Shadowrun: Crocodile Tears

A Shadowrun Novella

Chris A. Jackson

One

Politics, Islan’ Style

Trolls don’t fly, or at least we don’t like to. Commercial airliners aren’t big enough for us to be comfortable. Just getting through the door is like putting a size twenty foot in a size ten shoe, and most carriers make us pay extra for special seating. Fortunately, I know some riggers, so can usually get where I need to go in style, at least around the Caribbean.

Our ride roared to a hover over the helipad at José Martí International Airport and settled to the ground as light as a ten-ton feather. The pilot, an afro-Asian dwarf rigger named Hanji, gave us the green light and released our crash harnesses as the turbines spun down.

“Into the breach once again, ay, T’ing?” Hanji grinned as he strode back from the cockpit while the massive Skytran’s loading ramp lowered like a drawbridge. The sweltering Havana heat wafted in like a sultry blanket.

I stood up and stretched. “Anudda day, anudda political hurricane in de Caribbean League, mon.”

Okay, so it wasn’t really a hurricane, more like a tempest in a teacup. The tempest was the bi-annual Caribbean League Legislative meeting, and reps from every island state and South Florida would be attending. We’d skirted a real cat-one hurricane over the windward passage, so the flight from Montego Bay had been bouncy. Tipsy, the mage on my crew, still looked a little green. Her natural color was pale pink. I’d only brought three of my homies with me this time, and she was the only human. We weren’t expecting trouble, and I wanted some diversity. We were here for two reasons: business and pleasure. You get more work at these things if you spread around the love. O.C., an ork and my right-hand girl, is our hyper-chrome representative, and Squish, my anti-social elvish hacker, comes along to nerd out with all of his cyber-crime buds.

“I freakin’ hate politics!” O.C. picked up two cases, one full of weapons, the other our party clothes. Havana’s political scene ain’t like limin’ on the beach; you gotta dress the part at these things. The cases probably weighed a hundred kilos each, but O.C. carried them like a couple of briefcases, not even straining.

“You freakin’ hate everything, O.C.” Squish laughed and picked up his own case, much smaller, but no less loaded full of dangerous gear, albeit cybernetic instead of projectile.

“Not true, brah.” O.C. grinned at him. “Ganja, girls, and guns! The three-G’s!”

“Can we puh-lease get to the hotel before I puke! I need a drink!” Tipsy carried nothing but herself, and did that damned well as she flounced down the ramp. Anybody looking at her only saw the skinny blonde in skimpy clothes, not the mage who could fry them to cinders. Originally from L.A., she’d fled to the Caribbean after a domestic dispute that left her ex and his two ganger brothers a puddle of congealing protoplasm.

I strode down the loading ramp behind them into the blistering Havana sun.

“Not here for de politics anyway, O.C. We here for work!” The bi-annual meeting was really more of a week-long party than any serious attempt at governance, but runners from all over the Caribbean attended because state reps were always looking for capable people to solve their various problems without undue fuss.

“And to make some contacts,” Squish added.

“Bitches, I’m here to par-tay!” Tipsy fist-pumped and whooped. “Just point me to the bar!”

“I’m just here for the toys.” Hanji crooked a finger to the bay behind us, and his shiny red BMW 400GT came to life and edged down the ramp like a massive docile puppy, the gull-wing door lifting. “I’ll see you around, T’ing. Call me if the kimchi hits the turbofan.”

“Will do.” I waved to Hanji as he flopped into the driver’s seat and tore off for the customs terminal. I hoped I wouldn’t have to call him this week. Scuffles between runners weren’t unheard of at these affairs, but a sort of unwritten truce had been established, old grudges postponed. There was enough work for everybody here. We might try to frag each other next week, but here and now, it was all business.

“I thought you said we’d have a ride waiting.” Tipsy slipped on a pair of tortoise shell Vuarnets and scanned the hot tarmac.

“Supposed to.”

“There.” O.C. nodded to a big white panel van leaving the terminal toward us, a Cuban Customs insignia emblazoned across the front. “She late maybe?”

“Or there was trouble.” Tipsy gave me a sideways look and crossed her arms, her “ready for mayhem” stance.

“It’s all irie, Tips. Just chill.” I wasn’t sure of that, but the chances someone would try to frag us at the airport were slim. I slipped half of my mind into astral and centered on the cool scaly presence of my loa. A hot, dry tarmac isn’t the right environment for a crocodile spirit to manifest, but I could certainly have him look around for me. I didn’t expect a magical attack, but it’s better to have your umbrella ready for an unexpected shitstorm than to get caught in the deluge.

“Right! Fryin’ custom officials pretty much always a bad t’ing.” O.C. put her cases down and thumbed open the latch of the weapons case.

The van pulled up and a woman got out of the passenger side. At the sight of her cream-white suit and midnight satin skin, I knew everything was indeed irie.

“Ice Cream!” Tipsy dashed up and embraced her, and the rest of my crew followed suit.

I hadn’t seen Ice Cream for better than half a year, and last time had been under far different circumstances, involving bullets and a particularly nasty Kofo high priest. When my crew had finished saying hello, it was my turn.

“You look good, ti-fi!” I swept her up and squeezed her hard, unworried about hurting her. Ice Cream might look like a thin-skinned corporate wage slave, but under the fine threads, she was one of the toughest shadowrunners I’d ever met.

“And you, T’ing!” She looked up at me when I put her down. “Only four? You’re brave to visit Havana with less than half your crew.”

“Na, mon.” I grinned and poked myself in the chest with a thumb. “My reputation precede me, ti-fi. Da baddest Rastafarian troll shaman in de whole Caribbean!”

That got some laughs and snorts from my crew. Okay, maybe I’m not the baddest, but the only way you earn a rep in the League is to act like you’ve already got one.

“I get no respec’!”

“None at all.” O.C. picked up her cases and headed toward the bored customs inspector.

“Not one bit, boss,” Squish agreed.

“Like, ya get wha’cha pay for, big guy.” Tipsy giggled and bounced off.

“Well, you won’t hear that dreck from me.” Ice Cream punched me lightly in my bulging gut. “You’ll always be biggest and baddest in my book.”

“Same you, Tiya.” We strolled for the van. “Life good?”

“No worries, mon. Steady security work, and nobody’s shot at me in weeks. Julie picked up a gig with a legit legal firm here, and the kids are awesome. Never thought I’d get into the family thing, but it’s nice to be able to come home to smiling faces.”

“Best of both worlds, you got.” Ice Cream and Julianna Hennesy posed as a happy couple, but it was really a platonic arrangement. We’d extracted Julie’s husband from some Kofo cult snatchers, but he hadn’t made it out alive. Ice had promised to take care of his family, and kept her word. “Only family I got’s these reprobates.”

No lie; my crew was the only family I wanted or needed.

“You staying at the Packard?” Tiya asked as we boarded the van. O.C. had already bribed the customs official—some Caribbean traditions never change—and we were all legal.

“True dat. Dead center in de middle of everyt’ing!”

“Party central!” Tipsy did a little seated dance move and whooped. “Come hang with us, Icy! We’ll find us some bad dudes and show ’em how to get it on!”

“Sounds like fun.”

Tipsy whooped again and lurched out of her seat, arms raised, her whole body writhing like something out of a hentai flick.

“I find the level of estrogen in this confined space discomforting.” Squish looked away from Tipsy’s gyrating torso. He was from Salt Lake, fourth generation LDS, and pretty stiff by most runners’ standards, but he was one of the best hackers in the biz, and I was lucky to have him. He groused about our licentious ways occasionally, but we ribbed him in turn, so it was all good.

“No worries, brah.” O.C. clapped Squish on the shoulder. “I cover you ass.”

“Not if I cover it first!” Tipsy turned to twerk her boot right in Squish’s lap. She took sadistic pleasure in my hacker’s unease around women.

“Save it for de hotel, Tips.” Sometimes running a crew of shadowrunners felt like a cross between commanding a hit squad and directing a simsense porn flick.

“Buzzkill!” Tipsy sat down and threw me a petulant scowl that hid a smile. “Just tryin’ to make the Squishy not so...squishy, ya know.”

“You got de entire male population o’ Havana to torture, Tips. Party central in t’irty minutes.”

“Like, that’s for-ever!” She giggled again and winked at Squish. “Can’t I torture him a little in transit?”

Checked in and changed into our party clothes—and weapons—we hit the bar-side pool. The rum started to flow, music played, and the bizarre mix of pirates, shadowrunners, and politicians began to mingle.

Ice Cream had come prepared—she wore an ivory-white one-piece swimsuit under her Armorani—and joined us. True to their plan, she and Tipsy quickly launched a two-pronged attack at two slick-looking Latinos from San Juan. Squish sat at a table with four other cyber-geeks, holographic code streaming past in a blur between them, while O.C. hung with some razorguys and girls, talking weapons, enhancements, and explosives. I sat back in one of the troll-sized lounge chairs, lit up a spliff, soaked up the sun, and people-watched.

“You’re T’ing, are you not?”

I squinted through my shades up at the sharply dressed man and didn’t recognize him. Nice clothes, dark skin, well-groomed, no obvious cyberware. “Mebbe I be. Depends on who’s askin’.”

“My name is Edward DeLaNonce.” He stuck out a hand. His subtle creole accent and general appearance told me enough.

“Haitian?” I puffed and blew a smoke ring around his extended hand. The Haitian government didn’t have a good record with metahumans, and I don’t like bigots.

“You’re astute.” He nodded, his smile unchanged, his hand unmoving. “I’d like to personally thank you for your recent work in Port au Prince.”

I stood and shook his hand, resisting the urge to crush it. “You’re welcome, but why you t’ankin’ me?”

“Your operation eliminated the head of a particularly nasty cult. You accomplished what we’d been trying to do through legal channels for years.” He shrugged and retrieved his hand.

“Kie-Rah-Ma-El?” I puffed my spliff and inhaled deeply. “Da fool mess wit a friend o’ mine. Din’t whack him for you.”

I felt rather than saw someone at my elbow, and Squish held his phone out for me to see the Haitian’s picture and personal data displayed on the screen. His name was legit, a political attaché with the Haitian delegation. My astral perceptions tingled, and I sensed Tipsy close by, smoldering magic seething around her. It was nice to know she wasn’t so engrossed in the guy she was grinding up against that she didn’t notice her boss talking to a suit.

“Nevertheless, he was eliminated, and we’re grateful.” DeLaNonce glanced left and right, perhaps gauging my crew eying him, then looked back to me. “I’m sure that you understand my government’s official response to paramilitary actions and assassinations on our soil had to be as it was.”

“I understan’ plenty.” I grinned at him. The Haitian government had condemned the attack as terrorism and religious persecution, but hadn’t published the identities of the attackers. “Ya didn’t need ta keep my name out of it, but ya did. Not really necessary, but I be appreciatin’ it.” The shadow network knew who had mounted the op and why. Nobody fucks with friends of mine.

“You’re welcome. But I didn’t approach you here to exchange thanks.” He made a giving gesture with both hands. “I would like to reciprocate—unofficially, of course.”

“Oh?” I puffed my spliff and made a dismissive gesture that my crew could read. DeLaNonce was a politician, and no threat. Squish backed off, and the buzz of magic in my mind winked out. “An’ how might ya do dat?”

“Let me buy you a drink.” DeLaNonce gestured to the bar. “I’ll explain.”

“A’right.” I motioned him ahead. “’ope ya don’t mind if I stick to wata.” I puffed my spliff and blew another smoke ring. “Rasta, ya know.”

“Of course.” DeLaNonce ordered a fruity rum drink for himself and a tall glass of ice water.

We sat and faced off, and his features went suddenly serious. “I thought you’d like to know that the Kofo aren’t happy with the death of their high priest. The snake is not dead, only injured, and there is little more dangerous than an injured serpent.”

“True dat!” I puffed and sipped my water; it was flavored with lime. “Ya sayin’ dey gunnin’ for me?”

“Not quite yet. They haven’t the resources to mount an effective operation, and their Jamaican efforts have been significantly curtailed, but you’re high on their list. Their financial situation was damaged by a failed operation last year, then your assault on their stronghold and elimination of their high priest set them further back. They have, however, recently contracted out their services to a well-backed...entity. If they’re able to regroup financially, you’ll undoubtedly have trouble with them sooner or later.”

That was one problem with being high-profile and having a fixed address. The Caribbean isn’t like the mainland. Runners tend to have close connections to communities, and help locals as much as they help themselves. The payback is that nothing happens within fifty miles of Montego Bay without me knowing it. I’d known about the Kofo’s efforts in Jamaica before I helped Ice Cream snatch her friend from them and take them down a notch. As a consequence of that run, and some careful prodding afterword, their Jamaican land and people grab had been thwarted.

Yeah, they hated me a lot.

“An’ who be dis entity dey workin’ with?”

“I don’t know, and I hesitate to dig too deeply for fear of reprisal. The Kofo dislike me almost as much as they dislike you, you see.” He sipped his drink, fished a business card from the inner pocket of his suit jacket, and slid it across the bar. “This fellow, however, may be able to help you find that out. He brokers information to the League. A bit of a...patriot, in a wide sense. He has no allegiance to any particular government, but has come to the League’s aid on multiple occasions.”

I picked up the card. It looked blank, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything on it. It screamed “shadowrunner” louder than a kaiso band at Carnival.

“Ask this man what he knows about the Kofo’s dealings.” DeLaNonce stood and smiled. “It would be in your best interest. If the Kofo regain prominence, you and yours will definitely be at risk.”

We were pretty much always at risk, but I appreciated his offer. “Only one more question: Why tip me off? Why you care what ’appens to a gang of Jamaican runners?”

“Quite frankly, neither I nor my government do care, but we do not want the Kofo to gain in power.” He nodded and raised his glass to me. “We help you, you help yourself, and us in the process. Everybody wins.”

“An’ if I find out the Kofo are into somet’in’ big, who gonna foot the bill for me to risk my pretty neck in stoppin’ ’em?”

