Good cop, bad cop. It always worked. She saw the potential resistance vanish from Falcon’s eyes. “What were you doing there?” she repeated.
“I came with them,” he muttered. “The Amerindian runners.”
Modal shot her a sharp look. So he is an enemy after all, Sly thought. She saw Modal slip his finger onto the trigger of the kid’s own Fichetti.
The kid was still talking. “I found out it was a setup. It was never a meet, it was always an ambush. But I couldn’t do anything about it, they’d have geeked me.”
“Hold the phone,” Sly said, more to Modal than the kid. Looking a little disappointed, the elf lowered the Fichetti. “Get your story straight here. What—exactly— is your connection with the Amerinds who set me up?”
Falcon launched into a weird, scattered story about meeting a wounded Amerindian shadowrunner, helping him get to a rendezvous with his chummers after a hosed run. When the runner croaked, the kid had thrown in his lot with the others to make sure that the dead runner’s last wishes were carried out. Or something.
Modal caught her eye, shook his head. The story didn’t sound credible. People didn’t get involved in major shadowruns just because some stranger flatlined in their arms.
No, that wasn’t necessarily true. Kids might. Kids whose only ideas about shadowrunning came from the trid or from simsense. She looked into Falcon’s eyes again. She thought he was telling the truth.
The kid still hadn’t finished. “The meet was an ambush from the start,” he repeated. “Then the drek hit the fan, and the runner ‘bodyguarding’ me thought I’d sold them out. He was going to geek me. So I shot him and took his AK. Then I just wanted to bug out. I was heading for the fence when I met you.”
That hung together too, Sly thought. When she'd first seen the kid, he didn’t seem comfortable or familiar with the assault rifle, as though he’d just picked it up a few seconds before.
”So just what happened when the meet crashed?” she asked.
Falcon shrugged.”First thing I knew, something blew the drek out of Benbo.” (That had to be the heavily armored samurai guarding the leader.)
”Slick thought it was something you’d set up, but I saw your face when Benbo keeled. You were as surprised as anyone.” He hesitated, then asked,”What the frag was that? Magic?”
”I think I got it figured,” Modal answered.”It took me a while. Sly, you ever hear of a Barret?”
She thought for a moment, shook her head.
”It’s old,” the elf continued,”maybe nineteen-eighties or nineties. But it’s the ultimate sniper rifle.
”It’s a big thing. Bolt action, single-shot. But it’s chambered for fifty-caliber rounds. Bloody fifty-cal machine gun rounds, mate. It’ll take any standard MG ammunition-military ball, tracer, explosive, SLAP, APDS, white phosphorous—and it’s accurate at a klick and a half. A good sniper can squeeze off three shots before the first hits.”
She remembered seeing the gaping hole blasted right through the Amerindian samurai. She shuddered.”Fifty-cal explosive rounds ...”
”I don’t think those were explosives,” Modal corrected.”More like APDS tipped with depleted uranium. The ultimate anti-armor round. The slug hits anything solid—like armor—and the kinetic energy pushes the uranium over the activation threshold. It catches fire, and it burns at more than two thousand degrees Celsius.” He grinned nastily.”Enough to bloody well ruin the day of any street sammy, if you ask me.”
In her imagination, Sly could still see the fireball burning in the Amerindian’s chest before it burst out of his back. “That’s serious drek,” she murmured. With an effort she turned her attention back to Falcon. “So who was it took out your chummers?”
“They’re not my chummers,” he corrected her quietly. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Corp teams,” Modal put in. “Like I said.”
“Let’s get back to the Amerindians,” Sly suggested. “I don’t suppose they told you why they were after me.”
“Sure,” Falcon said, nodding his head vigorously. “Nightwalker told me. Lost tech, from the crash.”
Sly and Modal exchanged glances. She hesitated, afraid to ask the next question—the key question. “Did he say what lost tech?” she inquired slowly.
“Sure,” the kid repeated. “Fiber optics.”
