Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (33 page)

That was what she had thought on the flight here. The shadow underground wasn't very developed in Boise, but she made a few connections and learned enough to know at she had guessed wrong again. By pretending that she was looking for a panzer runner and needing to know the itchiness of local enforcement, she had found out that all was quiet. All of the—admittedly limited—excitement was to the north where, yesterday, a Council copter had reported contact with a panzer headed north along the river. The chopper pilot had lost the panzer in the canyons. No surprise there. Any good panzer runner could ditch a general patrol.

The panzer hadn't been identified, but Hart was reasonably sure it was the one Verner was riding. Her contacts had seemed anxious to do business, even with her flimsy story, which meant that the smuggling business was slow right now. It didn't seem that many other runs were in progress and the mystery panzer was headed in the right general direction. There were other paths to Verner's destination than the one she had decided to block, but all involved a lot of heavy terrain. Verner's run to Quebec would have gone a lot faster if they had taken the track through the plains. Perhaps the suit had anticipated opposition and chosen a less obvious route. If so, he was smarter than she thought. Or else his friends were. Or maybe he was just plain lucky.

The copter report placed the panzer too far north to reasonably expect that they would double back and take the lower road through the Snake River Plains. That meant they would be crossing the Rockies, somewhere in the wilder country. There were not many cities or even towns up there, and they'd be avoiding the few that were. Unless they were planning a long detour north, the likeliest crossing would put them out in Sioux territory somewhere near Great Falls, so that became her next stop. Great Falls passed for a city, but it was surrounded by badlands, prairies, and outback, none of which were her best working environments. And that's where they would be.

She had wanted to tie this one up herself because she was mostly to blame that Verner was still running around. She should have made sure that the Elves had done the job on him in the ambush. Now she couldn't hope to nail him herself out there. Tessien was better in the wild places than she was. She wanted Verner gone before he reached civilization again.

She stopped at a public telecom, slotted a credstick, and punched a number. She waited while the connections were made and a voice on the other end repeated the last four digits of the telecom code.

"Jenny, have our skinny friend meet me at Far Side North."

"Will do, boss."

The
Thunderbird
sat hunkered to the ground, quiet for the moment as Sam watched Begay crawl around the blackened scar on the side of the vehicle. The Navaho cursed as he fussed with the soldering gun, repairing damaged circuits.

"Why couldn't it have been Pinkskins that we ran into out here? With all their trying to be more Indian than Indians, their fragging arrows wouldn't have touched the
T-bird
. No. We got to flop on some lost patrol of fragging Wildcats. Drek, but there ain't no beauty in that."

"Wildcats?"

"Sioux special forces." Begay hopped off the
T-bird
and spat. "With anti-vehicle missiles, too. Missiles! What kind of mouse-minded idiot issues a squad missiles for a trek in the mountains."

"Maybe somebody was looking for panzers?"

"I didn't tell them we were coming."

"Neither did I."

Sam handed a water bag to the rigger. Begay swigged the water and spat again, then tossed the bag back to Sam. "Pretty slick the way you forced their Hummer into the ditch. Better shooting than I would of figured you for."

Sam shrugged off the praise.

"Woulda been easier to hose the Hummer."

Sam shrugged again. He didn't want to tell Begay that he had frozen once the sights had aligned on the Sioux military vehicle. He had not been able to pull the trigger. The lighter vehicle had been able to pace the normally faster panzer across the forested slopes, but it had no protection against the panzer's cannon. The Sioux had shown great courage in chasing the panzer and it wouldn't have been right to kill them. The Wildcats were just doing their jobs; Sam and Begay were the interlopers. The panzer guns didn't load gel rounds, so he had looked for a way to make them abandon the chase. The only thing he could think to do was to block the way, and the only way he could see to do it was to drop a tree in front of them. He had been appalled at how easy it was once the stream of projectiles from the
T-bird
's cannon buzz-sawed through the forest giant's trunk. If Begay thought that was fancy shooting, let him. He hoped the Wildcats weren't injured too severely when their Hummer had crashed.

Leaving Sam to his silence, Begay went back to complete the panzer's repairs.