“If you need any...compensation to facilitate your interference with the Kofo, I’ll help to arrange financing from the League.” He slipped his own card across the bar to me. “Within reason, of course.”

I arched an eyebrow in surprise. I’d never been offered a job by the whole Caribbean League before. Of course, this could be a set-up or an outright lie, too. I picked up his card anyway. “A’right. I’ll look into it.” And you too, buckaroo.

“Good hunting.” DeLaNonce got up and left. I looked over the blank card again, flipped it over, but still found nothing on it.

“What was dat about?” O.C. asked at my shoulder.

“Dunno.” I turned to find her and Squish looking nervous. “Mebbe we got somebody to talk to. Some Kofo t’ing we might gotta deal with.”

“Kofo again?” O.C. snorted in disgust. “Don’t dey evah learn?”

“Don’t look like it.” I handed the card to Squish. “Check dis out.”

“On it, boss.” He took the card and hustled off.

“What flavor trouble be dis, T’ing?” O.C. asked.

“Dunno yet. Mebbe just a little preventative maintenance. Kofo mebbe cuttin’ a deal with someone big. Whatevah it be, if dey win, we lose. DeLaNonce said dis guy’s an info broker, may know somethin’.”

“We meet with dis guy, you wanna go in locked and loaded?”

“Better safe dan sorry, but keep it low profile.” I nodded at the pool bar, where Tipsy and Ice Cream were still chatting up the Latinos. “Mebbe tell de ladies we might need dere services.”

“Tips’ll be pissed.”

I checked the time and shrugged. “Prob’ly won’t need her for at least a few ’ours. Tell her to party fast.”

Two

That Voodoo You Do

Squish’s analysis of the card revealed an imbedded code layer that, when accessed, pulled up a video call to a skinny middle-aged mulatto man with acne scars so deep it looked like he’d taken a medium-range shotgun blast to the face.

“Who be you?” the face asked.

“Squish. Work for T’ing’s crew out of Montego Bay. Got your card from a Haitian named DeLaNonce.”

“’Kay. Know him sure. Dig up info for him sometime.” He shrugged. “I’m Nix. Wha’chu need?”

“I’ll let my boss do the talking.” Squish turned the pickup to me.

“DeLaNonce said ya hadda line on a deal de Kofo just made. Somethin’ big. High rollers wit’ serious bank.”

“I might have such.” He shrugged again. “What’s it to you, brah?”

“Me and de Kofo go way back. Bad blood. When dey win, I lose. Anyt’ing you got on their dealin’s would be of interest.”

“How much interest?” He rubbed fingers and thumb together in front of the pickup. “Ain’t nothin’ free, brah.”

“Tell ya what. Dig up all ya can on ’em, and den we meet and exchange pleasantries.” I made a vague warding sign against demons. “I don’t like discussin’ business on the net.”

“Where you be?”

“Havana. We be discussin’ de socio-political situation of de Caribbean States with de League legislative reps.” I grinned my best piratical crocodile grin.

He barked a laugh. “Sweet. I be in town. Gimme six hours, den we meet. I come to you, brah.”

“Six hours.” I checked the time. “We at de Packard. Room eight-fifty-two.”

“I’ll be dere.”

The line went blank.

“Ping the crew, Squish. Six hours.”

“Six hours, boss.”

Tipsy was pissed that her party had been interrupted, but showed up on time and reasonably sober. Ice Cream bowed out when she learned the details, and rightly so. She technically wasn’t on my crew, but had been targeted by the Kofo before, so she had a vested interest. If we needed help, she’d be there, but the negotiations weren’t her business. Tiya had promised to keep the two Latinos company for Tipsy, which was one more reason Tips was pissed. She stood in the corner of the room with her arms folded, still wet from the pool, glaring at me. I could feel the mana crackling beneath her skin, ready to explode at a snap of her fingers.

“Chill, Tips. Just an info broker.”

“Or a Kofo set-up, and we’re all about to get geeked,” she countered.

“De t’ought ’ad crossed my mind.”

That was why Squish and O.C. weren’t in the room with us. The former sat in the adjoining bedroom, or at least his body did. His mind was in the net, hacked into the hotel’s surveillance system, the League’s security network, and even a satellite feed and Havana’s traffic CCTV systems. I wore an earpiece linked to Squish’s net persona. He would give me Nix’s position as soon as he appeared, and alert me if he spotted anything untoward.

O.C. stood on the roof of the hotel right above our room. If the fertilizer hit the air conditioning, she’d come in through the balcony window with guns blazing. For my part, I had half a dozen power fetishes braided into my dreads, and my loa, Croc, lurked in astral space, watching. If a magician so much as farted within a city block, I’d know.

“A waiter just got off the elevator,” Squish’s voice hissed in my ear. “Could be trouble.”

“’ow’s a waiter trouble?” I asked, my question relayed to Squish through video and audio pickups he’d placed around our room.

“Trouble?” Tipsy’s hands dropped, lightning writhing around her hands and up her arms, her wet hair crackling.

“Just chill for now,” I told her.

She nodded, but didn’t drop her spell. If she looked pissed before, she looked homicidal now.

“Nobody on the floor’s ordered room service,” Squish replied. He must have hacked into the hotel’s phone system, too. He might be a socially repressed cybergeek, but he was thorough.

“Ya didn’t order room service, did ya, Tips?”

She shook her head.

“Ya sure dis ain’t our guy, Squish?”

“Not even close. Chalk-white ’fro cut short, pasty skin. He’s carrying a service tray, but I don’t see any weapons.”

“White guy just got off de elevator on our floor,” I told Tipsy. “He’s carryin’ a tray like he’s deliverin’ room service, but nobody’s ordered.”

“Just one guy?” Tipsy frowned. “Nobody’s stupid enough to try to hit you with only one operator. This’s like got to be our guy in disguise.”

“Might be,” Squish agreed. “At our door in five...four...three...”

“Get de door, Tips.” I centered myself and readied a stunball. I didn’t want to damage the hotel or our guest too badly. “Find out who dis be.”

“Like, sure.” Tipsy banished her spell and started for the door, reaching back to unclip her bikini top on the way. She hung it on a lamp fixture as the doorbell rang.

This wouldn’t be the first time she’d used her tits as a moment’s distraction. That moment often meant the difference between life and death in our business. What else she might be planning, however, worried me.

“Try not ta scare de guy too much, please.”

“Who, me?” She snorted a laugh and shot me a wink. “Like I could scare anybody when you’re in the room.”

I grinned at her, but couldn’t really disagree. I do scare normals sometimes, but that’s not my fault. Humans tend to fear trolls for their size and strength, and assume we have short tempers, a racial profile I’ll admit I’ve used to my advantage before. When I start slinging magic instead of my fists, it surprises people.

Tipsy opened the door wide. “Oh, lookies! A cute guy with food! That’s like a two-fer!”

The guy, who looked nothing like the man I’d seen on the video call, gaped at Tipsy, pale blue eyes wide and mouth agape. He wasn’t very tall, and his features, though chalk-white, were afro-carrib. I’d seen coloration like his before, not true albinism, but an inherited absence of pigmentation. He also had a data port in one temple. The tray in his hand quivered.

“Wa...who’re you?” Then his eyes finally focused beyond Tipsy’s breasts and saw me. “What de...” He swallowed hard.

“The question is, who are you?” Tipsy grabbed his crotch with one hand and summoned her lightning spell in the other. “Answer, or your testicles are tater-tots.”

Now the tray really shook. “I’m...Nix.”

“Ya don’t look nothin’ like de dude I talked to.” I motioned Tipsy to bring him in.

She backed him up against the wall just inside the door. I stepped up and took the tray before he dropped it.

“C-cee gee.” He stuttered. “M-my avatar. You spoke to my avatar. No need for violence here.”

Squish’s voice crackled in my ear. “Tell Tipsy not to fry his nuts off, boss. Voice print matches, even if his face doesn’t.”

“Squish says it’s him, Tips. Chill.”

“Tits?” Nix’s pale eyes flicked from me to Tipsy’s breasts again. “What?”

“Not tits, Tips.” She gave his crotch another squeeze and banished her lightning spell. “Short for Tipsy.” She grinned at him, her hand still on his pants. “No hard feelings. Wanna drink?”

“Sh-sure.” Nix grinned as she let him go, his eyes following her as she bounced to the suite’s bar. “You be nervous types, you.”

“We be stayin’ alive types, we.” I gestured him in and peeked under the lid of the tray in my hand. A huge plate of pork shoulder, black beans, and fried plantains. My mouth watered. “It’s all irie, O.C. Nix just gave us a tense moment, but he brung food, so all’s forgiven.”

“I’m in.” O.C. slid the glass door to the balcony aside and unclipped her repelling line. She wore two SMG’s on her web gear as well as several grenades. “You Nix, brah?”

“Dat I be.” Nix seemed to have recovered some of his composure, and accepted a rum and tonic from Tipsy while trying not to stare at her breasts.

“O.C.” My razorgirl held out a fist for a bump. “Respec’.”

“Yes, sista’.” Nix bumped and downed half his drink.

“Boss!” Squish stepped into the room, looking uncomfortable. “Would you please tell Tipsy to put away her plus-two tits of distraction?”

“Hey!” Tipsy grabbed her boobs like they could shoot lasers and glared at him. “These are at least plus-six tits!”

“In your dreams,” Squish countered, trying valiantly to ignore her natural attributes. He held out a hand to Nix. “I’m Squish. IT. Nice avatar, by the way. Totally fooled me. Ignore Tipsy. She’s mostly harmless.”

Tipsy humphed in disgust and bounced over to retrieve her top. “So, do you like need me here, T’ing? I’m like so not into standing here just to take abuse for the rest of the night!”

“No problem, Tips. Have fun,” I said around a mouthful of pork.

“Hey! Fun is like my middle name!” She twirled her bikini top on a finger and left the room.

“She’s...” Nix cleared his throat and downed the rest of his drink.

“Dat she be. Now, have a sit down and tell me what ya dug up ’bout de Kofo.” I sat on one of the plush couches and put the tray of food on the table at the center of the seating area.

“Yeah, mon!” He sat. “I don’t got many details, but de deal’s with Aztechnology.”

“Big boys indeed.” Squish snagged a plantain from the tray and took a seat. “Serious funding.”

“True dat!” O.C. went to the bar and poured rum over ice.

Nix nodded. “Millions. I follow de cash. Big payments ta Kofo priests in Haiti, specifically, Kie-Rah-Ma-El’s successor. Azzies bought some serious magical talent. Four shamans flew west to Belize, then fell off-grid. These four, dey specialists in cloaking magic. I t’ink the Kofo mebbe helpin’ de Azzies get a foothold in de islan’s. Hidin’ somethin’ for ’em, mebbe.”

“Mutha...” My teeth grated together.

Squish shook his head. “Didn’t think even the Kofo were that stupid.”

“I be sure dey gettin’ a piece of de pie.” O.C. delivered another rum to Nix and brought one for herself.

“No doubt about dat.” I ate more pork and thought while I chewed. “So why ain’t the League diggin’ deeper into dis? It’s dere problem, right?”

“League can’t officially poke dere noses into Aztlan. Blowback would be like a cat-five rippin’ t’rough de islan’s.” Nix sipped his rum and pointed a finger at me. “Unofficially be different.”

“Deniability.” I nodded. If League operatives got caught hacking Aztechnology, there would be an international incident. Aztechnology wasn’t like most corporations; Enrico Silva wore three hats as the corporation’s CEO, Aztlan’s president, and a major religious leader, and their global approval had soared since their cooperative effort with the Corporate Council in South America. Pissing off Aztechnology would be a no-win scenario for the League. Shadowrunners, on the other hand, couldn’t be traced back to blame anyone. “Which be why DeLaNonce came to me.”

“You got it, brah. He knows you geeked Kie-Rah-Ma-El. You mebbe look into dis for free.”

“Not free, but maybe at cost.” I ate and thought about it. “Belize, you say?”

“Dat’s where de Kofo flew into, but after dat?” Nix shrugged. “I deal in info. Hackin’ into Aztlan above my pay grade, brah.”

“Not mine.” Squish nudged me. “Say the word, boss.”

“Word.” I nodded and shoveled more pork into my mouth. “We need to look into dis.”

“I’ll send you all I got, no charge.” Nix stood and downed his rum. “The Azzies start grabbin’ islan’s, we all hosed hard.”

“T’anks.” I stood and shook his hand, then turned to Squish. “Dig deep. I wanna know who picked these Kofo up at de airport, who drove de car, where dey went, who dey met, and what dey ate fa suppa.”

“I’m on it, boss.” He headed for the bedroom.

“If you need somethin’ you can’t get, hook up with Ice Cream and contract Skeeve’s services.” Skeeve was an ace fixer, and could pull talent from all over the world. “League’s pickin’ up the tab.”

“Affirmative, boss.” Squish closed the bedroom door.

“Nix, if you learn anything new...”

“You’ll get a visit from my avatar.” He grinned and headed for the door. “Maybe I’ll mosey down to the pool for some limin’. Buy Tipsy a drink or three.”

“Have fun.” My brain was so far from where my body stood, I felt like I needed warp drive to catch up.

“So, we on de job?” O.C. asked.

“Yeah. Let de rest of de crew know. ’Til Squish get a handle on who dese Kofo met in Belize, we in a holdin’ pattern.” I pulled my phone and punched up DeLaNonce’s number. “I’ll secure a deposit from DeLaNonce, and we in business.”

“Raja dat!” O.C. unclipped her web harness and dropped her gear on the couch. “You know where to fine me.”

“Party fast.”

“Ay-firmative!” She grinned and headed for the door.

DeLaNonce answered on the second ring. “Mister T’ing. All’s well, I trust.” I heard music and voices in the background.

“Well enough. We need ta talk about funding.”

“I’ll come to your room with my financial people.”

“T’anks.” I hung up and started to pace. Kofo were bad enough. If they’d hooked up with Aztechnology, it’d be like pouring gasoline on a fire.

