Preying for keeps

18

"Put the fragging guns down now!" one of the Inferno guards bellowed. He made the alternative clear by thrusting his own weapon out.

Skater ignored the command. Getting caught at this point wasn't an option.

The surviving yaks must have felt the same way, because one of them directed his pistol at Skater and Duran while the other unleashed half a clip at the nightclub's sec-team.

Leaping, accessing both boosted reflexes and extra adrenaline, Skater put himself over and behind the tow wall holding the plants. He hoped the wall would block the bullets. He dropped with his back against the wall in a squatting position and his pistol in a two-handed Weaver grip.

"Kid," Duran called. "You in one piece?"

Skater glanced around the comer of the wall and saw the ork in a defensive position behind an overturned table. "Yeah."

The gun battle was quickly heating up. The sec-teams had a momentary advantage, but more yakuza gunners drifted in from the dance floor and pushed them back, firing from whatever defensive positions they could find.

Every tick of the clock. Skater knew, put that much more distance between them and Maddock. "The stairs?" he shouted to Duran.

The ork nodded. "On your go, chummer."

"Do it!" Skater threw himself from cover, angling away from the thrust of the firefight. Bullets cut the air before and behind him. He didn't break stride. A round caught him high on the left shoulder but was stopped by the Kevlar-lined bomber jacket. The impact drove him off-balance, but he managed a stagger that got him to the door just after Duran burst through.

The twisting maze of stairs with flights leading down and up only held subdued lighting. A sec-guard in Inferno colors was coming up the flight of stairs leading to the second-floor landing. Before the man could raise his pistol in self-defense, Duran shoved the Squirt forward at point-blank range and pulled the trigger.

The DMSO gel ball smashed against the man's face, spreading visibly, and immediately taking effect.

Skater grabbed the handrail leading down to steady himself as he raced past the falling guard. Duran hit the wall ahead of them and pushed off, making the comer and gaining speed again. Seizing the handrail, Skater leaped and hauled himself over, knowing he was chancing a broken or sprained ankle, and landed with a jar halfway down the switch-back steps. He followed as Duran exploded through the first-floor door.

The corridor was empry, bui heads were popping out about twenty meters down where the main entrance was. No one seemed too eager to challenge them.

Skater glanced up at the maglev's floor indicator. "Says the cage is here."

"Only one way to find out." Duran plucked a broad-bladed combat knife from his sleeve in an eye-blurring movement. The edged metal flashed as he buried it to the hilt between the maglev doors and twisted.

The doors parted a few centimeters, enough for Skater to shove his fingers in and pull the door back, opening the other with it.

Maddock hung by a small wire that fitted snugly under his jawline and cut into the flesh enough to leave thin threads of blood seeping down his neck to stain his shin. His arms hung loosely, and his feet were fifty centimeters from the floor. Splashes of crimson spotted the stainless steel interior of the maglev cage.

Skater moved into the cage and used his free hand, his legs, and both elbows to leverage his head and shoulders through the escape hatch. The cage was a round, shiny egg-shape that floated up and down the shaft. Two floors above him, he spotted the elf woman floating through a set of double doors, levitated by her own power or someone else's. The shadowrunner kicked in his low-light vision and picked up three other figures waiting to help the woman make her exit. One of them was the elf who'd led the team that busted Skater out of Lone Star.

The elf spotted Skater and moved almost faster than Skater could counter, bringing up a shotgun and firing immediately.

Skater released his hold on the sides of the exit and dropped. The pellets caromed from the top of the cage like a sudden burst of hail, then rattled in smaller echoes against the sides of the maglev shaft.

"She had a backup team waiting in the wings," Skater said as he got up. "We'll never snag her now."

"We can't hold this twenty," Duran stated. "And I'm two rounds away from no-more-mister-nice-guy. The situation being what it is, I'm not about to surrender."

Holding the pistol in one hand, Skater used his other to search through Madtlock's clothing. There was nothing to be found; the woman had evidently gotten whatever she was looking for.

A glance back into the hallway showed that the possibility of retreat in either direction had been cut off by Inferno sec-teams. Duran put another man down with the last gel pellet from the Squirt, then hauled out his Roomsweeper heavy pistol.

"Inside," Skater told the ork. He fired three rounds and holed the standpipe fire extinguishing system near the group of men to their right. A hard spray of water jetted out from the punctures in the standpipe and created a rainbow-colored mist in the hallway that was difficult to see through as well as becoming an approach hazard.

For a moment, the return fire blistered the walls around the maglev doors.

"Kid, I sure as frag hope you've got a plan." Duran took up a position on the other side of the cage from Skater and fired a pair of shots into the hallway. The detonations were. deafening trapped inside the small space. "Our escape menu is getting about as limited as an incestuous cannibal's diet."

