Incursion

The Corps are moving again...

The word went out across all of the Net. It sunk into the deep spaces where ideologues and criminals and artists mingled and talked, out of sight of SYNC. It filtered into public discussion forums and private chats. People speculated in between posted news stories and plans for nights out in SanSan. It was muttered in offices and chattered about on street corners and shouted about in bars.

The Corps are moving again...

There were persistent rumors, of course. News didn't really filter back from the strange other world - a dream to few, a joke to many. Who'd believe that there was a world full of superheroes? Nobody really commented when Jackson Howard announced his retirement, or Elizabeth Mills was replaced as VP of Urban Renewal, or Chairman Hiro stepped down. The corporations moving above and around them were like giants from a past age. They did things because they wanted to, and who could stop them?

The Corps are moving again...

---  hello, kobbers

The words reached a corporate office in Heinlein.

"Are we moving again?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't have clearance for that."

"Yeah, but if you did, you wouldn't tell me, right? I wouldn't say anything if I did."

"Do you know anything?"

"No!"

"Aha!" 

--- this is a church

The words did not reach Ryō Ōno, because he was in the middle of a run.

Most people saw the Net. They needed a BMI, a screen or something to parse numbers, or hallucinate ICE as it saw itself. Something visual. Ze didn't need that. With its hands around the neck of her guitar and the stims buzzing through eir blood, they heard the Net, felt it as vibrations through the base of xir spine. Nothing but sonic. Data as notes.

Right now the noise was hollow, thudding drums. Metallic, enormous, the footsteps of a giant. A Colossus. One of BANGUN's finest. It could feel the reverberation of the thing slamming through her skull, threatening to reach into his brain and pull out zir soul.

They held onto the anticipation for as long as she dared. Then one hand slammed the strings of the guitar, sending sparks and lights flashing over its surface. In his head, the sure metallic beat of the ICE faltered, stumbling out of sync with the roar of data. As it tripped, xie hurtled past, hearing the disorganized ringing fade into the background -

And replaced with the gentle hum of system updates, stored procedures, tiny updates. Normally this would have been the time to shred it all. But this was a rare run where she wasn't going to do that.

A clanging chord ripped towards one of the sources of hums, jamming in like an electric hand in the stream, and pulled something out.

 Ryō jacked out and waited for the world to reform around xir. The stims were wearing out, the sleek buzz of their thoughts turning back to the turmoil. But before she stripped and crashed into bed, he managed to yank out a memstrip from the base of zir console and upload the contents.

--- this river is an altar

Barry "Baz" Wong had heard the words, but wasn't thinking about them right now. Most of his brainpower was focused on which part of the man on the ground in front of him he was going to kick.

"Come on, mate," he grunted, trying not to let the exertion show. "Where the fuck is it?"

The man whimpered, dirt staining his white uniform. Some mid-level c*** from PT Untaian. Baz sighed and knelt down, ignoring the creak of his knees.

"Look, mate," he added, fishing in his jacket pocket for his cigarette case. "Let's go right back to basics. The stuff that's in the mycele. You're supposed to have a case of the stuff. You don't have a case of the stuff. I'm here personally, and you're wasting my time. I don't enjoy kicking-"

He paused. "Nah, actually, I'm enjoying it heaps. But I'd rather get on with it, yeah? So where's the bloody magic living metal, you dipshit?"

He watched the man groan. It wasn't fun, lying on the concrete of the lower city of Kalimantan, surrounded by three tri-maf goons and wondering if this was the last time you got to saw the night sky. He'd been there. But hell, now he wasn't. He pulled a cigarette, eyes flicking to the screen embedded in the reverse side of the open case, and lit it.

"...isn't any more."

Baz had to lean in. "Sorry. Thought I didn't hear you right. The fuck do you mean there isn't any more?"

"There isn't any!" The scientist, or whatever he was, wailed. "I-it's being shipped elsewhere! I couldn't grab any before they put it on haulers and took it away!"

Something blinked on the screen of Baz's console, He ignored it, reaching his left arm out. Shining chrome flexed as he gripped the man's jaw hard enough that the guy yelled in pain.

"Where'd they take it, then?"

The man told him. Barry didn't believe him, until he finally glanced at his console screen.

--- this is a sacrifice

Tea. News. Threedee puzzle.

Then another day.

Sitting in her chair,  Magdalene Keino-Chemutai began her usual morning routine. The holograph of the Mahkota Langit space elevator sitting before her was a patchwork - based on the last designs she'd had before she'd been fired. Updates from her old logins were vanishing as Haas and Jinteki locked her out. But she'd got a pretty good idea of what the cretins were doing before they'd ousted her, and she'd managed to...

Well, they could fire her, but she could still do her job. The elevator on Lake Victoria was good. One of her better works. But she'd never settle for good.

She made a waving motion with her hands, expecting the usual list of blue screens to flick into reality. Manifests, schedules, the normal. But instead of blue, it was red.

"...What?"

She peered, not understanding at first. Manifests lacking materials. Schedules off track. They were lacking bioroids. They were lacking bioroids? The damn Ottos were all over the thing! How could Haas lack bioroids? Did the damn golems finally lose their minds and jump off the LEO station? 

Her drones didn't have answers for her, so she looked herself. The engines of servers and processors beneath her desk whined as new screens flared to life. She linked into an old Jinteki server - loaned out to Au Co for some of Gioan's more inane ideas, no doubt. She made dismissive noises as she brushed past the annoyance of a few layers of weak ICE. A rolling armadillo swerved off-course with some gravitic calculations. Knife-wielding hands stymied by complex rocketry measurements that saw her sail past. She cleaned up her own trail, of course. Wouldn't want that idiot to figure out his loaner server was her back door into LEO's manifests.

Her console vomited the resulting contents out into her apartment, the glass of her hi-rise darkening further to make sure the harsh Borneo sunlight didn't make the holograms difficult to view. She flicked through the folders and file cabinets that represented the contents. Her drones buzzed through, fat-bodied bees that hunted and gathered.

Nothing.

"What?!"

 Mycele shipments from Jinteki's side were down. Bioroid workforces had halved. The humans working on the Mahkota Langit weren't being laid off, of course. Ottos were more valuable. But what should have been complete in a few years had ballooned to decades.

 Why?

Magdalene sipped her tea and pondered. No, she fumed. This was stupid. This was infuriating. It was rude. They were pulling resources from her project for... what? Without so much as a note to explain? Surely it'd be on the news if these delays were happening.

...The news.

She thought, then jacked out of the server, the file cabinets vanishing, and selected a new target. A minor substation of Synapse that diverted a lot of traffic. Traffic she could scrape. The bastards at NBN were already reading everything outside her apartment and network, anyway. Why couldn't she? There was some one-woman marketeer out there doing the same thing, apparently -

And that was the first time Magdalene saw the words.

"Ah."

And then she decided to book her first holiday in years. Are you ready to jack in?