Anthology - SHADOWRUN - Spells and Chrome

Anyway, it had been a pretty summer day and they were working their way through some small family farm that had met some unfortunate and violent end.

They were on the north side of the farm, moving through fields that weren't growing anything but knee-high grass. The jungle rose up before them like an emerald wall, so close that Abiola could hear the cries of monkeys, the chatter of birds, the buzz and click of insects.

They moved across the farm using standard infantry tactics. First squad would sprint forward, while second stood back ready to provide covering fire. First would stop, establishing cover, and then the two squads would trade, second exposed, first concealed.

First had taken cover behind a truck turned over on its side, men laying prone behind the truck's engine block or its bed, AK-97s pointed at the jungle.

Second readied itself to rush forward toward the burnt-out hulk of a tractor forty meters from their position.

Abiola shivered.

It wasn't that he was a coward. He didn't fear combat. He was used to being bigger and more powerful than the men he fought. And he was a devout Christian, so he didn't believe this life would be his last. He did not want to die, but neither was he paralyzed by the thought that death might be waiting for him around every corner. Abiola Fashola was not a coward.

But suddenly he couldn't move.

So when second squad moved out, they went without him.

Giving Abiola a ringside seat when an Igbo ambush cut down every last man before they could reach the tractor's limited cover.

He would never know for sure what had caused him to freeze. Maybe his dreaming mind had looked out into the jungle and recognized the signs of danger: a glint of sunlight on steel, a fern stalk snapped and broken, the sudden peculiar silence of birds.

Whatever it was, from that moment on Abiola believed in it. So he took his fear of the old man seriously.

Abiola turned and hurried down the street, telling himself that things in Lagos were not always what they seemed. The old man could be scouting for the flesh-trade or he could be a corporate hitman, a merc recruiter, a drug runner.

Abiola did not wish to find out.

He ducked down a side street, took another turn, and ended up on Ikorodu Road.

In the late afternoon, Ikorodu was a snarl of traffic, an impossibly long line of cars and trucks so old they still ran on gas. Mixed in with the cars were darting motorcycle taxis called okadas, construction yellow danfo busses so crowded that people hung out their open doors, and the occasional caravan of trucks on their way to Victoria Island in the company of tanks and APCs.

None of them going anywhere.

A brown cloud of smog hung over the go-slow. Horns honked and men cursed. Boys no older than six worked their way between the stalled cars, hawking gum, newspapers, steamed bean cakes, sweating bottles of Gulder beer, anything that might sell to the trapped commuters.

In the chaos, no one noticed a hulking troll moving down the sidewalk.

Abiola Fashola was big even for a troll, two meters sixty-one and pushing three hundred twenty kilos, only the last ten of which were from too much Star beer. His skin was dark chocolate and a pair of ornate horns the color of bronze began at his forehead and curled around like a ram's. He wore camouflage pants from his merc days over heavy work boots. A black t-shirt revealed muscular arms that could pop a human skull like a balloon. A meter-long machete hung from his belt by a lanyard.

He also wore a simple gold cross hidden beneath his long, black beard. Abiola had great love for the baby Jesus, but he tried not to let it show.

In Lagos, universal love and brotherhood was the kind of thing that could get you killed.

As he walked down the street his vision swarmed with augmented reality objects, ghostly icons floating over reality, powered by the mesh network that blanketed the road.

Most of it was garbage, spam pop-ups offering to increase the size of certain parts of his anatomy. (Like he needed any part of himself to be bigger.)

He powered down his comlink and looked around. No sign of the mysterious old man. Maybe it'd all been in his imagination, after all.

Abiola weaved through the crazy, crowded streets of Lagos, following Ikorodu Road another couple blocks before ducking east again.

After losing the mysterious old man, Abiola almost felt good. Until he heard a cruel voice behind him say: "If it isn't Mr. Troll," and he remembered the errand that had brought him here in the first place. • • •

They ended up in a little bar, Abiola nursing a Star beer the street gang bought him. Abiola loved Star, but this one tasted a little off. Bottled beer went for five naira, but he couldn't help thinking this one had cost more.

Abiola raised the bottle in a gesture of respect and said, "Thank you for the beer, Babafemi Kosoko."

Yeah. This one had cost quite a bit more.

The bar was small, a ramshackle collection of salvaged wood over a dirt floor. It was filled with the six or seven area boys Babafemi had brought with him, all of them armed with automatic weapons and wicked looking knives.

Babafemi and Abiola sat alone at a battered table. Babafemi was young and handsome. He wore jeans, real western blue jeans, and a pale green t-shirt that proclaimed: "I don't have an attitude problem, you're just an asshole." The boy couldn't be older than twenty.

His given name meant, "Beloved by his father."

Babafemi flashed a lopsided grin, bright against his dark face. "We've been watching you, Abiola Fashola. Trolls are rare among the Yoruba people. Especially ones who used to be mercs."

"That part of my life is over," said Abiola carefully.

"Yes, but you still have the skills, no? You don't have to be a merc, but you still have the skills."

Abiola took a pull of his beer.

Babafemi was not human, not really. Oh, he was biologically human, Abiola was sure of that, but the part of human beings that made them feel for others of their kind, that held them back from terrible violence, that caused them to reach out a helping hand when none was required, that part of Babafemi was utterly missing.

Abiola hated killing, he was sick to death of killing, but he would have killed Babafemi for a quarter-naira and he would have taken the job without a second's consideration. He would've taken no joy in it, but he would have done it anyway for the same reason one puts down a rabid dog: because the world would be a better place without Babafemi in it.

Except instead of killing Babafemi, Abiola was going to end up working for him.

"The 38 Dragons have forgotten their place," said Babafemi. "They've been giving us trouble."

"Isn't their place down south where Shomolu bumps up against Surulere's northeast corner?" asked Abiola. "Maybe they're giving you trouble because they've got their backs to a killing field. If you talked with them, maybe you could work something out."

A thin, cold smile knifed across Babafemi's young face. "Oh, we're going to work something out. It won't involve talking, though." The boy leaned forward. "And the Ammits would like your help."

An ammit was a giant crocodile. The awakened species terrorized the swamps and creeks of Lagos. It was a powerful and dangerous creature, but Abiola understood that calling yourself an ammit didn't make you an ammit.

These boys, these terrible boys played at being soldiers, played at being monsters. They called themselves tigers or crocodiles or dragons or lions, but in the end all they did was kill each other.

And whoever else happened to be in the way.

"I don't know," said Abiola softly.

"Eighty-five naira," said Babafemi, "and plenty more where that's from. Every time you join us for one of our little parties."