Stackpole, Michael A - Shadowrun (2 page)

I handed the Viper to The Chauffeur and stepped into the street. The white Mitsubishi Nightsky stretch limo looked as out of place on the litter-strewn street as a wharf rat in the mayor's office, but that didn't stop it from being there. I waited as The Chauffeur scanned me with whatever he had for eyes behind those dark glasses of his, then smiled and entered the limo's dark interior.

Having grown up among the concrete alleys of Seattle, I thought of class as something you escaped from during the day. Despite my absolute loathing of anything and everything Etienne La Plante did and was, I 4I've always thought The Chauffeur was a dumb street name. Usually, in street names, you want something that suggests you're on top, like Tiger or King Cobra or something slick like that. Wolf, maybe, even. But The Chauffeur? I guess he liked it because he thought it made him sound like he was going places.

still had to admit he looked classy. His double-breasted suit was cut from cloth of silver, yet—if possible—did not look ostentatious or flashy. His wavy white hair had been perfectly cut and combed, giving me the impression that I'd stepped into a boardroom for a long-planned meeting.

I settled into a velvet seat so comfortable I could have died happy in it, especially if the woman seated next to La Plante gave me another one of her I-want-to-have-your-baby-or-at-least-try-hard-at-it smiles. In the armrest at my left hand sat a frosted mug of beer—the half-empty bottle next to it proclaimed it to be Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve.

Very good, Etienne. My favorite. Is it true that you bought the brewery because you heard one of Raven's men loved the stuff?

La Plante refrained from offering me his right hand, but I didn't mind. If there was any flesh and blood left to it, the silver carapace hid it completely. I noticed, as he picked up his own mug of beer, that the hand articulated perfectly, but then
he
could afford perfection. I'd not heard of any assassination attempts against him, so I had to assume he had voluntarily maimed himself.

"I would apologize, Mr. Kies, for my underling's actions but, you understand, that was a test." He shrugged wearily. "After the bad blood between Dr. Raven and myself, you can hardly forgive my being suspicious."

I gave him a quick smile that I broadened as I looked at his companion. "You can call me Wolf." I directed the comment more to the woman than La Plante and waited a half-second for a similar offer of intimacy from the crime boss or, more specifically,
her.
I continued when he ignored me—she was just being coy, I could tell. "When Dr. Raven was informed that you had become the custodian for Ms.

Alianha and was called upon by her elven guardians to get her back, he was forced to make some choices. I am sure you can understand that that negotiation was not the most popular course of action suggested." La Plante nodded sagely. "Former employees can be so, ah, vindictive, can't they?"

Sure, especially when you try to plant them in the harbor with their feet bound in a block of cement. No
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one would have figured Kid Stealth would blow off his own legs to escape that little death trap, but he did and survived. When your time comes, the timekeeper will be wearing shiny new legs and will move faster than even you remember.

"You heard our offer. You get the Fujiwara shipment schedules for the next six months in return for the girl. We'll burn you a chip. We can do the exchange tonight."

La Plante's nonchalant expression remained rooted on his face. "You have a decker good enough to get into Fujiwara that quickly? We're talking layers of protection—psychotropic 1C, defensive and offensive knowbots, expert constructs, you name it. Enough ice to give anyone a case of terminal frostbite."

I smiled confidently. "This decker is so hot the only way to stop her is to dunk her in liquid nitrogen and hit her with a hammer. We'll get the schedule for you."

He hid his excitement at the offer well. "How do I know the data will be good?"

I sat up straight. "You have Dr. Raven's word on it."

Where Ronnie Killstar would have answered with some inane barb, La Plante just nodded. "Very well."

He leaned over and whispered something in the redhead's ear. As she reached over and picked up my mug, he spoke. "You've not tried your beer. I assure you it has not been tampered with."

She sipped and returned the mug to its place on the armrest. As she licked her lips I felt an urge to procreate, then counted to ten—no, fifteen—to regain control. "Sorry," I said, and smiled, "but after the Weed, drinking in here just wouldn't be the same. You understand." For her benefit I added, "Maybe another time . . ."

