Shadowboxer

by Nicholas Pollotta

  The next day, heavily armed Slap Squads arrived to quickly spray-paint over any walls still standing in brilliant monotone colors of pink and blue. They’d also dropped a plasti-film covering over the destroyed structures so that the sprawl looked good to the tourists who still flocked to the coastal city for sun and tox-free surf.

  Looked good from the air, that is. But here on the cracked sidewalks and stinking streets no such illusion was maintained. Metacrabs infested the palm trees that lined the boulevards like chewed weeds, while gang graffiti and posters from simsense parlors or local boom bands layered the monotones into a jumbled collage, the plas strips sun-bleached and acid rain-washed until only sagging strips of rotting plas hung limply from the garish walls. At least the plasti-film roofs offered the starving squatters living in the ruins some meager protection from the deadly northern swamp rains.

  Only a couple of the barred shops and stores along the wide boulevard had walls strong enough and intact enough to keep out the metacrabs and devil rats, who regularly fought over anything edible that didn’t move, and thus these shops remained open for business, such as it was. The armored doors were propped ajar with jagged chunks of pink brain coral to entice customers to step in out of the heat. The sole exceptions were the always closed plate-steel doors of the Havana Gun Shop, and the Penguin Air Parlor, where a doubloon bought you five minutes of sweet, cold AC. And if some greedy gleeb tried to overstay, the AC was automatically cut until the other patrons threw you out. Whole or in pieces, their choice. But Thumbs liked the heat beating down on his bare chest, his ballistic vest flapping freely in the hot ocean breezes. A deep tan gave a nice contrast to his short white tusks, made a guy look healthy, and much harder to see when doing a run at night. Miami was a hot city. Always had been, always would be.

  These thoughts were suddenly interrupted when cries for help from an alleyway caught Thumb’s attention. Drawing the big Ares Predator from his inside holster, he checked the scan before going in. Not a tourist, or one of his Slammers. Not his concern then.

  What Thumbs saw was a terrified dwarf. Dressed in denims and loose cotton shirt, the halfer was backing away from a perfectly ordinary telecom unit, staring at the thing as if he fully expected it to spit acid at him. His hands were moving over his body in sharp slaps that Thumbs recognized as a military weapons search. Weapons against a phone?

  Startled, the dwarf jerked when he saw Thumbs, but that was only standard. Thumbs was big for any member of his race. An effect he cultivated by wearing cowboy boots with fifteen-millimeter heels, and lifting weights that would crush a norm.

  Ramming a hand into his pants pocket, the dwarf fumbled frantically for something, and Thumbs tensed his forearms in response, the carbide blades of his cyberware peeking a millimeter out of his forearms. The halfer couldn’t have a weapon, or else he’d have pulled it by now. Hey, that was a certified credstick the dwarf had just pulled out of his jacket and he was thrusting a stout arm toward the giant troll.

  “You, a hundred nuyen!” he barked in a barely controlled yell. “Shoot the telecom. Now!”

  Shoot the what? The notion was ludicrous, but even loonies had credsticks so Thumbs automatically said, “Two,” then after a split tick added, “fifty.”

  “Three!” shouted the dwarf frantically. “But DO IT NOW!”

  3

  Bending at his knees to adjust for angle, Thumbs brushed back his fringed vest and whipped out the Predator. The big autoloader thundered at his touch on its hair-trigger, and the telecom unit exploded in a blast of plastic, wiring, and chips. Then just to make sure, Thumbs pumped two more into the sparking equipment, finishing the destruction utterly.

  Only a couple of alley residents paid any attention to the bizarre event of terminating a telecom unit with extreme prejudice, as the mercs liked to say.

  “Thanks,” the dwarf almost wheezed in relief. Using a cuff to wipe the sweat from under his hat with one hand, he rummaged in a pocket with the other, unearthed a credstick, and tossed it to Thumbs, who made the catch with one hand.

  Thumbs winked as he slid the stick into his vest. “My pleasure,” he replied, jacking the slide on the massive handgun, chambering a fresh caseless round for immediate use. It was an old habit, hard learned in grim street fighting and not one he could ever, or would ever, forget.

