Robert Charette - Never deal with a Dragon

Tsung and the Indians made a leap for the Commuter’s landing gear as the VTOL rose from the landing pad. One of the Indians, Jason, managed a grip, but a quick response from the pilot shook him free. Jag watched the Indian land hard and lie stunned. Tsung knelt next to him, gesturing with glowing hands. Her eyes were fixed on the Commuter as it climbed.

Jaq mustered her spell defenses to protect the aircraft and the pilot, only to feel the energies slide past and strike elsewhere. Jaq spun to find Hutten sprawled on the floor of the cabin. The mercs were drawing away in disgust as his skin bubbled and flowed.

“Have fun yourself, bitch,” Sally’s voice said over the radio link.

Dodger found himself able to move again, but he feared that his hostess’s return would change that. In a way he couldn’t describe, he felt her presence still. He wanted to run, jack out while he could, but he had seen the Commuter take off and Sally and Ghost’s people behind. They needed help. He had to get out of here if he was going to do anything constructive.

He turned to find Jenny disappearing into one of the panels, which went dark before he could make sense out of the image it had been presenting. So that was the way out. Reasoning that the image might relate to Matrix positioning, he stepped up to the block that held nine pictures of the deceased decker. He was company property and his equipment would be linked for fast access. It would be a good place to start. Dodger walked forward and found himself in the subprocessor controlling security for Pad 23.

He couldn’t have asked for a better location.

Accessing the camera records, he clipped a copy of the battle and tagged it onto the go-code he was supposed to send when the team had gotten Hutten. He slipped it down the link to the broadcast monitor and sent it out on priority transmit. Sam would at least know what had happened. Maybe he could figure it out.

A strong believer in backups whenever possible, Dodger readied his online storage to accept a dump of the trideo record. When he tried the access again, he got an error message. A quick check showed him that the file had been deleted since he had last accessed it. Wary, he fled the node.

It was a short hop into the pad’s computer system. He activated the service lift and tapped a deck monitor to view the results of his handiwork. Pressed by the advancing Red Samurai, Sally was quick to take the anonymous offer of an escape route. She and the Indians rabbits onto the descending segment of the platform. They leaped off at the first sublevel, and Dodger sent the lift back up and locked it to seal off direct pursuit.

“Sally are you all right?” he asked over the maintenance call system.

“Dodger! Where the hell have you been?”

“No time. Take the shaft down to Pad 19. Code 7723 opens the lock. I’ll arrange something.”

He could hear her calling him until he cut the link, but he had to keep moving. He locked all access doors to the sublevel before heading out to the subprocessor for Pad 19’s control center. A deft touch slipped in an authorization for a corporate helicopter and scrambled a pilot to fly it. He tagged the request with a Code Orange designation to keep the rigger’s mouth shut as long as he thought it was a legitimate company undercover operation. The note he left about what he’d done would trigger when Sally used the code he’d given her. She’d need to know what to expect before leaving the maintenance shaft for the pad. He realized that he should have added an authorization for helicopter armament, and was about to do so when the walls of the node began to go translucent. He fled again.

He skipped down to a slave node that ran the climate control for an office suite on the mall level, hoping the low security would leave him less visible. He wanted to go back and make sure that Sally and the boys got out all right, but he was afraid to return anywhere he had been. He just didn’t have enough jazz to deal with this Ghost in the Machine. He knew he had run as far as he could when the walls started to silver. While he still could, he jacked out.

“Good luck, Sally.”

Sam looked out the window of the helicopter, not really seeing the fences and buildings that surrounded him. Ghost’s departure signal had come almost half an hour ago. By now he would have led his tribesmen in through the perimeter of the United Oil dockyard. Sam had been surprised at how many volunteered after Ghost told them he would do it alone. But it hadn’t been too many for Enterich to supply with arms. Sam didn’t know how he would have stopped any of the warriors from accompanying Ghost, but he’d have tried if armor and weapons hadn’t been available. Even well-equipped, the risks were great.

Things were still quiet, which he assumed to mean that all was well. A lot more bodies were going in than when he and Ghost had made their run into the facility, but this crowd was not going to try to get inside any buildings. They should be safe enough. With Dodger running cover on the arcology part of the operation, they were relying on a decker that Enterich supplied to override the perimeter alarms. She must have been good enough; the compound where the copter sat was close enough that Sam would have heard any gunfire or alarms. The only thing left to do was wait for the signal that Sally and Jaq had succeeded in lifting Hutten from the arcology. And worry.

It wasn’t the best plan, but he had been heartened when Ghost’s lieutenant and four buddies had decided to do the snatch. Sam was relieved that Sally would have some backup other than Jaq’s mercs. Jason’s crew wouldn’t have been Sam’s choice, but Sam wasn’t choosing. Any bodies were better than trusting totally to the good will of Lofwyr’s agent.

For the fourth time in the last half hour, he checked the case on the seat next to him to see that its circuits were in working order. Dodger was to tight-beamcast a trideo record of their snatch for Sam to display when he confronted the Dragon. It would be his proof that Hutten was hidden safely away, a lever for dealing with Haesslich. Everyone was sure Haesslich would be willing to negotiate to get his precious doppelganger back safely, but no one believed the Dragon would accept Sam’s terms. Sam wasn’t so sure himself, but he saw no other course. He must try to resolve this in a way that would leave his conscience clear. If Haesslich wouldn’t listen, then there was always Ghost’s way.

The unit beeped and the telltale indicated that it had received Dodger’s coded signal. That was it. The snatch had been made. Sam secured the receiver as soon as the transmission was complete.

“Indramin,” he said aloud, knowing that the rigger was listening. The rigger wasn’t aboard, because Sam didn’t want anyone else to share the risk of facing the Dragon. Indramin would be flying the helicopter by remote rig. “Time to go.”

The craft’s engines coughed to life and the rotors began to whirl up to speed. With a surge, the ship left the ground and Sam was on his way to confront Haesslich.

The tail Hart had put on Crenshaw had led her to Greerson, who was surprisingly easy to convince that she, too, was working with Crenshaw. The Dwarf, in turn, led her to Verner’s rendezvous point, where they’d watched as Verner split his teams into two groups. From the talk overheard via Greerson’s long-range pickup, she knew that one of the teams was headed for the arcology to snatch Hutten. The fools would walk straight into Crenshaw’s trap, but maybe they’d save Hart the headache of taking out the Crenshaw bitch.

She was glad she’d decided to pass on trying to invade the arcology. The chances of success seemed far too low. The chances for a Matrix penetration weren’t much better. But if Jenny couldn’t slip into the arcology’s Matrix and get a copy of the AI data from the doppelganger, Haesslich’s plan would come to naught. After tonight’s raid, the Hutten thing would be locked up tight, assuming it survived. Then Haesslich would get nothing. She didn’t like to think how the worm would take that disappointment.