The highways jammed with broken heroes
On a last chance power drive.
Everybody's out on the run tonight,
But there's no place left to hide…
Oh, someday girl, I don't know when,
We're gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go, and we'll walk in the sun,
But till then, tramps like us
Baby, we were born to run...
-Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
-0-
The Blue Sky has fallen, the Yellow Sky will rise,
In this year of Jinzi, let there be prosperity under heaven!
-Motto of the Yellow Scarf rebels, 184 AD
Before they set off for the Armoury, Ilsa passed Harry back his dikoted katana that he'd lost at the Embarcadero. And she handed Susan her old yellow scarf she'd left at Club Eclipse two months ago, as SeeräuberJenny. Susan hugged her old partner fiercely, before knotting her father's scarf over her street armour vest.
"Susan." Ilsa said, "This could be my last chance to ask–"
"–about marriage? Aw, sorry Wiz! I'm taken."
"I noticed. I was wondering if your scarf had any special significance."
"Yellow Turban Rebellion, Han Dynasty?" Harry offered, to Ilsa's visible shock, "What? When it's about the woman I love, I can do a Netsearch."
Susan kissed Harry's cheek, before confirming that, by family tradition, her ancestors had brought a corrupted ancient imperium to its knees. Her father had worn the yellow scarf on all his shadowruns.
"If Hetch Hetchy is destroyed, it'll be the poor slummers and metas who suffer. The Megacorps will just leave them to die, but we're going to fight for their future. 'The skies have fallen, the Shadows rise. Prosperity under heaven, and hope." Susan had been a slugger, a singer, never a poet, but she could feel that if tomorrow came, everything would change.
Saving a megasprawl, with Susan beside him–now Harry felt keenly as Ilsa how small a dream it had been. Even if Shavarus and the Tir were defeated, there would be more terrorists, and yet more reprisals from Saito's marines–his vengeful hate rolling over the city again, like a volcanic ash-cloud. The Japancorps' grip on the Baysprawl and the world would only grow tighter tomorrow. So long as San Francisco was still a city by tomorrow morning, not a thrashing, dying chaos.
"Let's do what we can, chummers." Harry broke the silence, "Save the city, slay some Ghosts, do the fragging impossible."
"Well, you do have a wizard." Ilsa swiftly readjusted her suit, her hood, her foci and her glasses.
"You've got a digital ork, more like." Anya, rather than hacking cameras this time, had acquired a Sundowner drone from an Eclipse merchant. It hovered at their shoulders like a metal guardian imp full of grenades and medkits.
Susan wanted to kiss Harry, again, but there was only a moment left to meet his brown, bright eyes. Then she had to tighten her armour, let go of his hand to make a fist, and get ready to Run.
With him–her Warrior, Hotspur. Two shadowrunners at last. Both of them couldn't help grinning.
The custom Hyundai Shin-Hyung sports car loaned by Kali was waiting on the garage level, with her driver-bodyguard gnawing his moustache and tapping chrome fingers. This bruiser, one Goro Ishikawa, made it clear that he knew what he was heading into, but that Kali had committed to get his huge gambling debts to her Yakazu friends cancelled, and take care of his family. He was in to the death. As the four Runners were silent together, he alone had nothing to say.
Then, since Kali had also told them that Club Eclipse was surrounded by Triad forces, they all quickly planned out how they were going to break through that.
-0-
As well as the Remington sniper rifles and M79 grenade launchers overlooking the front and rear doors of Eclipse, the Triad had gunmen and shamans covering the side alleys. Another crew were watching the rear vehicle ramp, with a burn-scarred dwarf ready to toss a proximity mine. The Mountain Cloud Triad had moved a profitable lot of ordnance to Oakland for the MPA's attacks, but they'd eagerly repurposed a shipment, when a time to trade had become a time to kill.
