| From: | Jaimie Nicholson <jaimie.nicholson@********.OTAGO.AC.NZ> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Search Results |
| Date: | Wed, 22 Jan 1997 12:31:28 +1300 |
>>>>>[I've _finally_ found Ronin... you can either read my commentary and
watch my cyber-cam footage or ask him to give you the highlights... I'm
keeping the footage anyway, as evidence for what he did to my ear... well,
you'll see what I mean when I get back to Seattle.
I started looking for him in LA, since that's where he expected to find you
trying to fence the simchip from Chicago, and I used what I knew of the
fake SIN he'd flown with to find the hotel he'd stayed in. He'd left it by
the time I arrived though, so I checked a few airlines, and it seems he had
taken a flight to San Francisco. Damn if I knew why (still don't, you can
ask him, I don't care anymore, my tenuous responsibility ends with finding
the ear-shooting bastard), so I followed him there. That was just before I
had dropped in for that astral talk with you, so you will have known this
much already.
In downtown SF, I asked a few questions, but being a Gaijin meta, I didn't
get far. I headed to Oakland, met some of the anti-corp people out here,
and got myself some matrix access. Checked around, finding what I could on
the Van Syke SIN, but it was flagged as fake, and I got a nasty
trace-psychotropic IC construct set on me to find out why I was asking. I
fought and suspended the thing and the tracker became the tracked... it was
from a local Renraku outfit. (Why the hell do they want Ronin so badly? Why
don't they just kill him?) Anyway, I did a bit of nosing around the 'Raku
system, with a little help from my friends, and found a file in a section
called "Main Branch Requests", as close as my translation prog can get it.
It was asking for one Ronald Van Syke to be held there for interrogation by
someone from HQ, who was on his way. This interrogator's name was listed as
Damien Van Holde (!!!! Father? Evil twin?? What's going on? Ronin wouldn't
say).
Checking further, I discovered that a 'Raku team had attacked Ronin's hotel
room, but he was out at the time, so he got clear. (I asked later, he had
some sort of detection spell quickened on him by Phoenix, a former friend
(lover?) who is now dead. I _need_ to get the formula for this spell,
apparently it picks up any interested party watching him, not like the
common detect enemies thing. The drain must have been fearsome.) He had
gone to ground, and for a while I couldn't think of a way of finding out
where.
It took a week (and some hypnotherapy, and I also discovered that in a
previous life, I was a Tharan (or something, I forget the name)
Priestess... which explains a lot :P ), but I finally remembered a few
other names he's used. Two were flagged as fakes, more tracers waiting to
tag any investigators, and the other one came back inactive (by way of the
bearer being dead). No attempts to track me on the dead one, so guessing
that meant that 'Raku didn't know about it, I went back and dug deeper. A
guy in the anti-corp group (godlike decker, taught me a drek-load) gave me
a hand, and we raided some government systems... turns out that on the
inactive (dead) SIN, of one Matt Neumann, the "this guy is dead" flag had
been tripped, but the SIN was still able to be used for some simple
operations. (Not too hard to set up according to my friend, but it was some
nice datawork all the same. I wonder how Ronin got it done.) As long as
no-one tried to buy the Eifel tower with that ID, chances are no-one would
have noticed. From the banking records for that SIN (sadly all we could get
was Read-Only access to that), there was some small expenditure going on
there, most commonly at a bar called the Black Ruby, some sort of minor
runner hangout, according to my anti-corp friends. I went there and set up
surveillance...
+++++Begin footage
The Black Ruby bar is dark, lit only by what filters through the few grimy
windows. The bar is on one of the short sides of the rectangular room, to
the left as one enters through one of the long sides. The camera is
situated at the corner farthest from both the bar and the door. Between
door and camera is a seriously underweight elven waitress, bringing a glass
of some dark liquid towards the camera. Over her shoulder, the camera
watches the door open, and a man steps through.
Heading for the bar, he wears black under a leather coat and mirror-shades.
His face is rendered unrecognisable by the back-lighting, but as he turns
to look at the camera, it becomes clear that this is Ronin. Swearing, he
dashes out the door again. After a moment's hesitation, the camera moves
forward, swerving around the waitress as Ice pursues Ronin. Moving through
the door, the camera looks out onto a street just before dawn. Ronin is
nowhere to be seen.
+++++End footage
Begin excuse: the spell must have tiped him off that I was watching him, he
presumed that I was from 'Raku, so he split. If only I'd been a woman, then
he might have stuck about to see what my interest was... Still, I had
thought that he might recognise me.
So, he ran off, and I tried to follow. From his paranoid state, I figured
he might set a trap or something, so I Shapeshifted into a raven, and took
to the air to get ahead of him. Guessing that he was headed for the coffin
hotel that was also paid for under the Neumann ID, I went there first. No
luck though. The only other possibility from the financial records I could
think of was a long term storage locker at a nearby rail station, and
that's where I caught up with him...
