“Problem is,” I go on, “the ‘bug’ hasn't gone through field testing yet ... or maybe Schrage isn’t into taking NVC’s word about what it’s supposed to do. So some NVC reps and Schrage himself—this has got to be much too big to leave to drones—make contact with the Cutters under some cover story, and they’ve got their field test.” I look at Argent. “How does that scan?”
“It scans all too well, omae,” he says softly.
“Did Peg happen to find out whether ML’s got any major clients on the go at the moment?” I ask, and the sudden look in the runner’s optics answers that one clearly. “Tsimshian.” He speaks the word flatly, coldly. “Peg says Military Liaison-Seattle cut a deal with some outfit in Kitimat. The Tsimshian capital.”
“When?”
“Two months back.” Argent smiles grimly. “The timeframe’s about right, isn’t it? Two weeks of research to find a good bioweapons supplier, two weeks of negotiation, then about a month for the field test.”
“What’s the deal?”
The runner snorts. “Peg’s good, but she’s not that good. Trust me, omae, the grim and gritty details are buried so deep no decker’s going to lay mitts on them.” He shrugs. “If I were Schrage, I'd have all that secret drek on an isolated machine, not part of the Matrix. You know, Tempest-shielded so you can’t even get it through induction or influence-scanning or anything.”
“Any guesses? You probably know more about the background than me. You’ve been in Seattle longer.”
He chuckles. “All my life, chummer. The sprawl’s my home. I was born here, and when it’s time to die, it’s as good a place as any.” He’s silent for a moment, and I can see him getting his thoughts in order. “The Tsimshian nation’s just basically bad news,” he says finally. “Intertribal squabbles tearing it up, the Haida and Kwakiutl underclass against the Tsimshian and Tlingit power bloc. Maybe it’s the national government wanting to finish off the ‘Haida problem’ once and for all. Or maybe it’s the Haida National Front wanting to geek the government. Or maybe it’s not tribally motivated at all.
“Tsimshian seceded from the NAN Sovereign Tribal Council in . . . what was it? Twenty thirty-five . . . ?”
“Twenty thirty-seven,” I amend.
“Whatever. Since the secession, Tsimshian and Salish-Shidhe have been this close to border wars on a dozen occasions, mainly over some major ore deposits and industrial facilities that are just close enough to the border to be in what you could call ‘disputed territory.’ Maybe Kitimat figures it’s high time to settle things with the S-S Council.” He shrugs eloquently. “As I said, chummer, Tsirnshian’s bad news. You need a fragging menu to find out who’s on their hate list for the day.”
Just fragging wonderful.
Argent’s looking at me with his steady, ironic gaze, like he’s waiting for me to figure something out.
The realization finally comes. “Yeah,” I growl. “It’s all speculation because we don’t know for sure that NVC created the bug. It could be that Schrage cut a deal with NVC for something innocent like implant technology. And we don’t know for fragging sure that Schrage had anything to do with the Cutters getting hit by the bug. But how else can you scan it?”
“That’s almost beside the point, isn’t it?” Argent says quietly. “I could tell you I’m all the way, one hundred percent gonzo convinced, but what the frag? What difference does it make?” He gives a single bark of humorless laughter. “It’s not like we can take our suspicions to Lone Star and have the cops look into it.”
“So what the frag do we do about it?” I snap.
Argent’s humorless grin fades into that cold poker-face I’ve seen too many times, and I think I know what his answer’s going to be. “Why should I want to do anything about it? Corps frag people over all the time. Why should I get bent out of shape about one more case?”
Frag, I fragging knew it! He’s a fragging shadowrunner, and there’s no credit in this for him. The familiar rage against runners has been keeping a low profile for the past few days, but now it starts twisting and writhing in my chest again. I draw breath to say something poisonous ...
Which is just what the cybered-up fragger is waiting for, of course. Before I can get out a word, he says, “But I’m curious about what NVC’s up to. Curious enough to maybe hum on down the Columbia River to Pillar Rock and have a little look-see.” I stare at him, and he gives me an innocent, drek-eating smile in response. “Want to come along?”
