Dead Air

by Jak Koke

  "Fraggin’ spirits!" Grids leaped to his feet. "What to do? What to do?" This was not some fantasy or simsense adventure. This was real. Too fragging real.

  Grids took a deep breath and tried to remember his conversation with Tamara just before her flight for New Orleans. Tried to recall what they had said to each other.

  The terminal at Long Beach International Airport was packed, but they’d found a small table in a bar near her departure gate. LBI was LA’s only facility for suborbitals and transcontinentals, built on a swamp in Long Beach, floating on giant pontoons so that it swayed and rocked whenever a heavy suborbital touched down. It was strange to be motion sick in an airport, but a necessary evil ever since LAX was destroyed in the ’28 quake.

  "You think you can reconstruct the text?" Tamara had asked him. "That document looked important."

  Grids grimaced, then took a sip of his soykaf and stared out at the runway before answering. "I don’t think you understand, Tam. The document was clearly marked as Alpha-level security. Not to mention that it’s drek Saeder-Krupp wants kept secret. Either one means just looking at that file might get us both geeked."

  She put a finger to his lips. "It also means that Andreas will pay dearly for its return." The smile she gave him was edged with sadness. "I’m really sorry I dragged you into this."

  Spirits, she was gorgeous. Even covered up and in disguise as she was then. Traveling incognito. She’d even convinced Rolph, her human bodyguard, to dress like an Amerind too and pretend to be her husband. Rolph sat at the bar right now, his obvious cybereyes glowing a dull silver in the tawny yellow light.

  "Well, you can reconstruct it?" she asked again. "Probably. Did you see every page?"

  "Think so, but some of them only for a second. I didn’t have time to read it."

  "Null sweat. A second is eons in sim. I can program a smartframe to crunch on the text recognition." He grew serious. "But I don’t like it, Tam. I think we should bail."

  "No, I’m sure we can cut a deal, persuade Andreas to get me started in some simfeature or other in exchange for our copy of the file."

  Grids stared at her in disbelief. "Michaelson is a senior executive veepee for the most powerful megacorp in the world! He eats people like us for breakfast. If he finds out, either from us or from someone else, we’re as good as dead."

  "Chill down, Grids. You’re overreacting."

  "Just promise me you’ll contact Grayson Alexander if something happens. You remember me talking about him. He’s a runner and can find you a place to hide."

  "I promise." She smiled at him again, cocking her head to one side as she listened to the airport’s intercom announcing that her flight was boarding. She picked up her red synthleather carry-on and stood looking at him for a moment. "Now you’re getting me worried. But this is my big chance and I don’t want to lose it. As soon as you’ve got the text, I’ll give Andreas the ultimatum. He’ll have to go along."

  "I hope you’re right." Grids thought she didn’t sound anymore convinced than he was.

  "Me too," Tamara said as she leaned over to kiss him goodbye, long and sultry, pressing her soft lips against his. Then she straightened up and gave Rolph the signal. They walked out, leaving Grids with his soykaf, growing cold and gritty.

  The memory faded.

  Now, in Tamara’s apartment, Grids brushed his fingers across his lips, trying to keep the sensation of her kiss from evaporating. He wiped tears from his eyes with his other hand. No time for that now. Gotta move.

  Time for action.

  Grayson Alexander. That’s who I need to contact.

  Grids activated the trideo, selected telecom voice-only, and placed a call to what used to be Grayson’s message line. After two rings, the line picked up, but no one answered. No message. No beep, just the faint crackle of blank memory.

  "It’s a ghost from the past, chummer," Grids said. "Urgent biz for you." Then he hung up, knowing that Grayson’s machine would have read the return LTG number from Tamara’s phone. Grayson would call back on a secure line.

  Of course, line security didn’t mean drek if someone had already tapped Tamara’s side. Then again, if someone had been here to tap, they’d already have come after the chip.

  The chip!

  Grids ran from the den to the garage; his joints snapped and cracked as he moved, protesting the motion after sitting idle for so long. Tamara had let him convert her garage into a freelance simsense studio. The guts of old computers, sim-sense decks, cyberdecks, and simsynths lay strewn across the astroturf-covered cement floor.

