Shadowboxer by Nicholas Pollotta

the node was still active, but Laura couldn’t figure this one out. Public telecom nodes usually just lay there dormant until a decker used one and got fried or they closed the node. This type of activity was unique. She wondered what it meant, but she had more important things to do right now.
    Laura Redbird would cruise the Matrix day and night, night and day, haunting the grid and info nets and virtual hangouts until somebody put out the word that they were hiring for a dangerous run. Any run, she didn’t care, as long as it was local and the bigger the better. Eventually, she’d land a job with the Gunderson Corporation, or better yet, a run against the corp. Laura would use that link as the thin edge of a wedge to get closer to the killer Johnson. It would take time, but there was really no other way. Eventually, the murderer would try to find another team of shadowrunners to hose over and Laura Redbird was going to be first in line on-line.
    Drek! Name. She’d have to use another name. The Johnson didn’t know what her meat body looked like any more than she did the Johnson’s, but the biff might know her name. She flapped her chrome wings in annoyance. It would be easy enough to change her physical appearance—some bleach for her hair and contact lenses, and she could probably pass for a deeply tanned European instead of the light-skinned Amerind that she was. Null perspiration. What she didn’t want to change was her icon; all her program chips and utilities were set to recognize it. Take days to correct the software. Then again, did she need too? There were lots of bird icons on the grid, so how about changing her name to Talon or Raptor or Falcon? No, something more common, innocuous. Go slow, stay low. Let the target come to you. Hmm, what about Silver? Yeah, perfect, nice and bland. That would do fine.
    Here I am, sent Silver silently to the whole world. Please hire me, Mr . Johnson, so I can kill you!

4
    With a bandanna now wrapped around his head to hide the gang tattoo, Thumbs appeared from around the wreckage of an old radio-controlled truck—now a home for twelve, with dogs and kids included—staying low and following the dwarf. Money was honey, and if the halfer had needed muscle once, he might need it again. And the job could easily go to the next guy who happened to be on hand. Which was going to be him.
    Piracy had been taking its toll on both shipping and tourism in Miami of late. The fraggers were ruthless and slippery, all the harder to catch because there were so many different groups of various sizes. Sure, Atlantic Security was on the case, but it didn’t seem to be making much of a dent. That was hurting the local economy bad, the trickle-down effect slowing everybody’s biz to a crawl. While Shorty there smelled like money and trouble. Thumbs’ two favorite things, outside of beer and sex. Which were practically the same thing: money-trouble, beer-sex, one always got you the other. Or so it seemed.
    Bending his knees to keep as low as possible, Thumbs watched as the dwarf scooted into a used clothing store. He knew the place. It was run by an old ork who’d lost both legs in a bad run and never quite managed to get enough nuyen to buy new ones. Lucky Pete was anything but. But he owed Thumbs favors, lots of ’em, and now no punksters would ever bother the cripple again after Thumbs had had some grisly fun with them. Mighty hard to ride a Scorpion or a Harley when ya can’t get a good grip on the handlebars anymore.
    Moving for the pink alley that led to the back door of the blue store, Thumbs froze as the dwarf came out again wearing sandals, a laser-white pair of shorts, a holiday shirt, sunglasses, and a beard almost as big as him. So big in fact that it nearly hid the Nikon & Howell portacam slung around his neck. Thumbs checked for the telltale map and there it was, sticking out of the halfer’s back pocket like the dorsal fin of a shark. The official flag for I’M A FRAGGING