Shadowrun: Down These Dark Streets: The Collected Stories of by Russell Zimmerman

Author:Russell Zimmerman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs

Chase saw the animated Mountain Dragons logo, a Western Drake crawling across the ork’s torso. He saw the icon for the young musician’s own AR-glasses, saw the ork’s projected cone-of-vision was squarely on his gal-pal, then slid over to his guitar as he packed it away. Chase saw a string of alerts as pop-ups announced new comments tagging and following Tommy Portland on MeFeed.

And Chase saw, most of all, Tommy’s P2.1 score, that aggregate metric of his popularity, the eyes on him, his number of followers, his footprint. It was that score that mattered to Chase. It was that score that would tell him just when to strike.

Tommy’s bounty wasn’t worth writing home about. It was some secondhand gig, a Northwest heavy hitter who had street channels gunning for the kid, too, but also an official government-sanctioned arrest request. A couple grand wasn’t enough to get Chase’s attention, or his producers’.

But the drift-in media buzz Chase: Errant Knight might get from going after an up-and-coming minor social media star, instead of just some other random orkish street tough? That made it worth the quick hunt. Chase’s job wasn’t about bounties and bullets, not really; it was about product placement—and product placement needed ratings.

Chase wasn’t here to grab Tommy Portland. He was here to hijack the guy’s social media spike.

So as the ork’s 2.1 numbers plateaued, Chase tore his gaze away to down the last of his bitter Southern Gentleman dark stout, a Sojourner classic. For a half-assed bar/coffee-house combo named after some old rockergirl, they made a decent beer, he had to give ’em that.

He flicked his fingers a few times and handled his AR tab, shucking off the order and a 1,000% tip to his Ares expense account. He let out a sigh, rolled his shoulders and neck to work out a kink, and looked back at Tommy P while steadying his breathing.

He saw the ork’s P-score start to dip for a second on the ticker, another, a third. That was it. They’d peaked.

Time to draw ‘em back in.

Chase slid through the crowd as Portland and his tusk-bunny girlfriend in that oversized coat shared a kiss, then the ork thirstily gulped down the Wanderlust pale ale—an irritated flick of his eyes sent a pop-up advertisement and a comfortably high review rating sliding out of Chase’s field of vision—that she had saved for him.

Chase came up in front of Tommy Portland, and half to-the-side, half-behind, his elf. The cowboy stopped when his Ares TacSmart rangefinder subroutines told him he was a comfortably-close 3.25 meters away.

“Tommy Portland!”

Chase was an elf, but a loud one. His lungs might not stack up compared to a broad-chested, trained singer, but he could hold his own in the volume department. He’d been trained in what Ares called the command voice, and he used it well. He had ten seasons of practice.

There was no mistaking it for an excited audience member, or as anything but a challenge and a threat. Heads turned. Chairs scraped. People started to move, a nervous herd.

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