Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small

by Russell Zimmerman

I needed him to do the latter, so I shot him a little bit.

  My slug tore into his gut, just to see how he liked it, because he hadn’t fastened shut the ballistic vest he was wearing as almost his only piece of clothing. He stumbled backward, face full of fangs twisted in a surprised little ‘o,’ and my Sideways tried to find a pattern in the splash of black blood he left.

  “Hiya, Sammy.” I gave him a mean little grin as I lined up my sights again, “Nice night, huh?”

  He turned and ran. I trotted after him, keeping him in sight but keeping my Colt ready as the alley-cat chase started. Whenever he looked over his shoulder, whenever I saw that white flash of his stupid facial tattoo, I snapped off a pot shot. I kept the pressure on. Even limping, even gut-shot, he was quick.

  I knew I’d lost him when I rounded a corner and just found a manhole cover flung to one side, an open, steaming, sewer tunnel inviting me to hell.

  I grinned and started my way back to Doc Beaver’s place. My Ford was still there, unmolested. I didn’t think it was because people on this end of Puyallup knew me, in fact, I was pretty sure it was ’cause they didn’t. All they saw was some loco bastard going after Beaver’s muscle and winning, and all they knew was they didn’t want a piece of that.

  Colt still in hand, I shouldered open the door and found the chubby street doc himself. I had to ask him a couple questions about his employees.

  CHAPTER 35

  My apartment was a friggin’ circus behind the frosted JAMES KINCAID, PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR on the door. Gentry’d helped himself to the maglock—well, fuckyouverymuch—and gone ahead and let everyone in, just ’cause I was running a little late. Beaver’d taken a little more work to open up than I’d thought he would, so sure, timeliness was on me, but I was still grouchy at the decker for taking liberties with my door.

  I dragged him into the hallway by the scruff of his neck, my apartment a riot of colors and technobabble, even with my AR toggled back off. I tabbed my mono-filter to maximum, which at least turned down the chaos a little, but I had a crazy wave of haircuts, piercings, tattoos, cybernetics, electronics, and discarded junk food wrappers filling the place, including at least one cyberdeck sprawled open on my desk—my desk!—with two geeky girls hmm’ing and haw’ing over its guts.

  “Hiya, Jimmy.” Gentry wriggled free of my grip, scowling and rubbing his neck. “Nice t’see you, too.”

  “Did your geek squad stay outta my study?”

  “C’mon, bro, don’t be all goronagee about it. Those geeks are here to do your wo—”

  I got right up in his face, angrier than I meant to be.

  “Did you stay out of my study?!”

  “Jeeze, man! Yes. We stayed out of your study. Everyone’s here, everyone’s in the main room, office, kitchen, whatever.”

  He looked away, but didn’t back off. He had some sand, at least. I tried to cool myself down.

  “All right. Don’t break in again. And keep everyone out of there, you hear me? It’s private. Even more private.”

  “Super private, yeah. I got it.” He looked sulky. I couldn’t blame him.

  I leaned around the corner enough to peer inside. None of the hackers even looked up. I knew just one of ’em, the rest were his.

  “So, who’ve we got?” I asked, trying to get him upbeat again. It worked.

  “Goth chick with the sweet-ass Sony rig, the tweaked CIY-720?”

  “I see a gal in black, sure.”

  “It’s wiz, chummer, she’s got some overclockage going on like nuts, raw speed on her ’deck is through the roof, you won’t believe th—”

  “I’m gonna save us both about ten minutes here, kid. You tell me who they are by how they look, maybe tell me what they do, okay? I don’t know or care how they do it, what specs they’ve got, or any of that.”

  “Roger that, buzzkill. Her handle’s Bootleg Girl. Chickie used to be a pretty hardcore bro, streets say, specializing in forging passcodes and slinging mass-copied files, selling ’em cheap to rip off the corp-cops. She’s novahot now, though, and running a solid cyberdeck. BG’s got some passcodes that’ll help with the power company search, she’s our way in like Flynn. Just wants to get back at The Man, she’s in to expose the weaknesses inherent in the system, in an effort to steer the modern consumer away from being so reliant on a single insecure service provider.”

  “A creepy academic-slash-activist. Fine. Next to her, the other gal?”