Time crawled past, and dusk descended. The neon draping the formidable sides of club Eclipse like jewellery on a dowager stayed dark, but the streets were well lit. The snipers kept their grim watch from the rooftops, and the Triad Mage sent more near-mindless watcher spirits into the building. They needed to be ready when their quarry stepped towards a door, no frag ups. Hacking through Mitsuhama's hottest ICE to the Eclipse security cams had proved undoable, but no enemy watchers spying the ambushers out had been seen…
Then a wall of flame shot up over the club's front entrance, blinding in the gloom. A few fiercer 49's opened up at once.
"It's a feint, drekheads!" The Mage screamed into his radio, "Shamans, take stage left and right! Rear door, be ready!"
The side-alleys swiftly filled up with green toxic mist. The waiting before was nothing to what followed. The rear door snipers and grenadiers were straining towards a patch of streetlight, where the feared and hated Hotspur would appear–
–when Fighter dropped lightly onto the roof behind them. She had monkey-jumped from the highest window of Eclipse to the next building, with the distractions of the firewall.
"Mess with my man, scum? Mess with me."
She struck as she spoke, as the Triad snipers grabbed for handguns; one spat lead past her jaw before she punched through his. She leapt to a lower roof. A dwarf with a mine stared up at her, more guns rose. She flung down a Renraku stun grenade in an elegant arc.
AK-97 fire still flashed out, when the Hyundai sports car shot out the back of Eclipse with the garage door half up. Anya's Sundowner drone, zipping around the low sports car out of the gunfire, plunked out another stun grenade. No sudden blast stopped the car from roaring out and around.
Bullets clipped the ledge under Susan's feet, as she leapt from roof to fire escape. A stunbolt burst near her head. But then she was hitting the street, sprinting three steps to an open door and diving into the car as they sped away.
"Whoa! Did you see that?" Like it was the first Run of their lives, she was grinning.
"It was beautiful." Harry tried to sound casual, "Of course in Hong Kong, we'd usually exit with a rotorcraft–"
"Zip it, idiot!" Susan poked Harry's neck from the back seat. "You'll get enough chances to show your skills."
Harry was about to say he'd show her his skills after the afterparty when Ishikawa, in the driver's seat, wrenched the car around. A Triad ork smashed his Suzuki Mirage bike into the Hyundai's centre mass and flew over the car before he could shoot it up.
"Mind on the job, kids?" Ishikawa growled, speeding off once more. Ilsa smiled quietly.
Though Hotspur was a fair driver, Kali's bodyguard was a car chase pro. Central 'Frisco's streets were clear of traffic, since the ban on cars, and clear of people, thanks to days of chaos and bloodshed. But the Runners had no time for fear, and sure as drek no time to fight across the city on foot. If a few marine squads converged on the Armoury to arrest them for traffic violations, that was gravy.
"Two more bikes with SMGs," Anya had clamped her drone to the back of the car, "Another one behind, with two pileon dwarfs and a tube launcher. More bikes further back. You up to another firewall, Wiz?"
"Did I ever mention what my doctoral thesis is in?"
Ilsa flicked out a curtain of flame across the street behind them. One of the Triad bikes shot up the edge of some steps and jumped the flames. The other two leaders split off down side alleys, still chasing. Ilsa hissed in annoyance.
"What, your super-egghead thesis thing is firewalls?" Fighter shook her head, as Hotspur took wild shots with his Browning from the front window, "That's your most boring spell!"
"I suppose you never noticed that ninety percent of physical barrier magic is shamanistic? Once I have worked out a general incantation to replicate my personal ritual, a whole new field of hermetic–"
The Hyundai screeched round a razor-sharp bend, throwing Ilsa onto Fighter's chest. Hotspur barely kept hold of his gun; the slipstream roared on his face like a blizzard, even as the speeding, deadly chase fired up his heart. One tailing bike hit the side street wall, in an electric blast.
The Hyundai bumped the wall once, then screeched out again onto a dark street. Fighter saw a Stuffer Shack sign on the corner, in the moment before they shot off again. The city blurred, the roar of the bikes behind them was dull. Hotspur was grinning, but to Fighter it was as close and still within the car as a speeding coffin. Then Ishikawa jinked the car across the street, as a grenade blast smacked into their side. Hotspur jerked back from the shrapnel.
