Never Deal with a Dragon

by Robert N. Charrette

  Ghost fell silent, seemingly exhausted by the long string of words. Sam didn’t know what motivated the man to speak so, but the speech gave him hope that these were not bloody-minded thugs who would as soon kill them as look at them. He began to think it was possible he might get out of this predicament alive.

  Ghost’s next words startled him even more than had his confidences.

  “Why am I talking to you?” the Amerindian snorted. “Don’t need no drek from some soft Anglo corporate,” Ghost said gruffly. Giving the darkening skies a last look, he ordered Sam back inside.

  The samurai’s sudden mood shift left Sam again unsure of what he faced among these shadowrunners. Nothing they said was exactly as Sam understood it to be. It made sense one minute, only to become totally alien the next. They seemed to live in another world. Confused, he climbed awkwardly back into the squat.

  An Elf had arrived while he had been on the balcony. He sat cross-legged in a corner, his attention on a data-reader in his lap. From the jacks on his left temple, Sam surmised that the Elf was the decker who had been riding Matrix cover on last night’s shadowrun.

  Sally still lay on the foam pad that was the room’s only furniture, but she was awake. She looked rested now, the hollow circles of exhaustion gone from her eyes. Ghost shouldered Sam out of the way and passed through a doorway hidden by a curtain that Sam had taken as a decorative wall hanging. The samurai returned with a tray of cold tofu and steaming soykaf, which he brought to Sally. She thanked him with a sad smile.

  “I’m getting too old for this, Ghost.”

  It seemed an old story between them.

  “Drink your soy.” Ghost waited while she drained half the cup. “You haven’t told us yet what you plan for the Raku.”

  “Avaunt, Lord Musclebrain,” the Elf ordered from his corner. “The fair Lady Tsung needs her rest before pressing on with this sordid business. You street samurai are all alike—no proper sensibilities, no understanding of delicate persons or sense of timing.

  “All you want to do is flex your muscles. Once you impress us with your hyped resources, you only stay long enough to grab your blood money before scurrying back to your squalid dens.”

  Thin, sparkling needles slid from beneath the fingernails of Ghost’s right hand. Sam guessed the Elf was pushing the limits of the Amerindian’s tolerance, imposing on his hospitality. Sally laid a hand on the samurai’s back, out of sight of the Elf. The needles vanished.

  “Can it, Dodger,” she said. “Ghost’s not pushing. A decision has to be made.”

  The Elf huffed his annoyance at the rebuff. Satisfied, Ghost walked to the window and stared out while Sally put her tray aside and sat up straighter. “So what’s on the disks we pulled?”

  “Quite a bit actually, Fair One.” All trace of annoyance was gone from his voice, replaced by cool professionalism. “Production schedules. Some personnel files. A couple of patent applications. A fine swag, which would have considerable street value if the run had not terminated so noisily. As is, we shall have to wait until cooler weather before safely disposing of it.”

  “Meaning we lost a lot of value?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, at least we’ll get paid for the plant.”

  Sam was confused. He understood that their stolen data would be less valuable on the open market if they waited to sell it, but he had thought they were simple thieves. “What plant?”

  Ghost started to say something, but closed his mouth when Sally spoke.

  “We made a little donation to the cleaning supplies of the computer systems research office. An aerosol generator disguised as cleaning spray. It will dispense a little bug called Vigid along with its cleaning solvent. In a few hours, a lot of Renraku wageslaves will be going home sick. The next few days will be somewhat uncomfortable for them and most displeasing to the Renraku management, what with the inevitable schedule disruption. While they limp along, our client, Atreus Applications, gets the jump on the competition. It should allow them to hit the Matrix with a new software package a full week ahead of Renraku.

  “That was the real job. Atreus wanted us to snatch some prototypes to hide the nature of the operation. We picked up the disks as a fringe benefit.”

  It all sounded straightforward—assuming allowances for the basically devious nature of shadowruns. But something nagged at Sam. Something about the delivery system of the disruptive bioagent. He ran Sally’s words over in his head. Why not simply spread the agent around? The runners could have been given an antidote beforehand. Why combine it with cleaning fluid? Simply to delay implementation? A tailored time-decay capsule could do that effectively enough. Why cleaning fluid, or was that important at all? Somewhere deep in his brain a synapse fired and a memory awoke.

