Just Compensation

by Robert N. Charrette

  “I’d like another crack at them injuns.” Santiago said.

  That wasn’t the right answer. “The NAN haven’t had the unity to do anything that magically heavy for more than a decade. Even if the OpFor were supposed to be NAN, why was the setting urban? Except in the Southwest, there aren’t a lot of cities left in NAN territories, and none of the boundary nations are in shape to invade. I just came from Denver. There’s a lot of shadow stuff out there, but nothing seriously military. Believe me, I know—the Indian nations are in no shape to invade.”

  “Hey, Tom, you worked with Captain Furlann out in Denver, didn’t you?” Vahn asked.

  “Once or twice.”

  “She’d have a need to know what was going on. Maybe she’ll spill to you.” Vahn raised a conspiratorial eyebrow.

  “I haven’t got any special relationship with her.” Tom said.

  “But I’d bet you’d like to.” Santiago said, miming ample handfuls before his chest. “Bet old Ice Heart knows some real tricks in the sack. The heartbreakers always do.”

  “Yeah.” Vahn agreed. “Bet she can shrivel your rod with a glance. And without magic. You’re hopeless, Santi.” Turning back to Tom, he said, “Seriously, though. The two of you shared a difficult duty station. Can’t you play on that?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Santiago’s turn to agree. “Comrades in arms—and, oh, what arms—shared dangers, old times, and all that.”

  “She and I did one tour on the response team. I was pushing papers most of the time.” Tom couldn’t tell them about the Arsenal incident even if he’d wanted to; the compulsion that had been laid on him took care of that.

  “So pull rank on her. You’re a major now.”

  Rank had never bothered Furlann much, and somehow he doubted that the transfer to Fort Schwartzkopf had changed her. But they were right to think that if anybody would know what magical threat was being represented in the exercise, the commander of magical OpFor was the one. She might be willing to tell them now that they’d been through the exercise. Tom thought it worth a try.

  They all agreed that he would have a better chance without a squad of guys at his back, so Tom headed for the special compound that served as a barracks cum laboratory for the Fort’s mages. The place had the best security on base, magical and otherwise. Unfortunately, the precautions were not taken just to protect the mages from outside dangers; some in the military did not approve of mages in uniform. It was well known that a sleeping mage was, more often than any other time, a defenseless mage, one with few defenses to detect or stop a fragmentation grenade. The result was that the mages lived in isolation. Tom didn’t think it was the best policy, but he had to concede that it was a reasonable precaution on the Army’s part until more of the population’s prejudice could be rooted out.

  He had almost reached the main gate when a convoy of staff cars pulled up beside it. The people who debarked were a wild mix of heights, weights, and builds, but almost all were norms. Tom only saw three elves and a dwarf; no goblin metatypes and no exotics. A good half of the crew were over or under the weight and height limits imposed on ordinary troopers. The combination of details told him that these were the Fort’s mages. Tom had no problem picking out Furlann from among them. Her auburn hair was long and flying loose, not regulation, but that was something else mages got away with. Getting closer, he saw that she still made BDUs look better than they had any right to. Tom didn’t disagree with Santiago’s attitude about Furlann’s desirability, just the captain’s expression of it. She was making directly for the gate.

  “Captain Furlann!” he called

  She turned, saw him, and stopped to wait. Her expression showed neither surprise nor welcome. Such coolness had earned her the nickname Ice Heart. Her wide green eyes were calm and collected, though their color was made more startlingly bright by the dark smudges of exhaustion beneath them. Even rag-ass tired she looked good.

  “Major.” she said as he reached her. “I’d heard you’d been assigned here.”

  “I got in just in time for the recent party.”

  She looked at him with reserved expectancy.

  “I just heard you were here.” he said awkwardly. “It’s been a while since Denver. I thought maybe we could stop at the officer’s mess. Get a drink, some food, talk a bit. You know, unwind after the exercise.”

  She raised one eyebrow, and almost smiled. “Why, Major Rocquette, I didn’t think you had it in you. I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. It’s been a long few days. All I really want right now is some sleep. You need some too. I’d say.”

