A Motive with a Universal Adapter 01

In the middle of the boom, the U.S. government and the dollar collapsed. Block after block of unfinished development sat derelict surrounded by abandoned construction equipment. The city south of 122nd street quickly filled with squatters and refugees with nowhere else to go.

Crime was rampant. Gang violence went unchecked. It didn't take long for Night's board of directors to cut their losses and pull the police back to the more established parts of the city where they could better protect the upstanding stockholders. The Combat Zone was written off as an anarchist ghetto. Only the law of the jungle applied.

"That's right. Deep in. I have an address if you want it..." Whistler trailed off.

Abby looked at me and I could tell she was getting cold feet. What good is a story if you're not alive to sell it?

"We want it," I told Whistler, not waiting for Abby to agree.

She paid the fare when the cab dropped us off at the side entrance of the warehouse while I rushed up the steps and rang the bell.

"Where the hell have you been, Ritz?" Jayden yelled as he unlocked the door. "You're almost an hour late! If The Hong-Kong Cavaliers weren't playing at The Armada Room tonight, I'd fire your ass and work the damn shift myself!"

"I'm sorry," I explained to my supervisor, who's ten years my junior. "My friend Joe was killed today."

"Sucks for him, sucks for you, shouldn't suck for me," he groussed, and then dashed down to the street and flagged the same cab Abby and I had arrived in.

I waved Abby inside, bolted the heavy steel security door into place, and clocked in.

The log-book was open on the desk with Jayden's last entry noting that I was late. The three security monitors on the desk cycled through feeds from dozens of cameras.

Eyeing the weapons locker in the dimly lit office, I hoped I wouldn't have to rely on bargain-bin shotguns for my revenge. They'd do in a pinch, but following Joe's killer into the Combat Zone—and coming back out again—required more firepower than I could afford.

I watched the video feeds flip by for a moment while Abby stood by the door fiddling with her camera.

"So, what was all that with Whistler and the tentacles?" I asked idly.

"Oh, Whistler is into this Japanese cartoon porn. But he doesn't like subtitles and he thinks translation chips are too dry and stilted. He likes his porn dubbed into Italian, so whenever he does a netrun for me, I spend an hour or two faking cartoon orgasms in a voiceover studio for him."

"I am so sorry I asked."

"Eh. I've done worse for less."

"Yeah, we all have... Oh wait, here we go..."

The left screen switched to the basement, and I could see our maintenance man working late. He had the assist motor for a heavy roll-down disassembled and parts spread across his workbench.

"I finally caught a break. C'mon, Rhoades."

Owl was hunched over his workbench with a pair of smart goggles on his face and a waldo gauntlet on his right arm. Both were jacked into cables snaking back to the neural processor ports at the base of his skull.

Probe wires in the fingers of his left cyber-arm attached to the circuit panel he was working on; diagnostic data scrolled across the vid screen built into his forearm. A TV sat on his worktop tuned to a custom hotrod show, but he was too absorbed in his work to pay attention or to notice Abby and me watching from the door.

"Hi Owl," I called to get his attention.

"Hey Ritz. You still work here?"

"For now."

"Your leg need another tune up?"

"No, it still has a few more months." Some of the military-grade built-ins in Uncle Sam's leg would get me reported if I took it to a respectable service center.

"Okay. Cool. Who's this?" he asked, looking up from his work and I could see the big, circular apertures on his goggles adjust to refocus.

"This is Rhoades," I answered.

"Abby Rhoades, Network 54 News," Abby introduced herself, stepping forward and extending her hand.

"Am I gonna be on TV?" Owl asked, looking at the camera she rested on her shoulder, but not taking her hand.

"Do you want to be?" Abby asked tentatively.

"Well sure," Owl said, turning back to his work. The goggles reset and the waldo manipulators mounted on the gauntlet lifted one tool out of his hand and replaced it with another. "Everybody wants to be on TV."

"I think that can be arranged," she smiled.

"Okay. Cool."

"Hey Owl," I began now that the pleasantries had been exchanged and the introductions made. "Are you still driving people into the Combat Zone in the Herkimer?"

"Yeah, sometimes... They pay me in money though."

"Well... I could pay you in salvage. There's likely to be some spare parts laying around after I'm done—guns, cyberware..."

They might be parts of me, but still.

"Can you get a right cyber-arm?" he asked, looking up again. "One that will fit me?"

