Stephen Kenson - Technobabel

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SHADOWRUN

TECHNOBABEL

Stephen Kenson

A ROC BOOK

ROC

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd,

Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published by Roc, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a member of Penguin

Putnam Inc.

First Printing, May, 1998 10 9876543

Series Editor: Donna Ippolito Cover: Peter Peoples

SHADOWRUN, FASA, and the distinctive SHADOWRUN and FASA logos are registered

trademarks of the FASA Corporation, 1100 W. Cermak, Suite B305, Chicago, IL

60608.

Printed in the United States of America

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this

publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission

of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR

SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN

PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10014.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book

is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher

and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this

"stripped book."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people who helped in the creation of this book who I would like

to thank. Thanks go to Bob Silverman for helping me make the jump to doing

this novel; Mike Mulvihill for giving me a shot and developing some great

Shadowrun storylines to work with; Donna Ippolito for giving an untried

novelist a chance; my fellow authors Mel Odom and Jak Koke for their

invaluable advice; FASA's extraordinary editorial staff for making me look

better than I am; my family and friends for putting up with me and encouraging

me; and, lastly, Tom Dowd, Paul Hume, and Bob Charrette for creating such a

cool world to play in. Thanks, everyone, I couldn't have done it without you.

Prologue

The year is 2059 . . .

Magic has returned to the world after an absence of thousands of years. What

the Mayan calendar called the Fifth World has given way to the Sixth, a new

cycle of magic, marked by the waking of the great dragon Ryumyo in the year

2011. The Sixth World is an age of magic and high technology. The age of

Shadowrun.

The rising magic has caused the Earth to Awaken. The ancient races have

re-emerged, throwing off their human guises. First came the elves and dwarfs,

born to human parents. Then came the orks and the trolls, some born different

like the elves and dwarfs, others transformed, twisted from human form into

their true selves as the rising magic activated their DNA. Dragons and other

creatures out of fantasy appeared in the skies and in the wilderness. Unknown

to the people of the twenty-first century, some of these folk and creatures

out of fantasy recall an earlier world where magic reigned supreme, long

before the earliest of recorded history. They know secrets that make them

powerful in this new Age of Magic.

The Sixth World is a strange blend of the arcane and the technological. The

march of technology has become a race. The distinction between man and machine

is blurred by the power of cybertechnology. Machine and computer implants are

commonplace, a mating of flesh and machine. People of the Sixth World are a

new breed; stronger, smarter, faster. Less human.

The Matrix has emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of the old global

computer network. A virtual world of

computer-generated reality, a universe of electrons controlled and manipulated

by those with the fastest cyberdecks and the hottest new code. In this world

is stored all of the information hidden behind powerful data fortresses just

waiting to be liberated by pirate computer users, deckers, who glide like

shadows through the corporate and governmental databases.

It is an era where information is power, where data and money are one and the

same. Multinational megacorporations have replaced governments as the true

superpowers. In a world where cities have grown together in sprawling

maga-plexes of concrete and steel, walled-off corporate enclaves and

arcologies are the modern castles from which corporate executives control

masses of wageslaves for the profit of a lucky and ruthless few.

But in the shadows of the corporate giants there are the SINless. Those

without System Identification Numbers are not recognized by the machinery of

society, by the bureaucracy so massive and complex that nobody understands it

completely. Among the SINless are the shadowrunners, traffickers in stolen

data and hot information, mercenaries of the street-discreet, effective, and

untraceable. They are the agents of the corporations that battle for power and

control in the concrete jungles.

In the depths of the Matrix, strange new forces stir, beyond the knowing of

any of the millions of people who access the vast network each day. The

dealings of a powerful inventor from a forgotten age of magic and a

multinational corporation with dreams of domination over the world market draw

the attention of powers unknown to either. A new faction has entered the

struggle of the Sixth World that is neither magic nor machine, but something

else entirely ...