"Shut the window," The bodyguard snapped, "You're not going to hit anything. Grip onto something and shut your mouths, or you'll bite your tongues off!"
All of them were white-knuckle gripping something already. They crashed through a carpark barrier; Goro's cybereye whirred as he wrenched a zig-zag course through parked cars. One bike thumped into a van, but more were racing up behind.
"Hey, you've earned your nyuyen, chummer," Fighter shouted to Ishikawa over the engine, "You want to dump us near the Armoury, slot and run, we won't–"
"Do you ever shut up?" The driver shot back.
"I had to keep quiet for too long. You've got a family, right? That's why you're facing certain death for money? They need–"
"–the money they'll get from the Yakuza. Not a killer with a half-chrome heart they wouldn't even know. I know I'm likely going to die for your fragging shadowrun; don't talk like I'm an idiot, a coward, or your chummer."
Fighter had no response except to curse the Yakuza in Cantonese. Hotspur had to confess he'd spent four months as an enforcer for the Yaks in Seattle.
"Oh, don't worry, love. I spent a month way back breaking fingers for the Triads. Two years; there's so much we've got to share, after this…"
A tender smile passed between them–Ilsa could practically hear the birdsong. Then a huge figure leap into the Hyundai's headlights. A troll with curling horns and long dark hair.
Fighter saw Sarah's face; she howled at Ishikawa to brake. The Hyundai had frontal bars for a ramming escape, and they were going at seventy; Ishikawa was ready to run the trog down. But Hotspur was back in Hong Kong, where his chummer had tried to ram a troll and died–he snatched at the wheel.
The Hyundai trailed a howling skid across the road where Sarah stood, and crashed side-on into a lamppost. A dozen airbags exploded into Runners from all sides, like stunning foam fists.
-0-
As Fighter shook her head to clear the mind-shaking blow, over twenty armed metahumans came up in her vision. Shavarus' people, gathering round them from the boarded squats and wrecked food stalls of the Mission District. Only a few die-hard followers, scarred and hard-eyed, but more desperate Metas with fresh wounds and any weapon they could find. Harried and hunted; ready to take up arms against humanity and the world, or follow the leader Sarah had spent the day commending to them.
The Metas had seen off the Triad bikers with a few bursts of fire. They would have filled the Runners with lead while they were still trapped in the airbags, if not for Sarah's raised claw and roaring voice. As her big hand pulled Fighter out from the car by her neck, Susan couldn't make out her words–only that she saw blood in Harry's hair.
(No saving the city. No happy ever after. The undeniable, unimaginable terror of loving another Runner, and Harry had to feel this too, for her! But he could not be dead, and there was no time–)
"–Shisho! What the frag are you doing here? We need to keep anyone from getting near the Armoury or messing with Lord Shavarus' ritual. What are you doing with those Runners? Another job for Shavarus, or–?"
"Shavarus mind-controlled me for two weeks and beat me bloody almost every day of it. He's doing something right now that'll kill thousands of metahumans, and we're going to stop him any way we have to." Fighter gently moved Sarah's claw away from her neck, as several militants levelled AKs at her head, "Do you want to come with us, or settle this with a fight?"
"STAY CHILL! DON'T SHOOT!" Sarah roared at her comrades, again. The face she turned back to Fighter was mute with huge anguish. Her tusks hung with her lips like a bitter burden.
"Your boy's alright, Susan," Came Anya's voice, "Ilsa's out cold, but I've got you covered." The drone hovered beside her, grenade tube aimed at the metas.
Susan told Sarah how Shavarus had beaten her, how he made her grovel to the elves. She unstrapped her vest, showed the marks on her arms and neck. The troll girl's own nightmares roared in her chest; she tried to say that it couldn't be so.
He had said she was a beautiful troll. That she could be strong, that she had to be strong, that she would have purpose and value, in the world he would make…he had made love to her, without violence. But not with a trace of the love and sympathy in the eyes of this human, her friend, who'd just smashed all she had believed in to pieces.
