Irreconcilable differenc.., p.11
Irreconcilable Differences, page 11
Micki gets distracted. The ice makes it through the security company's firewall. She does a quick search, pulls up client records on Leo's, along with billing information on all the other businesses they've done, then backs out. Hit and run.
“Got the security system intel,” she says. “And about a hundred business cred card numbers. Want ‘em?”
I can feel Sparks' smile across the gestalt. “Hell yeah,” he says. “That bank of yours dried up right after you left, and I haven't been able to get back in.”
“Don't,” she says. “It's in TexMex. The guys at the Big I were pretty explicit about what happens if we get extradited there. The Rangers don't have a golden limit.”
“Shit, Hotwire. They pinned that on you?”
“Yeah. Micki sighs. “Lucky me, Interpol does have a golden limit, and doesn't extradite to countries with a death penalty.”
“Shit. That sucks.” Sparks says. “You sure they're not watching you or anything?”
Micki shrugs. “Doubt it. They had me dead-to-rights. If they'd wanted me, they'd have kept me. Too small-time, I guess.”
I wish I could take a breath. Micki's shaving awfully close to the truth here. It feels like having the security guy walk past me in my stealth armor, except that I have less control. And if I get twitchy, Sparks will know I'm here. Thought filtering. Learned it in camp. But it's never fun.
“Ahh. So that's what's up with the ‘hit ‘em hard and fast’ plan, huh? Big I's got your goat, telling you we're small potatoes.” Sparks smiles a little. I can feel it. Catch myself wondering how right he is, really.
Micki shrugs again. “Duh,” she says, but her heart's not in it.
“Hey, kid. Don't take it so hard. Everybody gets jacked up once in a while,” Sparks says it gently.
Micki bristles. “Don't patronize me. And stop calling me kid. I screwed up, and I got lucky. Now get busy and put the sewer and net maps together, while I wade through this security system shit.”
“Oh, yes ma'am.” There's another emotion leaking off him into the gestalt, though. One I can barely feel. But it feels suspiciously like respect.
“Shut up,” Micki says to me. After a few more minutes, she logs out, and I can feel again. Take a deep breath.
Tickling at Micki's arm. Look over in time to see Kari draw a marker away from Micki's skin. Micki rolls her eyes. “Don't you get tired of that, Kari?”
The stark white girl shrugs in her armor, and says, “No. Why?”
“Well, then, do it on your own skin. Geez, that's so kindergarten.” Micki sounds genuinely annoyed.
Kari smiles, gets up, and unzips her armor jacket the rest of the way and pulls it open. Her bare chest is covered from throat to waist in red and black roses, thorns, and trailing vines, all done in modern, high contrast tattoo ink, and exquisite drawing. Even her nipples are tattooed with thorns.
“Like this?” She shrugs the rest of the way out of her jacket, and lets Micki take a good, long look, then turns and walks forward in the Winnebago. Her ink goes all the way around, and all the way to the wrists. Her spine is studded with small, stainless steel points, one at each vertebra, to disappear under her hair. Her body is thick; heavily muscled, softened, feminized by a couple centimeters of body fat. Hormonal implants, for sure. Somatropin, and testrogen, probably. And if you're springing for that kind of work, you do the cartilage reinforcements and adrenal boosts too. At minimum.
I feel. Micki feels. Together we feel plain, weak, like something that just crawled out from under a rock. Micki runs her fingers over the doodling on her arm. Printed circuit lines for Micki, instead of roses, but the artwork is obviously from the same hand.
Sparks chuckles, and scratches at his beard. “Oh, yeah, sure, just give that girl an excuse to show off, why don'tcha?” He doesn't seem especially unhappy about it, though. I get the feeling he's seen it before. “So you want to tell her she's wading through the sewer tonight?”
“I figured we'd have Ed do that part,” Micki says quietly.
Sparks just laughs, and lights another cigarette. Micki looks away hungrily.
Chapter 13
Note to self. If I survive to be debriefed after all this, complain bitterly about the quality of my briefing files. I'm flying blind here. I fucking hate that. It's just sloppy.
