From the Street (shadowrun stories) Page 14

  The tearful reunion between master and man's best friend doesn't go so well.

  "What is that?" Mr. Johnson says.

  "Your dog. Chester, purebred Australian Kelpie. The kidnappers intended to use him as a security animal, after extensive implants."

  "But… wait, I must see… " he says.

  My employer goes down on his knees in the filthy alley, picks up Chester's tail and takes a good, long look.

  "Oh, no." Tears were in his eyes. "They neutered him! The bastards… he's worthless now!"

  I cough politely.

  "I'm sorry your animal has been, ah, fixed, but I've completed my mission and I would like the remainder of my fee."

  Hutchinson turns apoplectic.

  "Your fee? Your fee! You worthless, bloody low-born gutterscum! Don't you understand? This animal is worth nothing to me now! He can't breed! I won't pay you one red cent! You and that – that beast can go to bottomless perdition for all I care!"

  Hutchinson tries to storm off, but I extend my staff and trip him before he can get to the car. I bring the staff down a centimeter from his head and watch my former Mr. Johnson flinch.

  "My money. One thousand nuyen. Now."

  He looks scared enough to pay. Then the sirens start, and his smile is an ugly thing.

  "Money be damned. I've called the police. They'll take you away!"

  Dammit. The sirens get closer. I bring my staff down again, but this time on his throat. By the time the police arrive, all they'll find is a miserly corpse. I gotta talk to Gio about giving me deadbeats like Hutchinson.

  I run, and Chester follows. It's a dead sprint down the back alleys to Little Asia, but I don't really know where we're going. We stop a block from Soon's. The respirator hums, trying to keep up with my breathing. Chester sniffs the garbage with serious interest.

  Now what the hell do I do? No money, and now I've got a dog. Maybe I can sell the dog. Not that I know where to start. All those dog fanciers would probably react the same way Hutchinson did. I make a call to Gio, the fixer who got me into this mess. I watch him on the AR call-screen, tapping away at something.

  "I'm afraid I can't help you right now, Sticks. Biz is backed up."

  "Fuck your other biz, Gio. You gave me a deadbeat." I explain about Hutchinson.

  "Hmm, all right. Won't even charge it against your account."

  "You're a real piece of work Gio. Let me have it."

  "Well, there are a number of lucrative markets. Livestock is one you've run into already, but from the sound of things the animal doesn't have a lot of meat on it, and they pay by the kilo. You could fatten him up, I suppose."

  I don't even know how to take care of a dog, much less a dog with more high-grade implants than most veteran runners.

  "Sims. Most of the syndicates have a bestiality BTL or two on the market. They pay a premium for well-trained "actors." Oh wait, the dog is fixed, right? Damn. Well, maybe one of those sims about being an animal."

  I watch Chester as he stops sniffing and pads over to me, metal claws clicking on the ground. He's holding a piece of rebar in his jaws, and drops it at my feet.

  I reach down to pick it up, and Chester's tail starts wagging. What the hell does he want me to do? I toss the worthless chunk of metal away. Chester leaps at the rebar, catches it in his jaws, and brings it back. I throw it harder this time, and again Chester fetches it. It's like a game. I start thinking while we play.

  "Pit fights are a possibility," Gio continues. "The market is always hungy for 'amateur talent.' A few of the gangs in the Barrens raise mutts and beat them to make them mean. Trained dogs usually last longer, and carry a higher price. Dogs with implants are always in demand at the Coliseum."

  A pit-fighting cyberdog, eh? Not many shadowrunners can say they have one of those. Could be a serious asset. Take him home; let him chew on my old clubs… I wonder how much he needs to eat? He'd be a nice security system. I'd like to see some gangers try to break in and steal my stuff with Chester around!

  "But, if you take my advice, xenotransplants are the way to go. The implants and organs in your animal must be worth a small fortune to certain street docs and veterinarians. Here, I'm sending you an encoded file with a number you can reach someone at. Her name is Butch. I really must be going now, Sticks. I'll call you when I have work."

