Ragnarock Read online

  Judgment Day

  Suddenly Dr. Goronay threw his head back and gave a terrible cry, whether of pain or anger, Talon couldn't tell. The doctor grabbed his balding head with his right hand and pointed his left at Lofwyr, forefinger extended in accusation.

  "Monster! Defiler!" he shouted. "You will not break me! I am a true servant of the gods! Death!" he cried. "Death to all tyrants!"

  As Goronay spoke, the rosy crystal on the floor in front of Lofwyr began to glow brightly. Talon looked quickly from the crystal to the golden dragon looming overhead.

  "Lowfyr . . ." he started to call out. Then, an arc of pinkish lightning exploded from the crystal. . . .

  "Talon, look out!" Boom yelled. He grabbed Talon and pulled him back and down as the dragon slammed his tail into one of the macroglass windows. . . .

  Goronay was laughing like a madman, practically gibbering. "Yes! Yes!" he shouted. "Now you will pay!"

  DIGGING FOR DANGER

  In the twenty-first century, magic brings out the best in people—and the worst. Tommy Talon should know. As head of a successful shadow-running team, it's the dark side of people that brings him business. This time he's hired to hunt a murderous archaeologist and recover a magical relic. But Talon's not hunting alone. Someone else wants the artifact too—someone very powerful. And Talon and his team must outwit the world's most potent megacorporation on its own turf if they're to have any chance of returning the treasure—or any chance of returning at all. . . .

  SHADOWRUN : 38

  RAGNAROCK

  Stephen Kenson

  To Christopher, for everything.

  Just like shadowrunning, this book was a team effort. Thanks go to Shadowrun developer Mike Mulvihill for his thoughts about just how devious dragons can be; to Donna Ippolito for editing under pressure; to Rob Boyle for his input and suggestions; and to my friends: Jan Campbell, Andy Frades, Lyle Hinckley, Sean Johnson, Bill Michie, and Rich Tomasso, for making Shadowrun as much fun as it has been. Thanks, chummers.

  Prologue

  The gods have sent the rain as a sign of their displeasure, Dr. Alexi Goronay thought glumly as he picked his way around the shallow, muddy puddles filling the deep pockmarks dug into the earth by machine treads, shovels, picks, and work boots. The rich clay soil was rapidly turning into a sticky mire that sucked at the feet with greedy fingers, slowing everyone to a labored trudge through the muck. Combined with the cold and the high winds of the past few days, it was easy to believe that this small area of the Ukraine had somehow earned the displeasure of some divine force.

  It could have been worse, the good doctor supposed as he struggled up a gentle slope to his waiting trailer, cursing to himself as the ground shifted and slid under his every step. This region should be getting buried under snow this late in the year, but weather patterns had been strange and it was unseasonably warm for early December. Not warm enough for the rain to be anything other than ice water, with snow unlikely.

  Reaching the trailer, the doctor stepped carefully over the cinder-block steps set just under the metal one leading up into the corrugated steel trailer. He didn't want to push the blocks any further into the mud than they already were. Using the door handle to pull himself up onto the step, he pushed the door open and stepped inside, tugging the slightly protesting door shut behind him. He paused for a moment to enjoy the relative quiet and warmth. Still, the glow of the small camp heater in the trailer could not chase the chill from his bones or from the depths of his spirit.

  It wasn't the rain that bothered him. Goronay couldn't count the times he'd encountered worse. He'd been all over the world and obliged to work under conditions ranging from blistering heat to bitter cold. His main concern was what the unseasonable weather would do to the dig site, only now in the early stages of being unearthed. The mess the weather was making of the ground, turning whole tracts into sloppy, sucking mires, was slowing the work of excavation almost to a halt. Some of his students were working a few areas under the protection of bright surplus tarpaulins and rain ponchos, but they could move at only the slowest pace. Already one near mishap had almost sent a bundle of artifact fragments scattering down a muddy hillside. Goronay had nearly canceled the dig on account of it.

