Preying for keeps

12

Duran stepped from cover and fired two double-ought blasts in the direction of the elves and ghouls, easily dropping some of both.

Skater stayed low, making his way toward the ork behind a row of crates. Rounds tore the canvas fabric and sent oblong pieces of material flying. Heavy return fire drove Duran back into hiding.

A flitting shadow warned Skater that he was about to he attacked. He turned to face the threat and caught an elf who was leaping over the covered crates. The elf's weight and momentum shoved Skater backward, but he locked a hand onto his attacker's gun-wrist.

He fell hard against the crates behind him and sent some of them spinning. Even in the darkness, he caught the gleam of edged metal in the elf's other hand. The knife came streaking for his face. Lifting his free arm. Skater parried the knife strike, then rammed his forehead into the elf's face. The crunch of breaking teeth echoed inside his skull, stepping up the pounding headache that was left over from the mind probe spell.

Before the elf could recover, Skater twisted the gun toward his attacker and jerked the trigger three times. All the rounds tore through the elf's chest. As the man lay dying, Skater stripped him of the Predator, then added two full clips to it from die belt at his attacker's waist.

Gray-white hands grabbed the tarp only centimeters from his face. The sharp talons sliced through the heavy material easily.

Skater lifted the Predator and squeezed off a round, wanting to make his ammunition last. The bullet shattered the ghoul's skull and sent it staggering back, bloody froth running down its misshapen muzzle.

He glanced up, searching for Duran. The ork was taking cover behind a crate.

"You need an invite at this point?" Duran asked as he thumbed more shells into the Remington Roomsweeper.

"Which way?" Skater asked. A glance showed him that the elves were starting to make headway against the ghouls. Several of the bodies lay strewn across the floor within reach of the ring of illumination coming from the overhead light. The elf mage's head had been removed by a blade, and the rest of the corpse lay stretched out near the broken chair.

Duran nodded across the empty space. "Door. Leads out into an alley. I got wheels waiting."

Skater pushed himself up, bringing the Predator around in both hands. "Go!" He was aware of Duran breaking cover as the elves who'd been firing at the ork's position came around to face him instead. The heavy pistol jumped in his hands as he squeezed the trigger rapidly. His first round extinguished the light, plunging the room into darkness.

He turned and dove as a fresh 'onslaught of bullets and fletchettes tore into the wall and door frame. Duran grabbed a fistful of the Lone Star jumper and yanked Skater to his feet in the short corridor, then gave him a shove toward the steel door with the panic bar still in place.

Skater dumped the empty clip and rammed the last full one in. He used his hip to slam against the panic bar. The door opened immediately, but the alarm whoop-whoop-whooped to life, the raucous noise echoing down the alley.

Afternoon had finally come to the sprawl, and so had the rain. Clouds obscured the sun, leaving the light washed out and fuzzy yellow. The drizzle coming down created a haze over the metroplex and left spattered pools of collected water across the uneven surface of the alley.

A yellow and black Harley Scorpion leaned on its kick-stand next to the warehouse wall, partially hidden by the overgrowth springing out of the cracked asphalt. On the other side of the alley was the incline of a loading dock reaching to the warehouse bays.

"Run, kid," Duran said. He slid a long knife from his boot and rammed it through the door handle and the locking mechanism on the door frame. "This won't hold them long."

Skater sprinted for the motorcycle. The light hurt his eyes and he blinked rapidly to get rid of the pain. It didn't help. "Anyone else here?"

Duran slid into the Scorpion's saddle shoving the heavy pistol into a belt holster. "I'm solo." Pressing the electronic ignition, he brought the motorcycle roaring to life.

Skater dropped into place behind the ork.

“Drek, kid, you look like a fragging Halloween pumpkin sitting up there in all that orange." Duran shrugged out of his jacket and passed it back.

Skater took the jacket and pulled it on. Someone inside the warehouse was banging the hell out of the door.

"Hang on," Duran advised. The motorcycle engine revved up, then leveled out when the clutch was released. The rear tire spun for just a moment before finding traction.

Wrapping his free arm around the ork's midsection. Skater hung on. The Scorpion felt like it was moving along at the outside edge of control.

Tires shrieked at the mouth of the alley. A black Ford Americar backed into position, blocking access to the street. Skater pointed the Predator at the car and was about to start unloading, wondering where the drek they were going to find cover.

