Jade Dragon

A Black Flame Publication

Copyright © 2006 Games Workshop Ltd.

ISBN: 1–84416–378–4

Publisher’s note:
This is a work of fiction, detailing an alternative
and decidedly imaginary future. All the characters, actions and events
portrayed in this book are not real, and are not based on real events or
actions.

Version: 1.0


For the punks, the edgerunners and the xiong can sha shou. You know
who you are.

My fellow Americans,


I am speaking to you today from the Oval Office, to bring you hope and
cheer in these troubling times. The succession of catastrophes that have
assailed our once-great nation continue to threaten us, but we are
resolute.


The negative fertility zone that is the desolation of the mid-west
divides east from west, but life is returning. The plucky pioneers of
the new Church of Joseph are reclaiming Salt Lake City from the
poisonous deserts just as their forefathers once did, and our prayers
are with them. And New Orleans may be under eight feet of water, but
they don't call it New Venice for nothing.


Here at the heart of government, we continue to work closely with the
MegaCorps who made this country the economic miracle it is today, to
bring prosperity and opportunity to all who will join us. All those
unfortunate or unwilling citizens who exercise their democratic right to
live how they will, no matter how far away from the comfort and security
of the corporate cities, may once more rest easy in their shacks knowing
that the new swathes of Sanctioned Operatives work tirelessly to protect
them from the biker gangs and NoGo hoodlums.


The succession of apparently inexplicable or occult manifestations and
events we have recently witnessed have unnerved many of us, it is true.
Even our own Government scientists are unable to account for much of
what is happening. Our church leaders tell us they are holding at bay
the unknown entities which have infested the datanets in the guise of
viruses.


A concerned citizen asked me the other day whether I thought we were
entering the Last Times, when Our Lord God will return to us and visit
His Rapture upon us, or whether we were just being tested as He once
tested his own son. My friends, I cannot answer that. But I am resolute
that with God's help, we shall work, as ever, to create a glorious
future in this most beautiful land.


Thank you, and God Bless America.


President Estevez


Ladies and Gentlemen, at this time Virgin SubOrbital would like to
announce that our flight is entering the descent phase toward the Hong
Kong Free Economic Enterprise Quadrant and our arrival at Chek Lap Kok
SkyHarbour is on schedule for seven forty-five pee-em, local time. Your
cabin staff wish to remind you that there is still time to make any
purchases of perfume, smoking materials, caffeinated products, cyberware
or pharmaceuticals from our in-flight dutyfree catalogue; simply press
the blue dot on the datascreen installed in your seat arm. Passengers
are free to move about the cabin and take drinks at the upper deck bar
or use one of our recreation pods in the discreet cabin. However, we
would ask all clients to note that once the seat belt sign has been
illuminated, all passengers must return to and remain in their seats as
the aircraft makes its final approach to Chek Lap Kok. For your comfort
and safety, neural induction coils mounted in the headrest of your seats
will automatically engage to help minimize any discomfort due to
pressure changes in the cabin. In the event of an emergency landing,
these coils will also lull you into a dreamless, peaceful sleep while
the cabin is flooded with ShokFoam™. Should you have any questions about
today’s flight, please feel free to discuss them with one of our
polylingual flight attendants. We know you have a choice when selecting
the carrier for your company’s international transit needs, and we thank
you for choosing Virgin SubOrbital today.

