Shadowplay

by Nigel Findley

  For more than a minute, the street looked like a freeze-frame from some trideo. The only movement he could see was one mauled corp soldier, dragging herself agonizingly toward cover, leaving behind a smeared trail of blood. Another minute.

  Then the movement began. Retreat, not advance. Through the nightsight he could see figures melting away into the darkness, leaving their sniper nests, leaving their over-watch positions. Slinking away into alleys, disappearing into buildings. A couple of figures—holding their empty hands away from their bodies—darted into the street to drag their dead and wounded out of the killing zone. Nobody cut them down.

  What the flying frag was happening?

  Within five minutes, the street was empty, the silence complete.

  “It’s over.”

  Falcon spun at the voice from behind him. Tried to swing the cumbersome Barret around.

  A large hand grabbed the barrel, immobilizing the gun as totally as if it had been locked into a vice. Falcon looked up into the face of a heavily armored street op. Looked into the muzzle of an SMG pointing directly between his eyes. Every muscle in his body spasmed, as if muscular tension could stop the bullets from smashing his skull to fragments.

  But the corp soldier didn’t fire. He just looked calmly down at Falcon. “It’s over,” the man said again. Then he released the rifle barrel, turned and tore away in an inhumanly fast sprint.

  Falcon watched him, letting the Barret’s barrel sagging down to the ground. Realizing he’d been holding his breath, he let the air out of his lungs in a long hiss.

  “It’s over,” he repeated. But what, exactly? And why?

  Well, it was damn sure he wasn’t going to figure that out squatting here.

  He slung the Barret’s strap over his shoulder and jogged back to the alley, to the rear door of the tavern. Went into the storeroom, rapped on the wall where he thought the concealed door was.

  After a few moments he heard a click, and the door swung back. He stepped into the back room.

  Mary was there. And so was Sly, who was longer jacked into her cyberdeck. She was sitting on the couch now, exhaustion written in every line of her body, a tired smile on her face.

  He unslung the rifle, tossed it onto a chair. “What the frag is going on?” he asked of anybody who’d care to give him an answer.

  33

  0700 hours, November 16, 2053

  Sly smiled at the young ganger—or should I think of him as a shaman now? she wondered. He looked almost as drained as she felt.

  “It’s over,” she told him.

  “What’s over, for frag’s sake?” he demanded.”What just happened? It’s like . . .”

  He hesitated, searching for the right words. “It’s like the fragging director yelled ‘Cut!’ and all the fragging actors went home.”

  She nodded. “I did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “I uploaded the fiber-optic data to the Corporate Court bulletin board system,” she explained. “It’s on the system now, where every corp in the world can read it.” She let herself relish the relief. “We're out from under.”

  “So why’d they stop shooting?” Falcon wanted to know.

  “Don’t you see?” she asked him. “Every corp’s got the information. There’s no percentage in coming after us, and there’s no percentage in”—she chuckled— “wasting each other’s assets. And you know that corps don’t do anything if there isn’t a percentage in it for them.”

  “So they stopped fighting. ...”

  “Because there was nothing to be gained by fighting anymore,” she finished for him. “They called back their armies, all their assets.” She shook her head. “I don’t like the corps, but there’s something to be said for the rational way they handle things.”

  Falcon shook his head slowly. She could see him trying to understand. Then his frown softened, and he smiled. “It’s over?” he asked, almost plaintively.

  “It’s over.”

  * * *

  They went back to the motel—the Plains Rest. Why not? As far as Sly could tell, nobody had figured that was their doss—And why should it matter now anyway? It was over! And what the hell, they needed somewhere to rest up. Somewhere to decide where they’d go from here.