With a tortured, rage-filled howl, Sarah drew her fist back. Susan did not move or raise her arms.
"Hit me, if you need to. I can take it."
"Of course you can. You're the hero saving the city, you're the fragging HUMAN! You're the hero, but you never got gang-raped, or gave yourself to a liar! You're not the dumb, stupid, worthless trog!" Sarah's head plunged up and down like a bull in pain; she struck her forehead with her hands until she bled, "I can't bear it anymore! This fragging world! Even if everyone dies, it has to change–and only he can change it!"
"You can change it, chummer–you can stop Shavarus," Anya spoke up through her drone, "Then a trog will have saved this city. Not destroyed it, and made all of us the same monsters they hate."
Sarah might have been shocked that a tin can with rotors was giving her advice, but it had been that sort of week–and the low orkish tone of Anya's voice came through the drone's speakers clearly.
"Bulldrek!" Another militant still shrieked, "The Corps control the news, they're never going to say anything good about us–"
"It'll be the truth! And we'll get the truth out, everywhere! That's what shadowrunners do!"
"You steal drek for the Corps! Shavarus is going to change the world!"
Susan could feel trigger-fingers tightening, but she stood still and looked Sarah in her tear-dropping eyes.
"Shavarus' way, or another way? For everyone in San Francisco, for every troll alive in the world tomorrow…it's your choice. Sorry."
Sarah didn't take long to think. She glared at Susan, then yelled to the other militants; they were heading to the Mission. A dark, wiry elf fired two bullets into her chest, without a word.
He would have shot her again if Ishikawa hadn't ripped through the airbags with his cyberclaws and got in front of her. The AK bullet hit him, as Hotspur shot the elf dead over the car's stricken hood.
Then Fighter charged at the guns, still bloodied from the crash, with Ki blazing from her fists and one howl of rage. She spun and broke an elf like a plank. Anya dropped her grenade, cursing militant idiots at full volume. Some were stunned, some fled, others were struck with fear–but an ork swung a bat, that broke on Fighter's arm. A troll's shotgun boomed. She dropped down, then spun up and kicked through his solar plexus.
Hotspur fired his Browning as he raced for another group. Their bullets cracked behind his flashing feet. Some ran, but he had to kill the rest, or he would die. Throwing his gun aside, he cut a zig-zag lightning path from ork to ork. A dwarf Street-Mage scorched him with a Powerbolt. Gritting his teeth, he stabbed another foe as he kicked her nose into her head.
A bullet clipped his arm. A shoulder hit had spun Fighter round, but she planted her feet and drove her good arm through another rib-cage. They were Adepts, with a power, a mission and a cause. The militant street thugs that didn't run all died. Sarah staggered up in an agonised roar, punching one of her ill-fated comrades into a wall, as Ishikawa and Hotspur took apart one last die-hard troll with a bat. Then the brief and brutal fight was over apart from the medkits and the groaning.
"SUSAN! You okay, you're–?"
"I'm chill. Better for not worrying about you, tiger–guess you wouldn't die if the world ended."
"Oh, tha–that's great, love. And I was just checking, not worried. I couldn't even imagine what could stop you–"
"–except death." Ilsa had finally crawled from the wreck to sprawl on the kerb, "Have you Dummköpfe…ach!…finally realised why shadowrunners can't fall in love? You both need…to be ready to watch each other die."
The two wounded killers, parted for so long, shared a glance that knew of nothing to stop their love now. Then they had to help Anya break out the medkits. All of them needed one; Sarah needed a Heal as well, but she was up strong as ever. Ishikawa's Kevlar-weave suit and bone lacing had saved his life. They'd burnt more than half their grenades and medkits before they'd even got to the Armoury.
"They were just defending their homes." Sarah glowered with sullen sadness over the bodies. "Couldn't take being shoved about anymore."
She glared again at Fighter, who had accepted she would share no more tears and embraces with her former student for the foreseeable. The troll girl finally turned to Ishikawa.
"What did you have to protect me for, squishy?"
"Seemed the right thing to do, missy. You're welcome."