Three

Sun and Fun

Tipsy was angry with me again for tearing her away from Havana—I was sensing a pattern here—and we were crammed into a commercial airliner, so our moods matched perfectly.

Two days in Havana, and Squish had traced the four Kofo shamans through their brief stay in Belize City. We still didn’t know where they’d gone, only that they’d posed as tourists, boarded a fifty-foot sport fishing boat six weeks ago, and never returned from their fishing trip. He’d hacked the marina’s security recordings, which clearly showed the boat leaving with them aboard and returning without them. A boat like that could have dropped them anywhere in a hundred-twenty-mile radius in the time it had been out of the marina. The captain’s name was Moyo, the boat Reel Good Time, and he seemed to run a legitimate charter business. He’d brought four mahi and one wahoo back from the trip, but no passengers, unless he’d transformed them into fish.

We also had video of the four Kofo shamans sitting down to dinner with a Belizean businessman named Greggo Tampaño the night before their one-way boat trip. On the surface, Tampaño ran an employment referral service for the tourist industry. Beneath, he was deep into Aztechnology’s pockets, working as a talent scout. Between him and Moya, we stood a good chance of digging up the truth.

Squish had learned more about Tampaño than Captain Moya. The captain lived on his boat, had no wife or significant other, paid his bills on time, and serviced his own vessel. He had one crewperson, a local young woman named Maria Najara, who baited hooks, cleaned the boat, maintained the fishing gear, and even served the wealthy passengers drinks and snacks. She lived with her unemployed husband and two daughters in the city. Moya seemed almost too clean.

Tampaño, on the other hand, we knew a lot about, from his wife, one kid, two mistresses, one brother, two sisters, deep debts to some shady characters that supported his high-end lifestyle, including the purchase of a palatial hacienda, and connections all around the globe. He wasn’t exactly dirty, but he’d hired runners to snatch talent for Aztechnology in the past.

Tipsy suggested we press Najara, which might work. She had a lot to lose, and applying pressure would be easy. But if she didn’t know anything valuable, we’d be hosed. I didn’t want to tip off the big boys by going for lesser prey first.

We—meaning me and my surly mage counterpart—landed in Belize City, and spent a grueling three hours going through customs and immigration. I’ll give one thing to the Azzies, they’re thorough. The documents the League had provided stood up under their scrutiny, and our bags contained nothing but clothes and suntan lotion. The beauty of being a practitioner of the arcane arts is that no security scan yet devised could peg you as one, and no pat-down could take away your weapons. Good thing, too; Aztlan is picky about who they let into their country. Unsanctioned magical adepts are forbidden entry, and anyone sporting chrome like O.C. would have never even been allowed to deplane.

We were posing as a couple on vacation, and the only interest we drew were the stares of two bigots who disapproved of interracial couples standing in front of us in the line at customs. I just grinned at them, mentally daring them to say something snide. They didn’t. Too bad. After two hours wedged into a seat barely big enough for me, I wanted to squash something.

We’d booked a room in a hotel Squish had assured me Tampaño frequented, but finding a troll-sized cab took us another half-hour. By the time we arrived, all I wanted was to burn a spliff, float in the pool, and soak up the sun.

I did.

Nothing reboots my nerves like ganja and floating in warm water. Must be the crocodile in me. I drifted for an hour like a big hairy island, my dreads a ropy halo of tentacles around my head. Tipsy chose a seat at the swim-up bar, and, two mojitos later, forgave me for dragging her along.

We had just started watching for Tampaño in earnest when I got a text from my aunt Squishy that my uncle wouldn’t be visiting until the following day. With nothing better to do, we went for a walk down to the marina where Mora kept his boat, playing the happy couple looking for something interesting to do on our vacation. Reel Good Time wasn’t in her slip, so we settled in at the bar and waited. I smoked, Tipsy had her third mojito, and our ship finally came in as the sun started to set.

Right on cue, Tipsy said, “If you wanna catch a fish, honey, that boat looks like a good one.”

Indeed, the four happy and moderately intoxicated tourists who had chartered Reel Good Time for the day were grinning and having their pictures taken with their catch, three not-so-happy billfish. Tipsy and I ambled down the dock. The tourists finished with their pictures and wobbled their way past us, laughing and telling stories. Moya certainly ran a legitimate fishing charter.

“Looks like you had a good day,” I said in my best mainland tourist accent.

“Fair.” Moya looked back from lowering the three billfish on a cart to take them up the dock. His eyes fixed on me first, then drifted to Tipsy, then back to me. “You lookin’ to book a trip?”

His Latina crewperson, Maria, looked up from scrubbing the blood from the boat’s shiny transom, but didn’t say anything and didn’t smile. She looked tired, but not evasive.

“Maybe. We’re here for the week.”

“It’s such a pretty boat,” Tipsy piped up.

“Thanks.” Moya grinned. “She’s my baby. Where are you stayin’?”

“The Biltmore.”

“You can book through the concierge there.” His eyes clicked back and forth between us again. Yep, nothing to see here but a couple of tourists. “I’m open on Thursday, I think. Just the two of you?”

“Yep. Always wanted to catch a big one.” It was Monday, but if Tampaño didn’t pan out, we might need an alternate plan.

“Well, I can’t guarantee anything, but we usually land at least one.”

“What do you do with the fish?” Tipsy asked, peering at the dead billfish with a frown.

“The really big ones we release. These’ll go to the hotel chefs. You may have one for dinner tonight.”

“Nothing like fresh fish!” I settled a hand on Tipsy’s back, our signal that we were done. “I’ll set it up with the concierge, then.”

“Hope to see you on Thursday!” He waved pleasantly and went back to his work.

Tipsy and I ambled up the dock and headed back to the hotel.

When we were out of earshot, she said, “Well, that was a waste of time.”

“Maybe not. If we don’t get what we need from Tampaño, we’ll go fishin’ with Moya.”

“Won’t that be fun!” Her voice dripped sarcasm.

“Look on de bright side.” I gave her a gentle nudge. “The League’s payin’ for dis, and we got nothin’ to do but look like tourists ’til tomorrow mornin’.”

She gave me a sour look. “And I get to play the part of your doting spouse. Oh joy!”

“Could be worse. I could have sent you here with Squish.” She snorted a laugh, but I knew how to cheer her up. “Only one more question we gotta answer tonight.”

She squinted up at me. “And what’s that?”

“Beach or pool?”

“That is a serious question.” She hung onto my arm like a dutiful wife. “Beach, I think. The pool chlorine’s killing my hair.”

“Beach it is.”

The next morning, after I got the sand out of my dreads and Tipsy killed her hangover with breakfast and a couple Bloody Marys, we booked a Thursday trip aboard Reel Good Time, and settled down to watch for Tampaño.

The place livened up in the afternoon, and that was when our mark showed. He wore a thousand-nuyen suit and chatted with local and visiting businesspeople, mostly, but I knew from Squish’s dossier he had an eye for the ladies.

I waited until there was an open spot at the bar near Tampaño, and unleashed my secret weapon.

“Time to make the play, Tips,” I whispered.

“Sure.” She downed her martini and slapped me hard across the face. “I’ll drink as much as I want! You’re not my goddamn father!” She whirled away and flounced to the bar.

“Bitch!” I glared and rubbed my face. Her ploy caught every eye in the place, Tampaño’s included. I turned away, heading for our room, but glanced back at the stairs to spot our mark facing Tipsy and motioning for the bartender.

In our room, I recovered my phone and texted Squish: <Hook is set.>

I received, <On him like white on rice, boss.>

Squish had hacked half the security feeds in Belize City. The only place he couldn’t spy in our hotel was inside the private rooms. We’d estimated it would take Tipsy about half an hour to land the fish. Tampaño had a deal with the hotel; one room on the second floor was always kept open for him, just in case he needed someplace to conduct a private business meeting. Squish would keep me appraised of the situation, and Tipsy wouldn’t really be alone with Tampaño until she stepped into his room. That would be a tense few minutes.

Tipsy assured me she could handle one Latino businessman, but I worried anyway. It was a good thing the floor of our room was tile. I would have paced a carpet to tatters.

My phone vibrated. Squish’s text read: <She’s reeling him in.>

I tapped, <Text when they’re inside,> and resumed my pacing. The last thing we wanted was to have Tampaño spot me while he was picking up my supposed spouse.

My phone vibrated again. <They’re climbing stairs now. She’s either drunk or faking it really good.>

I went to my door and waited.

<They’re in. Room 271. Hall’s clear.>

I pocketed my phone, stepped into the hall, and strode toward Tampaño’s room. I paused there and listened. Tipsy laughed and squealed playfully. Concentrating on not grinding my teeth, I drew some power from one of my foci and summoned some mana. An easy clairvoyance spell brought the inside of the room into my mind, but dampened my mundane vision. Squish would text me if anyone happened along. I pressed my ear to the door so I could hear what they were saying.

Inside the room, Tipsy and Tampaño were playing a game of cat and mouse. Watching it made my teeth grind, but Tipsy was no fool. She was playing him like a virtuoso. I could feel the subtle beguilement she had cast on him. He probably would have stripped naked and run through a cactus patch if she’d promised him a kiss after. She slipped out of his grasp and went to the bar to pour them drinks.

“Just one more, sweetie.” She poured and turned and trust the glass at him. “We can toast each other then get it on. ’Kay?”

“Sure, baby. Here’s to you.” He knocked the liquor back and tossed the glass aside. “Drink up.” He moved in, but she stiff-armed him in the chest.

“Patience, sweetie.” She sipped her drink and started unbuttoning his shirt one-handed. “Good things come to those who wait, you know.”

“What?” He suddenly looked angry. “Wait? I’m not gonna wait! What’re you playing at, you little puta?”

Tipsy stiffened. Something was wrong. With her spell, the drug she’d already slipped into his drink downstairs, and the alcohol, he shouldn’t have been capable of being angry with her.

Tipsy jabbed him in the chest with a finger. “Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll call you whatever I want!” Tampaño grabbed her wrist and pressed her up against the bar, groping her with his other hand. “You gringo putas are all alike. You need a lesson on how we do things down here.”

I’d heard enough. I probably could have smashed through the door, but that would hose us in the long run. We needed to get info from Tampaño without him knowing it or alerting Aztechnology. I dumped the clairvoyance, pulled my phone, and speed texted Squish. <DOOR!>

The locks were electronic, and Squish knew the game we were playing. He was so deep in the hotel’s network he could have had the fire alarm play Reggae. The light on the latch turned green, and I went in, mana crackling around me.

Tipsy stood at the bar, drink in hand, a disgusted look on her face, and Tampaño crumpled at her feet.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” She downed her drink in one long swallow. “Sorry. Like, I don’t know how he kicked my spell. Afraid I panicked a little bit, ya know.”

“Dead?” I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d killed him, but we needed information, not corpses.

She snorted a laugh. “No, just out.”

“T’anks for not killing ’im, Tips.” I picked him up and dropped him on the bed.

“I like really wanted to. Asshole needs to learn some manners.” Tipsy put her empty glass aside. “I don’t suppose you’d let me like burn off his nads and save the local ladies some trouble.”

“Sorry, Tips. Can’t. Azzies get a whiff he’s been compromised, we’re hosed. We stick to the plan.”

“Buzzkill.” She went to the bedside and lifted one eyelid at a time, examining Tampaño’s pupils. “The drug’ll hit him soon; maybe five minutes. That might have been how he shook off the emotion control. Drugs and magic, you know.”

“I know.”

Mind-effecting spells often got muddled by alcohol or drugs. In fact, Tipsy swore she drank to help smooth the mana burn. Personally, I preferred ganja, but I don’t judge. Whatever gets you through the day.

Of course, we needed information, so having him completely out cold wasn’t an option. The cocktail of chemicals she’d slipped into Tampaño’s drink would put him in a state of twilight awareness with the added bonus of amnesia and compliance. Again, I don’t know jack about biochemistry, but I’ve got associates for this sort of thing. Tipsy would ask the questions, while I probed his thoughts. There’s no such thing as truth serum, but the drugs would make him cooperative, and even if he didn’t answer, he’d think about the answers.

“Help me strip him.” Tipsy finished with his shirt buttons and untied his shoes.

When he wore only his boxers, and we had him propped up against the headboard, he started to come around. I stood beside the bed, and Tipsy sat cross-legged beside him. I rested one hand on his head, turned him to face her, and summoned mana from another focus to delve his thoughts.

“Greggo.” Tipsy patted Tampaño’s face gently, and his eyes fluttered open. She leaned in, their noses barely an inch apart. “Hey, you got sleepy on me, sweetie. You wore yourself out. You’re like so good!”

“Yeah, I...don’t...remember.” His thoughts were a swirl of confusion, some of it pretty colorful. I wouldn’t be telling Tipsy about those. Like I said, we didn’t need any corpses to explain.

“That’s okay. I just need to ask you some stuff, then like we can party some more. ’Kay?” Tipsy was still playing the role, but I could hear the disgust under her lilting So-Cal accent.

“Party…sure. Ask me what?”

“Those four Haitians you told me about. The ones you got for Aztechnology. Kofo shamans, right? They like paid you good to bring them in, right?”

“Paid me…real good…yeah. I get lots of…talent for them.”

His thoughts settled down, the shamans’ names flicked past along with several others, and what he’d been paid for finding and delivering them. This wasn’t anything Squish hadn’t already hacked, but it confirmed we had the right guy. I nodded to Tipsy.

“You put them on a boat, the Reel Good Time. A fishing boat, right?”

“Yeah. Moya…runs people for me…sometimes. Good cover.”

“Right. Where did he take them?”

“Sea transfer. Big…secret. Hush, hush.”

I got the details: Moya had taken the four to a location beyond the reef where he’d met a submarine, the Deep Builder 6, and transferred the four shamans aboard. I nodded again.

“And where did they go after?”

“…Misteriosa.”

Tipsy looked up at me in confusion, but I could only shrug. It sounded Spanish, but I’d never heard of it, and all I got from Tampaño was a blurry image. “Misteriosa? What’s that?”

“Secret place... Aztech’s…building there. Needed…Kofo to hide it.”