  Falcon had driven the Callaway, with Mary following along behind on her borrowed bike. Then again, maybe the bike was hers now. Its previous owner—the bartender—was dead. Falcon had insisted on taking along the massive sniper rifle—he hadn’t told her how he’d come to acquire it, and she hadn’t asked. They’d soon enough have plenty of time for stories. Sly had worried about the kid carrying such an obvious piece of ordnance openly to the motel room, but Mary had promised to handle it. Sly didn’t know exactly how Mary had done it, but even though the ganger had brushed past a cleaning woman with the rifle slung over his shoulder, there’d been no outcry, not even the slightest hint of recognition that he carried a gun. I should find out more about this magic drek. Sly thought dryly. Now Falcon was lying on the bed, the weapon beside him as though he didn’t want it too far out of reach. Once they were settled down—each with a glass of synthetic scotch from the bottle Mary had provided as her contribution to the celebration—Sly told them about her run through the Matrix. Was surprised to find herself shaking when she described the fight with the golem-class black ice. There were a lot of nightmares there, she realized, waiting to come and get her. She knew it would be a while before she’d be able to sleep without the memories returning to frighten her awake in a sweat-soaked bed.

  When she’d finished. Falcon shook his head slowly. “So that’s it?” he asked doubtfully. “No comebacks? No loose ends? Nobody coming to geek us?”

  She smiled. “The corps are satisfied . . . if that’s the right word,” she explained. “The playing field’s level again. Everyone’s got the results of Yamatetsu’s research. Nobody’s got any kind of edge. There’s nothing to go to war for.”

  “The corp war’s over?” he pressed.

  “It’s over,” Sly reassured him. “It’s like I said, there’s no percentage in it anymore. Everything’s back to business as usual.” She chuckled. “No doubt everyone’s scrabbling to develop what they’ve got, to advance the technology. But they’re all starting from the same point, so no one’s got an advantage.” She shrugged. “Probably the Concord of Zurich-Orbital’s back in force—with some changes—and the Corporate Court’s back on top of things.”

  “The Sioux government’s cleaning house,” Mary put in. “That’s what I heard when I picked up the bottle. Closing down the OMI, and—”

  Without warning, the door blew off its hinges. As Sly’s ears rang with the overpressure from the explosion, she saw a figure standing in the doorway. A massive figure, bulky with armor, a large helmet covering its head. The transparent face-shield was down, but through the clear macroplast she could clearly see the face.

  Knife-Edge.

  Sly clawed for her revolver. Out the corner of her eye, she saw Mary fling herself into the dubious shelter of one of the beds. Falcon didn’t dive for cover. He reached for the sniper rifle.

  Knife-Edge raised his assault rifle, triggering a short, controlled burst. Falcon screamed as the bullets tore into him, the impact sending him rolling off the bed. Still clutching his rifle, he slumped to the floor face-down, motionless in a spreading pool of blood.

  Sly brought up her pistol, squeezed off two rounds. Saw them slam harmlessly into Knife-Edge’s heavy armor.

  “Drek-eating slitch!” he yelled. “You fragged everything up!” He swung the assault rifle around.

  She stared down the muzzle helplessly. Nowhere to go! Time seemed to click into slow motion, everything happening at a crawl. Instinctively, she tried to fling herself aside. Felt her muscles contract, felt her weight shift as she lunged to the right. Too late, too slow. Her own movements were as slow as everything else—as slow as everything but her racing thoughts. She saw the Amerindian runner’s finger whiten as he tightened down on the trigger.
She was right out in the open, no cover. No time to reach cover. I’m dead, she thought, expecting any instant to feel the bullets flaying her flesh from her bones. She heard herself start to yell, her voice pitched too low, like sound from a tape running slow. “Noooo!”

  A big gun boomed.

  In slow motion, she saw Knife-Edge’s chest armor fracture under the impact, saw the fireball burst into life where the bullet struck him. Saw his chest cavity deform as the round tore through him. Saw it burst out the other side like a fist-sized glob of blood and tissue, with a dart of burning, molten metal at its core.

  The runner’s weapon came up, his death-spasm clenching down on the trigger. A long burst sprayed into the ceiling, tearing great holes in the acoustic tile. The impact of the bullet slammed him off balance, and he fell—slowly, ponderously, like a felled tree.