* * *
The kid continued to explain for several minutes. When he was finished. Sly found herself just staring at him. Shocked. Tox, she thought. No wonder the corps are going to war. The ability to tap into a competitor’s supposedly secure communications. More than that, to change the flow of data. She knew how prevalent was fiber-optic communication. Everything used it. The LTG system, the Matrix. Dedicated corporate and government datalines, too, because light lines were supposed to be immune to tapping. Even military channels, for frag’s sake, because fiber optics would be unaffected by the electromagnetic pulse if anyone set off a nuke in the upper atmosphere.
How many trillions of nuyen had been invested in this “ultra-secure” technology? There was no way that the megacorps, the governments, could switch everything to another medium of communication, not immediately. And during the transition phase, whoever had the technology Falcon described could quite literally control every facet of a competitor’s communications. To gain that kind of advantage—or to avoid that kind of disadvantage—the corps would do anything. Even go to war.
She looked over at Modal. He understood the enormity of it, too. She could see it in his eyes. “Jesus,” he breathed. “Sharon Louise ...”
“I know.” She stared at Falcon for a few more moments. The kid met her gaze steadily.
“I want to work with you,” he said at last. He was obviously trying to keep the fear and tension out of his voice, but wasn’t doing a very good job.
Modal snorted. Sly ignored the elf. “Why?” she asked.
“Nightwalker wanted to do the right thing with the information when he got it,” the kid explained. “He wanted to destroy it so nobody could use it. He wanted to rat the corp that was doing it to the Corporate Court in Zurich-Orbital.
“I think Knife-Edge had other ideas,” Falcon went on. “I think he wanted to keep it for himself. Use it himself, maybe, or sell it to the highest bidder.” He shook his head. “Nightwalker didn’t want that.
“You’ve got the information,” he said quietly. “What are you planning to do with it?”
And that was the big question, wasn't it? Sly thought. Destroying the encrypted file and all the information it contained—that was obviously the best choice on the global scale. But on the personal level it was no answer at all. She'd know she’d destroyed the file, but how would the corps know? I could tell them, and of course they’d believe me, yeah, right. No, with a prize this important, even the slightest chance—no matter how remote—that she hadn’t destroyed the file, that she’d kept a copy, and the corps would stay on her trail. Eventually they'd grab her and torture her to death to confirm to their own satisfaction she was telling the truth. And even if they did believe she’d destroyed it, they’d still keep after her for much the same reason. When suitably “motivated,” maybe she could remember some details from the file that might let them steal a march on their competitors.
No, destroying the file wasn’t the obvious solution it seemed.
“What are you going to do?” Falcon asked again.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I haven’t found the answer yet.”
“I want to help you find it.”
Modal snorted again. Again Sly ignored him. “Why? It’s not your fight.”
Watching the kid’s face, she could see the real answer that was ringing in his head. Because his friend Nightwalker would have wanted it this way. Fuzzy-headed, sentimental, over-emotional drek!
At least the kid didn’t say it out loud. He shrugged. “Because it’s important,” he said slowly. “And because you’ll need all the help you can get.”
A las
er painted the side of Falcon’s face. Modal had the Fichetti raised, ready to blow the kid’s head off.
“No, Modal,” she snapped, forcing the whip-crack of command into her voice.
He didn’t lower the gun, but neither did he pull the trigger. “He’s a liability, Sly,” the elf said emotionlessly.
“No. I’m an asset." The kid jumped on the last word like it had some real significance to him.
And Sly had to agree with him. “Leave him,” she said quietly to Modal. “Until I say otherwise, he’s with us.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“It’s mine to make.”
“Not if it gets me scragged, too,” Modal said. But he lowered the pistol, slipped it into his pocket.
That was one advantage of the pills, Sly had to admit. No bulldrek male ego, no worry about saving face. “I want to get out of here,” she said.”We need wheels. Modal, can you boost us a car?”
