NEVER TELL A DEAD MAN YOUR SECRETS

Somebody aced the dragon Dunkelzahn, and one of the mysterious links to the assassination is flat on his back in slab city: a double agent with two identities—both out of commission. Now he's the most-wanted carcass in Tacoma. Jack Skater's mission? Sleaze past the high-tech funeral security, outwit the Knight Errants, cop the stiff, and keep it on ice long enough to get the answer to the shadowrunners' life-and-death question: what's so hot about a stone-cold corpse?

And that isn't all that's dropped Skater elf-deep in drek—the UCAS Secret Service is also after the dead man's secret—and the government blue crews are prepared to liquidate anything in sight to get to it first....

“SAY THE WORD AND IT’S HISTORY.. ”

A gel-sealed ring of white phosphorus explosive was wrapped around the fifteen-centimeter trunk line.

Skater shoved his head inside the duct. The filtering system above and below was sealed. The sweet smell of burned flesh pervaded the air locked up in the duct. If his plan didn’t work, they ran the chance of being trapped like rats in the crawlspace between the ninth and tenth floors.

He pulled back out of the hole and gave Wheeler a thumb’s up. “Burn it.”

Wheeler touched an electronic detonator clipped to his shirt.

Skater tucked his face into the crook of his arm as the white phosphorus caught, throwing out a blinding amount of light and heat. The die was cast, and it waited to be seen if Lucky Lady came up a seven or snake eyes. . . .

SHADOWRUN : 27

HEADHUNTERS

MEL ODOM

1

“Elvis has left the building.”

Jack Skater hunkered down in the shadows atop a four-story warehouse adjacent to the team’s target and listened as Quint Duran gave the all-clear over the commlink. The ork was stationed down in the street, only a few blocks from the building Elvis had just vacated. The structure was the Mariah Building, at the corner of South Twenty-first Street and Ainsworth, not far from the Alaska Street Reservoir in Tacoma. The target was one of the bodies inside Shastakovich’s Funeral Home on the ninth floor of the Mariah.

The new moon barely cracked the darkness that swallowed Tacoma except for the occasional pockets of neon advertising running the length of several skyscrapers and the illumination necessary in the around-the-clock dock areas. Wet salt air rushed over him, propelled by the easterly winds coming in off Puget Sound not far away. The smell of the sea was almost stringent enough to claw the scent of the new tar roof underfoot from his nostrils.

He accessed the Commlink TV hardwired into his skull. “Our package, Duran?” he said. The Crypto Circuit HD in the hardware scrambled the transmission, making it impossible for anyone else to pick up. He especially hoped that held true for the city’s blue crews working to keep the streets safe from crime. Or better yet, Skater thought, keeping the streets free of any crimes they didn’t get a percentage of. But maybe he was just being cynical. A guy got cynical quick when he worked the shadows.

“In place,” Duran answered. “Just lit up the fiber link’s power monitor here. We’re go.” The ork’s voice sounded deep and relaxed, carrying the confidence of his many years as a mercenary before joining the team. He was verifying the operation of the Fiber-Optic Observation Link Elvis had installed into the security systems. It would give them access to the Mariah Building’s vid and aud subsystems they’d need to break into the funeral home.

The fiber link itself was system-friendly, an old military model that was still capable of linking up with whatever the Mariah had to throw at it. Duran also boosted the signal on to the van parked a few blocks further down Ainsworth Street, where Archangel sat running the computer-assist and communications for the team’s run. The elven decker was one of the best in the biz at breaking into computer systems and kludging computer-driven sec systems.

“Was he seen?” Skater shifted gingerly on the rooftop, trying to find a new vantage point. As scout for the run, he’d needed the height to get a better view of the terrain to call out the moves and provide backup if things went bust.

The ork laughed gently. “Nobody’s chasing him, kid. And Knight Errant working security, somebody would have been on his slotting hoop by now if they’d spotted him, wanting to know just what the frag he was doing on the building.”

“His ID should hold,” Skater said.

“Now that he’s dumped that fiber link, it might. But he’s got too much heavy bodware to pass more than a surface inspection.” Skater knew that was true. But Elvis had been the one to send. Alone, with backup a few hundred meters away and the team maybe on the line if the run suddenly went to hell, the big troll samurai was chromed with enough Amie-Awesome cyberware that he might be able to break free and get away even from Knight Errant’s best sec-guards.

“I’m clear, chummers,” Elvis said in his basso voice, “and in position at the boot shop a half-block down South Twenty-first from the main entrance to the Mariah Building. Have you got contact with the sec systems?”

“Powering up now.” Wheeler Iron-Nerve’s voice came over the commlink. The dwarf was in the van with Archangel. As rigger for the team, he was responsible for the hardware and the vehicle. “Okay, it looks like a go. Up to Archangel now.”

“I’m here,” Archangel said calmly over the commlink. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

Skater took a deep breath and tried to shake the feeling of dread that had been with him ever since the team had taken the Mr. Johnson’s nuyen four days ago and agreed to the run. Too many details had been left hanging, too much danger possible. He glanced down the street and barely made out the red-and white-striped sawhorses he and Elvis had put into position to cover their emergency escape route. If things didn’t get all fragged up, they’d be able to grab the body and simply take it down in the freight elevator and carry it out while Archangel sleazed her way through the building’s security so the Knight Errant teams on the premises wouldn’t be the wiser.

Skater was still nervous about the run despite all their precautions and all the planning they’d squeezed into the past few days. But the bottom line was that they all needed the score. Living in the shadows, in between the cracks of society without selling out to the Mafia or yakuza or the corps, was expensive even if a man or woman or meta lived alone and was responsible only for his or her own hoop. Now, though, Skater had Emma to figure into his personal equation of survival too. It made things harder in some ways, and easier in others.

Noise from the dock area thundered through the empty streets of Tacoma’s business district, and the whirling spotlights of the dock crews warred with the running lights of freighters. For decades, Tacoma had been the poor step-sister to glittering and decadent Seattle. But it was 2057 now, and wealth had come calling, spilling into the city from the deep pockets of the megacorps as they developed the shipping trade. The yakuza, Mafia, and Seoulpa Rings worked the alleys and black markets for the crumbs.

The team had made their pickup of the fiber-optic link and paid a fragging slotful of nuyen for it at Basil’s Faulty Bar, where Abe Heep ran a decent drinking establishment and a well-inventoried backdoor supply house for illegal techware that he scabbed from intelligence circles everywhere in the world. Duran had arranged the buy, and Skater was impressed by the operation. He’d spotted equipment from Seattle, the United Canadian and American States, the Salish-Shidhe Council lands, California Free State, and even Tir Taimgire, which ran the tightest security of all.

If the run got hosed somehow, Skater was counting on the abundance of security at the docks to drek up the Lone Star squads that would be summoned to the scene. His team could buzz turbo for the dock area and lose themselves among the private sec that would be drawing rank and number down on the docks where they guarded the ships of their various countries. A hidey-hole waited, already arranged and paid for, if they needed it.

He shifted, keeping his shadow against the line of the building as he peered over the edge. No sense in letting himself get spotted from below. A trio of thrill-gangers passed by down on the street, talking in loud voices. One of them took a long drag on a cigarette and glanced up, stopping for just an instant.

Skater drew back from the edge, hoping he hadn’t been made. Dark and slim and dressed in combat black over Kevlar armor, there was no way he could have passed unnoticed along the street. He carried an Ares Predator II pistol in a shoulder rig, and a Mossberg CDMT combat shotgun hung from his shoulder on a Whipit sling. A Cougar Fine Blade rode in his right boot. His Salish blood showed in his dusky skin, high cheekbones, and close-cropped dark hair.

Skater took the Ares low-light binox from his chest pouch and scanned their target. The light-multiplier circuitry banished most of the night.

The Mariah Building stood like an imposing stone finger, fourteen stories high. The maglev controls listed fifteen floors, but that was because the thirteenth had been left out. Its outer skin was blued chrome, the color of gunmetal or the broken heart of a razorboy, interrupted by rectangles of bulletproof black polycarbonate glazing. It was dwarfed in comparison to the Shiawase Complex and other megacorp skyrakers downtown.

Over the last three days, Skater and his crew had uncovered everything they could about the building, and about the various possible escape routes. Archangel’s databases now also had the names of every legitimate business located inside, most of the renters’ and shopkeepers’ identities and their staffs, and those of a number of apartment-dwellers in the top four stories who weren’t paying blackmail rates to keep their IDs unknown.

The lower floors held office and shop space, which was how they’d been able to set up the connect for the fiber link. Cullen Trey, suave and debonair—and the team’s combat mage, who had a sweet tooth for expensive things and an aristocratic lifestyle—had rented a small office in the name of a dead street mage.

Trey knew the man was dead because he’d killed him less than three weeks ago. Quint Duran had assisted in the track-down, looking for a mage who’d robbed the daughter of a jeweler Trey did biz and friendship with.

When Trey and Duran found their prey, the street mage had already established another identity, complete with SIN. Duran had taken care of the thief’s accomplices, and Trey had taken out the mage. As a combat mage, Cullen Trey was deadly. The false papers had been a bonus.

Once the fiber-optic observation link was found—and Skater was sure it would be—and the cable discovered snaking through the rented office space to the link box Elvis had installed only moments ago, the trail could only lead to a dead man.

The target Skater wanted was on the ninth floor—another dead man named Coleman January. Shastakovich’s Funeral Home had arrived with the money coming into Tacoma, a branch office of a substantial chain that catered to corp execs and those who could afford a somewhat expensive send-off. The security was provided by Ares and included most physical systems, with a wage mage on retainer for more important clientele.

“I’m in,” Archangel said over the Commlink IV. “I’ve sleazed us past the security systems inside and outside the building. Knight Errant will be blind and deaf to anything I want.”

Skater took a deep breath. “The whole system?”

“Yes. It took awhile to sort through the prism switches till I found the one we needed. I hit some white barrier IC that took a bit of work but I had some sleaze utilities it hasn’t seen before.” Skater breathed a sigh of relief. The plan had depended on the decker’s ability to get past the high-tech security and operate the fiber link without being noticed. Brute force alone wasn’t a viable option. “What about the target?”

“I’ve accessed the database, but there’s no listing for Coleman January.”

Skater checked his chron. It was 1:43:22 a.m. “Any mention of delivery being made?”

“No. I looked through those, too. I’ve got the deliveries that were already made this evening and the ones that’ll be made first thing in the morning.”

“Fraggit!” Skater said without cutting in the commlink. He wiped perspiration from his face with a gloved hand. It was still too drekking hot in August to be dressed as he was. The humidity was impartial to man, woman, or meta. But he couldn’t chance being identified. The hose-up with ReGEN a few months ago had cost him an eye, an ex-girlfriend, and nearly every bit of nuyen he’d had stashed away.

He was scared. He knew that and he hated it, but he was smart enough to admit it to himself. At twenty-five, he’d already been running the shadows for years. He was slotting good at what he did—or he’d never have made it this long. But he glanced at his shaking hand, seeing Emma’s face in his mind, his little girl’s smiles when he tickled her.

“Kid,” Duran growled, “there’s no way we got the wrong funeral home.”

“I know,” Skater said, forcing his mind to wrap around the problem facing the team. He glanced back at the building. “The Johnson said Coleman January would be here no later than two o’clock this morning. There’s only one way he could have known that.”

“Sure,” the ork replied. “You get to thinking real mean, you start to figure he was planning on slotting ol’ Coleman’s stick himself. Geek the guy, then let us pick up the body while Mr. Johnson makes sure he gets away clean. We get bagged by Lone Star, and I don’t think they’ll buy that we had nothing to do with. They probably wouldn’t look much past us either.”

“We don’t have much time to ask why,” Cullen Trey chimed in over the commlink. He was posted a block north on Ainsworth street, providing further visual coverage of the site and backup, if needed. “Not if we’re going to get that body and clear out before the next Knight Errant shift comes on at two-thirty. If the fiber link’s still up and running when they run the system analysis programs, our chances of being discovered become astronomical.” Unlike the others, Trey’s Commlink IV system was an external one. Cyberware and magic didn’t mix.

Skater knew he was right. The Knight Errant security agency pulled on-site security in twelve-hour shifts, from three to fifteen and fifteen to three. It was one of the first bits of information from the Johnson they’d confirmed.

“We’ve got fifteen minutes,” Trey went on, “providing Mr. Johnson’s schedule is precise, to the time when the body’s supposed to be there. At that time, we’ve got the thirty minutes for the op we planned. We can still decide whether we keep a green light or deep-six the run. I, for one, would like to see the other end of that nice little fee.”

Skater wasn’t surprised. Trey had a nuyen Jones, and liked the good life even though he wasn’t born to it. “How do you call it, Elvis?”

“Well, chummer, we’re into the funeral home’s sec systems with the fiber link. I’d say that gives us a leg up on the situation. And we are here.”

“That could be according to the Johnson’s plan,” Wheeler grumbled. “Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Frag, we’ve been slotted over by Johnsons before. Me, I’m for taking the front-end nuyen and taking a walk on this one.”

“Archangel?” Skater said. He lifted the binox again and tried to stare through the black polycarbonate glazing covering the ninth-floor windows of the Mariah. He wished he could peel it away, get a good scan inside. And he wished the thick greasy ball that had suddenly appeared in his stomach wasn’t there.

“I’m with Wheeler,” she said. “Discretion is the wisest move at this point. We’ve been paid for our time. If the Johnson gives us any grief about how we handled things, he’ll have to find a way to leverage the down payment back out of us.”

The problem was, Skater was aware, that Johnsons could sometimes do that. When a shadowrunner made a deal with a Mr. Johnson, there was usually no telling who was really inside those Armante suits. And going back on a deal was sometimes worse than failing. The victim of a run didn’t always know who’d come after him. Mr. Johnson knew who he’d made a deal with.

“Duran,” Skater said.

“I want the action,” the ork replied. “That makes it three to two. You gonna tie it up or go with the majority?”

Before Skater could answer, a footstep scraped against the pebbled rooftop behind him. He whirled, losing himself behind an air-conditioning unit.

“Told you I spotted somebody up here, Fontaine.”

The three thrillers Skater had spotted earlier stood in the center of the rooftop, dressed in the jet and crimson colors of the Milton Dark Angels. One young elf held two long knives in naked, scarred fists, while the other two, a human and a troll, were armed with a stun baton that crackled blue static and a glowing monofilament whip.

“Guess you were right, Hector,” the elf said. “I have to give you that. Watch him, Wynn. If the fragger tries to slot it outta here, cut his legs off with that whip.”

Skater drew the Predator from the shoulder rig. Dancing with members of a thrill gang didn’t fit into his agenda at all. The problem was, if he cut loose with the Predator, every blue crew in the area would be on him and the team.

“Kid,” Duran called. “We ain’t exactly got all night.”

“Busy,” Skater said. “Unexpected company. A welcome wagon of Dark Angel thrillers evidently out for a rooftop prowl.” And there wasn’t much rooftop to share. This building had only a small area to move around in between the masses of machinery used to heat and cool the offices and apartments below. Standing at the edge as he was, he didn’t even have many choices.

“Hold on,” Duran said, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Stay put,” Skater said. The ork’s position down at street level put him too far away to be any help, and the stairs along the outside of the building were the only way up. “I’ll handle it. By the time you get up here, it’d be over. One way or the other.”

Fontaine waved his companions into motion, spreading out around Skater’s position.

Skater knew they hadn’t seen the pistol, but he’d be properly fragged over if he used it because of the noise it would make.

“Jack,” Archangel called over the headset. “I just intercepted an incoming for the funeral house telecom. Coleman January is now enroute from a crash-and-dash out on Eye-Five. He’s DOA and arriving via DocWagon.”

Skater’s mind reeled at the news. The Johnson had said nothing about Coleman January coming in as a fresh corpse, delivered to the funeral home by a DocWagon emergency services vehicle. That put the run in a whole new light, and increased the danger quotient by an unknown amount. He wondered who’d aced January and how deep that might put his team into drek. While his thoughts raced, the troll thriller with the monofilament whip lashed out at the air-conditioning unit. In trained hands, the molecule-thin whip could carve a man to pieces.

Sparks leapt in all directions as the whip sliced through the heavy piece of machinery and came spitting light at Skater’s face.

2

Skater leaped backward, utilizing the max potential from his boosted reflexes. The monofilament whip sliced close enough to lay open a thin line along his left cheek. Warm blood ran over his face while a cold thrill raced down his back, making him instinctively flinch away.

He’d lost his right eye in the biz with Conrad MacKenzie a few months ago. The Yamatetsu cybereye he’d gotten as a replacement weeks after that was top of the line, but it wasn’t part of him. Raised by his grandfather in the Salish-Shidhe Council Lands around the Seattle sprawl, Skater still maintained a lot of the old ways of his Amerind upbringing despite his life as a shadowrunner. And the old ways said that the body was sacred, shouldn’t be littered up with tech garbage.

“You jump like a fragging grasshopper,” Wynn grunted, “but it ain’t gonna save your hoop.” He whirled the glowing monofilament whip again, cracking it toward Skater.

Leaping back again and seeing the other two Dark Angels closing in on him, Skater knew he was running out of rooftop. He landed lithely on his feet as the whip whistled by only a meter away. The edge of the building was less than half of that, leaving him little room to maneuver.

The whip sheared through a brick exhaust flume in a shower of sparks that lit up the sudden cloud of brick dust. The scar of the cut was visible even in the moonlight.

“He’s got a gun,” Hector, the human thriller, called out as he crouched behind a chunk of a rooftop maintenance autodroid waiting to cycle through its work schedule.

“Yeah,” Wynn said, drawing the whip back for another attack, “but I don’t see him using it.” He took another step forward, feinting with his weapon and sneering. “Maybe he’s out of bullets. Or maybe he just don’t have the guts to use it.”

“Your mistake,” Skater said in a harsh voice. “And your last chance to slot and run before you get a one-way ticket to slab city.”

“Chill talk,” the troll said, grinning, “for a guy all out of places to go.” He raised a chartreuse-dyed eyebrow that was as thick and woolly as a caterpillar. “Fontaine?”

“Yeah,” the elf thriller called back. He closed in as well, but stayed behind the big troll.

“How many pieces do you want your smoothie in?”

“Bite-size,” Fontaine said with a cold and mirthless smile.

Skater holstered the Predator. He’d use it when there were no other options. Killing, even in self-defense, didn’t come easy to him. Taking a deep breath, he focused on the two meters-plus of troll destruction facing him, trying not to be distracted by the back of his mind wanting to know about Coleman January’s arrival—how the body they were supposed to boost must have been planned by the Johnson as a fresh kill the whole time. And what their part in the biz was actually supposed to be. Puzzles and logistical problems had always fascinated him, as long as his hoop wasn’t on the line.

Another thing to consider was that DocWagon services didn’t come cheaply. DocWagon provided better on-site emergency medical care than any other paramedical facility going, including going in armed and dangerous onto a battlefield or street fight where a client had gone down either accidentally or on purpose.

Then Wynn’s whip lashed out again and Skater was in full sync, going with the boosted reflexes and years of shucking dirt in the shadows. He leaped to the right, clambering atop a makeup air vent near the roof’s edge. For just a moment, the rush of air being sucked out of the building coiled all around him and blunted some of the traffic noise coming from the sprawl.

A siren keened in South Twenty-first Street below, drawing Fontaine’s attention. “There’s a DocWagon down there that looks shot all to drek.” The flashing red lights strobed the darkness, casting a ruby pallor behind Fontaine.

The whip cut into the make-up air vent, the near-molecule thin cutting edge slashing through the heavy metal.

Skater stepped toward the troll without warning and leaped high into the air. The whip cut the air where he’d been. Before Wynn could recover, Skater landed beside him, already moving into an explosive kata. An expertly administered heel-stamp to the side of the troll’s knee shattered bone with loud snaps. The joint hadn’t been designed to take that kind of abuse, even on trolls.

“Oh bloody frag!” Wynn groaned. He tried to bring the monofilament whip back around, moving gracelessly on the injured leg.

Shifting, Skater parried the troll’s arm as it came back at him. He didn’t try to stop it, just let it roll over him. Strength for strength, he was no match for the meta and he knew it.

The whip cut a ragged edge over his head, as much a danger to Wynn as it was Skater. Monofilament whips were notorious for whacking off almost as many pieces from a wielder as they did from their intended target, unless the user was an expert. Wynn wasn’t.

The shadowrunner reached out and caught the whip wrist, slid along the huge hands, and grabbed the troll’s thumb in his fist. He moved again, using his weight, leverage and strength, and broke the thumb.

“You fragging son of a slitch!” Wynn cried out.

“Hector!” Fontaine yelled, moving in.

The human was slow to react, and the elf didn’t appear any too eager to come face-to-face with Skater on his own.

Wynn raked out his free hand, fingers and blunt nails digging for Skater’s face. The troll’s broad, ugly features were knotted up in pain. Crimson-studded silver earrings dangled from the scarred, triangular flaps of gristle that passed for ears on the huge shaggy head. His horns were engraved with intricate patterns and filled in with synthamber that glowed with inner fire.

Skater yanked again on the broken thumb, feeling the two ends of the bone grate. It didn’t feel like it had broken cleanly, which meant a lot more hurt for the thriller.

The troll’s scream of pain echoed across the rooftop, baring his huge yellowed teeth and the thick lower canines that jutted up like tusks. Beneath the facial warts, moles, and scars, Wynn’s face paled into a death mask. “Fontaine, get over here!”

Fontaine spit out a foul barrage of curses as he moved in cautiously from the left. Both knives moved in tandem, the wicked edges splintering moonlight.

Ducking under Wynn’s free arm, Skater released his hold on the broken thumb and moved into the troll again. One enemy down for certain would give him more time with the others—if he needed it.

Wynn floundered, trying to stump away on his injured leg and nearly falling over for his trouble. Skater curled the fingers of his right hand tight against themselves, then rammed the heel of his palm into the troll’s broad nose with all his weight behind the blow.

Blood spurted as the cartilage broke under the impact. The pain and the force of the blow dropped Wynn to his knees heavily enough to shake the rooftop.

Before the troll fell, Skater was already moving to face Fontaine.

The thriller leader appeared uncertain, despite the way he wove an intricate dance of steel in front of him with the knives. “What are you—injun?” he demanded. “You into wetwork? Some kind of repairman filling a contract?”

“I’m a professional, ditbrain, and I’m getting hosed off because you haven’t picked up that little clue yet and beat feet.” Skater kept shifting, mirroring the elf’s movements, letting Fontaine know he was no stranger to bladework. “I don’t frag around with krill-filler. I’ll toss you right back into the drekheap you crawled out of.”

Fontaine was a good-looking elf, possessing all the qualities of his type, the slender and lighter build, the high-boned face, and the almond-shaped eyes. His henna-shaded hair stood out against his almost bone-white skin, held back by a yellow headband stitched with elven runes. His ponytail, decorated with expensive tiger’s-eye combs, whipped around his head. Though slightly taller than Skater, he went five or ten kilos lighter.

“You don’t scare me,” Fontaine retorted. “Coming out here in my shadows to play. This is sacred turf for the Dark Angels, browncone, and you’re messing where you don’t belong.”

“Hector,” Wynn called, “help me, chummer. I’m hurting bad.” The whip lay beside him. He kept one hand over his broken nose and used the other to try to keep his balance.

Hector decided he had better things to do. He lowered his stun baton and switched off, showing empty hands a second later.

Without warning, Fontaine lunged forward, intending to disembowel Skater.

But Skater wasn’t there when the elf arrived. A small sidestep, only enough to clear the blade, then Skater lifted an elbow into the elf’s face, putting all his weight behind it.

Fontaine sailed backward and landed on his hoop, dazed. One of the knives dropped to the tar roof.

Skater stepped forward, resting one boot on the wrist of the hand holding the elf's remaining knife. He squatted and slid the Cougar Fine Blade from his boot top. The fear was still moving in him, not so much because of the thrillers as for the other events of the run. Thrillers were an everyday threat in the world, and a chummer could run into trouble with them even if he wasn’t working the mean streets. The arrival of Coleman January’s body at Shastakovich’s Funeral Home across the street bothered Skater most because he couldn’t be sure what it meant. If January had been dead for some time, just sitting on a slab, Skater wouldn’t have felt as threatened as he did now. But the man had rolled onto the scene in a DocWagon van that looked like it had been through some heavy drek. And January was only minutes dead, with who knew what closing up the distance behind him.

“Please,” Fontaine whined, the almond eyes glittering with tears.

Knowing he had an audience in the other two Dark Angels, Skater spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. He grabbed a handful of Fontaine’s fine hair and bent his face close to the elf’s. The thriller’s breath smelled like soured wine gone near to vinegar. The Cougar Fine Blade was only a centimeter from Fontaine’s aquiline nose.

“If you bother me again,” Skater said, “I’m going to take one of your pointy little ears as a door prize.” He tugged an ear meaningfully. “I know a granny-woman from the Nootka tribes near Spokane who would give me a little bounty for an elven ear to work a mojo with.”

“Don’t take my ear,” Fontaine put his free hand over the threatened part of his anatomy.

“Then breeze,” Skater said, “and don’t fragging look back. Scan me?”

Fontaine nodded.

Skater got off him and backed away. He drew the Predator again as Fontaine got to his feet, jerked the slide back, and popped the top round off the magazine into the air. He caught it deftly in his palm. The movement was enough to let the thrillers know the gun was primed for action. The hard look he gave them let them understand he was willing to use it.

All three flinched when the slide snapped back into place. Hector helped Wynn limp off, the troll’s immense bulk looking like it was about to crush the smaller human. Fontaine paused to get his other knife, then slid it into hiding inside his black synthleather jacket. He kept looking back, trying to make sure Skater knew he wasn’t running, but moving toward the rooftop door at a quick gait all the same.

After they were gone, Skater jogged across the rooftop and dropped into position on the side of the building overlooking Ainsworth Street in front of the Mariah. He took out the low-light binox again, and accessed the commlink. “Duran.”

“You back already?” the ork said sarcastically from his position down on the street.

Skater let the tone roll off him. When they were in the shadows, running on adrenaline, and treading on potential minefields, they all had quirks. But they’d pulled together as a unit for the last three years, become tighter than ever after the ReGEN biz. “Scan me in.”

The DocWagon unit in front of the Mariah Building was one of the lightly armored vehicles usually issued to a Standard Response Team. Their responsibilities included minor fender-benders on the highways and byways of their assigned sector, and calls for help from clients in non-crisis intervention situations. DocWagon also had High Threat Response teams that went into full-blown skirmishes in armored trucks that could have doubled as military tanks. A client paid the nuyen for the service, though. January had evidently lived in a privileged environment.

The DocWagon in Skater’s view looked like it had been through hell. The bulletproof glass in the right-rear quarter panel had taken a direct hit from something violent and nasty. Although it hadn’t allowed penetration, the window was warped and sticking out of its molding, spider-webbed so badly by fractures that visibility was nil. Black scorch marks covered the rest of the vehicle, glossing over some of the tears across its metallic hide. Broken support struts showed where the rear bumper had once been, but gave no indication as to where it might be now.

“DocWagon brought Coleman January in as meat,” Duran replied. “Road pizza from out on Eye-Five.”

Interstate 5 was a little over a klick to the south. “How?”

“Elvis is using a directional microphone from his position to pick up what the SRT team is saying and is relaying the signal on to Archangel, but most of it is worth nada. All we’ve heard mentioned so far is that January was the victim of a crash-and-dash. No witnesses. Guy who arrived on the scene popped January’s DocWagon wristband, jobbed the dispatcher the PIN, and told them the guy was probably geeked.”

The wristband was often a life-saver, Skater knew. A DocWagon subscriber or someone near him or her could set it off and the signal would go through to the dispatcher immediately, reading off the wearer’s vital signs and location.

“By the time the SRT guys arrived,” Duran went on, “a half-dozen Spike Wheels had already gotten there and were stripping what they could from January and the car he was driving.” The Spike Wheels were troll go-gangers who operated along south Intercity 5. They were hard to control, riding juiced-up hogs and carrying major ordnance. Some of them had ties to the yakuza and Mafia, and on occasion worked as transport for personnel and material.

“Was January human or meta?” Skater asked.

“Human. The Spike Wheels got hot over interference by the DocWagon guys and tried to scare them off. Even went so far as to trot out a M79B1 light anti-tank weapon.”

“That’s a lot of bang-bang for picking over what was left of road kill,” Wheeler put in.

“I should think it would be interesting to find out who was piloting the other vehicle,” came Cullen Trey’s disembodied voice over the commlink. “Or am I the only one being paranoid here?”

Skater tapped the binox, increasing the magnification. The SRT driver was an ork rigger with an exposed datajack linking him to the console of his vehicle by fiber-optic cable. Prowling the perimeters of the truck, he accessed the damage done to his rig, no doubt already preparing the report he’d have to file with DocWagon.

Moving the binox to the back of the truck, Skater discovered that the rear doors were open and the cargo hold was empty except for another ork wadding up a batch of bloody sheets and stuffing them into a surgical waste-recycling bag clearly labeled with international biohazard symbols. “Where’s January’s body?” Skater asked.

“They took it inside a few minutes ago.”

“They who?”

“People from the funeral home.”

“You’re sure?”

“They had on Shastakovich uniforms, kid,” Duran said. “Lettered real neat across the back.”

“Of course,” Trey interjected coolly, “it is possible that those uniforms were borrowed, and those people don’t work for the funeral home at all. That body could be gone in minutes.”

Wheeler laughed. “Worried about your bottom line, chummer?”

“Archangel checked them out,” Duran said. “She sleazed her way into the funeral home employee files. The two people who picked up the body both ID’d as employees.” Trey sounded slightly miffed. “If someone was willing to pay us for that body, and pay us rather handsomely for such a short investment of our time, you have to consider the fact that another party might be just as willing to pay someone else.” The ork rigger pulled the wire out of his head and sent it zipping back into the truck console. Then he crawled under the vehicle and started working to get a tire from under it.

“I want to know how January got to be road pizza so conveniently near two a.m.,” Skater said. It was 1:49:07 a.m. now. His main concern at the moment was whether his team might be implicated in the murder. A freshly geeked Coleman January had never been on the menu for the run, and mere proximity could make them suspect. Still, the balance of their nuyen might still be waiting if they carried through on their end of the deal. And Skater didn’t like walking away from runs he’d given his word on. It was bad for biz. His rep was nuyen in the bank. “Archangel?”

“She’s tripping through the Matrix, kid,” Duran said, “already looking for the DocWagon report that got turned in live. And she’s keeping an eye peeled for the body inside Shastakovich’s at the same time. Speaking of time, we’re running thin here. January’s just turned into a corpse. Even if it’s a simple crash-and-dash fatality, somebody’s gonna be along to investigate and file all the right reports. The Knight Errant shift change is gonna get in our way if we wait much longer. You get the deciding vote. Do we do the biz, or do we yank the chain?” Skater watched the two DocWagon employees. After the tire was successfully changed, they’d probably beat it on out of there, go back to patrolling their sector, and chalk the experience with the Spike Wheels up to another bad night on the job. He shifted the binox to the front doors of the Mariah Building. The heavy maglocks looked invulnerable.

“How did the SRT guys get into the building?” Skater asked. “A chipped access card,” Duran answered. “They swiped the door and went right on inside. The Shastakovich people met them in the hallway.”

“They can get us inside,” Skater said.

“Yeah, but getting anywhere else in that building is only going to be fragging hard. The maglevs are passcoded to require other cards, and you know the kinds of chill systems Ares has waiting inside the funeral home if you try to force your way inside.”

“There’s a way.” Skater put the binox in his chest pouch and melted away from the side of the building. The fear was thrumming inside him, beating against his defenses to take over. He kept it battened down, channeling the anxiety and wedding it to his instinct for survival. The run could be accomplished, with only a few variations on what they’d planned.

“You want to clue me in?”

“Later. Right now I want to borrow a little chat time with those SRT guys.” At the side of the building overlooking the alley separating him from the DocWagon vehicle on South Twenty-first Street, Skater grabbed the top rung of the fire escape scaling the outside of the structure he was on.

“Bribes usually don’t work with DocWagon employees,” Duran pointed out.

“No,” Skater agreed.

“So I guess we lean on them.”

Skater wrapped his boots on the outside edges of the fire escape and used his hands as brakes. He released enough pressure to slide quickly down to street level. “We bend them, but we don’t break them.”

“Sometimes, we don’t get those choices.”

“So we’ll hope for the best.”

“I take it we’re going to try for the extraction?” Trey asked. “Yeah,” Skater replied, creeping to the corner of the alley and drawing the Predator. He peered out across the street at the DocWagon team. “Mr. Johnson knew this was going to be a piece of hot biz, and didn’t tell us the half of it. The way I look at it, he’s gone to considerable lengths to get that body and probably wants it really bad. If we make the recovery, I think we’ll be in good position to renegotiate our fee.”

“Truly,” Cullen Trey said, “you’re a man after my own heart.”

“Maybe,” Skater said, “but let’s just hope I’m clever enough to keep us all from getting our hoops fragged. Wheeler, stay with Archangel and keep her covered while she’s running the Matrix. Trey, you’ve got the street. Elvis, Duran, you’re already out here at ground zero, so you’re with me. Let’s do it.” He stepped out of the shadows and onto the street, keeping the Predator tucked down along his leg. Killing the DocWagon personnel wasn’t an option, but wounding them enough to take them out of the play was fine.

Of course, the DocWagon team wouldn’t be held to those same rules. He felt himself getting tense inside as he crossed South Twenty-first Street. The distance separating him from the SRT members melted away.

3

Kylar Luppas glared through the bug-smeared windshield of his Saab Dynamit 776TI at the confused tangle knotting up passage along I-5, blaring his horn to warn the GMC Bulldog Step-Van with parcel post markings ahead of him. The Bulldog’s driver stepped on the brakes hard, setting off the ruby taillights bright as the spotter lamps Luppas’s mercenary team had used for rapid dust-offs in the Desert Wars a few years back. He flinched instinctively. His own men had died in the brightness of those lights used in the same fashion against them, pin-pointed for snipers.

He was racing inside, knowing he was near the rogue exec his employer had instructed him to track down and bring in. After days of searching, Norris Caber was almost in his grasp. Lupus still wasn’t certain how long Caber had gone missing before he’d been assigned to find him. The megacorps were always tight-mouthed with their information. The telecom report spotting Caber on the I-5 had come in from his Control less than five minutes ago. It was 1:54:12 a.m. now. If he couldn’t bring the man in, Luppas’s orders were to terminate Caber with extreme prejudice. And Fuchi Industrial Electronics carried a lot of prejudice. Especially to someone who betrayed the corp.

Tapping the feather-touch of the turbo-charged sports car’s accelerator, Luppas cut the delivery truck off as it tried to pull around a Ford Americar whose driver had probably been wounded in the reported action between the Spike Wheels and the DocWagon SRT crew. The troll manhandling the Bulldog blared his own horn back, then lifted a thick arm to flip Luppas the bird.

“Speedball One,” a feminine voice said from the console, “your satellite uplink has been routed and connected. Phillips Tacticom on-line.” Ramona Fishbein was back in the Seattle Fuchi offices, monitoring the whole situation through a series of low-level orbiting satellites. As Control for the op, she carried some weight, but Luppas made the decisions in the field.

Leaving the highway completely, Luppas negotiated the narrow band of trees, cultivated bushes, and grass that separated the traffic lanes of the interstate. Sedans and light-trucks with reverse lights flaring phosphorus white raced past him. The Phillips Tacticom was a military-type communications system he was familiar with from his Desert War days, capable of scrambling transmissions that were very hard to break.

A human came running out of the darkness ahead of Luppas, waving his arms and shouting.

Luppas thumbed the power button and dropped the sports car’s window. He also reached for the customized HammerII Model 61 OS pistol tucked into a synthleather holster under the console, drew it, and kept it out of sight.

“Fragging troll go-gangers are drekking everything!” the man shouted. “You’d better turn around now!” He was a sallow-complexioned human with bright red hair brutally sawed into a narrow cap of a mohawk, dressed in stained gray and green coveralls with the words “McPhearson’s Garage” stitched over the left breast in scarlet thread. He was apparently part of the crew trying to clean up the mess.

Scanning down the highway, Luppas watched the Spike Wheels go-gangers working over the wrecked cars. A fire-engine red Honda-GM 3220 Turbo lay in the middle of the intersection, turned turtle and upside down. The front end was accordioned in by a massive impact that left scratches all along the driver’s side. Luppas’s practiced eye told him the car had been hit by a bigger and heavier vehicle. Many of the other vehicles showed damage from the auto-weapons the troll go-gangers brandished, which also accounted for the fires licking at some of them. As he watched, one of the trolls fired another round from his anti-tank weapon and made a direct hit on a truck trying to turn around and slip away.

Luppas was certain then that the accident hadn’t been that at all. He also had to wonder how much the go-gangers knew and who had put them onto the man inside the Honda-GM. Luppas himself had been looking for the man for two days and had gotten no closer to him.

Kyle Luppas was as tall and slim as most elves, with bronzed skin so dark it almost looked black in the night, contrasting sharply with the yellow-bone color of his hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. A stylized tattoo of an Eastern dragon started to the outside of the arch of his right eyebrow, trailed down the side of his face, and curled its tail about his neck. The only interruptions to the artwork were the planes of his face and a quartet of long, thin shrapnel scars showing white against the bronze.

Even though it was dark, he sported a pair of specially machined, wraparound Whitelaw Electric Sunglasses because his eyes were so sensitive to the neon lights of the inner sprawls. He wore a dark plum-colored Mortimer greatcoat over a black-violet, double-breasted Vashon Island three-piece suit. The sapphire tear on the silver necklace around his throat was his primary spell focus.

“This is Speedball One.” Luppas powered his window back up and spoke into the tacticom. The wrecker driver still stood outside his car, frantically motioning for him to back up. “Speedball Two, do you copy?”

“Speedball Two copies, One. We’re in the helo and closing on your position.”

A thin smile carved Luppas’s nearly lipless mouth. Speedball Two tonight was Gunther Octavius, one of the people from his old group. A man who knew how to take orders without asking questions. “Two, confirm enroute and ETA.”

“We scrambled airborne, One. ETA is . . . four minutes twenty-seven seconds.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Two.”

Luppas stepped lightly out of the car, just missing the wrecker driver with his door. “You responded to the call. What did you see?”

The man hesitated. Knowing too much sometimes got you killed as quick as knowing too little.

Luppas backhanded the man in the face, rocking his head back. When the man tried to become hostile, he showed him the HammerII. “I don’t have all night.”

“Okay, okay,” the man said. “Take it easy. I got here in time to see the DocWagon SRT going at it with the Spike Wheels. Evidently they didn’t know about the go-gangers, because they come in light. The Spikes roared up like outta nowhere, blazing guns as soon as they were within range. The DocWagon team responded, taking a hit from some kinda slotting missile launcher or something, but they broke the ranks of those fragging meta—trolls—and sent them buzzing turbo. I was pulling into place, gonna wait on clearance from Lone Star to haul the salvage away, when the gangers returned. No questions asked. They just opened fire and started killing people.”

“Where’s the DocWagon crew?” Luppas demanded.

“They picked up the guy they were after and slotted it out of here.”

“Describe the person the DocWagon crew picked up.” When the man seemed on the verge of belligerence once more, Luppas leaned in again.

The wrecker driver covered his face with his arms. “All right, all right. It was a man. Maybe late twenties. Dark hair. Overweight. Guy who looked like any other corp geek would look.” Without a word, Luppas got back in his car and drove toward the Spike Wheels go-gangers. He was only minutes behind his prize and the fat bonus that went with it.

4

The ork SRT member standing at the passenger-side door of the DocWagon vehicle in front of the Mariah Building started getting fidgety when Jack Skater was still six meters away and closing. The ork’s firearm was thonged into snythleather at the hip, not convenient at all. Trying to look casual, he dropped his hand to his side.

Skater motioned with the Predator, still four meters away. “This close, you make an awfully big target, chummer.” He checked the time on his retinal clock: 01:59:34 a.m. The Johnson had hit the time right on the nose. The stitched patch on the ork’s shirt read FHARON.

“Both of the others are still alive.” Elvis stepped out from behind the truck. Dressed in black like Skater, the troll samurai was nothing short of an awe-inspiring three meters of sweat-enhanced muscle and bio-augmentation. His on-going dance with death was displayed in an accumulation of scars, his twisted left horn, and a silver-crowned tusk that sparkled in his easy smile.

“Let’s have the gunbelt,” Skater said. “Slowly.”

Two knives, a set of macroplast knuckle-dusters, and a Fichetti Tiffani Self-Defender landed on top of the gunbelt. Elvis scooped them up in a big hand and deposited them in the truck.

“Get the truck out of here,” Skater told Elvis.

The troll opened the door and fitted himself into one of the twin bucket seats with difficulty. The engine turned over sluggishly before catching.

The ork acted more nervous, but readily complied with Skater’s unvoiced request that he move down the street toward the front of the Mariah Building. Skater stayed a full step behind him, tucking the Predator II out of sight.

“Turn at the corner,” Skater said. He felt nervous and exposed. Knowing Duran was less than a block away down the street and keeping them covered with a sniper rifle didn’t help as much as it should have. Perspiration continued trickling down his back, making the clothing stick to him.

Nocturnal sprawl predators had gathered in the alley where Elvis parked the DocWagon truck. Of the two-legged and four-legged variety offered, Skater felt safer with the rodents and felines.

“Tell me about the client that you just dropped off, Fharon,” Skater suggested.

“What do you want to know? We caught a squeal about a crash-and-dash on Eye-Five. When we got there, those fragging Spike Wheels showed up and started cutting unholy hell. Before I knew it—”

Skater cut the ork off. “Tell me about the client you just picked up.”

“The guy’s wristband IDed him as Norris Caber. We got to the scene, one of my partners slotted his credstick, checking out the usual for his name, address, and med history. Popped up Coleman January. We were thinking maybe he took Caber’s wristband, or maybe Caber loaned it to him. I took a tissue sample, so we could match it against what DocWagon has on file.”

“Was January in your files?” Skater asked.

“No.”

“What did you have on Caber?”

“Usual med history. Nothing that caught the eye. The way the guy got geeked in the crash-and-dash, a med history wasn’t gonna be any help anyway. Spirits couldn’t have saved him unless they were ready to raise the dead.”

“What line of work was Caber in?” Skater asked.

The orb shook his head. “To get into something buried that deep, I’d need a higher sec clearance than I’ve got now.”

“Did the victim match up with Caber’s files?”

“He had a different face,” Fharon said. He touched the underside of his chin. “But if you knew what to look for, you could tell he’d had some work done. Recently. Maybe only a week or so back. Looked like good stuff.”

“Thanks,” Skater said.

Elvis took his cue and moved before the word was out of Skater’s mouth, seizing the troll and putting him into a sleeper hold. In seconds Fharon’s unconscious weight dropped in the troll’s arms. “He’ll be out for awhile.”

“Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink.

“Go.”

“While I was trying to get into the DocWagon system and decrypt some scramble IC covering their client files while looking for our target, I intercepted a file from Lone Star requesting that the body be turned over to them. They’re trying to locate this DocWagon unit now.”

A metallic screech sounded behind Skater. When he looked, he saw that Elvis yanked the DocWagon truck’s dog-brain and CPU from the console by strength alone. Sparks spit through the vacated space. A copy of all the files that had been sent and received would be on the drive. When Archangel had time, there was a chance she could download the information, possibly giving them a new angle.

“How did Lone Star get interested in the target?” Skater asked.

“The Spike Wheels are still at the crash-and-dash site and a dozen people or more have gotten killed,” she told him. “Lone Star investigators are demanding the corpse. They think January was a target and not some poor slot who got caught in an act of random violence. They want that body.” Skater’s mind spun, latching onto all the variables, turning them over as the adrenaline surged through him.

“Okay, kid,” Duran called over the commlink, “say we’re maybe minutes from being fragging invaded here. This much drek cycling the bowl, that body’s gotta be worth some serious nuyen. What’s it gonna be?”

For a moment, the fear squirmed around inside Skater, bringing with it the face of his daughter. They were running blind now and the scan wasn’t good for a runner who’d popped his ante on a run gone way bad. The advance money the Johnson had given them for recovery of the corpse was only enough to keep him scrambling another month or two, if he kept expenses leaned out. It cost to be invisible in the sprawl. He needed the score, and that was the bottom line.

Skater took a deep breath, and said, “Okay. We do it. Rendezvous back at the van. Move!” He paused long enough to remove Fharon’s DocWagon jacket, then grabbed one lying on the seat that the ork rigger had obviously discarded. In the next instant, he’d taken his place back in the shadows, moving fast, working to stay one quick step ahead of sudden death.

5

Luppas steered the sports car with one hand, aiming it down I-5 at the Spike Wheels clustered near the crash-and-dash. The gangers were ready to buzz turbo from the scene. If Norris Caber had left anything behind in the wreck, Luppas wasn’t going to let it be taken. A feral grin split his face as he drew fire from the go-gangers, closing on them as they tried to get away. The bullets hammered the Saab like hail, spitting brief lightnings from the impact areas.

The last two go-gangers hopped aboard their Vikings, putting heated rubber to the pavement as they sped after their playmates.

Luppas didn’t hesitate and took the Saab screaming across the blocked interstate. He steered hard, depending on the vehicle’s European-styled suspension and handling to see him through. He missed the overturned Honda 3220 by centimeters, eyes narrowing behind the Whitelaw sunglasses for a moment as the smashed vehicle suddenly went up in flames. Then the Whitelaws adjusted the polarization.

The Spikewheels were suddenly in front of him, spread out and heading back the wrong way on the highway, straight for the line of disorganized traffic a hundred meters in front of them. If they made the line of cars, Luppas knew they would be hard to catch because the off-ramps could take them all over Tacoma.

The elf pinned the accelerator to the floor, listening to the modified engine opening up. In a heartbeat, he was among them. Drawing even with the last troll, he pulled hard right and made contact with the Viking’s rear wheel. Metal grated against metal, and a shower of sparks jetted up from the contact.

The go-ganger lost control and went down in a flesh-eating skid that ended suddenly against a retaining wall. The Viking’s gas tank blew like an incendiary, igniting the big troll.

Recovering and accelerating again, Luppas cut hard left, ramming into a go-ganger he’d outrun. Hammered by the Saab, the big troll came bounding off his machine and splatted against the car’s windshield with enough residual force to rip the bulletproof glass from its moorings. Crimson threads gushed from the go-ganger’s mouth and nose, streaking the fractured glass. Then he was gone, rolling across the buckled rooftop.

With a pronounced shriek, the Saab blasted into the knot of Spike Wheels, mowing them down like tenpins. Only one of them managed to escape the onslaught.

Luppas had already noticed the troll making his getaway. The Saab drifted to a bumpy stop over metas and machines, coming around in a looping one-eighty. He had to batter the door open, aware that some of the go-gangers were getting to their feet around him.

Concentrating on the patch of pavement just ahead of the go-ganger, imagining it rising out of the ground in a sudden wall, Luppas threw his spell.

Slight waves of shimmering force spat from his hand.

In the next instant, the pavement suddenly became malleable, standing up a meter high and two meters wide directly in front of the go-ganger. The troll tried to brake and go around the barrier, but there was no time. The motorcycle crashed against it and sent its rider flying head-first against the grill of a GMC 4201 truck. The orange and black diagonal warning lines slashed across its massive front bumper suddenly went blood-red. The troll never moved after he dropped.

Luppas released his hold on the pavement and turned his attention back to the other go-gangers. One of them was lifting a Colt Cobra SMG into the crook of his elbow.

Luppas raised the HammerII pistol and fired the final two rounds from the magazine. The bullets caught the troll in the face, but they didn’t exit through the back of the ganger’s massive head. His bulletproof helmet kept the rounds bouncing around inside and through the skull for a few more passes.

Ducking behind the dented hulk of the Saab, Luppas thumbed the magazine release, dumped the empty, then reloaded with one of the clips containing explosive rounds from under the seat. He shoved two more into the pockets of the greatcoat.

The thrum of powerful rotors sounded overhead. Looking up, Luppas saw the outline of the matte-black Hughes Airstar 2050 closing in from above. No numbers littered her sides; she was neuter as she could be. The cargo door was open and a figure in a black urban Patterson Camo-Spec battle dress uniform clung to the side.

“Hey, omae!” Gunther Octavius called over the tacticom. “We made the party.”

“I want two of them alive,” Luppas said to his second. “Affirmative.”

Bullets from the go-gangers skated along the hardened exterior of the Airstar, then it was zooming in for the kill. Luppas rose over the line of the Saab with the HammerII in both hands, ready to defend his team.

6

Archangel sat in the contoured chair bolted to the floor of the Leyland-Rover Transport van’s cargo area two blocks from the Mariah Building, in the same spot where she’d been with the computer equipment most of the night A datajack connected her to the sleek deck on the small built-in work table where she was handling the fiber link that had spoofed the Mariah Building’s security network. She was busily recording bits and pieces of ongoing security vid and aud to play back into the systems later when necessary to mask the team’s insertion.

Knowing what it took to stay pro, Skater made sure his shadowrun team maintained access to any hardware they needed. It took serious nuyen to make serious nuyen. It was part of Skater’s rep that he was a man who could get into places he’d never seen before, do things many thought were impossible. And Skater had made his rep even before some of the others had jumped on board the team.

Some of it came from ability and nerve. Some of it came from having the right tools, and Skater made sure the team invested as a team, picking up equipment where and when they needed it. Everything else depended on sheer luck.

They’d hijacked the Leyland-Rover Transport van yesterday afternoon from a mall area in Renton, purposely choosing one set up as a workstation for a plumbing outfit. Wheeler had accomplished the necessary renovations in a matter of hours—installing back-up power generators for the deck, ripping out the extra shelving they hadn’t needed, bolting racks onto the walls for the gear they did need, and adding a paint job that had rendered it the faded gray and white it now was—with help from Skater and Elvis.

The vehicle’s ident number was faked; they’d made sure it didn’t have a match anywhere in the Seattle area. Skater saw no reason to chance laying down a trail even to a vehicle they would eventually wipe clean and abandon, after again stripping it of any ID.

He was the first to make it back to the van. “Has Lone Star got a lock on the DocWagon truck?” he asked as he shrugged into the borrowed med jacket. Elvis had also snatched the DocWagon ballcap with the company logo that had been hanging from the truck’s rearview mirror.

“No,” Archangel said, her eyes constantly scanning the nine monitors set up in front of her in a three-by-three configuration.

The scenes on the monitors were in color, black and white, infra-red, and thermographic. They changed as regularly as a metronome, a little signature burning onto the screen’s lower-right corner with each pulse to ID which floor, room, and/or camera view was being used, as well as the time/date stamp. It was now 1:58:23 a.m. The fiber link let her cover the whole building. A pad hanging from a magnetic hook at the side of the monitors was covered in Archangel’s fine script. Skater knew they were listings of the various camera views.

He leaned against the van for a few ticks and stared at her. Archangel was beautiful, complexioned a milky white. Her heart-shaped face perfectly set off her bronze elven eyes swirling with gold flecks. A shimmering cascade of platinum blond hair spilled across her shoulders and down her back, tucked up over one pointed ear. The datajack at her right temple caught the moving light show and shadowplay coming from the monitors and gleamed. Her baggy pants and shirt tried in vain to cover the lean, muscled curves beneath. Who she was and where she came from, though, were another matter. The only things Skater knew about the woman were that her name definitely wasn’t Archangel and that she was a drek-hot decker. Everybody, he’d figured when adding her to the team, was entitled to their secrets; he had his.

Skater snapped back into action. “No one’s coming toward Shastakovich’s Funeral Home?” He slipped on a pair of gloves with the palms cut out to allow better cooling. So far, no one had figured out a way to trace palm prints. Tissue was another problem altogether, but he’d decided to risk leaving it exposed over losing part of his grip. Hands were important in his line of work.

Macroplast inserts across the knuckles and the backs of his gloves provided armor as well as a weapon. He took up the filled-to-capacity backpack that stood in readiness beside the cargo door of the van.

Wheeler grabbed the other pack, then pulled on the light green DocWagon jacket Skater offered. The dwarf rigger stood only a little over a meter tall and his heavily muscled shoulders were nearly that broad across. His feet looked impossibly large, but were tucked into hobnailed boots that he would have put up anyone’s hoop for being unkind enough to mention that fact. He wore his chestnut-colored hair long, tightly coiled into a single plait down his back. Beneath his immense nose, his full, arrogant beard was slightly darker. The datajack on his temple shone like a freshly minted coin. He was the team’s transport specialist, and he’d had plenty of experience. When he wasn’t on a run, Wheeler often put in time working for DocWagon as a rigger specializing in high-threat response assignments.

“Not yet,” Archangel said with the icy cool that was her trademark in the biz. “For a modest fee, which I expect to be recompensed when we’re paid, I arranged for a diversion in Doc-Wagon’s system. I gave a group of thrill deckers who were playing in the Matrix tonight a few of DocWagon’s less security-intense passcodes to forage among the files. It would be chump change for us, but a few of them can turn some decent nuyen for a couple hours work. The DocWagon deckers will have too much cyber-traffic jamming their own retrieval systems to locate that particular truck for a while.” She raised an arched brow. “As long as the SRT members are in no position to call it in.”

Elvis rounded the back of the van and deposited the DocWagon dog-brain unit on the van floor. “They won’t be calling till somebody unties them.”

“So we got a window,” Quint Duran growled, stepping out of the shadows as silently as a leshy cutting through a forest. The ork had been down some hard roads as a mercenary and it showed. His dark, bushy hair was frosted with silver. Gold hoop earrings curled tight against his elongated ears. His face was seamed and scarred, and something malevolent burned almost constantly in his dark, hooded eyes. His synthleathered armor made him look like a dreadnought from the spirit world come to wreak havoc. The Franchi SPAS-22 combat shotgun he carried did nothing to soften that impression.

Cullen Trey approached from the front of the Leyland-Rover, a smile splitting his handsome face. Dressed in black clothes and armor that were as functional as they were flattering to his slender build, the combat mage also sported a black Kevlar cape that reached to his ankles and had a short collar attached. A dark amethyst jewel cut in a long cross nearly eight centimeters tall and little more than half that across held the cape together. He also carried a polished wooden walking stick with a silver gloaming owl’s head capping it.

“Evening all,” Trey said cheerfully. “Nice night for shadows.” Before joining the team, he had been a free-lance mage, working through fixers and handling a variety of runs. He was one of the best mages Skater had ever seen.

“Jack,” Archangel called.

Skater looked over, then followed her pointing finger to the mini-trideo set behind the driver’s seat where a tridcast was in progress. On the small screen, a helicopter was debarking a crew that looked as if it had been in a firefight. Skater guessed the troll gangers were probably involved. “Spike Wheels?”

Archangel nodded. “They returned to the site of the crash-and-dash.”

“Who’re are the guys in the whirlybird?” Wheeler asked. “The media report hasn’t said. They came out of nowhere and hit the Spike Wheels without warning.”

“They weren’t running with our target,” Skater said.

Duran nodded in agreement. “If they had been, they’d have made the extraction, not Doc Wagon.”

“Which means, by default,” Cullen Trey said, his voice not quite so cheery as he scanned the trid, “that they must be after the same popular little corpse that we are.”

“Looks like there’s plenty of others there to choose from,” Elvis rumbled. The trid screen showed the dead littered around the burning car, and more going down under the guns of the arriving hard crew. “And those guys are adding to the choices.”

“They’re good,” Duran admitted. “Maybe they’re part of Lone Star’s elite?”

“No.” Archangel made a note on the pad beside the bank of monitors, as able to multi-task as her deck. “According to the Lone Star bandwidths I’ve got access to, Lone Star has team enroute, but not physically at the scene.”

“Their magicians could be assensing the field ahead of the physical troops,” Trey pointed out. “Perhaps I could go take a peek myself.”

“No,” Skater said. “We’ve got the target’s twenty confirmed, and we’ve got a plan of action. If you go tripping over there and get assensed yourself, you could lead people back to us. Either Lone Star or this group. We go with what we know here.”

“Kid’s right,” Duran growled. “We may have a firedrake by the tail, but we get to choose the moves. All we have to do is grab the chunk of road pizza everybody’s so interested in and buzz turbo. Not simple, but we set out tonight thinking we could do it. Me, I still think we can.”

Skater prompted each of the others in quick succession. Not suprisingly, Trey and Elvis stuck with their votes in favor of making the run.

“I’m in,” Wheeler said. “We’re gonna have the spurs put to us if this thing goes drek-o, but, chummers, I’m having too much fun to stop now.” He pointed a blunt forefinger at the trideo. “That much interest is only interest on the nuyen we’ll be fleecing our Mr. Johnson out of.”

“Archangel?” Skater asked.

She looked at him, but he couldn’t read her features. “Let’s do it,” she said after a beat.