  I barely register the disconnect as Chester stares at me with his dark brown eyes. Break him up for spare parts? Just like that? No. I'll try the pitfighting thing. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

  I freeze when Chester starts to growl. Three Knight Errant officers are coming down the alley. One is a female ork armed with a stun gun, the other two are male humans with long poles that have loops of wire at the end. Looks like the boys at the lab want Chester back. How the hell did they find us? Then it hits me: the RFID tag. Damn. Well, they won't get my dog without a fight.

  Just as I whip out my extendable staff, Chester launches himself at the one with the taser. The humans advanced on me, and I fall back. It's one thing to beat up two guards when you have surprise and a weapon drawn; it's something else to take on two armed, aware opponents working together. I fence with them a bit, feeling out the range of their poles. When one of them makes a move for me, my staff breaks his right wrist, forcing him to drop his weapon.

  My follow-up is interrupted when the second officer gets the loop of his pole around my neck, and tightens it. I try to hit him with my staff, but he's out of range. The first human takes it away from me with his good hand. I can't breathe. I try to grab the loop, but my hands are too damn heavy. I can't see…

  I wake up to warm, greasy rain on my face. My throat burns, and I rip the loop off of my neck. Must have passed out. But where are the Knight Errant officers? Where's Chester? I look around the alley and open my eyes wide to adjust to the low light.

  Chester's snout is buried in the intestines of the ork woman; the bodies of the other two are nearby. The dog is covered with gore, and pulling out wet, slippery bits of meat from the ork's stomach. He stops feasting to look up at me. His eyes glow yellow-green. Chester wags his tail.

  I can't take him home. There's no way I could control him. I fetch around for that piece of rebar, and hold it up. Chester comes bounding over, jumping up and down on spring-powered legs. I hold the rebar up, and reach down with my other hand to pet Chester. He looks up at me with brown eyes, totally trusting.

  A shock goes up my arm as the rebar penetrates his left eye and into his brain. The dog dies almost instantly. His implants take a little while longer to stop twitching.

  I make my way back to Soon's, but somehow I don't think I'm up for any more dog. Not for a while, anyway.

  THE MAN WITH THE PLANS

  by Dave Barton

  I have become invisible and intangible. Nobody sees me anymore. I do my job but nothing changes, nobody benefits. Not anymore.

  But still I love the sea, the lift and tilt of the waves. Monty Crane gets land-sick, they joke down at the Bleached Whale, and they're right. Vancouver makes me sick to my stomach. I'm only happy when I'm on this old boat of mine and heading out of the bay.

  I am invisible. I keep my eyes on the horizon, my hands on the wheel, my mouth shut, and outside the one-man cabin my passengers chat as if I wasn't here.

  "I'm just saying: from what I've heard, Skunk won't take money," says the guy who thinks he's their leader. An ork with stud-covered skin. The rest of his body also infested with metal, no doubt. Hints of a Seattle accent, I think. I get a gut-load of deja vu, then and there. But he's right: Skunk doesn't need money. Money's no good out in the Swamps. I know what Skunk will want, and I know it won't be pretty. This isn't deja vu. I have been here before. Too many times. Maybe I should tell them.

  "So we save a chunk of our own pay," grunts his human friend, the Amerind punk with the coat full of knives. "Suits me."

  The elf girl's looking a little green. I like her but what can I do? The sea's choppy this morning, and anyway it'll
be better out than in.

  "And I'm just saying: there've got to be other ways to get the-" she drops her voice to a hoarse whisper, eyes darting in my direction "- blueprints for the place." She needn't have bothered. I could have filled in the blanks even if I didn't have an ear full of electronics. I know how it works with Arty Skunk. I've been there from the beginning.

  A cloud of sea spray slaps the elf girl in the face. She retches and folds up onto the deck, cupping her mouth. But she'll be damned if she won't finish her point: "I don't like what I've heard about this Skunk fellow-" she pauses to swallow back the sickness "-and I don't like thinking about what he might ask us to do in exchange."

  I smirk, safe in the knowledge that this raggedy old beard will hide it. A shadowrunner with a moral streak. Refreshing. Likeably naive. But I'm guessing she's new to this way of life and she isn't going to go very far with that kind of baggage. More's the pity.

