The Run

----

Margo stood in the almost laughably small bathroom and wiped her face with a damp washcloth. She was getting her drunk at least, but an idea had been slowly taking shape in her head since Del arrived.

I swear that girl is hitting on me, she thought. That can’t be right can it? I mean she’s only a kid. What could she see in me? I’m going nuts, she thought.

“Pipe dreams Margo old girl, nothing but pipe dreams and fantasy. You are what you are and nothing you can do will change that. What you are is homely and destined to live your life alone,” she said out loud to herself.

“Bullshit,” she said vehemently, “I really think she is interested,”

Margo tried to shake the idea, but once she voiced it, the idea took root in her slightly buzzed mind and wouldn’t go away. She remembered how Lana had sat so close to her on the stratojet flight, the looks from under veiled eyelids she had given when they parted and the maybe not so innocent comments.

Margo looked at herself critically in the mirror. Her face was blunt, her lips thin, her nose was not quite right, she had had it broken a few to many times. Her eyes were a beautiful azure blue, but they didn’t count, they were made to be pretty.

“A face only a mother could love,” she snorted in disgust. I really should have gone ahead and got laid. You know you have been too long without when you start entertaining ideas someone could really love you, she thought bitterly. And another woman no less, since when have you been thinking of walking on the wild side? Maybe for a while, she admitted to herself. There had been someone in Germany with them, that lithe soldier with the dancer’s body, but she had taken a 10mm slug in the head and Margo had left her where she lay.

She stalked out of the bathroom and got another beer. Once she was settled she looked up at the dark headed decker. Her face was blank; it was eerie, almost like looking at a house where you knew there was no one home. The net scared the hell out of Margo. She didn’t understand it at all, but the idea of having her brain wired up like these deckers did was almost nightmarish. She would rather take her chances with a Syntech hunter-killer team, at least she would die quick.

Still, there was a certain serenity that was becoming to Lana when she was in the grid. Margo waved her hand experimentally in front of the girl’s face, but there was an absolute lack of response. Feeling very much like a schoolgirl again Margo gently traced her finger along one of the decker’s stocking clad legs. The feel of the synthsilk and the skin beneath sent a thrill through the big warrior that was as disturbing as it was intense. Lana’s legs gently parted and Margo let her hand travel further up the inside of one creamy thigh. When her hand crossed the top of Lana’s stocking and met with bare flesh she pulled her hand back like she had been burned.

When Lana didn’t react Margo smiled. She wondered how far she could go before it would bring Lana back to the real world. She pushed her hand back under Lana’s skirts and began to gently stroke the girl through her satin panties. It felt really good to Margo and there was absolutely no reaction from Lana. She continued to gently rub until she realized her fingers were moist. Margo withdrew her hand and looked at her damp fingers. She held her fingers to her nose and inhaled, the aroma was delicate and musky, but she had to admit it was an aroma she liked. Margo stood and went to get another beer.

---

Alpha 1 was kicking when Del arrived. She ignored the entrance to the opening levels; Katt no longer played the game so she wouldn’t be found there. The Blakkatt was something of local mystery. She was older than most of the deckers and had enjoyed a successful career on the outside, but in some legit field. She had more connections than anyone Del knew, but she never got involved as a fixer. She did however, have a soft spot for the kids of Alpha 1 and stories abounded of her using her connections or advice to get someone out of a jam.

She was considered Elite even though she had never been very good at the game. Del had just earned her elite status and so she went to the elite lounge hoping to find the older decker. The Elite lounge was set up like a Wild West saloon. It was nearly empty, but that was usually the case. The elites were mostly working deckers now and only dropped by between jobs. When Del arrived the only ones there were the new crop of elites, those who had just made it like herself and a very few of the regulars.

At a corner table she spotted Katt and her circle of friends. Her avatar was a sleek black cat with glittering green eyes. She was currently curled up in the lap of a slim redheaded avatar. The others she knew by reputation only. The small, plain redhead was Misscolly, she had not been elite for a lot longer than Del, but she had made a rep for herself in a very short period. Rumor had it Benny was her patron and that said a lot. The dashing swordsman in the black cape was called Porkstar. He was elite as well and like Del he was just now starting to make his way outside the construct.