The Matrix is a computer-generated, symbolic representation of the grid, the

world information network. Instead of dealing with messy manual commands and

procedures, the cyberdeck lets the user perform apparently real actions in

cyberspace and then translates them into system operations. A person in the

Matrix reaches out and touches the symbol representing a file. The deck's

software knows the user wants to open that file. The machine performs all of

the operations, freeing the user from the tedious task of having to enter

those commands manually. Matrix imagery is imposed on the user by the grid in

a "consensual hallucination," to use Dr. Hikita 's term. It's no more an

ultimate reality than an animated vid-chip. These are computer-generated,

graphic images. The systems and the functions those images represent are real,

but the images are just that. They have no reality.

-Dr. William Spheris, noted expert on Matrix design, from a tridcast interview

on People to People,

June 12, 2049.

Not real? Not real!? Looks to me like the doc's never done a run. I'm

tellin'you, when you're dartin' through the peaks of Mitsuhama's L.A.

mainframe shaggin' combat systems that are doin' their bangest to roast you

alive, plus you 're prayin' to Ghost your deck doesn't melt in your lap cause

you got stupid, and you looks up and there in front a you is Death himself

jacked in by the corp to rip your soul . . . babes, that's reality.

-Decker "Sandman" commenting on Spheris' statement in the People to People

interview

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was

without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the

spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

-Genesis 1:1

Think back. What is the first thing you remember?

My life begins in an alley-a dark, hidden place in shadows of the city. I

awaken there like being born: weak, blind, and helpless, new to the world and

all of its strange sounds, smells, and experiences. And alone, but not for

very long. The first thing I become aware of is the darkness and the noise. I

cannot see, but I can feel and smell and hear.

I can feel the ground beneath me. It is hard and cool. The roughness of it is

not unpleasant-like someone scratching your back-and I lie there for I don't

know how long, just enjoying the sensation of being supported by the ground,

feeling its cool and strong embrace. I can feel the air stir around me, a

gentle breeze brushing across the bare skin of my face and hands and ruffling

my hair. The breeze brings smells and sounds to me as I lie there.

I smell the harsh smell of the city: a smell of burning. Burning fuel, burning

trash, burning wood, and people burning with hope, despair, misery, and joy

make up the smell, mixed in with the slow decaying scent of the city as metal,

mortar, and stone slowly crumble to rust and dust,

ground down beneath the force of the elements. I smell my own sweat, cooling

on my skin.

I hear the distant sounds of the city, the constant rumble of noise that most

city-dwellers ignore almost completely in their daily lives. I hear the voices

of cars, from the bass rumble of diesel engines to the high whine of electric

motors powering small commuter cars. From time to time a horn blares out its

distant cry of anger or warning. The voices of the city whisper and speak to

me, and I know there is danger.

Then I hear another voice, much closer, which is speaking to someone else.

"There he is," the voice says and I know he is talking about me.

Then another voice, deep and gravelly. "Just like Crawley said he would be.

I'll give him that, Weizack, that freak may be weird, but his information is

right on the money."

Weizack laughs, more like a humorless bark. "You should talk, chummer. You

ain't winning no beauty prizes yourself."

Weizack's partner growls, a low, throaty sound. "Watch it, chummer. I may look

like something outta somebody's nightmare, but at least I ain't no fragging

ghoul. Let's just do this job and get the frag out of here. This place gives

me the creeps."

A rough hand grabs my jaw, and I feel a jolt of fear and surprise shoot

through my nerves. I want to push away the hand touching me and filling my

nostrils with the stench of overripe sweat and the smell of decay, but my body

refuses to obey me. My muscles remain limp and I lie like a dead fish on the

cool, hard ground as the hands turn my head to the side and blunt fingers

brash against the side of my neck.

"Hey," I hear Weizack's comrade say, his hot, rank breath blowing past my

face. "He's still jacked in."

"So unplug him. What's the big deal?"

