“This is crazy even for us, but I think we’re going to have to do it anyway. Smile and be nice to the people,” Geraint said. He reached out a hand and tried the door. which opened to his investigative push. They entered the darkness of the room beyond as Rani checked what was going on behind him, staring into the night with her sensitive eyes. It smelled bad, but that wasn’t really an obstacle. Not to begin with, anyway.

Geraint was about to use a flashtube when someone threw the lights. The room was bigger than he’d expected, somehow, but it wasn’t the room’s dimensions that concerned him. Distinctly more of a problem were the occupants.

“Well, gentlemen, what DO we have here?”

The guttural voice was full of sarcasm and hostility. It looked like seven, maybe eight, trolls, but they were so large Geraint expected another half-dozen to pop out from behind them at any moment. They seemed to cover the far side of the room without leaving any space for air. The single naked light bulb was all that lit the place, but at that instant it seemed to shine unbearably bright and harsh. Most of the trolls seemed to have guns, and one had a shotgun that looked like it could neatly blast all visitors to hell and back with one delicate squeeze of the trigger. At their feet lay some large plastic trays covered with opaque plasbags filled with soft substances Geraint didn't want to look at more than once.

He and the others retreated gingerly back against the doorway. The trolls were smirking, all weapons pointed at their surprise guests.

“Come in. why don’t you?” one of the trolls ventured, but the four newcomers stood stiff and rigid. Deciding on a less polite approach, the one with the blackened snout barked out an order.

“Shut that rakkin” door or well blow you to buggery,” he snarled. Trying desperately to still the shaking of her gun hand, Rani complied.

The four of them stood immobile with guns readied, Serrin managing to fumble the huge net-gun from his coat, shaking and shivering. His eyes registered the presence of forty trolls in front of him, but there were as many Geraints as he had hands on his fingers.

“Hur, hur, hur,” one of the trolls sniggered, then spat violently onto the stained floor. He fingered a serrated knife with what was left of his left hand. Several of the others licked their lips. All looked as though they were slowly edging forward.

“Well, my, my. What have we here?”

It was Rani, cool and calm beyond even her own dreams, stepping forward to confront the brutes. “We try a little run down here in the East End, then when we have to make tracks sharpish, we bust into just the kind of people we can talk to. Guns and money. Lovely. Nice to meet you.”

She had her Ceska pointed directly at the head of the troll who’d done most of the talking. Though the elf had the shakes real bad and the other man looked totally at a loss, Rani was glad to see that the woman also had her pistol pointed at the same target.

The trolls hesitated long enough.

21

For a second that stretched out for hours, both groups stood frozen, weapons readied and pointed at each other. The leader of the trolls had some respect for them now, Rani could see, and he was looking to her. He realized she was a local, not some cross-town rich kid who’d be easy to fool, easy to catch off guard in a fatal instant of vacillation. Still, he was drooling slightly, a stringy glob of mucus hanging from one corner of his mouth. The other gang members were looking to old black-snout now, not quite so arrogant but still eager for the fray. Rani prayed they weren’t high on some of the crazier stuff around; if they were, reason would never get her group out of here alive.

“We’re very grateful for your hospitality,” she said as steadily as she could manage. “I imagine you’ll want some reward for that. Guess we can come up with something for you.”

The trolls chuckled inanely, gripping their weapons tighter. Black-snout leered at her.

“I’m rakking sure you can, girlie. Looks like you got some nice weapons there. Not the kinda gear to stop a troll, of course. Probably got some real money in that suit, slick kid, huh?” He slid his shotgun across to point at Geraint. “Poor little pixie there, he don’t look too good to me. Don’t think we’d get too many bullet tokens for his scrawny body. Rest of you worth a few nuyen, though. Hey, don’t look so sad and dismal. You ain’t gonna die! Different bits of you gonna be alive everywhere from Seattle to Tokyo!”

The trolls laughed among themselves, but none of them made a move. Yet.

Serrin’s shaking suddenly stopped, but he hardly knew his own state. His mind was lucid and calm, but his skin was clammy and he felt as if he might simply keel over at any instant. Fixing his gaze on the troll with the shotgun seemed to help him focus his attention and stay on his feet.

“The guns we have might not stop you. but they could do some unpleasant damage,” the elf said. “But I’ll tell you one thing, brother, if I’m going to die here, first I’m going to pump some hellfire so heavy even your thick butt-skins will go up in smoke. I mean, what the fraggin’ hell, what’ve I got to lose?”

Black-snout stared hard at Serrin, mentally gunning him down with his eyes but not daring to do more. He could see the strange stones the elf was clutching. Magic was the one real edge these intruders had. The weapons didn’t frighten the trolls, but a suicide strike by a mage with a serious death wish was another matter entirely. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his gang had ended up on the wrong end of a corporate combat mage. Many of them also had friends who’d suffered the same fate, and hadn’t lived to discuss it. The atmosphere began to change.

Please keep me standing up long enough to get us out of this, Serrin prayed mentally as Geraint and Rani began the negotiating. Geraint was listening to the flow of Rani’s clever comments, taking his cue from her as she told him implicitly what the trolls might accept for their release. Credsticks they wouldn’t touch; they had no way of verifying them. Geraint’s high-denomination sterling and nuyen notes did, however, speak to them in another language. Dumping slap patches and a pile of shiny equipment out of his bag, Geraint upped the ante even further.

Slowly the trolls began to move sideways, while Rani and the others did the same. It might have been hilarious had it not been so desperate, both groups circling around each other. Geraint covered their retreat through the far door with his heavy pistol. The trolls had one final challenge.

“Hey, ken-boy, why don’t you leave the woman here?” one of them smirked, rubbing his greasy crotch. The low chuckle that rippled through the group was a most unpleasant sound, but Geraint didn’t dare scratch the itch burning in his trigger finger. When the others reached the street, Geraint covered their final exit, then he backed out too. They still couldn’t relax yet, though.

“Where the hell are we? Got to get to Aldgate, the Shaking Samurai,” Geraint told Rani. She moved into action immediately, grabbing Serrin’s hand and guiding them as they ran up the Street.

The trolls had changed their minds, two of them firing from the upper floor of the house as the fleeing figures disappeared into the darkness. The group had almost reached the end of the road when Geraint drew up with a yelp of pain. He clutched the back of his leg just below the hip, but kept on going, limping around the corner as best he could. He’d taken a bullet, and when he took his hand away it was smeared with blood.

“They won’t follow. They’ve heard the sirens by now,” Rani tried to reassure them.

“Who are you?” Francesca gasped out at last, trying to conceal her disgust at the ork girl’s ugliness.

Rani scowled. “This isn’t the time for questions.” She pointed at Geraint. “He’s just been shot and elf-face is completely rakked. Look at his eyes. You got wheels?”