Fighter suspected there was more, but they would never hear it. Ishikawa reloaded his Ares Predator, and suggested that they move their hoops.
-0-
Night had truly fallen. Ilsa estimated over an hour before Shavarus completed his ritual, but on foot and poised to meet more attacks, they moved slowly. Hugging the walls, scanning blasted windows and broken shopfronts. From a world of miserable slums and purpose-built corporate cities, they could feel the centuries there; a pioneer city built on a billion ambitions and hopes. On violence as well as song, throughout its history–but before the morning, one troll with one dream meant to end all of it.
The few signs or lights left unsmashed stood flickering weak, and there were still bodies left in the street. More militants, somewhere on the streets–and the gunfire from up ahead, they half-hoped, meant the Marines were already there.
They wouldn't see the Tir Ghosts before getting bullets through both eyes–but as Fighter had said before, you just had to feel. She and Hotspur both let their selves flow out and the night flow in. The hidden figure, the hostile eye, the aiming rifle; the stones in the world stream that Martial Defence snatched out. Ilsa, who the Ghosts would likely shoot first, walked behind Sarah's bulk.
Anya told the troll girl what Shavarus had planned, and what it meant. The children who would die of thirst, the women forced to sell their bodies for bottled water. Over Sarah's heavy silence, Anya asked Ilsa–why was there a fragging great block of castle, in the middle of a Megasprawl?
"You recall that this is California?" The Mage whispered, "They built the National Guard an Armoury about 140 years ago, in the fancied style of a Spanish Islamic fort. It was used later on for a sports venue, as was the old Mission compound. A boxing ring, then a film set, a BDSM porn studio, the world's first BTL factory–and a lunatic asylum. It has been vacant for the past five years and is thought to be cursed."
"Isn't it? If Shavarus is using all that drek…?"
"…the astral residue of human pain and passion, to tear a hole in reality? Magic doesn't kill people; humans and trolls do. Brilliant and mad may be a cliché, but…"
"…but what made him mad?" Sarah's rough voice cut Ilsa off. Anya suggested she ask that of Shavarus herself, "I will. I don't know if I can fight him…but I'll do what I can."
They'd reached the junction of north Guerrero Street with 14th, which ran down past the north face and front steps of the Armoury. The wide, black walls already loomed over the block. The front faced an open street and parking lot, also the gunfire was coming from there. The plan was to head down Guerrero and round, to attack the castle's western side door. Anya glided out for recon, close to the asphalt, while Hotspur held at the corner.
"Okay, tiger?" Fighter whispered behind him.
"Don't know what fear is, remember?" His face toward the darkness was pale, "Want me to hold your hand?"
"Want to get slapped with mine? Focus, idiot."
Focus, focus, when she could have drowned her senses in all she felt and saw of him. He'd been amazing back there, she wanted to tell him, but they had to focus everything, without a trace of clouding fear, on all the things in the night that could kill them. They had to be shadowrunners…
"Five dead marines on 14th Street." Anya's voice in their ears, "Fresh. No…four dead, one gutshot. Sniper–"
There was no sound but a snapping drone rotor, and the pock of the bullet on the street. Anya's drone shot back and crash-landed in cover as she cursed.
Ishikawa was pulled out a repair kit–but Fighter's senses blazed white hot. The back of Ilsa's head was near a window–she yanked the Mage down, as it blew out from behind.
-0-
All the Runners dropped to the floor. Ilsa threw a fireball into the shop behind them–but the sniper stretched out along the Armoury's battlements had shot through the building by threading a bullet through two windows. Fighter could picture Lowri Greenwood, stretched out behind a Steyr rifle and infra-red sight. Grinning, as they heard another thunk–a woman's groan of agony from the dying marine in the street. Sarah began shaking, until Fighter gripped her hand.
"Think the marines are holed up down the street somewhere," Anya growled, as Ishikawa repaired her rotor, "There's a barrier over the front door. Couldn't see where the fragging Ghosts are at."
"Maybe she knows more. The marine." Hotspur and Ilsa both grabbed Fighter's arms before she could rise.
