Michael A. Stackpole - Shadowrun - Wolf and Raven

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Introduction

I never thought I'd live long enough to be writing memoirs. Hell, I never thought I'd learn to write well

enough to write memoirs. One of the things about associating with Doctor Raven is that you end up doing

a lot of things you never thought possible.

In my case, that includes surviving into my thirties.

Anyway, the adventures I've written down here all took place back in the dawn of time—back a good

six, eight years ago. Not very long in calendar days, but a lifetime when measured in physical therapy

sessions and reconstructive surgery. Much of this will feel like ancient history to most of you.

I'm hoping it will seem like that to me, too, one of these days.

—Wolfgang Kies, Seattle, 2059

Squeeze Play

As the door shut behind me and the bar's natural atmosphere raped my nostrils, I had a sudden urge to

remodel the place with a flame-thrower. From the outside the boarded-over windows and plywood

framing for the weather-beaten door suggested someone had already tried that with "the Weed," as its

denizens affectionately called the place. I had to agree with the name—nothing in here a load of Agent

Orange wouldn't improve. The Weed was the kind of bar that aspired to be a dump when it grew up1.

I'd not liked Ronnie Killstar when I'd spoken with him to set up this meeting. After seeing the place he

chose, I liked him even less. Easy, Wolf, I reminded myself. Raven gave you this job because you 've

got more control than Kid Stealth or Tom Electric. Don't let him down—you already owe him too

much.

Against my better judgment I crossed the short distance from the door to the bar. A small,

Hispanic-looking bartender wandered over to where I'd elbowed in between two other patrons. His

voice sounded like a ripsaw tearing into sheet steel. "Waddalya have?"

I squinted against the burning smoke from my neighbor's Saskatchewan Corona Grande and shrugged.

"What's on tap?"

The bartender shook his head.

"Great. Make it a double."

1 Oh, this is what a footnote is. Slick.

He stared blankly at my attempt at humor. "Waddalya have?" he rasped in a gravel-croak.

I glanced at the cooler. "Green River Pale. No need for a glass."

As he pulled the beer out of the cooler and brushed the ice off onto the floor, I pulled a roll of corp scrip

from my pocket. He twisted the cap off and I started peeling bills off the roll. I slowed when I got near

what the beer had to cost, then stopped when he started to move the bottle forward. He glanced up at

me, shrugged, then gave me the drink. I could have used a credstick to pay, but in a place this archaic

and seedy, crumpled paper seemed the way to go.

I carried the drink toward the corner nearest the door. The beer tasted like his voice sounded, but cold,

and I set it down quickly. I slid into a booth, then unzipped my leather jacket and settled in to observe

the bar and its patrons. I kept the beer in my left hand while letting my right rest near the butt of my

Beretta Viper 142.

My new vantage point allowed me a fuller appreciation of the Weed's decor. The plastic baby doll heads

and high-heeled shoes hanging from the ceiling somehow made sense seen within the larger context. Most

of the light came from sputtering neon signs begging patrons to drink exotic brews the bar no longer

stocked. Silvery tinsel and some flashing lights left behind during some long-ago Christmas mocked the

moribund setting, but somehow brought gaiety to the expression of the plastic, safe-sex doll floating

above a busted pinball machine.

The place oozed atmosphere.

I used my beer bottle to smear a six-legged piece of that atmosphere across the table.

2 Sure, the Beretta Viper 14 is old. So's gravity, but it still works. Nice thing about the Viper is that I have a

bullet, I have a target, I pull the trigger, and the gun does all the math for the hit. And with the Viper, I never

have batteries go dead on me in the middle of a firefight.

About the only normal portion of the bar lay kitty-corner across the room from my position. Three

jack-tables, the cocktail model, sat up against the wall. Only one wirehead was using the Weed's

facilities. The trode halo circled her ebony brow, and the light from the unit's display washed in rainbow

waves over her face, but she didn't notice. Whatever graphics were flashing across the screen were for

outsider consumption only— she was jacked in deep and playing her own little games.

I caught the scent of dead flowers all mixed up into a noxious blend that made the Weed smell worse and

was trendy enough to cost 150 nuyen a milliliter. The stink came to me about a second and a half before

I heard the click of Ronnie Killstar's wrist spur. Large as life, or at least as large as he could muster, the

pasty-faced street samurai slid into the booth across from me. The jaundiced light from the bar skittered

across the razored edge of the curved metal blade jutting out from his right wrist, and a red light glowed

in his eyes.

