Shadowrun

by Russell Zimmerman

  Takeshi nods, his voice full of understanding. “I’m sure you were. We’ll inform Knight Errant for you.”

  “On it, Boss,” SIMaeon says through the commlink. “But something else already has Knight Errant’s attention. Looks like an apartment shootout. May take them a bit to get on this.”

  “In the meantime, DocWagon 17 will take you to Overlake for a full examination.” As Takeshi speaks soothingly, he looks up at another DocWagon vehicle that stops next to the Citymaster.

  Simone follows his gaze and sees a standard DocWagon Ford SRT ambulance park. It’s emblazoned with the word AMBULANCE and 17 on its sides and back. A black woman hops out from behind the wheel while a troll clambers out of the back, both are wearing DocWagon uniforms. The troll carries a medkit.

  The woman waves at Takeshi. “We got this now, Tash. Just upload whatever.”

  “Medea? On patrol routes?” The pleasure at seeing her is evident in his face and his voice.

  “Just until I’m fully healed.” Medea shrugs, glancing at the pink burn scars on her upper body.

  He nods to the troll. “Hyperion. Good to see you.”

  Hyperion nods back, but doesn’t say anything. Instead he walks to Daisuke and Odder and goes down on one knee next to them. As Daisuke explains, again, that he was pushed, Hyperion listens and nods, giving the client his full attention. This seems to calm the man down.

  “How long have you been in the area?” Medea asks. “This isn’t your usual patrol route.”

  Takeshi looks around. It’s the survey of a man used to trouble. “Not long now, but it’s needed.”

  Medea glances at her partner and the client. “We all know how it goes. SRT patrols are boring, though. Anything I need to know?”

  “Odder thinks his blood work needs a closer look. We’ve contacted Knight Errant about this. He says he was pushed.”

  “Good to go.” Medea stops, looking at Simone. “Is that…?”

  Takeshi nods. “It is.”

  “That explains why you’re out here now.”

  He shrugs. “Yes.” Takeshi nods to her and the troll, then signals the rest of the team to mount up. The scene fades to black.

  This time when everything comes back into focus, Simone is riding shotgun with Gunther in the front of the Citymaster. The dashboard, only partially visible until now, shows bleeding-edge technology features in both AR and physical displays. While everything is top-of-the-line, it still has the cobbled-together feel of a vehicle personalized by its mechanically-minded driver.

  “So, this is the heart of Matilda.”

  Gunther nods, patting the dashboard twice. “She’s a good girl, aren’t you, dear?”

  “The driver of DocWagon 17, Medea, she looked like she’d been hurt pretty bad. Was…is she part of a High-Threat Response Team?”

  “Yeah. She’s a mage. Excellent at illusions and blocking all kinds of incoming. But she’s on standard patrols until she’s fully healed. Corporate policy.”

  “What happened?” Simone looks around the front of the Citymaster and then out the front windows. Most people on the street stop and watch as the huge vehicle rumbles by.

  “There was one hell of a fight for a Super-Platinum. A fire spirit got her something fierce. She was in the hospital for a while. She wasn’t the only one, either.”

  “I’d imagine that HTR teams get hurt on a regular basis. Who pays for those medical bills?”

  Gunther rubs the side of one of his ocular implants. “Well, the company does. Sorta. I mean, if you get hurt in the line of duty, you don’t have to pay for your medical. Either DocWagon pays for it, or the client pays for it through their fees or additional bills. I don’t really know. The company took care of me when I was hurt.”

  “What about when you’re not on duty?”

  He grins at her. “I got my own DocWagon contract. Momma didn’t raise a fool.”

  “Sounds like she raised a smart man. What’s your story How’d you become a rigger for DocWagon?”

  “You might say it’s in my blood. A family trade, even. Both my parents worked for DocWagon. I didn’t really think about doing anything else.”

  “Nothing? No rebellion against the parents?”

  He glances at her with a sly grin. “Oh, I didn’t come out of the womb with a datajack in my head, no. But I like machines and they like me.” He shrugs. “I had my moments of youthful indiscretion.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Now that’s something I’d like to hear about.”