"Susan?" Ilsa's voice didn't shake at all, "Snipers shoot to wound as a trap for heroic idiots, do you understand?"
"I'm a super-fast idiot."
"Carrying an armoured body back?"
"We could both carry her." Hotspur broke in. "I wouldn't risk a chummer's life for a company of marines, or yours for a fragging battalion, but you're you, you have to save her–and it could get her chummers on our side for a bit."
Fighter stared up through her lashes with shining eyes. She clasped her man's hand, and love drove out fear.
The bullet almost cut through Fighter's hair, as the Adepts floored it down the street. They snatched up the wounded marine by arms and legs; hauled hoop. More shots blazed from both sides of the street, some chasing them, some covering them. As Ilsa threw out fire to cover the Adepts herself, she strove to locate the shooters.
The gunfire blazing from the Chinese restaurant had to be the Marines–the Ghosts in the opposite buildings naturally had silencers and camo-cloaks, moving as invisibly as wind. A black and white barrier shimmered over the Armoury's door…
She jerked her head back, a moment before bullets nicking the wall threw grit at her glasses. She'd been Running long enough that her reflexes were worth a mention.
Crack shots that the Ghosts were, the Runners ran faster than they'd expected of humans. A bullet still lodged in Hotspur's vest, and the third sniper shot hit Fighter's leg. She fell, but she rolled to the wall, where Harry clung to her as Ilsa Healed her. Ishikawa–dumbfounded by what he'd seen–was left to treat the marine, a crop-haired young woman, who gladly confirmed that her comrades were holed up in the restaurant.
Within five minutes the Runners had dropped back down the next street, broken into the shop behind the restaurant (whose staff had spent the last 24 hours hiding under tables), and had the wounded marine shout through to her nakama that they weren't the Ghosts, before Sarah broke through the adjoining back wall. Avoiding the doubtless-enraged sniper watching the front was worth a little property damage.
They emerged in a kitchen that had been filthy before the white cloud of plaster from the wall. Which also settled on the black armour of another wounded marine, a medic, Warrant Officer Takahashi and Lieutenant Arai, wounded and grim faced.
-0-
"…didn't we meet at Eclipse, Lieutenant?" Hotspur smiled urbanely as he could, when they were all crouched on their haunches, "Small world."
"As you say…Ronin." The IJM officer stoically inclined his head, as if they were about to duel. Takahashi moved between them; he was weary but smiled as innocently as ever.
"Ronin-san? Our Lieutenant has just led us through some serious fighting, but of course we are deeply grateful for your rescuing our comrade. Grateful for your assistance, in this situation. And since we must fight alongside honourless shadowrunners to protect this city, we will readily fight beside a troll as well!"
It was a well-intended joke, told with a smile–that faded, as Takahashi looked into Sarah's eyes. Fighter stopped the troll girl with her hand.
"Let me take this, Sarah. Chill?"
"Chill like a calm fragging lake…shisho." The growl had a scream in it.
"You're ready to fight beside a troll?" Fighter looked over the marines, with her fists balled, "Do you know what it would take for her to fight beside you? I know you've lost chummers to this city, I geeked some of them, but that's on me. She did nothing to you, and you took everything from her, even her humanity–you Marines! And then are you going to look at her like a monster? When she's come here to save your hoops instead of tearing you to pieces, what is the honourable response?"
Arai seized Takahashi's shoulder. Only the female marine, who Fighter had saved, hauled herself up and managed a shaky bow.
"All chill then?" Hotspur broke the silence, "Nakama to the end, until we've saved San Francisco?"
"Definitely. Just like the anime, Axis Powers Akatsuki." Takahashi grinned (Arai actually cracked a smile at his lover's geekiness), "Everyone fighting together, under the Rising Sun."
