There's something about sailing
upon the vast, open ocean to induce feelings of introspection and solitude.
Maybe it's the fact that, other than whoever's crewing with you, there's
absolutely no one else around, quite unlike land civilization. At least
in the cities there's random groupings of drekheads you'd likely never
really wanted to talk to in the first place, but whose feet you'd happily
kiss if you don't like being alone like I am now.
Thank all the little gods that
I prefer being alone, anyway.
Or relatively alone; the Zemlya-Poltava
Swordsman I'm on, its twin outboard Nautilus Marine engines going full
steam, comes courtesy of the Huk. It's crewed by several members of their
'Metahuman Rights Faction', as I remember from the Philippine download
from Shadowland; these same crew members doing double duty as my Yomi assault
team. Apparently these guys do this kind of thing all the time, freeing
prisoners, smuggling in food and equipment, and even killing off some of
the Japanese Imperial guards when they feel the need.
Speak of the devil, and he will
appear... the captain of this boat and the faction, an Islamic Moro elf
who gave me the name Saloman Briones, appears from the small cabin and
joins me under the canopy on the deck. He's a wickedly vicious-looking
individual, his Moro and elvish blood making him very tall and whipcord-lean,
with plenty of wiry muscle to shame a greyhound. A loose cloth is wrapped
around his head in some kind of turban, and he's got one of those long,
wavy-bladed kris swords strapped to his waist. He's unsheathed it once,
to show it to me. It comes out to about 27 inches in length, with some
fairly tight and plentiful curves to it, and somewhere he found the wherewithal
to Dikote the sucker. The kris and his headwrap combine with his looks,
and make you wonder how in heck the Spaniards ever conquered the Moros
to begin with, back in their day.
"We will reach Lagu-lagu by sunset,"
he says with quiet confidence, his English heavily Filipino-accented. It
had taken me a while to figure out his manner of speech when we first met
on Palawan, and I'm still wondering to myself just how well-connected Walter
really is. From what Saloman himself has told me, combined with my light
reading from Shadowland, the Huk (Hukbo Ng Bayan Laban Sa Hapon, the Philippine
rebel organization) is headed up by none other than a great, although young,
dragon by name of Masaru. I'd known that Walter had an ear or two here
and there that he could bend, but this takes the cake. Of course, it also
explains a few things about our meet...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"At least you're not asking for
an audience with Lofwyr," Walter muttered to himself, an incredulous and
maybe even admiring look on his craggy face. We were sitting at a rickety
table with crates for seats in what passed for a meeting room in the tunnels
of the Underground in Seattle, and I had just finished briefing him on
my job. Naturally I had appealed to him on Mika's behalf, and not Kenji's;
although Kenji was the Johnson, he was also a Japanese that happened to
be part of the establishment that had created such a place as Yomi. Not
Kenji's fault, really, but with Walter's philosophy ("If you're not part
of the solution, you're part of the problem."), it was better to remind
him of the girl's plight.
"As if you could get me that,
anyway," I said, my voice joking but my manner deadpan. I don't crack many
smiles, and since I'm headed towards forty, with graying blonde hair, it's
best I don't start. Wrinkles would gain you respect with some people, but
in a shadowrunner, company man, or even just hooders like me, all it gets
you is less work. Folks start thinking that you're slowing down. True or
not, I need the money. And the fight for metahuman rights needs me.
"I think even Dunkelzahn said
in his will, 'Be careful of what you ask for...'" Walter quipped, but there
was a look in his eyes that told me how close to the mark that might possibly
be. Disquieted, I made a short and choppy waving-off gesture and leaned
forward.
"Forget about Lofwyr. Dragons
just mean trouble. What I'm asking for is transportation, mainly. A mage
or shaman for backup would be good, too, but right now I'm just concerned
with how to hop the Pacific to Yomi. Think you could get me an 'in' somewhere?"
I asked. I prayed that he actually could get me some magical muscle, that
maybe he had someone on retainer or something. Getting good help in that
area is rough and like searching for hen's teeth.
"Yeah, I got a few folks I can
talk to," he said, again with that look. I could bottle it and sell it
as "Eau de Mysterious Troll", but I get the feeling that it really wouldn't
sell well. The fluorescence from our light sticks made the walls of our
cave-like meeting room take on a somewhat eerie glow, and made Walter's
cow-brown eyes look nearly black. Those eyes, fixed on me, blinked after
a second as he shook his head.
"I shouldn'ta made that wish,"
he muttered to himself again before continuing. "I don't have anyone that
would fit your bill magically, Marlene. The few mages I know are mostly
busy and don't got that kinda time on their hands, plus these fellas won't
work with a lady, beggin' your pardon." He exposed his yellowing, be-tusked
teeth in an apologetic smile. "I keep tellin' the fraggers that workin'
for the Underground also means workin' with lotsa different folks, but
they don't got it beat in their heads yet."
