Shadowrun General > Fan fiction

Hop

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Critias:
A couple years back, I was as wet-behind-the-ears a rookie as you could imagine.  I never wanted to work patrol, and I didn't stick it out for too long.  My grandaddy Hopkins had been one of Clay Wilson's first Lone Star security officers, back in the day.  He'd jumped straight from the Marine Corps military police into a Lone Star uniform, and never looked back.  He spent thirty years with LSSS, with a full decade of service kicking ass in a Fast Response Team.  I worshiped him.  He put my dad through school, where he majored in Psychology and Communications.  My dad worked for thirteen years in Special Investigations and as a hostage negotiator before he and mom died, never once just wearing the plain uniform of a beat cop.  When I was young, I thought dad was weaker than grandpa.  He wasn't.  I know that now.  He was just different.  God damn that car bomb that took him from me before I could say so to his face.

My point, yeah.  Sorry.  My point is, I never wanted to be a beat cop.  I'd done well at the Austin Academy, had family history for brownie points, and had a full Bachelor's degree, but that wasn't enough to just flat out call my job upon graduation.  When I got allocated to Patrol, I asked for a reassignment prior to starting service;  I figured they'd appreciate that initiative, maybe they'd think I was trying to get sent as far from home as possible to show that I was willing to go where Lone Star needed me, to show I wasn't going to be open to favoritism or corruption by working the streets close to home.  The God's honest truth was that I didn't want to go home, since my parents had died.  I'd put in a lateral transfer request along with the regional reassignment, hoping to piggyback the one on top of the other.  I didn't want to work a beat.  I wanted Fast Response.  I got half of what I asked for, but the wrong half.  They shipped me far, far, away from Texas, but tossed me into a patrol car.

At any rate, there I was.  Seattle.  About as far from home as I could get, and as miserable and wet a place as I could imagine.  My nightmares came true, the move request hadn't been enough to impress anyone, and I was riding a beat.  

I'd been paired up with the meanest, ugliest, Ork son of a bitch you could imagine for an FTO, and on the rare instance he wasn't calling me a worthless piece of shit rookie, it was only to call me a dandelion eater, instead.  

Right.  'Cause growing up meta in Texas hadn't been crappy enough, y'know?  

They've got to lump Zeke and I together because we're metahumans, but he's the biggest bigot I've ever met.  The asshole hated everyone.  Cops younger than him for being so stupid.  Cops older than him for not aging like Orks do.  Orks for giving his metaspecies a bad name.  Other metaspecies for being gay, or short, or ugly, or pretty.  Mages for being weirdos.  SURGElings for being freaks.  Straight people for breeding and crowding up his city, gay guys for all eye-fucking him too much, lesbians for not eye-fucking him enough.  You name it, Zeke hated it.  

It was my fourth night of listening to him bitch and insult me while he drove us from rainy crime scene to rainy crime scene.  Our Americar -- two metas without a sergeant stripe between 'em, what, you thought we got a nice new car? -- pulled up outside a murder scene, our second or third of the night.  Homicide was already on the scene, but they wanted some more flashing lights and helmeted heads to keep crowds back, start questioning neighbors, and make sure the media saw just how damned hard Lone Star was working to keep the streets safe.  We weren't in the nicest part of Downtown, and the more uniforms on-scene, the better.  The officer in charge of the scene had even given us the green-light to go ahead and take our Mossbergs with us for the door-to-door if we wanted, to add a sense of authority and just in case the dipshit perp was still around.  

Zeke made it clear to me that if I didn't take my shotgun with me I was a pathetic homosexual vegetarian that fit every stereotype of elvenkind.  He reminded me of my grandpa, just a smidge, the way he spit tobacco juice at my boots while he dared me to disagree with him.

So we're on the fourth floor of the apartments across the street from the vic's body when suddenly all Hell breaks loose out front.  We'd had a few too many sets of mirror shades and parked cars out front, and the local worthless shitbird gangbangers had decided to mistake us for a shooting gallery.  I heard the explosions before anything else.  Automatic fire started echoing off the glass and steel apartments by the time I'd used a straight-armed shove to end an interview with a citizen, and get her proned out behind her couch and far away from her apartment windows.

Zeke is already at the window, cursing into the radio and giving descriptions of the shooters by the time I make up my mind whether or not I'm supposed to apologize to a civilian for throwing her across her own apartment.  Things get eerie for me when I hear the gunfire and screaming in my helmet earpieces, as well as with my own two ears, after a stray burst opened up the windows and sent glass falling everywhere.

A pickup truck full of Troll Killers was out front, all red, green, and ugly, with maybe a half dozen of them in the back of it, unloading top-notch Ares combat guns at everyone they see in a uniform.  It's driving up and down the street, back and forth, ramming and running over whatever it can reach, before it parks and they all really set up a proper firing line.  They've got their faces all painted up, they're shouting metaracial slurs when they're not just laughing and shooting, and right that second I wonder if I've made the right career choice, because there's no way I can be professional and clinical about animals like that, I just hate them.  