He sneered at me. "You ought to get your eyes done. I can bull's-eye a rat's ass at a thousand meters in

the pitch dark. I saw you come in and I saw you sit down. I can see in here plain as day."

That being the case, I saw no reason to mention he'd just wiped the sleeve of his white jacket through

cockroach paste. I sniffed at the air. "I don't need eyes to find you."

Two large men slipped from in back where Ronnie had been waiting and stood on either side of our

booth. They were both built like those smiling Buddha-type statues you find down the coast in Tokyo

West, 'cept these two wore more clothes, didn't smile, and didn't look like they'd give you good luck if

you rubbed their bellies. Still, if they were hanging around with Ronnie it meant they had to be

losers—which also explained why they looked so much at home in the Weed.

His intimidation batteries in place and ready to fire, Ronnie reinforced his sneer. "I didn't figure the great

Dr. Raven would trust Wolfgang Kies with an assignment of this importance."

I smiled. "TM."

"Huh?"

I smiled more broadly. "I said, 'TM.' You forgot to add the trademark to the phrase, 'the Great Dr.

Raven.' " I shook my head ruefully. "That's why he sent me. You've got no manners and no sense of

propriety. You wouldn't expect him to come to a place like this, would you?"

Clearly, any space in Ronnie's monosynaptic brain devoted to humor was overloaded by my effort. His

eyes flashed on and off as he got angry and his concentration broke. Suddenly, with a metallic snap that

sounded like a pistol being cocked, a twenty-five-centimeter icepick blade shot out from between the

middle and ring fingers on his right hand and he lunged forward. The tip touched my throat right above

the silver wolf's-head totem I wear and drew a single drop of blood.

"I don't need your static, you drekling! Raven sent word that he wanted to make a deal with La Plante,

not the other way around. We're not doing you a favor—it's you that wants one from us." Killstar's dark

eyes narrowed. "I want Raven!"

With great effort I killed the urge to lunge forward and bite his face off. I swallowed hard and felt the

icepick brush against my Adam's apple. "I wanted La Plante. I would suggest we're even."

I forced my eyes open and got the surprise reaction I expected as Ronnie looked into them for the first

time. With the anger rising in me I knew they'd gone from green to silver—that change is not all that rare.

Ronnie got an added treat, though, as a dark circle surrounded each iris with a Killer Ring. Your

augmented eyes may let you see in the dark, but they can't do this. It's something you've got to

have inside—it's not an option you get to tack on aftermarket.

Ronnie leaned back, but left the stinger extended. "Maybe we are even. What are you offering Mr. La

Plante?"

I ignored the question as a droplet of sweat burned into the pinprick at my throat. "I want proof she's still

alive."

The punk snapped his fingers and one of the Buddha brothers produced a portacomp and slipped a small

optical disk into the unit. I took it from him and hit the Play button. The LCD screen flickered to life and I

saw Moira Alianha standing calmly before a wall screen trideo display. She moved back and forth in

front of it, and I concentrated on how her long black hair trailed out and through the image. If they'd

recorded her moving before a blank screen, then masked in a recent program to make me think she was

still alive, the process would have broken down on those fine details.

It looked clean to me, but I didn't want to give Ronnie the satisfaction of knowing I thought he'd done

something right. "A simchip would have been better."

It was an effort for him to roll his cybereyes to heaven. "And we could have brought her here with a

brass band and an army of grunges3, but we don't think we're going to recover our overhead on this one.

Satisfied?"

I tapped the Disconnect and pocketed the device. "She's alive."

Ronnie smiled like a gambler holding four of a kind. "Mister La Plante has a client who has offered us a

great deal of money for Moira Alianha with her maidenhead intact. How can Raven make it worth our

while to turn her over to him instead?"

I tried to suppress the wince, but the additional construction on either side of Ronnie's smile showed me

I'd failed. Dr. Raven lost no love on Etienne La Plante, but recovering Moira and returning her to Tir

Tairngire meant he had to suppress his feelings and deal with the man. As Ronnie's smile cooled into a

smug look of superiority, I decided Kid Stealth might have been right in the first place: bring the whole

crew in and take La Plante's crime empire apart.