25
Frag that Argent anyway! The miserable son of a slitch must have known what was going through my mind, what I was thinking about him. And he fragging let me think it, let me get all morally superior and deeply into hating the ground he walks on.
And then, just when I was ready to tear his fragging head off, he basically said, “Hey, I want to do the right thing too, chummer,” and let me know he was just yanking my chain. Lousy son of a slitch.
In no time at all he’s got our transportation arranged and all that drek, and we're in the car heading for Sea-Tac. Meanwhile I’ve been getting more and more cranked up, while doing my fragging best not to show it.
I don't care if the runner knows I’m slotted off, priyatel. It's me who’s bothered. Argent was yanking my chain to make a point, feeding me a line that matched perfectly with my preconception of shadowrunners, the one I’ve picked up from cop talk and what I heard in the Academy . . . and, yes, that I’d probably sucked up from the fragging trideo. Fragging Argent knew that, and decided to make me eat my cherished ideas. By playing perfectly in synch with them, then doing a high-speed one-eighty and taking off in the opposite direction. And of course what I’m supposed to learn from this is that shadowrunners aren't the mercenary, empty-hearted slots I always believed them to be. I hate being proved wrong even at the best of times, and definitely not by some holier-than-thou scumbag like Argent.
And that’s why I’m sitting, fuming, in the passenger seat of the Westwind as Argent tools west, then south, through the southern end of downtown toward the part of Sea-Tac airport where private planes are kept. I start getting the creeps as we pull up to the guarded security gate that leads to the plane-owners’ parking lot, but Argent doesn’t show the slightest sign of tension.
The sec-guard’s eyes glint unnaturally in the watery afternoon sunlight, and I see the fiber-optic cable running from his datajack to the ‘puter pack on his belt. As he looks at us, our images are being transferred from his cybereyes to that pack, and probably relayed from there to some analysis/recognition system in a nearby building. The best outcome is that neither of us match up with the database of people authorized to use this gate. The worst, of course, is that my image triggers all kinds of watchdogs, and then things just kind of slide downhill from there.
I might as well have saved my stress for something that mattered—like the impending flight, for example. The sec-guard scans the two of us, focuses his eyes on infinity for a moment, then nods to Argent with a lot more respect than he’d shown a moment ago. “Head right on through, sir,” he says. “You know where to park.”
Argent smiles in response—the perfect image of some high corp suit accepting respect that’s only his due from a subordinate—and rolls on. I wonder what ID the ’puter came back with when it scanned Argent’s image, but I’m not going to humble myself enough to ask. I figure I’ve been humbled enough for one day.
Earlier, when the runner was telling me he'd arranged for a plane, I imagined some thrashed beater of a single-engine prop plane about as old as I am, if not older. A Piper Club, maybe, or a fragging Comanche dating back to the turn of the century. (When I was a kid, I used to read everything I could about planes, old and new. Not really as a hobby, but trying to eradicate the irrational fear I’ve always had of flying. Didn’t work worth a frag.) As we cruise past the aircraft parking area, I see enough of those ancient planes, deathtraps looking like they’re held together with chewing gum, baling wire, gaffer tape, and positive thinking.
But Ar
gent doesn’t stop here. Instead, he keeps driving, and we start to pass planes that are clawing their way up the socioeconomic, chronological, and reliability ranks. Cessnas and Fiat-Fokkers from only a decade or two ago begin to replace defunct De Havillands, and I start to feel a little better about the whole thing.
And still he’s not stopping. Instead he takes a right, and now the planes that we’re cruising by are a year or two old, if that. Lear-Cessna executive turboprops and Agusta-Cierva “Plutocrat” rotorcraft sit cheek-to-jowl with drek I’ve never seen before, most of the birds sporting corporate livery of some kind. The runner hasn’t cut some kind of deal for this kind of transport, has he?
