Preying for keeps

19

"Give me your number and I’ll have Mr. McKenzie get back to you when it's convenient," the woman said, her voice as prim as her pinched expression on the telecom screen.

"No," Skater replied. "I'll get back to you so you can give me a number where I can reach him. I wait more than ten minutes and you can tell him it's no longer convenient for me." He broke the connection and looked around the group. Archangel was at her deck, managing the relocate and deception programs that would mask the telecom's signature through the regional telecommunications grids. Wheeler was monitoring the feedback, ready to cut off the power if something nasty started whispering up the lines at them.

At the end of ten minutes, he called the LTG number McKenzie had left again.

"Do you have that number?" he asked without preamble.

"Yes." She read it off and didn't look or sound happy about doing it.

"Slotting high-headed bastard," she said. Abruptly the line clicked dead at the other end.

Skater listened intently to discern any other noises that might suggest someone or something else was on the line. There was nothing. A few seconds later white noise filled his ear. He glanced at Wheeler.

"We're green."

Skater punched in the number and waited to play it out. Conrad McKenzie was no lightweight on the Seattle crime scene. As brutal as he was cold-blooded, he'd carved a grim empire out for himself and his Family. Duran had added to their store of knowledge, recounting the time McKenzie had killed a yak opponent who'd been trying to muscle into a territory McKenzie had operated when younger. McKenzie had found out everything he could about the man, then tracked down his family and slaughtered them. Then he'd crippled the yak himself, destroying bone joints that took months to rebuild and burning the man with a blowtorch so he had to spend more months in tissue vats. At the end of that time, when the yak was almost recovered enough to walk by himself, McKenzie had him murdered outright. The message was clear. Animosity between the Mafia and yaks in Seattle ran deep and strong, but McKenzie apparently wanted to prove he wasn't a man to slot over.

Elvis had overheard some street buzz that McKenzie was semi-retired of late, having set himself up in a kind of judiciary position, settling disputes between lesser crime bosses. If McKenzie had dealt himself a hand in the freighter deal, the stakes were scraping the ozone.

"Skater?" The voice that answered was deep and whiskey-roughened, devoid of feeling.

"Run it down for me," Skater said. "The clock's ticking and I'm not going to stay on the line long enough for you to trace the call."

McKenzie laughed, a harsh sound. "I've been contacted by a certain party who would like to buy back the goods you liberated from them. I have no interest. I'm merely the go-between."

"Why would they come to you?" Skater asked.

"Because I have a reputation in this city as a man who can deliver what I promise. They are without many resources here in Seattle. I, however, am not."

"And you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart."

"Wrong." McKenzie seemed not to notice the sarcasm.

"I'm in this for a percentage, which I intend to collect from you and the elves."

"If you're doing the brokering," Skater pointed out, "you should take your cut from them."

"I am. But I'm nicking you for another ten percent they don't know about."

"No."

"No?" The harsh laugh sounded again. "Listen, nitbrain, you don't have a lot of choices at the moment."

"I don't have to sell the files to the elves."

"I guess not. You could hang on to them and keep running till they catch you. And they will, I promise you that, because we've already negotiated a finder's fee if I have to help them. You scan?"

"We've made it this far."

"You've been lucky so far, that's all. And the trouble with luck is that it runs out. You've got the elves after you, the yakuza, Lone Star, and from what I hear, some other small time losers. Do you really want to add me to the list?"

"Maybe you're already there," Skater said.

"I was there," McKenzie promised, "I'd be pissing on your corpse right now."

"How much are the elves offering?"

"Three million nuyen."

"Bump them," Skater said. "Double it."

"Done." McKenzie sounded happy. "I don't mind taking twenty percent of six million nuyen instead of three. They may balk, but they don't really have a choice. My finder's fee would run them more than that. You might have jam enough to stay out of my people's hands for a few days more, but don't count on more than that"

Skater didn't argue.

"But for a percentage both ways," McKenzie said, "and zero sweat involved, I'm willing to be a go-between."

"Why should I believe that you could leverage the elves off me and my team once the deal goes down?"

"You shouldn't," McKenzie said. "Get your nuyen up front and start running like hell."

"Doesn't sound all that enticing."

"Do you have any options here? I was you, that's the way I'd handle it. Face it, you're in way over your heads. And the drek's just getting deeper. I'm offering you a way out."

Skater ignored the comment, trying to regain some momentum of his own in the conversation. Time was running out. "How'd you get my drop number?"

"Let that be a lesson to you," McKenzie said. "I know more about you than you think. So, do we have a deal?"

"I'll call you," Skater replied, "and let you know."

McKenzie gave a dry chuckle. "You've got cojones. I’ll give you that. And you better call me soon. Skater, or don't bother." The connection broke, becoming a steady buzz of static.

"Doesn't sound like he gives a good slot one way or the other," Wheeler commented.

"No, he doesn't." The man left Skater with a chill and a tightness in his stomach that wasn't going to go away. He felt like he was being asked to stick his head into the mouth of a dragon.

