“How’d you make it so far off?” Argent asks curiously.
Raven chuckles. In contrast to her voice, which sounds natural, her laugh strikes me as horrible and inhuman, coming disembodied through the electronics. “Couldn’t hardly miss it, cobber,” she announces. “It’s got one serious nav beacon, it’s got permanent glide-paths delimited with radar beams, and even the backscatter from the surface-scanning radar reads just fine on my sensors.”
“Surface scans,” the runner echoes. “Landward, or on the river?”
“Both.”
“Serious drek,” Argent mutters. “Permanent glide-paths mean controlled airspace, right? So any guesses as to how far out?”
“Tough to say,” the rigger admits. “In the plex, private facilities are limited to a diameter of half a klick. But this is tribal land, and I don’t know the relevant . . . Hel-lo,” she interrupts herself. “They’re interrogating our transponder.”
“What the frag does that mean?” I demand.
“An electronic version of, ‘Who goes there, friend or foe?”’ Argent throws over his shoulder, then turns his attention back to Raven. “What’s the scoop?”
“We’re squawking as a Yamatetsu air ambulance,” she replies.
“Tell me if they try and raise you by voice,” Argent suggests. I still can’t see the site by naked eyeball, but the visual on Argent’s display is getting bigger and clearer. The place looks more like a fragging prison than my image of a research lab. Four major buildings and a couple of little outbuildings, all surrounded by a wall. From this distance and angle, it’s impossible to tell how tall it is. We can probably analyze it later from shadow angle and such, but my first impression is that it’s high and solid. And those things at the corners—architectural elements, or watchtowers? What the frag is this place anyway?
I glance down at the repeater console in front of me. Telltales and displays are flickering all over the section I’ve tentatively identified as dedicated to ECM and sensors. Probably the first fringes of the air-control radars and designated flight paths Raven was talking about. “How far out?” I ask.
“Five klicks,” she replies. I'm swinging out a little further from shore, just not to make them too nervous.” Even before she’s finished speaking, I feel the Merlin slip into a shallow bank to the left.
Wheep! A shrill warning tone sounds through the cockpit, and a handful of red lights light up on my repeater panel. “What’s that?” I demand.
“Pulse-mod radar, tight arc,” Raven shoots back. The words convey precisely dick in the way of data, but the tone of her voice, which comes through the datajack speaker link just fine, is tight. A fact conveying entirely too much data. We’re in drek.
‘‘Kill the transponder,” Argent snaps.
“Done,” replies the rigger. “No joy, we’re close enough, and that beam’s beefy enough that they already have a skin-paint on us.” The bank gets suddenly steeper, and the engines howl as the rigger cracks the throttles wide open. She’s diving, too, probably to pick up speed faster or to get under the radar (if that’s still relevant these days). The camera loses lock and Argent’s display goes dead, but at the moment nobody gives a frag.
More displays light up on my panel, including two little annunciators marked Lck and Lnch. A raucous buzzer sounds, painfully loud, until Argent punches a button on the console and stills it.
“What?” I yell.
It’s Argent who answers. “Radar-homer,” he barks. “Incoming missile.”
The engines scream louder, and I guess Raven’s kicked in emergency power. I’m thrown against my harness as she snaps the wings level. The Merlin’s still got a steep nose-down attitude, and all I can see ahead is the gray-brown water of the Columbia River, rushing closer every second. I tear my eyes from that hypnotizing sight and check the radar altimeter. Thirty meters, and dropping fast. Then the plane starts to lift out of the dive, pulling enough gees to feel like I’ve got Argent sitting on my chest. The water’s almost close enough to touch, whipping by at fragging near seven hundred klicks below the cockpit. I figure Raven must be trying to lose us in the surface effect. A good idea in theory, but from what little I know, flat water—like a river—isn’t the best place to try it. Your chances are much better over rough terrain. Not that we’ve got that much choice, of course.