The door opened again. La Plante's chauffeur hovered by the door with my gun in hand. "Tonight, Mr.

Kies, at warehouse building 18b, on the docks. We will give you the southern and western approaches. I would prefer this to be an intimate gathering."

"My feelings exactly. You bring a dozen of your grunges and I'll consider it even." I succeeded in getting myself perched on the edge of the seat. "And leave Ronnie at home . .."

La Plante waved my last remark off with a silvery flourish of his right hand. "Do not concern yourself with him. He has been assigned new duty. He'll be feeding fish for the foreseeable future."

The Chauffeur handed me the pistol, then swung the door shut. I smiled at him and his plastic mask of servitude cracked. "Someday, Wolf, it will come down to you and me. I'll make it quick. I want you to know that."

I met his mirror-eyed stare with my number two nasty glare. "Good, I like that. If a fight goes on too long, the blood stains set and then you can never get them out. . ."

His plastic mask back in place, he turned and walked away. Though every olfactory nerve ending in my nose protested mightily, I reentered the Weed. My beer still waited on the table, but Ronnie Killstar and the Wonton boys had vanished. I waited and sniffed, but I couldn't smell the mulch drippings that passed for Ronnie's cologne.
Given how that stuff smells and sells, the Weed here could bottle its mop
sloppings and make a fortune.
I shook my head.
Never happen
—
they'd actually have to mop this
place.

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Instead of returning to my table, I walked over to the jacktables. I pulled the bug from inside my jacket and tossed it on the black woman's deck. "Did you get it all?"

Valerie Valkyrie, Raven's newest aide, gave me a smile that made me forget La Plante's taste-tester.

"Everything, including your pulse rate and blood pressure when she sucked on your beer."

I felt the burn of a blush sweeping across my face, and it grew hotter as it pulled a giggle from her throat.

"We'll discuss how much of that makes it into the report for the Doctor later. Right now we've got work to do."

II

"All right, Zig and Zag, let's go through the drill one more time."

Zag frowned and the razor claws on his left hand flicked out, then retracted with the speed of a snake's tongue. "We've got names ..."

I raised myself up to my full height, which put me a centimeter or so taller than the smaller of them. "And right now they're Zig and Zag. You're local talent and I'm your Mr. Johnson. Now, you claim you want to join this elite circle? Fine, this is a tryout. Try living with new names for a second or two, got it?"

Zig elbowed Zag and they both nodded. For street samurai they weren't bad. Zag had gone the obvious route of adding chrome in the form of razor claws grafted to his hands and some retractable spurs that popped up from the top of his feet. He'd replaced his right eye with a rangefinder modification linked to the scope on his autorifle. He'd gone a bit far, in my mind, by having a fluorescent orange cross hairs tattooed over that eye from hairline to cheekbone and ear to across his nose, but it came close enough to warpaint that I could understand it. Still, I knew if I was on the other end of a sniper rifle, that would make a real nice target.

Zig had been more discreet. He'd gone in for body work. From the way he moved I knew he'd had his reflexes cranked up to move with the speed of something between a Bengal tiger and a striking cobra. I didn't see any body blades, but he was a bit more subtle than his partner so he might not have flashed them. I also got the impression he'd had some dermal sheathing implanted to protect his vital organs—a wise choice. One never knows where those replacement organs were grown, and the failure percentage on cut-rate Khmer hearts made having a Band-Aid slapped on the old one look like a good bet for survival.

"Val and I are going to jack into the Matrix. No one should be able to track us to where we're going, but we can't be a hundred percent certain of that. I need you two to be alert and careful because when we bust the system we're going after, things could get messy. What do you do if there's trouble?"

Zag grumbled and walked over to where my MP-95rested on the bed. "We slap the trades off you and hand you this toy. Then we get the wirehead out of here."

Val didn't notice the rancor in Zag's voice at his having been shot down earlier. When he asked if she would be interested in a little horizontal tango to "relieve the tension," she looked at him as if he were a deck with "Made in UCAS" stamped on its side. Zig and I shared a smile as Zag's anger deepened when Val continued to ignore him.

