8-ball cleared his throat. “This is it? Where’s the rest of your coven?”
Boanerges shrugged. “Kaneda and Joji are in Japan, Caitlin’s in the Tir, Marlowe’s in Everett preparing for an astral quest . . . Jinx and Mish are doing a stock take of the herbs and the medicines. So there’s only the six of us, but it was short notice. I’m glad you could make it. Did you bring any food?”
“I brought weapons,” said 8-ball shortly. “And Mute, here—best infiltration and extraction specialist I know. Mute, you know Boanerges and Sumatra; have you run with any of these other chummers?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he nodded at the mixed group sitting on rugs on the floor. “The scrawny redhead is Ratatosk. The big blond is Beef Patty.”
The leather-clad troll gave a friendly smile, and 8-ball turned to the silver-haired Anglo in the lined coat. “This is Professor Magnusson, Maggie to his friends. The Space Needle impersonation is Lankin, whose rep I’m sure you know. The short guy with the Zeiss eyes and the damaged digits is Zurich, tech wiz, and the human chummer with the extra holes in his head is Crane, best rigger ever to be dishonorably—”
“We’ve met,” said Crane curtly, then shrugged. “Long time ago, and in another country. No hard feelings?” “No,” said Mute. “Was that—”
“Why I was drummed out? No, that happened later; my CO and I had a small disagreement about my taking out a plane without authorization. But at least I didn’t sell the one I stole.” He extended a hand, and after a slight hesitation, Mute shook it.
8-ball smiled. “And last but not least,” he finished with a flourish, “the lady nearest the door is Yoko Aruki.” Mute clenched her teeth to prevent her jaw dropping, and was glad that the poor light and her dusky complexion made it difficult for anyone to notice whether she was blushing. Dozens of street samurai and ninja wannabes had spent millions on cyberware trying to emulate Yoko Aruki, the stealthy and reportedly bulletproof warrior-adept who could use almost any small object as a shuriken, and had once killed a yakuza oyabun while he was surrounded by a dozen elite bodyguards. Mute bowed and took a deep breath before righting herself. “Honored to meet you all.” “I’m afraid honor is all we can offer,” said Yoko wryly. “And shelter, and healing for those who need it. There are another twenty-seven people living here at present—you’ll have met at least two of them on your way in—but very few of them have any sort of combat training or experience, and most of that is with a knife or a stick. Maybe half of them could manage to look intimidating. I’m hoping that will be enough.”
“You don’t know why these people want the land?” “No,” said Ratatosk. “That’s been the main topic of discussion so far.”
“There’s one obvious possibility,” said 8-ball. “This isn’t the only squat in the area, but it’s the only one between here and the freeway that’s weatherproof and lightproof enough for many of the people here. This location is good protection for people who are allergic to sunlight, or to being seen, particularly by Lone Star or the corps. If whoever this is can shut us down, this would make an ideal base for clearing out a huge part of Puyallup—large enough for an airport or a military base.”
“Or anything else the sararimen don’t want in their backyard,” said Lankin. “A prison farm. A toxic-waste dump.” Boanerges shrugged. “I hope you’re wrong. This place was pretty toxic when I first came here, and we’ve put a lot of work into making it livable, even bringing in clean soil for a garden. The background count is almost down to zero now, though 1 hate to think what’s in some of those drums and containers we have lying around up above. I keep asking Pierce to move them, but he likes the different tones they make when he plays them.”
“Can we use those to create barricades, or traps?” asked 8-ball. “It would be subtle, since they just look like rubbish.”
Boanerges looked at Yoko. “This is out of my line of expertise. We can handle magical security, if you’ll take care of the physical.”
The adept nodded. “Okay. 8-ball, you said you brought weapons?”
The snake shaman shook his head as he looked at the armory spread over three of the dining hall’s rickety tables. One assault cannon, two AK-98s, two smartguns, six pistols ranging from Predators to derringers, a shotgun, a stun gun, a stun baton, a crossbow, a machete, a short sword, three survival knives and a small case of grenades as well as a large collection of potentially lethal cooking and gardening utensils. “Do we need all of these?” he asked.