  Grids instantly felt more comfortable as he closed the door on the overly tidy apartment and entered his work space. Scattered fiber-optics and carcasses of gutted electronics sprawled like roadkill. Stacks of compact disks, memory chips, and skillsofts littered the floor and shelves. There was even some old second-hand cyberware that he intended to scavenge for parts.

  His actual workspace was compact and well organized.

  The heart of the operation was a big Fuchi RealSense sim-synth that had been a Christmas gift from Tamara. The Fuchi simth pumped the electronic blood of his system, and Grids had been using it for all his most recent editing gigs. The Fuchi was assisted by three ingeniously programmed smartframes and a huge library of modular plugin effects, including emotive enablers, sense-patch samples, and EC/PC modulation controllers.

  A Fuchi Cyber-7 cyberdeck, which he’d heavily modified back in his old decking days, held the code for the smartframes and patched the whole rig into the Matrix for remote accessing. Even an off-the-shelf Cyber-7 would be overkill for that task, but occasionally Grids broke his own rules and decked into Amalgamated Studios or Brilliant Genesis for some contraband simsense properties—bits of sense, chunks of just the right urge, and the like.

  On the floor, next to the stack of CDs, was his Truman Realink simrecorder. He bent and opened it, quickly checking the recording bay. The chip still lay exactly where he’d left it. He breathed, then popped the chip and slotted it into the chipjack behind his ear. It was the safest place he could think of.

  Then he closed the case of his Truman and gave his studio another look around. He’d never been forced to move the entire rig at once, but the components were moderately small, and at a glance he figured it would all fit into the rear hatch of his Jackrabbit. He went to work, tearing it down, and was nearly finished when the telecom beeped.

  "Yeah?" Grids said, blanking the video.

  "Ghost from the past, this is Gray Shadow. The line is secure."

  "Gray, thanks for the quick comeback. I need a hidey-hole."

  After a pause. "For an old chummer, I got three available. All temporary, prices vary by location."

  "Any in Beverly Hills?"

  "East Hollywood."

  "East Hollywood it is. And I need protection. You got that for rent too?"

  "Everything’s for rent."

  "The cred’s no problem."

  "Then, your reservation is confirmed, Ghost. Meet me at the usual haunt for directions and accompaniment."

  "Thanks, Gray."

  "None necessary." The line went dead.

  Grids finished packing his equipment, then threw some clothes into a travel bag. It had been a long time since he’d run the shadows, and he’d have preferred it to be longer still.

  No choice.

  When the Jackrabbit was completely packed, he drove away as nonchalantly, as inconspicuously as he could. He still didn’t know if Tamara was alive or dead—or worse. But there was someone who would know.

  Jonathon Winger.

  Winger didn’t like him, but Grids had to find out if she was still alive. Chances were that even if she’d survived all that blood loss, she’d probably have sustained brain damage. She might be a vat case.

  Grids shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it. He tried to concentrate on his driving as he passed through the well-protected gates that separated the mansions of Beverly Hills from the Hollywood filth. He continued
down the hill into the sea of streetmeat and pornshops. BTL chip parlors and drug dens squeezed into the cracks between the legit theaters and tourist drek.

  He’d escaped from this place years ago, and it slotted him hard that it was where he had to go back to now.

  When was he going to be able to jack out of this nightmare sim?

  Grids hoped it was soon, but something told him this was only the beginning.

  13

  Jonathon came to with a start, sucking in a huge gasp of air. And as he breathed in and out, he realized where he was. Still sitting in the simrecliner. Still jacked through to Tamara’s feed, though no signal came from her. Where Tamara’s emotions and senses had been a moment before, now there was only a low hiss.

  Static in his head.

  Dead air.

  Jonathon straightened up and pulled the datacord from his temple to disconnect the feed. Tamara must be out of range or her simlink been damaged. At least the static meant she was still alive. But when the plug released from the datajack, the static crackled on in his head. He felt phantom tingles across his skin like a frayed edge to his nerves.