Emma came to Skater’s mind for a moment. And in that moment she was every reason not to continue the run, yet she was every reason to attempt it. He hadn’t told any of the others about the demands from some woman named Deja concerning Emma that he’d received through one of the message drops Kestrel managed for him. That the woman was able to find him at all without being in the biz was scary enough, and that he knew nothing about her at all was even more scary. Her demands for nuyen were even more unsettling. Kestrel was a fixer, one of the best in the biz, and a chummer who owed Skater big over the years. But even Kestrel was turning up empty on the name.

“I don’t want anyone geeked inside the building,” Skater said pointedly to Duran. The ork was the most willfully violent of the team.

“Then make sure you don’t let you or the short man”—the ork nodded at the dwarf—“get close to getting scragged. You’re on my shift and I take my responsibility seriously.”

“You’ve got the hallways,” Skater said. “I’m going to depend on you not to deflect whatever pursuit we have. Let the action run its course. Otherwise they’re going to spread out and it will get harder to depend on their being predictable.”

Duran gave a short nod.

“Trey,” Skater said. “You’ve got the street. Do not engage anyone unless the van is made. Same reasons. We’ve prepared for pursuit, and if we’ve prepared enough, they’ll be blocked where we want them to be blocked. You’re there only as a safety valve.”

“As you say,” Trey said with a nod.

“Elvis, you stay with the van. Protect Archangel, and get the hell out of here when Wheeler and I reach the top of the Mariah Building.”

“Done and done, chummer.” The troll dropped a massive fist onto Skater’s in a good-luck gesture.

“Wheeler.” Skater shouldered the pack.

“I’m standing in your shadow, omae,” said the dwarf rigger. “You won’t make a move without me.”

Skater took a last look up at the Mariah Building, took a last deep breath, took just an instant to send a hopeful prayer to all the spirits his grandfather had believed in. Then he was in motion.

The run was in full blitz, the sturm and drang cycling every move they made, waiting for one false step.

7

Luppas moved forward hurriedly, concentrating on the burning hulk of the Honda-GM 3220 at the epicenter of the crash-and-dash on I-5. The flames spiraled high over the vehicle now, feeding off the fuel leaking from the broken lines. That could be part of his recovery fee burning up.

He knew he was going to pay the price for using too much magic too quickly before the night was out. He focused on the burning husk of the Honda-GM, testing the power in his mind. When it felt right, equal to the task, he threw a hand out. Waves of shimmering force tore across the battlefield.

The spell slammed into the burning car. Immediately, the flames acted like they’d been hit by a physical force, spreading out in one flash-blinding arc of resistance. Then they were gone.

Luppas leaned heavily against the Saab, his knees weak and shaking. Perspiration dripped down his face, soaking into the expensive suit. He took a fresh grip on the HammerII, but just couldn’t find the strength in himself to feel really comfortable with it. He peered around, tracking shadows. The Whitelaws glasses had already adjusted to the decrease in light.

The matte-black helo continued to hover above them. A Vigilant rotary autocannon mounted on a hardpoint remote turret slung under the Airstar’s belly moved in tandem to the pilot’s head movements through the sensor links. The visible laser sighting, clearly chosen as a deterrent to any attempted involvement by the civilians at the fringes of the battle zone, stabbed a long ruby finger through the night. The laser slid over vehicles and bodies, never touching one of its own ground team members.

“Speedball Team, this is One,” Luppas said. “We’re on a time frame here. Ops are git and go. I want every Spike Wheel, alive or dead, in custody ASAP.”

The affirmative replies came in rapidly.

Luppas took a moment to center himself, repeating a few well-chosen mantras in ancient Farsi. By the time he was drawing his third breath, the mantra was pumping him up and cleaning his head.

“Control,” he called over the tacticom, “this is Speedball One.”

“Speedball One, Control copies,” Fishbein answered.

Luppas walked into the zone, knowing the helo pilot would wire his position into the team’s Global Positioning array, pinging off the Sony Nav-Dat he carried so his own team would know he was there. With the satlink interface through a low-orbiting satellite provided by Control, his team would know where he was at all times. “Do you have a fix on the primary target?”

“Negative, One.” Ramona Fishbein sounded properly bent about the situation. “DocWagon’s computers are experiencing a mild frag-up, from what I’ve been told.”

“How long before it’s sorted out?”

There was a hesitation. “That’s unknown.”

Luppas grinned to himself. Fishbein hated admitting her little pet puters couldn’t do everything at any given instant. “Maybe I can find something out from this end.”

“Whatever you think you can find out,” Fishbein said, “I’ll be standing by and ready to check it out.”

Luppas reached the smoldering Honda-GM. He took a pair of gloves from his pocket to protect his hands while he sifted through the debris.

More gunfire interrupted his inspection of the damaged vehicle. He took shelter behind the bulk of the car and kept scanning the contents.

“Speedball One, this is Two.”

“One copies, Two.” Luppas knelt inside the car. For it to be properly gone over, techs would have to be called in.

“The last target has been put down, One. Definitely inoperative.”

“Affirmative, Two. Confirm prisoners?” Luppas scanned the slashed seats and the glove compartment missing its door. The fire had easily reached the flash point for paper. Only a few sheets of ash remained intact. He didn’t touch them. They would be Fishbein’s forensics team’s problem. “A pair of them, One. Dumb and Dumber.”

Luppas took off a glove and touched the charred steering wheel with caution. A lot of residual heat remained in it, primarily in the composite plastics oozing slowly from the metal frame. He stood beside the Honda-GM and waited, wondering where Norris Caber had gone while outside the surveillance loop Fuchi had put into play in Seattle before sending for Luppas and his team.

He watched the recovery ops through the soot-stained windshield. His team worked three men to a corpse, piling the bodies into the cargo area of the Airstar while the helo skids hovered only centimeters from the pavement.

“Speedball One, this is Control. Lone Star will be at your twenty in two minutes or less.”

Gazing back down the line of cars in all directions, Luppas spotted the flashing red and blue light bars of the Lone Star vehicles. “Has any headway been made with them?”

“A deal’s on the table,” Fishbein replied.

“Keep me apprised.” Luppas gripped the steering wheel and slipped into the astral plane, dropping his physical senses.

For the last two days, the watcher spirits he’d conjured had been scouring Seattle for Caber in shifts, turning up nothing. All of which had been an incredible expense on Fuchi. The corp handled their cost easily, but for Luppas it had been a serious drain on his Art. A lesser mage wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. According to Fishbein’s sources, Seattle was where Caber was expected to be. Now that Luppas knew Caber was definitely in the Tacoma sprawl, he called on some watchers he’d had on stand-by.

They came to him in astral space, as mindless as puppies wanting to please their master, bodiless things that barely left an astral signature in their wake. They already had Caber’s image, so all he had to do was redefine the area of search. He sent them scurrying with a word, then checked back into the physical world.

Gunther Octavius had come up while he was dealing with the watchers. His second was dressed all in black, with a deep violet band around his upper left arm to identify him visually to the rest of the team. The GPS array would track him as well, but trigger fingers often worked by line of sight first.

“Watch over me, omae,” Luppas told Octavius. “I’ll be gone for a bit.” His meat body would, of course, be totally vulnerable while he was in the astral. Trusting Gunther implicitly, Luppas folded his arms around his drawn-up knees.

“I’ll be here,” Octavius promised. He had a face shaped like a trenching tool, hard and chiseled. He was broad and squat for a human, with iron-gray hair that bristled along the fringe under his helmet.

With a brief, practiced effort, Luppas slipped into astral space.

* * *

Luppas was aware of his astral self pulling free of his physical body. Floating high over the combat zone, he saw a watcher rush toward him.

“Master,” it croaked, “I have found the one you seek.”

Assensing other astral beings working around him far off in the nether distances of the wide-openness of the astral plane, Luppas made certain no one was interested in challenging him or was paying too much attention to what he was doing. He followed the watcher, sliding along as smoothly as the monorail circled downtown Seattle.

Buildings flew by beneath him as he increased speed. The geography seemed familiar, but he was unable to read street signs or even the neon advertising scaling the buildings. The astral plane re-interpreted the world, and literacy was a total loss. Only the emotions trickled through, all of them an artificial, shouting excitement.

The watcher took Luppas to the ninth floor of a building. He took in what he could of the outside of the structure, memorizing its lines so that he would know it again when he saw it from the helo’s co-pilot seat as he planned.

Certain he would remember it, he slipped into the building through one of the windows, oozing effortlessly through the material. Still floating, he followed the watcher past a number of office doors, until it stabbed into a thick wooden one that he assensed as having a heavy macroplast center.

Frustration chafed at him when he saw the unreadable squiggles that danced across the front of the door. If he were in his physical body, all he’d have to do was read the name of the establishment.

Aware of the seconds ticking past him no matter how fast astral projection made him, Luppas pushed through the door and followed the watcher. He knew at once from the way the rooms were laid out, coffins arranged so carefully with mourners grouped around them in chairs or standing in small clusters, that he was in a funeral home.

On the astral plane, the sense of mourning and loss was as sharp as razored electrical bursts. He found Norris Caber in a back room that held a wall full of stainless steel equipment. Caber was stacked on a metal pushcart next to the automated table hissing and sucking and buzzing its way into the corpse of an old ork female who had the blackened hole of a laser burned through her left eye. The woman’s limbs jerked and tossed from the force of the dog-brain-operated equipment that hung like a cybered spider from the ceiling. A slim human stood beside the table in a white coat, wheezing on a nicostick, not at all concerned.

Caber was dead. There was no question. His head had nearly been severed just below his jaw.

It had been 02:01:14 a.m. when he’d gone astral. Luppas left quickly, knowing he was risking his body’s health by staying gone so long. But on his way up through the building’s roof, he spotted two men in the firewell coming up toward the seventh floor. Their presence set off an instinctive alarm within him.

One of them was human, undoubtedly of Amerind blood, and the other was a dwarf. Both were dressed in black under the DocWagon blouses they wore. They also carried weapons and backpacks filled with an interesting selection of devices.

Neither of the two were astrally active on any level and showed only as dormant astral forms. But Luppas could sense the tension about them, and the determination to fulfill whatever mission they’d set for themselves.

If he hadn’t already been away from his body so long, and in a weakened state at that, Luppas would have remained to see what they were after. He was concerned that he find out exactly what that was.

He returned to his body as quickly as he could and slid back into it, banishing the watchers to conserve what little strength that he could still claim.

* * *

In the physical world, Luppas signaled his team and boarded the Airstar. When the last man was inside, Octavius grabbed the top and bottom doors and pulled them closed.

Luppas made his way forward with difficulty, shoving through his men and the dead trolls. Originally, the Airstar had been outfitted with nine bucket seats offering modest comfort. He’d ordered the bucket seats ripped out and fold-out bench ones put in so he could get more people inside. On the outside, the helo looked small, but it held five dead trolls, one of them burned to a crisp, two live ones, and his eight-man team well enough after the refurbishing.

Dropping into the co-pilot’s seat, Luppas accessed the tacticom. “Control, this is Speedball One. I found our target, but I need help retrieving him physically.”

“Where is he?”

“In a funeral home in a building thirteen stories tall. No more than a few blocks away. You should be able to ID it easily enough. There can’t be that many.”

“Affirmative, One. I want the body recovered and brought in.”

And with those words, Luppas knew there was even more to the covert op that he hadn’t been told. “Why, Control? I’ve verified the target. He’s toast.” Usually, his word on termination was good enough. The last thing Fuchi wanted was a body floating that could be pinned to them. Caber had been taken out by someone else; there’d be no trail back to the corp.

“Understood, One. However, you have your orders.”

“Affirmative, Control. We’ll need some help locating the building fast. Can you ID and ping?”

“Standby, One.”

Luppas belted himself into the seat, caught the pilot’s eye and thumbed upward.

The Airstar leaped into the sky, the rotor hammering the air. In seconds, the battle zone on Interstate 5 was far below them.

8

“Jack!” Archangel called over the commlink.

“Go.” Skater grabbed the handrail on the eighth-level landing of the Mariah Building and hauled himself up. His legs trembled from the extended exertion of climbing all eight floors, his boosted reflexes quivering in readiness, primed by the adrenaline rush. His retinal clock showed him it was 02:03:57 a.m. They had twenty-six minutes left on their window before the Knight Errant sec overlap occurred.

The DocWagon jackets had gotten them into the building and provided a simple camouflage from the Knight Errant security manning the closed-circuit monitors throughout the entrance and exit areas. Archangel had sleazed her way past the emergency stairwell IC and set up doppler imaging on those cams to show the same empty stairwells over and over on Knight Errant’s monitors. Neither Skater nor Wheeler showed up on any of the screens except Archangel’s.

“The helicopter at the scene of the crash-and-dash has just lifted and appears on its way to this building,” Archangel reported.

“You’re sure?” Skater reached the second eighth-floor landing switchback at full speed. Sweat drenched his clothing.

“I’m tracking it through a vidscreen display I’ve got that’s linked into a KSTS news flash transmission from a snoop equipped with a Sony HB500 portacam. She’s attempting to follow the helicopter by car.”

Spotting the yellow numbers marking the ninth floor, Skater pulled up short. The infrared circuitry in his eyes had already turned night into day in the firewell.

He peered through the heavy wire mesh in the safety glass. Halfway down the corridor a half-dozen people, mostly orks, were going out the front door of Shastakovich’s Funeral Home. All of them shook hands with one of the Shastakovich reps wearing a dark suit and somber expression.

Skater held a hand up to Wheeler, freezing the dwarf rigger into place. “How far out is the helicopter?”

“Only minutes,” Archangel answered.

Skater swapped looks with Wheeler as the dwarf pulled a battery-operated plascrete circular saw from his backpack. He checked the power read-out, which glowed full green. They were on the second level of stairs leading up to the tenth floor. “We need the aud systems cut in the stairwell,” Skater said. The fire-escape route contained a vibration-detection system Archangel had found when she’d reviewed the Knight Errant records she’d broken into before the run. Two microphones were placed on each level, all of them set up to disregard normal voices, overflow from the halls, and the thunder of jets passing overhead on their way to Sea-Tac Airport, as well as storms themselves. They would pick up screams for help, shouts, the cracks of gunfire, and the sound of Wheeler’s plascrete saw.

Wheeler used a measuring tape and a graphite pencil to mark off the square he intended to cut while Archangel jacked back into the Matrix. Then he put his tools away, pulled a paper mask over his lower face, bared the rough blade and set it against the wall. Beyond it was the air/heat ductwork they’d located and intended to use to get into Shastakovich’s.

Skater slipped on a mask as well, instinctively rebelling against it because it cut down on his oxygen flow when his system was riding out an adrenaline high. But it was much better than trying to breath the plascrete dust that would fill the stairwell in seconds. He accessed the commlink. “Duran.”

“Here, kid.”

“Knight Errant?”

The ork was stationed near the main Knight Errant security outpost on the fourth floor, ready to lay down a trail of confusion if it was needed. “Just logging another shift. When they’re not watching the monitors, they’re checking out the action on Arise Humanity! on a portable trid.”

“Tonight’s feature,” Elvis growled sarcastically, “ ‘Fifty Ways To Geek Unwanted Meta Neighbors And How To Get Away with It.’ ”

“I’ve got the vibration-detection system closed off,” Archangel reported. “You might want to be careful when you vent the integrity of that wall.”

“Why?” Skater asked.

“The vibration-detection system had white IC like I was expecting, but someone had logged a secondary perimeter into the logic circuits that had a gray IC tar baby umbilical tied into it.” The elf decker sounded jazzed. “If I hadn’t been on my toes, the tar baby would have crashed the deception utility I used against the access IC and sounded an alarm.”

“An alarm to Knight Errant or someone else?” Skater asked. “Someone else.”

“Could you trace the secondary alarm system?”

“Not without crashing the system.”

“Probably just some chummer not really wanting to rely solely on building sec,” Wheeler said, still holding the plascrete saw poised.

Skater nodded, figuring it the same way. They’d know soon enough. But it increased the chances of something nasty on the other side. “Both systems are down?”

“Yes,” Archangel replied.

“Do it,” Skater told the dwarf rigger.

Wheeler triggered the plascrete saw and the blade bit into the wall with a shower of bright sparks and a cloud of white-gray dust. The roar was incredible. Fine powder poured down onto the dwarf’s big feet as he cut.

Stepping back to the fire-escape door letting out onto the ninth-floor hallway, Skater peered outside again. Evidently the soundproofing in the Mariah Building was up to spec because no one came running at the door with weapon in hand to check out the sudden noise.

Another twenty seconds and Wheeler had cut through the section. Using a pair of thin steel hooks, he reached behind the block and hauled it out. Skater pulled off the DocWagon jacket and used it to handle the rectangle of plascrete and lower it to the floor so it wouldn’t thud and cause vibrations to run through the nearer offices on the ninth level. The edges of the block where the saw had scored it remained hot enough to burn the jacket material.

Darkness filled the area beyond the fresh-cut hole. Only a few pinpricks of light made glowing mushroom forms against the acoustic tiles on the bottom. With the cloud of plascrete dust filling the space, conventional flashlights and infrared vision were both nearly as useless.

Skater shrugged out of his backpack and brought it around over his chest. The crawlspace between floors was literally that. He pushed himself through the opening, took a moment to guess at his bearings, and started forward on his hands and knees.

Wheeler followed at once.

Movement across the floor of the crawlspace was tricky. Primarily constructed to maintain a decorative atmosphere in the building, providing a means to hang the acoustic ceiling low enough to cover the various power, water, and disposal trunklines, it wasn’t designed to sustain the weight of two people crawling over it.

Shastakovich’s Funeral Home boasted late-model cryo-chambers to keep the dead until all the details of a funeral could be worked out, a full line of caskets and services, and an on-site crematorium. When Skater had first seen the crematorium’s rooftop outlet duct in the blueprints, seen that it was nearly two meters across, he’d known how he was going to make the run.

The duct ran uninterrupted from the ceiling of the ninth floor all the way to the rooftop. Two filtering systems were inside, designed to remove all the illegal impurities from the smoke of the burnings. The duct at the rooftop was covered by a heavy protective screen, but was located well away from the two rooftop accesses.

When he reached the crematorium exhaust, Skater put a hand against it. It was still warm from recent use, but not too hot for what he had in mind. Even if it had been hot, there’d have been a way around that as well.

Wheeler took a monofilament file knife from his pack and bent to the task. He was short enough to work on his knees, taking a two-handed grip on the knife and digging in.

Skater accessed the commlink. “We’re in position and beginning our entry.”

“Work quickly,” Cullen Trey urged. “I’ve spotted the fragging helicopters myself. It’s got at least one cannon mounted underneath.”

“Lone Star also has ground units moving in,” Archangel added.

“Where’s the helicopter?” Skater asked.

“Hovering,” Archangel replied.

“The team’s sizing up the building,” Duran said. “Downloading whatever they can about the sec stats. It’s what I would do before I put soldiers into the battle zone. Terrain can be a good friend or your worst enemy. Your best investment is getting to know it.”

The thought of the helicopter hovering up there in the night sky and waiting to dispose troops into the building kept Skater’s heart racing. Even from the beginning, he’d known the run hinged on timing: quick in, quick out. Now there could be no false moves.

“Jack,” Wheeler called.

Skater looked over as the dwarf removed the cut-out section of the exhaust duct.

“We’re go,” the dwarf rigger said.

“Did you locate the main power line to the funeral home?” Skater reached into his backpack, shifted aside the thin coils of climbing cable, pitons, and pneumatic-powered shaft hammer, and took out the bulky electromagnetic gloves. They had pads in the palms and on the fingers, with plates capable of adhering to anything with enough ferrous trace elements. He put on the strap-on kneepads first, then tugged on the gloves. He jacked the power wires into the slits in the backpack that had been made to allow access to the micro-battery system sewn into the bottom.

“The power line’s right here.” Wheeler tapped a metal sheathed conduit next to the exhaust duct. “Say the word and it’s history.” A gel-sealed ring of white phosphorus explosive was wrapped around the fifteen-centimeter trunkline.

Skater shoved his head inside the duct. The filtering system above and below was sealed. The sweet smell of burned flesh pervaded the air locked up in the duct. If his plan didn’t work, they ran the chance of being trapped like rats in the crawlspace between the ninth and tenth floors.

He pulled back out of the hole and gave Wheeler a thumb’s-up. “Burn it.”

Wheeler touched an electronic detonator clipped to his shirt.

Skater tucked his face into the crook of his arm as the white phosphorus caught, throwing out a blinding amount of light and heat. The die was cast, and it waited to be seen if Lady Luck came up a seven or snake-eyes.

9

“Control has managed ID through a database search of the area around your present twenty,” Fishbein said over the tacticom. “Stand by for target ping.”

Aboard the Airstar, Luppas checked the helo’s navcomp and watched the funeral home’s twenty appear in the databanks as a glowing blue dot displayed on the monitor. Magnification increased automatically, till the streets and cross-streets were legible.

“One confirms, Control.” Luppas watched the Tacoma sprawl glide past under the helo’s belly. His eyes flicked to another panel and checked the time: 2:11:41 a.m. “We may also have competition for that corpse. How soon can you set up a satellite array over that building?”

“Minutes,” Fishbein responded.

“I’ll also need specs on that building. Floor plans. A who’s-who. Sec systems. Anything that could be pertinent to our infiltration.”

“It’s already been assembled. We’re downloading that information into your vehicle’s portable deck now.”

Luppas glanced at the deck slung under the Airstar’s console. Lights flickered across its sleek surface, letting him know the drives were copying the datastream along the satlink. One quick tug, and the deck would be with his team’s decker. Since the files logged into the deck as memory, the decker wouldn’t have to jack into the Matrix to receive them. Information would be available on the fly.

“And you might think about letting me in on what exactly it is we’re supposed to be looking for out here,” Luppas said. Recovering the body still gnawed at him. Every minute spent on the op at this point was leading to a possible shakedown by the Star if they crossed swords.

“Negative. One. This whole op is strictly need-to-know.”

Luppas quelled the angry frustration seething inside him. There was every possibility that Fishbein herself didn’t know what was at stake and was deliberately needling him. Their working relationship had never been easy. Pleasant was completely out of the datapic.

When he’d signed on for the corp checks, he’d known he wouldn’t always be kept in the loop. It made him long for the days when he was strictly free-lance, able to pick and choose the battles he faced. Drifting in the shadows, even the huge ones cast by the megacorps, still left a fighting man in enemy territory because he couldn’t see the fragging lines of demarcation.

Luppas moved back into the cargo hold, leaning heavily against the walls as the Airstar bucked and vibrated beneath the slamming force of the rotor.

Two members of the team shoved the troll prisoners against the bulkhead with the door. The dead littered the floor space in front of them. Both trolls glared up at Luppas angrily.

“Gonna be bad for you guys when the rest of the Spike Wheels find out who you are,” one of them threatened.

“It’s already bad for you,” Luppas replied with a cold smile.

The troll glowered but didn’t say anything.

“Open the door,” Luppas ordered.

The secman standing next to the Airstar’s door opened it with difficulty because of the airstream. Wind rushed in, slipping through all of their clothing with quick, deft fingers.

Luppas leveled a forefinger at the troll nearest the door. “Pull him in front of the opening.”

“Frag you!” the troll exploded. “You ain’t about to do any kind of drek like that! That’s just dandelion-talk!” He struggled and fought the two secmen who grabbed hold of him, stopping quick when one of them slid a long, serrated combat blade up under his heavy chin. After that, he went along slowly, but quietly.

“The Mariah Building is two minutes away,” the pilot called out over the tacticom.

“Acknowledged,” Luppas responded. “Maintain a position four hundred meters from the building until I instruct you otherwise.” Holding onto the support rails welded across the top of the Airstar’s cargo space, he walked in front of the troll. “Who hired you to strip that car down?”

“Go frag yourself!” the troll bellowed.

Shifting without warning, Luppas snap-kicked the troll in the face.

Blood streamed down the go-ganger’s contorted face as he fought to maintain his balance. The battle against gravity lasted only briefly. With his hands manacled behind his back, he had little foundation from which to recover. A harsh, ragged scream ripped from his throat as he went over backward and tumbled through the open helo door, quickly falling behind the Airstar.

Luppas stepped forward and rested against the doorframe as he watched the troll hit.

Still screaming, though the sound couldn’t be heard over the whop-whop-whop of the helo’s rotor blades, the troll dropped onto a delivery truck double-parked on East Thirty-eighth Street.

Luppas had no doubts that the go-ganger hadn’t survived the experience. He stepped back and gestured for the second troll to be brought over in front of the door.

The troll fought and yelled, and nearly took the two humans with him out the door as they dragged him by force into position. When he was placed, he threw himself sideways, trying to crawl back along the floor of the cargo hold, even attempting to use his chin to gain leverage.

Luppas slipped a Cougar Fine Blade from Octavius’s combat harness and knelt in front of the go-ganger. Seizing the troll’s mohawk in one hand, he shoved the go-ganger’s head back and bared his throat. He slid the knife under the troll’s Adam’s apple and pressed hard enough to trap it on the keen edge. The go-ganger couldn’t swallow without cutting his throat.

“Believe me, trog,” Luppas grated, “when I want you out that door, out you’ll go. Scan me?”

Unable to nod his head or answer in a loud voice, the troll whispered harshly, “Yeah.”

Luppas leaned back, removing the knife. He refused to give in to the pounding headache that threatened to make his vision double. “Good. One lie, one refusal to answer, and you die. Why were you at the crash-and-dash site?”

“We got hired to be there. A salvage job. We’ve done ’em before.”

Luppas nodded encouragement. “Who hired you?”

“A woman. But I don’t know her name. I swear.”

Taking time to add to the tension and uncertainty flooding through their prisoner, Luppas glanced up at Octavius, knowing his second would fall in with the role-playing. It was something they’d done before. “Well?”

Octavius shrugged. “I believe him.”

“You think he’d risk a tangle with a blue crew for someone he didn’t even know?”

“We had nuyen up front,” the go-ganger said before Octavius could answer. He sounded desperate to be believed. “She promised us more when we delivered.”

Luppas cast a spell so he could read the truth of the troll’s statements. He detected no falsehoods. “Delivered what?”

“The guy was supposed to be carrying a deck. All we had to do was get it. She’d get in touch with us again. She was going to place an ad in the classifieds once we let her know we had it.”

It made sense to Luppas. Transmission on the telecom was instantaneous. The buy-back could have been set up within an hour or less. “What part of the classifieds?”

“Antiques.”

The elf gestured at the dead trolls. “I don’t see a deck.”

“That’s because there wasn’t one.”

“If you’d gotten it, what kind of message were you supposed to leave in the classifieds?”

The troll tried to shrug, but the effort was wasted with the restraint put on him by the containment manacles. “Any message to Trojan from Soylent Green.”

“She gave you a spelling?”

The troll spelled the word after a brief hesitation and some serious brow-bending. “I got it written down. So did the others.”

“Sir,” the pilot cut in, “we’re in position over the target site.” Luppas looked past the troll through the open cargo door. In outline, the Mariah Building looked like the one he’d seen while astral. “Confirm target ping?”

“Target ping confirmed,” the pilot reported. “Reading five by five.”

“Hold your position and stay low.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Control,” Luppas said, “this is Speedball One. Did you scan the interview?”

“Affirmative, One.”

“Can you get a message onto the classifieds section of the telecom programming?”

“I’ll have to get approval.”

Luppas made his voice hard. “Then get your fragging approval and get electronic copy out there, Control, before that lead goes dead. Let me know when you have it.” Fishbein didn’t reply.

“Have you got sat-scans in place on the target area?” Luppas asked.

“Affirmative.” Fishbein remained short.

That was fine with Luppas. He only needed her intelligence support, not a personality. “Can you get into the building’s sec sys through emergency Matrix overrides?” On most public buildings where there was a risk to the civilian populace, fire department and Lone Star had satlink access to publicly ported sec systems so they could search the building room by room if necessary for survivors and to scan how bad a situation was while they were enroute. Corp buildings didn’t have a public jack that the emergency squads could use, but they had them for their own people.

“I tried as soon as we were able to ping the building. Those systems appear to be off-line.”

“Let me know if you get in.”

“Affirmative, One.”

Luppas turned his attention back to the go-ganger. “How’d you know where your target would be?”

“She told us.”

“She told you that he’d be involved in a crash-and-dash?”

“No. She just told us to look for his car. We knew what it looked like, and we knew where it would be. We figured we were gonna have to force him off the road. Nothing wiz for us. We were standing by, couldn’t believe it when we saw the crash-and-dash happen right in front of us. The guy kept the pedal to the metal, hauling faster going than he did coming.”

“He?”

The troll seemed unsure. “I think so.”

“You rolled up to the car?”

“After we made sure the slotting thing wasn’t gonna blow up, sure.”

“Then you couldn’t find the deck?”

The troll shook his head.

The elf looked up at the nearest secman. “Tranq him.”

The troll shrugged, trying to avoid the patch the secman shoved at his neck.

“Be still, you bozo,” the secman said. “If the man had wanted you dead, we’d have shoved your hoop out the door.”

Tensely, the Spiker accepted the patch, took a deep breath, then slumped to the floor of the cargo hold, eyes rolling up in his big head.

“Keep him safe,” Luppas instructed. “I’m going to need him later.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pilot,” Luppas called over the tacticom.

“Sir?”

“Take us onto the rooftop. When we unload, stay close for a possible fast evac.”

“Yes, sir.” Immediately, the Airstar banked and began the approach to the Mariah Building.

Luppas stepped back and let Octavius’s chosen point men take the doorway. He reached back for the Colt M-23 assault rifle his second held out to him, then made the weapon ready, his hands moving automatically. The fatigue from using his Art swirled around him, threatening to claim him, and his body was drenched with sweat. Magic took its toll, and he was running on empty.

The point men were out the door before the skids touched the rooftop. After a quick breath, Luppas was hot on their heels. No matter who the people were that were after what Norris Caber had on his body, there were only two ways of egress: the rooftop or street level. From the rooftop, Luppas knew his team would be able to cover both.

The elf wasn’t content to let them come to him, though. If Caber’s secret had to do with software that could be transmitted, there were plenty of decks inside the building that could offload the programming. The elf knew he was still jamming against the clock.

A heavy Ares Type II maglock secured the rooftop access door.

Luppas hand-signaled Octavius, who in turn signaled to another secman.

The secman who approached the maglock turned out to be very female when she removed her helmet. Bronze hair cascaded out in a ponytail. Without a word, she popped the maglock’s casing and attached a sequencer directly onto the maglock’s wiring with alligator clips. A dozen seconds passed, Luppas counting every tick, then the sequencer ran a green series indicating that the lock had been bypassed.

The metallic snick sounded faintly to Luppas’s sharp ears. When he tried the door, it opened easily.

The point man went through and down the metal stairs, his boots ringing on every third or fourth step. Luppas followed him into the bowels of the building, knowing the enemy was still somewhere inside, the prize yet to be claimed.

10

Skater waved the acrid smoke from his face, choking down. Then the ninth-floor exhaust duct in the Mariah Building shivered into a full-throated vibration against his back. Blinking back smoky tears that trailed down his face, Skater surveyed the power trunk line.

The phosphorus had amputated it, leaving a tangled mass of sparking wires in the jagged edged metal-ceramic composite pipe. The section of the trunk line leading in to Shastakovich’s Funeral Home remained inert, dead.

“Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink. “The bogey team has broken through the north rooftop door and is in the stairwell.”

Skater moved into the two-meter wide exhaust duct, his electromagnetic gloves and knee pads adhering to the metal sides even through the layers of soot. He went down from the tenth floor to the ninth floor, where the funeral home was. Wheeler came down behind him, following closely. The filtering systems above and below had drawn back into the recessed areas designed to hold them during semi-annual cleaning. The exhaust duct was clear all the way to the rooftop.

He pictured the Mariah Building in his head again. Access doors from the rooftop were located at the north and south ends of the building, leading down to the stairwells that corresponded at either end of the structure. The north end was furthest from their present position. Evidently the arriving bogey team didn’t have their exact location. It gave them a precious few seconds more. “Set off one of the audible alarms on the eleventh floor and make sure the security pads in that stairwell show it.”

“Done.”

Above him, resonating through the exhaust duct, Skater heard the strident whoop-whoop of a klaxon. “Duran, what about Knight Errant?”

“I dropped a couple of flash-bangs on them,” the ork answered. “They’re mobilizing just like you figured, spreading out to seal the ground floor.”

KER-THUNK!

The solid slam of metal against metal told Skater that Wheeler was already in the duct and hard at work. He disengaged the electromagnetism in his right glove by butting his chin against the forearm control. Once his hand was free, he slid the pneumatic hammer from the backpack, set a magazine filled with pitons into the chamber, and fitted the end against the duct wall with as much weight behind it as he could manage before squeezing the trigger. Even then the force of the piton sinking into the duct wall almost tore him from his position.

“Archangel, set off a screamer in the south side stairwell,” Skater instructed as he crawled further down. “Knight Errant will move into a confrontation with the unidentified crew.”

“Done.”

Skated hoped it would buy some more time. All they needed was minutes. And some luck. Luck was never a bad thing as long as it broke the right way.

At the bottom of the duct, light filtered in from the emergency systems.

“Knight Errant has just engaged the other team in the north-side stairwell,” Archangel reported.

Skater set the last piton into the duct wall and put the pneumatic hammer away. There was no sense in taking chances with Knight Errant’s mages using whatever residue he left on it to track him down. “What about progress in the north-side stairwell?”

“Halted at the eleventh floor.”

“The helicopter’s still waiting overhead,” Elvis said.

“Trey,” Skater said, “I hadn’t counted on an armed helicopter this soon.”

“Not to worry, chummer,” Trey said. “When the time comes, I’ll see if I can’t distract it.”

Skater’s neck hurt when he craned it back up to check on Wheeler.

The dwarf clung to the top of the exhaust duct. Behind him was a neat row of pitons. He used the pneumatic hammer to start the support bolts for the micro-block and tackle.

Cutting power to the remaining electromagnetic glove and the knee pads, Skater dropped into the crematorium vault. The same preventative circuitry that had opened the filters had also unsealed the vault doors and extinguished the gas-powered heating units.

Even with the infrared circuitry juicing his normal eyesight to the max, Skater had a hard time seeing in the vault. He got a brief impression of the ash-coated, composite glazed walls in the three-meter-wide cube, then he concentrated on the light lining the vault door as he moved forward.

The room beyond the vault doors of the crematorium unit held three sheet-covered bodies on rolling metal beds. To the right, a chromed ball embedded in the ceiling with articulated arms had been in the middle of prepping a corpse. Liquid noises slurped and gurgled from the equipment working on the corpse even over the passive warning tweets of the emergency illumination boxes set high on two of the walls. The illumination boxes had come on-line automatically when the power had been cut.

The ork woman on the prep table obviously wasn’t Coleman January or Norris Caber. Skater turned his attention to the three laden gurneys.

“Turn into ice right there, you son of a slitch!” a man’s voice warned.

* * *

“Who’s in the fragging stairwell?” Kyler Luppas demanded as he reloaded the Colt M-23 assault rifle while taking cover in the doorway on the eleventh floor of the Mariah Building. The plastiglass window at the end of the hall overlooked Ainsworth Street. He could see the red-and white-striped sawhorses blocking off the street and the gleam of the downtown advertising lights beyond.

“Knight Errant,” Octavius replied, leaning out and firing a quick burst that left someone screaming in pain.

“Control,” Luppas called over the tacticom, “this is Speed-ball One. I’ve got Knight Errant people here trying to crawl up my hoop. If you don’t find a way to back them off, we’re going to leave a lot of dead down here.”

“Understood, One.”

Luppas cursed in Sperethiel with real feeling. “Six, what about that screamer that got tripped?”

“Pure sim-scream. We went through those offices like krill-filler through a ghoul and turned up null.”

“Diversion,” Octavius said. “These people have the building wired to an extent.”

“If Knight Errant hasn’t passed them and we haven’t encountered them,” Luppas said, “that leaves the funeral home as the only place they could be.” He ripped a AFR-7 flash grenade from his second’s combat harness, yanked the pin, and flung it out into the stairwell.

Two ticks later, the flash-bang went off with the sound of thunder and an arc of lightning.

Luppas wheeled around the doorway and plunged into the fire escape. A group of Knight Errant secmen struggled to overcome the flash-bang’s effects, reeling on the stairs over two of their own dead.

The Colt M-23 rattled death in Luppas’s hands as he ran down the stairs. He aimed at their necks below the bulletproof face shields they wore, and their legs where the body armor stopped. His rounds chopped into the Knight Errant officers and sent them spinning.

Luppas hit the ninth-floor landing without breaking stride. Smashing through the doors, he encountered overflow from the funeral home. There were too many people to get past.

“Get down on the floor!” he yelled. He triggered a ragged line across the acoustic tiles of the ceiling for emphasis. “Now!”

The funeral mourners dropped instantly. Luppas shot through the head of an ork who tried to bring a pistol on line, killing the woman behind the target.

Octavius killed four more people, only two of them armed.

By the time the corpses hit the floor, Luppas was closing in on the double doors leading to the embalming room in the back. He felt certain the body was still there. If the shadowrunners had entered the area, there would have been signs of gunplay.

Maybe he had them too. The possibility made him smile in anticipation.

11

A broad man in mortician black stood in front of Skater, an Ingram Warrior 10 machine pistol cupped in both hands. He was young, surprisingly tan. “Don’t know what you are planning on doing here, fragger, but it stops now.”

Skater kept himself under control, thinking that Wheeler was there, thinking how much Emma needed him, thinking that he wished there was some other way to make the money they needed.

Gunshots sounded from far away, echoing into the embalming room. The mortician glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back around, Wheeler dropped down along a length of climbing cable in the vault and shot him with a DMSO gel bullet. The gamma-scopolamine-laced dimethyl sulfoxide was strong enough and fast enough to knock a man out between heartbeats. Unconscious, the man toppled to the floor.

The dwarf rigger strode into the room, sweat leaking down his face under his protective goggles and dripping into his dirt-encrusted beard. He kept the Squirt in his hand as he hopped up onto the embalming table. “Have you found Coleman January yet?”

Skater ripped the sheet off the first gurney and was relieved when he found the corpse there. He didn’t have to see what the others held. “Yeah.”

“We ain’t exactly got all night for this.” Wheeler took care not to step on the dead woman on the table as he attached a wire cable to the chrome ball mounted on the ceiling sporting articulated arms. The cable ran into the crematorium vault.

Yanking the corpse from the gurney, Skater pulled a Duraflex ascent harness from his backpack and quickly belted it around the dead man. He dragged the corpse into the vault.

The other end of the cable Wheeler was attaching to the embalming robot came down from the top of the exhaust duct, looped through the block and tackle bolted to the wall near the exit almost at rooftop level.

Skater ran the metal hook through the Duraflex harness on the dead man and fastened it back to the cable. A quick jerk to test it satisfied him it would hold. “Ready.”

Wheeler jumped off the embalming table and raced to an emergency power unit. He used a small crowbar to pry the cover off, snapping bolts. “Soon as I get some extra juice to this unit and bring it back on-line, we’re wiz.”

“Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink, “the bogey team has invaded Shastakovich’s!”

A shotgun detonated outside, the basso boom of the big bore instantly familiar. Twin chatters of assault rifles followed almost immediately.

The double doors were the only point of egress into the embalming room. The looped handles lined up neatly, but had no locks.

Skater took out his pry bar and shoved it through the looped handles. A heartbeat later, muffled voices—tight and controlled—drifted under the doors.

“Let’s slot it out of here,” Wheeler said. “Everything’s wiz.” He brandished a remote control as he ran to the crematorium vault.

Skater fell in behind the dwarf, the Predator in his hand.

Wheeler pointed the remote control at the embalming robot. Instantly, the chrome ball began to revolve, gaining speed and taking up slack in the cable.

Coleman January/Norris Caber’s lifeless body jerked beside Skater, then started rapidly rising to the top of the exhaust duct. Metal shrieked through metal.

Catching hold of the harness holding the dead man, Wheeler rode up with him. “Let’s go, Jack. You try climbing four stories on your own, you’ll be dead before you reach the rooftop.” He clipped on another line to the harness, guiding it down to Skater.

Just as Skater was reaching for the second cable, combined bursts of auto-fire raked the double doors to the embalming room. Wood splinters rained inside the room like confetti, and bullets bounced from the myriad metal surfaces. He missed the second cable and it rose up out of his reach while he took cover.

“Jack!” Wheeler called.

Skater watched the dwarf and the dead man rise steadily away from him as the gunfire continued, sending a handful of bullets ricocheting into the vault. One of them hit him in the left calf, initiating a shock of pain throughout his body.

* * *

Luppas dumped the empty clip from the assault rifle on the carpeted floor and gazed at the bullet-riddled double doors in front of him as he slipped a fresh clip into place. “No return fire,” he said.

“I heard voices in there,” Octavius said.

Luppas nodded. He had too. And the shrill of metal still grated. His headache still throbbed, but he was riding the adrenaline high as well now. It kept him going despite the drain of making magic. “They’ve blocked the door.”

Octavius bared a feral grin and held up a spherical grenade. “Not for long.” He pulled the pin with his teeth and tossed it at the doors.

Luppas took cover behind the pews at the same time Octavius did. From under the pews, he watched two Knight Errant officers rush into the room and take up offensive positions.

“Come out with your hands up,” one of them ordered, “and you won’t—”

The rest of his threat and promise vanished in the sudden roar of the exploding grenade. The concussion was enough to rip the doors from their hinges and blow the Knight Errant secmen off their feet.

Luppas glanced at the doors. Both had been reduced to kindling, blown nearly free of their hinges. He went left, knowing from all the years they’d been together that his second would go right automatically.

The grenade had fragged over nearly everything in the embalming room. The way the four corpses were ripped to bloody shreds, it was hard to know if the people they were after had died in the blast.

Movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention. His head swiveled in that direction as he threw a hand out to warn Octavius and started moving for cover himself. Both of them fired at the movement.

Then it was gone, leaving the vault empty.

“Somebody was in there,” his second said.

Luppas circled the room, looking at the dead faces. “Speedball Eight, this is One.”

“Eight copies, One.”

“I’m in the embalming room and I’m looking at a big vault.” Two dead faces down, and neither of them were Norris Caber or the man and dwarf he’d seen in the stairwell.

“The crematorium,” Eight replied. He carried the deck containing all the specs on the building.

“It has ductwork,” Luppas said, gazing up through the disrupted acoustic tile and seeing the metal sheath plunge up through the floor above. “Where does it lead?”

“To the rooftop, sir.”

“Damn,” Luppas snarled, closing on the vault at once. “Get someone back up to the rooftop. Air support, get those guns trained on the roof. If we can’t persuade those people to surrender, kill them!”

* * *

When the gunfire slowed for a moment, Skater threw himself at the pitons embedded in the wall. His boosted reflexes gave him the speed he needed as long as he kept his head. So far, the wound to his leg throbbed painfully but didn’t impede movement. Warm blood slopped into his boot.

Wheeler, unable to stop the rise of the cable, glanced down at him. “C’mon, Jack.”

Skater scrabbled for the next handhold as he pushed off with a foot. He made it to the next one, then found the cable tantalizingly close. Hurling himself outward, he caught the cable in one hand and felt just for a moment that he’d pulled his arm from its socket.

Then an explosion detonated, filling the exhaust duct with noise.

Temporarily deafened by the blast, buffeted by the concussion, Skater almost lost his grip. They were two stories up and he didn’t know if he’d have survived the fall. He kept his hand tight, but one of the electromagnetic gloves shook free of his backpack and went tumbling down. Before it had time to do more than come to a sudden stop, gunfire ripped into the crematorium vault and tore the glove apart.

Skater accessed the commlink. “Elvis. Move out.”

“You’re not clear,” the troll grumbled. From the way his voice echoed, Skater knew the street samurai was down in the sewers a few blocks down Ainsworth Street.

“If you’re not at the rendezvous when we need you,” Skater replied, “we’re dead.”

“I scan you, chummer. Null sweat. I’ll be there. Just make sure you and the halfer make it too.”

“They may be waiting on the rooftop,” Wheeler said on the heels of the troll.

“I know.” Skater couldn’t say anything more. It was 02:19:29 a.m. According to their estimations, they still had ten minutes before everything went to hell. Spirits, when he’d walked away from Emma tonight to make the run, part of him had admitted that it might be the last time he ever saw her. But he hadn’t expected it to feel like this.

Ten meters from the top, Wheeler triggered the plastic explosives he’d shoved in around the rooftop screen. A flaring explosion ripped through the duct, and in the next instant the screen was gone.

When the corpse hit the end of the block and tackle, the cable snapped taut and started slowly pulling the block and tackle from the wall. The Duraflex harness tightened up, pulling the dead man’s arms back so it looked like he was drawing a deep breath. Screeches sounded as the bolts sheared, then the block and tackle yanked from the duct wall and went tumbling down. The cable flopped and flipped like a dying naga.

Skater grabbed the nearest piton and held on, using only one hand while he grabbed the corpse’s clothing with the other. He hoped the material wouldn’t rip, then hoped the severed head wouldn’t fall the rest of the way off as he tripped the harness’s quick release and pulled the body free of the straps before the cable could yank it from his hands.

Wheeler climbed over the edge of the duct onto the rooftop, grimacing when he brushed up against the heated metal. He reached back in for the dead man, taking up some of the weight off Skater instantly.

Once he was on the rooftop himself, Skater said, “Get the rest of the gear and set up.” He put his feet against the duct and pulled as hard as he could, the muscles in his back and arms and shoulders protesting.

Bullets flamed past him as he dragged the corpse over the edge of the duct. He felt the vibrations thrill through the flesh as some of the rounds hit the dead man. “We’re made!” he yelled to Wheeler.

The dwarf removed a housing from an air-conditioning motor, giving it a quick tug to free it from the spot welds he’d done two days ago after Skater had designed the extraction. He took up the Connor grapple gun from inside, then fisted the folded frame of the collapsible Artemis Industries hang glider. Unlike the Artemis Nightglider, the collapsible version wasn’t capable of sustained flight, but it had the same low-noise, radar-absorbing mesh skin in anthracite black.

Skater stayed low and pulled the corpse over to the side of the building, joining Wheeler as the dwarf readied the grapple gun.

The threatening whop-whop-whop of helicopter rotors slammed a powerful gust of wind over the rooftop.

Fisting the Predator, Skater leveled his sights over the approaching helicopter. He squeezed off rounds as quickly as he could, knowing they wouldn’t penetrate the composite glazing over the craft’s nose, but they might buy a few seconds. He accessed the commlink. “Trey.”

“A moment more, chummer.” Trey sounded distant, wired-tight.

Bullets sparked as they hit the helicopter’s nose. Skater fired the Predator dry, then grabbed a smoke grenade from the backpack.

The helicopter pilot didn’t appear too discomfitted by the barrage of fire. He juked his craft around, elevating slightly and bringing the cannon to bear.

A hiss of compressed air jetted from the grapple gun that Wheeler hefted, followed a heartbeat later by the sound of the internal drum taking up slack.

“Let’s go,” Wheeler said.

Skater popped the top of a smoke grenade and tossed it only a few meters away. He knew the helicopter would probably have infrared or thermographic circuitry, but the hot particles from the smoker would blur even those readings. When it detonated with a loud pop, the smoke grenade belched out an indigo cloud that reduced visibility so much that Skater could barely make out the hand in front of his face.

The helicopter came closer, settling over the area and using the rotorwash to disperse the smoke. Men yelling orders to each other let Skater know the hunters were closing in for the kill.

Skater turned and helped Wheeler secure the dead man to the hang glider’s cargo drag line. Then he and the dwarf grabbed the airframe and stepped to the edge of the building. He glanced up, realizing for the first time that the hang glider was attached to the grapple cable but the wings weren’t out.

Glancing out at Ainsworth Street before them, Skater saw that the grappling hook had sunk into the street as planned nearly one hundred fifty meters away, only a few meters from the manhole cover that Duran and Elvis had surrounded with street repair sawhorses less than an hour ago. The cable felt taut, but the incline and the speed they’d generate from a leap on top of the fourteen-story building might be enough to geek them both when they hit the other end without the wings slowing them down.

“The glider’s not deployed!” Skater yelled.

“It’ll deploy!” Wheeler shouted back. “Trust me! We go too fragging slow, we’ll just be a slotting big clay pigeon! Now let’s go!”

Bullets cracked near their position, slamming into the unit they’d used as cover. One of them hit Skater’s bulletproof armor over his left kidney with bruising force. He staggered as he started forward with Wheeler.

Together, they stepped over the side of the building. And then dropped quick as a g-string in a low-class strip bar.

12

Luppas shoved his way to the rooftop of the Mariah Building and swung around, keying off the exchanges between his team. He spotted the cloud of smoke immediately. He ran toward it, breathing hard and taking cover where he could.

“Pilot, this is Speedball One,” Luppas said. “Where are they?” He gained another two meters, closing on the smoke cloud with the assault rifle leading the way.

A hesitation followed. “I haven’t found them yet.”

“Cease fire!” Luppas ordered. He glanced at his chron. 02:20:52 a.m. He was right on top of them; they couldn’t have gone far.

Instantly, the gunfire stopped, leaving only the street noises and the rapid hammer of the helicopter rotors.

“Speedball One, this is Control. I have your targets in sight at the south side of the building.”

Luppas was in motion at once, racing toward the building’s edge twenty meters from the dispersing smoke cloud in case Fishbein’s satlink hadn’t picked up everyone that had come out on the rooftop. Peering over, he spotted the grapple cable slanting down at a dangerous angle to Ainsworth Street just beyond the sawhorses.

Three figures dangled from the cable nearly forty meters below, curving the grapple line with their combined weight.

Then the box they hung from unfurled wings that shot out between breaths, locking into place with definite clicks. The black membrane stretched tautly over the hang glider’s frame and filled with air, slowing the headlong rush.

“Pilot,” Luppas yelled, “get on them! Bring them down!”

“Son of a slitch,” Octavius said, pulling his assault rifle to his shoulder and firing at the hang glider.

The helicopter dipped over the side of the building and streaked like a shark in pursuit between the buildings. The traffic in the street came to a halt, horns blaring.

“Control,” Luppas said, bringing his rifle up to aim at the cable draped over the edge of the building, “can you get a sat-lock on those people?”

“Done. As long as they remain on street level, I’ve got them.”

Luppas took up the trigger slack, concentrating on his shot in spite of the headache throbbing at his temples. His first round made the cable jump slightly, but didn’t cut through it. He put his sights over the cable again, letting out his breath and squeezing the trigger.

* * *

The hang glider’s wings deployed with a crackling ruffle of fabric and slowed the rate of descent immediately. Skater let out a tense breath and kept his fists around the glider’s push bar. With Wheeler and himself hanging onto it, there was no real way to control the lift, but it acted like a parachute, bringing them down to a speed that would enable them to survive when they hit the street.

And the street was coming up fragging fast. The corpse twirled beneath their feet at the end of the harness strap. Tracers cut through the air, burning orange and purple blurs within centimeters of them. A few hit and penetrated the hang glider’s wing membrane, leaving glowing embers around the holed material.

It was difficult to look out from under the hang glider back up to the rooftop, but Skater managed. He noticed the Airstar plunging after them just before the cannon mounted under its belly fired the first round.

The shot sizzled past them less than two meters behind. When it impacted against the street, it punched out a crater at least a meter across and as deep, leaving it engulfed in flames.

Three more rounds pounded into the street on auto-fire, getting closer to the hang glider. The fourth took out a parked car beside the building from which Skater had reconned earlier that night, tossing the vehicle high into the air and scattering a wreath of flaming debris that fell over both the shadowrunners.

Something hot and sharp slapped across Skater’s face, gone just as rapidly as it had come.

“That scroff's going to get the range in a minute!” Wheeler yelled over the whizzing of cable passing through the special eyelets of the hang glider and the hammer of cannonfire.

“Trey,” Skater called over the commlink.

“I’m there, omae,” Trey answered from his position in the shadows along South Twenty-first Street.

Even acquainted with magic as he was and expecting the spell, Skater only saw a vague shimmering in the air. Over the years, he’d heard rumors from sparse and different sources that Cullen Trey had been trained in mage arts by a dragon, but there’d never been proof of it. What Skater did know was that Trey stood head and shoulders above any number of mages.

An instant later, an explosion rocked the inside of the helicopter, followed a second later by a chain of explosions that ripped the aircraft to shreds. The whirling fireball slammed into the building to Skater’s left. A trail of flaming pieces spread down the side of the structure, crashing to the tree-lined sidewalk below. Pieces of debris shattered windows in offices and shops, setting off a couple dozen screamers that added to the dirge of destruction.

“Hellblast spell,” Cullen Trey said in a voice weakened by the effort he’d expanded. “Don’t leave home without it, omae.”

Without warning the grapple cable went slack, throwing the hang glider out of control.

“Oh frag, this is gonna hurt,” Wheeler said.

Skater shot a hand up behind him, hanging on with the other. The hang glider was tilted just enough to allow him to grab the metal spine of the frame. He slid his hand along it toward the back, then yanked as hard as he could.

The wing membrane suddenly locked full-on into the wind, slowing them with a jolt, but they were still moving fast.

Ahead of them, the cable dipped down to the street, less than thirty meters away.

“Jump!” Skater said. “We don’t want to get tangled up in the glider!”

The dwarf released his hold when they were nine or ten meters from the street. Skater did the same, flailing his arms to try to control his fall. He landed hard, smashing into two of the street repair sawhorses and losing his breath at once. The sawhorses went to pieces, but his body armor kept him from being seriously injured. His chest ached as he forced himself to his feet. The helicopter was gone, but the gunners on the rooftop were in full swing. Bullets danced along the street, searching for him.

A car had come to a stop almost even with them. A ragged line of bulletholes chased themselves over the hood and convinced the driver to put his vehicle in reverse and buzz turbo. Rubber shrilled and smoked.

Wheeler ran to the manhole cover and yanked it out of the way.

“Go!” Skater said. He hooked his fingers into the dead man’s blood-smeared clothing and dragged him toward the manhole. Two heavy-caliber bullets slammed across the shoulders of his Kevlar body armor, almost knocking him from his feet.

Wheeler dropped through the manhole.

Skater followed him, having some difficulty managing it while dragging the corpse, but aided by the surge of adrenaline pushing his body’s capacity to max performance. He held onto the lip of the manhole long enough to get his feet onto the rungs of the ladder built into the side of the sewer wall.

Once he had the corpse lined up, it came through in a rush. Unable to stop it, he had no choice but to let it splash into the malodorous water in the sewer channel.

“Ah drek,” Wheeler groaned. “We’re gonna have to ride with that thing for maybe hours, Jack.”

Skater scrambled down the ladder and ignored the complaint. “We’ve been through worse.”

“Maybe so, but it’s been awhile.” Wheeler slid in behind the maintenance drone he’d put into position hours ago. Archangel had sleazed the public utilities systems and masked the presence of the captured drone.

The drone was shaped like a small tank, a bubble top protecting the onboard dog-brain and software. Constructed of composite metal and ceramic, it was designed to go through the worst drek the sprawl had to throw out—literally. Tracked wheels drove it along, and the single arm thrust before it held a number of fittings that could be selected to cut and dig and record.

Elvis had sat the drone on its side earlier after the rigger had moved it into position. It took Skater and Wheeler both to shove it over. The heavy drone slammed into position, the tracked tires fitting neatly on the lips on either side of the slow-moving channel.

“Drek,” Wheeler said, “for a minute there I thought we were going to need that big trog to help us.” He climbed aboard and fed the cable from the drone into the jack in his temple. They’d captured the drone days ago, and Wheeler had installed the datajack so he could override the vehicle’s onboard dog-brain. The drone shivered to life, powered by battery cels.

During the time they’d needed to push the drone onto the channel edges, Coleman January/Norris Caber’s body chose to start floating away with the other sprawl refuse. Skater snagged it and pulled it onto the drone, trying not to smell the sour water that drained from the corpse’s clothing.

While Wheeler started the drone surging forward, Skater began making adjustments to the dead man, readying the Duraflex harness for one last move. It was hard to work on his breathing to calm himself and keep his body oxygenated enough with the stench around him, but he forced himself using the techniques his shaman grandfather had taught him.

Only one possible snag remained in the run.

13

“Elvis?” Skater called over the commlink as he and Wheeler clung to the drone as it rushed through the sewer.

“Go, chummer.”

Skater peered through the dark sewer, seeing the water flow snake around a bend. Beneath him the drone vibrated like a huge sea turtle having a palsy. “Are you in position?”

“Ready and waiting.”

Duran cut in. “A ground team has already been scrambled from the Mariah Building. Evidently they’re tracking the drone through the sewers.”

That didn’t surprise Skater. They’d counted on someone tapping into the public utility databanks. “You’re sure?”

“Judging from what I see on the trid, yeah. The biz at the Mariah Building has made KONG, KSAF, KSTS, and KKRU. All of those channels are showing live footage on-site. I think I also identified one of the main guys chasing us before the snoop with the portacam got knocked on his hoop for getting too close to the action.”