  She was right, of course, but exhaustion made him single-minded, too. “You are head of magical OpFor?”

  “That’s right.” Any thawing he’d seen in Ice Heart was gone.

  “Well, there are some things about the exercise that are bothering me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I thought maybe you could help me out by explaining a few details.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “Look, I’m not asking for secrets. All I need to know is whether the OpFor represented a reasonable threat. Were we dealing with potential hostiles, or was it rigged as a psych test?”

  “I can’t talk about any of that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Tenacity can be a virtue.” She gave him a cold half smile. “You know better than to ask about this stuff. That’s not how the game is played.”

  “There’s more than a game going on here.” he said, suddenly annoyed at her cavalier response. “The exercise was dangerous. We had people really get hurt out there. There’s got to be a good reason for it.”

  “Oh, there is.” she said. “Just hope you get good at what you’re doing. You’ll need to be.”

  She left him standing there and joined the last of her colleagues passing through the gate into the secure compound.

  >LOCAL FEED WFDC

  -[20:18:06/8-14-55]

  WFDC NEWS ANCHOR: SHIMMER GRACE [GRAC-A303]

  UPLINK SITE: BETHESDA STUDIO, FDC

  Grace: “Well, thank you, Taylor. What about that, friends? Conscience of the Country, eh? I guess they must have a special grace from above. Conscience for the whole country? I’m not sure I like them being my conscience. [Query cam angle] What about you?”

  [Audience response: 57% negative]

  Grace: “Well, it is a little scary, isn’t it? But I bet I know somebody who isn’t afraid of doing her conscience. Cynthia Locke is Chief of Police for the Federal Capital District, and she is ready to uplink with us. Live! [Screen inset: Locke] “Chief Locke, what do you know about the Conscience of the Country?”

  Locke: “Would you care to rephrase the question, Shimmer?”

  Grace: “Surely. Let’s take a limited view. We honest citizens of the District have a veritable army of the displaced and the potentially troublesome camped in our front yard. I know I’m worried. Do you think President Steele is acting effectively in this crisis?”

  Locke: “The White House isn’t my beat. I’m just a cop, after all.”

  Grace: “A cop, eh? And your beat is FDC. How will a cop deal with the Comp Army?”

  Locke: “Within the law. The Compensation demonstrators need to know that violence will not, repeat, will not, be tolerated. Violence can be exciting and terribly attractive, but it is not the solution to problems.” [Cut screen inset]

  Grace: “As Chief Locke says, violence can be terrible. But you know, sometimes you have to take a hard line. For instance, if you were "threatened on the street or someone entered your home uninvited, you would do whatever was necessary to stop the threat. [Query cam angle] Wouldn’t you?” [Audience response: 78% positive]<<<<<

  5

  “We haven’t much time.” the Asian woman said. She sat on the rail of the catwalk encircling the console cockpit, looking undisturbed by her own pronouncement, but her words served to make the others nervous, especially the ork.

  “That’s why we need to geek him qui
ck.” he said.

  Andy couldn’t tell if the chrome shields over the ork’s eyes were implants or paste-ons, but the twin blades of gleaming metal that slid from beneath his sleeve were real cyberware; there was no tell-tale bulge of a strap-on unit under his sleeve. This ork was a real street samurai. The needle points projected twenty centimeters past the ork’s wrist and were perfectly spaced to pierce Andy’s eyes dead center.

  Placing his palm in front of the spurs’ deadly points, the norm runner said, “We didn’t come here to make noise.”

  “All he’ll make is a nerdy bleat.” the ork said. “Won’t you, sheep?”

  “Don’t hurt me.” Andy pleaded.

  Andy’s connections with real shadowrunning went no further than lurking on the shadownet. He’d heard about a lot of real shadowrunners, but he’d never actually met any. Now that he had, he was quite sure he wasn’t one of them. His fantasies of being a runner seemed very far away and very, very foolish.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt you, kid.” the norm said.

