Impulse Control 104

Chapter 1 - New Wave Hookers

November, 2061

San Francisco

Year of the Comet

= = =

The speaker pad she'd had installed on the inside of her armor leaked slow, dulcet tones that made the whole interior of the suit vibrate ever so slightly. That had been an unexpected surprise the first time she'd turned it on, but Templeton had probably known it was going to have that effect. Must have been what he was smiling about when she got the helmet back.

"When I look out my window... Many sights to see."

He'd also promised that there would be no feedback, no routing of the music through her helmet's communication module, but that it would still pick up her voice. She'd asked Templeton how that was possible but he'd only smiled. Technomancer's secret.

"And when I look in my window... So many different people to be..."

But the vibration was getting to her after five hours in the armor and no action. It wasn't enough to distract her when she had something to focus on but when the minutes were long and the comm was quiet, she found her eyes slipping halfway closed, a little drool forming at the corner of her mouth. It was like a low-intensity, full-body massage gradually numbing her mind. When she unsealed this thing a flood was going to spill out of it. Her hair was stuck to her shoulders and neck with sweat even now.

"That it's strange... So strange... You got to pick up every stitch... You got to pick up every stitch..."

When she'd first asked for it, Templeton had told her that a neural implant would accomplish the same thing but with no risk of ever being discovered. She told him not a chance. Now she was paying the price for her aversion to cybernetics, and her addiction to neo-classical music.

"Mmm, must be the season of the witch... Must be the season of the witch, yeah! Must be the season of the witch!"

"Dawson," barked the comm. She shook her head, making the neck servos whirr audibly as she cleared her head. Sensing the incoming signal the speaker-pad suppressed its output so she could hear the comm clearly. Gaines' rough, impatient voice came through again over top of the next refrain.

"Dawson, eyes up! Ops reports movement sighted on some of the drones monitoring the approaches to the plaza."

Dawson took one deep breath to steady her voice and then touched the side of her helmet to transmit.

"Roger, Gaines." A tap to the helmet's console switched her from responding to personal area network broadcast, starting with a chime to get the attention of everyone else in the unit. All along the square the other Knight Errant heavies became suddenly alert, looking her way.

"We have company," Dawson relayed. "Eyes on those avenues, weapons hot. If those Protectorate goons show their faces here our orders are to shoot first and question the ghosts later."

"When I look over my shoulder, what do you think I see?"

"They wouldn't really try to take Silicon Valley, would they?" someone asked, probably Reyes. Supposedly neural readouts could tell you who was talking, but Dawson would never know first-hand.

"Some other cat looking over... his shoulder at me..."

"They would," Dawson spat into the comm, "They are. Keep your guns trained on your watchpoints. You see anything move that isn't wearing a KE uniform, give it all the free samples in your magazine."

"And he's strange... Sure is strange..."

Down the street Dawson was standing in front of, a light flashed behind a dark shape, probably some wage slave's antiquated car. She squeezed her left hand and the rotary gun attached to the arm of the suit began slowly spinning up.

"You got to pick up every stitch... You got to pick up every stitch, yeah..."

"Movement in my field," came a Vayger's silky voice. She was always cool in moments like this. Probably something to do with the implants and her missing essence.

"Beatniks are out to make it rich! Oh no, must be the season of the witch! Must be the season of the witch, yeah! Must be the season of the witch!"

Another small flash of light appeared, closer than the first. Dawson took a step forward and raised the gun. Her suit's visor scanned for thermal signatures in the shadows of the street but nothing came up.

"You got to pick up every stitch... Two rabbits runnin' in the ditch..."

But clearly visible up in the sky, like a second moon set between the dark evacuated skyscrapers around the plaza, was Halley's Comet. With something so big and bright it seemed impossible that the street ahead could be so dark. It made Dawson wish for the dingy, neon-lit alleyways of New York. But nobody wanted New York, not like they wanted San Fran.

"When I look out my window, what do you think I see?"

Something moved in the black and Dawson's eyes strained with an effort to make it out. Her right hand came up to tap the side of the visor and zoom in.

"And when I look in my window, so many different people to be..."

Her hand never made it all the way there. While she was still watching, while her eyes were right on it, Halley's comet...

