“We need to deal with that spirit,” Zipfile said—rather unnecessarily, Emu thought—as she scrambled to draw her Ruger.
“Working on it.” The assault rifles mounted on the Roto-Drones were the biggest guns Emu had, short of swinging the Bulldog around and ramming the spirit head-on, and she didn’t particularly feel like giving it the chance to put a lightning bolt through the windshield. Short of conjuring a better-armed drone out of thin air, there was nothing she could—
Hmm.
Mind racing, Emu sent a series of commands to her commlink. Even that brief task almost prevented her from swerving the Bulldog away from the spirit’s next attack, and the odd stray bullet that landed in the Bulldog’s cabin made it feel like Emu had waited an eternity before the recipient of the call answered. “Moshi moshi.”
“Please tell me you got a gun mounted on that new drone.”
Hardpoint’s eyebrows rose. “I did. In fact, I just finished calibrating it. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m mid-run up in Redmond with some kind of spirit chewing my arse, and my drones can’t scratch it.” Emu felt another impact through her control rig as she sent Hardpoint her GPS data.
The dwarf nodded gravely. “I’m on a test flight in Snohomish. Head north, and I’ll meet you as soon as I can.”
“Got it.” Emu killed the call and threw the Bulldog around a corner, giving the van as much gas as she could manage. Zipfile and the remaining drone were blasting away at the spirit, which utterly ignored their fire as it tossed lightning bolt after lightning bolt at the Bulldog like the van had called its girlfriend ugly. Emu’s control rig made the Bulldog more nimble than a cargo van had any right to be, but she couldn’t avoid every blast, and the rigger’s worry grew as the Bulldog’s status display turned increasingly red with each impact.
Over the next few minutes, and despite the dire circumstances, the game of cat-and-mouse between Emu and Zipfile and their pursuer became routine, even tedious. Emu would bring the Bulldog around a corner, the spirit would follow, and Zipfile and the remaining Roto-Drone would lay down as much cover fire as possible while Emu swerved to avoid yet another elemental bolt. Most of the time, the spirit’s attack would miss. Then Emu would turn another corner to keep the spirit from getting a follow-up shot on the van, the spirit would give chase, and the process would begin over again. The problem was that every elemental attack that hit its target slowed the Bulldog down a little bit, making the van a little more fragile and the controls a little less responsive. As the chase dragged on, the spirit got more accurate, or maybe luckier. Instead of every fourth lightning bolt striking its target, it became every third, and before long the Bulldog’s cabin was filled with holes the size of Emu’s fist.
Come on, Hardo, where are you? If Emu hadn’t been so busy trying to keep herself, Zipfile, and the van in one piece, she might’ve called him a second time, even though she knew it wouldn’t make his engines run any faster. Instead, she drifted the Bulldog around yet another corner—and promptly had a heart attack when she heard a deafening bang and felt the vehicle spin out of control, then pitch over onto its side. Pain shot through Emu’s “feet” like she’d dropped something heavy on them, the control rig’s way of telling her the Bulldog had blown two of its tires, and the sensation of gravel and asphalt scouring the van’s side panels felt like someone had body-checked Emu into a belt grinder.
Emu barely got her control rig shut off before the pain from the Bulldog’s “injuries” overwhelmed her, and even then, it still took several seconds for her brain to unscramble itself. Once the rigger had come to her senses, she slapped her seatbelt release and tried to climb between the front seats—the driver’s-side door was pinned against the ground—only to see the hostile spirit floating outside the van.
Another brilliant bolt lanced forth from the spirit’s hand, and out of sheer desperation, Emu flung herself back into her seat. A flash of light filled the Bulldog’s cabin, accompanied by the stench of ozone and an electric tingle across her skin, followed closely by a drumroll of thunderclaps ringing through the air.
So this is how I’ll die, Emu thought. There wasn’t time for anything else before the spirit’s attack hit home and the resulting blast pummeled her into darkness.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Emu’s repose was cut short by an ear-splitting roar. When she opened her eyes, the dark sky was fringed with an orange glow, and the air was thick with stifling heat and an acrid chemical stench.