+++++Begin footage
The view is from the air, and Ronin can be seen leaving a red faux-brick
building. He is carrying a black backpack, moderately heavy from the way he
walks. The street is clear of people and vehicles, there are only two or
three parked cars at the side of the road.
Ronin looks up as the footage begins, then moves quickly towards the cover
of a parked car. Ducking down, he reaches into the pack, his hand coming
out with a pistol. The POV descends, landing across the street from Ronin,
then rises as Ice changes back to human form. Looking towards the car
behind which Ronin is hiding, the camera observes the samurai rolling out
from behind it, pistol in hand. Two gunshots ring out, and Ice drops to the
ground, blood spraying across a view of the cloudy sky.
"Ronin," Ice calls weakly, "It's me, Ice," he grunts in pain,
"You shot me,
you bastard."
"Don't move!" comes Ronin's reply, getting closer.
Ice looks across the street, raising his head in order to do so. Ronin is
moving towards him, a heavy pistol pointed squarely at the elf's face.
"Frag," mutters Ronin, safing his weapon and putting it away under his
coat, "Let's move it, the cops'll be here in a couple of... well, hours to
be honest, but some of the locals might come for a look."
Ice's eyes close, and the camera shuts down.
+++++End footage
He actually _shot_ me. Twice, for frag's sake! One of them tore my
goddamned left EAR off! APDS, so at least the slugs didn't fragment (much),
the other one just broke a couple of ribs and collapsed one lung. _Damn_ I
was pissed when I woke up and got the damage report.
Luckily, I got to a street doc through the anti-corpers, though it took
some talking to stop them tearing Ronin a few new orifices (especially when
he admitted that he was the one that shot me). Quite frankly, I had some
difficulty persuading myself to stop them.
The next question on your mind is probably "why didn't you contact me about
this earlier". Well, my datajack got popped half out of my head by the
bullet that took off my ear (I'm fraggin' mutilated! MY LEFT EAR
GONE!!!!!), and repairs to it had to wait until I had recovered from the
complications caused by the collapsed lung (and that took a damn long time
with a mage's antipathy to the hard drugs that it takes to get rid of
surgical infections now that MRSA has caught that accelerated
divison/growth plasmid). I was lucky to get away without a cyber
replacement, they didn't have the facilities to whip up a regrown one.
Ronin didn't contact you because he was too wary of going near the matrix
in a corp dominated town like SF (the snivelling wimp... he can shoot the
ear off a poor helpless elf, but he can't go matrixing just because 'Raku
is after him... please everyone, a big round of "aawwwwwww"s). He was able
to do the fake ID, he said it was necessary, but that contacting you
wasn't. Maybe he wouldn't want me to have told you that, but the hell with
that ear-shooter. Watch this display of total disregard for the injury he
had done me...
+++++Begin footage
The view is of a small room, white painted walls. Ronin is sitting in a
chair next to the bed on which Ice sits. Head down, Ronin appears to be
reading the screen of a pocket computer. The samurai looks up after a
couple of seconds.
"So, you're finally up," he says with a slight grin.
Ice coughs.
"No thanks to you," he replies in a raspy voice, "Where's the doc?"
"Surgery, he's putting a datajack in some trog. He'll..."
"Christ, mate," interjects Ice, "You know where you are, don't you? That
kind of talk can get you killed here! It's all I can do to keep you alive
as it is."
Ronin grunts. Ice looks away for a moment, his glance passing over a mirror
on the wall across from the foot of the bed. A small bandage is visible on
the elf's head, covering where his left ear should have been attached.
"Where's my ear?" asks Ice in a chilly tone.
"It came off," says Ronin hesitantly, "When I shot you... sorry."
"You bastard!" yells Ice, struggling to get free of the straps that hold
him down, "I'll... you... goddamn it..." He gives up, lying back.
Ronin waits, and after a while Ice speaks again.
"Okay then, what's the story? Why did you come to SanFran, who's Damien Van
Holde, the lot."
"Forget it," Ronin replies, looking away, "No..."
"You owe me, mutilator!" Ice interupts, "You took my damn ear off!"
"Yeah, but I didn't know it was you, all you elves look the same to me."
Ronin grins at Ice's outrage.
"I don't believe you just said that," says the elf, "When I get better I'm
going to kick your ass!"
"Lie back and rest, pixie-boy," Ronin replies with a sigh, folding his arms
and putting his feet up on the bed, "or I'll have to shoot your other ear
off."
+++++End footage
But, I'm back to good health now, and the anti-corp guys are getting us
back to Seattle (in the flesh) in a few days. BTW, we owe a few favours out
here... would you be interested in coming back with us when we pay them off
with a bit of instruction at the anti-corpers' "people's university"? They
don't much like norms here, but the ones I met seemed to get over Ronin
pretty quick when I vouched for him.
Anyway, see you soon.]<<<<<
-- Ice <16:28:51/01-21-58>