I’m hurled against my straps again as Raven snaps us into another steep bank. Out the side of the cockpit, it looks like the left wing tip’s only centimeters above the water. If the rigger misjudges and plants the wing tip, it’s game fragging over. My imagination’s easily vivid enough to visualize the Merlin cartwheeling across the river, tearing itself apart before it vanishes in a red-black fireball.
“Read me off the radar characteristics,” Raven’s voice orders. “I’m kinda busy at the moment.” I can believe it. Even with vehicle control rigs, there’s only so much “band width” a human brain can handle, and flying something like a Merlin this low, this fast, has to take up a lot of the processing “horsepower.” Argent loosens his straps and leans forward for a closer look at his panel. “Gen six, pulse width class B, pulse freq class 4C,” he reads out the stats. “It’s got a hot lock on us. The launcher’s still painting us, too. Do you care?”
“Not right now,” the rigger replies. We snap over into as steep a bank in the opposite direction. “With that radar profile, we’ve got us an Ares Type Four seeker.”
“Is that good?” I ask.
“It could be better,” Argent remarks.
I grab onto the handholds on either side of my jump seat as Raven wrenches the Merlin through a sequence of ever-tighter turns. Twice every second, there’s a hollow boom from the back of the fuselage, and the plane jolts. I’ve got to assume the rigger’s punching out chaff—at least some of it probably active chaff with radar-emitting microchips incorporated into the mylar foil.
“Still locked,” Argent announces. “A thousand meters out, inbound at a thousand relative.”
“Echo that,” answers Raven. “Hold on tight, boys. Make-or-break time.”
Two more booms, then the chaff dispenser falls silent. The Merlin’s nose pulls up, engines screaming and airframe complaining. I let out a whoof! as the gees land on my chest. All I can see out the front of the cockpit is the gray overcast a few thousand meters above us. If this is the last thing I’m going to see, I’d have preferred something a little more interesting.
Displays change on the repeater panel in front of me. Good news or bad?
“Missile's lost lock,” Argent announces, his voice totally steady despite the fact that he currently weighs twice as much as normal. As if to punctuate the comment, there’s an incredible concussion from behind us. The plane shakes, and I hear myself squall in fright.
I feel the Merlin roll, and I think we’ve been hit and we’re going in. But a second later I realize it’s just Raven completing the maneuver, something like a split-S. Within seconds the wings are level and we’re heading due east at the Merlin’s full emergency speed. I wipe my forehead, and my hand comes away very wet.
Argent turns to me and remarks conversationally, “The missile locked onto the chaff and augured in. Pretty impressive detonation, huh?”
Yeah, right. I look over at Raven. She’s still just sitting there, jaw sagging spastically. Great company I’m keeping these days. The runner glances at his displays again and announces, “The launcher’s stopped painting us.”
Damn fragging good thing, too. “Time to head for home?” I suggest hopefully.
Argent nods. “We’ve got a home vid to watch.”
It’s late evening by the time we’re back in Renton, and I'm feeling like it’s been a frag of a long day. I’m twitchy as all frag. On the drive home on the freeway, a car next to Argent’s Westwind had to jam on the brakes, its brake shoes letting out a squeal that sounded all too much like the Merlin’s radar-lock annunciator. I think I managed to suppress my reaction—enough at least to keep from going through the fragging roof—but it was a sure sign of how far outside my comfort zone we’ve been operating. Recon flights and missile attacks? Give me a nice friendly knife-fight or gang shoot-out, please.
We hit the Hole in the Wall and head upstairs to my doss. (Why always my doss? Obviously because Argent doesn’t want me to know where he crashes, and I don’t really blame him.) The runner slots the chip with the Merlin’s vidcam data on it, and we bring up the best image we’ve got of the Pillar Rock NVC facility.
Seeing it in better detail now, I realize my first guess was right on the money—it does look like a fragging prison. Based on shadow-angle calculations, the telecom’s (surprisingly sophisticated) image-analysis software estimates the walls to be eight meters high. Even with maximum image-enhancement, we can’t see whether those walls are topped with anything, but judging from the overall look of the place I'd expect a few strands of razorwire (at best) or monowire (at worst), supplemented by sensors of some kind. What I thought were guard towers
are
guard towers, or at least something remarkably like them.