  What the frag ?

  He jacked in and then out again. Maybe my cranial memory hasn’t cleared.

  No change. Only the faint hiss in his mind.

  Suddenly the memory of her last moments coursed through him. The scream from her mind echoed in his ears, and he knew she was gone.

  He doubled over in pain, clutching his stomach as bile rose in his throat. He had thought it would always be the two of them, from the gypsies through the military, through prison, to riding the line together. Always the two of them. Always together. But now she was gone, and all that remained was the distant crackle like wind trapped in a box.

  He swallowed and stood up, feeling a surge of anger. His headclock showed that five minutes had passed since he’d blacked out. The crowd outside cheered violently, and Jonathon heard the loudspeaker announce that Dougan Rose’s penalty time was up.

  Jonathon remembered once standing in the gypsy tent with Tamara at his side staring into a holopic of Dougan Rose. His idol’s face had peered from the cube directly into Jonathon’s eyes with a look of sheer hatred. It was the same look Rose had given Tamara just before his cyberspurs had sliced her open. His intent was clear.

  Death.

  Jonathon tried to ignore the pain in his chest as he walked to his locker and put on new armor. He moved methodically, purposefully, focusing on each task in sequence. His Plycra unibody. His polycarb-slotted Kevlar chest plating. His boots. Until he was armored and ready to rock’n’roll.

  Payback time.

  The noise of the crowd grew faint as he dressed. Distant. The questions of his teammates fell on deaf ears. Their sidelong glances ignored. None of that mattered.

  His helmet went on last, locking into position. Then he strode into the garage, fired up one of his bikes, and grabbed a full complement of weapons from the racks by the corrugated metal doors.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Coach Kalish yelled after him as Jonathon pulled up into the team’s cycle bay. Coach was a dwarf with a drek-eating disposition. In her youth, she’d go-ganged with the Marauders out of Fontana. Before combat biker had become an official sport.

  "I want in," he said. He didn’t wait for her approval; instead he jacked himself into his Suzuki and roared out into the maze.

  "Winger!" It was Smitty’s voice coming over the com. "Vacate before the refs frag us for a penalty."

  Jonathon barely heard; his head buzzed with the frayed whisper of static. "Tamara," he mouthed.

  "Tam’s gone, chummer. DocWagon team took her. No news yet."

  "Sorry ’bout Tam, Winger," came Webber’s voice, "but you’re gonna cost us unless you bail. We got too many bikes in the maze."

  Smitty’s cut in. "You exit, Fallon. Winger’s in."

  "But—"

  "Move! You scan?"

  "Where’s Dougan?" Jonathon asked.

  "Center lane, straight shot, but—"

  Jonathon raised his Roomsweeper as he accelerated to take the curve high on the side, then rolled back to vertical down the stretch.

  Dougan roamed on his side of the midline, weaving. Waiting for bogey release. Unaware.

  Jonathon cranked the throttle to full out, hitting fifty, seventy, then one hundred klicks per hour. In the seconds before he reached Dougan, he cracked his whip.

  Dougan never expected the hit. Clearly against the rules, no pretense of fair play at all.

  Jonathon fired the Roomsweeper over and over as he approached. The whip in his other hand snapped out to wrap around Dougan’s neck while Jonathon anchored his end into the latch on his bike.

  Dougan reached up, activating his cyberspurs in an attempt to cut the whip that coiled like a polycarb anaconda around his neck. But his razors never made it. The whip snapped taut, pulling Dougan into the air by his head.

  Decapitated?

  No, but his helmet snapped off, flicked into the air like a champagne cork.

  Dougan hit the concrete on his side, his right ear grating against the pavement as his Yamaha Rapier, which was still locked onto his body, crashed on top.

  Dougan’s weight on the end of the whip jerked Jonathon’s bike down too, flipping the cycle out from under him. Concrete rushed up like the belt of a power sander to grind against his armored thigh as he skidded to slam into the barrier.

  Then the motors of both bikes went dead and the wheels locked as the referees in their turrets keyed the transponders to shut off. Jonathon was dimly aware of Dougan groaning, of the hushed awe of the crowd. He lay on his side, unable to push the weight of his bike off his chewed-up leg, barely able to breathe through the pain in his chest.

