Never Deal with a Dragon

by Robert N. Charrette

  Sam slid back the cover panel and pulled out the telecom connector. With a quick switch of plugs, the Elf’s cyberdeck took the place of Castillano’s computer. He reached for the datacord that would connect his socket with the deck. He almost changed his mind, but found courage when he remembered the innocents in the arcology who would suffer if no one tried to help. He slipped the plug in, steeling himself against the expected pain.

  It came, flashing faster and leaving a distant malaise in its wake. Sam focused his mind on the task at hand. Turning a blind eye to the gleaming spires and pulsing data paths that surrounded him in cyberspace, he charged forward to the massive Renraku construct. Using his company passwords, he opened a portal into the main database.

  Glittering rows of stars lay in serried ranks and columns all around him. Each point of light was a datafile, its tint reflecting the filing category. Sam fed the cyberdeck the key words and executed the search function. His point of view shifted with dazzling speed along the rows. He paused briefly at each file suggested by the deck, discarding useless information as he searched.

  In what seemed like only a few minutes, he found it. He copied the file and fled back to where he had entered the Matrix.

  “There is a counteragent,” he announced to the circle of concerned faces as he pulled the data cord from his temple.

  “Where do we get it?”

  “That’s the problem. It’s not being manufactured. It only exists in the machine.”

  There was silence in the room. Sam could feel the runners’ resolve to right a wrong slipping away.

  Castillano cleared his throat.

  “Biotech I know has a lab. Full computer-assisted design facilities. I can arrange an introduction. Standard fees.”

  Sam’s spirit soared with new hope. He looked to Sally, who stood with hands pressed together in front of her chest. The tension in her arm muscles was evident as her hands trembled slightly. For the first time, Sam noticed that the magician was missing the last joint of the little finger on her right hand. She released the tension with an explosive sigh.

  “Let’s do it!”

  “Nice of you to drop in,” Crenshaw said with mock politeness as Sam entered the stuffy room. He closed the door, shutting off the gray, pre-dawn light from the outer room. The stink of wastes from the corner was overpowering.

  “I’ve been trying to help the company.”

  “By sucking up to those criminals. Trying to help yourself more like,” Crenshaw grumbled. “Do you think you’re any better than us? That they’ll treat you any different because you fawn on them?”

  “You think I was trying to cut my own deal?” Sam was incredulous.

  Crenshaw gave him a grin that said it was exactly what she thought.

  “Just because that’s the way you operate doesn’t mean everyone does. Some people do care about others.”

  “Yeah, and I’m St. Nick.”

  “You’re wrong, Crenshaw. I’m hoping to save some lives.”

  “Starting with your own.”

  “No. Starting with some of our fellow employees at the arcology.” Sam told her how Sally’s group had been duped, and their decision to do something about it. “I’m going with them when they take the counteragent in.”

  “Trying to be a hero?”

  The thought hadn’t crossed Sam’s mind. “They need my help.”

  “Heroes get dead, kid. Those clowns got in once before. They don’t need you to do it.”

  Sam supposed she was right, but surely Renraku security would have found and closed whatever entryway the runners had used last time. “Maybe I just want to be sure they really do it.”

  Crenshaw looked unconvinced. “Stow the hype, kid. Let’s pretend you’ve convinced me of your noble heart. Sentiments are worth a fused BTL chip when the shooting starts. You aren’t trained for this stuff. It’s dangerous, you know.”

  “I don’t care.” Sam was surprised by the conviction in his own voice. “It has to be done.”

  “Crenshaw-san is right,” Jiro whispered from the corner where he was huddled. Sam had not even realized that the salaryman was awake. “Let it go. You will jeopardize your position with the company.”

  “So she has infected you now, Tanaka-san.” Sam shook his head sadly. “I’m not worried about my position with the company. They will understand that my loyalty compels me to make this effort. I have to keep the shadowrunners from misusing their time within the arcology.”

