Jade Dragon

by James Swallow

  “You preen too much. Like a dandy.” Feng had a cigarette in his hand now and he took a drag on it in the way a starving man would eat a meal.

  Ko gave the pile of ashes a desultory kick; an identical and intact packet of Peacefuls went into the drawstring pouch hanging on Feng’s belt. “Those things will kill you.”

  The joke was old, but it still raised a smirk from both of them. “The only vice I can have,” said the soldier. “If you can find me another one…”

  Ko nodded at the gathering of cars and bikes in the middle of the open concrete plaza. “Come on. Perhaps my luck will change.”

  Passport control consisted of a walk through a deep penetration scanner tunnel and an impressively large security automaton modelled on Kuan Ti, the God of War. The machine licked the thick black ident card in his hand with a thread-thin green laser, and took a moment to examine his HIV Negative warrant before intoning a welcome in elaborate Mandarin. Frankie walked through the lounge without stopping; the urge to get free of the identical spaces inside the plane and the airports propelled him into the arrivals area. He slowed, crossing the marble floors, looking up to take in the arching steel framework of the terminal’s roof.

  “Hello, Francis.” The voice was soft and melodic.

  “Uh. Hello.” A thin Japanese woman extended a hand to him and he took it. She had warm skin, dry and soft. At her shoulders were two very different figures. The first, a younger man, pinched and a little bored-looking. This one took his bags without comment and resumed walking. The other was tall, broad about the chest and he moved in the way that only trained men did. Frankie knew the type instantly; corporate security. All three of them wore suits of a similar cut, the discreet YLHI pennant there on their lapel like his, but Frankie had to wrench his gaze away from the security agent with an almost physical effort. The tall man’s face was concealed beneath a porcelain opera mask of the Monkey King, a swirl of black, yellow and white.

  “My name is Alice,” said the woman, “Mr Tze sends his apologies that he could not attend to greet you in person. I’m sure you understand.”

  Frankie nodded. She was very pale, he noticed, her skin the colour of milk.

  “I would also like to extend to you my personal sympathies on the matter of Alan’s passing.” She gave a little sigh. “I was honoured to work with him.”

  A confusion of questions forced their way to the front of Frankie’s mind as he understood in that moment how little he knew about Alan’s life, but they defied any attempt to articulate them. In the end he managed a clumsy “Thank you.”

  “Transport has been arranged,” said Alice. “This way.”

  Some quirk of legalese meant the car park outside Chek Lap Kok SkyHarbour was still classed as a public area, and so as long as they did nothing too reckless, there was little the greenjackets of the APRC could do with the go-ganger crews and wayward teens but move them on or throw in the occasional rousting when they got too rowdy. Ko privately believed that the soldiers from the mainland liked the corporates as little as he and his street racer friends did, and that they let the gangers hang out here just because it pissed off the suits. As long as they kept the level of fatalities down to an acceptable level, they would be allowed to loiter.

  Ko drew closer to the gathering and his heart sank. On his face the emotion showed up as a tight curl at the corner of his mouth. There was the metallic green Kondobishi Kaze he hated, with its ostentatious gold rims and that dumbass hemi blower poking through the bonnet like a little beehive.

  “Makes a change for you to see it from the front, eh Chen? Bet you forgot what it looks like, you see the tailgate so much!” A ripple of brusque laughter followed the insult out toward him.

  He returned Second Lei a level, icy stare—the same kind that Hazzard Wu gave the Master of Glocks at the climax of Gunfighter Orphanage’s final reel. “I let you win, Second, because you cry like a girl when you lose.” Ko held his hand waist-high. “Like a little girl.”

  Lei’s crude sneer froze on his face, the humour fading like vapour. “Watch your mouth, punk. You’re asphalt to me, understand? I wouldn’t even race you for pinks.”