3 Yeah, I know grunge is fairly vulgar slang for ork, but the term applied to the orks who worked for La

Plante. I think he found stupid ones, then fed them paint chips to dull down any native intelligence they had.

Since he used them mostly as mobile weapon transport and trigger fingers, brains weren't vital. As we used

to joke, to work for La Plante, you took an intelligence test: if you failed you were in.

"It won't guarantee we save the girl," Doc had told him.

"Yeah," said the Kid, "but it'll feel gigabytes better than helping that slime."

I rested my elbows on the table and steepled my fingers. "I have been authorized to offer you the

Fujiwara shipping schedule for the next six months in return for the girl. We can make the exchange

tonight."

For all often seconds Ronnie got that divine-revelation look on his face. Suddenly he realized how big a

game he was involved in, and how small a player in it he was. Then his eyes hooded over as the little

maggot figured out how important Moira Alianha had to be for the Doctor to offer that kind of hot-byte

data for her. A thought shot off on the wrong branch of his neural network and he began to believe in his

own importance.

He scoffed at the offer and began to ease himself out of the booth. "Maybe. I'll talk to La Plante and let

you know. You can wait here until then."

My right leg swept out and hooked up between his legs. I drew my knee up, jerking him and his squishy

parts against the edge of the table. That knocked the wind out of him and caused him to jackknife

forward. I grabbed a handful of his stringy blond hair with my left hand and tucked the barrel of my Viper

in his left ear.

A Killer Ring stare kept the karma twins at bay.

"That was a wrong answer, Ronnie." I eared the hammer back on the Viper 14 even though that was

unnecessary on the double-action pistol. "Mr. La Plante, I know you'd not be who you are if you let an

idiot like this conduct your negotiations for you without keeping tabs on him. I'd guess you've bugged Yin

and Yang here, unless you tricked this dolt into carrying a set of ears on himself."

A glint of gold from the cloisonne orchid pin on Ronnie's lapel had given him away. "Very good, Mr. La

Plante. Your gang's trademark pin is a listening device. I salute your foresight. I suggest your chauffeur

pull the limo around so we can discuss things in private, say, in five minutes. We'll take a spin around the

block and then you'll drop me back here. If not, I'm going to decorate the Weed's ceiling with something

that'll add some real color."

The Coors clock on the wall ticked off four and a half minutes before the door opened. The Chauffeur4,

dressed in a spiffy uniform with creases sharp enough to cut like razors, nodded to me. I patted Ronnie

patronizingly on the head. "We'll have to do this again some time, when I have more time to play."

Whatever Ronnie replied, it wasn't very polite and I put it down to his discomfort as I leaned heavily on

his head while working my way out of the booth. The twin pillars of Eastern wisdom let me pass, and I

made it to the doorway unmolested.

I handed the Viper to The Chauffeur and stepped into the street. The white Mitsubishi Nightsky stretch

limo looked as out of place on the litter-strewn street as a wharf rat in the mayor's office, but that didn't

stop it from being there. I waited as The Chauffeur scanned me with whatever he had for eyes behind

those dark glasses of his, then smiled and entered the limo's dark interior.

Having grown up among the concrete alleys of Seattle, I thought of class as something you escaped from

during the day. Despite my absolute loathing of anything and everything Etienne La Plante did and was, I

4 I've always thought The Chauffeur was a dumb street name. Usually, in street names, you want something

that suggests you're on top, like Tiger or King Cobra or something slick like that. Wolf, maybe, even. But The

Chauffeur? I guess he liked it because he thought it made him sound like he was going places.

still had to admit he looked classy. His double-breasted suit was cut from cloth of silver, yet—if

possible—did not look ostentatious or flashy. His wavy white hair had been perfectly cut and combed,

giving me the impression that I'd stepped into a boardroom for a long-planned meeting.

I settled into a velvet seat so comfortable I could have died happy in it, especially if the woman seated

next to La Plante gave me another one of her I-want-to-have-your-baby-or-at-least-try-hard-at-it

smiles. In the armrest at my left hand sat a frosted mug of beer—the half-empty bottle next to it

proclaimed it to be Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve.

Very good, Etienne. My favorite. Is it true that you bought the brewery because you heard one of

Raven's men loved the stuff?

