the surface from Sub-Level 38 of the Sea-Tac Residential-Industrial Urboplex. It took less than fifteen minutes to make the trip back down. Not to Sub-Level 38, but to Sub-Level 35, which is almost the same thing. A fact which I found to be rather interesting, since it meant the entire transportation system was intentionally rather than accidentally screwed up. I had just started to ask myself why when my call sign surfaced in the middle of the mumbo-jumbo that had passed through my ears but missed my mind. “Is that okay with you, Lurch?”
I had absolutely no idea what Norris was talking about and decided to take a chance. “Umblepop. I mean, yeah, sure.”
“Good,” Norris said smoothly, “then come up here with me so you’ll be handy when the time comes.”
I groaned internally, worked my way forward, and joined Norris at the head of the column. “Never volunteer for anything.” That’s the second or third maxim of every military organization I ever heard of, and I had somehow managed to violate it.
A pair of Zeebs approached. The Zeebs take their name from the skin-tight suits they wear. Suits that are white with diagonal black stripes. They look great on Olympic athletes and terrible on everyone else. Including this pair.
Norris motioned us against the wall. The first cop, a nasty piece of work with meaty thighs, started to say something but bit the words off when Norris flashed some interactive I.D. It recognized the Zeeb, read out some code, and the police continued on their way. I don’t know about the others, but I was impressed.
I waited for the order to move out, but Norris stared into space, listened to a voice via her earplugs, and subvocalized a response. She nodded, said something else, and turned to us. “Okay, boys and girls, take five but stay off the air. We’re waiting for teams three, eight, and sixteen to reach their launch points.”
I leaned against the wall. You had to give the corpies credit.
They might be assholes, but they were competent assholes, and knew how to get things done. Like launching all the teams at once so it would be impossible for one set of scrappers to warn the rest. Yeah, the plan was well conceived. But even the best laid plans have a tendency to come apart when the shooting starts. Norris interrupted my thoughts.
“Okay, people, time to rock and roll…Now remember, don’t fire unless fired at, and watch out for noncombatants.”
The truth was that it was damned hard to find any noncombatants below Sub-Level 15 or so, but we understood what she meant, and nodded obediently. I had no desire to grease the pathetic slobs that worked in the scrappers’ sweat shops, and the others didn’t either.
Still, it didn’t hurt to check our weapons and the backup mags slotted into pockets on the front of our chest armor. I didn’t like the Glock’s teeny-weeny grips, but the laser sight was nice, as was the heavy-duty magazine capacity. I was scared and felt an almost overwhelming need to go to the bathroom.
Norris pushed an access card into the slot by the door and waited for it to slide open. She stepped out and I followed. The corridor was packed with people. They took one look at us and ran, or tried to, since the bodies behind them blocked the way. Someone screamed, neon shimmered, and the usual flow of down-level water splashed out from under our boots as the crowd parted and Norris led us to the right.
I saw a sign. It was shaped like an arrow. Angry red letters jerked down towards a pair of graffiti-covered metal doors. When Norris spoke, her voice sounded a full register higher than it had before. “Those are the doors, Lurch! Break ’em down!”
I suddenly knew what I had unintentionally volunteered for and damned near shit my pants. But there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of choice, so I picked up speed, aimed my shoulder at the doors, and hit them as hard as I could. They gave, thank god, a lot more easily than I was ready for, and I fell forward. Somebody stepped on my back in their eagerness to follow Norris wherever she was going, and I gave them a silent blessing. They were welcome to my share of whatever bullets happened to be waiting.
The whole team had splashed past by the time I did a push-up, wiped the water from my chin, and staggered to my feet. I heard a confused babble of voices through my earplugs and stumbled forward, not so much out of loyalty to the team as from a sense of self-preservation. The hallway was long and dark, punctuated here and there by rectangles of light with a lot of deep, dark shadows in between. I knew that any one of them could conceal a gun-toting, fire-breathing, homicidally inclined free-market capitalist. The team represented safety in numbers, and I had a strong desire to be safe.