  “You and all my fans. Maybe someday I’ll write a tell-all book about it.”

  Gunther laughs. “I’ll buy a dozen copies.”

  “So you grew up with DocWagon, trained for it, and that’s that?”

  “Pretty much.” His glance at her is sly, but he doesn’t give any details.

  “Gunther Two-Keys…why ‘two-keys’?”

  Now he looks at her with a grin. “’Cause I got two keys, and they open every lock I know.” He waggles his eyebrows at her, his grin turning lascivious.

  “Gunther.”

  Takeshi’s quiet voice wipes the grin off the dwarf’s face, and he looks abashed. “Sorry, Miss Hart. Don’t mean nothing by it.” He gives her a half-shrug. “My friends gave me the nickname. One of my sayings is ‘If one key don’t work, the other will.’ Meaning if brains don’t fix a problem, brawn will.”

  “It’s a sound saying.” Simone’s voice is filled with amusement.

  The scene fades to black.

  The interior of a dive bar is full of blue-collar workers drinking, laughing, and having a good time. The camera scans the crowd and pauses on a group of people cheering around something. It zooms between two leather-jacketed patrons to reveal two lovely ladies wrestling in something that could be mud.

  As one pins the other, the formally dressed referee yells, “And the winner is…YOU!” He points at the screen. “Every night at the Bellevue Pour House Tavern is a winner. Tuesday night sloppy soy wrestling, Wednesday night wet t-shirt contests, Friday night Freestyle Fights! Never a dull moment at the Pour House!”

  One of the soy-covered ladies hands the referee a beer and toasts him with her own mug. The referee grins. “So come down to the Pour House and let us pour one for you!” They both take a big gulp of beer and smile as the words Bellevue Pour House Tavern appear on the screen over them.

  The show returned to Simone in the studio, with Gunther’s image floating next to her serene face. “We continue our in-depth look at DocWagon’s High-Threat Response Teams and the dangers they face every day. I’m Simone Hart, and this is a special edition of Stories with Hart. Later in this program, I’ll interview a very special guest, live, to answer all of our questions.”

  She gestured to the image floating next to her. “Gunther Two-Keys, born Gunther Holloway. His flirtatious demeanor hides a highly decorated and dedicated DocWagon employee. The twenty-year veteran has been a part of DocWagon’s High-Threat Response Team for twelve years. In that time, he’s saved the lives of more than thirty DocWagon med-techs and hundreds of DocWagon clients. He’s also died three times in the line of duty, needing to be resuscitated by the very DocWagon crews he worked with.”

  Simone smiled at the image of the dwarf rigger. “Gunther Two-Keys is exactly the kind of DocWagon employee others look up to.”

  The screen returns to Simone riding alongside Gunther. She watches his hands work as she speaks. “While Takeshi was talking to Medea, I got the feeling that an HTR team driving around is unusual. Could you tell me about that?”

  Gunther nods. “In truth, it is. Sorta. Some HTR teams stay in the garage. Some patrol. Usually, in the current schedule, we’re back at the garage waiting for an HTR call to come in from one of the other DocWagons or from dispatch. We don’t want to be on a Basic rescue when a hot call comes in. The HTR teams rotate who’s on patrol and who isn’t. We weren’t scheduled for patrol this week.”

  “And yet, here we are.”

  “Yeah. HQ de
cided you’d be safer with one of the HTR teams and have a better show if we did the patrolling, too. An extra patrol in our grid.”

  “Why?”

  “It allows us to spend time talking instead of answering the calls. There are a couple other HTR teams out there right now. Also, what’s more interesting? Riding in the field or sitting in a garage waiting for the shit to hit the fan?” Gunther glances at her. “Me? I think it’s riding around. But then, I like to drive.”

  “You’re right. The field work is much more interesting. So, why do you think DocWagon is allowing me to do this set of interviews?”

  Gunther shifts uncomfortably and looks away. “PR, I guess.”

  “Because of CrashCart?”

