After all Ilsa's efforts, Knight Errant had found Fighter in London (through an unexpected tip from Saeder-Krupp), before Monika Schaefer could get to her with the Agency data. Paladin had forced Knight Errant to see that Fighter couldn't be taken alive without Ilsa's help. So, the Mage had been dragged from her cell and they had finished up at St Dunstan's Church. Facing the white-haired man who spoke with the voice of a dragon, quiet and harsh. Rich with the refinement of aeons and unbearable force.
Susan, Ilsa and Sandra told Hans Brackhaus everything about the Agency. A single point held back, that he had known they knew, would have palpably assured their destruction. Still chained neck and heels, Fighter was a mouse before the cat, an insect beneath a polished shoe, before those golden eyes.
Still, she asserted that only the Agency's masters were Lofwyr's enemies. The agents had followed orders to move against Saeder Krupp; done their jobs for the cause's sake. Didn't deserve to be wiped from the world they had fought for, along with Alpha Base itself. Sandra backed her, even though the Juliet knew the Alpha Base coordinates and was manifestly, miserably, about to disclose them.
"…is further talk needful?" Ilsa cut in ahead of her–her face was white, but she spoke, "When you know so much already, Herr Brackhaus? When Alpha Base was a mothballed SK research station, and the Agency was founded–is, to this moment, funded–by Saeder Krupp?"
Alice had delivered the goods. Sandra barely concealed her shock, Fighter was dumbfounded. Paladin–Knight Errant had hunted and fought, his comrades had died, to track down the Agency on behalf of Saeder Krupp–actually sprang to his feet.
"That may be the case. We are a rather large concern, you understand." Brackhaus leaned back, with a smile that hid his teeth, "Local directors often receive almost complete autonomy, and I can scarcely keep track of our minor operations. For example, a shadowrunning team in Hong Kong recently stirred up a notable fracas between the Yellow Lotus Triad and its enemies. The Wuxia Corporation, even the red dragon Lung, were drawn in. Meanwhile, certain of their East Asian assets fell into other hands. I believe you actually knew some of the parties involved! Of course, the morning news-sites are concerned only with the shocking civilian casualties caused by Knight Errant in the Hyatt-Regency incident. They stand to lose several minor contracts–which I will probably resell, at a fair margin, to unarmed local security firms also owned by Ares. Trifles. Do sit down, Herr Steiner."
Paladin faced Brackhaus for seconds–Ilsa thought he seemed like St George in the stained glass behind them. Still, the dragon raised one eyebrow. Frowned. Paladin collapsed back into his seat.
"Ares, the Triads, Aztecnology–whoever loses, anywhere in the world, Lofwyr wins." Ilsa stated, "I can perceive how the Agency would be of use to him. World stability!"
Brackhaus didn't deign fit to reply. Fighter wanted desperately to hear everything Warrior had done, then where the frag her love was now, but Ilsa's eyes warned her. Don't ask, unless you're ready to deal with a dragon.
"Can you just tell us what's going on?" She finally moaned at Ilsa, "The Agency, SK, Darkchild...they're all…?"
"To bite Saeder Krupp's hand, that feeds them–why, I'm not certain–the Agency deployed the farce of Darkchild. Insisting to SK that an unknown third force was provoking conflict, while whipping its own agents up with the lie that SK had plotted covert war. Yes, Darkchild is with the Agency. A needful ploy to avoid instant destruction, when SK always knew the location of Alpha Base. And, unless they are so mad as to trust this simple ruse to deceive a dragon, a cover for their real plan…"
Susan lowered her head and groaned. Sandra bore betrayal more coolly than Paladin had.
"The Agency, Darkchild, Nagendra–what if they're all just insane?" Susan threw out.
"Hardly. Who runs the Agency, Nagendra or Director Oldman?"