I got it all in a rush. Aztechnology was building an undersea installation on Misteriosa Bank, a seamount east of Belize. The water there was shallow by deep-sea standards, barely one-hundred feet. It was a popular fishing spot. I got the exact coordinates, but not many details. Tampaño’s thoughts were still muddled. I nodded to Tipsy, and motioned her to get more.

“What’s so secret, Greggo? What are they building?”

Tampaño chuckled and whispered, “Big surprise…for the dragon.”

The Draco Foundation was the target. Something about the Caymans. The Foundation virtually owned the Cayman Islands, and had claim on the surrounding sea as well.

“What’s the surprise?” Tipsy asked

“Deep Sleep…for the fishies in the trench...”

More details came in, muddled, patchy, names, places, and images, like puzzle pieces I had to put together. The Cayman Trench was the target. There had been squabbles about sea-bed mining and drilling in the past, but the legalities favored the Draco Foundation’s claims to mineral and oil rights. So far, the resources remained untouched. The “fishies” Tampaño spoke of were the deep-dwelling life forms in the trench. Supposedly, only a few knew exactly what they were, but it was rumored they were sentient, sea dragons, maybe, or some variant awakened life form. The Draco Foundation had not exploited the resources of the trench in an effort to protect these creatures. Aztechnology had tried to purchase rights to mine and drill, but the Foundation had blocked them. Now the Azzies were going to take the deep-sea creatures out of the equation. Deep Sleep was the code name for two long-range torpedoes that were going to be launched from this undersea facility. The Kofo were there to keep the entire facility undetectable by acoustics, sonar, and satellite. The Azzies would launch the devices soon, the warheads armed with heavier-than-water nerve toxins that would eradicate all life in the trench.

Once everything was dead, Aztechnology would move in. Aside from the horrific implications of using genocidal weapons on sentient creatures, the fallout would be farther reaching. Once the Azzies got a foot in the Caribbean, there’d be no stopping them. They’d push and pry until they forced the issue to an armed conflict; one they knew the League would lose. That meant entire islands ravaged by war—people I knew, families and communities I supported, homes I’d helped build with my own hands, all destroyed.

I needed to know when the weapons would be launched. I tapped my wrist, and Tipsy nodded.

“When, Greggo? When will they put the fishies to sleep?”

“Soon. Big surprise… Big secret…”

Even drugged he was being evasive, but that couldn’t keep his mind from pulling up the specifics. The launch was set for the night of the twenty-fifth. The two torpedoes would have about a four-hour run time, and detonate at a depth of six-thousand meters in the east end of the trench. The dispersal would drift west with the deep-sea currents, checked only by the walls of the trench, but anything below that depth would die.

A one-hundred-thirty-mile-long swath of death. We had four days to prevent it.

“Got it,” I said, taking my hand away from Tampaño’s head.

“Who’s that…?” Tampaño started to turn, but Tipsy grabbed his chin.

“Nobody, Greggo. Just relax. No more questions.”

“Party time, puta.” He grinned and reached for her, but his hands never touched her. Light flared like a strobe from Tipsy’s hand and he went limp.

She rolled off the bed, brushing her hands off like she’d touched something dirty. “So, like what’s this deep sleep for fishies crap?”

“You not gonna like it, Tips.” She hadn’t heard what I’d learned from Tampaño, and explaining it in terms that would help her make the same decision I’d already made was critical. I needed my crew on my side on this one. “The Azzies’re plannin’ ta detonate two neurotoxin torpedoes in the Cayman Trench in four days.”

“What?” She went even whiter than her usual pale hue. “Why?”

“Ta exterminate whatever’s living down dere so dey can screw minin’ and drillin’ rights from de Draco Corporation.” I curled my lip at the limp form of Tampaño, pondering whether I should reconsider my decision not to rough him up. “Business, Aztlan style.”

“Genocide, you mean.” Tipsy looked ill. “We gotta tell the League, T’ing! They can’t let it happen!”

“True dat, and I’m glad we’re seein’ eye ta eye, but t’ink it through. De League can’t send ships to find dis launch site. It’d take too long. And even if dey did, it’d start a shootin’ war. Dis has to happen in de shadows. I’ll have Squish set up a meet with DeLaNonce, and we’ll see what dey’re willin’ to pay for. If we try to stop dis, we gotta do it quick, an’ it won’t be cheap.”

She nodded, and I could see she understood the implications of a war between the League and Aztlan. “You’ll need a kick-ass rigger, maybe like a fucking submarine, or an air drop with SCUBA.”

The notion of jumping from an aircraft into the sea didn’t settle well with me, and underwater operations are tricky for anyone with too much hardware. Anyone chromed up like O.C. tends to sink like a cast-iron cannonball. “Let’s see what de League’s willin’ ta pay for.”

“They’ll pay.” Tipsy sounded utterly sure of herself. “If they don’t, and the Azzies launch their bombs, Draco will go to the League and scream for action. The League can’t go to war for this, so they’ll scream to the Corporate Council, but all they can do is sanction Aztechnology, and like not a fucking thing will happen. The Azzies’ll get their foothold in the Caribbean, and we’ll all be hosed.”

“Yep. Already did dat math. It’s up to de League. I can’t fund dis op outta my pocket, and even if we had time, not many pirates and runners’d be willin’ ta do it for nothin’. We’ll be in de middle of a city full o’ reps from every island in de Caribbean by tonight. DeLaNonce started this; we’ll see if de League will foot de bill ta finish it.”

I gestured to Tampaño. “Question right now is, what do we do wit’ him?”

Tipsy’s face flushed with anger. “You’re not gonna let me kill him, are you?”

“No can do, Tips.”

She pouted, then nodded. “Let me make a call. I’ll have some of the local working girls up here in a hot minute. Like, I take some video, send it to his wife and mistresses, then bug out and call it even.”

“I like the way you t’ink. Hell got no wrath like Latinas scorned.” I grinned and nodded, heading for the door. “Our room, ASAP. I’ll start packing. We’re on a plane in an ’our.”

“Sweet!” She pulled her phone and started talking before I even got out of the room. I’d just made her day.

Tampaño was going to wake up with one hell of a hangover and some even more unpleasant surprises to boot.

Four

Tenuous Alliances

I couldn’t send any specifics over a non-encrypted connection, but I texted my Auntie Squishie that we had a family emergency, and had to cut our vacation short. Four hours and two flights later, we landed in Havana to be greeted by my entire crew. The word “emergency” had been like kicking an anthill. A dozen badass runners in an airport would usually have drawn attention, but not José Martí International during League Legislature week. We blended right in.

I was still working the flight kinks out of my ass when DeLaNonce appeared at the arriving flights curbside. He wasn’t smiling.

“Your friend messaged me that you have discovered a critical situation.” He looked over my crew with raised eyebrows. “And it appears you’ve martialed your forces.”

“Not all of ’em yet, but we need ta talk with some folks about dis before I pull de pin. Shit just got serious, and de solution gonna cost some real doubloons.”

“I anticipated as much.” DeLaNonce gestured to two big SUVs that would easily accommodate everyone. “I’ve arranged a meeting with some key people.”

“Irie!” I already knew he had, of course. Squish had kept me updated on DeLaNonce’s communications and movements. I waved my crew aboard and we tore off for the Packard like we had a dragon on our tail.

I filled DeLaNonce in on the details en route. He listened and didn’t interrupt; not what I expected from a politician; usually you can’t shut them up.

“So, ya see de problem, mon. League can’t do jack, and I can’t do jack without some serious backing.”

“I understand perfectly, Mister T’ing. I’ve called in representatives from Cuba, the Caymans, Jamaica, and Borinquen. I’ve already told them all I know, which is only what you’ve told me. I feel sure that they’ll agree to fund the operation. What time frame are we looking at?”

“Three and a half days.”

“Sentespri merde!” DeLaNonce’s eyes widened to the point where I worried they might fall out of his head. “And what kind of financial compensation would be necessary to mount an effective operation to intervene?”

“I got people crunchin’ de numbers right now, but at least half a million to do it right.” I’d put Squish on the job as soon as I could get him an encrypted message with the details, and he’d already grouped with Ice Cream. Her fixer Skeeve was burning up the shadow-net for any talent close enough to come on board without spreading around too many details. “All but one or two elements should be willin’ to work at cost. Unfortunately, I got only one option for a rigger capable of bringin’ in what I need in time, an’ she don’t work cheap.”

“And confidentiality?” His eyebrows lowered, but one remained cocked. “The money is less of an issue than keeping its source secret. This cannot be traced back to the League.”

I grinned at him. “We live in de shadows, mon. Certified untraceable credsticks only. Ya pay me, an’ I handle de rest. It’ll be like de money just up and vanish.”

“We’re just lucky the Kofo aren’t so careful with their finances,” DeLaNonce said.

“True dat.”

That they hadn’t hidden their tracks well at all did raise some red flags. I would have still been suspicious that this whole thing was a set-up from the beginning if Squish hadn’t sniffed out the truth. He’d dug so deep he knew DeLaNonce’s shoe size. He’d been buying information from Nix for years off-and-on, and while he wasn’t above a bit of blackmail and dirty dealing, he also had a personal history with the Kofo that went back three generations, and hated them with a passion. He’d fought them both legally and illegally for most of his life. It was a wonder they hadn’t geeked him yet, but he was a careful fellow, for a politician. Of course, uncareful politicians in Haiti ended up dead, or worse.

We arrived at the Packard, and followed DeLaNonce to a lavish meeting room. I took only Squish in with me, since he was the one who had all the details in a presentable format. We sat down at a long table with three men and two women from the major player islands that had a stake in the western Caribbean. The rep from the Caymans, a rail-thin afro-elf named Binsi Henderson, wore a Draco Foundation pin on her lapel, and greeted DeLaNonce with a two-handed clasp and a kiss to both cheeks.

DeLaNonce made proper introductions, but I knew most of them by sight. Squish had sent me dossiers. I’d met the Jamaican rep in person a few times, a pudgy little squidge named Clarence Bryant who didn’t like me at all, probably because I had earned more respect from the locals around Montego Bay than he ever would. This wasn’t the place or time to dredge up old feuds, however, and I gave him a friendly nod.

“Mister T’ing has discovered some very troubling information at my behest,” DeLaNonce said. “You all know as much as I did until I received his report. I’ll let him fill you in on the details.”

“Ta give ya de short version, we all about ta get hosed by the Azzies, and it ain’t gonna be consensual like.” I gave them the outline of Aztechnology’s plan, how far along it was, the target, and the timeline for deployment of the weapons.

The Draco Foundation representative grew more and more agitated with my every word. I’d expected no less. The Caymans were on the front lines of this whole thing. If the shit came down, they would be the hot iron between the hammer and the anvil. When I’d finished, she surged up from her seat, hands clenched into shaking fists.

“This is an act of war!” Henderson raged.

“Not yet it’s not, Binsi.” The Cuban rep, Enrico Gutierrez, made a calming motion with both hands. “The moment they deploy their weapons, it will be, but not until. The problem is, if we neutralize this threat prior to that moment, it could be interpreted as an act of war on our part.”

“Or a pre-emptive strike,” Bryant offered. “We could deploy a flight of Nimrods and drop depth charges in hours.”

Gutierrez shook his head. “The Misteriosa Bank is contested territory. If we destroy this undersea facility, Aztlan will claim it was a harmless research endeavor and retaliate. We’d step right into their trap.”

“True dat, but it ain’t even dat simple.” I nodded to Squish. “Me IT guy here got details, and it ain’t good news.”

“Please, let’s hear all the particulars before we make snap decisions,” DeLaNonce said. The others nodded, Henderson took her seat, and he gestured to Squish. “Please proceed.”

“The bioweapons likely contain the nerve agent, hydrophysonone. Heavier than water, but easily dispersed by ocean currents.” He slid a holo-display projector into the center of the table and tapped his phone. A chart of the northwestern Caribbean popped up for everyone to see. “If the warheads are destroyed on the Misteriosa Bank, and the warhead payloads are ruptured, the fallout will be carried with the Yucatan Current. Yucatan, the southeastern Gulf, Florida, and the Bahamas will be affected. If you hit this facility with a bomb, you piss off a lot of folks who are on your side.”

“And if we don’t do anything, we allow Aztechnology to commit an act of genocide,” Henderson countered.

“Dat’s where we come in,” I said with a nod to DeLaNonce. “We gotta plan ta hit dis sub-sea facility wit’out detonatin’ de warheads. De nerve agent can be neutralized wit’ fire. You get deniability; we get paid and keep the Azzies off our turf. Win-win.”

The reps all looked at one another, and Bryant cleared his throat. “With all due respec’ to Representative DeLaNonce, how do we know we aren’t being played here?”

“What?” DeLaNonce blinked at Bryant. “Let me assure you, Mista Bryant, I was the one who went to Mista T’ing, not de other way ’round.” He was upset enough that his Creole accent had slipped through.

“But he could have been working with the Kofo or Aztechnology from the beginning to—”

I laughed right in Bryant’s face. “Oh, dat’s right! I cooked dis whole t’ing up and somehow convince DeLaNonce, wit’out even knowin’ him, ta come ta me! Dat hold about as much wata as a sieve, Mista Bryant!”

“It’s a ridiculous accusation!” Henderson glared openly at Bryant. “If the League won’t back a mission to prevent this atrocity, the Draco Foundation will!”

Gutierrez raised a hand to intercede. “I tend to agree with Representative Henderson, but before we decide to back Mister T’ing’s mission, I think we need to hear all the details.”

“Agreed,” DeLaNonce said with a nod to me.

“Good.” I nudged Squish and waved him on. “Bring it.”

He did.