* * *
Driving the stolen Westwind back to the Sheraton, Modal groused about leaving his bike behind, but Sly knew he was just blowing off steam. He understood as well as she did that going back to pick up the bikes would be too much of a risk. She’d wondered idly whether Mongoose had ever made it out of the killing zone. She’d have to call Argent when she got a chance to update him on what went down. And to tell him that at least one of his boys wasn’t coming home.
The kid who called himself Falcon had ridden in the back with her. Grudgingly, Modal had followed Sly’s instructions and cut off the restraints, but only after subjecting the Amerindian to something only one step away from a strip search.
Now the car was abandoned in the underground parkade of the Washington Athletic Club, across the street from the Sheraton, with the AK-97 in the trunk. Modal had bitched about that, too, but hadn’t had an answer when Sly asked him how he expected to smuggle the assault rifle into the hotel. He knew as well as she did that the Sheraton’s weapons detectors would pick up their handguns, Modal’s Ingram. As in most better-class hotels, the security personnel would simply have recorded that the guests in rooms 1203 and 1205 were carrying “personal defense devices.” But the matter wouldn’t be so routine if the electronics suite were to pick up the AK concealed under somebody’s coat.
The clock on the bedside table of room 1205 read oh-four-fifty-one. Only two hours since they’d left the hotel for the meet. It felt more like days.
The kid, Falcon, flopped down in an armchair. In the brighter light, he looked younger than she’d originally thought, no older than fifteen. And he looked tired, like he hadn’t slept in days. His face was pinched, his olive complexion pale.
“You want to crash out?” she asked. “Use the bed in the other room.”
He nodded, then asked hesitantly, “Is there anything to eat?”
She glanced over at Modal. “Why don’t you call room service?” she suggested. “Get some food up here for all of us. I’ve got to make a call.”
She could see that Modal wanted to argue—he obviously still thought the kid was a liability—but he held his tongue. She shrugged. As the elf had said, keeping the kid with them was her mistake to make. Despite his misgivings he was going along with her.
She sat down on the bed of room 1203, keyed in Agarwal’s LTG number.
“Have you seen the news?” was the ex-decker’s first question when he answered the phone and saw who it was.
“Not really.” Modal had turned on the radio in the stolen car, but Sly hadn’t really given the news report much attention. She wracked her brain, trying to remember what the significant stories had been. Gang clashes, random street violence . . . But what had Argent said? The gangs weren 't involved, and the violence was neither random nor unmotivated. She felt cold. “It’s starting, isn’t it?” she asked Agarwal.
Agarwal didn’t answer her question directly, but his serious expression was communication enough. “As of about five minutes ago,” he said quietly, “there have been no more reports of anything that could be corporate violence in the news media. And any descriptions of such events in the current affairs databases were erased. What does that tell you, Sharon?”
A lot. Fear twisted within her, but she forced a chuckle. “I guess it doesn’t mean it’s all over, huh?”
“What it tells me," Agarwal went on, as though she hadn’t spoken, “is that the metroplex government— possibly backed by the federal bureaucracy—has issued a ‘D Notice’, an official gag order. Add to that the fact that just before your call, a voice-only announcement from Governor Schultz was broadcast on all trid and radio channels, and posted in all datafaxes and news-bases.” He snorted. “At five to five in the morning, I assume the voice was synthesized. The illustrious governor is rarely known to rise before ten.”
“What did Schultz say?” Sly asked.
“That all of the untoward gang and street violence has come to an end,” Agarwal said bleakly. “That the government has stepped in. That everything is back to normal, and that no citizen of the metroplex should fear for his or her safety.” He snorted again. “As if the government could guarantee that in a corporate war.” He shook his head. “All members of government are liars. They are consummate liars, they lie continuously. They know that we know that they lie, but they lie just the same. And then they talk about their honor.”
The ex-decker chuckled wryly. “Forgive me my political digressions.” He sighed. “I blush to inform you I have yet to break the file completely.”
“I don’t know that it matters so much anymore,” she admitted. “You were right, it’s lost tech. And now I know exactly what.” As efficiently as possible, she briefed him on what Falcon had told her.