"Hold on." Duran tapped the rear brake and swooped the Scorpion up the slight incline leading to the loading dock fronting the boarded-over warehouse bays. "Tight." He accelerated and leaned forward.

Skater had both arms wrapped around the ork's waist when he saw the end of the loading dock suddenly come into view. Some years in the past, when it had still been active, steel safety bars had encircled the loading area. All that was left were a few centimeters above the concrete showing torch scarring where they'd been cut off. He didn't even have time to curse before they were suddenly airborne.

Duran pulled back on the handlebars, bringing the Scorpion's front wheel up. The motorcycle shot over the Americar's nose, landing meters away from the car on a broken and overgrown sidewalk with a harsh bounce. The ork handled the big motorcycle with muscle and weight, bending it to his will. Still moving, he geared down, then twisted the accelerator again. The motorcycle leaped the short curb and charged out onto the street just after a delivery van passed by.

The Americar wheeled around and came at them, tearing through a flower vendor's pushcart. A rainbow of blossoms and roses scattered as the wide red and white umbrella went spinning away. Barely escaping injury herself, the vendor came up on her knees firing, moving much younger and more adroitly than her baggy clothing suggested. One of the bullets hit the elf in the passenger seat in the back of the head, coating the windshield on the inside with blood.

Duran sent the Harley screaming around the comer, having to slow to keep the motorcycle on both wheels. The elves in the Americar had a broader base and four wheels. The driver over controlled as he tried to close the distance separating him from the Scorpion and momentarily lost his vehicle in the drift. Fishtailing, the Americar slammed against a Bulldog step-van. Metal screeched as the car pulled free and lunged forward again.

"The tires!" Duran shouted above the slipstream.

Skater didn't answer. He was already lifting the Predator and lining up the sights on the Americar's front tire. He got off two rounds before the driver figured what was happening and took evasive action. Three of the bullets smacked against the street, and two more holed the radiator, stringing out white steam across the Americar's hood.

"Hang on!" Duran shouted again as he popped them over the curb and cut across the sidewalk in front of a row of shops. Pedestrians reluctantly gave way before them, then moved in earnest when the sedan jumped up over the curb after them.

Skater couldn't fire again without fear of hitting a bystander. He glanced ahead of them and saw a Metro Transit bus parked at the comer. An advertising wraparound painted on the bus's skin showed scenes from the Seattle Aquarium, seals, dolphins, and killer whales slicing through the pale blue water alongside mermaids, merrow, torpedo sharks, and unicorn fish. "The bus," he said to Duran.

"I see it." The ork veered left.

On the other side of the street was a furniture outlet store, complete with a corner window that ran from floor to ceiling on the first floor of the building. "Go around it," Skater shouted, "and take a right. Then come around so we're broadside to the car as it comes after us."

"No," Duran said, "we're fragged." He thrust out his right leg and brought the Scorpion around in a tight circle, working the front brake. They narrowly missed an armored Fedex truck. The short muzzles sticking out of the gun ports had already started rotating in their direction.

Behind the truck, Duran cut the motorcycle to the left and brought it around in the middle of the street in the oncoming traffic lane. For the moment the lane was clear, but Skater could see the traffic light already shifting from yellow to red. He pushed himself off the back of the Scorpion and took the Predator in both hands.

The Americar slid around the comer. The elf in the passenger seat had shoved his head and chest out the window, his weapon laid along the top of the car. He fired as soon as Skater came into view.

"Kid," Duran said.

But Skater was already firing, holding the pistol in both hands and ignoring the swinging cuff hanging from one wrist. He squeezed the Predator's trigger methodically. The first two rounds hit only centimeters from their target, leaving pitted scars on the street as the bullets whined away. Skater felt at least one of the elf's rounds rip through the jacket Duran had given him, jerking the tail hard. He ignored the threat and lined up his next shot.

At least two of the heavy pistol's bullets sank into the vehicle's tire. The rubber shredded instantly when the air leaked out of the tire and there was no way to combat the centrifugal force of the sharp turn. The Americar flipped and skidded into the Fedex truck, bouncing from the heavy truck's armor and considerably greater weight. Thinking it was under attack, the Fedex truck's guns blazed for a split second, reducing the Americar to a flaming pyre for the men inside it an instant before it smashed through the plate glass windows of the furniture store.