Sam's head hurt from interfacing with the vehicle's targeting system. It didn't seem to matter what the technology, any interface always left him with the ache, and now a faint nausea. The latter might simply be reaction from the chase. He hoped so.

The pocket of his coveralls felt weighed down by the case of instruction chips the professor had given him. Scanning a few of them on the panzer's computer hadn't done much for his peace of mind. They made him nervous, and he hadn't even tried any of the exercises yet. The familiar hurt of machine interface was a lot more comfortable; he understood that, or thought he did. It made a lot more sense and seemed a lot more real than all of the professor's talk about magic.

"She's patched," Begay announced as the soldering gun rattled back into the tool bin.

"Good. We'll move at dark then?"

"Can't wait. Gonna have to move fast till we get out of Sioux territory. Those Wildcats will get word out and have half the Sioux military down on our heads. Only easy way through Sioux territory is to avoid being spotted, and it's too late for that." Begay scanned the landscape. "Gonna cut north. It's the shortest way out of Sioux lands. Longer overall, but healthier, because there are more places to hide. You still willing to fly the ultra-light?"

Sam looked up. It would mean interfacing with the craft's sensors. "If you think it will help."

"Eyes in the sky never hurt. When we hit the badlands, we can't afford to waste time running up a blind canyon."

"Let's go then."

They were mounted in minutes, Sam in the gunner's couch because Begay didn't want to launch the drone just yet. The
Thunderbird
howled into the twilight.

Hart sat listening to the chatter on the Sioux military radio channels. Civilian possession of a receiver able to pick up those channels was illegal within Council lands. That didn't worry her too much; her very presence in the Sioux Council was illegal, for she had no valid entry permit. As soon as her translator told her what was happening, she smiled. This time she had guessed right. She was only hours away from the quarry and well-positioned to intercept. If she sent Tessien on the right sweep, before long they'd have Verner for good.

A sound like a dog's bark startled Sam from the reverie of flying. He had been daydreaming, reveling in the freedom he felt at the controls of the
Little Eagle
. The ultra-light was slow and sluggish compared to the sleek mono-wings he had flown in Japan, but after the claustrophobic confines of the panzer, the open sky around him was a joy. Half-dreaming he may have been, but not so far gone he couldn't tell that the noise he'd heard had come from the radio. A glance at the comm panel showed no light indicating an open channel with
Thunderbird
. The sound was a random burst of radio noise, then.

He checked the navigation screen. Seeing that he had drifted a bit from the planned course, he banked the Eagle into a gentle turn to correct the error. The late afternoon sky was a brilliant blue, spotted with islands of cloud. In the distance, he could see an occasional thunderstorm cell towering among its fluffier kin. Beneath him, the land stretched away in a subtle tapestry of gray and brown, with only the occasional patch of dark green.

Through gaps in the mounds of clouds, Sam found the
Thunderbird
exactly where she was supposed to be. The panzer's shadow bobbed and darted according to the vagaries of the terrain, sometimes racing ahead of the vehicle and sometimes falling behind as it negotiated the open badlands. The
T-bird
could make better speed, but it would mean traveling at a higher altitude that would invite an enemy's missiles. Lacking the stealthy profile that allowed the
Eagle
to slip unnoticed through the skies, the mass of the panzer would almost inevitably register on radar if she flew above a certain height. Stealth was important as long as they were still within the boundaries of the Sioux Council.

Thoughts of missiles became immediate as Sam noted a second shadow rippling over the ground. This one was more slender and faster-moving. Its shape seemed to flicker and change more than could be accounted for by the terrain. The puzzle resolved when he realized that the shape casting this shadow had wings, which beat as it flew. Magnification confirmed the approaching object's nature.

Sam's extremities went cold, while at the same time sweat began to bead on his forehead. The second shadow belonged to a Dragon. Watching with increasing trepidation, Sam saw the dracoform pass over a buffalo herd, apparently without noticing the animals. For their part, the bison decided that they wanted urgently to be elsewhere. If the Dragon wasn't hunting, what was it doing out here? Sam thought he knew the answer.

"
T-bird
," he called as he activated the radio link, "you've got a Dragon on intercept vector. Two o'clock relative."