  But he did not. He could not. For one thing, his patron would be quite upset if the dig were canceled. The Saeder-Krupp Corporation funded his research through a substantial grant to the University, with the strong implication that they expected results. If he canceled the dig now, the project might lose its funding entirely.

  There was something else that told him to go on, despite all the problems and despite his own better judgment, which said perhaps it would be wiser to simply cover things over and wait until conditions were more favorable. Some of his crew were already grumbling about finishing this thing before Christmas. It wasn't as if the dig site was allocated to anyone other than his department at the University, nor did it seem truly likely Saeder-Krupp would withdraw its support from the project, despite their threats. The funding was little more than pocket change to the world's largest and wealthiest megacorporation. Goronay also suspected that a famous archeological find would make for valuable propaganda in the international press.

  The doctor was a man of science and he did not believe in anything that he could not dig up out of the earth and examine with his own two eyes. Failing though they might be, he thought, as he wiped off his glasses on a not much dryer cloth. And yet, something told him that now was the only time for this dig, a sense of urgency he could not explain, but that he felt with every fiber of his being. If they abandoned the dig now, they would not likely be able to get back here before spring, but even that wasn't it. No, there was a sense that something momentous was about to happen and that time was running out. If only the blasted weather would cooperate!

  The doctor hung up his coat and hat to dry on the stand next to the small space heater and made his way over to the counter. While he waited for the water on the portable hot plate to boil, he glanced over the dig site information spread out on the table nearby. The site was not an overly remarkable one. The story was, in fact, fairly typical. Miners searching for new veins of ore to support Eastern Europe's hungry and hopeful industry had come across some unusual rock formations and done a little more digging, no doubt in hopes of finding some lost treasure that everyone seemed to think lay buried as part and parcel of every archeological find. All they discovered were some unusual stone and metal fragments, fragments that found their way to the archeology department and Dr. Goronay's desk by way of Saeder-Krupp, the mining company's parent corporation. The doctor had never seen artifacts of such a type from anywhere in the area. They appeared to be remnants of tools, or possibly weapons, but they were far too fragmentary and old to attempt to piece together what civilization or era they might have come from.

  The most interesting thing about the fragments, the one thing that continued to make Dr. Goronay think there was something to be found at this dig, was that they appeared to be extremely old. Many thousands of years old, in fact. If so, then the metal fragments were of extreme interest. There were bits of iron, copper, silver, and gold, too pure not to have been refined, and yet refined metals such as these were completely unknown in the Ukraine region so long ago.

  Just as the doctor sat down with a steaming cup of coffee to contemplate the selfsame fragments that lay spread out on the table along with the many papers, photographs, and topographical maps of the dig site, there came a loud knocking on the metal door of the trailer compartment that sounded like an amplification of the drumming rain outside. He opened the door to admit the sopping and panting form of Gregor, one of his students. The young man was drenched to the skin through his Soviet military-surplus rain poncho and winded from running and stumbling thr
ough the rain and mud to the doctor's trailer, but his face and eyes were wild with excitement.

  "Gregor," Dr, Goronay said as his assistant tried to catch his breath, "what in God's name is going on?" Young Gregor could be a bit excitable at times, but Goronay had never seen him in such a state.

  "Doctor, you must come and see!" Gregor paused for breath as the words seemed to stumble over each other in a rush to get out of his mouth. "In the east quadrant . . . we . . . we found something!"

  Oh, hell, the doctor thought, I didn't really need to dry off anyway. He grabbed his coat and hat and followed Gregor back out into the pouring rain. He had to admit that the boy's enthusiasm was contagious.

  He could feel something stirring inside him, something that said, "This is it. This is what I've been waiting for."

  Anya, another of Dr. Goronay's students, knelt under the tarpaulin tent near the find almost reverently, hovering over it like a guardian against anyone who might come near. A bright smile lit up her rain and mud-spattered face as the doctor approached.

