They'd sent in panzers and trucks and helos full of Lone Star, Atlantic Security, and any other troops they could recruit, with orders to shoot 'em up and burn 'em out. Ask questions later. Thousands of locals who had nothing to do with the incident died in the fire that night: norms, trolls, elves, kids, dogs, everybody. Rape and theft were apparently acceptable street dangers for tourists, but cannibalism was bad for the city's rep. Go figga.

The next day, heavily armed Slap Squads arrived to quickly spray-paint over any walls still standing in brilliant monotone colors of pink and blue. They'd also dropped a plasti-film covering over the destroyed structures so that the sprawl looked good to the tourists who still flocked to the coastal city for sun and tox-free surf.

Looked good from the air, that is. But here on the cracked sidewalks and stinking streets no such illusion was maintained. Metacrabs infested the palm trees that lined the boulevards like chewed weeds, while gang graffiti and posters from simsense parlors or local boom bands layered the monotones into a jumbled collage, the plas strips sun-bleached and acid rain-washed until only sagging strips of rotting plas hung limply from the garish walls. At least the plasti-film roofs offered the starving squatters living in the ruins some meager protection from the deadly northern swamp rains.

Only a couple of the barred shops and stores along the wide boulevard had walls strong enough and intact enough to keep out the metacrabs and devil rats, who regularly fought over anything edible that didn't move, and thus these shops remained open for business, such as it was. The armored doors were propped ajar with jagged chunks of pink brain coral to entice customers to step in out of the heat. The sole exceptions were the always closed plate-steel doors of the Havana Gun Shop, and the Penguin Air Parlor, where a doubloon bought you five minutes of sweet, cold AC. And if some greedy gleeb tried to overstay, the AC was automatically cut until the other patrons threw you out. Whole or in pieces, their choice. But Thumbs liked the heat beating down on his bare chest, his ballistic vest flapping freely in the hot ocean breezes. A deep tan gave a nice contrast to his short white tusks, made a guy look healthy, and much harder to see when doing a run at night. Miami was a hot city. Always had been, always would be.

These thoughts were suddenly interrupted when cries for help from an alleyway caught Thumb's attention. Drawing the big Ares Predator from his inside holster, he checked the scan before going in. Not a tourist, or one of his Slammers. Not his concern then.

What Thumbs saw was a terrified dwarf. Dressed in denims and loose cotton shirt, the halfer was backing away from a perfectly ordinary telecom unit, staring at the thing as if he fully expected it to spit acid at him. His hands were moving over his body in sharp slaps that Thumbs recognized as a military weapons search. Weapons against a phone?

Startled, the dwarf jerked when he saw Thumbs, but that was only standard. Thumbs was big for any member of his race. An effect he cultivated by wearing cowboy boots with fifteen-millimeter heels, and lifting weights that would crush a norm.

Ramming a hand into his pants pocket, the dwarf fumbled frantically for something, and Thumbs tensed his forearms in response, the carbide blades of his cyberware peeking a millimeter out of his forearms. The halfer couldn't have a weapon, or else he'd have pulled it by now. Hey, that was a certified credstick the dwarf had just pulled out of his jacket and he was thrusting a stout arm toward the giant troll.

"You, a hundred nuyen!" he barked in a barely controlled yell. "Shoot the telecom. Now!"

Shoot the what? The notion was ludicrous, but even loonies had credsticks so Thumbs automatically said, "Two," then after a split tick added, "fifty."

"Three!" shouted the dwarf frantically. "But DO IT NOW!"

3.

Bending at his knees to adjust for angle, Thumbs brushed back his fringed vest and whipped out the Predator. The big autoloader thundered at his touch on its hair-trigger, and the telecom unit exploded in a blast of plastic, wiring, and chips. Then just to make sure, Thumbs pumped two more into the sparking equipment, finishing the destruction utterly.