"Figures. Null sweat, Walter.
I'll scrounge up someone along the way." Maybe. I made a mental note to
start looking through my small database of magically-inclined acquaintances.
"So, who do I gotta kill to get to Yomi?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The last rays of sunlight are
reflecting weakly on the ten-foot high walls around Yomi and its scattered
guard stations by the time we come sailing up. We'd cut the Swordsman's
engines about a thousand meters out and pulled them inside the boat, reverting
to old-fashioned wind power and navigation to bring us the rest of the
way. Stealth, cunning, and a few generously donated (read: stolen) toys
are what we'll be using from here on out.
They must have made a really
good, big score some time back, or a ton of funds must have trickled over
to them, because one of their 'toys' is actually several sets of relatively
form-fitting suits of ruthenium-fibered light body armor that look like
wetsuits. We've already wriggled like fishes into them and, as twilight
begins in earnest, darkening the sky rapidly, we make our final preparations.
A tube of dark face paint is passed to me; with my white skin peeking above
this dark armor of mine, the guards will be able to pick me off in a heartbeat
unless I disguise it.
The sacrifices I make... with
a short grimace, I slather the stuff on. It feels cold and greasy, but
I make sure it covers as much of me that's exposed as possible. That done,
I strap on my web belt, which is carrying extra ammo for my guns (my Mossberg
combat shotgun in a sling holster behind my back), several smoke grenades
and flash-paks, and the best map of the place that I could get my hands
on. Fingerless gloves, with holes in the palms just big enough to allow
access to the smartlink induction pads, go on my hands next, my thermographic
goggles going on last. I switch them on to test them out and make sure
they're working; I'm rewarded with the outlines of my team's heat signatures.
Their last preparations resemble mine somewhat, except their gloves don't
have holes in them and they're mostly kitted out with telescoping sticks,
kris, and tasers. I wonder about those sticks of theirs briefly, but hey,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They're the pros here.
We weigh anchor since all of
us will be going and we'll need to be able to leave quickly, necessitating
knowing where the boat'll be at the end of the op. The figure that I can
barely discern as being Saloman makes a quiet signal; one by one, we all
slip into the water and wade towards the nearest guard station on the shore
in a wide vee pattern.
The water is cold, even through
my suit, coming up to about my waist, and I hold my Predator II in my left
hand above the water. I'm on the leftmost side of the vee with Saloman
at point. I can barely hear the water rippling around us, and a tingling
up my spine lets me know that the team's Dolphin shaman has cast the invisibility
spell on us to prevent our showing up on the perimeter cameras.
They'll never know what hit'em.
We reach the shore and silently
make our way to the door of our chosen guard station. The door has a recessed
access panel covered by transparent macroglass to protect the electronics
from the salt sea air; handing my Predator II to Saloman, I take the full
glove he offers me and pull it on over my right hand. I steel myself, because
the pain will be nasty, then I ball my hand into a fist and punch through
the macroglass. The glass, although a thick polymer, can't stand up to
my enhanced strength, shattering into sharp chunks. The shock of outraged
nerves in my hand travels up my arm and sends brief fiery jolts of pain
signals to my brain, drawing my face in tight from reaction. The worst
of it is gone in seconds, however, allowing me to draw the skin-saving
glove off my hand and take my gun back from the Moro elf. He stuffs the
glove into his belt, then with one clean, swift motion tasers the access
panel. Garbled sounds and displays emit from it, but it does what we wanted
it to do. The station door opens, and we all file quickly and quietly in,
alert for trouble.
A narrow corridor connects us
to the first post, where an Imperial guard was sitting behind a desk with
a computer and a bank of surveillance monitors. We caught him scanning
a tusker porn mag. Looks like the shaman had maintained the invisibility
spell, which is a good thing. I can see a few levers and buttons on the
desk that control access to a few other areas in the station as it connects
to the rest of Yomi and the various corp-controlled prisons; they're labeled
in Japanese kanji characters, however, and I can't read that stuff. We
have the guard subdued and knocked out cold before he can do more than
look surprised. I take the decorative sash from his uniform and ball it
up, stuffing it in his mouth just in case we're unlucky enough to have
him wake up while I'm running around in this rat-maze trying to find Mika.
I push my goggles up on top of
my head and pull out the map I'd gotten so that I could try to make sense
of what the toggles and switches did. One of the other team members, a
lean and hardy but scrappy-looking Korean, notices what I am up to, looks
at the switches, then flips one, flipping a few more near it as well.
