Jade Dragon (3 page)

“What risk—” The driver turned his head to look where Ko was directing
his attention and in the next second the armoured glass window was
rising up to slam him in the face, the ganger’s hand on the back of his
head. He reeled with the unexpected impact and Ko propelled the man away
on to the pavement, deftly removing the ignition tag wristlet from him
as he fell. The dazed suit dropped to his knees and emitted a moan.

“Sucker.” Ko slid into the driver’s seat and felt it go firm around his
waist. From the corner of his eye there was the firefly glow of a
cigarette tip and there was Feng, ill at ease on the passenger’s side.
He didn’t like cars very much.

The soldier gave him a look, using the cigarette to indicate the
sprawled man outside. “That one, he’s going to get whipped because you
stole this carriage.”

Ko ignored the phantom smell of tobacco smoke and shifted the car into
drive; the fool had left the motor running. “What, I should shed tears
for him? He shouldn’t have become a corp, shouldn’t have signed his life
away to some rich old breadhead.” Reaching under the dash, he found the
cut-off remote and tore it out. With relish, Ko slammed the gears and
spun the Merc from the kerb, launching out into the night past the
shouting faces of the men in the waiting area. He sounded the
horn—
Ba! Ba! Ba!
—as he blazed past Second and the rest, grinning.

Feng shook his head. “When are you going to learn, boy? Everyone serves
a warlord, even those who think they don’t.”

The Merc threw Ko right and left against the restraints as he slalomed
past the security gate and on to the airport highway. “Not me,” he
insisted, “not ever.”

On the back seat, Frankie Lam’s carry-on bag rolled over and spilt its
contents.

The Osprey 990. Man, that’s a cherry cyke, y’know? Fast like a bat
outta hell, got those pannier-mounted rear smokers and a cyclops gun in
the nose… Badda-bing, can come on you like death hisself if you ain’t,
whatchacall,
alert.

On the highway I seen one duel wit’ a couple NRG–500s and clean up the
blacktop like they was pushbikes. That’s why the cops in the Denver
Death Zone use them for race-and-chase. Fine choice. Fine, fine choice.

The point? Oh yeah. Well, last thing I reckoned I’d see was one of them
fine machines flyin’ through the air like it ain’t no thing, straight
through the window and blazin’ alight. Came through the glass—crash—and
straight across the floor. What? A warehouse. That was where we were. A
warehouse. Can I tell it my way, or d’you wanna read it off the cop’s
books? No? All right then.

So. Gabby, she takes the Osprey in the face and she dead right there.
Landed on her, burnt her up. All hell’s breaking loose, Walt’s
scramblin’ for his pistols and that little Poindexter, whatever he call
himself Doctor Bloom, he’s screamin’ and shoutin’ at me like it’s my
gorram fault. And the pigs. The pigs is making this noise like all get
out.

But that’s not the thing of it. In through the bust glass comes some
tear gas shells, but that’s nothing on a big ship for me, ’cos I sprung
for nasal filter implants last year, after I got a capsicum load from
the Coast Guard bulls offa Kennebunkport. I got me a Mossbach Tactical
Autoloader. Y’know, the kind wit’ the snail drum mag? Yeah? I’m packing
double-ought gauge shells in there, ’cos we’re fixing not to mix it up
with no one but maybe local five-oh. Shit, we were, whatchacall, wrong
about
that.

Roscoe and Dooley, they’re fast lads and they got them carbines. I
don’t see what they’re shooting at, but like this
(snaps fingers)
Roscoe has a hole in hisself’s chest like the size o’ my fist and he
falls all the way down from the gantry up high and lands—crunch—in the
pigs. I reckoned them stories ’bout pigs eatin’ man meat was hooey but
no, they start in on him. Still squealing. Guess it was no surprise,
though, considering. Roscoe was always gettin’ into arguments with Doc
Bloom when he kept hurtin’ the little porkers for shits and grins. The
Doc, he got mighty angry ’bout it. See, he got them pig’s brains wired
up like into one big ’puter, making them all think alike, or somethin‘.
He was usin’ them to play the ponies, screw wit’ the lottery, whatever.
Turned the little bacon-balls into a big pink, whatchacall, processor.
Illegal as all get-out, so I reckon, but no one gives a rat’s ass about
pigs, so who’s gonna stop him?