Nate, Kari, and Ed come back to the table with us. Kari's got her jacket on again, but she hasn't bothered to zip it. As much as this woman's been in the body shops, as much money as the work I've seen on her already costs it's a crime that I don't have a file on her at all. Sparks, too. Nothing, though he's a small-timer, so that's less surprising.
I finally get a good look at Nate.
CAF0.35b2.1: Searching face recognition database…
Subject: Black, Nathan E. Alias Blackjack, alias Norman, alias...
Well well. The facial recognition database isn't broken after all.
Nathan “Blackjack” Black, Leader of the Salina 785s. Various juvenile offenses, mostly involving controlled substance possession and tax evasion, most notably cigarettes. Ran his own non-union sex co-op for a while with some of his schoolmates, before the union girls called down the RCMP on him. He's lucky that's all they did. The IUSW is not to be trifled with. They've been known to ship fuel-air bombs to companies who mess with their people or their business.
Anyway. Mr. Black's record as an adult is almost spotless. Which basically means he's gotten better at not getting caught. Interpol's gotten wind that the Kansas State Patrol suspects him in of trafficking in just about anything that will turn a profit: stolen goods, information, weapons, controlled substances, and so on and so forth. His looks fit the profile. He's energetic, ambitious, corporate minded, but basically a small-time hood by trade. Redhead, buzz cut. Goatee. One jack behind his left ear. Known associates: Michelle “Hotwire” Blake. As Micki would say, “Duh.”
“So, did you get it?” Nate asks.
“Huh?” Micki says. “Sorry. Miss Mongo-Tits is distracting me.”
Kari chuckles and zips her jacket back up.
Nate repeats his question. “Did you get the intel for the run?”
Micki gives him an annoyed look. “Course. I told you I could.”
He smiles. Chewing tobacco stains. Blisters of decay on his front teeth. Ew. I see why Micki doesn't look at him much. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Badass Hotty-wire. Okay. What's your plan?”
“This should be good,” Micki says to me.
So I tell them: “Basically, we send Ed down a manhole on Sheridan at Fifth to go find Petanet's fiber demarc at Sheridan and Sixth. Break in there, run a fiber down the sewer from Leo's, patch it into his switch, plug it into the demarc, and get back out before anyone notices. Then tomorrow or sometime, we break into Petanet, turn on the new fiber, get inside the Reapers' firewall, and go cause trouble for the Reapers.”
“I could have told him, you know.” Micki sulks into the gestalt. But I keep control for the moment.
“Sounds like a lot of work,” he says. “Why not just use the fiber they already have, both ways?”
“Duh.” It boils up out of Micki's mouth before I can stop it. But I think it came from me. Heaven help me. “Think about it. We go in on a fiber the Reapers control, and they're right in our face, coming after us. They can shut us down, or track us and come after us, or whatever they want. This way, we control the link, cause they don't know what link we're using. Things get too hot, we can pull the plug, or we can fight them on their home turf instead of ours. It's a lot safer for us plugheads.”
Sparks looks at me. At Micki. “Plugheads?”
Shit. Slang problems. I dump Micki back in the driver's seat.
“Yeah. Plugheads,” she says to him. “That's what they call us in CalTech. Duh. You're such a rube, Carl.” To me, she adds, “Don't do that! Shit!”
Nate holds up both hands. “Guys, chill. We're on a short schedule tonight cause little-miss-badass has to get home before dawn, or her mommy will get her.”
“Fuck you, Nate,” Micki says.
“Maybe when you're older, Micki.” He looks her in the eye just a moment, and she squirms just slightly. He smirks. “Okay.” Nate goes on, “I like this plan, overall, but let's put Carlotta down in the sewer. Eddy's too damn big. Mick, that's your show. You'll be riding with her. Sparks, you're with Ed. I'll pull guard duty and keep an eye on the séance. Questions?”
Kari looks considerably less enthusiastic than she was earlier. “Oh, no, believe me, I'm looking forward to wading through the sewer. Great plan, Mick.”
Eddie speaks up. “How?”
Micki looks over. “How what?”
“How do I get … the fiber in the sewer?”
“‘Lectric drill. Find a sewer pipe in the building near a toilet. Drill a hole. Feed your fiber in, and flush. The water flow should do the job,” Micki says.