The fingertips brush my neck again. I hear a faint metallic click and feel an

immediate and yawning sense of loss open up within me. He has taken something

from me. Something very important, my connection to something larger and

greater than I am. I am truly alone now, and helpless against

these strangers. I try to move, or even open my eyes, but I can't. It feels

like my brain is detached from the rest of my body. Like I have forgotten how

to use it somehow. The part of me that is awake and aware floats somewhere,

detached, unable to make the connection to make a move or a sound.

"Fragging chipheads," the deep voice grumbles. "Why they wanna burn out their

brains beats the drek outta me. Feedin' stuff straight into your brain is

totally fragged up. All of that techno-trash, just for the sake of gettin'

high."

"You ever try slottin' sims, Riley?" Weizack asks his partner.

"No way. Those things'll frag you up for good. Not even the beetles, just the

soft-core drek. My cousin was a sim-chipper, and all he did was spend the

whole day sitting around slotting chips and living in a fraggin' fantasy

world. Couldn't hold down a job or nothin'. Finally cooked his brain slotting

something he shouldn't of. Cheap Hong Kong trash. You wanna get trashed, I say

do it the old fashioned way-with a bottle or something. These brain-burners

frag you up but good."

"What about all of this stuff?" Weizack says, his voice coming from close by

and above where I lie. He must be standing near my head, looking down at me.

"Leave it," the one called Riley says. "Said you don't wanna mess with this

drek. It's bad biz."

"Why not? As long as we're here ..."

"No." Riley's tone flat and cold. "Bad enough we're comin' here for him, but I

ain't messin' with some of the weird-ass mojo that goes down around here.

Beetles are bad enough, but this place gets used for some real magic. Once

we're done with him we're out of it, but if we mess with this place we could

end up cursed or worse."

"You really believe in that hoodoo curse drek?" Weizack asked.

"Take another look at my face, drekhead, and tell me there's no truth to

curses. Ever since the magic came back, it's been nothing but trouble for the

whole world." Riley's voice was heavy with bitterness. "It mighta made some of

the elves and their wannabes happy, but it's just another

way to slot over the rest of us. Proof that mother nature is a slitch with a

sense of humor. Now shut the frag up and give me a hand here. We need to move

this guy before somebody finds us here."

A strong pair of hands grips my ankles and, a moment later, another pair

slides under my shoulders and grips me under the armpits. They lift me off the

ground like a limp rag, all of my muscles still stubbornly refusing to respond

to my mind's demands to move. Just a little movement, a twitch or a blink, to

show these two I'm awake and aware. That's all it would take. But I can't seem

to figure out how to do it.

I feel vaguely sick and dizzy as I'm carried a short distance, swaying gently

between my two porters. They set me down again on a surface that is slick and

soft over the hardness of the ground.

"All set?" Weizack asks, and for a moment I think he's talking to me. Riley

grunts in response and Weizack says, "O.K., let's get going. Crawley doesn't

like to be kept waiting."

"Frag him," Riley says. "I don't take drek from any frag-gin' ghoul."

I hear the sound of a zipper and feel the slick vinyl-coated cloth close

around me like an embrace. The zipper passes up over my head and I'm

completely sealed in ... oh no. They don't think I'm unconscious. They think

I'm dead! But I'm not!

I feel panic grip my heart like a cold hand as my mind frantically screams at

my body to obey. I just need to move, to make a sound, something to tell these

men I'm really alive, that they've got the wrong guy. Dammit, move! I feel my

breathing begin to quicken and I hope the sound will penetrate the heavy

vinyl, but there is no response from outside it.

Two pairs of hands lift me off the ground and swing me like a sack a couple of

times before releasing me. There is a moment of cold, stark terror as I fly

through the air with no sense of balance and no idea where I will fall. Then I

drop

onto something firm but yielding, and roll just a bit before coming to rest on

my side.