  Sly’s own lunge was carrying her off her chair, to the right. Nothing she could do to stop it. As she fell, still in slow motion, she saw Falcon. Somehow he’d managed to drag himself up onto his elbows, managed to bring the sniper rifle to bear. He was staring at the ruins of Knife-Edge, his mouth hanging open, eyes glazed with agony, face pale from wound shock and loss of blood. She saw him slump down again.

  Sly hit the ground hard, too distracted to turn the fall into the roll she’d intended. As the impact drove the air from her lungs, time seemed to snap back to full-speed again.

  Gasping, she forced herself to her feet. The room looked like a slaughterhouse. The air was filled with the sweet, sickening smell of blood—the reek of feces, of cordite, of hot metal.

  Mary’s head appeared from behind the bed. Looked at what was left of Knife-Edge, her face going pale.

  “Do something for Falcon,” Sly ordered breathlessly. Mary jumped to obey.

  Sly looked around at the chaos. In the distance, she could hear the wail of an approaching siren.

  “Now it’s over,” she whispered.

  Epilogue

  1430 hours, May 20, 2054

  The mid-afternoon sun beat down from a cloudless sky, the small waves of the Caribbean Ocean shattering the golden light into sparkling shards. Without a breeze, it would have been brutally hot. But there was a breeze, blowing from the east—from the landward side—carrying with it the sweet-fresh smell of tropical flowers and verdant forest. The fourteen-meter powerboat—the Out of the Shadows—swung easily at anchor, a kilometer off the west coast of the island of Saint Lucia.

  Sharon Young sat on the flybridge, sprawled bonelessly in the pilot’s seat, a broad, floppy-brimmed hat sheltering her from the worst of the sun’s onslaught. Her skin was tanned a deep mahogany. Little rivulets of sweat ran down her body, darkening the waistband of her sky-blue monokini. On the rail, within easy reach, was a large gin and tonic—real gin, still available and not prohibitively priced in the islands. On the deck beside her was a pair of binoculars—also within easy reach if she wanted to take a closer look at any of the other boats anchored in the bay, or examine the huge spear-like mountain that the chart identified as the Gros Piton.

  She sighed. She’d been aboard the Shadows for almost two months now, cruising slowly—aimlessly, almost— through the island chains of the Caribbean League. Just taking it easy, unwinding slowly. Stopping wherever the mood took her, going ashore or simply lounging aboard. The Shadows had enough fresh-water capacity and storage space that Sly could provision the vessel for almost three weeks at sea without having to resupply. Which was just the way she liked it.

  She ran a hand along the polished teak rail. My boat. She could still hardly believe it, even after two months.

  After the debacle at the motel room, after the death of Knife-Edge, they’d gone to ground in the shadows of Cheyenne. Mary had stayed by Falcon’s bedside the entire time—almost two weeks—that it had taken for magic and medicine to bring the young shaman-ganger back from the brink of death. During that time. Sly had spent a couple of hours a day wandering around the Cheyenne corner of the Matrix, just generally checking things out-watching the newsbases, monitoring megacorp activities in Sioux and elsewhere. Never trying to crack into anything that was protected, of course, and definitely never getting even close to anything that looked like it was related to either the Sioux military or the Corporate Court.

  The corp war was over—all signs of conflict vanished as though they’d never existed. That had been obvious from the first moment Sly had started monitoring network activity, but it had taken her several days to completely believe it. There’d been hints of transfer payments between megacorps—no doubt restitution for “lost assets,” personnel and equipment killed or mangled during the fighting. (She’d wondered what the dead soldiers would think about that. . . .) The Corporate Court had apparently been directing those transfer payments, and the Zurich Orbital Bank had been handling all the transactions. So didn’t that mean that the Court was back in control of everything? Business as usual . . .

