Nanoshock

by K C Alexander

  Trinity is one of those deep places that doesn’t see the sun. A double-edged knife. On the one hand, minimal risk of sun poisoning. No need to rely on shields to keep the radiation out, either, so the spotty shielding on the fringes of this side of the city doesn’t matter.

  On the other, freezing fucking cold, wet and dark as the inside of a dead man’s asshole. Plenty of room to maneuver. Lots of places to stab a body in the dark.

  Lots of places from which to snipe an unwitting runner like myself.

  Carmichael’s demeanor had all but screamed ambush. He’d mentioned knowing people. Two and two didn’t have to add up to four, especially with Shepherd trash, but this was so obviously a setup that I wanted to rip Shepherd dick off and ram it up Malik’s nose.

  “You won’t get out of here,” Carmichael spat behind me. “This time, we’re taking you down.”

  “You and what nuke?” I scoffed.

  “You stupid whore. This one.” Based on the shadows stretching long and thin into the street, he flung a hand into the air. “Shepherds!” A triumphant scream. “Put her down!”

  The operator sighed. Probably at me.

  A Shepherd call, huh? Better than a sniper, anyway. I reached to the small of my back where I’d stuck my cheapie – a Somers & Phelps pistol with 10mm rounds and about twelve chances to kill as many motherfuckers as I could. They called it the Gritster. Yeah, I know. Corporations are stupid. But street names can be even worse, so Gritster it is.

  Bottom line, it fires bullets and can be trusted in any situation not worth real effort. It was the only firearm I’d bother to waste on these assholes.

  Maybe.

  Any moment now…

  Right?

  The poor bastard behind me held his dramatic pose for a full, painfully stretched thirty seconds. I rolled my eyes to the dirty cross spotlighted above us. The only brightness in that bag of meat came from his clothing.

  “Shepherds,” he said again, louder. “Get her!”

  Another pause.

  The operator held his breath – I heard the intake. No exhale. Then, “Is something supposed to happen?”

  Oh, man. No intel, just a dumb bastard with a grudge. No source, just the same dumbass who could have asked for real backup from that source and didn’t. Anybody that informed had connections; had there been a sniper, I’d’ve been shot by now.

  This was the last straw.

  I burst into laughter so intense, my balance went sideways. I caught myself against the wall, howling with it. In my peripheral vision, Carmichael’s mouth opened. Closed. I laughed and laughed until tears streamed down my cheeks until I had to brace one hand on my knee to keep upright. “You…” I gasped a snort, barely managing to get the words out. “You wanna call ’em again? I’ll wait.”

  His lips peeled back around uneven teeth, fear and fury. He stepped back. Slowly. Like maybe he wouldn’t startle me if he moved just slow enough.

  The risk of taking on someone like me meant failure blew bloody chunks. Literally. He’d come after me with no plan, no reliable backup. No fucking weapon. If you’re going to go after somebody over your paygrade, you’d better do it fast and right.

  He sucked at both. Worse, he had just enough info on my soured reputation to be dangerous, and a line into my business that pissed me right the hell off.

  Carmichael took a few more steps back, shaking hands digging into his robe. He wore filthy treaders under the flirty white hem, stained with the muck of the streets he claimed to control.

  I tapped my nanosteel index finger against the Gritster’s barrel. It clinked.

  The way his head twitched, I figured he’d come in wired up for comms and wasn’t getting any updates. Blood ran from the mange I’d made of his face, and the sweat rolling down to mix with it confirmed what I already knew: nobody was coming.

  His voice lost the rest of any modulation his tech gave him, guttural with rage. “This isn’t over.”

  “Uh huh.” I scratched at my temple with the barrel. “So, about that contact…”

  “You’re going down!” Again with the saliva. The dude had issues.

  “One more time,” I sighed. “Your contact.”

  “I’ll be the first to fuck your bleeding corpse.”

  Fine. I’d asked four times, broke my own record.

  I smiled. Teeth. Stone cold murderous intent. “Get in line, chum.”

  He panicked all over again. As I expected, that light woven into his robe went fullscale blinding, a geyser of interference. He spun on one foot and took off, fabric flapping around his skinny legs.

