The Man Who Stole the Weather

Flicking the camera on, Jill fiddled with the orientation for a moment before setting it on its tripod. The red light on top above the lens let her know it was broadcasting, letting anyone following on the matrix see her pale face, made wet by the sea spray and lit only by the single LED lamp clinging to the post above the cabin of the boat. The moon was nowhere in sight, the world pitch-black beyond the small section of deck she was standing on.

Stepping back, the woman ran her hands through her damp hair, the dark mass made colorless from the dearth of illumination as she pulled it from her neck and quickly readjusted the spectacles resting on her nose. The steady rain meant that the lenses were beaded with moisture and obscured her eyes from the camera's casual inquiry. Everything bobbed slightly on the moody ocean.

"Hello!" Jill started, "Yes, this is once again Professor Waldrite, speaking to you from my research vessel The Knowing Look. I am situated off of the coast of the California Free State and as you can see the weather is what most people would call 'foul' but which I would describe as informative!"

Stopping to catch her breath, Jill reached up to the lamp hanging above the doorway and angled it inside, momentarily plunging the deck into total blackness but allowing the interior of the cabin to become visible. A bank of electronic equipment, currently offline, sat against the wall, well out of range of the falling rain.

"Now, those of you who watch the news are surely aware that approximately four miles to the west of San Francisco is the formation that has been named by the North American Weather Service as Mana Storm Vorsyth. Remote monitoring has determined that Vorsyth is a class four awakened spirit entity--yes, that's right, a sentient storm!"

Reaching for the camera's tripod, Jill spun it around on its platform set into the deck of the ship and pointed it at the bow. The vessel remained dark and indistinct, little more than a shape to the viewers on the matrix. But on the horizon, swirling slowly in scintillating patterns of blue, violet and green, a fury of red lightning and tossing waves roiled across the sea. Clouds lit by their own aura formed into shapes: a grasping hand, a gasping mouth, a witnessing eye. The clouds shaped themselves this way for only a few moments before the wind scattered them, destroying what was to make way for some new form.

From off-camera the professor continued. "It is well understood," she said between gulped breaths of salt-heavy air, "That mana storms understand their own nature well enough to know that landfall will cause them to break apart, and they make every effort to push themselves away from coasts so as to avoid this fate. What is not understood is the full extent of a sentient storm's awareness and cognition. No one, I repeat no one, has ever tried to talk to a storm that speaks. I have spent the last year and a half calibrating my equipment and if my calculations are correct, when I am within one mile of Vorsyth's center I will be able to tune in to an energy wavelength suitable for communication of an auditory nature!"

"If so, this will be the biggest development in the field of crypto-meteorology since the Awakening in 2011! Now there is a chance that The Knowing Look will in the course of this endeavor be lost, and me along with it... That is why I am uploading my expedition to the matrix in real time, for any and all observers to benefit from!"

Jill continued talking as the camera recorded Vorsyth several miles in the distance. The sounds of distant thunder and a voice whispering something in a language not yet invented carried across the waves.

From the center of the storm a flash of pure white light emanated. There was something like a scream, something like fingers from the clouds groping for an escape much too far out of reach...

And then Vorsyth was gone. All at once its clouds were gone, as if someone had reached down from the heavens and simply wiped it away to leave behind only a star-speckled sky.

"In a few moments," Jill announced, "I will power on the engines and..."

The professor came into view of the camera, her silhouette stark black against the outline of the night sky.

"In a.. Few..."

She dropped the device she'd been holding and gripped the railing of the bow.

"Where did it go?"

= = =

One week later

Folsom State Prison, California Free State

= = =

"How's life in a box, Mister Megiddo?"

Julius reclined in his padded chair, crossing his legs and setting down the glass of scotch he'd been holding. "A gilded cage is every bit as confining as one of cold iron, detective. Though I must admit, I prefer to know about my visitors in advance. Of the three I was expecting today, you were not among them."

"One of the benefits about being on the right side of the law is that you don't need an appointment to see someone," Dawson informed him. Hands in her coat pockets, she gestured to the large display screen situated on one wall of the cell. "I see you're sparing no expense. Reasonable, considering how long you're going to be in here."

