Shadowrunning (Dropped)

Chapter 1 (Part 1)

Chapter 1 - First Meeting

“Firefly meet Bobby and Tree. Bobby and Tree meet Firefly.” The fixer’s introduction was simple enough.

The troll towered over everyone and made Firefly feel every inch of the short height bestowed upon her by her race. The elfin man beside him, though, stood out. It wasn’t anything about his looks but no one could ignore his presence. Perhaps it was the way he stood or casually surveyed her.

He can’t be afraid of much.

“Who’s who?” She could do a matrix check to find out the answer but decided not to resort to that.

The elfin man stepped forward and held out a hand. “I’m Bobby.” He shook her hand. “This here is Tree. We’ve been working together for a while now.” His eyes moved constantly. Over me, over the surroundings, and especially the fixer.

“We were promised a decker and a rigger. Are you messing with us?” Firefly couldn’t say that he glared, but it was more of an ice cold disdain.

“There’s your decker,” the fixer motioned towards her. “And she’ll introduce you to the rigger.”

If Bobby’s eyebrows had been more prominent Firefly could have watched them scale the heights of his forehead. But, he had enough sense not to say anything in front of the fixer.

“Satisfied?” the fixer asked.

“Yes.” Bobby still stared at her though and she knew that the flood of questions would come once they were somewhere away from prying ears.

Everyone shook hands and her new group went one way while the fixer disappeared into a car.

“We are now a group. We might as well get started.” Bobby smiled. “When and where are we going to meet this rigger?”

“At the surveillance site and tomorrow morning.”

“Surveillance site?”

Firefly nodded. “He and I had a bit of advance warning for this job so we scouted a good place to check things out from. There’s no point in discussing how the run will go until we have gathered more info.”

“And the matrix can’t help you find out more?”

“I’ve looked up everything I can and all it does is raise questions. Either that or the info is absent. We found enough to find a place to keep an eye on. That’s where the rigger is now. He’s the best at spying with his drones.”

He shrugged. “Ok. You two have worked together before?”

“We’ve done a few jobs together. Nothing big by ourselves because we didn’t have enough firepower. Neither of us is primarily a fighter. You don’t look like much of one yourself.”

Bobby laughed. “That’s what this big guy is for. Tree loves to play with big guns. Don’t you, Tree?”

The troll nodded solemnly. “Guns are good toys.”

Firefly noted the size of the one strapped to his back. At least he had the muscles to hand it. Out loud she said, “Good. So far as we know a fighter will be good for this job.” She dug around in her duster jacket for her electronic paper. “Here, transfer your info to this and I’ll send you the location and time for the meeting.”

While Bobby wrote down his info, she linked herself to the matrix and connected to his avatar. His info was easily accessible then, but she waited until he handed her back the paper before pretending to check the info while sending him an encrypted message. The encryption would unravel by the time he thought to check for a message. He never needed to know that she wasn’t a true hardwired decker.