Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (42 page)

Sam was pleased. "Then maybe that's a place to start. If those two were there, maybe it means that Drake works for United Oil."

The sodium vapor lamps on the buildings cast a harsh, flat light. Trapped in their glare, various big and small objects sent their shadows stretching deep into the surrounding night. Light and dark made two separate worlds.

Sam crouched in the darkness, staring with trepidation at the pools of light. Once he had lived in the other world, where light represented safety. How many times had he shaken his head dolefully at the predations of the terrorists and criminals who disrupted safe, corporate life. Now he was a part of the other world, the land of shadows that survived on corporate leavings or what could be taken from the corporations' arrogant waste. Once he had been secure in his armor of scientific rationality, believing that if magic were not a sham, some obscure physical or biological principle could explain it away. Now others were telling him that he was a magician, just as did his own weird experiences. The notion still frightened him, but seemed to beckon and fascinate as well.

The allure and alarm of magic were akin to what he felt toward Sally. Last night she had shown him uses of magic he could never have imagined, and his heart raced at the sudden memory. Sally was unlike any woman he had ever known. She was as beautiful, vibrant, and exciting as she was terrifying.

What had he gotten into?

The United Oil dockyard
, a part of his mind reminded him sardonically. Here, in the shadow of one of the many squat mushroom shapes that made up the tank farm.
Now
, waiting for Ghost Who Walks Inside to return from his reconnaissance. Everything was quiet and had been ever since they'd crossed the perimeter fence. Sam didn't know whether to be relieved at fully passing the outer security or worried that United Oil's security teams lay in wait for them, laughing at the foolish confidence of the intruders.

Dodger had been certain he had nullified the perimeter security. It was easy, he said when he gave them the go-ahead over a telecom on the street outside. He sounded so confident, which was all well and good for him. He was not going inside physically with Sam and Ghost.

Once inside, the job got tougher. United Oil's site security strategy did not emphasize an impenetrable perimeter. Instead, it concentrated security assets in the buildings themselves. Each structure had its own level of countermeasures, the extent and complexity varying according to the value of the contents of the structure and the ease with which an intruder might affect or remove those contents. Dodger was expecting difficulties in slipping past the Intrusion Countermeasures of the target building. They were counting on him to take control of the alarms, but they wouldn't know if he had succeeded until the moment they tried to enter the building. They had been unable to agree on a form of signal that would not alert United Oil security. Once inside the building, they could communicate relatively safely through the site's computer system. But by then, Ghost and Sam would have set off any still functional alarms as they crossed the building's security barrier.

Sam knew that Dodger was good at this sort of thing, but he couldn't relax. He wiped his sweaty palms against the rough fabric of his dark coveralls.

The target building stood on the other side of the vehicle park, its face no different from the other warehouses in the row. With its weathered brick, dirty glass, and rusted window screening, the only distinguishing features were the faded numerals of its building number. No sign proclaimed it as the security field office.

They expected its physical security measures to be light, but the plans they got from Cog showed an alarm at every entrance but one. That door could be opened freely at any time of day or night without sounding an alarm. The door was the connector between a fenced enclosure running the length of the building's southern side and a series of pens inside the building's walls. Those pens were the nests for the company's cockatrices, terrifying paranimals that could calcify flesh with a touch.

Sam thought about trying an astral walk to see how many cockatrices there were and to make sure they were all outside. He dreaded what might happen if any were not. Met in the narrow confines of the nesting pens, the paranimals would have all the advantages. The men would be crowding one another, the distances would be too short for effective gunfire, and the beasts were very fast.

Staring at the door, Sam stayed where he was, firmly in the grip of his mundane senses. Sally had warned him that the creatures could see astral presences and could affect his astral body as fatally as his flesh body. Maybe she had just been trying to scare him out of doing the run, but if Sally spoke true, the creatures presented an even greater menace to his astral self than to his physical being. He had learned that the astral body was somehow a reflection of a person's essence. Could a person's essence be other than his soul? If one of those things touched him during astral projection, what would happen to his soul?