There’s
a single gate to landward, and a couple of boat docks—outside the wall, of course—on the river.
After a minute or two of close examination, I encapsulate my analysis. “It’s a fragging fortress.”
Argent nods slowly. “An interesting design for a lab. I’d say,” he agrees, "I’ve seen corp facilities with serious security before, but it’s never this obvious, this blatant.”
Something that’s been bothering me for a while chooses this moment to surface. “If NVC’s a Tir-based corp, why’s this place on the north side of the river? That’s S-S-turf.” The shadowrunner shrugs. “I’d guess it’s because the Tir keeps such a close watch on corporations operating in the nation. And remember that James Telestrian has ties with the government and the conservative biz community. If Timothy T. is using this lab for something dark and nasty, he wouldn’t want it anywhere within his father’s sphere of influence, would he?”
“I thought the S-S Council came down hard on corps,” I point out.
“Some corps, yes,” Argent confirms. “But I know of two or three that have managed to curry favor with the council.” He snorts. “Probably through hefty bribes, but that’s just a guess. I’d say this proves you can number Nova Vita Cybernetics among those corps.”
I turn back to the telecom display. “We still don’t know anything, do we?”
Argent shrugs again. “I think the fact that somebody hosed off a missile at us is somewhat indicative,” he points out dryly.
“Indicative that NVC’s up to something they want to keep in the shadows, yes,” I correct. “It could by anything, though, couldn’t it?”
The runner’s not convinced. “I’d say that the missile, combined with the Schrage connection, plus the fact that Nova Vita transferred gengineers to Pillar Rock, tells us something.”
I shake my head firmly. “To use your word, it’s indicative, but it’s sure as frag not conclusive. It’s circumstantial evidence, not proof. There’s nothing we can take to the authorities, and what authorities would we trust with this anyway?”
Argent starts to argue, but a new thought comes hurtling out of nowhere to slam into my mind like a bullet-train. “Hold the fragging phone,” I snap. The shadowrunner shuts up, and watches me curiously.
I’m silent for a good minute or two, then feel my face crease in a smile. Yeah, that hangs together.
“What?” Argent asks, referring to the smile.
“I’ll give you the details later,” I tell him. “In the meantime, there are some things I’m going to need from you and Peg. Maybe you should take notes . . .”
* * *
Argent didn’t go along with me immediately, but then I didn’t expect him to. I’ve got to admit, though, that he wasn’t anywhere near as adamantly opposed to my plan as I’d expected. (Or, possibly, as adamantly opposed as I’d have been to a plan of his. I’ll have to think about that . . .) When he saw what I was driving at, he went along. Sure, he pointed out a few holes I hadn’t noticed, but he also suggested ways to fill them, and the scheme ended up stronger as a result.
So. now here I am, sitting in front of the telecom, trying to relax, trying to slow my heart rate down to something even approaching normal. I’ve got to be frosty, I keep telling myself. If this were some kind of combat situation, I could at least try to depend on my training to see me through it. But this is so different. If I don’t handle it right. I’m going to be on the run from the Cutters and the Star and anybody else who’s in on the game until somebody finally scores and manages to blow my brains out.
I glance over at Argent. He’s straddling a chair nearby, but out of the vid pickup’s field of view. He’s watching me calmly, almost detachedly. Easy for him. It’s not his head with a death-mark on it. Frag him anyway. I turn back to the telecom and enter the code-string Peg supplied.
Placing the call seems to take forever. The screen remains totally blank at first, but the speaker’s alive with hums and clicks and faint beeps as the utility I’ve triggered has its way with the LTG grid. Eventually the screen fills with the familiar shifting patterns, and the status line at the bottom of the display reads Establishing Connection. The status line changes, and from the speaker comes the familiar “ringing” tone, but with a strange echo to it. No fragging surprise; this call is going through a seven-node relay—the most complex link-up Peg can handle with any reliability—as opposed to the two-node relay I used to reach Argent. If the recipient of the call can trace through seven intermediate nodes, I don’t even want to know about it.