Burnout 6

I rejoined my astral self and my meat body with all the grace of a pelican landing, which is to say, none. After squeezing my astral organs through my partially healed ribs, around my mods, and back inside where they belonged (you think it’s so fraggin’ funny, you try it), I opened my eyes and tried to reorient to a reality with walls and floor before I gave Gears the bad news. Gears was resting one hand tentatively on my shoulder and was using the other to point something which looked for all the world like an old fashioned electric curling iron towards the window frame. A cord at the back end led to the box of transmitter parts under the bed. She glanced down when I groaned, and lifted her hand quickly off my shoulder.

“I didn’t know if you needed me to be touching you if something went wrong or not.” She said apologetically. “And I’m not sure how to pull you out even if I needed to. I realized about 3 seconds after you left that there was no datajack cord to yank if something went wrong. And I narrow-banded a message to the gangers telling them to get ready in case you didn’t come back in time.”

She followed my gaze to the object in her hand. “It’s the working end of the signal jammer.” She said with some pride. “I think I just shot down one of the drones. And the Stuffer Shack across the street is going to need a new microwave.” She giggled, but there was a slight edge of hysteria in her voice. Being left in a room with a mostly lifeless body, while multiple gun-toting hostiles are closing in with the intent of turning it and you into entirely lifeless bodies, can do that to ya. I was surprised she was as clear-headed as she was. I also hoped she was kidding about the microwave.

“We have a problem.” I sat up slowly and launched into an explanation about the magic-sensitive rad badges Jinn and his gang were packing, and the chances of a counterspell fryin’ me if I left up the hebejeebee spell. I could pull the plug on the spell, but the plan was that I was in charge of freakin’ our guests outta their shoes, and the Halloweeners would take it from there once the runners were too distracted to shoot straight. And, like I mentioned before, we were bait. Some things never change.

“So how likely is it that their badges will hurt you?” asked Gears. My wince was answer enough: sustainin’ any kind of spell left me more useless than I cared to admit, which was why I wanted the gangers to handle cleanup while Gears stayed out of the way. With an open path to discharge through the astral from my spell to me, it wouldn’t take much for me to fold like a carton of soy noodles, especially if the badges triggered at the same time. The clever “don’t notice me” part of the spell wasn’t gonna avoid the badges’ detection, because a spell badge wouldn’t log the spell’s effects as mid-run paranoia like a person would.

“Is there some way to trigger whatever they do before they get up here?” asked Gears. I snorted. “Sure, but I’m fresh out of other magicians to throw to them.” I responded. Sarcasm, one of my uglier tells for a deal gone bad. Some people who know me say I’m always sarcastic, which isn’t true, but I think the fact that they believe it says a lot about my life.

“What about Eddie?” She asked. “Does it have to be spell magic?” “Depends…” I answered slowly, as I tried to dredge up the spells I knew that could be used to create a rad badge, and fightin’ the urge to argue about it just ‘cause Gears suggested it. Twice I had to stop myself from getting sidetracked into giving a lecture to Gears on magic theory: some part of my brain was trying to stall, while the rest of me was cursing it for not bein’ able to think faster. We were max capacity on enemies and low on time to make this work. “OK, we’ll try it.” I summoned Eddie to come see me. He did.

“So, I went and looked everywhere that you said to look, and nobody was there, but I thought maybe they were playing that hiding game you told me about, so I went and looked again, but they still weren’t there, so I went and looked again, but – ” I cut him off. “Eddie: there are two people working their way up the – ” I glanced at Gears, and she grabbed her pocket secretarial Frankenstein and twiddled knobs. “South stairwell, second floor, two human – frag, cam just went out: I think they spotted it. Oh, wait.” She moved the jammer so it pointed back out the window. Ok, south stairwell, yeah, it’s gone.” I made a note to myself not to walk in front of the curling iron. I pointed a direction for Eddie and told him about a new game that required him to go hover in astral form exactly in the middle of the two runners until their badges changed to black. “It might make you have to leave here, which means you get to go back where you came from. Ok?” “Sure thing!” he said, and zipped away.