Disappeared.

Dawson blinked, then blinked again. It had been there a moment before, now the night sky was clear. It was as if someone had just reached up and plucked it from among the stars.

"It's strange... Sure is strange..."

"Where did it go?" Dawson whispered incredulously.

"You got to pick up every stitch... You got to pick up every stitch... Two rabbits runnin' in the ditch..."

Instead of zooming in, she hit the comm broadcast. "Eyes on the sky. Anyone seeing what I'm seeing? That comet just... vanished!"

Her visor immediately blared red with a surprise heat signature. Not in the shape of a person, but in a fast-moving trail of exhaust. From a rocket.

"Oh, no... must be the season of the witch!"

"Captain!!"

Dawson's eyes shifted from the empty sky down to the incoming missile. It was halfway to her position before she had even realized what was going on.

"Must be the season of the witch, yeah!"

With her right hand Dawson reached out and caught the rocket by its midsection. There was no hope of arresting its progress but that wasn't her first instinct. All she did was hold it arm's length, let it spin her 180 degrees and then let go.

Instead of flying past her towards the face of the Ares California Free State headquarters, she'd marked it Return to Sender.

"Must be the season of the witch..."

The rocket had enough fuel to finish the round-trip and it did so into the side of the building near where it had been fired. A new thermal image in the shape of a stocky human sprang to life leaving cover in a mad scramble towards the street.

The explosion leveled the first floor of the structure and eleven seconds later the second floor decided its time had come to become the new first floor and the ninth floor decided it also wanted to become the first floor. The skyscraper satisfied both ambitions by falling over sideways, landing on the street, the protectorate rocketeer and the building across the street as well.

A tidal wave of dust, pulverized concrete shrapnel and shattered glass started rolling towards the plaza. Dawson turned away from the cloud of urban destruction and ran for some semblance of safety behind the foundation of the square's central fountain, hitting her comm broadcast on the way.

"Take cover!!"

Dawson ended up face-down on the once-clean tiles making up the ground of the Orchard plaza. She felt the wave of force from the falling buildings and realized that there must have been a domino effect with some other structures nearby. Someone would be happy about that; the insurance payoffs would be huge, and KE would just blame it on the protectorates.

But at the moment it was a major hindrance. Debris stacked up on top of Dawson as she lay on the ground; at least one piece of rebar bounced off the back of her leg and would have shattered it were it not for her armored suit reducing it to a severe bruising. Being a heavy for Knight Errant had its considerations.

Six minutes went by with no noise but the distant crumbling of buildings adjacent to the Orchard. The face of the HQ itself was reinforced glass but the visibility of the operatives inside would now be non-existent. The drones were probably down from the destruction. And then two things happened.

The first was footsteps crunching through the dust and detritus coating the square. Dawson laid motionless, preserving her accidental camouflage beside the fountain. She was under almost a foot of powdered construction material and at least one sheet of corrugated metal; none of her visual sensors had any data.

The second was that the comm crackled. Pickers spoke in a low, strained tone. "Drek... My damn leg's caught under an engine block... Can't get up..."

Someone else cut in before Pickers could even finish. "Shut it! Protectorates are movin' into the square!" Vayger, cool as ever. "Anyone have a visual?"

"I do." Reyes, probably. "Six. Lightly armored. One's carrying an EMP detonator."

"We can't let them get close to the Orchard!" Pickers again. "Someone draw their fire!"

"I lost my rifle in the dust," Vayger reported. Then after a moment of silence, "Anyone see Captain Dawson?"

"She was by the fountain," Reyes said softly. "Right where they're standing."

"Cap," Pickers whispered. "Imp... if you can hear us... they're on your far side now, backs to the foundation..."

"If you're down there..." Vayger prayed.

The speaker pad had somehow not come unstuck from the inside of Dawson's helmet. In the absence of any input on her part, it had finally shifted to a new track. New music streamed out of it and filled her armor with soft vibrations.

"It's the time... of the season... when love runs high..."

"They're going to wipe the computers from out here!" Pickers warned. "My implants are starting to... fuck up..."

"Drek!" Vayger cough over the comm. She had one artificial lung.