People are dying, everywhere.

Every poor bastard officer still on the street is pinned down or bleeding out in the gutter.  Every two or three seconds one of the Troll Killers remembers how to use a secondary trigger, and sends a grenade arcing over to where the officers on the street had taken cover behind their cars.  Some hit, and send a patrol car and two or three cops straight to shit.  Some bounce and skitter away, and catch the civilians that stopped to see the flashing lights and aren't scattering fast enough.  

One of the psychos in the back of the truck is just waving his Alpha around, spraying into the apartment buildings and laughing.  When there's an explosion on the street, he takes it as a challenge and triggers his grenade launcher, too.  He's happy.  He's happy to be just randomly hurting people.

Fucking Tempo.  Fucking Seattle.

Zeke sticks his head and shoulders up and shoulders his Mossberg, sending a steady stream of buckshot down from our window, cursing as his shotgun rocks against his shoulder.  I pitch in, and the two of us race to see who can empty their magazine faster.  We tie, despite his head start.  The angle's bad, we're up too high, and our CMDTs have cheap combat chokes that are shit for long distance shooting.  Between the buckshot scatter and the drugs coursing through the Troll Killers, all we manage it to make a few of 'em stumble and howl at us.  Even with my smartgun hook up, buckshot's just not made for this kind of range.

We get their attention, though.  A scattering of autofire responds, even as the pair of us duck down to reload.  Zeke had told me that every pocket of my Lone Star issue armored jacket had better be full of spare shotgun shells -- he says this on my first night, mind, maybe the second or third sentence out of his mouth, in fact, before I even get his name -- or obviously it was a sign my mother and I had done things to each other that were illegal in the CAS, UCAS, and everywhere decent.

I've thumbed the last round into my underbarrel tube when something besides basic Alpha fire slams into the wall behind us.  The grenade hits low, but the explosion does enough that even a shitty gangbanger's shitty aim is good enough.  You know what they say about horseshoes and hand grenades?  Well, launched ones from a smartgun, too.  Trust me.

A split second after I hear the whump of the launch, I feel Zeke's hands on me, his Ork-strong arms giving me a heave away from the wall.  Then the blast hits.  A mule kicks me in the spine and I go flying without an ounce of air in my lungs.  

My ears won't stop ringing as I try to disentangle myself and my Mossberg from the civilian lady's couch, and taking my helmet off and putting it back on doesn't help the spots leave my vision or make any sense at all.  By the time I can clear my head, take a proper breath and get back to my feet to look around, I realize that Zeke was a lot closer to the point of impact than I was.  He's about half gone, just like the floor and wall of the apartment building.  The place has turned into a mess of red and meat and open air and sharp edges.

I spend about five seconds panicking and wishing I was back at college before the ringing in my ears gives way to two voices.  One is my grandfather, telling me to get my shit together, cowboy up, and stop my crying.  If I don't straighten up and roll on, I'll learn what it's like to get my ass kicked by an old man.  The other voice is my father.  He reminds me that the book is there for a reason.  Manuals are written because they're full of good advice.  Lone Star issues gear because it's valuable.  Remember the academy.  He's proud of me.

I've got to do something.  The radio screams in my ears as other officers die, as Alpha combatguns chatter and send death and grenades everywhere, as civilians get mowed down standing right there right in front of us and we can't do a damned thing to help them.

I pull out the popper Zeke had given me -- right before the shotgun shell "advice" -- my first night.  In Austin, we'd been told that Jazz use wasn't uncommon among high crime patrol officers.  They'd told us that it was to be used in emergencies, to speed up response times and serve as a direct combat force multiplier.  They'd told us that, used in moderation, it provided well trained Lone Star officers with the edge they'd need to waste the beetleheads and Tempo junkies that made us all look bad.

They hadn't told us that it was common for veteran officers with multiple disciplinary black marks and a strong tie to the streets they patrolled -- officers like Zeke, for instance -- to keep emergency one-shot inhalers of Kamikaze, not Jazz, on hand.  Funny story, but Zeke hadn't told me that, either.

My blood turns to fire a half second after the dose hits me.  

It feels like flying.

I'm back at UT, playing Free Safety to earn my way through school.  It's just seconds after a  highlight reel tackle of mine had just stopped the opposing team short on a third down play.  I'm a tiny god.  I'm king of the world.  I'd stuffed their running back before he'd hit the line of scrimmage, hit him so hard his helmet flew off, and knocked their whole offensive team over to their sidelines to make room for special teams.  I am unstoppable.  I'm on fire.  I'm playing the game of my life.  Coach puts me on punt return duty once he sees I'm not tired, and I stand at the far end of the field, seeing the sea of orange t-shirted fans cheering for me, working the turf under my cleats as I wait for their punter to give me my ball.  My ball, that I'm going to run to my end zone as soon as they kick it towards me.  All I need -- all I need in the whole wide world -- is for a few of these guys to block for me, and I'll show every Longhorn fan out there that I'm the king of the stadium.  