  “That’s right.” the ork agreed, snapping his blades in and out of their forearm sheath so quickly that Andy wasn’t entirely sure they’d moved. “Be over so fast you won’t feel a thing.”

  “Wait a minnit, wait a minnit.” The troll cocked his head to the side, as if he were listening to something. After a moment he said, “Yates is okay, but he’s locked out of the research banks. He won’t be driving the loot home.”

  “Drek. We’re hosed.” The ork didn’t sounded surprised. “And it’s all because of this little piece of corp drek.”

  “Dump it.” the norm said. “We knew we were taking a chance when Yates found the back door. We’ll just have to go back to the plan.”

  “They’re coming.” the woman said.

  “Then we’re going.” the norm said.

  The woman did a backflip off the rail and disappeared from sight. The norm and the troll looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Just one more piece of business.” the ork said, cocking his arm back.

  Andy’s eyes were riveted to the twin points of the ork samurai’s spurs. He saw his sight, his very life balanced on those needles. He waited, sweat trickling down his sides, hoping he wouldn’t shame himself by wetting his pants. He’d never thought he’d die this way. Hell, he’d never really thought he would die. It wasn’t the sort of thing he thought about at all.

  But the spurs came no closer.

  Finding himself still breathing, Andy forced himself to widen his focus and saw the norm’s hand wrapped around the ork’s wrist. The two men were glaring at each other. The troll looked on passively, apparently content to let his fellow runners settle their differences between themselves. For the moment, the “they” who were “coming” were forgotten.

  “He’ll squeal.” said the ork.

  “That’s no reason to kill him.” said the norm.

  “Good enough for me.”

  “Not for me. Think about this, you leave him dead, they’ll know we’ve been here. We take him with us, and all they’ve got is an empty locked room. Taking him with us will give us some slack.”

  “Marksman’s right.” the troll said.

  “Nobody asked you, Rags.” the ork snapped. His eyes never left the norm’s. The norm, whose name was apparently Marksman, stared right back at him. Andy would never have been able to stare down the samurai, but this Marksman guy clearly had chutzpah. The ork wasn’t ready to give up. “You let him live, he’ll squeal. Put the corpcops on us for sure. I ain’t got no interest in watching my hoop twenty-four a day.”

  “No!” Andy shook his head vigorously. “I won’t tell anybody.”

  The ork rolled his eyes. “Oh, and that’s chiptruth.”

  “Hurry!” called the woman’s voice from below.

  “We got no time for this.” Marksman said. “Rags, get the kid moving.”

  Rags did as he was told, hustling Andy toward a break in the railing near the nose of the cockpit console. From there a ladder ran down into the shadowy recesses beneath the cockpit entry level. Andy had never been down there before. The drivers didn’t go down there; it was tech territory.

  Behind him he heard Marksman say, “We’ll take care of the kid later.”

  “Later.” the ork agreed.

  Rags laid his immense trollish hand on Andy’s shoulder and propelled him toward the ladder. Andy barely managed to get a grip on the handrail, before he took the fastest way down. The troll crowded close, and Andy had to scramble to stay ahead of Rags’s descending bulk and avoid getting stepped on.

  Below the catwalk level the air was warmer with the heat radiating from the pipes and vents and motors around him. The space wasn’t small, but it was claustrophobically cramped by the support struts and gimbal mounts interwoven with hydraulics and other simulation enhancers.

  Virtuality could do a lot, especially with simsense tracks on the circuits, but some effects were still best simulated by manipulating the user’s physical environment. Telestrian did a lot of simulation testing, and that testing demanded a lot of variable environments. That was what this down-below was all about. The console chambers had been built to accommodate such testing and make it as realistic as possible. Some of this machinery was responsible for Andy actually feeling the G forces in the Montjoy simulation. In a way, dirty and smelly and noisy as it was, it was fascinating.