"Nagendra gives the orders, plans every mission," Sandra offered, "I've thought he might be a front for Director Oldman…"
"No, Oldman is just the desk-warming nonentity he appears; his deputy, Nagendra, is the Agency's effective, autonomous master. The man without flesh or passions–but ambition, like revenge, is a vice of the mind. One secret base of killers may have been too small for him, perhaps…still, the Agency is indeed a bizarre organisation. Petty manipulation, control for the sake of power alone…almost the character of an evil child."
Hans Brackhaus, drawn away by his own whirring thoughts of another concern, had regarded Ilsa with mild interest; like a horse that could count. Without movement or sound, he recaptured all attention.
"So, then. The Agency is a valued possession of Lofwyr's, but scarcely one to perpetually hold his interest. The destruction of every base, and agent, would be as light a matter to him as the disposing of two misplaced shadowrunners. Yes, it is occasionally necessary to liquidate a minor department, and it does encourage les autres…"
"No! No…why are you here?" Like a rat from a trap, Ilsa spoke out savagely, "Why would you meet us in person, not through a screen, unless nothing in your world is of greater moment now than the Agency? What about the Brazil Project?"
Sandra clearly had no idea. Fighter couldn't even think where Brazil had been; Amazonia had swallowed it when she'd been four.
"You would bluff me?" Brackhaus whispered, "You do not know what that means."
"Nor do you, Herr Brackhaus. Alice didn't know. Only three facilities, somewhere in Europe, Asia, Mid East. That you, and Lofwyr, cannot have known of at all! Nagendra is not insane–he would not face a dragon without a magic spear to hurt it. And if Lofwyr had known, he would never have let it come to this!"
Ilsa finished, breathing hard. Brackhaus showed his teeth. The numerate horse had turned a somersault.
"There is very little that Lofwyr does not know, Fräulein Tresckow, but a great deal he judges irrelevant. The purpose of the Agency's Brazil project may be to wipe out humanity–another trifle–or even destroy an ordinary dragon. But understand; there is nothing men can do to even touch the Great Dragon Lofwyr."
"Do you believe in God, Herr Brackhaus?" Paladin snapped. His KE squad were looking terrified by now. Even Paladin shrank under Hans Brackhaus's eyes, in the silence. Finally, the snowy-haired man smiled. Whistled a bar from Verdi's Otello.
"Credo, credo credo…in un Dio Crudel. I believe in a jealous god, who made me in his image. I believe in Lofwyr. And yet you challenge Lofwyr! That mad, brilliant human defiance…is a resource of value. I do, in fact, intend to bring the Agency to heel. Tell me, Miss Lei–supposing a Redmond gang boss possessed a talented but troublesome minion, what action might they take?"
"Uh, shoot up their house? Pinkie cutting? Send a message, some cheap hitmen…?"
"…who need not even survive to require payment. Quite. I don't normally make use of such cheap tools…this, however, is not cheap." Sandra passed Ilsa the item in her hands; to Fighter's disbelief, it was a small metal box. "You will infiltrate the Agency's Alpha Base and use this item to ensure the extraction of all their secrets, specifically the location of the Brazil facilities. On the off-chance you survive, I may perhaps turn you loose with some trifling reward. Miss Creighton and my other people will brief you in full. I have a very great deal of more important business."
-0-
Hans Brackhaus did linger to contemplate the stained-glass window where St George was slaying the dragon, with quiet amusement (The Conjurer in the Knight Errant squad served the Dragonslayer Totem. A month after his encounter with Lofwyr, he committed suicide from pure horror and shame).
Ilsa and Paladin withdrew to say their goodbyes, scolding each other for their recklessness. Sandra sat beside Susan, elegant as ever. She brushed loose hair from the chained Adept's face, kissed her cheek.
"You're going to be alright…?" It was all Susan could ask.
"I cooperated," Sandra tried to smile, "All the secrets I had from Renraku, or I'd picked up on missions. Saeder Krupp is surveying for more gas deposits in the North Sea. After all the lies, death and adventure…I'm finishing right where I started. A sell-out wagemage." Her lips trembled like a butterfly, pinned, "Can you forgive me, Susan? Will you be safe?"
