Silver Wings and Chrome Kings (1st Installment)

PROLOGUE: The Business of the Future

“There seems to have been a problem with the credit transfer.”

“There is no problem. There is no payment for unfulfilled commissions.”

“What are you talking about? Completion was guaranteed. The oversight inspection returned perfectly clean results.”

“Incorrect. Three billets were improperly handled. We have a troubleshooting team reviewing the situation.”

“Three? Send me the data and I’ll take care of it. There’s no need for a separate team.”

“Negative. The team is already in the field tracing the billets.”

“Now wait you…”

“Repeat, the team is in the field and will complete the commission. Your assistance is no longer required nor desirable. There will be no further business relations between us. Ever.”

Unlatching her dented and dirty hardshell armor to pull out a nicstik, Dera shook it alight as the light-sensitive camera mounted on her left shoulder whirred quietly, following a preprogrammed pattern across the crime scene to record the carnage for forensicomp analysis later. Shards of glass littered the floor about the mangled remains of what, at some time previously, had been a human being. Her partner slipped quietly around the room with a portable inspection unit, careful to stay out of the camera’s field of view as it whirred and clicked its way back and forth across the small room.

“DNA scan negative, ID scan negative.”

“You’re wasting your time, Del. The Bumblebee popped up outside the window, emptied the magazine and, just like that, problem all gone. No evidence either. And cybercypher here,” she pointed at the corpse with the glowing end of the nicstik, “won’t have a past or a present on record and sure as hell ain’t gonna have a future.”

“Yeh, I know, but they’ll wanna see the scans anyway” Del sighed, “even if it is just a case of business as usual.”

Chapter the 1st: Ain’t No Effin’ Angel
Imagine all the sleazy bars in all the vids you grew up on: the punks, the whores and the hard men mixing in the urban soup called a city. Condense all that into a single gestalt of the quintessential bad place to be. Welcome to the Fallen Angel. Try not to die before you leave, the bartender really hates to clean up.

I do business down here sometimes, away from big lights, big city. Some call me The Tween, some call me Mister Fixit, a very few even use one of my names. Most people would think that a geek in a suit like mine would last inside the Effin’ Angel, as we regulars call it, about as long as a cherry in a third-gen corpwar. Just goes to show that most people don’t hang around in places like the Angel. Which is good or the bartender would be cleaning up lily-livers 24/7. The only two things that matter inside the Angel are the two A’s: Attitude and Armament. Attitude is my life, armament is my business. All kinds of business greases through the Angel: a thousand eurobuck whore might be translating two vials into a hundred-thousand folding downpayments on her next black-market biosculpt with the rest going to feed her pimp’s taste for expensive cars. The whores slum to the Angel when they need hard curry in a hurry. Sex with grimers and drifters don’t add up in a hurry so they supplement their usual fare with a more esoteric menu. The buyers of these high-priced wares? Three road gypsies in long coats hanging past their knees with just that little bit of extra stiffness that means armor plates and enough metal laced into their bones that the floor creaks with their every movement.

My eyes roamed over my own customers seated at my usual corner table. The low-level video feed transmitted to my associates outside guaranteed revenge if not survival. Hey, every business has some risks and you just do your best to cover your ass. If the girl hadn’t been old input, and unfinished besides, they never would have heard of me and couldn’t have found me with a GPS beacon, satellite lock and IR gear. My catalog makes the hookers’ wares look like prizes in a penny-ante arcade in comparison. The gypsies that roam the dirtlands in the cracks between one megalopolis and another don’t usually have the funds or the need for my services. Wanderers don’t generally shop much in hard to get, harder to keep, heavy armament. They were a cash and carry bunch and most carried everything they owned on their backs. Small groups traveling together might have a need to protect, or take, something more than their bike and their pistols, but most knew their best safety was staying off the radar and under the ground swell. What they had to steal wasn’t worth the pain it would take to get it away from them and everyone knew it. The big groups, the ones that stayed together as they roamed places everyone else had the sense to stay the hell away from, they occasionally had a …situation… that could use my particular brand of solution. The slim woman leaning forward intently across from me over the indelibly stained and cracked plastic tabletop knew that. She also knew how to get to me, in more ways than one. She knew what I could do and was pretty sure about what I couldn’t. She hadn’t been so sure about what I wouldn’t and that was how we ended up when she ran out. Now the lady had a name in the streets and a rep dogging her heels.