Ghost was suddenly at Sam's side, almost startling a yelp from him. The Indian waited a few seconds while Sam's breathing returned to normal, then tugged on his arm.

"Let's go. The roving patrol just started their round. Won't be back here for another ten."

They moved quickly and quietly across the lot, keeping to the cover of the vehicles. They stopped downwind, several meters from the fenced area. Sam licked his lips, tasting the greasy, ashy flavor of the face-darkening makeup he wore to eliminate reflections. "Maybe you should do the shooting."

"Your gun, your run." Ghost's face was unreadable. "You shoot."

"Right." Resigned, Sam reached into the pouch at his belt and removed a magazine. Fumbling a little in the dark, he ejected the clip in his pistol and replaced it with the one from his pouch. He was careful to slip the currently unwanted clip into a pocket.

"Got the right one, Paleface?"

"Should be," Sam whispered in annoyance. If the Indian was expecting Sam to do it, he could at least have the decency to expect he'd do it right. "You're the one with the cybereyes. Couldn't you read the label?"

"Thirty-two cee-cee's of Somulin cut with ten grains of Alpha-dexoryladrin," Ghost recited. "Make sure you put the other clip back in before we run into any guards. Any Human that takes that dosage ain't going to see morning."

"I know, I know." The Indian was treating him like a child. "You want to get touched by one of those things?"

The Indian's gap-toothed, crooked smile glinted in a fugitive beam of light. "You think they're fast enough to touch a ghost?"

"I don't know. You want to find out that they can by getting stoned the hard way?"

"No," Ghost said seriously.

"Right." Sam was satisfied that he had scored a point. "I'll change magazines when we're through the pens."

Gun ready, Sam took aim at the nearest sleeping cockatrice, which looked like no more than a dark mound. The pistol bucked a little in his hand, accompanying the soft huff of the shell's compressed air propulsion. The target's feathers quivered slightly before the mound resumed its previous slight, measured motion.

"Think I got it?"

"If you'd only nicked it, it would be screaming bloody hell. Either it's sleeping or you missed completely." Ghost paused. "We'll find out once we're inside. Dart the rest."

The Narcoject Lethe huffed four more times, spitting its tranquillizer darts at four more cockatrices. Sam changed clips and fired five more rounds. Another clip change was required before he darted the final two. Each hit had as little obvious effect as the first.

"All of them?"

"Far as I can see."

"Let's go," Ghost said, leading the way.

The gate had a simple keypad lock, but it might be more than enough to delay them until the patrol showed up. Ghost attached an unscrambler to the lock. The box hummed and digits flashed across its screen. In just under two minutes, numbers locked into a match for the combination, and the bolt snicked open. They heard a loud guffaw as one j of the guards responded to a companion's joke.

With discovery marching toward them, they entered the enclosure. Sam was afraid that one or more of the beasts would leap up and charge them, but nothing moved. The pen was rank with a musty smell that vaguely reminded him of the feathered serpent Tessien, but less savory. Sam wondered if the odor was the feathers, the scales, the combination, or just the smell of magic. One by one, he gathered up his darts with a three-pronged gripper, careful not to let skin actually touch any part of the beasts. The task should not have been difficult, but his fear, heightened by the approach of the security patrol, made him fumble-fingered. He didn't want to leave empty darts lying about the enclosure as evidence that the cockatrices' sleep had been enforced.

The last dart recovered, he joined Ghost at the passage into the nesting area. The Indian's left hand held an Ingram smartgun and his right rested against the swinging door. With a nod to Sam, he pushed it, holding it open as he listened. Ghost motioned Sam forward with his head and let Sam take the weight of the door. The Indian moved into the deep darkness of the pens.

Sam waited at the door, his starlight goggles unable to penetrate the gloom of the deeply recessed parts of the nesting area. Light from beyond silhouetted Ghost moving carefully across the area; he was heading for the transparent wall that separated the nests from the handlers' area. A rustle in the darkness made Sam shudder. At least one cockatrice was inside with them. Ghost heard it too, and swiveled to face the explosion of feathers and scaly fury that launched itself at him.