  Ko resisted the urge to say what he really thought—that Second was a braggart and a fool, who only kept his green monster on the road because he funded it with cash skimmed from back-alley drug pushing that even the triads wouldn’t touch. Instead he just looked away. Sometimes it was easier to let the fool have his way than start a fresh fight every time they crossed paths. Give the baby the teat.

  But Lei had other ideas. “You know who this is?” He put the question to the assembled gangers, who quieted, sensing violence brewing. “This is Chen Watt Ko, spooky Chen, no-hope loser with his imaginary friend!” Second advanced toward him. “Where’s your pal, Ko? Is he here?” Lei cast around, made a show of looking high and low. He pantomimed a shiver. “Whoo-hoo-hoo! Ko sees dead people!”

  “Tell him I said he has a face like a baboon’s ass-crack.” Feng was there on the hood of the green car. He stubbed out one Peaceful on the windscreen and lit another.

  Second looked right through the swordsman. “No? Not here? What a shame.” He stepped up and prodded Ko in the chest. “You’ve been a freak since we were kids, Chen. I only keep you around for laughs.” Second snapped his fingers and the nondescript dolly with him handed over a pop-pack of clear capsules. He took a couple and tossed them into his open mouth like candy drops. Ko’s antipathy showed; drug-takers disgusted him.

  “Zen, zen…” sang the girl. “I’m the quiet mind inside, pretty voice…”

  “I see your grandmother…” Ko began, and Second wheeled around to face him, his eyes alight with sudden fury. “Your grandmother is very disappointed in you. She says you’re too fat and you lay with unclean women.”

  Second’s fist was cocked and in that second Ko thought the other man would knock him to the ground—he was bigger and it would have hurt a lot—but at the last moment he spat and pushed Ko away. “You’re so smart, Chen, how about you walk home tonight, huh?” Lei snapped out an order and no one argued. “Nobody gives Ko a lift, understand? He don’t deserve to roll with us!”

  “I got a car.” The lie came from nowhere.

  “Oh?” Second faced him again. “Your sister has that crackerbox Ranger of yours, I saw it down in Central! Where are these new wheels, then?”

  A glimmer of movement caught Ko’s eye. A formation of three gunmetal Mercedes Vectors were pulling into the corporate waiting area near the airport terminal. “There it is,” he replied. “I’ll just go get it.”

  Second mumbled something under his breath about “idiot” but Ko was already walking away.

  Feng jogged after him. “What are you going to do, boy?”

  “A daring and stupid thing.”

  Frankie watched Alice’s man jog away with his carry-on in his hand, toward the stand of silver cars waiting on the slip road outside the terminal. She gave him a small, controlled smile. “If you prefer to drive yourself in the city, I can have my department arrange something suitable for you. For the moment, though, I would recommend you opt for a pool car and driver. Hong Kong has changed a lot since you left.”

  “It, uh, always does.” He glanced at the masked man again.

  “Mr Tze takes the security of his personnel most seriously,” said the woman, answering the question before he spoke it.

  Frankie frowned. The night air was cloying and strange somehow.

  “Is something amiss?” asked the woman.

  “It’s nothing,” he replied after a moment. “Just… I was born here. But now… Now I’m home and it feels… Foreign?”

  “The thing about the Euros is,” began Ko, “they got what you call an ‘engineer mindset’.”

  The man came up from the back seat with a start, dropping Frankie’s bag and slamming the door. Where the hell had this punk come from? “This is a restricted area—”

  Ko was still speaking. “See, they look at fine ride like this and c
an’t think past the test track and the wheel lab. They forget that cars drive on the Street.” He pointed at the dashboard. “And the Street’s got a manner of finding its way around things.”

  “You can’t be here,” said the driver, shooting a quick glance to where his passengers were waiting. “I’m calling security—”

  “You know about the design fault, though, huh? Otherwise you wouldn’t be driving one of them, right?” Ko pointed again. “One in every six… That’s a pretty serious risk, neh?”

  “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.

  2. Full Throttle

  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.