"What?" Jack exclaimed, turning to look at Max and Joe. Max stood against the wall between the window and the door, his Remington in his hand. Joe crouched in the corner on the opposite side of the window, against the side wall, his Ruger lying across his knees.

"Stay low, if possible," Max advised.

I crouched and moved over by Max, peering between the edge of the window and the curtain. Sure enough, there were six men out there, who were all watching our room intently. They were definitely corp samurai. They had the cheap Japanese suits, the shades, the lethal hardware... everything.

One, evidently seeing the curtain move, raised his weapon. I jerked my head back. The window shattered, dust flew from the curtain, and bullet holes appeared stitched in the sheetrock of the back wall. Above the sound of falling glass, I could barely hear the "whip whip whip" of silenced gunfire.

"Whew," I breathed, when the shooting had stopped. "Trigger- happy little SOBs, aren't they?"

"We need to leave before it occurs to them to toss a grenade through that window," Max said.

"They won't use a grenade," Jack contradicted, peering up from where she lay on the floor. "They want me alive."

"There's sech a thing as a tear gas grenade," Joe pointed out.

"You can't take them, Max?" Jack asked.

Max shook his head. "I'm fast, but I'm not that fast. These aren't the Black Nagas we're facing this time. From the equipment they're carrying, I'd say they're most certainly corporate enforcers of some sort. At least a few of them probably have nerve wires equal to or better than mine."

"We can't fight 'em," Joe said. "We've just gotta get t' th' Tank somehow and get outta here."

I had an idea. "We don't have to get to the Tank," I asserted. "She can come to us. Joe, you got her remote rig on you?"

Joe looked at me for a moment, then grinned. "Bright boy," he said. He patted pockets on his coveralls, then reached in one and pulled out a black box. Out of another pocket came some cables and a smaller unit, which he attached to the first.

"You chummers inside," a voice came from outside, "we don't want you. Send out the girl and you can go!"

We didn't answer. Joe continued setting up his RC rig.

"Jacqueline, all we want to do is talk to you. We won't hurt you," another of the samurai outside added.

"I hate being called Jacqueline," Jack muttered, then shouted so the enforcers outside could hear, "What assurance can you give me of that?"

Joe finished setting up his rig and shoved the jack into his temple. I heard the sound of a big diesel starting up outside. Over it came the voice of one of the samurai. "One or more of your friends can come with you. They can make sure you're okay."

"Get back away from the wall," Joe said, backing towards the bed with his eyes closed and a look of intense concentration on his face.

"Joe, what are you doing?" I asked, uneasily, as Max and I moved to join Jack in the middle of the floor.

A sharp squeal of tires came from outside, accompanied by the roar of the engine, and I heard what was presumably the samurai shouting various impolite things in consternation. Tires squealed again, this time louder, and, a moment later, the front wall of the room shattered like a rotten log as the Tank's back bumper crashed through the cheap sheetrock and reconstituted fiberboard. She came to a stop with her back tires on the rug and her back doors swinging open invitingly.

Joe was the first one to move, stripping his RC jacks off and diving into his truck's cargo bay. Jack and I shook off our surprise and followed. Max waited to make sure we made it over into the back seat before he crowded himself into the cargo bay. Even as he was pulling the rear doors closed behind him, Joe had tumbled into the front seat, slammed his rigger jack home without waiting to get his body pointed in the right direction, and had begun to accelerate.

The samurai scrambled out of the way (for the second time, presumably, to judge by the noises I'd heard) as the Suburban lunged in their direction. We passed them, and I ducked automatically as they re-formed behind us and opened up with their machine pistols in our direction. I heard one of them yelling "The tires! The tires!" over the sound of bullets ricocheting like lethal hail off the Tank's armor.

Joe, evidently heard them too, for he snorted, "Good luck, chummers. They're solid rubber."

As we swerved out of the motel parking lot and onto the roadway, almost flattening a little Mitsubishi econobox, I dared to poke my head up again, deciding it was safe to trust in the Tank's thick hide, and saw that the samurai had stopped firing and were piling into a pair of older-model Americars, one green and one brown - the sort of cars that no one actually drives except for undercover cops and corporate hitmen.

"This would be the obligatory car chase, I guess," Jack observed.

"Somehow, I don't feel the obligation," Max observed. "Tom, if you'll hand me my Enfield and a magazine of armor-piercers, I'll see what I can do to cut this short."

I rummaged through the ammo box and found a drum magazine full of armor-piercing slugs while Jack undid the wingnuts that held Max's AS-7 on the gunrack. Jack handed it to me; I slapped the magazine home and handed it to Max. He twisted himself around to take it, then said, "Joe, do you think you could open a back window for me?"

Joe obliged. In the meantime, the two Americars had come close up behind us, and the nearer of the two had a samurai hanging out the window, attempting to get a clear shot at the Tank. I don't know what he thought he was going to shoot at - they'd already proven that their little 5mm machine pistols couldn't penetrate.