Susan nodded, heart hammering like a war drum. The Run ahead was bigger than the biggest. An undersea fortress. Well over a hundred elite agents; monstrous training, their unflinching cause–and Darkchild still lurking behind. Brackhaus hadn't bothered to pretend it wasn't a Black Run, suicide; hadn't needed to even imply that refusal or failure meant death.
But hardly anything could have spurred Susan harder (as Brackhaus had perhaps anticipated) than being told she was helpless. Except for it being clear that the lives of Anya, Orion, all the agents, depended on her returning to Alpha Base and someway, any way, ending the rebellion against Saeder Krupp. Before the footfall of a dragon wiped them away in an instant; unconsidered and unmourned disposable Runners. But she was a shadowrunner too.
"We're rats in a trap, that slay the cat. I'm going to live SINless and free, again, a proper shadowrunner, if I have to burn down the Agency myself. You…do your best, Sandra. You're a real chummer, you were always there for me. You've done enough."
"Always. Even if your heart was far away, in Hong Kong." Sandra turned aside, blinking back tears, "Darling, I do hope you find that idiot man of yours, hope you'll be happy…just punch him once more for me, please?"
Before the end, Susan found herself staring, again, at the church's great crucifix. Her father had taught her Buddhism; mental discipline, strength through purity of life and thought. In desperate hours, against foes that couldn't be fought, she had clumsily prayed to Guan Yin. The gentle, smiling bodhisattva of mercy; somebody like the Madonna with her child by the altar, or the mother she had never known. She couldn't have helplessly prayed to some mighty man in the heavens, while the nightmares of rape consumed her strength.
The man who was God on the cross, withered and bowed, struck her as the Man of Sorrows. He had suffered, for the world's new birth, forgiveness. She had suffered, sacrificed and killed–for just a fistful of Nyuyen? But she could not stop Running. Men like monsters had cast her as woman-shaped trash; stolen her strength, silenced her screams. For that, for every woman and herself, she could not be meek. She could never submit. She would not go quietly into the night.
She would fight, through crime and killing fists, the only way she had been born to. She would fight through the base under the waters, the deadly agents and the dark monster. Then she would find Harry, wherever in the world he was, and love him right then and there. She would live a Shadowrunner, on the road to death and hell, as long as she fragging well could.
-0-
There was enough waiting, travel and nothing for even Susan's courage to be stretched, before the entry phase of the Run on Alpha Base began without a hitch. Somewhere on the coast of Seattle a team of agents had their comms cut off, thirty minutes before the pilotless submarine arrived for their extraction. Fighter didn't recognize anyone, as she stepped over the bodies.
A black-clad team of Saeder Krupp Runners had mown down the four agents, A security specialist wagemage hit the sub with a powerful hex, as it slid up from the bay in a shower of scummy water. Onboard cameras and wireless hub registered nothing wrong, as Fighter and Ilsa smashed through the four-hoverdrone escort. They settled into the black submarine, before it slipped back under; on course for Alpha Base.
There were radio check-ins, but they had the Agency's daycodes from Saeder Krupp, and a recording from comms eavesdropping of a dead agent's voice. Ilsa wove her voice distortion spell; magic arced around her throat. She spoke with a male ork's voice, into the radio to the Agency; their team was returning without incident. For any Run, always, covert entry was the second-most vital part. Susan fidgeted, aware that if the hex on the sub's internal cameras failed, an Agency decker would switch off the craft remotely and seal their coffin.
With Darkchild still out there, though, with what he'd done to Corelli, Dunbar and all the rest, a rigger Jacking into the sub or drones might as well have shot themselves before their chummers did. Magic didn't have that danger, but duration was the problem A hex to last all the way to Alpha Base had required a master Mage, who obviously wasn't heading out with the Runners herself. Also, no magic yet developed could get data out of the Matrix; and that was the Run's nominal objective, on which their lives depended.
