Part 1-Chapter 1

Atoyama City. It's a spectacular view, especially from across the Bay. If you're smart you won't come any closer than that. It's a great place to live, if you can afford it. If you can't? Well, not so much.

Flip through the V-books and all the travel pages tell you how great the city is. "Bustling" they call it. "Vibrant". All the kind of garbage that sells. What they never tell you about is the crime and the poverty. But that's here too. And the underworld? Heck, the underworld's every bit as "bustling" and "vibrant" as the real world. Some might even say the underworld is the real world. I know I do.

It's early evening. Not that you'd know it. The sky's pitch black. There's a heavy storm blowing in from the sea. The rain's already here. It feels like I'm being hit with cold needles. The damn wind makes lighting a cigerette almost impossible. Almost. After the lighter blows out for the third time, I give up and fire up my anti-personnel charge. Sends an electrical current through a network of contact points in the carbon outer skin of my arms. I touch anyone with them and they get a hell of a buzz. Muscles lock up and down they go. Comes in handy in other ways too. Like now.

I touch the cigarette to the tip of my finger. Success on the first try.

I take a long drag and lean back against the shipping container behind me. According to the clock on my retinal display, I've got about twenty minutes to wait. Might as well take it easy.

I'm at the main docks across the Bay from the city. Watching a warehouse. Stake out. Hell of a boring job. Never liked it. Even back in the military. Best thing about being in SWAT? we never had to bother with this kind of thing. We got the call, kicked down the door and shot everyone inside. PI work though? Give me a break. If I wasn't being paid so much I'd never do it.

Technically, I wasn't being paid for this one though. It was a favour for a friend in the department. There's a whole bunch of crimes that make up the biggest headaches for Atoyama PD: sex crimes, smuggling, homicide, black market augments and narcotics. APD can only barely keep up. So every now and then, they need a little help. That's where freelancers like me come in.

Most crime on Edo is controlled by Yakuza families and the Corporations. Hard to tell who's who most of the time. Sure, we have other gangs too: Russian Organizatsiya, Triads, Italian Mafia. They're all here, but they're all small fry. The whole of the Kobiyashi system is Japanese Territorial Space so most planets have a majority Japanese population. Edo's no exception. Biggest gangs in Atoyama are Yakuza. But tonight, they're not my target.

Tonight, I'm hunting Mafia.