There is a clunk of metal on metal and the retreating footsteps of the two

men. Then the sound of doors opening and muffled talk from somewhere ahead of

me. That's when I realize I'm lying on top of a stack of bodies, all of them

wrapped up for delivery just like me. But delivery to where? And are they dead

or like me, trying desperately to gather the strength to cry out, to yell "I'm

alive!" in hopes someone will hear them?

The thought hits me: is this what death is like? Maybe I really am dead and

just don't know it. Maybe when you die all you really do is become a helpless

prisoner in your slowly decaying body, aware of the world around you but

unable to move or communicate in any way. Maybe your mind hangs around until

your body rots away in the ground or you get the quick and merciful release of

cremation. The thought of this paralysis as the afterlife nearly makes me

scream and collapse in terror, but another thought bubbles up into my mind

from somewhere. I know I'm not dead. I just know it somewhere deep down

inside. I know I've been dead before and this isn't what it was like. I'm

alive, reborn, and I have to figure out how I'm going to stay that way. Be a

shame to start my new life only to end up dead again.

An engine rumbles to life and we start to drive. The meat-wagon slowly pulls

away from the place of my awakening and heads out into the city.

The initiatory experiences of shamans the world over are remarkably similar,

which we can now account for in the universal nature of magic itself. The

proto- shaman falls into a trance or profoundly deathlike state, often as a

result of an illness. While in this state, the candidate's spirit leaves the

body behind and travels or is taken into the other world. In this spirit

world, the candidate's spirit-self encounters and speaks with the various

spirits dwelling there, learning certain secret words, names, and songs. The

candidate's spirit form is then torn apart or devoured by the spirits, reduced

to nothing more than a skeleton. The spirits introduce something new to the

shaman's skeletal form, something symbolic of the shaman's awakened magical

talent, like a magic stone or bone. The spirit-body is then reconstructed

better than ever before. This death/rebirth experience awakens the shaman's

magical potential and the candidate returns to the physical world with an

awareness of the spirits and the power of the spirit world. This traditional

form of shamanic initiation continues even into our modern magical age.

-from the lecture "Shamanic Traditions in the

Twenty-first Century," by Nobel Prize winning

shaman Dr. Akiko Kano, Cal-Tech, 2044

I lie on top of a pile of corpses for I don't know how long. Time seems to

drag without destination or origin. We sway and weave through the traffic like

a funeral barge slowly

making its way downriver to the sea. I try to let the gentle movements soothe

me instead of making me sick to my stomach while I concentrate on trying to

find a way out of this situation. The smell inside the meat-wagon is awful.

The hot, organic smell of death mixed with the sharp bite of chemical

cleansers and overlaid with the strange smell and taste of the rubbery vinyl

of the body-bag surrounding me like the cocoon of some kind of strange insect.

A thought passes through my head about how body-bags are not exactly designed

with comfort in mind, and I have to force down a bout of hysterical laughter

at the idea.

I know I've got to find some way to get out of here. Buried in the hot

darkness and the smell of decay and disinfectant, I take stock of the

situation. I cannot make my muscles work the way they should, but I can still

feel my hands and my feet, the sensation of the vinyl body-bag against my

skin, the way I rest on top of the bodies supporting me, the motion of the van

as it moves. My mind is a jumble of thoughts and images. I was expecting to

see someone else. Someone else was to come and find me, not these

body-snatchers looking for corpses.

Why can't I move? I try to figure out what could have happened to cause this.

I can still feel everything. Neither my limbs nor my skin are numb. I dismiss

the possibility of injury causing my paralysis. The idea makes me ill, and, if

it's true, there's not much hope of getting out of here. I push the thoughts

aside. No point in dwelling on what I can't change.

Drugs? I don't think so. I don't feel sedated or drugged. My mind is sharp and

awake. It might be a drug I don't know, but, again, there isn't much I can do

if that's the case. Best to consider the other possibilities.