But no, ahead of us I can see what we’ll be using, and my anxiety’s back in the pit of my stomach. Not that it’s an old beater of a plane. Not at all. It’s a brand spanking new McDonnell-Douglas Merlin, a small, slick cousin to the Federated-Boeing Commuter. It’s a tilt-wing with two long-bladed turboprops, apparently based on a nineteen-eighties’ design called the Osprey, a V/STOL that switches from horizontal flight to vertical by pivoting its wings, effectively turning props into helicopter-style rotors.
Frag, everybody in any city in North America has seen the F-B Commuters do their thing. And, similarly, everybody knows how unreliable they are—manufacturers’ claims to the contrary, of course—and how vulnerable to loss of power during the transition from horizontal to vertical or vice versa. I promised myself a long time back I’d never fly in a Commuter, and now here I am faced with riding in the smaller—and even more unreliable—Merlin. Just fragging wonderful, and I really want to thank you for that Argent, from the bottom of my heart.
Again, of course, I try to hide my discomfort. I focus my eyes on the blue and white craft, trying to pay close attention to two jumpsuited techs or mechanics or whatever they are dicking around inside open access covers. To get my mind off crash and fatality statistics, I try to recognize the livery and the angular logo on the fuselage.
“Don’t worry about the corp affiliation,” Argent pipes up, going back to his old mind-reading routine. “Yamatetsu sold it to a chummer a while back, and she never got around to repainting it.”
Uh-huh. And I wonder if she ever got around to changing the radar transponder to read civilian instead of corp?
Argent pulls up next to the Merlin, and we climb out. I see movement in the open hatchway, then a figure emerges. An elf, but shorter and broader than the typical metatype. At first I scan her as fat, but I quickly revise that as she comes down the ladder to the apron. “Comfortably well-upholstered” might be a better description. Her face, too, is broader than the elf standard, and her eyes and buzz-cut hair are dark instead of light. But she’s got the elf ears, and there’s something I can’t quite label about her smile at the sight of Argent that confirms her metatype as far as I’m concerned. She’s wearing a shapeless black jumpsuit with altogether too many pockets and stuff apparently crammed into every one of them.
“Hoi, Argent!” she calls, and her voice and broad smile remind me of a kid with a new toy.
“Hoi, Raven.” He takes her offered hand, and they shake like old chummers.
Seeing her close up now, I try to guess at this Raven’s age. Judging by her voice and the way she moved, at first I had her chipped at about twenty. Now, though, I kick that up by ten years, maybe fifteen. Her face is weather-tanned, with networks of deep crinkles around her eyes. I hadn’t spotted her mods before, but now I see three datajacks, one in each temple, and a third that looks relatively new because of the faintly pink and tender-looking skin just above the joint of her jaw on the right side. Presumably, she’s jacked for a vehicle control rig. You don’t find many deckers buying and flying cast-off corp planes.
“Long time,” Raven tells Argent, her smile not fading in the slightest. “You gotta come see me sometime when it’s not biz, okay?”
Argent smiles back, and his eyes are more relaxed than I’ve ever seen them. Old chummers for sure. “Okay, I promise.” He remembers me, and gestures me over. “Raven, this is Wolf.”
The elf sticks her hand out, and I take it. Firm grip, cool, and the texture of the skin—not quite right—tells me the datajacks aren’t her only mods.
“You've picked a good day,” she announces, glancing at the sky. “High overcast, good viz.” She grins at me. “Ready to do some flying?”
* * *
Raven’s a slick pilot, I’ll give her that much. Every maneuver the Merlin makes is smooth as synthsilk, perfectly controlled, without any sense that she’s fighting the machine or forcing it to do anything. On the contrary, it feels more like the plane’s doing everything naturally because that’s what planes do, and we’re just along for the ride. Even the transition between vertical and horizontal flight—when the wings pivot to turn overhead rotors into turboprop air screws—was so smooth and steady I didn't notice the event until a few seconds later when I realized our flight regime had changed. For the first time since I spotted the Merlin, my anxiety level has begun to shade down a bit.