“Well, if it isn’t Miss Delusion,” the Katt said in an accent that seemed to combine elements from the American west and British high society.

“Hey, Del,” Porky called out.

“Del,” Misscolly said quietly. Rumor had it she had a bad experience on a run and since then she hadn’t been the same. She was far quieter now, far more reserved than she had been when they fought each other on a regular basis to hone their skills.

“Katt, I’m in a bind, can we talk?”

“Uh oh,” the feline avatar said as it climbed off the girl’s lap and hoped onto the table. The others seemed to realize it was supposed to be a private conversation.

“I was just heading to the maze, wanna come Colly?” Porkstar said as he rose.

“No, I have some Biz to take care of, I’ll catch you later,” she said and in an instant she was gone. She had always been incredibly fast, even before the jack, but now she moved so swiftly it was almost impossible to believe.

“Peace,” Porky said and slipped out of the lounge.

“Now what’s the problem?” the Katt said.

“I took a job, but I don’t think I can do it. Now I am stuck and I don’t know what to do,” Del confessed. She told Katt the whole story, even admitting her attraction to the Merc and her reasons. When she had finished the Katt looked at her long and hard.

“Del, you should know better than to mix personal feelings and Biz. That will get you killed. Unless you have done some serious upgrading you can’t even get up to the Transcom node, much less inside,”

“I know,” Del said miserably.

“Well, it can’t be helped now, you can’t back out, you’ll need a Data hammer and a hex decrypter at the least. Probably a decent invisibility or mimic too. Do you have any attack programs at all?”

“No,” she admitted.

“I’ll see what I can come up with, you just hang here a bit. What kind of deck are you using?”

“A Sony 2500-k”

“Damn, that’s weak girl,”

“I lost my good deck in Germany,”

“All right, forget hanging here, you would take forever to Dl a decent prog on that piece of shit. Gimme a meat address,”

After a moments hesitation she gave Margo’s address. She felt self-conscious and realized just how big a mistake she had made by saying she could do this.

“Let me see if I can find Shotgun. He just upgraded and may still have his old deck, but it will probably cost you. How are you fixed for creds?”

“I am flat broke,” she admitted. The Katt sighed, but then smiled.

“Maybe he will part with it for nothing, lucky for you everyone thinks you have a cute ass, I’ll be in touch,” she said and was gone in a flash.

Del sighed heavily and jacked out.

The real world imposed itself on her with a slightly sickening sensation she likened to vertigo. She still wasn’t used to the DNI. Margo was sitting at the table again with another beer and Lana noticed a fresh cooler in front of her. She noticed her legs were spread apart and felt a dampness in her panties. She took a deep drink to cover her embarrassment and then smiled.

“Done, we have a sitting at 10:30 tomorrow. Just promise to behave and I will take care of everything,”

“Whatever you say,” Margo said easily. It seemed to Lana that she was really beginning to relax. For the next half hour they talked about the job and what they might encounter. A knock at the door sent Margo to her feet with her pistol out so quickly that it stunned Lana. The big woman moved so fast it hurt the eye to try and follow her.

“No, wait! I am expecting someone,” Lana blurted out.

“You gave out my address?” Margo nearly snarled.

Lana wanted to cry when she realized how stupidly unprofessional that had been, but she felt that she would really loose any chance she had with the big woman if she admitted her mistake. She put on her best face and tried to bluff her way through the lapse in judgment.

“You’re asking me to break into a top corp’s security net, and that means putting my life on the line. I need some better fucking electronics to pull it off. The person I told can be trusted, if you don’t have faith in my judgment just say so now and I’ll walk,” she said. Lana hoped she wasn’t transparent to the big woman. All she really wanted to do was cry and apologize.

Margo sighed heavily and the tenseness in her body dissipated. She holstered the pistol and sat back down. Lana rose and went to the door, there was a courier from Olympus. Lana breathed a sigh of relief. Olympus was the most trusted courier service in the world, so secure that even diplomats trusted packages with them. Just seeing the gray uniform of the delivery guy seemed to set Margo’s mind at ease. Lana signed for the package and opened it.