"Meifumado," is all he says.
I nod at him thankfully. Might've taken me too long to figure it out on
my own. He looks at me inquisitively, pointing at my map; I step closer
and let him look at it as well. He scans it rapidly, then calls out something
to the others in Korean. Saloman, apparently understanding Korean as well
as Japanese, English, and Filipino, bobbed his head in assent to whatever
the fellow had said.
"He says he knows how to get
there, and we could follow him. I think it is a good idea. Do you know
what cellblock she is in?" he inquires carefully.
"My information told me that
she is with the mentally unstable people," I tell him. With luck he'll
know where that is.
We are not that lucky, however.
He shakes his head.
"That covers a large area. We
will need to question someone there." I don't bother telling him that I
had pretty much worked that out for myself long before coming here. We
don't have the time and I think that he might get upset.
"Fine. Let's get moving before
someone checks on this guy," I reply. I tap the Korean on the shoulder
and indicate that he should go on and lead the way. He shakes his hand
minutely, and out snicks the stick to its fullest extent, about five feet.
Looks like it's made of a titanium alloy, too, so you know it has to hurt
when it connects. My goggles go back down over my eyes and I hold my Predator
in my right hand, the smartlink system linking up and displaying the gun's
status report on my retina. With that done and the guard stuffed out of
sight under his desk, we leave the first post and make our way out the
next door to the tunnel that connects this station to the rest of the island.
The next few minutes play out
like a commando's dream, as we disable or kill every Imperial guard we
come upon in our quest to find Mika. Between some lightning quick moves
on the part of those with the five feet long sticks, Saloman's bloodthirsty
kris sword, and my Predator II carving up the opposition, we manage to
wade through the Imperial guards set at various points along our path with
a little less difficulty than I'd previously expected.
I frown. Not like I really enjoy
this, but this is too easy. Something's up.
Row upon row of caged inmates
stare back at us as we move past them, varying degrees of fear and confusion
on their faces. A few recognize us for what we might represent, and begin
pleading with us in various languages. I can almost see the hope in their
eyes, painful to look at along with their emaciated and battered bodies.
Some of them don't look too deprived, though... mute testament to the dog-eat-dog
mentality that prevails even in the prisons here. These examples just regard
us, cool as cucumbers, smoking cigarettes, slotting chips, or indulging
whatever vice they've managed to be able to get a hold of in this filthy
citadel.
I wonder how anyone can manage
to hold themselves together here. And, from the looks of a few specimens,
I wonder how anyone can manage to keep from suiciding out of sheer despair.
And Mika is somewhere in all of this.
"Mika!" I call out as we go,
since we could not get a fix on her location earlier. "I'm looking for
Mika Petrovna!" Big mistake. Half a dozen inmates began gabbling that they
were Mika, even one male dwarf with drooping Fu Manchu mustaches, drool
dribbling down his chin. He had all the earmarks of a BTL user on his last
legs. I don't have much choice, however. I continue calling for Mika as
we go.
"Hey," one voice manages to cut
through the din, mainly by virtue of actually sounding reasonable. And
speaking English, something I hadn't expected to hear. "Hey, you looking
for Mika Petrovna? I knew her..."
"'Knew' her?" I say, whipping
around to face the source of this voice. I'd kicked on my wired reflexes
three rows back when we had faced off a particularly quick guard, so I
am continually squelching some of the reflexes that I don't want to act
on. Like pulling a trigger.
The voice belongs to a Vietnamese
elf, a girl who looks as if she's spent a little bit of time doing the
rough trade on the street somewhere, maybe Singapore. Whatever experiences
she has had has left a visible mark on her that you can't fail to notice.
Her skin is on the coarse side, with nicotine stains on her fingers and
dirt under long, cracked fingernails. She is wearing a ragged grey shift
that barely comes to her knees and leaves her arms bare. It also bares
the numerous tattoos on her body, which run the gamut from a large, green
eastern dragon slithering up her right leg to vague, slightly ominous looking
dark cloudy swirls peeking from her left shoulder.
"Yeah. Knew. She's gone. They
took her," she says laconically, scanning me and Saloman's crew with an
edgy, almost feral, look. Absently she scratches at some old needle track
marks that I'd previously taken for welts or tattoos.
"Who?" I say curtly, wanting
to get the frag out of here now. If the Imperial guards took her someplace,
my job might become easier or harder, depending on where they took her
and why. And even on whose orders.
The woman's mouth purses as if
she wants to spit, her eyebrows drawing together scornfully.