Only a couple of alley residents paid any attention to the bizarre event of terminating a telecom unit with extreme prejudice, as the mercs liked to say.

"Thanks," the dwarf almost wheezed in relief. Using a cuff to wipe the sweat from under his hat with one hand, he rummaged in a pocket with the other, unearthed a credstick, and tossed it to Thumbs, who made the catch with one hand.

Thumbs winked as he slid the stick into his vest. "My pleasure," he replied, jacking the slide on the massive handgun, chambering a fresh caseless round for immediate use. It was an old habit, hard learned in grim street fighting and not one he could ever, or would ever, forget.

Without another word, the dwarf turned and began to move away as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run. But at the mouth of a garbage-strewn alley, he stopped and glanced over a shoulder. "Here's a bonus download for ya, chummer. Hot data, fresh from the horse. Beat feet."

Faintly in the distance, Thumbs heard sirens sound. Already? For shooting a stinking telecom? Feeling his scalp prickly, he nodded his own thanks, then moved into the busy street, dodging traffic with practiced ease, his mind already conjuring the bounty of chemical and fleshy pleasures now available to him. Easiest nuyen he'd ever made. What a day this was! What! A! Day!

Maneuvering through the piles of garbage and duraplas crates filling the alleyway, Adam Two Bears left the troll behind and darted between the towering norm drunks and scraggly elf chippers vibrating to the secret rhythm of the wires in their brains. All ignored him. Not one tried to stop him or ask for a handout. Gunfire followed by a running person always meant real trouble and the only way you stayed breathing on the streets was to avoid it.

Gods and demons, what had he gotten himself into? All this could happen while he was watching on a public telecom? Somebody had fragging wiped Sister Wizard while she was jacked into the fragging Matrix. And while he was fragging watching as he waited for her to jack out. With his own eyes he'd seen the IC fry first her deck and then her brain. Right there, big as life. The only good thing about it was that he'd been at a public telecom on the other side of town and not there in the doss with her.

Frag and drek! Where had she been, in whose files? Somebody who didn't like to be bothered. And it had to be somebody big. Atlantic Security? Gunderson? But the only person who could answer that question was a stiff still jacked into the smoking ruins of her Fuchi 9 with her brains dripping out of her ear. Gunderson was one of the most powerful multinationals in Miami. And being a corp like any other, they could easily have their fingers in just about anything.

Congratulations, Two Bears admonished himself sourly. One hour on the job and his best decker was toasted. A new personal record. Gotta find someplace to twig this mess and get major backup ASAP.

Stopping at the other end of the alleyway, Two Bears looked beyond the honking traffic at the telecom sitting there in plain sight. It was covered with graffiti and probably smelled like a lavatory, but the access light was bright on top, so it was still in operational condition. Help was only a call away. He could have a hundred runners here in minutes.

Yet he hesitated to make a dash for the unit. Did he dare call any of his regulars? Rattlesnake, ChrisCross, Omni, Jimmy 2 Cool. Oh man ... if they could do that to Sister so quickly, then they had to know her telecom was on and where it was connected.

Face facts, chumley, you panicked, he told himself. Maybe if god loves dwarfs, that big troll had destroyed the telecom before a trace could be done. But what if a decker someplace was able to follow the connection to the call box before Sister's brain was fried? What if who-ever-the-frag they were-this so-called IronHell-were even now tracking him down, encircling, this neighborhood, ghosting his crib and known chummers? Going to any of his usual haunts could mean getting geeked big time. And anybody Two Bears knew might already be compromised by IronHell. Pros moved fast. Show up at Dogboy's doss and his knock on the door could be answered by a shotgun blast in the throat.

Forcing himself to stroll casually instead of run, Two Bears felt eyes watching him as he moved along through the tall bustling crowds. Desperately he searched for another dwarf, almost ready to call on a total stranger as long as it was one of his own kind, so great was his need. But only norms and trolls and orks filled the street. Great. Just great. Tugging on his ear, Two Bears wondered what to do, where to go?