"Worse than that," Skater said. "At least an incestuous cannibal knows where his next meal is coming from."

Duran gave him a wry look.

"Cover me," Skater said.

"Another slotting crack like that," Duran warned, "and I geek you myself."

Skater lunged through the door long enough to fire three bullets into the maglev level display. A puff of smoke ejected from the crunched plates, followed by sparks and the start of a small fire. He withdrew back into the cage a heartbeat ahead of the gunfire that smashed into the doors. He tapped the down button for the second basement level.

Erratically, the doors closed with metallic grindings and protesting squeaks. More bullets spanged across the stainless steel and ricocheted over his and Duran's heads before they were shut out. The maglev dropped at once, starting Skater's stomach spinning with the near-feeling of weightlessness.

"Down?" Duran growled. "Down means we're going to be wearing a straitjacket of piascrete and have the building sitting on top of us."

The maglev arrived with a slight bump that belied the swirling sensation in Skater's stomach. He took the lead when the doors opened, following the Predator into the corridor. No one was in either direction. The closer to Hell a person got, the fewer people were around.

"This floor's connected to an underground garage," Skater said, orienting himself to what he'd learned about the building. Low-wattage security lights painted gray stripes of illumination across the floor. While the ork had worked the portaphone to arrange invitations into the nightclub, Skater had been using the Eurowind's small computer to download maps of the building provided by Archangel, which he'd used to plot routes for a hasty retreat. He counted doors, then went through.

'They'll have the garage sealed and watched," Duran said.

"We're not going through the garage doors," Skater said as they entered the parking area.

"Ops guy will have made us by now," Duran said, pointing to the lens of a vidcam in the wall. "They'll know where we're at."

"Give me a hand," Skater said, shoving his fingers into the recessed handle of a manhole cover in the comer. 'This fragging thing is heavy."

Duran reached down and hooked the cover as well. Even with them working together, it moved only with difficulty. "Tell me this is only an access tube for the utilities."

Skater didn't reply as they bent to the task. The stench that curled up from the darkness inside the manhole after the cover was removed was the only necessary answer.

"Drek, kid," the ork grumbled, "we've hit a new low for getaways."

Skater swung onto the ladder mounted on the wall and started down into the stinking gloom. "Just hope we've hit this one at low tide."

Standing under the heated pummeling of the shower, Skater let the water sluice away the fatigue and the drek from their escape through the sewer running under the Inferno. Wheeler had disposed of Archibald's corpse by pouring acid and bacteria-reinforced lime over it in the bathtub, so the surfaces around him gleamed. The process had taken a few hours, but by the time the rigger was done, their host was only a memory and bits of DNA drifting through the lines to the water recycling plant. Skater didn't like thinking that the nightclub was on the same system as the doss, nor that it might be downstream. The thought that some of Archibald might have made it back to the apartment with him to go through the pipes again was too much.

The small bathroom in the doss acted like an acoustic ear, attracting all the sounds from without. Wheeler, Elvis, and Trey, despite the tension of the present situation, were still laughing at the kvetching Duran was doing about the escape through the sewer system.

"I mean it was this fragging big." the ork growled. "If it'd had eyes, I'da thought I'd been attacked by a slotting deathrattle. Drek, I'd already flamed a few shots in that direction when the kid told me to relax."

"You thought it was a snake?" Wheeler said. "A death-rattle?" The dwarf succumbed to a new wave of barking laughter. "Slot me, I wish I'd been there."

"You keep rubbing me raw, halfer," Duran promised, "and it can still be arranged."

Skater shut off the water, dried off, and got dressed. A bag on the sink contained deodorant, shaving cream, and a razor. He used them, then went to join the others. He almost felt human again.

The windows were blacked out with cloth, and Wheeler had established new perimeter security measures. The master control held a number of cables plugged into it, as well as three vidlinks covering possible approaches to the apartment. The unit sat on the table with quick-disconnects, blinking green. All the cameras were hidden, had motion-detecting capabilities, and IR functions.

Duran was clad in fresh clothes and sat on the floor cleaning the weapons they'd used at the nightclub. He wore gloves and was working over a shirt Archibald no longer had a need for.

Elvis sat on the couch in contemplative silence, but the muscles in his thighs flexed and shifted, letting Skater know the troll was keeping limber and ready with isometrics. His silver horntip gleamed as he polished both his tusks with wax. Wheeler occupied himself with tweaking up the kluged systems he'd set up in the apartment. His tool belt held various instruments, and his vest was festooned as well. Spare wiring leaked out of one pocket from a spool.

"Soykaf?" Trey called from the kitchen.

"The hotter the better." The run through the sewer system had left Skater chilled. He stopped a few steps from Archangel.

