Carla strode across the parking lot and wrenched open the car door. She and Masaki had been trying all that afternoon and evening to find Pita, but none of the street kids would admit to seeing the girl. She’d disappeared into thin air-and taken the Mitsuhama data-chip with her. Their producer had given Carla and Masaki one day to dig up some proof that there really was a story. So far, all they had were dead ends. And now Masaki was acting like an idiot, honking the horn like a frightened kid. He even had the engine running, as if fearing that a fast getaway would be imminent.
“What the hell are you doing?” Carla asked Masaki angrily. Trying to wake up all of Seattle? If you weren’t such a timid-”
Masaki didn’t wait for the insult. “Look at this!” he said, pointing urgently to the compact trid built into the dash of his car. “I was channel surfing and stumbled across this pirate broadcast. Looks like they’ve found Pita for us.”
Carla climbed hurriedly into the car, thumbing the volume key beside the tiny trideo screen. Pita’s voice crackled from the speaker and her image wavered. At first Carla thought it was just the trideo unit acting up. but then she saw the channel display. The broadcast was coming in on Channel 115-a channel that should have been carrying nothing but a blank blue field. This was clearly a pirate broadcast, fed illegally through a cable booster into a “dead” channel. The pirates were probably transmitting via remote feed to avoid getting caught, should their input be traced. The resulting distortion had caused the color to shift; Pita’s face was distinctly green. But her voice was coming through, loud and clear, despite the occasional pop of static.
“This is where it happened.” she said in a quavering voice. “This is where my friends were killed.”
The camera pulled back from Pita, revealing the wall behind her. The words that had been painted in the orks’ blood were faint but still legible, thanks to an overhang that protected them from the rain that had been falling steadily throughout the day: “Human Power!”, “Goblin Scum Must Die!” and “Keep Our Human Family Pure!”
Carla jabbed a finger at the screen. “That’s Rainier Avenue South, the spot where those three orks were killed by Humanis Policlub. I shot trid there a couple of days ago. If this is a live broadcast, that’s where Pita is right now.”
“It’s live all right,” Masaki said, wheezing with excitement. “But the pirate would be a fool to broadcast from an identifiable location. Lone Star would be all over him before he’d even finished his intro.
“See this faint blue line?” He traced Pita’s outline with a finger. “The kid’s image has been inserted over a shot of the corner where the kids were killed. The pirate is shooting with two portacams. one slaved to the other. He’s using a mixer to paste the two images together.”
“So how do we find him?” Carla asked.
“The portacams can’t be more than a few hundred meters apart,” he said. “He’s got to be within a block or two of that corner or else the signal would suffer too much distortion and the images wouldn’t match up. And he must be shooting outside to capture traffic noise. We’ll find him.” Masaki put the car into gear and punched the accelerator. “Now what was that name you wanted to call me? A timid what?
“Shh!” Carla hissed, “I’m trying to listen to this. Has the kid said anything about the dead mage?”
“Not yet.” Masaki rounded a corner, tires squealing. “It’s been nothing but intro so far. After introducing Pita, the reporter went into this rambling spiel about the coming revolution and injustice against the metaraces. Usual bulldrek. About what you’d expect from amateur propagandists like Orks First! They’re eating up the kid’s story with a fork and-”
“Quiet!” Carla leaned closer to the tiny screen. The camera was back on the ork girl, locked in a closeup that showed the tears at the corners of her eyes. Carla made sure the machine was set on record, for review later in case she missed anything.
“We were stopped outside an apartment a few blocks from here,” Pita began, gesturing up the Street, “by two Lone Star cops. There were four of us. Me, Chen Wah…” She paused, blinking furiously. “And two younger orks, Shaz and Mohan Gill. The cops took our simsense headset and…”
Carla glanced up as the car came to a halt. They were stopping for a yellow light. Cross traffic was light. “Let’s move, Masaki!” she said impatiently. “The pirate is going to wrap this story and disappear.”
“This intersection is monitored!” Masaki protested. “I don’t want to risk getting a tick-”
Carla grabbed the wheel, slid across the seat, and punched her foot down on top of Masaki’s, depressing the accelerator. Masaki gasped in fear as the car leaped across the intersection, narrowly missing the oncoming traffic. Horns blared, but then they were through and racing along Rainier. Masaki glared at Carla as she released the wheel, then drove on, grinding his teeth. Carla was pleased to see that they were at last making some decent speed.
She returned her attention to the trideo screen. The pirate reporter was standing beside Pita, one arm draped protectively over her shoulders. He was talking earnestly into the camera, his eyes glittering with intensity.
“Most of us have gone through what Pita has just described,” he was saying. “Lone Star seizes our property without warrant, stops and questions us without due cause, and talks to us in the most derogatory way they can think of. We live our lives in the Underground, afraid to venture onto the streets of our own city, shut out from the homes we once owned. Governor Schultz and Lone Star Chief Loudon have promised to ‘clean up’ Seattle. They pretend they’re talking about street crime. But anyone who remembers the events of 2039 will read between the lines and realize that the ‘housecleaning’ these humans are talking about is far more serious than the round-up that triggered the Night of Rage. We at Orks First! are about to bring you the true story of the links between our city’s ‘security’ force and the policlub that was notorious for-”
“We're close now!” Masaki called out. “They’ve got to be around here somewhere.” He weaved around another vehicle, cut off a truck, and pulled back into the curb lane.
The pirate’s voice was lost in a roar of static. The trideo screen had gone blue.
“Damn!” Carla thumped the dash above the trideo set. “We’ve lost the transmission.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Masaki wheezed, slowing the car. “There they are!”
Carla looked up. The ork girl was perhaps a block away, standing near the curb. Her body posture was hunched, frozen. She looked like a frightened animal, caught in the glare of headlights and uncertain which way to run. The pirate reporter lay at her feet, tangled in his tripod as if he had tripped over it. He was struggling to raise himself to a sitting position, to point something black he held in his hand. At first, Carla thought it was a portacam. But then she recognized the streamlined shape of a pistol. She was just powering down her window when shots coughed out from across the street. The ork reporter sagged to the ground, then went still.
“That’s gunfire!” Masaki said, slamming on the brakes. Around them, other drivers were also reacting, some accelerating away as quickly as possible, others spinning in tight fishtail turns. Two cars slammed together with a dull crunch and the scraping squeal of torn metal in the intersection ahead.
As their car skidded to a stop, Carla peered around Masaki. On the opposite side of the street, a man was tucking a pistol into a holster under his arm. A smaller man sprinted out into traffic, heading for the ork girl.
Cursing the power window for its slowness, Carla stuck her head out the opening. “Pita!” she cried. “This way!”