Max leveled his Enfield out the window. When the samurai saw its gaping barrel pointed in their direction, they ducked under the dashboard, the driver steering by peering over with one eye.

Max wasn't shooting at them, though. He simply pointed the Enfield at the hood of the brown Ford and held the trigger down for a few seconds. When he let up, there were fat blue sparks flying from the motors on both the Americar's front wheels and flames billowing out from under the hood, shooting through the dozen 12-gauge holes punched in it.

Max drew his weapon back in as the brown Americar slid to a halt, the green one barely swerving in time to miss it. Max blew smoke from the barrel of his Enfield and said, "It can be nice, sometimes, having the firepower to penetrate an engine block."

The green Ford continued to follow us, but from prudently outside easy shotgun range, and, more often than not, with another car or two screening them from Max's gun. We continued to weave through traffic. I hoped Joe was as good at handling the Tank as I thought he was. Suddenly, the remaining Americar swerved and accelerated around the Chrysler-Nissan it had been using for cover and began rapidly closing with us. One of the samurai leaned out the passenger side window with some sort of two-handed piece. I saw the muzzle flash, then heard the sound of a bullet far too close to me, closely followed by the crack of a rifle. There was a neat round hole in the clear armor plastic of one of the Tank's back windows.

"Stole my trick," Max observed, calmly. "Joe, that one penetrated."

We hit a section of thicker traffic, and both we and the Ford were forced to weave sharply to avoid the other cars. The samurai hanging out the window was too busy holding on to be able to take a second shot. Then Joe took the next turn, a sharp right. I was thrown against the door and Jack was thrown against me as we skidded through the turn. For a moment, Jack and I were nose to nose, close enough that I could feel her breath on my face.

Then she grinned and said, "We've got to stop meeting this way." With those words, she pushed herself lightly away, sliding back over into her seat. I blinked at her, then turned to see if the Americar had made the turn.

It had. The samurai with the rifle leaned out the window again and squeezed the trigger. I saw the muzzle flash and heard the rifle crack, but didn't see or hear any impact. Evidently a clean miss, then. Max stuck his Enfield out the window again and fired a couple of bursts in the direction of the green Ford. Their windshield starred, then shattered, but they kept coming.

Max shook his head. "They have a better accurate range than I do. I was aiming for their power plant."

We barreled down a long hill, barely slowing as we went through cross traffic - Joe pulled a skid that slid the back end of the vehicle out of the way of an oncoming car. At the same moment, I heard another gunshot over the sound of protesting rubber, and a hole appeared in the headrest of the driver's seat, directly in front of me. I turned and saw the entry hole the bullet had made in the Tank's rear side window, mentally traced the line it must have followed, and shuddered at how near it had come to both Jack and I, then realized that if Joe hadn't skidded when he had, it would have caught Max full in the chest. I shuddered again.

Max squeezed off another burst from his Enfield, then said, "Joe, I'd appreciate it if you could somehow evade or outrun these gentlemen."

"I can't go any faster in this fraggin' traffic," Joe growled. "But if... yup, here we are..."

We'd been traveling through an older part of town, with close-set twentieth century buildings. Now we emerged from them into a forest of pillars beneath a reinforced concrete ceiling, fully sixteen lanes wide. In the wrong lane, Joe barreled past the row of vehicles waiting at the end of the road for the light to turn and allow them onto the on ramp. Horns blared at us as Joe took the corner at around seventy and accelerated up the ramp. The Americar followed, the samurai in the passenger seat still trying to draw a bead on us with his rifle.

We came off the top of the exit ramp at about 150, cutting across four lanes of traffic as Joe instructed us, "Keep yer heads down fer a minute. I'm jest gonna outrun 'em."

"You can outrun them with this?" Jack asked, as she obediently kept her head down.

Joe chuckled mirthlessly. "Th' Tank's faster'n she looks. Th' big ol' turbodiesel I put in her cranks out better'n seven hundred horsepower. Takes a little bit to get up t'speed, but once she does, there's not much catchin' her."

I peered over Joe's seat, noting that the speedometer needle was pointing at 200 kph - the top end of the scale, where a peg prevented it from going any further. I looked back. The Americar was a green blotch half a kilometer back, and the gap was rapidly growing.

"Looks like we're clear," I observed. "What're we going to do now?"

Jack raised her head, checking to see that the pursuing vehicle was indeed far behind us before saying, "We're going to have to find somewhere where we can stop and check out that download, I guess."

"Somewhere we can hide th' Tank," Joe put in. "They'll be on th' lookout fer her now."

"Next time, they'll bring weaponry capable of punching through her armor like tinfoil," Max added. "The Tank is well defended for a civilian vehicle, but that won't help much against military grade weaponry. An AK-97, say. Or even a good heavy pistol. Anything heavier than those little silenced popguns they had."

"So we need a place where we can hang out for a while to check out my file, and it also has to be a place where we can hide the Tank," I summarized. "Jack, you're more familiar with this area than we are. Do you know anywhere?"