I’d told him to dig deep, and he had. Holo-projections flicked to life in sequence, and Squish told them what they were looking at: the Azzies involved in the project, the Kofo shamans who were brought it to keep it hidden, the materials being transported through Belize City, and finally high-resolution satellite imagery of Misteriosa Bank with the position of the Deep Sleep subsea station highlighted. We didn’t have exact schematics of the station, but it was big, a modular construction pieced together on site with full laboratory and engineering capabilities. The torpedoes themselves were standard long-range, high-speed, military-grade hardware, but the warheads were specially designed and installed on-site. The neurotoxin itself was transported as several inert compounds, which only became toxic when activated together with yet another catalyst. Hopefully, the toxin wouldn’t yet be activated and loaded prior to our arrival. We had no way to know exactly how the torpedoes would be launched or stored prior to launch, of course. Finding them might be a challenge, but deactivating the torpedoes without detonating the warheads, even if they were loaded, wouldn’t be hard.

What would be hard was getting into the facility without getting fragged.

“De biggest problem on oua end is we don’t know jack ’bout dere defenses,” I added as Squish finished his presentation, the breakdown of costs displayed for all to read. “We assume active and passive sonar, which we can deal with, but if dey got fifty bio-drone sharks cruisin’ the banks, we gonna have a problem. For all we know, dey got conventional torpedoes as well. We can mask oua approach with magic, but it ain’t perfect. We willin’ to give it oua best shot, go in fast, take out de torpedoes, burn the neurotoxin, flood de place, and get out. My people’re ready ta rock, and I got more to meet up in Grand Cayman. You cut me de doubloons, and we good to go.”

The reps all looked at one another again, determination on some faces, skepticism on only Bryant’s.

Henderson stood, her features carved in stone. “I would prefer that this be a League-sanctioned and cooperative effort, but if you all aren’t willing to sign on, the Draco Foundation will act alone.” Her dark eyes pinned the others one at a time. “If we do act alone, however, you can all expect less cooperation from the Caymans on any of the other legislative initiatives that you’ve presented this session and in the future.”

I traded a glance with Squish, and he winked at me. Henderson had just given us the go, regardless of what anyone else said. I nodded to him, and he started texting. The ball was rolling.

In the end, the other reps capitulated, even Bryant. Henderson withdrew a small black box from a briefcase, coded an encrypted credstick, and handed it to me, the balance half a million nuyen.

“We good to go, lady and gentlemen.” I handed the stick to Squish. “Word of dis meetin’ get out and me and ma crew get hosed, I be takin’ it personal.”

“I don’t like threats, T’ing!” Bryant snapped.

“Ain’t a threat. It a fact.” I blew him off and turned to Henderson. “Can you smooth t’ings over with Cayman customs and immigration? I be charterin’ a flight dis afternoon.”

“No problem, T’ing.” She held out a hand to me. “Thank you.”

“It all irie, Miss Henderson.” I grinned and took her tiny hand in mine. “Maybe when dis all over, we do some limin’ on de beach at ma place.”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

That was, of course, assuming we survived.

We landed in Cayman six hours later. I’d contracted Hanji to lift us, and to standby in case we needed an emergency air evac from Misteriosa. From my crew, I brought Tipsy, Squish, a shark shaman named Bytes, two gunners, Dondy and Shank, who weren’t heavier-than-water chromed, Tweaker, an intrusion specialist, and Pak, who was a physical adept. Sadly—and against her protestations—I’d sent O.C. back to Montego Bay with the rest of my people. Swimming’s impossible with a hundred kilos of metal melded to your bones, and we might end up in the drink. This wasn’t her type of op.

We were met at the terminal by Henderson’s personal assistant, a fellow named Blake who looked skeptical, but had been ordered to be helpful. He walked us around customs and immigration, even though our papers, albeit forged, were in order. I don’t know if the tourists actually believed we were a reggae band arriving for a gig, but we looked the part. We’d even traded our duffle bags for instrument cases, but if they’d been X-rayed, the tech would probably have had a heart attack.

Henderson’s man escorted us out to the bustling curbside. A sharp whistle caught my ear, and I espied Ice Cream, garbed in her usual white Armorani, waving from the running board of a roll-up panel truck. How she kept so spiffy clean, I’ll never know. Since we’d been using her fixer, Skeeve, to set up most of this op’s talent outside my own crew, Ice Cream had volunteered to come along. Aside from her contacts, she was one of the best I’d ever run with, a welcome addition. I thanked Blake and we hefted our bags.

Ice Cream hopped down as we approached and rolled up to the back of the vehicle.

“Good ta see you, Tiya.” I shoved my bag into the back and scooped her up in a hard embrace. “T’anks for comin’. No profit on dis one, and we wadin’ into a shitstorm.”

“No problem, mon.” When I put her down, she greeted the rest of the crew, then turned back to me. “Twizzler and Goombay are already aboard. We’re good to go.”

“Raja dat!” The two hired shamans were non-combatants on this run, as were Bytz and Squish. They would stay aboard our ride and provide cover and recon, magical and network, respectively. I waved my crew aboard and took a seat up front with Tiya. “Your rigger’s online, I ’ope.”

“Ready and waiting just north of the sound. Water’s too shallow for Deep Rose, and it’d be best if nobody ashore saw us board. I chartered a fishing boat to ferry us out. Local guy. Solid.” She jammed the rental truck in gear and pulled into the traffic. “You look tired.”

“Didn’t sleep much. Too many air miles, and I don’t fly so good. I be alright once we on de wata.” We would have a few hours aboard Deep Rose in transit, and I planned to burn a spliff and get some quick shuteye. “Ya sure Rose okay with dis run? She try’n kill ya once already, an’ she worked for de Kofo ta boot.”

“Rose will work for anyone who pays her, and that was just business.” Tiya grinned at me sidelong. “Besides, she didn’t really try to kill me. She didn’t rough me up more than she had to, and I didn’t break any more of her toys than I had to. No hard feelings.”

“If ya say so.” I rubbed my eyes and tried not to worry about things I had no control over. I had to trust Tiya on this. We were tight; if she trusted Rose, I had to trust her. Besides, it wasn’t like I’d never hosed another runner for profit before. In the Caribbean, business was business, and today’s competitors were tomorrow’s allies. “And de rest of de gear?”

“All aboard already. Don’t fret, T’ing. We got this down.”

“Irie.” I closed my eyes and concentrated on my loa. Croc was there, as always, lurking under the surface, watching, listening, feeling for astral vibrations like heartbeats in water. So far, nobody had noticed us.

I snapped out of my trance when we jolted to the stop at the marina. A small, teal-blue sport fisherman bobbed at the dock waiting for us, her crew standing ready. The captain greeted Tiya, and we hefted our gear aboard with no questions.

“Thank God for wet bars and thirsty tourists!” Tipsy poured herself a stiff drink as the crew cast off lines and the boat’s engines roared to life. She’d been painfully sober all day, and the sun was well past the yardarm.

“Go easy, Tips. We on de job.”

“Just gettin’ primed for the burn, Boss.” She knocked back her drink, stripped down to her string bikini, and climbed up to the fly bridge. “Besides, who’s gonna believe a sportfish boat goin’ out without a couple of boat babes aboard! Come on, Tiya!”

“I really hate her sometimes,” Squish grumbled, averting his eyes as she climbed the ladder.

“She right. We look too stiff. Play us some reggae, Squish!” I lit up and drew a deep lungful. “Ev’rybody loosen up!”

“Raja dat!” Tiya doffed her jacket and climbed up to the flybridge to play her part.

Squish tapped his phone to hack into the boat’s sound system. Pak stripped down to his camo shorts and climbed out to the bow to sit lotus and soak up the tropical sunset. Dondy and Shank sat inside, and Bytz leaned over the side to trail a hand in the water, undoubtedly channeling his loa. The sea was his environment. He’d watch over us. I drew another hit and let the sweet ganja settle my nerves.

We roared out of the marina with reggae blaring, our boat babes dancing on the flybridge beside the captain, just another boatload of tourists on a sunset cruise. Thirty minutes later, just north of the cut into North Sound, we stopped.

“We here, mon!” the captain shouted down.

“Party time!” Tipsy slid down the ladder and dashed into the cabin.

“Squish, ping Rose. Ev’rybody grab yer gear.” I flicked the stub of my spliff overboard and shouldered my bag.

“Rose has already got us, Boss.” Squish pointed off our port side. “Coming up now.”

About a hundred feet off our side, Deep Rose surged to the surface. The modified Krasnay Sormova Partisan was painted in ocean camouflage, mottled dark blue fading to paler beneath. The top hatch of the conning tower flipped open, and White Rose popped up to wave, her short platinum hair fluttering in the breeze. The submarine maneuvered alongside with rigger precision, and the crew of the sport fisherman secured the two vessels together.

The sub’s main hatch opened, and we boarded. The hatch was a tight squeeze for me, the interior slightly claustrophobic. Twizzler and Goombay, the two shamans I’d recruited, were already strapped into their seats, eyes closed, deeply astral, masking our presence. The light from the surface filtered through the four large ports, painting every surface in rippling blue waves. The main hatch cycled closed overhead, and I felt like the walls were closing in.

“Welcome aboard!” Rose dropped down from the conning tower to greet us. “Ice Cream! You’re lookin’ fine, darlin’!”

“And you, Rose.” Tiya shook her hand and introduced the rest of us.

I’d met Rose briefly a few months before when we’d rescued Tiya from the Kofo in Port au Prince. Rose had been working for the Kofo then, and had abducted Tiya for delivery. Tiya had, by way of payback, driven a car into the cabin of her yacht at high speed. One might think such an exchange of pleasantries would have left them life-long enemies, but Rose held no grudges. In the end, her profit from the Kofo had paid for the damages to her ship, and Tiya and she had parted on reasonably good terms, if not exactly friends.

“T’ing, good ta see ya. Sorry for the cramped accommodations. Deep Rose ain’t exactly built to troll specs.”

“No problem.” I shook her hand, then stumbled as the sub suddenly surged into motion. Squish cursed and fell into one of the seats, and Tipsy swore a blue streak. “We under way? Who’s driving this t’ing?”

“Oh, don’t you fret your perty head one tiny little bit, darlin’. I’m drivin’!” She tapped her temple, a wifi rig plugged into one of her rigger ports. “Just wanna get us down where the ride’ll smooth out. I got the course all laid in. We’ll be on the spot in about four hours. Just sit back, strap your asses in, kick yer feet up, and enjoy the ride!”

“Our gear?” I looked for a seat that would fit me and found only one. We were pretty much packed in like sardines in a tin, but not as bad as an airliner.

“Stowed forward beneath the boarding hatch, there.” She pointed to a pile of bags strapped to the hull beneath a round iris hatch. “I’ll ping Squish when we get close.” She waved and climbed the ladder to the conning tower.

I strode forward—I had to duck to keep from cracking my horns on the overhead—and turned to my crew. “Everybody on the go team, chill. Bytz, you’re our eyes, tell Goombay and Twizzler to make us invisible.” I was saving my strength for the fight, and I sucked at illusions anyway.

“We ain’t nothin’ but a fish, T’ing!” Bytz was already strapped in, and reclined his seat to a comfortable position.

“Squish, you online?”

“Always.” He gave me the thumbs-up and tapped the hull with a finger. “Rose has some good software, but her IC isn’t quite up to my standards. If we’re pinged by sonar or an acoustic rig, I’ll know. She says we’ll go EM silent twenty miles from the target. Once you’re in, we’ll go short-wave encrypted for comms.”

“Irie.” I surveyed the faces of my go team. Tiya sat next to Pak, both of them calm, Dondy and Shank were going over their weapons already, Tweaker sat leaned back with his eyes closed, probably meditating. Tipsy looked anxious; she’d donned a thin wetsuit from her bag, but her arms were folded in her ready-for-a-fight posture. “Ya chill, Tips?”

Her blue eyes flicked to me and she shrugged. “Like, ridiculously sober.”

“Well, dip into yer stash if ya gotta, but I need ya sharp for the op.”

She nodded. “I’m okay. Just jittery, you know, like waiting for a knock at the door from a jealous husband.”

I snorted a laugh and tapped the hull with a knuckle. “Somebody knock on dis door, we got bigga problems den a tin can full of Azzies.”

She nodded and tried to shrug it off.

I sat down and reclined my seat, going through the op in my head, and listening to the near-silent hum of the sub’s engines. I checked my loa, and Croc reassured me that all was well in astral space. To him, Deep Rose looked like a big fish swimming along with one other, Bytz’s loa conjured in real space. I opened my eyes and peered out the port. The light was fading, but at the edge of visibility, I spotted a long, speckled torpedo shape cruised along with us, nearly as large as our sub.

I felt strange to be comforted by the presence of a fifty-foot whale shark, but it’s a strange world, and I’m part of that strange. I leaned back and closed my eyes, a tune my mama used to hum running through my head. “Crocodile, crocodile teeth so white. Don’t you smile and don’t you bite...” Memories of her always visited me at times like this, how she used to tell me I was the prettiest little thing she’d ever seen.

All mothers lie like that, I guess, and all children take comfort in it.

Five

Going Deep

When a hand touched my arm, I opened my eyes to a room filled with blood.

I blinked and dispelled the illusion; it wasn’t blood, just dark red running lights that filled the cabin of Deep Rose. I’d been asleep, dreaming of floating in warm water, just under the surface, waiting for prey to come close. Croc often invaded my dreams, so often that I expected it. This time, since I really was floating along in warm water, albeit inside a submarine, the dream struck me as ironic.

“Thirty minutes, boss,” Squish said. “We’ve slowed down. Rose says she’s picked up some drones on long-range passive sonar, but we should be able to slip through. We’ll show up as biologic on their sonar.”

“Raja dat!” I heaved up to find most of my crew already gearing up.

Tiya and Tipsy wore Kevlar body suits and heavier chest armor. Tipsy strapped on a single pistol as a backup weapon, while Tiya preferred twin silenced HK SMGs, a pair of Fineblades across her back, and her old standby Thunderbolt in a low quick-draw holster. Dondy and Shank hefted Colt water carbines, also silenced and impervious to immersion. Even Tweaker carried a pair of pistols along with all his intrusion gear. Only Pak didn’t carry any firearms or blades. He didn’t need a weapon; he was one. He wore only a pair of skintight stretch shorts, his tattoos black in the low red light. He moved past me to the boarding hatch beside Tweaker, knowing he’d be the first through.