He couldn't keep himself from looking back over his shoulder, which caught the eye of a slotmachine girl in Amerind buckskin and feathers. She called out something suggestive to him, but he never heard the words, only the tone. "Necker," he answered, to get rid of her fast. It was a trick that rarely failed. As expected, she recoiled in disgust. Few were the flesh peddlers who would hire out to somebody who liked doing the dead.

Alone on the crowded sidewalk, Two Bears watched the second-floor windows for the silenced barrels of sniper rifles and thought furiously, plans coming and going like the locals around him. Maybe he should go back and find the troll. The slag had been happy enough to do something glitched like blow out a telecom for a credstick. He didn't know the guy, but maybe he could trust him as far as he could pay him.

Keeping his back to the wall, Two Bears pulled his hat down as far as it would go and moved on quickly. No, that was too chancy. And, beside, the moment for it was past. His only hope was moving fast. After that, he'd have to see what chance threw his way. Still sauntering casually, but moving steadily as if only mildly late for an appointment somewhere, he rounded the corner and headed east on SW Seventeenth Street.

Far out at sea, a merchant ship flying the flag of Aztechnology drifted randomly in the winds and currents of the Atlantic.

Powerless, its twin rudders moving freely, the craft traveled wherever the ocean dictated. Mostly in circles. Occasionally, an ocean swell crested the foredeck and washed away another of the lifeless bodies lying in dark brown pools. Hundreds of spent shell casings first bumped into a wave prow, then noisily rained down the sticky steel stairs in the forecastle to scatter wildly on the smooth deck of the main open cargo hold, rolling about from wall to wall, encountering nothing to hinder their travels. Nothing except for a few ropes and chains and a humming Hercules lift, still idling along all by itself directly below the open armored hatch in the deck above.

In the pilot house, the navigational computer was dark, the manual wheel spinning wildly with each wave. Lying in the hatchway leading to the chart room aft of the bridge were the charred remains of the captain and her XO, their weapons baked into the black bones of their ashen hands. And hiding under the captain's desk was a dead ork cook with most of his chest missing, a score of round holes from the point-black shotgun blast riddling the antique cherry-wood. His brown-stained fingers were splayed wide from the shock of his violent demise. However, hidden behind the turning corpse was a single word painted on the desk from the wide stream of blood from the two fire-charred merchant officers.

It was in Spanish ork, sea slang that was a mere meaningless squiggle to anybody not trained in the idiomatic, sub-tongues of colloquial metahuman dialects. When Aztechnology finally got a university philologist there, the scholar was able to read the crimson word as: Greetings.

Making it back to her apartment after learning what had happened to Blackjack, Laura Redbird found the lock destroyed and her doss in a shambles. The big table made from an industrial macroplas spool for holding wire was over in one corner next to the slashed ruin of the couch and the busted remains of the trideo. They had sure done a good job of trashing the place. Was it possible the word was already out that Redbird and Blackjack had both gotten geeked on a bad run? Everything of value was gone, and everything else was in pieces just in case it hid something of value. Not much remained intact, aside from doors and windows. Unless they'd somehow missed her stash.

Kneeling down on the floor next to the spool table, Laura slid a kitchen knife along the old carpeting, following the pattern of the clean area that had been underneath the table. The canvas backing was tough, but the blade was sharp and with little effort she lifted away the patch, exposing the old hardwood flooring. Digging the knife point into the floorboards, she finally pried one up with a screech of rusty nails. With that opening established, the other boards came away much easier and soon she had a hole exposing the joints and joyces that supported the floor. Plus, an enlongated bundle of plastic and cloth wrapped with tape. Amateurs. They'd gotten some chips and clothing, but missed the good stuff.

Ripping away the protective layers, Laura brought out a credstick showing a thousand nuyen, an old Colt revolver and ammo box-better than nothing, she supposed-a medkit, and her first real deck, a Fuchi 2 with the spare fiber-op cables still attached.