The steel bars between the two of them were not so close together that she couldn't make out the elf's expression. Have amusement, half disgust.

"A person in my position can afford to settle in, detective. In a hundred years my hair will be a little longer, my scotch a little finer and Aztechnology's stock a little more valuable. You however will have returned to the earth, little more than ashes let loose in the wind. That is assuming you do not meet a more violent conclusion before that. Police work can be so dangerous, you know."

Dawson stood up slowly from the stool she'd had put in front of Julius' cell, which was twice the size of every other compartment on the block. She leaned close to the bars and lifted her head so the brim of her hat wouldn't obscure her face.

"Is that a threat, Mister Megiddo? If you're hiding another Walther in there, you're not going to get a better chance than right now."

Julius chuckled softly. "I do not need to kill you, detective. Time will do it for me. The corporate court may have put an end to project: glimpse but Aztlan appreciates my willingness to sacrifice on its behalf."

"You mean your willingness to sacrifice others," she corrected, "And then accept the blame when it backfired."

The elf spread his hands. "Semantics, detective. I did not drain the blood from anyone who did not agree to be a participant in Aztechnology's research efforts. They should have, how do you Americans put it... Read the fine print."

She lunged at the bars, injecting her right arm into the cell and swiping at Megiddo. Her fingertips managed to catch the elf's collar; if she hadn't been so broad of shoulders she'd have fit far enough in to grab his throat as she intended.

"You had best hope I'm not around in a hundred years, Mister Megiddo," Dawson spoke, voice low and severe. "Because if I am you can be certain that when those doors out there open up to let you out of this prison there won't be a limousine waiting to take you somewhere. The only thing waiting will be me and a loaded gun. If I'm in a wheelchair you can be sure I'll run your gilded ass over when my magazine is empty."

Dawson let go of his expensive shirt and Julius leaned away from her arm as it retracted. His expression now was no longer mixed, being only of pure disdain. "How civilized," the elf seethed. "You could have spilled my scotch, detective. The bottle this came from costs more than that repugnant car you came here in. That will always be the difference between us, even when these bars are longer in the way."

Dawson put her hands back in her pocket and spoke as she turned away. "Those bars are the only thing keeping you alive, Mister Megiddo. I recommend you start to appreciate them."

Walking back up the hallway towards the entrance to the cell block put Dawson in front of many other prisoners, most of whom had clear reinforced ballistic glass instead of bars. An ork or troll could bend solid steel given enough time, but as an elf had no particularly extraordinary strength and Megiddo received visitors almost every day, the warden had decided bars were just fine in his case. She wondered what the nuyen price was for that level of leniency.

The three-hour drive back to Sunnyvale took Dawson down interstate 80 and then onto the coast. When passing through Daly City she got a glimpse of the Pacific, which seemed unusually serene, almost picturesque. There was no sign of the storm that had supposedly been lurking there not long ago. There was in fact not a cloud in the sky. Music kept her company while she cruised down the open road.

"They may fix the weather in the world, just like mister Gore said..."

"But tell me what's to be done, lord, about the weather in my head?"

= = =

The visit to Megiddo had left Dawson feeling bitter but the meetings at Knight-Errant made her feel bored. She sat in her self-assigned place at the cold end of the table, as far from Gaines and the five junior executives working under him at the Orchard. Even six empty chairs between her and the 'head of optimized personnel allocation' couldn't keep her from feeling the resentment radiating from those five people. It wasn't that she'd showed up a few minutes late; it's that she was here at all.

Presently speaking was the 'head of brand recognition and imaging,' a woman that Dawson thought looked like an artist's rendition of a hummingbird demanding to see the manager at a restaurant. "Studies with our focus groups show that the rifle version of the Ares Accelerator comes off as looking friendlier than the pistol version! People see a holstered gun and they think about the officer carrying it--if they have restraint, if their aim is good, if they're here to help or protect them... But when they see the rifle being held in both hands, they think about the gun! They think about what it fires, how it works, what it can do... They're much more likely to cooperate with someone if they're thinking about the gun and not about the person holding it."

