Jade Dragon

2. Full Throttle

The Vector held to the road like it was in love with it. This being a weeknight and the hour somewhat late, the Northern Lantau Expressway was sparse with traffic. Ko pressed the accelerator hard to the floor and let the gunmetal sedan eat up the asphalt. Angry hoots from the drivers he slipstreamed fell away in strangled chugs of Doppler-shifted noise, the Mercedes sliding effortlessly around the other road users as if they were static islands in a shimmering river of mercury. The speed limit signs blurred past him. Each used a laser ranger to bounce off oncoming vehicles and flash up their kilometres-per-hour on the big holograph displays that floated over the highway. If you kept to the limit or below it, it beamed out a cartoon smiley face. If you overshot, you were given a grimacing scowl. Ko’s speed was so high that the signs were throwing up skulls and crossbones.

“This is unnatural,” said Feng, jamming a cigarette in his mouth. The guardsman held himself tight, arms braced about the cuirass on his chest. Ko threw him a look and Feng stabbed a finger at the road. “Don’t turn away! You’ll crash this thing into someone and kill them, and I don’t want any company!”

“Yeah, if I die, who’d you haunt then?” The driver chuckled. “You don’t need to be here,” said Ko. “Do your thing, go away and come back later.”

“I can’t always do it. Not just like that, not on demand.”

“Oh.” Ko grinned. “Pity. For you, I mean.”

The next holosign he passed had a string of text on it: “Authorities Informed. Speed Reduction Measures Initiated.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?” demanded Feng.

“Tanglers.”

Five kilometres further up the expressway, a crack opened in the surface of the road, the polymerised blacktop peeling back like a lipless mouth. Two prongs, blinking with warning strobes, extended upward and grew spines of impact-resistant piezoplastic. At their tips were pressure-jet web guns, needle-fine nozzles that could fling a polymer spray into the air. Like spider’s thread, the polymer hardened on contact with the air, turning thick and gluey. It was water soluble, and it lasted for less than five minutes before it dissolved, but that was typically more than enough time to coat the wheels of a speeder and force them to slow. Ko had caught a grille full of the stuff once, back when a race against some Wanchai show-off had sent him down the wrong road. It was like driving through treacle.

The trick to beating the tanglers was to drive in a way the designers thought only an idiot would.

Ko shifted around the neon-lit bulk of bleating robohauler and aimed the bonnet of the Vector directly at the closest pylon. He saw the thin streams of fluid hissing into the night air, crossing away and to the right, converging on the place where the traffic control computer estimated he was supposed to be.

“The pole with the lanterns…” Feng said. “You’re going to hit it!”

“Yes.” Ko ran the sedan right into the plastic upright and heard it clatter and scrape against the underside of the Mercedes as it folded beneath it. The car listed sharply as some of the rangier fluid spat over the rear tyres, but he was ready for it and there was hardly enough to cause him trouble. In the rear-view, he spotted the hauler going headlong into a puddle of the stuff and the vehicle skidded hard. The robot truck’s simplistic road-brain lacked the finesse to manage such a sudden change in highway conditions and the hauler spun out, throwing up a fountain of sparks as it scraped the barrier on the median strip. The Vector made some complaining noises and shuddered. A clatter of noise from the back seat drew Ko’s attention. “What the hell is that? A bag?”

“The speed traps were ineffective.” The masked man spoke for the first time, never once turning his head from the driver’s seat. His voice was neutral in a way that seemed too precise to be fully human.

Frankie watched the distance markers blinking past the window as the remaining cars in the YLHI convoy followed the expressway back toward the city. He felt an odd sense of amusement at the thief’s boldness, taking one of the Vectors from right under the nose of his escorts. He let his gaze wander to Alice. Her annoyance was palpable there in the back of the sedan, coming off her chilly expression in ice-cold waves. The car felt cramped, the air inside uncomfortable.

Alice paused only to listen to the report from the man in the Monkey King mask and then returned to the conversation she was having in hissy Japanese with her vu-phone. A hand-held cellular model, the compact wedge of electronics was standard-issue equipment to every Yuk Lung executive above grade three. She gave Frankie a contrite but irritated look. “I am so very sorry you had to witness that, Francis. You are barely home for ten minutes and you are forced to watch a crime unfold in front of you. Rest assured, the thief will be caught and punished.” She turned back to the phone and barked out something angry.