First off, she checked the action of the Colt, then loaded the revolving internal steel cylinder by manually sliding in six individual .38 cartridges. Fragging thing wasn't even autoloading or caseless, no smartlink, laser sights, nothing. Just a hunk of dead metal. But the oily bullets were explosive hollowpoints capable of blowing a norm's head off or seriously getting the attention of a troll. It would do for today until she was able to boost, or if abso-fragging-lutely necessary, buy, something better.

Armed, she slid the table in front of the door and checked to make sure the windows were locked. Nobody hiding in the closets or in the empty fridge. Satisfied that she was alone for the mo, Laura connected the Fuchi and ran a quick diagnostic check. The obsolete deck hummed happily as it took entire seconds to perform this simple task, but gave a go status reading of all operational parameters achieved.

Everything took forever with this dinosaur, and the first thing she did was check her mail. Lots of notes posted there by friends and chummers who owed her on the down and dirty of the queered run last night. Most of it she knew from what she'd already picked up on the street. Blackjack was dead, shot, crushed, and burned. Ghost! Not even the yakuza kill you three times. Apparently a wetjob by their own Johnson, who'd attempted to disguise it as a counterstrike by another corp. Lone Star bought it 'cause they didn't care, but the street was wise. Zapped by your own Johnson, every runner's worst nightmare. The single flaw in the otherwise perfect wipeout was that Laura Redbird was still alive, and even though she didn't know what the Johnson looked like, she did know that the slitch worked for the Gunderson Corporation. And while faces and even voices could change, Laura highly doubted anybody would take precautions to protect herself from a decker known to be dead.

Gonna find you, omae, Laura vowed to the universe. And I'll geek you on the spot right in front of your guards. BlackJack was much more than my bedpartner and fellow runner. Lovers may come and go, but we were friends. Something clean that even the sprawl couldn't steal. But you did, Johnson. And my life isn't going to start again until yours has ended, slot. End of trans.

The ancient keyboard had only some basic programs in it. She couldn't do anything fancy, but she could do one very important thing. Stored in this deck's memory was an RTG number that would grant her legal access to the main datalines of the Miami grid.

Who knew what number this was? Maybe an old lady who happened to mention it once or a local business that had used it in an ad or even the number of some poor slob who'd told her to call him in the morning. Wherever it came from didn't matter because the line opened .. .

. . . and she stood in one of the main datastreams leading into Miami. The data flowed around her like the rushing rapids of a river. After all that happened last night, now she was home. She belonged in the Matrix.

She'd once programmed her persona into this old deck, and so she appeared in the consensual reality of the Matrix as a gleaming silver falcon. The icon a decker used was of his or her own choosing, and Laura used the modified totem of her Choctaw tribe.

She knew she needed to get off such a public line; in the Matrix too much data could be as big a pain as too little.

She'd never be able to navigate the data streams the way she wanted using this old deck, so she was going to have to hop out of this line and head for the private nodes. A few standard log-ons and log-offs and she was heading into the heart of Miami by an untraceable route.

So far, this was mostly kosher. Bypassing the public links, she headed straight for the private business lines, hopping from connection to connection as she had a hundred times before when playing her favorite game. Soon Laura was alone as she penetrated deeper and deeper into potentially deadly corporate territory.

In the angled distance, she spied the decahedrons of the Miami city gov, the irregular lumpy bubbles of the Gunderson Corporation's data banks, and beside them, a collection of squat stumps covered with nasty-looking barbed thorns of no known function. It looked like the Gunderson deckers had been working overtime on either some new defensive IC or system alert. Either way, she'd note it. It might be of great interest next time she stopped off at the Virtual Cabana, a node where she and some of Miami's randier shadow deckers liked to hang out.

As much as she wanted to hit Gunderson directly to try and find out who'd set them up, she reluctantly turned away from the thorn structures and continued on, flying low through a forest of transparent flowering trees and jumbled cubes all color-coded for different public uses and departments.