"Cap!" Reyes. "It's now or never!"

"In this time, give it to me easy... And let me try with pleasured hands..."

Dawson had no implants and her armor was EM shielded. Being captain had some considerations too.

"To take you in the sun to promised lands! To show you every one..."

With one shove of her arms, she forced herself out of the dust, squeezing her left hand into a fist that set her rotary barrel spinning so quickly it spat grit and shards of rock in every direction.

"It's the time of the sea-son for loving!"

Swinging around to what her visor told her was the east side of the square brought the protectorates into her field of view. They were only just now turning to regard her as dust still billowed off of her armored body: four men and two women, all decorated in the rising-sun colors of self-appointed "general" Saito. Her vindicator was in full spin when she pressed the trigger button with her thumb.

"What's your name?"

The first wide sweep she made took out two of them with multiple shots to the upper torso. The three remaining riflemen were fast enough to drop to the ground and avoid the hail of caseless she sent their way and their demolitionist took cover behind the bulky EM emitter.

"Who's your daddy?"

Dawson pointed the vindicator at it and squeezed the trigger again, filling it with twenty-one rounds that made it suitable only for grating cheese on a huge scale.

"He rich?"

The riflemen on the ground opened fire on her and ancient 7.62 rounds started ricocheting off Dawson's armored suit. One struck her visor and put the tiniest crack in it.

"Is he rich like me?"

She turned the still-spinning barrels on their position at a low angle and let loose. One was too slow to abandon it and she took five seconds of sustained fire that turned her into a red mist quickly lost in the dust.

"Has he taken... any time..."

One of the two remaining protectorate soldiers rushed at her with a long bayonet on the edge of his rifle, screaming something in Japanese. Without changing her stance Dawson rammed the rotating barrels into his midsection; the blade's edge scraped harmlessly off of her helmet, taking nothing with it but a little of the black paint.

"To show..."

She didn't need to fire: the barrels caught the soldier's uniform and the torque twisted him to the side immediately, planting him on the ground where his head skipped off a concrete slab and ended his movements.

"To show you what you need to live!"

The last protectorate soldier trained her rifle on the gap between Dawson's helmet and pauldron. A steady shot put one round into the kinetic mesh on the side of her throat and she felt it like a swift stab to an undefended neck.

"Tell it to me slowly!"

Wheezing in breath through the mask over the lower part of her face, Dawson turned her vindicator on the soldier and squeezed her thumb into the trigger. She dove for cover but Dawson tracked her movements and kept it trained on her. After four seconds of sustained fire the rounds caught up and cut the protectorate nearly in half.

"Tell you what..."

The demolitionist had crawled away from the shredded emitter. As Dawson turned the vindicator on him, he rolled up onto his back and threw up his hands in her direction. The visor flashed a warning: Technomancy Detected. She squeezed the trigger and the magazine on top of the vindicator immediately burst into flames. The bullets started flying out off of her side at random directions.

"I really want to know!"

Dawson used her right hand to decouple the rotary gun from her arm, and left it burning on the dust, moving across the distance towards the last protectorate. He had pulled the pin on an ancient fragmentation grenade and was holding it out in her direction.

She closed her armored fist over his, crushing his hand in place around the explosive, then spinning him over and pressing her foot down on his back.

A gout of dust billowed out from under his body, which then started to sink into the displaced debris.

"It's the time of the season for loving!"

In the heavy breathing that followed, Dawson noticed that the low vibration of her suit had been active the whole time, offset by the slight recoil of the vindicator being fired. Gaines spoke tentatively through the comm.

"What's going on out there, Dawson?"

Chest still heaving, Dawson put one hand to her sore neck where it felt like someone had stabbed her with a dull knife and put the other to her helmet's console. "Had some visitors," she admitted. Then she looked up again and queried Gaines.

"Where did that comet go?"

"Forget about the comet, Dawson! Are there any more protectorates in the perimeter?"

Vaguely annoyed, Dawson replied, "No, none in sight. I doubt they'll try that again. This fighting will be over soon if that's the best they can do."

Gaines grunted over the comm. "You sound almost disappointed about that, Imp."

"Me?" Dawson quipped back. "I could never get enough of this."