“Who?”

“A merc named Gunther Octavius.”

Skater shifted on the drone as it vibrated under him. The wet corpse beside him jitterbugged on its back.

“You’re almost two hundred meters from Elvis’s position,” Duran said. “At your present speed, that’s just under a minute away.”

“Gunther Octavius doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Not for you. I knew him in the Desert Wars. He ran as number two for an elf named Kylar Luppas. Handled really nasty special ops wetwork, never any grunt labor.”

“I don’t know that one either,” Skater said.

“Luppas is a name I know,” Cullen Trey cut in. “He floats through mage circles on occasion. Very exotic in the nature of things he shows an interest in.”

“Luppas might be interested in mage stuff,” Duran growled, “but he’s a fragging merc through and through.”

“It could be the vocation he chooses to work at to support his interest in magic,” Trey said. “Educating one’s self in the Arts is never without enormous cost, both financial and personal.”

“Forty-three seconds, kid,” Duran said. “And, Cullen, don’t try to gull anyone: with you, financial and personal are the same thing.”

“I’ll be at your car in less time than that,” Trey said, “to take umbrage with that petty piece of slander, Duran. So be looking for me.”

“Come ahead,” the ork replied. “What I was telling you about, kid, was the kind of trouble we’ve bought into. Last I heard on Luppas, he’s working free-lance for IntSec, pulling down a hefty annual consultation fee. Which means he catches for all the heavy wetwork. And IntSec being on the scene means one thing.”

“Fuchi Industrial Electronics,” Skater said.

“Or, at the least,” Duran corrected, “Richard Villiers. IntSec is his baby.”

Either meant death. The megacorp had three different divisions, with Villiers heading up one of them. All of them dealt harshly with shadowrunners.

Skater looked at the body beside him and briefly considered letting it ride out the trip on the drone. If Luppas had a tag on the drone, he’d find the body. Maybe the Fuchi hit-mage would leave it at that.

The problem was, he didn’t think that was true.

“Twenty seconds, kid,” Duran reported.

Skater glanced up at the tunnel, getting everything he could from the infrared circuitry. He pushed himself to his feet as soon as he saw the T-bar hanging down through an open manhole. It was lit up by infrared-sensitive strips. “Elvis, we’re here.”

“Ready, chummers. Just grab hold and let me do the donkey work.”

Then there was no time to try to figure out what he should do with the body. Skater grabbed for the T-bar with both hands. His right seized a firm hold while the left secured the clip to the Duraflex harness securing the dead man. Wheeler grabbed a hold on the other side.

The pain wasn’t as bad as Skater had thought it would be when he came to a stop. He peered up through the manhole and saw Elvis standing in the middle of Ainsworth Street ten blocks down from the Mariah Building at the intersection of South Sixth Street with the other end of the T-bar gripped in both massive hands, a support halter around his neck. The troll’s muscles stood out in chiseled relief, veins close to bursting with the effort. His shirt had given up the fight and shredded along his arms. Even the zippers holding the body armor burst. His natural strength would probably have been enough to handle their weight, but the cyber-augmentation in his body added even more.

The drone continued its run without them. In the next block, with the way the streets divided, it was already running down to North Sixth Street, following the North Eleventh Street fork off the three-way division of streets there.

“Slot,” Elvis groaned, “this is a temporary gig, okay? I don’t intend to hang around long enough for the fragging pigeons to find me. Move.”

A Mitsubishi Runabout came perilously close to the troll, blaring its horn.

Wheeler made the climb out of the manhole first, followed by Skater. Lifting the dead man clear was accomplished with ease.

When they had him out, Elvis draped the stinking corpse over his shoulder with a grimace of disgust. Skater shoved the heavy cover back over the manhole and ran toward the shadowed alley where the van waited.

Archangel opened the side door as Elvis neared. The troll dropped his prize into the middle of the floor, then clambered in after it. Wheeler slid behind the steering column while Skater hauled himself into the shotgun seat. He reloaded the Predator II and stared through the windshield, breathing hard. The cold knot of anxiety had curdled inside his stomach.

The Wheeler backed them toward the other end of the alley as a phalanx of dark sedans raced down the street they’d just abandoned.

Archangel raised an eyebrow, her icy demeanor intact despite the tension of the last hours. “Well, that was interesting.” Skater made himself draw a deep breath, then push it all out. The pain from his leg and cheek and assorted muscles ate into his conscious mind. He had to force it all away. Accessing the commlink, he said, “Duran.”

“Here, chummer.”

“We’re away. What about Trey?”

“Here,” the mage said.

Wheeler flipped the lights on as he brought the van around and headed them south on North Twenty-seventh Street. None of the traffic gave them any special attention.

“Take it easy working your way out of the sprawl,” Skater said, knowing it didn’t really have to be said but feeling the need to say it all the same. “We’ll meet back at the rendezvous in two hours.”

“See you there, kid. You done good.”

Skater closed the commlink down, grateful to get the steady buzz of communication out of his throbbing head.

Elvis rolled the corpse into a troll-sized camou-colored duffel bag and zipped it up. The seal was air-tight, but the damage had already been done to the van’s carpet. “Can you crack those windows up there and give a chummer a break? This kludge is ripe.” He held his nose.

Skater rolled the window down as the stench from the sewer cloyed the air. It was one of the reasons they’d boosted a plumber’s truck. Anyone smelling it wouldn’t think twice.

“Fuchi,” Archangel said, letting the thought of the mega-corp hang in the air with the stench.

“I know,” Skater replied, feeling the weight. “Johnsons lie to you. That’s a fact of a shadowrunner’s regular biz. But this particular Johnson has got some real explaining to do. And I mean to see it done.” The trouble was, once a guy started trying to sort out all the lies, usually only more were offered. To start, he needed one solid truth. So far, the only thing he knew for sure was that the man in Elvis’s duffel—whatever his name actually turned out to be—was stone-cold dead. And someone had planned it that way.

* * *

Four minutes later, Luppas took the flash from the nearest man standing around the manhole at the intersection of North Eleventh and North Orchard Streets, and clambered through the opening. He didn’t have to go far. Clinging to the ladder built into the walls, the smell fogging his mind, but not really more than a bush-league effort after all the death he’d seen, he played the flash over the drone.

Fishbein had reported its location and they’d reached it in seconds.

The drone sat bridging the sewer channel, inert. Nothing was on it, and there was no sign of the two men or the body they’d taken from the Mariah Building.

He opened a channel on the tacticom. “Control, this is Speedball One. I’ve found the drone. Are you sure those people didn’t abandon it and slog off through the drek?”

“The sensors would have shown it,” Fishbein said.

“Get in there,” Luppas ordered one of his men standing beside the maintenance drone.

The guy didn’t hesitate, but he didn’t like it.

“I’ve got a reading now,” Fishbein said.

Luppas waved the man out of the water. “One of my men. Just testing your system’s reliability.” He played the flash over the drone again.

“They never got off,” Fishbein insisted.

“They’re not here now.” Luppas crawled up through the manhole opening. The ground teams surrounded the site, squeezed in between the tall buildings downtown only a few blocks from Commencement Bay, keeping even Lone Star back. He didn’t know what Fishbein had worked out with the Star, but it was definitely effective.

“You lost them,” Fishbein accused.

Despite the anger rattling around in him, Luppas had to chuckle. “Fishbein, you’d never have even gotten this close to them without me. I found Shastakovich’s, and I’ve seen two of them. If I hadn’t been here tonight, you’d have just been chasing shadows.”

She blanked out of the tacticom without another word, letting the sudden surge of static speak for her.

Luppas walked to one of the sedans and waved Octavius over. “Wrap things up here,” he told his second. “I want mages and forensics people covering the building, the funeral home, and that fragging drone. Get back to me with anything you have.” Octavius nodded and scratched his jaw. “Got to admit one thing. Whoever pulled this run off, they got a way with the biz. Should make it more interesting running them to ground.”

“More interesting,” Luppas grated, “and maybe they’ll get to live a little longer. But when we get to the end of it, they’ll be just as dead. They just don’t know it yet.”

14

Skater turned soybacon in the frying pan on the stove in the doss in Auburn they planned to use just as the cool-off after the run. According to the chron built into the stove, it was 08:48:10 a.m. Barely six hours had passed since the run on Shastakovich’s. On the other side of the dusty Venetian blinds covering the window, the sun was coming up and tinting the sky rose and lavender to the east.

“I’m done in there, Jack,” Cullen Trey said, coming into the small kitchen.

“What did you find?” Skater asked. He pulled the first of the bacon out with a pair of plas tongs and spread it across the waiting paper towels, then dumped in soysausage.

The combat mage leaned over Skater’s shoulder to observe the contents of the pan. “Spirits, you aren’t actually going to put that in your stomach, are you? Do you know how much cholesterol is in that?”

‘I’m more interested in what you found in that corpse.” Skater cracked open a dozen eggs in another frying pan, added a little soymilk, salt and pepper. He used a different spatula to stir them.

Trey opened the oven door and peered inside. “Ahh, wheat muffins.”

“And biscuits,” Skater said. After realizing the team was going to be grounded for longer than he’d planned, he’d made a lightning raid on a Stuffer Shack for food supplies. Hunger was one of the unpleasantries they didn’t need to deal with while trying to figure out the dead body and the Fuchi angle it brought along with it. Going out to a nuke-and-serve or McHugh’s as a group wasn’t doable. Neither was sending one person to pick up orders for all of them. Lone Star had snitches who worked the public places, especially eateries like a McHugh’s or a Bee Burger.

“Waste of water and flour,” Trey announced. “There were some watchers closing in on the body, but I dispersed them. Nothing else was there.”

“Did you find out who sent the watchers?”

“To do that, I’d have left a clear astral trail back to us. If it had been possible.”

“What about the slag’s personal effects?” Skater lifted the frying pan with scrambled eggs and scraped them into a paper-lined bowl. Then he cracked another dozen eggs and started the process over again. It still felt strange cooking for all of them. He’d always had a solitary life, and usually he preferred it that way. But this morning cooking was a blessing, giving him something to do with his hands while his mind raced.

“The ones we have,” Trey said, “are nothing. Charms, mostly, with only a hint of the Art clinging to them. May I help?”

“There’s a cantaloupe and a honeydew melon in the fridge,” Skater said. “You can cut them into chunks into a bowl, then put them back until we’re ready for them.”

Trey gave him a small salute, looked in vain for a sharp knife, then produced one with a flourish from somewhere inside his Kevlar-lined cape. He washed it under the tap, using the liquid soap Skater had purchased with the foodstuffs. Soap and babies, Skater had learned, went together like a yabo and a mean streak.

Skater finished pulling the soybacon out before briefly checking the soysausage links. They weren’t done yet, so he rolled them in the pan, getting all sides. With everything so close to being finished, he pulled a carton of processed hash browns out of the freezer unit and popped them into the nuker. By the time he was done, so were the soysausages.

“Got any soykaf?” Duran asked, walking into the room with an empty cup in his big scarred hand.

“Over there.” Skater pointed at the pot brewing next to the portable trid. He put the soysausage on another plate, then drained the frying pan and put it into the sink. “Find what you were looking for on Kylar Luppas?”

“Guy I know from the old days has a loose line on Luppas,” the ork said. “Before Luppas got the gig with Fuchi and Villiers, he used to hustle some action from my contact.”

“What kind of action?” Skater turned off the oven and removed the biscuits and muffins, placing them in a straw basket lined with paper towels.

Trey added two glasses of artificially flavored jellies, then a jar of peach preserves that had been incredibly expensive at a gourmet shop. “You’re a good man, Jack,” he said, beaming.

“Protecting high rollers who had plenty of cash and a proportionate amount of people who wanted to see them geeked,” Duran answered.

“If it comes down to it,” Skater asked, “how much trouble is Luppas going to be?”

“Working for Fuchi,” Duran said, “Luppas will be in the thick of it as long as they have an interest. They shut down the flow of nuyen, he’s gone. Work is never personal with him. Direct confrontation with him would be a last resort.”

“Finesse,” Skater said.

“Which, as it is,” Trey said, “happens to be your forte in the shadowrunning biz.”

Skater turned his attention back to the stove, feeling the weight of the run settling back onto his shoulders. He was the planner for the groups, the schemer who made the impossible at least worth taking the chance on. But he’d made mistakes in the past, little ones; until he’d hosed up and gotten Shiva geeked. Her face still haunted his dreams along with Larisa Hartsinger’s. Both of them had died in the ReGEN frag-up.

“I’m starved,” Archangel said, walking into the room, fresh from the shower. She ran her fingers through her hair, then took her time peering at everything that had been prepared.

“Your guy didn’t happen to mention in what capacity Luppas was working for Fuchi, did he?” Skater asked.

“General drift I got was that Luppas headed up some kind of specialty black bag squad for Villiers.”

“Worked himself right to the top, didn’t he?” Trey asked, smearing peach preserves on a muffin. “Shadowrunning on a corporate level. No real worries about Lone Star or Knight Errant, or any of the other government or federal blue crews. Not like us indi contractors? Some chummers have all the luck.”

“Yeah,” Duran said, “but you let an op go blooie in your face at corporate level, and you’re not talking about pulling a few years in some slammer where you’ve got to protect your hoop from some inconsiderate hosers in the showers. You frag up, they take you out if the corporate competition hasn’t.” Skater turned that over in his mind as he took up a piece of soybacon and pinched off bites. He chewed with patience, getting as much of the taste as he could. The flavor reminded him of the times when his grandfather had taken him camping on Council lands, when they’d caught rabbits and lizards and slow-roasted them over a spit so the juices didn’t all burn off.

“If he’s working a covert run for Fuchi,” Skater said, “the connection between Norris Caber and Fuchi might not exist. Caber could have been with any of the corporations.”

“Caber’s listed as a free-lance efficiency expert under the Coleman January name,” Archangel said. “According to it, he never worked for Fuchi.” She reached across the table and opened the blinds a little, allowing more natural light into the room.

“Any history to back the ID up?” Skater asked.

“Seven years of filed tax reports,” Archangel said. “But the trail disappears after that. Rented apartments, car payments, small purchases. It’s a decent enough cover. If someone didn’t know there had to be more, they’d probably have stopped their search way before I did.”

“This slag looks like he’s in his early thirties,” Skater said. “He should have had more history than that.”

“He doesn’t,” Archangel replied.

“Maybe he lives with his mother,” Wheeler said, walking into the kitchen and helping himself to the soykaf.

“Just a little joke, Wheeler?” Trey taunted.

The dwarf ignored the comment and took a tour of the breakfast laid out.

“Where’s Elvis?” Skater asked, knowing the troll should have smelled the food and heard the others talking.

“With Emma,” Archangel said.

“She woke up?” Skater asked. “I didn’t hear her.” Usually he was aware of every move she made when they were together in the small house he’d purchased for them on an island of Vancouver, British Colombia. The link had almost become psychic.

“She didn’t wake up,” Archangel said. “Elvis woke her up, saying he wanted to keep her from sleeping too much so she’d be ready to go back to sleep when you got a chance to crash. Personally, I think it’s because he can’t stand to see her sleeping when he’s around. He’d rather play with her.”

The troll had been one of the oldest in a family of several children. He’d played big brother and uncle to brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and dozens of kids who had just belonged to friends.

Skater walked to the door of the kitchen and stuck his head out long enough to call for the troll.

“Coming,” Elvis rumbled in his bass voice, “soon as I finish with this diaper.” A small cloud of white talcum powder poofed out from the side of the bed through the bedroom door.

For a moment, the new guilt that Skater wasn’t used to assailed him, rending at him with the sharp talons of a firebird. Grudgingly, he pushed it away, blaming the fresh round of fears on Deja and her demands.

The truth, however, remained that he was raising his daughter around the dangers of his own life as a shadowrunner. Elvis, no matter how he was with her, had killed people with his bare hands and cybernetic augmentations.

All of them had killed. The thought lay in his stomach like the greasy remains of undercooked krill-filler.

The telecom in his pocket buzzed for attention. When he punched up the connection, it was Deja’s harsh voice in his ear. “I found you, Skater, just like I told you I would. Don’t you dare cut me off without listening to what I have to say!”

15

“Talk,” Skater said. He walked as far away from the kitchen and the back bedroom of the doss as he could, wanting the space from the rest of the team. Deja was his problem, and he’d find a way clear of it.

“You got my messages, Jack?” the woman taunted. “Yeah.” Skater gazed through the mini-blinds set horizontally across the window overlooking the Boeing manufacturing plants to the east along Auburn Enumclaw Road and SE 408th Street. The factories ran three shifts a day, churning out aviation parts and supplies, filling the air with gray-black drek that was a visible announcement of someone in the mayor’s environmental protection offices taking graft.

There’d been three messages from the woman in the last ten days. The first came a few days before Dunkelzahn was assassinated in Washington. A second had come the day after the assassination. And the third had come only yesterday, the thirteenth of August. Skater had never talked to her, only listened to the messages. He’d tried to trace her number and location through the telecom, but hadn’t been successful.

“If you got my messages, Jack,” the woman said, “then you already know what I want.”

Skater felt his stomach turning over. He widened the gap in the mini-blinds with his fingers a few centimeters more, trying to find something to focus on that would allow him to remain calm and collected. The early morning traffic taking all the tool pushers to the various factories was in full swing, and the streets filled like rivers of shaped steel and ceramic on the verge of overflowing their banks.

“You want to know where I got this telecom number, Jack? A friend of yours with loose lips.”

Skater knew that wasn’t true. The people in this doss were the only people he trusted with it; except for Kestrel, who was his oldest chummer. The telecom number the woman had reached was an old one by his standards. Almost seven months had gone by since he’d set it up for a piece of biz that had fizzled out.

The number was routed through two piggy-backed exchanges that officially didn’t exist. One of the exchanges was in the downtown office of a semi-retired mage who specialized in healing spells. The other exchange was through a troll pizza stuffer who ran a sports book on the side where an extra telecom link wouldn’t be noticed. Once every eight hours, Skater had a program that beeped all the drop numbers he had and dumped the messages into a blackboard system that held them for another eight hours before pushing them on to an apartment in Tacoma that he’d rented under an alias through a guy he’d paid but had never met. After the key had been exchanged through another drop, Skater had Kestrel set up the system. The street fixer was one of the best in the biz.

Elvis came out of the back bedroom holding Emma over his head and sticking his tongue out at her. Trapped as the troll’s tongue was between his tusks, Slater didn’t think most people would have seen the humor in the expression.

Emma, however, cooed in appreciation and dribbled milky baby spit. Augmented as his street samurai reflexes were, Elvis managed to hold her in one massive hand while he gently caught the spit on her I Love Trolls bib and patted her lips before it hit him in the face. She was dressed in a frilly tourmaline jumper with white booties that Archangel had purchased for her. Emma’s elven ears came to delicate points, her fine dark hair parting on either side of them.

“What do you want?” Skater asked the woman called Deja. “Exactly what I’ve been saying all along: I want Emma.”

“What for?” he asked.

“I get to know Emma is going to have an okay life. That’s more than Larisa got. You killed my sister.”

The accusation hit Skater like a physical blow. Larisa Hartsinger had been Emma’s mother and Skater’s lover. Throughout the time of their relationship, Larisa had never mentioned a sister named Deja. She hadn’t mentioned any of her other family either, and Skater hadn’t asked. At the end, after Larisa had been killed during the ReGEN run a few months ago, she’d kept Emma’s birth a secret as well.

“Emma doesn’t need to be with you, Jack,” Deja stated. “You’re dangerous. You’re only going to get her hurt.” Feeling the conversation on the verge of circling, Skater punched off the telecom, then immediately coded in a block on calls through the number Deja had accessed.

He punched in another code and was tracked onto a recording without an identifying announcement. “Jack,” he said simply. Kestrel would know his voice. When he heard the beep, he started talking. “I’ve got some software problems I need you to handle for me. Nothing heavy and nothing’s flaming. I’ll give you a call back at ten in the a.m.” He punched off and pocketed the telecom.

He felt the pressure coming in from the run and his personal life. Either would have been hard enough. Together, at the moment, he could think of no certain way out. His team was at risk, and so was his hold on his daughter. Divided allegiances more than divided a man’s strength and sense of purpose by half. If he gave up on either one of them, though, he didn’t think what was left of him would be worth having.

16

Skater returned to the kitchen. Despite the problems he faced, he felt better for getting some food and a bit of rest. It was hard to believe that only five hours had passed since they’d come off the streets. The others kept their conversation animated, like none of them were curious about what was going on. Cullen Trey had them involved in one of the wiz stories he often liked to tell. They were usually events that had actually happened to him, but tweaked a little for maximum dramatic payoff.

Emma pumped her hands out from her position curled inside Elvis’s big forearm, reaching for the pacifier the troll teased her with by holding it in his mouth. She reached it and twisted her fingers around it. Elvis opened his mouth and let her take it. She laughed at him, then poked the pacifier into her mouth.

No one asked what was on Skater’s mind. The adrenaline pounded inside him, nearly as bad as it had been when he and Wheeler had gone running across the Mariah Building’s rooftop with Luppas’s black ops group in tow.

Quint Duran regarded Skater with a black gaze. There were no questions in the ork’s eyes, but Skater felt like he was being measured. The feeling was almost enough to make him angry at Duran.

Then Skater did get angry—at himself. Because the ork had every right to know how Skater was handling himself and what kind of weight was being pulled along into the run.

“Look,” Wheeler said, pointing to the trid. “We made the news flash for this hour.”

Skater took a biscuit from those left and smeared it with grape synthjelly while watching the vid loop play on the trid.

“No one knows what the thrillers behind the raid were after,” Trey quoted after the snoop had closed his beat.

“As if there’s not a history of thrillers boosting the place for cadavers to ransom,” Elvis said. “That’s why the fragging security was so tight.”

“What’s more interesting,” Skater pointed out, “is the fact that there was no mention of a missing body.”

“Fuchi covered it up,” Duran stated.

“Maybe,” Skater said. “Until we scan the true situation, we’ll stay low profile.”

“What do we do about the Johnson?” Duran got up long enough to refill his cup with soykaf. “The guy’s going to be waiting on us.”

“We make contact and negotiate the rendezvous spot,” Skater said.

“What about the corpse?”

The body was in one of the other bedrooms in the doss. Wheeler had gotten a used inflatable synthrubber raft from a military surplus store that catered to an all-night, no-questions-asked trade. The raft had been big enough to outfit one man, maybe two for a time in a pinch, and had come with a rain-proof tarp that snapped down tight enough to keep the inside dry. After the body had been stored inside and wrapped in plas storage wrap, they’d dumped in sacks of ice to preserve it as best as they could.

“It stays here. We’re not going to risk losing it.” Skater shifted his attention to Archangel. “You said you needed gear to trace out all the cyberware Norris is outfitted with.”

Archangel nodded. “A Yamatetsu Cyberware Subsystem Diagnostics Interface. I can get one. I just need it moved.” Wheeler nodded. “Okay. Elvis, you up for an early morning drive?”

“Sure,” the troll rumbled. In his arms, Emma pushed her bottle from her mouth and made happy cooing noises.

“Set it up,” Wheeler told Archangel, “and we’ll make the pickup.”

Skater felt guilty as he watched Elvis holding his daughter, knowing there was a body in one of the next rooms that could, beyond a doubt, get them all geeked. He couldn’t help thinking Deja was probably right in saying he had no business with Emma. The way he lived, running the shadows, was no way to bring up a child. But he had to worry about other matters at the moment. “What good is this diagnostics equipment going to do?”

“When you’re dealing with cyberware,” Archangel said, “you’re working with four separate systems.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Bodyware. Headware. Matrixware. Sense-ware. All of these subsystems are routed through their own interface modules. By accessing the subsystem interface modules through the cyberware diagnostics interface, I may learn more about what Caber was involved with. And who. There’s also the probability that since Fuchi’s private yabos were muscling the snatch-and-run on Caber’s body, whatever they were searching for wasn’t found at the accident scene.”

“Which leaves the corpse,” Duran said.

“Caber was equipped with a C2 deck. Before I start slotting around with the memory modules and enhancements, I want a better scan of what’s actually in the matrixware subsystems. If the body has something hidden in it as software, I don’t want to frag it up before we get a chance to extricate it.”

“A C2 deck is top-of-the-line tech,” Skater said. “He could have been a runner.”

Trey leaned forward. “I’m afraid I don’t know what a C2 deck is. My education into the technological side of life is admittedly somewhat limited.”

“It’s a cranial cyberdeck,” Archangel replied. “Placed entirely inside a joker’s head.”

Trey leaned back in his chair, going white around his lips. He loosened his cape collar with a hooked finger. “Not for me, I’m afraid.” As a mage, he knew what that kind of invasive treatment would do to his ability to wield magic.

“If you were a decker, you’d see the wiz of it,” Archangel said. “Hands-free operation. When you get up to run, you don’t have to lug a deck around with you or worry about getting it boned slamming into something. I’ve heard that some corps even tie the C2 decks into a decker’s vital signs as a sec precaution. If a decker’s heart stops, the last thing the C2 does is juice up a trigger that activates a trace and report program as well as a trace and burn program. The trace and report does exactly that, homing into a corp’s security systems and giving a location to a rescue squad so they can pick up the dataslave. While that’s going on, the trace and burn melts down the C2 deck’s MPCP.” She glanced over at Trey. “The master persona control program. It’s the nerve system for the C2 deck.”

“So when you open Caber’s C2 deck and the memory/storage—” Skater said.

“—there may be nothing inside,” Archangel finished. “But I won’t know until I can run diagnostics on his cyberware. If the memory is intact, I’ll still have to sleaze my way into the data.”

17

Skater looked around at his team, all of them seated at the table now. “At this point we’ve got a little time. Luppas and Fuchi may be looking for us, but if they’d made us, we’d know it by now. All of them have street contacts who’d have passed the word on through drop sites.”

A round of nods agreed with him.

“We’ve got a few angles to pursue on this busted play. The first angle is Caber’s ID—if that’s his real name. Archangel’s already run him through the Matrix. No one knows him there. The only records that do exist are on Coleman January, who is a fabrication. But it’s possible Caber has been living under the ID for a few years. His DocWagon premiums were paid up.

Someone corporate knew he was living under the Coleman January name or they’d have been canceled.”

“You say corporate,” Archangel said, “because of the cyberware.”

“I’m talking about the security DocWagon had on his files regarding employment. And also the fact that having a DocWagon platinum account means you’ve got to have a pretty high standard of living. DocWagon must have alerted someone connected with Fuchi about the crash-and-dash, otherwise Luppas wouldn’t have known about it.” Skater felt he was in the zone now, all worries about Deja temporarily shelved. “The January ID may list him as a free-lance efficiency expert, but what kind of annual salary are we talking about here?”

“Not enough, chummer,” Cullen Trey commented, idly twisting his glass in his hands. “Hiding out means seeing people off the books. Everyone from medicos to income tax surgeons. We’re all aware of that. And those people working the shadows have a habit of charging much more and expecting to slot the old credstick up front—no payment plans.”

Skater nodded. “Caber had to have been getting nuyen from a source not named on his income tax statements. There may be leads there and also in the work he was supposed to have done free-lance. Self-employment—those contracts have to be accounted for.”

“White collar drek,” Duran groused.

“There’s enough red tape in their cross-filed and redundant datastreams to bring down nearly anyone you’d want to,” Archangel said. “Provided you have the patience and talent to take their subsystems apart.”

“It’s one of the tools we have to work with to finesse this scam,” Skater said.

“Rather chase a target through the shadows,” the ork stated. “When things start heating up, I want the action.”

“You’re going to get it,” Skater promised. “Next on our agenda is Kylar Luppas. The joker’s got his sights on crashing our hoops. We’re going to do some crashing of our own.” Duran showed a big-toothed grin under lowered eyebrows shadowing gimlet-black eyes.

“How soon is your chummer going to have a jacket on Luppas?” Skater asked. Duran had assured him that some ork he knew named Vankler could come up with the goods. “Couple more hours,” Duran said.

Skater checked his chron. “That puts us up to twelve o’clock or so. I want to put the heat back on Luppas.”

“You put somebody on his backtrail,” Duran said seriously, “you’re setting them up to get geeked.”

“Not if the people on his backtrail are Lone Star and media snoops,” Skater replied. “Archangel, do you still have the vid you downloaded on the arrival of Luppas and his black ops team?”

“Yes.”

“So you give copies of it to the Star and a news trid station,” Wheeler said, clarifying it for himself. “Instant pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Only Luppas gets to be the jackass.”

“I doubt he’ll stay pinned,” Skater said. “But maybe it’ll make other pieces of this network pop loose.”

“Fuchi’s IntSec program has always been Miles Lanier’s baby,” Elvis said. “You got to ask yourself why his fingerprints aren’t all over this thing.”

“There’s street buzz that I’ve heard,” Trey said, “that suggests Lanier’s temporary absence from Villiers’s Fuchi offices is due in part to Dunkelzahn’s assassination.”

“Somebody’s suggesting Lanier and Villiers were involved with geeking the dragon?” Duran asked. “That’s one I haven’t heard.” He rubbed his face. “With all the drek I’ve listened to in the last few days since the assassination, maybe that’s the only one that’s slipped by me.”

“I’ll have to tell the regulars down at Reno’s about that,” Elvis said. “Reno Pyatt’s got an assassination pool going on who really slotted Dunkelzahn’s stick. That one’s not up there.”

“With all the parties interested in flatlining our briefest president,” Trey said, “the pool should have some fine change in the offing for the winner. Unless the leading favorite happens to come through on the pay line.”

Skater steered the conversation back to the run. “If we can link the funeral home ops to Luppas, then establish a link between Luppas and Fuchi, we’ll hold a torch to Fuchi’s hoop.”

“They might start covering their tracks more,” Archangel said. “Real ones or ones they’re imagining.”

“Right. And if they do, maybe we can find something that floats to the top that we can use.”

“When do we contact the Johnson?” Duran asked.

“After we get the information on Luppas. Maybe it’ll give us a way to put pressure on the Johnson.”

“The Johnson may have already slotted and run,” Wheeler said. “Could have re-tagged himself with a new ID and SIN right after he found out about the raid.”

“Yeah,” Skater agreed. “And this run could have already been traced back to him, and Lone Star or Luppas are waiting for us to step into the wiz trap they’ve got waiting for us.”

The thought sobered them all.

“We’ve got our game plan,” Skater said. “Let’s stick with it and see where it goes. Things go bad, we’ll know it and make different plans.”

* * *

Emma asleep on his chest, dozing fitfully with her fist tucked up under her chin, Skater shifted on the couch. Voices drifted in from the surrounding dosses, on both sides as well as above and below, some in casual tones while others held belligerent barks and a practiced cadence.

He felt stiff from all the physical activity during the night and early morning. The lumpy couch made it worse. During his past few months with his daughter, spent recuperating from the loss of his eye and learning to care for her while the shadows cooled off a bit, he’d learned that when Emma slept anywhere on the bed with him that he subconsciously kept track of her. He didn’t move, didn’t shift, didn’t roll from one side of the bed to the other as he usually did.

Old cartilage from past injuries popped and snapped as he rolled Emma into his arms and stood. She stirred only briefly, making tiny whimpers for a moment, then let out a long breath and dropped back into slumber. Carefully, he tucked her into the portable bed that looked like an oversized picnic basket.

He knelt beside her long enough to tuck her in, pulling her blanket up. She smelled baby-powder fresh, her complexion like milk. He felt bad knowing that she’d wake up and he wouldn’t be there.

“Jack.”

Skater turned, finding Archangel standing in the doorway to the bedroom where they’d stored Caber’s body.

She wore a pair of medico gloves that reached up to her elbows. Blood stained them in places, the liquid dark and crusty. “She’s going to be just fine. I’ll be here for her when she wakes.”

“I appreciate it.” Skater rubbed at the back of his neck and tried to work the knot of tension out.

“Want to talk about it?”

“What?” He knew how inane it sounded the moment the word left his lips.

Archangel peeled off the bloody gloves and tossed them into a trash hamper that would be taken to the doss building’s incinerator later. All evidence of their presence was being quietly eradicated on a regular basis.

“The weather,” Archangel said quietly. She leaned against the door frame, fatigue breaking her normally straight posture into a warped version of itself.

Returning his attention to Emma, Skater adjusted the spare shirt he left with her when she was sleeping by herself. The bit about the shirt had been a tip from Elvis. Usually it was a fairly clean shirt he’d worn the day before, one that still carried the smell of him on it. The troll had explained that young children relied more on a sense of smell to identify their parents than sight or hearing. Those senses developed later. The shirt comforted Emma while she slept, giving her the illusion that Skater was with her.

“Give me some time.” Skater stood and returned Archangel’s forthright gaze. “I need to skull it around awhile, try to figure out how I feel about it. I appreciate the offer.”

“It bothers you that she’s here,” Archangel said.

“I left her with the friends Elvis arranged last night. Maybe I should have asked if she could have stayed a little longer.”

“I wasn’t talking about Emma’s safety.” Archangel regarded him coolly with her gold-flecked bronze eyes. “I’m referring to your peace of mind and your ability to concentrate on salvaging this run.”

“Is there something you want to say about how I’m handling things?”

“No.” Her spine straightened and spots of color marked her pale cheeks. “I think you’re doing everything you can. There’s no one else I’d rather have ramrodding this run.”

“Sorry.” Skater glanced out the window. The sun shone down harder, brighter, creating specks of bright light that bounced off windows of the buildings across the street. “I’m concerned about having Emma here, in the middle of this frag-up. I’ve been waking up off and on, trying to figure out what to do about her.”

“For the run?” Archangel asked. “Or longer?”

“It gets confused. I run the shadows as a professional. There’s nothing else I’m trained to do, and I can’t go back and invent a SIN and a personal history under another name that’s going to let me take up living like a straight. And I’m her dad.”

“So you’re feeling the pull in both directions.”

“Yeah. I don’t like being connected.” As soon as he said it, Skater didn’t like the way his words sounded.

“Connected? Or tied down by having to take care of Emma?”

“Sometimes I feel tied down,” Skater admitted. “I get ready to go somewhere, it’s a pain in the hoop remembering everything. Bottles. Diaper bag. Spare clothes. Formula.” Archangel laughed, then quickly covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry. That won’t happen again. It’s just amusing to think of you forgetting something like that when you put together the runs that you do.”

Skater felt himself get angry, then the emotions dissolved when he looked at the decker. “Did you ever have kids?” Considering the unusual life-span of elves, he didn’t really know how old Archangel was. It was possible that she’d had whole families that had grown up and moved on.

She hesitated for a moment, the old defensiveness that always clung to her shining in her eyes. In their time together, she’d never revealed anything of ter personal life. “No,” she said at last.

“Ever thought about it?”

“No.” Her answer came quick and hard, final as a door closing on a slam.

Skater took the cue and dropped that subject. He looked down at his daughter. “These past few months, I’ve never felt so alive as when I’m with her. The runs used to have that effect on me. Still do in some ways, I guess.”

“The adrenaline rush.”

He nodded. “That’s part of it. Another part is finding out if I’m as clever as I think I am, as fast as I think I am.” He paused. “But Emma’s different. With her, most of the time I’m relaxed. She’s still a baby now, and is only starting to interact. I’m content most nights with her sleeping beside me, just knowing she’s there.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

“Sometimes I do.”

Archangel’s brows drew together. “Why?”

Skater drew a deep breath to distance some of the emotions warring inside himself, then let it out. “Feeling that way makes me think I’m being selfish. Let’s face it. What do I know about being a parent?”

“Emma is clean and well-fed and happy.”

“And she’s in the middle of a potential drekking firezone if this thing busts outs wrong.”

“What are you afraid of?” Archangel asked softly.

“I’m afraid of making a mistake with her, getting her hurt or not letting her live a normal life. This”—he gestured around the apartment—“isn’t a normal life.”

“You think maybe the kids of those parents in the dosses around us are living a more normal life?”

The arguing voices around them continued, interspersed with the plaintive whining and crying of small children. Something smashed against the wall of the doss behind the kitchen and broke, striking hard enough to rattle the cabinet doors.

“Do you think Emma would be better off living with someone like that?” Archangel asked.

“Not everyone’s like that,” Skater said.

“Is her life with you like that?”

“Not when we’re alone.”

“Maybe that’s what you should be thinking about.”

Skater shook his head. “It’s not that fragging easy.”

“Then you’ve got to make it so that it is. Before you make any kind of decision at all.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Skater headed for the bedroom where Duran had sacked out on the floor.

The ork lay on his back, one hand behind his neck to pillow his head, and the other wrapped around the Ceska Black Scorpion machine pistol that he kept as back-up for the Franchi combat shotgun.

“Time to roll,” Skater said.

Trey had claimed the twin bed for himself and slept with a sleeping mask covering his eyes.

Duran came awake instantly. “Be right there, kid.”

“That’s fine. I got dibs on the shower.” Skater walked back to the living room and headed for the bathroom after retrieving a change of clothing from the bag that held his and Emma’s things.

Archangel had returned to the bedroom where the corpse was. Even though the door was open, Skater felt the wall between them.

18

“The office of Richard Villiers,” Kylar Luppas announced to the sec audbox sealed in stainless polysteel on the elevator cage’s wall. He checked the chron beside it. It was 11:59:19 a.m.

The maglev doors closed with muffled force, no sound, but enough vibration to let occupants know they weren’t going to open up again easily if the sec codes were violated. The cage started up smoothly, propelled by magnetic pulse. Its synthmahogany walls gleamed with fresh polish and smelled like the real wood. The Bellevue offices of Fuchi didn’t stint on decor.

“Access to further floors is prohibited without proper authorization,” a female voice said as the cage stopped only seconds later. “Please stand by to ID yourself.”

A flexible hose almost as thick in diameter as the elfs little finger dropped through a specially constructed vent in the cage ceiling. A wire mesh bulb covered the hose’s opening so it couldn’t be easily blocked.

“Please stand back until you are otherwise directed,” the feminine voice instructed. “The hose you see above you is attached to a tank of gamma-scopolamine. Should you fail the ID, you will be rendered unconscious and turned over to Lone Star. Trespassing charges will be levied against you.” The gamma-scopolamine remained the most gentle of the cage’s defensives. The wall also held BacteriTech Bacterial Containment Grids located with aerosol canisters of FAB-1 and FAB-UV held at sub-zero temperatures. Once an unauthorized astral insertion into the building was detected by a corporate security mage, an alarm went out and the containers of fat bacteria released their contents throughout the sensitive areas of the skyscraper. Mages and other beings able to move along the astral planes were blocked from going astral by the organic matter in the FAB.

A mage who’d left his body to take a quick astral tour of the building and happened to be caught outside of his own flesh and blood when the BCGs were triggered couldn’t reenter his body and ran the risk of dying if kept outside for too long. At the very least, he or she was completely defenseless against the sec guards who arrived.

For those conniving enough to bring their own oxygen supply, aware of the gamma-scopolamine, the maglev cage was wired for heavy electric shock strong enough to neutralize a rampaging behemoth. From that point on, things turned decidedly deadly. Some of the sec work belonged to Luppas.

“Voice ID first. State your name and position within Fuchi Industrial Electronics Corporation.”

“Kylar Luppas.” His position was never mentioned.

“Confirm. Please step forward to the ocular that will extend from the wall ahead of you.”

A small section of the synthmahogany irised and the ocular hummed out into position. Luppas moved forward and fitted his right eye into the ocular.

“Retinal scan confirm. Vital signs confirm. Awaiting astral scan.”

During the pause that followed, Luppas recognized the cool kiss of an astral projection touching him from a sec-mage working somewhere in the building. He reined in the immediate reflex to strike back at the uncomfortable feeling that came as a result.

“Astral scan confirmed,” the female voice stated. “Welcome to the upper levels, Mr. Luppas. Enjoy your stay.”

The aperture in the synthmahogany pulled itself back together. When it finished, only unblemished synthwood remained. The cage started back up. Electric blue numbers cycled through the digital readout.

Villiers’s private offices in the Bellevue research compound on Sixth Street SE and 112th Avenue SE occupied the whole floor two levels from the top of the skyraker. The levels above it held reactive armor built into the walls and floors. With Sea-Tac so close, the possibility of a relatively surprising launch of a Mitsubishi-GM Bandit air-to-ground missile remained a threat.

Fuchi Industrial Electronics itself was a consortium of three powerful men: Richard Villiers, Shikei Nakatomi, and Korin Yamana. They had their prospective areas of control, but Luppas knew each constantly sought leverage over the others, especially for the corporation’s space-based Fuchi Orbital Division. Currently, Villiers held that control, but that was subject to change. That thin balance of power among the three families made the skyscraper’s security necessary.

The maglev cage doors opened a heartbeat after the arrival bing sounded. A plastiglass sec checkpoint extended from the maglev. A secteam in Fuchi uniforms stood in a tight array around the checkpoint.

“Mr. Luppas,” a clean-shaven young man said. “We’ll need your swipe card, please.”

Glancing at the plastiglass-covered floor, Luppas saw the thin line of seal-gel mixing in with the carpet. He had no doubt that it contained FAT-1. Canisters marked with the substance clung to the plastiglass on the outside like truncated octopi.

Luppas passed the swipe card through the thin slot of the locked plastiglass door. One of the other secmen took it.

The secman with Luppas’s swipe card dropped it into a portable incinerator tucked against the wall. “Not to worry, sir,” the sergeant-major said. “We’re issuing new corporate ID cards today.” He waved at the woman covering the door and she released the locks.

Luppas passed through and accepted the new swipe card from the sergeant-major. “What’s down?”

“New cards, sir,” the sec commander replied. “Any other information will be passed along only on a need-to-know basis. That isn’t my area.”

“Where’s Miles Lanier?” Luppas asked. Lanier headed up Fuchi’s IntSec branch.

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

Luppas put the card away and continued down the hall. Something was in the wind, and it bothered him. If drastic changes were necessary in Fuchi’s offices, Lanier would have been on-site overseeing them.

A simple chromed door ended the hallway. Luppas watched his reflection change as he neared the entrance, shifting across the metal planes. The door slid open.

A receptionist sat behind a kidney-shaped desk. Cool and competent, her hair razored short so grabbing it would be an effort, she glanced at Luppas without expression. Silver cybereyes glinted coldly.

“Mr. Luppas, you’ve been cleared for admittance,” she said precisely in a voice that was the best nuyen could buy. Like the other receptionists, including the few males Luppas had noticed in rotation, she carried the best and heaviest cyberware available, and so much of it that the line between man and machine was blurred.

The doors to the inner sanctum slid apart as he walked toward them. Two desks occupied the center of the large, windowless room, running parallel to each other but facing outward so that one person could man them both. The walls held various Fuchi logos that had been used over the years, as well as digipix of hardware that had been developed by the corporation since its inception.

Ramona Fishbein wore a chic Zoé skirt-suit. The sea-foam green skirt ended nearly thirty centimeters from the center of her tanned knee, her modesty kept intact as she walked through the two desk areas only by the permanent electrostatic charge in the garment. The dark royal blue jacket secured by one button revealed an impressive cleavage. The crystallized polymer of the weave rendered a subliminal shimmer that assaulted the senses in the dim lighting prevalent in the room.

Scalpels and tech had taken away the years from Fishbein’s face, scrubbed down to pink flesh newness with acid washes. She could have been anywhere from twenty to eighty, trim and athletic, oozing a confidence that bordered on predatory. Turquoise and silver clips worked into bird shapes that looked antique and of Amerind workmanship held her black hair up and back.

Massaging the back of her neck, Fishbein continued talking over a pencil-mike headset, giving quick orders to various personnel. She carried a small keypad in her hand as she gazed at the trid screens surrounding her, controlling the communications as well as the trid reception. She waved Luppas to a comfortably overstuffed chair near the left desk.

He ignored the gesture and crossed the room to the wet bar in the corner. Taking down a crimson-flecked brandy snifter that had been hand blown by dwarven glass-makers of Germany, he loaded it with cracked ice and sluiced a chilled bottle of imported Cuige Chonnacht mineral water from Tir na nOg over it. He added two wedges of lemon and a wedge of lime to the drink and gently swirled the contents as he took the seat Fishbein had offered.

Fishbein continued her conversations. Her voice never rose, but became edged as monofilament wire.

Luppas sipped his drink and waited. He glanced across the trids Fishbein had open to her, wondering what the woman was covering. President Kyle Haeffner, looking tired but trustworthy, stood in the White House’s oval-shaped Blue Room in front of huge paned windows overlooking the flowering gardens. A PRC-44b Yellowjacket helicopter with military markings hovered in the blue sky over the UCAS president’s right shoulder and black armband. The message wasn’t exactly subliminal.

On another trid, stock footage of the gathering of dragons that had taken place after Dunkelzahn’s assassination only days ago filled the screen. The dragons blew out fiery breath as they circled the prismatic manastorm that marked the spot of Dunkelzahn’s demise.

“Time,” Fishbein declared.

Immediately, the trids blanked out and she stripped the headset off and tossed it onto one of the desks. She too crossed to the wet bar and made herself a drink.

“Villiers?” Luppas inquired.

“Twenty-seven seconds and counting. He’ll be joining us by cyberlink.” Fishbein held up a hairnet-shaped hitcher rig. She smirked. “Let’s go, tortoise boy.”

Reluctantly, Luppas donned the cybergear. He’d never relished the experience of hitching along with a decker through the Matrix. He waited for Fishbein to bring him on-line through the Fuchi Cyber-IVx she’d jacked into. His own entry was going to be through the Dir-X simsense rig she’d booted into her deck.

A flash of color filled his simvision. Abruptly the colors swirled away. When he blinked, he saw that he was still seated in the room he and Fishbein occupied. Now, though, Richard Villiers also occupied the room with them. Fishbein was seated behind the desk, the fiber-optic cable linked to the datajack in the back of her skull and the C2 deck meshed with her brain no longer visible.

Dark, handsome, and regal, Villiers stood in the center of the room in front of the desks and the chair Luppas had chosen. The simsense rig mimicked the images and sensations of the experience perfectly.

“You lost your mission’s objective, Mr. Luppas,” Villiers said coldly, “and I want to know when you’re going to get it back!”

19

The Seattle monorail’s door opened as an automated male voice announced, “Jefferson Street Station with access to Harborview Hospital. Please exercise caution as you exit. Thank you and have a nice day.”

Skater followed the press of the crowd out onto the station. Transit sec-guards were out in force, their Defiance Industries AZ-150 super stun batons already in hand to keep the peace.

It was nearly noon, though the sun hadn’t burned its way through the cloud cover that had overtaken the sprawl shortly after the coming of the dawn. Skater knew lunch money would be the least of the targets chased after by the gutterkin looking to make one more day in the plex at someone else’s expense.

He carried the Predator in shoulder leather under a lightweight black jacket advertising Ice Blue Ice, a popular elven band specializing in blues music. A dark green ball cap with a rounded bill shadowed his features.

Passing through the turnstiles, he glanced up at the reflective surface of the polysteel framing the door that let out into the wide stairs curling down to street level four stories below. Quint Duran got off the monorail two cars behind Skater and easily fell into his backtrail. The ork was dressed for the street, blending into the press of metahumanity.

The rumble of conversation filled the stairwell as Skater followed the landings down to street level. Most of the metas and humans in the stairwell wore hospital clothing. Two young boys, one a troll and the other an ebony-hued human, jandered down the steps together ahead of Skater, passing combat biker collector’s digipix back and forth.

“I got it, Orren!” the troll boy said, holding up a digipix in a taloned hand. “Jonathan Winger’s rookie card, and it’s a full-motion micro-vid!”

“Oh frag, Kyle, that’s so rad!” Orren took the card carefully by the edges and examined it. On the digicard, Winger hunkered over his bike as he shot out over a gap in the track, a chopped-down shotgun in hand.

As Skater followed the boys along, watching them swap their cards back and forth, he wondered if he’d have felt more confident about having a child if Emma were a boy instead of a girl. He immediately felt guilty and brushed the question from his mind. Spotting the public telecom he was looking for, he stepped through the doorway.

He slotted one of the certified credsticks he carried into the telecom payment jack. The tone came on and he punched in the LTG, then added the numbers he’d memorized.

Out on the street, almost invisible to Skater, Duran purchased a sloppie from a street vendor. The green umbrella over the cart with its yellow daisy design looked too bright and cheery despite the fading effects of the sun.

“Lone Star,” a curt male voice answered at the other end of the connection.

Automatically, Skater tripped the retinal clock in his cybereye. The time/date stamp misted into his vision, clicking off ghostly sapphire numerals: 11:59:31/8-14-57, 11:59:32/ 8-14-57 . . .

“Detective Division,” he replied.

“One moment, please.” The telecom crackled as the connection transferred.

“Detective Division,” a smooth feminine voice answered almost immediately. “Carella speaking. How can I help you?”

“I need to speak to Nina Barrett,” Skater said. He deliberately kept the telecom’s vid blanked. If his face was already known, there was no reason to advertise. He had no doubt that the Star’s sec staff was already running a standard trace on the call’s LTG.

He counted ticks of the chron, mentally giving Nina ninety seconds to pick up. The blue numbers in his field of vision kept twisting rapidly.

“Barrett,” the troll detective answered. The vid portion of the telecom came on with a pop of explosive color. A short, precisely centered, chartreuse-tipped platinum mohawk nestled across a broad skull framed by two twisted horns polished a rich jet-black. She wore the blue and gold uniform of Lone Star.

Skater noticed the time coming up on the full minute mark. He’d met Nina and her partner Paulson a few months ago. They’d been investigating Larisa Hartsinger’s murder; he’d been their prime suspect. He tapped the telecom’s keypad and brought the vid on-line so she could see him.

“Remember me?” Skater asked.

“How could I forget?” Honest amusement flickered in her eyes. “People around here still talk about the way you disappeared from slam during the middle of the night.”

“This isn’t about that,” Skater said.

“Didn’t figure it was, Otto. Or should I call you Jack? Personally, I like Jack. Feels closer to the truth.”

Skater ignored the statement. “I know you’re tracing the call, so we don’t have much time. You heard about the smash-and-grab at Shastakovich’s Funeral Home last night?”

“Sure. I watch the trid. The whole operation looked like a righteous frag-up.”

“The trid snoops didn’t mention the missing corpse,” Skater said.

On the telecom vidscreen, the Lone Star detective quickly accessed a manual deck. “I don’t show any missing corpses,” she said, looking up after entering a few commands.

The ease with which she accessed the information let Skater know that Lone Star had already opened its own file. “Check with DocWagon. There was a victim at a crash-and-dash out on I-5 last night. Find out where that body is. If you can.”

“I’ve got a full plate right now,” Nina said. “Why should I bother with this?”

“Because it could be big,” Skater replied.

“Give me a for-instance.”

Skater checked the retinal clock. He only had seconds left before he went over his safety margin for the call. “For instance Fuchi is involved. They had a black ops team at the funeral home. They geeked the sec-guards when they scrambled inside the Mariah Building. The team was headed up by a guy named Kylar Luppas.” He spelled it. “Luppas is an elf. Mercenary. Straight out of the Desert Wars a few years back. He may be in Seattle under an alias backed up by Fuchi.”

Nina tapped the noteputer’s keys. “I show nothing on anyone named Kylar Luppas.”

“Should tell you how high up he’s juiced. Nobody’s wearing their proper name on this gig.”

The big troll detective looked at Skater and raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

“The corpse you’re looking for was registered with Shastakovich’s as Coleman January. DocWagon answered a wristband call at the crash-and-dash on I-5 and the client’s name was Norris Caber. Caber’s med premiums came straight from Fuchi’s credsticks.”

“And you just happened to feel curious enough to dig into this drek?”

The retinal clock display showed Skater he was nine seconds short of his goal time for ending the conversation before a trace could be completed. “The vid the trid stations got at the funeral home were all boned. None of them show Luppas or his people. Check your personal deck drop at the Star. You’ll find a copy of vid that shows Luppas there. I’m sending it to you. Don’t bother trying to trace the upload through the Matrix. The effort would cost the Star some big nuyen for deck repairs and overtime to get systems operational again.” Archangel had encrypted a white IC package that would nuke the file if it was tampered with and prevent a trace.

“You think you’re that good?”

“Not me. But I know someone who is. I’ve got to buzz turbo. Your deckers should be closing in on this LTG now.”

“Jack, what about the baby you were looking for?” Nina asked. “Larisa Hartsinger’s baby.”

When Skater had been locked up in the Star’s slammer during his last run, Nina had shown sympathy. He hesitated only for a second. “I found her.”

“She’s okay?”

“Yeah, thanks for asking.” He tagged the Disconnect button, and Nina Barrett’s face winked off the screen.

20

In the Matrix version of the Fuchi offices, Kyle Luppas felt a momentary spark of anger and resentment at Villiers’s accusation that he had hosed up the assignment, but quickly quashed it. Emotions weren’t for professionals, especially when dealing with an employer.

“It would be more accurate to say that so far I’ve been unable to recover the property I’ve been assigned to bring in,” Luppas said.

Villiers’s image broke up suddenly as the man paced, then reassembled itself a step or two ahead of where it had been. “Not all of this is your fault, and I realize that. Have you got a lead on who took the corpse?”

“My team is working on it. The team that scammed it are professionals. They had the right gear, they had blueprints of the building, they didn’t even blink when we showed up.” Villiers looked perturbed. Reaching out, he opened his right hand suddenly. A sprinkle of crimson sparks darted out centimeters from his fingers, then swirled into a square vid-screen that hung two-dimensionally in the air.

Luppas studied the numbers, letters, and icons that skated across the surface but couldn’t make anything of it. A glance at Fishbein left him certain she was left out in the cold as much as he was.

Another wave of his hand and the screen was gone. Villiers stared at Luppas. “How much do they know?”

Luppas answered in a matter-of-fact voice. “Probably more than I do.” He put his hands together. “But I do know Caber wasn’t the real target for us. He was only the bait. Knowing who our real target is would help. I could figure out what kinds of moves he has open to him, and how willing he is to make them.” Villiers hesitated only a moment, then inscribed a rectangle about the size of a playing card in the air. When it turned solid and hung at eye-level, the Fuchi exec flicked it with a fingernail and sent it tumbling toward Luppas.

The elf caught the rectangle effortlessly, cupping it in his palm and turning it over for inspection. The digipix showed two views of a woman, front and right profile. Her classic Mediterranean features appeared hawkish and intent, muddy brown eyes narrowed almost in a semblance of distaste. Her face, angular and sharp, offered no hope of openness or intimacy. Short-cropped peroxide blond hair tinted with dark gray undertones lay over her skull like a duck’s down. Silver glinted from her features, from the datajack in her left temple to the stylized zipper piercing her left eyebrow and the three small silver hoops piercing her right nostril. Her long and slender neck hinted at a slight build and a racing metabolism. “Who is she?” Luppas asked.

“Ripley Falkenhayne. There’s no reason you should know her,” Villiers said. “But I expect you to get to know her. Ramona will give you a copy of her file, which is not to leave your office here.”

“Understood.” Luppas flicked the digipix into the air, not surprised at all when it disintegrated back into whatever binary bytes and electrons had formed it. “Is she connected with Fuchi?”

“No.”

“How many people know about Falkenhayne?” the elf asked.

“The three of us,” Villiers said. “Neither you or Ramona were brought into the loop until now.”

Luppas concentrated on tact. The job at Fuchi was lucrative. Finding another would be difficult at best. Getting geeked out in the field due to a lack of situation intelligence was even less appealing. “What about Miles Lanier?”

“What about him?” Villiers appeared guarded only for an instant, then the Matrix icon of him misted and became as relaxed-looking as he ever was.

“With something as serious as this, I’d have expected Lanier to be involved.”

“He’s not,” Villiers said flatly.

Further puzzled by the machinations taking shape around him, Luppas decided to concentrate on the issue at hand. “Is Falkenhayne considered the primary target of the operation at this point?”

“No. Your focus is still on Caber’s body. The woman would be a pleasant bonus. If that changes, and it could, I’ll see that you’re informed through channels.”

“What am I looking for on Caber’s body?”

“There was a deck,” Villiers stated. “A state-of-the-art passcode protected deltaware grade C2 deck.”

Luppas knew about cranial cyberdecks. Forced recoveries resulted in a mess. “What kind of resources does Falkenhayne possesses?”

“Financially, she’s close to existing in a vacuum. As far as close friends go, there are none. She was a software developer for Dulce Tech, working on a grant from Dunkelzahn before his assassination.”

“Did the wyrm have a buy-in on her project?” Luppas asked. He was well aware that the great dragon had his fingers in several profitable pies.

“A percentage at best,” Villiers answered. “That’s according to the information I’ve retrieved so far. Dunkelzahn had a soft spot for independent corporations. Instead of buying them out, he often shored them up. He said it was to keep them hungry to succeed.”

Luppas understood that. Hostile takeovers in the corporate world functioned much like military overthrows of government. The domestic people involved either ran, or they became totally dependent on winning the favor of their new overseers instead of taking care of business as usual.