“Damn kids,” said Ping, the guy who’d taken his bag at arrivals. Coiled in the front passenger seat, he sported the beginnings of a nasty bruise on his cheek. “Oughta ban the lot of them from the ’port. Only go there to race up and down the highway.” He started to say something else, but Alice gave him a sharp glare; it was Ping’s fault the car had been taken, and so he had forfeited the right to speak because of his laxity.

“Highway patrol enforcers are inbound,” reported the Monkey King. “He’ll be at the bridge before they get here.”

Frankie wondered where the agent was getting this data from. There had to be an audio-video link inside the mask, or else some cyberware implant looping a feed from the police band. He heard the masked man make a tutting sound under his breath as he guided the Mercedes around a stalled robohauler and through the thick slurry of spent tangler foam. The other car in the group was quite a way behind them.

Alice looked up and met the driver’s eyes in the rear-view. Frankie saw something unspoken pass between them.

“He’s going to go for the WarPark off-ramp. I can catch him. With your permission?”

She nodded, and with a grunt of power from the engine, the driver threw the Vector into top gear.

Alice punched in a different number. “Traffic control, this is YLHI mobile 41312, enacting clause six of the Corporate Self-Defence Act. Advise all enforcement agents that this is a duly noted and legal exercise of our company rights.” She hung up without waiting for a reply and snapped the cellphone closed.

A thought formed in Frankie s mind. “My bag… Where’s my carry-on bag from the plane?”

Ping looked at the floor. “In, uh, in the car.” He pointed in the general direction of the road.

“Don’t worry,” said Alice. “The moment the vehicle was stolen, the contents of your personal computer were nashloaded to our central server and then the machine was wiped. Your company phone was also automatically severed from our internal network.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.” He extended his hand to her. “May I?”

The woman gave him a dubious look, but passed him the vu-phone all the same. Without really being sure of what motivated him, Frankie hesitated with his finger over the keypad, trying to remember his own number.

With one hand on the wheel, Ko rooted through the contents of the carry-on bag on his lap. In-flight toiletries kit. A dead d-screen. Half a bottle of Copperhead mineral water. Some entertainment softs still in the wrapper. And…

“Eyes on the road!” said Feng.

The Vector drifted hard, missing a slow-moving drop-top by less than an inch. “I can do two things at once,” Ko held up the last object in front of him. A corporate cellular telephone. “Crap.” These things were worth a lot to the right people, and Ko knew half a dozen hackers who would part with a lot of yuan for an intact celly with all the hardwired comms protocols inside; but there was also the fact that these phones were wired with satellite locator chips that could light him up like a homing beacon. Ko tossed the bag into the back seat again and slammed the phone on the dashboard three times in rapid succession, splintering the case. A glimpse of wires and circuits peered out at him from a break in the plastic. “Ah, why risk it?” Ko reached forward to open the window. “Best to toss it, just in case-”

It rang with the gentle chirp of a nightingale.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line was young and wary. “Who the hell is this?”

Alice was watching Frankie very carefully. “Stealing cars is not a good way to win friends and influence people, kid.” He kept his voice level. “You should stop this before you get hurt.”

The reaction he got was exactly the one that he would have given in the same place. “Screw you, wageslave! Go polish your shoes or something.”

“What are you trying to accomplish?” whispered Alice.

Frankie waved her into silence. “That was pretty slick what you did back there. With the tanglers. That took balls. You gotta be good behind the wheel to pull off something like that.”

“Don’t flatter me, pal.”

He kept speaking, ignoring the interruption. “Or of course, it could just be that you’re lucky. Are you the lucky type? All balls no brains, gonna wrap yourself around a lamp-post one day?” The words bubbled up from inside Frankie, spooling out of some place locked in his past. It was strange to hear Alan’s words coming out of his mouth, but there it was. Suddenly he was inside that stupid kid’s head, thinking what he was thinking, going where he was going.

“Eat my dust, suit. This ride is too fine for cashwhores like you.”

