Ariel had done some checking on him and hadn’t turned up much. Clearly, Mr. Johnson was a cautious man. Ariel believed Mr. J worked for Renraku. Word on the streets said the megacorporate computer giant was running a lot of operations against their rival Fuchi in the past months.
But Hammer had his own suspicions about who the team’s new employer was. The target Mr. Johnson wanted was a small computer corp called Mandala Technologies in a small high-tech research park in the Route 128 area. At first glance it looked no different than any of the hundred small technology corps in the area, but Ariel did some digging and came up with some interesting facts. It looked like Mandala was owned through a series of holding companies that traced back to none other than Richard Villiers himself, king of the Fuchi corporate empire.
The interesting thing about the facility was that Fuchi didn’t own it, but Villiers did. The baby corp wasn’t part of the "Fuchi family of companies," as the corporate reports liked to read. It was part of what looked to be a growing number of companies in the UCAS owned by Villiers alone, part of a personal financial empire the Fuchi CEO seemed to be building for himself.
Hammer had heard rumors that there was trouble brewing in Fuchi’s ranks. The corp had always been split between the three internal factions who controlled it. Villiers currently had the upper hand over the other two, both of them powerful Japanese industrial families.
Having the upper hand, however, seemed to be a good reason for the Japanese families to set aside their differences and work to bring Villiers down a peg or two.
The fact that their CEO was building his own power base behind the backs of his Japanese partners could not sit too well with them. Add in the fact that the Johnson was a Japanese who seemed to know a lot about the facility and Hammer suspected Fuchi was already splitting into camps and that there were going to be plenty more operations like the one they were handling tonight.
If all went well, there could be the promise of additional work for the team. Hammer just wanted to make sure he didn’t join up with the wrong side. Corporate internal conflicts were nearly always the nastiest. They say nobody knows how to fight like family, and when it came to the megacorps, that
was
doubly true. A Fuchi internal struggle could be very profitable, but it could also lead to runners working on the wrong side ending up very dead.
"One minute to the LZ, boss,"
came
a voice from the front of the cabin. Hammer looked up from his work on the Manhunter and holstered the pistol at his side.
"Okay, boys, get ready for some action," he said to the rest of the Hammermen. He turned toward the front of the chopper as Val guided them in toward the target. The Mandate Tech building was exactly as shown in the holos and specs Hammer had seen, a small office park structure like dozens of others in the Route 128 area. The broad band of highway north of downtown Boston was the highest concentration of high-tech companies and corporate research facilities in the plex. The office part was the same as most of the others, a three-story structure of brick and modern ferrocrete composites with windows of tinted glass and a broad, open parking area currently vacant of vehicles. There was a small expanse of open ground behind the building with a small pond and benches where employees could take their lunches when the weather allowed. Some tall stands of trees surrounded the plot of land on which the building was situated.
Although the landscaping and design of the facility were intended to be pleasant to view, Hammer’s trained eye could see that the design was planned as much for security as for aesthetics. The terrain around the building was planted with trees, which blocked a clear view of the building from neighboring plots and the road. The small pond provided some natural defense from any approach from the side of the building as well as an additional surface for radar to scan for unusual vibrations or indications of movement. The parking area was an open expanse perfect for sweeping with sensors of all kinds, and could become an open killing zone if the company decided to exercise their right to protect their territory with deadly force.
Fortunately, the Hammermen wouldn’t have to worry about any of those security measures if Ariel had handled the main computer system as planned.
"Hammer to Trouble, report," Hammer said into his throat mike. A burst of static greeted him, followed by the decker’s voice.
"I’m a little busy right now, Boss," Ariel said. "We’ve got an active alert down here. Security’s suppressed, but something else crashed a lot of the system. Things are going crazy." A harsh burst of static drowned out whatever else she was going to say. Hammer listened on the channel for a moment.
"Trouble?
Trouble, do you copy?" There was only silence of the line. From the cockpit of the chopper, Val called back to the leader of the Hammermen.
"What’s the word, Boss? Do we hit the LZ or fly by?"
Hammer considered his answer carefully. Ariel’s message made it clear that all was not going as planned. If there was a dust-up, he could be leading his team into a deathtrap of corporate security just waiting for them. On the other hand, if the security system was still offline, as Ariel said, it was possible the system crash could serve as a distraction for the operation. If Hammer scrubbed the run, the team would never get another chance at their target. Corporate security would be on alert, and they would move the target to a safer location. The run would be for
nothing,
and the team would be in the red for the expenses they’d already put out. Corporate Johnsons weren’t well known for paying for incomplete or failed shadowruns.
Hammer rested a hand on the back of Val’s seat and looked out at the Mandala facility.
"Hit the LZ," he said. "We’re going in."
On
February
8,
2029,
computer
systems
across
the
world
were
attacked,
apparently
at
random,
by
a
virus
program
of
unprecedented
power
.
Systems
crashed,
their
data
wiped
clean
and
even
their
hardware
burned
out
by
the
effects
of
the
virus
.
As
the
killer
program
spread,
governments
toppled
and
the
world
economy
neared
collapse
.
Only
the
Echo
Mirage
Project
sponsored
by
the
United
States
government
was
able
to
produce
data-processing
specialists
able
to
directly
engage
the
virus
in
cyberspace
.