“What about Dulce Tech?” he asked. “Does she have anyone there who would help her?”

“Falkenhayne wasn’t close to anyone at Dulce Tech.” Villiers paused for a moment, then opened up another window in the Matrix. The screen held only gray smoke that shifted in organized cadence. He listened for a moment, then made a reply.

None of the words reached Luppas’s ears so he knew Villiers had squelched the audio portion of the Matrix-driven sim office. Even knowing how it was done, and grounded as he was in the things made possible by the Arts, watching was still disconcerting.

The screen disappeared as Villiers turned his attention back to Fishbein and Luppas. “Dulce Tech is set up as a thinktank. It’s a big facility, by independent standards, and specializes in communications. The last figures I’ve seen suggest as many as thirty-two projects are presently undergoing development at this time.”

“In a thinktank,” Luppas said, “the needs of the developers are usually met by the corporation’s administrators. That includes housing and a monthly budget, both personal and business. Often, the administrators get a limited power of attorney as well. Has the administrator been questioned?”

“Yes. Thoroughly. There’s nothing for you there.” Villiers looked away for a moment, then back. “I’m out of time here. Find the body, Kylar, and chances are you’ll find the woman. I want them both in one piece.” The corp exec’s image suddenly shattered into millions of pixels and dropped through the floor like sand rushing through the neck of an hourglass.

Luppas’s stomach tightened once, trembled, then his senses went black as he jacked out.

* * *

Almost instantly, Luppas opened his eyes in the real world again. He stripped the hitcher rig off and dropped it to the floor. A headache rumbled threateningly at the base of his skull and he felt slightly nauseous.

“And that concludes our broadcast,” Fishbein said.

Luppas lifted his drink and sipped. The water tasted cool and citric. The sides of the snifter glistened with sweat and felt slippery in his fingers.

“Tell me about Norris Caber,” he said.

Fishbein faced him, taking time to run her fingers through her dark hair and re-affix the clips. “You know all you need to.”

“Was he employed here?” Luppas stood, swirling his drink and making the lemon and lime chunks dance through its icy skeleton.

Fishbein grinned coldly. “No.”

“Would you lie to me?”

“In a flat nanosecond,” she said. “Let me set a few things straight for you. Number one: you’re a mercenary, Luppas. Decryption: None of us here knows how much we can trust you. Number two: you’re expendable. Decryption: If you get caught, you’re not bringing us down with you. Number three: you have a problem following orders when they don’t suit you. Decryption: If you weren’t as good as you are, you wouldn’t be standing here now, much less working ops on this situation. Scan me?”

Luppas regarded her. “I detest secrets that get in the way of an operation.”

“Find the body. Find the woman. You’ll get a big bonus and everyone here will breathe a macro-sigh of relief.” Fishbein turned from him, letting him know the audience was over.

Luppas finished his drink and put the empty glass in the small sink behind the wet bar. He let himself out and walked past the gillette sitting at the receptionist’s desk.

In the maglev, watching the sec-team on the other side of their barrier, he punched in the code for the underground parking area. Then he accessed his wristphone, punching in a number. “Mr. Kossuth.”

“Captain Luppas,” a synthwhiskey-scorched voice responded as a man’s face took shape on the small screen. He was shaved bald and his features seemed immobile, shaded with a Slavic cast that had been eroded by plastic surgeries made necessary because of past injuries. The datajack in his right temple held a ferrous shine.

“Did you get in?” Luppas asked as the floors dropped away.

“Yes, sir.”

“The subject?”

“Files were obtained, sir. I might mention, they were in the process of being scrubbed at the time I managed the download. There might be some fragmentation.”

“Let’s hope not, Mr. Kossuth. I hate being disappointed.” Luppas punched off the wristphone and flipped it closed. He’d guessed that Villiers would want to talk to him personally today, and since the corp exec wasn’t in Bellevue, that meant it would be done via a secured sat-uplink to Tokyo. Most of Fuchi’s matrix ware would have been concentrated on maintaining the integrity of that link.

Kossuth was deadly when it came to a datasnatch. During the Desert Wars, the man’s skills had been invaluable.

Before the maglev touched bottom, Luppas was already examining the possibilities in his mind, wondering how big was the prize he was searching for.

The one hard and fast rule he’d learned from the corp scene was that whoever controlled the product or access to it could write their own ticket. Maybe this was going to be his chance to hit the big-time.

21

Gracie’s For Ribs was located on Olive Street and Belmont Avenue in downtown Seattle. The restaurant rocked with the sound of dozens of voices calling out orders to the harried waitresses piloting huge plates of ribs, chicken, sausages, and salmon between the narrow runways left between the tables.

At 12:19:43 a.m., Skater stepped into the flow of hungry traffic and navigated his way around to the small alcove that led to the freshers and the pay telecoms.

Business cards covered a polyfoam bulletin board between the two telecoms, held in place by thumbtacks, pushpins, twisted paper clips, and electrostatic charges. LTG numbers written by previous telecom users created a numeric chaos on the wall.

After punching in the LTG number he wanted to reach, Skater leaned back into the wall to keep a watchful eye on anyone who came toward him.

“KSAF news desk. Petyr Banacek here. Talk to me, hot-shot. Time is nuyen.”

KSAF’s reputation as a muckraker scored high, even in Seattle. Every rumor that jandered their way, they nailed down and made news out of. Skater intended to use the resources the station carried to put heat on Luppas and Fuchi.

“Is Joann Conolly available?” Skater asked.

“Hey, hotshot, let me give you the scoop on the biz because I’m feeling like such a nice chummer today. Joann’s this station’s star attraction right now. You can’t just call up here and ask to speak to her, scan me?”

“You get the chance,” Skater said, “ask her if she’d like to get the chip-truth about the raid Fuchi ordered on Shastakovich’s Funeral Home last night.”

“Whoa, bucko, you can’t just lob that baby nuke into my lap, then pull a fade.” Banacek sounded decidedly more interested.

The vid connection at the other end of the telecom opened up. In the small square, a young-looking elf peered intently from the screen, a mop of unruly blue-dyed hair twisting in thick curls in every direction. His almond-shaped eyes held bloodshot lines.

Skater moved in closer, hunching up a shoulder to cover the telecom vidscreen.

“C’mon, muchacho,” Banacek pleaded, “give me a vidfeed and let’s kick this around.” He tapped a forefinger against the vidscreen at his end.

“Time is nuyen,” Skater said, repeating the news desk guy’s own phrase. “And I’ve got an agenda.”

“Give me something.”

“I’ve got an LTG,” Skater said. Archangel’s expertise made the LTG hook-up possible. “When I disconnect, call it up and download the trid waiting at the other end. If you try to trace the LTG, you’ll trip some nasty white IC and fry the file and you won’t have it. Once you download the file, the copy at the other end will self-destruct. You get one shot.” He read off the LTG.

“Wait,” Banacek said. “Scan me in to what this scam is all about.”

“Corp shadow biz,” Skater said. “As many people as Fuchi killed last night, I figured your team would be better at putting a public quiz together.” He tapped the Disconnect button and watched the colors in the vidscreen go back to gray.

Slotting the certified credstick again, Skater placed another call, this one to Kestrel at one of the numerous drops the fixer maintained. “Jack,” he said when the telecom at the other end keyed open.

“How you doing, omae?” Kestrel said.

“On the go and staying low.” Skater watched through the alcove as Duran casually began a conversation with another ork. “What have you got for me?”

“Scan’s skinny on both the Coleman January name and the Norris Caber one. If I was a betting man, which I’m not, I’d think the January handle was a re-tag and Caber was the righteous name. My guy went pretty deep into the Matrix through legitimate sources, but got stone-walled by IC he thinks he traced back to Fuchi.”

Kestrel kept a number of people on his payroll, some of them living the straight life and doing small favors for a healthy nuyen donation. Usually the work related to background checks, building permits and blueprints, and stock analysis.

“He couldn’t scan how Caber might have been tied up with Fuchi?”

“Omae, that’s as close as he got. And, Jack, I’m running up some debt here in your name.”

Skater grinned in spite of the tension that filled him. Some things never changed. “I’ve got a certified credstick tucked away at Mama Kameyo’s. She’s holding it for you now. If it’s not enough, let me know. Thanks, chummer.” Mama Kameyo’s was a small Korean restaurant in the sprawl they did third-person biz through.

“Keep your head and neck together, omae.”

* * *

Nine minutes later, Skater placed the call to the Johnson from a pay telecom at the corner of Denny Way and Tenth Avenue. Aztechnology’s Northwest Complex stood out from the other buildings surrounding it. Modeled on the religious structures of ancient Mexico, all of the complex’s housing looked unique and mysterious, and a little foreboding. Dwarfing it all, the pyramidal main structure crouched among the smaller buildings. Huge friezes lined the walls, carved from half-meter thick artificially grown quartz crystals into the shapes of ancient Aztec and Mayan gods. By day, the eighty carved slabs looked gray, but at night white and alabaster lights brought the friezes to stunning life.

The LTG connected almost immediately. “Yes,” the Johnson’s deep, masculine voice answered.

“I’ve got your package,” Skater said.

“Why the slot have you waited so fragging long to contact me?” The joker sounded as bent as he was scared.

“If you’ve seen any trid at all,” Skater said, “you’d know that making the extraction last night drew a fragging heat wave. The deal was for an easy-in, easy-out ops. Not the slotting bone-up we faced last night.”

“I’m sorry about that,” the Johnson said. “I didn’t know it would go down like that.”

“How did you think it would go down?” Skater demanded. “I figured it would be a piece of cake. You and your team would take the body, frag the funeral home’s computers to show no bodies were missing, and be out of there in minutes.”

“That’s what we agreed on when we set the price.” Skater stared into the blank vidscreen. From what Archangel had dug up about the LTG, it broadcast from a portacom, making it both expensive and hard to trace.

“Meaning?”

“The price has gone up for delivery,” Skater said.

“That’s slotting blackmail!”

Skater kept his voice hard. “It’s a fair recompensation for nearly getting geeked last night on your behalf. Either that, or we take our chances and cut a deal with Fuchi.”

“Slot it, Skater, way it was told to me, you were an upfront slag when it came to a run. A chummer could expect you to play within the boundaries.”

“You should have checked the addendum that came with that: I’m upfront when I’ve been dealt with fairly. This dirty piece of biz, you slotted me and my team over six ways from Sunday. I’m in it now for the nuyen. Either yours or Fuchi’s. I don’t give a ratfrag anymore. The longer I hold onto this body, the more likely I am to get totally slotted over, lose the nuyen I’ve got coming, and probably get geeked in the process. Now, do you want to try to tell me again how to run my biz?”

“No. I can meet you tonight outside Matchstick’s. Do you know where it is?”

“Yeah,” Skater said, “I know where it is. But we’re not going to meet there. Have you ever been out to Everett?”

The Johnson sounded hesitant “A few times. That’s kind of an in-your-face district.”

“That’s right,” Skater agreed, and it was where he felt safest conducting the deal. “At the north end of I-5 where it crosses over into Salish lands, there’ll be a nightclub. It’s called Neon Sunsets. Be there at nine p.m. I’ll give you ten minutes if you’re late, then I breeze and you’re out the package.” He hit the Disconnect before the man on the other end could say another word.

22

After the conversation with the Johnson, Skater had hailed a gypsy cab on out of there. He and Duran rode together, clearing the area immediately in case the Johnson managed to trace the call. Now that he’d taken care of that piece of biz, the worries about Emma began to intrude again into his thoughts.

“Kid, your mind isn’t focused,” Duran said.

Skater gazed out the cab’s dirt-streaked windows. The elven cab driver lounged on his seat on the other side of the soundproof plastiglass, but it didn’t mean there were no bugs in the back seat. Both he and Duran took care not to mention names or places, using shadowspeak.

“You don’t like the way I’m running this?” Skater asked. Duran showed both palms empty. “Kid, you’re doing fine. I’m not asking this for me or anybody. I’m offering to come along as a freebie, take care of whatever personal biz is on your mind. All I’m saying is we got the time.”

Skater looked into the ork’s dark eyes. He saw the honest intent there and it bothered him. Running alone, hanging alone, that was the way he’d tried to live his life for a long time now. But there was no way he could earn the nuyen he needed for Emma and him to survive on his own, and linking up with another shadowrun team where those boundaries existed again was kludge thinking. He didn’t like the idea of running up moral debts; nuyen was a hell of a lot easier to pay off, and a chummer knew when the bill came due.

Still, offering Duran money for his time would be insulting. Skater knew that.

“Know what it’s like to have something hanging over your head,” Duran commented.

“Yeah,” Skater said. It was a big decision to involve Duran. One not easily made, and one that couldn’t be taken back. But he had to start working through the morass. His mind was his keenest weapon, what he had to offer the team. He didn’t need it spinning toward burn-out. Leaning forward, he tapped on the glass and gave the driver the new address. Then he told Duran about Deja’s calls and about the woman’s claims to be Larisa’s sister and her demands that he give up Emma.

* * *

Skater got out of the cab, resettling the Predator under his jacket till it felt comfortable. Tukwila was strictly low-class, where the down-and-out went to live and prey on each other. All the dosses appeared run-down, sagging little giants of plascrete block and ambitious mortar. Fly-by-night construction companies had poured, finished, and rented out the structures almost in the same week a few short months after the Night of Rage swept through Seattle in 2039. The alleys and narrow streets didn’t resemble paths anymore; they were scars ribbed by broken asphalt, urban hunting trails that knew no true relief from predators.

Skater took the lead, Duran staying a half-step back to bring up the rear. The humidity drew out beads of sweat that made his clothes stick to his skin. He walked around potholes in the asphalt alleyways where a handful of children, human as well as meta, played with homemade boats flying paper sails in the pools of water that had collected.

As Skater and Duran drew near, the children all became quiet and sidled up against the nearest building or fence. One of the boys even climbed up on top of a low retaining wall, eyes white and showing he was ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble.

“This is what Archangel was trying to get at when she was talking to you this morning,” Duran said in a low voice that didn’t carry. “Most people who have kids, they don’t prepare for it. They’re kind of thrown into it, learning as they go. She doesn’t want you to sell yourself short.”

Skater didn’t make a reply, kept his attention focused on the movement around him. Some of the apartments possessed small balconies on the second and third floors that overlooked the alley. Most of them held piles of refuse, broken patio furniture, and plastifoam packing cases. A demented Santa Claus hung from one of them, a garrote knotted around his stretched neck, his round face and beard showing methodical cigarette burn patterns.

“Maybe none of my biz,” Duran went on, “but I think she’s got a point. Look around you, kid, and smell the soykaf. How many of these kids do you really think stand a chance in this world? The boys will grow up to be local yabos, and gutterkin, probably get geeked in a bimble-brained turf war between thrillers. The girls will end up selling their hoops, hoping some fragging prince in shining armor will come take them away from all this. The parents living in here, slot, they’re all chem-guzzlers, chipheads, and street haunts who couldn’t make it in the straight world and were too afraid of the shadows, or too damn slow to make a go of it there.”

“Doesn’t mean Emma won’t end up any of those ways herself,” Skater said bitterly.

“Kid, you’re looking too far ahead.”

Skater knew that was true. Before Emma, he hadn’t had to look much past the next handful of days.

“You need to focus on right now,” Duran said. “Frag, you can always scope out the guessing game of what’s-gonna-go-wrong-next and bone your mind with more than you can handle. That’s fear talking inside you, not common sense.”

“I know,” Skater said. Behind them, the children had already redescended to their play areas. “Emma needs a parent.”

“You’re her parent.”

Skater looked at the big ork. “She got fragged over in that department. She deserves something better, someone better.”

“Slot! Listen to you, kid.” Duran slapped him on the shoulder, hard enough to sting and grab Skater’s attention. “Fragging quitterspeak is what that is. It surprised me that Archangel didn’t grab your ears this morning and pull them down to your ankles. For a guy as smart as you, you can sure pull a set of blinders on.”

“I can see my weak areas,” Skater said.

“Frag, everybody has ’em. The joker you should look out for most in this world, he’s the one don’t know he’s got weak areas. You play to your strengths, kid, you always have. That hose-up a few months back, look at the way you managed a save out of that. I don’t think many could have. You took on a Tir Taimgire corp, the yakuza, and Conrad McKenzie’s mafia bunch. You even went up against the dragon Lofwyr himself. I know the idea of taking care of Emma can’t be any scarier than that.”

“I didn’t save Larisa.”

Duran dropped a heavy hand on Skater’s shoulder. “You couldn’t, kid. That’s something you’re going to have to acknowledge or it’s gonna eat you alive.”

Skater paused a moment before speaking. The subject matter was already taboo. “I ever tell you about my mom?”

“No.”

Feeling the squalor of Tukwila all around him, it suddenly brought back the emotions as well as the memories of those times. Taking a deep breath, Skater plunged ahead. “She was bom to Daniel Ghost-Step and Imala Loves-Walking-In-Sunlight. She was the baby, bom after four previous children, and christened Kolenya Dances-in-Flowers. She ran away from the Council Lands at seventeen and moved to Seattle.”

“Drawn by the lights of the big city,” Duran commented. Skater shrugged. “I never asked what brought her here, she never said. After she was here for a time, she got pregnant. Story goes that she was hanging with a shadowrunner, maybe even more than one. At the time she’d set herself up as a fixer, working low-end profit and safe black market goods, barely surviving. When she got close to the birthing time, she went home. Nowhere else to go, I suppose.”

“And maybe she figured you had no place in the sprawl.”

“Maybe.” Voice thick and surprised because of it, Skater made himself go on. “After she had me, she stayed around for a few months. My grandfather told me she even tried to make a go of motherhood, said he could tell there was a lot of love there.”

“But in the end, she buzzed turbo.”

“Before I was six months old.” Skater took the corner at the next alley and spotted Kalika Chilson’s doss only a little further on. “I was raised by my grandfather. My grandmother, my uncles and aunts and cousins, none of them wanted anything to do with me.”

“Tainted blood.”

“Something like that. Daniel Ghost-Step was a leader among the Salish. Nothing big, but tribespeople mentioned his name with respect. Having me there changed a lot of that for him. They stopped somewhere short of ostracizing him. Even his other kids.”

“Man must have loved you.”

“In his way, as much as he was able,” Skater said. “I think he did. But I keep wondering if it wasn’t more out of his idea of duty than any real feelings for me.”

“Look at what the man did, omae,” Duran said. “Not what a crazy, mixed-up kid was feeling.”

“Most days I do,” Skater said. “But having Emma’s made me look at those times with a harder eye. Sometimes I don’t like what I see.”

“Part of the biz when you start going internal, kid. It’s what gives you the strength that you have, and it’s what points out your weak spots for you to pick at. That’s also your greatest gift when it comes to running the shadows: you’re able to look at more perspectives than most people.”

“I was fifteen when my grandfather died,” Skater said. “Left me at loose ends. Nobody in the tribe was particularly ready for me to break bread at their tables. Late one night, I packed up the few things I cared about and made the trek into Seattle. Took me a few weeks to find my mom. She was living as a fixer, and not too happy to see me when I came strolling through the door of her doss.”

“Back with your dad?”

Skater shook his head. “Never knew who he was.”

“Ever try to find out?”

“I never cared. Not really. Every now and then I’d get a twinge of curiosity, but no way to really follow up on what had gone down all that time ago.”

“And now?”

“Mostly I don’t think about it.”

Duran nodded, and let the matter go.

Skater felt silently thankful, surprised at how hard it was to talk about those things and wishing he could find a way to stop. “I lived with my mom almost three years. We never got close. She always had biz to do, and didn’t want to be looking over her shoulder to see where I was while she did it. So I was left alone a lot. But that was okay, because I liked being by myself.”

“That’s when you started in the shadows,” Duran guessed. Skater nodded. “Mainly boosting. Then I used my mom’s connections to pass off the goods and get whatever nuyen I could. One day I came home, found a group of Dissemblers in the doss. They’d already geeked my mother. Later I found out it was over money. She’d shorted them on a credstick.” He left out the part about how he’d rescued Kestrel, maintaining some of the distance between then and now. “I tracked down the gangers responsible over the next year. It didn’t happen easy. I learned how to geek someone quick, in the heat of the dust-up, and I learned how to geek someone cold, once I knew it had to be done.”

“That’s a drekking learning curve from helL,” Duran said. “It didn’t all go my way,” Skater admitted. “That’s how I picked up most of the cyberware I’ve got.” He touched the side of his head. “Like this eye. I didn’t have it installed by choice. I’ve got too much of my grandfather’s ways in me for that.”

“Sure,” Duran said softly, “but what’s all that got to do with Emma?”

Skater felt that answer was obvious. “I don’t know anything about being a parent, Quint. I’m not even sure if I know how to—to care about someone else.”

“You’re this confused and it’s bothering you this much,” the ork said, “I’d say you should have a clue by now.”

Skater shook his head. “What I feel shouldn’t matter in this equation. What counts is what’s best for Emma.”

“Take a look around, omae,” the ork said in a low voice. “You see anybody else waiting to take that weight off your shoulders?”

“I’m not ready to be a parent,” Skater said.

“No one is. Not even when they know it’s coming.” Duran tapped Skater’s chest with a forefinger, and Skater felt the taps thump hollowly inside his body. “You go with what you feel in here, chummer. And that’s chip-truth.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Skater shook his head as he aimed himself at the stairs leading up to Kalika Chilson’s doss. “The one true thing I know is that I don’t like the idea of being away from her, maybe never seeing her again. That hurts.”

“Something you should file away and keep in your brainbox to remember,” Duran said. “Larisa had time to ask other people to take care of your daughter. She could have closed you out of the loop entirely. She didn’t, kid. She chose you to take care of Emma.”

True enough, Skater supposed. But he remembered the mess his ex-lover had gotten herself into there at the end. Just maybe, leaving Emma with him was a sheer act of desperation.

He brushed away the thought as he put his hand on the stair banister and started up the stairs. Kalika Chilson lived in 305. Before he reached the door, he heard shouting coming from inside. A man’s angry voice shrilled invective.

Skater rapped his knuckles against the scarred plastiwood surface, his other hand slipping beneath his jacket to free the Predator. The doorbell hung in pieces against the frame.

The screaming man inside the room quieted.

A moment later, the door opened, the chain securing it to the door frame visible in the gap. Kalika Chilson, blood running down the corner of her mouth, peered out at Skater with one rheumy eye.

23

“Get back here, you thieving slitch!” the man’s voice grunted. A big hand seized Kalika Chilson by her gray hair and yanked her back. The door slammed a moment later.

Adrenaline instantly yanking him into overdrive, knowing his thoughts were razor-edged and running in a thousand directions, Skater took a step back and drove his foot into the door beside the locking mechanism.

Plasteel shrieked as the door shuddered, then gave way entirely.

Skater wrapped both hands around the Predator and stepped into the room. Fear surged within him. The situation was definitely out of the safety zone. Anyone in the neighborhood could trip a PANICBUTTON in the next breath, bringing the Star down on them in force. Blue crews didn’t hit the low-income squats with any conception of tact. The safest course of action for Skater and Duran was to leave immediately.

The desire was there, but Skater found himself unable to act on it. Whatever else Kalika Chilson was, she had been Larisa Hartsinger’s mother. And she was Emma’s grandmother. He’d never thought of her that way before.

A man in his late forties stood behind Kalika Chilson, one big hand still knotted in her hair while the other held a small hide-out pistol screwed under her jawline. Madness twinkled in the solid purple cybereyes set close together in a face that looked sculpted from a plascrete pyramid. The shaven skull, overlapped by scarred chrome that still had a few shiny spots, came to a narrow wedge of bone and metal over the wide shelf of jaw.

Kalika Chilson clapped both hands to the fist in her hair, making plaintive whines. Short, thin, and frail, with her face all pinched in from age and chronic abuse of alcohol or drugs or something just as debilitating, she looked like a child’s stuffed monkey with its head ripped open, the stuffing material forming the gray nest of springy hair that exploded from her scalp. She wore only a faded blue tee shirt that hung almost low enough to cover her bikini-cut pale green panties and didn’t conceal the fact that she wore no bra over her sagging breasts.

Tripping his boosted reflexes, Skater squeezed the Predator’s trigger. The bullet sped true, gouging deeply into the man’s shoulder. Pain and the impact made the man drop his weapon without firing it while the Chilson screamed.

She ducked her head and kicked back at her captor. Strands of gray hair remained in his fist as she fell to the floor. He screamed as the pain took him.

Skater reached down and caught the woman by the arm, propelling her back toward Duran. The ork caught her easily and kept her moving till she was out of the line of fire, tucked away behind his armored body.

The purple cybereyes flickered for a moment, then the grimace of pain washed from the man’s face. “Think you’re a mean little slotter, don’t you?” he said. “Gonna teach you a thing or two about trying to drek over ol' Karg.” A set of matte-black Wiremasters hand razors popped from the fingertips of both hands, extending almost eight centimeters past the flesh.

A cold chill buzzed through Skater but only touched him fleetingly as the adrenaline laced his system after the boosted reflexes came on-line. He slid the Predator into shoulder leather. Maybe most of the squat dwellers hadn’t heard the sound of the shot, and maybe most of them would prove willing to let the first one go. But if a barrage went off, the call to the Star would go through without a doubt. He took a step forward, watching the eerie surface of the pupil-less purple cybereyes, getting close enough to see himself reflected in them.

“Lemme put a pill between his lookers and we’re down to null sweat in a heartbeat,” Duran said.

“No,” Skater replied. “We do this quiet.”

Karg barked laughter and started circling warily. “You must have a trog-sized death wish, browncone. Slot, you’re looking at death on the move.”

Judging from the way Karg moved, Skater recognized immediately that the man knew his way around a dustup. Skater took a step forward, like he was closing to do battle with his hands.

Instantly Karg reached out to slice and dice.

Skater wasn’t there when Karg made his move, though. Ducking under the hand razors, Skater bent and twisted at the waist, driving home a stamp-kick that caught the man in the crotch.

A high-pitched yelp of pain echoed off the walls. Karg staggered and looked dazed.

Never letting up, Skater dropped his hands to the floor to support himself, then launched a kick at Karg’s immense jaw. The man’s teeth clicked together. White splinters spilled across his pale blue lips a moment before crimson threads wove across the puckered flesh and dripped to his chin.

Skater flipped backward, easily avoiding the fistful of razors that swiped at him. He landed on his feet and took a step forward. He feinted a forward snap-kick, holding it back just long enough for Karg to react and raise both hands, in his defense. Spinning, Skater brought his foot around in a long, vicious side-kick.

The impact of the kick knocked Karg backward over a sagging couch. An overflowing rose-colored plastiglass ashtray filled with nicostick butts upended like tombstones fell off the arm of the couch to the floor with a dull thud. A pix frame holding a cheap reproduction holo of a mother hellhound and her pups in a torch-lit cave splintered. The plastifoam backing shredded and dropped the holo in pieces.

“Not bad, kid,” Duran growled as he surveyed the unconscious Karg. “Woulda still been safer to put a bullet into this joker’s brain pan if you ask me. You’re out on the street some night, this slag notices you, maybe you don’t get the chance to defend yourself and you get geeked.”

Skater took the man’s shirt collar in his hands and dragged him outside. “Not if it’s not necessary.” He knew he still had to sleep with his memories and nightmares, and he preferred to keep as much drek out of them as he could. “Get the woman and let’s breeze.”

At the foot of the stairs, Skater jockeyed the unconscious man over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, With all the cyberaugmentation that had been done, the joker was heavier than normal.

Nearly two dozen neighbors peered from hiding places and from behind window curtains as Skater made his way to the street corner. Mothers called their children to them, ushering them inside the house.

Duran came down the stairs with Kalika Chilson only a few moments later. She had tied her hair back with a red scarf that revealed her pointed elf ears, and slipped on a pair of black slacks and calf-high boots. She pulled on a lightweight handmade Nootka sweater depicting the tribe’s legend of the Birth of Dragons.

“You can’t just drag me out of my doss like this,” the woman complained.

Duran grinned thinly, baring his fangs. “ ’Kay, maybe we’ll just toss you back there and bed down Good-Time Charlie with you again.”

“No.” She glared at the ork.

Looking at her, Skater still had a hard time seeing how she could have been Larisa’s mother. Larisa’s image in his memory was still so beautiful that it made his heart ache sometimes to think about her. Visiting her grave once had convinced him that whatever good-byes needed saying between them were no longer possible.

“Then I guess you go with us,” Duran said.

Skater stepped off the curb to flag down a passing cab. When the cab rocked to a stop at the curb, he ushered Kalika Chilson inside, then slid in behind her. Duran took shotgun beside the driver, who immediately switched up his air fresher to counteract the smell of sex, sweat, and synthwhiskey that clung to the woman.

* * *

Skater slotted the hostess at the Purple Haze a large tip before they were allowed a table. The restaurant was located on Bell Street and Elliot Avenue in downtown Seattle, and was a popular dining spot. They were used to a certain kind of guest, and objected to Kalika Chilson becoming one of them. The objection was quietly conveyed out of the woman’s earshot so there wouldn’t be an argument.

Duran maintained control over her and created distance around them, adding to the reluctance evidenced by the other patrons of the restaurant waiting to be seated for an afternoon biz lunch.

Skater took the woman by the elbow and guided her after the elven host who showed them to their table. Kalika took a seat on the other side of the table from Skater, then moved over as the ork took a seat beside her.

The Purple Haze offered a Pueblo menu filled with spicy meats and plenty of vegetables. Voodoo Chili remained the house specialty. Southwestern color schemes marked the rooms filled with flowering cactus plants in pots and gengineered yucca trees that grew through spaces set into the floor and changed soft pastel colors every few minutes. The biofeature was triggered by a shift in ultraviolet light spewed from overhead lamps.

The bench seats around the table towered over the seated patrons. Small, multicolor tiles laid out in mosaics covered the table top.

Kalika Chilson rattled her chipped and broken fingernails against the tiles nervously. “I’ve got to go to the fresher.”

Duran looked at her. “You can wait.”

She started to argue with him, then withered under his direct gaze. “I can wait.”

“They’ve got bars over the fresher windows anyway,” Duran said. “Keeps guests from slipping out on the tab when it comes due.”

A slim Amerind waitress stopped at the table long enough to drop off glasses and a sweating pitcher of ice-cold spring water imported from the NAN. She informed them that it came from Colorado and was purified by shamans as well as chem-processing plants. She also left them with a basket containing fresh chunks of steaming pan-fried sourdough biscuits and three different butter dishes.

Kalika Chilson selected a biscuit and broke it open in her hands. She licked her fingers, then took a knife and helped herself to the garlic butter, slathering it on generously. “What do you want with me?”

“I want to talk about Larisa,” Skater said.

“What about her?”

“Was she your only child?”

Kalika Chilson nodded. “Me and her dad, we stayed together for a few years, hanging onto each other because there wasn’t anyone else to hang onto. Finally got so even that wasn’t working anymore after awhile.” She demolished another bite of bread. “Why do you ask?”

Feeling better all ready, Skater said, “Because recently I talked to someone claiming to be Larisa’s sister.”

The woman nodded and wiped butter from the corner of her mouth with a forefinger, then sucked it clean. “That would be Deja.”

Skater felt like he’d been poleaxed with a stun baton.

24

Skater leaned back in the booth and gazed over the lunch crowd gathered at the Purple Haze. Somewhere beyond the restaurant’s walls, he knew the Seattle sprawl continued on as it did every day. Inside, though, he felt like his world had just tilted on its axis. He glanced at Duran seated across from him and let out a tense breath. Then he looked back at the woman. The waitress placed steaming bowls of chili on the table.

“Deja was Larisa’s half-sister,” Kalika Chilson said as she picked up a spoon and helped herself. “Larisa’s father’s brat.”

“Was?” Skater tried to mask his emotions, and guessed he was doing good because the woman barely glanced at him.

Kalika Chilson shrugged her thin shoulders. “Was. Is. Who gives a frag? None of that drek every really mattered to me.” Skater fielded the questioning look she darted his way without real effort. “How well did Larisa know her?”

“You knew Larisa, right?” the woman asked.

“Yeah.” Out of habit, Skater scanned the crowd in the Purple Haze. None of them appeared interested in their table. “Did Larisa ever mention Deja?”

“No.”

“ ’Kay. Does that sound close to you?”

“No.”

“Then you know as much about the two of them as I do.” Kalika Chilson turned her attention back to the bowl of Voodoo Chili. “She was a year or two older than Larisa and kept to herself a lot.”

“Do you know where Deja is?”

“Any reason I’m supposed to?”

Skater grew irritated at his questions being answered in oracle form. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“A few days ago. Maybe a month after I saw you. I can’t remember.” The woman wiped her mouth with the back of her arm.

Skater resisted the impulse to hand her a napkin. “Where did you see her?”

“She came by my doss.” Kalika Chilson pierced him with her stare. “You’re covering a lot of turf and not getting anywhere. Usually that’s because a joker’s trying to bleed someone else dry of any information without giving anything away.”

Before Skater could reply, Duran leaned in, shoving his big fanged face into the elf woman’s. “You got a problem with that?”

She hesitated for a moment, then broke their locked gaze and looked back at Skater. “No. Don’t mean nothing to me. None of it. ’Cept the nuyen I got coming when you’re done. All I was getting at is that maybe you’re wasting time you could spend better elsewhere.” She tapped her spoon against the bowl’s edge. “And this chili’s getting cold. First hot meal I’ve had that hasn’t come out of a nuker in a long time. I’d like the chance to get to enjoy it.”

“What did Deja want?” Skater asked.

“Wanted to know what I knew about Larisa’s baby.”

“What did you tell her?”

The woman lifted her thin shoulders and dropped them, fitting her mouth around another spoonful of chili. “The truth. That I didn’t know nothing about no baby. Of course, I made her pay me a hundred nuyen before I mentioned it.”

“What did she say?”

“At first, the ungrateful slitch didn’t believe me. I couldn’t believe it. When she was eight or ten, when she didn’t have a home because her mom was in the lockup, I gave her my home to live at. And her not even mine, and a trog-baby to boot. Till her dad and me split up that last time.”

“Deja is a troll?” Skater asked.

Kalika Chilson buttered more bread, lathering it on heavy and making final adjustments with a forefinger. “Sure. So was her father, but I didn’t mind so much because he had an income. Deja was just another mouth to feed. Her mother was human. Thought she was going to be human too, for a time. She goblinized at puberty—during the time I had her. It was nasty, I’ll tell you right now. You never want to put up with the grief that UGE drek brings on.” UGE was unexplained genetic expression, by which elves, trolls, dwarfs, and orks had been reintroduced into the world as magic returned. Usually, UGE manifested itself in children at the onset of puberty.

Puberty didn’t agree with Kalika Chilson’s estimate of Deja being eight or ten years old. Skater mentally adjusted Deja’s age up.

“Why was she asking about the baby?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m trying to get a lead on Deja,” Skater said, knowing he was getting close to over-playing his hand. “What I’m after is the money.”

The statement caught the woman’s attention. “Money?”

“She owes me some money,” Skater lied. It was one of the most believable fictions in the sprawl, but it was almost nearly the biggest truth. Everybody owed money, and most people scrambled when they had trouble paying it back, leaving bounty men and enforcers stringing in their wake.

“Is there a finder’s fee?” the woman asked.

As Skater examined the weathered, seamed face, he wondered what Larisa’s early years were like. “If you come across with the information, you’ll get it now. If you give me drek, I guess you’ve got a free bowl of Voodoo Chili.”

Kalika Chilson’s expression showed how much she under-appreciated that. “Last I heard, Deja had a job with one of the megacorps. She was a dataslave for Renraku, I think.”

Skater took that in and bounced it around mentally. A Renraku tie would bring even more heat down on the team. With Fuchi and Renraku looking for them—if it came to that—there wouldn’t be many shadows left in the sprawl to hide in. “She ever mention anything about her work?”

“We don’t talk,” the woman said. “But she got the information from me for only a hundred nuyen. What does that tell you?”

Skater shrugged, leaving it for the woman to say.

“It means she ain’t doing very good for herself these days,” Kalika Chilson snorted. “Even convinced me of that.”

“How?”

“She came to see me,” she said. “If Deja had really been holding all the chips, she’d have had me up to her apartment or her office. People holding all the nuyen, slot, they like to show it off if they have the chance. Make you feel intimidated standing there in front of them.”

“So her coming to see you—” Skater prompted.

“Meant she didn’t want me to come see her, and maybe see that she ain’t got it quite as good as she’d like someone else to believe.” Kalika Chilson looked wistfully at Skater’s untouched chili bowl.

Skater pushed the bowl toward her.

The woman moved her empty one out of the way and started eating again. “After she left, kvetching about the hundred nuyen she dropped on me, I called up Pauletta Coulter. One of the biggest gossips in the neighborhood. Her daughter used to be on friendly terms with Deja, though Larisa never cared for her. Turns out her daughter is still working for the megacorp Deja worked at.”

“Worked?” Skater asked.

The woman nodded and ran a biscuit through the chili, soaking it thoroughly. “Deja got drek-canned almost three weeks ago. No severance. No continuation of bennies. Flat out on her hoop.” She grinned lopsidedly, without any real humor. “So if you’re looking for money, it sounds like you’re pretty much slotted.”

The waitress approached with their bill.

Skater glanced at it quickly, like the money really made any sense to him, and slotted his credstick, adding a tip. The waitress thanked him with a polite smile and retreated.

Below the table, he counted out nuyen notes. Dropping five-hundred nuyen into a blank envelope, he passed it across the table to Kalika Chilson. Maybe he was being generous, and maybe it was because she was Emma’s grandmother. He didn’t know.

The woman pulled the envelope out of view on her side of the table and laboriously worked through the counting of it. She took the folded notes in one hand, then slipped it up under her shirt and into a pouch that evidently hung from a leather thong around her neck. “Let me know if I can help you any more.”

Skater nodded and pushed up from the seat.

“You two wouldn’t be willing to split a cab, would you?” she asked. “Maybe save a little nuyen on the fare?”

“No,” Duran growled before Skater could answer.

“Slot,” the woman grumbled. “I was just asking.”

25

Skater and Duran entered Lordstrung’s Department Store on Fifth Avenue and Pine Street at 14:21:03. The coming meeting with Vankler, a mercenary broker who’d worked with Luppas, had Skater tense. Duran had set up the meet, and from the accounts he gave, Vankler wasn’t a man to cross.

They weren’t going in alone, though. Wheeler and Elvis had already gone into the Ork Underground ahead of them and staked out Maxine’s, the bar where Vankler had announced the meeting would be held. Archangel and Trey were following behind, only a couple of blocks away. All of them were carrying weapons.

The department store held a number of people shifting through the racks of clothing and stalking the aisles of furniture, humansized as well as troll-sized. None of them gave him or Duran a second glance. The Ork Underground drew all kinds.

No one had planned the Ork Underground, and there was still plenty of political pressure in the Seattle sprawl to get rid of it. The foundation had been laid in the nineteenth century, after a fire had razed Seattle. Instead of rebuilding, the city planners simply established new buildings on top of the old ones, leaving dozens of empty basements buried under the sprawl.

In the early years after UGE had begun to manifest, orks, trolls, and dwarfs had taken to the underground and begun building their own subterranean city, connecting the myriad spaces by tunnels. Eventually, the dwarfs had had a falling out with the orks, packed up their tools, and left. But they left behind ornate friezes and craftsmanship that were rare and beautiful to behold.

Lone Star hadn’t been able to properly police the Ork Underground, as it came to be called, and criminals had moved into the area as well. As things stood now, the Ork Underground was the largest black market bazaar in the sprawl, and one whose secrets were guarded by nearly every man, woman, and child living there.

As such, Skater couldn’t have thought of a better place for Vankler’s meeting. The mercenary broker would be in the center of his web.

Skater took a left at the customer service desk in Lord-strung’s and walked toward one of the building’s basement doors. Plain and somber at ground level, the doors masked a heavy blast-proof core. He went down the plascrete steps, striped in yellow and black so they became easily visible.

Below ground level, the stairway widened out into a generous corridor. Track lighting illuminated the way, hanging on the walls as well as the ceiling nearly four meters overhead. Intervals between the track lighting held advertisements for various shops and businesses in the Underground. Smells of meat-heavy cooking filled the cycled air, peppered through with the cut of the air-conditioning it took to cool the Underground. The rumble of voices, mostly ork, created a constant undercurrent of noise trapped between the walls of the Underground.

Skater was at once conscious of the wall that went up between him and most of the orks he encountered. Prejudice wasn’t an expression or trait solely owned by humans. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead, not meeting anyone’s gaze.

“ ’S okay, chummer,” Duran growled. “Got me here with you.”

“I used to feel comfortable coming here,” Skater said. “Larisa and I liked to spend time down here, browsing through the shops. She loved the carvings.”

“Times change,” the ork replied. “Human policlubs have been gaining new members for some time. Ork sympathy toward other races died nearly overall when Dunkelzahn was assassinated. Maybe if they could find out who did it, things wouldn’t be the way they are.”

“The policlubs would have caused pressure anyway,” Skater said. His vision annoyed him. Getting fed two different receptions, one through his flesh and blood eye, and the other through the Yamatetsu cybereye that had already adjusted to the change in lighting, he found his depth perception was seriously impaired. The effect was something he’d noticed before, but wired as he was on adrenaline it was more noticeable now.

“A lot of orks didn’t care much for Dunkelzahn anyway,” Duran said. “They figured he was slowly selling the metas out. Guess we’ll never know now.”

The ork took the lead. Skater ghosted along at his companion’s left elbow nearly a full step back. They knifed through the hallways, skin tones changing as the neon lights splashed across them. With all the plascrete surrounding them, the whisper of shoe soles across the pavement reminded Skater of a quick-running stream. The sound remained a constant.

The aroma of meats filled the corridors as they twisted and turned through the Underground, mixing in with spices and the odor of a dozen different woods burning. All of the Underground restaurants were linked to a ventilation system that sucked the smoke out away from the sprawl into the Sound.

The Underground had a lot of short, broken streets that gradually led inward.

“Ever been to Maxine’s?” Duran asked as they turned another corner.

Skater shook his head.

They crossed another path, passing underneath one of the first filigreed arches the dwarfs and orks had constructed when taking over the Underground. Instead of plascrete, a dome of carved rock occupied the space above them, making Skater suddenly feel small. Before the Underground had started going commercial, before the orks had hosed off the dwarfs and chased them from the place, the early constructions had been works of art.

Maxine’s Bar and Grill occupied the corner of the next intersection. The neon lights showed nude metawomen shimmying and shaking across the front of the bar. The wide double doors showed up in the neon design as a dressing screen that the neon nudes cavorted from on either side.

Skater accessed the Crypto-Circuit in the Commlink IV and whispered over the internal mike. “Elvis.”

“Here, omae,” the big troll answered. “I’ve got my eye on you two. Wheeler and I are already in Maxine’s.”

“Security inside the building is heavy,” Wheeler said. “They’re running deep on tech and flesh and blood. More than I’d expect for a simple meet and greet.”

“However,” Archangel interjected smoothly, “Vankler is aware that Luppas is involved. By virtue of that, it would be in his best interests to assume Fuchi is as well.”

Skater silently agreed with the elven decker. She gave her and Trey’s location as only a few meters behind Duran and Skater, making them easily able to close rapidly if needed.

Skater followed Duran as they walked across the passage. Maxine’s also benefited from the architecture. Ornate friezes covered walls around the intersection, depicting some of the history of the building of the Underground as well as tragic scenes from the Night of Rage.

“Company,” Duran growled.

Skater ran his gaze over the dozen men who stepped from a biotech outlet store across the intersection from Maxine’s. The leader was a tall ork with polished fangs who looked like a poster model of ork dental hygiene. He wore biker leathers scarred from abuse, but repaired as much as was possible.

Duran stopped in the middle of the street and kept his hands spread slightly away from his sides. Skater did the same. The ork passersby, definite citizens of the community, recognized what was going down and hastened to put distance between themselves and the two parties.

“Duran,” the leader said.

“Tyr,” Duran acknowledged.

Skater picked up the resonance of the exchange, knowing the two men shared a history that wasn’t amiable.

“It’s been a long time,” Tyr said. “Surprised to see you’re still alive. We don’t hear much about you these days.”

Duran just returned the man’s gaze.

“Take their weapons,” Tyr said to his crew. “All of them.”

As Skater handed over his Predator, he noticed the two Ork Underground police members lounging in the shadows at the end of the block-long tunnel. Evidently Vankler had already purchased whatever official sanction he needed for the meeting.

“He’s clean,” one of them said.

Three other members worked at relieving Duran of weapons. Skater had counted nine so far, three pistols and an assortment of garrotes, blades, and throwing items with deadly edges or points. Two of them Skater had never seen before. They ran a portable cyberware scanner over Duran three times, but the loop never bleeped a warning.

Satisfied, Tyr ordered his men to take them to Maxine’s. Skater followed Duran’s lead, not saying anything as they entered the bar, but his adrenaline level had his senses working overtime and his heart thumping solidly in his chest.

26

Skater sat at the big round synthmahogany table tucked away in a back corner of Maxine’s. All around him in the bar, razored klashce music imported by way of Jamaica hammered into the dark, featureless walls grimed by the constant use of nicosticks and pipes. The smell of barbecue overrode all other odors, but those of synthwhiskey and beer cut their paths through the montage of scents.

To the right, three runways held strippers. The middle one stood on a raised dais, visible from any point in the club. The other two runways bisected the audience into wings, fantasy on the half-shell segregating the rowdy crowd. The dancers were elves, trolls, humans, orks, and dwarfs, and the bump and grind movements were ripped from ages-old sexual impulses. Mirrors lighted the wall behind the main stage, giving more depth to the crowded room. Cat-calls and risqué cheers followed the beat of the music and the swish of hips.

“Long time, Quint,” Vankler said in a gravely growl. It was hard to judge his height with him sitting down, but Skater figured the ork was half a head shorter than him, probably a whole head shorter than Duran. But where height was a genetic washout, broadness was definitely overstated. Vankler’s shoulders were almost as broad in relation to the rest of his body as a dwarfs.

“Long time,” Duran agreed.

Vankler wore casual Vashon Island corduroy slacks and an open-throated olive Oxford. A tie hung smoothly over the shoulder of a blazer hanging from a peg on the wall behind him. His broad, generous face carried a number of scars that hadn’t quite washed out from reconstruction or faded over the years. The lower right canine, two fangs in front of it, and the four behind were all too perfect and white to be anything but prosthesis work. He wore his hair brushed back in a pompadour style. Eyebrows bulged over a shelf of bone above his hard, cold eyes.

“We’ve been down some mean streets together, Quint,” Vankler said. “Been places where a lot of chummers never get to. We’ve seen the behemoth up close and lived to tell the tale.”

“At the time, we thought we had to go down them. Living through things gives a chummer a new perspective.”

Vankler summoned one of the topless waitresses, who hurriedly refreshed the drinks all around. “Can I offer you anything?” Vankler asked Duran.

Duran appeared to give it consideration. “Buffalo wings, if Chen’s still around.”

Vankler smiled, and this time Skater saw honest feeling in the man’s eyes. “She is.” He added the order to the waitress, then switched his attention to Skater. “Did Quint tell you we shared a history?”

“He probably thought it wasn’t pertinent,” Skater answered.

“Probably did,” Vankler agreed. “He always was a closemouthed son of a slitch. A number of clients paid for him for that reason, though. We did biz together for a time. Risked our hoops, and maybe had our hands on some big-time nuyen. Of course, back in those days it spent as easily as it came. That was when we did the work ourselves.”

He spread his hands and gestured around the room. “Now I don’t have to take all the risks myself.” The waitress returned bearing two large woven baskets of buffalo wings with different glazes. She also put out a stack of small saucers.

“We had quite the biz going on,” Vankler said. “Rolling numbers constantly in the black no matter how much we spent. An important clientele list that numbered the economically elite in this sprawl and in Cal Free. Then, a wiz piece of biz went down all wrong. Some of our people got geeked. Quint nearly ended up with a toe tag himself. Some of the ones who got flatlined were chummers. Or, let’s say as close to him as he lets anyone get. He got it in his head that I was responsible and took off.”

“Old biz,” Duran said softly. “We got new biz now.” He reached into the baskets of buffalo wings and took out a half-dozen pieces, putting them on the saucer in front of him.

Skater felt the tension clouding over the table. Even with the raucous music in the background and the nude dancers gyrating on the stages within easy sight, the by-play between Duran and Vankler held everyone’s attention. He missed the feel of the Predator at his side.

“Jack,” Archangel called softly over the commlink. “Yeah,” Skater replied, covering his mouth with his hand to mask his response.

“Vankler’s people are closing off the exits.”

Skater shifted slightly in his chair, twisting so he could see Duran as well as take in the mirrors behind the stage. The ork caught his eye briefly, following the glance with a short nod. In the mirrors, Skater barely made out the shifting shapes of more sec-guards threading through the crowd, closing off the two exits to the passages through the Ork Underground as well as the three carved stairways that curled up into the upper rooms. His stomach spasmed. “Stay frosty,” he said over the commlink. “We’re deep into this one. We’ll see how it plays out.” The sick feeling in his stomach told him he probably already had it figured, though.

“Kylar Luppas,” Duran said. He gnawed flesh from a buffalo wing, then deliberately cracked the bone and sucked the marrow from it. He kept eating, but his eyes never left Vankler’s.

“You have the credstick?”

Duran smeared the grease from his fingers with a paper napkin, then passed a certified credstick over.

“He’s with Fuchi,” Vankler confirmed. “Black ops. Just like you figured.”

“What’s he working on?”

Vankler shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What does Luppas usually work on for Fuchi?”

“Wetwork. Close-cover. Watch-over. Extractions. Anything particularly messy, potentially a drain on the Fuchi coffers, or that requires a heavy hand combined with a fine touch. Fuchi gets guaranteed exclusivity.”

“But Luppas takes work on the side,” Duran said.

“Not himself. Rather, you might say he subcontracts it to his own people.”

“Who does Luppas report to at Fuchi?” Duran asked. “Miles Lanier,” Vankler said as he lit a cigar. “Though I’ve heard a rumor that may be changing.”

Skater filed that fact away. He knew of Miles Lanier. The man was a legend among runners because of the sec work he’d done to protect Fuchi from data thieves. Any change among the status quo of Fuchi was worth serious nuyen.

“If Lanier’s out of the loop, who does Luppas report to?”

“Who else, my man? Richard Villiers himself.”

“You ever get a feel for what Luppas is working on?” Duran asked.

Vankler laughed his sputtering Harley laugh again. “That would be drekking paranoid, wouldn’t it? Not to mention fragging risky. Luppas is not a joker you’d want to slot around.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Duran said. “You got the information I asked for regarding Luppas?”

Vankler reached into the jacket on the peg behind him and brought out a glassine envelope. Ironically, a Fuchi-made Disk Protek covered the disk inside the envelope. He placed the envelope on the table and pushed it across. The glassine slid easily.

When Duran made no effort to reach out for the envelope, Skater took it and tucked it away. The hard-driving music changed again, the brief lull allowing the excited male and female voices to slam into the sudden void, then they were washed away by the next set. The new girls taking their places on the stage upped the ante with a hard-grinding burlesque that drew a snowfall of nuyen notes onto the stages.

“Then,” Duran said, his eyes fixed on Vankler, “I guess we’re done with this biz.”

And in that split-second, Skater felt the full measure of the danger they’d stepped into suddenly come spilling down around them. Almost like a group organism guided by nuclear magnetic resonance devices, Vankler’s yabos closed in, tightening the circle.

“Not completely,” Vankler said. He leaned back in his chair and dropped one hand below the edge of the table. Duran left his hands on the table. “ ’Sup?”

Skater felt ice cold claws scrape along his spine, digging in tight for a nanosecond, then slithering on.

“Now it gets putrid,” Elvis said over the closed loop of the commlink. “Hang on, chummers, I’m on my way.”

“If you can’t do it safely,” Skater instructed subvocally, “leave it and buzz turbo. Not all of us have to go down now. Maybe we can make our own way out.”

“No way, Jack,” Archangel said. “Luppas isn’t the type to leave a job half-done.”

“No truer words spoken,” Trey agreed.

“We all get out of here,” Wheeler said. “Our only shot of getting clear is to do it as a team.”

Skater forced his breath out, keeping the oxygen flow going.

“Biz,” Vankler answered Duran. “You paid me for information on Luppas. I’ve got a vested interest in the man.”

“Your piece of his biz,” Duran said.

Vankler shook his head and stoked the cigar again. “That’s something to protect, but not everything. I figure you for the biz that went down at Shastakovich’s Funeral Home last night. If Fuchi has Luppas involved, we’re talking about a serious score. Can’t let that pass me by.”

Still relaxed, a loose smile playing with his thin lips, Duran said, “I should be used to you selling me out by now.” He paused. “You’ve got a problem, though.”

Vankler looked amused. “How do you figure?”

“I came here today waiting to see this score go down like this.”

Vankler spread his hands, entertaining his group. Still, Skater noted the tension filling the man. Duran was probably the single most dangerous man he knew. Even Elvis, with all his rolling Amie-Awesome cyberware, wasn’t as coldly methodical as Quint Duran when events came down to the killing ground.

“So what are you going to tell me?” Vankler asked sarcastically. “That you’ve got a cortex bomb in your brainbox with enough bang to post this table as a memory? That you’ve got a Judas switch punked up in your pinkie?”

“No,” Duran stated quietly. “But you know me. You know I never walk into a situation I don’t think I can walk out of. You want to bet I’m wrong this time?”

“He’s flapping his lips,” Tyr commented harshly. “Sounds like pure spew to me.” His pistol was in his hand.

Duran grinned, and there was nothing friendly or humorous about the expression. “Your call, Vankler.”

The tension filled the immediate vicinity despite the augmented strains of music blasting the club. Under his Kevlar-lined jacket, Skater was sweating. Emma was at the safehouse, watched over by two of Elvis’s friends who had instructions to turn to fog if they didn’t make their check-in times. He felt confident his daughter would be safe no matter how this went down.

Skater tried to relax and think, but there was no way and no time.

Duran exploded into action a heartbeat ahead of Skater, and everything went to frag, the strum and drang once more bursting lose.

27

Skater threw himself from the chair into a diving roll. Before his outflung hand touched the floor, a silenced SMG belched a rage of bullets that smashed the chair into pieces. He dropped and rolled, boosted reflexes moving in response to his survival instinct.

Hooking a foot behind the heel of the yabo nearest him, Skater rammed his other foot against the man’s knee from the side. It only required seven or eight kilograms of pressure to break a regular flesh and blood knee, considerably more if the knee was augmented. Skater’s kick exceeded the tolerances for both.

Bone shattered inside the joint. Shards of ivory and metal reinforcements slashed through the skin and clothing in an explosion of blood. The wounded man shrieked as he came down.

Duran’s hands flashed. The speed and skill that he possessed turned the broken chicken bones he’d gathered before him into deadly weapons. Splintered stumps of ivory jutted from an eye of the man to Vankler’s left, penetrating to the brain.

The yabo grabbed at the bone shard protruding from his eye, but it was buried so deep and covered by so much blood that he couldn’t get it out before death claimed him. He dropped into the men near him, throwing them all off balance. Other men cried out as well, hit in the faces, throats, and eyes by other impromptu darts Duran had made.

Still, the ork hadn’t been able to put all the combatants out of commission. From point-blank distance, bullets and flechettes slammed into his bulletproof clothing. Knocked off his feet, Duran went down.

Unwounded yabos poured from around their wounded compatriots yelling for blood, pulling weapons into view. Pandemonium erupted over Maxine’s, underscored by the razored music blasting from the macrospeakers.

Skater pushed himself into motion again, diving for the man whose leg he’d broken. The man writhed, one hand grabbing for his shattered leg while the other maintained a death grip on his SMG.

A bullet hit Skater high on his left shoulder, blocked by the Kevlar-weave of his jacket. He ignored the pain and grabbed for the SMG, prying it loose. Wrapping his free hand in the yabo’s clothing, he rolled, pulling the screaming man over on top of him as more of Vankler’s people opened fire.

By the time the bullets caught up to him, Skater was under the man. He felt the vibrations of the gunfire slam into the yabo. The street samurai reached for Skater’s face with a fistfull of razors gleaming from his fingertips as Skater raised the SMG and raked an arc of withering death at the man nearest him.

Before the yabo had a chance to sink his finger razors into Skater’s eyes, a bullet cored through the back of his head and blew through his forehead. Blood sprayed over Skater as the man quivered and flatlined, whatever cyber-circuitry melded to his nervous system shorting out as life left him.

Skater rolled from under the dead man, the SMG up in his fist chattering and jerking like a move-by-wire system gone spastic. The slide blew back empty without warning and locked.

Vankler moved up from the table, dodging back and trying to bring out his pistol.

“Quint!” Skater called over the commlink.