Standing in the doorway, unwilling to tangle with the beast and even more unwilling to abandon Ghost, Sam watched as the Indian dodged the first attack. The creature landed on two strong, heavily taloned legs and turned swiftly. Its beaked head searched for the man who had invaded its nest. It stalked forward, hissing and lashing its tail. Ghost circled warily, trying to keep enough room to maneuver. His second Ingram was in his other hand; he held both weapons out in front of him but didn't shoot.

The noise, Sam realized, would give them away. Sam raised his own weapon, but could not find a clear shot as the cockatrice rushed Ghost and they began a whirling dance of strike and counter. Parrying with his weapons and dodging the paranimal's attacks by sheer speed, the samurai was being forced deeper into the nest, further into the darkness and away from the clear area in the center. Sooner or later, he would falter or slip.

Knowing that hitting Ghost could be lethal, Sam fired the Lethe, but the two combatants continued their frenetic action. He had only two more shots in the clip and the guards were getting closer. Sam fired again. The cockatrice leapt high, striking out at Ghost with its tail. The samurai ducked underneath and dove back toward the open center of the chamber. The creature landed heavily, almost falling. It

turned and took a step toward Ghost before collapsing in a heap to the floor.

Sam slipped fully into the pen and let the door swing down. He leaned against the wall, breathing deeply. They had come near disaster; he could see his first dart embedded Ghost's belt.

As Sam's breathing slowed, he heard the guard patrol pass by outside. They gave no indication that they were of the intruders as they tramped on to the next part their sweep. It would be another half-hour before the guards returned to the building.

Though Sam and Ghost were within the walls of the scanty building, they were still isolated from the rest of the structure. From their position inside the nesting area, they could see the staging area where the cockatrice handlers kept their rigid leashes, thick, insulated gloves, and control prods. A closed door promised access to the rest of the building. Their access to the handlers' area was blocked by a sealed access port, its lock unreachable though the transparent plastic. Unless Dodger had made it through the system, this was as far as they could go.

Ghost nudged Sam and pointed at a security camera turning their way. The lens rotated as it focused on them, a mechanical eye squinting to see more clearly. Were they hosed? The lock unbolted, giving him his answer. Dodger had made it through to take control of the building's security systems. Ghost waved to the camera and the ready light blinked three times in the agreed-upon signal. Before Sam registered the third blink, Ghost was halfway to the door. Sam followed, fumbling with the magazine of his Lethe.

They walked the corridor cautiously, knowing a few people were still in the building. As long as Dodger was on overwatch they would set off no alarms, but they needed to take precautions to avoid meeting any United Oil personnel. They headed for the day offices, avoiding the main monitor room, the barracks wing, and the ready room. Ghost stopped short at the open door to the reception area, then jumped swiftly across the opening and motioned for Sam to move up and peer in.

The light spilling from the doorway was not a forgotten lamp as he had hoped. A man was working at a terminal in the reception area, effectively blocking access to the inner offices. The man's short sleeved shirt was not the severe military cut of security personnel uniforms, so he was probably just a clerk trying to score points with his boss by pulling overtime.

Ghost tapped his Ingram with his finger, pointing at Sam, then at the man. Sam shook his head. They didn't know what the man was working on; an interruption might set off an alarm, especially if he was networking interactively. Dodger wouldn't be able to filter out the reactions of anyone in communication with the clerk. Sam pointed at Ghost and the man before crossing his own wrists in front of him. Ghost nodded in understanding and stole into the room.

A reflection on the computer screen must have betrayed the Indian's approach. Before Ghost could grip the chair to pull the clerk away from the keyboard, the man turned his head. His eyes narrowed as he realized he faced an intruder and he shot a hand toward the jacket draped on the desk. Ghost cut past the chair and thwarted the man's attempt by slamming his left-hand Ingram onto the corporate's wrist. The violent action dislodged the holstered gun that had lain hidden in the folds of the garment. Pinning the man's wrist to the desk with one gun, Ghost forced the man's chin upwards with the barrel of the other Ingram.