Not that watching Raven at work was all that reassuring. Oh sure, I’ve flown on planes piloted by riggers—everyone who’s ever hopped a commercial suborbital, semiballistic, or HSCT has—but that doesn’t mean I’ve been on the flight deck to watch them at it. And now I’m glad I wasn’t. I tell you there’s something disturbing, something just fragging wrong about watching the pilot—the person who’s got your life in her hands—jack into the control board of the plane and then promptly fall asleep!
No drek, that’s just what it looks like. Raven looks totally boneless, slumped there in her flight couch. Only the four-point safety harness and the special headrest with forehead strap keep her upright, stop her from sliding like a corpse down into the well under the panel. Her eyes are shut, and her mouth is hanging slightly open. And she’s fragging drooling. Just a little, but it’s enough.
Argent looks over at me and grins. He’s sitting in the copilot’s chair, to Raven’s right, while I’m squatted down on a jump seat just back of the gap between the two front seats. I’ve never liked being relegated to the back of the bus, and this time’s no different. The Merlin’s got incredible visibility, though. From where I’m sitting, it looks like maybe seventy-five percent of the small plane’s nose is transplast, which means I’ve got a better than one-eighty-degree field of view in the horizontal plane, and more than ninety in the vertical. It feels like being in a fragging bubble hanging eighteen hundred meters in the air.
To take my mind off the mild case of agoraphobia I didn’t know I had, I concentrate on the jump seat I’m strapped into, and the tech-drek around it. First I notice a tiny swing-out console that shows a set of repeater displays matching most of the sensors controlled from the main panel. They’re not labeled worth a drek, of course, but they’re interesting nonetheless. I think I’ve scoped out a few of them—ECM and ECCM tell-tales here, threat display over here, and a display of consumables carried over there. (I note with grim interest that the Merlin’s got a full load of chaff and flares on board. Why, I wonder? Because Raven just doesn’t take any chances, ever? Or because she’s expecting to have to use them in the near future?)
“Don’t like flying, Wolf?” the runner asks mildly.
Frag. I thought I was hiding it better than that. I shrug in response.
“I used to hate it.” He chuckles. “Of course, that was back when going up in a plane usually meant I was going to jump out of it at some point.” I file that fact away for future reference—paratrooper training and experience. Just what is Argent’s background, anyway?
“Then I figured, why not just sit back and enjoy the view?” he goes on. “Why worry? We all have to go when our number’s up, and it doesn’t matter where we are—in a plane, in a firefight, or in a nice warm bath—when the time comes.”
“Yeah,” I grumble, hooking a thumb toward Raven. “But what if it’s her number that comes up?”
* * *
The Merlin’s a fast plane,
a blessing because it means we’ll be back on the ground all that much sooner. Within minutes after dust-off, we’re at eighteen hundred meters and cruising south. The demarcation where the sprawl ends and the Salish-Shidhe nation begins is obvious, even though we're too high to see the walls and fences and guard posts. On one side of the demarcator there’s city; on the other, countryside. It’s like God took a hand razor and sculpted a sharp edge along the urban area that would otherwise be spreading south toward Portland.
I’m a little anxious about crossing that line, the invisible boundary dividing UCAS airspace from S-S airspace. Even though I’ve never tried it myself, I’ve heard enough about how fragging difficult it is to slide “over the wall, out of the sprawl”—that is, slip the border into the Amerindian territory surrounding Seattle. I can’t believe the S-S Council’s going to be any more amenable to us scroffy “Seattlites” encroaching on their pristine fragging country by air.
But the grief’s not as bad as when Argent drove onto the Sea-Tac private apron. I’ve got to assume Raven is in contact with ground controllers and all the usual drek, but her meat body didn’t shift a millimeter, and she didn’t bother to patch whatever communication she had through to the cockpit speakers. Or—who knows?—maybe she didn’t have to talk to anybody. For all I know, the transponder in the Merlin might still be squawking the idee for a high-level Yamatetsu exec transport. Whatever, we just blow on through into S-S airspace without the slightest hassle. Thank Ghu for small favors, say I.
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