like a war. Hell, it was a war. Automatic weapons fire, the boom of shotguns, the reverberating thunder of grenades, and a high pitched screech of something not of this world tore the night air.
A strange calm fell over Kaine. For the first time in ages he felt like he was where he belonged. He knew who he was, what he was supposed to do. A smile crept across his lips as all the excuses he'd told himself back in '57 about why he had to go into hiding melted away.
Everybody makes mistakes, he thought, still grinning. Time to make up for lost time. • • •
Emerging from the alley at the front of the buildings, Kaine got his first clear view of the battle. The gangers were pinned down behind their vehicles. The gunfire coming from the building was light but constant, exactly as he'd instructed. Now and then, Elise dropped a grenade into the middle of it all. The goal at this point wasn't to take the gang out, just make them think really hard about whether rushing the building was a good idea.
Of course the main attraction was the elementals. Hilda's enormous fire elemental was locked in combat with an earth elemental and an air elemental. The air elemental spiraled around the battle like a tiny tornado, tossing dust and debris and taking an occasional swipe at the fire elemental. The earth elemental grappled directly with the fire elemental, trying to force its way past the fire spirit to the building. As the fire elemental batted the earth elemental back, Kaine whistled under his breath. Hilda had some serious mojo.
Scanning the gangers and matching them to the overlay Darius was transmitting, he re-tagged the shamans. If he could get across the road, he could get behind their line. The problem was the streetlights.
'Darius. Kill the streetlights on the west side of the building.'
'Um, I'm not sure how to do that. I can brighten them and dim them and stuff, but I don't think I can turn them off.'
Kaine cursed and wracked his brain, trying to remember something that might help. He remembered a run his team had done on a Renraku research center a long time ago.
'O.K., don't worry about turning them off. Just crank them up. All the way. Past redline if you can.'
The lights flared, and Kaine's cybereyes worked overtime to compensate. After a few seconds of blinding, white light, the bulbs started to blow. Moments later, the street was dark.
'Nice work, kid.'
'Whoa! That was awesome,' Darius replied.
Kaine didn't wait. He dashed across the street. Halfway to the other side a beeping alerted him that his knee was hitting red again. Kaine cursed the old hardware, but he didn't stop. He reached the other side, apparently without drawing attention to himself, and crouched behind some trash cans. Peering over the cans, he saw the gangers. They were focused on the building.
He spotted one of the mages sitting behind an old Ford Americar, his back against the front tire. The mage's eyes were squeezed shut, and he was rocking and muttering. Kaine knew that look. The guy was struggling to keep his elemental under control. Looking up, he saw Hilda's fire elemental getting forced back. The ganger mage might not have full control over his elemental, but the tide was definitely turning against Kaine's people.
Not ready to reveal his position just yet, Kaine weighed his options. Even with the battle raging, gunfire coming from behind the lines might grab somebody's attention. Reaching behind his back, he popped the mini-crossbow he carried from its mount and pulled a bolt from the pocket on his thigh.
Doesn't need to be state of the art to kill ya, Kaine thought.
He raised the crossbow, his cybereyes' smart assist locking onto the mage, and he squeezed the trigger. With only the slightest whisper, the bolt flew through the air and made a little pop as it embedded itself in the side of the mage's head. The mage slumped over, and when Kaine looked under the car again he saw the air elemental blow away like smoke on the wind.
One down, he thought. And not a moment too soon.
With a scream and a sudden stench of sulfur, Hilda's fire elemental exploded. The earth elemental had plowed straight through it. Fire swirled around the stone creature for a moment, and then wicked away in a shower of sparks. The gangers let out a cheer, and with a command from their leader they charged. The earth elemental headed straight for the door.
Kaine was thankful that he'd outfitted the door guards with the hand weapons. They weren't much, but it was a hell of a lot better than fighting that thing with their bare hands. Eagle had once tried to explain to Kaine why normal weapons didn't do much against elementals, but Kaine had gotten bored and dozed off. He didn't care about the ins and outs of it. He just needed to know how to kill the damn things.
With any luck, Kaine might take out the other mage, and thus banish the elemental, before the monster managed to do too much damage. Kaine rechecked the second mage's position and started creeping along behind the gangers' cars. Except for a few wounded, the rest of them had rushed the building.
Check that, Kaine thought. Almost all the gangers.
Just as Kaine was about to round the bumper of a rusty Hermes delivery van, he spotted the massive troll leader with two other gangers. As the troll watched the battle, the two gangers worked furiously to mount the troll's mini gun on him. Kaine peeked under the Hermes and saw the earth elemental crushing the front door of the building. A stream of gangers poured in behind it.
Shit!
There was no real choice. He had to take out that minigun and hope to hell that those boys inside could handle the elemental. Dropping his crossbow, he drew his matched set of Cavalier Deputy pistols.
Kaine popped his reflexes and stepped out from behind the van. He cursed when he found that he didn't have a clean shot on the troll. His cybereyes locked on the two gangers helping their leader instead. Via the smartlinks on his pistols and palms, his arms and weapons snapped up into perfect firing positions. He squeezed the triggers, felt the rounds spiral down the barrels, and heard the pop as twin silver bullets cracked through the sound barrier and exited the gun. A nanosecond later two wet, red holes appeared in the foreheads of the gangers, and they dropped to the ground.
The troll, his minigun already in its harness, spun to face Kaine and pulled the trigger. Kaine winced when he saw that the barrels were already spinning. He knew what was coming. The angry squawk of a couple hundred rounds exiting the gun almost simultaneously echoed in the night air. Kaine barely rolled back behind the van in time.
The screech of his AR alarms was the only notification Kaine had that he'd been hit. Praying the readout was wrong, he looked to his left. It wasn't wrong. The stream of bullets had sheared his left arm off just below the shoulder. The glittering chrome appendage lay twitching on the ground, one of his Deputies still gripped in the hand.
The troll laughed, a rough, awful sound as hard as the minigun's bullets. At the same time, a cacophony of shouts and screams blasted through Kaine's comm. Over the chaos he heard Elise shouting orders while Darius cried out positions. Kaine shut it off. There was nothing he could do for them now.
'I don't know who you are, omae,' the troll called out, 'but you do not fuck with the New Chamber Boys!'
In the background he heard the whir of the minigun's barrel still spinning, ready to spew forth another stream of pure death.
'Fuck you,' Kaine spat, still crouched behind the Hermes. Conversation under fire had never been his strong suit.
The minigun squawked again. The screech of rending metal filled the air, and a shower of sparks rained on Kaine. When the noise stopped, Kaine looked up and found that the troll had cut the back side of the van in half with the gun. Had he been standing, he'd already be dead. From across the street he heard an explosion detonate inside the building.
Kaine growled. There was no way in hell he was going down cowering in the shadows. He'd already spent the last fifteen years doing that.
Bypassing the failsafes, Kaine popped his wires into full overload. The burn that raged through his nerve endings was agonizing, and he smelled the sizzle of flesh as the wires went into meltdown. Kaine launched himself from behind the van. The troll was ready, and Kaine watched as in slow motion the huge metahuman squeezed the trigger on the minigun. The bullets streamed toward him like a glittering ribbon of mercury.
Kaine brought up the Deputy. At this speed, even his smartlink wasn't keeping up. He ignored it and lined up the shot along the gun's iron sights. He pulled the trigger, and the big pistol bucked in his hand. The cybernetic muscles in his arm locked down and compensated for the recoil. The stream of lead from the minigun sliced through his shoulder. Pain dampers shut down all sensation, and Kaine squinted through the mist of blood that