  Crenshaw smirked and Tanaka hung his head, listless again. Sam could see that his arguments would not affect them. It was just as well. His short cyberspace run, added to his lack of sleep, had left him exhausted. He needed rest. The run was to take place the next night and it was definitely going to be dangerous. He would have to be alert. Sam lay down where he was, stretching out on the hard boards. In moments, he was asleep.

  Sam awoke to a hand on his shoulder. Red light flooded the room through the open doorway. The glow illuminated Ghost’s face as he leaned close.

  “Time to move, paleface.”

  Sam sat up groggily, shaking his head to clear it. For a moment, he was confused, but the smell soon brought it all back. A quick glance told him that he and the Amerindian were the only two people in the room.

  “Where are the others?”

  “We thought it best to move them to a safer place till we get back.”

  Sam nodded as Ghost padded silently across the room. Perhaps the man spoke true. Or perhaps the runners were holding the others hostage for his good behavior. He didn’t want to believe that they had killed his fellows to be free of the need to guard them, but that possibility nagged, too. Crenshaw’s cynical voice echoed in his head. Could he really trust these people?

  Sam creaked his way across the old boards. In the outer room, he found Sally, Ghost, and the Ork all strapping on various bits of gear and checking their weapons.

  “Where’s Dodger?”

  Sally gave him a smile. “Don’t worry. He’s in a place where he can jack into the Matrix undisturbed. He’ll be riding shotgun in cyberspace, just like last time.”

  “Are the others with him?”

  “Let’s not get too inquisitive,” she advised.

  Having inserted a knife into his boot sheath, Ghost scooped a bundle from the floor and tossed it. Sam fumbled the catch, surprised by its weight. The black paper garment was obviously covering some bulky object. He poked at it, revealing the soft gleam of metal. Sam unwrapped it further.

  “A slivergun,” Ghost informed him. “Can you use it?”

  Sam looked down at the evilly gleaming weapon. “No.”

  “Great,” moaned the Ork. “He’s gonna get our behinds fried, Sally.”

  “If he does, he goes with us,” she replied. “You do understand that, Verner?”

  He did. All too well. He tried saying so, but the words stuck in his throat. He nodded instead.

  “And don’t forget it,” the Ork snarled. “I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”

  Under that watchful eye, Sam carefully placed the pistol on the floor and pulled on the coveralls that had enshrouded it. After sealing them closed, he buckled on the belt and holster he had missed in the excitement of discovering the gun.

  “Ooh, look,” the Ork cooed. “A ferocious shadowrunner. I’m so frightened.”

  “Dump it, Kham,” Sally ordered. “Verner will do all right if you ease up a bit.”

  She settled her weapon belts, and in a swirl of fringed duster, turned for the window. Sam started to follow, but came up short as a hand gripped his arm. He craned his neck around to find Ghost’s ragged grin. A poke in his ribs directed his gaze down toward the gun the Amerindian was holding. Sam swallowed hard. He didn’t want it, but if they trusted him to carry it, he probably should trust their belief that it might be necessary. He took the weapon, settling its unfamiliar weight into the holster.

  The fire escape creaked and rattled under the combined weight of the shadowrunners. Sam feared that it would ri
p loose from the crumbling brick wall and pitch them all into the alley. To his surprise, the rickety construct was still intact when they reached the bottom.

  Three motorcycles waited in the alley. Two of the bikes were sleek Yamaha Rapiers, their chrome and plastic smooth and unmarked. The third was a heavy hog, its nameplate proclaiming it a Harley Scorpion. The machine was all motor, iron, and mysterious clamps and fastenings.

  “You ride with me,” the Ork grunted as he swung onto the big Scorpion.

  Sam climbed up behind the odorous metahuman. There was nothing to grip but the Ork himself, a decision Sam had barely made when Kham jumped the bike forward. Sam nearly tumbled off as they rounded the corner. The petrochem roar of the Rapiers soon joined the howl of the Scorpion, and they cruised in vee-formation down the streets of the Barrens.