  Without another word, the dwarf turned and began to move away as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run. But at the mouth of a garbage-strewn alley, he stopped and glanced over a shoulder. “Here’s a bonus download for ya, chummer. Hot data, fresh from the horse. Beat feet.”

  Faintly in the distance, Thumbs heard sirens sound. Already? For shooting a stinking telecom? Feeling his scalp prickly, he nodded his own thanks, then moved into the busy street, dodging traffic with practiced ease, his mind already conjuring the bounty of chemical and fleshy pleasures now available to him. Easiest nuyen he’d ever made. What a day this was! What! A! Day!

  * * *

  Maneuvering through the piles of garbage and duraplas crates filling the alleyway, Adam Two Bears left the troll behind and darted between the towering norm drunks and scraggly elf chippers vibrating to the secret rhythm of the wires in their brains. All ignored him. Not one tried to stop him or ask for a handout. Gunfire followed by a running person always meant real trouble and the only way you stayed breathing on the streets was to avoid it.

  Gods and demons, what had he gotten himself into? All this could happen while he was watching on a public telecom? Somebody had fragging wiped Sister Wizard while she was jacked into the fragging Matrix. And while he was fragging watching as he waited for her to jack out. With his own eyes he’d seen the IC fry first her deck and then her brain. Right there, big as life. The only good thing about it was that he’d been at a public telecom on the other side of town and not there in the doss with her.

  Frag and drek! Where had she been, in whose files? Somebody who didn’t like to be bothered. And it had to be somebody big. Atlantic Security? Gunderson? But the only person who could answer that question was a stiff still jacked into the smoking ruins of her Fuchi 9 with her brains dripping out of her ear. Gunderson was one of the most powerful multinationals in Miami. And being a corp like any other, they could easily have their fingers in just about anything.

  Congratulations, Two Bears admonished himself sourly. One hour on the job and his best decker was toasted. A new personal record. Gotta find someplace to twig this mess and get major backup ASAP.

  Stopping at the other end of the alleyway, Two Bears looked beyond the honking traffic at the telecom sitting there in plain sight. It was covered with graffiti and probably smelled like a lavatory, but the access light was bright on top, so it was still in operational condition. Help was only a call away. He could have a hundred runners here in minutes.

  Yet he hesitated to make a dash for the unit. Did he dare call any of his regulars? Rattlesnake, ChrisCross, Omni, Jimmy 2 Cool. Oh man ... if they could do that to Sister so quickly, then they had to know her telecom was on and where it was connected.

  Face facts, chumley, you panicked, he told himself. Maybe if god loves dwarfs, that big troll had destroyed the telecom before a trace could be done. But what if a decker someplace was able to follow the connection to the call box before Sister’s brain was fried? What if who-ever-the-frag they were—this so-called IronHell—were even now tracking him down, encircling, this neighborhood, ghosting his crib and known chummers? Going to any of his usual haunts could mean getting geeked big time. And anybody Two Bears knew might already be compromised by IronHell. Pros moved fast. Show up at Dogboy’s doss and his knock on the door could be answered by a shotgun blast in the throat.

  Forcing himself to stroll casually instead of run, Two Bears felt eyes watching him as he moved along through the tall bustling crowds. Desperately he searched for another dwarf, almost ready to call on a total stranger as long as it was one of his own kind, so great was his need. But only norms and trolls and orks filled the
street. Great. Just great. Tugging on his ear, Two Bears wondered what to do, where to go?

  He couldn’t keep himself from looking back over his shoulder, which caught the eye of a slotmachine girl in Amerind buckskin and feathers. She called out something suggestive to him, but he never heard the words, only the tone. “Necker,” he answered, to get rid of her fast. It was a trick that rarely failed. As expected, she recoiled in disgust. Few were the flesh peddlers who would hire out to somebody who liked doing the dead.

  Alone on the crowded sidewalk, Two Bears watched the second-floor windows for the silenced barrels of sniper rifles and thought furiously, plans coming and going like the locals around him. Maybe he should go back and find the troll. The slag had been happy enough to do something glitched like blow out a telecom for a credstick. He didn’t know the guy, but maybe he could trust him as far as he could pay him.