“Nightshade,” she said, her startlingly green eyes bright with pride in her animated face, giving me her street name.” I allowed that I had heard of it, which was true. I keep track of mobile up-and-comers on the scene. They can be very useful to someone in my line of work. “I run . . . ran, I mean, out of the Starshine Followers . . . from down, down by the, the . . .,” she stammered and then faded out. The sparkle in those eyes dimmed behind the tears on her smooth cheeks as she tried to forget what she knew was true: the Starshine Followers were gone. She dropped back in her chair, dwarfed by the black giant next to her as he continued to watched me impassively. I gave him points for the lack of passion in his voice as he continued her words; “She means the Starshine Followers that formed down by the waterfront. I’m sure you know the story” his deep voice rumbled. I did. Everyone did.
He never moved but I could almost feel him hovering protectively around the woman as she continued to sob softly, gathering it together slowly. At least seven feet of proud ebony sculpture, his hard features expressionless, he watched for my reaction to the news. Good luck to him on that score. I retired my reactions years ago. I watched his bald skull glisten in the dim light and thought about that superchromed cybernetic arm of his oh so carelessly draped on the table, pointed at me.

“I don’t do hopeless causes” I said to him, matching his even tone. “Too hard on material I work too hard to get.” Subtle, that’s me.

“Not hopeless!” she broke back into the conversation. I heard the echoes of past arguments in her voice, arguments I’d never forget. “Not hopeless, not when the message is heard.”

“You think someone is listening? Do you really…” I stopped short, no point going there.

“Not hopeless” she repeated.

“We sold everything” rumbled the camo-clad giant. “We can pay the freight, friend. You saw the broadcast,” not a question, everybody had seen that one! “And you know my brother is serious. We were told that you were a serious man. You want some folding floating your way, fine. Not? We find someone else.”

Now that was a persuasive argument, folding money is always persuasive. Too many ways to track electrons on the wire or in the air. Sure, I did business that way too, but the black market ran on hard currency. Then there was the gypsy angle. Nomads went everywhere, saw everything, and lots of people pointedly ignored them which suited them just fine. The best of them held their wandering families together with a code of honor as old as gypsies themselves. If you weren’t one of them, then you were fair game, and if you were one of them, well they went to extreme lengths to protect their own. It was frequently the only the comfort the friendless wanderers had. Not a bad idea to have people like that in your debt, or at least as return customers.
Nor did I miss the implied threat: drifters have long memories for their friends, but even longer ones for their enemies. The Starshine Followers had been news in the undercurrent of the shadows as something to watch for a while before their name had been splashed across practically every flat surface in every city in the northern hemisphere. The Followers were unique. They were just what they said; followers. That might not sound significant unless you knew firsthand the fierce independence that drove most of them to take to the open road, never settling down, never settling in. For months there had been a slight but steady migration down to the sprawling docks district that had once thrived near Savannah. The drifters had gathered together before, but this time they hadn’t left after a few nights of bonfires.

Nightshade, still Sarah Mary to me, leaned back into the table. The raven waterfall of her hair tumbled across her bare shoulders, sweeping my eyes into hers. “We need the best. We need you. We are going to do this,” she said, intensity lacing her voice like diamond wire.

“Besides,” whispered a new voice beside me. “We’re good people to know.” I managed to keep from sending for the cavalry, but barely. What I deserve for letting myself get distracted during biz.

He’d apparently eaten a lot of gravel in his life; his voice sounded like he used it once a decade or so. He stepped around to the other side of the table and nodded to Sarah. His business with the two vials had obviously concluded. His two companions had disappeared somewhere, as had the hooker. “We heard. We’re here. I’m Sunny, like the stars.” And they say that cyborgs got no sense of humor. I wondered if he ever used more than five words in a sentence. The mirrored goggles grafted to his face tracked over Sarah and her carefully motionless companion.

I could almost hear the dust in the gears as the newcomer grated out, “Where’s the man?” in a tone of voice used to getting answers. A faint shudder rippled through the muscular black giant as he replied coolly.
“Not here. Might be later. Might not.” The diction must be contagious. I gave the guy points in Attitude and hoped that he had more than chill to back his play.

“You finish here, we’ll talk” the semi-human walking freezer replied. He wrapped himself up in his ragged trailduster and headed for the bar. The bartender’s repeating shotgun disappeared and he wiped down three glasses as the other two flanked the loquacious one and they all put an elbow down on the chipped marble. The normal sounds of the bar returned and I realized I had been holding my breath.

Sarah speared me with triumphant eyes. I gave her a brief nod to acknowledge the point. I removed my own mirrorshades and let my backup know they weren’t needed any longer. Good cover is expensive by the hour, but it’s just ‘parta da’ bizness’ as they say.

“So. You have a list for me I assume?” I smiled at them and the negotiations were on.

<em>Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.</em>

Author: D. D. Wolf | Category: cyberpunk, D. D. Wolf, Sci-Fi | Comments(0) June 2007