From: tagg@hg.uleth.ca (Nathaniel Tagg)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: The Golden Spike:  Shopping for adventure
Date: 21 Aug 92 04:24:54 GMT
Reply-To: tagg@hg.uleth.ca
Organization: University of Lethbridge


     Drax walked down Hamilton's shore district alleys with trepidation.  He 
unconsiously gripped his briefcase more tightly in his left hand.   He heard 
the plastic handle start to creak in complaint and consciously forced his hand 
to power down slightly.  The hand told him that the object he carried 
was currently ten degrees below body temperature, and weighed precisely one 
point two kilograms.  
    Pathetically light.  Drax hadn't had the money to keep it stocked for some 
months, but now that he had the chance he was shivering with fear again.
     Part of the fear was, of course, that he was walking through what was 
officially Chromer territory.  Drax didn't have any particular street 
affiliations at present, but Chromers rarely asked questions of prey.  What 
made him really nervous was his upcoming meeting. 
     From the outside, the fence's safehouse looked like it was ready to 
collapse into the Lake.  Or rather, it looked as though it wanted to, but 
couldn't because the lake was inconvieniently located several blocks away,
over and beyond the artifical landfill that sprawled out into Lake Ontario.
  The door was half sunk into the ground, where innumerable bits of styrofoam,
fax sheet and grime had built up.  Inexplicably, the door appeared to be
inside out, with saftey latch on the outside rather than in.  Drax pushed the 
horizontal metal bar and followed the door into the entryway.
       The door slowly closed behind him on an old, noisy hydraulic piston, 
leaving him in total darkness.  Feeling self-conscious, and more than a little
silly, Drax raised his hands and made the Jive for trade.  Then he waited.  A
slight hum was all that revealed that he was being thoroughly scanned.
      Shortly, a static-covered voice spoke to him, shattering his composure. 
"So out with it; who told you I was here?"
      _What a trite line_ Drax thought.  "Eugene sent me."
    "I should have guessed.   Well, the arm doesn't have any of 'yur usual 
weapons, and the case and eye are clear too.  Just put yur piece on the floor,
no one is gonna touch it."  Drax took his pistol from his jacket and layed it 
down as he was told. 
     He heard the hum of magnets as seven independent locking bars withdrew 
themselves into the vault door in front of him.  The door opened, and the 
flourescent light blinded his right eye temporarily.  Before him stood a 
grizzled man, maybe forty, pointing a shotgun at his head.  Satisfied, he 
slowly put it down as he saw that Drax hadn't tried to recover his weapon.
      Drax looked around nervously.  Crates sat piled against the reinforces 
concrete walls One open crate near one wall appeared to hold several dozen 
packages of cheap ramen.  A ancient microwave sat on a crate nearby, with 
a dish of some kind revolving inside it.  "I'm Drax.  Thanks for letting me 
in, mister...."
     "Yeah, yeah.  So, what stock you wanna rip offa me, kid?"
     "Listen, if you don't want to sell, I can just...'
     "Naw.  I need the money.  I just resent you short-sighted folk fur not 
thinking of stashin stuff yurselves.  And I gotta sell mine to pay for the 
'lectric bill."
     Drax marvelled.  The man before him  was said to be an infamous hermit, 
and seemed to pride himself on being a survivor of any assault on the city, 
be it conventional, biological, or commercial, and yet he depended on 
the power Grid just like everyone else.  The ignorance seemed incredible, 
but the hermit had said it without so much as flinching.
     "So, spit it out.  What do ya need?" the old man repeated.
     "Explosives.  Lots of them."  

     Drax left the ramshackle building twenty minutes later, with his left 
hand wrapped around the handle of a case that now wieghed well over twelve 
kilograms, and with the pockets of his trenchcoat bulging with newly 
acquired items.  Chromers no longer seemed a threat, with this payload.