  Too slow. Too late. I raised the Gritster shoulder-height, arm stretched, and pulled the trigger. I didn’t have to look at his stupid lightwire to aim. The asshole didn’t vary his angle.

  The report of the medium pistol cracked through Trinity; a sharp shock that pinged wall to wall. The bullet caught him in the back – the spine, rather than his ass this time. Much as I’d enjoy leaving him with another keloid, I wasn’t going to risk it. With any luck, the loss of one of the source’s contacts would put a blinder on.

  Father Carpetstain hit the wet street and didn’t move.

  I dropped my hand back to my side, shaking my head. With the other, I tapped the comm in my ear. Hard. That feedback whine sang like an altar boy fresh off a Shepherd. “Update for Mr Reed,” I chirped.

  “Goddammit–”

  “No info to be had,” I said over him.

  “I already heard!”

  “Tell requisitions I expect reimbursement for the bullet.”

  Something clicked. Not the comm. His teeth, maybe. “A full report will be delivered to Mr Reed.”

  “Awesome. Make sure you note how I didn’t assfuck a Shepherd with rusted rebar.”

  “That is gross.”

  “Don’t kink shame.” Rolling my aching shoulder, I left the worst ambush attempt in the whole fucking history of ambushes and paced towards the vermin lane I’d marked as my way out. “Tell Reed he’d better pay me for his lousy intel or I’ll do to his ass what I didn’t do to Carmichael’s.”

  An immediate click signaled a dead line.

  I win. My ego did, anyway.

  So, now what? The Shepherds had obviously abandoned Carmichael, which suggested they hadn’t been on board with the bastard’s halfassed plan. The stuff he’d known about Digo and Nanji still stung, but he’d been fuzzy enough on details to keep me from shitting my pants. Nothing everyone else didn’t already know.

  He’d said nothing about Mantis specifically, either. Just MetaCorp. And yet he had contacted Mantis to get to me. How?

  I know people, he’d said.

  Shit on stilts, I’d have to find the intermediary. And I’d have to do it before they tried this shit again. Next time, I might not be so lucky.

  I didn’t put the Gritster back in my harness. At this point, the sound of a gunshot all but guaranteed company. Scavengers, if nothing else. Cannibalism wasn’t all that rare around the starving. Me, I wasn’t into the kind of munching that didn’t involve ass and snatch.

  For scavengers, I was boots and walking meat.

  4

  I’d barely made it out of Carmichael’s glow radius when a shot cracked over my head. Then another in quick succession. One bullet pinged off my tech arm, another missed by a meter and sparked as it kissed the asphalt.

  Not a pro. I wasn’t even mad.

  My policies are simple: if it shoots at me, kill it. If it jumps at me, kill it. If it owes me a favor and doesn’t pay up, kill it. Basically, kill whoever fucks with me. Fuck whoever doesn’t.

  Scavengers aren’t the shooting kind. Guns are rare as virgins down here.

  The Shepherds had obviously given up on smart forever, and without smart, would-be assassins don’t stand a chance. I looked up, found the grimy teenager sighting through a modified, balls-old sniper rifle at me, and scowled at him. He was too damn close for that weapon, much less the too-large scope he’d glued on it.

  My retur
n fire tore into the exposed side of his face. I didn’t even need to move to hit him, just aim up and done. His body dropped from the ledge, landed at my feet in a tangle of arms and legs. Tenderized organs audibly squelched. One corpse, ready for the buffet.

  I caught the rifle before it landed on him, gave it a once over, and tossed it to the side. Worthless junk.

  As I stepped over the dead kid, the cheap wire wrapped around his ear went wild. I paused, tilted my head. Echoed shouts bounced between dank walls, caught on each other and multiplied. So, hey, the Shepherds had been around in some quantity. Couldn’t tell how many there were, but I figured outnumbered was a fair bet.

  Awesome. I could use that anger management therapy.

  I left the corpse where it was – didn’t pat him down. I’d bet my ass he had nothing on him. Killing the poor bastard was a mercy; only one way out of the Square.

  Or two, if you’re me. Which is how I ended up hauling ass through Trinity Square with a bitchload of pissed off deacons on my tail, no bullets left, and a growing harsh on my zen. Killing four of them thinned them out, but I’d run out of ammo. Shoulda brought spares in my arm. I’d forgotten to refill it.