I struggled into my wetsuit, enduring the mirth of my crew. I’m not exactly svelte, even for a troll. Everything felt too tight, and it took a few minutes to work everything into a comfortable arrangement. Over that, a heavy armored vest, and a pack filled with charges. My ammo belt weighed about forty kilos, but that didn’t mean much to me. Lastly, I picked up my combat shotgun and checked the loads. Buckshot, because I didn’t want to shoot holes in the hull, and the grenades in the underbarrel launcher were flashbangs. We weren’t really concerned with taking prisoners, but again, creating leaks before we wanted to would be bad.

Lastly, I donned my comm rig and tapped it to life. “Okay my friends, ya’ll know de plan. We find de torpedoes, make sure dey don’t work, den de warheads, if dey aren’t already loaded, burn ’em, den frag de place and get out. Any questions?”

“Do you think they’ll like, at least have a bar?” Tipsy asked, drawing a few chuckles.

“Doubt it, but we ain’t got time to socialize anyways.”

“Buzzkill. No worries, I carry my own party.” She pulled a single shot bottle of Finlandia from her ammo belt and downed it.

“Okay, everyone else need to stay sharp on dis one. Rose finds us a hatch, Tweaker gets it open without settin’ off any alarms, den we go in quiet and stay dat way long as we can. Pak an’ Ice Cream on point, then Dondy an’ Tipsy, then me. Shank an’ Tweaker cover our asses.” I tapped my earpiece. “We’ll all be on comms with Squish, but keep it quiet if ya can. Got it?”

They all affirmed. Pak twisted and stretched like a cat, preparing his magically enhanced muscles for action. Tiya twisted her neck sharply, eliciting pops, and slipped a chip into her slot. The rest of us chambered rounds and clicked off safeties.

Silence, save for the subsonic drone of the sub’s engines. I hoped the Azzies weren’t listening on that wavelength.

“Contact,” Squish said in my ear, and everyone tensed. “A DSRV making a close pass. Bytz is moving his loa to block it.”

“I thought we was EM dark?”

“We are, except for comms and inertial guidance, which are shielded. Rose is piloting blind and I’m relaying on closed comm from Bytz. He’s our sonar.”

“Raja.” Underwater, especially in the dark, a conjured spirit could pass for real, and Bytz’s whale shark loa was big enough to block a small cruiser. The other two shamans were masking our appearance, so even if the drone lit us up, we should look just like another big fish.

Light swept through one of the starboard ports, and I peered out the window.

Two white headlights shone out of the black, their wide beams illuminating the long, spotted form of Bytz’s conjured loa. The craft, barely bigger than a suitcase, turned away and I caught its outline, a simple frame with propulsion, cameras, sensors, and two small torpedoes slung underneath. I held my breath and watched it pass. We’d either fooled it, or the rigger running it was smart and had called in reinforcements. If that happened, we’d be visited by more torpedoes than Rose could defend against.

“Clear,” Squish told us, and I wasn’t the only one who released a held breath.

We crept forward in the blackness.

“We’re inside their perimeter. Rose says the bottoms come up, so she’s lighting up with UV. You should be able to see some.”

Outside, the world went from utter blackness to a deep purple highlighted with teal flashes of marine life. The sea floor looked like an aerial view of the jungle at night with IR. Everything moved with the surge of the current, huge sea fans, frilly pens, and long strands of weed. Lazy fish slept in their grottos, oval eyes staring out unseeing. Bytz’s loa swam alongside us, a vast shape speckled with fluorescent motes.

For several long, tense minutes we cruised along in near silence. The distant song of a whale reverberated through the hull, then a sharp sound that clashed against the silence, a metallic clang that tensed every nerve aboard.

“Not us,” Squish said before anyone could ask. “The station. Someone aboard dropped a wrench.”

“Raja.” I continued to peer out the port, leaning close to the glass to look forward. We had slowed even more, barely swimming speed. Then, out of the distant gloom, a wall of coral suddenly loomed up. “Reef ahead!”

“It’s not a reef. It’s the station,” Squish said.

“Mutha... Damn good camo.” But it wasn’t camouflage, it was magic. The Kofo shamans had made a modular sub-sea installation the size of a football field look like a coral reef. “Dese dudes are good.”

As we neared, I could pick out the shapes of the modular sections, each about the length of a tractor-trailer, but rounded with a broad base. They were connected end-to-end or side-to-side, but I couldn’t see any details. Squish had shown me schematics of the types of modules the Azzies had deployed, and they had hatches in various positions to accommodate different designs. They could even be stacked, but from what I could see, they hadn’t been here. Fortunately, there seemed to be no viewing ports, or if there were, they were dark. Nobody inside was watching us. Unfortunately, with the magical camouflage, I couldn’t see any signs of a torpedo launching section—not that I would know what one looked like if I saw it.

“Where you wanna go in, darlin’?” Rose said over the comm, her voice tense. “We’re sittin’ ducks out here.”

“Can’t see much. Give me a second to get some recon.” I squinted out the port at the immense lump of coral. Sonar might give us an outline of the structure, but active pinging would alert anyone inside, and the next sound we’d hear would be the high-speed propellers of torpedoes. But we had another way to get a look. I closed my eyes and slipped into astral space just enough to communicate with my shaman. “Bytz, can ya do a swim-by and gimme the layout?”

“No problem.”

I waited. My crew fidgeted. Tipsy folded her arms and clicked her nails.

“Looks like about twenty-five sections spread out like a five-pointed starfish. About five modules connected side by side in the middle, probably the control center. Can’t see any launch facility, but they could have opening launch ports like a sub.”

“T’anks, Bytz. Ya keep watch. Anything take interest in us, nudge Croc.”

“I’m on it, T’ing. No worries, mon.”

But I did have worries. I wasn’t about to pop into the facility in the control center, not with five wings unexplored. But if we went in at the end of one of the arms, we had a one in five chance of finding the launch center, and even if we did, the warheads might not be in the torpedoes yet. We had to neutralize both without rupturing the warheads.

I keyed my throat mic for everyone to hear my orders. “Pick de nearest arm of de facility and put us t’rough de hatch at de very end, Rose. We go in quiet, and den ya detach and settle down to look like a piece o’ the reef. We’ll keep you in touch on comms.”

“Rodger wilco, darlin’.”

Deep Rose maneuvered with the grace of a twenty-ton ballerina, crabbing sideways along the reef to orient her bow in line with the end of one of the arms of the station. This left me staring out the port at open ocean, all but dark. In the far distance I caught the glow of another DSRV’s lights. The Azzies were relying on technology for surveillance and magic for concealment.

We crept forward, utterly silent now, the massive sub’s maneuvering thrusters nudging us with tiny jets of water. Finally, we stopped completely without even a faint jolt. Rose knew her shit.

“Extending boarding airlock now,” Rose informed us.

I nodded to my crew, and we formed up, Tweaker, Pak, and Tiya at the hatch’s ladder. We stood in silence, straining to hear anything that could tell us what was going on outside. I caught the faint whir of a pump and a hiss of compressed air, the airlock cycling.

“Cycling inner hatch now,” Rose said.

Seven weapons raised to point at the iris hatch as it slid silently open. Of course, there was nothing to shoot, unless you counted the one unfortunate damselfish that had been caught in the airlock. Water dripped down, and the fish fell to the deck to flop and flail around helplessly. The outer airlock was open, the water-tight seal firmly affixed to the hull of the facility. Rose had nailed her docking maneuver; a standard connecting hatch sat centered in our open airlock.

“Tweaker, go. Ice Cream, and Pak, cover. Everyone else, flanking positions.”

We all moved forward as my point team climbed the ladder and crept into the lock. It was a tight fit for three, but they managed to give Tweaker enough room to work. The rest of us waited. The tiny damselfish flopped and stilled, its mouth gaping in a futile attempt to breathe.

“Fuck,” Tipsy hissed, holstering her pistol to kneel and scoop up the distressed animal.

“Rescuing a fish, Tips?” Shank said.

Tipsy glared at him. “Fuck off. It’s a living thing.”

“Quiet!” I hissed over the comm. I didn’t know what Tipsy planned to do with the fish, but it was her business as long as she did her job.

Something clicked, air hissed, and my ears popped. Tweaker peered down at us from the hatch and gave me a thumbs-up.

We were in.

Tweaker came down, and the rest of us went up in order. I climbed up behind Dondy, and paused for a second to assess our situation. The station’s hatch, a three-panel pocket door that slid together to close and receded into the bulkhead when open, revealed a cluttered chamber filled with machining equipment, plastic crates, and toolboxes. A red maintenance light gave the room a bloody cast. Tiya and Pak were moving junk out of the way of the hatch, trying to be silent and vigilant at the same time. Dondy aimed his Colt down the axis of the chamber, but so far had no target; the far door was closed. The module was empty, evidently used for storage and metalworking. Tiya’s boots crunched on metal shavings as she and Pak edged into the room.

As we followed, Tipsy knelt to place the damselfish at the juncture of the hatch and the boarding tube’s seal. It still gaped its mouth open for water, but it was alive. When Deep Rose detached, it would be free. She wiped her hands on her wetsuit and edged forward as the advance team made room, once again the badass combat mage, not the emotional young woman who would pause to save the life of a fish when her own was in danger.

My respect for her ratcheted up another notch.

One thing was certain, the hatches connecting the modules of the facility weren’t made to accommodate trolls. I had to squeeze to get through. The odors of metal and cutting oil hung thick in the air. I wondered if the Azzies air filtration system was even running. It had to be, of course, or everyone aboard would already be dead from CO₂ poisoning. I motioned Tweaker to close the door behind us. As he did, I slipped one of the charges from my pack, affixed it to the outer hull of the chamber, and activated the receiver.

“We’re in, Rose. Hatch secured.”

“Roger.” Again, it spoke well for her skill that I didn’t hear or feel a thing as she detached and maneuvered away. I got a mental image of Tipsy’s little fish swimming off, miraculously alive after its brush with death.

I snapped my fingers and motioned Tweaker ahead. He slipped past us and checked the door. An access panel opened as if by magic under his fingers, and he did something, either unlocking the door or bypassing an alarm. I didn’t ask questions. He knew his job, and performed like his life depended on it, because it did. All of ours did.

Unfortunately, there were no windows in the connecting hatches, so there was no way to know what lay beyond.

The three panels slid aside, white light in our faces. A bewildered man wearing only fatigue pants, a toothbrush in his mouth, stared at us in shock. His eyes widened for an instant, his foam-filled mouth gaping.

A three-round burst took him square in the chest, the clatter of brass hitting the deck louder than the shots from Tiya’s HK. He hit the floor hard, twitched, and coughed toothpaste foam flecked with red.

The module was a single hallway lined with three sliding doors on each side, two of them open, center left and center right, the other four closed. Probably a hab section, if someone was brushing their teeth. Tiya and Pak were moving forward as a voice called out in Spanish from an open door.

“Oi, Vakayo, you clumsy whore. You trip again?”

Pak and Tiya both dashed forward faster than any non-enhanced person could move. Pak got to the door first and went through in a blur. A truncated shout rang out an instant before four dull impacts. Tipsy and Dondy followed, but Tiya was already at the door. She glanced in, then turned to face the other side of the hallway, her weapons lowered but ready. Evidently, Pak had finished the job.

Tipsy checked the other open door while Dondy mirrored Tiya’s stance, covering the other two closed doors. Tipsy peeked inside, then stepped in. Blue light flashed like a strobe from the doorway, a mana bolt. Something meaty slammed into a bulkhead with the spell’s impact. Good girl. We didn’t want to burn the place down quite yet. I stepped into the chamber with my weapon pointed down and a spell in my other hand. Each door had a single button control labeled Abierto/Cerrar. I punched the one to my right and peered into an empty room, the four bunks rumpled but vacant.

Of course, that was the cue for the left-hand door to open and a bewildered Azzie to say, “What the fu—”

I truncated his sentence—and his neck—with a toxic wave spell. Flesh and bone melted away, and the spell splashed into the tiny room beyond him. Three other men tried to rise from their bunks before they, too, dissolved in the flesh-eating spray. There’s no force behind the spell, so the guy in the door whose head I’d obliterated simply crumpled and fell forward, blood jetting from the severed arteries of his neck.

The spell burn washed over me as always, a staggering tide of fatigue. I drew a breath and let it out slowly, breathing out the burn like a cloud of intoxicating smoke, visualizing the effect leaving my body. I’d done it a million times; most times it worked, sometimes it didn’t. This time, the burn faded to a hint of background weakness I couldn’t quite banish. There was nothing I could do but work through it.

I stepped over the puddle as Tipsy exited the room she’d checked. She glanced at the floor behind me, then gave me a nod. Pak stepped from the other door, his chest spattered with blood. I waved everyone forward. We had two more doors to clear, and so far, no alarms.

“Lock de door open behind us, Tweaker,” I whispered without looking back. “Pak and Ice Cream, check de doors. Tips and Dondy, back up. Keep it quiet.”

I glanced into the two cleared rooms as I passed. Two twisted corpses lay on the floor of the right-hand bunk room, and the left, a bathroom, showed me only a congealing puddle of goo oozing from under a stall door. Tipsy had blasted the poor guy on the toilet. Pak opened his door first and moved so fast he seemed to vanish. He emerged a second later and shook his head. Empty. With two empty rooms and two full ones in the middle of the night, I was betting the last room wouldn’t be empty.

I would have won the bet.

The door opened, and Tiya’s HK burped four bursts in quick succession. She stepped in to check her work, and came back out a moment later to hold up four fingers then draw her thumb across her throat. I gave her a nod and motioned Tweaker forward. Two sections down, about twenty or so to go.