  The ride through the streets showed Sam the same face of Seattle he had seen on their walk to meet the fixer, at least until they left the urban wasteland of the Barrens. Once into the more civilized districts, the street crowds thinned and the noise and glare diminished. Somehow the runners did not look out of place. There were still other bikers in leathers and long coats. The hard-edged types that had filled the streets of the Barrens were leavened with more ordinary folks, sararimen, families, and ordinary workers out for a good time.

  Seattle was a border town, isolated among the wild lands of the Salish-Shidhe Council. It was an outpost of the United Canadian-American States in the midst of a foreign land, a trading post with the world of the Pacific. As such, it could be a rough-and-tumble place. Like in the old days of the wild west, Sam decided, when a man or woman often carried the law in a holster.

  Even so, the corporations frowned on anything that might seriously affect business, and so there were peace officers. Private cops and the Lone Star patrols kept the heavy weaponry from the streets and protected their masters. What people did to each other did not concern the corporations, but what they might do to corporate holdings or personnel did.

  Sam found this balance of wildness and civilization strange after the ordered peace of greater Tokyo. The strangeness had a vitality that the Japanese capital, with all its culture, sophistication, and history, lacked. Maybe he was beginning to like Seattle.

  The closer they came to the central business district, the more civilized the street traffic became. Electric cars and public transport became common sights as the bikers became rare in proportion to the prowl cars bearing the Lone Star logo. The numbers of folk on the street shifted more in favor of the corporate workers, but the outré element never quite disappeared. The odd and the strange hung at the outskirts of Sam’s awareness in a way he had never experienced on the streets of Tokyo. He found it exhilarating.

  Well into downtown Seattle, they turned onto Alaskan Way and headed south. Ahead, dwarfing the nearby buildings, loomed the arcology. Shining out from the mostly darkened north face of the structure, the cool blue of Renraku’s name in English and Japanese complemented the gold glow from the company’s dot-and-expanding-wavefront logo.

  Once, Sam had found those symbols comforting, a sign of home. They looked gigantic and unattainable floating above Seattle. And ominous. He imagined the circle that was supposed to be the source of the communication waves as a radar dish, its arc-shaped waves as all-seeing energy seeking out those who might harm the corporation. His earlier excitement fled, banished by nervous fear. Despite the crowded street, he felt naked and exposed. The Red Samurai must surely be watching their approach.

  If they were, they took no action. The runners cut out of the traffic onto a side street, dodging through alleys among the dockside warehouses. They slowed as they neared the loading docks of their destination, Kinebec Transport, but the great corrugated doors remained unmoving.

  “Damned Elf missed his cue again,” Kham muttered, his voice almost lost in the noise from his bike’s engine. “Probably off chewing dandelions.”

  Ghost signaled a circle around the block, drawing an oath from the Ork. “We’ll attract attention.”

  “No help for it,” Sally shouted over the bike’s noise.

  On the second pass, the third of the six doors yawned open as they rounded the corner. The runners guided their bikes inside and killed the engines. The massive door rumbled down, swallowing the echoes and shielding them from the street.

  Ghost led them unerringly through the darkened building to a maintenance panel. Some fast work with a multi-tool had the panel down, allowing them to make their way to the lower level along a ladder of rusty rungs welded to the support girder. A hundred or so meters later, he took them up another ladder. The building they entered smelled of the sea. Sam could hear the faint lap of water against pilings.

  “’Kay, paleface. We’re on the number one west-face dock, just seaside of Fast Freddie’s Surgery. It’s your lead now.”

  Sam didn’t know where Fast Freddie’s was, but he recognized the dock designation from the maps of the arcology he had seen. He led the runners onto the street and up the dock toward the arcology. A bare thirty meters from the circumference road that ran along the walls of the structure, he indicated the gate to a construction site. Before Ghost could put his tool to work, Kham shouldered into the wire gate, snapping the thin chain and dropping the padlock to the ground.

  “We’re in a hurry, ain’t we?” he said in defense of this lack of subtlety.

  Leading them past the quiet machinery, Sam took them into the basement of the skeletal structure. A few minutes’ search located what he was seeking.

  “This is a tap shaft to the heat-exchanger pipes that run under the arcology. We should be able to move along it and into the arcology through an uncompleted maintenance station.”