Panic flooded into the rigger’s thoughts as she heard someone screaming nearby. Frag off, Hell isn’t real! It isn’t, it can’t be real…it…
With her mind racing like an engine with the gas pedal floored, Emu jolted upright from where she’d been lying on the rough, sharp stone, looking for something, anything, that might prove her fears wrong.
The first thing she saw was the Bulldog’s front grille. The vehicle’s burning wreck was still tipped over on its side, and its windscreen was missing. Then Emu heard more screaming and another thunderous roar, and turned to see Zipfile nearby, jumping for joy like she’d just won something. “Laduuuuuumaaaaaaaaa!” The cheer was followed by the triumphant, bellowing vrrr of a vuvuzela being blown at volumes no metahuman lungs could match. It was the same audio clip that Zipfile played when her beloved Imikhonto scored a goal in an urban brawl game.
Emu gingerly pushed herself to her feet, her entire body aching. “What happened?”
“We got thrown out of the van when the spirit hit it after we crashed,” Zipfile said. “But the spirit kept attacking the Bulldog instead of coming after us, until Hardpoint’s drone showed up and wrecked it with that giant machine gun.” The dwarf pointed off to the side, where Hardpoint’s Shingetsu was sitting as patiently as the dwarf himself did.
“And the cargo?” The possibility that this whole debacle had been for nothing, that the goods Tommy D wanted so badly might’ve been destroyed in the crash, frightened Emu almost as much as thinking she’d literally died and gone to Hell.
Zipfile shrugged. “A little banged up, but I got it out of the Bulldog before anything caught fire. I’ll need your help getting it into the car, though.”
“Car?” Emu tilted her head to one side, confused.
“I had to steal a car to tow the case out of the Bulldog—it was too heavy for me to lift, remember? Besides, we needed a ride anyway.” Zipfile grinned.
Emu couldn’t help but laugh at the dwarf’s logic, especially now that post-danger exhaustion was setting in. “Suits me fine, mate.”
With that, and after a brief text-message exchange with Hardpoint—Emu tried not to think about how much it would cost to replace the explosive rounds Hardpoint had expended on the spirit—the two women loaded their cargo into their newly-acquired Americar and set off.
Rather than waste time going back to the safehouse, Emu pointed the Americar directly for the White Pine Casino. The place was open 24/7, and although Tommy D wasn’t there—Emu doubted the mobster was even awake at this hour of the morning—his soldati were happy to take the cargo off the rigger’s hands. Not feeling particularly trusting after the events of the last few days, Emu sent her own message to Tommy to make sure his goons didn’t “forget” to tell him that Emu’s job was done, then summoned her Commodore for a pickup. Meanwhile, Zipfile set the Americar’s autopilot to return the vehicle to where she’d stolen it from. If Knight Errant bothered to investigate, all they would see was that some gambler had stolen a car to go joyriding to a casino.
Back at the safehouse, Emu found herself unable to fall asleep, despite her exhaustion. Instead, she passed the time by staring at the ceiling and wondering if the Mafia run had been worth it. It would give her a month’s respite from Tommy D’s legbreakers coming looking for her, but Emu’s payments to the Ciarniellos were nothing compared to the cost of a new RCC—the device had been inside the Bulldog when it caught fire—let alone the Bulldog itself, or the drones she’d have to replace yet again.
I
t’s just part of life in the shadows, Hardpoint had told her once, after the first time repair costs had turned a run from a profit into a loss. This one was by far the biggest lost Emu had suffered as a result of a run, but it wasn’t the first, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last.
With that “comforting” thought in mind, Emu finally drifted off to sleep.
When the rigger woke up that afternoon, she was assaulted by the smell of something spicy. Her growling stomach propelled her into the safehouse’s kitchen area—and there, she saw Rude, sitting at the table with a pile of Taco Temple double-stuffed tacos in front of him. When the troll heard Emu enter the room, he looked up from his meal. “Yo.”
“Where the frag have you been, mate?” Emu’s surprise made her forget how hungry she was for a moment.
