Shadowrun

by Dylan Birtolo

  Yu rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s complicated. If I go with you and something happens to me, my Triad brothers are sworn to avenge it, but we can’t afford to get in the middle of a war between the Mafia and the Yakuza. The bosses don’t like taking risks if they don’t have to, and the rest of us took oaths to obey them, whether we like it or not.” The elf’s sour look made it clear to Emu that he didn’t, in fact, like it.

  “No worries, mate. We’ll figure something out—” Another perimeter alarm popped up in Emu’s AR field. The rigger reached for her gun again, but relaxed when she saw a familiar figure on the security feed. “Looks like Zipfile’s here.”

  “And you’re not pulling a gun on her? I don’t know whether I should be flattered or offended.”

  Emu glared at the elf. “She doesn’t give me a heart attack from sneaking past the perimeter sensors just to prove she can. And for the record, you tripped one of the ultrasound scanners.”

  Yu grinned. “See, now you know it works.”

  Just then, the safehouse door swung open to reveal the errant dwarf, carrying an armload of Stuffer Shack bags. “Here, guys. This should last us until a few minutes after Rude shows up.” She hefted the bag on to the kitchen table, then rummaged around inside it for a soybar.

  Yu snorted and grabbed his own soybar, then glanced at his AR clock. “Aiya, I should try to get some sleep before tonight.”

  “What’s tonight?” Emu lit another cigarette, then went to stand beside a window when Zipfile started coughing.

  “Myth called someone she knows at Renraku who hires for their runs in Seattle. I’m supposed to meet him at the Nikko later.”

  Emu frowned. “No luck with the secretary?”

  “Not anything relevant. Apparently, ‘Mr. Miller’ called her this morning to say he wasn’t feeling well, and would be working from home for the rest of the week, so Ghost only knows where he is now. Anyway, thanks for the food, Zip.” Yu waved with his half-eaten soybar, then sauntered off to the side room that served as the safehouse’s sleeping area.

  Emu blew a lungful of smoke out the window, then left her cigarette in an ashtray while she grabbed a Buzz Cola from the pile of foodstuffs. “Hey, Zippo, could you help me with something?”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve running over someone’s cat with a drone.” The dwarf grinned, and Emu regretted—not for the first time—ever telling her that story.

  “No, I can handle that on my own, thanks. I had to take a job for the Ciarniello Family to pay their bloody loan shark, though. It’s a heist at a Yak warehouse in Redmond.”

  “A heist? Good thing we’ve got a thief then, yeah? I’m sure Yu will love it,” Zipfile said.

  Emu winced. “Uh, yeah, about that. He said he couldn’t help. Something about getting in drek with his Triad higher-ups for getting them into a mob war.”

  “Seriously? Eish, that guy…probably just doesn’t want to make his boyfriend angry.” Zipfile ran a hand over her head. “Ehh, don’t worry, you and I can still do it. How big is this thing they want you to steal? We could just run in and grab it urban brawl-style, yeah?”

  “Sure, the two of us can just run in and steal it out from under a bunch of Yak goons.” The rigger laughed, but her mirth faded when she saw the puzzled expression on Zipfile’s face. “Wait—you’re serious?”

  Zipfile shrugged between bites of soybar. “Why not? I’ll be in the van anyway, and if the cargo was valuable enough for bleeding-edge security they wouldn’t be keeping it in Redmond, yeah?”

  “That’s crazy, mate.”

  “Crazy enough to work.” The dwarf smirked. “You got a better idea?”

  Emu gave Zipfile a sideways glance. “You’ve been spending too much time with Gentry.”

  Zipfile made a face at the mention of Ms. Myth’s other go-to decker and urban brawl enthusiast. “Hey, my legs might be shorter than everyone else’s, but I’m a smaller target, too. The Luxembourg Miners are almost all dwarfs, and they were in the Teuton Cup!”

  “Alright, you’ve convinced me.” Emu raised her hands in defeat, then sent Zipfile the warehouse’s GPS coordinates. “The item we need is a metallic case tagged with SpinGlobal RFIDs. They wouldn’t tell me what was inside it, just that it’s somewhere in that warehouse and that they want it back as soon as possible.”