Ilsa held the mysterious box from Hans Brackhaus by a handle. She was wearing a black Kevlar-weave pantsuit that hugged her curves stunningly, combined with an armour-lined cloak; Saeder Krupp's quartermaster had boasted racks of them. Fighter had her faithful spiked gloves, but she'd traded her battered Kunai suit for the reactive-camo Milspec armour worn by Corp commandos. They'd drawn enough grenades, medkits and fetishes to last probably more than five minutes by themselves.
The young women waited for the wait to end, in the metallic, beeping confines of the microsub. Susan was first to break the silence.
"So…feels a bit funny, Wiz. This is the Big Run...Harry talked about it, always, with that smile. But it's just the two of us, I mean that's good-"
"It didn't make it obvious, even to you, that this is supposed to be a suicide Run?"
"Supposed to be. Hey, it could be worse! You didn't do it with your Knight Errant guy in an actual church, did you?"
"It was a derelict warehouse, which the cultists had desecrated more thoroughly than David and I could have done."
"You sure? If that had been a real church, we'd be looking at Judgement from Heaven, serious bad karma..."
"Honestly!" Ilsa groaned, "Am I the only one living in the twenty-first century?"
Susan cracked up, hugging her stomach. Ilsa only smiled, but warmly.
"Oh, Ilsa…" Susan gasped, wiping her eyes, "I thought my love life was weird! I mean, he sounds kind of weird, but a really great guy! Really nice, especially next to some of the fraggers out there..."
"Such as Nagendra and Darkchild. If you can stop pestering me about my misplaced tryst for five minutes together…our job is to bring 'Judgement from Heaven' as you say, down on their heads."
Fighter looked ahead. Her fists resting over strong thighs, her ponytail hung down like a black flag. She though on all she had learnt, gained and suffered at Alpha Base. The training and the torture, the mind games and the nights without sleep. She thought, from Tokyo to Berlin, on all that the Agency had made them give, for a lie.
"I dreamed about this, you know? Caged up in that underwater can; sometimes I wanted to forget the cause and burn the whole place down."
"Ignoring the problems of igniting an underwater base…I am reminded of the Seeräuber-Jenny song. Pirate Jenny, you would say."
"Um, pirates sound cool?"
"She was a serving drudge, a prostitute, a victim of rape. It is an old story, often retold. Her song is her dream; that a ship of pirates will sail in and blast a vile city to matchsticks. That the pirates will make her their queen and kill every man that abused her, in her sight. Before she finally sails away from the ruins of her miserable reality. It is a legend of anarchy, but I find it more apt–" It was the kindest smile Susan had ever seen from Ilsa "–that Pirate Jenny should sail in herself, for her long-dreamt revenge."
Susan imagined herself, still a victim, still trapped in a corner. Dreaming hopelessly of revenge and justice, on the men who had crushed her too completely to ever fight for herself again. She imagined it, and she shuddered. Her Warrior had hauled her from the pit, but she had clung to his hand; no one could save you if you could not save yourself. And no saving hero for so many other girls–no saving. She thought of girls in the Barrens, trafficked women dying as nothing but victims, and everything she was doing instead of saving them suddenly made no sense.
"Possibly those are our 'pirates'?" Ilsa indicated the sub's sonar screen, "Our avengers, at any rate."
The microsub's computer reported signals from a Vanquisher class nuclear submarine. Fighter imagined it stretching above them, like a sub-orbital besides a largish bird. It didn't need to hide; it was unquestionably Saeder Krupp. Gunboat diplomacy, just as Susan's ancestors had faced. If the threat, or the Runners aimed at its heart, did not bring the Agency to heel–Lofwyr had his claw over the button that would end it. Wipe out all the agents who had killed and died for world peace; the hopeless lie. Unneeded; couldn't that world-spanning Wyrm have cleansed the earth, with his power, decades ago, if it were possible at all? If it hadn't preferred smashing its unwanted toys to make room for more. And getting its slice of profit from every misery, along with every Megacorp monster that straddled the Earth. Shadowrunners and Knight Errant, agencies and nations; pawns in their game, it was how things had always been, but what about her? Another monster, in their horde of shadows?