"I don't know enough of the science involved to tell if it's a design for a virus," Archangel said. "I got into the files with a couple of homegrown decode utilities I got from a chummer. I've never tried anything like this before, but he said he uses them to reconstruct scrambled files from crashed disks. By cracking the IC with a high-octane deception program that makes me act like a System Access Node and challenges the files as they follow the sleazes, they identify themselves long enough for my browser to log on and reassemble the bits and pieces I get."

Skater was hunkered down beside her, staring hard at the confusion of chemical symbols and esoteric terms that had surfaced from the files they'd taken off the elven freighter. The rest of the team ringed them. With the turn of events, sleep was no longer an option.

"Whatever it really is," Archangel said, "it's a hybrid."

Another image surfaced on the monitor, showing a stylish though modest building deep in the heart of a metropolitan area that had seen better days.

"Portland," Elvis said. "I've done some biz there. Back when the place was a boom town."

"These are the corporate headquarters of NuGene," Arch¬angel told them. "Their primary field of interest, as we've already seen, is in biomed research and development."

"What type of biotech?" Wheeler asked.

"Well," Archangel said over her shoulder, "they started out developing biomed facilities, but after 2052 turned strictly R amp;D. They haven't come out with any major commercial products yet, but basically they specialize in wetware-transplants, gene therapy, tissue tech, and regeneration. Repairing cellular damage. Mostly muscle tissue, tendons. Ultimately, they'd like to induce damaged tissue to renew itself organically." Archangel turned back to the screen. "But no one knows what they've accomplished. They've operated solely in the Tir, never gone beyond its borders."

"Until now." Skater shifted, stretching out the bruises and aches he'd collected over the last two days.

"NuGene teetered on the verge of financial collapse when the Council of Princes switched to Seattle as the Tir's primary port of call in '52." Archangel explained. "Like I said, they were the first to pioneer biomed facilities in Tir Taimgire. Up till the time Portland went bust, they were raking in the nuyen."

"I'll bet that slotted off a lot of shareholders," Trey said.

Archangel nodded. "According to newsfaxes I accessed from Portland's public databanks, the CEO decided to reinvest in his corporation rather than let it go down the tubes. As the stocks dropped in value, he spent a fortune buying them back up, hoping to prevent a takeover. For awhile, Saeder-Krupp seemed to be trying for a buyout, but gradually this guy accumulated ownership of fifty-seven percent of NuGene."

"Brave soul," Trey commented. "Fifty-seven percent of nothing, though, is the equivalent of one percent of nothing. And a drekking lot harder to afford."

"He didn't see it that way. I've read some watered-down versions of his corporate statement and mission plans. If he couldn't compete with Seattle, he'd regain what he'd lost by coming up with a product no one else could provide."

"Did he say what that was?" Wheeler asked.

"No. But he promised if for years."

"Then nobody knows if he was just blowing smoke."

"Torin Silverstaff didn't have that reputation," Archangel said.

The name rang a bell in Skater's mind. "Who?"

The elven decker repeated herself.

"Got a datapic?"

"Yes." Archangel typed in some new commands and the screen shifted to a white-haired elf at some elegant social function, 'This was taken at a ball given in Lugh Surehand's honor three years ago, a year after NuGene almost went belly up. Torin Silverstaff was a reluctant guest according to the reports I've read, but he'd never given up hope of seeing Portland reinstated as the major port city for the Tir."

Torin Silverstaff looked familiar to Skater. The features were classic elven and proud. "Any relation to Tavis Silverstaff?" He suddenly remembered the name from the interview with Perri Twyst.

"Torin was his father."

"Was?" Skater asked.

"Torin was murdered in a mugging in Portland three years ago, shortly after this pic was taken. The killer was never found."

"So his son is the heir apparent."

"Yes. There was rumor of a stipulation in the inheritance. Tavis Silverstaff has three younger sisters, and his mother is still alive. To inherit the controlling interest in NuGene, Silverstaff has to provide for all of them, including their families.”

"Was NuGene generating a profit at this point?" Trey asked.

Archangel shook her head. "It was still being bankrolled by Silverstaff's own nuyen. He never stopped believing that the Council of Princes would see the error of their ways and reinstate Portland."

"Long time to go without a payday," Duran rumbled.

"The corp almost went broke nineteen months ago. It had over-extended itself funding new research." Tapping the keys Archangel shifted to a picture of Tavis Silverstaff dressed in business clothes thumb printing a document on trid footage. "Then Silverstaff picked up a number of new investors, including some support from the Council of Princes, when he announced he was going to take a stab at the Seattle market."

The monitor screen flared, then reconstructed itself into a new picture. Silverstaff was at center stage, looking a few years younger and trimmer. His hair was tied back in a flowing ponytail and he wore a tank top, shorts, and gloves in uniform colors. He carried a long stick curved at the end.