  “Good for them, but we have to find it first.” Zipfile studied the feed from the Optic-X. “Eight guys…that’s not too bad. Just need a big enough distraction to keep them all busy while we sneak in. Your drones can do that, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” The rigger chewed on her lower lip as she mentally sifted through the specs of all of her drones.” We might even be able to take a few of them out ahead of time…”

  Noticing Zipfile’s surprised expression, Emu explained, and after a moment, the dwarf nodded. The two women spent the next few hours bouncing ideas back and forth, building on each other’s suggestions until they’d come up with a plan.

  With the Mafia assignment in hand for the moment, Emu turned her attention back to the larger threat: Renraku. An old teammate of Emu’s had dealt with the Japanacorp before, acting as deniable hired muscle all over the Pacific, including a couple jobs in Seattle. Maybe the rigger’s old comrade was connected well enough to dig up something useful. It was a long shot, but Emu didn’t exactly have a wealth of options at this point.

  Yu and Zipfile were off doing their respective things, so Emu flopped on to the safehouse couch and made a call. The ARO expanded to fit the video feed from the other end of the call, a sharper-than-life view of…a wall.

  A rustling sound filled Emu’s ears, and a voice followed several seconds later. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Time for you to invest in a datajack instead of using your commlink with your bloody hands.” The rigger shook her head.

  “Wha—Emu?” The wall promptly spun to reveal a woman blinking sleep away. “Not like you to call this early.”

  “It’s noon, Lyara.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Emu rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m in a bind and I really need your help.” The admission made her wince a little.

  Lyara snorted. “Again? ‘Lyara, come rescue me from these Mafia thugs whose gun shipment I stole.’ ‘Lyara, help me deal with these bikies who’re slotted that I ran over their cat.’ You should be glad I don’t charge you for it.”

  Lyara was a mercenary, or as the suits in Melbourne liked to call it, a “security consultant.” It was through Lyara’s merc company that Emu had first stepped into the shadows, piloting recon and combat drones alongside the soldiers, though she’d shifted to being more of a vehicle rigger in the years since.

  Emu sighed. “This time’s not like that, Ly. A Johnson tried to have my team killed after a frame-up job—and it wasn’t the usual ‘try to kill us instead of paying us’ bulldrek, either. They tracked my teammates down before the run was even finished, bombed one of our safehouses, everything. And you know full well the cat was a bastet, and I only ran it over because it jammed my wireless before I could stop the Doberman.” At the time, they’d both gotten a good laugh out of the idea of a Matrix-attuned cat being chased by a drone named after a dog.

  “Ugh… alright, I don’t know what you expect me to do from here, but I’ll help however I can.”

  “I’m trying to find some dirt on this slot from Renraku that’ll make him back off.” Emu sent the picture Yu had given her through the Matrix feed. “You still know people there, right?”

  “Depends. Will you make it worth my time?”

  “I thought you said you weren’t charging me for it.”

  “Nah, mate, it’s just a favor for a favor. I tried to order some merch from a place in Seattle, but the shipping’s brutal. Could you pick something up and chuck it in the post for me?”

  Emu raised an eyebrow. “You want me to hit the bottle-o while I’m out, too?”

  “Nah, you’ve got shit taste in beer.” Lyara grinned.

&n
bsp; “Uh, it’s called having standards? What am I picking up for you, and where?”

  “It’s a place called Powerline. Let me look up the address—”

  “Don’t bother, I know where it is.”

  The merc’s eyes shot up. “Oh, do you? Did moving to Seattle broaden your horizons in more ways than one?” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

  “No, it’s— One of the guys on my team goes there sometimes. He asked me to give him a ride once, that’s all.” Emu felt her cheeks burning.

  “So you’re giving rides at fetish clubs now? You really have changed.” Lyara grinned again, this time with mischief in her eyes. “As for what I’m getting—”

  “Never mind, I don’t want to know, I’m not list-en-ing,” Emu said, covering her ears. “Just tell me whether it’ll fit in the boot.”

  “It can be difficult to judge whether a package of a certain size will fit in the boot. Being able to tell at a glance is a matter of experience,” the merc replied, deadpan.