Dawson couldn't keep from shaking her head at how stupid this sounded. Gaines however had an excellent poker face for these things and was able to hide his contempt for the idea.

"And," he said while his eyes moved from Branding to the 'head of marketable weapons cost reduction,' a heavy-set dark-skinned man who had gaudy gold framing on the sides of his face, "Is the Impeller fit for mass production yet?"

Reduction pushed himself away from the table and gestured to the burly corp-sec agent standing behind him, a male ork in a suit and sunglasses. In his hands he was carrying an ugly contrivance of steel and wires, the Ares Impeller.

"Testing so far," the department head said in a deep yet somehow still nasally voice, "Has shown that the increased potency of the power supply and the additional length of the barrel affords the operator significantly better accuracy over a long distance and increased propulsion so as to avoid the drop-off from gravity. As you know, after about a hundred feet the Accelerator's steel rod projectiles have significant decline in their trajectory because of the weight of the rods. You could aim at someone's head and end up hitting them in the abdomen or the waist. But the Impeller does not have that limitation---wherever you point, you shoot!"

The ork lifted the gun up in his hands and showed it from several angles, opening up the breech to display the space where the rods would sit once loaded. Coils that would magnetize in sequence to move the rod lined the barrel and a large circular disc of gold, steel and cobalt formed the very beginning of the firing chamber. Though she had to admit she had a fondness for the Accelerator because of how it could injure without killing, the Impeller had nothing endearing about it. To build a single one of them was more expensive than a small house outside San Francisco.

Gaines pointed at the weapon with one finger on his left hand. "One of your reports last month," he said skeptically, "Indicated you were having power cycling issues. Something about heat buildup in the coils? Where are we at with that?"

Reduction dismissed the concern with a wave of one pudgy hand. "It's true we've had some instances with some of the prototypes overheating when fired rapidly in short succession, but I wouldn't classify these as a problem exactly. The Impeller was conceived to be a riot control device in most cases and it's unlikely it will need to be fired more than once or twice in order to disperse a crowd. That provides ample time for the--"

"You need to port the barrel." All eyes at the table turned towards Dawson. She knew it was probably a mistake to talk, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut any longer.

Looking down his nose at her, Reduction asked "Pardon?"

"Port the barrel," Dawson repeated, resisting the urge to say it slowly as if to an idiot. "Put holes in it, between the coils so the heat can vent through them. It'll also make the whole thing a little lighter which I'm sure agent Cranston there would appreciate, considering he's the one who has to carry that god awful thing all the time."

Gaines sat back in his seat and tented his fingers, face unreadable while the department heads looked at each other with a mix of uncertainty and mild revulsion.

Branding started back up. "Studies show that having perforations in field equipment leads people to believe that costs are being cut in manufacturing. It makes products look lower-quality." Reduction pointed at Branding and nodded enthusiastically, seemingly unaware this should have been the argument he was making.

Dawson ignored the flimsy refutation. "You could also put a heatsink along the bottom of the barrel, insulated on the exterior so the user can still hold it. Actually what you should really do is reduce the size of the power supply in the stock, but I don't imagine there's anything anyone could say to get you to do that. You know sixty years ago if you wanted a weapon like this you needed a generator the size of a car in order to power it. I know Ares owns BMW but most customers don't buy a mid-price luxury car just because it comes with a rail gun. And is it worth it to mention that the trigger is even more sensitive than the one on the Accelerator?"

Now the 'head of crisis solutions and collateral damage assessment' spoke up. He was a lean, hollow-eyed man with short hair and thin lips, but uniquely qualified among the other department heads to comment on this subject in that aside from Gaines, Dawson and Cranston he was the only person in the room likely to have fired a weapon before.

"Given the penetrating power of the Impeller at its highest setting," he said matter-of-factly, "It is statistically unlikely that an agent will need to fire it more than once in an engagement."