You may think that was icy, but I’ve never really believed there was much substance to the “summonings are people too” spoutings. Most talking heads go the other way and say summonings are nothing more than manifestations of different aspects of the summoner’s self: I don’t know about that either. I do know if the decision was Eddie or me, Eddie lost, null persp on that choice.

Thanks to Gears’ remote sensors, we had time to verify that Victor’s van was still in the alley, and Big Ugly Fragger was still on the bench watching the team’s exit route and standing by as backup. Gears was still trying to draw a bead on the second of Victor’s two drones when I felt two overlapping sensations, one as if my right hand had fallen asleep and gone numb, and the other as if the rest of my body had been dipped in acid followed by a forced march naked through a sandstorm. No telling what would have happened if I’d triggered the badges in person. I’m guessin’ the numbness was from the severance of my link with Eddie, and the acid was what he felt when he triggered the badges, but it could have been the other way around. Mana does funny stuff sometimes, kids.

I was slumping back onto the bed when I felt a full body “twang” completely unlike the two previous sensations, except that it was just as fraggin’ uncomfortable. Frosty and Bloodgroove must have recognized the triggering of the badges, and were moving in for the kill with the belief that I was incapacitated or fried (they weren’t far wrong). The twang was my mojo creepy doing its thing as they stepped into the hallway. I continued my slump and signaled Gears with a gasp.

“Spell’s triggered. Tell the ‘weeners.” I had seen them commit violent and inevitably painful acts against people who used that nickname. I didn’t care.

She tapped a short sequence into the secretarial monstrosity of hers, waited for a reply, and nodded. Partly by accident, partly by design, the Halloweeners were using an assortment of rooms one floor below: I had hoped that any intel Jinn’s gang gathered would show that the targets (us) were mostly alone on the third floor, (“Hey, looky-look, nobody here but us bait…”), and would not connect us with the gangers, who tended to come and go as they saw fit. Victor would probably have verified our isolation with a few careful sweeps from his sensor laden drones, in spite of our window “chaff.” He would have noticed the high occupancy of the floor below, but the plan was for the gangers to lay low acting like typical flophouse tenants until the spell was triggered by whoever came after us, then blow in like a team of panzers once the spell had gone off. Within a few seconds of Gears’ message the gangers would be spreadin’ up the stairs behind the runners like a plague, making life exceedingly miserable for Frosty and Bloodgroove if they retreated before I got to them. It was time for the show.

I slipped out of myself again and sent my astral self into the hallway. Although it was not as easy to see from the astral, I knew from experience that the hallway was strewn with empty wrappers, plastic shavings, and other detritus. We’d hauled it there ourselves. The debris was mostly innocuous. However, tucked upside down in one corner was a Japanese oni mask that a talsimonger had provided (“at cost, I swear”) to help anchor and sustain my hebejeebee spell, and Gears had artfully concealed a small camera or two in the debris. While a kill zone full of claymores would have been nice, it wasn’t very practical in a public hallway, and not even the Halloweener’s influence on the landlord could get him to agree to letting us mount explosive charges into the walls. But Frosty and Bloodgroove didn’t know that...

I floated quickly until I was above and behind Frosty, who had just taken up position to cover Bloodgroove’s advance with a sleek looking assault rifle. They were halfway down the hall already. I noted with satisfaction that both badges had been triggered, and sent a heartfelt thanks to Eddie, wherever he was. The little guy had pulled it off. I concentrated, gasped for astral air, and concentrated again. When I was sure I’d made the crossover from astral to physical materialization, I whispered “Pssst…Frosty?”

The reaction was everything I was hoping for. A very paranoid Frosty swung the barrel of the rifle around before I finished saying her name, whipping it frantically at the air behind her, then up towards me. In spite of her not-very-suppressed anxiety, she remained a practiced professional, the butt staying fused to her shoulder and her eyes tracking over the front sight the entire time. ‘S a wonder she didn’t do some serious drek to her spinal column. Her target acquisition was dead on, and a thin ruby light bored from under her barrel into the center of my chest, and then continued through my chest until it lit up the ceiling behind me. I think seeing that, more than anything else, kept her from firing. I saw that Bloodgroove had reacted almost as fast and was pointing a twin of Frosty’s rifle at my spectral body. I wondered later if the rifles had been purchased as a set: at the time all I could do was wonder which of the half dozen contradictory stories was true about spell-slingers that got shot while “straddling the gap” between reality and astral space. I pushed ahead before they decided to enlighten me.