Magic? It's possible. There are spells to paralyze and control people. I know

something about the theory behind them. Magicians have the ability to do such

things, but I can't recall ever having been under a spell. Thinking about

magic makes me feel strange. There's something I don't remember about it.

Something important, but it doesn't help me with my present problem.

There's the possibility of the BTLs Riley talked about. Better Than Life

chips-beetles-were things plenty of people plugged into their brains to

experience feelings and sensations more pleasurable and intense than anything

real life had to offer, supposedly. I dimly recall a feeling like that,

feelings deeper and broader than anything I thought a human body and mind

could contain. A sense of being so large, so vast, but it slips away from me

even as I try to grab hold of it. Was I using chips in the alley? Is my

current condition the result of neural damage to my motor centers? I can't

remember.

The way I'm lying on top of the stack of bodies is giving me a painful pull at

the base of my neck. I long to raise my head or to roll over to a more

comfortable position. I focus on the pain, let it fill my thoughts. I pour all

of my effort into making my body roll over to the side. Just a little

contraction of the muscles. Just a slight change in position. That's it.

Should be easy. Nothing to it.

I start to sweat inside the confinement of the body bag, and I can feel the

air getting hot and stale. The sound of my own breathing is loud in the

confinement, but I focus on it to remind me I'm still alive and I try to

quicken its pace. I need more air, more oxygen to my muscles and my brain to

try and speed their recovery. If they can recover, that is ... No, I can't let

myself think that way. I have to be able to move or there's no chance at all.

The meat-wagon takes a corner hard, and I throw all of my strength into

rolling with the movement. There! I manage to roll onto my back on top of the

other bodies, and I think I can feel someone's arm under my lower back, as if

it were holding me in an embrace. It isn't much, but I moved.

I start concentrating on my hands and my feet. They are tingling a bit and,

with some effort, I can almost move them. The paralysis gripping my body is

starting to fade, I can feel it. I concentrate on trying to move, trying to

find my voice, to bring my mind back into synch with my body. That's it. I

feel like my mind has lost touch with my body, like I've only forgotten how to

use it properly. If I

could only open my eyes. Of course, all there is to see right now is the

inside of a dark body bag. I just need to try a little harder.

We slow to a stop, and the driver kills the engine. We've arrived somewhere. I

start to work feverishly to regain some movement, any kind of movement. I have

to tell them I'm not dead, that they've made a mistake. I have to get out of

here. I hear the doors of the van clunk open, and I can hear the men talking

again. Weizack is saying something about the Urban Brawl game he lost some

money on last night. His partner Riley just grunts in response to his

ramblings.

Rough hands lift me out of the back of the van, and I try to squirm or

struggle inside the body bag to tell these two they're not handling a corpse.

I manage to flex my hands a bit, curling the fingers in to form fists, but I

still can't move my arms. The thought of Weizack and his chummer dropping me

in fright and cracking my skull on whatever is under me if I move flashes

briefly through my mind. I could end up needing a body bag for real then, but

I have to try and make them aware of me.

Then I hear a new voice speaking.

"Is this him?" the voice asks, barely audible through the thick vinyl body

bag. The sound of it is low and whispery.

"Yeah, right where you said he would be," Weizack says, his voice gone flat

and cold. The newcomer is obviously not a friend.

"Let me see," the other whispers.

I am lowered to the ground, and someone unzips the body bag. There is a rush

of cool night air, and a foul stench assaults my nostrils. It is the smell of

death and decay from the meat-wagon, but much worse and without the acidic

tang of the disinfectant to cover it. The touch of the cool air and the

terrible smell send another surge of adrenaline through my system, and I fight

to move or see what is going on.

"Good, good," the new voice whispers, and I shiver a bit at the sound. Did

they see that? "He's still in good shape, his aura is still bright and

strong."

A dry hand gently caresses my cheek and I nearly gag at the touch. It's like

the touch of a corpse. I can feel sharp nails like claws just barely grazing

my skin.

