Never Deal with a Dragon

by Robert N. Charrette

  “Bring up the masking utilities,“ Dodger instructed.

  He keyed his own, knowing without needing to see that his normal icon, a small ebon child with a glittering silver cloak, had been overlain with a simulation of the standard Renraku corporate decker icon. Sam’s Matrix imagery, having originally been one of those icons, underwent a less visible shift. The facial features blurred and smoothed as replicated corporate symbols and identification markings shimmered into existence.

  The badges borne by Sam’s icon were faintly smudged, darkened as though slightly burned. With more time, Dodger could have done better, but he had to settle for unregistered duplicates of Renraku access authorizations that were imperfect. Though not foolproof, their disguises should withstand casual scrutiny by ordinary anti-intruder programming.

  “‘Tis time to see if your back door really opens our way into the castle.”

  “Dodger, I don’t think I should let you see the code.”

  “‘Tis a place whose secret paths I have trodden before.”

  “But you got in by yourself then. I wasn’t opening the door. I...well, it just doesn’t seem right that I should. Even now. What if we’re mistaken and Renraku has nothing to do with the killings? It would be wrong for me to give away this secret.”

  ”Do as your conscience bids, Sir Corp.”

  “I just wanted you to understand.”

  “Shall we get on with it?”

  “All right.”

  Sam’s icon moved ahead. They floated upward until they hovered at one edge of the pyramid, about a third of the way to the apex. Sam placed his hand at the point where an arc racing along the edge had revealed a slight discoloration. Just before the next wave hit that point, Sam’s icon swung between Dodger’s and the point of contact with the pyramid. As the wave passed, the faint glimmer of an outline appear in the surface of the Renraku construct.

  Dodger opened his eyes. Usually there was nothing to watch while decking. His gaze drifted to where his companion’s fingers tapped codewords into the Allegiance cyberdeck. Dodger’s fingers tapped an identical sequence on his own Fairlight deck. When Sam’s fingers ceased their frantic motion, Dodger’s hit one more key and the sequence was locked into storage on his deck.

  Part of the price, he thought. The passgate was too valuable a piece of data to be denied him by Sam’s scruples. He refocused his full attention on the Matrix.

  They entered the Renraku complex into a backwater slave module that was overseer for a bank of elevators. Such a node should not have allowed access to the system but it was, after all, a back door. The appearance was that of a small guardroom. Its smooth walls flashed infrequently with light as the elevators went about their business. A samurai dozed in one corner of the imaginary room, his neon armor dull. Because the elevators only connected a small spread of floors in areas of minimum security, the guardian ice would normally be activated only in an alert.

  The run suddenly looked a lot more feasible. If Renraku had really been in an uproar over a major tech theft, the entire system would be on alert. Even here, the guard would be awake to watch the physical elevators and to report intruders to security. Such a monitor assignment was usually considered superfluous in such an unimportant node, but the presence of guardian ice was an indication of the thoroughness of the Renraku Matrix. At least that was the most reasonable conclusion if one assumed that Matrix security didn’t know about the back door. Dodger didn’t think such ignorance likely. He certainly wouldn’t want to bet his brain on it.

  Though the guard was asleep and everything seemed peaceful, it might still be a trap. If their own programs weren’t successfully hiding their identities, the countermeasure programming might be sophisticated enough to present a pacific image until the intruding deckers could be drawn so deep into the system that escape was impossible. Corporate deckers could already be jacking in to hunt them down, or a tracer might be back-tracking their signal to detect their physical location prior to targeting a strike team. Dodger hadn’t survived years as a shadowrunning decker without caution. But he had some experience with this particular corporate Matrix and he found nothing to indicate that all was not as it seemed. Somewhat assured, he signaled Sam to press on.

  Sam leading, they left the elevator control node and stepped out onto the ethereal pathways that connected the components of the internal Matrix. In the infinite darkness, subsystems glowed like distant stars of arcane geometry, while pulses of data blazed comet-like across those subjective heavens. Before and behind them, their own path faded away, leaving them walking an insubstantial flare of light that came from nowhere and went to nowhere, until they reached the next node.

  During the transit, Dodger noticed that Sam’s icon limped. His brow furrowed as he tried to understand the phenomenon. He had seen nothing in the persona programming that indicated such a visual interpretation for the construct. Once the run was over, he would have to re-inspect the chips.

  As the limping chrome mannikin led him through node after node, Dodger’s confidence grew. He began to feel assured that there really was no alert. They had only encountered one roving corporate decker and Dodger’s programs had masked them from him. If an alert were in progress, they wouldn’t have gone three nodes without bumping into some deckhound. This might be an easy run after all.

  Finally, they reached Sam’s goal, a datastore for medical files on non-Human assets. When first told of it, Dodger had questioned the worth of such data to their quest. Would not personnel files, though harder to penetrate, be more useful in identifying whether the feathered serpent worked for Renraku? Sam had assured him that Renraku would classify a Dragon, even a sentient one, as an asset rather than an employee. The distinction was foolishness to Dodger, but then he wasn’t Japanese like Renraku’s directors. Orientals sometimes had different ideas about how the world worked. He’d seen enough of such skewed attitudes from Sally Tsung, and she was only half-Oriental.

