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After giving custom's guard-bots the slip I set us up to enter the bay. (Damn fancy giant goldfish, they just float along in the current as if a parade float had been tossed into Tokyo Bay, one instant's inattention, one little mistake by the girl at the ECM console, and the next thing you know they've snuck up on you and attached a great huge explosive charge on your dorsal.) [Dorsal? Damn I've been hooked up to this thing too long. Next thing you know I'll have forgotten how to walk.] The Boss Lady finally hears what she wants from the radio and give the order to dock. She spits out coordinates as if she were cursing us, oh and we are to surface and enter Chiba's docks in plain sight.[So this Corp wants to rub it in to some other Corp, big surprise.] The harbor master is hauled back from dreamland by his console's nerve fraying whine. Quick look at the old screen. He reaches for beat up old binoculars and looks out into the bay's nocturnal murk. For the three hundredth time that night he curses the regs that keep an old man from his rest. The harbor master dutifully marks in the anachronistic paper log book the arrival and docking into pier 18 of an old fishing trawler. Which had sunk 5 months ago in a storm. What actually docked at pier 18 was a 200 feet long mechanical shark. I slide us up to the pier, activate the robotic arms that'll hold us fast to the dock. Give the all clear to start with the unloading and oversee the computer's shut down of the main systems. I finally can disentangle myself from these unnecessarily ornate neural links and limp out of the damned pilot's chair and stretch. The docks were a flurry of activity as cargo handlers emptied the holds of cargo and of the booty from our predations on the ships of competing Corps, trucks wait filled with technological goodies headed for La La Land, the bean counters are trying to inventory the loot and hand out the appropriate shares to the corporate sailors who just want to get to the nearest bar as fast as possible, coveralled techs underfoot as they swarm into the sub, a parcel of suits off to a side conversing with our luscious little Ice Queen of a captain, in short the best organized bit of chaos I've seen in a long time. I make my bid to escape before some tech tries to tie me into the control chair for some stupid tests, as I sneak past the suits, 'our beloved captain' intercepts me and throws a slug of electronics in a plastic case like it was a shuriken. Out of self defense I snatch the little 'beeper' as Tomiko admonishes me about not 'loosing' this one like I did in San Juan. I catch the attention of an almost too small taxi and crawl in with my luggage -bot barely keeping up. I tell the little robot taxi where I want to go and prepay for what (alleged) security measures it has. Finally I have a moment to think of what an insane 7 months it's been since The Engineer came along to offer me a job as pilot for some pirate ship he'd built for some Zaibatsu or other. "Just take a transcontinental with me to La La Land, soak in a hot tub with some chicks while I schmooze with the suits and then you get to travel the world and maybe make some bussines connections." Well the pay they offered me had more than enough digits plus a pretty good cut of any loot we got from "salvage" (wink wink nudge nudge) and before I can change my mind we're off and I find myself under the stiletto heel of the prettiest taskmaster you can imaging. Thank the gods this is the last leg of the trip for me three more weeks and I'll be free of her grasps. Sigh, if only she wasn't so good in bed. The taxi announce that we are nearing my destination. I look out, old flickering neon declaims "CHATSUBO", standing in front of the bar a tall thin guy is getting drenched by the light drizzle , he's looking straight up at the sky as if mesmerized. I pay the taxi and get out, hazarding a look at the sky, gray clouds lit from below by the city, light plumes of fly ash and the confetti of styrofoam that seems to infest Chiba's gutters and the harbor. As I get near the bar the guy suddenly starts to scream; "Change the channel! Change the channel! Can't you see it's dead!" He runs off laughing, "yeah that's a great line" and trying to write in a little electronic pad. I shake my head and go into the bar. Ratz looks up from pouring another round of assorted drinks for the mere handful of regulars when the much abused door opens. A new face. A sleek speed cultist, fancy running shoes, seamless running pants made of some strangely thick black material as if he'd been dipped into tire rubber from the waist down, a plain t-shirt surprisingly devoid of logos, an electric blue jacket the kind with the soft-deck sewn into the lining. An iridescent green beetle of an Japanese made luggage-bot at his heels. Smiling the newcomer walks up to the bar. "So this is the world famous 'Chatsubo'? You must be Ratz". "Yes mein friend and you are?" "Driver.", scanning the bottles lined up behind Ratz "Got any Bacardi?" "Bacardi? Hah, there hasn't been a drop of that in Chiba since the island got taken of the map. No friend artiste..." An arm that should be in a museum of cybernetics waves at the bottles; "What you see is what I've got." "Taken off the.. oh the corporate siege. Oh come on, you sure you don't have a bottle stashed behind the bar for a special occasion?" By now the handful of witnesses have backed away and are taking bets as to how long before the old bean-bag gun comes up from behind the bar. "No. I haven't got any. There isn't any in all Japan. Why don't you choose something else." "Now let me get this straight. There's none of it ,anywhere, and not even you could get some? "Yes! Damn it there's isn't any !" Ratz starts to reach for the shotgun "The distillery doesn't even exist! Not since some corporation blew up the island!" "Well , in that case would you like to buy some?" The old composite riot gun slips out of Ratz' hand as he tries to make sense of what he has heard. "You have Bacardi rum to sell?" "Half a case!" at the cue the luggage bot opens its 'wings' displaying the bottles within "What are they worth to you?" Driver slides a piece of paper and a stylus to Ratz. The regulars sit there with their mouths open as what had so far been an immutable law of commerce seemed about to be reversed. The little paper went back and forth a few times till finally. "Done!" Driver passes up the bottles and Ratz hands him some rumpled nuyens ,a roll of corporate scripts and a smart card which are quickly absorbed by Driver's pants when he touches them to were the pockets should be. "Ah you are truly an artiste of the deal. You must tell old Ratz however did you manage to get at a cache of the stuff. The corporations said that they'd leveled the island where it used to be made." "Is made. The siege is going a lot worse for the Corps than they're letting on. It just so happens that..." BEEP BEEP BEEP "Oops got to go. Sorry. But maybe I'll be back with the story some day if any body's interested." Just as I exit the Chatsubo a pair of APCs with corporate logos pull up. Tomiko pokes her head out of a hatch. "Well don't just stand there! Get in. The timetable has been moved up, we leave immediately!" Sigh, back to the old grind. copyright 1997 Charleson Mambo
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