He threw a hammerfist at me high, and I ducked low and right, throwing my left arm forward into his gut. My muscles, San Francisco-made, not Toronto, lifted him off the ground and back into a startled group of near-famous people. I grabbed Honey’s arm, but just then Redstone started to get up. I clip-kicked him to the side of the head, dropping him again.
We moved through the crowd, pushing them aside when they were stupid enough to get in the way. Most of them thought the fireworks were part of the show and had no idea anything was wrong. They’d learn soon enough.
We reached Janey’s candy-cart and I let go of Honey for a moment. It took seconds for me to break through the false sides and pull out the prize within. A man asked for some cotton candy, but I ignored him.
I slung the pack and pulled the Ingram out of the side pouch. Again, I felt the cool thrill of the smart-circuits kicking in and the reassuring presence of the amber targeting spot. Honey stared in shock at the gun and then up at me. We hadn’t told her about the stashed weapons.
Grabbing her, I started moving again, this time for the stairs. Somewhere behind us, I could hear Redstone yelling and the responding howl of the crowd. They thought it was a live act. Fine, let them. I keyed Channel 1 and buzzed Raphe.
"Raphe, Liam. We’re roasted. I’m running your way with Honey. Over."
"Roger, Liam. We’ve got some heavy-security activity on this level, so watch yourself. Over."
"Roger, Raphe," We reached the stairs and I slammed us through, crashing into the Lone Star guard standing beyond them. He fell to his knees and I snap-kicked him once in the chest. He dropped and we kept moving. I keyed Channel 2. "Jack," I said. "Report. Over."
"Not now, Liam, they’re all over me like hair on an ape. I’m doggin' four of them in the music library processor."
I led us out onto the floor above the production level, intending to take a different stair down, just in case. I glanced back at Honey and caught the wild, raw look in her eyes. This wasn’t simsense. This was real.
I stopped suddenly, letting go of her hand. "Jack, where did you say you were? Over." I was staring at a door marked with the words "Main Library Systems."
"Not now, Liam. I’m getting seriously roasted here."
"Where are you, Jack?" I repeated.
"I’m in the fraggin' library processor! Now will you shut up!" he yelled.
My right foot shot out and hit the door just below the maglock, breaking it completely. I rushed into the darkened room and flipped my thermo-vision up. It was a tech room all right, lots of cold panels and terminals, and one red hot processor bay. "Jack," I said, "when I give the word, get the hell out of that processor."
"Dammit, Liam! I don’t have time to—"
"Jack, just do it. When I say so." I found the hottest section of the processor and lined up my red spot on it.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jack screamed.
"Now, Jack," I said and hosed my entire clip into the processor. Sparks flew and flame erupted as the optical chips ruptured and their focused energy ran loose. I ejected the clip and slammed another one home.
"HOLY GHOST!" he yelled. "What the hell did you do?! It’s like a firestorm in there! I think you dumped those four deckers!!"
"Remember, Jack, it may be slick-tech," I said humbly, "but it’s still just tech."
Suddenly, Honey made a sound deep in her throat and stepped into the room. I pulled her in farther, dropped low, and glanced into the hallway. Three guards were checking rooms about ten meters away, apparently unable to see that this door was open. I leaned back into the room, pulled an airfoil grenade from my pack, and keyed it for inertial go off. Once thrown, it would detonate only when its forward momentum was halted. Standing up, I motioned for Honey to stay where she was, as the sound of the gunfire and a series of small explosions reached us from the floor below.
Still standing. I glanced quickly into the half, got a bearing on my target, and spun, stepping into the hall and throwing the grenade with one motion. It sailed straight for the door jamb by the nearest guard, and I waited until it was halfway there before I yelled, "Hey Junior!" They all turned, surprised and the idiot guard reflexively reached out for the grenade It exploded. I grabbed Honey and ran the other way. not letting her look back.
We hit the stairway as Raphe signaled me that they had the master sense-chips and to meet on the roof. I looked back to be sure Honey was still with me. I had her by the arm, but wanted to make sure her brain didn’t flit out on me. It hadn’t and she even managed a weak smile as we climbed.
It took two kicks to break through the root door. I left Honey there and dive-rolled out onto the helipad. It was clear, and I waved Honey out. I Keyed in Channel 4.