“You've been poking around in my head, haven't you, Mick? That's classic technique,” I tell her.
Micki shrugs inwardly. “I know it now. That's all that matters.”
Chapter 14
We drop Kari off first. She walks casually down the street into the dark. Micki closes her eyes and logs in. Pulls up Kari's sensorium. Kari's tech-ninja firmware answers, and gives us a heads-up display of Kari's vitals, her system status, power level from her glucose fuel cells. Things like pain block and stim switch are blocked at this level. All we get are her senses.
“I feel you knockin' but you can't come in.” Kari chuckles. “Least not right now. Boss man wants this to be a ride, not a drive.” Kari slips a hand into the belt pouch of her waterproof coveralls and fishes out a short prybar. Looks both ways in the street. Levers up the manhole cover at one edge. She grunts a little, and the status indicators change. Muscle sequencing mode, balance all that muscle for strength rather than speed. The manhole cover is suddenly, trivially light. Balance back toward speed. She practically floats down to the ladder under the manhole. Back to power, and she one-hands the cover closed behind her. Back to speed, and she climbs down into the sewer. She doesn't stop to think about it. She just does it, as automatically as blinking.
I was wrong about Kari's eyes just being cosmetic implants. She's had them completely overhauled. Multilayer, high-speed, high-def retinal veneers. And the exotic black eyes are extra-large-aperture, multilayer zoom optics, with an LCD iris for light control. Very, very flash. First hit the street about the time I was copied. They take your eyeballs out of your head to do the install, and by the time they're done, only the exterior of the eye is left. They hide the wire to your internal power along the optic nerve. Very flash. Even I don't have eyes like this. Didn't. Who knows? If original me is still around, she might have them by now. Her eyes always did suck, even after laser surgery. My eyes. Whichever. With my luck, bifocals are probably involved by now. Kari, by contrast, can see in the dark. Once she switches on an infrared illuminator, it's like having a spotlight.
“Damn, Kari,” is Micki's only comment.
“I told you I have a great body,” Kari says. Smiles. At least until her foot sinks into the sludge at the bottom of the pipe. “Guh. Someone in this city needs to clean these fucking things. They're going to get a backup one of these days. And Hottywire?”
“Yeah?”
“This is an incredible smell you've discovered.”
“Sorry.”
I don't think Micki gets the reference.
Kari slogs through the sludge. “Don't be. I live to do this stuff.”
“Hotwire. Pay attention.” Sparks' voice. Still behind Micki in the deck's gestalt. “Get Hari-Kari into position. Ed and I are going after the security system.”
Micki pulls the security system schematics up and hands them off to Sparks. “Here. This is what the alarm company had on it.”
Sparks goes back to Ed. “Ed. On your left should be a magnetic sensor, with a wire leading into the building.”
“Got it,” Ed says.
“Hey Hotty.” Kari again. “This looks like your fiber demarc. BFR XDS. Not bad, for out here in the sticks.”
Micki jumps us back into Kari's context. “Okay. Yeah. That's the one. Go ahead and pick the lock on the cover.”
Kari chuckles a little and gets into her bag again. “Old school, baby. I haven't had to actually pick a lock in a long time.” She shakes her head, as though amused. It's a little dizzying second hand. Third. Whatever.
“Fuck!” Ed shouts.
“Oh holy hell. Damn it, Micki, how old are these plans?” Sparks this time.
Micki puts Kari's sensorium in the background and bounces over to Ed's. Same overall system, but minus the eyes. He's wearing Utanium (Quantum Protection!) light-amp shades, like a sensible person. Alarms are blaring in the background.
“Fuck me,” Micki comments. “Stupid Reapers changed the system. Fuck. Me. Okay. Um. Nobody panic.”
I relay the urge to take a slow breath to Micki. She does it.
“Help,” she thinks to herself.
Shit. I can't do much like this, without letting Sparks know I'm here. Machine ghost. Demon within. Shit. Can't even grit my teeth to think. But I do what I can. I think of the smell of roses. Micki blinks. Thinks about Kari. Where Kari is. What she can do from there. She pauses. I think about penguins. Micki gets it, all in a matter of a second or two.