She shook her head, then stopped, reconsidered, and answered, slowly, "Actually, I might." She thought for a minute more, then said, "Joe, can you get us over into Troy? Over near Rensselaer? I think I can find the place from there."

"Can do. I got RPI on th' automap," Joe replied.

Joe put us in front of Rensselaer's chainlink and barbed- wire front gate in short order - he didn't let the Tank's speed drop until we left the interstate, then drove the city streets with his usual style. As a result, by the time we reached Rensselaer, we were quite sure we were no longer being followed. There were several choppers in the air, but Max had been keeping an eye on them, and none of them seemed to have a particular interest in us.

From there, Jack took over guiding us. The part of town RPI was located in wasn't particularly nice these days, and the area Jack guided us into was even worse. The streets were narrow and dirty, the buildings were old and run-down, missing windows and even, in some cases, pieces of walls. There were people loitering on the sidewalks and in the street, and Joe had drive slowly and carefully to avoid people who didn't feel like getting out of the way or things that couldn't. Most of the few other vehicles we saw were parked by the side of the road with wheels, windshields, and other parts missing. A few had been stripped down to bare frames. We passed one old Sri Lankan sedan which had been set on fire. A half-dozen ganger types stood around idly watching it burn.

I was beginning to wonder if Jack really knew where we were going when she said, "Hmm... I thought we were in the right place. Try the next block."

Joe slowly circled the block. As we came up the next street, Jack announced, "There it is."

My gaze followed her pointing finger to a narrow, three- story brick building. It was evidently a fire station or garage of some sort, because there was a garage door in the front. Had been a fire station or garage, I should say, because it was obvious from the cardboard covering the windows in the garage door and the simply missing windows upstairs that it was no longer kept up. Besides, there was an abandoned sink lying upside-down on the sidewalk right in front of the garage door, effectively blocking vehicles from going in or out.

Joe pulled to a halt in front of the building. Jack opened her door and started to slide out of the Suburban, saying, "I'll go see if Sammy'll let us hide here." Then she paused and added, "Tom, why don't you come with me."

I shrugged and climbed out of the Tank. As I climbed down, a twinge in my side reminded me that I hadn't changed the derm on my wounds that day. Jack circled around the Tank and joined me, and together we walked up to the dilapidated building. Jack reached out a hand and banged on the door. When there was no response, she banged again, harder. After we'd waited a little longer and still gotten no response, Jack muttered, "I hope Sammy hasn't gone and fraggin' moved out."

"If there's no one living here anymore, maybe we can just kinda commandeer the place," I suggested.

Jack shook her head. "This isn't the kind of neighborhood where you want to just move in on the assumption that a building's abandoned. Somebody'll come by and bump you off for edging in on their territory."

Scant seconds after she finished speaking, the door creaked open, revealing a tall elf in tattered, faded jeans and a sleeveless white t-shirt. His white hair was cut unevenly and stuck out in all directions, and his silver eyes were bloodshot. He had a Streetline Special in his right hand.

"Whaddya..." he began, in an irritated tone, then broke off as he recognized my companion. "Jack? What're you doin' here?" he demanded.

"I ran into some trouble, and I need some help," she replied, evenly.

"Worth getting me up for at nine in the fraggin' morning?" the elf - Sammy, I presumed - asked, as he tucked his little pistol into his waistband. "This isn't like that other time..."

"Credit me with some sense," Jack retorted, stiffly. "I'm aware that you didn't consider that to be as important as I did, but..."

I hoped that they knew what they were talking about, because I certainly didn't. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable standing around while Jack argued with someone who was apparently an old acquaintance.

"Never mind that now," Sammy said, dismissing the subject with a wave of his hand. "Old news. Who's this," he asked, indicating me, "and whattaya want me to do?"

"I'm Tom Cameron," I introduced myself.

"I'm Sammy," he replied. "My friends call me 'Slammer'."

"When it comes to street handles," I observed, "it's not what your friends call you that counts. It's what your enemies call you."

"So what do your enemies call you?" Sammy asked.

I grinned and replied, "Broadsword."

"Well, pleased to meetcha, Broadsword," Sammy said, sticking his hand out.

I shook his hand; he attempted to crush mine. So I crushed back. He was almost certainly stronger than I - he had visible muscles rippling in his arms, which is unusual for an elf, and elves tend to be stronger than proportionately built humans. On the other hand, I had a swordsman's grip strength, so I held my own.

"Same here," I replied, though I wasn't particularly pleased to meet him, and I suspected he felt the same way about me. He rubbed me the wrong way. But Jack said he could help us, and I chose to believe her.

Sammy turned back to Jack. "So whattaya need?" he asked again.

"We've got a vehicle we need to hide for a day or two," Jack replied. "You're the only person I know who's got a garage."

Sammy considered the Tank with new interest. "That the vehicle?" he asked. Jack nodded. "Is it hot?"