Frankie nodded. “Heh. Yeah, Mercedes Vector. Smooth, isn’t it? Like driving on silk.”

There was something in the man’s voice that made Ko stop with his thumb hovering over the disconnect key. It wasn’t anything he could quantify… Just that ghost of a wish denied, the deep need, the thrill that came from the drive. Ko could hear the faraway longing in the corp’s voice, the mirror of it in his own. A memory of something his sister had once said floated to the surface. Octane in your blood. You need wheels like other people need air.

“I did what you did,” the man was saying. “What are you, eighteen? Nineteen? Blazing around Castle Peak Road and the turns over Tai Mo Shan in some hyped up two-door, I bet. One step ahead of the greenjackets. Making yuan off races and taking pinks where you can.”

“You don’t know me.” Ko looked around and saw that Feng was gone. The denial sounded feeble in his ears.

“Yes I do. I used to be you. What, you think stealing cars and road racing was invented by you and your buddies?”

Ko saw the honey-coloured glow of the WarPark emerge as he passed Discovery Bay; they were doing one of the regular Apocalypse Then! promotions to bring in the punters, and the air over the theme park’s dome was lit with tracer fire and controlled napalm bursts. All at once, Ko understood what this creep was up to. “Weak, chummer, real weak. You think you can play me, distract me so you can get up close?” He made a spitting sound. "Let me tell you who I am, mister corporate man, mister I-used-to-be-you. I’m not some highway punk you can step on. I got connections, see, I’m known!’

The voice came back, quick and sarcastic. “Who you with? The 14K or the Wo Shing Wo? Pinching cars for them so they can ship them off to the mainland? I bet you get a lot of yuan for that.”

The WarPark exit was coming up fast, and Ko eyed it. If he went in there, it would be easy to ditch the Vector, slip away, maybe fence the d-screen and the phone for some pocket change. But this presumptuous suit was starting to piss him off. If he could get the Merc back across the bridge, he could get it to the docks in Tsing Yi and sell it. Yeah. Plenty of yuan for that.

“Hey, corp, listen.” He leaned in to whisper into the cellphone. “Maybe you’re not lying to me. Maybe you used to be a fast-mover back in the day. But that was then. You sold out, chummer, pissed away your freedom for a nice suit and an office cube. Now all you’re fit for is sucking my fumes!” Ko slammed the phone hard against the dash and stamped on the accelerator again. He cut across the lanes and surged into the feed towards the city.

Frankie looked at the phone. “He… Cut me off.”

“I see the vehicle,” said the Monkey King. “He’s going for the bridge.”

“Deal with him.” Alice took back the phone and frowned. “This has gone on for too long already.”

Acceleration pushed Frankie back into the seat and the passive restraint around his belly went taut, the memory plastic reacting to the velocity change. He tried to peer over the shoulder of the driver, but the masked man filled the seat, and he could only manage glimpses of the road ahead and the ghostly digits of the head-up display painted on the inside of the windscreen. The towers of the Tsing Ma Bridge were growing before them, blinking with cherry red strobes at their tips.

Monkey King touched a panel on the dash, revealing an array of flip-switches for the Vector’s weapons systems. “I would like permission to employ lethal force.”

Alice gave Frankie the smallest of looks and shook her head. “No. Secure the vehicle and criminal intact, please.”

He didn’t bother to say what all of them knew; that the security agent was probably good enough to take out the kid with only minimal damage to the other Merc. Alice was trying to present a non-threatening face. Frankie suspected that if he had not been in the car, the answer would have been very different.

The driver tapped a control and from the front bumper came a clack-hiss of oiled components. Along the Vector’s prow, the polycarbonate impact buffer parted to allow a series of hydraulic ram plates to emerge. Each had a saw tooth look to them, patterned with square spikes like the face of a tenderising hammer. Volters whined up to capacity, contact triggers released and ready for an impact.

“There,” said the Monkey King with a slight incline of his head. Frankie caught sight of the rear of a silver sedan as it passed around a shuttlebus and crossed the first archway of the bridge.

He became aware of Alice watching him. “Was that true?” she asked, with a very faint hint of distaste. “The things you said to the thief, that you were once in a gangcult?”