  Up ahead their hacker perches cross-legged on the bow of the boat. He's sweeping his hands around in the air like one of those Tai Chi nuts in the park in Chinatown, only ten times the speed. Juggling little panels and streams of information that only he can see. I glance out at the landmarks and the little signs that only I can see. Behind us on the right, the fortress walls of the aerodrome are fading into the morning haze. The silt is merging with the sea. Time to turn hard to port and follow what's left of the coast. And any second now…

  Sure enough, the hacker cries out "Fuck it!" and shakes his fists in the air. He stands up and stomps my way.

  "No signal? Seriously?" he shouts through the window. I shake my head and shout back, trying to put some sympathy into the tone:

  "Aye, and you won't get much in the Swamps either. A few patches here and there, but wireless relays aren't a high priority, I'm afraid."

  He curses, and the others fumble with their commlinks to confirm what their friend has just pointed out. There will be moaning and bitching like spoiled children, you mark my words.

  "Why are we heading so far out? We wanted to go south, not west!" the ork yells. A Wuxing cargo jet has chosen this moment to roar overhead, spiraling down toward the Vancouver aerodrome behind us. Odd that it isn't heading directly to their facility.

  Young punk. Telling me my business? I sigh through gritted teeth.

  "Safest way. Lots of Rangers and Border Patrol along the north edge of the Swamps. Watching for trouble and smugglers. Lucky we didn't get stopped already when we skirted it."

  Luck, and ten years plying this old fishing boat. I've been stopped so many times they rarely bother me anymore as long as I stick to this route. They never have searched hard enough to find the smuggling bins under the hull, I'm happy to say, otherwise I guess it would be a different story.

  They shut up for a while, taking in the view. I think the elf girl's about ready to cry when she first sees the Dyke. And the ork can hardly bring himself to look. All those heads on spikes, looking out to sea-kind of surprised-looking, some of them. I remember when the Dyke was still a symbol of hope. God forgive me. I might as well have put those heads up there myself.

  It was over ten years ago when Mother Earth hit the Richmond area with one mother of an earthquake. We were sure it wasn't natural. The aerodrome just to the north got away with a few cracks, and as you'd guess, the corps weren't slow to get it patched up and good as new. But Richmond, sitting on the sands between the two arms of the Fraser River, was a different story. Many of the buildings were reduced to rubble. A few years and another earthquake later and the land had taken more than it could bear. It subsided ten feet or more and let the sea rush in to embrace the remaining real estate.

  After the first quake, most of the survivors fled to neighboring districts and the high and mighty managed to pack them all in eventually. The Cascade Crow governors dutifully danced in honor of the dead, then washed their hands and walked away. The place was empty, they said. Nothing more to see. But it wasn't true, especially around the edges of the district. Some couldn't afford to leave (Amerind insurance companies quibbled about "hand of God" clauses and sold their souls to the devil that day), some didn't want to leave, and some people in this world are drawn to suffering like flies to shit. On top of everything else, there were the Shedim zombies: a real nightmare at the center of the district. Not every victim of Richmond took death lying down.

  Six years ago, not long before the Crash of '64, I was shipping another team of shadowrunners on this exact same route. In this exact same boat. I remember now: there was an ork pretending to be in charge of that lot too. Razor, I think his name was. Or the name he was giving me, anyway. I don't remember the others so well, but these were the people who gave Arty Skunk his big idea. This was the day that Skunk got a wicked glint in his eye.

  Razor wasn't a native of Vancouver either, and although he was trying to pretend otherwise, I don't think he'd even been here very long. I had a feeling that none of them had. They were still buzzing from a trip to the Vancouver Ridge in downtown. Back then it had only been open for a year or two, though I don't think it's mellowed much with age, even after the Crash lost everyone so much money. Two miles of the most expensive shops, bars, restaurants, hotels, and casinos in the Salish-Shidhe Council. Swimming pools, an aquarium, an arboretum in the main concourse, massage and beauty parlors, art galleries, you name it, all of it under the same long roof. The Pacific Prosperity Group's big shiny statement that it could promote greed and glamour even in the tree-hugging SSC. And a shiny slap in the face for all those people trying to rebuild the Richmond Swamps not ten miles away.