“It’s not enough,” said Yoko almost simultaneously. “Not if we want to scare them into negotiating. If everyone has a gun . . .”
Boanerges shuddered. “That sounds like a recipe for a massacre. Mutually assured destruction. Most of the people here have never even fired a gun before.”
“I’m hoping they won’t have to fire them. Those who have training should get live ammo; the rest will be better off with gel, or blanks, especially as there’s no way we can armor everyone who’s here.” To Yoko’s disappointment, no one contradicted her.
“Even the kids?” said Boanerges.
Yoko sighed. “Okay. No guns for under twelves who have an adult who’ll protect them. How many does that leave out?”
“Six, maybe seven or eight . . . something like that. Ms. Hotop would know better than I do, since she’s in charge of educating all the kids here.”
“That should be okay. I don’t want to have to kill anyone, but if we can do enough damage to their vehicles that they have to walk back . . .”
Beef Patty grinned. “I’d like to see them try to call a cab down here,” she said.
“I’d rather not be responsible for any of the opposition getting killed, either,” said Boanerges, shaking his head. “And if they try walking through this neighborhood at night looking as though they’ve got anything worth stealing . . . there’s plenty of chipheads around here who’d gut someone for a warm coat or a pair of shoes, and a few body shops that’ll buy secondhand eyes with no questions asked. Let’s make sure they have a safe way out.”
“We’re not going to have to worry about it; if they’re professionals, they’ll have a back-up plan,” 8-ball replied. “Or good DocWagon coverage. But gel rounds would be a good idea anyway; less chance of friendly fire casualties. I should be able to get them by morning, if you can tell me what calibers you need, and a few extra vests and helmets, but that many guns . . . that’ll take serious fragging time and/or money.”
Boanerges turned to Beef Patty. “Could we get guns from your friends in the gang?”
“I can ask,” said the troll, “but I dunno. The Black Rains are a bit twitchy after that drive-by drek last month. Asking them to reduce their weapons supply might make things worse.”
Ratatosk snapped his fingers. “Doc, do you still have that jackpoint here?”
“Sure, next to the library.”
“Great. Give me half an hour; I have an idea where you can get your guns.”
4
The honeymoon suite at the Renton Inn was decorated in a fake Scandinavian style that instantly set the Hatter’s teeth on edge, but the price included good electronic and magical security as well as a huge bed and a trideo screen that was even wider—and it was far enough from the Az-technology Pyramid that there was little danger of the mercenaries guessing who the Hatter worked for, or of the Hatter’s superiors finding out what he was doing in his spare time. Hare had carefully isolated the trideo from the hotel’s network, and the squad’s mage was sitting on the bed staring into astral, watching for spells or intruders. Griffin, the squad’s rigger, stared at the aerial photos on the huge screen and traced the site of the former Monolith warehouse with a laser pointer. “There’s not much left above ground,” he said. “No roofing, nothing left of the second floor except some rubble, but some stretches of wall are still standing. Highest near the corners, as is to be expected; these bathrooms are mostly intact except for the roof. It seems unlikely the toilets are still in use, but the showers probably are; these look like rainwate
r tanks. No electricity, though ... at least, no lights or heat above ground. The brighter spots are vegetation; they may be trying to grow some of their own food. This box may be a car, probably an SUV; they’ve camouflaged it pretty well, but if you enhance it a little, you can still see the tire tracks and the warmth of the engine.
“This is the ramp you told me about, northeast corner of the sublevel. I can’t see any other exits, though the stairwell here may still be useable. The buildings around this are in even worse shape—no roof, no basement, not even much left in the way of walls—but they’re unoccupied, as far as I can tell.”
Hare smiled to himself. He had already checked out the buildings surrounding the Monolith lot: ruined warehouses, small factories, and a lunch bar. All had been officially vacant for at least twenty years, and so thoroughly stripped that they were no more than crumbling shells. “What about the radar?”