"If I find one, I'll be sure to save it for you."

"Okay. Cool. I wanna try to build my waldos into one." He pulled the jack from behind his head, slid his wrist out of the gauntlet and set it down almost reverently on his work top. "Do you have enough guns for the Zone?"

"No, we're gonna have to steal some more firepower first. You wanna help?"

"Fourth floor?" he asked.

"Fourth floor," I confirmed.

"Okay. Cool."

"What's on the fourth floor?" Abby asked.

Maximum Mike's Arms & Ammo Emporium bills itself as the Mallplex's most popular destination for novice and discerning firearms shoppers alike. Other gun stores pop up in the Mallplex occasionally, but none of them last long. Most meet with a catastrophic end; make of that what you will.

Mike's deals in volume, placing huge orders with all of the big manufacturers. Of course, the Mallplex charges a premium for square meters, so Mike's can't afford to keep too much in backstock. What's not at the store, they keep here. They lease the whole fourth floor and have their own security systems in place.

"How you comin' Owl?" I asked him twenty minutes later.

"Good. I've reset the override code. Now I just need to by-pass the log circuit so there's no record of the door being opened."

The freight elevator from the loading dock had been custom installed and only went to the fourth floor. It was the only way in or out of Maximum Mike's stockroom. The alarm system used redundant biometric, PIN, and transmitter codes. And of course there was me, the live security guard on duty 24 hours a day.

We'd already looped the camera feed so we wouldn't be recorded. Abby had been surprisingly adept with the equipment, but it felt like a wasted effort as she stood there with her own camera trained on Owl.

"I'm not sure I like you filming this, Rhoades. If we're lucky, Mike's won't realize they've been robbed until their next inventory count. I'd rather not tip them off early."

"Are you kidding?" Abby smirked at me. "If this goes well, Maximum Mike's is gonna buy commercial time during this story. They may even sponsor it... If it goes badly, I'll sell them the footage for their insurance claim."

"Well, as long as you've got all the angles covered."

"This is what I do, Ritz."

It was odd to think that just an hour ago I was desperately clinging to this job when I had nothing else. Now that I had a direction—an objective—I was prepared to sacrifice the job and anything else necessary to see L. Nero bleed. There was a fair chance I could find and crease Joe's assassin and make it back before the morning shift arrived with no one the wiser.

There was probably an equal chance I'd die in the effort.

"Okay, I'm all set," Owl announced. "Either this works, or a police AV will be overhead in about 90 seconds."

The indicator on the control panel changed from red to green and I don't know about the others, but I held my breath listening for an alarm. All was quiet. Owl retracted the scanner probes back into his fingers.

As we stepped aboard the elevator, Abby finally broke the silence. "So Owl, did you know Joe Carmichael too?" she asked, keeping the camera on him.

Owl frowned. "Who?"

"Savage Joe?"

Owl's blank stare was intensified by the emotionless goggles. I just grinned to myself, knowing Abby was going to have to work harder than that to get a 'Why?' out of Owl.

"The guy who was killed at Talsorian's," she prodded. "The friend whose death Ritz is avenging."

"Oh. Is that why we're doing it? Cool."

"Well, yes..." she followed up. "That's why Ritz is doing it. But why are you risking your job and robbing your own employer? What's in it for you?"

"I dunno," Owl shrugged. "Seemed like fun."

Four floors up, the elevator doors opened onto row after row of heavy shelving units stacked with ammo and weapons, still in their boxes. A pallet lifter sat by the door. The aisles between shelves permitted just enough room for it to maneuver.

"Owl, find ammo. Five-five-six caliber and twelve gauge shells. Extra clips too if you can."

"Okay. Cool."

He started down one aisle and I down another. If there was any organization system it wasn't readily apparent, so I plunged ahead and read off box labels as I passed.

"Dai Lung. Crap... Budget Arms. Crap... Federated Arms. Meh... "

"You're kind of picky," Abby pointed out, following me with the camera. "What are you looking for?"

"I like Militech," I answered. "Arasaka... Here, we go. Militech. Hm, no not the Viper. I need something heavier."

"It sounds like they put the cheap stuff up front," Abby observed.

"Yeah," I agreed. "It looks like the high-end Malorian and Tsunami stock is further back. Maximum Mike's probably hoped if they were ever robbed the thieves would grab whatever was up front first. This aisle is all small caliber though. Let's check the next one."

