Some folks say it rains all the time here. It don't. In the dark heart of winter, even the wind blowing in off the Sound doesn't keep the cold away entirely; sometimes it doesn't rain, it snows. But even when it snows, it feels like trouble pours right on me.
My optics laid a thermographic overlay atop my high-res lowlight graphics, and every mook I saw just looked like a blob of cool green from the night vision, muddied and splashed with deep red where his heat signature leaked past secondhand armor. Snowflakes the size of quarters -- swear! -- blurred up everything, making the red and green appear and disappear behind flurrying blobs of white. It was all terrible festive, but hell if I was able to enjoy the yuletide mood. They weren't waving church bells around, these punks had Predators and Max-Powers, instead, and a couple boxy little TMPs, to boot. Ho, ho, holy shit, that was a lot of lead in the air.
I pounded my last twelve-gauge slug into one's center-of-mass, then swung back around my corner as the hail of incoming fire gnawed at the bricks and whipped past my head. Dammit. Shotty was empty. I tossed my Mossberg into the blue-gray -- cold, but dirty as hell -- Puyallup slush, my neighborhood's unique mixture of snow and ash. The shotgun'd be fine, though. I felt a hot trickle of blood seep down my side, a grazing hit just above my hit had me good and pissed off, even if my Sideways didn't let it sting.
"Good thinkin' gettin' the stainless," I muttered as I snagged my Colt from under my coat. At least it wouldn't rust up on me. Prob'ly.
I poked my handgun around the corner and let the smartlink field-in-field give me the sea of merry red, green, and white again. Punks. Two were down thanks to the shotgun, but the ones left were stupid or high enough not to stop. Three of 'em, coming down the alley my way, and between me and my Ford. I'd had a quick job two buildings down, wanted the weight and size of the Mossberg to help keep a situation under control while I served some papers; and now here we were, a handful of gangers from the Who Gives A Frag I Can't Keep Track crew, wannabes who'd hit a big enough stash of guns and combat drugs to think they were Puyallup's next big thing. The near-hit earlier, a burst that'd chewed a hole in my lucky coat, had torn at my off-side hip, too; my spare magazine was gone. I just had the eight-plus-one rounds in my Colt 2061's single-stack magazine, and Ariana was nowhere to be found.
Merry friggin' Christmas.
I laid down three shots as I went around the corner, Colt leading the way. The one in front staggered as I hit him, and the rest locked up as I did the last thing that made any damned sense, and advanced. What was it Hard Exit always said they'd trained her to do? 'When in doubt, assault,' or something like that. If you found yourself in an untenable position, you were dead anyways. If not, attacking would throw them off and you'd take the initiative from 'em.
I shoulder-checked their lead man aside and leveled my Colt at the next one. I'd gotten a second's jump on 'em and nailed one, but they were quicker to react than I would'a liked. Flare comp subroutines darkened his muzzle flash, but I felt his Steyr's slugs tug playfully at the hem of my coat, missing by a hair. The Sideways slowed him down -- technically sped my perception up, but whatever -- and even as I lined up my front sight and the smartlink reticule on the cheery red-and-green blob that was trying to kill me, my audio suite picked up the cheerful ringing of his shell casings hitting the ground. My Colt bucked in my hand and I swear the metal-sweet sound of his cases played a Christmas carol in my head. I fed him a second shot, a third, saw him stumble, squeeze the trigger and sent mental commands, firefirefire until his Ork-broad body finally stumbled and fell.
A fresh red light blinked on in my field of vision, the Colt's onboard software alerting me to the fact I was out of ammo. It wasn't needed, I'd felt it run dry; there'd been a shift in weight as the bit metal slide locked back, and, oh yeah, the little fact it wasn't fucking shooting any more.