  “Lyara!” Emu’s attempt to speak collapsed into sputtering, and she hid her face in her hands, not that it made much difference when the conversation was being pumped directly into her brain by DNI.

  Lyara burst into a fit of cackles. “I can’t help it, you’re so easy to get worked up!”

  Emu sulked. “You’re a terrible person.”

  “I mean, were you expecting something else?” Lyara’s grin stayed plastered across her face.

  “Ugh, never mind…just tell me which fake SIN you used after you order it. Now, could we please get back to dealing with the Renraku thing before it literally kills me?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll talk to my contacts and see if they know who that bloke is and how you can get him off your back. It’ll probably be exy as fuck, though, just to warn you,” Lyara said.

  Emu sighed. “How much?” All the little extra expenses—not to mention the big ones—were adding up faster than Emu could bring the nuyen in.

  “Last time I bought paydata like this from him, it was…” Lyara frowned and rubbed her forehead. “Probably a couple grand? Assuming he already has it. If he has to hire someone to find it for him, it might be a lot more.”

  “Great… Call him up, I guess. If I can’t afford it, I can’t afford it.”

  “No worries, mate. Can I go back to bed, or would you like me to stay up and torture you more?”

  Emu snorted. “Night, Lyara.”

  Emu had rarely felt more self-conscious in her life.

  From the first moment a visitor stepped inside, Powerline made its nature clear: it was a fetish club, catering to nearly anything its patrons could dream up, and probably a few things that hadn’t occurred to them before. People of all persuasions and interests were mingling and chatting, undoubtedly—in Emu’s mind, anyway—planning what sort of unspeakable acts they’d perform on each other later. Of the patrons Emu could see, every one of them was wearing some sort of fetish-related outfit, leaving the rigger to stick out like a sore thumb in her street clothes. The irony of the “normal” one being the outsider here wasn’t lost on her.

  Really, it wasn’t even the fetish gear and public displays of far-more-than-affection that bothered Emu—it was the inquisitive looks she got from the patrons. What’s someone like you doing here? They were the same looks she’d gotten as a girl, living in corporate housing with her father, where they were the only kooris around. Most of her father’s colleagues and their families were white Australian or Japanese, a few were Chinese or Indian, and every single one of them had given her the same look. What’s someone like you doing here? A few of them had even said it (and less pleasant things) aloud, as though Emu’s obvious Kuringgai heritage meant she was destined to spend her life being a koradji out woop woop with her mother and half-siblings. Never mind that her mother’s family had treated her like an outsider because she’d grown up half in a corporate housing facility and half in the bush, and that was before she’d polluted her body with cyberware by getting a control rig…

  Emu shook her head to snap out of her reverie. Just get it over with and you can leave, she reminded herself. There was something like a reception desk not far from the front entrance, so Emu headed that way, silently thanking whatever power controlled the universe there was no line-up.

  The man staffing the desk looked up when Emu approached, offering her a bright cheery smile. “Welcome to Powerline, honey! How can we delight you today?”

  “How are ya, mate? I’m just here to pick up a package. Should be under Kylie Foster?” Emu glanced at an AR window she’d opened, reading off the confirmation number Lyara had sent her.

  “Let’s see…” The clerk fiddled with his terminal for a moment. “Ahh, here it is. Just a sec, and I’ll go get that for you.”

  Emu mumbled a thank you, then passed the time by wondering how she’d gotten more comfortable with getting shot at by megacorp agents than being around people who were open about their kinks. At least the curious glances had mostly stopped, although there was one Japanese bloke—a drug dealer, Emu noted, after seeing a few of his deals take place—who seemed to have taken an unusual interest in her, while also trying not to look like he was watching. The elaborate tattoos on the dealer’s arms marked him as a Yakuza member, but Emu didn’t know enough about the Japanese syndicates to tell whether the man was part of the same group that controlled the warehouse, or even if she could determine that kind of thing from a Yakuza soldier’s ink. She settled for keeping her hand close to her concealed Crusader and wishing she was somewhere else.

  A few tense minutes later, Emu spotted the desk clerk returning—and struggled not to facepalm at the suitcase-sized box he carried.

