Tails You Lose

by Lisa Smedman

  "This is Rover. I'm starting my run."

  Using the aerial photo of the terminal she'd snapped earlier as a map, Alma jogged between the walls of containers, winding her way through the maze. They rose up on either side of her like gigantic, multicolored building blocks, a checkerboard of greens, brick-reds, blues, yellows and grays. Every second one seemed to be bright yellow, emblazoned in meter-high red Chinese characters with the words Swift Wind Cargo.

  When she was six minutes away from her target, she instructed Reynolds to start moving. He answered—but at that same moment lightning crackled overhead, filling her subdermal speaker with a burst of static. The thunder followed a second or two later. Alma's cyberears immediately compensated, damping the sudden burst of noise down to a level that didn't impede her hearing, but static continued to crackle in her implanted speaker each time a bolt of lightning flickered in the darkening sky. The rain drummed steadily down, soaking Alma's hair and chilling her bare face and fingertips.

  At the seven-minute, thirty-nine-second mark, she rounded the corner of a row of containers and spotted the one that was their target. The crane—which arched over the stack like a gigantic, upside-down U on wheels—lowered and spread metal jaws and locked them onto the dark blue container next to the target with a loud clang. Hydraulics whining, the crane lifted the blue container into the air and carried it toward the waiting ship.

  Squinting against the driving rain, Alma saw that the door of the Swift Wind container was clear. She sprinted the last few meters and leaped up into the air. Her fingers found the top of the container in the bottom row adjacent to the target, and she hauled herself up onto its roof in a fluid motion, swiveling her legs to the side so that she would land on her feet.

  The container was a soft-top, its canvas roof already starting to pool with rainwater. Alma's wired reflexes immediately compensated for the uneven footing, keeping her steady and level on the trampoline-like surface. Moving with the grace of an acrobat, she bounced her way across it to the door of the yellow container that was her target. She couldn't see the magical ward that had stopped Reynolds from entering; it was probably painted on the inside of the container. She listened, letting her hearing amplification detect any noise that might be coming from inside. The only thing she heard was a soft, steady beeping—probably the stabilization unit.

  The door of the container was sealed with a heavy padlock and a numbered squealstrip. The former was a simple mechanical lock that could easily be removed with bolt cutters—but the squealstrip would emit an ear-piercing wail if the metal strip was severed.

  Alma pulled a finger-thin spray can of quick-hardening foam from the tool bag on her chest and sprayed a healthy wad of it around the squealstrip's built-in speaker. She counted off the thirty seconds it took to dry, using the time to pull out her bolt cutters and extend their collapsible handles. When thirty seconds were up she flicked a fingernail against the bright blue foam to test its hardness and then cut through the squealstrip. The foam worked beautifully—the only sound was a muffled squeak, and even that noise was lost in the low rumble of thunder overhead. She cut through the padlock and set it aside, and then stood and pushed back the lever that would release the door.

  "Rover to Observer. I'm about to access our target. What's your ETA?"

  She heard Reynolds whisper a curse before he answered. "Sorry. Took a wrong turn. ETA is . . . ah . . ." She heard the rustle of his sleeve as Reynolds consulted his wristwatch.

  "ETA is one minute, max."

  Alma's ears easily picked up the sound of the van's engine. Behind it, she could hear another vehicle—one that had a higher pitch similar to the Ford Americars that the Port of Vancouver Security used. At the same moment, Schell's voice came over the speaker behind her ear.

  "Base to Rover and Observer. You'd better move quickly or you'll have company."

  Alma had intended to wait for Reynolds before opening the door, in case the container was magically guarded. With Port of Vancouver Security on its way, she didn't have that luxury. She hauled on the heavy container door, dancing lightly back on the springy canvas as it opened.

  The load inside the Swift Wind container had shifted during its transport to the terminal—Alma's cyberears caught the sound of cardboard sliding on cardboard, and then a wall of boxes crashed out of the open door. The canvas top of the container on which Alma stood bowed under their weight, stretching downward as it filled with tearing cardboard and clattering cans—and then the lashings that held it gave way, whipping out of their holes.