Griffin nodded, and a new image flashed onto the screen. “Ground-penetrating view shows no tunnels except for the sewer pipes and other standard conduits—maybe big enough for a snooper drone, but not for people. We can’t get a very good picture of the underground levels, unfortunately. Most of the stuff down there is almost invisible to radar; some metal, a little concrete, but not much structural apart from those pillars, which you can see here. They’re probably the only thing holding the roof up. But this is interesting: some sort of vault or bunker under the middle of the floor. Metal-lined, and while I can’t tell you how deep it is, from above, it looks the right size to be a cargo container.” He scratched his aquiline nose. “Anyway, that’ll give you a good idea of the scale of that level. Room for a hundred bunks, easy.”
“Go back a few slides,” said the Hatter. “The low-angle view. I thought I saw something in the background, another building . . .”
Griffin scrolled through the images. “That?” he said, indicating the edge of a funnel-shaped structure.
“Yes.”
“I have a better shot of that . . . here. It’s a cooling tower from an old power station.”
Hatter nodded. Several geothermal power stations had been built on the lava flow from the 2017 eruption of Mt. Rainier, but later abandoned.
“How tall is it?”
“Seven or eight floors.”
“Intact?”
“Seems to be. It was built to withstand any subsequent eruptions, and so should be pretty robust.”
“Thanks,” said the Hatter, and turned to the mage the mercenaries had brought with them—an attractive young woman named Lori. She was round-faced and short for an elf, scarcely taller than the lanky rigger who looked at her with obvious affection, and her straight, shoulder-length haircut hid her ears: she could easily have been mistaken for human, and presumably didn’t care. “If you looked at the site in astral, could you tell us how many people really are down in that cellar?”
“If it’s not too thoroughly protected, yes.”
“Good,” said the Hatter. “We may be able to provide them with food, transport . . . anything that would entice them to leave without a fight. Makes it easier on everybody.”
Ratatosk had never liked the look of Lone Star’s icon in the Matrix—an adobe-colored square block marked with the Lone Star insignia. The architecture, an old-West-style fort complete with cannons, went beyond mere ugly functionalism to being distinctly forbidding: it gave the impression that visitors were as likely to be greeted with gunfire as with assistance.
Of course, few people went there looking for the sort of assistance that Ratatosk was seeking.
The icon of a large red squirrel—Ratatosk’s custom-designed representation of the interface between his brain and the Matrix—slipped through the gate into a bustling representation of Seattle’s South Main Street circa 1884, and headed for the sheriff’s office. Ratatosk checked that the secret door hidden behind the wanted posters hadn’t been removed or booby-trapped with intrusion countermeasures— popularly known as IC, or ice—then tapped in the appropriate code. In the Matrix, the squirrel sniffed at the wall and scratched gently at the crack between two boards. The posters parted like curtains, and the squirrel scampered into a dim corridor. Ratatosk had entered a Lone Star host through a backdoor access.
He found the appropriate dataline and zoomed along it to a datastore protected by low-intensity IC in the likeness of giant Gila monsters patrolling its adobe walls. The squirrel produced a small card from an invisible pocket and flashed it past an arrow slit in the wall. The steel door swung open, and he scrambled inside the store.
The datastore looked like a nineteenth-century library, the books on its shelves ranging from thin dime novels with bright yellow covers to huge, iron-bound, chained and padlocked Bibles. Ratatosk felt that the tarantulas, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters scuttling around the floor and along the shelves rather spoiled the illusion. He knew these creatures represented probe IC that would check his credentials each time he tried to read a file inside the datastore; if he fragged up, or even if he tried to read too many files, the probe IC would summon Lone Star deckers armed with special utilities that would let them track Ratatosk to his jackpoint and stun him. The deckers’ icons mostly looked like the classic movie cop Dirty Harry in Lone Star uniform, and many of them had a similar attitude—preferring to attack with a lethal version of the black hammer utility first and perform autopsies later.