She was downloading files, her elven features a study in ice, frosted grayish-green from the deck monitor. Fluidly, her fingers played the keyboard. Images rolled and shifted too fast for Skater to see. Bits and bytes of info traveled in linear fashion, scaling quickly to the top of the screen and disappearing.

"You called your friend?" Archangel asked.

"Yes." Kestrel had left a message at Skater's drop. "He confirmed that Dion and Shayx worked for Synclair Tone."

"And you've never bumped into this guy?"

"No."

Voice cold and impersonal. Archangel said, "So the only common denominator you have is Larisa Hartsinger."

Skater said yes.

"I used his LTG number and some of the buzz Trey was able to collect to find out more about him." Archangel's fingers kept moving, and the clack of the keys being struck became a constant background noise. "He's got a record from his days in the Barrens. I picked it up from a pirate board I'm connected to. A lot of private investigators use the service.

The monitor cleared and formed a face. The man was young, an elf with the look of a thriller blocked into the ragged cut of his fair hair, the mismatched cybereye in the left socket puckered by a knife scar, and the trio of burn scars interrupting the stubble growth on the right side of his chin.

"How long has Tone been operating in Seattle?"

"Five months. About the time since you and Larisa called it quits."

That was one way to put being dumped, Skater thought. Then he recalled Brynna's assurances that Larisa had been blackmailed into leaving him. He pushed his personal feelings aside for the time. "That means he came onto the scene after Maddock, but Aggie said the Synclair Tone Larisa knew was a polished guy."

The picture on the monitor shifted in response to Archangel's commands. The face that replaced the Lone Star mug shot was clean and made-over. Even the mismatched cybereye had been replaced with an organic one and the three bums on his chin had been excised, leaving a smooth and shaven face. His hair was style-shop perfect. "He became that."

"Expensive," Trey commented. Skater knew the mage would know. He hadn't been born to wealth or to good manners, but he'd chosen how he presented himself and taught himself how to enjoy finer things. "The knife scars and the bums required a vat job to eradicate completely." The rest of the team had drifted over, listening and looking.

"Did he have the nuyen?" Wheeler asked.

"Not much ever showed on his arrest record from Puyal-lup," Archangel answered. "Every time he went down, it was for nickel and dime crimes. But he had a reputation for being a hard guy to handle, and one who would never cut a deal with the blues to save himself."

"Has he been noosed since he's been here?"

"No."

Skater shelved that line of inquiry for the moment. "How far did you get into those files we jacked from the freighter?"

"I cracked them a little more," she replied. "But they're not going to tell us anything. They've been corrupted, and whoever did it knew what they were doing. I don't think there's anything more I can recover."

"Intentionally corrupted?" Trey asked.

She nodded. "But I got far enough in to confirm that they're some kind of medical reports and research development. Perhaps if we took it to someone who knows more about bioresearch, we could find out what we're dealing with."

"Is there a possibility you accidentally corrupted the files while boosting them from the SeaHawk's system?" Trey asked.

Archangel turned her cold gaze on the mage. "Was there any way you could have made that sleep spell that you mojoed the crew with any more potent?"

Trey touched his forehead as if doffing an imaginary hat "Forgive me for questioning your professionalism, my lady."

"The question was legitimate," Archangel acknowledged. "However, I'm sure I didn't harm the files when I extracted them. They were already corrupt."

"The freighter was carrying worthless files," Skater said. "Only one reason why that I can think of."

Duran nodded. 'Trojan horses have been around for a long time. It should have worked, if that's what they were doing. You and Archangel checked the freighter out and it looked like a nice prize to you."

"And to the yaks." Wheeler pointed out.

Skater looked at the scenario and put a further spin on it. "We got there before them, making it a double Trojan horse. We go for the files and get them, and the yaks think we made off with them, not knowing what we have isn't worth drek."

"No one told the ship's crew or the people guarding the computer either," Elvis said. 'Those sailors stood their ground hard. We didn't kill anyone., but the yaks sure fragging did."

"You think the real files have already reached Seattle," Duran said.

"If they did," Skater asked, "then why are the elves chasing us so hard?"

"Keeping up the smoke screen," the ork replied.

"Possible. But why go after Maddock?"

The big mercenary shrugged. "Same reason, maybe."

Skater shook his head. "Now we're getting too many maybes. Finesse is best when used least. How did the elves know about Maddock?"

"Brynna could have given you up to the elves after you left her."

Skater considered the supposition briefly, then rejected it. "I think she was on the level. It's possible Tone and Maddock are connected, but what would Tone be doing with an elven corp?" He glanced at Archangel. "Where did you get with those diplomatic plates?"

"As yet, nowhere," she said. "I've got a browser program running, and maybe it'll turn up something. But from everything I've seen in the files I've accessed, I'd be willing to bet those plates belonged to cars used by Tir representatives. If I can't get in through plate identification, I've got some capture programs standing by to access the carpool maintenance files. At least one of those vehicles was seriously damaged, if not destroyed. When a replacement or an order for repairs comes through maintenance, I'll know."