(Ilsa was impressed; Hotspur had subtly made sure the marines wouldn't try to kill them until after the battle was over. Even Susan had to realise what was coming; one saved marine did not balance sixteen dead between them. She herself, of course, would be ready to kill the surviving marines as soon as their usefulness ended. She'd betrayed nearly everyone but Susan, since she'd fallen into the shadows, and killed without mercy. Even Anya, before there'd been nothing of her but a copied A.I. She was alive, and would remain so…
…for her work? For the People's University? For Henry? Good things, but she felt suddenly exhausted…)
Keeping low, Hotspur glanced into the restaurant proper, as a wounded marine was propped up at the back to watch the hole. At the front, the security shutter was down over the shattered window; another hole had been blown in a side wall for a quick escape. Three more marines were crouched with their H&K rifles by loopholes they had cut; two more had been shot through the loopholes in their heads. Saito's finest were unmistakably exhausted, and the Runners could sense their despair; but there were few visible signs of emotion and no question of retreat.
"There cannot be many Tir out there; that is infuriating." Even now, speaking of battle lent animation to Arai's face, "Perhaps two elves in both the buildings at the Armoury's northern corners, where they can cover the front and sides. Magical barriers on the doors. One accursed sniper, using cameras to watch the side doors–our rigger saw them, before he was killed. We've lost fifteen good men out of twenty-six, to less than ten daisy-chewing elves. Our comms have been hacked, so we cannot call for backup."
"But you're not going to retreat?" Ishikawa did sound hopeful.
"Not even if we could do so safely. We are Imperial Japanese Marines."
Takahashi sighed and clenched his fist over his heart. Arai's grim-jawed resolve in the face of disaster actually struck Hotspur as rather epic–though Fighter and Ilsa thought it was schoolboy stupidity.
"Are you a summoner, ma'am?" Takahashi earnestly asked Ilsa, "The best way to pass those barriers–"
"–would be to send a spirit through, to smash the empowering crystal." Ilsa thought quickly, "Are you certain the side doors are also protected?"
"I sent six men on a flanking attack. They were driven back despite their best efforts; I believe only two–"
Then they heard the little clack-cough noise of a silenced automatic. The casualty facing the hole at the back slumped down. He had seen nothing; the Runners had heard nothing behind them. They were facing the Tir Ghosts.
Fighter saw the balls of light, writhing like spiders, flying into the room. She could have thrown grenades back, but not burst-spells. The lightning would stun all of them the manaball didn't kill, and a few seconds of gunfire would finish it all. Unless she moved first, if she could…
Hotspur flew across the kitchen as Fighter threw herself at the spells. Their Mystic Shields were already forming. They might have shoved each other away, and died. But their arms that weren't shielding their eyes ended up clutching each other, as the spells they'd blocked with their bodies went off, hurling them down. A storm of fire–Arai's rifle, the Ghosts' Steyrs, Anya's shells, Flamestrikes–passed over their smoking bodies.
When the smoke cleared, one Ghost was laid out in the shop behind, blonde hair falling from his hood like a broken angel. The marines' quiet medic had been shot dead, and so had Goro Ishikawa.
Sarah charged and fell on the fallen Ghost, to make sure of his death or trample him to paste. The second wounded Ghost who'd ducked to one side of the hole, put three bullets in her back.
The elf would have slipped away on his slender legs, but Ilsa threw up a firewall behind him. Rather than using magic against a Mage, the commando rushed her with inhuman speed, ducking under her Flamestrike. He stabbed fingers into her neck, shoved her towards Arai to catch his bullets–but it was the wounded female marine on the floor that emptied her sidearm into the Ghost's back.
Ilsa came within a inch of burning down Arai before he shot her. She saw in his narrowed eyes he very nearly did. But they needed his marines, he needed her for the barrier...finally and slowly, the rifle lowered and the sparks vanished from the hand.
-0-
Fighter and Hotspur needed all the remaining medkits but one; they looked and felt like lightly grilled steaks. Sarah furiously refused anything but a Heal for the bullets lodged in her huge back, insisting she couldn't die until she'd done something. It was a miracle the back wall hadn't collapsed yet, though the workers hiding in the shop behind had been killed by the Ghosts as they passed.
"Who was he?" Arai bowed his head towards Ishikawa's corpse.