  “Excuse me,” he said tentatively, “But the solvent in the cleaning fluid. Was it acetone-based?”

  “Who knows,” Sally said. “What does it matter?”

  Sam took a deep breath. “If it was, I don’t think that the Vigid will do what you expect it to.”

  “Ah,” sneered the Elf, “observe how the merchandise displays an extensive biotechnical knowledge. We may yet realize a handsome profit.”

  “I’m not a biotech,” Sam said, letting his annoyance show. “I’m just a researcher. But I’ve got a good memory. I saw an article on Vigid once. Some researcher for the UCAS government had done an experiment. It got contaminated when an assistant spilled some acetone while cleaning glassware. The acetone interacted with the protein shell of the virus, stripping parts of it and causing the core genetic material to mutate in an isomeric form.”

  “So it’s a different bug,” the Elf drawled.

  “It’s a lethal bug. That lab assistant died. In a replication test, 30 to 40 percent of the analog mice exposed to the isomeric virus died.”

  Sally’s look became grim during Sam’s recitation. She placed her kaf mug on the floor in a slow and deliberate manner. “We weren’t hired for wetwork.”

  “Certes, the fee was far too low,” the Elf agreed.

  “Frag the fees!” Ghost snarled, needles flashing at his fingertips. “Somebody set us up.”

  Sally nodded slowly. “I think we need to talk to someone about our recent employers before we go to meet them.”

  Sam was not sure why the runners had brought him along, but he didn’t think it politic to ask. They had been rejoined by the Ork called Kham, who seemed outraged at the possibility of a set-up. He had to be dissuaded from bringing heavy weaponry along to the meeting with the fixer.

  The walk to the meet site was through a kind of place Sam had only seen on the trid. The streets were crowded, filled with rockerhaunts, gutterpunks, and chippies. Squatters held their miserable alleys and boxes against muscleboys from the gangs, and razorguys hung tough behind their moneyed charges. The hungry and the thrill-seekers mingled cheek to chromed jowl in the harsh glare of the neon and public trid screens.

  The noise and crowd swirled around them, parting and reforming as they passed. Even the hardest-looking street samurai and Ork bullyboys seemed to fade from their path without causing trouble. Maybe the mage had something to do with it, or maybe it was simply Sam’s imagination.

  They stopped at an abandoned storefront in a less congested area. Through the smashed window, what little Sam could see of the building’s floor was as littered and stained as the sidewalk. Even from outside, the odor of stale urine and refuse was intense. No one on the street paid the least attention when the group entered the building.

  Three men waited inside. All were tall and rangy. Hard muscles showed wherever their street garb exposed flesh. All carried obvious weaponry. Street samurai, Sam guessed, but he saw none of the obvious cyberware the breed favored. Either they were so good they didn’t need enhancement or else their modifications were very subtle. Either way, they had to be dangerous.

  The blond one on the left had a large dog by his side, at least half-wolf in its bloodline. The beast growled softly whe
n Sam and the runners entered. While the others exchanged opening pleasantries with the men, Sam crouched and held out his hand to the animal. Cautiously, its posture indicating suspicion, the beast advanced to sniff at his hand.

  “Freya bites,” one of the fixer’s men warned.

  “I’m sure she does,” Sam returned, without taking his eyes from Freya. The animal gave the tips of Sam’s fingers a tentative lick. He smiled, reaching his other hand out slowly to ruffle the fur at the side of Freya’s head. “She’s marvelous. Where did you get her?”

  “She followed me home one night,” the guard said sarcastically.

  The sound of a man clearing his throat caused Sam to turn. The runners were already facing the newcomers. Two more rangy samurai flanked a bigger man. He was dark, even without the benefit of backlighting from the street. His richly tailored suit was out of place among the ruins, but he seemed completely at home. The man, obviously the fixer they had come to meet, stepped forward.