  The walls of the datastore were aswirl with alphanumeric characters. Symbols flashed different colors and danced at varying speeds, the pattern complex and ever-shifting. The image represented the code systems locking the data away from unauthorized access. Sam’s icon stood transfixed. “I think you’d better handle this. I might trip an alarm.”

  “Technomancy of the simplest sort. Keep watch.”

  Dodger’s icon dropped its mask and an ebon hand flourished a matte gold case. Slim fingers snapped open the lid and delicately removed a tool. Kneeling before the flickering wall of alphanumerics as though before a lock, Dodger inserted the slim instrument into the flow. After a few minute adjustments, he selected another tool, slipping it into the flow to use with the first. A careful twist of the wrist and the symbols slowed, their color pulses becoming longer. Another twist, and they slowed further and further, until they froze.

  “Which file, Sir Corp?”

  “I need to scan them.”

  Sam’s icon stepped to the wall and placed a hand on the seemingly solid light. The chromed head bowed as if in deep concentration and file names flickered briefly as a fairy fire fled across them. After a minute, the glow steadied and highlighted one of them. “That one.”

  The ebon boy nodded and adjusted the angles of his tools. The wall moved again, sequences rippling past until the chosen code lay under the position of his hands. He returned the tools to their case and it vanished under his cloak.

  Dodger extended his hand into the wall. It disappeared into the light as if cut off at the wrist. After a moment, he withdrew it. He held a fat green book. Dodger flipped quickly through the pages. “No serpents.”

  Sam sighed.

  Dodger tossed the book back through the wall and tapped twice on the glowing file code. The alphanumerics of the wall resumed their manic rush, but their clarity was reduced.

  “Dodger, I think we’d better get out of here.”

  “What is it?’

  “I don’t know. I just think that we might be pushing our luck if we stay.”


  Dodger’s suspicions were roused by Sam’s sudden concern, an indication that he was withholding information. He reactivated his masking program. “Very well, but I’ll lead. We shall move faster that way.”

  They did, indeed, move faster, retracing their route toward the exit, until Dodger pulled up suddenly. He gazed in shock at the walls of the node they had just entered. Vertical slabs of mirror reflected their icons to infinity. It was uncanny, unprecedented. What made it worse was that Dodger’s reflection showed the jet outline of a boy crouched under a shimmering cloak and the markings of Sam’s chromed mannikin were dark pittings in the smooth surface. Dodger felt uneasy. He had never encountered anything like this node in all his years of running the Matrix.

  Fingers flew across the keyboard, improvising programs to analyze the nature of the hardware in which their programs were operating.

  Somewhere in the depths of the mirrors, Dodger saw something move. It was distant and furtive. There was nothing in the apparent chamber to account for the fleeting glimmer.

  Analysis programs received abort signals and new instructions were entered at at frantic pace: Cut and Run, Stand by for Execution.

  He reached across the room, batting Sam’s hands away from their poised position above the Allegiance cyberdeck. He keyed in the run code and punched “Execute”.”

  The chromed mannikins in distant reflections winked out. The vanishing images continued through closer and closer planes of reflection at an ever-accelerating pace. The last images vanished, and with a pop, Sam’s icon dematerialized from the node.

  Dodger was alone with what moved in the mirrors.

  How he knew he wasn’t sure, but he was certain that it was coming closer.

  His finger stabbed the “Execute” key.

  His own reflections began the fugue of vanishing. The presence reacted, moving closer as well, racing the disappearing Dodgers. Its masking chrome dropped, the ebon boy raced around the room as though moving the icon itself might give his reflections the speed they needed to escape the presence. He felt the other nearing, but dared not look back. It was almost upon him as the last reflection vanished.

  Pop.

  He was panting and bathed in sweat, but he was safely back in the real world. He jerked the datacord from his jack. Sam was looking at him, bewildered. He didn’t know enough to be scared.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before. In fact, from everything I do know, it was impossible.”

  “But you got us out anyway.” Sam pulled out his jack and tossed it on the counter. “I guess it doesn’t matter what it was. We got what I wanted, and now that we’re out safely, they can’t trace us.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “The headache is worth it. I’m sure now that Renraku didn’t order the killings. If the feathered serpent had been working for them, its medical data would have been in that file.”

  “They could have hired it for the occasion.”

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not if they wanted to stay legal.”

  “Pray tell, why not? The contract courts would have let them invoke a termination clause on Hanae and yourself. The villains who rule there rarely check too deeply into whether said employee was really sufficiently valuable to warrant such a clause. Renraku could easily create the fiction that you were both important enough.”

  Sam looked discomfitted by the idea that his former corporation might do such a thing. “No. They wouldn’t do that. Even if they did, wouldn’t the Dragon have to be part of the corporation? Everyone knows that the courts are scrupulous about proper form during the invocation and execution of such clauses. The law states that any actions taken against the renegade must be taken by bona fide corporate officers.”