By
2031,
the
last
known
concentrations
of
the
virus
code
were
purged
from
the
world
telecommunications
system
and
only
seven
of
the
original
thirty-two
members
of
Echo
Mirage
lived
to
tell
of
it
.
—From
How
It
Came
to
Pass:
Events
That
Shaped
the
Sixth
World,
by Armand D’Angelo, Virtual Press, Seattle, 2044
Hammer had the door of the chopper open even before Val put the bird on the ground. As soon as the helicopter settled onto the ferrocrete of the Mandala parking area with a gentle bump, Hammer and the rest of his team were hitting the ground and moving low away from the backwash of the rotors as they kicked up dirt and leaves from the immaculate black surface. The facility was too small to have a helipad of its own, but the empty parking lot made a perfect landing zone for a pilot of Val’s skill.
The five men loped across the open ground of the parking area, senses alert for any signs of a trap or that their approach was noticed in any way by someone in the darkened building. There was nothing, no sign of movement or light from the windows, no chatter from hidden sentry guns or hunting cries from any magical beasts that might be guarding the facility. The place seemed to be as Hammer’s connections had described, a low-key facility relying heavily on being too small and unknown to be of much interest to anyone. Any security the Hammermen had to worry about would have to be inside.
The Hammermen reached the side door of the place in short order. Tojo took a maglock passkey from one of the pouches on his web belt and slashed it through the cardreader posted next to the door. The electronics in the keycard sent out a pulse to scramble the lock’s systems and override the magnetic mechanism. It was a brute-force solution to overcoming the lock, but time was of the essence. If what Ariel said was true, the facility’s systems were already on alert. Hopefully the maglock tampering would go unnoticed in the midst of all of the other commotion.
Hammer still wished he could get some kind of response from the decker. There had been nothing since Ariel’s last transmission, but he didn’t dare try to raise her. If she was in the middle of fighting some of the security countermeasures in the system, any distraction could be fatal. In the Matrix every microsecond counted.
He pushed the concern out of his mind. If Ariel did okay, she would make contact. If she didn’t, there was nothing he could do about it.
The door popped open with a clack and the lights on the lock went to flashing red. Hammer waved to the other members of the team. Sloane and Tojo took the doorway high and low, covering left and right. Then they moved through the door, followed by Tootall and Geist, with Hammer bringing up the rear. He left the door open behind him, since they would likely be heading out of the place in a hurry. The corridor on the other side of the door stretched away for about six meters to meet another at a right angle.
"Trouble says the target is on the lower level," he said to the team. "Geist, can you find him?"
The mage nodded and sank into a lotus position on the floor with practiced ease. His breathing slowed and he gave a deep sigh. Hammer imagined he could see Geist’s spirit leaving his body with his breath as the mage descended into a deep trance. His astral form would be able to recon the place more quickly than any flesh and blood person and report back. The rest of the team would keep an eye on Geist’s meat body while he was "away."
Hammer glanced up from the still form of the mage just as a pair of security guards appeared around the corner. There was a split-second where the guards were surprised at the sight of the runners. In that fraction of a second the Hammermen were already moving. Tootall stepped in front of Geist’s body to protect the mage from stray rounds. In his trance-state, Geist was helpless and any injury could drive his body into fatal shock.
At the same instant, Sloane, Tojo, and Hammer moved into action. Tojo’s hyped-up reflexes made him a blur of motion as he drew a bead on the first guard and fired a burst from his Crusader machine pistol. The guard’s body armor soaked up much of the kinetic force of the rounds as the bullets stitched a line up his chest. None of the 9mm rounds penetrated the armor-weave, but the impact sent the guard stumbling back, off-balance.
Sloane followed up Tojo’s attack with a shot from his Ares Predator. The heavy pistol round caught the second guard full in the chest and bowled him over, packing far more stopping power than Tojo’s light machine pistol. The guard went down to the floor, probably with a few broken ribs, at least.
Hammer leveled his Manhunter at the first guard, who was trying to bring his own weapon to bear on the runners. To the ork’s enhanced nervous system, the guard seemed to be moving in slow-motion—time compressed itself into an eternity between aiming and firing. The targeting systems in the pistol interfaced with Hammer’s built-in smartgun circuitry and he fired. The high-caliber rounds from the Manhunter made even Sloane’s Predator look like a cap-gun. The shot caught the guard in the high collar of his armored uniform. The armor absorbed most of the impact, but there was still more than enough force to crush the man’s trachea and send him flopping onto the floor, dropping his gun and clutching at his neck before he passed out.
The other guard tried weakly to get back to his feet, but Tojo was on top of him before he had the chance. A snap-kick to the guard’s head and he was down for the count. Two guards down in just seconds. The shadowrunners stopped and surveyed the area around them, weapons at the ready, but no further threats materialized. Tojo and Sloane checked down the corridor either way the guards had come from and gave the all-clear signal back.
Tootall turned to Hammer. "You chummers coulda saved some for me," he said with one of his tusky grins. The troll didn’t have the speed the rest of the team could call on, but his massive body was strong enough to tear a human in two and his tough hide usually gave him protection to make up for the speed he lacked.
"Don’t worry, chummer," Hammer said grimly. "Looks like there could be plenty more where those came from."
"There are," Geist said as he roused from his trance and stood up. Tootall helped him up, and the pale mage turned to Hammer.