Hardwired

Hardwired is a 1986 cyberpunk science fiction novel by American writer Walter Jon Williams. It was nominated for the 1987 Locus Award. Plot summary The Orbital Corporations won the Rock War, and now they control America. Cowboy, one of the protagonists, is a smuggler who can control an armored hovertank using a neural interface. The other protagonist, Sarah, is a prostitute turned mercenary assassin; she and Cowboy end up teaming up to fight the Orbitals. Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence. Cowboy is hired by a Russian named Arkady to transport medicine across "The Line" while Sarah takes a seduction and assassination job for an Orbital agent named Cunningham. Both of them find themselves betrayed by their employers and soon are forced into hiding, driving them together.