  “The beast could have been a bounty hunter.”

  “The law also says that bounties must be set and registered in court. You yourself found out that there was none.”

  “Alas, Sir Corp. The legal record does not always match reality.”

  “I won’t believe there was an unrecorded bounty,” Sam said, shaking his head vigorously. “Renraku wouldn’t dare risk the sanctions for disregarding the regulations, especially since I didn’t take anything. The cost would be far too high.”

  “You seem well-informed on the law concerning these matters.”

  “Let’s say that I recently had a sudden awakening of interest in the legal status of corporate runaways. I thought the knowledge might have a bearing on my future.”

  “As it has.” Dodger shifted his chair back and stood. Placing a hand on Sam’s shoulder, he said, “With this run against Renraku, you have stepped fully into the shadows. You are now divorced from the corporations. I strip thee of the name Corp and formally dub thee Twist.”

  “Thanks, I think.” Sam looked taken aback. “I guess we did O.K., huh? At least I no longer have to worry that Renraku is after me and I don’t feel guilty that the other guy took something out, making me an accessory to his theft. Like you said before we decked, if there had been a theft, the whole system would have been on alert.”

  “Be not so sure that it wasn’t.”

  Sam frowned, then offered a tentative smile. “Why not? I used to work there. Remember? There was no alert.”

  “Then you can tell me what those mirrors were all about.”

  “No, but I can tell that there were some glitches in the system. Stuff like the fuzziness in the medical datastore. You know, resolution problems. The mirrors were probably some kind of diagnostic subroutine.”

  Dodger didn’t buy it, but there was no point in saying so. The phenomenon was obviously well beyond Sam’s appreciation as a decker. Sam also didn’t appreciate Dodger’s concern.

  “Whatever was going on there won’t matter. I don’t think we’ll have to go back. What we learned tells me that the murderers are somewhere outside Renraku. That’s where we’ll have to do the rest of our looking.”

  “First,” Dodger said firmly, “we get some sleep. You may take the first shift in the bed, Sir Twist, for I have some thinking to do.”

  Actually, he had some worrying to do. Not just about the puzzle of the mirrors or the riddle of the murderers. Sam’s reaction to the Matrix wasn’t normal. Dodger had gotten a look at his datajack when he was checking Sam out on the Allegiance. The port cover had the maker’s signature: Soriyama. That name proclaimed it as one of the most expensive pieces of tech Dodger had ever seen. No street doc or hack corporate implanter had done that job. It had been put in by the best, a real cutting-edge cybertechie and there should have been a flawless man-machine interface. Sam’s headaches were anomalous, strange enough even without the limping icon. Could the two be connected?

  There was more to Samuel Verner than met the eye, cyber or otherwise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Sherman, take a look at this!”

  Cliber’s shout brought Huang running to stare at her console screen. His eyes widened with excitement.

  “Signal conductivity and virtual memory increases simultaneous with multi-tasking crashes,” Huang muttered. “Where were the crashes?”

  Cliber touched a key and highlighted the locales on the architecture construct.

  “Hmmm. Intrusions in progress?”

  “None on report. I’ll run a check,” said Cliber, even as she applied herself to the keyboard.

  Hutten crowded in to view the display.

  “What do you make of it, Konrad?”

  The systems engineer looked perplexed. “OMDRs operating beyond spec. A full three banks of 77206 chips at maximum capacity, but the Haas biochip’s barely above maintenance cycle activity.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t match any of the expected parameters.”

  “Exactly.” Huang beamed. His infectious grin spread to the other two. “We’ll need to confirm it.”

  “I’ll start a full diagnostic.” Hutten returned to his own station and jacked in.

/>   From her position at the door of the research lab, Crenshaw watched and heard all. The technical details meant nothing to her, but the excitement of the researchers communicated quite a bit. She had picked a lucky time to pass through the lab on her daily observation tour. If something significant had happened, she would report it to Sato immediately. Perhaps she could claim that her intervention had motivated the laggard team, thereby improving her standing with the Kansayaku.

  “A breakthrough, Doctors?”

  Huang and Cliber looked up, seemingly stunned to notice her. “No,” Huang said tentatively, in accompaniment to Cliber’s head shake. More forcefully, he added, “Just a glitch. A hardware problem in one of the nodes.”

  Crenshaw nodded and said nothing. Their suddenly sober faces told her that they were lying, that they obviously wished she were not present. She decided to accept their explanation until she knew not only what had really happened but just how to use the information to her own advantage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sam awoke to find Dodger seated at the foot of the bed, staring at him. The Elf’s eyes were bloodshot and the unkempt appearance of his clothes was the result of extended wear more than an artful fashion sense. He had obviously been awake for a long time, which meant that Sam had been sleeping a long time.

  “You were supposed to wake me.”

  The Elf shrugged. “You needed the sleep.”

  That had been true enough, but Sam felt rested now. “How long?”

  “All night and most of the day.”

  “What about you?”

  “I needed the time.”

  “You needed the sleep. You look like you’ve ridden a nightmare. I thought you Elves were supposed to be bundles of energy, day after day.”