  Keeping his back to the wall, Two Bears pulled his hat down as far as it would go and moved on quickly. No, that was too chancy. And, beside, the moment for it was past. His only hope was moving fast. After that, he’d have to see what chance threw his way. Still sauntering casually, but moving steadily as if only mildly late for an appointment somewhere, he rounded the corner and headed east on SW Seventeenth Street.

  * * *

  Far out at sea, a merchant ship flying the flag of Aztechnology drifted randomly in the winds and currents of the Atlantic.

  Powerless, its twin rudders moving freely, the craft traveled wherever the ocean dictated. Mostly in circles. Occasionally, an ocean swell crested the foredeck and washed away another of the lifeless bodies lying in dark brown pools. Hundreds of spent shell casings first bumped into a wave prow, then noisily rained down the sticky steel stairs in the forecastle to scatter wildly on the smooth deck of the main open cargo hold, rolling about from wall to wall, encountering nothing to hinder their travels. Nothing except for a few ropes and chains and a humming Hercules lift, still idling along all by itself directly below the open armored hatch in the deck above.

  In the pilot house, the navigational computer was dark, the manual wheel spinning wildly with each wave. Lying in the hatchway leading to the chart room aft of the bridge were the charred remains of the captain and her XO, their weapons baked into the black bones of their ashen hands. And hiding under the captain’s desk was a dead ork cook with most of his chest missing, a score of round holes from the point-black shotgun blast riddling the antique cherry-wood. His brown-stained fingers were splayed wide from the shock of his violent demise. However, hidden behind the turning corpse was a single word painted on the desk from the wide stream of blood from the two fire-charred merchant officers.

  It was in Spanish ork, sea slang that was a mere meaningless squiggle to anybody not trained in the idiomatic, sub-tongues of colloquial metahuman dialects. When Aztechnology finally got a university philologist there, the scholar was able to read the crimson word as: Greetings.

  * * *

  Making it back to her apartment after learning what had happened to Blackjack, Laura Redbird found the lock destroyed and her doss in a shambles. The big table made from an industrial macroplas spool for holding wire was over in one corner next to the slashed ruin of the couch and the busted remains of the trideo. They had sure done a good job of trashing the place. Was it possible the word was already out that Redbird and Blackjack had both gotten geeked on a bad run? Everything of value was gone, and everything else was in pieces just in case it hid something of value. Not much remained intact, aside from doors and windows. Unless they’d somehow missed her stash.

  Kneeling down on the floor next to the spool table, Laura slid a kitchen knife along the old carpeting, following the pattern of the clean area that had been underneath the table. The canvas backing was tough, but the blade was sharp and with little effort she lifted away the patch, exposing the old hardwood flooring. Digging the knife point into the floorboards, she finally pried one up with a screech of rusty nails. With that opening established, the other boards came away much easier and soon she had a hole exposing the joints and joyces that supported the floor. Plus, an enlongated bundle of plastic and cloth wrapped with tape. Amateurs. They’d gotten some chips and clothing, but missed the good stuff.

  Ripping away the protective layers, Laura brought out a credstick showing a thousand nuyen, an old Colt revolver and ammo box—better than nothing, she supposed—a medkit, and her first real deck, a Fuchi 2 with the spare fiber-op cables still attached.

  First off, she checked the action of the Colt, then loaded the revolving internal steel cylinder by manually sliding in six individual .38 cartridges. Fragging thing wasn’t even autoloading or caseless, no smartlink, laser sights, nothing. Just a hunk of dead metal. But the oily bullets were explosive hollowpoints capable of blowing a norm’s head off or seriously getting the attention of a troll. It would do for today until she was able to boost, or if abso-fragging-lutely necessary, buy, something better.

  Armed, she slid the table in front of the door and checked to make sure the windows were locked. Nobody hiding in the closets or in the empty fridge. Satisfied that she was alone for the mo, Laura connected the Fuchi and ran a quick diagnostic check. The obsolete deck hummed happily as it took entire seconds to perform this simple task, but gave a go status reading of all operational parameters achieved.