  I remember our approach to the Swamps that day. Their conversation faltering and the smiles dropping off their faces like iron anvils. Quite a contrast to the Ridge. As I turned inland at the southern end of the Dyke, they saw the sickly thin survivors wading through the water. A long chain of them, hounded by flies, blankly piling up bits of debris on top of rusting shells of cars on top of heaps of rotting branches. It was tempting to think that they shuffled like zombies, but out here it was a good idea to draw a clear line between the barely living and the wading dead.

  "What are they doing?" I remember Razor asking.

  "They're building the Dyke," I told him. "They think they can reclaim Richmond."

  As we slipped on by, he and his friends watched the scene with sour looks on their faces. There were huge makeshift banners laid out along the Dyke, for the benefit of all those wealthy execs flying in toward the aerodrome. "If you won't do it, we will!" was one of them. Others were less polite. But those poor souls were hardly in a state to do anything. I remember Razor and his friends tensing as they spotted a man, a rusting assault rifle in his hands, standing on one of the tiled rooftops that peeked out of the foul water. A second armed man came up the roof behind him.

  "Take it easy!" I told my passengers.

  "Who are they?" asked one, a young lad with startling white hair.

  "You're going to see Arty Skunk? Well those are his men and that there Dyke is his big idea. And there are any number of Gator Gangs that would happily prey on all these people if Arty's men weren't here. But we're all right. They know this boat, so don't rock it." Razor nodded with some sort of approval. Maybe once he'd been a bit of a community leader himself.

  I was getting paid (and paid pretty well-they hadn't even haggled) to take this lot all the way to Arty's headquarters: the top floors of an old semi-submerged school just a little way in from the Dyke. The "Skunkworks," people called it. Arty's little community center.

  I thought it best to go in with them, a familiar face to lead them up to Arty's "throne room" in the roof space and introduce them. I was almost more worried for Arty than I was for them. They carried themselves like cobras.

  "We've heard you've acquired blueprints for the Vitus Grand Hotel," said Razor.

  So that was it. The VG was one of the most expensive hotels in the world. The final extravagant flourish at the end of the Vancouver Ridge. The kind of place that didn't do rooms; if you couldn'
t afford a suite then they weren't interested in your custom. If these guys were planning to hit the VG then they really were playing in the big league. But Arty wasn't going to be intimidated. He was his usual clipped and charmless self.

  "We'd considered staging a protest there. What's it to you?"

  I wondered what sort of protest he'd contemplated. The VG already attracted all kinds of jealous slurs, jokes, and graffiti: bloggers calling it the "VITAS Grand," and so on. But the VG was too rich and classy to care about a little plague joke. And much too secure for Arty's minions to tackle. I was surprised that he'd managed to get the blueprints in the first place. Vancouver's wealthy Cascade Crow landowners tended to pay well to keep the details of their property away from public eyes. But there were still a few well-connected Amerinds with some sympathy for the plight of the Swamps dwellers. And Arty was the kind of man who could capitalize on bourgeois guilt.

  The shadowrunners shifted uneasily. Razor took the lead again.

  "We'll pay well for them."

  I remember Arty looking at the antiquated datapad in his hands. That's when I saw that glint.

  "Money's not much use to me out here," he barked. "But… decent guns and people who know how to use them… those I can use."

  I doubted Arty was the only source for the information they wanted. But this would be clean: no risk of alerting the target. I could read the same thought on Razor's face.

  "Go on," he said quietly.

  "There is a gang that has been terrorizing my people." (My people? The ego of the man!) "They call themselves the Crocs. King Croc is a troll. And there are his two lieutenants, one of them a shaman. They've got a nest not too far away. You bring me… their heads… and then you can have your blueprints for free."

  Arty's minions smiled at each other and nodded approvingly. The shadowrunners looked at each other, and asked for a moment to discuss the offer. I stood at the back of the room, hardly daring to breathe. Nobody would be sorry to see the Crocs get their comeuppance. I'd heard all about them many times. The abductions. The drugs. Abuse. Destruction. Black magic. Worse. The Crocs were a menace, but these guys looked up to the task. Yes, I remember thinking I'd be very glad to see my passengers take this deal. From the animation of their huddled discussion, I got the sense that they were not too sure. They asked a whole lot of questions about the gang and its crimes, asked for a glimpse of the blueprint file to confirm it was what they were after, and in the end Razor came back.