"Say again. A what?"

"A Dragon."

"Roger," Begay responded calmly. The
Thunderbird
banked hard as the rigger spoke, changing its heading.

"If the newcomer was headed in their direction, it would soon be obvious. Sam prayed hard, but the Dragon adjusted direction to maintain an intercept course. To Begay, he reported, "Still following."

"Roger. It'll get nasty, then. Flash me a terrain pic, then stay high and keep your eyes open. I need to know if anyone is coming to play."

Maybe Sam was being unduly worried. Begay seemed unperturbed by the Dragon, less excited than during the brush with the Sioux Wildcats. Maybe his confidence was based on knowing what to expect. If so, Sam wanted to give him as much time as possible. He quickly keyed the instructions to the
Eagle
's computer, sending the terrain data downlink to appear on the panzer's navigation screen. That would let Begay select the best available spot for the coming confrontation.

Begay knew his vehicle, its capabilities, and its limitations. Why shouldn't he be confident? A Dragon was a mighty beast, but it was still an animal. What kind of animal was a match for even a light panzer like the
Thunderbird
? The beast would need composite armor like the
T-bird
's own to resist the 20mm shells of the chain gun, let alone the heavy vehicle killers that the main cannon could spew. This would be a short fight.

From his conversations with Begay, Sam knew that the rigger would try to keep the conflict as brief as possible. Not only to keep from attracting other unwanted attention, but to keep from using too many expendables that would cut into his profit margin.

The panzer lifted out of the valley and passed over a ridge into another gully that stretched toward an open space surrounded by sentinel mesas. Rushing across the clearing and banking across the lower slope of one of the boundary formations, the
Thunderbird
kicked up pebbles and dust. On the flat again, she ran back toward the gully more slowly, her turret angled toward the Dragon's approach.

The
Thunderbird
's chain gun ripped up real estate where the Dragon had first showed its fanged head, but the beast put on a burst of speed just before it broke cover. The unscathed serpent swept in toward the panzer.

"Frag, that worm's fast," Begay commented in mild surprise as Sam watched the fiery line of tracers chase the erratically weaving shape.

The Dragon unleashed a burst of flame as it swerved past the
Thunderbird
, but the jet of fire impacted the ground in front of the panzer. Sage blackened and smoked. The Dragon seemed reluctant to stay and slug it out with the tank. Orange tracers chased it across the valley.

From his aerial perspective, Sam observed activity a few dozen meters in front of the panzer. The earth was mounding, and Sam's first thought was that concealed enemy troops were breaking cover. The notion was soon dispelled when he saw the soil moving by itself. Rocks and pebbles rolled toward a central bulge that heaved itself up, making a wall across the panzer's path. Before Sam could warn Begay, the
Thunderbird
plowed into the weird obstacle.

Deprived of the sound, Sam could only imagine the grating and pinging of the gravel on hull of the speeding panzer. He feared that the debris would clog or damage the cooling vents, a fear more than justified as metal shrapnel from the protective louvers exploded out from the sides of the
T-bird
. The panzer charged on another ten or twenty meters, but the gravel still swirled around it in an unabated storm. Fist-sized cobbles struck the vehicle, rebounded, then struck again like maddened bees defending a hive from an interloper. The slowing panzer was nearly lost to Sam's sight in the swirling haze of sand and grit.

"How in hell do you fight dirt?"

Sam didn't think that the question was meant for him. Besides, he had no idea. Then he noticed something. "The gravel cloud's only five meters tall."

"Right." The rigger's response was clipped, but Sam knew Begay had understood when the
Thunderbird
rose up on a column of superheated air, her main thrust directed straight down. Soil and rocks were kicked out and away, only to curve about and rejoin the agitated mass. At first, it seemed that the
T-bird
's action only made things worse, for the gravel storm rose up along with the panzer. Then Sam saw that the malefic sediment was attenuating, being stretched as though it were somehow tied to the more placid earth. As the panzer reached ten meters, the surging mass fell back. Only fugitive pebbles and streams of sand cascaded from the now rapidly rising
Thunderbird
.