Now soaring high in the electron skies, Laura froze motionless in mid-air above the endless horizon of the Matrix. This area of the consenting hallucination of the world computer grid belonged to the Caribbean League Gov and vaguely resembled something by an ancient painter named Salvador Dali, a fave among deckers who'd created the initial sculptured programs.

The ground was translucent red glass filled with billions of stars-databytes-that swirled and flowed like trapped galaxies of fireflies. Rising into the sky were polyhedron skyscrapers of shining green, so large they almost blotted the horizon. They were filled with myriad tiny triangular sections that constantly opened and closed as if a million tiny mouths were accepting or disgorging visitors-databytes-and venting white steam of unknown function. The writhing sky was a vista of quicksilver, endlessly flowing into itself and reforming nano by nano, a mad mirrored plane against which she hoped her own chrome icon was not discernible.

Down on the ground, a dozen or so corporate icons of different styles and types were scrambling about near a small, insignificant geyser of gushing light that formed a fountain from an irregular crater in the dataflow. The main international RTG. From here links to nearly every country could be tapped, although this point was mainly a link to Africa, South America, Amazonia, Aztlan, and the Antarctic Colonies. It was also what the Caribbean League used for "official government business." Which meant there was nothing of value here. The League had a one island one-vote policy for political decisions, but the rest of the time they seemed to be at each other's throats. All the various members also had their own individual nodes and their own private links to each other. Pirates had deckers too.

Laura loved this node. It was a decker's playground ... Satellite uplinks were a blink away, and she could be anywhere in the world in nanoseconds. And the security was nearly always beatable. She loved that the best.

She was about to leave when something caught her eye. Out of the datastream another icon appeared, then another and another, five or six in all. Keeping her distance, she watched as the icons first took on the appearance of the data-processors at the fountain-metahumans in typical Miami neon-colored jumpsuits and sunglasses. But as they headed away from the fountain on one of the telecom lines, the icons changed into black sharks.

The sharks moved along the public telecom grid at an incredibly fast rate, and it almost seemed to Laura that the date flowing along those lines actually moved out of their way. They stopped at a public telecom unit. Or that's what it must have been before somebody fragged it up. The icons set up a new mode next to it and then changed again to public telecom decker icons. The com unit must have been only recently damaged because the node was still active, but Laura couldn't figure this one out. Public telecom nodes usually just lay there dormant until a decker used one and got fried or they closed the node. This type of activity was unique. She wondered what it meant, but she had more important things to do right now.

Laura Redbird would cruise the Matrix day and night, night and day, haunting the grid and info nets and virtual hangouts until somebody put out the word that they were hiring for a dangerous run. Any run, she didn't care, as long as it was local and the bigger the better. Eventually, she'd land a job with the Gunderson Corporation, or better yet, a run against the corp. Laura would use that link as the thin edge of a wedge to get closer to the killer Johnson. It would take time, but there was really no other way. Eventually, the murderer would try to find another team of shadowrunners to hose over and Laura Redbird was going to be first in line on-line.

Drek! Name. She'd have to use another name. The Johnson didn't know what her meat body looked like any more than she did the Johnson's, but the biff might know her name. She flapped her chrome wings in annoyance. It would be easy enough to change her physical appearance-some bleach for her hair and contact lenses, and she could probably pass for a deeply tanned European instead of the light-skinned Amerind that she was. Null perspiration. What she didn't want to change was her icon; all her program chips and utilities were set to recognize it. Take days to correct the software. Then again, did she need too? There were lots of bird icons on the grid, so how about changing her name to Talon or Raptor or Falcon? No, something more common, innocuous. Go slow, stay low. Let the target come to you. Hmm, what about Silver? Yeah, perfect, nice and bland. That would do fine.

Here I am, sent Silver silently to the whole world. Please hire me, Mr. Johnson, so I can kill you!