The third one came at me with a roar and a barking Predator in his mitt, and we fell into the snow in a tangled heap. The slush soaked half of me, and I fought a shiver as I felt how warm and blood-slick some of it was. He latched split-nailed fingers around my neck and shouted obscenities. I frowned at the state of his teeth and thumbed the slide release on my '61, feeling the solid snick-snack and the weight shifting again. I used his strangling as an excuse to not smell his breath for a second and, lazily, Sideways-high like always, I just reached out with one long elven arm and smacked him square in the temple with the hunk of metal in my hand. A gun's a weapon, or at least a tool, even when it's empty.
Then I did it again, and again, and again, until he let go. And a few more times, for good measure.
I hauled myself to my feet and choked in a deep breath, ready to claw my knife from my pocket if any of them tried to get back up. They didn't, so I had a second and clawed into a different pocket; a smoke to calm my nerves, a Target to fill the alley with the sharp smell of tobacco and carcinogens. I wasn't in the mood to go for my mojo, I settled for the ancient Zippo to get it lit. Inhale. Exhale. Watch heat signatures fade.
My wingtips slipped in the sludge and ice as I retrieved my Mossberg, propped it on one shoulder, and sauntered down the alley to my waiting Ford...trying to remember if the heat was working or not. Then there was a flash of light right in front of me, and there she was; Ari. My ally. Late as shit.
"Ohmygosh!" Her eyes went wide, crystal-blue and innocent, as she saw the state of me. "I'm so sorry! So super duper sorry!"
Hell if even I could stay mad at her for long. She swooped next to me, snug under my free arm, effortlessly lifting me even as she poured mana into my wounded hip until my Corpsman medi-scan biomonitor stopped pinging me about the gunshot in my side.
"I got here as fast I could! I was working my other job!"
"Your...what?" I puffed out smoke and confusion.
"Yooooou knooooow," she said, like a little girl. A gloating one.
"I know you don't have another job, is what I know."
"Come ooooooon, boss. You've gotta know! You're so smart! We spirits, we fly really fast. Especially me! That's how I got back south to Puyallup so quick." The last with a bit of childish pride.
"Uh huh."
"And we can fly right through walls and ceilings and stuff, unless they're warded, all swooooosh."
"And if someone powerful takes care of the wards, or helps you, then..." but she cut me off.
"And we can read auras, to see who's lying and telling the truth, who's afraid and who's brave, who's good and who's bad."
"Right."
"And I love kids!"
"Yeah."
"And I love preeee-seeeents."
"You love waffles, too, what's th--"
"And I hate bad guys," her face scrunched up.
"So?"
"And coal does also come from the plane of Earth, like me."
"I guess, but..."
"And I have pointy eaaaaaars!"
"Yeah, but you..."
"C'mon, boss. Don't make me say it." Honest concern in her voice, a child begging her parent for a favor, a best friend pleading for someone's confidence. "I'm not allowed to say it."
My gut and my head worked together as I sucked in another lungful of sweet, sharp, tobacco. I let my street instincts do most of the work, using my headware to confirm my hunches and compile my data, as I slid into the driver's seat of my big ugly Ford.
"You can fly all over the planet in one night. You can tell who's a schmuck and who's a straight-shooter, and you like givin' stuff to good kids, and have plenty of coal for bad ones."
"Uh huh!" She hovered harmlessly through the door of my Ford and planted herself in the passenger seat, humoring me as I put the pieces together.
"You were working somewhere north of here, for a powerful spellcaster who helps you with wards, to get into buildings real fast. And you got the gig because you look like an elf?"
"Yeah!" She almost struck a pose.
"And it's Christmas."
Another nod, this one very serious.
"You work for...?"
She looked terrible pleased with herself as she reached up to her mouth, clamped quietly shut now, and turned an imaginary key before tossing it away.
I followed suit with the tossing motion, but only to flick my Target out into the Puyallup slush before rolling my window back up. I shook my head and the Ford snarled and pulled away, shooting a backwards glance to the tumbled gangers who'd never bother anyone again.
"And to all a good night."