Rude shrugged. “Lookin’ into somethin’ I found at Elfy-Pants’ little warehouse party. Got a little shot up, an’ had to lay low for a while.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us?” Emu sauntered into the kitchen proper and retrieved a soybar from one of the cupboards. The tacos smelled damn good, but the rigger knew Rude and his troll-sized appetite weren’t big on sharing food. Hell, they’d be lucky if he didn’t start in on the soybars after the Aztláner food was gone.
“Nah, just bullets. Didn’t want y’all to start naggin’ me ’bout it. Already had seventeen messages tellin’ me to come here.” Rude grumbled toward the living room couch, where Zipfile was chilling as she surfed the Matrix in VR.
Emu snorted and plopped into the chair across from Rude. “Well, maybe they wouldn’t back up like that if you answered your bloody commlink once in a while. So what’s this thing you were looking into?”
Rude grunted around a mouthful of taco. “Tell you when FB and Elfy-Pants get here.”
“You heard from Frostburn?” Emu’s eyebrows shot up.
“Shorty did. Just said she was on her way. Elfy-Pants went to…fraggin’…” Rude paused for a moment, then growled and smacked himself in the forehead. “The food store.”
“Stuffer Shack?” Whatever accident was behind Rude’s amnesia caused other memory glitches sometimes, Emu knew.
Rude grunted an affirmative and went back to eating. Emu knew that was Rude-speak for “I have nothing more to say on this topic,” so rather than try to engage the troll further, she started browsing through the messages that had come in while she was asleep.
Most of them were spam and went straight to the bin, although Emu did send the “Tír Tairngire prince” who wanted her help moving his nuyen out of the country a fake SIN that had already been burned, purely to see whether Knight Errant would go after the scammers for accessing a credit account created under a fake name.
With the spam messages out of the way, Emu finally got to something useful: a text-only message from Lyara.
Several minutes passed before Lyara wrote back again. This time, her message led off with an angry-face icon.
The rigger shook her head at Lyara’s message. “Wow, rude.”
“Mm?” Rude looked up from his rapidly-shrinking pile of tacos.
Emu waved him off. “Nothing. Not you.”
“Huh?” Yu had naturally chosen that moment to return from Stuffer Shack, and as usual, Emu hadn’t heard the elf enter the room.
“Never mind.” The rigger sighed, but immediately perked up when she saw another figure enter behind Yu. “Frostburn!”
The ork magician waved. “Hey, gang. There a spare bed around? I haven’t slept since…yeah.” Emu could practically see fatigue gumming up the gears inside Frostburn’s head.
“Coffins, yeah. Right-hand door,” Emu said, pointing to the bedroom.
“Thanks. Oh, here. From Renraku.” Frostburn fished a commlink out of her pocket and tossed it at Yu, apparently having forgotten that the elf’s hands were full, then shuffled off to the room Emu had indicated. Luckily, Yu was able to catch the flying device with his foot before it hit the ground, kicking it up into the air like a hacky sack so it fell into one of the grocery bags.
Emu glanced at the others as she lit a cigarette. “You want to wait to talk until she wakes up?”
“Nah, fill her in later,” Rude said, balling up his bag full of taco wrappers and tossing it into a nearby bin. Emu nodded and pinged Zipfile in the Matrix. The dwarf joined the others at the kitchen table a few minutes later, and Rude continued. “That thing I said I was lookin’ into? The same guys who tried to geek Elfy-Pants at the warehouse also geeked a bunch of Renraku wageslaves.”
Emu frowned. “From what my contact told me, it was a real HTR team at the warehouse.”
“Or they hacked Knight Errant’s dispatch system to cover their tracks,” Yu suggested.
“Not likely.” Zipfile shook her head. “Ares might not be a ‘Matrix corp’ like Renraku, but they still have wiz security on their most important systems. Hacking KE dispatch would be hard enough that a lot of deckers would only do it to say they could.”
