Free Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams Page B

the goods were cheaper and more abundant there–– cheap enough to ship them to the markets in the Northeast at a fat profit, so long as there wasn’t much duty to pay along the way.
    And so the first atmosphere jocks rode their supersonic deltas across the Alley with their midnight loads of contraband. And the Midwest responded, first by sending up radar planes and armed interceptor aircraft, then, when the action shifted from planes to panzers, by strengthening their ground defenses.
    And now, in Missouri, by licensing privateers. The states were unable to keep up with the changes in smuggling technology, and so they decided instead to license a local corporation to chase the contraband for them. The fact that the Constitution authorized only the federal government to grant letters of marque and reprisal had been ignored; the Constitution is a dead letter anyway, in the face of Orbital superiority.
    The privateers are authorized to shoot to kill, and in addition to a hefty bounty are rewarded by ownership, free and clear, of whatever contraband they can secure. Reports spoke of impressive arrays of airborne radar, of heat sensors and weird sound detectors and aircraft full of sensing missiles and bristling with guns.
    From Gridley Cowboy moves slowly northeast, taking his time, mapping the flying radar arrays. They are drone aircraft, ultralights under robot control, solar-powered to stay aloft forever, rising with the sun and gliding slowly earthward at night, only having to return to base for servicing every couple of months or so. They are in constant microwave communication with computers on the ground, ready to scramble aircraft if anything suspicious pops up. They are so light that radar-homing missiles can’t find them to shoot them down, and antiradiation homers would be spotted as they climbed, in plenty of time for the arrays to switch off before the missile arrives.
    Cowboy is aiming for the wide area between New Kansas City and the Ozarks. People in the Ozarks are friendly, he knows, with a tradition of resistance to the people they call “the laws” that goes back at least to Cole Younger, but the terrain is too restrictive. Cowboy wants a fast run over the flat. The fact that this part of the state is where the privateers have concentrated their defenses is just a pleasant coincidence.
    The sensor drones are turning lazy circles in the air as they glide downward on battery power, and Cowboy thinks he sees a pattern building that will allow him to slide into a blind spot that might last until he’s fifty miles the other side of the Missouri border. As his panzer slides down the crumbling banks of the Marais des Cygnes and tears across flat mudbanks and muddy water, it extrudes a directional antenna and spits a coded message to the west, to where Arkady and the Dodger wait in Arkady’s aircraft, turning its own circles over the plains of eastern Colorado.
    The answering signal comes quickly, a strong broadcast to Arkady’s people on the Kansas– Missouri border. There are other panzerboys out there, standing ready by their vehicles, waiting for the word... and when they receive it, their own panzers will hit the plains, moving swiftly and then stopping, tearing through fields in zigzag patterns, sending dust signatures aloft, tracking radar and infrared patterns across the computer displays of the privateers. The laws will have to expend a lot of effort tracking them down and apprehending them. And when found, the decoy panzerboys will surrender meekly enough---since they carry no contraband and will only be fined for the amount of bobwire they flattened during their runs, and maybe do a little time for reckless endangerment. Arkady will cover the fines and legal fees, as well as their generous salaries. If the worst happens, their widows and orphans will have the benefit of insurance. It’s well-paid work, and a training ground for ambitious panzerboys who want to run the Line.
    But after the signal