"Depends what you mean by 'hot'," Jack replied. "It's not stolen." She paused, then glared at him through narrowed eyes. "Don't you go getting any ideas, either."

"Okay, okay," Sammy responded, "you can use my place. You'll hafta help clear some furniture out of the way, though, and I'm not sure the big door still opens."

"That's okay. I think we can deal with that," Jack told him, cheerfully. She turned back to the Tank and called, "Hey, Max, come help us move some furniture," beckoning him with a broad gesture. Then she turned to me and said, "Tom, grab that sink, wouldja?"

I nodded and picked the sink up, tossing it out of the way. It made a satisfying noise when it hit the sidewalk. I turned back in time to catch Max introducing himself to Sammy.

"Maxwell Xavier Orson-Jones, at your service," he said, with a slight bow, extending a massive paw to be shaken.

"Uh, yeah," Sammy observed. "I'm... uh... Sammy." He shook Max's hand, despite the fact that his whole hand could only go around Max's first two fingers. I wondered if he'd tried that crushing grip deal on Max, and, if so, if Max had noticed. I figured Sammy probably hadn't. Some of the macho swagger'd gone out of his attitude when he saw Max. Even a polite and well- behaved troll like Max can one-up just about anyone in the macho department, I guess.

"Well, come on in, get this drek moved, if you're gonna," Sammy invited, turning and ducking back into the building. Max followed. He had to stoop and turn sideways to get through the narrow doorway. While he was holding up traffic, I caught up with Jack.

"How do you know this guy?" I asked.

Jack hesitated for a moment, then told me, "You don't wanna know."

"But..." I began.

"Trust me, you don't," she assured me, and turned and slipped into the building. I hesitated for a moment outside before following.

The building was almost as dilapidated on the inside as it was on the outside. Ratty furniture, probably salvaged from the trash somewhere, was scattered across the bare concrete floor. There was a 'com; it was half pulled out from the wall, and cabling hung out of it. It was still working, though.

Sammy plopped himself down in a tattered swivel chair where he could watch the 'com and propped his battered combat boots up on top of a noisily laboring portable fridge. His feet displaced some of the empty beer cans that sat on top; one tipped off and fell to the floor with a echoing clatter.

Max made short work of the furniture moving. He scooped up a battered love seat under one arm and an equally tormented easy chair under the other, moved them back to make room for the Tank, and set them back down neatly.

Jack was tugging on the big garage door, attempting to get it to open. When I joined her, she said, "I think I see the problem. One of the rails is twisted, up just before it starts to curve." I looked up and agreed with her assessment. "Maybe we could twist it back?" she pondered. "Sammy? You got a set of pliers around here?"

"There's an easier way," I told her. "Max! Think you could straighten that for us?" I pointed.

Max lumbered over, examined the rail for a minute, then wrapped a hand around it on either side of the bend and twisted. He examined his handiwork for a moment, then smoothed the wrinkles out of the metal with his fingers. Jack grabbed the garage door again and heaved on it. It rolled up, with only a minor hitch as it passed Max's repair, and opened.

Joe, still idling across the street, saw the door go up, and turned the Tank towards us. He rolled slowly into the garage, pulling to precise halt with the ramplate about ten centimeters from the spot where Max had set the love seat. There was another ten centimeters of clearance between the back bumper and the door after Jack had rolled it shut. Joe shut the big diesel down and hopped out.

"No choppers, no ground traffic," he informed us. "'Less they got us on a spysat before we got under cover, we're clear."

"Tracking a vehicle on surveillance satellite is difficult," Max remarked, "especially through sprawl. The buildings provide too much cover against anything but an extremely high angle shot."

"Okay," I observed, "then we're clear." I glanced over at Jack. "We going to go over our data here?"

"I don't wanna leave th' Tank," Joe put in.

"Good thinking, I'd say. Sammy," Jack raised her voice slightly, with a pointed glance in Sammy's direction, "has been known to wander off with things that weren't his."

Sammy turned his attention from the telecom back to us. "Aww, Christ, Jack," he complained, "you bringin' that drek up again? I thought you'd had your revenge for that already."

"That was my revenge for your being an asshole," Jack told him. "I figure you still owe me for that necklace."

"Yeah, well, I'm payin' you back, aren't I? I'm lettin' you use my place."

"Yeah," Jack admitted, "but that doesn't mean I have to be fraggin' ecstatic about it."

Sammy snorted, then swiveled to look at the Suburban. "Dunno where I'd fence a fraggin' truck, anyways," he said, then turned back to the 'com.

"The data?" I prompted Jack.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, right," she answered, then stopped and thought for a moment. "If we hook into Sammy's 'com, odds are we'll get traced back again... not to mention interrupting Sammy's fraggin' basketball game."

"So we are going to have to go somewhere else, then," I observed, "to scrounge materials if nothing else."

"No," Jack replied, slightly surprised, "we can just use that little display unit you built."