Once again, firearms and magic at the ready, the door opened. Another long hallway, this one lined with roll-up doors. Storage, no doubt. I had Tweaker check a couple, just to be sure, and he confirmed that the cabinets were full of machine parts, tools, spare electronics, and chemicals. We all proceeded forward in formation while Tweaker locked the door open behind us

The next door, if my mental image of the layout of this place was accurate, would probably open into the control center. At this hour, I hoped it would be sparsely occupied by the night watch. Somewhere, at least two shamans were working to maintain the illusory camouflage. The other two were probably sleeping. I thought it likely that a rigger would also be on duty at all times, at least to monitor the DSRVs on picket. Add one watch officer, at least two techs, one guard, maybe two. I figured most of the engineers and technical staff would work day shift. I held my hand up in a fist and approached the door.

“I wanna have a look-see before we open dis one.” I pressed a hand to the door and closed my eyes, summoning power from one of my foci to see beyond the door.

There was far more activity in the control center than I liked. Three men and two women pointed and gesticulated at a set of holo-displays; three of them wore pistols. Two more lay in couches——each with an IV and EEG telemetry headgear. From the look, they were Kofo shamans maintaining the station’s camouflage. There were also four Azzie guards in full security gear stationed at the corners of the chamber, and another figure in a rigger couch, hardwired into a console. So much for the skeleton crew of the night shift.

Also, the layout of the place wasn’t simple. There were four specially designed modules situated side-by-side, the connections between each of them six high, square hatches, which left five wide pillars in place between each as well. That would be both an advantage and disadvantage, as they would supply cover to both us and our foes.

I whispered these details over the comm to my crew as I tried to discern the reason for so much activity. The holos displayed two different images, rotating and colorized, that looked like the star-shaped facility atop the reef. One of the men kept pointing to a section of one display, then the other. To me, the two displays looked identical. Then, one of the men manipulated something on one of the panels and a section of one display lit up in yellow, a small lump on the reef some distance from the station.

I keyed my mic. “Squish, are ya bein’ scanned?”

“The whole reef’s being swept with ultrasonics from the drones, boss. It has been since we arrived. We shouldn’t look like anything more than another rock.”

Two displays of the seamount, one slightly different, the difference highlighted yellow. The answer was simple.

“I’m watching de control center. Dey’re analyzin’ two scans of de reef, one wit’ you, and one wit’out. I t’ink dey—”

Then the woman in the group jabbed a finger at the display with the yellow blip and shouted something into her mic. The blip went red, and five moving green blips appeared. Yellow lines materialized between the blips, and a pulsing purple triangle appeared from one of the green blips, moving quickly along the line.

The high-pitched whine of a high-speed propeller reverberated through the hull of the station.

“Incomin’ torp, Squish!”

“On it!” He sounded tense, but then, so did I.

“We goin’ in hot!” I cancelled my spell and hammered the Abierto button beside the door. “Target the rigger. Close de door behind us, Tweaker!”

I intended to be first through the door, since I was already standing in the way, but my reflexes aren’t enhanced by magic or technology. Pak and Tiya slipped past before I even took a step, dodging left and right. Good thing they got out of my way. I squeezed through and fired a flashbang from the underbarrel launcher into the tight knot of officers and techs. Even before the grenade exploded, Tiya and Pak took down two of the guards, one with a burst of gunfire, the other with a kick to the neck that took the man’s head right off.

I opened my mouth and closed my eyes an instant before the flashbang went off, but the explosion in such a confined space still rattled my teeth.

I summoned a manaball, drawing power from another focus, but before I could complete the spell, Tipsy stepped into the doorway and incinerated half the chamber with a fireball. She obviously was not in the mood to fuck around. The flames reduced the rigger and the two Kofo shamans to something that looked and disconcertingly smelled like barbeque pork that had been on the grill too long, but the spell also drew fire.

A ruby laser winked onto Tipsy’s torso even as she dashed for cover. Two rounds hit her, I saw the puffs from her armored vest, and she sprawled flat.

“Tips is down!” I howled over the comm as I leaned out and sent my manaball into the cluster of stunned officers and technicians. Two of them fired pistols at me before the spell detonated, but their aim wasn’t so good. One bullet spalled off my left horn, ringing my already ringing ears, before I could duck back into cover.

As my spell blasted people every which way, Dondy and Shank unloaded from the doorway, cutting the guard who had shot Tipsy into pieces.

Alarms howled, muffled through my stunned hearing, and fire suppression sprinklers sprayed salt water down from above. Electronics sparked and sputtered, people screamed in Creole, English, and Spanish, and the lights went from white to red. Rounds pinged against the pillar I stood behind; the remaining guard was still up and firing. I risked a glance and saw that one of the officers had escaped my manaball, at least partially, and crouched behind a sputtering console, firing her pistol. The other guard was firing at three targets, me, Pak, and Tiya, keeping us pinned down. Tipsy lay unmoving, but I couldn’t get to her without exposing myself.

Then the surviving Azzies’ tactics gelled in my head, and a thought came to me. Suppressive fire... stalling for reinforcements. Shit!

“Gunners! Cover de other doors!” Throwing caution to the wind—the croc in me has issues with it anyway—I broke cover to scoop Tipsy up one handed. Something hit me in the back—a pistol round, I think—but it didn’t get through my Kevlar.

To my surprise, she yelped in pain. “Careful, ya fucking lummox! Like, I just got shot, ya know!”

“Sorry!” I steadied her on her feet behind my pillar. “Ya okay?” I looked for blood but didn’t see any.

“Like fucking marvelous!” She grimaced and clutched her side. “Broke a rib, I think, and my left tit feels like it did ten rounds with a pit bull!”

“Well, take cover before ya sling yer next spell, okay?”

The connecting door right in front of us opened, four angry Azzies leveling weapons right at us.

“Cover this!” Tipsy filled the corridor with flames.

I fired my shotgun without really aiming, but I couldn’t see much through the fire anyway. Bullets and screams shrieked out of the inferno. A round hit me in the chest, and another ripped a piece of meat from my left arm.

I was getting pissed.

I didn’t think the first round had penetrated my vest, but I didn’t have the time to look. Tipsy ducked and yelped, rolling diagonally behind the next pillar. I charged the door as the flames cleared, firing ten-gauge rounds down the narrow hallway. It looked to be another storage unit, roll-up doors to both sides, and nowhere for anyone to hide. Whoever hadn’t been fried by Tipsy’s spell went down filled with double-aught buckshot.

Beyond the carnage, I glimpsed another hab module filled with more angry Azzies. This wasn’t the launch or lab wing, so we didn’t need to go there. I stepped aside as the Azzies opened up, and pulled a charge from my pack.

“Fire in de hole!” I activated the receiver, flung the charge down the passage into the next module, and triggered the detonator.

Two explosions rocked the station, one from the first charge I’d set in the machine shop, and the other from the one I’d just thrown. Tweaker had closed the door to the section we’d already cleared, so no water came through. I’d hoped the charge I threw wouldn’t breach the hull, since I hadn’t actually placed it, but from the deluge gushing through the door, I guess my calculations hadn’t been so good. I hit the Cerrar button beside the door, but nothing happened.

“Shit!” I glanced down the section. Water jetted from the connection between the storage and hab modules. On the upside, the explosion seemed to have killed or incapacitated everyone in the compartment. If I could close the door, I’d call it a win. If not, we’d drown. “Tweaker! I need ya!” I put my back to the wall and scanned the control center for my intrusion specialist.

The place was fragged.

My crew was pretty chewed up, too, but we’d gotten the rigger and the control center was ours. Bursts of fire were still coming from one corridor, but Dondy, Tiya, and Tipsy were keeping the Azzies from getting a foothold. Pak had caught a couple rounds, but stood beside the door at the ready, seemingly unaffected by the two bloody holes in his abdomen. Shank lay sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood spreading beneath his head, an unlucky round having found its mark.

Tweaker skidded to a stop beside me and pried open the door’s access panel with a deft twist of a multi-tool. “Electrics are down. Gotta bypass to my battery pack!”

“Do it!” I reloaded and covered him. We were out of the field of fire of the open hallway, but there was no way to know if one of the last two might open at any moment.

“You bleedin’, T’ing!” Tweaker shot me a look as he worked.

“It’s irie. Bleedin’ means I’m still alive, and I not even started kickin’ asses yet.”

“Raja dat!” Something in the door control sparked, and the three panels closed. The water stopped flowing into the room.

“Excellent! Come wit’ me.” I led Tweaker to the side of the open door and pointed to the control panel. “Get ready ta close it.”

“Raja.” He opened the panel and got to work.

I assessed Pak as bullets flew back and forth through the door between us. The tattoos covering his torso were moving, writhing like snakes around his wounds. I didn’t know if they were healing him or just angry at being shot full of holes.

“You okay, Pak?”

“Nominal,” he replied.

I pulled a stim from the med pack at my belt. “Need somethin’ for de pain?”

He shook his head. “Pain is irrelevant. Focus is paramount.”

“Suit yerself.” I popped one in my mouth and swallowed, because I’m a wimp and pain distracts me. I would have lit up a spliff, but the deluge of water from the sprinkler system wouldn’t let me. I risked a quick peek around the corner. It was another hab/workshop wing, and the Azzies were firing from cover.

“Ready, T’ing,” Tweaker said with a nod.

“Irie!” I pulled another charge, turned it on, and tossed it across the gap to Pak. “T’rough de door when I say.”

He nodded.

I held up a fist to my crew, and they held fire. Then, I leaned my shotgun around the corner and fired a flashbang. The round detonated, silencing the Azzie fire, and I pointed to Pak. He stepped out and threw carefully. I didn’t have to worry that he’d miss. I’d seen him toss cocoanuts into a basket from the top of a seventy-foot tree, never missing once.

I tapped Tweaker on the shoulder. “Now!”

The doors closed, and the explosion rocked the station. I felt comfortable with the assumption that the wing was no longer a threat.

My ears rang in the sudden quiet for a moment. Sometime during the fight, the alarm had died. Probably when the electrics went down. I needed to know if we still had a way out of here, however. “Squish, ya still livin’?”

“Sort of. Kinda busy. The rigger’s drones went on automatic when you smoked him. We’re up to our asses in alligators. Rose is too busy to talk, and the rest of us are running interference with our loas.”

“Raja. We got de control room. Mosta de Azzies’re dead. Gotta find the torps, and we good to go.”

“Rodger, boss. Hope we’re here when you’re done.”

“So do I.” I looked over my crew.

Tipsy looked worried and stood stiffly, favoring her left side. Tiya had taken a graze to the side of her face, but it had stopped bleeding already. Dondy looked hale, and Tweaker hadn’t gotten a scratch. Pak, I had no way to assess. If any other human had taken two rounds to the abdomen, I’d have written them off, but he didn’t seem impaired at all. I had to trust him.

“Got two more sections ta clear. Any bets which one has de torps?” The question was only half-serious, but I got two answers.

“That one.” Pak pointed to the one across the room from where we stood.

After consulting a small gadget, Tweaker nodded. “Yes, that one. It’s oriented with the end facing east. If the launch tubes are conventional ones, they’ll be in the end of that arm, pointing toward the target.”

“Alright den, ev’ryone ready up and stay sharp. We still got two Kofo shamans I ain’t seen yet.” I strode across the room.

“One thing, T’ing,” Tweaker warned. “No explosions near the torpedoes. If the warheads get ruptured without fire to neutralize the neurotoxin, we’re all dead.”

“Raja dat.” I motioned everyone forward. Pak and Tipsy took positions beside the door, while Tweaker worked on the panel. I stood behind Tiya and Dondy because I was tall enough to shoot over their heads.

“I can’t believe I like, left a perfectly good party for this shit.” Tipsy pulled another single shot bottle of Finlandia from her belt and downed it, flicking the bottle away with a grimace.

Tiya snorted a laugh. “Come on, Tips, this is way more fun than those to Latinos were.”

“Oh, for sure! Like, so disappointing!”

“Welcome ta my kinda party.” I leveled my ten-gauge at the door and nodded at Tweaker. “Ready?”

“When you are.”

“Do it.”

The door opened to an empty room crowded with lab equipment, but no people. Tiya nodded to Pak and they advanced side by side. Dondy and Tipsy followed. I went next and Tweaker followed, watching behind. Halfway down the chamber, we passed a hatch on our left labeled Emergencia Salida.

“What the...” I turned to Tweaker. “Think they really have an emergency exit? Where would it go?”

Tweaker bent down to read the block of fine print beneath the big red letters, then the door’s controls. “Looks like an escape pod, and it’s been deployed.”

“How many people would fit?”

“Six.” He looked up at me and shrugged. “No telling how many were aboard.”

“Well, fuck. Hope ta hell dey didn’t have de warheads wit’em.” I exchanged a look with my crew and nodded to the closed door. “Move on.”

We approached the door as before, Tweaker accessing the controls and powering the electric motor from his battery backpack. I nodded that we were ready, and he cycled it open.

We’d found the torpedoes. Two ten-meter-long cylinders, half a meter in diameter, rested on robotic cradles in the middle of the chamber. Instead of a standard connection port, the far end of the chamber, was equipped with two doors of the same diameter and a complicated launching system. But these fish weren’t ready to swim yet. Panels had been removed near the noses of the weapons.

“Check ’em, Tweaker.” There was nowhere to hide in the chamber, most of the space occupied by machinery for storing, assembling, and handling the massive weapons, so no reason for the rest of us to crowd in. “The rest of you, cover our exit and secure de control center.”

Tweaker went in, and the others reversed order and went back the way we’d come. One glance in one of the torpedoes’ open access ports and Tweaker gave me the bad news.

“No warheads.”

“Well, fuck it.” I pulled a charge from my pack and squeezed through the hatch to hand it to him. “Only one more place ta look. We’ll rig dese to blow an’—”

“Shit!” Tweaker was elbow deep in one of the weapons, craning his neck through the access port to peer inside. “There’s somethin’... Someone’s beat you to it, T’ing. There’s already charges set inside!”

My gut clenched. “Can ya disarm them?”

“I don’t even know how they’re activated! Looks like they’re magnetically attached, but they could be timed or radio detonated.” He hooked a thumb at the ceiling. “Safe bet whoever took that escape pod rigged ’em to blow. They’re fueled with PGDN, T’ing! A shit-ton of it!”