         	*	*	*	*	*

      "So, did you get all the toys you wanted down in Hamilton?" asked Ian 
Stuart with a smirk.  Drax eyed his "employers",  thinking for the tenth 
time how much they looked like a nice suburban yuppie couple up from Ottawa 
for a week. Probably a perfect cover, he realized.
      "Yeah, no thanks to you.  The guy nearly blew my head off when I offered
him half the going price.  But he was desperate, and we did a deal.  I can get 
everything else I need at the OSD tonight.  You know, whoever's paying you 
guys has some funny ideas about what an 'operating budget' is."
      "Well, where is it?"
      "I got it stashed in a coffin at Pearson International.  Out of order 
sign on the door.  Reprogrammed the lock."
     Bobbi spoke up.  "I would still like to know how you plan to get stuff 
like that into the Sprawl.  Couldn't you get you're, uh, tools on location?"
     Drax sighed.  "No.  Firstly, it gives the opposition, whoever that turns 
out to be, another way to track us.  Secondly, I don't have any contacts in 
the Sprawl, and some of this stuff is downright rare.  Thirdly, I have to 
know the stuff will burn when I want it to;  a friend of mine said that my 
supplier was on the up-and-up.  As for how I get it through, let's just say 
that holography can be made to work for x-rays as well as your usual red 
to violet."
     "But they use chemical detectors on the airlines..."
     "Not on automated cargo flights.  Hey, I'm not stupid enough ride in 
the same goddam _plane_ as shit like that.  I've seen what it can do if 
handled too roughly."  There.  That seemed to give them food for thought.  
As long as Ward and June Cleaver here were thinking, Drax was going to make a 
break for it.  "Well, I gotta get moving if I you want to get out of town 
tomorrow.  Eleven o'clock?"
     "Six hundred hours sharp, at Pearson, terminal four, wiseguy."
     "Okay, okay," Drax muttered.  Anything just to get away from these 
stiffs for a couple of hours...

	*	*	*	*	*

    Drax woke up poorly.  The alarm built into the coffin went off at 5:50,
breaking his nightmare. Sweating, he automatically sprang upright in bed.  This
was, of course the wrong thing to do in a narrow sleep-cubical.  
     The door of the coffin opened some five minutes later to a swearing 
figure wearing two day old clothing and sporting a new sizable bump on his 
forehead.
      He climbed down the narrow ladder from his spot two meters off the floor,
swaying slightly from the alchohol he had finished imbibing a mere four hours
before.  He stepped carefully to the ground, wishing now that he had spent more
time sleeping and less time unsucsessfully tring to pick up the new waitress at
the OSD.  Getting the stuff from Eugene, had of course, been just the work of a
few minutes in one of the more priviate stock rooms deep in the bowels of the
warehouse-come-pub.
     He hurried across ten rows to the ground-level coffin marked "Out of
order". He checked for watchers, and seeing none, keyed the lock pad with a
long sequence of numbers.  The hatch opened obediently, revealing a large
duffle bag and his insulated suitcase.
     Drax grabbed his stuff, made a quick desision, and smashed the lock of the
coffin with the back of his left hand to match the out of order sign.  Faster
than trying to scrape off the cardboard sign he had meticulously fastened to
the door with dried toothpaste.
     He hurried from the chamber, made his way through the terminal, caught an
airport bus from terminal two to the recently completed terminal four.  He got
out, and looked around. There they were, two lovebirds staring into each
other's eyes.  He couldn't here what they were saying, but again he was struck
with just how ordinary they looked, just a couple seperating for a buisness
trip, an everyday occourance.  'No style', he thought.  Or, rather, it had
style that was an exact replica of having no style.  He perfered not having to
worry about such things.
     He approached the couple, politely announcing his presence by pretending
to have a smoker's hacking cough. Satisfyingly, they both jerked their eyes
from each other to stare briefly at the intruder, before quickly rearranging
their masks for buisness.
     "So you finally made it."  Ian looked pointedly at his watch.
     "Ten frigging minutes late.  I had trouble with the lock," Drax replied,
indicating the suitcase.
     "Alright.  So which one of us are you going with, anyway?" asked Bobbi.
     Drax had been putting off making this decision.  One way, he could get to
know the rest of the team more quickly, and get a better idea of who he could
turn his back on in a hurry.  The other way, he could scope out the territory,
get a feel for the target, get himself a hidey-hole, try to find out who his
real employer was.  Fifty-fifty, he judged.  He looked at his choice of
companions, suppressed a leer, and said "It's been a long time since I was in
the Sprawl.  Can't stand going recruiting, anyway.  I'll see ya in a few days,
Ian."  He winked.
     Drax left Ian to start fuming quietly, and went over to the ticket counter
to buy a New York shuttle ticket.


------------------------
       Drax is my character.  Ian and Bobbi Stuart belong to Dan.  Using these
characters without permission is either illegal, expensive, or fattening, I
forget which. Copyright sometime in the late 20th century.  All rights, lefts,
etc, reserved.
	Constructive Critisism is Your Friend.  Comments appreciated.  Well, at
least half the time.

Until next time, this is Mister Conclusion saying, "Until next time, this is
Mister Conclusion saying, 'Good Night'."
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          Nathaniel Tagg               The U of Hell,  Lethbridge, AB
    "It's just a matter of putting one point seven nine five three seven two
and two point two oh four six two eight together."     --The Doctor 
___The opinions expressed by the author of the preceding message are not 
nessesarily representative of the opinions of the author of the
preceding message.____
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