4.

With a bandanna now wrapped around his head to hide the gang tattoo, Thumbs appeared from around the wreckage of an old radio-controlled truck-now a home for twelve, with dogs and kids included-staying low and following the dwarf. Money was honey, and if the halfer had needed muscle once, he might need it again. And the job could easily go to the next guy who happened to be on hand. Which was going to be him.

Piracy had been taking its toll on both shipping and tourism in Miami of late. The fraggers were ruthless and slippery, all the harder to catch because there were so many different groups of various sizes. Sure, Atlantic Security was on the case, but it didn't seem to be making much of a dent. That was hurting the local economy bad, the trickle-down effect slowing everybody's biz to a crawl. While Shorty there smelled like money and trouble. Thumbs' two favorite things, outside of beer and sex. Which were practically the same thing: money-trouble, beer-sex, one always got you the other. Or so it seemed.

Bending his knees to keep as low as possible, Thumbs watched as the dwarf scooted into a used clothing store. He knew the place. It was run by an old ork who'd lost both legs in a bad run and never quite managed to get enough nuyen to buy new ones. Lucky Pete was anything but. But he owed Thumbs favors, lots of 'em, and now no punksters would ever bother the cripple again after Thumbs had had some grisly fun with them. Mighty hard to ride a Scorpion or a Harley when ya can't get a good grip on the handlebars anymore.

Moving for the pink alley that led to the back door of the blue store, Thumbs froze as the dwarf came out again wearing sandals, a laser-white pair of shorts, a holiday shirt, sunglasses, and a beard almost as big as him. So big in fact that it nearly hid the Nikon & Howell portacam slung around his neck. Thumbs checked for the telltale map and there it was, sticking out of the halfer's back pocket like the dorsal fin of a shark. The official flag for I'M A FRAGGING TOURIST.

Smart move. During the day, nobody sane would ever bother him. So he was safe from molestation, unless he ran into someone who knew and didn't like him. If the locals found out he was a fake, they'd become a mob and violently tear the dwarf apart with their bare hands, then set his bloody bones on fire as a warning to any other braindeads who dared to violate the unwritten law of Overtown.

Thumbs gave a half-smile as he crossed the street to stay behind the Johnson. Little guy must be desperate to try that, and he obviously had more nuyen, a lot more, to get Lucky to cough up a disguise that fast for an alien. Just for a tick, Thumbs debated sliding into the store to get the scan from the ork. But his quarry was moving with a purpose now that he was disguised and Thumbs knew he'd lose him if he dallied.

"Take a cab, nullhead," he mentally ordered the other. Be a lot easier to track the halfer sitting down. But the dwarf scuttled along, humming pictures of everything and everybody. Which made more than a few of the local denizens scurry for cover. Last thing a SINless gleeb wanted was some alien recording the fact that he lived but did not have a System Identification Number. That could get a person killed down here.

On a littered corner, a girl troll from the Slammers raised an arm to hail him. Thumbs quickly gave her a curt hand slice and frowned, never pausing for a beat. The fem's face went neutral and she leaned back against the crumbling brick facade of the old movie theatre, now a joyboy brothel, and began cleaning her nails with a Japanese-style long knife.

Smart. Talia was shaping up real good. And not just 'cause she was reaching her teens. Big troll like him had lots of beds to warm, but drek-few chummers who knew when to keep their fragging mouths shut, [f the hammer fell on this and things got dirty, Thumbs'd bring her in as cannon fodder and see if she really had the stuff. He wondered if she had a gun. If not, he could supply her. For a price, of course. Nothing was free.

Why would anybody shoot a telecom?

Moving through the thickening traffic of the wageslaves heading home, the answer hit him. To stop a possible trace. No phone link would mean no ID. Even an ace decker couldn't reconstruct what was no longer there. Then he remembered how fast the sirens had sounded. Lone Star would never race into Overtown simply for a blown phone. The police had bigger problems than that just staying alive in this town. But no, they'd been on their way. Ergo, some red-hot decker had already done a trace. If only he could check to make sure.