  “Here you go, honey,” he said, dropping the parcel on the desk with a dull thump. “That’ll be six hundred nuyen.”

  “Uh, sure.” The rigger managed not to choke in surprise at the price as she waved her hand at an ARO marked “Pay Here” floating above the desk and transferred the required amount. Six hundred? What the frag did she buy? “Do I need to do anything else?”

  “Nope, you’re all set. If you’re ever interested in finding more partners, though, you should definitely stop by sometime. With a range of tastes like yours, I’m sure a few people here could pick up some new tricks,” the clerk said, gesturing to the box.

  Emu’s cheeks started to burn. “No no, these aren’t mine—I’m picking them up for a friend.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, then tell your friend they should visit us,” the clerk said, with a raised eyebrow and a knowing look in their eye, like he heard that excuse all the time—which, to be fair, he probably did.

  For a moment, Emu considered trying to explain that no, the assortment of adult merchandise actually was for a friend, but another glance at the interested-not-interested drug dealer convinced her to cut her losses. “Thanks, mate.” The rigger gave the clerk a friendly smile as she hefted the box, then strolled out of the club.

  As soon as she stepped outside, Emu mentally commanded one of her Hornets to watch the door of the club. The drone buzzed away, and Emu kept one eye on its video feed as she stuffed Lyara’s shipment into the Commodore’s boot—or trunk, as people called it in Seattle. Thankfully, nobody else emerged from the building before she got everything loaded up. She paused just long enough to recover the Hornet on her way out of the parking lot, then made for the open road.

  For people willing to rely on GridGuide and allow their cars’ built-in autopilot to drive—that is to say, most people—the trip from Bellevue to the marina at Mukilteo Park would be a chance to play Matrix games or catch a quick nap. Like most riggers, though, Emu wouldn’t be caught dead letting anyone else drive, especially an autopilot program. Luckily, her rabid insistence on controlling her own vehicle meant she was already watching the road when the staccato whine of a pack of motorcycles approached from behind her. A glance through the Commodore’s rear sensors, filtered through the vehicle control rig implanted in her skull, revealed that the offending
bikes were painted in garish red and orange: the colors of the 405 Hellhounds motorcycle gang.

  Emu cursed. The Commodore—GMC’s answer to Hyundai’s better-known Shin-Hyung—was hugely popular among street racers. That made the sport sedans and their drivers equally popular as targets for the 405 Hellhounds’ initiation rituals, something Emu had learned the hard way the first time she’d driven “their” stretch of road. Traffic was light enough at this time of day that the freeway was relatively empty, and thanks to her previous run-ins with them, Emu knew the Hellhounds wouldn’t see the bog-standard Americars and Bulldogs nearby as more tempting targets.

  As if on cue, half a dozen Thundercloud Contrail racing bikes closed in on Emu’s Commodore. The Hellhounds whooped and hollered, whipping their bike chains against the sides of the car as they roared past, scraping gashes out of the paint and leaving gouges in the reinforced windows. For Emu, the feedback translated through her control rig made each strike felt like she was being slapped: no lasting damage, but painful as hell. After the first pass, the Hellhounds spread out, causing panicked honking from other drivers when they briefly drove the wrong way down the freeway, before coming around for another run at the rigger.

  Fine, Emu thought. She really didn’t need the extra hassle of scrapping with a go-gang right now, but if she couldn’t avoid this fight, she was damn well going to win it.

  She gunned the Commodore’s engine—an action that her control rig translated into feeling like she’d taken off at a run, rather than the sedate jog she’d been maintaining—using the go-gangers’ brief about-face to open as much distance as possible between them. The rigger knew the Hellhounds’ bikes were quicker and more agile than she was, and she was determined to use them chasing her to her advantage for as long as she could. Just as Emu had hoped, the bloodthirsty go-gangers were eager to catch up with her, rushing at the Commodore in a virtually straight line.

  Then the big, beefy Mossberg shotgun mounted in the Commodore’s rear made its presence known when it blew out the closest Mirage’s front wheel and turned the Hellhound riding it into a pile of shouting disbelief and road rash.