“Here, kid.” The ork twitched to life again, moving sluggishly by normal standards, but still fragging quick next to his opponents. His empty hands flicked out, grabbing two men nearest him and breaking body parts with audible snaps, converting them into human shields and roadblocks to create distance from the other yabos closing in. “Don’t get your shorts in a wad.” He sounded out of breath, but otherwise intact. Blood smeared his face, staining implacable features.

Elvis arrived almost unnoticed. The big troll slammed a body block into the knot of orks surging for Duran, bowling them down. Still moving, he cleared men from Duran with bone-cracking swings of his huge fists.

“Fragging trog!” a yabo bellowed, bringing an SMG up.

Elvis moved instinctively, stepping in and slightly to one side. The stream of bullets whizzed past him, sparking tracer fire. The big troll shook his right hand out, freeing a pair of forearm snap blades. He swiped the blades forward, and the yabo’s head went rolling across the floor wearing the last look of astonishment that would ever be required of it.

A group of men gathered from the nearby tables, weapons appearing instantly. Shoving the corpse from him, Skater ran a hand along the yabo’s body next to him and found spare clips for the SMG in the joker’s pockets. He shoved one home, yelling a warning to Duran and Elvis about the gathering crowd.

Before the words were fully out of his mouth, the knot of men were thrown backward. Skater expected to hear the concussion of the grenade that blew them off their feet a moment later. Instead, only the sounds of their groans and screams reached him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Cullen Trey moving toward them, his hands weaving intricate gestures.

“I thought perhaps a little breathing room was in order,” Trey said over the commlink. “Things were looking tight.”

“Jack,” Wheeler said. “We’ve got to move. Trapped in the Underground like this, if Vankler’s got any contacts with the Star, we could be fragged. They could cover the topside in minutes.”

Skater forced himself to his feet as a tri-burst of bullets hammered against his chest. If he hadn’t been moving, the rounds would have torn his head from his shoulders. He squeezed the trigger and cut down a pair of yabos standing near Vankler. He swung the SMG to cover Vankler.

Gripping the table, Vankler threw it toward Skater, creating a momentary shield.

Adrenaline powering his system, the boosted reflexes kicking in instantly, Skater braced himself and caught the thrown table against his forearm. Sharp pain sheared through his left elbow at the impact. Staggered back by the weight and the force, he tried to bring the SMG to bear again.

Vankler shouted orders at his men as he retreated toward the back of the bar. Yabos, guided by Tyr, firmed up a new skirmish line that took advantage of the tavern terrain. Before they had time to use their position to their advantage, Wheeler cut loose with a prolonged blast from an SMG that broke their ranks and sent most of them scrambling for cover.

Shoving the pain in his elbow away, Skater launched himself in pursuit of Vankler. He cut through the broken yabo line like a combat biker streaking for the finish line in the final seconds of a competition.

Skater vaulted over the prone body, then jumped a pair of overturned chairs. Everything was happening very fast, his senses in overdrive. He was grimly aware that Elvis and Duran had set up a back-to-back defense against the gathering of yabos. A captured knife gleamed in Duran’s hand, the blade long enough to qualify it as a short sword. He held a pistol in the other hand.

Vankler’s lead had allowed him to reach the other side of the squared-off bar. Two more yabos stood in the back, holding open a door equipped with a maglock. They leveled their weapons and fired around their employer.

Dodging to the side, Skater vaulted onto the synthpecan finish of the bar, sliding along the polished surface. The bullets shattered bottles and plastiglasses on the shelves behind the bar. Some of the plastiglass along the bar shattered when rounds struck them; the rest broke and tumbled away as Skater slid along the bar.

He squeezed off rounds that made the SMG quiver in his fist. The yabo to Vankler’s left went down, twisting in a violent pirouette as the bullets shuddered against him. Then Skater was all out of bartop and plunging to the floor. He landed awkwardly, a tipped chair knocking hell out of his ribs when he went down, but he recovered quickly.

Vankler was only a handful of meters from the heavy sec-door when Archangel moved out of the crowd of dancers who were trying to get through the exit door behind the stage. She held her Ares Light Fire 70 in both hands. She’d dressed in black for the night, but her alabaster skin and platinum blond hair stood out against it. She looked like a vengeful wraith, her face sharp and expressionless, almond eyes narrow.

The yabo guarding the door tried to turn quickly enough to defend his employer.

Archangel shot the yabo squarely between the eyes once as the man brought his weapon around. Before the high-pitched crack of the Light Fire 70 died away, the yabo tumbled to the floor.

Vankler raised his weapon and fired at Archangel.

Fear filled Skater as she disappeared from sight behind the big ork’s bulk. He levered himself to his feet, crying out and cursing with the pain that pulsed along his injured arm.

Vankler’s SMG ripped through another short burst. Skater felt certain the rounds had punched holes in Archangel. Vankler had been too close to miss. A growl ripped free from his throat as he closed the distance. The captured SMG was in his hand, extended before him, laser sight touching the back of Vankler’s head, kissing it with a lethal ruby dot.

Then Vankler’s head jerked sideways, blood spewing from his cracked lips. The ork’s legs looked like they’d suddenly turned to rubber.

Another step and Vankler collapsed, then Skater found himself staring at Archangel across the prone man. The roaring rush of anxiety that had filled his ears decreased pressure.

Unhurried, though her beautiful face was a tight mask of tension, she knelt and screwed the business end of her pistol into Vankler’s triangular-shaped ear. At her quiet insistence, he released his weapon. Archangel looked up at Skater. “Help me get him back on his feet,” she said.

Transferring the SMG to his other hand so he could use his good arm in the task, Skater gripped the back of Vankler’s collar and yanked the man to his feet. Archangel’s pistol never wavered from its position.

When Skater joined her, coming into Vankler’s view, he saw the fight go out of the big ork. “Tell your men to step down. Now!”

Vankler bellowed out the command, freezing his men into position around the tavern. Tables and chairs lay in scattered pieces over the floor. Mirrored shards tumbled in careless abandon behind the stage area. The canned music kept cycling, a vicious backbeat to the strobing neon lights coming from overhead.

Skater felt a hot tendril of blood seep down the side of his face, only now registering the dulled throb of the wound along the side of his head, but not remembering when or where he’d acquired it. He moved his weapon meaningfully over the yabos, who maintained their defensive postures. Getting out of the Underground was still going to be a wiz feat.

Slowly, Duran and Elvis disengaged from the hand-to-hand brawl the battle had become in their immediate vicinity. Both of them had to step over the unmoving dead and the moaning wounded. Blood spotted their clothing, too much of it to be all their own while they remained standing.

“I’ll take him,” Elvis rumbled when he came up beside Archangel. He fisted Vankler’s neck easily in one huge paw, the gleaming edges of the snap blades only millimeters from vulnerable skin.

Archangel stepped away, keeping her pistol in both hands. The barrel never wavered from Vankler’s face. “If anything bad happens, you’re going to be the first one to get iced.”

Keeping the SMG leveled, taking his Predator back from Duran, Skater moved tensely for the club’s front door. A quick glance outside let him know a crowd had already gathered in the passageway. He cursed with real feeling, fear adding to his creativity. “We’ve pegged the needle on this one,” he said over the commlink. He ran the Underground’s logistics through his head. “We’re not far from the exit at Big Rhino’s. We could try for it.”

“I got a back door slotted, omae,” Duran said.

“Now would be the time,” Trey said with a hint of trepidation in his casual tone, “to jander out in that direction.” Duran took point and Skater automatically fell in as left wing. Archangel took up the right. Elvis brought Vankler along while Wheeler and Cullen Trey covered their retreat.

28

The team of shadowrunners moved through the passages of the Ork Underground quickly, keeping their weapons in their fists and out of sight as much as possible. The crowds in the passages were out in force, flowing from shop to shop and starting the early rounds of the taverns.

“Here,” Duran growled, cutting to the right into a small antique shop. The door opened with a shove and shuddered into the wall, banging loudly.

Skater followed the ork through the door. The air was heavy and thick with the smell of incense, almost nauseating with the sickly sweet of it. Shelves lined the walls, filled with books, vases, knickknacks, and other items that someone had classified as valuable.

A hard-faced ork dressed in a loud Hawaiian shirt covered with jalapeno-green parrots wearing Panama hats came up from the back. He wiped at his hands with a paint-and varnish-stained towel.

“Turn into ice!” Duran ordered, leveling his weapon.

The ork came to a stop immediately and threw his hands into the air, the stained rag flying suddenly at half-mast. “I’m chill,” the man said. “I’m not going to do nothing you don’t say to do.” Paint chips flecked his short beard.

After stepping into the antique shop, Wheeler and Trey took up positions on either side of the door. Elvis kicked over a wicker chair that had seen better days but still had a serviceable frame that could handle a fair amount of abuse. Wheeler caught the chair before it came to a halt and slid it under the door, jamming it tight.

Vankler reached up for Elvis’s arm, trying to ease the pressure at his neck, but the big troll shook his head.

Falling into place to one side of the small plastiglass window overlooking the passageway outside, Skater made himself into a small target behind the window frame. Archangel flanked him on the other side, taking up a position behind a counter that was backed by a stone slab that had been artificed into shape with crude tools.

“I’m looking for the boss,” Duran said, keeping his weapon on the paint-and varnish-splattered ork.

“That’s me,” the shopkeeper said. “But I don’t know you. There’s no reason you should have trouble for me.”

“No trouble,” Duran growled, “as long as you show us the back way out of this place.”

“Sure, sure,” the ork said. “No reason nobody should get hurt, right?” He led the way into the back of the shop, past tables covered with many different items in various stages of disarray. Shelves held an assortments of putties, glues, and varnishes, as well as a kiln. Evidently the shop’s antiques didn’t happen without a lot of work.

“The door’s behind here,” the shopkeeper said. He shoved a floor-to-ceiling file cabinet to one side, revealing a narrow doorway behind it. He pushed it open to reveal carved stone steps chopped out of the earth leading up, corkscrewing around to take up less space.

“Where does it go?” Duran moved forward, taking a pocket flash out and shining it into the opening.

“To a warehouse near the docks.”

“Whose warehouse?” Archangel asked.

The shopkeeper shrugged. “It’s rental space on a contractual basis. Crews only show up there when there’s an overflow of deliveries. The word I get is that it’s been rented out to an elven company from the Tir for the next month, but they haven’t taken occupation yet.”

“What about security?” Skater asked.

“There isn’t any the last I heard,” the ork said. “Just the goons the local chapters put together to rattle the doors occasionally.”

“Jack,” Wheeler called. “The drekheads outside are getting antsy. I just spotted a couple of them moving into the shops on either side of us.”

Running the situation through his mind, Skater scanned the angles. The ventilation ductwork over his head caught his attention. “They’ve got a way in,” he said, pointing. “The whole underground’s honeycombed with ventilation. Only the most sec-conscious places are going to have defenses.”

“Then I suggest we avail ourselves of the opportunity we have facing us,” Cullen Trey said. “Post haste.”

Duran nodded. “In a minute.” He crossed the distance to Elvis and shoved the snout of his weapon under Vankler’s jaw. “I want to chat with this son of a slitch for a moment.”

“Wheeler,” Skater said. “Start us up.”

Wheeler vanished into the doorway, followed by Trey and Archangel.

Skater waved Elvis away as well. “We don’t have a lot of time, Duran.” He stared at Duran’s hard face, wondering if he was going to geek Vankler then and there. He knew he didn’t stand a chance of preventing it if that was what Duran wanted to do.

“Nothing personal going on here, kid,” Duran said. “Nothing for you to worry about. This is strictly biz.”

Skater relaxed somewhat. Duran was nothing if not a pro. “Talk to me, Vankler,” the ork said. “You held back on us, just like you held back on Luppas. You tried to hot-dog it and take us down when we walked in to you. What were you thinking about? Cutting a deal with Luppas for our hoops?”

“Go frag yourself,” Vankler snarled.

Without the slightest bit of warning, Duran rammed an elbow into Vankler’s face.

The yabo chief’s head snapped backward, bouncing off the stone wall behind him. He bellowed in pain.

“This is biz,” Duran said in a hard voice as he moved into position behind Vankler so the man couldn’t easily hit him from below. “You know how I get over biz. You can hose me off, chances are I’ll let you live. But if I need something from you and you won’t give it, I’ll ice you where you’re standing.”

Vankler made gagging noises. “All right, all right.” He smeared at his jaw with his hand, pulling it away covered with blood. His voice was thinner now, no longer as strong or as cocky.

“What is Luppas looking for?” Duran asked.

“Joker named Norris Caber.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know.”

Duran hit Vankler in the side of the head. The impact was meaty, but not loud enough or long enough to cover the sound of someone crawling through the ventilation. Skater heard the hushed whisper of tense voices too.

“What I got,” Vankler groaned, “is a tie between a joker named Coleman January and Norris Caber. Turns out maybe they’re the same guy. You heard about the raid on that funeral home last night, right?”

“Get on with it,” Duran ordered.

Skater peered intently at the air duct, counting off the seconds in his mind and pushing away the tension that threatened to fill him.

“The last few days,” Vankler said, “Luppas has been interested in Norris Caber. Just finding an address on the guy, right? I figured the joker was SINless, that had to be the reason it was so hard to do a locate on him. Then I turned up the fact that Caber worked for Fuchi. At least, once upon a time, like the story goes. He dropped out of sight months ago, with no reason why. This morning, one of my contacts in DocWagon—a slag who gets me the skinny on a wetware target from time to time when she can—tells me about the situation at Shastakovich’s.”

“What situation?” Skater asked.

“The body that disappeared. The trid snoops haven’t said anything about it yet, so I’m guessing maybe they still don’t know. But my contact told me this dead guy, Coleman January, popped up on their scramble screens as Caber.”

“So what interested you?” Skater asked.

“The January slag,” Vankler said. “There’s been street buzz through the sprawl lately about a joker who can take a top exec from a corp, defuse any cortex bombs the slag’s wired with, and get him back into a productive mode within days. Anybody who can deck their way through that kind of encoded deltaware can name his price.”

“And street buzz names this guy as Coleman January?”

“I caught his name in the last few weeks as a joker to maybe do business with. The bottom line was that if he wasn’t the guy, then he knew the guy who was.”

A small fog of dust belched out of the vent in the center of the shop’s back room. Skater lifted his SMG instantly and fired. Rounds struck sparks from the plasteel as they punched through.

A man’s scream suddenly filled the small room only an instant before a body crashed through the ceiling tiles, leaving a huge hole. An avalanche of ancient dust cascaded down, making it look like a smoke grenade had gone off.

“Time to go,” Skater told Duran as the falling body slammed into the beveled stone floor.

The ork gave him a tight nod and clubbed Vankler’s skull, knocking him out. Duran opened his fingers and let the unconscious man drop. “Go. I got the back door.”

Skater didn’t argue. A line of bullets from a yabo still in the ductwork suddenly chattered to life and chopped miniature wooden furniture, jewelry boxes, and glassware into pieces. Skater grabbed the door frame and pulled himself around and up the steps, driving his feet hard against them. The blackness inside the passage was complete until he triggered his infrared vision. Even that, though, was fogged over by the dust rapidly filling the tunnel from the action below.

He tried not to breathe as he ran, afraid his lungs would fill up with the airborne debris. Archangel waited on him at the other end, a look of concern on her delicate face.

“Drek hit the pot down there,” Skater said, coming up out of the hole in the ground. Around him, broken blocks of ancient concrete and pavement, strands of rusted barbed wire, splintered two-by-fours, and shattered glass covered the ravaged earth. The dank smell of mold flooded his nostrils.

“There’s a door here.” Archangel pointed.

Duran erupted from the hole in the ground, the sounds of men echoing after him. “Move. They’re not going to hesitate long about following us up.”

Skater followed Archangel, dropping the SMG and drawing the Predator. Out on the street, the pistol would be easier to keep hidden. They rushed through the rectangle with Duran on their heels. Once outside, Skater took a deep breath, smelling the brine from Elliot Bay.

The opening let them out into an alley that was overgrown with weeds and grass creeping up between the broken asphalt. Twenty meters down, the alley let out onto a small side street that ran between rows of warehouses. Ten meters in the other direction, the alley dead-ended against a sagging plastiwire fence with gaping holes.

Elvis and Trey had already flanked the mouth of the alley.

Synthrubber shrilled out on the street, swinging wide around the corner. Headlights flared into the alley, stripping away the darkness.

Skater brought up the Predator automatically, instinctively cutting out the infrared vision. A battered Landrover shrieked to a stop with its nose pointed into the alley, the headlights not lined up true any more. On the other side of the bug-spattered windshield, Wheeler sat behind the steering column.

“Let’s go, chummers,” the dwarf called through the window. “Little bar down at the other end of the corner has already missed this piece of drek and probably launched a find-and-recover fee to the Star. It’s most likely a cheap bounty, but you never know.”

Elvis pulled the side door open and piled inside, cramping up at once. Archangel and Trey took seats as well. Skater got in back and pulled the door closed as Duran took the shotgun seat.

A mass of armed yabos boiled out into the alley. They opened fire at once, nearly obliterating the windshield and striking miniature comets from the metal.

Wheeler yanked the vehicle into reverse and tromped the accelerator. His short arms fought the wheel, bringing the Landrover under his command.

Seated near Trey, Skater still barely scanned the waves of shimmering force leaving the combat mage’s fingertips as Trey spoke a foreign language under his breath. The shimmering force stopped just short of the yabos, then exploded into a fiery wall that closed off the entire alley and rose nearly three meters from the ground.

Even seated inside the Landrover, Skater felt the heat wash over them. Then Wheeler dropped the transmission into first gear and pinned the accelerator to the floor, rocketing them out of the area.

Skater found a comfortable spot for his injured arm and watched the sprawl flash by outside the windows. If Vankler was right in what he had said, the stakes in the game they were playing were higher than he’d expected even after confirmation of Fuchi’s interest. And it was too late to cut and run. Too many people knew who they were.

29

“Norris Caber definitely worked for Fuchi,” Kossuth said. He sat across the inlaid table from Gunther Octavius in Luppas’s high-rise suite overlooking the Seattle sprawl, watching the sun sink into the lake waters only a few blocks away.

Kylar Luppas broke the seal on the fresh bottle of Cuige Chonnact from his private wine cellar. He extracted the cork with a loud, explosive pop, then poured it over the ice in his glass. “In what capacity?”

“Unknown, sir,” Kossuth answered. The elegant genuine glass and walnut breakfast table occupied the hexagonal-shaped dining room just off the apartment’s spacious kitchen.

Luppas took his place at the table, favoring the side that overlooked the sprawl. The view was expensive but well within his wages from Fuchi—without ever having to touch the bonuses he received each year. His tastes usually weren’t all that extravagant unless he could afford them and they could be had. During the Desert Wars, he’d lived simply, putting the surplus nuyen away till he took time out for whatever civilization he chose to bivouac in.

“Tell me again how you managed to turn this joker up?” Octavius said as he eased his considerable bulk into one of the chairs ringing the table. He flipped a coaster to one side of the stack of print-outs Kossuth had put together, then put a sweating domestic beer on top of the coaster.

“Sec vid records,” Kossuth said, shifting papers. He spread out the holopics. “See? I have sec vid footage of Caber going into and out of Fuchi.”

The vids still were grainy, showing the effort that had been made to recover them. Kossuth had said they were being destroyed even as he’d downloaded what he could of them.

“Another interesting facet of the sec-vid log searches I pulled,” Kossuth said, “is that Caber turned up on none of the inner office vid logs.”

Luppas watched Octavius absorb that, knowing the man immediately reached the same conclusions he’d drawn. Gunther Octavius was an independent thinker, which was why he held the position he did within the mercenary structure. When they agreed on something, it was generally because it was the only real answer that could be reached, given a particular set of circumstances.

“Fuchi always keeps its people under surveillance,” Octavius said. “If not in the regular vid files, then in the private ones. Did you check there?”

“Yes,” Kossuth said, “and found it to be as holey as Swiss cheese. Someone eviscerated those files. Holes so big you could never hope to patch them up again.”

It had only taken Luppas a few months to work a back door into the Fuchi systems after he’d signed on with the corp. The link had come through a brief liaison with a female decker who’d been charmed by his looks and the charm he’d manufactured for her. Once he’d found her weakness—the fact that she was running a utility that diverted corporate scrip through the payroll by jinking with the shipping accounts to offset hospital expenses incurred by her young son and costing Fuchi another thirty thousand nuyen a year—Luppas had exploited it. He’d blackmailed the woman even though he was sure the Fuchi security systems had already discovered the graft and decided that the woman’s skills as a programmer were worth the extra pay. A few weeks after Kossuth had established a new back door into the system that was much more complex and more low-profile than hers, the woman had died in a fire at her doss. Luppas had made sure of it.

As a tactician, information counted in lives. In business, it ruled the nuyen flow coursing through the sprawl. And now, it presented him at least with leverage, and maybe a buy-in on whatever dirty biz Fuchi was struggling to cover up. “You’ve formed a prelim,” Luppas said.

Kossuth hesitated, unconsciously raking his fingertips over his datajack. He disliked giving suppositions about anything; information was his game, and he played it fiercely. “I believe the Nakatomi and Yamana infrastructures of Fuchi are reacting to the shift within the Villiers infrastructure. Not acting simply in kind.”

“What do you base that on?”

“As you know, sir,” the decker said, “our intel on those Fuchi infrastructures is restricted predominantly to our ties to Villiers’s systems that are in place.”

Luppas nodded, encouraging the man. The infrastructures operated independently of each other, but they all had spies in the others’ camps. As an outgrowth, each faction of Fuchi had double-agents quietly placed within each of the other infrastructures.

“The corporate intelligence arm within Villiers’s infrastructure has reported incursions into the Villiers’s holdings. Three deckers have been flatlined in the last four days trying to get into Villiers’s private files.”

Luppas twisted the glass before him thoughtfully, gazing into the hot afternoon sunshine pouring down into the streets on the other side of the window. The change was taking place within Villiers’s sphere of influence. And he wasn’t the only one curious.

“In the last three days, since this shift has begun, terminations of employment or changes in locations have been quietly issued to five employees that I’ve found out about.”

The time frame fit neatly enough into the time that Luppas had been involved with the Caber situation. “Who?”

Kossuth laid out five digitized pics on the table. Then he named them and gave their positions within Fuchi.

Luppas studied the assembled faces. Only two of them were personally known to him, and those only superficially. “These two people,” he tapped the pics, “answer to Miles Lanier.”

“Their employment has been terminated,” Kossuth replied. “In this one’s case, I found record of an immediate resignation less than twenty-four hours ago.”

The statement caught Luppas’s interest at once. The woman and the position were both highly placed in Villiers’s Tokyo operation. Trained paranoia kicked into gear inside his mind, slipping greasily through the thorns of self-preservation. “Do these five people have a common denominator?”

“Three of them, certainly,” Kossuth said. “They worked for IntSec. More particularly, they were placed there by Miles Lanier. Hired and trained and supervised by him.”

“The one whose resignation was turned in?”

“She was a confirmed hire by Lanier.”

Octavius leaned in and looked at the faces more studiously. “If you ask me, this looks like a fragging palace coup in the works, and Lanier may be the guiding hand at work. That would explain the change in security.”

30

Gunther Octavius’s announcement hung in the room.

Luppas knew that the scenario with Lanier was possible. Villiers and Lanier had worked together for years, but that didn’t mean the relationship was anything more than mutually lucrative. If Lanier had an opportunity to better his own station in life, Luppas had no doubts the man would do just that.

“Did you make a tie between Caber and Lanier?” he asked. “Not a definite one,” Kossuth said. “But for Caber to be employed there—”

“Lanier would have had to do his background check.” Kossuth nodded.

Luppas looked at the other two holopics on the table. “What about these two? What ties them to Lanier?”

“Recommendations,” Kossuth said.

“Not outright hires.”

“No, sir. But, given the assumption that Lanier chose to leave and had the opportunity to take a hand-picked team with him, these are two probable candidates. They worked with Lanier directly.”

Reaching a decision, Luppas swept the holopics of the five people from the center of the table over to an edge. “For the moment, we’ll consider this a tangential operation, one moving independently of the action we’ve been asked to take on regarding Norris Caber.”

“Why?” Octavius asked. The man had learned to play devil’s advocate very well over the years.

“Some of the on-site physical and magical security was provided at times by staff trained through Lanier’s IntSec crew who’d gone into business for themselves.”

“That’s a really thin tie,” Octavius argued. “Guys who worked at IntSec got paid really well. Why would they leave?”

“Jokers working like we work, like they worked,” Luppas said, “don’t always get along with the bureaucratic view of how an op should be performed. And with Fuchi being so big on the corp scene, a frequent target for shadowrunners and other corps, they had a really good chance of getting involved in a tangle they couldn’t get out of and getting their sticks slotted good and proper. Operating on your own, at smaller facilities, the nuyen might be a little thinner, but you’d live to get to spend it.”

“So they get away from Fuchi,” Octavius said. “Why tell Lanier about anything they found out at Dulce Tech?” Luppas swirled his ice in his glass. “Why else? Lanier could put them in touch with Fuchi money.”

“Okay, given that Lanier knew about the software being developed by Falkenhayne, why didn’t he do something about it sooner?”

“Because then we’d have been hired to grease Lanier first. Villiers wouldn’t have wanted the joker walking around breathing. That’s macro betrayal, omae.”

“So, assuming he has it, how do you think Lanier’s handling the information?”

“Maybe he’s just sitting on it.”

“That wouldn’t be an assumption I’d want to make,” Kossuth said.

“For the moment, we’ll also assume that Lanier is unwilling to take any direct action against Villiers,” Luppas said, putting everything into perspective for himself and choosing to ignore Octavius’s comment. It was a nasty, convoluted tangle. “So he has to operate outside his normal boundaries.”

“Bringing in a third party,” Octavius stated.

Luppas nodded. “Probably the shadowrunning team that took Caber’s body.”

“You think Lanier would hire a group of shadowrunners?” Octavius asked.

“I received a call from Vankler only a few minutes before you arrived,” Luppas said, turning to face his second. “He says a team of shadowrunners came around asking questions about me. One of them was an ork named Quint Duran.” Octavius nodded slowly. “We know a guy named Duran. Not a guy to frag around with.”

“True. Vankler also said Duran was running with two guys who matched the descriptions of the ones I saw at the funeral home.”

“And they were asking about you?”

“I think something got hosed with their Johnson,” Luppas said. “They weren’t expecting to walk into the firefight they had with us. They’re trying to find out more information, maybe only to bump the price up. But I’m betting they think their hoops are on the line.”

“Can’t say that I blame them,” Octavius said.

“If Lanier ultimately is the Johnson they’re working for,” Luppas said, “my guess is he’ll kill them rather than leave a link that might track back to him.”

For a moment no one said anything. Then Kossuth spoke up. “And if we make the recovery for Villiers?”

“I think he’s going to whack us,” Luppas said quietly. He let the words hang. “Villiers gave me the information on Ripley Falkenhayne today. Vankler told me there’s street buzz about someone who can make an extraction of a high-level passcoded corp exec and provide a turnaround of days instead of months to get the exec back on-line at another company. If that’s true, we’re talking about a corp being able to play merry hell with any other corp’s executive staff. That kind of power is worth killing over. And Richard Villiers is definitely one of the guys who’d do it without hesitation.”

No one disagreed with his assessment.

“So where do we go from here?” Octavius asked.

“What it’s going to come down to,” Luppas said, “is whoever manages to get both the woman and the software package first. Us or those runners. The one who gets the prize also gets a shot at cutting a healthy chunk of maybe the biggest score to hit the shadows. The loser is going to have to run hard to keep from getting geeked in the fallout. Lanier and Villiers can’t afford to get too involved and risk exposure. Dunkelzahn’s people are mixed up in this too, and they’re beating the bushes looking for his assassins.” He’d learned that from reports Fishbein had forwarded. Evidently there were people in the great dragon’s hierarchy who knew about the grant Falkenhayne had gotten from the wyrm. According to Fishbein, though, none of Dunkelzahn’s investigators had tied Falkenhayne to either the Caber or the January name. “The last thing Villiers or Lanier would want is attention from Dunkelzahn’s people or the UCAS government.”

“We haven’t got much field to maneuver in here,” Octavius said.

“No,” Luppas agreed. “There’s a thin groove between living and dying, and we’re slotted directly into it. Just like those shadowrunners, and you can bet your hoop they’re working that out for themselves right now.”

“It’s also possible,” Octavius said, “that if there is a mole inside Fuchi working this deal, that it’s not Lanier at all.” Luppas nodded. “I’d already thought about that.”

“Figured you had. Just wanted to say it.”

“With the way this ops is shaking out,” Luppas said, “there’s a good chance of us getting blindsided by Fuchi.” Octavius grinned. “Thinking about going solo?”

“This corporate gig was wearing thin anyway,” Luppas said with a smile. “And if we get the woman and the software, we can name our own price. That’s a bottom line a chummer has to love.”

31

“He was a corp exec at one time,” Archangel announced. She used a keyboard deck on the kitchen table at the safe house to bring up the schematics. “Everything in him is top-of-the-line passcoded deltaware.”

Skater watched the diagrams pop up and wash away the soft blue of the monitor. Emma slept on his shoulder, still restless even in slumber, her thumb tucked tightly in her mouth, her breath cloying with the scent of formula. He knew he should lay her down in her own bed; his arm was already partially numb from holding the weight of her. But he didn’t want to let go of his daughter because she felt so warm against him. It was 16:06:06 p.m. A mere fourteen hours since they’d all nearly gotten geeked at the funeral home. Skater felt he’d lived a lifetime in less than a day. And the chill from the narrow escape only a little more than an hour ago sill vibrated inside him, making him feel almost hollowed out. Emma’s presence took the edge off it.

The rest of the team sat around the monitor and Archangel, where they could get a good view of her briefing. Duran and Elvis occupied the sofa, sharing a plate of fresh-nuked nachos and a bucket of barbecue chicken from the Stuffer Shack a few blocks away. Wheeler sat in reversed fashion on one of the chairs rescued from the kitchen, a can of processed synth ham open in his hands that he used to cover crackers, which he swallowed in single bites. Cullen Trey sat in lotus position on a large pillow he’d found in one of the bedrooms, quietly building a mound of pistachio shells in a disposable ashtray bearing the logo of the New Century Square Hotel. A defoliated grape vine continued to wilt on a saucer.

“You say that because of the deltaware cyber enhancements in his body,” Wheeler said. “A joker running a hot deck and working the shadows could have built up enough nuyen to afford a system like that.”

“Over time,” Archangel said, “perhaps. But the diagnostics I ran on the corpse tell me those additions were made at the same time. That narrows the guesswork down. A runner would want components installed as soon as the nuyen was there to afford it. Better operating systems usually mean a better bottom line.”

Skater knew it went without saying that a shadowrunner’s bottom line was getting his or her next breath in the free and clear.

“An invasive full-module makeover to remove the passcode-protected deltaware is expensive,” Elvis rumbled. “That’s why corps get real reluctant about pulling an exec from another corp. And it also takes a lot of time replacing all the hardware to get a joker back into gear for the new corp.”

Skater knew that was true. Passcoded deltaware was specifically designed to keep execs loyal to the home corp. Someone who knew he would face a series of painful operations to replace all the cyberware in his body would be a lot less likely to jump the corporate ship, and more tolerant of the corp line. Getting cyberware installed wasn’t a pleasant experience, nor was getting used to it. Every new piece changed everything a chummer knew about his own body.

“Still, who’s to say it wasn’t done in components and this guy built his system up one at a time after he got free of the corp he was working for?” Elvis asked.

“I do,” Archangel said. “Your augmentations weren’t done at one time. When you have work done, especially upgrades and new systems, what is the doc’s first concern?”

“Whether he’s going to get paid,” Wheeler said.

The attempted levity brightened the room for only a moment, then quickly faded. Skater knew they were all tense and running scared. Fuchi’s presence in the current biz placed a heavy weight on their next few moves, and the chron was ticking down fast on the operation.

“Linkages,” Elvis said. “Whether one system is going to be operational with another.”

Archangel nodded. “All of Caber’s linkages are fully integrated. There’s been no adjustments, no add-ons to the mods, no recalibration of existing systems to make them compatible with new installations.” She raised an arched eyebrow. “Does anyone know how often a full-body make-over is performed outside the corp levels?”

“Not very fragging often,” Wheeler growled. “We’re talking macro bucks here, omae.”

“Pardon me if I don’t understand the elucidation,” Trey said, dusting his hands and pushing the pile of pistachio hulls away. “But I thought we assumed from the DocWagon involvement that Caber was corp-issue. Why is this important?”

“Because if he was running high in the corp echelons and his deltaware was supplied by Fuchi—or any of the other major corps, for that matter—it would have probably been encoded for use with that corp only. When I tied in with the subsystems diagnostics interface, I didn’t find any of the coding I expected.”

Trey spread his hands. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“To oversimplify it,” Skater said, “an encoding in the delta-ware is sort of like a maglock. If you have the key to that maglock, you can get in. If you have a key to another maglock, you can’t. The major corps—Fuchi, Aztechnology, Saeder-Krapp, etcetera—use archived programming in the deltaware only at the top levels of their ops to keep access to those areas down even among different divisions. Caber would have been a good candidate for that because of the espionage ops he was involved with.”

“I’m aware of the passcode protection,” Trey said. “It’s why some extractions at corp levels that high have gotten so expensive. Those execs have any number of surveillance apparatus built into their bodies.”

“If a passcoded exec is taken from one corp and recruited to another corp, his or her systems have to be pretty much gutted and re-installed before he or she becomes of use to the new corp,” Skater said. It was also one of the chief reasons that black-market cyberware suppliers didn’t deal in deltaware.

And most shadow clinics weren’t set up to handle installation or repairs for it either.

“That takes months,” Elvis said, “when you’re dealing with delta ware.”

“And in the meantime,” Trey said, “the recruited exec is pretty much dead weight?”

“Exactly.”

“Headhunters,” Duran said, gazing at the monitor. “That’s what they call the corp black ops teams or the shadowrunners who specialize in exec extractions. The word’s come a long way from how they used to use it.” He gave an orkish grin, baring fangs. “Guess that old saying about the more things change the more they stay the same is true.”

Trey nodded toward Norris Caber’s diagnostics read-out on the monitor. “The anomaly you discovered in this man’s systems was the lack of such encoding.”

“Yes. His system is a tabula rasa. A blank slate. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“We don’t have a way of knowing how long Caber had gone missing,” Duran said. “Maybe the corp he worked for—and for the moment we’ll assume it was Fuchi—erased the programming themselves. Joker was in deep somewhere. Whoever was pulling his strings might not have wanted a signature left that would trace back to the corp.”

“It’s not that easy,” Archangel said. “Once the programming’s on, it becomes a part of the linkages. What you’re thinking of is something like an uninstall utility.”

“You’re sure they don’t have them?”

“I’ve never heard of one.”

Trey chuckled, then looked around at the others. “What’s not being said here is what that utility would be worth to a corp.”

“Enough to fragging geek the lot of us trying to get it,” Wheeler said. “Then piss on our ashes to make sure we’re never found.”

“That’s assuming we get caught,” Trey said. “Whatever else can be said about our current situation, we do happen to be in the middle of it. Our only realistic option rather than proceeding would be to buzz turbo and drop out of sight.” He paused for dramatic impact. “If that’s even truly possible at this point.” He glanced at Skater. “Jack?”

Skater shifted Emma, pulling her down into his arms. Her weight against him reminded him of everything he had to lose; whether he pursued the run or whether he gave it up. Provided he chose to run with Emma, as far and as fast as he could from whatever heat Deja could and would pull down on him, he needed the flexibility a lot of nuyen gave a chummer to vanish from the playing field. Nothing else he had a lead on could turn the kind of nuyen he’d need for that, and nothing else appeared as dangerous. By rights, Deja was the least of his present worries, but she held the most direct threat toward his daughter. If he chose to bow out of the run, he’d still be short of the necessary money to make Emma and himself disappear.

Skater looked at the others. “I’ve set up the meet with the Johnson for tonight. If we get more information, we’ll be better able to judge where we stand.” He paused. “Unless there’s anyone who wants out now.”

They were all silent for a time. Archangel broke it.

“And what do you think we should do, Jack?” she asked. Skater wanted to tell them they should go for it, but he knew that was him answering for them out of his own needs. He wasn’t objective. He shook his head. “It’s not for me to decide.”

“Wrong, kid,” Duran growled in a low voice. “It is for you to decide. You’re the team leader. You’ve laid out runs for us before. We all get a vote, but you always take the first one when it’s down to the wire. Me, I trust your instincts.”

Skater gazed at the ork and grinned thin, cold, totally devoid of mirth. “You were with me out there earlier today. You know what’s going through my head. I’ve got my own agenda.” Duran smiled happily. “Don’t see anything wrong with a guy being properly motivated, kid. Being a professional’s one thing, but I like working with someone who’s got a damn good reason to lay his hoop on the line.”

Trey, Wheeler, and Elvis silently agreed. Only Archangel was unreadable.

Skater looked at her. “How about you?”

Her gaze was frank and intense. “I want to know if you’ve made up your mind about Emma. What you’re going to do with her.”

32

The silence that followed Archangel’s question about Emma deepened quickly and uncomfortably.

“Archangel,” Trey said quietly, setting his wine glass aside, “I think—”

“No,” she said with force, without turning from the lock she held with Skater’s eyes. “I didn’t ask what you thought, Cullen.” She was polite, but her tone offered no room for negotiation.

“Actually, it’s none of your business,” Skater said. He was aware that the answer came from anger rather than the cool detachment he wished for. He didn’t like being unprofessional, but he also thought it was an unprofessional question. “She’s my daughter.”

“A few months back,” Archangel said evenly, “you asked all of us to risk our hoops to get her for you. We did.”

“Maybe you should cut Jack some slack here,” Elvis said quietly.

“Slot off,” Archangel said just as quietly. “I’ve got a right to know. So do you.”

“Why?” Skater demanded. “Because of all the biz that went down a few months ago? Drek, how long am I going to owe that to you? Because if it’s going to be awhile, let’s agree on a price and let me pay it. I don’t need this drek.” Archangel’s features softened and a sheen filled her eyes. “Fraggit, Jack, it’s not because of what happened a few months go. That has nothing to do with it. It would make as much sense for any one of us to figure out who had saved whose hoop last on a run. That’s all history. What I’m looking at is going on right now.”

“I can’t help your feelings,” Skater started, “this is my prob—”

“It’s not about my feelings,” Archangel said irritably. “It’s not even about Emma’s. It’s about yours, and you’re so damn mudbrained you can’t see that.”

Skater tried to say something, then realized he didn’t know what he could say.

“You lead this team, Jack,” she said. “And we follow you. Sure, it doesn’t have to be that way, but that’s the way all of us want it or we wouldn’t be here. When you took Emma on, we knew there’d be some changes. There were. We’ve adapted. We’ve pulled our weight, and we’ve pulled yours when you were worried about your daughter.”

Her words hit Skater like a slap in the face. He’d been on his own, responsible to no one, for years. He wanted to say something, even if it was only invective straight from the simmering cesspool that had leaped full-blown into his mind. But he didn’t trust his voice. He made himself glance around at the other members of the team. Wheeler and Trey looked away and wouldn’t meet his eyes. Elvis shrugged helplessly in silent support. Duran’s gaze was flat, implacable.

After awhile, Skater found his voice. “Maybe it’d be better if we just shelved this arrangement here. You can make your own decision about the meet with the Johnson and handle it yourselves.”

“Chill, kid,” Duran said. “That’s not what she’s getting at.”

“Frag off,” Archangel told the ork. “I know what I’m trying to say.”

“Look,” Duran said, swiveling on Archangel and leveling a forefinger in her direction, “you’ve got a point worth discussing, but you’re over-reacting. You’re not as neutral in this as you believe.”

Crimson spots stained Archangel’s cheeks. “I’m not overreacting.”

“Yeah,” Duran grunted, “you are. You’re emotionally involved.”

Archangel folded her arms over her breasts, momentarily at a loss for words. “He won’t listen,” she told Duran.

Skater stood and watched, not believing what he was seeing. Years of working together had forged a limited but strong relationship between all of them. Not getting to know too much personal history about each other had been a good thing. It was personal histories that destroyed most teams, even the good ones. He’d learned that early and believed in it strongly.

“He doesn’t understand what you’re saying,” Duran said. “He’s not ready for this.”

“Then when?” Archangel demanded. “After he’s made a decision and it’s too late to do anything about it? Is he going to be ready then?”

Skater decided in an instant that he didn’t like the discussion being conducted like he wasn’t even there. He took a step forward.

Duran pinned him in this place with a bleak gaze. “Lady’s right, kid. You gotta know so we can know. Wish it coulda come at a more convenient time.”

Skater barely controlled his frustration, amazed at the confusion that filled him while at the same time expecting it. “You have to know what?”

“What you’re going to do about Emma,” Duran said. “Why?”

“Because, kid, whatever decision you make, it’s gonna affect how you hold yourself, how you conduct yourself, how you see yourself. How you think when you’re out there eye-deep in drek with the rest of us. Hell, it’d be easier listing the things that decision wouldn’t affect.”

“If there are any,” Archangel said.

Skater looked at them, from elf to ork and back again. Elvis stood and reached his big arms out. “Let me have Emma and I’ll tuck her in.”

Skater let the big troll slip his daughter away from him, feeling strangely numb and on fire all at the same time.

“It’s not our feelings I’m concerned with, Jack,” Archangel said softly. “You get so occupied with everything that’s going on around you that you don’t take your own feelings into consideration. Just like this morning: you were almost ready to believe that Emma would have it better with someone else than with you. You didn’t even consider that someone else might be worse than she could ever have it with you. You talked about the way Emma was young enough that she wouldn’t know the difference if someone else raised her. But someone would know the difference. You would know.”

Skater stared at Archangel, understanding finally and yet even more at a loss in some regards. It was easier looking at a decision like that as if it would be something final, never to be thought of again.

She stared back, putting it to him. “How would you feel about giving her up? Not just at first, but weeks, months, and years after the fact?”

Over Archangel’s shoulder, Elvis was just disappearing into one of the bedrooms. Skater felt the emptiness in his arms, the weight of where his daughter had lain against him.

“I can’t do it,” he said. He looked around the room, wondering who was going to be the first to register displeasure. They all looked at him, including Elvis who was returning from the bedroom. “Whatever it takes, I’m going to keep Emma with me. And if you want me out, I’m out. There’s no reason to bust up the team.”

In the silence, he waited for the objections to his announced decision to surface. When none did, he was both relieved and surprised.

“Well,” Duran said a few ticks later, “now that that’s been dealt with, let’s talk about tonight’s meet with the Johnson. Figuring out a way to get in and out with our hoops intact will be a lot more fragging fun and less tense.”

* * *

Almost two hours later, Skater slotted a certified credstick in a public telecom beside the Staffer Shack near their doss and punched the LTG of Kestrel’s current message drop. He listened to the recorded message, basically stating that Hiroshima Bob had been summoned to a higher calling and would no longer be operating Hiroshima Bob’s Domino and Arcade Emporium.

He selected the chosen words, did the mental conversion from letters to numerals, and had the second number in seconds. Then he punched in a series from the numeric pad, knowing Kestrel would do the conversions at his end and call back in ten minutes if everything was still safe at both locations.

He walked back to join Duran in the shadows beside the building. With the cold air breezing over them in sporadic gusts of increasing frequency, he was grateful for the long jacket he wore.

Even lounging against the building, acting like the only thing that concerned him was staying warm for the next few minutes, Quint Duran looked dangerous. That was a blessing, however, because the thrillers were out in force now, pack predators weaving through the streets searching for the weak and the infirm who’d been caught out in the sprawl after nightfall.

They shared the silence between them for a moment, listening to the sounds of the plex battering the buildings around them. Voices carried in the chill air, raucous and raw, challenging each other and their own mortality.

“You want to tell me what happened back there at the doss with Archangel?” Skater asked.

“That lady knows more about self-control than any of us, I suspect.”

Skater didn’t know how Duran could say that, but then he wasn’t sure what kind of relationship the others had enjoyed with each other before Larisa’s death had forced them to get to know each other better. He was also surprised to find that he was uncomfortable with that thought. “That doesn’t tell me why she busted my hump so hard.”

“Look, kid, there’s no reason to get your pecker in a knot,” Duran said. “Personally, I thought you were doing fine. Holding your own in spite of all the drek about what to do with Emma and the problem of this Deja.”

“Why didn’t Archangel?”

“You’d have to ask her.”

Skater looked at the ork. “Okay.” Then he turned away.

As soon as he did, Duran turned slightly toward him, not exactly at Zen state anymore. “Okay?”

“Okay, I’ll ask her.”

“I really wouldn’t recommend that, chummer.”

“You just did.”

“No.” Duran’s reply was flat, brooking no argument. “What I said was if you wanted to know what she had in her mind is that you would have to ask her. Never once did I say you should.”

“Would or should,” Skater said. “I don’t see a problem either way.”

“You wouldn’t,” the ork said, “and probably at this point you shouldn’t.”

“You saying there’s a difference?”

Duran nodded. “Some difference, kid. The kind you get when you compare bean shooters to grenade launchers.”

“You’re not making things any clearer.”

“I know.”

“If she doesn’t think I can handle—”

“Take my word for it, kid, that’s not the issue on the nuker at the moment.”

Skater glanced over at the telecom, willing it to beep so it would give him sanction from the thoughts whirling inside his head. “If you ask me,” he said, “Archangel acts like she’s got some personal issues too.”

Duran hesitated just a second, then nodded. “I’d say that sums it up.”

“But she hasn’t bothered to tell anyone.” Skater paused. “Unless she’s mentioned it to you.” Some of the anger melted away then as curiosity and concern took its place. “Not me.”

“The others?”

“I really doubt it.”

Skater’s anger returned. “Talking to you is getting to be about as much fun as having a root canal.”

Duran waited a beat, then nodded agreeably, which didn’t help Skater’s mood at all. “I can see how you’d feel that way, kid.”

A blue and white Americar slid to a stop at the corner and picked up one of the painted women hustling barely covered temptations at the traffic light. The driver was moving along again before the woman had the door shut.

“If she’s dealing with her own problems, you’d think she’d cut me some slack,” Skater said.

“Yeah,” Duran said, “unless she was waiting on you to figure yours out so she could figure out what to do with hers.”

“That,” Skater replied, “doesn’t make any sense at all.” Duran reached out a paw and dropped it onto Skater’s shoulder. “You’re probably right, kid. Let’s just let it go there. This conversation’s giving me a fragging headache. Concentrate on the biz. That’s where you shine.”

Before Skater could respond to that, the telecom beeped. He walked back to it and hit the Connect.

33

Kestrel didn’t key in the vid at the other end of the telecom connection and Skater returned the favor. He said hello, then added a few comments about the weather. The fixer’s electronic spies at the other end would verify his voice pattern. “Hey, chummer,” Kestrel said, “keeping your hoop intact?”

“So far,” Skater said. “Did you turn up anything?” He’d requested the fixer to check into the rumors about the corp extractions with Coleman January’s name tagged to them.

“At first it was a whisper, not even real street buzz,” Kestrel answered. “Figured maybe you’d spent good nuyen for nada, omae, then I scanned a factoid or two and, with a little more work—that got really creative I don’t mind telling you—confirmed three extractions.”

“With the Coleman January name attached to them?”

“Yeah. And they’re carrying some weight too—in the person of a UCAS federal investigator named Quentin Strapp.”

“He’s after the execs who were extracted?”

“Only as a byproduct. The way I scan it, he’s only scratching around for them hoping to turn up Coleman January.”

Running the fed’s name through his memory, Skater came up empty. “I’ve never heard of Strapp.”

“Most people haven’t,” Kestrel said. “He works way back off the books, omae. I used up a healthy dose of the credstick you gave me to get information concerning Strapp. Figured you’d want it. He had a long career working the shadows around government. He was retired. Definitely someone who avoided the spotlight but who could make the breaks on the big cases. Usually worked out of the Washington DC area. The way I scan it right now, he was brought out of retirement to work Dunkelzahn’s assassination on the QT.”

Skater cursed silently, not knowing how the corpse the team had stolen could lead back to the great dragon’s murder. But in a way it made sense. When ripples hit the shadows, it was hard to tell where they were coming from. The fallout from Dunkelzahn’s death was only beginning and would last for years. “What’s Strapp’s angle here in Seattle?”

“Haven’t scanned it yet, chummer,” Kestrel said. “When I do, you’ll be the next to know.”

“Can you get me a jacket on Strapp?”

“Slot a blank chip when we finish our chat and I’ll download it to you.”

“Good enough. What about the extractions?”

“Of the three I confirmed, two were from Fuchi. Whoever Coleman January is, the joker must have a pipeline direct to the corps. The scan I get is that he brokered both of those people out of there in less than a month. They were all in the R&D end of corp ops from what I understand. Those guys always go expensive.”

Skater memorized all three names in short order. “What about jackets for them?”

“Not me,” Kestrel replied. “You want those, you’re going to have to get them yourself. Fuchi’s looking for two of them and Aztechnology is looking for the third. You can bet both corps have their files sealed up tight and protected by the best ice money can buy.”

“Are the names legit?”

“I think so, omae, but this is shadow biz. The extractions are real, but the lies could have already started concerning who they really were.”

Skater knew that was true. The corps would be the first to start the lies, toning down the loss of the execs and what they were actually worth as well as what they were working on. “When did those extractions go down?”

Kestrel paused. In the background Skater heard a note-puter’s keys clacking. “I don’t have specific dates on any of them except the second Fuchi extraction three days ago. The other two were taken within the last thirty days.”

“Were the extractions managed by a shadow team?”

“No. One day the execs just didn’t show up for work anymore.”

“No violence?”

“None.”

Skater considered that. Many extractions turned bloody. “Whoever’s doing this,” Kestrel said, “has got a wiz biz set up. I wouldn’t mind having a piece of it.”

Skater silently agreed. On the surface, it looked like easy profit. As long as a chummer didn’t mind being hunted by most of the corps and any individual talent out combing the sprawl for a get-rich-quick scheme. “Any clue as to how big Coleman January’s operation was?”

“Small,” Kestrel said. “Otherwise I’d have heard more about it.”

“If you hear anything definite, let me know.”

“You got it. You just keep your head low out there.” Skater echoed the sentiment and punched the Disconnect. He slotted a blank chip and accessed the download waiting on him. Inside the telecom’s plasteel housing, the drive unit whined for a few seconds. The green light beside the slot flared to life, signaling that the download was finished. He pressed the Eject key and caught the chip in his fist.

* * *

Emma was still sleeping when Skater returned to the safe-house twenty minutes later. Thankfully, Archangel seemed to be back to her usual cool, dispassionate self.

She was working on Norris Caber’s corpse with carefully measured movements. Wheeler stood at her side, offering support physically as well as verbally. A shop droplight hung from the ceiling, throwing out a bright incandescence.

Archangel wore disposable gloves that reached up past her elbows. Blood stained them almost their entire length. Her blood-shot almond eyes above the surgeon’s mask flicked to Skater and Duran briefly, then returned to her work.

Skater was glad he’d finished the ham and cheese roll he’d liberated from the doss’s refrigerator before entering the room. Still, his stomach rolled threateningly as the stench of old death filled his nostrils.

Someone had taken the closet door from its hinges and converted it to a temporary operating table across the bed. The end stuck out from the edge of the bed almost half a meter, allowing Archangel easy access to the head. A small end table beside her held a battery-powered rotary saw with telescoping arm and a half-dozen attachments. A plastifoam rectangular pan held several liters of blood-stained water and an accumulation of stainless plasteel knives and other utensils.

The corpse’s head had been shaved. A long incision bisected the naked scalp, revealing a thin layer of grayish-white fat under the bluing flesh. Chromed metal gleamed under the thin layer of dark blood. One of the dead man’s eyes stared blankly at the ceiling and moved slightly as Archangel worked.

“I couldn’t access anything from the datajack when I hooked up the diagnostics,” Archangel said in a neutral voice. “So I’m taking the more direct route.” She took a gear-driven surgical spreader from Wheeler, then directed the dwarf to hold the dead man’s chin. After Wheeler locked onto the corpse’s face, Archangel turned the spreader’s wheel.

The flesh made sucking noises as it parted. The dead eye roved with even more agitation.

Archangel reached both hands forward, a battery-powered pincer cutter in one hand. “From what I learned from the diagnostics, the C2 deck is intact and operational. I’m just locked out of it. If I can get past its defenses and jack into a more direct interface, I may be able to salvage something.”

Skater was prepared to hear anger in her voice as she spoke to him. Instead, it was as if nothing had ever been said between them. He found that even more disconcerting than the anger. If it wasn’t worth saying, why did she even bring it up?

“We got a new kink,” Duran growled. He worked the flesh off a turkey drumstick, chewing with obvious relish as he watched Archangel work. “Jack’s information specialist turned up a UCAS fed investigator named Quentin Strapp who’s evidently in the sprawl now.”

Archangel left the spreader in place, then sank a handful of fingers into the dead man’s skull.

Skater tried to ignore the squishing and sucking noises that accompanied her efforts. The muscles in her forearm corded as she strained.

“Strapp’s reportedly looking for Coleman January,” Duran said. “His main direction is supposed to be finding Dunkelzahn’s murderers.”

“And Strapp thinks he’s going to find an answer to that here in Seattle?” Archangel stopped working and gave them a look of incredulity.

“Somebody does,” Skater said, “or the guy wouldn’t be here.”

Archangel turned her attention back to the corpse. Her arm flexed again. The sucking sound increased. A moment later, her arm jerked spasmodically and the internal deck came loose in her hand.

Wheeler extended a towel and took the deck onto it. After another pass by Archangel with the pincers, the dwarf rigger wrapped up the feed deck. The chrome may have integrated fully with the flesh at one time, but the surface repelled the blood now.

“The angle Strapp’s working may not just be Coleman January or Norris Caber,” Archangel said. “The Caber identity may lead back to Fuchi. The corp may be his real target.” Skater had already considered that. “Maybe. He’s definitely looking at the extractions.” He checked his retinal chron. It was 19:41:22 p.m. Little over an hour remained before the meet with the Johnson.

Archangel shoved the pieces of scalp back together and used a medi-stapler to stitch them in place. The effect was crude but managed to close the gaping wound. “Is the meet still on with the Johnson?”

“Strapp’s another variable in the mix,” Skater said, “but I don’t think his involvement is going to change things on our op. Evidently he’s not as close to the truth as we are.”

“If we are.” Archangel turned the C2 deck over in her gloved hands, eyes narrowed in concentration. The unit was larger in surface than her hand, but was only slightly more than a centimeter thick. Made of gleaming alloy that showed through the blood, the cranial computer was shaped in a horseshoe that fit over both temples and surrounded the back of the brain, scooped delicately into the skull for a form fit. Tiny synaptic relays sprouted from the top of it, looking like an inverted jellyfish. The bottom booted into a rectangular interface with the spinal column.

“We’re getting there,” Duran growled. “And we’re ahead of the biz. We got Strapp IDed before he blindsided us.”

“It gives us some working room,” Skater said. He glanced at the dead man. “And the fact of the matter is we’re still holding the prize everyone else seems to be looking for. We can bargain at any time. Having Strapp and the UCAS government involved gives us access to one more angle.”

“This is the UCAS government we’re talking about here,” Wheeler said. “They’d just as soon fragging geek you as anyone else if it came down to that.”

“Then I guess the trick is to not let it come down to that,” Skater said. He was irritated at Archangel and he didn’t like it. But if she’d felt compelled to push him earlier, she should have still been showing signs of it, not dismissing the entire matter.

If the elven decker heard any of the irritation in his voice, she didn’t acknowledge it. Rotating the C2 deck in her hands, she attached wires with alligator clips to three different points.

Skater recognized the audio-visual leads that ran from Archangel’s deck to the internal deck.

She tapped the keyboard in quick syncopation, watching the datastreams appear on the attached monitor screen. After a few minutes, she shook her head. “I can’t find any files in there that are intact.” Her fingers continued flying across the keys. “None of them. Not even the slaved programs juicing the subsystem interface modules are on-line. His whole cybernetic nervous system’s been fragged.” She unhooked the internal deck from her own, then peeled off the bloody gloves and dropped them into the small trash can beside the bed.

“That leaves the Johnson,” Skater said.

Duran pulled at a hoop earring. “Gives the joker more leverage than I’d want him to have.”

“Maybe,” Skater said, turning from the room. “But if he didn’t still need what we have, he wouldn’t be willing to deal with us. Not all the leverage is his. We’re going to bring that to his attention and see how it shakes out.”

34

In the hours since they’d been given images of Ripley Falkenhayne, the watcher spirits had turned up nothing. It led Kylar Luppas to believe the woman was hiding out under magical defenses of some kind. He was certain it wasn’t anything that could stand up to his mastery of the Arts, but he had to locate his target first.