"Silverstaff was a member of the Portland Marchers," Archangel said. "Part of the National Hurling Association. He was nominated MVP two of the three years he played."

"What happened the third year?" Wheeler asked.

"He lost a knee to a deliberate maiming attempt by a Bend Journeymen player. Even after two vat jobs, it was never the same again. Silverstaff refused cyberware, maybe because he was such a natural athlete."

The monitor screen flickered and showed a new shot of Silverstaff with his father at a corporate meeting in '54, the year of the elder Silverstaff's death.

"He went to work for his father at NuGene," Archangel said. "Silverstaff is still a very popular figure in the Tir because of his career in sports. But he'd also been groomed by his father for business. He has a natural proclivity for PR. And, as you can see from recent trid footage of him, for wheeling and dealing."

"Part of the package Silverstaff is pitching to the UCC is his support for maintaining Seattle as Tir Taimgire's main port," Elvis put in. "Sounds like a conflict of interest."

"Tavis Silverstaff's a lot different from his father. Torin, was strictly a first-generation elf, supporting the segregation of the races that Walter Bright Water argued for when trying to convince NAN to grant land to form the Tir nation. Tavis believes that the elves of Tir Tairngire need more interface with the human culture, as well as other nations. Especially in business. One thing he does have in common with his father is that he continues to promise that NuGene is developing a revolutionary, new product."

"With fifty-seven percent of the corp in his pocket," Wheeler said, "Silverstaff would be doing pretty slotting good if NuGene suddenly started turning a profit."

More footage spooled across the screen, detailing other shots and other business of NuGene, including some of the recent footage Skater'd already seen.

"With Silverstaff in Seattle, who's minding the store at NuGene?" Skater asked.

"Regis Blackoak." Archangel stopped the montage of pictures. A heavily jowled man easily twenty years older than Silverstaff flipped onto the monitor. "He worked for the elder Silverstaff in an advisory capacity. His politics have changed so much that Torin Silverstaff is probably rolling over in his grave." Archangel restarted the flow of images.

"Hold on," Skater suddenly gestured at the screen as Archangel froze the motion on a scene of Silverstaff dancing with his wife at some formal event. She was pregnant, but he had her in a low dip regardless. "Silverstaff isn't using a cane. Where is it? I've never seen him on the trid without his cane."

"Skater's right," Elvis said. "Ain't nothing bum about that elf s leg."

"Didn't you say NuGene's been working on repair of cellular damage?" Wheeler asked. "See how this scans- NuGene finds a way to do that, right? The CEO is living proof that it works. What do you do with this tech? Sell it to DocWagon? Set up a new DocWagon? Or set up a situation where you compete with DocWagon for biz? A crisis situation, say, where you know you'll come out on top."

"Like what type of crisis?" Archangel asked.

"Like infect people with a degenerative disease, some tissue-destroying virus, like something we got on this chip here, then sell the antidote-for a price.

"Good for a short-term infusion of nuyen," Elvis said. "Would Silverstaff have been that desperate?"

"No way," Archangel said. "With the backing the corp is getting from the Council of Princes and other wealthy investors, NuGene's solvent for at least another three years. Besides, it doesn't fit. If NuGene has a great new product, why go to all that trouble? Just put it on the market. There's no shortage of cell-damaged vat cases. Another DocWagon, though, I don't think the yaks or the Mafia would be thrilled about that." She looked at the screen. "Besides, pics can be deceiving."

Archangel wrinkled her brow as she hit another key. "I also downloaded some information from a black website on business affairs in Seattle. According to it, Silverstaff might be asked to join the United Corporation Council.

Skater looked at her. "That's impossible. No one not connected to Seattle has ever been invited to the UCC."

The United Corporation Council was a formal association of the sprawl's major corporations. Behind the scenes, they manipulated more than stock prices and buy-outs. They also had considerable pull with the local politics as well as considerable sway in UCAS interests.

'The UCC must figure NuGene is going to be a success," Skater said.

"So what was on the freighter?" Duran asked.

The montage of trid shots started across the screen again.

"It might have been start-up data for the NuGene branch they're setting up here in Seattle," Archangel said.

"What are they going to try to sell?"

"R amp;D, just like in Portland. Other than that, I can't say."

An image flickered across the screen and registered in Skater's memory banks. "Hold it."

Archangel pressed a button and the montage stopped.

"Go back a few frames."

Slowly, the footage started backward.

"There," Skater said, when he saw the figure that had caught his attention. The face on the screen was unmistakably like that of the elf who'd broken him out of Lone Star. "Who's that?"

Archangel opened a window, then read from the file. "Ellard Dragonfletcher. He's NuGene's top security man."

"For how long?" Skater asked.

"Seven years. He rose to that post under Torin Silverstaff. There's not much else on him.

"Do some snooping," Skater said. Then he explained why. He glanced at the clock. "Almost midnight, chummers. I don't want to keep McKenzie simmering too long. Do we take the deal, or do we leave it?"