  Not the worst problem on my plate. Just the most immediate.

  I took a breather in the shadow of the searchlight aimed up at the crumbling cross at the top of a dilapidated church, crouching on the ledge between the light and the dropoff to the streets below. My exit was on the west side, where I’d grab my piece of junk ride and meet up with my Mantis extraction crew. They’d get me into the Corporate sector without any extra questions, then I’d smugly sit on Reed’s desk while yellowed flakes of nunjuice drifted off my pants. A little gonorrheal gift for everyone.

  Gunfire echoed somewhere in the bleak hell of Trinity Square, snatching my attention to the street below. A figure stepped into view. “Fuck!”

  “Stop shooting at shadows,” came a louder, closer yell.

  “Go to hell!”

  “Where’d she go?” Syllables bounced between slick walls. “Where is she?”

  I grinned as more gathered around the first. What dreary light there was pooled like rotting halos in the smoggy layer of shit. Farther away, that spotlight of Carmichael’s useless robe seared patterns in the pollution that settled in districts like this. A bleeding sun in a nuclear haze, just bright enough that one of the Shepherds’ guns glinted faintly – a composite piece of trash called the Kago, but the rest of us call the Crappo. They’re made from whatever’ll fit, tend to 6mm rounds, with a sixty percent chance the fucking thing won’t jam, overheat or explode on you.

  Fixers on the low end of life grab ’em from corpses and keep selling them on.

  They don’t pack that much power, at least compared to what I’m used to. Didn’t mean any one of these lowlifes couldn’t get a lucky shot. My cred was already in the pisser; rumors of my demise at the hands of the Shepherds would just embarrass me.

  “Shitting hell,” seethed a deacon. His head, bald at the top, gleamed like a pale hole. “Where is she?”

  “Lost her,” said the first. His voice was high and tight, every word clipped to a splinter. “She got Carmichael, God take him.”

  “Good. One problem down.” Another of the Shepherds tapped his own shoulder with the barrel of his Sauger Quad 54. A better piece than the composites, but top-heavy. Swinging one of those near your face is how an idiot blows his own head off. “We gonna pin it on her?”

  Ugh. So that explained Carmichael’s gambit. I’d just played the tool of some shitty gang’s politics, and done them a favor while at it. That hurt my pride, those childfuckers.

  Annoyed, I dragged my metal fingers over my scalp. My chin-length shock of bleached hair stuck to the sweat and ambient grime on my forehead and cheeks, causing my skin to itch in its wake.

  I needed a serious sanitizing.

  One of them growled; a darker, leaner shadow scouting the area in a slow circle. “We owe the bitch anyway. Sister Charmine’s ruined.”

  “She still alive?”

  “No body?” asked another, anticipating the response.

  “Whore slipped us,” he replied. “We’ll find her.”

  “God damn her.”

  “Amen.”

  If that meant what I thought it meant, the nun hadn’t just wised up to orgasms, but had gotten the fuck out of shit square while she was at it. Not sure how, but if she lived long enough to dodge the gang’s deacons, she’d have a fighting chance outside this zone.

  Samaritan service done for the day.

  The crouching one stood. “Find this cyberbitch. She’ll net us more dead than alive, so don’t hold back.”

  “What about–”

  “I don’t fucking care what some heathen cunt wants,” the apparent leader snapped. “Killing her boosts our Word, so gift this one the grace of a bullet. You hear me?”

  Cunt, huh? Some heathen cunt, no less. Wasn’t me, I’d obviously been designated the cyberbitch here.

  One rubbed his head. “But the creds–”

  My eyes narrowed as the boss grabbed the speaker by the front of his shirt and dragged him eye to eye. “To hell with a sinner’s credits,” he roared. “Bring Riko down and do it now!”

  Credits. Sounded like a bounty, but not one anyone else knew about. Bounties tend to light the street network on fire, especially the deliver alive ones. That usually meant hell on earth for the poor sucker caught in the crossfire – fun gossip.

  Less fun was my head in said crossfire. Who wanted me alive that badly? And secretly, too. I should have heard about my own cunting bounty.

  Carmichael’s source? Had to be whoever directed him to the Mantis contact.