La Plante refrained from offering me his right hand, but I didn't mind. If there was any flesh and blood left

to it, the silver carapace hid it completely. I noticed, as he picked up his own mug of beer, that the hand

articulated perfectly, but then he could afford perfection. I'd not heard of any assassination attempts

against him, so I had to assume he had voluntarily maimed himself.

"I would apologize, Mr. Kies, for my underling's actions but, you understand, that was a test." He

shrugged wearily. "After the bad blood between Dr. Raven and myself, you can hardly forgive my being

suspicious."

I gave him a quick smile that I broadened as I looked at his companion. "You can call me Wolf." I

directed the comment more to the woman than La Plante and waited a half-second for a similar offer of

intimacy from the crime boss or, more specifically, her. I continued when he ignored me—she was just

being coy, I could tell. "When Dr. Raven was informed that you had become the custodian for Ms.

Alianha and was called upon by her elven guardians to get her back, he was forced to make some

choices. I am sure you can understand that that negotiation was not the most popular course of action

suggested." La Plante nodded sagely. "Former employees can be so, ah, vindictive, can't they?"

Sure, especially when you try to plant them in the harbor with their feet bound in a block of

cement. No one would have figured Kid Stealth would blow off his own legs to escape that little

death trap, but he did and survived. When your time comes, the timekeeper will be wearing shiny

new legs and will move faster than even you remember.

"You heard our offer. You get the Fujiwara shipment schedules for the next six months in return for the

girl. We'll burn you a chip. We can do the exchange tonight."

La Plante's nonchalant expression remained rooted on his face. "You have a decker good enough to get

into Fujiwara that quickly? We're talking layers of protection—psychotropic 1C, defensive and offensive

knowbots, expert constructs, you name it. Enough ice to give anyone a case of terminal frostbite."

I smiled confidently. "This decker is so hot the only way to stop her is to dunk her in liquid nitrogen and

hit her with a hammer. We'll get the schedule for you."

He hid his excitement at the offer well. "How do I know the data will be good?"

I sat up straight. "You have Dr. Raven's word on it."

Where Ronnie Killstar would have answered with some inane barb, La Plante just nodded. "Very well."

He leaned over and whispered something in the redhead's ear. As she reached over and picked up my

mug, he spoke. "You've not tried your beer. I assure you it has not been tampered with."

She sipped and returned the mug to its place on the armrest. As she licked her lips I felt an urge to

procreate, then counted to ten—no, fifteen—to regain control. "Sorry," I said, and smiled, "but after the

Weed, drinking in here just wouldn't be the same. You understand." For her benefit I added, "Maybe

another time . . ."

The door opened again. La Plante's chauffeur hovered by the door with my gun in hand. "Tonight, Mr.

Kies, at warehouse building 18b, on the docks. We will give you the southern and western approaches. I

would prefer this to be an intimate gathering."

"My feelings exactly. You bring a dozen of your grunges and I'll consider it even." I succeeded in getting

myself perched on the edge of the seat. "And leave Ronnie at home . .."

La Plante waved my last remark off with a silvery flourish of his right hand. "Do not concern yourself with

him. He has been assigned new duty. He'll be feeding fish for the foreseeable future."

The Chauffeur handed me the pistol, then swung the door shut. I smiled at him and his plastic mask of

servitude cracked. "Someday, Wolf, it will come down to you and me. I'll make it quick. I want you to

know that."

I met his mirror-eyed stare with my number two nasty glare. "Good, I like that. If a fight goes on too

long, the blood stains set and then you can never get them out. . ."

His plastic mask back in place, he turned and walked away. Though every olfactory nerve ending in my

nose protested mightily, I reentered the Weed. My beer still waited on the table, but Ronnie Killstar and

the Wonton boys had vanished. I waited and sniffed, but I couldn't smell the mulch drippings that passed

for Ronnie's cologne. Given how that stuff smells and sells, the Weed here could bottle its mop

sloppings and make a fortune. I shook my head. Never happen—they'd actually have to mop this

place.

Instead of returning to my table, I walked over to the jacktables. I pulled the bug from inside my jacket

and tossed it on the black woman's deck. "Did you get it all?"

Valerie Valkyrie, Raven's newest aide, gave me a smile that made me forget La Plante's taste-tester.

"Everything, including your pulse rate and blood pressure when she sucked on your beer."

I felt the burn of a blush sweeping across my face, and it grew hotter as it pulled a giggle from her throat.