“Besides, you saw what they brought to the warehouse,” Emu added. “Anyone with the nuyen to kit out three or four Roadmasters’ worth of HTR troopers and the helicopter that came after us might as well just bribe someone at Knight Errant. If I can afford it, they sure as hell can.”
Yu raised an eyebrow. “Your guy sold you out, remember?”
“That’s not the point, and you know it.”
“Fine, fine.” Yu raised a hand to concede the argument. “The only thing I got out of Myth’s guy was that he’s no help. He just said he didn’t know of any ops they were running against Telestrian.”
Rude grunted. “Maybe he’s lyin’.”
“Maybe. I wish I could say I’d have known if he was, but I thought that about our Johnson, too,” Yu admitted.
“Don’t worry about it,” Zipfile said. “Lying is what the corps do. That’s how they keep people under their thumbs.”
“You could ask him to run the name my contact gave me. Haruki Satou,” Emu said.
Yu shook his head. “The guy I met referred to himself as ‘Satou,’ too. I think that’s just the name Renraku Johnsons when they meet with runners.”
“Don’t worry, chummers. I already found the Johnson.” Zipfile grinned, smug as a Tír-born elf. Emu and Yu both gaped at her, and Rude even raised an eyebrow at the dwarf.
“So we had three different commlinks for this guy, yeah?” she continued. “The one Yu called to arrange a meeting after the run at Telestrian, the one the Johnson used to call 911 at the warehouse, and the one he used with the assassin that went after Emu. So, I pinged some of Frostburn’s old co-workers at NeoNET to see if they still had access to the routing data for Seattle’s grid, pulled the GPSs of the burner commlinks during those calls, and got some friends to help me check the GridGuide logs.” An image of an SK-Bentley luxury sedan—probably from a surveillance camera, Emu guessed, judging by the high angle—appeared above the table. “Is this your car?”
Emu whistled. “It will be if we steal it. We can do that, right?”
“Chummers, meet Simon Dennis, Renraku spy and former CEO of Rip Current Sea Lanes. He’s—” The dwarf broke off suddenly, frowning. “Is everyone else getting that call?”
In the same moment Zipfile asked, an incoming-call notification popped up in Emu’s AR field, claiming to come from a private commcode. The four runners nodded to each
other, then picked up the call in unison.
The avatar that appeared was of an elven man in a business suit, wearing the kind of bemused smile that Emu used to get from her father’s corporate superiors.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” he said, words tinged with a mild but obvious Tír Tairngire lilt. “My name is Mr. Johnson, and I work for Telestrian Industries. It’s come to my attention that you carried out an operation against this corporation several days ago, one which has inflicted significant financial burden on our company. I want to give you the opportunity to correct your mistake.”
The team shared a series of “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me” looks before Yu answered. “That’s generous of you, Mr. Johnson, but our team isn’t in the habit of undoing our own work—unless you’re offering us compensation for doing so.”
Mr. Johnson smiled. “That depends. Would you consider an opportunity for revenge against the man who’s been trying to kill you ‘compensation’?”
If Yu had some kind of reaction to the elf’s words, he didn’t let it show. “I’m afraid I’m not sure what you’re talking ab—”
“Let’s not waste any time beating around the bush, shall we? A Renraku operative named Simon Dennis, whom you know as ‘Mr. Miller,’ hired you to infiltrate the Telestrian Industries headquarters on Denny Way and plant malicious code inside our corporate host. You did so, and when you went to collect your payment, he double-crossed you and sent Knight Errant to kill you instead. Much to his chagrin, you survived not only that attempt on your lives, but several further attempts against various members of your team. So, I ask you again: Would you consider the opportunity for revenge against ‘Mr. Miller,’ the man who’s been trying to kill you, ‘compensation’?” Mr. Johnson raised his eyebrows expectantly.
The team shared another round of glances. “We’d be open to the idea,” Yu said.
“Splendid. Meet me at the Viridian Gardens at nine o’clock tonight, and we’ll discuss the details. Don’t bother dressing for the occasion, I’ll send word to the front desk to allow you inside regardless.” Before any of the runners could respond, the Telestrian Mr. Johnson ended the call.
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