  As soon as the canvas bowed enough for her feet to find purchase on the contents of the container below, Alma sprang to one side. She flipped once in midair, bringing her feet under her as her body twisted, and landed on the container's rim. As the boxes finished tumbling into the container below her, she ran lightly along the edge toward the Swift Wind container. Dangling out of its open door, its weight supported only by a shifting pile of tin cans and broken boxes, was the stabilization unit: a gigantic plastic case colored hospital green, with monitors and condition-indicator lights flashing on its sides.

  The stabilization unit teetered for a moment and then fell with a crash into the container below. Alma's heart lurched as she thought of Gray Squirrel being jostled about inside, but then logic took over. The stabilization unit was designed to be shipped from hospital to hospital. A few bumps and bangs wouldn't hurt it—or the man inside.

  Tires hissed to a stop on the pavement below Alma. She glanced down and saw Reynolds peering up at her through the van's windshield. His eyes searched the open end of the Swift Wind container, and his lips moved.

  Alma heard his voice in her radio: "Where's the target?"

  "It fell down inside," she answered, pointing. "Get up here, where you can see it. Hurry!"

  The shaman flung open the driver's door and did as instructed, scrambling up onto the roof of the van. From that vantage point, he was able to peer over the lip of the canvas-topped container and get a line of sight on the stabilization unit.

  Reynolds began to chant, arms bent at his sides in a posture reminiscent of wings about to unfold. As he slowly extended his arms, fingers spread wide like feathers, the stabilization unit lifted into the air. Alma wasted no time watching it, instead shouldering the Swift Wind container's door shut to cover their tracks and then leaping lightly down to the ground to wrench open the double doors at the back of the van. As Reynolds guided the heavy stabilization unit up and out of the container and down toward the open doors, Alma gave it a shove and then slammed the doors shut.

  Schell was relaying a message, but Alma's cyberears were already warning her of the same thing. The Port of Vancouver patrol car must be just around the corner—she could even pick out the voice of the driver as he radioed his superiors about the Mohawk Oil van that had strayed suspiciously off course, into the container staging area.

  Alma leaped into the driver's seat and gunned the engine as soon as Reynolds was on board. "Base—do we still have a smoke screen?"

  "Affirmative."

  "Right." She briefly deactivated the speaker in her throat and spoke to Reynolds. "Time for an illusion—and make it quick!"

  The shaman began chanting once more—a soft, cooing noise reminiscent of a pigeon settling contentedly into its nest. He closed his eyes, oblivious to the rainwater that dripped from his face and braids onto his lap. To Alma's eyes, the van did not change, but she knew what was happening. Even as the Port of Vancouver Security patrol car rounded the corner of the row of containers, the van was assuming the appearance of a mobile crane carrying one of the smaller, five-meter-long containers. When the patrol car hissed past, its driver gave them no more than a passing glance.

  Alma turned the van onto the road that led back to the gate, and in a few minutes more they were outside the terminal and back on city streets. In the back of the van, the stabilization unit continued to beep.

  Reynolds had slumped in his seat. After a second or two, he sat up with a
jerk. When he turned toward Alma, his eyes were wide. He glanced back at the stabilization unit and bobbed his head in a ducking motion.

  "Bad news," he said. "I just did an astral scan of the stabilization unit. It's Gray Squirrel, all right—but he's got no aura. It looks like he's—"

  "What?" Alma veered the van over to the side of the road and jammed on the brakes. Her pulse was pounding in her ears. "What happened? Did the stabilization unit fail? Is that why the alarm's beeping?"

  Reynolds shook his head. His face was very pale. "The unit's working fine. It switched automatically into critical-care life-support mode—that's what the beeping noise and flashing light are about. But even critical care couldn't—"

  Alma clawed her seat belt open and clambered into the back of the vehicle. She found the stabilization unit's control panel and stabbed at it with a forefinger until the locking mechanism clicked. As she wrenched open the lid, cold air rushed out of the unit, carrying with it a hospital smell that was a mix of plastic, sterilizing scrub—and another, much more pungent odor that smelled like copper: blood.

