"With kick-ass cyber-babes, sociopathic computers, and a world descending into culture war, Hammerjack delivers everything you could want in a sci-fi action thriller. Fast, inventive, and deeply, darkly cool." -- Max Barry, author of Jennifer Government
"Giller’s debut hits all the right chords for genre success: breakneck action, high-tech inventiveness, and a compelling protagonist in the hard-boiled hacker-gumshoe Cray. A winning blend of crime novel motifs and computer technology makes it must reading for fans of cyberpunk and detective fiction alike." -- Booklist
"Nice, noirish twists and one badass female character I wish I'd invented myself....Marc Giller certainly knows how to write." -- Richard Morgan, author of Broken Angels
"Pull on your mirror shades and hang on for the ride. This is cyberpunk without equivocation, in the tradition of Gibson and Sterling, with a nicely camochromed Halo thugs thrown in for good measure...a fast-paced and enjoyable read." -- Neal Asher, author of Gridlinked
"Giller’s action-packed debut has cinematic crackle and a crisp pace…[his] brave new world consistently entertains and may provide a solid foundation for a series." -- Publishers Weekly
"Strongly styled SF debut with big echoes of The Matrix Trilogy and the Philip K. Dick flicks Blade Runner and Minority Report... Really cleans up your neural-imaging system with radiant tensile energy." -- Kirkus Reviews
Chapter
One
"This is the Zone, man," Cray Alden heard someone say as he walked into the staging area, the attitude behind the voice pumped with synthetic steroids and the usual macho bullshit. "Sectors on the outside don't see it like we do. When it starts to come down, I ain't even gonna wait to see what happens before I frag 'em. Don't matter to me as long as I collect."
It was the Zone agent's mantra: pay for play. Without the cash, you might as well be dealing with a Boy Scout. That was the way it worked in the Franchise Zones, especially out here in the Asian Sphere. Sleaze and civilization had been one and the same here for centuries, untold pleasures opening the door to dirty riches.
That made for plenty of players, and where there were players there were runners: high-tech polar opposites of the kind of muscle in this room. The commerce of illegal information was big business, and there was usually no shortage of takers.
"I know, man, I know," another one of them picked up. "I think it's better to bring them in cold anyway. Seen runners do some crazy shit. Do yourself a favor and take 'em out the second you get a clean shot."
"Just as easy to dig flash from a corpse," someone agreed casually.
"Yeah, but then you miss out on the fun part," another observed. "You ever see an open extraction? Never heard screaming like that in your life."
This brought forth a howl of laughter, the kind Cray only heard when he was in the company of these missing links. He could smell the raw meat on their breath.
Cray would have preferred to do this by himself, but the Collective didn't allow that kind of leeway inside the Zone. Instead he had been assigned four agents to assist him in the interception—overkill as far as Cray was concerned, but to his superiors there was no such thing. Each of the agents carried three visible weapons, although Cray was certain they had more tucked away in the camochrome armor that plated their bodies. He hated working with them. Every time he heard them laugh, he lost a little more faith in the human race.
The cackles gave way to the pounding of boots as they saw Cray walking in. It was a thing they did whenever they met the man in charge of the mission—a sort of tribal rite that had more to do with tradition than actual respect. They also put on a show with their armor, the camochrome pixels changing colors as Cray walked past, making them bright one second and nearly invisible the next. The effect was eerie, and made them seem even less real.
Cray didn't try to hide his contempt. They wouldn't have cared anyway.
"That's enough," he told the agents as he took the floor. The noise died down as soon as Cray stepped behind the small podium at the head of the room. His tone of voice made the agents pay attention, but it was the money Cray's boss had ponied up that made them listen. Phao Yin was the force behind everything Cray did, enough to make these agents think he was CSS—even though nothing could be further from the truth.
"I want to start by making one thing clear," he announced. "I don't work like the people you're used to. There is no bounty involved here, no price for flesh. I'm here to make a simple intercept, and you're here to make sure nothing goes wrong. So don't go thinking the mark is expendable. I want her taken alive. Is that understood?"
A snicker arose. The agents probably thought Cray was looking forward to torturing his mark. If they thought that, fine. As long as it meant they followed orders.
"Good," Cray finished. "I know you've already assimilated the dossier on our target, so I won't waste your time going over it again. If you have any questions, now's the time."
The agent Cray heard when he first walked in stood up. "Your dossier is missing some information," he said, putting on his own show of bravado. "You got no bio. You got no visual. All you got is a name and a possible description."
"I know."
"So how the hell are were supposed to make the target if we don't even know what the bitch looks like?"
"I gave you everything you need to know," Cray said, his dark brown eyes glaring at the agent. "Identification of the mark is my responsibility, not yours. As long as you have my eyes, you don't need to use your own."
There were sneers, shaking heads, muttered obscenities. Cray didn't want to give this bunch any reason to believe he trusted them. If they didn't know what they were looking for, they wouldn't wander very far from him. And as long as Cray could keep them in his sight, they would be far less likely to screw everything up.
"You got any problems with that?" he asked, giving them all a chance to back out.
Copyright © 2005 by Marc D. Giller
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In this dark, futuristic thriller, Marc Giller defines the cutting edge of suspense with a relentless tale of murder, techno-terrorism, and a conspiracy one man is driven to uncover--even if he must undo reality in the process.... They ride virtual waves of code and pirate high-tech secrets to sell to the highest bidder--they are faster and smarter than your security system, and are only too happy to show you by how much. They are hammerjacks, and the rewards of their profession are second only to the sheer rush of what they do. Cray Alden was once one of them. Now he's a corporate spook chasing down the information traffickers who've turned business into all-out war. But beneath the surface skirmishes lurks something darker--rumors of a biological supercomputer that threatens to shift the balance of power between man and machine. Now Cray is caught in the cross fire between the corporate Collective and a shadowy fanatical anti-tech cult called Inru. With an assassin on his trail and a devastating secret locked in his mind, Cray must turn to the hammerjack who's been his most dangerous, most elusive quarry. Together they are on the deadliest mission of Cray's life--to destroy the god that man made.