He floated weightlessly in the astral plane, his meat body back in the high-rise doss where he lived. He sent the last watcher back to its assigned task and wheeled high over the sprawl.

He liked being free.

The present situation at Fuchi was shifting to the gravely uncertain, and the probability that he and his crew might get sacrificed to find Ripley Falkenhayne had greatly increased. Finding the missing woman might be his only way to remain as free as he wanted.

On his way up through the ranks as a mercenary, he hadn’t been shackled. When he’d learned of his ability in the Arts, he’d invested every scrap of nuyen he could earn, barter, or steal to get the training he thought would further his career. That had been the beginning of bigger things for him, and also for the loss of autonomy.

The more he learned about spells and spellcasting, the more vulnerable he realized he was. His aura, he was assured, was strong enough that most mages would consider him a threat. So he’d learned to mask aura and his ability. And he’d continued to learn. It had all cost.

The martial skills he’d acquired as second nature living off the streets. When he’d left San Antonio fleeing a murder beef and enlisted as a mercenary for Aztlan, he’d adapted easily to the military life, the rough-and-tumble techniques mere additions to those he already knew.

Promotions came quickly after that; he was good and attrition took its toll on those who couldn’t hack the grade. Even before the stint in the Desert Wars, he’d acquired a taste for the good life from his success in Aztlan. He’d lived without it at times, and been willing to.

That was no longer the case. The last few years with Fuchi had become addictive. Learning was one thing, but power was something else again.

Luppas knew he was prepared to die reaching for it before he would allow anyone to push him back down in the feeding chain. More relaxed and more focused, he let himself be pulled back to his body in the doss.

* * *

Luppas opened his eyes, narrowing them immediately against the unaccustomed brightness of the room.

Octavius was crossing from the kitchen to a desk in the living room where Kossuth was writing with mechanical precision on a clean sheet of paper. The pen flew across the page, spilling out characters and numerals.

“I think I’ve got something,” the decker said. “Remember the telecom we recovered at the scene of the crash-and dash?” Octavius twisted the cap off a fresh beer. “Sure. We went through the memory. All the files had been corrupted. Turned out to be a fragging dead end.”

“Sure,” Kossuth agreed. “But the account wasn’t corrupted.”

“You’ve got LTG numbers?” Luppas asked, shifting in the chair and drawing the attention of both other men.

“No,” Kossuth said. “The ice was too heavy, too dangerous to get into without a guide or someone who’d been through that system before. But I was able to tag a trace utility on each of the LTG numbers that had contacted the portable telecom Caber was using.”

“You’re sure the telecom belonged to Caber?” Octavius asked as he sat.

Kossuth dipped his chin once in a nod. “Yes. It was registered in the Coleman January name.”

“For how long?”

“Almost two years, according to the phone records I found.” The decker reviewed the sheet of numerals and letters in front of him.

“Then the telecom had a history,” Luppas said. “A number of people had the LTG.”

“I came up with seventeen other LTGs,” Kossuth confirmed. “As I said, the search was time-consuming. Many of the LTGs I discovered were for portable units. I managed to get all of them pegged to their owners fairly easily. Except three.”

“Three portacoms,” Octavius repeated, cocking an eyebrow. “Say he was working the extraction racket like we think, maybe he’d want telecoms he could place in the hands of the people he was moving, to be sure they could stay in constant contact. Something he’d know wouldn’t track back to him easily.”

“He’d have put them under other false SINs,” Luppas said. It made sense.

“That’s exactly what he did,” Kossuth said. “And the names he used—”

“Were ex-employees of Fuchi who’ve long since disappeared,” Luppas said.

Kossuth looked only mildly disappointed. “Correct.”

“And that tells us we’re pretty much on the drekking nose when we figured Caber,” Octavius stated. “He’d know which bodies were buried and wouldn’t be around to object to his using their SINs, and would be able to block notice of them in the Fuchi mainframes. Villiers was operating from a blind spot looking for this joker.”

Luppas glanced at Kossuth. “So we’ve got the names of dead people. Where does that get us?”

Kossuth smiled. “Only two of those other portable telecoms tracked back to corpses. The third one didn’t show up anywhere. The guy who’s using it doesn’t exist as far as the phone companies know.”

“Do you know who the third person is?”

“No,” Kossuth said, “but I think I know where he is now. I put a trace utility in the phone company’s software, and it found the guy. Normally a portable telecom is fragging impossible to find. You’d have to do it while a conversation was occurring, then triangulate the broadcasting unit between two communications towers. And if it’s near the heart of the sprawl, forget it. This joker has been talking to someone for the last three minutes, downloading files over a public telecom through his personal unit.”

“Where?” Luppas asked. He checked his chron. It was 20:41:22.

“A border bar called Neon Sunsets. Near I-5, where Everett butts up against the Salish lands.”

35

“Since we haven’t seen the Johnson in the flesh,” Quint Duran said, “won’t there be a problem identifying him in the crowd?”

“Not much,” Skater said, riding shotgun and staring out through the bug-smeared window of the Landrover they’d stolen from the Normandy Park area. The effort had been marred only by a small brush with Knight Errant security watching over the garage after the squealer went off. His mind stayed active, playing the angles on the situation they were walking into. He weighed the pros and cons, and tried not to think of Emma asleep back at the safehouse. Elvis had arranged a troll bodyguard to watch over her during their absence. “He’ll know us.”

“You’re playing the cards awfully close to the vest, kid,” the ork growled.

“You see another way?”

Reluctantly, Duran shook his head.

Less than four minutes later, at 20:53:12 by Skater’s chron, they arrived at the bar. The Landrover’s wheels crunched over the graveled area out front, which spanned both Everett and part of the Salish Council lands.

The building itself had been constructed on tribal lands, free of UCAS taxes and laws, and close enough for foot trade to escape the duties levied at the official checkpoints for getting into the Council lands. Two stories tall, built in an L-shape that suggested a bar below and shops overhead, as well as a few rooms to let, the building’s exterior was unfinished scarred pine that had grayed from long exposure to the elements.

Bars covered the windows. On the other side of the multi-paned constructions, neon tubing advertised beers and exotic dancers. Wooden steps led up to double batwing doors. Illumination from inside splashed out onto the large porch area where an armed troll shared guard duty with a lean elf. Both were dressed in rough-out genuine leathers and knee-high mocassins, harking back to the frontier days so many Amerindians said they longed for. Their weapons, however, were fully modern pistols and stun batons.

The parking lot out front held a lot of road machinery. The accumulation included expensive vehicles of men slumming from Everett looking for a brush with imagined danger in a real frontier border bar, worn and patched-over pickups from the Salish lands, and motorcycles clustered together that suggested the presence of a go-gang.

Duran pulled the Landrover alongside a new-model Americar and shut off the lights. He let the engine idle for a few minutes, the transmission still in gear as he waited for trouble to appear.

“I’ll be back in a minute, chummers,” Cullen Trey said.

Skater shifted his vision around the parking lot, Predator ready in the pocket of the long military-surplus jacket he wore. From the corner of his eye, he saw Trey slump against the back seat. The mage was in the astral now, checking out the interior of the bar.

“There’s Wheeler and Archangel,” Duran said, nodding to the right.

Skater swiveled his head around and watched Wheeler bring the modified Leyland-Zil Tsarina to a halt at the other end of the parking lot. The Tsarina belonged to the dwarf and had an interesting array of weapons built into it as well as a souped-up Leyland-built engine. With its patchy-gray exterior and accumulation of small dents, no one would have given it a second look. The SIN it was registered to would hold up to inspection, unless someone tried to find the individual it belonged to on file.

Bringing it to the meet was risky in some respects. Not in the least was the danger of losing the vehicle and having to replace it. But that was also about the extent of the loss. Losing hardware was a fact of life for a professional shadowrunner. Skater knew that wannabes and amateur shadowrunners could suffer a hardware loss that would shake them right out of the biz. His own team had a commitment to replacing any losses they took in a score, then they divvied up what was left. It was the only way for a professional to act.

Wheeler would use the Tsarina to run blocker for them if the operation got hosed up.

Skater accessed the Commlink IV. “Elvis.”

“Here, omae,” the troll responded.

Duran shoved a forefinger to the left.

Following the direction, Skater spotted the troll getting out of the used Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit he’d purchased that morning. It was the yellow of old bone and carried a layer of dust. Archangel had created the SIN and the identity it was registered to, but the ID was so thin that if the car dealer hadn’t been greedy, the deal would have fallen through under a serious inspection. And they’d paid by certified credstick, which turned most larcenous eyes in the sprawl blind.

“Step easy, chummer,” Skater said softly. He was perspiring in the Landrover, his skin already saturated from the additional weight and thickness of the heavy Kevlar armor and plate sewn into the military surplus jacket. None of them were exactly what they appeared that night.

“Call me Lightfoot,” Elvis said quietly, scaling the short flight of steps. The sec team stopped him for only a few seconds, running a weapons wand over the big troll samurai.

Even over the distance separating them, Skater watched the wand light up repeatedly. When the sec crew finished, not bothering to remove any of the weapons, Elvis slotted a credstick and moved on into the building.

“Couple of thorough yabos there,” Elvis commented. Despite the special filters managing the commlink, noises and snippets of conversations inside the bar echoed into the frequency.

Duran kept both hands on the Landrover’s steering wheel. His attention was focused on the building, but he looked at ease. The neon tubing spelling out the bar’s name along the face of the second story splotched his hard face, gleaming wetly across his bared fangs.

“The bar’s pretty much like we figured it,” Elvis said. A feminine voice asked him if he wanted a drink, and he ordered a beer.

Skater listened to the creak of synthleather and the shrill of a bar stool being pulled across the floor as the troll took a seat. He glanced at his chron. It was 20:57:09. He took in a long breath, held it, and let it out. He tried telling himself the meet was the most danger they had left to face, but he couldn’t convince himself.

“It’s set up in the H pattern like Archangel found in the blueprints,” Elvis went on. “The bar’s in the center between the two sections of the interior. They’ve got a band on the east-end stage. Strippers are working the west-end stage. There’s a lotta people in here, omae. If Cullen can’t find our guy, it’s going to be hard to do.”

“He will,” Skater said. He waited quietly, working on his breath, knowing that Duran was aware of it. Two more minutes passed. A half-dozen more customers entered the batwing doors.

In the back seat, Trey stirred, coming back into himself. Then he smiled. “I found him.”

“Where?” Skater asked.

“Near the band stage. Guy’s sitting all by himself at the line of stools along the wall.”

“Elvis,” Skater said.

“Got it,” the troll rumbled. “I’m on my way.”

“He’s human,” Trey went on. “Tall for a human. Maybe two meters. He’s jacked, running some kind of stimulant, and carrying a lot of body augmentation.”

“Bearded,” Trey continued, “a scar on the left side of his face that runs from his nose back to his earlobe. It’s new enough he still feels twinges from it.”

“I see him,” Elvis said a few seconds later.

“Be careful approaching,” Trey warned. “He’s got at least two yabos backing his play that I found. One of them is a street shaman.”

“I see them too,” Elvis said.

Skater accessed the commlink. “Archangel, Wheeler.”

“We’re in,” Archangel said in her cool, professional voice. “And he sees me,” Elvis stated.

“All right,” Skater said to Duran and Trey. “Let’s do it.”

36

The bar reeked of beer, body odor, nicosticks, a dozen different perfumes, and spicy Salish meats. The wooden floor was littered with a thin layer of sawdust to absorb spilled drinks and spilled blood. Illumination was kept at a low level, creating pools over nine-ball tables. Trid arcade games hovered impossible figures of mechanical madness and freakish nature combined with mythology in the smoke-laced air in the back. Bets were made and taken rapidly, the groans coming regularly from one group or another as the imaginary combatants flew at each other with rending fangs and claws or missiles and machine-gun fire.

Skater wound through the packed crowd, driving through them to the stage area.

The band took refuge behind a wall of poultry wire that held dimples from thrown beer bottles over years of nightly abuse. Plastiglass fragments dangled in the wire now, winking in the lights and picking up the muted neon glow from the advertising above the bar in the center of the big room.

The band had four members equipped with electric guitars, a keyboard, and drums. The female lead guitarist was also the lead vocalist. Her throaty voice sweltered in the bar, taking advantage of the acoustics and belting out old gold country music with a razored Japanese undertone. All the band members wore black and silver acrylic gloss and blue denim.

Elvis sat at a small table with the bearded man Trey had described.

As Skater approached, he picked up the two yabos running close-cover on the Johnson that Trey had warned them about. There was also one other in the shadows. All of them trained their attention on him and Duran. From outward appearances, Cullen Trey didn’t seem like a threat.

“Mr. Johnson,” Skater said politely.

The Johnson looked up and smiled uncomfortably. “Won’t you join us, Mr.—”

“Snipe,” Skater replied, pulling out a chair and seating himself at the table, “Snipe-Hunt. It’s a hyphenated name and carries history with it. We’ll get to that.”

The Johnson gave a pained look. “Hey, I can only take limited responsibility here, pal.”

“Only if we allow you to,” Skater said. “You made the call. You made the deal. You didn’t tell us everything.”

“I told you everything I knew.”

Skater looked at the man, getting the impression that the Johnson was telling the truth. “Then. What about now?”

“That hasn’t changed.”

Duran took a seat at another table that gave him an opportunity to cover Skater. He kept his attention on the yabos.

“You hired us to recover a body,” Skater said. “A body that wasn’t a body until we went to make the recovery.”

“I didn’t know about that.” The Johnson ran a thick hand through his thinning hair and blew out a tense breath. “I got hired to hire you.”

“By who?”

He shrugged and reached for the nicostick package by the ashtray on the table in front of him. He shook one out and lighted it. The cool yellow glow bathed the hard planes of his face. He didn’t look like he’d been sleeping well. “I don’t know. She didn’t give her name.”

“She?”

He nodded. “It was a woman. I can tell you that much.” He took a hit off the nicostick and breathed it out through his nose as he talked. “She sounded educated. Cultured, maybe. But she knew her biz in the shadows.”

“Why you?”

“I work on the fringes,” the Johnson said. “I know people who work both sides of the shadows. She knew me.”

“Who are you?”

The Johnson shook his head. “No. You’re not getting that. I’m staying as clear as I can of this whole thing.”

“Why would you take work from this woman?” Skater asked.

“Same reason you took the job. I got the money up front when I was supposed to, and it was enough to make me forget I should have been afraid. You could have drek-canned the run the minute you found out DocWagon was bringing in a fresh corpse. You didn’t.”

“I didn’t want to give the money back,” Skater said.

The Johnson smiled. The effort showed genuine mirth despite the stress that was also obvious. “You could have kept it.”

“No,” Skater said, “I couldn’t have done that.”

The Johnson rolled his cigarette on the ash tray’s edge, shaping the coal.

“That’s what I asked her,” the Johnson said. “How she could trust you. She said you had a reputation. I did some checking and turned up a joker who knew a fixer named Kestrel who’s supposed to have done some work with you. I put in a call to Kestrel but never got a call back from him. However, I did get one from a lady who knew a guy I knew. We talked about you and she gave me the message drop for you.”

Skater knew most of that because Kestrel had arranged for the Johnson’s people to talk with people that would be considered safe. The association between Kestrel and the shadowrunner team was loose and carried an amount of deniability for both sides. And Kestrel brokered for more than one team of shadowrunners.

“Only other guy my contact would have worked with was a team under a guy named Argent,” the Johnson finished up.

Argent was known to Skater, as was his team; they called themselves the Wrecking Crew. A name they’d well-earned. Argent was a legend in the biz, a guy who’d had his own flesh-and-blood arms hacked off to receive cybernetic replacements. There was no way to explain that to Skater’s way of thinking, even discounting the Salish beliefs his grandfather had instilled in him.

“Argent’s got a bigger rep,” Skater said.

“Argent’s also out of the sprawl,” the Johnson said.

“So that left us.”

The Johnson nodded. “And we’re here together now because we’re chasing the back end of the amount we contracted for.”

“That’s not all I’m after,” Skater said.

“Then you’ve wasted my time—because I’m not here to negotiate.” The Johnson stood up, crushed his cigarette out, and started to move away.

“I’ve still got the package,” Skater told him. He didn’t want the man to leave, but he knew if he tried anything physical, the drek would hit the fan.

The Johnson’s attention riveted on him. “Here?”

“No. Delivery is negotiable.”

The Johnson hesitated for a moment. “Too much heat’s come down from this thing to play fragging games.”

“I’m not playing,” Skater said. “I’m just a guy trying to slip through the cracks on a very nasty piece of biz. If I’d known more up front, maybe I’d have done things differently, kept the heat at a distance. Maybe I’d have just walked away. I think the lady who hired you knew that.”

“What do you know?” the Johnson demanded.

“Probably more than you at this point.” Skater looked up at the man, holding his gaze. “What did your contact tell you about Coleman January?”

The Johnson took a deep breath, glanced around at the three yabos sitting quietly and ready to follow his lead. Cursing, he sat back down at the table and fumbled for his pack of nico-sticks. “Money, slot it! Spirits, I hate whoever came up with the idea of money!” He stuck a nicostick into his mouth and lit up between cupped palms. “The drekkingest part of money is that you can owe it to somebody, you know? Money you haven’t even made yet!” He let out a blast of smoke. “Yeah, I know about Coleman January.”

“What do you know?” Skater insisted.

“Look, I’m not here to let you push my buttons,” the Johnson warned.

“It’s your back-end money,” Skater pointed out. “I’ve got the package and your contact told you to get me. She’s using you as a middle man right now. If I squeeze you out, she’ll come to me to get what she wants. I can’t do anything but better my position for the deal. You’re valuable to me only as long as you cooperate.”

“You’re a hard son of a slitch,” the Johnson said.

Skater said nothing.

The Johnson ordered a fresh beer from the cocktail waitress. When she was gone, he said, “My contact and Coleman January were in biz together. He slotted her over. She wanted him out.”

“Did you contract for the wetwork?” Skater asked.

“No, man. I told you I only hang in the fringes, and that doesn’t include anything that heavy. I broker deals, set up recoveries for small corps, insurance companies, do skip-tracing, that kind of drek.”

“You didn’t think she was going to have him killed,” Skater said.

The Johnson started to shake his head, then stopped. “Maybe. There wasn’t anything I could do about it even if I knew for sure. I ran Coleman January through some databases I’ve got access to. The fragging guy wasn’t even real.”

“But you picked up street buzz on him, didn’t you?”

The Johnson sucked the nicostick again, and the coal glowed bright orange. “Yeah.”

“And they said January was involved in corp extractions.”

“Did you know this before?” the Johnson asked. “Or after?”

“After,” Skater said. “I’m still playing catch-up.”

“You move fast.”

“It’s a fast game.”

“Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“There’s a helo approaching the bar.”

Skater swiveled his head around to Cullen Trey.

The mage nodded, then his head fell forward onto his arms. “What’s wrong?” the Johnson asked, picking up at once on the byplay.

“We’ve got company.” Skater pushed himself out of his seat. “Drekking son of a slitch!” the Johnson snarled. “You led them to us!” His hand slid under his jacket and came out with a Manhunter as the move-by-wire system jerked him smoothly into action. He shoved the pistol forward into Skater’s face.

37

Skater’s boosted reflexes came on-line as the adrenaline flooded his system. He flicked his left hand out and caught the Johnson’s gun wrist.

The yabos made their moves at the same time, hauling weapons into view. The bar crowd went into a frenzy immediately, some people throwing themselves into cover and some pulling weapons of their own.

Elvis uncoiled from the table beside Skater like a giant spasm letting go. He hurled himself toward the two yabos closest together. One was human and the other was a troll.

Duran pushed himself out of his chair and into a profile stance, bringing his pistol up in his fist and aiming at the third yabo. He fired two shots without hesitation.

“No killing!” Skater ordered as he struggled with the Johnson. “I don’t want any of them geeked!” Shifting his weight, he brought a knee crashing up into the Johnson’s groin.

Elvis roared happily in combat mode as he smashed into the pair of yabos he’d targeted. All three of them went down at once, reducing a table to kindling.

The Johnson groaned in sudden pain and released his grip on the Manhunter. Skater peeled the hand-cannon away from the man, then shoved him to the floor. A bouncer clad in a Neon Sunsets vest came rushing at him with a stun baton crackling in his big knuckled hands.

“Back off, Sparky!” Skater growled, showing the bouncer the biz end of the Manhunter.

“Chill, man, I hear you!” The bouncer stopped dead in his tracks.

“Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink, “the helicopter’s put a team down behind the bar. Gunther Octavius is among them. I counted at least ten.”

“Get down on the floor,” Skater ordered the bouncer.

Immediately the big man dropped onto the floor.

“Where’s the helo?” Skater asked Archangel. He glanced over at Duran and saw the ork covering the room, backing off two other bouncers with the pistol. The yabo he’d shot lay on the floor groaning and holding hands to his knees. Bullets had cored through both the man’s shinbones, effectively taking him out of the action despite whatever cyberware he had built into his body.

“Coming back over the building to cover the front,” Archangel replied.

“Weaponry?” Skater asked.

“Heavy bang-bang,” Wheeler replied. “We’re talking about an aerial war chariot here, omae.”

Skater thought he could hear the throb of the rotors over the confusion reigning inside the bar. He shifted his grip to the Johnson’s throat, knowing he was leaving himself dangerously open to attack if the man decided to go for it. He rested the barrel of the Manhunter against the Johnson’s cheek, forcing the flesh up to halfway close the eye above it.

To his left, Elvis surged up out of the pile of flailing limbs, holding the chromed human in both hands above his head. The human yabo flexed his arms and legs, snapping elbow and heel spurs and finger razors out. Before he had a chance to bury them in the troll samurai’s flesh, Elvis threw him across the room.

Twisting and flailing, the yabo smashed into the collection of arcade games in the corner. Sparks from defunct machinery flared to sudden, short life; then most of them winked out, throwing out brief fields of rainbow trid static.

Dozens of people were already scrambling for the exits, not waiting to see any more.

Skater knew the panic would work in their favor just as much as it would work against them. Luppas’s people would be hindered as well.

An emergency exit door in the back opened, letting in the outside lights. A woman started outside, but a sudden burst of machine pistol fire drove her back inside. Her face obliterated by the bullets, she was dead even as she stumbled back into the people who’d gotten in line to follow her out.

Hoarse screams ripped through the ranks of the bar crowd as they surged again, this time from the exit. Skater turned his attention back to the Johnson. “Think about it,” he yelled at the man. “If Fuchi’s blacklight crew could have tracked us, they’d have taken us sooner! We’ve got what they want, not you! They found out about us through you!”

“She must have set us up,” the Johnson said, his eyes widening in understanding. “She was the only one who knew we’d be here together.”

“You told her?” Skater asked. Out the corner of his eye, he caught the fight between Elvis and the last yabo. Most of the moves were unrecognizable to him, moving too fast for his fragmented attention to catch them.

“She wanted to know before she’d turn loose of the money.”

“Kid,” Duran said, “let’s drift now. Jaw later.”

Skater nodded. “Are we square on this?” he asked the Johnson.

“Yeah.”

“Make a move on me again and I’ll drop you in your tracks. No questions asked and no quarter given.”

“Sure.”

Duran opened up with his pistol just as Elvis laid out his opponent with a final spinning backhand that lifted the troll yabo from his feet and dropped him almost five meters away. The ork’s bullets chopped at the black-armored men boiling into the room through the exit.

Dressed in hard ebony armor, the blacklight team resembled an invasion of insect warriors. The bulbous combat helmets completed the appearance. Machine pistols spat flames in their hands, cutting through the bar crowd indiscriminately.

Skater leveled the Manhunter in front of him and squeezed the trigger twice. Both rounds slapped into the lead gunman’s helmet, snapping the man’s head back and causing him to stumble. The harsh spang of the impacts and the sudden spray of sparks testified that the bullets hadn’t penetrated.

In a handful of seconds, the gunman had regained his balance and turned toward Skater, bringing the machine pistol up.

Mind working overtime, juiced by the adrenaline surging through him, Skater dodged to one side. A line of bullets, peppered with a flaring purple tracer every third or fourth round, burned through the area where he’d been standing.

He ran hard, streaking for the bar area. Two bartenders, a male human and a female ork, peered anxiously over the top. He was aware of the Johnson beating feet beside him, the man’s breathing rasping even over the confusion filling the bar.

Still meters from the counter, Skater hurled himself into the air, arms stretched before him. He hit the bartop hard, knocking the wind from his lungs, then skidding across to drop on the other side. His ribs ached as he forced himself to his feet.

“Get out of here!” he yelled at the bartenders.

They moved at once, erupting out of either end of the bar. Bullets smashed into the bottles of liquor and beer behind the bar, reducing the huge mirror etched with erotic scenes of sea nymphs and sailors into dangerous shards that rained down over Skater.

He shoved the Manhunter into the Johnson’s hands, then reached up for two whiskey bottles. Ducking behind the temporary protection of the bar, he ripped the seals off and opened the caps. Searching the shelves behind the bar, he found a bar towel that was mostly dry. He set the whiskey bottles on the floor, ripped strips from the towel, and crammed them into the necks of the bottles.

Upending the bottles, he let the whiskey run through till it saturated the cloth strips and started dripping onto the floor at his feet. Satisfied that they were drenched, he lit them.

Raking his eyes across the scene as the hunters build up a new phalanx and readied themselves for the charge, Skater spotted Cullen Trey’s unconscious body lying on the floor. A cold knot formed in Skater’s throat while he looked Trey over. He didn’t see any wounds. He hoped the mage’s apparent lifelessness was merely the result of a continued stay in the astral plane.

Standing, he drew back his right arm. The lead hunter came around on him, dragging the barrel of his machine pistol after him. Skater lobbed the Molotov cocktail as hard as he could across the twenty meters separating them.

The Molotov shattered across the target’s chest. Blue and yellow alcohol flames wreathed the figure. He screamed in fear and pain, swinging his arm against the fire.

“Duran,” Skater called over the commlink. “I’ve got to pick Cullen up.” He drew the Predator. He had trouble breathing the bar air, even more smoky now with the addition of the Molotov cocktail.

“Come ahead, kid. Me and Elvis got your back. Just give me the word.”

The troll held an Ares Ultra Power heavy pistol, the integral laser sight firing a ruby beam out across the armored invaders. He reached for a nearby table, seizing it in one big hand.

Skater shifted again, then threw the remaining home-made incendiary at the nearest hunter. The shock trooper pivoted out of the way, bringing up his weapon as the Molotov cocktail headed for the empty space where he’d been almost a meter away.

Duran snap-fired. At first, Skater thought the ork was shooting at the armored hunter. Even as that thought was registering, the whiskey bottle exploded in midair. The liquid turned into a flying spider’s web of flame that caught the armored trooper in its snare, roping the joker with fiery strands.

“Now!” Skater called.

Elvis stepped around the corner he was using for cover and threw the table he’d snatched up from the floor. It sailed across nearly ten meters and crashed into one of the shock troops, knocking the man from his feet.

“Come on!” Skater told the Johnson. As soon as he cleared the end of the bar, he felt a round slam into the military jacket with enough force to stagger him. The bullet didn’t penetrate the Kevlar weave under the jacket, but it struck hard enough to leave a bruise that would last for days. Skater nearly fell as his breath locked in his lungs, but kept moving for Trey.

38

Skater fisted Trey’s Kevlar cape and wrapped it over the mages head. Blunt trauma was still something to be feared if he was hit.

One of the armored hunters targeted Skater. The red aiming laser flashed across Skater’s eyes as the gunner took a bead on him. Skater struggled under Trey’s weight, feeling the other man shift under his own power, then call out something in a sing-song voice.

Before the armored trooper could fire, he was blown back by an arcane wind that came from nowhere. Tables and chairs smashed against other troopers.

“Can’t stay, chummer,” Trey said in a fatigued voice as Skater reached Elvis. “Luppas is making his move through the astral.” Then Trey slumped against Skater’s shoulder.

Skater led the way to the front door. Out in the fresh air, he could smell the stench coming from the bar.

Three commercial-size vans rolled across the graveled parking area and came to crunching stops with overlapping fields of fire that prevented access to the street. More men clad in black body armor spilled out of the door and took up positions.

“Rat frag!” Duran said. “We stepped into the weasel’s guts on this one, kid!”

The military-style helicopter swung overhead, bright lights slung on the underbelly illuminating the parking area. Twin tracking lasers swept across the front of the bar.

“Take out the lights,” Skater ordered. He lifted the Predator and started banging off shots at the helicopter’s underbelly. It took him four shots to take out one of the six spotlights under the aircraft.

The helicopter pilot tried to pull his craft up, seeking security and the room to bring the minigun slung underneath into play. Elvis, Duran, and the Johnson took out the rest of the lights before the craft was away.

Skater shifted Trey’s limp weight across his shoulders. Out in the parking area, the rush of the fleeing bar patrons provided enough confusion for them to move toward their stolen Landrover. He knew from an earlier recon that the area behind the bar was all forest, leading out into the Salish lands.

He ignored the short bursts of autofire that lanced in his direction. The Landrover’s side door hissed open and slid back a second before he reached it, operated by the remote control Wheeler had rigged up to replace the vehicle’s original electronic locks.

Skater shoved Trey’s body inside. A spotlight whipped across him, carried by one of the armored troopers. In the brief illumination, he saw that Trey’s eyes were slitted halfway open and terribly bloodshot. His complexion was pasty too, the threads of blood running across his face looking black.

Reaching between the front seats, Skater grabbed his monofilament sword and scabbard, and looped it across his back. He accessed the commlink. “Archangel, what’s the status on the local blue crews?”

“The Border Patrol is on their way,” she replied coolly from Wheeler’s Tsarina. “And the Everett Lone Star branch has put together a Fast Response Team. They’ll be here in minutes.” The Johnson started to clamber into the Landrover.

Duran caught the man’s elbow. “Where the frag do you think you’re going?”

A look of confusion spread across the Johnson’s bearded face. “With you.”

“Let him in,” Skater said.

“Extra baggage,” Duran pointed out. “And no problem of ours. We got what he knows.”

Skater scanned the armored troops spreading out through the roil of cars, exchanging shots with the fleeing bar patrons. They hadn’t pinpointed the team yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

“You haven’t got it all,” the Johnson said through clenched teeth. “I’ve got an LTG number for a drop I’m supposed to use to get in touch with the woman. And I’ve got the password that will let me through the back door of it.”

“I still don’t like it,” Duran said. “This joker is the reason Luppas’s people found us.”

“He’s also the only lead we have now of getting Luppas and Fuchi off our hoops,” Skater said.

“Jack’s right,” Elvis said. He worked his forearm snapblades and popped them into view. “We’re gonna get dirty getting out of here. Might as well have something to show for it.”

Skater threw a final glance at Cullen Trey’s prone body inside the Landrover, then closed the door after the Johnson had scrambled inside. “Duran, you’ve got the wheel. Elvis and I are going to make some space, see about losing the chopper. You move when we free you up. Or when you realize we aren’t going to be able to.”

“We heading for the street?” Duran asked, stepping up into the bucket seat behind the steering wheel.

“Off-road,” Skater said, unsheathing the monofilament sword running down his back. “Go east a kilometer, then cut due south. We should run back into the Everett sprawl in three or four kilometers.”

Duran nodded, cradling his shotgun in his lap, then reaching out to flick the adhesive compass they’d mounted on the dash after boosting the vehicle. “What about you?”

“I’ll be along.” Skater dropped his closed fist on the ork’s. He hoped it was true. But he didn’t see any other way around it. His own needs had placed the team in jeopardy. If losing Emma hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind, he’d surely have walked away from the run back at Shastakovich’s. He had no doubts they would have followed his lead; even Trey, who never passed up a chance to score on a run. None of them would have been at the bar tonight. He owed them the chance to get clear.

“Jack.”

Skater turned, recognizing Archangel’s voice, knowing it wasn’t coming over the commlink.

She rushed to the Landrover’s side, her Ares Light Fire 70 in her hand. “I came to help. I couldn’t sit there doing nothing. Wheeler’s already sealed up in the rigger’s cocoon of his Tsarina; he can handle the car by himself. I’d only be in the way. Here, I can do some good.”

Skater gave her a tight nod and watched as Archangel vaulted up into the Landrover’s cab, taking over the spot behind the steering wheel that Duran left for her. “I’ll let you know when,” he told her over the commlink.

“I’ll be here.” Her words were clear, neutral, but her eyes flashed rebellion, something Skater had never seen in her before. She turned the vehicle’s engine over and it rumbled to life easily.

“Elvis,” Skater said.

“Ready, omae.”

He took a two-handed grip on the sword, willing it to become part of his body and feeling the boosted reflexes take it in as well. “We’ll make our way to the motorcycles and take out as many of Luppas’s people as we can,” Skater said. “Then we hot-wire a couple of the bikes so we can provide close-cover on the Landrover’s retreat into the forest.”

The troll samurai nodded as he looped a Panther assault cannon over his shoulder on a belt that contained extra rounds.

Skater moved into the shadows.

39

On the astral plane, Kylar Luppas zipped through the Neon Sunsets bar, searching for his quarry. The watchers flew in a porpoise group around him, nosing through the patrons scrambling for their lives, verifying the features of each one, looking for the ones Luppas had assigned them to find. He’d seen the shadowrunners once, only moments after the armored troops from the helo had broken in through the back of the bar.

“Master,” a thin voice piped up.

Floating above the center of the carnage in the bar, Luppas turned to look at the watcher as it flew toward him.

“We’ve found the humans,” the watcher cried out enthusiastically. “They are outside. They—”

Abruptly, the gaseous body of the watcher curled in on itself like a flower wilting into a dead ball in nanoseconds.

“Absurd little creatures, aren’t they?” a mocking voice inquired.

Luppas came around.

The other mage stood before him, feet resting on astral terra firma nearly a meter from the floor. A cynical smile twisted his thin lips. He didn’t look much different than his physical body, a little taller, perhaps. Obviously his image in astral space wasn’t based on his ego.

“Still,” the other mage said, “they have their uses.”

“Before I kill you,” Luppas said, “I’ll have your name.”

“Because names are power?” the mage taunted. “That’s superstition. Or hasn’t anyone told you that yet?”

Concentrating, Luppas unleashed a mana bolt from his left hand, hurling it quickly. The spell appeared as a miniature fuschia eyekiller no longer than an average man’s hand. All spells in the astral took on the forms of animals the way he perceived them. Other mages saw them differently. He’d never questioned the differences, because magic was a thing sharpened by belief more than it was strengthened by knowledge.

The astral creature took wing immediately, streaking for the other mage.

Reacting instantly, the mage took a step back and raised the walking stick he carried. He put his other hand on it, pulling at the stick. Instantly it lengthened and thickened, becoming a fighting staff two meters long that glowed with the mage’s own simple yellow aura.

The mana bolt in the form of the miniature eyekiller zoomed at the mage’s head. Before it could arrive, the staff struck it squarely, reducing it to a pyrotechnic burst that left neither ash nor smoke behind.

The mage whirled the staff with a flourish and brought it to an instant stop in the perpendicular. He seized the edge of his cape with his free hand and bowed, never taking his eyes from Luppas. “The name, inquisitive one, is Cullen Trey.” Luppas recognized the name from his sojourns among the denizens of the Seattle sprawl. “You’ve got a big rep.”

“And an even bigger heart,” Trey assured him. “Which is why I’m offering to let you walk away from this if you let my friends go.”

Using his foci, Luppas reached forward, activating the weapon focus back on his meat body. The space before him shimmered, then a katana materialized in his hands.

“Ah,” Trey mocked, seemingly not impressed by the weapon. “From the House of Ginsu.”

“We’re going to play a little game,” Luppas stated, “you and I.” He walked toward the mage.

“The sushi game, right?” Trey stood his ground, not making a move to defend. “Sushi loves me, sushi loves me not?”

Close enough now, Luppas feinted. When Trey took the bait and went to block the thrust, he shifted the katana, striking at the juncture of neck and body, intending to end the fight quickly.

Instead, Trey flipped the staff up and blocked the katana hard enough to send shivers down Luppas’s arms. Multicolored sparks flared as the two weapons met.

Luppas stepped back, realizing the staff was neither an ordinary manifestation of astral energy nor an astral likeness of a weapon focus. It was ancient and powerful, something he would have liked to research for his own knowledge.

Trey didn’t let the fight end, though. He stepped forward and took the initiative, striking out repeatedly and driving Luppas back before him.

Luppas threw himself at the roof of the bar, flying through it and into the night sky, hovering only a dozen meters from the helo. When he looked down, he saw the Landrover pull into the lanes between the rows of parked cars and speed toward the forest. It was the one area he hadn’t been able to successfully close off. But then the shadowrunners weren’t supposed to be able to get free of the bar before he either had them or they were dead.

He’d come prepared, though. He always did. Stretching out a hand, he spoke the words of binding, reaching through astral space to the place where he’d put the earth elemental on hold while back at his doss. “Gilyaremo, Earth-shaker, I bid you come.”

Almost at once, the presence took shape in the astral before him. The spirit looked vaguely like a troll at first glance because of the girth and the horns on its head. But the horns were three in number, curving back from the temples and from the center of its forehead, going from a black luster to blood red in subtle shifts. The face was triangular, definitely bovine. At the end of the short, bowed legs were cloven hoofs. The body consisted of hard, carved white marble shot through with deep purple veins.

“I await your command, Master Luppas,” the elemental said in baleful tones. The elemental’s binding hadn’t been a happy occasion, but Luppas had given it no choice.

He pointed at the Landrover, pursued already by the helo. “Stop that vehicle.”

“Yes, Master.” The elemental turned and streaked toward the Landrover.

“Luppas!” Trey yelled out in challenge as he passed through the top of the bar, coming up quickly from below. A mana bolt ripped from his hand, shaping itself into a glowing obsidian torpedo shark that sped toward Luppas.

As he prepared his defenses, Luppas saw danger to the helo that the pilot didn’t. He abandoned the astral plane, returning to his meat body and hoping he was in time. The first explosion ripped into the helicopter as he opened his eyes back in the physical world.

40

Three armored troopers emerging from the bar spotted Skater and Elvis immediately.

“Elvis,” Skater said, dropping into a slide that took him behind the heavy bulk of a Harley-Davidson Scorpion. Bullets smashed into the dressed-out street bike as sparks jumped. At least one round cored through the synthleather seat and sent padding flying.

“Get down, omae,” Elvis said. He sat astride a Thundercloud Pinto all-terrain trike that had seen better days. Still, the big engine sounded throaty and strong. The samurai raised the Panther assault cannon in a one-handed grip.

Skater felt the heat of the warhead buzzing by him. He tracked it instinctively, turning around just in time to see the superplast payload strike the chest of the lead man of a four-man team of Luppas’s troopers.

The warhead turned the man into chunks of armor and bloody meat. The concussion scattered the three men behind him, knocking them from their feet.

Elvis reloaded and fired again, managing to take out one more of their attackers before they retreated. “Ballistic armor,” the troll samurai snorted. “Nowhere near the same as impact-resistant. They’d have to be fragging tanks to stand against this baby.”

Skater silently agreed, but he did it while he raced to the side of the Hyundai Offroader he’d chosen out of the collection of motorcycles. Most of them were street sleds and wouldn’t be able to handle the rough terrain they were going to have to navigate to make their escape. He sheathed the monofilament sword in the scabbard over his back and caught the small knife Elvis flipped at him. In a matter of seconds, he’d stripped the wires and jumped the ignition. The Offroader started with a growl.

Straddling the Offroader, Skater twisted the accelerator and dropped the gear shift into first. He accessed the commlink. “Okay, Archangel, let’s buzz turbo!” The rear tire spun for just a moment, then caught traction. He was grimly aware of the helicopter above them.

A surge of black-armored troops followed in the wake of the Landrover as Archangel pulled it into the parking lane. Evidently Luppas’s people had managed to locate it either by magical means or physical recon.

Elvis fired another warhead into their path, striking one man full-on and blowing him back into two people behind him, sending the whole tangle of bodies crashing into a truck behind them.

“Cover them,” Skater told Elvis. “I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”

The troll nodded, dropping the Panther’s belt rig so it would hang within easy reach at his hip. He accelerated and shot away, the rear-drive twin back wheels spitting gravel.

Skater planted a foot and pivoted. Bullets struck the bikes around him, reducing some of them to scrap. A spark caught fire somewhere behind him, and the motorcycles blew when he was meters away. The blast of warm air covered him like a blanket, bringing a false sense of security that went away as quickly as it came.

The helicopter shot after the Landrover, dropping altitude as it brought the onboard miniguns on-line. Ruby aiming lasers darted across the back of the Landrover as it sped for the end of the parking lot and the ragged treeline beyond.

Skater accessed the commlink, dodging between the uneven lines of cars, flaring out into a wing position to the Landrover’s right. Elvis was already covering the left. “Wheeler.”

“Yeah,” the dwarf rigger responded, his voice edgy. He’d remained in place in the parking area, sitting quietly in the Tsarina and waiting to be brought into the action at the appropriate moment.

“Light up the helicopter.” Skater scanned the edge of the parking lot some sixty meters away. The land had been bulldozed mostly flat for the parking lot, but the terrain beyond was hilly and heavily wooded. If they could make it into that, he was certain they could slip away.

Skater spotted the tracer fire from the Vanquisher heavy machine gun Wheeler had concealed in a rear deck mount on the Tsarina as it arced into the sky after its target. The machine-gun fire pinpointed the helicopter’s tail rotor and assembly almost immediately.

With the tail section blown away and already in flames, the helicopter lost control and plunged into the treeline ahead of the Landrover. When the spinning rotors touched the trees, the blades shattered, turning into a maelstrom of deadly projectiles. Bent and broken, the wreckage of the helicopter dropped listlessly into the forest as gravity claimed it again, turning the helicopter into a giant fireball before it hit the ground.

At first, Skater thought the screech of metal was coming from the helicopter, then he realized it came from his left. Swiveling his head, braking quickly to avoid an Americar pulling out in front of him, then zooming around it, he glanced at the Landrover. Even with the infrared vision, he barely made out the thing that suddenly rose up from the parking lot and brought the big vehicle to a stop.

The creature stood almost five meters tall and was easily over half that wide. It was vaguely man-shaped, formed of the earth and gravel of the parking lot. There was no neck, but it gave the appearance of having a head that squared off and ran directly into the trunk of its body. Two powerful arms as broad across as a normal human’s chest shoved against the front of the Landrover, halting it even though the vehicle’s four wheels churned the ground. The legs looked like bridge-support pillars, braced to take on the weight, momentum, and drive of the vehicle it blocked.

“Fragging earth elemental,” Duran snarled. “Gotta be Luppas. Anybody eyeballed that browncone? Manage to get a double-ought enema up his hoop, we won’t have to drek with this walking gravel pit.” He opened the door and stepped out to face the monster with his shotgun. He fired two rounds.

The creature opened its gash of a mouth and roared in response. The shotgun pellets had no effect at all.

Skater brought the Offroader to a halt. On the other side of the Landrover, Elvis skidded to a stop on the Pinto. The trike’s light illuminated the huge elemental.

“Back up,” Skater ordered. “Try to break free and go around it.”

Archangel reversed the transmission and stomped the accelerator. All four of the Landrover’s tires dug in. None of them got anywhere. Every chunk of gravel or ripped earth that slapped into the elemental was added to its bulk. Its appearance changed into something more humanlike with each passing second as it manifested itself on the physical plane more completely.

“I can’t,” Archangel said. Before she could say another word, the ground acted like it had suddenly turned liquid under the Landrover, swallowing it down, centimeters at a time. The elemental continued shoving the vehicle into the opening grave.

41

Slipping back into his meat body, Kylar Luppas felt the first crush of the explosions that quaked through the helo. The sounds came afterward, battering him in a rush. Flesh and blood were slow to respond even with adrenaline hitting his system because he’d been away from his body for an extended time. Combating Cullen Trey on the astral plane had dwindled his reserves, the drain on them made even worse with the effort of keeping the other spells going.

Buffeted by the explosion, Luppas smashed against the bulwark beside the warped door. The barrier spell he’d woven around himself prevented any real damage, but it tested his focus. The barrier would protect him from most physical damage, but was no protection at all from Trey’s continued attacks from the astral plane if they were based on another level than the physical. Another moment, though, and he added a mana barrier to his defenses, activating spell locks for both.

He looked out the door, watching the ground come up quickly, at an aggressive angle because the craft had rolled over partially on its side. The twisted branches of the trees clawed for the helo as it dropped into their deadly embrace.

Knowing he was almost out of time even then, Luppas flung himself through the cargo hold, tucking himself into a ball to avoid the careening mass of metal gone way past any control or predictability. Once he was clear of the wreckage, he levitated himself, slowing his fall and gaining control over his direction.

In the next moment, the helo struck the treeline and shivered into thousands of pieces. Shrapnel struck but didn’t penetrate the invisible barrier cocoon wrapped around Luppas. Rainbow-colored pyrotechnics shot out from the impacts, visible only to Luppas or anyone else able to assense the astral.

Holding steady at twenty meters above the ground, Luppas aimed himself back in the direction of the bar. He scanned the battlefield with a practiced and calculating eye. The shadowrunners had come closer to breaking through than he’d thought possible. The earth elemental stood in front of the fleeing Landrover, shoving the vehicle down into the firmament as it used its powers to engulf its target.

At the other end of the parking lot, Octavius ordered the three blocking vehicles into motion again. Traffic fleeing from the bar had stalled out, backing down from the guns aboard the mercenaries’ craft. Still, there remained places to jockey around the abandoned cars and trucks.

The mercenary rigs plowed through the citizen’s vehicles, taking little damage themselves due to the heavy armor that made them almost as durable as any light tank Luppas had commanded in the Desert Wars. A limping troll went down beneath the bumper of one of the cars, and the vehicle moved on. The troll remained a twisted version of herself in the truck’s wake.

Luppas gathered his flagging strength for another magical assault. He assensed the Landrover, detecting the man inside. He hovered closer, relying on his barrier spells to keep him safe. There, through the back glass of the Landrover, he saw the man who’d talked with Skater. Chanting, using the Art to the best of his ability, Luppas read what he could from the man, probing his mind harshly. Trey’s five friends were easy to assense as to what they were, if not necessarily who. He immediately recognized the fact that the seventh man didn’t belong with them. And he’d seen them talking to the man from adversarial positions.

There wasn’t time for Luppas to gain much information. But in the space of a second, he had what he judged he needed. The woman who’d hired the man had left an LTG number and a time to get in touch with her.

Luppas shaped the mana dart in his mind, preparing it and making sure it would serve his purpose. He recognized Quint Duran then as the big ork hunkered next to the sinking Landrover for cover. Duran fired repeatedly and broke the ranks of the approaching ground troops in spite of Octavius’s efforts.

The Landrover lunged, trying to escape the grave that opened around it. The earth elemental roared with rage, then drew back a big arm that had a shaped boulder for a fist at the end of it. With a cry of savage glee, it banged the boulder-fist onto the Landrover’s hood, smashing the surface down and scoring it with long tears.

Luppas sent the mana dart winging on its way, watching as the sword-bearing motorcycle rider closed on the earth elemental and Cullen Trey swung free of the Landrover, staggering enough to let him know that the mystical battle had been draining for the human as well.

42

Standing on the Offroader’s footpegs, his fist twisted tightly around the accelerator, Skater raced at the earth elemental. In the last few seconds, it had absorbed enough debris from the parking lot and from the dirt and rock being slung by the Landrover’s wheels to grow another meter and a half.

At nearly seven meters in height, fully half that in breadth, the elemental seemed impossible to distract from its prey. Blunt features that looked as rudimentary as a child might make formed a ragged expression of maniacal joy.

Skater knew they had to get the Landrover free. Holding steady, he swept the sword up in his left hand, relying on his skill and his boosted reflexes as he neared the creature. The Landrover’s engine roared, banishing all other noise. Even communication over the commlink was difficult.

“You’re crazy, kid,” Duran said. “Back off. We’ll bail.”

“Jack,” Archangel said. “Don’t.”

All they needed was just the thinnest sliver of a chance. Skater knew he had the elemental’s attention when the cone-shaped head grated around on its rock-encrusted stump of a neck. It lifted its boulder fist from the front of the Landrover, almost succeeding in smashing out the windshield with its latest effort, and shrugged a blocky shoulder around. The fist came up before it, looking like a giant hammer carved from a quarry wall.

Skater twisted his accelerator, revving up the rpms. The Offroader responded immediately. As he came within reach of the elemental, he struck at its knee with the sword, almost at waist-level for him due to the creature’s size.

Although not magical in nature, Skater knew his attack would have an effect on the creature. When elementals manifested on the physical plane, they became vulnerable to physical attacks. Bullets and launched weapons wouldn’t touch them, Trey had once explained during a venture not so long ago, nor anything that was activated without an attacker’s personal skill behind it. Swords and knives worked, but generally elementals could merely shrug off the effects of those; the same for throwing axes and arrows from bows that weren’t crossbows. A crossbow tended to be too independent of a user’s will, where a bow took real skill to use. And courage to stand in the face of such a foe.

Sparks flashed from the monofilament edge as it struck rock. But the keen edge sliced on through the appendage, although the resulting impact against Skater’s arm felt like it pulled his shoulder out of its socket. The sword pulling free of the earth elemental almost yanked him from the Offroader’s seat.

The elemental howled in pain and anger as Skater fought to keep the motorcycle upright. He geared down, shoved the sword into the scabbard across his back, and brought the Offroader around in a tight circle that scattered gravel in all directions only a few meters from Elvis.

The samurai troll held the Panther assault cannon to his shoulder and sighted on a group of mercenaries coming up on the right from between a cluster of abandoned vehicles. The Panther whooshed a jet of hot flame out the back of the superplast warhead as the liquid propellant caught. It sizzled into the cluster of cars less than a heartbeat later. The explosion rocked the cars and threw armored bodies to the ground.

Swiveling his head back to the earth elemental, Skater watched the thing staggering on its wounded leg, roaring up against the night as it continued to lean on the Landrover. “Son of a slitch,” Skater muttered, not believing what he was seeing. He accessed the commlink. “Gun the motor, Archangel!”

The Landrover’s power plant kicked in again. All four wheels churned dirt, sinking lower into the ground as it helped dig its own grave. The ground level was to the middle of the doors now.

Then, for an instant, Skater thought maybe the slash across the back of the thing’s leg had been enough. The elemental shuddered with the effort of restraining the Landrover, its feet sliding back centimeters.

Abruptly, the leg snapped back into position, the slash healing almost instantly. Then the creature slammed both hands once more across the front of the Landrover with renewed effort. Its scream of fury was bloodchilling, sounding like an amplified echoing of a shovel being thrust deep into bedrock.

“Fraggit,” Skater said. “Abandon the Landrover. Archangel, try to get back with Wheeler.” The dwarf rigger was several car-lengths behind the Landrover, unable to bring the Tsarina’s weapons in line to target the elemental. Even then, machinegun fire wouldn’t have done anything to the creature. Skater shifted on the Offroader, bringing the engine back up to high rpms. “Duran, is Trey—”

“I’m here, chummer,” the mage replied.

Skater focused on the unsteady figure that stepped from the side of the Landrover.

“Elvis,” Trey said. “Have you another rocket left, my friend?”

“More than one,” Elvis said.

“I’ll have need of it.” Hands spread out at shoulder height at his sides, palms facing outward, Trey walked toward the earth elemental.

The creature took notice of the mage at once. Its misshapen head rocked back, offering a flinty profile in the moonlight, and it acted like it was snuffling the air.

“Shoot the elemental with it,” Trey said. He stopped only five meters from the creature.

“Can’t,” Elvis said. “You’re too close. Frag, the Landrover’s too close.”

Skater scanned the line of mercenaries less than forty meters away. At any moment he knew they’d make the break and leave whatever concealment they were using as cover to overrun their position.

“Trust me, omae,” Trey said.

“Done.” Elvis lifted the Panther assault cannon and pointed it at the elemental. “Coming.” He squeezed the trigger and the warhead whooshed from the barrel.

When the rocket hit the earth elemental, the superplast warhead went off in a much more pyrotechnic blast than normal. Skater knew that the effort Cullen Trey had expended casting the spell must have been considerable. He’d never seen anything like the spell, hadn’t ever heard of anything like it. A fountain of green fire erupted from the creature’s side. In spite of all the bridled force unleashed by the explosive, the elemental wasn’t affected at all.

But that was only true at first.

Skater expected to see the Landrover’s front end blown to hell. Instead, it had acquired only a few dozen new scratches. The brunt of the blast was contained in the shimmery cloud Trey had created. The pocket swelled from the explosion, encompassing the earth elemental.

The winds trapped inside the shimmering reached gale-force intensity in seconds. The ululating howl of it whipping around even in its confined space echoed over the parking lot, covering over all but the most strident screams of the approaching Border Patrol sirens.

The wind flayed the earth elemental alive. Soil went first, freeing up the chunks of rock and gravel it had used to manifest itself on the physical plane. Even before it crumbled and fell into the cycling windstorm, the creature lost its hold on the Landrover.

Archangel steered the big rig through the wind. Breached by the Landrover, the wind carried the earth elemental up and over the vehicle. The creature’s howls of pain suddenly echoed, and its physical representation went completely to pieces inside the cyclonic wind.

“Cover them!” Skater yelled to Elvis.

The troll samurai gave him a tight nod, then rearmed the Panther and fired another round.

Archangel brought the Landrover to a halt long enough for Duran to shove Trey inside, then clamber into the shotgun seat himself. The front line of mercenaries broke cover, charging after them as Elvis fired the Panther once more.

Reloading his pistol, Skater watched the arrival of the Border Patrol. The Amerind protectors were hardcases of the shoot-first-and-identify later school. When they were called in, usually a situation had already gone critical and a lot was at stake.

Skater dropped the Offroader back into gear, popped the clutch, and roared after the Landrover and the Tsarina. Both the vehicles had already cleared the edge of the parking lot and were disappearing into the thick forest.

Skater knew pursuit would last for a time, but none of Luppas’s vehicles had been in prime position to move against them. He only hoped the Border Patrol hadn’t marked their vehicles for pursuit.

43

“Luppas and his people escaped,” Wheeler said over the commlink.

Seated behind the steering wheel of the Americar they’d boosted less than ten minutes ago, Skater wasn’t surprised. Luppas getting caught would have been more surprising, and not being able to leverage his way out of the Border Patrol’s grasp if he had been caught would have been even more surprising still. The elf mercenary remained a threat, and Skater could almost feel the man’s breath coasting down the back of his neck in spite of the distance they’d created by running from the scene.

Skater and Elvis had ridden their motorcycles almost two kilometers east along the highway to another bar they’d found on the area map Archangel had accessed through her deck. The Cocked Hat Saloon was a border bar as well, but it was in Everett, not the tribal lands. Specializing in cyber-delights like the addictive better-than-life simchips and restricted pharmaceuticals that the Amerinds couldn’t get easily in tribal lands, the saloon did a bang-up after-hours biz. That’s where they’d boosted the car they now buzzed down the highway.

Further down the incline that led to the highway up ahead, Wheeler sat in the Tsarina, a dark shadow among the many others thronging the forest. He kept surveillance over the group’s back as Skater and Elvis searched for the Landrover.

The escape from the Neon Sunsets bar was almost a half-hour old. Having the team stationary this long in potentially hostile country wasn’t good, but the Landrover—even if it hadn’t become an instantly recognizable visual eyesore—wasn’t trustworthy enough to get them back to the safehouse where they could hole up. Scanning the heavy line of forest on the other side of the highway, Skater spotted the brief white-yellow obelisk of Duran’s flash as he flagged him down.

“Got him?” Elvis asked from the passenger seat. The big troll samurai held one hand cupped over his ear, listening intently while his eyes took in the dark landscape. He was monitoring the Lone Star transmissions on another frequency Archangel had made available on the commlink, just as she’d provided Wheeler with the passcodes to the link to the Border Patrol.

“Got him,” Skater said. He swerved the Americar over to the side of the highway and pulled off into the brush. His clothing was damp with perspiration, and fear still slammed adrenaline charges through him that left him exhausted enough that his hands quivered. The shakes left by the violence were always better tended when he was quiet and when he was alone. They didn’t have time for that now.

He slid the Americar over the rough terrain to a stop beside the wreckage of the Landrover. The vehicle had finally given up, collapsing at the side of the highway when the engine overheated after the holed radiator emptied.

Skater opened the door of the Americar and stepped out, then walked over to the Landrover. Archangel and Duran stood just outside the sliding side door, peering in.

Duran’s features looked wan and grim in the headlights of the Americar. “Don’t know if taking the Johnson with us was such a wiz idea, kid. If somebody got a tissue sample on him, they’ll have a good chance at tracking us. And you know Luppas traced him once or they’d never have found us.” Skater wrestled with that as he looked over Archangel’s shoulder. The Johnson lay sprawled in the back of the Landrover. Grayish foam flecked with blood bubbled at his mouth, and his open eyes tracked independent orbits. His color had washed away, leaving skin like old parchment in its place. “Frag,” Skater said. “What happened to him?”