“It wasn’t a gangcult,” he said automatically. “Not like the Americans have. Just stupid kids and fast cars.”

“And yet you made something of yourself.” The words were so bland and neutral, Frankie could not be sure if she were complimenting or insulting him.

Ko saw the second Vector coming when the backwash from the bridge spotlights caught the gunmetal shape in their glow, a silver shark on dark asphalt. Then he was rumbling over the causeway and on to the bridge proper. The two kilometre stretch of flyover arced from Ma Wan to Tsing Yi island over the Lamma Channel, and below Ko could make out the boxy shapes of cargo submersibles, nosing through the sluggish water toward the floodlit freight terminal. All he had to do was get down there, and he’d be golden.

Feng was standing on the lip of the bridge and pointing into the sky. Ko sped past him, almost too quick to register the guardsman there with one hand pressing a smoke to his lips and the other stabbing at the northwest. Ko looked where he pointed and saw flickers of light moving toward the bridge, the glint of reflection from the spinning rotors. Police helo-drones, fast little ducted-rotor aircraft bristling with gun pods.

The other Vector was coming up fast. Ko swerved to avoid another slow mover and boldly cut across the path of the pursuing car. The corp driver gunned his engine and followed him across the lanes, never once losing a moment of concentration. The second Merc surged forward and slammed into the rear of Ko’s car. He heard the rear bumper crack under the impact, the deep hum of electric discharge.

Ko had the weapon pallet open already. He didn’t really like dropped munitions-they always seemed a little unsporting to him-but this wasn’t a situation he could be friendly about. Ignoring the fans of lasers sweeping down the bridge toward him from the drones, he tap-tapped the drop switch and let a cluster of poppers tumble from the rear compartment as he pulled away. The size of tennis balls, the small spheres bounced once-twice-three times to arm and then detonated in loud, bright explosions. More a disorienting, less a destructive weapon, poppers were designed to baffle a tailgater rather than kill them.

The second Vector skidded a little as one of the front tyres deflated; but in the next moment the wheel was refilling itself and the Mercedes made up the distance again. Ko swore under his breath. The driver of the other car was now visible in the wing mirror. Was that guy wearing an opera mask?

The Vector rammed him again and broke off the rest of the bumper and number plate, grinding them to shards beneath the Merc’s wheels. Ko flicked a glance up at the drones. The robot flyers were deploying taser catapults, ready to fire electro-harpoons into the car’s hood to shock the computer-controlled engine to death. One hit would turn the Vector into an expensive roller skate and Ko would coast to a halt, sealed inside a steel coffin until the APRC came to arrest him.

“I don’t think so.” Ko thumbed another switch and ignited the one-use smokescreen canister in the boot. Instantly, a thick cloud of inky blue haze coughed from the back of the Vector, fogging the highway.

The Monkey King made the little tutting noise again as the smoke enveloped the car, and he tapped a control on the steering wheel. A glimmer of light washed over the windscreen and suddenly the highway ahead was rendered in computer-generated gridform, data feeding from the hood’s radar sensors to the head-up display. He turned the Vector into the fugitive car and rammed him a third time, pressing the arcing electric probes into the exposed innards of the vehicle. The thief swerved again and slammed on the brakes, dropping away past the driver’s side. In the back seat Frankie saw a blur of silver vanish behind them; then they emerged from the smoke cloud and into a glitter of red targeting lasers.

The police drones lost the stolen vehicle just for a moment in the swath of blue mist, the metallic particulates in the discharge baffling their sensors. But traffic control had given them a target sillhoutte to look for, and, when the shape of a sliver Mercedes Vector flying YLHI colours presented itself, both the robots fired without hesitation. The first harpoon went wide, clattering uselessly against the crash barrier; the second struck the bonnet and locked, a combination of molecular glue and magnetic coils holding it fast. The dense capacitor in the harpoon’s head released a massive bolt of power into the engine and killed it instantly. The Vector turned into an uncontrolled skid that rammed it into a bridge stanchion. The car described a seven hundred and twenty degree spin before coming to a shuddering halt in the nearside lane.