"C'mon," Duran urged.

Skater hesitated only a second, feeling bad about the elf he saw stumble from the wreckage of the car completely wrapped in flames. He sprinted for the motorcycle and even before he got a leg all the way over, Duran was weaving through the traffic in a flat-out run.

By one p.m. they were down in the Ork Underground, Skater gratefully accepting the soykaf Duran brought him from the kiosk next to a tattoo parlor. The warmth soaked through the styrofoam cup and he held it in both palms, absorbing as much of the heat as he could.

"Hungry?" The low light gleamed off the ork's fangs springing up from his lower jaw.

"No." Truthfully. Skater was hungry, but he didn't think anything would stay down,

"Ready to walk?"

"Sure." Skater walked beside the ork. "Where are we going?"

"A bolthole I arranged with a guy." Duran's smile wasn't reassuring. "He works the downtown area from a small doss."

"I guess I owe you one for this."

Duran shrugged and took a narrow walkway leading off the main drag, It would take them back through a tunnel, and then on toward a door into a basement, which was one of the many secret entrances into and out of this underground city.

"How'd you find me?" Skater asked.

"Trailed you from Lone Star," Duran answered. "A guy I know scoped that you'd been arrested for murder over in Bellevue. I was hanging around Lone Star, hoping to scan the situation. I was still thinking maybe I'd get someone inside to talk to you when I saw the elves going into the building through the prisoner processing center."

"Who let them in?" Skater asked.

Duran paused in front of a small building painted in mismatched gray, some of the spots looking like they'd been coated over scorched surfaces. The door was scarred and nicked, showing the steel core underneath.

"I wasn't close enough to see," Duran said as he swiped a passcard through the maglock. "Bur you know the fix had to be set pretty high to bust into Lone Star and then get out with a prisoner. Lot of people got paid off."

Skater knew that, and it left a lot of questions.

"Null sweat following a bunch of elves and just luck some fragging ghouls showed up to distract them." The door opened and Duran stepped into the waiting darkness. Skater followed, feeling the tightness in his stomach.

The corpse of a dead dwarf lay sprawled in the center of the small living room. The look on his pasty white face was one of surprise. A black hole occupied the space at the top of his nose.

"I was in a hurry earlier," Duran explained. "Didn't have time to tidy up."

"Anybody I should know?" Skater asked calmly. He dropped his hand around the Predator in his pocket, carefully scanning the rest of the doss.

A trideo with illegal hookups leaking through the roof occupied one corner, offset by two speakers from a simrig. The sofa and easy chair were both covered in plaid, but neither from a set that belonged together. A ratty rug with an embroidered flock of colorful birds covered most of the open floor under a scarred soykaf table.

"A junkyen hustler named Archibald." Duran reached down to the gargoyle base of a lamp and switched on the light. Two moths leaped into flight and began circling the bulb. "Had a regular gig supplying some Aztechnology corpgeek for whatever experiments or other slot they're cooking up there. Human or meta, male or female, didn't matter as long as they were young. Tumbled across that little fact while doing some in-house work for Aztechnology a while back. Been meaning to speak to Archibald about it for some time, but I didn't know how well he was connected."

"I guess it was a short conversation."

Duran plopped down into the easy chair and looked at the dead dwarf. "I got in the final parting shot, you might say."

Skater briefly studied the bullet hole between the dwarf's eyes. "I'd say so."

"I also got the name of the corpgeek he's been supplying. Very high up on the ladder, but I'm learning some things about him. Time comes, there's going to be an opening for a new exec. Every now and then, the nitbrain gets out on his own without his bosses knowing about it. Likes to go without a sec-team knowing either. One night, he'll find me waiting instead."

Skater glanced back at the bushy-haired ork, waiting. His hand was still curled around the butt of the Predator. There'd always been tension between him and Duran, centering around the leadership of the team.

"In the meantime," Duran said, "old Archibald doesn't mind if we use his doss for a meeting place."

"So where does that leave us?" Skater asked. He remained standing, not moving toward the sofa.

'Talking," Duran replied. "Which is good."

"Okay."

"You don't trust me, do you?"

Skater returned the level gaze and answered honestly. "On a run, with profit waiting up ahead, yeah."