Well, shit, we found out who.

There’s this
pop
and the roof grows a new skylight, just like that.
Down comes this dark fella—yeah, that’s him—and he sends Dooley straight
to hell. Bam-bam-bam, never laid a shot on this guy. He had this sword,
see. Blade so sharp you could cut the virtue from an angel. Dooley’s
carbine, he slices that sucker in two, takes the boy’s hands off into
the bargain. Walt… Well, by now he’s got his irons… What? Oh, they
were some nickel-plated sissy guns. Anyhoo. Walt shoots at him, the dark
fella, he does a gorram back flip and nails Walt with a crossbow. A
crossbow! Like what they used in olden times, for Kylie’s sake!

Well sir, by this here time I’m filling the air wit’ lead and can I hit
this boy? Can I hell! He’s on me like white on rice, breaks this arm and
shoots me in the leg. Takes the Mossbach just as polite as you like,
puts me on the dirt. Now, I’m thinkin’ that this is the end for ol’
Billy, but your man just reaches in a pocket and gives me a card. Like
offa poker deck, ’cept it’s got a pitcher on it. A pitcher of a dancin’
loon and the guy smiles at me, he says: “The Fool. This is your lucky
day, William. ”And he lets me live.

Off he goes. He caps Bloom… He seemed real angry about the way the
Doc was treatin’ the pigs. Leaves me for the marshals with this here
card. Lookit. Y’see? It’s what them there boys call tarrow. Tarrow cards
or somethin‘. One o’ the marshals tole me that these things got,
whatchacall, mojo on ’em, black magic. Well, shit. I unloaded a hun-nerd
rounds at that boy and never nicked him one time. If that ain’t black
magic, then I dunno what is.

William “Big” Buettner, arrest suspect #6575FG, Fresno State Militia
Service. Subject brought to book by Sanctioned Operative Joshua Fixx
(independent), serial number 1800979.

For more information on any of the weapons systems mentioned during this
transcript, Touch Here for Hyperlinx. This RealTime Interrogation is a
WKIL-TV program, sponsored by Turner, Harvest and Ramirez.

The Vector held to the road like it was in love with it. This being a
weeknight and the hour somewhat late, the Northern Lantau Expressway was
sparse with traffic. Ko pressed the accelerator hard to the floor and
let the gunmetal sedan eat up the asphalt. Angry hoots from the drivers
he slipstreamed fell away in strangled chugs of Doppler-shifted noise,
the Mercedes sliding effortlessly around the other road users as if they
were static islands in a shimmering river of mercury. The speed limit
signs blurred past him. Each used a laser ranger to bounce off oncoming
vehicles and flash up their kilometres-per-hour on the big holograph
displays that floated over the highway. If you kept to the limit or
below it, it beamed out a cartoon smiley face. If you overshot, you were
given a grimacing scowl. Ko’s speed was so high that the signs were
throwing up skulls and crossbones.

“This is unnatural,” said Feng, jamming a cigarette in his mouth. The
guardsman held himself tight, arms braced about the cuirass on his
chest. Ko threw him a look and Feng stabbed a finger at the road. “Don’t
turn away! You’ll crash this thing into someone and kill them, and I
don’t want any company!”

“Yeah, if I die, who’d you haunt then?” The driver chuckled. “You don’t
need to be here,” said Ko. “Do your thing, go away and come back later.”

“I can’t always do it. Not just like that, not on demand.”

“Oh.” Ko grinned. “Pity. For you, I mean.”

The next holosign he passed had a string of text on it: “Authorities
Informed. Speed Reduction Measures Initiated.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?” demanded Feng.

“Tanglers.”

Five kilometres further up the expressway, a crack opened in the surface
of the road, the polymerised blacktop peeling back like a lipless mouth.
Two prongs, blinking with warning strobes, extended upward and grew
spines of impact-resistant piezoplastic. At their tips were
pressure-jet web guns, needle-fine nozzles that could fling a polymer
spray into the air. Like spider’s thread, the polymer hardened on
contact with the air, turning thick and gluey. It was water soluble, and
it lasted for less than five minutes before it dissolved, but that was
typically more than enough time to coat the wheels of a speeder and
force them to slow. Ko had caught a grille full of the stuff once, back
when a race against some Wanchai show-off had sent him down the wrong
road. It was like driving through treacle.