"Don't you want something high-end from the back," Abby asked as we rounded the corner and I started toward the middle of the aisle.

"Militech kept us grunts supplied, even when the government stopped paying the bills. By the end of the war, I think Militech suits were probably calling more shots than the Pentagon brass... Ah! This is what I'm looking for."

I pulled the top box off a stack, slit the packaging tape open with my boot knife, and opened the carton.

"When the politicians finally wrote off the war as a bad idea, there was no plan for getting the troops home. It was Militech transports that evac'd us back to the U.S."

Feeling the weight of the assault rifle in my hands was like hugging an old friend. I gave it a quick once-over then turned toward Abby and looked directly into her camera lens.

"If I'm gonna pull off your—what did you call it? This 'universal adapter' story of yours—I'm gonna do it with a Militech Ronin in my hands and a smile on my face."

"Oh my god, that was such a great line!" Abby gushed. "They'll pay big money to use that in a commercial. Can we do another take? Maybe without the aside?"

"If we survive, we can do all the takes you want," I promised. "Right now, I need a good shotgun."

"Hey, Ritz." Owl called from a couple of aisles over. "Guess what I found."

We pulled a duffle bag out of a carton full of them and loaded it up with ammo, clips, slings, link cables, and other fun surprises. It had a Maximum Mike's logo embroidered on the side and Abby insisted on getting it in the frame whenever she could.

Down in Owl's garage on the ground floor, we all piled into the Herkimer. Owl climbed up into the driver's seat while Abby and I loaded clips and adjusted slings in the back.

"Hey, would you be willing to mount a camera on your gun?" Abby asked, pulling a compact vid-cam out of her bag. "I don't want to, like, throw off your aim or anything, but you'll be the one with the best angles."

"Sure," I took the camera and snapped the quick-mount bracket under the barrel of the Ronin. "Militiech had us mount all kinds of high-tech doohickies during the war. I don't even notice them."

Speaking of the war, odds were I'd need every advantage Uncle Sam left me with, so I pulled off my boot and checked the tread on the sole of my primer grey foot.

"Oh, hey, I didn't know you had cyber-leg," Abby remarked. "What brand?"

"Government issue. I think it was built by Omni Consumer Products. But it's been modded and re-built so many times now, I doubt anyone at an Omni service center would recognize it."

"You should really show that off. You know it wouldn't cost much to get it chrome plated. Give you a real edgerunner vibe."

"This is a combat injury, not a fashion statement," I frowned. "I can't get used to the idea of showing off what was essentially my own screw-up. I should have seen the IED that took my leg."

"Right, sorry," Abby backtracked. "It's just, you know, that Kiroshi whatchamacallit is kinda flashy."

"That's different," I tapped the Optishield. "This was a signing bonus. When they recruited me for the Cyber-Merc Wars, the Lithuanians upgraded the eyes Uncle Sam gave me after a sniper's bullet caught my ocular ridge and ripped out both my optic nerves."

Abby grimaced at the imagery. It was her own fault for giving me that elocution chip.

"We're coming up on the crossing," Owl called back over his shoulder.

"I'm just gonna go... shoot some establishing footage," Abby excused herself.

She climbed up front with Owl as the Herkimer trundled south. The cops manning the Studio City checkpoint at 122nd street waved us through without stopping us for the usual warning. I guess we looked like we could handle ourselves.

A relic of last century's First Central American War, the Herkimer was designed as an urban troop transport. It has as much armor as a main battle tank, and it's narrow and nimble enough to maneuver through bombed out streets and back alleys. Or so Owl says.

But the double-clutch transmission was considered too complex and the price tag was too high, so it never went into production. Owl found this prototype in a scrap yard in Seattle and restored it. He usually finds a way to earn a little euro off his hobby projects.

Up front, Abby could film the Combat Zone through the viewport.

The first block or two are still pretty lively, crowded with the sort of bored suits and dilettantes who thrive on the 'danger' of going to a Combat Zone night club with their heavily armed bodyguards or security details. You can also find brothels, shops fencing blackmarket goods, designer drug labs, ripper-doc clinics—anything that would be illegal a block away. They siphon power, gas, and water off front businesses on the other side of the divide and hire their own security.

After that fringe zone, the traffic on wheel and on foot evaporates and the landscape turns to rot and ruin. The streetlights go out, the storefronts and houses go dark, and the crumbling asphalt is strewn with garbage and rubble. Gangs patrol their turf and shake down anyone who looks weaker than them.