"But now?"

"No."

"Good. Keeps us even."

Skater raised his empty cup. "Old Archibald stock soykaf in his place?"

"Sure. Needed something to give color to his brandy." Duran pushed himself up from the easy chair and led the way to the small kitchenette, presenting his back to Skater.

Despite the offered vulnerability. Skater didn't let down his guard. All anyone ever got around Duran was one mistake. And he knew from experience that the ork never put himself into a position where he couldn't handle himself.

It turned out the dwarf kept his soykaf in the refrigerator next to liter bottles of cheap synthbrandy. The freezer unit yielded a half-dozen nuke meals, which stood the test of time better than the moldy cheese and blackened bag of wilted salad on the wire racks.

"Not exactly a cultured palate we're dealing with here," Duran said as he took the frozen dinners out and started chipping the ice from them.

Skater handled the soykaf, scooping it liberally into the electric kaf-maker so it would be strong. "Why were you looking for me?"

Duran slipped the first two dinners out of their wrap and popped them into the microwave. He set the parameters before answering. "We were set up on the Sapphire Seahawk. Doesn't take a gene-splicer to put that together."

The microwave hummed along beneath the timbre of his voice, accompanied by the soykaf-maker juicing the mix. "Shiva got killed. Can't say I really liked her much, but she was a stand-up warrior. I figured if you were the one sold us out, I was going to offer her memory a revenge freebie."

Skater just stared at the ork, out of things to say.

Duran gave him a thin smile. "I'da done the same for you, chummer."

"Glad to hear it."

"Figured it would put your mind right to ease."

Skater opened the cabinets and found two chipped ceramic mugs. After a cursory glance inside them, he washed both in the sink, then filled each one with steaming kaf.

"The dancer set you up, didn't she?" Duran said as he accepted one of the cups. "The one the street doc was talking about when he was turning Shiva to chop?"

Wispy steam rose from the black liquid. Skater blew on it, getting his mind ready to taste and maybe sip. "I don't think she knew she was."

Duran pointed to the lopsided dining table with three chairs around it. The wall beside it held a poster of Slip-Shadow Sara singing at a local nightclub before becoming the megahit she was now. She was belting out the high notes, feeling the good pain. "Let's sit. Then you tell me about it."

"And then?"

The microwave pinged. Duran slipped on a mitt that had been burned in several places and retrieved the dinners. The smell of sirloin tips and applesauce temporarily won against the malaise of odors already in the doss and the new ones emanating from the ripening dwarf. "A lot of people out there seem to want us dead. We need to figure out who they are, who set us up, and what's so fraggin' important they'll spend a mountain of nuyen to put us down."

Skater took the fork the ork handed him. "And you think I know all this?"

"No way, chummer." Duran grinned without mirth as he took his seat across the table. "If you'da known, somebody woulda made sure you turned up geeked, not sitting nice and tidy in a Lone Star cell. My guess is that the elves used some heavy grease-some kinda clout-and got you quietly off the street. If my chummer wasn't tied in so tight to the network, I wouldn't have known about you either. And I fragging sure wouldn't have been able to spring you from the cop shop."

"You could have checked that out without me," Skater replied.

"We tried."

Skater looked at him. "We?"

"We didn't exactly split up the way we said after leaving you." Duran forked a huge mouthful and chewed, juice oozing out between his fangs. "Chummer, when you got your head on straight, there ain't another runner in the biz whose action I'd back over yours. You're sharp and you're smart, and you scan people really well, especially the twisted ones."

Skater sipped the soykaf and considered the ork's words.

"The rest of us have noticed you seemed to have a lot on your mind lately. We figured, frag it, let you sort it out for yourself. But now it's boiled over on the team. Whatever this run was about, whoever's hunting us, if you're fragged then we are too. The only way any of us is going to get our hoop outta this jam is together."

"It gets kind of complicated," Skater said, "and I don't know every angle myself. And I damn sure don't know where to start."

"Start with the woman."

“There's truths and there's lies. I haven't got it all sorted out myself yet."

“That's what you got me for, chummer. You're all caught up with it right now, but you tell me what you know and I see if I notice something you mighta missed."

Skater started talking. It was hard at first, because he was so used to being careful what he said to anyone. No one really knew everything there was to know about him. Larisa had come the closest. But now she was dead.