  Gray Squirrel lay on his back, cocooned in supercooled blue foam. Monitor patches dotted his chest, and intravenous tubes fed into his arms. A clear plastic breathing tube snaked down into his open mouth. His scalp had been shaved so that CAT-scan monitors could be attached; the skin was nicked in several places. His face was as white as paper, his dark eyes wide and staring.

  Air was still hissing into the breathing tube, but it wasn't going far. Gray Squirrel's neck had been severed down to the spine, and the oxygen-rich mixture sighed out of this gaping wound, fluttering the ragged skin. A thick layer of frozen blood covered his chest and arms—the logical part of Alma's mind noted that his throat must have been slit just after he had been placed inside the containment unit, just before the lid had been closed. Unable to deal with the sudden trauma, the unit had gone into life-support mode, but too late: there was no life left to support.

  Alma touched Gray Squirrel's cheek. His skin was as cold as glass.

  "It's my fault, Squirrel," she whispered. "I should have located you sooner."

  A tremor began in Alma's left hand, but she didn't bother to time its duration. There didn't seem to be much point.

  2

  Meeting

  Night Owl eased her Harley Electroglide into a space between two parked cars and cut the motorcycle's engine. Rain spattered on the bike's twin exhaust pipes, hissing into steam as it hit the hot metal. She pulled off her leather gauntlets and night-vision goggles, flicked wet hair out of her eyes, and then checked her face in the bike's mirror, making sure the thick blue and black lines of the Beijing Opera mask she'd painted on her face hadn't run in the rain. Then she climbed down from the bike, admiring the winking owl that she'd had custom painted on the gas tank. She heaved the metal monster up onto its kick stand and was just about to jander into the restaurant when a soggy blanket huddled in front of the building unfolded itself.

  Instantly on alert, Night Owl whipped a hand back and under her leather jacket, reaching for the Ares Predator concealed against the small of her back. It was halfway out of its holster before she realized that the grotter under the blanket was just a teenage elf, looking for spare cred.

  The elf was skinny, with pointed ears that stuck out of ragged holes in his black knitted hat. His plastic pants had been made of bubble wrap and duct tape, and the sleeves of his striped shirt looked as though they'd been chewed off at the elbow. He smelled of hydro-gro weed, days-old sweat and moldy blanket, but his eyes were still scanning. He'd savvied her weapon in the second she'd flashed for it.

  "Hey, heavy lady, be chill. I was just going to give your chrome a polish." He held out a dirty rag and a squirt bottle that might once have held liquid polish.

  Night Owl was about to tell him to frag off when she noticed the kid's left hand. It was obviously cybered, its synthetic skin peeling back to reveal the artificial metal joints, plastic tendons, and servos that lay underneath. The middle finger was frozen in an open position, as if the kid were giving the world a permanent "frag you." The hand looked too small for the arm; the flesh around the kid's wrist was puckered like a baggy shirt that had been tucked into a tight pair of jeans.

  Night Owl stepped under the dripping awning the kid had been using for shelter. "How long've you had that hand, cobber?"

  The kid glanced down at his hand as if he'd forgotten it was cybered. "Since I was ten."

  "It's too small for you now. How come you weren't fitted with a larger hand?"

  The elf shrugged. "Couldn't afford it."

  Night Owl stood for a moment in silence, watching raindrops bounce off the roofs of parked cars. The going rate for a bottom-of-the-heap, alpha-grade cyberhand was forty thousand nuyen. The kid's parents had probably scrimped up everything they had to pay for it—and the fraggers who sold it to them never bothered to mention that the kid would outgrow it in a few years' time.

  "Who made the hand?"

  The kid turned the hand over to show her the logo on its inner wrist. A curling tsunami wave hovered over the letters "PCI." Framing the wave in a circle were the words "Pacific Cybernetics Industries—The Wave of the Future."

  Night Owl's eyes narrowed. PCI had a history of dumping its outdated cyberware in third-world countries whose customers didn't have the nuyen to launch lawsuits after the drek glitched or broke down. Some of the obsolete 'ware also showed up in local chop shops, like the one this kid's parents must have taken him to.