"We'll discuss how much of that makes it into the report for the Doctor later. Right now we've got work

to do."

"All right, Zig and Zag, let's go through the drill one more time."

Zag frowned and the razor claws on his left hand flicked out, then retracted with the speed of a snake's

tongue. "We've got names ..."

I raised myself up to my full height, which put me a centimeter or so taller than the smaller of them. "And

right now they're Zig and Zag. You're local talent and I'm your Mr. Johnson. Now, you claim you want

to join this elite circle? Fine, this is a tryout. Try living with new names for a second or two, got it?"

Zig elbowed Zag and they both nodded. For street samurai they weren't bad. Zag had gone the obvious

route of adding chrome in the form of razor claws grafted to his hands and some retractable spurs that

popped up from the top of his feet. He'd replaced his right eye with a rangefinder modification linked to

the scope on his autorifle. He'd gone a bit far, in my mind, by having a fluorescent orange cross hairs

tattooed over that eye from hairline to cheekbone and ear to across his nose, but it came close enough to

warpaint that I could understand it. Still, I knew if I was on the other end of a sniper rifle, that would

make a real nice target.

Zig had been more discreet. He'd gone in for body work. From the way he moved I knew he'd had his

reflexes cranked up to move with the speed of something between a Bengal tiger and a striking cobra. I

didn't see any body blades, but he was a bit more subtle than his partner so he might not have flashed

them. I also got the impression he'd had some dermal sheathing implanted to protect his vital organs—a

wise choice. One never knows where those replacement organs were grown, and the failure percentage

on cut-rate Khmer hearts made having a Band-Aid slapped on the old one look like a good bet for

survival.

"Val and I are going to jack into the Matrix. No one should be able to track us to where we're going, but

we can't be a hundred percent certain of that. I need you two to be alert and careful because when we

bust the system we're going after, things could get messy. What do you do if there's trouble?"

Zag grumbled and walked over to where my MP-95 rested on the bed. "We slap the trades off you and

hand you this toy. Then we get the wirehead out of here."

Val didn't notice the rancor in Zag's voice at his having been shot down earlier. When he asked if she

would be interested in a little horizontal tango to "relieve the tension," she looked at him as if he were a

deck with "Made in UCAS" stamped on its side. Zig and I shared a smile as Zag's anger deepened when

Val continued to ignore him.

"Good. That's it. You get her out and get her to the place she tells you. Don't worry about me. I'll be

fine."

"Or dead." Zag hefted one of the spare clips for my MP-9 submachine gun. "Freaking nine-millimeter toy

and you've got silver bullets? Who do you think you are, the Lone Ranger?" He thumbed one bullet from

the clip and tossed it to Zig.

Easy, Wolf. Better this tough guy act to hide his nerves than him falling apart on you. "I think I'm

your Mr. Johnson—and a superstitious one at that."

Zig looked closely at the silver bullet in his hand. "Drilled and patched. You got mercury in there to make

the bullet explode?"

I shook my head solemnly. "Silver nitrate solution. Physics is the same, the result is nastier. Burns as it

goes."

5 Yeah, yeah. It's another antique gun, but it shoots straight, which is all I ask. Stealth keeps my guns as well

tuned as my mechanic does my Mustang, so they work. Besides, the MP-9 is considered such a toy by most

gillettes that they don't see it as much of a danger until one of its bullets is finished making an exit wound.

Zig tossed the bullet back to his partner. "You planning on hunting a werewolf or something?"

"Were you in Seattle during the Full Moon Slashings?"

The mention of that series of killings tore Val away from her deck. "A half-dozen years ago? That was

the first anyone had heard of Dr. Raven, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." I let that one-word answer hang there long enough for all three of them to realize I wasn't going

to say anything specific about that outing. "After that I've carried silver bullets. Never want to be without

them if you need them."

Val shivered. "Viper too?"

"Amen." I forced myself to smile and break the mood. "You got that Hibatchi chip encoder prepped

yet?"

Val scolded me. "Hitachi, Wolf, and you know it."

I accepted a trode coronet from her slender fingers and pulled it onto my head. I adjusted it so the

electrodes pressed against my temples and ran back over the midline of my skull. Val reached over and

tightened the band to improve the contact, then she clipped the dangling lead into a splice cable. She slid

that jack into the slot behind her left ear, then flipped a switch on the deck.

