Jade Dragon (20 page)

Even though he knew it was pointless, he tried the doors. Ko opened his
mouth to call out, but the words died in his throat, escaping as a faint
whimper. No one would hear him. No one would care.

He slumped to the floor and sat against the wall. Chinks of light from
rust holes provided illumination as Ko went through his pockets, in lieu
of having anything better to do. Scraps of paper and an old matchbook
from the Dot. A couple of loose bullets—fat lot of good they would do
him now—and a wallet with a handful of yuan. And…

Ko’s fingers closed around the cellphone in the instant it rang. He
snapped it open in panic, suddenly terrified that Hung’s men would hear
it.

“H-hello?”

“Is that you?” Frankie frowned the moment he asked the question. It was
a dumb thing to say.

“Yeah.” The kid was muted and fearful. “This how you get your laughs,
huh? Fuck with me and my family, and then phone up to gloat about it?”

“Where are you?” Frankie had the digi-map of the docks open in front of
him. “Where did Blue Snake take you?”

“Dancing Dragon Pier. Big Hung’s docks. Like you don’t know.”

Frankie nodded to himself, running an image transform program. The
satellite image became an infrared pattern of cold blues and moving
orange blobs. One peculiar shape—green instead of human-red—was standing
among a group of others. Tze’s guardian? “Tell me where you are.
Exactly.”

“Inna cargo pod. Freezing an’ bleeding to death. Why are you asking me
this shit?”

Frankie took a breath. What had they taught him in the academy? The best
time to negotiate with a hostile source was when you had them on the
ropes. “Remember what I said before? I have a job for you.”

“Huh.” Despite his dire predicament, Ko felt the urge to laugh. “You got
great timing, mister wageslave. Pretty soon, I ain’t gonna be in any
shape to do anything for anybody.” The soft glow of the phone cast faint
shadows around the gloomy interior.

“I had nothing to do with what happened to the girl… Your sister.” The
voice on the other end of the phone seemed genuine, or at least as far
as Ko could tell. These corps, they lie for a living. “I could help.”

Ko fought off a shiver. The cold was leaching into his fingertips and
toes. “What do you care? I’m just a thief, neh? A streetpunk for you
suits to roll over like some bug. You don’t know me. What d’you want,
huh?”

“You said you had connections with the triads, yes?”

“Yeah,” he nodded woodenly. “I know people in the Wo Shing Wo, the 14K,
others. Not that it has done me any favours.” Ko coughed and spat out
blood.

“I can get you out of there,” said the voice, “if you trust me. In
return I want you to get some information. There was a hit… I need to
know who ordered it.”

“You can’t do it yourself, mister big shot?” snorted Ko.

“I can’t take the risk of investigating myself. I need someone like you.
I can’t be connected.”

“Like me,” murmured Ko, masking a wheeze. “Oh yeah. I see where this is
going. You want some no-namer to do your dirty work, someone…
disposable?”

“That’s about the size of it, yes.”

Ko forced a smile. “Yeah. You got yourself problems you don’t want your
boss knowing about, so you gotta come down to the gutter to deal with
it.” He shifted, fighting down the pain. “Sure. I’m your man. But I want
something else.”

“I’m going to save your life,” insisted the corporate. “That’s not
enough?”

“No. I want money. After what that rat shit Tze did to my sister, it’s
gonna take some heavyweight paper to make her well again. You clean that
mess up, too.”

Frankie choked back a laugh. “You’re in no shape to be setting terms.”

There was a dry, painful chuckle. “I gotta guy ten metres away from me
with a machine gun gonna drill me any second now. I got nothing to lose.
Pay up or get some other chump to be your errand boy.”

In spite of himself, Frankie smiled. This kid’s nobody’s fool. “Okay.”

There was a long pause. “Fine. Now how you gonna spring me, mister
wageslave?”

A plan began to form in Frankie’s mind as he examined the data traffic
streaming in and out . of the dockyards. “Can you swim?”

“Uh, yeah, but—”

“Be ready. And don’t lose that phone.” He stabbed the disconnect key.

“Oh man,” Ko breathed, staring at the silent cellphone. “What did I just
do?”