"Ilsa," Susan burst out, "What should we do, if we get through this? I know, you need to clear your name, I want to find Harry, but…all the drek in the world, are we doing the best we can?"
Shadowrunners who suddenly contemplated their life's purpose while, for instance, rappelling down a skyscraper under heavy gunfire...often did not live to act on their conclusions. Which was probably why–Ilsa reflected–shadowrunners without a purpose of steel lived and died as pawns. She smiled at Susan, proudly.
"I said some harsh things about your Kung Fu classes, but I don't believe I've ever seen you look happier. Martial arts teaching, for self-discipline as well as self-defence, could change the lives of many young women."
"Against Redmond gangs, with automatic weapons? It wasn't enough even for me, on my first Run…" Susan shuddered, briefly, "Ilsa, I definitely want to pass on Lei Kung Fu, definitely, definitely teach women to protect themselves…but it doesn't feel like enough. To protect the weak...Father always said that was the purpose of our Kung Fu, his gift to me."
"You've saved women from traffickers before, but the price was not only in nyuyen. It exacerbated your own trauma."
"Yeah, it was worse than a Run…but isn't that what it takes? If I can save more girls from that hell, if they can live in the light again...I can't hold back! Their lives have to mean more than just me! If we had some Nyuyen, other Runners who felt the same–it would be fragging hard, but we could really make a difference…?"
"Remember; the Agency had a cause. Have you heard of the Daughters of Yemaja? An all-female group in Metropole, Amazonia, their mission is to prevent, or avenge, any violence against women whatever. I don't know the details of their methods, but they are one of the most feared gangs in an exceedingly violent sprawl. The Good Daughter Society, a militant group of chauvinist abusers–" Ilsa's nostrils flared, "–has even been set up specifically to oppose them, and violence against women in Metropole's favelas is still virtually the worst in the world. It is a good motive, Susan; I would simply advise forethought."
"When I think of those girls, I can't think, Wiz. I don't know…if I could really save even one innocent child, that might be enough for me, but not for the world. How can we change the whole thing, Wiz? All the cruelty and despair; can we change the world's soul, somehow?"
Ilsa raised an eyebrow. Fighter's smooth forehead clenched, considering what even Harry would have seen as an impossible dream.
"I'm not aware of a spell for it. The Megacorps, I understand, utilise control of the media and obscene quantities of money. The latter, incidentally, may form part of our 'trifling reward' for this Run."
"Okay…" Fighter's thoughts quickly turned back to the practical. "With just the two of us, Wiz, doesn't it feel like we've forgotten something? We need to get this Brazil Project stuff out of the Matrix. Unless you've got a decker in a box there, if the plan doesn't work…"
"We could make another attempt to fake our deaths. In any case, our plan relies on the goodness of the human heart, so I'm not listening to any doubts from you. Alice supplied me a great deal of data, on the Agency–and confirmed, with proof, one little suspicion I had been nursing. With that knowledge, we are two of the only four Runners who could ever break through this Run of Runs, and place the Golden Wyrm himself in our debt. I will either die, or obtain all I have fought for, Susan. There is nowhere but here that I would rather be."
The Heidelberg Mage stared ahead once more, her body poised like a soldier. Fighter grinned at her partner, courage surging higher. They were coming home, in a way, with a plan. They might just save humanity. The Agency that had used and betrayed so many Runners was directly in their sights. They tensed like penned horses, waiting for the gate, as the sub flew along its shining trail. To the steel nest that was Alpha Base, under the ocean's unfathomable darkness.
"We're going to stick to the plan this time," Susan quipped, "Owe you that much. You're a real chummer, Ilsa. The best."
A shadow passed over the Mage's face, for a moment, as she reached across the metal box to clasp Susan's hand.