"Good job," Skater said. "Do you have that copy of the news report I recorded tonight?"

Archangel nodded.

"Would you run it?"

She tapped a few keys on the keyboard.

Skater called for Duran. They watched it five times. At the end of the last showing. Skater knew they weren't going to find any more elves from the raiding party than the two he'd already identified.

"Run them through immigration," Skater told Archangel, "visitor's visa files and Seattle Port Authority. Those jokers didn't just appear over here from the Tir."

Archangel cut and pasted the first face, moving it into its own file. "I can set up a cross-reference for the rest of the people in this footage at the same places. It'll take time."

Skater left her with it and walked back to the security setup Wheeler had installed. "Duran, you need some rack time. So do the rest of you. Elvis, you've got first watch. It's eleven now. That gives us seven hours before dawn. If nothing's jumping by then, maybe we can all catch a few. Elvis, set up the rotation for every hour and a half."

Wheeler volunteered for the next watch, claiming it wouldn't be so bad because he'd managed a few winks that evening after disposing of the body and setting up the security system.

As Skater watched them, he was amazed at how quickly everything came together. On a shadowrun, they worked as a unit for only a few hours, each one returning to his or her own life shortly after. He'd never imagined any of them spending much time together. They were too different, too adamant about liking their privacy.

But he had to reconsider that, thinking maybe he'd let his own preferences color his perceptions. He didn't like the thought of getting close to anyone. Larisa had been the only one. Leaning on others was weak; his mother had hammered that into his brain, and most of the people he'd known in the Council lands seemed to shun his company.

Thinking of Larisa made him think of the baby. She was alone out there somewhere-if she was still alive, he reminded himself-and that could be a cruel world waiting. For a heartbeat, he felt that if he could find the child and touch it, it would be like touching Larisa again.

“Jack."

He looked at Archangel and shelved the thoughts, making himself concentrate on survival. He needed sleep. The stimulants he'd been taking to keep going were taxing his reserves. "Yeah?"

"I may have something."

Skater joined her at the deck. "What?”

"The Sapphire Seahawk went down in international waters," Archangel said as she stroked the keyboard. "I guessed that she would be carrying insurance, so I sent some sleaze fingers to snoop out civil data about the freighter and learned that a carrier in Seattle covered the trip once the freighter crossed the Tir Taimgire border. The loss was filed with the carrier this morning so a credstick could be issued within the next ten days. It didn't take long to find the carrier, because not that many of them are willing to handle foreign accounts, especially for that much."

A form file appeared on the monitor. Skater leaned in, struggling to read the fine print

"Cutting to the bone," Archangel said, "the agreement lists the responsibilities of both parties."

"The carrier," Skater prompted.

"Wilcoxin Controlled Risk, Inc. And the insured party…" Archangel paused and pointed at the screen. "An outfit calling itself NuGene Inc."

The name rang a bell in Skater's mind. "Tell me more."

"I just found them," Archangel said. "On the surface, they're a biomedical research and development corporation."

"Yeah," Skater said, remembering the tridcast he'd seen. "In the Tir."

"Portland." Archangel hit more keys and a gridded map appeared on the monitor screen. "The address shows that it's on Southwest Terwilliger Boulevard, somewhere near Tir Taimgire Medical Center. I'm working up other data, but from what I've seen so far, the decision by the Council of Princes to use Seattle as a port created some serious economic problems for the corporation."

That happened to a lot of businesses in Portland then," Skater said. "Dig into it a little and see what you get."

Archangel nodded, and Skater walked over to the telecom Wheeler had rigged up with cut-outs that would make it very difficult to trace back to the apartment. Even with the security measures built in, he didn't plan on calling any numbers that were at risk.

He tapped in the number for the message drop he was using to contact Kestrel and checked in. He was informed there was a message for him. He keyed in the four-digit play sequence.

"I picked up some new biz hustling through the streets," Kestrel's voice said. "There's a guy wants to meet with you about the run. Says he has a deal. Name's Conrad McKenzie. You've probably heard of him. If not, call me and I'll give you the score. He left a number."

Skater memorized the number, then tapped the Disconnect key. He was familiar with the name, and it sent a cold, electric spike of premonition through his spine.

"What's wrong?" Archangel asked.

"My chummer passed along some buzz on the streets," Skater said. "Conrad McKenzie wants to talk with us about the biz on the freighter."

"Conrad McKenzie?" Wheeler stepped out of the kitchen with a fresh cup of soykaf in his hand. "Joker's one of the biggest Mafia bosses in the sprawl. What does he want?"

"He didn't say," Skater replied as he pushed himself out of the chair. "But he left a number."