  Everything took forever with this dinosaur, and the first thing she did was check her mail. Lots of notes posted there by friends and chummers who owed her on the down and dirty of the queered run last night. Most of it she knew from what she’d already picked up on the street. Blackjack was dead, shot, crushed, and burned. Ghost! Not even the yakuza kill you three times. Apparently a wetjob by their own Johnson, who’d attempted to disguise it as a counterstrike by another corp. Lone Star bought it ’cause they didn’t care, but the street was wise. Zapped by your own Johnson, every runner’s worst nightmare. The single flaw in the otherwise perfect wipeout was that Laura Redbird was still alive, and even though she didn’t know what the Johnson looked like, she did know that the slitch worked for the Gunderson Corporation. And while faces and even voices could change, Laura highly doubted anybody would take precautions to protect herself from a decker known to be dead.

  Gonna find you, omae, Laura vowed to the universe. And I’ll geek you on the spot right in front of your guards. BlackJack was much more than my bedpartner and fellow runner. Lovers may come and go, but we were friends. Something clean that even the sprawl couldn’t steal. But you did, Johnson. And my life isn’t going to start again until yours has ended, slot. End of trans.

  The ancient keyboard had only some basic programs in it. She couldn’t do anything fancy, but she could do one very important thing. Stored in this deck’s memory was an RTG number that would grant her legal access to the main datalines of the Miami grid.

  Who knew what number this was? Maybe an old lady who happened to mention it once or a local business that had used it in an ad or even the number of some poor slob who’d told her to call him in the morning. Wherever it came from didn’t matter because the line opened .. .

  . . . and she stood in one of the main datastreams leading into Miami. The data flowed around her like the rushing rapids of a river. After all that happened last night, now she was home. She belonged in the Matrix.

  She’d once programmed her persona into this old deck, and so she appeared in the consensual reality of the Matrix as a gleaming silver falcon. The icon a decker used was of his or her own choosing, and Laura used the modified totem of her Choctaw tribe.

  She knew she needed to get off such a public line; in the Matrix too much data could be as big a pain as too little.

  She’d never be able to navigate the data streams the way she wanted using this old deck, so she was going to have to hop out of this line and head for the private nodes. A few standard log-ons and log-offs and she was heading into the heart of Miami by an untraceable route.

  So far, this was mostly kosher. Bypassing the public link
s, she headed straight for the private business lines, hopping from connection to connection as she had a hundred times before when playing her favorite game. Soon Laura was alone as she penetrated deeper and deeper into potentially deadly corporate territory.

  In the angled distance, she spied the decahedrons of the Miami city gov, the irregular lumpy bubbles of the Gunderson Corporation’s data banks, and beside them, a collection of squat stumps covered with nasty-looking barbed thorns of no known function. It looked like the Gunderson deckers had been working overtime on either some new defensive IC or system alert. Either way, she’d note it. It might be of great interest next time she stopped off at the Virtual Cabana, a node where she and some of Miami’s randier shadow deckers liked to hang out.

  As much as she wanted to hit Gunderson directly to try and find out who’d set them up, she reluctantly turned away from the thorn structures and continued on, flying low through a forest of transparent flowering trees and jumbled cubes all color-coded for different public uses and departments.

  Now soaring high in the electron skies, Laura froze motionless in mid-air above the endless horizon of the Matrix. This area of the consenting hallucination of the world computer grid belonged to the Caribbean League Gov and vaguely resembled something by an ancient painter named Salvador Dali, a fave among deckers who’d created the initial sculptured programs.

  The ground was translucent red glass filled with billions of stars—databytes—that swirled and flowed like trapped galaxies of fireflies. Rising into the sky were polyhedron skyscrapers of shining green, so large they almost blotted the horizon. They were filled with myriad tiny triangular sections that constantly opened and closed as if a million tiny mouths were accepting or disgorging visitors—databytes—and venting white steam of unknown function. The writhing sky was a vista of quicksilver, endlessly flowing into itself and reforming nano by nano, a mad mirrored plane against which she hoped her own chrome icon was not discernible.