  “Making new friends?”

  Sam thought the raspy-voiced fixer was speaking to him, but Sally replied.

  “Always. You know what a party girl I am.”

  If the fixer was amused, his heavily pocked face didn’t show it. He simply turned his cold eyes on the magician.

  “I’m glad you could spare the time for a meet,” she said. “I’m sure I can make it worth your while, Castillano.”

  Castillano shrugged. “Why me? Cog’s your preferred connection.”

  “Cog’s unavailable.”

  The fixer’s face remained expressionless. “I’m second-best,” he said, making his question a statement.

  Sally gave him a light laugh. “Let’s just say I thought you were the best choice tonight.”

  “You need a specialist?”

  “What we’re most interested in right now is information.”

  “A target?”

  “An employer.”

  Castillano rubbed his hands together meditatively. Had his face shown any interest, Sam might have thought him a merchant scenting an easy sale. The fixer opened his mouth slightly and ran the edge of his tongue along the lower lip. “That sort of information is in high demand at the moment.”

  The shadowrunners exchanged glances. “Something come down that we haven’t heard about?”

  “Maybe,” Castillano responded noncommittally.

  “Add it to the bill.”

  The fixer nodded in acceptance. “Smilin’ Sam and Johnny Come Lately.”

  Sally cocked her head to the side, her expression slightly annoyed. “News about the firefight at the After Ours Bar is hardly a commodity. The screamsheets were full of it.”

  “Screamsheets don’t mention the rifle.”

  “What rifle?” Sally asked in sudden interest.

  “Arisaka KZ-977. Sniper model. Not silenced. Lone Star Security picked it up in the street in front of the building where your two acquaintances were killed.”

  “They don’t use anything big,” Ghost interjected.

  “Yeah,” the Ork agreed. “Johnny never did like loud noises. A real runt pup dat way.”

  Castillano stared at the Ork.

  “What’s the point, Castillano?”

  “Mr. James Yoshimura died of a single shot to the head as he left the After Ours. Pair of Lone Star officers saw Yoshimura go down and heard the shot. They spotted Sam and Johnny. One of the runners panicked and shot at the cops. Cops shot back. The rifle fell. The runners died.

  “Lone Star ballistics matched the gun to the lethal bullet. Trajectory puts the shooter in the vicinity of the runners. The rifle survived the drop better than Smilin’ Sam.”

  “No other witnesses?”

  “None,” Castillano confirmed.

  “Dirty cops,” Ghost concluded. “Sam and Johnny were bagmen and cats. They didn’t do wetwork.”

  “Maybe. The Lone Stars have clean records. Apparently incorruptible. Just quick to shoot.”

  “Then Sam and Johnny were set up.”

  Castillano shrugged.

  “And you know something about it.”

  “I never said that. Enquiries into the matter are likely to be unhealthy.”

  “It seems to have been a bad week for running the shadows. We had someone twist us around, too.”

  “Looking for a connection?”

  “If it’s there, we’ll do something about it. If not, Sam and Johnny were big boys,” Ghost declared.

  “What exactly is it you want?”

  “Let’s start with a bioproduct called Vigid.”

  “Anti-riot agent. Fast-acting incapacitant with pronounced after-effects similar to a bad stomach virus. Aerosol vector. How much do you want?”

  “Had more’n enough already,” the Ork snarled.

  “We want to know what might happen if the substance were subjected to an acetone bath.”

  If Castillano was surprised or curious about the request, he didn’t show it. He walked across the room, avoiding the debris as though by instinct. From a countertop, he lifted what looked like a moldy pile of garbage to reveal a telecom port. He took out a pocket computer and plugged it in. After a few minutes of plying the keys, he announced, “This will take awhile. When do you want to meet?”

  “Check UCAS Chemistry Today, December 2048,” Sam said. “There’s no time for you to replicate it.”

  The fixer entered a document search. “Wilkins and Chung?”

  “That’s it,” Sam confirmed, nodding to the runners as well.

  Castillano stroked his mustache as he studied the screen. “Looks like Vigid reacts badly to acetone. Gets very toxic.”