"Ah, fresh meat," the same voice whispers again with a sigh of pleasure,

sending a whiff of hot, foul breath wafting across my face. Hearing those

words, I regain some control over myself. My eyes snap open and I stare up

into what looks like the face of death itself. The figure crouched above me is

pale and hairless, with skin tinged the gray of the grave and drawn tight over

his bones. Thin lips curl back in a cruel smile, exposing sharp teeth that

remind me of a small, meat-eating animal. A narrow tongue of a darker shade of

gray emerges to lick his lips like a man sitting down to a feast. His hands

are bony claws tipped with sharp, rending nails, and his eyes are the worst of

all. White and blind, they seem to focus on my face, and yet look past my

flesh as if they were peering straight into my soul.

"Good evening," the gray figure whispers to me, and I realize it is night, the

dark sky covered with a gray shroud of clouds. I also realize neither my two

"handlers" nor the creature crouching above me are surprised or shocked to see

me awake. They know I'm not dead, and the implications break over me like a

wave. If they knew I was alive the whole time, then I haven't been taken for

disposal like some kind of rubbish off the streets but for some other purpose.

The ghoul's comment about "fresh meat" comes to mind and I shudder again and

try to move. My limbs jerk spasmodically this time, causing the creature to

stop smiling and back away a bit, even as he waves the two handlers in closer.

"No, no," he whispers in his low voice, "don't try to move. You'll be better

off if you stay still. We wouldn't want you to injure yourself." His words are

intended to sound comforting, but they only make my skin crawl. I look up at

his pinched, gray face and his sightless eyes and see no pity or sympathy

there.

"Bring him," he tells the two handlers. "You can come back for the rest later.

It's not like they're going anywhere." Chuckling a wheezing laugh at his own

joke, the

creature turns and moves off as the handlers each grab one of my arms and lift

me up. I notice that Weizack is a man with a bit of a paunch and red-rimmed

eyes. He wears a scuffed leather jacket and a faded and stained denim shirt. I

also notice the butt of a pistol protruding from the side of his belt

underneath the jacket.

His partner is a tall, hulking figure with a broad, flat face. Two short tusks

protrude up over his upper lip and his ears are longish and pointed, lying

back against his skull. He looks like a goblin or ogre out of some fairy tale,

but I realize he's an ork, one of the metatypes who assumed their true forms

when magic returned to the world. He is right about one thing; his face is

ugly as sin, but it's nothing like the hideous visage of the creature they

work for, the ghoul. I catch the thing's face out of the corner of my eye as

they lift me off the ground, and he almost looks sorry for me. That worries me

more than anything I've seen so far.

The two handlers carry me away from the meat-wagon, my feet dragging on the

ground, toward a low brick building. The van is parked in an alley alongside

the building, and there's a side door nearby. The weathered brick walls of the

building are smeared with years of accumulated graffiti; the signs, scrawls,

and symbols meshing together like the secret writing cities use to communicate

with those who know how to read it. The symbols are strangely familiar to me,

but then I notice something else scrawled in vivid red near the door of the

building: "Beware the Tamanous."

I'm dragged through the door, down a corridor lit by the blue-white light of

flickering fluorescent tubes, a glow to make a healthy person look dead, which

only emphasizes the ghoul's pallor. He leads us into a room and turns to

Weizack and his partner.

"Put him up on the table," he says, "so I can get him prepared for delivery."

Delivery to whom? I wonder, as the men drag me toward a flat, steel table in

the middle of the room. Next to it I see a tray of shining, polished

instruments: scalpels, needles, tubes, wires, and gleaming hypodermics.

"It seems like such a waste," the creature sighs softly

somewhere behind me. "The parts are always best when they're fresh."

When I hear those words I feel the adrenaline rush into my body like a dam

breaking. Synapses fire and connect, newfound energy shoots through my nervous

system and I find the strength to plant my feet on the floor and shove Weizack

away. As he stumbles back with a yell into the tray of instruments, I grab for

his gun. Time goes strange and everything seems to be moving in slow motion to

me.

