeah. Gonna get some sleep. Wish I had a bottle, though."
"Sleep"s good, Georgie." Hoping the old guy would forget about the bottle, Kham pointed him toward the stairs and made sure the drunk had a grip on the rail before urging him down into the darkness. "Just get some sleep,"
The old man mumbled something as he went down the stairs, but Kharn didn"t understand a word of it.
Booze and age, the bane of an ork"s life-if despair and drugs didn"t get him first.
As Kittle George disappeared, a shadow fell over Kham. He turned slowly, careful to avoid sudden moves. The big troll he found grinning at him was familiar. Grabber worked as a bouncer at Shaver"s Bar; he also was a small-time fixer. The troll"s operational area ran about five blocks north and south of Kittle George"s, along Cullen, and out west all the way to the wall that marked the Salish-Shidhe boundary with the plex. The troll was rumbling with a deep chuckling.
"Hoi, Grabber. Whuzzappenin" down at Shaver"s?"
"Hoi, Kham," the troll boomed. "Bodyguarding these days, chummer?"
Kham shrugged.
For a troll, Grabber was moderately bright; the troll picked up on the fact that Kham didn"t find any humor in his poor joke, and so tried some more innocuous small talk. "Been quiet at the club. Just the usual. No sweat "cepting Sat.u.r.day night."
Kham had heard about the riot. "Local scuzboys giving ya trouble?"