“I’m gonna ask once, nicely. Walk away, and tell Jinn the hunt is off. Your lives, today, in exchange for Tantilus.” It wasn’t a fair trade, and we each knew it: it wasn’t even a trade. This wasn’t about fairness or trading. Gears and the Halloweeners both thought I was crazy to be offering Jinn’s team a choice at all: why ruin a perfectly good ambush to try to extract a vague and ultimately unenforceable promise? I hadn’t been able to give them a good answer, but had managed to work them over into doing it my way anyway.

In spite of my invitation, Bloodgroove and Frosty didn’t look like they were interested in walking away, or anywhere else for that matter. I let myself drift down between them, and Bloodgroove shifted position so she wouldn’t shoot through me and into Frosty. Both were solid professionals, even with the hebejeebee working them over. Neither let their guns move so much as a millimeter off target, which would have been pretty impressive if it hadn’t been my hoop as the target. Bloodgroove was subvocalizing: I realized Jinn and Big Ugly Fragger were getting updated. Fine by me.

“Look,” I said, trying to sound like I was invulnerable instead of just wavery and see-through, “Jinn’s bracketed, and Tommy T.’s marked too. I tripped Jinn’s badge when I floated enough C-12 under the van to put it in orbit: have him check his badge if he doesn’t believe me.” Let them pass that along. “If the rest of your team” – I silently hoped there was no one unaccounted for – “stays where they are, we all breathe longer. If not, our conversation’s over and things get messy fast. Your choice.” I could see in Frosty’s eyes that she was not happy that I was calling the shots. Big fraggin’ surprise. I hoped my next line would be even less pleasant.

“You can probably find me and maybe even take me out, but if you do the Halloweeners won’t let you out alive. The funny thing is, they don’t even like me, but they’ll splash you just for fun unless I say otherwise.” As if on cue, the stairwell doors at each end of the hall opened up, and gangers began jandering through to take up calculated poses lounging on either side of the entryway. They seemed to ignore the two well-armed runners and the semi-invisible man in the middle of the hall, as if we were beneath their notice. You wouldn’t think lounging teenagers would be menacing. You’d be wrong.

These were blooded turf war veterans, and this was undisputedly their turf: they’d done everything but piddle on it (and I had my doubts about drawing the line there) to make it their own. Some had visible weapons, some did not, but there was no doubt they could turn this hallway into an abattoir if things went bad. (Go ahead, slot your French chip, I’ll wait. While we’re on the subject of abattoirs, someday I’ll tell you about the 13th floor of the Aztecnology pyramid, the one that doesn’t exist. But I digress.) Jinn may have scanned the gangers coming up the stairs and warned Frosty and Bloodgroove, ‘cause they didn’t so much as twitch when the doors opened, but if they been tense before, they were redlined now. I took the decision away from them.

“Death…” I whispered. “Too much death…” I began my fade back into the astral. “Go away, Bloodgroove. Go away, Frosty. End the hunt, and live. Tell Jinn the death-price is paid…” I sounded like a fraggin’ shaman, balancing cosmic inequities with psychobabble, but I didn’t care, as long as it worked. I finished the fade and waited. Four complicated hand gestures and several radio transmissions later, Bloodgroove and Frosty lowered their guns slowly and started walking back towards the south stairwell.

I admit it, I smirked. I so rarely see a plan come off intact I was delighted that this one had. I watched them start down the stairwell, then jumped back to my meat body. I squeezed, twisted, and moaned myself back inside, then opened my eyes. After a few seconds, I looked around, and that’s when I noticed Gears was nowhere to be seen.

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Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq2C:\windows\TEMP\AutoRecovery save of Burnout 6.asd

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

Compaq"C:\Shadowrun\stories\Burnout 6.doc

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