Weizack crashes to the tiled floor along with all of the sharp and shining

surgical gear as I flick the safety off on the gun and spin on his partner. I

faintly hear the gray creature cry out not to damage me too much as I level

the gun at the ork.

A look of total and utter surprise on Riley's face makes him look almost

innocent and comical for a moment before I fire and the rounds from Weizack's

gun erase his face in a blur of red. He topples back toward the floor with the

top of his head blown off.

Before I can turn toward the ghoul, he is upon me, slamming into my side with

surprising speed and strength. His skin is like leather and his eyes are

hideous, wide and staring. The smell of him is as overpowering as the charnel

smell of the meat-wagon, and he sends us both crashing to the cold tile floor

near the steel table. The gun flies from my hand and slides across the tile

floor just out of reach. I struggle to get to it, but too late.

The creature is hideously strong and I am still weak and moving too slow. It

grabs me and throws me down onto the floor on my back, pushing the air out of

my lungs with a whoosh and sending pain lancing up my spine. A blow to my

stomach makes me want to retch, and another upside my head has me seeing

stars. I struggle to throw the thing off me as it straddles my legs and

strikes at me with its wiry arms, but it is too strong, too heavy.

The gun is out of my reach and Weizack is stirring and cursing, bleeding from

several cuts and gashes the surgical tools have given him. The hot, metallic

smell of blood is everywhere in the room, and it seems to drive the creature

pinning me into a rage. It smiles and licks its thin lips, revealing a

mouthful of sharp teeth and an animal-like tongue.

I shrink back in fear. Something cold and primal uncoils inside me and seems

to take over, a basic instinct. There is a metallic click, and I strike out at

one of the wiry gray arms pinning me down. The ghoul arcs back, howling in

pain, a scream that scratches against my brain like a monofilament edge parts

flesh and bone like water. Blood spurts out in dark gouts from the stump of

the ghoul's arm. I kick the screaming thing off of me and scramble onto my

hands and knees toward the gun. The dark, carbon-fiber blade slides silently

back into my forearm, shedding the blood and gore from its slick surface as it

goes, my skin sealing perfectly over the opening with only the slightest mark

to reveal its passage.

Grabbing the gun from the floor as Weizack begins to get back to his feet, I

shoot him in the leg, shattering his thigh bone and leaving a exit wound I

could fit my fist through. He goes down yelling "Frag!" over and over again at

the top of his lungs as the ghoul also continues to howl and roll on the floor

in agony. I have to get out of here before I find out if they've got

reinforcements nearby. I move over to where Weizack is leaning against the

wall and clutching at his leg.

"Keys," I say as I level the gun at him. He looks for a moment like he's going

to tell me to go slot, but then glances again at the gun I'm holding and

reaches into the pocket of his jacket. I grab the key-ring in the shape of a

little plastic dragon without taking my eyes off him and then back a few steps

away.

Turning from the carnage in the room, I head out the door, my head still

ringing from the ghoul's strike and my ribs and legs aching. I burst out into

the hallway to see a man wearing a pristine white lab coat over his street

clothes. He is studying the flat computer pad in his hand. He looks up as I

rush out of the room, all bloody and wild-eyed, and there is a long instant

where we seem to just stand and stare at each other. I raise the gun and shoot

him

without a second thought and keep moving down the corridor. He drops the

computer pad with a clatter and stumbles back from the impact of the round to

his chest. The look of surprise is frozen on his face, and he leaves streaks

of blood where he slides down the pale gray wall. I have no idea who he is.

I run down the corridor and out the door to the van parked in the alleyway,

still loaded with its macabre cargo of corpses. I yank open the door, jump

into the driver's side, and gun the ignition, body-bags scattering from the

meat-wagon's open rear doors as I peel out of there. A horn blares at me as I

swerve onto the road and accelerate away, but there is no sign of pursuit from

the charnel house. Only when I'm several blocks away do I notice the blood

spattered on my clothes and skin. I look down at my arm where the terrible

curved blade emerged, seeing the faint, pale line on my skin near my wrist

that is its sheath.