  It had been harder to keep track of the maneuvering within the Sioux Nation’s military and governmental apparatus, but in time she’d picked out a few “indirect indicators,” which had given her some clue about what was going on without getting her close enough to trigger an alert. It had certainly looked as though Mary was right—the Sioux military had been doing some major housecleaning. The Office of Military Intelligence had undergone a massive purge—a “restructuring,” according to the bureaucratese. Most of the big players in the OMI had been transferred elsewhere in the military complex, but some—including the head honcho, one Sheila Wolffriend—had simply vanished. Gone, never to be heard of again. End of story. Then the military had just closed ranks, and that was it. Business as usual there, too.

  Toward the end of Falcon’s convalescence, Sly had gathered up her courage and taken a look into the Seattle Matrix. Status quo ante there as well—no changes, everything running as if there’d never been a corp war on the horizon. She’d checked her own records, too, just to see if anyone had tied her in with the events in Sioux.

  Somebody had, that had been immediately obvious. According to the files, Sharon Louise Young now had an account in the Zurich Gemeinschaft Bank. An account with a balance in the low seven digits. An off-planet account, free from any kind of tax and exempt from UCAS Internal Revenue Service scrutiny.

  When Sly first saw this, she’d jacked out at once, sweating in panic. A trap? Somebody waits for me to make a withdrawal, and then everyone and his fragging dog jumps me. . . .

  But then she’d gone back in and approached the information from a dozen different angles. There’d been no traps or traces around the account. Nothing other than the bank’s own monolithic security. No deckers watching for access. Using various blinds and covers, shell companies and shills, she’d tried to withdraw some of the credit, transfer it to a blind account in a bank in Casper, Sioux Nation. No problem. The transfer had gone through faster than any bank transaction Sly had ever seen—no doubt the Casper bank had jumped frosty when they'd seen where the credit was coming from.

  The next day the electronic mail message had arrived. Not at any of her shell companies or layers of protection. Delivered electronically directly to her cyberdeck. Addressed to Sharon Louise Young. From the Board of Directors of the Zurich-Orbital Bank. When she’d gotten over the shakes and the sweats—how the frag did they track her down so easily?—she read the message.

  The account balance was a payment for services rendered, authorized by the Corporate Court itself. No specifications as to just what services, but Sly didn’t have too much trouble venturing a guess. For stopping the corp war, of course. For letting everyone forget about geeking each other, for letting everyone get back to the profitable business of screwing the consumer.

  The e-mail message had ended with a suggestion that there was “no need to contact the Court to thank them or to discuss this matter in any way.” In other words, take the money, shut up, and get out of our hair for good. It had seemed like an excellent idea.

  And so Sharon Young—Sly
no more—was in retirement, long-awaited and well-deserved.

  And, much as she hated to admit it, she was getting bored. She’d left Falcon and Mary behind in Cheyenne— with a fair chunk of credit each, of course—left her old life and the shadows far behind. But . . .

  You could take the runner out of the shadows, but you couldn’t take the shadows out of the runner—or something like that.

  She sighed, finished her drink and went below.

  The Out of the Shadows boasted a state-of-the-art computer system, complete with satellite link. It hadn’t when Sharon first picked it up, of course; that had been the first of many modifications she’d commissioned for the graceful craft. She slumped down at the keyboard, idly logged on and requested a list of any electronic mail she’d received.

  There was only one message. No originator ID.

  Curiosity piqued, she ran a back-trace. No real problem. The sender had suppressed his or her ID, but hadn’t buried it too deeply—as though he/she wanted Sharon to be able to run the trace if she wished.

  As the information appeared on the flatscreen, Sharon sat back and smiled.

  The transmission was from Cheyenne—from Falcon. She chuckled as she read the message.

  A really hot run was shaping up, it seemed. Starting in Cheyenne, but maybe spreading back up into the UCAS and Seattle. Falcon had gotten a team together, but there was still one slot open—for a drek-hot decker. If the “lady of leisure” could fit it into her busy social schedule, would she consider it?

  Sly shook her head slowly. I'm retired, she told herself.

  But then another thought struck her. Retirement isn't doing nothing, she realized, it’s doing only what you want to do. That was a new concept.

  A broad smile spread over her face. May, she thought. I wonder what the weather’s like in Cheyenne?

  Copyright

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England