"Umm... well, yeah, we could," I answered, hesitantly, "if it wasn't still at Joe's."

"Oh," Jack replied. "That is a problem." We both considered the matter. Finally, Jack said, "Joe, the Tank's autopilot has a display screen, doesn't it?"

Joe turned back to us from where he'd apparently been examining the architecture. "What're you plannin' on doin' t' my Tank?" he demanded, suspiciously.

"Not much," Jack assured him. "We just need the display screen so we can use the image Tom grabbed without getting traced back through the Grid."

Joe didn't look convinced, and turned his questioning gaze on me.

"It'll work, I think," I told him, turning the idea over in my mind, and beginning to become enthused about it. "We won't have to do much hardware modification, just hook in an adapter that we can plug my deck into. I think I can convince my deck to feed the data out in a format the autopilot's map reader can handle..."

"Right, right, you know what yer talkin' about," Joe interrupted, waving off my technical description. He still seemed somewhat dubious about the idea, though. "Go ahead... but I'll be watchin' what ya do... and you damn well better be able t'put it back t'gether when yer done."

"Don't worry," I reassured him. "I try to make it a habit not to do anything I can't undo."

"Oh?" Joe inquired. "That why we're in Albany, hidin' from corp hitmen, insteada back home, watchin' th' 'com?"

"Hey, that's my fault," Jack objected, from her position by the Tank, just opening her passenger door. "He's trying to help me fix something I did."

"Mebbe it's you I shouldn't let near my Tank, then," Joe observed. I followed him over to the Tank, and slid into the driver's seat, twisting myself around where I could get a good look at the central console where the autopilot display was located. Joe climbed into the back, where he could peer over the seat backs and watch what Jack and I were doing.

I dug Joe's electronics kit out of my pocket. Jack produced one of her own from one of her jacket pockets. Between us, we made short work of the screws holding the autopilot into the dashboard. I lifted it gently out and balanced it on the transmission hump. I wasn't entirely sure of the exact purpose of quite a lot of the circuitry, because the screen was a bulky, old-fashioned vacuum-tube type instead of one of the more compact and advanced LCD screens I was used to. The video adapter interface was familiar, though, and that was the point we needed to hook in at.

"Okay," I said to Jack. "I think all we need is an STJ-400 to... um... whatever-that-is adapter, and we can hook this thing up. What do you call that kind of jack, anyway?"

"I usually call them, 'you know, those round ones, with the pins?'" Jack replied, accompanying her words with appropriate hand gestures. "Dunno what the ISO number for 'em might be. The question is, do you have one?"

"I have two, actually," I answered, and, after a pause, added, "back in my dorm room. I don't have any of my gadgets and drek with me, unfortunately. How about you?"

Jack quickly went through her pockets, occasionally pulling out some random bit of stuff to check it. Some of the stuff I have to assume was magical, because I couldn't see any other reason for Jack to be carrying it. Either that or she had even stranger tastes in the random junk she collected than I did.

"Nope," she told me, when she was finished.

"'Scuse me," Joe interjected. "This what you need?" He was holding up a half-meter cable with an STJ-400 on one end, and a whatever-that-is on the other.

"Perfect!" Jack exclaimed.

"It'll certainly do," I added. "Where'd you get it?"

"Part of the RC rig," Joe replied.

Jack detached the display adapter from the autopilot proper, and I plugged Joe's cable into it. The other end I hooked into my deck and powered the deck up. Nothing happened.

"Nothing happened," I said.

"Um..." Jack said, looking at the screen, then looked up at me. "Power would be nice," she pointed out, dryly.

"Oh. Right. I'm an idiot," I said. "Joe, can we power this up without running the engine?"

"Yup," he replied. "Push th' ignition switch up insteada down. Just, if yer gonna use it fer more'n three'r four hours, you'll hafta run the engine fer a while or it'll run down th' battery."

I pushed the ignition switch up, and the dash displays lit. The autopilot screen came alive with static.

"Hmm." I said, looking at it, then ran my fingers over the buttons on the side of my deck, programming it blind, manually. The static cleared and the system diagram I'd snagged from CeNYDEx came up on the screen.

"Cool," Jack murmured, taking over manipulation of the diagram using the pan and zoom controls on the autopilot unit. "You see anything here you recognize?"

"Well," I replied, "the basic layout seems to match the diagram I got from Nighthawk. That means that this," I pointed, "must be the maintainence access we went in... and this fork here is the branch in the trunk lines where the corp decker came after us the first time."

"Right... let's see, the CPU is up here." She zoomed in on it. "I'm not sure how we got there, though."

"My deck's command log should've recorded it," I began, "if it's really important..."

Jack was panning back towards the fork, trying to trace our route. In running the unfamiliar controls, she brushed a wrong button and the data changed. Another display layer was laid over the first, showing the bandwidths on all of the datalines and processing speeds for the nodes. We both looked at it for a moment, then Jack exclaimed, "Hey, this thing's multi-layered." She quickly began adding in the other layers, looking to see what it wasn't showing us. She flipped through a couple more layers, showing absolute traffic density and percentage of capability in use, then reached one that puzzled both of us for a minute. Then, "Process IDs! It's got all the process IDs! Man, the thing must've just dumped its guts for you."