I didn't even know it was there.

Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from

the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they

said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And

they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us

build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us

make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the.

earth." And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons

of men had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they

all have one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do;

and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let

us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one

another's speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face

of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was

called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and

from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth.

-Genesis 11:1-9

It had been a long time since God felled humanity's last attempt to build a

tower to the heavens, but humanity had now toppled heaven from the sky and

raised up a new heaven to replace it. A heaven of glittering satellites and

low-orbital factories singing their electronic choruses in praise of commerce

and free enterprise, looking down on the Earth with their watchful eyes,

seeing all.

In the highest throne of the new heaven sat the Zurich-Orbital, home of the

Corporate Court. The Court arbitrated the disputes and laws of the vast,

multinational mega-corporations straddling the globe and holding the power and

prestige once reserved for the nations they had eclipsed. Granted

extraterritorial status by the weakened governments of the world, the

megacorps answer to no law but their own, embodied in the form of the

satellite orbiting high above the mundane concerns of Earth's teeming

populace. From their heavenly headquarters, the thirteen justices of the

Corporate Court pass their divine judgments on the world below and the

megacorporations controlling it.

Justice David Hague of the Corporate Court floated in his small office space

on board the Zurich-Orbital like an angel sitting on a cloud, but the

Justice-a paid employee of Fuchi Industrial Electronics-was anything but

serene. Fidgeting in the loose harness keeping him tethered to one wall of the

small room, Hague did his best to simulate pacing in a zero-gravity

environment. Floating gently back and forth while looking out the room's small

window at the vast blue sphere of the Earth below, he was alone for the moment

with his worries and concerns.

Despite his unease, Hague was very much the image of an angelic figure. His

rosy cheeks and wide blue eyes gave him a boyish air that made him look years

younger. He'd cursed the "baby face" in youth, but now that he was past fifty,

his youthful looks worked to his advantage. Where most of his colleagues were

spending huge sums on cutting-edge treatments to keep them looking young and

vital, David Hague could still pass for a man in his thirties. Oh, there was a

touch of gray in the golden curls, but his hair was so fair most didn't notice

it anyway. He sighed and thought wistfully of his native Amsterdam again,

wishing he were back home, or at least back on Earth.

He longed to be standing on solid ground and wished the whole matter he'd come

here for was over. The trip up to

the orbital had been exhausting, as usual. The Z-O operated on Greenwich Mean

Time, which meant it was something like four a.m. here, whatever meaning that

had for a station in low-earth orbit. Hague's personal body clock wasn't far

off, and he wished for the hundredth time that the whole thing was over and

done with so he could at least get some sleep.

Although Hague, like all of the Corporate Court justices, was no stranger to

confrontation or conflict, he felt a deep uneasiness about the events that had

brought him to the Zurich-Orbital station. A serpent had entered the Corporate

Court's economic and legal Eden, and he feared it might topple their tower to

the heavens just as God had toppled humanity's last attempt. The balance of

power between the megacorporations was delicate in the extreme, and the Court

was entrusted with maintaining it and keeping the peace.

An electronic chime drew Hague's attention away from his brooding. He gently

pushed off from the wall to grab a padded handle, which let him turn toward

the door of the room.

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SHADOWRUNTECHNOBABELStephenKensonAROCBOOKROCPublishedbythePenguinGroupPenguinPutnamInc.,375HudsonStreet,NewYork,NewYork10014,U.S.A.PenguinBooksLtd,27WrightsLane,LondonW85TZ,EnglandPenguinBooksAustraliaLtd,Ringwood,Victoria,AustraliaPenguinBooksCanadaLtd,10AlcornAvenue,Toronto,Ontario,CanadaM4V3B2Pen...

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