When she was finished, Agarwal looked pale, shaken. “So the Concord of Zurich-Orbital is about to collapse?”
She shrugged. “It didn’t seem to do much good,” she said. “Yamatetsu was still working counter to it, and I guess the rest of the corps were too.”
“Yes, yes,” Agarwal brushed that off. “But there is more to the Concord than just the matter of fiber optics, Sharon. Much more. It is perhaps the most wide-ranging agreement the megacorporations have ever entered into with each other.
“The Concord has provisions covering most facets of communications technology,” he went on. “You know that most of the zaibatsus have their own satellites, communication and otherwise? Well, many of those satellites are thought to have sophisticated jamming circuits, or even anti-satellite—ASAT—capability, to destroy the communication assets of a competitor. Similarly, many megacorporations still carry out research into ‘core wars’—which, as I mentioned to you earlier, is viral warfare against a competitor’s computer systems.
“Of course, if any corporation were to use any of these capabilities—jamming, ASAT, or viral—there would be reprisals. Followed by counter-reprisals, followed by escalation. Followed by a level of—shall we say—‘digital bloodletting’ that no corporation would wish to even contemplate.
“That is the importance of the Concord, Sharon,” Agarwal concluded, “to prevent that. And it has worked, for more than twenty years. In 2041, an Atlanta-based corporation called Lanrie—a small player, its influence limited to the Confederated American States—infected a competitor in Miami with a tailored computer virus. Somehow the major zaibatsus found out about it. Under the terms of the Concord of Zurich-Orbital, and with the sanction of the Corporate Court, the megacorporations totally destroyed Lanrie. Shattered its financial structure. Destroyed its facilities and assets. Executed its Board of Directors. All as an object lesson. Since then nobody has actually practiced viral warfare.”
Sly was shaken to the core. Her skin felt as cold as if an icy draft were blowing through the room. “And the corps are ready to break the Concord?”
Agarwal nodded. “The Corporate Court is trying to call them back,” he explained, “like hunting dogs to heel. To remind them of the Concord, no doubt, and its importance. But—as I told you the last time we talked— the zaibatsus ar
e ignoring the Court’s edicts. The potential benefits of the prize—the lost technology—outweigh the potential dangers of breaking the Concord. Or so the megacorporations see it.”
She thought it through for a few moments. “Have they crossed the line yet?” she asked. “Has anybody passed the point of no return?”
“Not yet. But all are perilously close to the line. The situation is more unstable than ever before.”
“Can it be stabilized again?”
“Up to the point that one megacorporation makes a substantive, direct attack against significant assets of another,” Agarwal pronounced, “yes.”
“How?”
He fixed her with his tired eyes. “If we assume that the corporations remain on the precipice, and don’t go over before you can act,” he said slowly, “I think it all rests in your hands. In how you deal with the information you hold.
“The way I see it,” he continued, “you have two choices. The first is to destroy the information.”
That suggestion wasn’t new; she’d already considered it and discarded it. “It won’t work,” she told Agarwal. “Nobody would believe I’d destroyed it.”
“As you say,” he agreed.
“And the second choice?”
“If you can’t make sure that nobody gets the information,” he said, “then make sure everybody gets it. Disseminate it, publicize it, so that every megacorporation has equal access to the information. The only answer is to keep the playing field level and to make sure everyone knows it’s level. When one corporation, or faction of corporations, has an advantage—or is thought to have an advantage—then things are unstable. Do you understand, Sharon?”
She nodded slowly. In concept, it made perfect sense, it was simple. But . . . “How?” she demanded.
He spread his hands eloquently. Search me .. .
“And what if I don’t manage it?”
“Corporate war,” Agarwal stated positively. “The collapse of the world’s economy within a few days of its start. The first food riots probably wouldn’t occur for at least a week. The big question is whether civilian governments would have time to launch military action before they collapsed. I think any nuclear exchange would probably be quite limited. ...”
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