"Someone from San Francisco." Fighter carefully closed his cybereyes. Then she rose with an attitude that said she'd had enough, "If I draw off the sniper–if I jump from another building again–"
"–you will be shot." Ilsa rasped, rubbing her throat, "She has seen how fast you are, she will not miss. An earth elemental could shield us, and pass through the barrier–but they lumber, it would be shot to pieces. The more pressing issue is how they were able to trail and attack us…Anya? You've been hacked, haven't you?"
Silence. Then the drone shuddered in mid-air.
"Fragging, fragging frag!"
"I should have known it, when the sniper conveniently missed you."
"They snuck a worm in, a can of mil-spec worms, I never noticed! Hacking isn't just power, frag, frag!" The sundowner was now shaking like the lid of a pot. Arai aimed his gun at it furiously, but Fighter only demanded to know if her chummer would be okay, "I can keep my core code clean, I'm not going to start shooting you, Susan…but I'm only just hanging on!"
"Anya!" Ilsa's word flew out like bullets, "Did your father tell you how we broke through the Agency? With the explosives?" The drone nodded, "A flanking attack, by stealth. Take out the cameras–"
"Okay, I've got my microphones and optics back! The last thing the Daisy Eaters heard was flanking attack and cameras! Now, what's the plan?"
"Oh! You mean like the Agency, when you bluffed about explosives, then took out the bugs so we could make a real escape plan! You two should be really great chummers, you know?" Ilsa glared at Fighter; Anya would've if she wasn't struggling.
"Tell me all about the Agency, babe, when we fragging get through this alive." Hotspur hadn't let go of her hand since they'd almost died together, "What the frag is this plan?"
"Anya can overload the cameras watching the side doors, through her link to the Ghost's decker. The sniper should move to repel a flanking assault, but we will attack from the front."
"Straight past maybe four Ghosts covering the street. Crack shots with thermal sights, Aim spells, and Smartlinks."
"The earth elemental will give us some protection. You have more speed, armour and odds of survival than I do–and we have no time for anything else."
"Not if they saw through that drone how few of us are left." Furious but controlled, Arai reloaded his rifle, "I will charge with you. My men will provide covering fire and hold the daisy-eaters in place. Takahashi, I leave you in command–"
"Don't you dare even talk about leaving me…sir." The marine Mage gazed into Arai's hard, beloved face, "I'm a marine as well, before anything else…whether we die out here or in there, let's stay together."
"Susan," Harry whispered, painfully, "I thought I could go through anything, if we were together…but what if they miss me out there, and hit you? I'm…fragging scared, more than I've ever been in my life. I don't want you to go."
"…oh, Harry. if I'd stayed in Redmond, keeping your bed warm and popping out your kids…would I be me? The girl you love? I know it feels drekky, I'm feeling it for you, love…we're both idiots. But we've got to face it, what might happen. Be heroes, for us and for everybody else."
"I'd fly out and distract some more," Anya's voice was buzzing now, "But I don't think I can blow those cameras without letting their decker grab this drone, so you'd better smash it. I was fresh out of grenades and medkits anyway."
"That's not what we care about," Fighter told her firmly, "Will you be okay?"
"Yeah. I'm in the Matrix–a few days of purging code, I'll survive. Thanks."
As the marines aimed through the barrier, and the runners gathered behind the door of the next building, Fighter and Hotspur had a minute or so. To try and think on their love lost and dead, to not think…neither way worked. Arai stood calm and ready. He grated at Hotspur that samurai, unlike shadowrunners, faced death with death accepted into their heart for a greater cause. Sarah glowered at that but stayed silent.
"'A man's true worth," Ilsa muttered absently, "Is established when he gives his life for his principles.' Henning Von Tresckow."
Fighter's love still tortured her with fear, but, weak as she felt, she had to run. For the innocents than Shavarus and the Tir had killed and would kill–and to prove that would always remain at her hero's side.
She let go of his hand. The cameras sizzled in the distance. Sarah smashed Anya's drone with one claw, Ilsa's earth elemental surged up out of the street, and then they ran.