  “Do you believe me now?” Sam asked of the runners.

  The Elf, silent until now, answered him. “You gave the reference, Sir Corp. The document could be a plant.”

  “Unlikely,” Castillano said. Even Sam was startled by the fixer’s uncharacteristic free offering. “He didn’t get the month right.”

  “Let’s assume the damn stuff really does mutate. Who makes it, Castillano?”

  “Genomics holds the patent. Exclusive manufacturing contract for Seretech.”

  “Seretech!” Ghost spat.

  “Fraggin’ hellfire!” the Ork howled.

  Sally and Dodger just looked worried.

  “What does it mean?” Sam asked.

  “We’ve had a few misunderstandings with them in the past,” Sally said softly.

  “Then you think they might have been behind this? That they deliberately set you up?”

  “Indubitably,” the Elf put in. “They must have used Atreus as a cut-out to allay our suspicions. They probably arranged for Renraku security to find out about our mission.”

  “But not until after we had placed their dirty little toy,” Sally added bitterly.

  “How would it help them to have you caught?”

  “Dey don’t like us, Mr. Suit,” the Ork growled. “Dat’s enough reason fer anybody.”

  “They didn’t even have to get us geeked on the way out,” Ghost expanded. “Any of us that got caught wouldn’t know that they had hired us, so there’d be no link to Seretech. We also didn’t know what their bug would really do, so we wouldn’t have said anything. A simple break-in and lift of those prototypes would have been easy enough to squirm out of. Attempted robbery and breaking and entering. Light stuff. Until people started dying. For that, we’d have been blamed, and they probably thought we’d finger Atreus and take them down with us.”

  Sally picked it up. “Seretech would have been in the clear and sitting on fat street. They’d have hit their rivals at Renraku and gotten us too. Any of us that the Raku samurai didn’t take down would be facing mass murder charges ‘cause nobody would believe we didn’t know what kind of stuff we were placing. Seretech pays back two debts at once. Maybe even three, if they’ve got a beef with Atreus. Once again, the megacorp comes out on top.”

  “So what happens now?” Sam prodded.

  “We take our losses and stay out of the light.
” Sally sighed. “Seretech’s bad business.”

  Sam was appalled. “What about those people at Renraku? They’re innocent. You can’t just let them die.”

  “Can’t we?” said Ghost.

  Flushed with outrage, Sam spun to face Sally, stabbing an accusing finger. “I thought you didn’t do wetwork cheap. Pretty flexible honor you’ve got. Things get tough, and you fold. You must enjoy being somebody’s fall guys. What’ll happen to your hot-shot reps when the street finds out how you let yourselves be used?”

  “Stuff dat. Nobody’ll know,” the Ork muttered.

  “He will!” Sam shouted, pointing at Castillano. He swung his arm about to take in the guards. “They know, too!”

  “Uh, Lady Tsung,” the Elf said quietly, “perhaps we could go back and pull out the cans.”

  “It’s too late,” Sally said. “They’ll already have used some of it.”

  “You could just tell Renraku what’s going on,” Sam suggested.

  “They wouldn’t believe us. Even if they did, they’d still come looking for us, figuring we had something to do with it. They’d be right, of course, and when people start dying, it would turn into a blood feud. We’re better off keeping quiet.”

  “Wait a minute!” Sam yelped. “Castillano, let me see your computer.”

  The fixer simply stared at him, keeping a proprietary hand on the keyboard.

  Sally sighed. “On the tab.”

  Castillano handed over the keyboard.

  Sam fiddled with it, cursing its slowness. He felt a featherweight touch on his shoulder. He turned to find the Elf offering a cyberdeck.

  “Faster this way,” Dodger said.

  Sam looked at the device the Elf carried hidden beneath his coat. Save for its special function keys and carrying strap, it looked like an ordinary computer keyboard. He took it gingerly.

  This would not be like plugging into the Federated Boeing Commuter. This was a real doorway to the Matrix. There would be no autopilot insulation from the terrifying glories of cyberspace.

  “Jack’s over here,” the Elf said, pointing.