"No wonder it took it so long," I observed.

"We can locate all the ice using the process IDs," Jack added. "See, there's that troll-thing, and that's the process that was building this file for you, and that bundle there must be your persona and utility programs."

"Hmm... yeah," I responded, poking at the autopilot controls myself. After a little trial-and-error, I got the traffic density and usage layers hidden again, then zoomed in on the CPU and the process ID for the troll-ice we'd fought there. More data on the troll-process appeared as I zoomed in... interrupts hooked, addresses, and so on. "Not just locate them," I corrected. "With this information, it'd be dead easy to crash 'em."

"Yeah, right," Jack agreed, grinning broadly. "We could specially tailor our attack programs to hit each ice where it'd damage it the most."

"Mmm..." I agreed, absently, while my brain flipped through other possibilities in turbo mode. "How are you at writing virus code?" I asked.

"Not my specialty," she admitted. "But I've done it before, of course. Why? You thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Yeah," I said. "Let's write us a specially tailored virus... a nice little worm specifically designed to blow through these defenses," I tapped the screen, "and just ride it in, grab what we want, and jack out."

"Great," Jack observed. "All we need to do is figure out what we want, and where they're keeping it, then."

"Yeah, that and write the worm," I agreed. "First things first. If this was your system, and you were a piece of top secret data, where would you hide?"

"Somewhere in this wing," Jack decided. She pointed at the other two. "This one's all stuff for handling the Grid hookup, and this one looks like building security. All the corporate stuff must be over here."

Joe shook his head and climbed out of the Tank, wandering off. Jack and I put our heads together (both figuratively and literally... it was a small screen and hard to see from anywhere but directly in front of it), trying to locate the datastores we wanted. We studied the display, checking node labels, security levels, and access patterns of each of the hundreds of nodes in the corporate wing of the system.

It was Jack who finally found it. "Hey, Tom, look at this one," she said, drawing my attention to one node in particular. "Special Ops Archives."

I looked. It was a datastore that seemed to be associated with a pair of subprocessors that were isolated from the main body of the system. The lone dataline into the subprocessors was defended by heavy access ice, which in turn was linked to a pair of processes which showed the unmistakable configurations of lethal black ice, and were set to activate if the access ice was tampered with. The subprocessors supported a variety of other processes, several of which were search programs. By comparing the addresses they were accessing with the simultaneous profile of my own persona program taken by the CPU, I was able to identify one of the search programs as the one tracking me.

"That looks like our baby," I agreed, then added, thoughtfully, "There's something odd about it..."

Jack nodded and bit her lip, studying the little cluster of nodes. Then she exclaimed, "I know. There's no processes running in that datastore. No ice, though they've got to have stuff in there they want defended, no programs accessing the data, not even a process to handle imaging requests."

"You're right... hmm..." I agreed.

Jack began flipping through other layers, examining everything we had on the three nodes.

"Traffic patterns are weird, too," I noted.

"Yeah," Jack replied. "There's all those long stretches of zero usage, followed by jagged peaks... hmm..." She tapped the image of one of the SPUs. "Tom," she asked, "what's that process do?"

I puzzled over it for a minute, then said, "It queries the datastore about something. Nothing in particular, it seems. Just a query to see if it's out there..." I trailed off, trying to think of a reason why anyone would send that sort of query to a datastore. It's not like datastores go down on a regular basis. They're about as simple devices as nodes can get, little more than an array of optical chips, and, at the same time, they have layers of redundancy built into them, often double or triple redundancy or better in the case of the big corps' stores. The big rule in the decker world is that the data has to be protected, or your system isn't worth anything.

"I think..." Jack began hesitantly, but her voice firmed as she continued to speak, "I think they take the datastore off-line periodically."

"Of course," I responded, seeing the light. "Physically dismounting the bank... you can't crack a system that's not hooked up." Talk about keeping the data safe...

"Security," Jack affirmed. "Keep it off-line when it's not in use. I bet there's a physical switch somewhere that's gotta be flipped by hand to bring the store up."

I nodded. It made sense. No point in going to the trouble of dismounting the datastore to keep it safe from intruding deckers if those deckers could remount it with a command from within the system. "We'd better check the security wing anyway," I advised. "If there's a virtual switch, that's where it would be, I think, since it's not here in the Special Ops section."

We got to it. We were still flipping through the security section, examining anything that looked like we might be able to have a remote suspicion that it might harbor a control process for the Special Ops datastore, when Joe interrupted us.

He stuck his head in through the driver's door of the Tank and asked, "Eithera ya intrested in lunch?"

I blinked and asked, "Lunch? What time is it?"