  “The sizzlin’ hot piece of Jamaican bacon? That’s Voodoo Child. She used to be the tech support for some Carib pirate clan, got exiled over some drama-for-your-momma, so now she’s hanging here in Seattle. She’s only packing a Renraku Tsurugi, and she and BG are working on it right this nanosecond, but she melts IC like nobody’s business an’ don’t take no guff. Muscle, if things go sour.”

  Muscle, right. She was fit enough, but still shapely, still curvy, hardly chrome-built or bulked-up like Skip. If she was muscle, it was clearly only in the Matrix.

  “Pay?”

  “She owes a favor to a Gator shaman, who wants her to fuck with Eta Engineering over something.”

  “So free?”

  “So free.”

  “Great, she’s hired. I know the next guy.”

  “Yeah, I was psyched when I saw you knew Hotspur. He’s gone goronit, but the raegh’s a legend back home.”

  Back home. So Gentry was from the Tír. That explained a lot. It couldn’t’ve been easy, growing up human there. I shoved aside my linguasoft pop-ups, getting the gist. Hotspur’d abandoned ElfyLand, but was still respected by the geeks there.

  “He’s in it to win it, Jimmy. Guy knows his stuff, been around since, like, Dodger, just never made it big.”

  It was true. The other elf, with his glossy black-and-white Spinrad-X cyberarm, had been on the Seattle fringe as long as I had, maybe longer. He could hold his own in a scrap, I knew, not just in the digital reality they all soaked too long in. Hotspur and I’d met doing a little work for a local Neo-Anarchist cell. He was good people.

  “Yeah, Gentry. I know him. And if I know him, he’s…”

  “Free, yeah. Just wants to help.”

  Good people, like I said.

  “Perfect. Next?”

  “That empty chair over there was where I was sitting.”

  “I don’t need to know that.”

  “I’m just bein’ thorough, boss.”

  “Gentry…”

  “Fine! Fine. Last up on our hit parade is Highball.”

  “I like the cut of his jib.”

  “I don’t know what those old-people words mean.”

  “I like booze-centric street names, sue me. Just tell me about him.”

  “He’s a Cereal Killer—that’s ‘cereal,’ with a c, like CHOCO-PUNCH CHOCO-PUFFS, not the other—”

  “I got it, yeah.”

  “Anyway, he’s a CK, but not too bad a guy for a ‘trix-ganger. He’s got the weakest ’deck in the group, but that’s like saying the guy with the Ares Predator’s got the cheapest pistol. He’s still trouble. Along with Voodoo Child, he’s gonna be our heavy hitter. The guy’s balls nasty in a digi-fight, even if he’s not the most subtle hacker this side of Slamm-0!, y’know?”

  “No, no I do not.”

  “I’m saying he’s good against IC and security deckers, in case we slip up and get loud.”

  “And he’s how expensive?”

  “Drumroll please…also free. I dared him.”

  “That was it?”

  “Well, I dared him and promised him some face-time with BG and Voodoo, yeah.”

  I gave Gentry a sidelong glance.

  “You got me a room full of hackers for free?”

  “We prefer deckers, except maybe Hotspur, but, uh, yeah. I told you, everyone just wants the street cred. We’ll get what you’re after, leave a little VR graffiti, tag the place up, and be rock stars. So, uh, yeah. Free. Minus the pizza and the CHOCO-PUNCH stuff, and…”

  “And a case of protein shakes?” />
  “That’d be wiz, Jimmy, yeah.”

  “Done. I’ll hit the store. You lot finish getting ready.”

  I dropped about two hundred nu on munchies, counting the pizzas they’d already picked up. I got them every kind of sugary, caffeinated, suicidal drek I could find. No booze—even for Highball—until after the hack was finished, but I picked some of that up, too, just to have it handy. A roomful of grown men and women, shadowrunners one and all, killers and stone-cold professionals, and I was getting ’em to spit in the eye of two of the city’s most crucial, powerful entities, all for some junk food.

  Sometimes this world is weird as hell.