"Let's do it, Aiiyee," I said
"Roger. One Dragon coming up."
The sound of automatic weapons fire echoed up from the stair as Janey. Raphe, and Witt burst from it. Seeing me. Janey turned and lobbed a ball-grenade back the way they’d come. The weapons fire stopped.
Honey collapsed into Witt's arms.
Smiling. Janey jogged over. "Aces?"
"Aces.’ I said.
Noise and wind roared around us as a huge, dark shape erupted up from below the roof line. Its maneuvering and landing lights flared on as it crested above us, then began to descend. Within seconds of its appearance, the Ares Dragon was ready to land.
"That’s our one," Raphe said and began to walk toward the roof edge. We followed, Janey and I both guiding Witt and Honey.
Confused, Witt said, "Jack told me we were going out by Dragon!"
I nodded. "He lied."
"But. He looked back as the Dragon touched down briefly, paused, and then shot skyward.
"Besides." I said. "It ain’t a real Dragon."
We reached the edge and had just crouched low, when a pair of Lone Star one-man Wasps banked hard from between two nearby buildings and shot past the Dragon. They split left and right, then roared by it again, this time tracking their forward chain guns at the helicopter.
"How the hell will we get down? Fly?" Honey demanded, as a group of men burst from the stairwell. There were a number of Lone Stars, including Redstone, plus a couple of suits who were probably MegaMedia execs. They were gesturing wildly at the Dragon.
"I’m not, but you are," I said, much to her surprise. Janey had thrown back some concrete-colored tarp and handed me a rappelling harness and line. We threw them on as Raphe shuffled over to Witt and Honey.
"I'm taking you down," he said. "The hard way." Gunfire erupted as the Lone Star guards fired on the retreating Dragon. The Wasps made one last pass, then opened fire as well.
Honey stared open-mouthed. "They’re shooting at it . . ."
I nodded. "You are worth one-billion nuyen a year to them. Honey. They ain’t gonna just let you walk."
Raphe grabbed them both, stood up and walked to the ledge. "Let’s go," he said. "Up on the ledge." He jumped up and pulled them with him. Holding each of their hands, a soft purple glow flowed from his arms onto their bodies as they stepped off and were swallowed up by the darkness.
I looked at Janey and smiled. "Aces."
She nodded and we watched as the Dragon begin to cough smoke and sputter flame. It also began to lose altitude, but suddenly put on a burst of speed and turned toward the harbor and the towering Aztechnology pyramid. One of the Wasps fired a long burst into it. raking it hard near the rear engine. Dense smoke poured out as the rear rotor cut out entirely and the helicopter began to drop. It impacted five meters inside the Aztechnology perimeter and erupted in a ball of flame nearly as high as the pyramid itself. Debris rained across a quarter of downtown Seattle.
The chopper was a phony, a military decoy used for training and target practice. Aztechnology would examine the wreckage that went down on their property, and easily learn that it was only a drone. Odds were, however, they’d be so mad at MegaMedia that they wouldn’t tell them until it was too late. We had our fingers crossed that the Aztechs would
n’t notice it was one of their own drones, courtesy of an unnamed friend.
"Time to go." said Janey, and we, too, dropped over the edge. It took us less than a minute to reach the ground.
We detached and quickly touched the ropes with a chemical stick Janey was carrying. Immediately, a reaction began in the ropes that would ignite the whole length of it, clamps and all. Molecularly unstable, it dissolved in minutes.
A Dominion Pizza delivery van sat not ten meters away. Grinning. I raced Janey to it.
She beat me easy.
WOULD IT HELP TO SAY I’M SORRY?
by Michael A. Stackpole
Smoke hung in the air of the Jackal’s Lantern like fog rolling off a toxic waste pond. Hanging down from the ceiling, glowing plastic pumpkin heads filled the thick vapor with a lurid orange hue that defined and shaped the varied streams and eddies floating through the room. The smoke stank mostly of illegal substances, both organic and synthetic, but nearest the door where Tiger Jackson and Iron Mike Morrissey stood, car exhaust and the moist scent of rotten garbage held sway.