As I said, I wasn’t much of a chemist. “What’s PGDN?”

“It’s like nitroglycerin!”

“Mutha...” That was one chemical I knew. I activated my charge and slapped it to the ass-end of one torpedo. “C’mon. We gotta get outta here.”

“Raja dat!” He skipped past me through the door.

“And close de hatches behind us! If dese go off—”

A distant explosion rattled through the walls, nearly stopping my heart.

Tweaker looked at me, his eyes wide. “Deep Rose?”

“Close de doors and come on!” I snapped, hurrying past him. I keyed my mic. “Squish, ya dere?”

No answer.

“Deep Rose, Deep Rose, ya copy?” I received no reply, but I had no way to know if they could hear me or not. “Squish, de torpedos were set to explode by de Azzies. They could go off any time. Dere in de east arm of de complex. We’re going into de northwest arm now.” I squeezed through the second hatch into the control center and met the worried gazes of the rest of my crew.

“Are they gone?” Tipsy’s voice cracked.

“Dunno, but we got oua own probl’ms. De torps’re rigged ta blow, and de fuel’s explosive. We gotta find de warheads and figure out how ta get de fuck outta here.”

Tweaker closed the last hatch behind me. “Secure, but if those things blow...”

“Nothin’ we can do but get as far away from ’em as we can.” I motioned us to the last hatch. “Open it.”

We formed up as before, and the door opened to reveal another hab chamber, but more comfortable than the previous ones we’d seen. There were bunks with privacy curtains to the right, and two tables set to the left, then a small galley and another door. Officers’ quarters, undoubtedly.

“Move. Tiya, check the bunks, Pak, the other side. Tweaker, close the door behind us.”

We moved. There was nobody home. I felt a little better with another door behind us, but I had no way to know how big an explosion the fuel from the two torpedoes would yield. I didn’t want to find out, either.

Tweaker worked past us and opened the panel to the next door. We formed up, and he opened it. Another storage section with roll-up doors on both sides, the passage down the middle wide enough for a normal-sized human to squeeze past me, but not much more. I felt a little claustrophobic. We checked a few of the cabinets in passing. Most were filled with lab supplies and chemicals with names longer than a politician’s memory of campaign promises.

There wasn’t much room to form up as we had before, so while Tweaker worked on the door controls, Pak stood to the other side of the portal. Tiya and Dondy stood side by side with their weapons trained on the door, and Tipsy had just enough room to cast a spell between them. I stood behind them all, tall enough to send something lethal over their heads.

“Ready,” Tweaker said.

I gave him the nod, and the door opened.

The two Kofo shamans and two more lab-geeky looking guys were certainly surprised to see us.

The room was a lab, but I didn’t have time to take much notice. I did note the open hatch at the other end with the same red designation, Emergencia Salida, above it. Another escape pod.

The Kofo, a man and a woman, stood near the hatch, while the two guys in white coats held large metal spheres about a half-meter in diameter, labeled with large biohazard symbols.

The warheads.

The two lab geeks stared at us in terror. Tiya capped one of them with a three-shot burst, and Dondy took the other down. Both had the smart-gun accuracy and forethought not to shoot the warheads.

The Kofo responded quicker, dodging behind lab benches to avoid the hail of bullets, but I caught a glimpse of the horror on their faces as the two spheres hit the floor hard. I had no shot, and dared not risk rupturing the warheads with a shotgun blast or a flashbang.

Tipsy, however, had no such compunction, and flung a fireball into the lab.

The spell detonated close enough to send flames back through the hatch, and singed Tweaker and Pak a little. I didn’t know if the flames would be hot enough to rupture the warheads, but if they did, the nerve gas should have been inactivated by the heat.

Through the dissipating flames, I spotted one of the warheads on the floor, scorched but apparently intact, then I was distracted by one of the Kofo popping up from behind a lab bench. Sickly green light flashed in his hands. We were stuffed into the passage and had nowhere to dodge, so I put all I had into a counterspell.

The corrosive blast hit my counter like a battering ram, but some got through the hatch to spray Tweaker and Pak. Tweaker fell back screaming, clutching his face with both hands. Pak bounded through the door, and Tiya went in after him in a blur. Before anyone else could even get through, it was over, one of the Kofo lay slumped over a bench with his head twisted around backward, while the woman had been riddled by a full salvo from Tiya’s HKs. I guess she held a grudge for the past.

“Dondy, check Tweaker. Tiya, make sure dose warheads ain’t leaking.”

“If they were, we’d be dead already.” Tiya dumped her empty magazines and reloaded, then nudged the two metal spheres with a toe. “They’re singed, but not ruptured.”

“Irie!” I squeezed through the hatch and looked around.

The room was cooked, but none of our gunfire seemed to have ruptured the hull. The sprinkler system had long since given up. “Everyone in. We fry de warheads in the storage module, shut de door, and use de escape pod.”

Tipsy and Dondy helped Tweaker through the hatch. He was shaking badly, going into shock, his face a mass of half-dissolved flesh, eyes vacant sockets. There was nothing we could do for him but bandages and painkillers, which we did. I also tried to contact Squish again, but got no reply.

Tiya and Pak took the warheads to the far end of the storage room and returned. Dondy took Tweaker’s electrical rig and followed his instructions to hot-wire the door controls.

“Okay, Tiya shoots, Tipsy burns it, and Dondy closes de door, one-two-t’ree. Got it?” They all nodded. “Ready, Tips?”

“Sure.” She called flame to her hands and stood ready. Tiya leveled her HK’s at the warheads. “Call it, T’ing.”

“A’right. Ready...an’—”

The floor of the station bucked up under us, the force of the exploding torpedoes rolling the entire wing. We were all flung around like dice in a cup, the hard edges of benches and shattering glassware doing as much damage as a barrage of incoming fire. I hit a bulkhead hard enough to smash a cabinet of equipment to scrap, but my armor jacket kept the damage to my arms, legs, and head. The latter is pretty hard, so I didn’t lose consciousness. Everyone but Pak was pretty beat up. He had somehow managed to tumble with the roll and not break anything.

I heaved up, shaking broken glass from my dreads and took stock of my crew. Dondy had an arm bent in mid-bone, and Tiya bled from a head wound. Tipsy had been folded over a lab bench on her bad ribs. She moaned and coughed blood. Tweaker had miraculously endured no worse injury than landing on top of Dondy, which was probably how the latter had gotten a broken arm. What was worse than our injuries, however, was the water.

The door that had attached us to the rest of the station was bent in and leaking badly. On top of that, the seal between the lab and escape pod was spraying water. We had to get out, but we had to destroy the neurotoxin first.

“Ev’ryone up!” I helped Tipsy stand. “We gotta finish dis now and get out!” That was assuming the escape pod worked. I grabbed Tweaker’s rig and attached the leads to the door’s terminals, powering the electrics. “Tiya, shoot! Tipsy, can ya manage a fireball?”

“Sure... like... I think.” She grimaced with bloody teeth and worked the spell. Flames filled her hands, and she nodded to Tiya. “Go.”

Tiya fired two bursts from her weapons, and Tipsy loosed her spell. I heard the crack of the warheads rupturing over the roar of flames, and keyed the door closed.

“Mission accomplished! Now, ev’rybody in de escape pod!” We all shed our heavy gear, and I lifted Tweaker, Tiya helped Tipsy, and Pak steadied Dondy.

They started boarding and I handed Tweaker to Pak through the leaking hatch. When all five were in, all but lying atop each other, because the pod and the station module were both lying on their sides, there was little room to spare. The unit wasn’t made for trolls, and there was no way I would fit.

I handed my comm rig to Tiya. “No room for trolls. You hit the surface, trigger the call to Hanji. He’ll scoop you up.”

“Wait! T’ing! No!” Tipsy looked stricken. “We can fit you in.”

The others echoed her, but I shook my head. “Ain’t no room. I’ll keep dis hatch open and follow you up. It’s only thirty-five meters. Crocs swim good, ya know.”

“But we can fit you if we take out one of the seats!” she argued.

“No time for dat!” Water was already knee deep and lapping over the lower rim of the hatch. “Hit de button! I ain’t gonna die, Tips. I’ll be right behind ya!”

“You promise?” Tipsy sounded like she thought I was lying.

I really wasn’t. “Promise! Now go!”

Tiya hit the big red button mounted next to the hatch.

Nothing happened.

She slammed it again, but still the doors remained open.

“How the fuck does an emergency pod not work in an emergency?” Tipsy raged.

“Gotta be a bad switch or somet’in’.”

But the only member of my crew who could possibly diagnose, repair, or bypass the switch had no eyes, and the water was now rising faster. We were trapped. Even if we could open the hatch to the storage section, which I really would rather not risk, considering the chance of remaining neurotoxin, the door at the other end was sprung and leaking.

“Everybody out.” I leaned through and lifted Tweaker out. “We gotta figure out a way to get this t’ing off and swim up.”

“I am like, so not in condition to hold my breath!” Tipsy said.

I knew she wasn’t just complaining. With broken ribs and a lacerated lung, she probably wouldn’t make it to the surface. Neither would Tweaker, but I didn’t know what else to do. We either tried to get out and swam for it, or we drowned here.

“I’ll take you up, Tips. It’ll only be a few seconds. Pak can help Tweaker. The rest of us should be okay if we shed our weapons and ammo.” I unclipped my belt and let it splash into the rising water. “Now, how do we get de escape pod off dis t’ing?”

“Blow it off its mountings?” Dondy suggested.

“Wit’out killin’ everyone?”

“Mount two charges, left and right,” Tweaker said, the words a bit muffled from his ruined face. “Close the door from this side. The blasts should counteract one another and blow the pod in half.”

“And not blow de door into oua faces?”

“Maybe.”

“Do it!” I handed two charges to Pak and he mounted them on opposite walls of the spherical escape pod. The water was halfway up the hatch when he swam back out. I applied power to the hatch—the panel thankfully on the dry side—and closed it. I pulled the detonator and considered for a moment what I was about to do and the possible consequences.

If the door was damaged by the blast, we’d drown. If the blast breached the door, we’d be shredded by shrapnel. If the blast didn’t blow the pod completely apart, we’d still be trapped. I gave us about a one in five chance of escaping, less of making it to the surface alive.

I motioned everyone to the far end of the module and faced the hatch. “Ev’rybody ready?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely not ready!” Tipsy half-swam, half-stood behind me, clutching my belt with both hands.

“No option, Tips. Sorry.” I flipped up the cover on the detonator with my thumb.

“Wait!” Pak shouted, and since I’d never heard him shout once in my life, I stopped.

“What?”

He cocked his head. “Hear something. Propellers, maybe.”

“I can’t hear anyt’ing over my ringin’ ears and the spray of water! You sure?”

He nodded and pointed to the right-hand wall. “There.”

Then something hit us. Not hard enough to roll the module again, but the floor rocked and the rising water sloshed back and forth. Just as everyone was regaining their feet, something whined against the hull, and sparks flew from metal. A cutter sliced through the hull in a precise circle, faster than I would have thought possible. The disc of metal fell away, and Squish peered through.

“Need a lift?”

“Squishie!” Tipsy swam up to the hole and clambered up like her broken ribs had suddenly healed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I like swear I will never tease you again!”

“You don’t have to swear, Tips.” He grinned and helped her through. “And you can tease me any time.”

I lifted Tweaker through and started helping the others. “What happened ta comms?”

“We had a little altercation with some drones,” Squish explained. “A torp got through and blew one port out. Rose’s repair drone sealed it, but our comms got fried.”

“Glad ya made it.” I helped the last of my crew up and through the hole, then heaved myself up. The water was lapping at the edge.

“Glad you made it, boss.” Squish closed the iris hatch behind us and cycled the airlock to detach us from the ruined station. “The warheads?”

“Fried. Mission accomplished, but one escape pod got away. Dunno who.”

The inside of Deep Rose didn’t look much better than the inside of the station had. I fell into my seat and reached for a spliff, but my belt pack was gone.

“We saw that on sonar,” Squish said as we surged into motion. “As soon as all hell broke loose, Rose lit everything up and started shooting off countermeasures. We conjured some shark spirits and intercepted most of the drones’ fire. She’s a badass rigger, I tell you true.”

“Why, thank ya, darlin!” Rose descended the ladder from the conning tower and looked us over skeptically. “We’re missin’ one.”

“Shank took a headshot,” I explained with a shrug. “Nothin’ ta be done.”

“Damn, I’m sorry about that.”

“He knew de risks.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes. I hurt all over, inside and out. “It’s de life, right? We live by de sword, and die by de sword. Coulda been a hell of a lot worse.”

“Ain’t that the damn truth.” Rose pointed to a locker. “Med kits in there. We’ll be in Cayman in four hours, give or take. Kick back, darlin’s. Rose is drivin’,”

“Four hours.” I leaned back and closed my eyes. Mission accomplished... I was too beat up to wonder yet if it had been worth the cost. “Wake me when we get dere.”

About the Author

As a sailor, reader of SF/F, and gamer, writing nautical and RPG tie-in stories came naturally for Chris. He has written for Paizo Publishing, Privateer Press, Catalyst Game Labs, Fantasy Flight Games, Legendary Games, Mongoose Publishing, and Red Circle Productions.

He has, to date, written over 30 novels, several of which are pending publication this year, are on submission with agents and publishers, or still in the editorial process.

Upcoming releases include Dragon Nemesis, book two of the Dragons of Boston urban fantasy trilogy from Falstaff Books; his newest nautical fantasy series in the Blood Sea Tales, book four, Ashwalker, will release this fall; and his Shadowrun novella, Crocodile Tears, with Catalyst Game Labs, featuring his Caribbean characters from two previous Shadowrun short stories.

Visit jaxbooks.com for a look at his other work, and free samples!

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A Kiss to Die For by Jennifer Brozek

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SHADOWRUN: CROCODILE TEARS

By Chris A. Jackson

Cover art by Victor Manuel Leza Moreno

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