  I sat on overwatch. It was tough. I didn’t piggyback this time, didn’t want to peek over Gentry’s shoulder and go along for the ride. He had enough to do, herding cats and coordinating a bunch of crazy bastards, right? I let him do it. I’d told him what we were looking for, and I’d told him why—after Sammy stuck his fist in my gut, I figured Gentry deserved the whole story—and I just had to trust him and his merry band of digital pirates to get the job done.

  It was hard, to just sit there and watch them plug in. My neighborhood was good for it, both city services companies had hubs nearby, offices with server rooms and whatever else Gentry’d need. We were in the right part of town to get a solid connection, he’d said, which was why we’d agreed on my apartment in the first place.

  In the end, they all just…did it. Sprawled out, got comfortable, leaned against a wall or something, and went away. It was eerie. I figured it was how other folks felt when I went astral—all the way, not just sneaking a peek—when they all dipped into full virtual reality, hot-sim, nothing between them and being brain-fried but their wits and their programs.

  It was over faster than I thought it’d be.

  They were gone two and a half minutes; that was it. Everyone lay there, everyone twitched a little, then they twitched a little more. Highball and Voodoo Child got bloody noses, then Bootleg Girl fell outta my chair and onto her ass. Hotspur kicked around a little, like someone having a bad dream, and then his namesake blades slid out of his arm, just to retract a second later. Then that was it. They all started blinking their eyes open, a couple groaned in pain, Voodoo cussed until she high-fived Highball, and they all started whooping.

  I busted out the liquor.

  Mission fucking accomplished.

  CHAPTER 36

  Things started moving faster. I called Hank Weazely and Pink, with Gentry listening in and coordinating file-swapping. I got data from each of them, shared information with each of them, tabulated what I had, sent the hackers back to the Armadillo with another hundred nuyen to buy themselves a round, and then I made one more phone call.

  Caitlyn the Caboose was an Ork Underground girl through and through. She’d grown up in the dark down there, fixed what needed fixing, killed what needed killing. She’d been a big name about a decade back—that’s when we’d first crossed paths, me new-ish at this detective thing, her in her prime—and had been a drek-hot razorgirl for a while. Upgrades were expensive, though, and she’d seen that in the long run the streets were like the house in a casino. You keep playing long enough, they win.

  Caitlyn had been busy these last few years, what with the campaign and all. They hadn’t put her in the spotlight or stuck a microphone in her face, she wasn’t the sort for that, even if she was cute in a “girl next door, but also a chromed-up pitfighter” sort of way. No, Caboose had been an organizer. A little Underground law, keeping rallies from getting out of hand, knocking heads, keeping the tusky young punks in line, not letting anything go too crazy. The people had spoken and the Ork Underground was a district all its own now; and there Caitlyn the Caboose was, protecting the rear, like always, trying to maintain something like order.

  Especially since that two-timing Skip wasn’t answering my calls right now, Caitlyn was just what I’d needed to help put some puzzle pieces in order.

  “’Boose? It’s Jimmy. Jimmy K. Jimmy Kincaid? The PI?”

  Jeez, tough crowd. The last bit finally got her, though. Ten years was a long time to an ork. I tried not to let it sting.

  “Hoi, Jimmy. What’s up?”

  “I need some info, Cait. I’m tracking down some fuglies from the little-u underground, ghouls and their bitch-queen, a vampire. I want ’em gone, you want ’em gone. You gimme some solid paydata, I’m another step closer.”

  “I’ll help if I can,” she said, and my heart sang. She was good people, Caboose.

  “I’ll send you the map I’ve got right now. I just need you to let me know—be honest, Caboose, it’s important—let me know which of ’em are your people, and which aren’t.”

  “Which what?”

  I transferred the file, waited a tick to make sure the data was sending.

  “That’s a map, a buddy put it together.” Hank was a buddy now, I guess. He had come through for me, the current map I had was version four, all told, updated and updated, time and again, as he kept the data coming.

  “It’s been cross-referenced with some data we got, a good score from some secure utility servers. The spots on there, the tinted sections? That’s what I need you for, Caboose. Those zones mark likely unlawful access points.”

  “You want me to rat my people out?”

  “No, nothing like that. I want to know where the Underground might’ve spread to, yes. I want to know which power taps are theirs, yes. But I swear to you—Caitlyn, I swear it on my mother—I’m not telling anybody. It’s so I can know where these ghouls aren’t. I just need to narrow it down.”

