Never deal with a Dragon

15

Crenshaw stood by the door for a few minutes, watching the activity in the room. Most of the work stations were occupied. A quick glance at the duty board showed that the personnel belonging to the empty slots were out on assignment. Everyone was busy, or at least busy looking that way. Marushige presided over the room from his operations desk. She took the dark circles under his eyes as confirmation that the security chief had been up all night watching events develop on the situation screens that filled one wall.

Despite her personal interest in the case, she had slept. Let others do the groundwork and the backchecking. This one was not going to be a hot pursuit. She didn’t care much for the chase anymore, but she intended to be in on the kill.

She crossed the room to the ops desk, avoiding several collisions with scurrying staff. She would normally have resented that they didn’t watch where they were going. When she had worked in such a room years ago, she bad always been aware of what was going on around her. But today was different. She felt good, knowing that she had been vindicated.

“Told you he was a problem,” she said, coming up to Marushige.

He glanced at her, letting his mouth quirk up in an expression of annoyance. “Yes, you did. Do you feel that you have accomplished something?”

“If you had listened to me, this all could have been avoided.”

“Is that what you’ve told Sato?”

“I haven’t told Sato anything.”

“How considerate,” Marushige snapped.

Crenshaw ignored the sarcasm. She was really feeling expansive today. “He does want a full report, though. He seems concerned that your lack of security will reflect on him. He doesn’t like that sort of thing.”

“So speaks the great Lord Sato’s new mouth. I’ll make a report when I receive a request through channels. He’ll have to get in line behind President Huang.”

“The president has forsaken his computers and taken an interest in this? How fascinating.”

Marushige shot her a sour look. “Look, Crenshaw I don’t need this right now. Huang’s interest is purely routine, just like this extraction. Verner was only a minor researcher and the woman was only an office lady. They are no loss to Renraku.”

Crenshaw chuckled. “All of this interest on your part is hardly routine.”

“As you said, Sato doesn’t like security problems of any kind.”

Crenshaw knew that Marushige was aware of Sato’s power. Hadn’t he assigned her to the Kansayaku, hoping that she would screw up in front of him? Sato’s presence was a two-edged sword. Marushige’s own performance was in the spotlight now. He desperately wanted to keep his job, and Crenshaw was in a position to slant the Kansayaku’s opinion. Sato’s displeasure would be enough to get Marushige sacked, which the security chief knew as well as she did. All he wanted to do was to tie up the loose ends and put this problem to rest. But there were too many connected with Verner’s extraction.

“The Dragon that scared off our pursuit craft suggests some real muscle behind this run,” Crenshaw said.

Marushige grunted noncommittally as he tried to read a report just handed him by an aide.

“Verner must have lifted something important.”

The security chief slapped the flimsy down. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Just trying to understand what has happened, general,” she responded with false innocence. “Kansayaku Sato might ask me some questions. I would hate to have to tell him that the arcology security chief doesn’t know what happened or why.”

“I’ll bet you would.”

“I’ve told you before that I don’t want your job.” She was used to his disbelief on that point. “But I do want to see that thief Verner get what’s coming to him.”

“We’ve found no indication that he left with anything other than himself and his lady friend. Nothing reported missing from any of the labs and no Matrix security breaches. With his limited access, the likelihood that he carried off any significant data is extremely low.”

“Maybe his benefactors thought his connection with Aneki would be worth something.” She brayed a laugh. “They’ll be disappointed.”

“Yes, well, it won’t be the first time someone lost an investment in a speculation.”

True enough, she thought. But she was still convinced that Verner was involved in something more than a simple escape. He had shown himself too stupidly loyal to Renraku, too obsessed with his goblinized sister. Getting Sato to tell Verner that he could write letters to her should have kept him in the arcology. The wimp wouldn’t have run out. There was another angle to this operation, and she was going to find it.

“What about the guy on the gurney?” she asked.

“What about him? No other personnel are reported missing, so he’s not one of ours. We have several reports of some Rumplestiltskin’s customer getting sick just before the DocWagon aerial ambulance got there. That guy vanished only a few minutes before the runners came through with their gurney.”

“So you think he was the patient?”

“Our rooftop cameras recorded the extraction, and the sick man matches the physical description of the body on the gurney. Seventy percent certainty.”

“But not one hundred.”

“One cannot expect much better from only verbal descriptions and trideo surveillance of a masked and shrouded person.”

“That’s true.” So Verner wasn’t selling someone else out. Still, there had to be more. “Pity about the Ork dying. She might have told us something.”

Marushige gave a predatory smile.

“Oh, but she did,” he said, waving the report he had been trying to read.

“This identifies her as Greta Wilmark a freelance runner. Her regular associates include Harry Sloan, Black Dog Sullivan, Kurt Leighton, and another Ork, Chin Lee. Sloan and Sullivan make an eighty percent match with the two paramedics on the landing pad, and analysis of the ambulance’s flight pattern suggests strongly that Leighton was the rigger in the pilot’s seat.

“That accounts for all of Wilmark’s regular team except for Lee, but runner teams are notoriously mutable. The female “doctor” was probably a substitute for Lee. All in all, it looks like a small-time operation.”

“Except for the Dragon,” Crenshaw insisted.

“That may have been an unrelated occurrence,” Marushige said with a shrug. “Our pilot did not stay around long enough to establish a link between the runners’ escape and the dracoform’s presence. It seems unlikely that such small-potatoes runners could have arranged such backup. As soon as the report is prepared, we’ll close out the case.”

Crenshaw frowned. Marushige might be satisfied that he had all the answers he needed, but she was not. Even if everything was as simple as Marushige thought, she wanted Verner to be caught and punished.

“What are you planning to do about Verner?”

“Unless something new turns up, nothing. The costs of hunting down such petty fugitives are high. Past experience indicates that such an investment isn’t worth the yield.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Sato won’t like you doing nothing.”

“You mean you don’t like it.” He recovered his composure as she lost her own. “Sato is a businessman. When he sees the reports and the cost estimates for any retaliatory operations, he will agree with me.”

Crenshaw’s day had gone sour. This should have been the opportunity to take down Verner for good, and legally, at that. Instead, it had twisted around. Marushige was going to let him get away.

Well, there had to be something she could do about it, and she would find it.