Another block passed before the dwarf stopped at a noodle stand, becoming third in line for service. Spying a telecom, Thumbs quickly decided to make a call to a chummer who lived practically on top of that public telecom box. Keeping an eye on the dwarf, he punched in the LTG code, and the screen cleared into the image of a sleepy troll in greasy clothes, tousled hair, and a badly broken tusk. On the wall behind him were rain-smeared sex posters and gaping crab holes. No furniture was in view.

"Yeah, who the frag is this?" the troll demanded.

"Beaver, it's me," rumbled Thumbs. "Speak fast and earn fifty."

The other's gummy eyes went wide with avarice. "For fifty I'd jump offa bridge widout lookin' ta see if dere was any woter. Whatcha need, T'umbs?" he slurred eagerly.

"Still living on Seventeenth and Cuban?"

"Sure. Ya needs a flop?"

Jail would be preferable to that cesspool. The only reason the rotting doss had no cockroaches was that the crabs used 'em as garnish for the devil rats. "Thanks, but no."

"T'en whatchawant?"

"Don't open ya curtains, but look outside and see who's checking out the busted telecom near the pawnshop."

Beaver's face contorted into unasked questions, but he merely nodded, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The tusker returned in a minute. "Man, it's a party down t'ere!"

"Lone Stars?" asked Thumbs, mentally calculating percentages.

"Der waz. But some suits in a slickmobile chased 'em way. Ya wan me ta go down and act casually like? See wa I kin see?"

Jesus, Buddah, and Zeus, no! Even on a good day, which this was obviously not, Beaver possessed all the adroit acting ability of a busted chair. Maybe less.

"No need. It's arctic," Thumbs replied, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of a hand. The tiny ridges of the cyberware exits on his arm rubbed his face in a pleasantly familiar manner. So, this halfer had more than just Lone Star after him. A limo on the scene had to mean a corp was in on this too. And that meant real trouble and real money. Thumbs' price just tripled.

"Ah, Thumbs, like, when can I get my nuyen?" asked Beaver, licking the stub of his busted tusk.

Across the street, the dwarf got served his food and began walking away, slurping down the noodles barely chewed. It was good protective cover-fugitives didn't stop, for lunch. His own stomach rumbled in sympathy. Thumbs had missed breakfast, and lunch didn't look like it was coming for quite awhile. "Get 'em from Lucky Pete. Tell him I said it's chill."

"Null perspiration. T'anks!"

Without saying goodbye, Thumbs disconnected and quickly moved after the departing dwarf. This could be the score of his life. Maybe he shouldn't wait to see if the dwarf had more work, but let the guy run to his bolthole and then turn him in to whoever was after him. Surely, there'd be some reward in it.

Thumbs hated the idea of dealing with a corp, even just for a minute and indirectly, but that angle could be safer and would probably pay more. When the time was right, he'd give the halfer one opportunity to hire him, and if he refused, then the corp goons would get him gift-wrapped. But either way, the guy was nuyen in the bank. Then the dwarf turned northeast, heading for General Gomez Park.

Drek! Thumbs slowed his advance, but still kept going. The idiot was heading straight out of Slammers' turf and directly into Latin Kings territory. Sworn blood enemies of Thumbs' gang, and rabid policlubbers. Racists with guns, not exactly the sort of folk he really wanted to be dealing with at the present moment. He already had Lone Star and some corp security goons after the little guy.

In a heartbeat, he made his decision. Okay, time to talk with the halfer and tell him about the bottom line. Amid a traffic jam, Thumbs briskly maneuvered his massive bulk between the slow-moving cars, roaring speedsters, and darting beach bikes, trying to reach the hurrying dwarf as his tiny form disappeared and re-appeared within the bustling crowd.