She actually gasped in delight when she tore the plain box open. Inside was a Holistics 3-D 9600-x cyber deck. It had a built in voice module and all the bells and whistles. Lana couldn’t have afforded one of these in her wildest dreams. A note was taped to it and she opened the folded piece of paper.

You owe me one pic of that ass

-Shotty

p.s. once you get this meet Katt, you know where.

Ignoring Margo’s stare she immediately jacked in. The deck was amazing, it had more active slots than her old one and she almost felt like she was surfing naked the responses were so crisp. She made her way to the elite lounge in almost no time. Katt sat on the table.

“I see Shotty was as good as his word,” Katt observed. Del could only nod.

“Have a seat, some friends will be dropping by with a few more gifts. Make note of them Del, you are going to owe them and I expect you will repay them when the time comes, assuming you survive,” Katt said. Before she was even seated Porkstar walked in.

“Hey Katt, I got your message, what’s up?”

“Delusion here is in a bind and she needs some progs, do you still have that Data Hammer I got you?”

“Sure,” he said and almost instantly an insanely huge war hammer appeared in his hands. He passed it to Del and as she held it the hammer pulsed blue then disappeared. On her active Icons a hammer appeared in slot 1.

“You realize that this isn’t the recommended way to pick up progies. You can call that hammer back just once and then it’s gone. You have to have the chips to reuse them,”

“I know,” Del said, still marveling at her new deck. Before more could be said another of the old timers showed up. His name was Sullustan Dream and he was an expert at being unobtrusive. From him Del got two invisibility progs and one disguise. All of them were Mk 35, which was about 15 grades better than anything she had ever previously been able to use. Programs all carried a mark number, indicating what generation they were. The higher the mark, the stronger and more recent the program was and the better the deck required to use them.

From a shadowy man called the Fantom she picked up two screening progs. These would help hide her back trail incase she missed a watchdog program. From a decker known as the Weasle she got a pair of Mk 50 infiltration programs. The Weasle was one of the legends in this part of the net and Del was terribly impressed that he would show up and help. She really began to wonder about Blakkatt and just how much influence she had.

That left her with everything but attack programs. She wondered who would show up with those; it didn’t occur to her that the Katt wouldn’t arrange for her to have a couple. She was mildly surprised when Colly returned to the room. With the new deck she didn’t seem to be moving quite as fast, or maybe she was tired, it was strange but sometimes a person’s avatar reflected how they were feeling and Colly looked spent.

“Are you all right woman?” Katt asked, apparently it wasn’t Del’s imagination.

“Ran into some black ICE at the research station,” she replied in a very tired voice. ICE stood for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronic. These programs had developed from the anti-virus and anti-hacker programs of the late 20th century. It came in three flavors. White ICE was the weakest, it was usually just there to trace you or block access and was pretty easily defeated, even her old deck and progs could deal with white ICE. Grey ICE was tougher, it sent signals back down your electronic path that would try to cause an overload in your deck, scramble your program chips or dump you from the grid. Grey ICE was tougher to defeat and she had only encountered it once, in Germany. Black ICE was different, it was meant to kill or maim you. The programs sent signals back down your path as well. If they reached your deck they didn’t try to damage it, but instead tried to destroy the decker’s brain with massive amounts of Biofeedback. It disrupted neural pathways and in some cases planted subliminal triggers that caused deckers to kill themselves. She had never seen black ICE and the horror stories she had heard made her sure she never wanted to. That Colly could talk about it so matter-of-factly raised her respect for the young woman.

“Bad?”

“Yeah,”

“I won’t keep you then, Delusion here is in a bind and needs some attack progies. I don’t go in for that sort of stuff and don’t know of anyone who has anything useful, besides you,”

Del was a little shocked. Colly was such a nice person; it really seemed hard to believe that of all Katt’s contacts she would be the one with the attack progs.

“What does she need?”

“She is breaking Transcom’s outer security grid, I’ll leave it up to you, you know more than I do about them and about what she might need”

“Have you ever used an attack prog?” the slender avatar asked.

“No,” Del admitted.

Misscolly looked around to make sure the lounge was empty. In an instant a Lion with batlike wings appeared next to the slim avatar. It was so lifelike Del gasped.