  It was already narrowed. I didn’t tell her that, just let Caitlyn chew on her bottom lip, tusks be damned, and make up her mind.

  I’d tagged that asshole, Bones, to send him scurrying. I’d compiled data from the likely entry points we had—Gem’s warehouse that Tomizawa had told me about, some tunnels that connected to Doc Beaver’s place, old tunnels me ‘n’ Pinkerton had tagged two years ago, newer entrances he knew about throughout Downtown from leaning on his contacts, the sewer I’d kicked Sammy Bones into—and we’d put them all together. We had likely locations already, just based on the entrances and exits we knew they used.

  We had some tunnels highlighted, some tunnels already flagged. What we needed was confirmation. What we needed was for the Ork Underground to be honest with me, to tell me which illegal utility drainages were theirs, so we could mark certain lengths of tunnel off the map.

  “You promise, Jimmy? Not a word to your buddies in city hall, no cops?”

  “You got my word, Caboose. Not a peep. This is just for a case. Just to kill some ghouls.”

  “Jeeze…all right. Fine. Here.”

  I got a little icon blinking to life, letting me know she’d sent back a file. A quick thought pulled it up, I rotated the 3D map, looked for her tags, or rather, looked for where her tags weren’t.

  “You’re a lifesaver, ’Boose.”

  “Not yet I ain’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m coming along, when you go after ’em. Gotta make sure this is on the up and up.”

  That’d be her excuse with the Underground leadership, maybe.

  “Sure,” I said, fighting a smile. She was good people. “Happy to have you, Caboose. More than.”

  “Awright.” She tried to put on a grouchy ork face, failed miserably. “Don’t get all weepy on me, keeb. The more the merrier, that’s all. Call with a time and a place, yeah? Caboose, out!”

  The call went dead. It gave me a hell of an idea. The more the merrier.

  I had to cross-reference the latest version of the map with Hank Weazely, and my stomach was grumbling at me, too. The geeks’d cleaned out that pile of junk food I’d bought, hadn’t even left me any cold pizza, and they’d hit my fridge like a plague of locusts to boot.

  “Hey, Darlene? Naw, naw. I’m not calling for Hank, or, well, him, too. Listen. That spaghetti still an option?”

  “Tonig
ht?”

  A home-cooked meal would do me some good. After having all those hackers fill up my place, even a night around Hank and Darlene’s kids might not be too bad.

  “Yeah, I gotta talk a little biz with him, too, though. But spaghetti sounds great. That’d be perfect.”

  I smiled after I hung up, whistling a little tune as I headed out to my Ford. Things were gonna work out just fine.

  CHAPTER 37

  I should never have kicked their door open after seeing the blood on the knob, the scratches where claws had fumbled with simple, human opening of a door.

  I should never have stepped inside, Colt up, wand ready, wrists crossed like I could still help someone.

  I should never have looked around, my stupid fucking cybereyes and this terrible goddammed Sideways soaking it all in, locking it away, memorizing every detail.

  I smelled smoke first, mercifully, but it didn’t last before the other odors hit. Cheap garlic bread that had been left in the oven too long—the kitchen network’s stupid dog-brain cheerfully displayed that the timer had expired twenty minutes earlier—and filled the place with smoke and stink, granting a haze of unreality to all of it. My augmentations didn’t let the haze do the job, though, they still picked out every little detail. My Sideways tried to count spaghetti noodles scattered on the floor amidst pieces of housewife, tried to make sense of splash patterns, tried to tell me the story of a pot of boiling noodles being thrown at an assailant in a futile attempt at defending their home. My Transys called up forensic tutorials and told me the height of their assailant based on how the blood had hit the wall and ceiling, then the subroutines struggled for a moment because it couldn’t match the damage to any sort of knife blade.

  That’s because they hadn’t used knives to do their cutting.

  A reluctant detective, a horrified investigator just this once, I picked out patterns in the scraps of cloth and meat that were all that was left of Darlene, there on the kitchen floor. I put together a jigsaw puzzle where, half an hour earlier, a woman had stood cooking dinner for an expected houseguest.