Jackson let the door slide shut behind him and watched as the draft dented the smoky curtain between the entrance way and the rest of the tavern. Off to the right, patrons lined the bar, packed cheek to jowl like puling kittens fighting to suckle at oblivion’s teat. Further in, as far as he could peer through the gray interior, Jackson saw people seated around tables built from old telephone cable drums or pieces of wood nailed to battered oil barrels. Items ranging from car fenders twisted into curlicues to pieces of mannequins adorned with barbed-wire jewelry decorated the posts holding up the ceiling.
Iron Mike let a big smile light his face as he turned to his partner. "And you were thinking, were ya. that this was not the sort of place for setting up a meet with a Mr. Johnson."
Tiger shook his head and laughed at Mike’s sarcasm. "The air itself will take the starch out of his suit. I suppose meeting him on our turf is good, but I’m not so sure the Lantern is our turf anymore."
Iron Mike shrugged off Tiger's concern like a light rain and wandered nonchalantly into the room. Tiger followed, then slipped into the alcove Mike had chosen, taking the bench on the left side of the table. Resting his back against the wall, he put his right leg up on the bench and let the folds of his kevlar-lined longcoat hide the sawed-off shotgun holstered on his right thigh.
A bleached-blond waitress surfaced through the smoke to appear in the mouth of their alcove. She wore her hair gathered in a ponytail high on her head and had whitened her features with powder, except around her eyes, nose, and mouth. The hollow-eyed look of her face was accentuated by the downward-pointing triangles of black make-up surrounding each eye. Her nose was similarly hidden in a dark triangle, and black lipstick outlined her mouth. The tattered T-shirt— strategically dipped off one shoulder—and her dirty, ragged black dress added to the impression that she had been hired only after being seasoned by a stint in the grave.
Despite her ghoulish appearance, the woman smiled warmly. "Iliya Mike, Tiger. Been a while. Whatcha having?"
Iron Mike gave her a big smile and folded his hands behind his head. "Ah, Pia, my love, just seeing you again is enough to satisfy me, but I’ll take a Green River Pale to cut the dust in me throat."
Pia wrinkled up her cute nose and shivered excitedly. "I just love your accent." She threw a wink at Morrissey, then turned to his dusky companion. "And you. Tiger?"
Tiger shot a disgusted glance at his friend, then growled in the low tones of his namesake. "Give me what the lepercaun ordered."
"Back in a flash," she laughed and disappeared into the mist.
Tiger sighed heavily. "I just love your accent!" he mimicked.
Iron Mike chuckled at his partner’s raspy falsetto. "Oh, lad, jealousy doesn’t become you. And it’s leprechaun."
"Fake as all hell is what it is." Tiger narrowed his mechanical amber eyes. "I knew you long before you dreamed up this ‘refugee from Ireland’ tale. You're a lepreconman, that's what you are."
Mike stretched, easing out some of the kinks created by the dermal armor implanted in his body. "Tiger, you just knew me before I was willing to admit I was a refugee from the Emerald Isle."
Tiger shook his head, but couldn’t keep from grinning. "Then how come your accent and that story showed up around the same time?"
"Details, laddie-buck, details. You can figure I am faking it now, or you can assume I was disguising my accent until I felt I was in the clear."
Tiger flashed his teeth in a feline snarl. "I’ll bet if someone woke you up in the middle of the night, you’d speak plain Towntalk like the rest of us."
"If you need a volunteer to do the waking, I get off in a couple of hours." Pia offered as she returned with their beers.
Mike accepted his and raised it in a salute to her. "Ach, lass. I’ll have to pass on your offer tonight because my friend and I have some business to attend to. In a night or two, however, I think we can arrange something."
She handed Tiger his bottle, then clutched the tray to her chest. "I’ll check my social schedule and make a date." She smiled at Tiger, "But don’t expect me to be the solution to your mystery. I'm not the sort to kiss and tell. That’s five-fifty."
Mike fished a ten-nuyen coin from his pocket and snapped it down on the table, his thumb pressed firmly against Hirohito’s profile. "Save the rest forcabfare to my place, darlin’." Pia snatched up the coin and again retreated into the smoke. Tiger took a pull on his beer, then frowned at his partner. "I can’t believe how freely you spend the money we work so hard to earn."