Frankie worked his jaw and frowned, shifting slightly in the depths of
the padded acceleration couch. The conformal cushion gave a sensual sigh
and moved to accommodate him, but he fidgeted again. The book he’d
loaded into his palmtop remained unread, his attention unable to hold
past page six of
What Gangcults Can Teach Us About Management.
Stuffing the computer into his carry-on bag, his eyes returned to
wandering over and around the smooth lines of the airliner cabin. On
some level he felt like he was failing to project the right image. The
other men and women in their seats, each an arm’s length away from the
other and surrounded by an expensive halo of legroom, all seemed so at
ease in here as to be profoundly bored with it all. Moving so she
wouldn’t know where he was looking, Frankie observed the lady in
pinstripes with the Eidolon cheek-tatt. She was still having the same
conversation she’d started as they came out of boost phase from
LA-Double-X, in poppy little spits of subvocalisation that weren’t real
words, talking to a dermal mike in her larynx. A privacy masking field
made it impossible for him to figure out what she was so animated about,
but by the way she kept miming a gun—forefinger extended, thumb a
falling hammer—it was clear somebody back in NorCalifornia was getting
reamed. Next to her was a large man who looked like a sumotori, forced
into a black Ozwald Boateng suit that might have made an elegant pup
tent in another life. The big fellow was engrossed in the screen he
gripped with fat sausage fingers; the sound was on direct beam, but
Frankie could see the tanned face of ZeeBeeCee’s Tammy Popeldouris
engaged in serious conversation with Juno Qwan, while the idol singer’s
new vid played picture-in-picture.

A gentle swell of turbulence rocked the liner, reminding him where they
were. He sniffed the air; the same canned, conditioned taste that the
atmosphere in the office had, that the airport lounge had too. The cabin
was seamless in muted reds and pale cream, matching almost perfectly to
the decor of the executive embarkation area at LAXX, and no doubt to the
egress lounge at SkyHarbour and any one of a hundred other airports
around the world. Usually that sort of thing made Frankie feel safe, the
idea that the corps were helping to maintain a homogenous profile across
the world, so that anyone could find a Buckstars or a MacDee no matter
if you were in Manchester or Mumbai… But all of a sudden it seemed too
plastic to him, just a veneer over a dangerous, unfamiliar place. He
looked away, forcing down the little flutter of butterfly nerves rolling
around in his gut. He was supposed to be a professional; this sort of
giddy rush was the kind of thing a single-term window gazer would
experience, not an echelon executive like him.

I should be making the most of this, he thought. It wasn’t every day he
got to fly transcontinental; what with the shifts in the fuel markets
and the rise of franchise terrorism post Y2K, aviation had moved back to
the rarefied state it was in at the dawn of commercial flight—when only
the military and the very rich could afford it.

Frankie let out a controlled breath and, for what must have been the
hundredth time during the flight, he unfolded the photo.

There they were, the two of them with big, goofy grins on their faces on
the upper deck of the Star Ferry, the lights of the city a rainbow blur
behind them. He tried to remember who had taken the picture—one of the
other grads, maybe that thin girl from Foshan who got posted to orbit?
They both looked so happy there, fuelled by too many bottles of Tsingtao
and the elation at making the cut at the corporate academy. That was
before the company had parted them, sent him to the other side of the
world while his brother got to stay home and rise like a rocket through
the ranks of the head office. Frankie felt the bite of resentment and
instantly flattened it. No. Alan deserves his success.
Deserved
it. He
was always the more diligent of them, and Frankie knew it. While Frankie
had toiled to make any kind of advancement at the Los Angeles division,
Alan Lam had caught the eye of the upper tiers and skipped entire grades
on his way to the top floors.

Not that any of those things mattered now, a morose inner voice reminded
him. When the summons from Yuk Lung Heavy Industry’s headquarters had
pinged into life on the LA branch office d-screen, there was a moment
when Frankie’s supervisor had automatically assumed it was for him. Burt
Tiplady, all one metre sixty of his arrogant, noisy self, had swaggered
over to take the comm, oozing smarm. Burt had been waiting for four
years to get cherry-picked by Hong Kong. The look on his face when he
realised the message was for Frankie, not him, was worth every day that
Lam had weathered his bellicose presence; but try as he might, Frankie
couldn’t rekindle that feeling right now. The cold hollow that formed as
Burt passed him the screen to read had overwritten that one moment of
elation.