  He ducked under the tent and knelt down near where the find had been carefully laid out on some dry towels, though God only knew where they had managed to find any at that point. Gregor crouched impatiently on his haunches, bouncing a bit as he waited to see what would happen next.

  "All right then," the doctor said with a grunt as he lowered himself to his knees, "let's see what we have here." Anya started to speak, but Goronay shushed her with a "tut, tut" and a wave of his hand. He preferred to examine a new find for himself before he heard a report from his juniors. He took his damp glasses from a coat pocket and slipped them on to get a better look.

  The find was a squarish clay tablet, roughly a meter across and perhaps ten centimeters thick. It was surprisingly well preserved, with only some minor deterioration around the edges. If this find was anywhere near the age of the other artifacts, it was an archeological miracle that it was in such good shape.

  The flat surface of the tablet was carved with graceful, angular glyphs laid out in a very precise spiral that wound its way from the outer edge and spiraled in toward the center, the glyphs growing progressively smaller until they reached a symbol carved in the very center of the tablet. The halogen lighting of the dig site and the dampness of the clay seemed to make the symbols stand out in dark relief against the pale surface of the tablet. Goronay took his time studying the symbols, with only a quiet "hmmm" escaping his lips as he gently wiped mud off parts of the find to examine them more closely. Finally he sat back, and a smile showed through his damp gray beard.

  "Amazing. Simply amazing. I have never seen writing such as this. It shows vague similarities to some runic alphabets, but it seems to represent a completely unknown style and composition." He turned to Anya. "Where was this found?"

  "Down at the eighth layer." she replied. "And doctor, when we lifted it out of the pit, it was very heavy. We believe that there might be something inside the clay. Maybe stone or even metal!" Fascinating, Goronay thought. What a discovery! If there was something covered over by the tablet, then it should be remarkably well preserved, given the state of the clay itself.

  "And, Doctor," Anya said, with a shy pause, "I think it may be magical."

  "Indeed?" The doctor replied. He was an old man and still not entirely used to the fact that magic had returned to the world. Anya's specialty, however, was psychometric archeology, and she used her extrasensory gifts to both track down archeological finds and to learn something of their history by reading their auras or some such thing. Dr. Goronay really didn't understand how it all worked, but he'd seen archaeological sensitives in action enough times to believe that they did.

  "Magical in what way?" he asked.

  Anya shrugged and shook her head. "I'm not sure." she said. "There are definite traces of . . . something around it, but like nothing I've ever seen before. I get the impression of great age. Whatever is associated with the magic might be inside the tablet."

  "Well, then, we should get a look inside. Anya, get a crew together and arrange to have our find transported to the University as soon as possible. We'll need our special equipment to x-ray it and perform other tests to see what there is to see." The doctor smiled and clapped Gregor on the shoulder. "Gregor, help me carry it back to my trailer for safekeeping. It seems that Father Christmas has brought us a present a week early, my friends."

  Dr. Goronay and Gregor carefully wrapped the tablet in plastic sheeting and covered it with towels before each taking an end of the parcel and lifting it. Anya was right, the tablet was heavier than it should have been, though Goronay was so energized, he felt as if he could lift ten times its weight off the ground all by himself. He and Gregor walked gingerly through the muck to the doctor's trailer, while another student ran ahead to open the door for them. Once, Gregor nearly slipped in the mud, but managed to regain his balance before sending their burden tumbling to the ground. He sheepishly grinned at the doctor, then returned his concentration to their task.

  Once they'd set the tablet on the workbench inside his trailer, Dr. Goronay ignored his sodden clothing and his now cold cup of coffee. He began unwrapping the find, to examine it better under the light and to clean it off somewhat. He sent Gregor off to get some imaging equipment to take holopics of the tablet.