“I'm on it.” She switches back to Kari's context. “Pull the plug on Leo's line. Twenty three. Plug it into a Penguini bridge, and plug the bridge into the fiber box.”
Kari's hands fly. I'm not sure Micki's could go any faster, no matter how hard I pushed them. Kari unplugs the fiber line and plugs it into the little wireless bridge in less than a second. Micki sets up routing through her deck's wireless interface, and watches the data flow. Leo's security system is saying, “Alarm. Alarm. Alarm. Intruder at the front door.” More or less, anyway. Micki stops that stream of data cold.
“Help,” Micki thinks.
Glance at what Sparks is doing. Ed crouches down and jumps, three meters straight up, and hauls himself up to a window. Kicks his way through the window. Drops inside the building. “Back closet on your right,” Sparks says. “Router's in there, and there's a sewer line in that wall.” Sparks is riding him closely. I take the chance. “Reset it,” I think, in as many words.
Micki pulls the security system data up. Sics the cracking ice on the security system brain. Looks up the security system protocols. Sends the “I'm resetting, please stand by” code to the security system's data line to wherever. Sends it two or three times.
The Lady's ice breaks into the security system computer in a few seconds. Micki skews the security system's realtime clock a few seconds back, then tells the system to reset. The timestamps when the resets were sent on the line and in the machine's log should match.
“Okay,” Mick says. “Alarm system is handled. But it may have called the police. So we've got two or three minutes, tops, before Ed's gotta be out of there.”
“Security system's down?”
“Down enough,” Micki answers. “It can't do anything without me letting it.”
“Great. Ed. Plug your line in, and get drilling. Do it fast, man.”
“On it,” Ed says.
Micki switches back to Kari. “Kari. We're gonna have to plug twenty-three back in fast, or the fiber will time out on us, and that will bring the house down. Be ready, okay?”
“Always, babycakes,” Kari says. “Looking forward to being out. And a shower.”
Micki switches back. “Time, gang. How're we doing?”
Sparks says, “Just about there.” Through Ed's hearing, I can hear sirens.
“Fuck,” Micki says. “Cops are coming. Make it fast.”
“‘M through,” Ed says. He looks at the hole he's drilled in the wall and the sewer pipe behind it. Maybe four millimeters.
“Good. Run your cable, Ed.” Sparks.
Ed feeds thin fiberoptic cable through the hole, threading it down into the sewer. He jerks out of the closet and runs, in a motion so fast it feels like deck flight, to the bathroom on the other side of the wall and flushes the toilet. Then runs back.
Micki switches to Kari's sensorium. “Look out for the…” But Kari's already been hit by the gust of water, and the fiber.
“Good thing I had my mouth closed,” Kari says.
“Put the ends on it, Kari. Ed's hooking things up on his end,” Micki says.
“Figured that out, Hotty.” Kari gets into her bag and gets out a fiberoptic stripper. It looks like an old-fashioned bullet mold. Geez, you normally don't see those things outside data centers. Kari cuts back a couple centimeters of the fiber. It takes a few seconds. There's a saying: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Kari is smooth and fast.
Micki switches back. Ed's finished epoxying a wall plate to the wall over the hole. He plugs a patch cord from the router to the jack in the wall, but the link light doesn't come on.
“How're we doing, Hotwire?” Sparks says.
“Putting the fiber connections together now. Get him out of there,” Micki says.
“No can do. We have to make sure this works first,” Sparks says.
“Shit,” is Micki's reply. She jumps back to Kari's sensorium. “Kari, please, make it fast, or they're gonna catch your brother.”
Kari snickers, but her hands don't stop moving. She lays the bare fiber in a fiber cleaver. Closes the tab that holds the fiber in place, then closes the other tab around the piece that's going to be cut off. Slides the cleaving mechanism into place and scores the fiber, then presses the cleave lever. There's a faint snap. She casts the cleaver loose from the fiber, and lines the fiber up into the connector. “The day yokel co-op cops catch my brother is the day Ed and I should pack it up and go home, Hotty.”
“Kari, please. Sparks is holding Ed there until we get a link light.”
“Shit,” Kari says. That's never a good sign. “Damn it.”