I run, I dodge a tackler, juke left, fake to the right in a quick stutter step, put green behind me as I take the punt back the way it came.  An Orkish linebacker with ridiculous shoulders and no neck to speak of is coming at me like a freight train.  I play chicken with him, lower my shoulder, go straight at him and through him.  I'm an Elf, but not that kind of Elf.  I work hard, I eat protein, I lift big, I'm as strong as any motherfucker in my stadium, and I'll show that to them one at a time if I have to.  I carry my football down the field, stiffarm another defensive end and give myself nothing but grass between me and the promised land.  Just to show off, when I hit the goal line I uncoil my legs like springs and launch myself through the air to look good for the cameras.

I hang in the air forever, and think about glory and coeds and working hard to impress my grandpa.  The football breaks the plane of the end zone, and the scoreboard changes as the crowd goes wild.

Touchdown Longhorns!  Touchdown, Hopkins!

My cleats hit the seldom-trod turf of the endzone, and...

...I blink Kamikaze-dilated eyes as I break both my legs and a Troll Killer's skull landing on top of him in the back of their pick up truck, sixty feet down.  And I don't feel a damned thing, when I do.  

I prop my ass up on the tailgate of their crowded pick up as it starts moving again and smoothly shoulder my shotgun just as lazily as if it was a fine summer day.  I'm carefree as a teenager again, with Gramps sneaking me beer and the both of us are shooting whole boxes of clay pigeons out on his property.  

The Mossberg bucks against my shoulder, and I cheerfully shout "pull" as I rack the slide and fire again, and again, and again.  Every squeeze of the trigger sends eight metal pellets, each one an 8.4mm round in and of itself, downrange in a tight cluster.  Grandpa's proud of me.  I'm hitting with every single shot, dead on, and blasting the pigeons to pieces.  I run out of clay pigeons and send the rest of the magazine through the rear window of the truck and into the cab, and when something in there explodes in a blast of red the truck does something crazy and the next thing I know -- whoops! oof! -- the whole world's spinning end over end and then the pavement rises up to hit me like a jerk.

The gunfire's all stopped.  When the first Lone Star officer peeks his head up over the hood of one of the patrol car's that's left, they see me trying to prop myself up on the rear bumper of the wrecked pick-up truck.  I don't feel any pain.  None.  One gloved hand is clawing at the paint to try and pull myself up onto my shattered legs.  

The other hand is in the air, flashing the pinkie-and-forefinger Hook 'Em Horns, and I'm shouting "Woooooooooo" as loud as I can into the rainy, miserable, bitch of the Seattle sky.  They're quick to rush over and take away my shotgun and my sidearm, and have to almost wrestle me down to make me sit still and wait for DocWagon.  I've got six bullets wedged in my vest, and two that penetrated.  I'm coughing blood and laughing about it, while other cops are slapping tranq patches on me like they've got stock in the company.  By the time medevac shows up, I've got a pair of trauma patches on my chest, too, and they're the only things keeping me alive.

Nine officers die in that assault, eleven civilians, with over triple that wounded.  Me?  My record gets an update to show kills on seven Troll Killers, one with a three-story dropkick and six with perfect head shots.  Lone Star makes sure the news reporters focus more on the Ares-manufactured guns and less on the gangbangers being high on Tempo at the time of the attack.  It'll make Damien Knight look bad, and us look good, and that's what really counts.  

I'm a media darling for a full thirty second tridshow spot later that night, from a DocWagon clinic bed.  My old transfer request for a Fast Response Team unit immediately gets the green light, and a commendation appears with words like "initiative" and "gallantry."  Lone Star gives me a sweet deal with a really reasonable interest rate and installment plan on some great new legs, a reaction enhancement package, and a new heart.

And I never, ever, touch a Jazz inhaler again.

Critias:
Just a quickie while I had some time to kill.  Err, okay, I don't really have time to kill.  I've got a hojillion academic projects and a few Shadowrun ones I should be working on, but this tiny little story -- not even a huge part of Nathan "Hop" Hopkins' background -- has been clattering around in my skull and needed out.

There's plenty more Hop to come, if and when I find the time to relax and write for fun.  He's a little more...human...than Rook.  ;)

Patrick Goodman:
I like him! Well, except for him being a T-sip, but you can't have it all, I suppose....

Angelone:
Ouch, that's gotta sting... His issues have issues.

Usda Beph:
Very discriptive, provokative writing. I will definitely take more than a few pointers from your style sir!

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