The trick to beating the tanglers was to drive in a way the designers
thought only an idiot would.

Ko shifted around the neon-lit bulk of bleating robohauler and aimed the
bonnet of the Vector directly at the closest pylon. He saw the thin
streams of fluid hissing into the night air, crossing away and to the
right, converging on the place where the traffic control computer
estimated he was
supposed
to be.

“The pole with the lanterns…” Feng said. “You’re going to hit it!”

“Yes.” Ko ran the sedan right into the plastic upright and heard it
clatter and scrape against the underside of the Mercedes as it folded
beneath it. The car listed sharply as some of the rangier fluid spat
over the rear tyres, but he was ready for it and there was hardly enough
to cause him trouble. In the rear-view, he spotted the hauler going
headlong into a puddle of the stuff and the vehicle skidded hard. The
robot truck’s simplistic road-brain lacked the finesse to manage such a
sudden change in highway conditions and the hauler spun out, throwing up
a fountain of sparks as it scraped the barrier on the median strip. The
Vector made some complaining noises and shuddered. A clatter of noise
from the back seat drew Ko’s attention. “What the hell is that? A bag?”

“The speed traps were ineffective.” The masked man spoke for the first
time, never once turning his head from the driver’s seat. His voice was
neutral in a way that seemed too precise to be fully human.

Frankie watched the distance markers blinking past the window as the
remaining cars in the YLHI convoy followed the expressway back toward
the city. He felt an odd sense of amusement at the thief’s boldness,
taking one of the Vectors from right under the nose of his escorts. He
let his gaze wander to Alice. Her annoyance was palpable there in the
back of the sedan, coming off her chilly expression in ice-cold waves.
The car felt cramped, the air inside uncomfortable.

Alice paused only to listen to the report from the man in the Monkey
King mask and then returned to the conversation she was having in hissy
Japanese with her vu-phone. A hand-held cellular model, the compact
wedge of electronics was standard-issue equipment to every Yuk Lung
executive above grade three. She gave Frankie a contrite but irritated
look. “I am so very sorry you had to witness that, Francis. You are
barely home for ten minutes and you are forced to watch a crime unfold
in front of you. Rest assured, the thief will be caught and punished.”
She turned back to the phone and barked out something angry.

“Damn kids,” said Ping, the guy who’d taken his bag at arrivals. Coiled
in the front passenger seat, he sported the beginnings of a nasty bruise
on his cheek. “Oughta ban the lot of them from the ’port. Only go there
to race up and down the highway.” He started to say something else, but
Alice gave him a sharp glare; it was Ping’s fault the car had been
taken, and so he had forfeited the right to speak because of his laxity.

“Highway patrol enforcers are inbound,” reported the Monkey King. “He’ll
be at the bridge before they get here.”

Frankie wondered where the agent was getting this data from. There had
to be an audio-video link inside the mask, or else some cyberware
implant looping a feed from the police band. He heard the masked man
make a tutting sound under his breath as he guided the Mercedes around a
stalled robohauler and through the thick slurry of spent tangler foam.
The other car in the group was quite a way behind them.

Alice looked up and met the driver’s eyes in the rear-view. Frankie saw
something unspoken pass between them.

“He’s going to go for the WarPark off-ramp. I can catch him. With your
permission?”

She nodded, and with a grunt of power from the engine, the driver threw
the Vector into top gear.

Alice punched in a different number. “Traffic control, this is YLHI
mobile 41312, enacting clause six of the Corporate Self-Defence Act.
Advise all enforcement agents that this is a duly noted and legal
exercise of our company rights.” She hung up without waiting for a reply
and snapped the cellphone closed.

A thought formed in Frankie s mind. “My bag… Where’s my carry-on bag
from the plane?”

Ping looked at the floor. “In, uh, in the car.” He pointed in the
general direction of the road.

“Don’t worry,” said Alice. “The moment the vehicle was stolen, the
contents of your personal computer were nashloaded to our central server
and then the machine was wiped. Your company phone was also
automatically severed from our internal network.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.” He extended his hand to her. “May I?”

The woman gave him a dubious look, but passed him the vu-phone all the
same. Without really being sure of what motivated him, Frankie hesitated
with his finger over the keypad, trying to remember his own number.