I winked at her. "Let's do it."

She winked back and hit a button on the keyboard. "Play ball."

Doc Raven had warned me that Valerie Valkyrie was special, but until we plunged through that electric

aurora wall of static and into the Matrix, I had no idea how special. I'd jacked into the Matrix

before—who hasn't—but it had always been on a public deck where I ended up inside an entertainment

system. Moving from game program to game program, I caught glimpses of the Matrix through the neat

little windows the programmers had built into their systems, but I'd never had any desire to go out

adventuring on my own. Before, the form and shape of the Matrix had always been decided by the local

network controllers. Here in Seattle the RTG resembled a vector graphic of the urban sprawl it

encompassed. Well-fortified nodes were surrounded by fences and walls, and Matrix security teams

patrolled the electronic streets like cops cruising a beat. I'd heard it had been designed that way because

it made the casual user feel like he was in familiar surroundings and thus easier to find his way around.

As things got strange and the world shifted, so did the Matrix. When a user entered the Chinatown area

here in Seattle, for example, the buildings melted away and the nodes took the form of mah jong tiles.

Deckers claimed that made it easier to pick out unprotected nodes, but I don't know about that. I've

heard it said, and can believe, that no one goes near the nodes represented by dragons.

But that's the way of the world. Steer as clear as possible from dragons—words to live by and advice it'll

kill you to ignore.

I've heard decker tales that if a decker got good enough he could impose his own sense of order on the

Matrix. With enough skill he could make the Matrix appear the way he wanted it—free of extraneous

data. Another urban legend born in the Matrix.

Valerie Valkyrie was a legendary decker.

After only two seconds, the landscape construct shifted. Gone were the clean lines of glowing, lime-green

streets and shining white buildings. Suddenly I found myself standing beside the pitcher's mound in a

monstrous baseball stadium. Val, outlined in a neon-blue that matched her eyes, pulled on a baseball cap

that materialized from thin air and gave me a broad grin. The cap had a Raven patch on it.

"Sorry if you aren't used to this, Wolf." The shrug of her shoulders told me she wasn't sorry at all and that

my surprised reaction made her day. "Warping the Matrix to my conception of it gives me a home-field

advantage." Within the solar yellow of the glove on her right hand, she twitched a ball around and got the

grip she wanted on it. From a dugout over on the third-base side of the field a smallish man walked up

toward the plate. Behind and above him a Scoreboard flashed to life and spewed out all sorts of

information in hexidecimal.

I pointed up at the display. "Can you translate?"

She looked at me as if I'd disappointed her, then nodded. Suddenly the Scoreboard flickered and the

handy notation of baseball replaced the curious array of numbers and letters. Coming up to bat was

Ronnie Killstar's personal file. The count was zero balls and two strikes, and the Scoreboard reported his

batting average as .128. He batted right-handed.

Val licked her lips as a catcher and umpire materialized behind the plate. "Can of corn." A green ball

appeared in her left hand and she spun it around until she grasped it between her thumb, index, and

middle fingers. Rearing back, her azure outline blurred and she delivered the pitch. It arced in at the plate,

then dropped a full fifteen centimeters below Ronnie's futile swing.

"Yer out!" screamed the umpire.

All sorts of data poured out onto the Scoreboard. It was a bit more nasty than one might expect to find

on the average baseball card, but it still bespoke nothing more than a mediocre career. A quick

comparison of his successful stolen bases versus times caught out in the attempt confirmed that he was an

unsuccessful smalltime thief before La Plante took him on as a leg-breaker.

As the record of his most recent telecom calls started to flash up on the Scoreboard, I looked over at

Val. "You can cut this any time you want. He's useless and now he's dead." I glanced over at the number

of the last call he'd made. "Hope it was to his mother."

Val wrinkled her nose. "I was unaware anyone had taught Petri dishes to answer the phone." She caught

the ball the catcher threw back at her. "That was just a warm-up. I shouldn't have used a forkball on

him—that was overkill." Certain things started to click into place for me. Cracking systems required a

vast array of ice-breaking programs. Most deckers used commercially developed software and,

consequently, could only break into the most simple of bases.

True artists like Val modify and write their own wares. I once talked with a decker who went by the

handle of Merlin who'd named all of his ice-breakers after spells. "It helps me remember what's what.