I glanced into the doorways as I ran by and was treated to the sight of dismal rooms packed with ragged- looking pieceworkers. Most were adults, but a third or more were children, their eyes dull as they clipped one component to the next. Some of the brighter workers had seen the team, the guns, and the body armor and jumped to the correct conclusion. They were on their feet and headed for the nearest exits.
The rest sat where they were, parts clutched in grimy hands, waiting for instructions that would never come. I wanted to tell them it was a bad idea, that it was quitting time, but doubted they would listen. Jobs were hard to come by, even crappy ones, and they weren’t about to split without one helluva good reason.
A sledgehammer hit me between the shoulder blades. I heard the boom of a handgun and hit the floor facedown. I’d been doing a lot of that lately, and I hoped it wouldn’t ruin my good looks. The combination of inertia and the slime-covered floor carried me down the corridor. I rolled, thumbed the laser sight, and watched the ruby- red dot dance across the ceiling. I forced it down, found the scrapper, and squeezed the trigger.
The Droidware body armor had saved my life. The scrapper wasn’t so lucky. Either he wasn’t wearing any, or what he had was too thin. The outcome was the same. My slugs picked the man up, threw him backwards, and bounced him off a wall. He was still in the process of falling when Norris blasted my ears. “Hey, Lurch! Where the hell are you, anyway? We could use some help up here.”
I felt like telling her to kiss my ass, but old military habits kicked in, and I did what I was told. I lumbered up the hall, aiming my weapon at every shadow I encountered, half expecting to catch one between the eyes. Any hint of radio discipline had disappeared, and my plugs were filled with garbage.
“Watch it…watch it…the little one has a gun.” “Cover my back, damn it…” “Come to poppa, little robot…daddy has a present for you.” “…Not a god-damned scrapper in sight…” “Whoa, momma! Check those buns!”
It was about then that I caught up with the rear guard, a scrawny little weasel with the rather appropriate call sign of “Snotface.” He motioned me forward, and I had just pulled up alongside him when the fecal matter hit the fan.
The scrappers seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. They poured out of the shadows, dropped from overhead accessways, and popped out of doorways like so many jack-in-the-boxes. And every friggin’ one of them had a little kid strapped across their chests, leaving their hands free to do other things. Like blow our heads off.
The kids screamed, the scrappers opened fire, and Snotface took one through his open mouth. I sensed more people fall and heard Norris give the only order she could. “Ignore the kids! Shoot the bastards!”
She was right, I knew that, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. The rest of the shooters opened fire while I stood there with a gun in my hand, unable to pull the trigger. The children came apart like so many cheap dolls as a hail of bullets hit them and were stopped by the body armor between them and the scrappers.
That’s when I saw her. A little girl with straight black hair, doll-fine features, and a thumb in her mouth. She didn’t scream, struggle against the straps that held her in place, or do any of the other things you would have expected. She just hung there, watching the destruction, waiting to die.
Something primal worked its way up through my throat and came screaming out my mouth. I felt the slugs hit my body armor as I made my way forward. A smaller man might have stumbled, might have fallen, but my size worked in my favor. The bullets hit and I kept coming.
I saw the scrapper had long greasy locks, bad teeth, and a two-day growth of beard. He grinned, knowing that I couldn’t shoot without hitting the girl, tilted his gun up towards my highly reflective head, and started to squeeze the trigger.
I guess I’ll never know why the little girl took her thumb out of her mouth and grabbed his hand, but I’m real glad that she did, because it gave me sufficient time to cross the intervening space, grab the bastard’s head and spin it halfway around.
The move was all strength and no science, but it worked anyway. Bones crunched, the scrapper’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped towards the deck. I grabbed and held him long enough to free the girl. She looked into my eyes, smiled approvingly, and pointed towards my skull plate. “Shiny!”
I smiled in return. “Very shiny. Do you like it?”