"I'll tell you, but you gotta
take me with you. I can help you. I got the juice," she says, sounding
slightly desperate but almost arrogantly confident. Obviously she means
that she is a mage of some sort. I glance over at Saloman, whose look should
be pinning her to the wall to allow for a thorough examination. Seeing
me look at him from the corner of his eye, he nods shortly.
"Bring her. If she lies, she
dies." The woman flinches momentarily but nods agreement. Even if she is
lying, in a way she will have escaped. Death is preferable to Yomi.
In half a second we've scrambled
her cell door's circuits, like we would have for Mika had she been here,
and we grab her and make our way back out the way we came. A great roar
goes up from the inmates' collective mouths; howls of despair, of rage,
of pain - and here and there, celebration. Hope can be a terrible thing
to behold. This time I take point; now that I know where I'm going, I can
do us the most good by doing what I do best: making mince pie out of whoever
gets in my way.
We pound back down the corridors,
my muscle replacements making me almost twice as fast as my companions.
I'm almost out of the ammo I'd brought for my Predator, so I holster it
and reach behind me, pulling out the Mossberg. It links up and chats with
my smartlink in my hand, displaying the Mossberg's stats and bringing its
crosshairs online within my field of vision.
Coming up on my left...
I stop on a dime and pivot sharply.
Reinforcement guards have finally arrived, three in this initial wave.
I have just enough time to notice that their eyes had gone wide at seeing
how fast I move before my reflexes kick in and squeeze my trigger finger
for me, doing what seems like a quickie handshake with my smartlink. The
combat shotgun coughs several times in a semi-auto spray, mowing the Imperial
guards down like wheat at harvest time.
"Move out, double time! Reinforcements!"
I yell at the crew as they come jogging past. Now they begin running in
earnest, almost dragging the stumbling woman along. To her credit she's
trying her damnedest to keep up, her face grey and drawn from the fatigue.
But she will slow us down the way she's going. This isn't gonna do.
I snag her from their grip and,
stooping for a second, sling her over my shoulder like a bag of flour.
Somewhere in the back of my mind a vague and amusing thought about a damsel
rescuing another damsel in distress sits chuckling, but I only have time
to think about beating feet out of Meifumado and Yomi for now.
We make tracks and round a corner
in just enough time to avoid getting hit with a smoke grenade lobbed at
us from behind. Shiest, they're gaining on us!
I adjust my grip on the woman,
from necessity using my left hand to pull out one of my flash-paks. I activate
it and toss it behind me to let it do its work, blinding and distracting
the guards. I readjust my grip, my Mossberg free again to shoot with if
need be, and I can see from the reflection on the walls the flash-pak's
strobing lights, hearing surprised and pain-filled shouts.
"Yakuza..." I hear the woman
whisper as we finally make it back to the guard station corridor that will
take us out of here. All I can do at this moment is grunt; my breath is
a bit short from running and the strain of carrying the woman around.
"Yakuza. They run half of this
island," the woman whispers again. We've just made it outside and into
the thick, humid night. A bare sliver of moon shines from amongst the stars.
I set the woman down.
>"Tell me about it later. Right
now, we swim for the boat." I point to the Swordsman waiting like a patient
dog, bobbing offshore. I can just make out the woman, who nods, not looking
at me. The others are already halfway to the boat as we enter the water,
my Mossberg back in its place behind my back and my goggles on top of my
head.
We make it to the boat just as
Saloman and the crew are readying the boat to speed back to Palawan, rigging
up the Nautilus outboard engines. I pull myself up onto the deck, then
turn around and help hoist the elven woman aboard. Captain Briones, seeing
us aboard now, calls out something in Filipino; the engines rev to life,
the boat slewing around and then speeding us away from Yomi. The salt spray
flings cool droplets of water around and at us. I close my eyes and breathe
in deeply, feeling glad to be alive.
"Ichiwa-kai. I know them by their
tattoos," the woman cries out over the noise of the engines. I turn my
head to look at her and see droplets of water running down her face, the
spray pelting her.
"What about them?" I say back,
loudly. Was she hallucinating or reliving something? She does have that
ex-junkie look to her, after all...
"They took Mika. At first I thought
they were coming for me, so that I would do their tattoos for them again
and make their magics, but they laughed at me and said they wanted someone
else, for something that I wouldn't do for them when I had the chance."
The expression on her face is frightened as she recalls what happened.
"They said, 'No, Hisho, she is
to be bunraku.' I felt so relieved that I didn't care what happened
to her, even though Mika and I had talked often," she continues, her eyes
now screwing up in shame.
"Sweet Jesu..." I swear softly.
A flesh puppet. They were going to turn Mika into a prostitute.
The girl curls up into a fetal
ball, sobbing freely with her eyes staring wide, her tears mingling with
the salt of the Pacific.
To be continued...
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