Alan was dead; the company expressed its deepest sympathies, and
requested the presence of his brother in the Hong Kong office on the
next available stratojet.

That was two days ago. Time had passed in a whirl. The forms authorising
his transfer were attached with the comm, and he’d gone back to his
dormplex in Santa Monica to find his gear already stowed for transit.
YLHI wanted him to come home, and so he did, propelled on a cushion of
numbness and faint guilt. Frankie had not spoken to Alan in a year, and
even then it had only been a cursory hello-goodbye, something to do with
that GenTech problem in Texas. Once, they had been inseparable. Now, the
company that had parted them was all that connected them.

Frankie sighed and it came with a shudder. He felt isolated, impossibly
disconnected from the young guy in the picture, his hand around his
brother’s shoulder, laughing and carefree.

“Going home?”

Frankie looked up with a start and blinked. The flight attendant had
materialized from out of thin air, a tray of data needles in the crook
of one arm. She had ice blue eyes that matched the sliver-grey glolights
in her blonde hair. The smile on her lips was utterly perfect. “I’m
s-sorry?” he managed.

“Are you going home? To Hong Kong?” She indicated the picture with a
gente incline of her head. “Meeting family?”

“Yes.” His throat went tight. “Can I, um, have a drink, please?”

“Of course. Glen Fujiyama on the rocks, wasn’t it?” She produced the
tumbler of whiskey from a trolley at her side.

Frankie took a deep sip, feeling stupid for asking for it like a child
begging for sweets. He was in the rare air of the high corporates now,
and no one who travelled here had to ask for anything. They were
entitled to it.

As if she saw it in his mind, the attendant asked, “Is this the first
time you’ve flown with us?” She smiled again. “Congratulations on your
promotion.”

“Yes,” he repeated. “Thank you.”

She indicated the tray of software, the varicoloured pins like a spread
of fly-fishing lures. “Can I interest you in an entertainment programme?
Something from the cinema of the Ukraine, perhaps?”

Frankie shook his head.

“We have sensual recreation automata on board, if you’d prefer. They
support a wide range of romantic configurations.”

Another sip. “I’m fine. ”This time he said it with the right tone of
dismissal and the attendant melted away with a final, perfectly sculpted
smile. He nursed the drink as a low rumble worked its way through the
liner’s airframe. Through the half-open window blind, he could see
distant hazy blobs that represented the coastal city sprawls of Vietnam.
With every passing second the stratojet brought Frankie closer to the
point of no return, the moment looming up in front of him where finally
irrevocably, he would have to face the hard reality that his brother was
gone. But as much as he tried to convince himself that the churn of
emotions in his gut was some ridiculous hope that this all might be some
huge mistake, he knew in his marrow that Alan had perished. There was
nothing arcane about it, no ephemeral spiritual bond between siblings.
He just knew it; it seemed right somehow, correct in the order of
things.

No, the sick dread that gathered at the corners of his thoughts had a
different source. His transfer had come directly from the office of the
chief executive officer of Yuk Lung Heavy Industry, from the man who
ruled the corporation like a feudal warlord. Mr Tze. If he had a first
name, no one spoke it. In an age when the corporate hierarchy was the
new royalty of the Twenties, the master of YLHI was a reclusive, shady
figure. He never left Hong Kong, rarely even ventured from the towering
citadel headquarters of the company, and only then to the fortress
compound he maintained along the Pearl River. The man wore his command
of the corporation like a suit of ancient armour and he was as ruthless
as the Mongols that some said he descended from. The mere idea of being
in this man’s physical presence threatened to overwhelm Frankie if he
dwelled on it too long. See, there were
stories
about Mr Tze. The kind
that only ever appeared on viral samizdata netcasts in the instants
before Datapol shut them down. To even admit to having watched such
seditious material would warrant instant termination of contract for
Frankie. He drained the last of the drink and lost himself in the motion
of the ice cubes in the tumbler, moving over one another as the
aircraft’s nose dipped toward China.