Crack in the Kill Code (AmpCore #2)

01 - Wrong Side of History

No matter how many times Maddie made the crossing, Hadrian South still scared the shit out of her.

She tugged her heavy black coat tighter around her spindly frame as their barge listed towards the derelict dock. Dark buildings rose up in front of them like a wall of broken teeth, ghostly lights of residual code sparking through broken windows.

Shapes moved there. Shadows slick with grime and rust, and the long years of decay.

"Gimme fourteen degrees starboard," she said quietly. "Let's not get any more attention tonight than we have to."

At the front of the ship, the woman at the helm cabin raised a hand in acknowledgement. The barge turned, the vicious water of the Hadrian River slapping at its reinforced plating. She knew the ship only had a few more trips across the water left in it before she would need to fork out for a fresh coating of galvanised armour. If they didn't make good on this run, they'd be risking the river eating its way clean through the hull.

Maddie did not relish that thought. A swim in the Hadrian would kill you as surely as a bullet to the brain.

She paced slowly back and forth across the deck, one hand resting against the reassuring bulk of her heavy revolver. It was an old-fashioned BoarNorth Armouries model, but it kicked just as hard as any of the shiny new, nickel-plated, piss-barrels that the corps cranked out these days. She liked its weight and simplicity.

"You sure on the score this time?" Skater muttered, standing behind her at the railing. He patted his hands together gently, his breath misting in the winter air.

"Of course I'm sure."

"I'm just askin'. You know, last time-,"

"I know what happened last time." She shot him an irate glance. He was a portly, grease-haired man with a spine made out of jelly, but he was the best hacker in her crew. That bought him a ticket on this little venture.

Dangerous? Sometimes. Lucrative? Always.

"I checked the intel three times," Maddie continued. "It's good. A Linkchain bio-factory – all the black-market cybers we could want." She fixed him with an accusing stare. "I hope you've done your homework, Skater."

"Yeah, I did it. I'm set." He tapped the thin steel-grey square embedded in his temple, bringing a translucent visor to life across his eyes. She could see the lines of code whirring along it as he rechecked some minute portion of his brute algorithms. "Just get me to the door without us gettin' chopped for parts."

"I'll do my best." Turning her attention back to Hadrian South, she crammed a few errant strands of dirty-blond hair back beneath her beanie and huffed out a breath, watching the steam disappear into the night. She didn't need to look back to know what was behind her. She could feel the vomit of light from Hadrian North, the neon skyline casting a never-ending glare out over the docks.

They closed in on her chosen landing place. The slipway was just passed one of the old docks, where massive loading cranes and conveyors had been left to rot and rust with the ages. This close to the water, most of them had long-since been gutted by salvagers – the safest and easiest to access. She'd carved up a few of them herself.

No, her prize required going a little deeper into the city.

The slipway spanned barely ten meters across, little more than a run off area for sewage, fuel discharge and the launch of tugboats. It was a dark little slice of nothing that suited her just fine. Maddie crept forward, until she reached the helm station, leaning in over the shoulder of her navigator.

"Slow and easy," she whispered. "And for fuck sake watch the sonar. Last thing we need is to ring a bloody gong that someone's left behind."

"I got it, I got it," the woman replied, tapping the silently spinning sonar screen that had been spliced into the barge's control console. "We're good. Nothing in the water high enough to touch us."