“Trey said it was a mana dart,” Archangel said.

The Johnson breathed harshly and unevenly, the bubbles spilling from his mouth and leaking down his chin.

Skater thought about the LTG number the Johnson had claimed to have. He glanced at Cullen Trey crumpled up in the middle seat. “Get Trey into the car.” Skater climbed in next to the Johnson, and felt the Landrover shift as Duran gently hoisted Trey from the vehicle.

A thick purple tongue erupted from the Johnson’s mouth and weakly licked at the froth covering his lips. “Fragger . . . fragger ... got me pretty good . . . didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Skater said, wishing he could lie and tell the man everything was going to be okay. But he could tell from looking that it wasn’t going to be. He felt guilty for not getting the medkit from the front of the Landrover and adhering a tranq slap patch onto the man.

The Johnson shoved a shaky hand out. “Hold my . . . hand . . . please . . . more scared than . . . than I thought . . . I’d be.” He tried a feigned laugh at himself, but it came out more as a choked gurgle.

Skater took the man’s hand. The fear inside him was feral, running rampant. Thinking that Emma might be lost to him almost send him over the edge. Only the realization that he was her sole provider kept him together. He felt the man’s strength fading, the callused hand in his going weak.

“Woman ... woman I talked to,” the Johnson said, “she . .. sounded hard ... but... but she sounded scared ... she needs ... somebody ... said she was ... was all alone ... in this.” The Landrover shifted again as Duran stepped inside. “Kid, we gotta beat feet.”

Skater nodded. “In a minute.” He looked into the Johnson’s rolling eyes. “You said you had an LTG number for the woman.”

“You gotta promise ... to take this . . . this son of a slitch out. . . first.”

“If I can,” Skater said. “That’s the most I can promise.”

The Johnson focused on Skater’s face briefly and with difficulty. “Woman . . . said you could ... be trusted . . . maybe ... just maybe ... I’m gonna trust you too.” He struggled to take a deep, shuddering breath. “LTG number’s . . . 9206 . . . 75 . .. 9991.”

He breathed again, with increasing effort, the effort sounding drowned in his chest. “Supposed to call . .. call between . .. twenty-two ten and twenty-two fifteen .. . tomorrow . . . said she’ll... have the rest of the money then . . . password’s liberty . . . don’t even know her name.”

Skater repeated the information to himself, watching as the Johnson’s last breath hissed out of him, sounding wet, miring down at the end in the fluid-filled lungs. The eyes finally halted their endless cycling, stilling with different views but sharing the same perspective. Skater found his own breath locked tight in his chest. Maybe he’d been unwilling to breathe in the man’s death, and maybe he’d just forgotten. He wasn’t sure.

Gently, Skater reached out and closed the dead man’s eyes. “Sleep easy, Mr. Johnson.” Then he turned and followed Duran out of the Landrover.

44

Outside the Landrover, the air was fresh, cooler, filled with the scent of the pines in the forest. Skater breathed it in, willing himself to think. It was his gift, the ability to plan and adapt and see things that most people wouldn’t guess at. He’d been left alone with his imagination as a child, ostracized from so much of his mother’s people’s daily lives. All he’d had was his grandfather, and that was divided between Daniel Ghost-step’s other progeny, as well as his counseling duties to the tribe. His mind had become razor-edged, a weapon he could use. But it also became something that could devour him if he let it.

He took a final glance at the Landrover. It had nothing that could tie them to it. They’d all been careful.

He forced his breath out one last time and slid into the passenger seat of the Americar. Archangel and Trey were already in the back. Elvis strode down the incline and joined Wheeler at the Tsarina. The dwarf rigger popped the Tsarina’s locked doors and let the troll in.

“Let’s roll,” Skater called over the commlink. There was nowhere else for them to go but the safehouse. At least they’d be secure there, able to examine their options. And all of them were slicing pretty fragging thin, Skater knew. He checked his retinal clock: 22:06:18. Little more than an hour had passed since the meeting with the Johnson.

Duran slid behind the Americar’s steering wheel. He placed a heavy foot on the accelerator. The tires skidded through the loose soil of the highway embankment for a moment, then the vehicle roared onto the pavement.

Checking the side mirror, Skater saw the Tsarina ghost along in their wake, moving powerfully and smoothly. He turned around in the seat and glanced at Trey. “How is he?” he asked Archangel.

She nodded but didn’t look at him. Her attention was focused on Trey as she wiped moist towelettes over his face, removing the blood. “He’ll make it.”

“I know a rat shaman in downtown Seattle who can work some healing magic on him. She knows how to keep her mouth shut too. She’s expensive, but she’s worth it,” Skater said.

Archangel turned on him, fire blazing in the gold flakes of her eyes. “I think he should be consulted.”

“I think he’ll understand.”

“You think he’ll understand,” Archangel repeated. She stared at him for a moment, then broke their locked gaze and threw the used towelette into a plastifoam container she was using as a trash receptacle. “Jack, how the slot is it that you know so much about how other people feel all of a sudden? How do you know what is best for everybody when you didn’t even know what you were going to do with your daughter just this morning? It comes to my mind that you’re only sure of what suits you.”

Skater managed to stifle the angry retort before the words left his lips. It helped that he was unaccustomed to seeing such strong emotion in Archangel. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” she snapped. “It’s what’s wrong with you that’s throwing everything off, Jack.”

Skater peered through the dust-covered windshield and forced his breath out, keeping the anger at bay. They were running for their lives, from an enemy who could reach out and geek them in a moment’s notice if he caught up with them, from a corporation able to reach into every nook and cranny of anywhere they could run. Dissension in the ranks wasn’t a good move.

“Actually, chummers,” Cullen Trey said in a weak voice, “a visit to this rat shaman doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Even if it will do nothing more than ease this headache. Feels like I’ve got the worst hangover in history.”

“What about someone you know?” Archangel asked. “Wouldn’t you rather go there?”

Skater knew the suggestion was a deliberate barb aimed in his general direction.

“Dear lady,” Trey said, “Luppas knows me. It could be that anyone I know he may know as well. Or know of. We’d be better off staying away from the circles he and I frequent.” Trey slid his bloodshot and slightly unfocused gaze over to Skater. “Jack, I leave myself in your hands.” Without another word, Trey’s head lolled to the side.

Skater started over the seat, trying to remember how to do CPR, wondering if there was a trauma patch in the medkit. “No,” Archangel said. “He’s fine. He’s just sleeping.”

As Skater watched, the mage’s breathing became more regular, sounding calmer and less strained.

Archangel took her long coat off and pulled it over Trey, creating a double layer with his cape. “I think you’re right about the rat shaman, Jack.”

Skater looked at her, trying to figure out what was going on between them. They’d never had really cross words with each other before. In fact, of them all, Archangel had always been the most professional in handling the interpersonal relationships of the team even in times of chaotic stress. He didn’t know what had changed. “You weren’t sure about that a minute ago.”

The brighter lights of Everett’s downtown area filled the car. The neon glare left apparitions of advertising staining the windows around them, twisting shadows into elongated patterns.

“That was then,” Archangel said. She wrapped her arms around her upper body. Her gaze was distant and defiant.

Skater was speechless for a moment. He remembered how irritating Larisa could be when she got moody, how he’d never understood how she jumped from one emotional theme to another in the space of seconds. Women were mutable and he understood that, but he wasn’t used to it from Archangel. He started to say something, even knowing there was nothing correct he could say, but mad enough just the same to not let it pass.

Instead, Duran spoke up first. “You given any thought to what we’re going to do with Luppas next?”

“We avoid him,” Skater said. “With the leads I gave Lone Star and the media, Luppas and Fuchi should be coming under some kind of investigation, and probably exposure in the public eye. Hopefully either or both will cause Fuchi to put a tighter rein on Luppas’s actions and give us more room to maneuver. In the meantime, we try to find out who this woman is.”

“Common sense says she’s an independent programmer of some sort,” Archangel said.

Skater reached up and flipped down the visor, using the vanity mirror on the inside of it to meet the decker’s gaze. “Why?”

“If she’d been working for Fuchi, they would already have had access to whatever software designs she’d created. Prototypes, if not the finished product. And they’d have spent their time looking for her in her usual haunts, not hunting us.”

“Woulda been the same for any other cop,” Duran said. “Yes. But it was Fuchi.”

“Meaning Fuchi’s probably the only one who tumbled to the software so far,” the ork said.

Skater seized on the ideas, running them through and playing the angles, bouncing them around until he had something he could play with that made sense. “Caber knew.”

“He was working for Fuchi,” Archangel pointed out. Her hands rested comfortably in her lap, her face expressionless, her eyes masked. “Obviously, Caber thought he could cut a better deal for himself by not telling Fuchi everything. Or the woman.” Some of the angles were starting to fall into place in Skater’s head. He felt his mind flex around them, spinning them into position so they fit with other truths he knew or could guess at. He was barely conscious of the highway humming along under the synthrubber tires or the sprawl uncoiling around them. “What did Caber have to offer the woman that would make her work with him?”

Duran swapped looks with Archangel in the rearview mirror. “If you got something, kid, spit it out so we can have a look at it too. Fragging chron’s ticking away faster than a dying snake twitches.”

Skater felt excitement thrill through him as he put it together. “Caber got onto the woman somehow while he was working for Fuchi. We can all agree on that. But let’s take a look at Caber’s usual field of operations.”

“The megacorps,” Archangel said.

“Right. One way or another, by blackmail or subterfuge, Caber found his way into the other corps over the years and stole secrets. Secrets that could be turned into heavy profits for Fuchi. We got that information from different sources, but they were in agreement. If the woman had come from another corp, we know one thing for certain.”

“Fuchi wouldn’t have been the only fragging corp in the scene,” Duran growled. “The original corp would have been hustling to recover their lost tech too.”

Skater nodded. A lot of the joints between his ideas appeared seamless as he smoothed them out. Despite the exhaustion slamming into him from the frenetic activity of the night before and the day-long schedule of running and fighting, his mind had slid into that twilight of clear-headedness independent of physical body. “Somebody else—Renraku, Yamatetsu, Mitsuhama—some-fragging-body would have been tripping all over this piece of biz with Fuchi.”

“Don’t forget Quentin Strapp,” Archangel said. “He represents the UCAS’ interest in this.”

“Whatever interest they have,” Duran said.

“The woman,” Skater said with certainty.

“Why?” Archangel asked.

“Fuchi was in place in Seattle. Caber was in place in his position.” Skater stared through the windshield in front of him without really seeing it. “The only thing that changed was the woman.”

“How?”

Skater shook his head. “I don’t know. But it was her movement that started the chain of events.”

“That’s a stretch, kid.” Duran peered over at Skater. “Check this,” Skater said, feeling that he was on the right path but not knowing exactly where it was taking him. “We’ve been told Caber was under deep cover for months. Probably working this software development. Let’s say this woman has been developing the software for a time, was getting close to completing it. If she was working with one of the major corps, she’d have had a whole staff that would have known what she was doing.”

“Caber woulda been able to take any one of them,” Duran said. “Get behind her back. Maybe even geek her and be done with it.”

“Yeah. So why go to the woman?” Skater asked.

“Because she was the only one who had access to the software tech,” Archangel replied. “So she wasn’t part of a corporation.”

“No. Probably she was with an independent research facility.” Some of the team’s own runs had been against such small agencies. The problem with a thinktank was that a runner never knew if he was going to get anything worth fencing. Or for certain what kind of security was going to be guarding the place. Several developers who leased workspace in a thinktank also provided their own security in addition to what was already operational.

“Okay, kid, the controllability factor of the software makes the case for the non-megacorp sphere of operations, but what makes you think she had some kind of development deal with an independent research facility?” Duran demanded.

“She’d have needed access to different passcoded deltaware designs,” Archangel said, instantly following along.

Skater looked at her with approval. This was the Archangel he was familiar and comfortable with.

“If she designed a program that would erase all the protective codes in only one scenario,” Archangel went on, “she wouldn’t have created much.”

“You think this is what the woman was trying to invent?” Duran asked.

“Don’t know. We’d have to talk to her to know that.” Skater paused, reassembling his thoughts. “She created this software, and she had to know what the applications would be. The corps only passcode-protect higher-level execs. She might not have even seen it for what it was.”

“I doubt that,” Archangel said. “Perhaps she took another path to get to it, but she knew.”

“Which brings us back to Caber’s part in it for her,” Skater said. “Working as he did throughout the megacorps, knowing who he could buy and knowing where all the dirty laundry was hidden so he could leverage passcodes and information, Caber also learned a lot of other things.”

A slow grin spread across Duran’s face. He scratched his whisker-stubbled chin with a black-taloned thumb. “Who was ready to jump ship at which megacorp and who was ready to take them on.”

“Got it in one,” Skater said.

“Vankler said Caber had been moving execs in the last few weeks,” Duran said. “Joker like Caber, he wouldn’t have stood around the sprawl to see who come out hunting him.”

“I don’t think so either,” Skater said. “He’d have set himself up a deal, sold the software to the first corp that could meet his price, and then shook the dust off his feet as far as Seattle, and maybe the UCAS, was concerned.”

“So why didn’t he?” Archangel asked.

“The woman,” Skater replied, feeling he was right. “She doesn’t know how biz is done. She used Caber as long as she could, used him to set up meets with the execs who wanted to haul hoop and had the credsticks to back it up.”

“She’s after the money,” Duran said. He took the off-ramp on the highway, aiming the car down the access ramp that would coil it around the clover-leaf pattern and shunt them into the loop that would take them around downtown Everett.

“It’s not just the money,” Archangel said. “If she wanted that, she could have sold the software. What she wants is control. She’s sitting on a huge profit potential, but she’s got no way to make it work without losing everything.”

And that, Skater felt, was the crux of the situation for the woman.

“So where does this Strapp joker fit in?” Duran asked.

“I don’t know,” Skater replied honestly. “We’ll have to do some digging on him. Everything we’ve seen on the information my fixer gave me suggests he’s just what we’ve been told: a federal investigator searching for Dunkelzahn’s assassins.”

“If Strapp is as single-minded—and honest—as we’ve been led to believe,” Archangel said, “then something about the woman or her research must lead back to Dunkelzahn.”

“Unless Strapp’s using Caber and the woman to leverage a piece of biz against Fuchi,” Skater said. “Nobody knows who geeked the dragon or why. Except whoever did it.”

“You put it like that,” Duran said in a heavy voice, “makes everything more complicated. Is Fuchi out to score some wiz piece of tech, or are they out just to cover their hoops?”

“I don’t know,” Skater said. “The only thing I’m certain of is that that woman has got some tech that’s potentially worth millions of nuyen, and that if Luppas gets to her ahead of us, she’s roadkill.”

45

“Would you mind some company?”

Sitting on a cold step in the building stairwell, Skater looked up and saw Archangel standing in the breezeway that led back to the Auburn safehouse, where they continued to stay because it was safer than lugging the corpse around. It was now 02:13:49. They’d been at the doss almost three hours since returning from Everett. Below in the streets, traffic still surged along, mostly stragglers making their way back home after the late shift or putting in an evening at their favorite watering hole.

Archangel had changed clothes, opting for synthdenim jeans and a handknit Pueblo sweater with Southwestern colors and designs over a solid black turtleneck. She stood with a plate steaming gray vapor into the night in one hand and a glass in the other. A small loaf of sliced French bread was tucked under her arm. Her expression was defensive but hopeful.

Skater was stunned by the offer and sat for a moment trying to figure it out.

“Maybe not,” Archangel said, apparently misreading his face. Her nostrils flared and a pinched white spot appeared on her nose. She turned to go, her shoulders stiffly squared.

“Archangel,” Skater called, cursing himself out silently for being so slow to react, “wait.”

Surprisingly, she did.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You caught me while I was doing a major core-dump on the past twenty-four hours. I know I looked right at you, but you didn’t even show up on my internal screens.”

Without turning around, she said, “I noticed you didn’t get any bread with your stew. I thought maybe you’d like some.”

“I would.”

She turned and placed her plate and glass on the edge of the stairwell. Her fingers worked deftly, pulling off a few slices of the short, narrow loaf.

Skater took the slices, for a moment feeling her fingers against his. The chill of the night made him feel like electricity was in the brief touch. Then her hand retreated.

“I don’t have to stay,” she said.

“I’d like the company,” Skater said politely, though he wasn’t sure if he would or not. He balanced the bread on the plate’s edge and waited. All of a sudden it felt like he was sitting down to one of those tense family dinners back m the tribal lands. None of his mother’s family had liked him because he’d been half-white and bom of an unknown father. He’d sat there at the feasts, waiting to eat, the saliva always thick and dry in his mouth despite the rumbling in his belly.

As if uncertain and uncomfortable herself, Archangel sat on the landing in front of Skater’s position on the stairwell steps. She moved the stew around on her plate without taking a bite for a time.

“Trey’s resting much easier now.”

Skater nodded. “That’s good.” The trip to the rat shaman hadn’t taken more than an hour, and Trey had come around briefly, sounding stronger than before. Once they’d returned to the doss, the mage had ate sparingly, then took himself off to bed.

Wheeler and Elvis had made the run to the Stuffer Shack for the canned stew. There wasn’t much any of them could do till the next day when they planned to call the LTG the Johnson had given them. Duran occupied himself doing what he could to track Luppas’s movements. The elf mercenary had adroitly avoided both the Border Patrol and Lone Star.

Skater tore one of the small bread slices in half and ran it through the stew’s dregs. When he had it sopping with the broth, he ate it, relishing the small amount of warmth that was left and the salty taste of it.

As if taking his cue, Archangel began eating. She worked the spoon mechanically, feeding herself as if it was a chore.

Skater let the silence between them build, feeling it was the only safe thing to do. Despite the street noises and the snippets of disembodied voices coming from other dosses and from below, the silence was the most noticeable thing between them.

They scraped their plates and mopped them clean with bread, then cut the aftertaste from their mouths with the remnants of their beer. When they finished, Skater sat there, his hoop cold against the plastistone surface of the stair step. “It’s hard for me,” Archangel said without looking at him. Skater had no idea what she was talking about. He just nodded understandingly, and not too agreeably with that. “Apologizing,” she said.

“There’s no need to—”

“Shut up, Jack,” she said harshly. “Apologies aren’t centered around whether or not a person feels he or she is owed one. They come because the person giving them decides he or she owes one to someone. If I didn’t feel the need, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Fine,” Skater said in annoyance. “Apology accepted.” Skater wished for something to do with his hands while he sat there and waited.

“I’m apologizing for the lack of professionalism I’ve been exhibiting on this run,” she said. “I owe apologies to the others as well, but I wanted to start with you.”

Skater remained silent.

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “This is the part where you say ‘apology accepted.’ ”

“It is,” Skater said. “Though I feel I owe—”

“No,” she interrupted. “Jack, you’ve had a lot on your plate. I should have cut you more slack. Having Emma is a big responsibility, but what really got me slotted off was the way you put yourself down about what you’re doing with her.”

“It’s hard knowing exactly what it is I’m supposed to do,” he said. “I never planned on being here, and I fragging sure didn’t plan on having this career while I raised a child.”

“I know. And I knew that when I was busy busting your hump over it.”

“The run’s been kind of—”

“It’s not the run.” Archangel took a deep breath. “For me to blame my behavior on the run would be copping out. What’s been bothering me is something I have to deal with. Something I hadn’t planned on having to deal with either.” She laughed again, and this time it sounded more bitter, but internally directed.

Responding to the vulnerability of the feelings being expressed, but uncomfortable himself, Skater said, “Maybe I can help.”

She looked at him, pinned him with her direct gaze. “Jack, you offering that lets me know you’re the last person I need helping me.”

Skater felt like he’d been slapped. He started to say something—he wasn’t sure what, only that it was going to be heated—but she cut him off.

“That wasn’t meant in a mean way,” she said, “so please don’t take it that way. This is just something I’ve got to see through myself.” She pushed herself to her feet and gathered her plate and glass and the remnant of the French bread. “Take the apology. I’m going to see this run to the end, and you can rely on me to be every bit as pro as I’ve ever been. I just felt you deserved to know that.”

Before Skater could make up his mind to be angry or supportive, or to just say thanks, she left him sitting there in the shadow-steeped stairwell. As the door to the doss closed behind her, the headache that he’d almost beaten into submission with analgesics was back in full force.

46

Kylar Luppas sat in the back seat of the Toyota Elite limousine opposite his second-in-command. He stared through the one-way window at the public telecom across the street at the side of the Stuffer Shack. They’d followed Kossuth’s directions to this spot as the decker made his way through the Matrix, tracing the LTG number Luppas had scanned from the Johnson in the van at Neon Sunsets. Luppas was hoping to find more than a public-access area. And to set up a security team over the area if he deemed it a worthwhile pursuit.

The telecom was third in a row of six. A woman in revealing attire that left no questions about what she was doing there at that time of the morning talked animatedly on the fifth telecom in the row.

“There has to be a cut-out on the telecom,” Luppas said, settling heavily back into the limo’s padded seat. The Elite was from one of the Fuchi garages, but he’d had Deeda, one of the unit’s riggers, remove all the tracing equipment the megacorp had installed. For the moment, they were off Fuchi’s tracking-screens, working on borrowed time.

“Kossuth is searching for it now,” Octavius said. The decker was holed up in the Greenwoods Inn, a hotel Luppas had selected for the night, making his way through the Matrix and the files of the LTG grid in particular.

Immediately following the escape from the bar and even as the Border Patrol and Lone Star’s Everett branch were trying to close him in their nets, Luppas had called a ladyfriend he sometimes shared a bed with and paid her to remove some of the damage he’d suffered from overuse of his Art. As a mage, she was very expensive, and very good at what she did.

“The woman we’re looking for is a software developer,” Luppas said. “Whatever utilities she’s using to forward any contact will be highly sophisticated. Be sure and tell Mr. Kossuth that he’ll probably be looking for the subtle, not the obvious.”

Octavius nodded and relayed the message over the tacticom.

Luppas scanned the street corner. This location in the Bellevue District guaranteed security by proximity alone. Even the Stuffer Shack had wiz surveillance and intruder alerts if a guy knew where to look, and Luppas did.

“Do you think she’s here in Bellevue?” Octavius asked.

Luppas shook his head. “I don’t know. Hiding here is possible. She’s surely put aside some money from the extractions she and Caber carried out. And there’s not a better place in the Seattle area to negotiate in-country security. If she’d bought security and attempted to stay somewhere else, she’d have drawn attention to herself by the simple fact of possessing it.”

Octavius shifted his bulk in the back seat. “What I’m thinking, with the way Bellevue is pretty much bordered by Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish, that leaves the Intercity Five-Twenty and Intercity Ninety bridges as the primary routes to get out of the district. If things get tight, Lone Star could close those down in minutes, maybe trap us in here.”

Luppas nodded.

“And if we attempt to use air support,” Octavius said, “we run the risk of becoming high-profile and trackable. If the blue crews don’t make us, Fuchi will.”

“I’d say that leaves the waterways, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s 02:57:38,” Octavius said. “That gives us nearly fourteen hours to set this up before the woman expects a call, according to the intel you stripped from the Johnson back at that bar.”

“If the woman doesn’t get wise to us,” Luppas said, “or simply get cold feet.” Either was possible. In the meantime, everything they were doing was subject to discovery by Fuchi. Fishbein was burning up the bandwidths trying to tap into their covert-ops frequencies. Kossuth had them cycling everything on a chaotic template, constantly shifting the illegal taps into the Matrix and into the low-orbit satellites Fuchi had helped fund for them. Fishbein had tried to shut them down; Kossuth had kept them open.

“The good thing I see is that the runners are nowhere in the scan,” Octavius said.

“Possibly,” Luppas said. “They don’t have to show up to know this is a public telecom.” Kossuth had tapped into the telecommunications nerve center array and informed them of that fact even before they’d regrouped from the bar.

“That’s assuming the man lived long enough to give them the LTG.”

“For the moment,” Luppas said, “I’d rather assume he did. Those people have provided enough unpleasant surprises.” He reached down for the telecom wired into the limousine’s satlink. “Time to rattle Fishbein’s cage.” He punched in the private LTG number for the Fuchi operations manager. “Before she gets lucky enough to get a lead on us.”

On the second ring, Fishbein opened the telecom channel. “What?”

“It’s me,” Luppas said. “I thought it was time to talk.”

“Where the frag are you?” Fishbein demanded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

“I’ve been aware of that. I didn’t want to be reached.”

“I want you to report in immediately.”

Luppas laughed. “You’re hardly in a position to make demands, Ramona.”

She opened the vid at her end, showing him her face. She looked iron-hard and merciless. “You’re forgetting who I represent. You’re—”

Luppas cut her off in mid-threat. “No. It’s only because of who you’re working for that I’m even calling you.”

“If I put the word out, you’re dead,” Fishbein said.

“Is that what Villiers says?”

“He’s leaving the decision in my hands.”

“Somehow I have trouble believing that.”

“Let me make you a believer.”

“Even if that were true, it’s the wrong decision.”

“Not from where I’m sitting.”

“I think you should have another talk with Villiers.”

“I think you should go frag yourself till you’re raw at both ends,” Fishbein said. “Then I think you should rub salt into those—”

“Very descriptive,” Luppas interrupted.

“I’ve barely gotten started,” Fishbein said.

“No,” Luppas replied. “You’re finished. And let me tell you why.”

“You’re signing your own death warrant, Luppas. This corp doesn’t tolerate betrayal.”

“This isn’t betrayal,” Luppas said. “What I’m doing is renegotiating my cut of the pie. From a much safer position, I might add. As a business exec, you should understand that.”

“You’re overestimating your own worth,” Fishbein told him. “I know about Ripley Falkenhayne, and I know about the corp-exec extractions she and Caber were doing under Fuchi’s nose. I know that Falkenhayne’s program will allow the corp who has it to raid other megacorps with impunity, and with a much quicker turnaround than has ever been possible before.”

“A little knowledge can be dangerous,” Fishbein said. “But especially to the person who has it but shouldn’t. That’s you, Luppas. You’ve flatlined yourself and your whole team because you thought you were big enough to handle this, but you’re not.”

“Wrong,” Luppas responded. “If you make a move against us, Ramona, the first thing that’ll happen will be delivery of the files on Falkenhayne, her program, and Fuchi’s own involvement in this to the other megacorps. Unless you can guarantee that you can geek us and take Falkenhayne into your custody, I’d suggest you back off.”

Fishbein’s face hardened. She was quiet for a long beat. “You’re a disgusting slotter.”

“Talk to Villiers and tell him what I just said. He won’t let this get personal the way you have. I’m willing to bet he’ll treat it as another piece of biz where the bottom line shifted but hasn’t pushed a healthy profit out of the picture. He’ll see there’s still plenty of money for him to make. I’ll get back to you.” He hit the Disconnect. A confrontation with a megacorp like Fuchi was risky, but—all things considered—Luppas thought it was much better than trusting one.

And hopefully much more profitable.

47

“Jack, there’s an announcement on the trid I thought you might want to watch,” Wheeler said.

Struggling out from under Emma without waking her, wrapped in the blanket he’d used to cover them both while they slept on the sagging couch in the safehouse, Skater checked the time. It was 06:26:14 a.m. He’d gotten little more than two hours’ sleep.

“What is it?” he asked Wheeler as he made his daughter comfortable on the couch. For a moment, he thought Emma was going to wake. Gently, he tucked one of her fists into her mouth. She sucked on it a couple times, then drifted right back to sleep. A button in the shape of a teddy bear head lay on the couch beside her, evidently pulled from her nightgown during the night. He took it and pocketed it so she wouldn’t pick it up and put it into her mouth. Watching for things like that had become automatic.

“You know who Nadja Daviar is?” Wheeler led the way back to the kitchen.

Skater racked his brain, trying to grasp all the fleeting thoughts cycling through his head. “One of Dunkelzahn’s advisors.” That stray fact he nailed down from a media show he’d cruised through in the last few days since the assassination.

“Not to mention the UCAS vice-presidential appointee.”

Elvis, Archangel, and Duran sat around the small kitchen table, hunkered down over steaming cups of soykaf. The trid showed images taken inside the lobby of an imposing building. The footer across the bottom of the screen said WATERGATE HOTEL, 9:29 a.m. EST. LIVE SATLINK repeatedly blinked into focus in the lower left corner.

“—be joining Ms. Daviar shortly,” a media anchor stated in a whispering voice that Skater thought sounded more suited to a golf announcer. The buzz of other conversations was barely muted in the background.

The camera played around the pomp and splendor of the hotel, while a small window opened up and began showing footage of Dunkelzahn’s inaugural ball only six days ago. The small section didn’t do the great dragon justice, making him seem small against the backdrop of the hotel.

Duran pressed a hot cup of soykaf into Skater’s hands. “You look like you need this, kid.”

“Thanks,” Skater said, holding the cup in both hands so it warmed his chilled flesh. He sipped the coffee and looked his team over, measuring them and what they had to offer. Cullen Trey was missing from their ranks, and only Duran looked like he was ready to meet the day head-on.

“Hold on,” the anchor said. “We’re joining Ms. Daviar now live from the Watergate Hotel.”

The scene on the trid tightened on the striking woman stepping into the focus of the cameras. Skater remembered her features from all the media coverage. The additional inset screen popped out of existence, leaving full attention on Daviar.

“I, Dunkelzahn, being of sound mind and body, do hereby declare this to be my last will and testament,” Daviar read.

Skater found his chest tightening as the woman spoke, knowing a whole world was about to be affected by her words, that even the megacorporations weren’t going to be safe from repercussions from the dragon’s death. It was a moment he was sure everyone would remember. Dunkelzahn’s coffers—and the great dragon’s secrets, at least some of them—were about to come spilling out.

“The media blitz you were hoping to hit Fuchi with by relaying information to Lone Star and the trid snoops,” Duran growled, “has just been replaced with the following program.” Skater knew it was true. All the light he’d hoped to shine on Fuchi and Luppas was going to be eclipsed by the mad scramble to get to the truths behind the great dragon’s bequests.

Their movements would be the media’s least concerns for the time being. Fuchi and Luppas could move with impunity.

“Hello all,” Cullen Trey called in a sleepy voice. “It appears I’ve arrived precipitously, judging from the long faces.”

Skater turned to him.

“At least you’re back from the dead,” Elvis said. “And frag, chummer, I’ve never heard you snore like that before.” Trey self-consciously ran a hand through his tousled hair. “I assure you, you’re mistaken about the author of those noises.”

“I don’t think so,” Wheeler replied.

Skater didn’t begrudge the others their light-hearted banter, but he felt no pull to join in. He peered over Trey’s shoulder at Emma sleeping on the couch. An ache filled his heart. All he wanted to do was take her to a house where they could doss down decently and not share space with a dead man. Spirits, it wasn’t too much to ask.

Trey chose to ignore the comments. Bags hung under his eyes. “I assume we’re still going to try to make contact with the woman the late Mr. Johnson said hired him.”

“Yes,” Skater said. “We’re in too deep to walk away without a score.” None of them could afford the loss, and all of them were sure they’d have to fade the heat possibly for months.

“I trust that no headway has been made as to who the woman might be,” Trey said.

“No,” Skater replied. In the background, Daviar’s strong voice read the will, doling out gifts and riches line by line.

“I suspect that we have the only person we might ask concerning her identity,” Trey said. “That is within our humble access, at any rate.”

“He’s dead,” Duran growled.

“True.” Trey helped himself to the soykaf with shaking hands. “I propose a possible answer that shall push your incredulity to the limit, and mayhap even strain the constrictions of the arcane.” He blew on his soykaf and peered over the rim. “If I’m permitted, of course.”

“I don’t see,” Skater replied, “that we have a choice.”

* * *

Kylar Luppas lay in bed in one of the executive suites at the Greenwoods Inn on the 116th Avenue NE in the Bellevue District of Seattle. The room had been rented last night under one of the false SINs Kossuth had kept on hand since the unit had migrated to Seattle. A half-dozen other rooms kept other members of the unit, taking control of the hotel’s whole ninth floor.

Gunther Octavius stood just inside the room, dressed in trousers only, the doors to the adjoining room open behind him. His attention, like that of Luppas, was riveted on the trid recessed in what appeared to be a hand-crafted shelf that fit in with the opulence of the room. Everything in the adjoining suites reflected a heavy Victorian influence that Luppas found suited his present mood. He’d definitely moved into king territory with the declaration to Fishbein.

Nadja Daviar’s voice came in clearly over the surround-sound speakers hidden inside the room. “—Matthew Taylor, I leave my vintage 2017 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. May it amuse—”

“How long has this been going on?” Luppas asked. “Minutes,” Octavius replied. “Kossuth is recording it.”

“—leave the Maltese Falcon, in gratitude for having introduced me to the film of the same name. I also leave thirty thousand nuyen—”

“Has there been any mention of the Falkenhayne woman?” Luppas asked. “Or of Dulce Tech?”

“No,” his second in command replied. “But something like this, with the dragon being so close to this piece of biz, I thought maybe you’d want to see this for yourself.”

“You’re right, of course.” The headache had lessened while Luppas had slept. Only the heavy, sodden ashes of it remained inside his skull. He swung his legs from the bed, his skin prickling in reaction to the coolness inside the room. He poured a glass of mineral water from the pitcher on the night stand and drank. His eyes never left the trid.

“To Miles Lanier, head of Fuchi Internal Security, I leave four million shares of stock in Renraku Corporation,” Daviar read, “plus the board seat to which said shares entitle him.”

“And that,” Luppas said, feeling some of Fuchi’s omnipresent pressure lift from his shoulders, “explains the mystery of why Villiers made the change in Fuchi’s security systems. Villiers got wind of the bequest early.”

“It also means Lanier’s clear of this action,” Octavius said. “It’ll be interesting to see what Renraku has to say about their new board member, and how Villiers is ultimately going to handle Lanier’s windfall.”

“Possibly a very exploitable situation,” Luppas said. “For someone else. I’m satisfied in knowing that our present field of engagement is so open. Of all of Villier’s manpower resources, it’s Lanier I’d have feared the most.”

Octavius nodded silent agreement.

Luppas watched in amazement as the list steadily continued to grow. With the chaos the will could conceivably cause, he’d picked a very good time to get clear of the sprawl. The rabble, including the moneyed and affluent, were going to be battling for the right to pick the dragon’s bones.

* * *

“His name’s Papa DeBit,” Cullen Trey said as he stepped out of the old Ford flatbed truck the team had boosted for the operation. Wheeler and Elvis had set up an abbreviated canvas top over the flatbed that covered most of it.

“Debit?” Skater asked, crawling out from the rear seats in the truck’s cab. The second row of seats was only centimeters behind the first row, and his legs had nearly gone to sleep during the rough ride. He flexed them as he dropped to the cracked sidewalk at the curb beside the flatbed truck. Pain shot through his knees as circulation returned. “Is that a joke?”

Trey smiled. “Maybe, but people down here take the name seriously.” He looked more like his old self now, jocular again, and jaunty in his Kevlar cape. He also looked out of place in the rundown section of Puyallup. As the southernmost region of the outlying area around Seattle and away from any port accessibility, the suburb had dire economical problems with no solutions in sight.

The Loveland District was part of the Puyallup Barrens, filled with ruins of buildings and houses. Even tenements that looked abandoned often held whole families who survived on whatever—or whoever—they could find in nearby Fort Lewis. Skater knew the populace consisted primarily of chip-pushers, thieves, squatters, and prostitutes, all of whom lived off the military personnel and support units stationed at the fort. It wasn’t a place to come to do shadow biz, or any other kind. At 8:46 a.m., the neighborhood looked deserted. The people who were awake and living on the semblance of a diurnal lifestyle were afraid to come out and potentially end up as prey for others who were stronger or more desperate.

Elvis and Wheeler stayed with the flatbed. Norris Caber’s body, covered in bags of ice and economy-size containers of Kwik-Kold chemical coolant, reposed in the scarred synthwood-paneled crate they’d fashioned earlier that sat mostly concealed by the sagging canvas over the flatbed.

Trey led the way up a rickety set of plastiboard steps that vibrated underfoot as they went. Feeling the weak support beneath him, Skater’s confidence in the plan sank.

“Are you sure DeBit’s going to be here?” he asked Trey. “Papa DeBit never leaves,” Trey said. “He’s not an overly endowed person when it comes to friends.”

“Terrific,” Skater replied. “What do you say the chances are that we’ll get geeked by someone out to flatline DeBit while we’re here?”

“Ah, so cynical, Jack. That attitude ill becomes you.”

“I don’t think we’re exactly sitting in the clover patch at this point,” Skater said.

Trey reached a landing on the third floor. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I checked it at the funeral home when we decided to go ahead and snag the corpse,” Skater said, “and haven’t bothered to go back after it.” He scanned the door in front of them, his feelings of unease rising as he took in the chaotic scene.

The bas-relief on the synthwood door was amateurish, maybe even intentionally so, but the images trapped there were still easily made out. Snakes twisted around skulls and sometimes through them, coiling beside beaches facing dark water, which had been rendered by the artist or artists burning the necessary area with a low-level flame to provide the depthless color. Handmade drums and large alligators were represented in the hellish mix as well. Men and women wearing frightened faces bowed before impossibly figured gigantic beings that showed no trace of mercy and little humanity of any sort.

“What the frag is this?” Skater asked, and he was irritated at himself that he felt the need to whisper. But there was a primitive part of him that wanted nothing, not even his voice, to go past the barrier of the door.

“Ever heard of voodoo. Jack?” Trey asked.

Skater nodded. “Sure. Some special kind of magic from down in New Orleans.” His memory kindled enough stories to raise goose bumps.

Trey nodded. “Close enough. Voodoo first came to flower in the West Indies, taking up influences from Christianity, Catholicism, and African tribal beliefs until it became a mixed concoction all its own.”

“Get to Papa DeBit,” Skater said.

“He’s a houngan,” Trey explained. “A mage in the voodoun religion who walks with the loas and is generally regarded as a spiritual leader among his people.”

“What’s he doing here instead of in New Orleans?”

“Nobody knows.” Trey shrugged. “I’ve heard rumors of a feud down in New Orleans between Papa DeBit and a Haitian bocor. I’ve got mixed reports who won.”

“A bocor?” Skater struggled to get a grasp on all the information he was being given.

“A houngan who’s basically used up his welcome mat with the loa.”

Skater lifted an eyebrow. It was the second time Trey had used the term.

“Loa are the voudoun spirits,” Trey said, “and some believe them to be gods. I couldn’t say which they are. They represent the personification of deities and beliefs.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

“Don’t get them slotted off,” Trey said. The glints in his eyes suggested he was only halfway kidding. “They’re very vindictive when they’re mad.” He lifted his knuckles and worked them against the door.

48

A gentle fog of dust rained from the bas-relief on the voodoo man’s door and swirled around Trey. Skater didn’t figure the houngan got much company.

“Enter,” a voice ordered. The word sounded old and unused, possessing the Same husky rasp of an unoiled lock.

Trey twisted the knob and followed the door inside.

His hand only centimeters from the Predator’s butt inside his waistband under his coat, Skater followed. His nose wrinkled up at once in response to the thick incense that hung in the musty air. Sunlight from the open door behind him only penetrated the gloom staining the doss for a meter or so.

Skater breathed shallowly, sure he’d be overcome by the heady mixture of scents if he wasn’t careful. He tripped the infrared circuitry in his head and stripped away the darkness. Still, for some reason, the infrared vision wasn’t as sure or as clear as it usually was. He wrote it off to fatigue, to too few hours spent in sleep, but the primitive part of him that had stood up and taken notice of the door told him that wasn’t all he was experiencing.

“Welcome to my home, magic man,” the voice said.

“You know me?” Trey asked.

“I know what you are.”

Skater peered through the gloom and finally tracked the voice to a cadaver of a man seated on a heaped arrangement of pillows in the center of the floor.

The man’s skin was so black it held blue undertones, the true black of an elkhorn that had been burnished to the deepest ebony over a controlled fire. He looked like he was made of sticks, hodge-podged together in a semblance of a skinny old man. The head was much too large for the body. Bright electric blue tattooing gleamed against the anthracite parchment of flesh stretched tight over the thin bones that looked so brittle they’d break if he moved too suddenly. He wore only a stained white loin cloth.

“You are Papa DeBit?” Trey asked.

“You could seek no others here in this place,” the small, shrunken man said, “for this is my place, clearly marked for others to know they take their lives in their hands should they seek me out for the wrong reasons.”

A necklace of what looked like finger bones hung from the old man’s scrawny neck. Skater hoped they really belonged to some kind of fowl or some small mammal that belonged in a casserole dish. He raked his gaze over the rest of the room, taking in the talismans and fetishes hanging on the walls. Shelves lined the walls, the sills of the closed windows, and the corners of the room. All of them were covered with partially used candles. More candles covered the flat spaces of the furniture and small tables. Even plates on the carpet held candles.

Only a few of them burned, unbothered by the breeze that strolled in through the open door behind Skater.

Even with the fresh air, the earthy smell lingering in the room wouldn’t dilute. If not for the door opening onto the street behind them and letting in the gray sunlight from the overcast morning, Skater would have sworn he and Trey had just stepped into an open grave.

“We come for purposes of our own,” Trey said. He kept his hands open and away from his body.

The sickly figure on the pillows didn’t appear to think himself vulnerable at all. “Sit then, magic man, and tell these ears what you wish.”

Trey sat cross-legged, drawing his cape around him.

Skater couldn’t believe the old man seemed so in control of the situation.

“And I, young warrior,” the old man said, swiveling his head up to face Skater, “can’t believe you walk into my abode so blithely, without the proper fear you should have before me.” Skater looked into the man’s gaze, suddenly realizing one of the houngan’s eyes wasn’t really an eye at all, but a red skullfaced die inset into a black rubber ball. The nickname, “young warrior,” had been something only his grandfather had ever called him.

Papa DeBit smiled, revealing age-blackened teeth and stumps left where teeth had been worn away. The strands of saliva trapped in the grin glinted silvery. “There is much I can know about you, young warrior, should I so choose.” Skater kept his voice lean, hard, knowing he believed the man. “We didn’t come here about me. And I don’t have an interest in getting my fortune told.”

Papa DeBit reached into a small pouch under the bone necklace. The worn strings gave way easily. He held a pinch of something between his thumb and forefinger. Speaking in a low, chanting voice, the houngan flicked the dust into the air toward Skater. Less than a meter from his fingertips, the dust particles burst into green dots of flame and quickly winked out, leaving gray smoke patches in their wake.

“Too bad,” the old man said. “It would be a challenge for me to read all the portents I see in you, and it would surely be an interesting tale. Both in what has occurred with you, and what is yet to come.”

Art unexplained chill thrilled through Skater at the old man’s declaration.

“And you, magic man?” Papa DeBit said. “I see you already know some of what is to come, and how your destiny lies with that of this young warrior.”

“You’re speaking in riddles,” Trey said, but he didn’t deny the charge.

“I speak in truth,” the old man replied, “and you know it.”

“We’re here on another matter,” Trey said.

Reaching back, Papa DeBit snatched a candle from under the edge of the patched plaid couch behind him. Carefully, he set the candle into a gnawed plastifoam cat dish between himself and Trey. The bones of a small rodent lay draped inside the dish. Leathery bits of meat still clung to the ribs and hindquarters.

“You’re here about the dead man,” the houngan said, “a dead man you have taken into your possession.”

Trey nodded.

Skater watched, knowing Trey hadn’t told Papa DeBit about Caber. They’d come without calling.

“What do you know?” Trey asked.

“Only that you need an answer from this dead man,” the houngan said. He made certain the candle was straight in the cat dish, then arranged the rodent’s bones more properly. The candle was straight as a dagger and as dulled black as decade-old roofing tar. A twisted tuft of a gray wick looked like sinew that had been yanked from a rotting corpse.

“A name,” Trey said. “Only a name.”

“You make it sound like so small a task, magic man.”

“Not really,” Trey replied. “It’s all that we dare ask for.”

“Was this name known to the dead man?” Papa DeBit asked. “We believe so.”

“Then bring him in so that we might find out.”

“The price,” Trey said.

Skater wanted to shake himself. He was so entranced in the conversation between the two that he wasn’t paying attention to his combat senses. He was supposed to be covering Trey’s back, instead he was gawking like some wannabe.

“For bringing a man back from the dead?” Papa DeBit smiled expansively, a silvery sheen of saliva across his teeth. “And what would you think the cost would be, magic man?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

“And if I name something too high?”

“We can’t pay.”

The houngan’s eyes darted between Skater and Trey. “Or you won’t.” He cackled quietly, amused. Then he turned his attention back to Trey. “As you’re no doubt aware, money no longer intrigues me as much as it once did. I know they say that about me on the streets of this sprawl. Along with other things, some true and others not so true.”

Trey said nothing.

Skater felt the weight of the seconds ticking past them, never to be reclaimed. He wanted to close the deal and get on with it.

“There is, however, a prize I’ve been seeking for a very long time.” Papa DeBit shifted among his pillows. “I’ve not found it, but I continue the search. Should I find it, magic man, I want your promise—and that of the young warrior—that you will do all in your power to return it to me at that time.”

“A run?” Skater asked. “That’s what you want?”

The houngan turned his gaze on him. “A salvation. Make no mistake, nor think of it as something so trivial. Lost souls are painful to think of.”

“Who would we be up against?” Skater asked, but it was only to buy time and he had the feeling the old man knew that. With the heat coming down on them, there was no real room for negotiation.

“I don’t know in truth. Only parts are clear to me.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Papa DeBit gestured with an empty hand. “What you yourself seek is no easy matter. It is, as they say, the only deal on the table.” The unlit candle at the center of the three-way conversation appeared to draw in extra light from the room, making the apartment even darker.

Trey looked up at Skater. “It’s your call.”

“I can’t bind both of us,” Skater replied.

“Very well.” Trey looked back at the houngan. “You have my promise.”

The old man nodded, still regarding Skater. “And you, young warrior? The bargain can’t be completed without your acceptance as well.”

“I agree,” Skater said reluctantly. Taking a run before he saw it and knew at least some of what was at stake and where it would take them was against every rule he’d made for himself.

“Then bring me your dead man,” Papa DeBit said, “and let me bid him answer your question.”

Skater moved out to the landing and walked down the steps while Trey stayed behind. He still felt curious eyes on him from the nearby dosses, but the portent behind them was much easier to take than the atmosphere kept at bay in the houngan’s doss. And, according to Trey, Papa DeBit was one of the good guys among the voudoun.

He left Wheeler at the truck while he and Elvis toted the crate back up the steps. Inside the apartment, they laid it before Papa DeBit.

“Take off the top,” the houngan ordered. He leaned forward among his pillows and pulled out a small bottle of ash-gray liquid from inside one of them.

Skater and Elvis used their knives to pry the lid off the crate. When they had it, they set it aside.

Norris Caber’s corpse had turned fish-belly white from death, looking impossibly swollen from the noxious gases that had gathered in his blood vessels and stomach. Twenty-four hours did ugly things to an unpreserved corpse.

Chanting in a language that Skater couldn’t recognize, Papa DeBit poured some of the ash-colored liquid onto his palm. Skater couldn’t shake the feeling that he somehow knew the foreign words. With quick strokes, Papa DeBit painted a skull on his face, using the broken planes of his features to exaggerate the curvature.

“Open yourself to the loa, young warrior,” the houngan entreated. “Else they may not come at all. The loa are very fickle to begin with, and any negative energy they perceive in this doss will be an affront to them.” He lifted his arms high over his head, palms pushed outward toward the ceiling. “The loa we seek is a very special one.”

Skater glanced at Elvis. The big troll looked uneasy with the whole arrangement. He flexed his huge fists, only millimeters away from popping open the forearm snapblades.

Taking a deep breath, Skater forced himself to sit in a lotus position on the floor, waving at Elvis to do the same. A flowery smell curled his nose, bringing with it an astringent after-scent. He assumed it came from the fluid.

“Good, good, young warrior,” Papa DeBit said. His face was toward the ceiling, highlighted by the gray ash-fluid. His eyes were closed. “You must sometimes bend in order that you may learn to be strong.” He flicked his forefinger again. This time the fiery sparks leaped to the flat black candle.

The wick ignited, creating an impossibly huge smoke cloud that hovered over the four men in the room and the corpse.

Skater gazed into the smoke, almost believing there were twisting, turning shapes in the rolling gray clouds. The shapes were vibrant, alive, and as primitive and ferocious as the figures trapped in the bas-relief on the door to the doss.

“Come to us, Damballah,” Papa DeBit said. “Come to us, O mighty serpent, that we might appease your hunger and ask a favor.” He lowered his voice as he reached out for a set of bongo drums almost hidden by the pillow-strewn couch. “Damballah is my mait tete loa, my patron. We have known each other many years.” He slapped his palms against the genuine leather tops of the drums. The beat was frenetic, savage.

Skater’s eyes grew wider as he watched the smoke pouring from the candle create a cloud against the ceiling above them. Misshapen things fought and warred in the smoke, perhaps even lived and died. He didn’t know, but the imagery was stark and powerful.

Papa DeBit resumed chanting. After a bit he stopped and put the drum away as well. “Damballah is here,” he said in a tight whisper. He gazed at the smoke cloud hugging the ceiling and smiled.

Peering at the smoke, Skater watched as the images roiled and coalesced. In seconds, only the outline of a huge snake hung in the air, coiled around and through itself.

“Quickly,” Papa DeBit said. “We must make an offering to appease Damballah’s hunger and win him to our cause.” He pulled a pack of nicosticks from the pillows and shook two of them out. “Give me something of yours that you cherish.” He placed the two nicosticks in the cat dish beside the candle. When he pulled his hand back, both of them lit without visible means, their smoke curling up to be breathed in through the giant snake’s flaring nostrils.

Trey reached into his pockets and took out a fetish. “A favorite of mine,” he explained. The sandstone carving made a ring, three fish each chasing the other, barely overlapping. “One I crafted a long time ago.” He added it to the dish.

Hot wax dripped from the black candle and ran black threads over the sandstone. The fetish ring disintegrated.

Elvis added a stiletto with an inlaid pearl handle from his boot. “Carried it with me a lot of years.” Once in the dish, the pearl blackened and shattered, and the blade seemed to rust away in seconds.

“And you, young warrior?” Papa DeBit asked, fixing his one eye and the skull-faced die on Skater.

“Nothing,” Skater replied. “I have nuyen.” He showed a roll of bills he carried. “I don’t acquire keepsakes.”

“Empty your pockets,” the houngan ordered.

Skater did, dumping everything unceremoniously onto the carpeted floor.

Papa DeBit scattered the coins and bills across the carpet, searching, his one eye sparking with intent. “We must hurry. Surely you have something of worth.” He stopped when he found the ceramic teddy bear button Skater had discovered near Emma that morning. He plucked it from the coins. “This.” Skater almost said no. The teddy bear button was from one of the outfits Larisa had put aside for Emma. It had been in the cache of clothes at the apartment where Larisa had been killed. Skater had hired a scavenger through Kestrel to raid the debris after things had quieted down a few days after the ReGEN run. Nearly nothing had remained as far as Larisa’s personal effects went.

Instead, he kept quiet and watched as Papa DeBit put the button in the cat dish. All of them waited for the button to be consumed.

It wasn’t.

After a moment, the houngan reached into the dish and took the button out. “Not this one,” the old man said. “Damballah feels you are being too generous with this, young warrior.” Skater gratefully took the button back from the man, closing it tight in his fist. He wasn’t one to hang onto material things, but the button meant something. And rightfully, it was more Emma’s than his to give.

“Now,” Papa DeBit said, “now Damballah will mount your dead man.”

Turning into a swirl of activity, the smoke cloud funneled into the crate with the dead man, sending tendrils into the body through the nose, ears, and mouth.

“Mounting,” Trey said in a low voice, “is a form of possession the loa use. Normally they mount the houngans themselves, or the serviteurs—the mundane followers of voudoun—and manifest themselves on the physical plane.” Trey’s words reminded Skater that the mage could assense the astral world as well. If he saw a giant snake in the smoke, he had to wonder what Trey could see in the astral. There was no time to ask, and he promptly forgot about it when Norris Caber’s corpse suddenly jerked to motion inside the crate.

As bloated as the dead man was, he moved with sinewy grace. Caber’s hands gripped the sides of the crate, forcing the body upward.

At first Skater thought the corpse was having trouble moving because of the bloat, shifting uncertainly back and forth on legs that threatened collapse. Then he noticed that the corpse actually moved with grace, coiling and uncoiling as it straightened to its full height.

Norris Caber swayed to an inner beat that echoed the rhythm set forth by the drums Papa DeBit had played. Restlessly, the corpse stood within its make-shift coffin, illuminated only by the candles, beads of sweat running down his face like hot drops of wax.

Skater felt a chill suddenly rush through the doss that seemed to freeze him to the bone.

The dead man opened his mouth and spoke. “Ripley Falkenhayne.”

And Skater’s brain was so numbed with amazement that he almost forgot to remember the name.

In the next moment, the smoke exploded out of the dead man, leaving the corpse to tumble bonelessly back into the crate.

49

Skater slotted his credstick at the public telecom of the Twilight Cubed Hotel on South Eleventh Street and Pacific at 09:38:16 a.m., almost forty minutes after leaving the houngan’s doss. Skater and Duran had taken a cab to the area while Elvis and Trey took the body back to the safehouse in Auburn. Twilight Cubed was a coffin hotel, catering to the cheap labor that was the lifeblood of the docks. For a few nuyen a night, a chummer got a bed roughly two meters by one meter, then got filed away at the top, at the bottom, or somewhere in between a four-man stack till punch-out time in the morning. Advertised fringe benefits included triple-X rated simsense.

Skater lounged against the gray plastibrick surface of the hotel and gazed across the City Waterway at Tacoma’s growing dock area. Almost eight and a half hours remained before they could call the Johnson’s employer. Plenty of time to cut the margin real thin between living and dying.

The telecom at the other end answered the call. “You have reached LTG five-two-zero-six, zero-seven-three-six-zero-five. If that is the number you wished to call, please leave a message.” The voice was a mass-distributed one that could be purchased at any software distributor or downloaded through the Matrix.

The recording had been Archangel’s idea in light of the fact they were staying at the safehouse longer than they’d expected. Shadowrunners knew some tele-marketing services existed in the sprawl that would call, chat briefly, and then feed recorded voice patterns back into a Lone Star program that searched for matching patterns in a database of missing people involved in investigations. Even a hello could slot a chummer over if it reached the right digital ears and the Star was looking for him.

The LTG number was genuine, but actually tracked back to Killer Katie, Kween of Knoctume, a small shop in the Menlo Park District that specialized in outfitting people who’d chosen to live like vampires. They weren’t real vampires, but they liked to think they were and went to lengths to emulate the lifestyle.

Killer Katie’s fulfilled a need, and as a result, her shop was only open from dusk till dawn. Using the LTG number during the day through a utility swap-out Archangel had brewed up was no problem at all. Killer Katie’s real answering machine was programmed not to answer during daylight hours. No self-respecting client would be caught calling during that time.

“It’s me,” Skater said.

The answering machine bleeped once, then went off-line. “Jack,” Archangel said.

“We got a name,” Skater said, watching the tugs work the harbor area, moving barges back and forth between the big ships. “Ripley Falkenhayne.”

“Do you have a spelling?”

“No. Is it going to be a problem?”

“I think the name is unique enough, and Ms. Falkenhayne herself has to be unique among the software programmers we’ll be searching through. I’ll start exploring databases now.”

“Good enough,” Skater said and disconnected. He slotted the certified credstick and punched in the Lone Star nonemergency LTG. When the dispatch officer answered, Skater asked for the Detectives Division, then requested a transfer to Nina Barrett.

“Barrett.” The vid popped into place, revealing the troll detective. She looked haggard.

Skater opened the vid from his end, letting her see him. “You know,” Barrett said, “after that free-for-all up in Everett last night involving someone of your general description, among others, and a bunch of slotters we’ve traced back to Fuchi Industrial Electronics, I’m not surprised I’m hearing from you.”

That let Skater know she hadn’t been idle since he’d called her the day before. “You tagged them to Fuchi?”

“Yep. The bad news is we have no way of proving it.” She shifted, settling a little further from the vid pick-up. “The good news, however, is that I may be in a position to issue an APB on your chummer Kylar Luppas.”

“He’ll know it’s coming.” Skater also knew the all-points-bulletin would cramp the elf's style somewhat.

“I know. But in the meantime, Paulson and I have a hand-picked crew of blue suits assigned to a dragnet for Luppas covering the Seattle sprawl. If we find him, we’ll get the APB logged into the system and pick him up for questioning and possible charges regarding the frag-up at Neon Sunsets. A lot of dead bodies have turned up missing since you claimed the corpse from Shastakovich’s two days ago.” Skater passed on his turn at verbal tennis. He knew Barrett’s ploy was to get him talking, maybe draw out some information before he knew he was giving it.