  “Yeah. CrashCart. What a bunch of vultures. You don’t just wait to see if someone’s going to fail a rescue, and then dive in. If you’re a medical team, your first job is to save lives, period.” The disgust is clear in Gunther’s voice, and the scene fades to black.

  An image of Evo’s white-and-silver logo appeared next to Simone in the studio. “CrashCart, a subsidiary of the biotech company Evo, is the new kid on the block when it comes to saving people’s lives. However, they’ve entered the arena with an aggressive flair. Frequently seen at firefights involving DocWagon saving their clients’ lives, if the resistance is too heavy or the DocWagon team sustains too much damage to complete their mission, they’ve been known to come into the situation and try to finish what DocWagon started.”

  Simone nodded to her audience. “Of course, this is always accompanied by accusations of corporate setups, but nothing has been proven yet. It’s caused a number of DocWagon clients to shift their loyalty—and their nuyen—to CrashCart. Still, many claim CrashCart doesn’t have the staying power or the experience DocWagon has. The outcome of this competition remains to be seen.”

  The studio fades to black again, and Gunther reappears. “Clients may choose whomever they wish, but my own contract is with DocWagon and will remain so. I can’t trust a corporation like that.”

  SIMaeon suddenly comes into AR view in his human avatar form. Sitting between Gunther and Simone, he bounces up and down like an excited child. “You wanna know what’s interesting?”

  “What’s that, kiddo?” Gunther tilts his head.

  “I think someone—maybe even CrashCart—is trying to hack our comms.”

  Gunther takes his hands off of the Citymaster’s wheel and turns to SIMaeon. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, just before the last two rescues we got called for, I noticed a weird little jog in the Matrix. Kinda like something’s there, but not. A ghost in the machine, so to speak. So I set a trap for it. It’s a good one, too. If it’s there, I got its number.”

  Takeshi’s voice is heard. “Have you alerted DocWagon’s main dispatch?”

  “Yes, sir, I have. Just thought ya’ll would want to know. Because there’s more.” SIMaeon gives her an expectant look.

  “I’d like to know more, SIMaeon. I know my viewers would like to know, too.”

  The hacker pauses. “I’m not formally accusing anyone of anything yet. I’ve just noticed a thing. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. So, if it happens again…I’ll know.”

  SIMaeon’s AR image flickers. “Wait…there it is…and…oh. Oh, damn. Incoming. Platinum. It’s Miyuzaki. He’s at the Pour House. And there’s a lot of activity. Looks like the Hellhounds are mixing it up with the bar patrons…” SIMaeon trails off. “Lots of shooting.”

  Gunther is no longer paying attention to the conversation. His body is limp in its harness as he pilots the Citymaster at suicidal speeds around corners, barely missing oncoming cars. Simone is rocked back and forth as the huge vehicle swerves through Bellevue’s traffic.

  Takeshi’s command voice is clear. “Time to the Pour House?”

  “Four minutes,” comes over the truck’s speakers.

  “Status of the client?”

  Odder answers in the same professional tone. “Irregular heartbeat, minimal brainwave function with bursts of activity.”

  SIMaeon’s avatar flickers again. “I think he got hit by black IC and then dumped. God, I hope he got dumped.”

  Takeshi ignores SIMaeon’s concern. “Permission to access?” When SIMaeon doesn’t immediately answer, Takeshi’s voice cracks like a whip. “SIMaeon! Permission to access?”

  “Sorry. Got activity here. Uh…yes. The Pour House has a blanket agreement.”

  “What kind of activity?”

  “Two kinds. Something’s called Knight Errant to the other side of Bellevue and my trap worked. I’ve captured an agent, and it’s screaming bloody murder.”

  The scene faded to black, and Simone’s unusually serious face appeared. “It was at this point that we all realized that something unusual was going on. Something was targeting DocWagon 19 specifically. To what end, we didn’t know. It’s only in retrospect that the plot became clear.”