The steel doors answered him, opening with a clattering squeal. Ko
staggered backward, reflexively trying to make himself a smaller target;
but there was no cover at all inside the cargo pod. The hatches opened
wide and there was Rikio and another one of Hung’s boys, scowling from
underneath a sepia-toned punch-perm. Rikio’s face was expressionless.

“Look,” Ko said, “there’s no need for this.”

Punch-perm nodded at Rikio. “That blue-faced bitch wants this tyke aired
out. You gonna do it, or do I gotta tell Hung you’re not up to the job?”

“Hey,” said Ko. “Wait.”

Rikio licked his lips. “Naw. It’s okay. ”

Punch-perm kept talking as if Ko wasn’t even there. “So, then. You wanna
use my gun?”

“Naw,” Rikio repeated, flicking off the Ushanti’s safety, “I got it.”

Ko heard a rumbling sound, getting louder by the second. Was that death,
bearing down on him? “Please,” he implored, tears spiking his eyes.
“Just let me go—”

Rikio raised the machine pistol; that was about the moment the
robo-truck slammed into the side of the container and rode right over
the punch-perm guy, wheels grinding the man into the asphalt.

The empty metal box shifted with ear-splitting shrieks, fat yellow
sparks flying from the doors. Rikio tumbled into the cargo pod, narrowly
missing the same fate as the other enforcer. Ko slipped and fell, his
hands crusted with a film of dried blood.

He saw the front of the robot six-wheeler as it retreated back a few
feet, huffing like an overworked dray horse. Written across the
blank-faced prow of the truck were three words: “Yuk Lung Haulage.”

The vehicle came at the pod again and this time the impact threw it back
two metres, pushing it back over the edge of the dock. The machine
shouldered into the container and began the slow and steady process of
tipping it into the bay.

Frankie worked the controls, licking sweat from his lips. On the thermal
scan he could see the shapes of a dozen men sprinting across the cargo
apron toward the truck, the cold shapes of weapons in their grips. It
had been simple to open up the automatic navigation controls on one of
the many YLHI drone haulers, and reprogramme the dog-smart drive brain
to do his bidding; but now Frankie was having second thoughts about his
impulsive choice of exit strategy. He could make out the two flailing
orange shapes inside the box, so he knew the kid wasn’t dead—not yet.
Pinpricks of bright white showed where the triad gunsels were firing on
the truck. Behind them, the alien shape of Tze’s Blue Snake stood and
observed, motionless.

The robo-truck smashed into the cargo pod one last time and drove it
over the lip of the concrete dock. Vehicle and all, the pod struck the
waters of the bay and vanished, the shape fading away into the blue
sheen of the cold.

Ko and Rikio collided with each other and the walls, bouncing around
like stones in a rattle. Rikio tumbled underneath him and Ko felt
something break inside the Red Pole as he softened the impact against
the steel box. Water gushed into the container, buoying up Rikio’s body.
Ko noted the new angles in his arms and legs, the freakish tilt of the
neck, but found it hard to summon any sympathy.

Ko pushed at the undertow of the seawater, but the icy cold and the
searing bite of the wound in his chest bled the energy from him.
Tilting, the box dropped beneath the surface, the tiny pocket of trapped
air inside bubbling out in whooping breaths. He tried to swim, but there
was nothing in him, not a drop of energy to spare.

I’m going to die. I’m sorry, Nikki. I let you down.

“Stupid, weak city boy.” The voice hammered into his head. “You’re not
dead yet.” Something tugged at him through the chill water and Ko saw a
shape drifting at the mouth of the container, leather cords and a long
ponytail floating around him. “Swim, damn you,” snarled Feng. “The
drowned never know peace! You want to spend eternity haunting this
concrete cesspool? Come on! Swim!”

Ko’s leaden limbs moved, dragging him forward. The container dropped
away toward the dark, and with agonizing slowness Ko felt himself rising
toward the bland grey light of the surface. Feng beckoned him from the
shadows of the dock stanchions, speaking without moving his lips. “This
way! Come up here, quickly!”

He burst from the depths through oily water, sucking in great wet gasps
of air. Ko’s fingers found a rusty rail and he pulled himself
hand-over-hand, up and on to the concrete pier. Behind him on the next
dock over, he could hear shouting and curses. A gunshot rang out, and a
divot of stone cracked near his leg. He felt hollow inside, but somehow
there was a secret reserve of energy coining from a place he’d never
known of, and it propelled Ko forward, gasping and spitting up acrid
water. Ahead he saw a chainlink gate lying open, and beyond that, a
service road.