  “You’d better be right, chummer. Dat don’t look like a comfy squirm.”

  Sam hoped he was right, too. His plan to enter this way was based on a three-week-old construction schedule. That document had called for the station to be completed and secured by now. He was counting on the fact that just about everything at the arcology project was behind schedule. If the workers had been uncharacteristically efficient, they would be denied access.

  The crawl proved every bit as “squirmy” as the Ork had feared. Twice the bulky metahuman got wedged trying to cross junctions without divesting himself of his equipment first.

  Two sweaty hours later, they had worked their way through the steamy tunnel to the station. Faint worklights gleamed from a barrier-free opening.

  Sam wiped his brow with a grimy hand. At least now he didn’t have to worry about what the runners would do to him if the way had been blocked. Per plan, they located the station’s terminal. Without jacking in, Sam turned it on and entered the code that would tell Dodger they had gotten inside the arcology’s boundaries.

  Almost instantly, the Elf responded through the terminal’s speaker.

  “You are late.”

  Sally’s headshake forestalled any assorted retorts. “Are we all set for the next phase?”

  “Assuredly, my lady. The bravoes manning the check points along your route have been instructed to expect a repair party. There are temporary access cards waiting for you at the main desk on alpha level, but you will need your special talents to pick them up. Unfortunately, I don’t have the necessary codes to activate them and haven’t had time to make counterfeits. It really is quite a remarkable system they have here. Very sophisticated.”

  “Save the admiration for later, Elf,” Ghost snapped. “What are we going to do about those codes?”

  “No need to get testy, Sir Razorguy. I think there may be a solution. If the noble Sir Corp will enter his own code, I can copy it onto all the cards. I believe I can hide the multiple entries in the guise of a system hiccup.”

  The runners looked expectantly at Sam. His mouth was dry. If Renraku had deactivated his access code when he disappeared, the plan was destined for failure. At worst, it would set off alarms. Either way, he would be compromising his confidentiality agreement with the cor
poration. As if he hadn’t already done that by leading these people here.

  “Dodger?”

  “Aye, Sir Corp.”

  “If I put in my code, can you read it, or are you blind-copying it?”

  “Have you so little faith? Am I not The Dodger, wizard of the Matrix? Once it is data, it is mine to do with as I please.”

  No, Sam thought, I am demonstrating a remarkable amount of faith. Your feathers only seem to get ruffled when you’re bluffing about how good you are. “You’ll not keep a copy to use on another run?”

  “Sir Corp, you wound me. Of course not. Expediency is the goad that forces me to this pass. A decker of my skill opens what he will, at will.”

  “Glad to hear it, Dodger,” Sam answered. That probably means you can’tdo it. “I’ll put it in.”

  While Sam entered his code into the datastation, Kham pulled Sally aside. They returned with four pairs of Renraku work coveralls and matching hardhats from the locker room. As the runners started to put them on, Sam just stood there, holding the set Sally had handed him.

  “This isn’t going to work, you know,” he told them. “Sally and I might pass, but you two are obviously not Renraku.”

  “S’matter, Raku not an equal opportunity employer?” the Ork rumbled.

  “Not if they can avoid it.”

  “Just put the stuff on, paleface. Sally’ll take care of it.”

  With little other choice, Sam complied. “What do you mean, Sally will take care of it?” he asked, sealing the white suit over the black one they had given him.

  “An illusion spell,” she said. The guards will see what they expect to see.”

  “If you can do that, why bother with the coveralls?”

  “It’s easier this way. The less I have to twist to make them see what I want them to see, the easier it is to make them see it.”

  “If you could do this, why didn’t we just walk in the front door?”

  “Trid,” she said. “Now be quiet for a minute and let me concentrate.”

  She closed her eyes and put her left hand on the hilt of her magesword where it poked through the slit pocket. Her right hand contorted through a series of gestures as she moved it slowly back and forth in front of her. Sam saw, or thought he saw, a vague glow shimmer briefly into existence, trailing the path of her mystic passes.