Jack started to dig out her pocketwatch, but Joe forestalled her by answering, "Preddinear noon. You two've been at this fer almost three hours. Max's gone out fer pizza. Occured to us that none of us've eaten since five last night."

"Was it really that recently?" I asked. "It seems like longer."

Jack grinned. "We've traveled 200 kilometers, been shot at twice, broken into one house, one major computer system, and been involved in a car chase since then. I guess it just seems longer 'cause we've been keeping busy."

"Three times," Joe corrected.

"Hmm?" Jack inquired.

"Three times," Joe repeated. "We've been shot at three times."

"Oh. So we have," Jack replied. "That first go-round with the Nagas'd slipped my mind." She slid out of the Tank, stretched, and looked around the room. "Max go by himself?" she asked, her brow furrowing with concern. "This isn't the best neighborhood to be wandering around by yourself, even in the daytime."

Joe chuckled. "He's wearin' his body armor an' packin' a shotgun. An' even if he wasn't, he's big enough t' bench-press th' Tank, here." He gave the Suburban an affectionate slap on the fender. "He won't have any trouble."

"There are advantages to being a troll," I agreed. I extricated myself from the Tank's front seat, groaning as a sharp stab of pain shot through my side from my rib injury, which had stiffened during the three hours I'd spent sitting in the Tank, leaning over at an odd angle. I remembered, also, that I hadn't yet replaced the derm that was supposed to suppress the pain. "For one thing, they don't break as easily as us flimsy humans," I added, gingerly working some of the stiffness out of my side.

"You humans," Jack corrected, coming around to my side of the Tank. "Let me see those wounds of yours."

I drew my t-shirt up to reveal my bandaged ribs. Jack examined me briefly, then said, "Well, I know enough first aid to know that dressing needs to be changed. Joe, is there a first aid kit in the Tank?"

The dwarf nodded and said, "Lemme get it." He dug under the front seat and pulled out the kit, handing it to Jack. Jack set it down on the hood of the Tank and began rummaging through it.

"Ah, here we go," she muttered, then turned back to me and began unwinding my bandage.

"Uh... you really don't need to do that," I protested, somewhat embarrassed at the attention.

Jack rolled her eyes at me in exasperation. "The only reason you got hurt is 'cause you were standing between me and a machine gun. Changing your bandages for you's the least I can do."

"Well, I didn't exactly throw myself into the path of the bullets on purpose," I objected. "Ow!" I added, as Jack accidentally bumped my cracked rib with the back of her hand hard enough to send a spike of pain shooting through my side.

She shot me an apologetic glance and replied, "No, you were just trying to catch me so I wouldn't crack my head on the curb when I fell. And you got shot for your trouble. Sounds admirable enough to me."

She finished undoing the bandages and began gently pulling at the pad over the shallow gouge across my left side. I winced at the sharp sting as she pulled it free. I know they make dressings that don't stick to dried blood - I'd gotten one the one previous time I'd gotten shot. Of course, that was in a real hospital, and the corp health care'd still been paying my family's bills.

"Nasty," Jack observed. "Looks like it's healing okay, though."

I looked down at my side and grimaced. The skin around my injury had the puffy, pale, damp look of flesh that hasn't been getting enough air, and, in short, looked rather terrible. "How can you tell?" I asked Jack.

She grinned up at me. "I'm a mage. I can see your aura. It's healing." She contemplated the wound again. "It probably should be cleaned, but I wouldn't even trust the water around here for drinking, to say nothing about putting it on an open wound." She turned her attention to the injury on my other side. "You got more of these derms?" she asked.

"Uh... yeah, in my coat pocket," I affirmed. "Wherever that is."

"I think I saw it in the back of the Tank," Jack replied, and headed off to find it. She was right... once she mentioned it, I remembered taking it off, along with my sword, and tossing it in the back seat.

I was left standing there, holding the fabric of my shirt up away from the tender raw flesh of the bullet score. I looked up to see Sammy staring at me. The expression on his face wasn't pleasant. When my gaze met his, he turned away, turning his attention back to the telecom. He radiated sullen displeasure. I wondered what he had to be annoyed at me about. It occurred to me then that he might be jealous of the attention Jack was giving me. With that thought, the last piece fell into place, and I realized what the connection between Jack and Sammy was. After a little more thought, I decided that she'd dumped him, and he wasn't entirely happy about it. He'd probably agreed to let us use his place to show her that she still needed him, and was annoyed that all she really needed from him was parking space.

It was around then that I began to wonder if maybe there was good reason for him to be jealous of the attention Jack was paying me. My heart lifted with the thought, and I pushed it back down, telling myself it was too good to be true. The idea continued to gnaw at the back of my mind anyway.

Jack returned with the zip-lock of derms. She peeled the old one off and smoothed a new one down in its place. A cool feeling slid through my side, displacing the pain. I hadn't realized how constant and widespread the dull ache in my side had been until it was suddenly gone. As I sighed in relief, Jack pressed a new dressing over my bullet scar and began to wind the gauze around me again.