  But he didn’t have time to be fascinated. The troll urged Andy on, emphasizing his words with piledriver blows to Andy’s kidneys. Rags didn’t sound mad, but those shoves hurt. Andy had the horrible feeling that the troll was being gentle. Trolls were inhumanly strong, and Rags was bigger than average for his metatype. Maybe he didn’t know his own strength? Andy shivered despite the heat bathing him. Was the troll strong enough to tear a person limb from limb? Would Andy find out the hard way?

  Not being in complete control of his forward motion—thanks to Rags—Andy caromed into the hardware surrounding him. He yelped from the pain, then he found out what real pain was when Rags cuffed him.

  “Keep quiet.” the troll said menacingly.

  Andy did his best, but Rags kept giving Andy shoves that sent him into the hard and often scaldingly hot hardware. Andy managed to stifle the noise, but he couldn’t keep himself from crying.

  Even without Rags’s help, Andy banged his head and barked his shins as they progressed through the tightly packed maze of machines. It wasn’t fair. The troll didn’t seem to have half Andy’s trouble negotiating the twisting course.

  With one last shove, Rags propelled Andy through an open doorway in one of the walls. Which one, Andy couldn’t be sure; he had lost all sense of direction during the trip through the machinery. Rags followed him through, crowding him up against the cool wall of what appeared to be a maintenance corridor. Marksman and the ork were right behind Rags. The norm spun just inside the entrance and ran a card through the maglock. The door hissed shut.

  There was another ork waiting in the maintenance tunnel. He wore Telestrian coveralls like the others. Though lacking the obvious chrome of the first ork, he still didn’t look like a Telestrian employee; there was something feral about him that was quite unlike the orks Andy knew. This one didn’t belong in the corporate world.

  “Who de frag is dis?” the ork asked, clearly unhappy to see Andy.

  “Baggage.” the first ork said, shoving Andy toward the other. “And it’s your job to see he don’t get us into trouble, Beatty.”

  Beatty looked to Marksman, who nodded.

  “Don’t get hungry.” the ork samurai said.

  “You mean I don’t get ta eat him here?” Beatty looked disappointed as he ran a finger along one of his tusks. “Shamgar, you never let me have any fun.”

  “Fun’s for later.” Shamgar said.

  Andy thought he saw the samurai’s spurs snap out briefly. The light wasn’t good in the tunnel. Maybe he was mistaken?

  “Right now, we’re back to the original plan.” Marksman said.


  “I tought Yates had a short cut.” Beatty said.

  “The geek here changed the road map.” Shamgar told him.

  Beatty looked annoyed. And hungry.

  “I’m sorry.” Andy stammered. “I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. I mean, I didn’t even kno—”

  “Just shut up.” Shamgar growled.

  Andy shut up.

  “Things aren’t so bad.” Marksman said. Andy wasn’t sure if Marksman was talking to him or to the other runners, but what followed was definitely for the runners. “We head for our original target and get Yates his connection. We’ll have time if we get moving.”

  “He gonna see everyting we do. He seen all our faces already.” Beatty complained, pointing at Andy.

  “Kit will take care of him.” Marksman said.

  “Oh, yeah.” Beatty sounded embarrassed, the way you do when you remember something you shouldn’t have forgotten.

  Kit? Who was Kit? And what was Kit going to do to him?

  “She ain’t the answer to everything.” Shamgar said.

  “Don’t be so sure.” Marksman said.

  Kit must be the Asian woman. Andy still wondered what she was supposed to do to him. He hoped it would be better than being torn apart by a troll or eaten by a feral ork.

  The trip through the maintenance corridor wasn’t as hard on Andy’s body as the one through the down-below of the cockpit room, but his nerves didn't take it any easier. These runners were desperate people. They didn’t want him along. Some of them didn’t even want him alive. What if Telestrian security discovered them? Andy wasn’t really much of a hostage. There would be a firefight for sure. The idea didn’t sound as appealing in reality as it always had on his virtual runs.

  Despite his misgivings, they reached the runners’ destination without encountering anyone. The door before them was marked “Industrial Robotics Design Center.” Marksman stood at the maglock, readying his card.

  “You don’t want to do that.” Andy said.