The drones started to bark pre-recorded phrases, ordering the people inside to remain where they were and not attempt to leave their vehicle. Neither unit spent any time scanning the other silver Mercedes Vector that raced away past the stalled vehicle, the horn sounding three times in a rude salute.

In the back seat of the dead car, Frankie Lam watched the other Vector vanish toward the city and fought down the urge to laugh.

Rikio had an Ushanti sub-machinegun in his hand as Ko stepped out of the sedan. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, waving the weapon around, taking in the whole of the dockside warehouse around them with an exasperated gesture.

“Reckon you might like it.” Ko showed teeth, keeping his tone fast and light. He knew better than to underplay it when dealing with triads, even low-level Red Poles like Rikio. “Mostly intact, bit of bumper damage…”

“I’ll say,” said the gunman, craning his neck to look at the wounded rear end. “Why’d you bring this trash here?”

“Trash?” Ko spat. “How many of these you get to see, Rik? It’s hot off the highway, man. Hell, even if you chop-shop it, this sweet ride will make you your bonus for the month-”

“Hot is right,” said the other man, letting his free hand wander through his five-toned punch-perm. “Get this outta here. I don’t know you. I ain’t seen you.”

All at once, Ko’s studied cool disintegrated in a jolt of anger. “The fuck? What did you say to me?” He grabbed a handful of Rikio’s green silk shirt and snarled at him, oblivious to the machinegun. “You just cut me off ’cos you’re too chickenshit to take this?” In a flash, the adrenaline rush and the latent anger he’d been nursing all day came together in a single outburst. “We came up together, man! Now you act like you don’t know me?”

“Back off.” Rikio pushed him away with the muzzle of the Ushanti. “You’re not 14K, Ko. You could be, but you’re not. You’re a loner. That means I don’t have to do you any favours-”

“What’s going on here?” The voice halted both of them. Ko’s anger froze solid. The man approaching them was a small, wizened figure. In his youth, the elderly fellow had probably been a big guy, heavy but dangerous with it. What he had lost to age, he’d replaced with presence. Rikio’s manner was instantly obeisant.

“Sifu Hung. Sorry, sorry, sir. Just a small disagreement. Nothing important. ”

Big Hung. Ko’s blood ran cold. This old man was the senior boss of the entire 14K triad, half of Hong Kong’s criminal enterprises firmly in the pocket of this dumpy doughball ex-contender. The youth marvelled at the idea of it; the stories he had heard about Big Hung’s ruthless nature, of the fear he instilled in other men-and now to look at him, the mobster looked like nothing more than a fat old geezer in an expensive suit. The elderly guy leaned closer. Ko smelled cologne and the faint aroma of tiger balm.

Hung gave Ko a measuring stare, and he made it clear he didn’t like what he saw. “You don’t belong here, boy. Stop bothering my lads and get lost.” More men were approaching now, Hung’s personal guard. All of them held shiny handguns in deceptively casual stances.

“Ko brought a car…” began Rikio, in an attempt to justify himself.

Hung turned his puppy-like brown eyes on the Vector and sniffed like he smelt something bad. “Corp wheels? Is this boy a fool?” he asked Rikio, “He won’t earn our graces by doing a stupid tiling like this.” He gave the car a dismissive wave. “Burn it.”

“What?” Ko blurted. “But-”

Hung eyed Rikio, ignoring Ko so completely that it silenced him. “Torch it,” he repeated. “And then make the idiot go away.”

For old time’s sake, Rikio let Ko take the bag from the back seat and leave with just a few bruises and a split lip. By the time he was at the highway, the night had closed in and unleashed the rain. Feng was waiting there for him.

“You lie with pigs, you become dirty,” said the swordsman.

Ko made a spitting noise and kept walking.

We are not so blind that we cannot see. Do you understand what will happen when the sky cuts like SILK and the BEAST pours in?

Do not accept the way of no mind and the CALMNESS of the false Zen-this is a lie made to entrap you, a coil cast down from the dragons in the toivers! Turn your face from false IDOLS. Find truth in your HEART.

The poison of dead emperors taints the Fragrant Harbour! Touch life and live! Go on and LIVE!

Excerpt from a tract distributed in Temple Street Market. Origin and author unknown.