Just as she was finishing, the door thumped open and Max entered, balancing a stack of pizza boxes on one broad palm. The realization that I was gripping a handful of t-shirt where my sword hilt should have been, and the realization that we were feeling maybe a wee bit paranoid came simultaneously. Jack shot an amused glance my direction as she noticed my move. I glanced pointedly back at her right hand, which had dropped to her wand, and she had the grace to blush.

Max stopped and looked around the room. "Ah, it's a pleasure to see you again, too, my dear friends," he observed.

"Sorry. Y' startled us," Joe replied, setting his shotgun down and leaving it leaning against the Tank's fender.

"Knock, next time," Sammy complained, though he was the only person in the room that hadn't jumped when Max opened the door.

Max ignored him, bringing the pizzas over and spreading the boxes out on the hood of the Tank. "I bought two pepperoni, a cheese, and a pineapple," he told us.

"Oh, cool. I love pineapple pizza," Jack exclaimed. I stifled a chuckle. Max gets pineapple pizza because usually no one else will eat it, ensuring that he'll get at least one whole pizza to himself. (It takes a lot of pizza to keep a troll Max's size going.)

We all dug into the pizza, including Sammy, who grabbed three slices of pepperoni, then went back to his chair. He dug a beer out of his fridge and went back to watching the 'com. He didn't offer us anything to drink. I shrugged and sat down on the love seat in front of the Tank. Jack grabbed her piece of pizza and executed a graceful roll over the back of the love seat, flopping down beside me without losing a single bit of pineapple off her pizza. Sammy shot a resentful glance our way, then went back to watching his 'com. Max settled down in the easy chair with three pieces of pineapple cradled in his palm, and Joe perched on the hood of the Tank, behind Jack and I.

After Max had swallowed his first piece of pizza, he addressed Jack and I. "You two spent quite a while in the Tank. Did you discover anything worthwhile?"

I nodded. "Yeah. We've found some interesting stuff. I think we've almost got a plan."

"And you know how well we do at sticking to those," Jack added, with a grin.

Max grinned back through his tusks. "And what is this alleged plan?" he asked.

Jack and I quickly outlined our discoveries regarding the datastore we were after. When we were done, Joe made a noise of understanding and said, "So we've gotta go in an' turn th' thing on?"

"Yeah, basically," I replied.

"Y'have any idea where they keep th' thing?" Joe asked.

"What, you mean physically?" I responded.

At almost the same moment Jack answered him with a shake of her head. "We can't even make a reasonable guess, 'cause the only map we've got's those spysat pics, and they don't show the inside."

Jack stretched back and snagged another piece of pineapple pizza. She grabbed a piece of pepperoni as well and handed it to me. I thanked her with a nod and smile as I swallowed the last mouthful of crust from my previous slice.

Max cleared his throat and commented, "It should be a matter of public record."

"The location of their top secret database?" Jack asked, incredulously.

"No," Max replied, "but the basic floor plan should be on file with the city. It's probably out of date, and they almost certainly left out a juicy detail or two, but it should help with our difficulty."

"I bet we could crack City Hall without using our decks," I mused, a grin spreading across my face.

Jack grinned back at me. "Public records? Sure, no problem. Just gotta convince 'em that we're someone with a legitimate reason to see 'em."

"Hmm... a social sciences crack, perhaps?" I mused.

Jack gave me a quizzical look. "Social sciences?" she asked.

I gave a quick nod. "Yeah, when you crack a system just by talking someone into letting you in."

"Is that what you call it?" she asked. "Hmm. I'd never heard that term for it before. We always just called it conning someone." She took a moment for thought, then asked, "So who do we con, and how?"

I looked to Max.

"The city planner's office should have the necessary documents," he observed. "As to access, there are several city offices that should have access to them. The fire marshal's office, for example."

"Hmm... " Jack mused. "You think we can put together a believable background for a fire marshal's office? I'm thinking of trying out for a job as a marshal's secretary."

"We can do better than that," I replied. "I bet we can steal the real secretary's background. I don't think we've got the computing power available to steal the face and voice too, but putting the background behind you shouldn't be a problem."

Jack's brow wrinkled. "How're we going to do that without decks?" she asked.

"'Com," I replied. "Call and record, then hang up quick. We can do the processing and what little programming we'll need offline."

"Mmm... right. When we're done lunch, then, if Sammy's not using his 'com?" she inquired.

"Nuh uh," Sammy interjected. "You're not using my 'com for that kinda drek. I don't need no cops and corps and drek sniffin' around here."

"Thanks," Jack replied, dryly. "Knew we could count on you. Hmm... a public 'com?"

"I happened to notice a 'com booth on the next block," Max put in. "I won't testify as to its working, though."

"Cool." Jack hopped up off the couch. She snagged another piece of pizza off the hood of the Tank, and said, around the first mouthful, "Max, you wanna go make some calls while these laggards are finishing lunch?"