“This is a Gryphon. It’s good against other progs but not against another decker. It’s a one shot deal usually, they tend to get aced by the protection routines of most of the stuff you will want to throw them at so be sure it needs killing before you waste one. Del nodded as her machine pulled down the Gryphon and two more like it.

A huge club then appeared in Colly’s hands. She handed it to Del and it shimmered as her processor downloaded it. Like the Gryphons there was no mark number. That meant custom programs, the most expensive and in general the best. Del had never dreamed of owning a custom program, they usually ran in the tens of thousands of cred. It was kind of awe inspiring that someone would let her use some of theirs.

“That’s a bludgeon. It’s useless against other progs but very effective against other deckers. It’s designed to kill. Use it only if you have to,”

Colly also gave her a program that appeared as a suit of armor. After it downloaded the young woman smiled wanly, scratched the Katt behind the ears and was gone, not leaving, but a dump. Del realized she must have been really tired to exit that way.

“I worry about her sometimes,” Katt said.

“I didn’t know she was into attack progs, custom stuff too. That’s heavy.”

“Her first run on the outside she ran into something that hurt her, hurt her bad. Now she is probably one of the best out there, maybe even on par with Weasel and Colorado. She grew up hard and fast and I think part of her is dead, or buried very deep. Take it to heart Del, you aren’t playing games any more,”

-----

When the world faded back in Margo was staring at her with a funny expression. Maybe it was the drinks or something else, but her expression had softened perceptibly. Lana felt suddenly that there was some hope after all that the big woman was interested. Where to go from here was a complete mystery however. Margo sipped her beer and then reached for the remote to the vid unit.

“Feel like a movie?’ she asked in a very subdued voice.

“Sure,” Lana said.

“It’s chipped, descrambler gets all the channels,” Margo said as she handed Lana the remote. The decker held the remote and considered her options. There were a few channels she could flip to that might help her move things along the way she wanted them to go. There were a couple of channels that ran soft-core girl-girl flicks. She checked the schedule and found one that was running one of her favorites. It was full of romance and adventure and she felt like it might be just the ticket.

Once she had selected it she slid down onto the floor next to Margo. The big woman looked at her strangely, but made no comment. Lana was so caught up in being close to Margo that she barely noticed the movie. She was, however watching Margo carefully when the first sex scene started. The big woman wrinkled her nose, but otherwise seemed unphazed by the action. Lana kept her eyes on Margo throughout and felt a thrill when she noticed the big woman’s nipples poking out and making tents in the thin shirt.

A few minutes later during one of the more tender scenes Lana allowed her head to fall on Margo’s shoulder. The taller woman shifted slightly and draped her arm across the seat of the sofa, almost, but not quite placing it on Lana’s shoulders. Lana could feel the softness of Margo’s breast against her arm and was thrilled, but at the same time quietly frustrated. Margo was sending all the right signals, but they could signal just friendship. The little decker had been doing nothing but dreaming of this woman taking her to bed since Germany and the anticipation was about to kill her.

Giving up on subtly and on the big woman making the first move Lana impulsively took Margo’s hand in her own. When the big woman turned and looked at her Lana stared directly into the warrior’s eyes. Screwing up all of her courage she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Margo’s.

Del couldn’t have thrown Margo for a bigger loop if she had produced a gun and pointed it at her. What are you supposed to do when a beautiful young woman kisses you? she asked herself. The answer was ludicrously self evident, kiss her back dummy, and so she did.

The girl’s lips were soft and parted when Margo thrust her tongue against them. Margo hadn’t realized how pent up she had been until she wrapped the girl up in her arms and hugged her fiercely to her breast while deeply kissing her. Margo had always been a bit of a tiger in bed, yet another reason that seemed to make men afraid of her. This was totally new to her though, she realized instinctively that she would dictate the terms. The way Lana melted into her embrace left no doubt about what the girl wanted.

The kiss was so passionate it took Margo’s breath away. Lana’s mouth was sweet and warm and the way she sucked on Margo’s tongue nearly drove the big woman insane. Her fingers found the zipper on Lana’s dress and eased it down. She placed a finger at the small of the decker’s back and gently ran it up her spine. Her skin was warm and silky to the touch. Lana moaned into her mouth and broke the kiss to move her mouth to Margo’s neck.