"Good. That's it. You get her out and get her to the place she tells you. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

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"Or dead." Zag hefted one of the spare clips for my MP-9 submachine gun. "Freaking nine-millimeter toy and you've got silver bullets? Who do you think you are, the Lone Ranger?" He thumbed one bullet from the clip and tossed it to Zig.

Easy, Wolf. Better this tough guy act to hide his nerves than him falling apart on you."I think I'm your Mr. Johnson—and a superstitious one at that."

Zig looked closely at the silver bullet in his hand. "Drilled and patched. You got mercury in there to make the bullet explode?"

I shook my head solemnly. "Silver nitrate solution. Physics is the same, the result is nastier. Burns as it goes."

5Yeah, yeah. It's another antique gun, but it shoots straight, which is all I ask. Stealth keeps my guns as well tuned as my mechanic does my Mustang, so they work. Besides, the MP-9 is considered such a toy by most gillettes that they don't see it as much of a danger until one of its bullets is finished making an exit wound.

Zig tossed the bullet back to his partner. "You planning on hunting a werewolf or something?"

"Were you in Seattle during the Full Moon Slashings?"

The mention of that series of killings tore Val away from her deck. "A half-dozen years ago? That was the first anyone had heard of Dr. Raven, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." I let that one-word answer hang there long enough for all three of them to realize I wasn't going to say anything specific about that outing. "After that I've carried silver bullets. Never want to be without them if you need them."

Val shivered. "Viper too?"

"Amen." I forced myself to smile and break the mood. "You got that Hibatchi chip encoder prepped yet?"

Val scolded me. "Hitachi, Wolf, and you know it."

I accepted a trode coronet from her slender fingers and pulled it onto my head. I adjusted it so the electrodes pressed against my temples and ran back over the midline of my skull. Val reached over and tightened the band to improve the contact, then she clipped the dangling lead into a splice cable. She slid that jack into the slot behind her left ear, then flipped a switch on the deck.

I winked at her. "Let's do it."

She winked back and hit a button on the keyboard. "Play ball."

Doc Raven had warned me that Valerie Valkyrie was special, but until we plunged through that electric aurora wall of static and into the Matrix, I had no idea how special. I'd jacked into the Matrix before—who hasn't—but it had always been on a public deck where I ended up inside an entertainment system. Moving from game program to game program, I caught glimpses of the Matrix through the neat little windows the programmers had built into their systems, but I'd never had any desire to go out
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adventuring on my own. Before, the form and shape of the Matrix had always been decided by the local network controllers. Here in Seattle the RTG resembled a vector graphic of the urban sprawl it encompassed. Well-fortified nodes were surrounded by fences and walls, and Matrix security teams patrolled the electronic streets like cops cruising a beat. I'd heard it had been designed that way because it made the casual user feel like he was in familiar surroundings and thus easier to find his way around.

As things got strange and the world shifted, so did the Matrix. When a user entered the Chinatown area here in Seattle, for example, the buildings melted away and the nodes took the form of mah jong tiles.

Deckers claimed that made it easier to pick out unprotected nodes, but I don't know about that. I've heard it said, and can believe, that no one goes near the nodes represented by dragons.

But that's the way of the world. Steer as clear as possible from dragons—words to live by and advice it'll kill you to ignore.

I've heard decker tales that if a decker got good enough he could impose his own sense of order on the Matrix. With enough skill he could make the Matrix appear the way he wanted it—free of extraneous data. Another urban legend born in the Matrix.

Valerie Valkyrie was a legendary decker.

After only two seconds, the landscape construct shifted. Gone were the clean lines of glowing, lime-green streets and shining white buildings. Suddenly I found myself standing beside the pitcher's mound in a monstrous baseball stadium. Val, outlined in a neon-blue that matched her eyes, pulled on a baseball cap that materialized from thin air and gave me a broad grin. The cap had a Raven patch on it.