The next minute, that worry hit me over the head with all the subtlety of a tire iron. A Guardian got off a lucky shot that took out one of my Wandjinas, and the resulting nasty feedback damned near made me black out from pain. But I couldn't afford to black out. I had to win this fight or die trying.
My control of the rest of my drone network was hanging by a thread. Sick and dizzy, trying to ignore the red-and-black flashes that kept cutting across my vision, I pulled a sneaky tactic that had the added virtue of not demanding mental effort. I pushed a button on my decrypt module and sent a complicated encrypt protocol down the dataline. As I expected, the sec-drones that had been moving toward me slowed down, then stopped. None of them fired. My little encryption trick had slowed the sec-rigger's response time dramatically while he tried to sort out just what the frag I'd done. Now I had time to shake off the not-quite-dump-shock and sneak up on the fragger.
I focused inward, then made an even bigger mental fist and slammed it down on the ghostly outlines of the sec-rigger's virtual body. As his mind wavered under the impact, I wrapped my virtual arms around his middle and squeezed. Hard. His virtual shape began to collapse, curling into a fetal position and then melting into a shapeless mass.
Then his collapse speeded up. He was trying to wriggle out of my grip before I throttled him into a coma. A dark hole of nothing suddenly opened nearby, and the sec-rigger flowed toward it. Little fragger was trying to jack out. I stretched out a virtual leg and blocked the entrance to the hole, then wrapped around the sec-rigger again and squeezed some more until I couldn't sense his presence anywhere in the system.
I'd won. I was the building now; I could feel every square inch of it, plus all the perimeter drones that had been doing their level best to knock out my Wandjinas. First thing I did was order the sec-drones to back off. I kept them active, though, in case I might need them to help my buds on the way out. (That old martial-arts rule is dead on target; use your enemy's strength against him as much as you can. Saves you the trouble of doing all the work yourself, and surprises the hell out of the bad guys.) The next thing I did was find my team, just in time to open some convenient doors for them without tripping any alarms. I also kept track of the Yamatetsu security guards, alerted to trouble by the security rigger before I'd dealt with him. Thanks to my Jabberwockies, they had no idea who was attacking their facility or where the team was; they jogged up and down corridors at random, not knowing where to go. For the sheer fun of it, I set off a gaggle of motion sensors several hundred yards away from where my team was. The razorboys dashed off, each of them eager to be the first one to nail himself a real live intruder.
Needless to say, we pulled off the run and were well compensated for it. Which just goes to show what a talented rigger can do-especially if she spends her cred wisely.
› Josie Cruise
MISSION IMPROBABLE
Written by Diane Piron-Gelman and Robert Cruz, based on stories by Jonathan Szeto
It started as a simple job. (How many times have you heard that in your life!) I should have known; few things in my life are ever simple, but that's what you get when you're a smuggler and sometime runner, making your living outsmarting the Powers That Be. I'd been hired by a Johnson to retrieve a certain package from an island that lay in Salish territory, which made sending a ground team a difficult proposition. Border crossings and fake datawork and all, you know-and it'd have to be good datawork, in case the Salish authorities decided to get picky about "interlopers" from the UCAS. Good, of course, meaning expensive. Even at my hefty fee, I was cheaper than the usual running team. The Johnson and her up-front cred checked out, so I took the job. A simple helicopter flight out to the island, a quick in-and-out, return trip and a hand-over-easy money, I thought.
I drove my favorite car to the place where I'd hidden my 'copter away. She was my pride and joy, that Airstar-a good sturdy workhorse of a vehicle, with plenty of nifty mods I'd made myself. Any decent rigger, in my opinion, also ought to be a halfway decent mechanic-especially a rigger like me, who couldn't always count on a talented and discreet mechanic turning up if a smuggling run went sour.
I waved hello to the maintenance crew, but didn't make much small talk. No time to chat when biz was waiting to be done. They gave me an all-systems-go report, which was all I needed to hear. I strode up to the Airstar, checked to make sure I had plenty of ammo for my gun, then climbed into the pilot's seat.
I jacked into the helicopter's rig and the virtual heads-up display blossomed before my eyes. Dizziness hit me for a split second; then my mind adjusted to the blizzard of input from the view screens, which were arrayed before me like the many facets of a cut diamond. The screens showed views from every angle, as well as numerous data displays. At the moment, the largest screen, positioned squarely in the center, displayed the status of the Airstar's system as it warmed up.
As I summoned the helicopter to life, I could feel the rumble of the Pratt Whitney turbojet engines in my chest. The chopper's blades seemed to rotate in sync with the blood pulsing through my limbs. I shifted into forward visual mode; a small icon blinked in a corner of the main view screen, indicating that the hangar door had opened. I was cleared for takeoff.
I pulled my legs into a crouch. The rotating blades went from a whine to a roar in response. I leaped upward and the helicopter rose, slowly but surely soaring upward through the rooftop hangar door. Once I'd gotten several dozen meters above the roof of the warehouse, I set the chopper to hovering briefly as I scanned the Seattle sprawl far below. The low background levels of thermal and electromagnetic radiation emanating from the city showed up as a dull red and green glow in my display. I spotted no active radiation sources, which meant no one was watching right now.
I turned my attention to the navigational screen. It showed my target destination as a red dot, a tiny island of hot brightness in the deep, cool blue of the Pacific Ocean. With another flicker of thought I commanded the screen to display known sensor watch posts. They appeared as small radar-dish icons giving off white waves.
I swiftly plotted a course that eluded most of the lookout points, then stretched my arms over my head, twisted my body toward Puget Sound, and swept my arms down to my sides. The Airstar turned and sped toward the moonlight that glinted off the Sound.
This was going to be a cakewalk. Breeze on out to the target, pick up the package and come back home. I'd be back in time for happy hour at the Shack-and this time able to pay my tab, and just maybe buy a round or three for a certain pretty lady I'd had my eye on recently. Yep, this was just the kind of job I liked best…
Suddenly the chopper's warning klaxons started screaming. I turned my head and my visual display rotated until the rear view screen occupied my central window. On it I saw two dark flecks against the pink and gray pre-dawn sky. The Airstar's Identify Friend or Foe transponders identified the craft as two F-B Eagle interceptors from the UCASAF's Fifth Air Wing based at McChord.
Before I could make another move, bright spurts of thermographic orange blossomed under the wings of both interceptors and the helicopter's targeting alarm began to shriek. A warning message flashed on my heads-up display-both interceptors had locked on to the Airstar and fired air-to-air missiles.
Instinctively, I arched my body toward the coastline, a movement that turned the helicopter. At the same time I started kicking my legs furiously like an Olympic swimmer, sending the chopper screaming toward the land. But my evasive action didn't fool the missiles' targeting sensors. The deadly projectiles twisted and dove after me.