  Another Mantis department? Possible. The factions aren’t known for playing nice with each other. Corporate espionage plays like basketball to most suits. Points are points, only in creds and tech and influence.

  The role of the ball is played by everybody else in the way.

  Fuck. In the end, all that mattered to me was that somebody out there knew two-thirds of my shit and had the opportunity to farm it out. Needed to find out who and needed to squeeze what else they knew out of ’em.

  The guy playing prophet flung out a hand, gesturing the others to fan. “Eternal damnation to deacons who fail.”

  I rolled my eyes, pitched my voice low. “Hello, my flock,” I intoned. “This is God.”

  They stared at each other. Looked around. “What the fuck–”

  “Thou shit not,” I continued, my voice deep and epic as I could make it. “Nor mess with bitches scarier than you.” A beat. “Wait.” I thought about it, bracing my hand against the lip of my perch. The cold cement cooled my overly warm palm. “Is it than thou? Shit thou?”

  “Up there!”

  I laughed as they finally looked up in unison. Too slow. Goddamn, everything they did was too slow. My nagging sense of embarrassment was getting hard to shake. At this point, putting them out of their misery was the nice thing to do.

  Two guns snapped up.

  The leader of the group looked the most surprised – at least, I think he did. A black cross tattooed his skin forehead to neck, temple to temple. Made his eyes look very small, and his mouth very large and pink as it gaped.

  Taking advantage of the moment, I stepped off the ledge.

  Could have just left, I guess. Easy enough to lose them again. But screw that. I didn’t want to play it safe. I was just angry enough to go in armed. As in, armed. With a piece of body tech that’d seen more shit than half these assholes.

  Although it was machined to a functional shape, my arm would never pass for the real thing. Made of tough diamond steel, it didn’t scratch easy and broke only when I pushed it – which I did, and did often. Nanofactoried tech like this meets in the middle of affordable and streetside functional, and I excelled at finding all-new ways to blow its capabilities to the max. Diamond steel gave it extra reinforcement, but didn’t leave room for pretty. My dexterity would always be shot, my
fine motor skills lacking.

  Good thing I didn’t aim for finesse. Instead, I aimed for that sickly pallid spot at the top of one deacon’s head.

  The Shepherds regrouped faster than I expected. Bullets pinged off the rusted ledge behind me. A few hit the spotlight, shattering its cover and snapping sparks overhead. The pocked and rusted cross above me went dark.

  Score one for me.

  Their faces lit up from the fiery shower, which only gave me a better view as I landed fist-first into the middle of the crowd. The skull beneath my hand crumpled. Then exploded out at the sides. Gray matter and bone shrapnel flew.

  I got lucky. Splatter caught Crossface in the eyes. He screamed, wheeling back, flailing, mouth full of the raw stuff. I grabbed his Kago with my flesh hand, even as I wrenched my embedded fist from the depths of his buddy’s chunked brainmeat.

  “Jesus Christ,” he swore. I think it was a swear; my pocket detective flinches like it is.

  “Not today,” I said brightly, swinging my borrowed gun around to knock it against the crouching deacon’s eye socket.

  A flash of pure panic under that uneven black ink. The pussy that passed for his mouth twisted, peeling back pink in the black leg of his tattooed iconery.

  Then he found the balls he didn’t know how to use. “Kill her!” he screamed. “Nownownow–”

  No sense of self-preservation. Happens a lot.

  I pulled the trigger just as another Shepherd surged at me from the left. The bullet tore through viscous eyeball and meat, skin singed from the heat of it. Crossface sailed backward, second set of brains turned to mush thanks to the bullet too weak to exit his hard head.

  The second ganger cursed as I slammed my foot into his chest, a backwards kick that sent him sailing into a pile of rotting trash. Pulp and mildew puffed out around him, a cloud of noxious black.

  I missed the growling goon that gifted me a bullet in the back. The report cracked like a pissant toy rocket, but a bullet was a bullet. “Fuck!” I grunted, jerking to the side. Goddamn, that hurt. No exit wounds, the Crappo just wasn’t that powerful, but shit, it sucked. No exit wound meant dealing with it later. If I didn’t, my nanos would build a pocket of collagen around it, creating a keloid seal. Nanos are good, but not push out foreign objects good.