Robert Charrette - Choose your enemies carefully

This was no immediate reaction, so Glover got Corbeau on his feet and guided him through the doorway. Dodger slung his deck and followed. As he walked, the elf finished assembling the compact sub-machine gun he had broken down for their walk from the abandoned car.

The inside of the warehouse was cavernous. Corbeau's footsteps echoed softly in the darkness. He was the only one of the group not wearing soft-soled footgear. Pools of light fought back the dark at random intervals, revealing stacks of crates, pyramids of cylinders, and huge cargo containers. During the day the area would have been a hive of activity. Night made it a sepulcher. With the door to the alley closed, the street sounds had vanished, leaving only Corbeau's soft footfalls and the lap of water against the concrete of the enclosed dock area to break the silence.

They were halfway across the floor, strung out in the dark, when Glover felt a clammy touch at the base of his skull. He shuddered. That was the warning signal he had been told he would receive when magical danger to his person was imminent. He stopped, readying his defenses. Extending his senses to locate his associates, Glover spread the protection to include them. He was barely quick enough. As he closed the shield over Burke, he felt a spell slam against his defensive perimeter, clawing to get in and ravage them.

The magician who cast it hadn't been expecting a counter; he hadn't used enough strength.

Lights flooded the area. Mihn-Pao security had been alerted and had lain in ambush on the possibility that the EPA officers had tumbled onto runners targeting the facility. Half a dozen uniformed guards were on the catwalks in the rafters, readying to fire on the intruders. Glover could hear more clattering to join their fellows. The hard slap of boots on concrete told him that additional forces were charging to intercept them on the warehouse floor.

Burke reacted with all of his chipped speed. His Steyr AUG coughed in rapid bursts as he spun. Three of the guards dropped in his initial attack, killed or incapacitated before they could fire. One of the bodies slipped from the catwalk to impact heavily on the concrete behind Glover.

As the Mihn-Pao squad returned fire, Glover dove forward to drag the cow-eyed Corbeau out of harm's way. His back itched. There was a hostile magician out there. If Glover had to protect Corbeau, he would be unable to counter the enemy's magic effectively.

Single sharp cracks marked Twist's contribution. Each shot shattered one of the globes protecting the lights that robbed the runners of the concealment of the shadows. They no longer fought in a building filled with artificial day. The earlier gloom had not returned, but at least they had patches of dark to hide in.

The elf joined the fray, spraying a lethal welcome into the midst of the first reinforcing squad on the catwalks. The survivors fell back. No doubt they were suddenly glad of Twist's destructive efforts as they retreated into the cloaking shadows.

Darkness would do little to hide them from the enemy magician. Glover forced Corbeau to crawl faster. He needed to get the man to a safe place so he could concentrate on finding his counterpart. Finding a stack of crates that provided a nook out of the surviving guards' line of fire, Glover directed Corbeau into the recess and told him to keep his head down. That done, he crawled back to the edge of the stack.

Using only his mundane senses, Glover started to search for the enemy magician. The hostile was already active and would likely spot him first if he tried active magic. His saw no sign of the enemy.

Twist was huddled in the shelter of a massive shipping crate. At first, Glover thought that the American runner had been wounded, but he realized that Twist was concentrating. His breathing was deep, almost trancelike. When he had first seen the odd knots in the fringes of Twist's jacket, Glover had thought them merely superstitious claptrap, the sort of charms to ward off evil that so many mundanes thought were effective. Perhaps they signified something more. Twist's shooting had been quite accurate. Was he some*sort of warrior adept? Glover hadn't thought that such adepts could focus their energies to improve their ability with projectile weapons, but he didn't know everything about magic. Who could?

Twist released his concentration, spun to his left, and knelt. Cradling his gun in a two-handed grip, he eased forward until he had a line of fire around the crate that had shielded him. Head cocked upward, he seemed to be searching the darkness for a target. Glover followed Twist's apparent eyeline.

There was nothing and no one on the catwalk\a151at least nothing mundane. Glover shifted his perception and saw the enemy mage. She had been standing there, invisible to the mundane eye, awaiting targets. Before Glover could ready a spell, Twist fired. The Mihn-Pao mage jerked and clutched at her shoulder. As she staggered against the railing, her astral aura flickered and Glover knew she had dropped her cloaking spell. Witchfire flickered around the mage's hand as she tried to summon the energy for a spell. The light faded when she slumped to her knees.'It vanished entirely when she toppled backward onto the walk's flooring.

The loss of the mage took the heart out of the MihnPao guards, and the firefight rapidly degenerated into a stalemate. The runners were pinned down, too far away from the boats at the docks to make a break. The security team didn't advance; they were unwilling to face Burke's deadly accurate fire. At least there were no alarms. Likely the Mihn-Pao team leader had no wish to lose face in the corporate community; to call for help against such a small invasion would not be good for Mihn-Pao's public image. The corporation's concern for its image was one of the reasons he had chosen to acquire his transportation from them; they were less likely to report the theft than any of the alternative sources. Mihn-Pao's obsession with image was serving the runners now, but it was a fleeting advantage. Even without an alarm, there would be more troops. Time was on Mihn-Pao's side.

A sudden burst of lambent energy cut the darkness, sizzling past the elf's hiding place and boring a hole in one of the pillars. It was too focused and rigid for magical energy; a new, lethal technology had entered the fray. Glover drifted his astral form free to locate the danger. From the far end of the structure, another Mihn-Pao squad was advancing. They were led by a burly ork enwrapped in the bristly cocoon of heavy armor and a gyro-stabilized gun mount. His silhouette was misshapen beyond the offensive distortion normal for his kind, made hunchbacked by the massive backpack he wore. His burden was the power pack that fed his high-energy laser weapon. The laser, though heavy due to the coolant jacket sheathing its barrel, swiveled quickly under the ork's direction. Glover returned to his body as another bolt tore through the boxes behind which the elf sheltered. Dodger scrambled backwards, seeking new cover. Glover smelled burned hair mixed with the scent of wood smoke and something even more acrid. Small flames played in the charcoaled edges of the hole the laser had drilled through the crates.

Mihn-Pao had played a trump that Glover and the runners could not easily counter. Armor would protect the ork from the runners' guns, but Glover could take out the gunner with his magic if he had a clear line of sight. Unfortunately, that meant the gunner would have a line of fire as well. Glover was quite sure the ork would be faster.

Burke signalled for his attention. Glover softly spoke the words for the spell that would let him hear Burke's words. He didn't like what the former SAS man had to say, but he saw no reasonable alternative. He nodded, and Burke was on his way. Glover started to tug Corbeau out of his hiding place.