Ratatosk cautiously opened a small file drawer. If the metaphor held, this would be the library’s card catalog, an index that would point him to the directory he needed. He discovered that the list of passwords that guaranteed access to the information he wanted was kept in a locked cabinet. The squirrel icon plucked a stiff hair from its tail and picked the old-fashioned lock; when the door swung open, Ratatosk found himself standing at the edge of a large bubbling tar pit.
He swore silently as he analyzed the security measures. The gray-level tar pit IC could infect his deck with a viral code that could not only crash his deck but corrupt everything in its memory. Worse still, there was probably even more dangerous black IC under the graphite-colored surface, monofilament-sharp slivers of code that could shred his software and tear all the way through to the interface between the datajack and his brain, burning out circuits and neurons alike and potentially causing a fatal stroke. Ratatosk had seen too many victims of black IC and black hammer, with blood and worse leaking from their ears, to take any unnecessary risks.
On the other hand, he mused, the password file would not only enable him to upload the schedule he’d come here for, it would allow him into other local Lone Star datastores for as long as the passwords remained valid. If he didn’t set off any alarms, that might be as much as a week . . . and he could trade that information with other deckers, for other passwords or nuyen. He took a deep breath, and decided the risk was worth it.
The squirrel leaped lightly to a solid-looking patch of ground, using its tail for balance. It crossed the tar pit carefully, testing each patch of ground as if it were climbing through the tiny branches at the top of a tree, watching for triggers that might suddenly turn into damaging viral codes in the guise of dire wolves or saber-toothed tigers. He had a slow program loaded, one powerful enough to make the IC move as sluggishly as a glacier, and a seriously damaging attack utility in reserve, but hoped he wouldn’t need either; he’d always preferred to rely on stealth. After what felt like an hour of nerve-jangling paranoia but was only seconds of real time, a bursting bubble of tar revealed the corner of a small book. The squirrel plucked it out of the tar, produced a silk handkerchief from another hidden pocket, and wiped the cover clean (removing any IC in the process) without getting anything stuck to his russet fur.
Ratatosk opened the slim volume and scanned the few pages for likely-looking passwords. The words kept trying to move around, but the squirrel stroked the book cover, and they settled into place. Ratatosk decrypted the file contents as quickly as possible and searched for the passwords he needed. He chose keywords cautiously until he had three like
ly-looking logon IDs and passwords—the most he could try without the risk of bringing a posse of defensive deckers down on his head. Hoping that none of the passwords had been corrupted by the scramble IC, he leaped out of the tar pit and back into the library. Quickly scanning the shelves again, the squirrel chose a padlocked ledger in Wells Fargo green—the file of transport schedules. He ran a claw over one of the passwords, which morphed into a key. He tried using this to open the ledger, but it remained locked: insufficient authorization.
Ratatosk swore silently again, thankful at least that the book’s leather cover hadn’t morphed into a ravenous mouth full of teeth, and tried the second logon ID and password. This combination gave him read-only access, but that was all he needed to download the file: unlike last week, this time he wasn’t inside Lone Star trying to edit a criminal record. The ledger sprang open, revealing lines of names and figures in neat copperplate script.
Seven seconds later, he logged off. Everything went black for a moment, and then the shadows slowly assumed recognizable shapes. Ratatosk felt momentarily disoriented as he tried to remember where he’d left his body. “You okay?” asked a huge troll.
The decker blinked, and remembered that he was in the Crypt’s magical library, with Beef Patty standing guard over his meat. “Fine,” he said, then took a deep breath and added, “Let’s go.”
“The bad news,” Ratatosk said when he returned to the meeting in Boanerges’ colorfully cluttered medicine lodge, “is that the land has been legally sold, to the Giuoco Piano Company, which is owned by the Fedorov Family Trust. Neither existed until last week, and both are registered in Konigsberg . . . which means that there’s no way we can find out who really owns them, because Konigsberg’s commercial confidentiality laws are murder and their databases are in sealed systems. The contact details on the district council’s database are for the trust’s law firm, which is also based in Konigsberg, and represents a few hundred shell companies. And before you ask, they paid up front with a certified credstick.
Shadowrun 46 - A Fistful of Data Page 4