= = =

Fighting in San Francisco continued until 2068, when a combined force of the California Rangers and Ares Macrotechnology finally removed Keiji Saito from power after 7 consecutive years of continuous engagements.

= = =

June, 2078

San Francisco

= = =

"Did you call her?" Officer Brandt half-asked, half-insisted.

"Yeah, I fucking called her," sergeant Sokoth grumbled. He obviously intended to keep muttering about his reluctance in the matter so Brandt handed him the hot soykaf he'd brought. The ork looked at it for a moment, then accepted it with a grunt. Instead of barely-suppressed swears the slurping from the cup was what followed.

"So she should be here any minute then," Brandt observed. Sokoth grunted around the liquid he was swallowing and nodded. When he'd drained the entire container he crunched it in his gnarled fist and handed it back to Brandt, who promptly handed it off to another passing officer. No need to contaminate the crime scene anymore than it already was.

"This is the third time in as many weeks," the sergeant complained. "The regional manager is going to start asking what they pay us for when it's her that does all the work."

"They pay us to look stumped and get blamed by the media," Brandt reminded him. Sokoth grunted at that; he was a grunter, sergeant Sokoth.

"Well they don't have to pay me for that this time, I really am stumped. What's this look like to you, Brandt?" The ork gestured to the scene in front of them, which was still being cordoned off by Lone Star's personnel.

"Looks like someone robbed a small-time alchemy lab," Brandt said matter-of-factly. Small-time was perhaps a little harsh--a digital readout below the Applied Reactions sign on top of the building let anyone know the nuyen value of the insurance policy on the building and its contents, and it wasn't a cheap one. You could never tell just what that meant at a glance: if it was ensured for a huge amount that might mean there was something incredibly valuable being done there and you were risking the wrath of the parent company by doing a break-in... On the other hand it could just be a bluff, dissuading would-be burglars with that threat when really nothing was going on inside except routine alchemy subcontracting. The megacorps loved their shadow games.

"That's how it looks to me too!" Sokoth grumbled. "But if so, what did they take? They tore the building up but left all the metals in their storage tanks. Why rob a place but not take anything?"

"They also murdered the accountant working late," Brandt pointed out. Indeed, the man's body was still in the lobby, behind the desk. Sokoth had told no one to touch it 'until she gets here to look at the poor norm.'

"So they did," Sokoth said sourly. Brandt had worked with Sokoth for four years and they'd seen a lot of murders in San Francisco in that time. He could tell they never got easier for Sokoth to look at. Life only seemed to get more fragile as the guns became more dangerous and the tech more advanced.

"You always save the most uplifting cases for me," said a woman's voice. Brandt and Sokoth both turned to look behind them where a human woman in a faded black trench coat, long enough that the bottom was just a few inches above the ground, was standing several feet away. As usual she had her wide-brimmed hat angled slightly to one side, letting the cascade of her soft black hair spill down the sides of her head and onto her shoulders.

"Nice of you to join us," Sokoth grumbled. He was a grumbler, sergeant Sokoth.

"Nice of you to pay my fee," Dawson said back, levelly. That made Sokoth scowl. He was a scowler, sergeant Sokoth.

"Spare me the witty banter this time, Dawson," the sergeant said. "I've been on duty for 17 hours and I'm late for an appointment with my bed."

"Not as late as that accountant, I hear," Dawson commented, stepping her way past Sokoth and Brandt. The two shared a look and went in after her as she ducked beneath the Do Not Cross Under Penalty of Litigation tape someone had put over the doorway.

Dawson walked slowly through the lobby, looking around at the excessive devastation that had been wrought on the interior. Whoever had broken in hadn't been subtle about it: the cheap couches were torn up like they'd been looking for change between the wan cushions, the glass tables had been smashed as had the news-pads which once had rested on them, and of course the utilitarian but effective advertisement price readout screens for various services had been ripped off the wall, wiring and all.

Dawson stopped once she was past the desk, looking down at where the accountant had been left, but she only lingered for several seconds before proceeding through the propped-open double doors into the lab proper, where the destruction was even more extensive. They'd even smashed several of the wall-lights, making odd shadows play on the walls as the woman's body occluded them.