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."