Abby was interviewing Owl as he drove. At one point I heard her giggle, but I wasn't paying attention to the conversation. I had bigger things on my mind.

Alone in the back of the Herkimer, as I rolled my pant leg up, my left arm started to spasm uncontrollably.

This was stupid. I was in no shape to go into combat. I should have taken the time to find a new Lucidrine supplier first. But the only lead I had on Savage Joe's killer was getting colder by the second. If I didn't go now, I might not get another chance.

I lit up another cigarette to try to calm my nerves. Once the trembling became continuous, the next stage of withdrawal would be delayed reaction time as my brain struggled to send signals through all the static. Reaction time was not something I could spare. Where I was going, micro-seconds would separate the living from the late.

"We're almost there, Ritz," Owl called back from the driver's seat. The large irises of his goggles glowed green in the dark cab as he drove the blacked-out transport by low-light enhancement. He had a cable jacked into his neural processor running into the Herkimer's dashboard. Owl didn't even touch the steering wheel or the pedals as we rounded the corner.

I stood up and leaned over his shoulder. "Okay, drive through nice and slow. I want to see what we're dealing with."

"There, on the left," Abby pointed.

A dilapidated six-story apartment building called 'The Bradbury' came into view. The Black Queen's 'Crown and B' tag was painted three stories high on the front. Several windows on the upper floors were illuminated, suggesting they had a generator hooked up somewhere.

One corner of the building had collapsed but the rubble had been stacked and shored up to prevent entry through the breach. The front door had been covered with a steel plate on hinges. I switched the Kiroshi to thermograph and counted a half-dozen faint heat signatures close enough to the front wall to be seen through it.

This was bad news.

I had hoped to find L. Nero hunkered down alone in a spider hole waiting for the heat to die down. Instead he was ensconced in the stronghold of a booster gang with enough muscle to hold turf twenty-some blocks into this hellscape.

"Go to the end of the block, turn right, and park," I told Owl.

"You think Nero's inside?" Abby asked, turning her camera on me.

"Yep."

"What's the best way to get to him?"

"One sniper on top of that building," I pointed, "another over there. A fire team at the front door, another around back, and a third dropped on the roof by a combat AV providing close air support. Breach the perimeter simultaneously and sweep-and-clear 'til everyone meets in the middle."

"Okay, So... How are we gonna get to him?"

"I'm still working that out," I told her, jacking the Ronin into my processor.

The display on the Kiroshi immediately showed a full thirty-round clip. I chambered a round and switched off the safety while I opened the back hatch of the Herkimer. The targeting reticle danced across my vision as I stepped down onto the pavement and swept the rifle left to right.

Overhead a Network 54 blimp drifted in long, lazy circles. The folks who live in the Combat Zone buy stuff too, and the networks couldn't leave them without advertising just because there was no electricity.

Giant downward-tilted video screens played TV show promos, movie trailers, sports highlights, and of course commercials. Four giant spotlights panned across the ground as if to say "Look at me! Look at me!"

The only things showing on my thermograph were a few yellow dots I recognized as rats. Beyond the sound of the blimp's speakers, the pop of small arms fire could be heard in the distance; a revving engine; squealing tires. It was all several blocks away. Closer by, there was muffled rock music playing inside the Black Queens' building.

The air smelled smokey and when I switched back to normal vision I could see why. The building across the street was a burned out husk against the dull night sky.

If the Black Queens had a sentry standing guard, he was doing it inside. If there was a patrol, they were out of sight. Everything looked clear. Zooming in on The Bradburys' front door, I spotted a camera above it facing out at the street. That would be a problem.

"All clear?" Abby whispered over the drone of the approaching blimp.

"Camera," I pointed with my rifle muzzle.

She brought her own camera up to her shoulder and I heard the soft hum of the zoom motor.

"Oh yeah, there it is. It looks like they're watching the approach, but not the door itself."

"If anyone's paying attention, I'll lose the element of surprise," I mused. "Guess it's a chance I'll have to take."

"We could try to flare the lens, blind the camera for a second or two, long enough for us to get to the blind spot underneath."

"Would that work?" That opened up possibilities and a plan was taking shape.

"It's a wide-angle lens; they're especially susceptible to lens flare," Abby explained. "And as dark as it is out here, it's probably a low-light camera. That would intensify the effect. A good flare could whiteout the whole picture."