  Still, Jonathon felt some satisfaction in that pain. Dougan Rose had been made to pay a small price. But it wasn’t enough yet. Only Dougan’s death would even the score.

  Yet, the injury to the other biker served to dull the phantom echo of static in Jonathon’s head. At least for the moment.

  If only he could see Tamara’s face once more.

  14

  Luc Tashika stared down from his office window. Far below the monolithic silver and black heights of the MCT headquarters, the night breathed and moved like an entity, a living creature crawling through the jungle of concrete and steel.

  And crouched in the shadow of the megacorporate sky-towers of Arcology Mile were the SINless and the destitute. No System Identification Number meant untraceable, outside the ordered machine of society. Effectively nonexistent.

  At this time of night, many of those were just beginning their biz down there. They were the shadowrunners, the street docs, the fixers . . . Scum for hire, thought Tashika.

  Some sold ’ware, others services. And some were the real garbage—the chipheads and the BTL junkies, the beggars and the petty thieves. These were the largest in number, and before the night was over many of them would clog the sewers and dumpsters with their worthless flesh.

  Tashika had almost stopped seeing them at all, but tonight his thoughts had been forced down into the shadows because of this unpleasantness concerning Tamara Ny. Tashika sighed, taking a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat from his brow. He tried to retain his calm; he didn’t want to repeat his outburst of a few moments ago.

  When Dr. Franklin had called from the DocWagon clinic in New Orleans to tell him of Miss Ny’s death, Tashika had flown into a rage. He’d thrown the teiecom across the room and nearly broken his hands pounding his fists against his desk. That fragging incompetent had killed her.

  But that was minutes ago. Now, he was calm. And he struggled to stay that way despite the fire in his head and the shakes that threatened to take control of his shoulders. He breathed. Slow.

  He didn’t even know if Ny had actually stolen any important information from Michaelson. Dr. Franklin had scanned all her headware for hints of a file or simsense record, but had found nothing.

  Tashika sighed and pick
ed up the remains of his telecom, which he placed on his desk. He could get Cinnamon to find Miss Ny’s accomplice, this Grids Desmond, and take care of the situation, but it would cost him. If Mr. Desmond could be found for free . . .

  Hmm, he thought, perhaps there is a way Mr. Rose can remedy the situation.

  Tashika asked Bridget to get Dougan on a secure line. After a moment of blackness, Dougan’s face filled the screen, a pained expression on the elven features. He was sitting in a bed in the DocWagon clinic, the call having automatically been forwarded to his room. The interlocking plates of a blue plastichrome exoskeleton fit snugly around his neck, holding his head straight and immobile. A bandage also covered the right side of his head where it had scraped against the pavement.

  "Ah, Mr. Tashika," Dougan said, grimacing in pain as he spoke. "I’ve been expecting to hear from you."

  Tashika tried to gather up his anger, but it was cold and distant. Used up. "Explain yourself," he said.

  "It was an accident," Dougan said.

  Tashika noted the change in Dougan’s tone, almost subservient. Much different from their last conversation. "You cannot know how crucial a mistake you have made," Tashika said.

  "I’m really sorry, sir."

  He is trying to manipulate me, Tashika thought. That is clear. Could he be lying? Perhaps he deliberately killed Tamara Ny. No, that doesn’t make sense; he merely wants to appease my anger.

  Dougan’s expression was one of atonement. "How can I amend my error so that—?"

  "So that I reveal nothing?"

  "Yes."

  "Perhaps there is one thing . . ."

  "What?"

  "According to my sources, Miss Ny worked with an accomplice—a Grids Desmond. I want you to find him or hire someone else to do it. Someone discreet, you understand?"

  "A shadowrunner?"

  Tashika nodded. "Retrieve the simchip intact and destroy all copies. Mr. Desmond and anyone else who has knowledge of the chip’s contents will have to be neutralized."

  "Killed?"

  "Yes."

  "That is no small task," Dougan said.