Fade to Black

1

At 01:14 hours, everything went dark: the rooftop lounge, the aeropad outside it, every light, beacon, and security system guarding the top of the tower.

Gordon Ito slipped on a pair of light-intensifying shades, checked his watch, and motioned the uniformed security officers out of the rooftop lounge. Only his personal bodyguard remained.

The blackout was on Gordon's order, engineered via a diagnostic program running on the tower's operations mainframes-initialized in error, should anyone ever ask. The blackout had been a pre-condition for the meet about to occur. Gordon did not like the pre-conditions, but he liked far less the reasons that had compelled, him to call for the meet.

Recent events now forced him to roll up one of his games, a covert op. The prospect displeased him, all the more so because ending the operation would require special action. All evidence of the op had to be spirited out of the competition's hands, that or eradicated, before any embarrassing disclosures could be made. This would cost Gordon a few more nuyen from his clandestine operating budget, but that meant nothing compared to the risks and the potential for disaster. The games he played always involved high stakes, commensurate risks, and ominous potentialities.

Now, the chopper came into view, a grayish specter cast in silhouette by the radiant illumination of the soaring towers of lower Manhattan. The rhythmic thumping of the craft's rotors resounded softly against the lounge's floor-to-ceiling windows. Gordon recognized the chopper's configuration, that of an A.C. Plutocrat, a big helo with luxury accommodations, usually reserved for the corporate elite.

Carefully, the chopper settled onto the aeropad outside.

"Iku beki desu," said Gordon's bodyguard.

Gordon shook his head. He would attend this meeting alone, as arranged. He would not need the bodyguard's protection. That much he could be sure of. The person he was about to meet considered him too valuable a customer-and perhaps too dangerous a potential enemy-to let anything unwise occur.

Outside, the whirling rotors slowed. Gordon stepped forward. Double transparex doors snapped open before him. As he walked out onto the aeropad toward the waiting chopper, the wind howled and tugged at his tailored suit. The aeropad sat perched some two hundred and fifty stories above the street, atop Tower Five of Fuchi Industrial Electronics' monument to economic imperialism. The wind always raged up here, and it was always cold and harsh. Gordon knew that better than most.

The door in the flank of the chopper swung open like a pair of jaws, the lower section descending to provide a set of steps. A man too tall and lean and gaunt to be anything but an elf descended the steps, his long black duster flapping in the wind. Approaching Gordon, he extended the hand-held probe of a weapons detector, checked the device, then motioned at the Plutocrat with his chin.

"Estd bien," the elf said. "Entre."

Gordon climbed the steps up into the narrow space directly behind the flight crew. Both pilot and copilot wore helmets with full, nonreflective visors that masked their features completely. The pair sat like statues, facing their controls and the broad forward windshield of the chopper, never once turning their heads.

The door to the rear cabin swung open. Gordon stepped through. The elf followed.

The cabin was ostentatiously appointed in black and red and gold-crushed velvet on the walls, full carpeting, lush drapes. A pair of men in black mirrorshades and sharply cut gray suits waited to the left and right of the door. One was big enough to be an ork bodybuilder, the other looked Asian and had the build of a sumo wrestler. Impassive faces, casual postures. Nothing Gordon hadn't expected. Nothing he'd not seen before.

The woman seated in the captain's-style chair at the rear of the cabin looked Spanish. She had her sable hair drawn back sleek and flat from her brow. The gold wire lead of a datawire hung from her right temple. She wore black visorshades, a sparkling red jacket adorned with swirls of black, tight black slacks and gleaming scarlet boots. Her name was Sarabande. She was kuromaku, a fixer. She motioned casually to the chair facing her from across a small oval table. Gordon accepted the offer and sat down. The subtle thumping of the chopper's rotors grew louder as the craft ascended, swinging out over lower Manhattan and across the Hudson, toward the blighted regions of Jersey City and Newark. Gordon glanced at the drape-covered windows and guessed at the chopper's movements. He also checked his watch: 01:18 hours. The upper stories of Tower Five would be back on-line by now, fully illuminated and operational, while some slag down in Facility Control would be wondering what the hell had happened. "Your business?" Sarabande said. "On chip."

"Muy Men."

Gordon opened the synth-digit replacing the end of his left pinkie and drew out an optical chip couched in a wafer-thin plastic carrier. He held out the chip-carrier. The elf examined it and passed it to his master. A compact console rose from the center of the table. Sarabande slotted both carrier and chip into a receiving port. Several minutes passed. Gordon waited.

"A very complete dossier," Sarabande said finally. "The work to be done will require extensive preparation and will entail a high risk. What price will you pay?' Gordon replied, "Whatever it takes."

"I will require an immediate advance of three hundred thousand nuyen."

"I want multi-level back-up and I want the job expedited."

"Five-hundred thousand nuyen."

"And you guarantee completion." Sarabande showed no reaction. "The work will be attempted by competent parties taking all reasonable steps to ensure success," she said. That is your guarantee." Gordon nodded. It would do.