  Night Owl reached into a pocket and handed the kid a certified credstick. The kid's eyes widened when he thumbed the stick's balance and saw the one and two zeroes on the miniature screen.

  "Keep an eye on the bike, kid," Night Owl told him. "I wouldn't want one of these parked cars to back into it."

  The kid opened his mouth to thank her, but Night Owl didn't stick around to hear it. She turned and shoved open the door of the restaurant.

  Wazubee's was always packed at this time of night. The restaurant was a favorite hangout for the artists, citizenship activists, performance poets and other chill-folk who inhabited the area around the Drive. Humans and metas of every description jammed the tables, spending their nuyen on realkaf with a water chaser and trying to talk over the rhyth-lmpulse that droned from the speakers overhead. The crowds and noise made Wazubee's the perfect place for a shadow meet—nobody gave a runner a second glance here.

  Night Owl spotted her fixer in the back of the restaurant, sitting at a table under a gigantic chandelier made from welded cutlery. The votive candle on the table in front of him was no match for Hothead's trademark flame hair, which at the moment was blazing with a steady, propane-blue flicker. Filament-thin flames twisted out of pores in the insulated dermal plating that lined his scalp, flaring to a height of nearly five centimeters, then dampening down before flaring again. The tubes that fed propane to the system ran down the back of his neck and disappeared under his shirt collar; he wore a canteen-sized, refillable tank clipped to his belt. He'd gotten the idea from the work of 12 Midnight, a turn-of-the-century artist whose stainless-steel paintings always included propane flames. Hothead figured they looked chill and decided to turn himself into a work of art.

  Night Owl worked her way to Hothead's table and slapped palms with him. He flashed her a brief smile, eyes crinkling around fire-red contact lenses. The color matched the jacket of his cellosuit, which made a crinkling noise as he shifted his weight. Despite the cheerful greeting, he seemed uneasy about Night Owl joining him. He kept glancing toward the door. She wondered if he'd been waiting for a meet with another runner.

  "Ni hao, Hothead," Night Owl said, sliding into the chair on the opposite side of the table. "Sorry about dripping on your table. It's pretty wet out there."

  "Did you see the storm this afternoon?" Hothead asked.

  Night Owl shook her head. "I was sleeping."

  "Street buzz says there were storm crows in the clouds. A Shinto sun shaman once told me that
they gather in flocks when an evil deity is about to appear."

  Night Owl laughed. "As long as it's not me he's looking for, I don't care."

  The sleeve of Hothead's suit crinkled as he drained the last of his 'kaf. He set down the cup and pushed back his chair as if he was about to go.

  "Got any biz?" Night Owl asked.

  Hothead's eyes narrowed. "After you screwed up that last job I brokered for you? I don't think so." Night Owl frowned. "What do you mean? The extraction went down without a glitch."

  "Buzz has it that your Johnson didn't receive what he paid for."

  Night Owl smiled. She'd never intended that he should. Her interest in the run had been personal, and she'd accomplished what had needed to be done. "Too bad. Sometimes things get damaged in transit."

  "Damaged?" Hothead gave her a careful look. "You mean lost. Someone let something slip, and the item your Johnson paid so much cred for was snatched back by its original owners before it reached its destination."

  Night Owl shrugged. "Whatever."

  "The Johnson wants his nuyen back."

  "I've spent it." She jerked a thumb in the direction of the door. "Check out my new wheels."

  "You spent all of it?" Hothead shifted toward the edge of his seat, as if he was about to leave. "That's bad—but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me."

  "Find me some more biz," Night Owl insisted. "Then I'll at least have the option of paying the Johnson his nuyen back."

  Hothead gave her a skeptical look. They both knew runners didn't give refunds.

  "I know someone who needs some extra muscle tomorrow, for a run that's going down at noon," Hothead said.

  "Noon?" Night Owl laughed. "You know me, Hothead. I'm a reverse Cinderella. I come out at midnight and turn into a pumpkin at dawn."

  Hothead shrugged. "The only other job I have right now needs someone who can pass as a Full Blood. You look too Euro—although with a hint of something Asian underneath. Are you part Chinese? Your accent is perfect."