the urge to look over her shoulder, negotiating the debris and cargo
containers placed across the width of the pier in what seemed a casual fashion; in fact, the junk had been arranged to provide bottlenecks to
stop anyone from rushing the big ship moored at the 86 from the shore. In the bleak light of the evening, the vessel was a wall of gray steel
curving up and over her head, frozen there like a wave cast in metal. Chains of fairy lights hung down from rusting gantries, flapping in the
breeze, and while the upper deck was mostly dark, she could hear the sounds of people running around up there, and the occasional crunch of
metal on metal. They had a regulation-size basketball court made of scrap iron and chain link on the deck—she'd seen it in the distance as she
crossed the bridge over 12th Avenue—and there was a game on, lit by bio-lume sticks and fires burning in oil drums.
Ahead she glimpsed the name of the venerable old vessel. Image patterning software in her Sarif optics picked out the letters defaced but still
standing clear of the go-ganger tags painted over them: Intrepid.
Anna kept walking, approaching the covered gantry that extended up into the hull. Once upon a time, this old warship had sailed the world,
projecting American sea power in the Pacific, Cuba, and Vietnam; fate and rich men had saved her from becoming a billion razor blades, and for
a while the aging aircraft carrier had stood at dock, hosting stories of old wars, even serving her nation once again when the towers came down.
But that was almost thirty years dead and gone, and recession and stock crashes had sent the old warhorse into darkness. The relic planes that
had once stood on her decks were gone, sold off to collectors, and the ship itself had been left to rust. But like so many things, the people at the
fringes of the city had found a use for her.
Anna had paid enough bribes to get the word of the day that let her on board. From the aft of the hangar deck, the sounds of a hammer-speed
DJ resonated down the echoing hull. Between here and there, the place they called "the wet market" blossomed like a multicolored fungus,
dozens of makeshift stalls selling pirated datasofts, old tech, and recovered cyberware alongside oil-can cook plates crackling with hot fat and
pungent foods from India, the Caribbean, or the African Federation. There was no law at the 86, but the New York Police Department tended
to let things lie, providing that the residents kept themselves to themselves and made sure that any bodies washed up inside New Jersey's
jurisdiction.
Anna skirted past the marketplace and found a corroded set of ladders that led up to the next level. The corridor she emerged in was gloomy. It
smelled of rust and seawater. Following lines of peeling lume tape, she ascended again and emerged somewhere near the bow. A large section of
the forward deck had been cut away and in its place there were a couple of jury-rigged geo-domes made of smart fabric. The sea smell gave
way to the faint whiff of ozone and battery acid.
Inside the dome there was a parade of cowboy electronics; server frames modified like hot rods, chugging gasoline generators and fat trunks of
cable snaking from fans of solar panels or military-issue satellite antennae. Monitors and holoscreens lit the space with cold blue illumination,
and here and there, faces rendered ghost-white glanced up at her from laptops or gamer pits.
"Kel." She turned sharply at the sound of her cover name and saw Denny walking toward her. So dark-skinned as to seem almost coal-black, he
was a short and stocky hacker with a shorn skull and an unkempt soul patch on his narrow chin. He had mirrored Kusanagi optics that gave his
eyes the look of steel spheres. Following a few steps behind was a tall, rail-thin woman inside a doublet a size too large for her. She had
thumbless spider-hands the color of old terra-cotta.
Anna gave Denny a nod from beneath her hood,
containers placed across the width of the pier in what seemed a casual fashion; in fact, the junk had been arranged to provide bottlenecks to
stop anyone from rushing the big ship moored at the 86 from the shore. In the bleak light of the evening, the vessel was a wall of gray steel
curving up and over her head, frozen there like a wave cast in metal. Chains of fairy lights hung down from rusting gantries, flapping in the
breeze, and while the upper deck was mostly dark, she could hear the sounds of people running around up there, and the occasional crunch of
metal on metal. They had a regulation-size basketball court made of scrap iron and chain link on the deck—she'd seen it in the distance as she
crossed the bridge over 12th Avenue—and there was a game on, lit by bio-lume sticks and fires burning in oil drums.
Ahead she glimpsed the name of the venerable old vessel. Image patterning software in her Sarif optics picked out the letters defaced but still
standing clear of the go-ganger tags painted over them: Intrepid.
Anna kept walking, approaching the covered gantry that extended up into the hull. Once upon a time, this old warship had sailed the world,
projecting American sea power in the Pacific, Cuba, and Vietnam; fate and rich men had saved her from becoming a billion razor blades, and for
a while the aging aircraft carrier had stood at dock, hosting stories of old wars, even serving her nation once again when the towers came down.
But that was almost thirty years dead and gone, and recession and stock crashes had sent the old warhorse into darkness. The relic planes that
had once stood on her decks were gone, sold off to collectors, and the ship itself had been left to rust. But like so many things, the people at the
fringes of the city had found a use for her.
Anna had paid enough bribes to get the word of the day that let her on board. From the aft of the hangar deck, the sounds of a hammer-speed
DJ resonated down the echoing hull. Between here and there, the place they called "the wet market" blossomed like a multicolored fungus,
dozens of makeshift stalls selling pirated datasofts, old tech, and recovered cyberware alongside oil-can cook plates crackling with hot fat and
pungent foods from India, the Caribbean, or the African Federation. There was no law at the 86, but the New York Police Department tended
to let things lie, providing that the residents kept themselves to themselves and made sure that any bodies washed up inside New Jersey's
jurisdiction.
Anna skirted past the marketplace and found a corroded set of ladders that led up to the next level. The corridor she emerged in was gloomy. It
smelled of rust and seawater. Following lines of peeling lume tape, she ascended again and emerged somewhere near the bow. A large section of
the forward deck had been cut away and in its place there were a couple of jury-rigged geo-domes made of smart fabric. The sea smell gave
way to the faint whiff of ozone and battery acid.
Inside the dome there was a parade of cowboy electronics; server frames modified like hot rods, chugging gasoline generators and fat trunks of
cable snaking from fans of solar panels or military-issue satellite antennae. Monitors and holoscreens lit the space with cold blue illumination,
and here and there, faces rendered ghost-white glanced up at her from laptops or gamer pits.
"Kel." She turned sharply at the sound of her cover name and saw Denny walking toward her. So dark-skinned as to seem almost coal-black, he
was a short and stocky hacker with a shorn skull and an unkempt soul patch on his narrow chin. He had mirrored Kusanagi optics that gave his
eyes the look of steel spheres. Following a few steps behind was a tall, rail-thin woman inside a doublet a size too large for her. She had
thumbless spider-hands the color of old terra-cotta.
Anna gave Denny a nod from beneath her hood,
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