Sitting up in her chair, Dawson looked directly at Collateral and asked, "Have you ever met a go-ganger? How about a Shadowrunner? Have you ever seen, say, a toxic shaman with more eyes on his back than on his face, looking for a hill to die on? Other than on a display screen, that is."

The other department heads looked again at each other, a few of them now looking at Gaines as if somehow expecting him to reign her in. Eventually Branding spoke up.

"The power supply is the biggest selling point right now, studies show. Customers like that it has so much power. It's possible we could even spin the heat buildup as a positive thing! A kind of design-level safety mechanism that prevents excessive casualties!"

Dawson stood up, the sound of the chair wheels across the marble floor cutting off Branding's screed. She looked at Cranston and asked, "Carrying ammunition for that?" The ork nodded, and Dawson shrugged off her trench coat, laying it down on the meeting table next to her hat, followed by the Accelerator she'd been carrying on her hip. Then she began walking across the room, dragging the chair with her.

"Get it loaded, then."

The department heads looked immensely worried and Cranston himself at last looked to Gaines for confirmation. The greying executive lifted his brows expectantly.

"The head of heavy ordnance tactics and strategy development gave you an order, son."

Cranston shrugged and pulled from a strapped satchel on his right hip a ten-inch steel rod, which he proceeded to slot into the Ares Impeller's breech before snapping it shut.

Dawson had gone to the far end of the boardroom, the side facing the field behind the Orchard where nothing of importance happened. She had the chair next to her.

"Maximum velocity, agent. Don't worry, there's no one outside, and we're on the tenth floor anyway. Shoot at me until you hit me."

Reduction looked nervously to Gaines, his head damp with perspiration. "Mr. Gaines... I feel obligated to ask if the board room is a fitting place for whatever it is that's about to take place..."

Lifting his thumbs, Gaines put on an expression of helpless resignation. "What makes you think I have any control over this?" he asked, the corners of his mouth just slightly curled upward.

Dawson had one hand on the chair's back, with about twenty-five feet between her and Cranston. "Fire when ready, agent."

The ork hesitated for a moment, and then after that moment was up he shrugged and lifted the Impeller up to a firing position.

The moment he did so, Dawson hurled the chair at him. The lightweight piece of office furniture flew across the space between herself and the ork. His reflexes were good and he was halfway into a dodge to his right when the over-sensitive trigger betrayed him. The chair careened harmlessly past Cranston as the Impeller discharged, sending glowing-hot steel rod across the boardroom and into the wall three feet to Dawson's right

The department heads all flinched away from the largely noiseless weapon discharge. Dawson started charging back across the room but diverted to her right suddenly while Cranston was slotting another rod into the Impeller. Branding recoiled from Dawson's presence as if the dark-haired woman were the one holding the weapon, but her real target was at the head of the table. She gripped Gaines by the collar of his suit and hauled him up out of his chair, much to his alarm.

Spinning his entire body around, Dawson put him in front of her as a human shield, holding him around the neck with one of her arms which the older man had no hope of prying away from him even with both hands. With her other arm she held his waist and leaned back, keeping his flailing legs off the ground and robbing him of any leverage.

Cranston lifted the Impeller again and stared open-mouthed at Dawson as she advanced, holding the deputy division head in front of her like an expensive armor plate. Branding screamed for security. Reduction shouted out Gaines' name. Collateral hid under the table.

Dawson made it ten feet before Cranston got the idea to aim at one of her legs and she knew Gaines had outlived his usefulness; without ceremony she tossed him to her right towards the table while lunging to the left and as soon as she did, a second shot from the Impeller hit the ground beside her right foot, sinking into the floor and sending up a shower of hot marble flakes in every direction. Gaines stumbled into the meeting table, gasping for breath as Dawson eschewed diversionary tactics and began charging straight at Cranston.

The ork was good at his job and kept a level head, quickly reloading the Impeller and bringing it up when Dawson was just seven feet away. He pointed the weapon at her face and pulled the trigger. Click.

Smoke began spilling out of the barrel of the gun while a red warning light blared furiously on the small readout beside the velocity dial. He looked quickly down at it from behind his sunglasses, and then up just in time to see Dawson's fist closing in on his face.