Lisa Smedman - The Lucifer desk

An electronics shop seemed the most likely place to start her search for Yao. The first three Pita tried didn’t produce any results. None of them had heard of Yao-or was willing to admit that they’d sold equipment to Orks First ! Exhausted and hungry, Pita was about to give up. She had decided to find a fast food outlet and do some scrap snacking-eating the soggy fries and burger crusts that patrons had left behind-when she spotted an electronics shop. It was tucked into the bend of a street, its merchandise displayed behind barred windows. A flickering holo of a trideo camera floated above the door, slowly rotating. A closed-circuit trideo set in the window broadcast the passing shoppers. The view panned back and forth, as if the holo-camera was doing the recording. It would have been a neat trick if the trideo set’s tracking hadn’t been so bad. The picture was smeared with static.

Pita rapped on the door of the shop, then waited for the clerk to buzz her in. It was a tiny store, just a couple of meters wide and deep. The shelves on either side were lined with home entertainment equipment, most of it second-hand. Large yellow price tags hung from each item. The center of the store was taken up with bins of off-the-rack electronics: fiber-optic cables, datachips, mini-amps, and interface plugs. Glass counters held cheap knock-offs of designer watches and electronic toys, made in some Third World sweat-shop.

The shopkeeper was a female dwarf who sat on a tall stool behind one of the counters. She was hunched over a cyberdeck, her short legs dangling. Half of her head was shaved, revealing multiple datajacks. A cable stretched from one of the jacks to the deck. On the other side of her head, her hair hung down in a thick braid. Her fingernails were covered in a thin layer of polished metal, making light clicking noises as she drummed them against the counter. Her eyes were unfocused at first, but then she blinked and looked up at Pita.

“Can I help you?” she asked, gently tugging the jack from the slot above her ear.

Pita started to shake her head. What would a dwarf clerk from a crummy little shop like this know about ork trideo pirates? But she’d come this far, Might as well ask.

“I’m looking for someone,” Pita said. “Yao Wah. Yao is the first name. He’s a pirate who shoots trideo for Orks First ! I thought you might know him. He’s my friend’s brother and I need to tell him someth-”

The dwarf’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I know this Yao?”

Pita shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought maybe he came in here to buy equipment.”

The dwarf stared at her impassively.

“Guess I was wrong,” Pita said, reaching for the door.

“I know him.”

“You do?” Pita turned around quickly.

“Yeah. He’s a class-A slot,” the dwarf said, wrinkling her nose. “Stifled me for a signal booster. Owes me five thousand nuyen. But is the fragger going to pay me? I doubt it. He’d rather deal with his own kind.”

Pita waited, sizing up the dwarf. “Do you know where I can find Yao?”

“You could try posting a message on the Matrix. Orks First ! runs a bulletin hoard on the Seattle network.”

“I don’t even have enough nuyen to use the public telecom,” Pita said. “Besides, I need to see him in person.”

“You need to meet the meat,” the dwarf said. “Why?”

“Something’s happened to his brother. I need to tell Yao about it, face to face.”

“This brother’s important to him? You think Yao would answer if I posted something about the kid?”

Pita nodded. “Tell him it’s a message about Little Pork Dumpling. Then he’ll know it’s for real. He used to call his brother that because he was so fat when he was little.”

“Right. Wait one.” The dwarf slotted the jack back into her head and closed her eyes. After a second or two she opened them again. “It’s done. A friend of his is passing the message along.”

“That’s great!” Pita said. “When can I meet him? And where?”

“Right here,” the dwarf answered. “But not until he pays his bill, plus interest for the three months it’s overdue. And don’t get any ideas about going off to find him yourself. The door’s locked and armed. If Yao wants the meet, he’ll come. We’ll see if his ‘little pork dumpling’ is worth five thousand nuyen to him.”

Yao was shorter than he looked on trideo. He was about Pita’s height, but had broader shoulders and a thicker neck. He looked like an older version of Chen, with the same straight black hair and Asian eyecast. He wore his hair “high and tight-shaved over the ears and spiky on top. It was starting to gray a little, although he was still probably only in his mid-twenties. Life on the streets had given his eyes a hard, wary look. But he was good-looking, for an ork. His jaw was narrow and his nose straight. He wore jeans torn off at the knee and a black leather vest over a loose-fitting sweatshirt-probably to deliberately contrast with the carefully groomed reporters of the legitimate news stations.

Yao sat on the other side of a small plastic table, watching Pita scarf down her second plate of noodles. There was no way to tell whether he had anything so fancy as an cybereye cam, but there a datajack showed in his temple and a mini-radio was clipped to one earlobe. When Pita asked what it was, he told her it was a Lone Star scanner and decryption unit. “Keeps me one step ahead of the cops,” he explained, one arm draped across the back of the bench. She noticed he always kept one eye on the doorway, where his friend Anwar lounged.

The second pirate wore jeans, a muscle shirt, and cowboy boots. He leaned against a wall next to the door, one arm cradling a bulky trideo camera whose size gave it away as being more than two decades out of date-nearly an antique. He grinned at Yao and gave him a thumbs-up sign indicating that none of the Underground’s security goons were in sight.

Pita finished her noodles and drained the last of her soda. She toyed nervously with one of her chopsticks until Yao gently touched her wrist. The back of his hand was covered with a mass of spiky black hairs; he didn’t shave his hands to look morn human the way some orks did. “Well?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me something about Chen? Or do you want to soak me for another plate of noodles first?”

The chopstick in Pita’s hands snapped in two. “He’s dead,” she blurted.

“Yes?”

Pita looked up. “You knew?”

Yao shook his head. On his trideo broadcasts, he was animated and expressive, but now his face was strangely still. Only a faint wince of his eyes betrayed what he must be feeling. “I didn’t know. But I could guess. I can read people. I can see that Chen meant a lot to you.”

Pita stared at the tabletop. Its edge was scatted with cigarette bums. The brown stains reminded her of the dried blood she’d found on her jacket the morning after Chen had… After the cops had…

Tears dripped onto the bright yellow plastic. Yao reached across the table and lifted Pita’s chin with one massive hand. “What happened? How did he die? Was it a fight? An overdose? How?”

“The Star,” Pita answered. She had to swallow before she could go on. “They shot him. And two of his friends, Shaz and Mohan. We were hanging out, trying to boost a trideo feed to catch one of your broadcasts. Lone Star stopped us and-”

“And Chen pulled a weapon. Stupid fragger. You’d think he’d know better.”

“No!” Pita protested. “It wasn’t like that at all. At first all the Stars did was smash the ‘trode rig you gave him. But later, they came back in their patrol car. Shaz threw a rock at them, and they opened fire on us. But none of us had a weapon. Not in our hands. Mohan had a knife, but it was still in his pocket. The cops never even got out of their car or gave us a warning. They shot before we even had time to run.”