  As Goronay brushed the moist dirt off the tablet, he happened to glance at the briefcase sitting next to the small desk. It triggered a sort of recognition in him, like he'd just remembered something. As if in a trance, he found himself moving over to the briefcase, setting it on the desk top, and opening it to reveal a flat object resembling a large, thick frisbee molded from dark plastic. He picked up his pocket secretary, inserted a data chip into the port, and keyed the memo mode. Holding it near his lips, he spoke into the receiver.

  "Target acquired. Will meet at the pre-planned coordinates. Request instructions." He removed the chip and opened a small port on top of the plastic discus. He snapped the chip inside and closed the flap. Then he picked the thing up and carried it to the window. The rain still fell, cold and dark as he slid the window open. He pressed a hidden activation stud on the underside of the plastic disk, set it down on the sill, and backed away as it began to hum to life.

  There was a faint "pop" as the disk deposited something on the window sill. Then it whirred, and a powerful fan lifted it into the air, like a little flying saucer. It hovered for a moment, then oriented on the open window. The whirring increased, and the plastic drone zipped out the window and disappeared into the night. The message was on its way.

  Goronay ignored the departure of the drone. His attention was completely focused on what it left behind, the small plastic chip sitting on the window sill. He licked his dry lips, feeling like a parched man just discovering an oasis in the desert. He reverently lifted the chip in trembling hands and fitted it into the small socket located just behind his left ear. The chip slid home with a satisfying click. Goronay shuddered as it made contact, an involuntary moan escaping his lips.

  The rush of power was orgasmic in its intensity. He could feel it filling his limbs, surging through him. He was like a hero of legend, like a god. There was nothing he could not do, nothing that could stand in his way. He dimly remembered the first time he'd felt this way, shortly after first seeing the artifacts from this dig site, when the strange men came to visit him in the dead of the night and showed him the power and glory that could be his. The power erased all doubts, all fears. He knew what he needed to do.

  Goronay picked up a hammer lying on the countertop and swung it at the tablet with all his might. The hard clay cracked and splintered under the force of his blow, sending fragments flying everywhere. Goronay struck again, and again, and dark fissures ran through the whole object, the delicate glyphs and traceries obliterated by the force of his blows. Deep inside some of those cracks, something gleamed and glimmered.

  Goronay began to brush the shards of clay aside to get a better look at it. Just then the door of the trailer o
pened and young Gregor backed in, carrying the holo-imaging camera. He closed the door, turned toward Dr. Goronay and froze, a look of shock and horror on his face as he saw his mentor, standing over the broken remains of their find, hammer in hand.

  "Doctor. . . Dr. Goronay!" he stammered. "What are you doing!" He took a step back from the intense look in the doctor's eyes, knocking over a stack of printouts behind him and sending them fluttering across the floor.

  Goronay smiled fiercely, the power singing and surging in his veins. He stepped forward, and Gregor tried to stumble back again, tripping over the papers and falling to the floor in a heap. He raised his hands in a feeble gesture to ward off what was coming.

  "Doctor, please! No, don't! Please don't . . . !"

  Gregor's pleas were like music to Goronay's ears. The doctor stepped forward and raised the hammer, bringing it down again and again on Gregor's skull until his cries were silenced and the white papers scattered over the floor were red with blood. Suddenly, the feeling of power faded and Goronay was himself again. He stood there for what seemed like an eternity, looking down in horror at the body of the young man who'd been so excited and enthusiastic about archeology, who often burst into his office with some new idea or discovery he wanted to discuss. Gregor would never become the scientist he'd dreamed of being. The bloody hammer dropped from Goronay's nerveless fingers, hitting the floor with a thud.

  "Gregor." he whispered. "Dear God, dear God, what have I done?"

  Goronay wrenched his gaze away from Gregor's body and turned back to the broken ruin of the clay tablet, and what lay gleaming within it. He knew what had happened. He could feel the chip, useless and burnt out, nestled into the jack implanted into the skin behind his ear. Already he hungered for another taste of what it contained. His masters would be waiting for him, the strange, dark men who came to him in the night. They would be waiting for him to do their bidding and they would reward him with power and glory once again.