Jenny again, instead of the more technically brilliant, but emotionally unstable, Dodger; but the stress under which she was operating was disturbing her usual crisp grasp of the situation.
'What's the word, Jenny?'
'A street runner posted an FYI on the local shadownet after seeing a magically assisted snatch outside St. Basil's in South London. Dated the op just after noon yesterday. Victim matches the priest's description.'
'Could still be a thousand people.'
'A thousand people don't attract the attention of other people, two of whom match descriptions with your druids,'
'You got any more details?'
'Negatively. Spotter didn't want to get involved. Beat feet soon as he twigged to the op. Said catching fireballs wasn't his style.'
'Smart.'
There was a pause, then Jenny said in a tentative voice, 'I thought we were, too, boss.'
'You got a problem, Jenny?'
'Negatively, boss,' she responded quickly. 'You pay the bills and I run the Matrix. What could be better? I just think this one's running a little close to overheat, and you're awful close to the fire.'
'Just do your job, girl. I'll be all right.'
'Hope so. Just don't want to see the boss getting hurt for no good reason.'
Hart didn't like the idea of getting hurt, for any reason. Jenny's fears weren't groundless. There were too many factions scrambling around. The sooner things were settled, the better.
'Did you get the meres lined up?'
'Prepaid bond locked them down, but if they're as good as they claim, we don't have enough in the account to pay the completion fee. Logistics ate a lot of the budget.'
'Don't worry, they'll take enough casualties. Feed me the rendezvous data.'
The telecom beeped, signaling a datafeed on the second line. Hart split the screen and reviewed the details. They were satisfactory.
'Time to go to work, Jenny.'
'I'm gone, boss.' Jenny's voice faded out in simulated doppler echoes.
Word of Father Rinaldi's fate finally reached them, and it was not good. In attempting to contact the investigative team his order had sent to the British Isles, the priest had run afoul of agents of the Hidden Circle and been captured. Sam had no doubt that the priest would be one of the victims at the renegade druids' next filthy ritual.
Rinaldi's capture complicated things, and Sam didn't need any more complications. Everything was too confused as it was. He stared at the opened packet that Dodger had brought.
Weighting down the curl of the paper was a pistol holster wrapped up in its belt. The smooth black leather encased his Narcoject Lethe, the same pistol that Dodger had given him and that Hart had taken away after she shot him. The other end of the wrappings was held down by a fossil tooth. 'Some kind of Late Cretaceous dinosaur,'' the paleontologist had said when Sam had taken it to the museum open house. Sam thought he had a better idea of its origin but he had been wounded and delirious that night in the badlands when he had broken it free from its sandstone entombment. Whatever it had been, it had become a power fetish for him when he drilled a hole to take a ritually knotted cord so that he could wear it around his neck. Folded neatly between the gun and the tooth was the fringed kevlar-lined leather jacket that Sally had given him after his first solo shadowrun.
What had motivated Hart to give Dodger this packet of gifts for Sam? It didn't seem to be boobytrapped; Sam had detected no residues of spells, and Willie had confirmed that no technological bugs infested the contents of the package. 'He'll need it,' she had told Dodger. For what? Against her? If it was meant as some sort of apology, why hadn't she contacted him herself? The unlocked for return of his goods only confused him more, raising additional worries. Time was running out.
With Rinaldi needing to be rescued, the runners had to split their already pitifully weak forces. It couldn't be helped. If their attack against Hyde-White went off before they rescued the Circle's captives, there was too great a chance that the captives would be killed out of hand. If they made their rescue attempt before the spoiling attack, the Circle would be alerted that Sam's team was back in action. That surprise element was their only advantage, and a pair of simultaneous operations was the only way to use that advantage. It was also a good way for the runners to be defeated in detail.
They were so pitifully undermanned for what they had to do. Herzog was dead, and Willie's street contacts had told her that the shaman's death had effectively cut off any chance of local help. The word on the street was that the run was suicide. Dodger was still trying to contact some out-of-town friends, but Sam didn't have much hope that they would be able to stand up to the druids. He had detailed them, should they show, to helping Dodger go after Rinaldi. With the distraction Sam's attack would provide, Dodger's group shouldn't face organized opposition. At least they had been able to make connections through Cog to outfit Willie for the raid.
The plan was weak and Sam knew it. But they'd make the run. The split weakened the effort, perhaps fatally; but Sam couldn't abandon Rinaldi, and he couldn't see a way to stagger the operations. It was all at once or not at all.
He tossed his head back and closed his eyes, using the exercises Herzog had shown him to reduce the tension. When he felt his neck muscles relax a little, he sighed and brought his head upright again. Beyond Hart's engimatic gift the telecom screen glowed with a frozen image. The screen showed a hardcover book lying on a rug, half covered by a sheet. Due to the forced image enlargement, the image wasn't sharp, but it was clear enough for Sam to recognize it. While Dodger's electronic delvings seemed to contradict Sam's certainty that the woman who was residing in Hyde-White's residence was his sister, the book argued otherwise. And, to Sam, the book won the argument and spurred his haste.
Only the author's name and half of the title were visible, but Sam knew the book, anyway. It was R. Norman Carter's Queen of Sorceries. The original spine of the cover was gone, replaced by a strip of plastiboard taped down to protect the binding. Sam remembered his father standing behind his shoulder monitoring him as he carefully lettered the name of the book onto that now-scuffed piece of board. He could hear Janice crying in the other room and the soft, comforting tones of his mother as she tried to soothe her frantic daughter. Sam had still been mad and unrepentant about teasing his sister about her fondness for the story. His father had said it had been cruel to tease Janice, but Sam hadn't understood at the time. He had thought that his father would approve of his attitude. After all, the book glorified magic. Sam had thought he was rescuing Janice from the perils of magic.
What he hadn't known when he was nine. Even with its shoddy repair, or perhaps because of it, the book had remained one of Janice's childhood treasures. Like their father, she had always been sentimental about books. Sam didn't understand the passion she felt for the physical object, but he knew that she would have used her limited weight allowance to take her favorites with her to Yorni.
Now that book sat in Hyde-White's residence, and Sam could not believe that it belonged to anyone other than his sister. Somehow, Hyde-White had rescued her from Yomi and seduced her. For the first, Sam had to be grateful; the druid had done something Sam had been unable to do. But, for the second, the man had only earned Sam's enmity. Janice had obviously exchanged one form of bondage for another, and she probably was more than grateful for the attention the fat druid gave her. Her goblinized form would not be beautiful.
Sam could not leave his sister living a lie. He was all the family she had left, and he would have sought her freedom even if Hyde-White had been no more than a wealthy and jaded corporate with an exotic taste in bedmates. The druid's evil taint made Janice's rescue and Hyde-White's elimination imperative.
Dodger knew that the electronic contact would have been safer. Not that he was worried about physical safety; he had chosen the meeting site carefully. Though elves were uncommon throughout the plex, their presence in this dive of a pub was less remarkable; London's metahumans showed remarkably more tolerance for each other than the norms did for any of the metatypes.
Even though a Matrix connection would have given him less opportunity to screw up, he wanted an inperson meet. It wasn't because he wanted to deal with Estios face to facea151that was a pain on which he would gladly pass. He felt a need to see Teresa again.