  An image of a horrifying dog with glowing eyes and slavering jaws appeared next to Simone. “Named after canis tartari, a canine creature that hunts in packs, can breathe fire, and is immune to flame, the go-gang known as the Hellhounds is an all human biker gang that wears primarily red and orange and claims the I-405 corridor as its territory. Usually they reserve their hatred for rival go-gangs the Leather Devils or Blood Mountain Boys. That night, they decided to pick a fight with the patrons of the Bellevue Pour House Tavern—a known rough-and-tumble bar on the edge of Bellevue and Redmond that specializes in local beers.”

  The Hellhound image digitized into a streaming video of people fighting in and around the Pour House Tavern. The video, from Simone’s smart glasses, captured through the Citymaster’s front windshield, revealed the violence of the scene.

  “When DocWagon 19 arrived, it looked like the Redmond Barrens had somehow spilled over into the usually serene Bellevue borders. And while a fight was going on outside, another fight was being fought within the Matrix between SIMaeon and unknown assailants.”

  “Are you under attack?” Takeshi’s impossibly calm voice clashes against the chaos and violence outside the vehicle. Simone looks at Gunther’s limp body, then glances at SIMaeon, whose AR persona has moved to the back of the truck and hovers near his unresponsive body. She watches the two of them speaking.

  “Yes. I think I am. The agent appeared to be just a snoop and spoof, but I think it’s hiding something nastier. It’s not trying to get away like a normal agent.”

  The truck reverberates with the sound of something hitting it. “Gunther, get them away from Matilda.”

  The rigger doesn’t answer in words. Instead, the crack of gel rounds firing from the turret guns tells one and all he heard the request.

  “Tash. The client just flatlined.”

  Takeshi nods. “Miss Hart. Simone. You will stay in the DocWagon until someone escorts you in. SIMaeon, do what you need to do. Ping the comms if you believe you can assist us.”

  “Will do.” At this point, SIMaeon’s human persona shrinks into a small ball of fire.

  “Ready!” Hey Jude is at the gull wing door, waiting. “Let’s go.”

  Hey Jude is out the door as soon as it opens, with Takeshi and Odder following. Simone remains in her seat, watching the DocWagon team exit.

  Through the open door, Hey Jude hits one man hard with Athena and head butts another. Takeshi’s out the door, his skin glowing with magical armor. He clears a path for Odder, who lets fly with a mana bolt, dropping another Hellhound. Then the Citymaster’s gull-wing door closes.

  “Don’t worry, Simone.” Gunther’s voice comes over the speakers. “You’re safe in here.”

  “Thank you.” Her gaze focuses on the flickering ball of AR fire then to the teen’s mortal body. SIMaeon’s nose is bleeding. “Is SIMaeon all right?”

  “Yes. Yes.” The hacker’s voice comes over the commlink in a burst of static. “One agent down. I hope that hacker’s deck is burned.”

  “What
happened?”

  “Someone’s trying to get into our personal comms.”

  “DocWagon 19’s comms?”

  The ball of fire nods at her. “Yes. And they aren’t done. Running silent.” The ball of fire disappears.

  Simone looks around the truck and then moves back to the front seat with Gunther’s limp body. She reaches out a hand to touch him.

  “Don’t do that, please.” Gunther’s voice is sharp over the vehicle speakers. “I’m still here. Just busy. I’ll narrate what I can. Watch the action out the window.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Null persp.”

  The scene faded to black, then returned to Simone in the studio. “The next five minutes were long ones. While listening to the sparse comm chatter and Gunther telling me what his drones were seeing and doing, I realized—deep down inside—just how unsafe everything had become. It was more dangerous than any other ride-along I’d been on.”

  An image of SIMaeon in both his fireball form and his human form appeared next to Simone. “SIMaeon was fighting for control of the communications array that assigned DocWagon 19 their private channel to talk and to work effectively as a team. The battle was fought in the Matrix—the digital representation of information. When a hacker is jacked in, they generally leave their body behind, leaving it vulnerable to physical attack. It’s why many hackers work remotely, protecting their identities and locations with their strongest security measures.

  “However, hacking from a distance has its own problems in the Matrix due to line noise. You want to have some distance, but not too much. This is why SIMaeon does his work from within the Citymaster. His physical closeness, while personally dangerous, adds to the communications security of DocWagon 19’s comm systems. And it’s good thing, too.”