On the road was a parked car. The speedgeek part of his brain identified
it immediately as a Korvette Impulse, one of the ’23 models that had the
puny touchlocks on the doors. Ko felt a weak smile forming on his lips
just at the sight of it.

Wild…

WILD…

WYLDSKY!

One Night Only! Victoria Peak!

The greatest concert of the decade, with the hottest bands and NO
RULES!

There’s no ticket—the only thing you need to get in is freedom!

Come together and stand your ground!

Show the world that music can’t be caged!

It’s not about the green! It’s about the BLUE!

WYLDSKY!

Featuring performances by JetSlut! Charlie Fish! Yellow Dancer!

And a SPECIAL guest star—Who Knows? YOU KNOW!

The biggest free gig in the PacRim!

WYLDSKY!

The future starts here!

Fixx let the road do the driving, allowing the turns and changes to come
from the world around him, travelling without moving, conscious but
unseeing. The black Korvette seemed to understand its new master, and
behaved as a good horse should, cantering unhurried through the canyons
of the city. Lucy had done him proud.

There came the point, just as Joshua expected, when the road ended, and
there he turned off the motor and let the surroundings talk to him.
Hours passed without his notice, instead his mind dwelling on the
fragments of time from the mallplex; the pieces of sensory recall from
there and the same moments from the Hyperdome collided and merged in his
mind, an ocean of floating jigsaw pieces connecting, disconnecting,
seeking patterns in each other. In the car, in the service road between
the concrete warehouses, in the place of silence-such-as-it-was, Fixx
recovered the deck of cards his sainted grandmother had bequeathed and
began to play out a reading on the empty passenger seat beside him. The
patterns started to emerge, and he chewed his lip. All this time, and
still Fixx felt like he was unready, like he was waiting.

“Stage ain’t set,” he said aloud. “Players ain’t ready yet.”

His mind was so focused on the tarot matrix that the shadow crossing the
window by his head was a sudden surprise.

The Korvette had one-way surrounds of black glass, and with the car
dormant as it was, a person might be forgiven for thinking it was empty.
Fixx paused, an unturned card in his hand, and studied the raggedy youth
working at the door lock. The Chinese kid had his tongue pressed between
his teeth in serious concentration. He looked strung out and wasted, a
nasty blossom of blood down the front of his shirt, constellations of
bruises on his face and neck. He was wet through, his clothes plastered
to him; but most of all the fear was coming off him in waves.

In spite of all that, Fixx took a look at the card, even though in that
moment he knew exactly what it would show. The sanctioned operative
flipped the latch and the Korvette’s gullwing door rose.

The thief jerked in shock as he realised the car was occupied. “Oh.
Shit.” He blinked and skipped back a few steps as Fixx got out. “Hey,
uh. This isn’t my car!” He faked a frown. “What a silly mistake!”

Fixx handed the tarot card to him. “Here. This seem familiar?”

The kid read the name on the bottom, eyes narrowing. “Knight ofWands.
Huh. He kinda looks a little like me. ”

“How ’bout that?” Fixx grinned. “Yeah. Curtain’s going up now.”

There were footsteps coming and they turned to see a group of men in
spaciously cut suits approach at a run. All of the new arrivals were
carrying guns, and they exchanged confused looks at the sight of the
black man and his car.

“Hold it, Ko, you little punk!” snapped one of them. “You brought this
on yourself!”

Fixx raised a hand. “A moment, gentlemen. If you’ll just allow me…” He
drew the bones from his pocket and scattered them across the Korvette’s
bonnet. The op bent low, examining the turn and placement of them. He
glanced at the youth. “Ah-yuh.” In a flash, he gathered the bones back
up again. Papa Legba had told him what it was he had been waiting for.

One of the men came close, reaching out a hand. “Keep out of this—”

Fixx broke his gun arm and the enforcer’s pistol fell at Ko’s feet. As
the kid scrambled for it, Fixx punched the triad gunsel off balance and
bounced his head off the Korvette’s roof.