Iron Mike shrugged. "I give it to the colleens and you give it to your sister. We’re both throwing it away. Easy come, easy go."
"It’s not the same." With his thumbnail, Tiger traced the initials someone had carved into the table. Anger pulsed through him, a ripple through his shoulders and arms that snapped out the razorclaws planted beneath his fingernails. He gouged more wood from the tabletop. then forced himself to relax and retract the claws. "Sorry. You’re not so wrong." Mike grabbed Tiger’s wrist and gave it a squeeze. "No offense meant. I envy you your roots here in Seattle. At least you have some family. I don’t know if my kin are alive or dead—and I don’t imagine as they know or care the same about me."
Tiger noticed the sharp contrast between Mike's pale skin and his own ebon flesh. "Different races, different mothers, but somehow I think you’re my only real family."
Mike’s head came up. "Your sister’s old man slapping her around again?"
"He's a simsense junkie," Tiger shrugged. "There are times he can’t tell reality from the tapes and he gets carried away. LaVonne says she loves him and he provides for the kids, so she won't listen when I tell her to get away from him."
Iron Mike removed his right hand from Tiger’s wrist and used it to pick up his beer in one slow, smooth motion. Tiger instantly recognized his partner's shift into "trouble mode" and turned to face the alcove opening. Approaching their table from across the room were four youths. Their leader, a cadaverously thin man, was made-up as a grimmer match to the jack-o'-lanterns lighting the room than even Pia was. The black makeup around his mouth gave him a block-toothed frown that hid his thin lips.
Even though both of them belonged to the Halloweeners, Tiger sensed, as he assumed his partner had, that these four were not out to greet them as friends. They’re stiff and tense, like they expect a fight. Tiger made a great show of lifting his bottle to his mouth with his left hand while his right hand surreptitiously snaked down and freed the shotgun from its holster.
Charles the Red tossed lanky hair back from his face with a spasmodic jerk of his head. "What are you two doing here?" He looked ready to spit on them, but merely kept his face screwed up with contempt.
Mike's green-eyed stare raked over the scarecrow figure of a man, then darted to each of his three subordinates. "Well, Charles, it would appear to me that we’re here having a drink, all casual like. Now I’m getting the feeling, in y
our eyes, there’s something wrong with this?"
Charles rubbed one finger over the lump of bone where his nose had once been broken. "Yeah. We don't allow Doc Raven’s men in here. Get out."
Mike looked over at Tiger and laughed, but Tiger was glowering. In deference to his partner, Mike canned his mirth, then spitted Charles with a nasty stare. "Start making some sense or move along. Not only are you sucking up the only good air in the place, but we have a business meeting scheduled here. Raven's men, us? What the hell are you talking about?"
The Halloweener leader folded his arms across his chest. "Word on the street says you helped Wolfgang Kies and Raven rescue some elven princess from La Plante’s gang. Kies is a mortal enemy of ours and so is Raven. You work for them, you’re one of them. We don't want Raven’s chummers in here, got it?"
Tiger barely noticed Mike’s chuckle as anger built in him. Mike slapped the table with his open hand. "You hear that. Tiger? Charles thinks we’ve abandoned the Halloweeners because we're part of Raven’s group. Ha!"
"You took their money ..."
Mike shifted around to display both shoulders of his long-coat. "Do you see a Raven patch on this jacket or on Tiger's coat? We’ve taken all sorts of people’s money, that doesn’t make us part of their organizations. Our chummers from RJR Nabisco-Sears haven’t asked us around for punch and cookies even though we did a job for them."
Iron Mike’s voice downshifted into a slightly more menacing tone. "Furthermore, boyo, if you’d checked with your treasurer, you’d know we turned over the gang’s 10 percent to you out of the nuyen Wolf paid us."
Charles sneered down at the two street samurai. "We don’t take money from gillettes in Raven’s gang."
"Enough!" Tiger shifted around and slid from the alcove with the grace and speed of a sidewinder rippling across the sand. Before Charles had a chance to react. Tiger jammed the double-barreled gun under his chin. "Open your ears, dogpuke! We did a job for Raven because the money was good. We got paid off and that’s it. No further connections, no further commitments. That’s the end."
Into the Shadows Page 21