When some system's trying to flatline you, you want to be able to react quickly with a codebomb that will

do the job." Val, with her passion for baseball, had designed and named her ice-breakers for pitches.

"Let's get on to the main show, okay?"

"Roger."

Val concentrated and slammed a fist into her glove a couple of times. I noticed some subtle changes in

the stadium as the Fujiwara system came into range for us to access it. "Okay, we're ready to begin.

Kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul, isn't it?"

I nodded. Fujiwara Corporation was a legal shell that laundered money for a yakuza group based further

down the coast in Tokyo West. Whereas La Plante was a broker who facilitated the movement of things

from one party to another, Fujiwara actually brought contraband materials into Seattle from all over the

world. On a scale of one all the way up to Hitler's SS, both groups ranked fairly high, but Fujiwara

exercised a bit more restraint in how they dealt with rivals.

That meant they preferred a single yak hitter to a mad bomber. La Plante did too until Kid Stealth had

the temerity to defect to Raven. Neither group played nicely with their enemies, and this little Matrix run

was about to deposit us on Fujiwara's bad side.

The butterflies started in my stomach as a behemoth stepped from the dugout. He looked like something

from a cartoon. He had tiny legs and a narrow waist that blossomed up into immensely powerful arms

and shoulders. The bat he carried looked like it had been cold-hammered into shape from the hull of an

aircraft carrier, but he wielded it like it weighed no more than a spoon.

The field changed abruptly when he stepped into the batter's box to hit right-handed. Runners appeared

on second and third and the count stood even at 0 and 0. The batter's name appeared on the

Scoreboard as Babe Fujiwara and his batting average stood at a whopping .565.

I swallowed hard. "Why do I get the feeling this man is the All-Star team all rolled into one?"

Val wiped her brow on her sleeve. "That's because he is." Then she shot me a winning grin. "But that's

okay, baby, because I'm Rookie of the Year."

"Play ball!" cried the umpire.

Val's fingers twitched as she toyed with the ball hidden in her mitt, then she reared back to throw. The

fastball sizzled yellow and gold as it streaked toward the plate. Babe Fujiwara swung on the pitch and

missed, but not by much. From the look on Val's face she'd expected a larger margin of victory.

Her cerulean eyes narrowed. I saw her grip the now-green ball in the same way she'd done to deal with

Ronnie. The forkball shot from her hand at medium speed, then dropped precipitously. Even so, his bat

whipped around and he hit the ice-breaker solidly. Suddenly it shifted color from green to red and

rocketed back onto the field.

It hit me in the left ankle and fiery pain shot up my leg. The ball popped into the air as I dropped to the

ground. Val sprang off the mound, gathered the ball up, and tossed it over at Babe as he lumbered up the

baseline toward first. When the ball hit him in the shoulder, he exploded into blue sparks.

Gasping against the pain, I looked up at her. "What the hell was that?"

Val's nostrils flared. "Fujiwara has put some cascading 1C on line. The fact that you hurt means it's

blacker than La Plante's heart. I managed to flip a couple of bits into that program and used it to destroy

the ice layer that spawned it, but I'm not sure I can do that again."

I got an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. "We're in a bit deeper than we want to be, aren't we?"

She looked over at the runners on second and third. "We got a pass on the first two layers of ice. We

would have wasted time and broken them, but I thought speed was of the essence. Fujiwara gave them

to us to make it difficult for us to get out of here .. ."

I raised an eyebrow as I massaged my ankle. "You mean we're trapped in the Fujiwara system."

She shrugged. "It's a matter of perspective."

"Well, try it from my perspective, one of pain."

"We're trapped." She must have seen my icon begin the fingerwork for the spell that would deaden the

pain. "Don't waste the effort, Wolf. That stuff doesn't work in this environment." Her fingers convulsed

and a blue mitt appeared on my left hand. "Just use this to block anything they hit at you and it should

protect you."

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IntroductionIneverthoughtI'dlivelongenoughtobewritingmemoirs.Hell,IneverthoughtI'dlearntowritewellenoughtowritememoirs.OneofthethingsaboutassociatingwithDoctorRavenisthatyouendupdoingalotofthingsyouneverthoughtpossible.Inmycase,thatincludessurvivingintomythirties.Anyway,theadventuresI'vewrittendownh...

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Michael A. Stackpole - Shadowrun - Wolf and Raven

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