Barrett looked back at him, waiting. “I knew this wasn’t a social call. What do you want?”

“To talk to Quentin Strapp.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He’s a federal agent,” Skater replied. “Assigned to the Dunkelzahn assassination.”

“All of which makes me even more curious.”

“The last I heard,” Skater sad, “anytime a federal investigator comes into an area, they usually liaison with the locals. Even if Strapp has overlooked that professional courtesy, I’m guessing you know where he is. Or can find out.”

“And if I don’t get a message to him?”

“Then I’ll find another way.” Skater showed her a smile, feeling the control he had in this situation and relishing it after everything else had been so fragged-over in the last two days. “If I have to do it another way, maybe I won’t feel so friendly toward you in the future.”

“That,” Barrett said, “would be closely akin to losing a chronic migraine headache.”

“If I do it through you, however,” Skater pointed out, “I’ll keep you in the loop even if Strapp tries to freeze you out. That’s the best I can do at this point.”

Despite the impassive look the troll groundhound was giving him, Skater knew she was giving the offer serious consideration. “How do I know I can trust you?” she asked finally.

“Trust is a funny thing,” Skater told her. “My grandfather used to say you have to earn it to get it, but it still had to be given by the other person too.”

“How do you figure you earned it?”

“I called you,” Skater said. “I could’ve slotted the cred-stick a little while, greased some wheels, and come up with another way to the fed in maybe a little more time than I’m using now. The way I’m figuring it, I’m trusting you as much as you’re trusting me. If you go to your captain and tell him about me, he might decide I’d be a good addition to his inquisition, in spite of Strapp.”

“You’ve got a devious mind, Jack. It’s a wonder you can trust your shadow to follow you around.”

“Don’t think I don’t check up on it occasionally. Can you make the meet happen?” The retinal read-out showed Skater he was near the end of his time frame.

“I’ll call Strapp and clear it, then get back to you.”

“When do you want me to call you?” Skater asked.

“Give me a half-hour.”

“Done.” Skater punched the Disconnect, then walked back to Duran.

“You didn’t mention anything about Strapp,” the ork said as they headed toward the metro bus stop two blocks up. The bus sat in the loading zone, passengers getting on now with packages and small children.

“I didn’t know if I could make it happen. He can still say no.”

“What if he does?”

“Then we’re still looking.”

“Looking for what?”

“Somebody to turn Falkenhayne over to,” Skater said. “And you’re planning on turning her over to Strapp?”

“Falkenhayne’s going to have to deal, Quint.” Skater returned the ork’s gaze full measure. “She doesn’t have a choice any more. Neither do we, if we want to get out from under the weight of this run. Fuchi’s not going to give up on this. Let’s catch the bus and I’ll explain.”

* * *

Kylar Luppas stared down over the Bellevue District from the glassed-in balcony of his hotel room. The sprawl had come alive with the morning, and at noon the streets were filled with traffic. Beyond them to the west he could see the sparkling waters of Lake Washington beyond Interstate 405.

When the doorbell rang the first time, it was room service. He let the delivery woman in after assensing her and finding she wasn’t masked and was definitely who and what she appeared to be. After she’d gone, he sat at the buffet table she’d laid out and began eating.

When the doorbell rang again, it was Gunther Octavius. Judging from the grin on the man’s face, he’d been successful in his assigned quest. Luppas waved him to a chair.

Octavius sat, eyeing the buffet. “Couldn’t make up your mind this morning?”

“Famished,” Luppas said. “Dig in.”

Octavius used a fork to move a half-dozen pieces of French toast over to a plate, followed by sausages and bacon. He looked dubiously at the steaming silver pitcher on the table. “Soykaf?”

“No. That’s a rather fine breakfast wine out of Tir Tairngire. I was surprised to find it on the menu. It’s bottled by the Nilestian.” The restaurant was a favorite of Luppas’s when he was in the Tir. “Very light, very spicy. They do most everything spicy there.”

“You’re celebrating early,” Octavius said.

“We’ve won,” Luppas stated simply. “When we make that telecom call later today, the woman—and her tech—will be ours.”

“It’s not like you to be so confident so early.”

Luppas sprinkled shaved almonds over raspberry drenched crepes. “What’s not to be confident about? I have Fuchi and that fragging Fishbein over a barrel. And if Falkenhayne could have fled, she’d have already done it. She was depending on Caber. Fuchi was depending on Caber. He betrayed them both. No, you and I have hit the big-time with this one. All we have to do is get her.”

“Skater may not be out of it,” Octavius said.

“Skater?”

Octavius nodded. “The guy heading up the shadow team that snatched the corpse. I got the skinny on him about five minutes ago. Jokers we’ve got gleaning the riffraff about the trouble at the bar last night turned up Skater’s name. He’s known to run—maybe—with Quint Duran and a combat mage named Cullen Trey. There’s also a street samurai named Elvis. Two or three other people too, but they didn’t get much on them. I had to pay off four fixers before I got what information they had verified enough that I could figure it for gospel. Skater’s the real deal. A working shadowrunner doing contract work as a pro. The team also has a decker, and a rigger, and maybe a woman samurai as well. They work together and don’t let outsiders in. Very tight. It’s no wonder we’ve had the trouble with them that we have.”

“After last night, they’re history.” Luppas refused to let anything spoil his good mood. “They didn’t talk to the man they went there to meet. I made sure he was dead before they had the chance later.”

“You’d think they would be history,” Octavius agreed. “But when I was on my way up here, I met Kossuth. He said the permanent files that are in place on Ripley Falkenhayne were accessed. She wasn’t SINless, remember? There’s quite a bit of data on her. Property, credit, a divorce, and an ex-husband. Kossuth said he layered the white IC around Falkenhayne’s files with some kind of passive alert that would signal him if someone accessed the files. Whoever tagged the files also got the ones Dulce Tech maintained on her presence there.”

“When were those files accessed?”

“This morning,” Octavius replied. “Skater and his team have holed up somewhere, but they’re still active.”

Luppas felt most of his appetite slip away. He placed his fork on the plate. “Did you find out anything we could use against Skater?”

“I found out someone else has been looking for him among the shadows too. Turns out Skater may have fathered a child by a woman named Larisa Hartsinger, who’s now dead because of some biz Skater mishandled a few months ago. Some dancers at the CyberSpace bar in Seattle passed on rumors about that.”

“What biz?”

“No idea. But it sounds like heavy doings—both the Mafia and the yakuza involved. And Skater is supposed to have geeked a local Mafia don named Conrad McKenzie before the dust settled. Joker took the long fall from the monorail in downtown Seattle. Skater walked away from it.”

“Any idea what the prize was?”

Octavius shook his head.

“Okay, so you’ve got a history for Skater. I didn’t hear anything in there about leverage.”

Octavius smiled. “The person looking for Skater? That was Larisa Hartsinger’s step-sister. Deja Chilson. She worked for Renraku up until almost four weeks ago. They canned her.”

“What did she do?”

“Dataslave. She was pretty low in the food chain at the corp.” Luppas forked up another bite of crepes and chewed thoughtfully. “Any idea why she wants to talk to Skater?”

“We’d have to ask her.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Yeah. She’s got a SIN and a full-time job fending off bill collectors who knew her back when things were pretty good at Renraku. Looking at her finances, she obviously never heard of a rainy day. She’s in debt up to her eyeballs, and facing her last month or so at the doss she’s renting until she’s out on the street.” Octavius paused. “I’m figuring since Deja Chilson is the step-sister to his dead girlfriend, and his daughter’s aunt once removed or however that drek works, maybe Skater would be interested in seeing she keeps breathing. I thought it would be worth a try. In case we do need leverage. If not, maybe the bill collectors can attach her life insurance when the body’s found.” Luppas nodded. “Get her.” He took another bite of crepes, concentrating on his appetite again. “Skater might be out there somewhere, but he isn’t big enough to be more than a stumbling block. We’re going to make this work.”

50

Skater watched the trid screens through the crystal-clear plastiglass window of the DocDrama trideo outlet. All of the thirty or more he could see carried different channels, but all of them were broadcasting stories concerning Dunkelzahn’s will. He was only able to see bits and pieces over and through the crowd that ranged four and five deep in the Tacoma Mall, drawn by the magic of the incredible wealth that had been doled out by Nadja Daviar.

Checking the time again on his retinal clock and finding it was 14:22:57, Skater moved toward the public telecoms available in a short hallway beside The Naughty Nineties, an antique store that carried pre-Awakening curios. Today’s special, according to the banner strung over the door, was an old-fashioned telephone pager circa 1996 in an assortment of day-glo colors for only fifty nuyen.

Slotting his credstick, Skater punched in the Lone Star LTG and got pushed through the switchboard. Nina Barrett opened the vid at the other end.

“Jack?” she said.

Skater opened the vid at his end too. When he’d called the troll detective back shortly after ten that morning, she’d let him know Strapp was willing to talk but wouldn’t be able to make it till two. And the fed wanted to talk from the Star’s precinct.

“Okay, sister,” a rough male voice said, “I can handle things from here.”

Nina shot a look of distaste off-screen and pushed up from her chair. “Just want you to know I think you jokers make a fine pair,” she said sarcastically. “Testosterone’s so thick you could cut it with a knife.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So skedaddle already. My god, who pays you to be a pain in the hoop? Not me, I’m telling you.”

Skater experienced momentary vertigo as the telecom’s viewer jerked around, almost covered briefly by a thick, broad hand. Then the viewer centered on Quentin Strapp. Skater recognized the man from the files Kestrel had sent him.

Strapp possessed a jowly face that made his head look like it had been carved from a block of cedar, maintaining the squarish feel. Wrinkles cut deeply into the flesh, mixed in with a few scars that hadn’t been erased by the cosmetic surgery that had made his cheekbones baby smooth. Drinker’s veins still showed under the skin, though, and in the muddy brown eyes that stared flatly back into the viewscreen. Fair hair had turned silver over the years, and he wore it combed straight back. He wore a weathered olive trench coat over a dark suit and red and silver striped tie.

“You wanted to talk to me,” Strapp said. “Detective Barrett thought it might be a good idea.” He turned his blunt-fingered palms in toward himself. “Me, I’m looking for a few good ideas, but I’m looking for them quick.”

“I’ve got a situation.”

Strapp interrupted, hooking a forefinger into his shirt collar to loosen his tie. “We all do, Jack. But I ain’t got time to listen to every fragging one, you know?”

“I’m not here for me,” Skater said, realizing just how hard of a sell the federal agent was going to be.

“Well, now that’s very altruistic, Jack.” Strapp paused. “Especially for a guy with no SIN and who refuses to come across with a name. But I’m kind of in the mood for altruistic jokers. Providing they ain’t boring.” He looked away from the viewer and made a show of shuffling papers on Nina’s desk, running his fingers across the noteputer there. “I’m a busy guy.”

“I can put you next to Ripley Falkenhayne. Do you have anybody else that can do that?”

“What makes you think I’m interested in anybody by that name?”

“A player who moves through the shadows,” Skater said, “leaves ripples. Especially if he’s from out of his home sprawl. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a runner or he’s a cop. If you start asking me questions about things I know or how I know them, I can tell you now I’m going to get damn boring to talk to. Let’s save ourselves some grief. If you’re not interested, let’s just disconnect now.”

Strapp laced his fingers in front of him. “All the chips or nothing, huh?”

“You’re not the only guy working against the clock,” Skater said.

Strap gave a short nod. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

“Falkenhayne’s on the run from Fuchi,” Skater said. “Primarily from a guy named Kylar Luppas. Ring any bells?”

Strapp held up the noteputer to the viewer and pressed a button. Luppas showed up on the miniature viewer in front and profile shots. The fed grinned without humor. “A truly orchestrated event.”

“I was told you were here looking for a guy named Coleman January.”

Strapp dug his little finger in his ear and acted distracted. “What you got going, Jack, that you can sit around and listen to drivel all day? Makes me wonder what I’m buying into.”

“Coleman January had some side action working through the shadows. He was arranging extractions from different corps there in Seattle.”

“There in Seattle?” Strapp cleared his throat. He twirled the noteputer with his fingers, then brushed at his tie. “You’re so far away from ground zero, I’m wondering if you got anything at all that I’m interested in.”

“Are you always so abrasive?”

Strapp grinned. “Jack, people I know who love me tell me I’m as abrasive as a lactose-intolerant troll mother-in-law two hormone shots behind in her menopausal therapy who’s just found out her daughter’s husband has got the rutting instincts of a bandersnatch in heat and is drowning her sorrows down at the local Cream O’ Confections. Trust me, you ain’t seen abrasive yet.”

“Fine,” Skater replied, forcibly keeping his temper. “Tell me when I get to something you don’t understand.” At the rate this was going, the trace margin Skater had calculated on the call seemed to disappear faster with each passing second.

“I’ll do that very little thing. And while I’m at it, Jack, let me tell you something else I understand. If you had any other good shot at getting your hoop out of the crack it’s in besides me, you’d take it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Skater said. “I could walk away right now.” He saw Duran watching him, covering his position from only a few meters away.

“Then tell me why you’re dealing with me and cut out all the bulldrek,” Strapp said.

“You’ve got a rep. People tell me when you give your word, you keep it. And it’s not me that doesn’t have a place to go. It’s Falkenhayne.”

“And you know that for a fact?”

“If she did,” Skater said, “she’d already be gone.”

“Where is she?”

“Local,” Skater said. “Same as me. I could be on top of you inside fifteen minutes.”

Strapp rubbed a hand over his chin. “The way I hear it, Falkenhayne’s maybe invented some kind of programming that wipes corp-encoded deltaware clean. Saves on reconstruction after an extraction. Why doesn’t she cut a deal with any of the megacorps located here in Seattle?”

“Talk to her.” Skater could guess, but he didn’t want to do it with the fed. Strapp looked smart enough to pick it up even off the telecom screen.

“I’ll do that too, should I get the opportunity. But tell me something else, Jack. Why—”

“Why don’t I sell her out to Fuchi or someone else?” Skater asked.

“We get down to the nut-cutting, yeah, that’s what I’d like to know. You’re a shadowrunner. This kind of goes against the grain from what I know about you jokers.”

“Two reasons,” Skater answered. “The first being that the Johnson I accepted the run from ultimately was responsible for her. So the nuyen I’ve been paid—”

“Came out of Falkenhayne’s pocket. Yeah, yeah. People I talked to said you had a rep for sticking to your word on how a deal would go down. What’s the second reason?”

“Fuchi and the other megacorps wouldn’t give her a chance to survive,” Skater said. “They’d use her and lose her.”

“True. But that’s also not your problem.”

“I’m taking it on that way,” Skater said.

“A soft spot, Jack?” Strapp grinned, genuinely amused. “Something like that can get a shadowrunner geeked in a heartbeat.”

Skater knew that was true. But he was sure Falkenhayne was in way over her head. She was a citizen, a software programmer who’d somehow gotten lost in the maze of duplicities that existed between the megacorps and their battle for the bottom line. As close to an innocent in his world of shadows as there was. And the truth was also that he stuck when he took on a run. That fact kept him who he was in spite of all the lies he dealt with on a daily basis. “I’ve had Kylar Luppas breathing up my hoop for two days. I’m still here.”

“So why deal with me?” Strapp asked. “Aside from the fact that you’ve got it in your brainbox that I’m trustworthy.”

“Because you can move her on into the UCAS. I’m betting the UCAS would love to get their hands on software that would let them beat the megacorps’ own raiding headhunters searching through exec talent. The chance to spy on the megacorps would be worth the price of keeping her alive and happy in case someone finds a way to beat her programming. Frag, the racketeering divisions alone would probably geek their own mothers for the chance to put an agent deep inside Aztechnology or any of the others, knowing they could pull the agent out at any time without worrying about a cortex bomb or something equally nasty taking out the covert operator when they brought him or her in.”

“You cover a lot of angles when you get started, don’t you, Jack?”

“It’s the only way to play the game,” Skater replied.

“And I only play the angles that are there. I don’t make them up.” Strapp nodded. “So where’s Coleman January?”

“Dead. I’ve got his body.”

Strapp’s eyes focused more intently. “Did you flatline him? Altruistic or not, I’d have a problem with that.”

“No,” Skater said. “January died in a crash-and-dash at two a.m. two mornings ago out on I-5. It also turns out that his real name was Norris Caber, and he worked for Fuchi.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Skater took the chips Archangel had made of the files Kestrel had sent, as well as ones she’d downloaded herself. “Before I disconnect, I’ll upload what I’ve got to you. Take a look.”

“Then why the hell didn’t I know about it?”

“Talk to DocWagon. Someone at Fuchi quashed the report that went out concerning the pickup one of their units made that morning. The body was delivered to Shastakovich’s Funeral Home. Everything that happened there wasn’t so easy to shut down or cover over, but I don’t know if they even knew who the body belonged to at the time.”

“I’ll look into it,” Strapp said.

“Now I need something from you,” Skater told the federal agent.

“You can ask.”

“What was your interest in Coleman January? The way I hear it, you’re investigating the presidential assassination. Where’s the connection?”

“What do you know about the place where Falkenhayne worked?”

“DulceTech,” Skater replied, vaguely remembering the name from the briefing he’d gotten from Archangel less than an hour ago. She was still pulling information in. “Developmental and research lab.”

Strapp nodded. “What you might not know at first glance was that Dunkelzahn had invested heavily in DulceTech through holding companies. It’ll all come out in the next few days as the tridsnoops sift through his will, but it wasn’t readily known at the time. Or even now.”

“That’s no real surprise,” Skater replied. “Judging from what I’ve heard on the trid today, Dunkelzahn had a hell of a stock portfolio. He might not even have known about the investment in DulceTech.”

Strapp smiled. “Ah, Jack, but he did. In fact, he’d even earmarked it in his records. Especially the design work being done by Ripley Falkenhayne. They were made available to me. I think the dragon had someone close to Falkenhayne who kept him informed. Can you imagine what Dunkelzahn would have done with the programming the woman came up with?”

Skater could. And he couldn’t help thinking maybe it had been good that someone had assassinated the dragon. Because if Dunkelzahn had entered into the corporate scene able to freely pick and choose among the megacorporations in a headhunting spree, the raiding would probably have touched off an inter-corporate war the likes of which neither the Awakened world nor the one that had come before it had ever seen.

Strapp went on. “I was told about Dunkelzahn’s holdings, and about the interest Fuchi was showing in DulceTech. Kylar Luppas’s name popped up all of a sudden when I discovered the woman had gone missing. Luppas has a rep for being able to deliver on wetwork. And come to find out, Miles Lanier was in for a large inheritance from Dunkelzahn’s will. It didn’t take me long to learn that Luppas worked for Fuchi, and possibly Lanier.” The agent shrugged. “When I caught the buzz about the program that could remove all the embedded passcoding in corp-assigned deltaware, that was frosting on the cake. Frag, at this point, I’m not above believing Villiers himself ordered Dunkelzahn whacked to get at that programming. So I came out here to check into it.”

Skater absorbed that. The scenario had been more or less what he’d pieced together. He checked the retinal display, realizing he’d already exceeded the margin for safety he’d given himself by almost a full minute. A chummer could die in less. “Let’s cut to the chase.”

“Tell me what you need,” Strapp said.

“That easy?” Skater asked.

Strapp grinned but it held only gallows humor. “Jack, let’s face it. You’re using me, I’m using you. Now I got no problems with that. In my view, you’re Seattle’s problem. The Star’s problem. Maybe Fuchi’s problem. But you’re not my problem. I’m looking for people who killed the UCAS president. I don’t give a frag about corpses that were stolen from a funeral home, especially when the Star helped close the book on the whole thing with Knight Errant and kept Fuchi from getting its linens soiled. You’re using me to hopefully get Falkenhayne out of the drek she’s in, and I’m using you as bait to get to Luppas and Lanier and Fuchi. I have questions, and they better damn well have some answers.”

“After we drop Falkenhayne with you,” Skater said, “I want my team and myself to be able to walk away.”

“Even if you’re successful, do you think Fuchi will let it go? You’re taking what they might view as property from them.”

“Revenge doesn’t pay a percentage on the bottom line for the megacorps,” Skater said. “Villiers, above all else, is a businessman. If he isn’t, I’m no better off than I am now.”

“Fine. Tell me when and where.”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Skater said.

Strapp’s face hardened. “Did you just spend all this time yanking my chain for nothing, Jack?”

“No,” Skater said. “I like the deal. But I’m going to have to sell Falkenhayne on it first. And I’ve got a feeling she’s going to be harder to convince than you were. I’ll be in touch. Leave a number with Nina.” He punched the Disconnect, uploaded the files and started moving, his mind clearing as he focused on the possibilities. He didn’t fully trust the UCAS man, but out of all the options available, Quentin Strapp was the lesser of all evils.

Now he just had to get Ripley Falkenhayne to believe that.

51

Back at the safehouse by 15:31:47, Skater laid the situation out for the team, reviewing their options. They’d gathered in the kitchen, seated around the table again. Emma was with a couple of Elvis’s chummers, protected from any fallout that might reach the team even here. All of them were tense as the chron continued to click off the minutes.

“It appears that we’ve come smack between a rock and a hard place,” Cullen Trey commented when Skater finished. “Or we could simply step out of the way and let Fuchi take Falkenhayne.”

“I have trouble with that,” Skater said. “Falkenhayne doesn’t have options. If we don’t break her out of the sprawl, Luppas will have her. And if there’d been someone else she could have gone to, she’d have done it.”

“We don’t owe her anything,” Archangel said flatly. “True.” Skater turned her. “Do you feel comfortable leaving her where she is, knowing we have a chance at pulling this off?” He didn’t know what to expect as a response. Since he’d been back at the safehouse, he was certain Archangel was consciously avoiding him. He was also sure that Duran had noticed her behavior as well.

Archangel calmly returned his gaze. “No.”

Skater raked his gaze over the rest of the team. “Ripley Falkenhayne didn’t set herself up with this situation.”

And that was chip-truth. Archangel’s searches into the databases had revealed an interesting scenario. Less than three years ago, Falkenhayne had submitted a request for an investment on behalf of a Dunkelzahn holding company: development time and cost for software research that she would repay out of the proceeds of her work, over which she would maintain control after releasing it on the open market. The deal had been indicative of Dunkelzahn’s policy of investing in small businesses or corps, then taking his profit when those people turned one.

Control hadn’t been a real issue with the dragon, which went against the grain of most of their kind Skater knew of. Dunkelzahn had been satisfied with enabling humans and metas to carve their own niches in the Awakened world. That had been one of his presidential platform promises, more or less.

Falkenhayne’s research involved communication programming aimed at reconfiguring orbiting satellites with outdated databases without the expense of physically seeking each one down in a space shuttle and either bringing them up to spec with new hardware or replacing them. Both solutions were extremely expensive, as well as time consuming. If successful, her programming would have been worth millions of nuyen.

Falkenhayne had exceeded her expectations. Skater had wondered if the dragon had known of the success before he was blown up. The money involved was certainly enough to support Strapp’s suspicion of Fuchi’s involvement in Dunkelzahn’s murder. Archangel’s research also revealed a handful of Dunkelzahn’s smaller corporations that had been buying up outdated satellites from other corps that had left them in orbit after taking them off-line, including RTG/LTG relay sub-stations. According to the contracts, those smaller corporations intended the satellites for salvage.

But anyone who’d taken a look at the technology available at that time had figured that salvage meant physically stripping components from the satellites and selling them to electronics companies specializing in dog-brain driven construction equipment being exported and sold to third world countries.

Falkenhayne’s coding was designed to break down the old machine language used by a satellite’s designers and convert it to a database that could have been overwritten with Dunkelzahn’s programs, with an enhanced memory management system also programmed in. Or converted to the programming of any other corp.

Part of Dunkelzahn’s investment return was going to be the salvation of those satellites before anyone else knew they could be successfully upgraded at a minimum cost. With the known numbers Archangel had been able to crunch, the additional satellites would have increased the dragon’s holdings by twenty percent. Fuchi, with their own fleet of suborbitals, could have felt threatened enough by that perceived encroachment to launch a pre-emptive strike at Dunkelzahn.

At that time three years ago, no one had known the corp deltaware was going to be passcode-protected, making it harder to accomplish extractions that were essentially corporate raiding.

If Dunkelzahn had lived, if Norris Caber hadn’t found Falkenhayne out only days before through his corp espionage ferreting, the figures Archangel had come up with suggested Falkenhayne would have made a good profit on her work, probably even enough to retire and live well for the rest of her life. But the dragon had been assassinated, removing her only line of defense. Only Caber’s apparent greed had kept Falkenhayne out of Fuchi’s hands.

“It’s not just Falkenhayne’s hoop on the line here,” Elvis said. “If we stand back and let Fuchi take her, and take the body”—he jerked a thumb in the direction of the back bedroom—“we still know what she’s developed. Villiers would figure that knowledge would be worth something, and it would fragging sure hurt his opportunities for Fuchi recruitment if the other corps found out and managed to get into a position to stop some of the headhunting. Villiers might want us geeked as part of the damage control on this op.”

“Quentin Strapp knows about Falkenhayne’s programming,” Wheeler said. “He told Jack that.”

“Strapp said he’d heard about it,” Skater corrected. “He didn’t say that he knew it was for real.”

“Wouldn’t be long before he did,” Wheeler said. “Especially when corp exec extractions suddenly ballooned, and all of them were going to Fuchi.”

“Might be too late for us by that time,” Duran commented. “Granted, going after the woman at this point sounds risky, and sounds pretty damn fragged with no nuyen in sight for the effort. But if Strapp gets his mitts on her and turns her over to the UCAS, Villiers is going to know without a doubt that her software design is going to be in someone else’s hands. Flatlining us at that point would be useless.”

And that, Skater knew, was the best argument he could offer for the run. He still didn’t like the idea of Falkenhayne being left hung out to dry.

“What about turning the LTG and password we have over to Strapp and letting the UCAS handle her extraction from the area?” Cullen Trey asked. “Once they had her, it would be foolish for Fuchi to continue pursuit of us.”

“A UCAS salvage?” Archangel shook her head. “How fast could something like that be set up?” She didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “And that’s assuming Strapp or the UCAS could authorize and organize an extraction without picking up major coverage on the news trid programs.” She shook her head. “They can’t do it.”

“And that,” Skater said, “leaves us to cover our own hoops.” He paused, looking around at the others. “I’m willing to try for the extraction.”

“I’m in,” Elvis said, smiling. “Can’t let you go it alone, Jack.”

“So am I,” Wheeler said, “but only because this seems the surest way to get Fuchi off our backs.” Beneath the dwarfs gruff exterior, though, Skater knew Wheeler was sympathetic to the difficulty of someone like Falkenhayne trying to go it alone against the megacorp. They were all professional shadowrunners, but none of them had lost their humanity in arriving there.

“A fair damsel in distress,” Cullen Trey said, “potentially at the mercies of an uncouth varlet. A host of them, in fact. How very quaint. Yet I find myself drawn irresistibly to such a venture that calls out to the soul of chivalry.”

Archangel nodded. “Our rep as shadowrunners is on the line, too. In this biz, you’re only as good as your last success. There are people who know we’re involved now. Vankler. Luppas. Villiers. And people who’ll talk about this run after the dust settles. If we pull out and run away with our tails between our legs, how long do you think it’ll be before we get another call from a Johnson for a run?”

“Too slotting long,” Duran replied. “Bottom line is this chummers: shadowrunning is how we make our money. We get dumb, we get flatlined. We get too cautious, we starve. And making a successful run against Fuchi and living to talk about it, that’s blue chip stock in a resume. I’m in.”

Skater looked around the table, feeling the adrenaline surging through his system. The run was on, and there was no other feeling quite like it. And this time they were going to be putting everything on one final roll of the dice.

52

With the swap utility in place and operational, shifting the safehouse’s LTG to Killer Katie’s, Skater put the call through to the LTG the Johnson had given him. His retinal clock gave the time as 17:07:16. The others sat quietly, working through a pot of soykaf someone had put on. Archangel was jacked into her deck, slumped forward in her chair. As the call went through, she was going to try to trace it in case Falkenhayne wasn’t amenable to the offer Skater was going to make.

The telecom picked up on the other end midway through the first beep. “Yes,” a feminine voice said.

“Liberty,” Skater said, and felt his gut clench. He wasn’t the Johnson. She’d know that straightaway. He could only hope the password would buy him some time. If it didn’t, there was nowhere else to go.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

Skater tripped the vid control, letting her see him at her end. “It’s Jack Skater. In a roundabout way, you hired me to pick up a package for you from Shastakovich’s.”

She hesitated.

Skater could hear her breathing rapidly at the other end of the connection. Archangel was jacked into her deck, trying to trace the call now. Wheeler was peering over her shoulder at the floppy-screen deck attachment that showed Archangel’s progress through the Matrix, allowing her to send text messages back to anyone watching the screen.

“Ripley,” Skate said, “I know you’re in trouble. I want to help.” He didn’t say anything more than that. Those were the words he needed her to think about and base her decision on.

“I don’t know you,” Falkenhayne stated. “I don’t have any reason to trust you.”

“I still have the package you wanted me to get,” Skater said. “I could have given it up to Fuchi two days ago and been out of this whole drekking mess.”

“For all I know, you’re working for them.”

“I can tell you that I’m not,” Skater said, “but it’s up to you to believe me.” He took a quick glance at the floppy-screen deck attachment and read the lines of text on it near the bottom border.

>The signal's coming from Bellevue. She’s using a cut-out relay from a public telecom. I’m trying to get past it, but it's a very wiz piece of work, flirting with probably a half-dozen LTG exchanges before going back to its real origin point.

The imagery on the floppy-screen was stark, shot through with brilliant colors. The view was Archangel’s, from her persona icon inside the Matrix. She stood in a hexagonal-shaped room, bright green lines of demarcation against an iridescent back. A computer-enhanced replica of a telecom was mounted on one wall. Hands reached into the viewpoint and popped the computerized replica of the telecom into pieces, revealing a silver and onyx box at the heart of it. Skater knew the hands belonged to the persona icon Archangel used in the Matrix.

Bright red and blue lines of laser light suddenly came into view, shooting along the wall, then quickiy vanishing from sight in the faraway distance.

>Keep her talking.

“Ripley,” Skater prompted.

“What happened to the man I gave this LTG to?” she asked.

“He’s dead.”

There was a quick inhalation of breath on the other end. “Oh, god.”

“A man named Kylar Luppas killed him,” Skater explained. “But before he died, he told me about you, said that you needed help.”

On the floppy-screen, Archangel opened the silver and onyx box only to find another silver and onyx box inside, this one slightly smaller. She reached in for it, taking it out. When she had it firmly in her hands, most of the red and blue lines shooting from it winked out.

>The cut-out’s a degradable utility. If she breaks the connection, it’ll destroy itself and we've lost her.

“Ripley,” Skater said, “stay with me here. I think I can get you out of this.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Yes.”

She laughed, and the strained noise sounded on the verge of hysteria. “How?”

“Can we talk?” Skater asked. “Somewhere else?”

“This is as close as you get to me.”

“Okay,” Skater said. On the floppy-screen display, Archangel had opened the second silver and onyx box, revealing yet another one. The red and blue lines decreased in number, dropping to only a dozen or two. Skater felt the pressure building, wanting to make the deal.

>Almost. Just a few more seconds. Archangel’s hands started working to open the third box.

Skater tore his eyes from the floppy-screen display, knowing Archangel was deftly peeling back the defenses Falkenhayne had set up within the Matrix between the LTG sites. “You’re going to have to trust someone, Ripley. You’re in over your head. If Dunkelzahn was still around, you’d have had a chance to go it on your own.”

There was a long pause. For a moment Skater was afraid he’d lost her. Then she started talking again. “I can’t believe they killed him.”

Skater thought she was talking about Fuchi, but he couldn’t be sure. The woman sounded totally emotionally fragged from living on the edge too long. His sympathy went out to her, thinking that her present state must have been what Larisa Hartsinger went through those few months ago before she’d been killed by MacKenzie’s people. His throat constricted and he had to work hard to keep his own emotions from bleeding into his voice.

Judging from the looks on the faces of his team around him, he knew they’d been touched by the woman’s plight as well.

“There’s a way out for you,” Skater said.

On the floppy-screen display, Archangel had successfully opened the third box. Inside was another, this one small enough to be cupped in her palm, still carrying through the silver and onyx motif. Only three of the glowing lines remained, two blue and one red.

“How?” Falkenhayne asked. “Even before Dunkelzahn died, Fuchi was making a move to buy out the thinktank where I was working. They had a man in here asking questions about me. I heard about him through the thinktank grapevine. I never saw him, but I got his name.”

“Norris Caber,” Skater said. “I know about him. What you didn’t know was that he was Coleman January.”

Abruptly, the viewer popped on. Ripley Falkenhayne was revealed in a shot that took in head and shoulders. Her face was pinched and tight, softened some by the shadows she sat in. Skater could tell she was in a room, but couldn’t tell anything about it. Her peroxide blonde hair was in disarray, too long to be worn in the short-cropped style it had been cut for. Metal surfaces gleamed against her face, hinting at the datajack in her temple and piercings in her ears, eyebrow, and nose.

“Caber was Coleman?” she asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Skater said. “When he was geeked in the crash-and-dash out on I-5, he was wearing a DocWagon wristband that identified him as Caber.”

“I only knew him as Coleman,” she said. “I went to a fixer—a friend of a friend had arranged the introductions—and she set me up with Coleman.”

“To sell the programming that would erase deltaware passcoding to corp execs looking to jump ship.”

She nodded. “I gave degradable copies to Coleman. Onetime use only stuff with heavy scramble IC to nuke the files if anyone tried to read them or do any kind of analysis on them. Even then, they weren’t capable of replicating themselves, only executing the program. Coleman arranged everything else, the buyers, the times, and I got a cut. When I had enough nuyen saved back, I was going to run until I could find a place to think things out. There was too much pressure with Dunkelzahn gone and Fuchi banging at the door of the thinktank.”

“But Coleman January betrayed you,” Skater said, putting together the pieces that he’d learned and deduced. It all hung together right. “That’s why you had him flat-lined.”

Falkenhayne winced at the damning statement. “He betrayed me,” she repeated defensively. “He broke into my personal files here at DulceTech. I knew he was looking for the program, and I knew then that I couldn’t trust him. He got what he thought was the program master and ran. I hired a wetworker through the fixer who’d introduced me to Coleman and paid to have Coleman geeked in the crash-and-dash. Out of the money we made together.” She paused and laughed awkwardly. “It’s funny, you know, with Coleman helping finance the money I needed to have him killed.”

“It’s okay,” Skater said, hoping the woman could hold it together long enough to hear him out.

“Even with what I knew about Coleman, it took the wet-worker twenty-seven hours to find him and get the job done. I was afraid Coleman was going to find out that what he’d stolen wasn’t what he’d been looking for at all and come back after me.”

“But the hit was arranged,” Skater said.

She nodded, licking her lips. “I was told Coleman would be taking a trip to rendezvous with a buyer. The wetworker tailed him from his home, then geeked him on I-5.”

“You could have had him geeked in his home.”

“No. I couldn’t know who Coleman had told about the programming design. If he was geeked out in the public and there was enough confusion going on, whatever partners he might have had would hopefully think the programming was stolen from him and wouldn’t be looking for me for awhile. I was already in hiding.”

“You hired the go-gangers,” Skater said, understanding her reference to confusion at the site. Frag, besides being gifted when it came to programming design, the woman had a natural talent for subterfuge.

She suddenly broke down and started crying, wiping an arm across her face and snuffling. “It wasn’t easy to do, fraggit! But I thought maybe if the go-gangers looked like they were robbing Coleman’s vehicle, whoever was looking for us would chase them! And I never knew those slotters would hurt so many innocent people while they were doing it!” Her voice broke. “I swear to you I didn’t know! I was just trying to save myself!”

“It’s okay,” Skater told her. “Just take a deep breath. I’m not here to judge you. I really do want to help.”

Shoulders shaking with the effort of calming herself, Falkenhayne quieted.

“You arranged to have us hired to recover the body.”

“Yes. I was told you were good. Obviously since you’re talking to me now, you are. How did you know Coleman was Norris Caber?”

“The Coleman January identity was one Fuchi had helped him establish. It probably wasn’t the only one.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. Her brown eyes looked liquid in the dim lighting, wide and unbelieving. “After Dunkelzahn was killed, I couldn’t get through to his people to let them know I needed help; they were too involved with the assassination. He’d kept me at a safe distance, he’d told me, because his operations were constantly getting spied on.”

“Did he know the software you were developing would erase deltaware programming?”

“No.” She shook her head, sending her tousled locks bobbing. “I’d known for almost two months before he died, but the implications of what it could do bothered me. I didn’t even know if I was going to let him use it. All it was supposed to be was a satellite-recovery communications utility. Software that would be worth a considerable amount, but not what it ended up being.”

A shower of sparks suddenly flared to life on the floppy-screen display, highlighting Wheeler’s face in vivid chartreuse. Archangel nearly dropped the latest box she was working on. Taking one hand from the box, she closed her hand into a fist, then opened it again a moment later to reveal a blue-white gem as large as the ball of her thumb. She tossed the gem away into a corner of the black and green room. The chartreuse sparks immediately leapt after it, freeing her to work on the box.

>Scramble IC. The deception program utility I fed it will keep it occupied, though.

“Do you know what a corporation could do with what I designed?” Falkenhayne asked. “You know about extractions that routinely go on between megacorps anyway. This program is like a master key for getting through the passcode-protected deltaware a corp uses to ensure loyalty from its high-level employees. If any corp got hold of it and started using it flagrantly, we’re talking about an economic war that would trickle down from the suborbital stations all the way into the streets of every sprawl in the Awakened world.”

“I know,” Skater said.

“Drek, I don’t know if I would have willingly given Dunkelzahn that much power,” she said. “And I liked and trusted him. It’s just too much. Too many people would die! And all because of me!”

“Dear lady,” Cullen Trey said, moving in close to Skater’s elbow, “you can’t simply un-design the programming you’ve created.” His voice was pitched soft and low, empathizing.

“Who’s that?” Falkenhayne demanded. Tears tracked down her face.

“A friend,” Skater said, broadening the view on the telecom so it would include the Trey as well. “His name is Cullen. He’s part of the team you hired.”

Trey bowed his head in acknowledgment of the introduction. “If I may,” he told Skater.

Nodding, Skater took a step back. On the telecom screen, Falkenhayne looked to Trey. With quiet passion, the mage outlined Skater’s deal with the UCAS. Using his way with words, Trey was able to show the subject in the best possible light. Skater figured if magic hadn’t lured Trey into its fold, he’d have had a stellar career as a used-car salesman.

Falkenhayne wasn’t happy. “What you’re talking about is virtually a prison sentence under UCAS protection,” she said. “That’s not fair.”

Skater silently agreed with her assessment of the situation.

“At least,” Trey replied with quiet control, “that way you get to live.”

“One other thing I’d like to point out,” Skater said. “You’re thinking the programming you’ve created that defeats the current passcoding on deltaware is going to remain that way. Once the megacorps find out it exists, they’ll put their best computer programmers to work figuring out new passcodes that can’t be beaten by your programming. When that happens, the programming you’ve invented now will be worthless. It might take weeks or months, Ripley, but it will happen and you’ll be free.”

“Who’s to say the UCAS won’t do the same thing?” Falkenhayne pointed out.

“They’re not in business like the corps are,” Skater said. He paused. “With the situation being what it is, Ripley, this is the best thing I can see happening.” He glanced quickly at the floppy-screen display, seeing that Archangel had cracked the last box. Only one strand of glowing red light remained attached to the telecomm replica.

The floppy-screen viewpoint suddenly shifted, all the images blurring into long streaks of color. Skater knew Archangel had locked onto the original signal and was following it back through the LTG grid network in the Matrix.

>I’ve got the location where she is.

The view on the floppy-screen display halted on a tall rectangular shape that Skater assumed was a building. The viewpoint changed from side to side, addresses flickering in the upper left corner.

Abruptly, the screen went blank. At the table, Archangel reached up and pulled the datajack from her temple. “And I’ve got the address,” she whispered so the telecom wouldn’t pick up her voice. “But, Jack, there was somebody else in there. They may have gotten through too.”

Her words twisted Skater’s stomach, making him feel he’d swallowed an ice-cold towel that was sucking him dry despite the temperature. “What’s it going to be, Ripley?” he asked. “Every second we wait puts Fuchi one step closer.”

Without warning, the woman broke down, her voice coming in heaving sobs. “I’m so tired. I just want to feel safe again. It’s been so long, I think I’ve forgotten how that feels.” She took a long, deep breath. “Just come get me, and damn you if you’ve been lying to me.” She gave her address and apartment number, then hit the Disconnect, blanking the vidscreen.

Skater looked at Archangel.

“That’s the address,” Archangel said. “But like I told you, someone else was in there poking around too. I didn’t stick long enough to find out who it was or what they were looking for.”

“Okay,” Skater said, looking around at the others, “let’s buzz turbo and hope that whoever it was didn’t get in too, or that we’ve got enough of a lead to get there and get gone before they arrive.” He started for the door, grabbing gear as he went.

53

Skater and Duran took the point position on the recovery of Ripley Falkenhayne. At 17:31:18, they parked the Ford Americar XE in the underground lot beneath the Kerriger apartment tower where Falkenhayne was staying under a false name and false SIN she’d purchased. The SIN, as Archangel had discovered after a brief search through the Matrix by jacking into a public telecom, was flimsy and not worth the nuyen the woman had paid for it. But Falkenhayne hadn’t been in the shadows enough to know.

The six-year-old Americar XE Skater and Duran climbed out of was Ford’s sports package, complete with a bored out engine and rack and pinion handling. It wasn’t a Eurocar West-wind 2000, but the rigger Wheeler had bought it from that afternoon at Skater’s request had guaranteed the workmanship and the performance. The identification on the car would pass a superficial examination. He didn’t intend to have it long enough for it to become a family heirloom.

Inside the elevator, Skater punched the seventh-floor button. The doors closed. He accessed the commlink. “Archangel.”

“Here.” Her voice sounded a long way off, but at least the communications gear was working through the building. There’d been some concerns because white-noise generators designed to thwart eavesdroppers and private investigators could block the transmissions, and a number of Bellevue residents were paranoid enough and rich enough to install them in their dosses as readily as they installed a trid.

“How am I coming through on that end?” Skater glanced across the elevator cage at Duran. Like himself, the big ork was dressed in a dark blue coverall bearing a BugSlammers Pest Control emblem across the back. The coverall was loose enough to disguise the body armor and weapons they had on underneath. The coverall’s prominent emblem guaranteed distance from the apartment tower residents. In Bellevue—nobody wanted to be seen talking to a bug man because of possible social repercussions. Both of them carried silver spray canisters that had been tricked out to deliver noxious fumes instead of pesticide. It was all equipment they’d successfully used on a previous run.

“Distant, but I read you well enough.”

Wheeler was with Archangel, out on Overlake Drive West a few blocks east of Eight-first Avenue NE where the Kerriger apartment tower was. The rigger was jacked into the Tsarina, riding heavy armor in case they needed it.

“Elvis,” Skater called as the digital readout on the floor levels read a crimson 5.

“Here, omae. Trey’s in the astral, watching your back.” Elvis and Cullen Trey were further along Overlake Drive West in another vehicle, where the street took a forty-five degree turn south and ran alongside Lake Washington till it reached Groat Point and the small marina there. That was the path Skater had chosen to take Falkenhayne out of the area and make the meet with Strapp.

The floor level display hit 7, then the bell binged to announce the stop.

Skater took a deep breath, pumping his lungs full of oxygen, keying up the boosted reflexes. He reached through the slit pocket of the baggy coveralls and fisted the butt of the Predator holstered on his hip. He nudged the safety off with his forefinger.

Duran drifted soundlessly into place behind him.

The corridor ran clean and lean, with only a few paintings to break the length of aquamarine hallway. All of the paintings appeared to be of Amerind influence with elven overtones, probably to pander to the Salish-Shidhe Council representatives who slummed occasionally from the embassy on Council Island in Lake Washington, due south of the Bellevue area. One of the regular ferry lines to the island ran between Groat Point in Bellevue and Calkins Point on the island.

The short-shag white carpet looked and felt like sand beneath their feet, muffling sounds. An elevator further down the hallway pinged loudly and sent Skater’s nerves jangling. He had to will himself to keep walking as the door separated in front of him.

A young ork couple dressed in evening wear stepped into the hallway. They were laughing and talking, and gave Skater and Duran only a cursory glance, making sure the BugSlammers men weren’t bearing down on their apartment.

Skater came to a stop in front of 716. He sat his canister down and rapped his knuckles on the door. It was part of his cover. He’d noticed most people who worked door-to-door didn’t trust doorbells, but when flesh pounded against a surface, it made noise. He kept his fist tight around the Predator.

For a dozen seconds, he held his breath, waiting, thinking about the presence Archangel had sensed in the Matrix with her, someone who she hadn’t been able to identify. He wondered if they were already too late, then felt guilty because he almost wished they were.

If Kylar Luppas and his team had arrived before them and taken the woman, the team would have no choice but to give up. Ripley Falkenhayne would be dead before anyone saw her again.

He started to rap again, just to be sure. If all else failed, they could bypass the maglock. Duran had the tools they’d need.

Then the door pulled back inside.

Ripley Falkenhayne had dressed casual, wearing a Vashon Island jacket and slacks with a lightweight duster that hung heavily enough that Skater knew at a glance it was armored.

She’d made the attempt to comb her hair and straighten her face, but she still looked worn and disheveled.

She peered at Skater over the short barrel of a Fichetti Tiffani Needler, her lower lip trembling, both hands locked on the pistol.

“Ripley,” Skater said quietly, noticing the way her hands shook, “everything’s going to be okay. Do you hear me?” He moved slowly, spreading his hands out from his body.

“I hear—hear you,” she stammered. She didn’t, however, lower the needler.

“I’m here to help you,” Skater coaxed. “I need you to put the gun down.” He motioned with his hand, slowly. “Before somebody gets hurt.”

“Help me,” she said in a thin, tight voice.

“She’s locked, kid,” Duran said softly over the commlink. “You’re gonna have to take the fragging gun away from her.”

Falkenhayne’s knuckles were white as her hands shook. The needler stayed more or less centered on Skater’s chest.

Even with the bulletproof armor he had on under the coverall, Skater knew the Fichetti was deadly even though it only hit the scales at half a kilo.

“Ripley,” he said, more quietly.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to move toward you, okay? Just going to get the gun out of your hands so we can get you out of here?” Skater eased forward, tense as a coiled spring. He wanted to keep her mind busy so it wouldn’t trip the primitive instincts that would make her fire the needler. “You don’t have a bag or a suitcase. Is there anything else you’re going to need when we go?”

“No. Nothing. I don’t have any—”

Skater slipped his hand over hers, jamming his thumb into the trigger guard under her forefinger so she couldn’t pull through. It took considerable effort to rip the pistol from her grip. He let out a sigh of relief when he slipped the safety back on and shoved it into a pocket of the coveralls.

He peered beyond her into the doss. The lights were out. Everything was dark. Debris from Stuffer Shacks littered the floor and the coffee table in the center of the living room. It didn’t look like the woman had been out of the place for days.

“You don’t have anything to take?” Skater asked.

“No.” She shook her head, her arms automatically going around her upper body to hold herself.

“Your files?”

“I’ve got them tucked away in a database, so heavily encrypted and hidden so far back no one could ever find them.”

“Your deck?”

“I turned it into kludge after I got off the telecom.”

“Then you’re ready.” Skater gave her a smile that he had to force, but knew she would take some comfort from it.

She ran a hand through her blonde hair. “Frag, yes, I’m ready.”

“Then let’s go.” Skater took her by the arm and started to usher her out the door. Maybe they were going to make it after all.

“Wait,” she said, “I forgot something.” She pulled from his grip and went back into the room.

“I got an elevator, kid,” Duran called over the commlink.

Glancing over his shoulder, Skater saw the ork standing in an elevator cage, leaning against the doors and preventing closure.

“Ripley,” Skater said, “we’ve got to go now.” He took a step toward her, then she was running toward him, her face tight with fear.

“I almost forgot these,” she said, holding out three chips. “They’re some of the degradable copies of my program. Since you and your team do extractions and I couldn’t pay you the balance of what I owe you, I thought maybe this would square things between us.” She hesitated, blinking back tears. “I’m sorry. It’s all I have. Please don’t leave me here.”

Skater took her hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay. I didn’t come here looking for money. I came here looking for you.”

“Still.” Falkenhayne shoved the chips out at him.

Skater took them, buttoning them into a pocket of the armor he wore under the coverall. “Thank you.” With three extractions involving little risk, the team could end up turning a tidy little profit that would keep them flush until another good run came along. Even at Cullen Trey’s standards.

He took her upper arm again, moving her out into the hallway. Trey’s voice came over the commlink in a burst.

“Watch out, Jack, Duran.” Trey sounded winded. “I just found Luppas in the astral plane nearby. He’s been keeping me distracted. There’s a team already inside the building. They may be on top of you now.”

Before Skater could cross the hallway to Duran, a half-dozen armed men erupted from the fire escape at the far end of the hallway. He pulled Falkenhayne behind him, forcing her back into the doss they’d just quit. He felt her weight against his back, heard her screams suddenly fill his ears.

“Bloody frag,” Duran growled. Braced against the side of the elevator car, he had partial cover from the gunfire that suddenly ripped up the wall beside him. He ripped the coverall away with his big hands, stripping himself down to the black synthleathered armor. With a jerk, he freed the Franchi SPAS-22 combat shotgun from where it had been secured down his right leg under the coveralls. He leaned around the door and touched off four rounds as quickly as he could squeeze the trigger.

Wearing heavy-weave ballistic armor, Luppas’s shock troops hadn’t expected to take much damage. The two men leading the pack were surprised—only for a very short moment, probably—by the explosive rounds Duran used in the SPAS-22.

The four shotgun blasts caught them chest high, the rounds ripping through the bulletproof armor and setting off the miniature explosive heads. The dead bodies flew backwards, bringing the advance literally to a dead stop.

By the time Luppas’s mercenaries had recovered, Skater had shoved Falkenhayne to momentary safety back inside the door to her room. He brought the Predator up, adrenaline firing his system, letting the boosted reflexes go into macro-overdrive. Against Luppas, there was going to be no holding back, no quarter given. The man was too dangerous, too professional, and he too was being hunted right now.

Like Skater, Luppas had walked into an all or nothing situation. The shadowrunner understood that. Losing wasn’t an alternative.

In the hallway, a merc tried to move around the bodies, jockeying for position.

Skater placed two rounds through his plastiglass facemask. Inside the impact-resistant helmet, the merc’s head exploded. Almost decapitated, the corpse slumped to its knees, holding the assault rifle automatically at present arms.

In the elevator cage, Duran was thumbing fresh shells into the shotgun’s breach.

“Trey,” Skater called over the commlink. He reached down for the canister he’d carried as part of his pesticide disguise.

“Here, chummer.”

“I need a read on what we’re up against here.” Skater activated the three-second delay timer secreted in the canister’s handle. He glanced at Duran.

“Do it,” the ork called out.

Before Skater could release the timer switch, an explosive warhead from a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher slammed into the hallway floor only a few centimeters from the elevator doorway.

Duran was slapped away. An instant later, the door closed as the elevator cage started down.

Skater had no choice but to watch it go, listening to Falkenhayne praying out loud behind him.

54

Kylar Luppas’s astral self soared over Overlake Drive West, his attention drawn to the apartment tower. Trey had fled from the astral field, but not before mounting a cunning offensive. Luppas knew better than to think he’d beaten the other mage, nor was he fool enough to blithely chase after him in astral space.

He scanned the streets, knowing Trey’s meat body had to be stashed somewhere in a nearby vehicle. The shadowrunners wouldn’t lug the unconscious man around, and if he was going to be effective on both the physical and astral planes, Trey would be mobile in either event.

Luppas called three watchers to him, put Trey’s features in their simple minds, and sent them winging on their way. Their search parameters started at the apartment tower, spreading out from there. The underground parking garage was a logical choice.

Satisfied, he peered down Overlake Drive West and saw the Ares Master carrying his own physical self arrive only blocks down, turning off Evergreen Point. He checked around himself again, looking for signs of Trey. He knew he hadn’t defeated the mage in their brief swap of spells, though neither of them had fought with anything less than their best.

Trey had prepared himself well for this fight; Luppas had assensed numerous fetishes and two very strong foci on him. Either one of those foci would have led Luppas directly to Trey had he wanted to track down the power emanating from them.

That wasn’t his intention. Doing that would have left him exposed. The only thing that mattered was the woman.

He flew toward the apartment tower, finding he couldn’t get in through the FAB-1-treated walls of the individual dosses. Such a feature wasn’t uncommon in the Bellevue District. Security there was rated near the top of the list by Lone Star. He found a window on the fifth floor that hadn’t been treated, hurrying now.

Inside, he found himself in a hallway. There’d been an uncomfortable chance that he’d entered into an FAB-l-treated doss and wouldn’t be able to get past the front door. Assuming he didn’t trip some astral detection spell that might have been anchored to the area and end up with magical security breathing up his hoop on the astral plane, he was free to run. In the upscale districts of the sprawl, percentages ran higher regarding the presence of magically active secmen.

The dosses were stacked linearly, which was good. He blasted up through the floors, finding that none of them had been FAB-1 treated, which stood to reason because the tower needed access for the mages working in close cover.

He zipped up to the seventh floor, coming up behind his team of mercenaries who were already engaging the shadowrunner team. He identified Falkenhayne with Skater immediately, watching as the shadowrunner pushed the woman back into her doss.

Luppas stood beside the two advancing men, thinking he should return to his meat body and reiterate his orders to make sure the woman was taken alive. One of the men stepped through his astral form just as Quint Duran slipped around the corner by the elevator cage in front of them. Duran leveled the shotgun in his hands.

“Get down, you ditbrain!” Luppas snarled. But the man, of course, couldn’t hear him from the astral.

The shotgun blasts caught the two mercenaries, pitching them backward.

Ice-cold fire touched Luppas at the center of his being. In disbelief, he looked at his chest, wondering if somehow the blasts had managed to strike his astral form.

Instead, he saw a rainbow-colored harpy gnawing into his chest. The bat-like wings fluttered with serious intent as the back feet clawed viciously.

The ice-cold fire in Luppas’s chest spread as he started feeling incredibly sleepy. He staggered back, nearly going to his knees. The attack was powerful and totally unexpected.

“Hello again.”

Luppas looked up, concentrating to break the effects of the sleep spell. Cullen Trey stood at the other end of the hallway. Bright crystalline colors gathered in the mage’s right hand as he drew it back to throw.

“Frag you, Trey,” Luppas shouted, “if you think a sleep spell is going to bring me down.” He closed his hand over the miniature harpy that was the shape of the spell. He felt its bones crunching in his grip. When he opened his hand, only ash and bits of burned bone tumbled out, disappearing before they even touched the blood-stained white carpet in the hallway.

Trey threw another spell. The crystalline bits of color hardened and developed jagged edges.

Fast as they were, Luppas heightened assenses only assured him the shape was some kind of draco-form. It also told that it was a mana bolt.

Drawing on the power of his foci, Luppas put his hand out. The sword icon took shape in his fist. All his reflexes came on line as the heal spell he cast over himself repaired some of the damage he’d taken from Trey’s earlier attack. He swept the sword toward the streaking draco-form. He felt the connection, as solid as any physical thing he’d ever touched, then the draco-form sailed backward, shorn cleanly in two.

Where a living creature would have died, the spell spun around its two halves, then reformed under Trey’s direction. The mage hung at the end of the hallway, a mocking smile on his lips. He gestured, and the draco-form streaked for Luppas again.

Luppas stepped aside, dodging and unleashing a manaball that flew toward the shadowrunner mage. Trey’s staff appeared in his hand, but he used the long cape as a defense.

As the draco-form came back on the attack, Luppas met It with the flat of his blade. The effort required felt like it tore the muscles in his neck and shoulders. But at the moment of impact, the spell was defeated, vanishing back into a mass of crystalline bits that evaporated as quickly as snowflakes in a summer’s heat.

At the other end of the hallway, Trey was borne back by the manaball, unable to break the momentum Luppas had put behind the spell.

Luppas didn’t think he’d geeked his opponent, but he knew there was some serious injury dealt. He started to go forward, to press the advantage, then from the corner of his eye he saw one of his mercenaries put a rocket launcher to shoulder.

“No!” Luppas yelled helplessly. He didn’t remember the man’s name—he was one of the new faces Gunther Octavius had recruited for this operation—but it wouldn’t have done him any good from the astral anyway. Nor could Luppas strike him down from there.

The rocket leapt from the launcher, closing the distance to the wall beside the ork shadowrunner. Luppas stayed long enough to make sure neither Skater nor Falkenhayne were harmed by the blast.

He sped back out of the building and dropped back into his meat body. He opened his eyes in the Ares Master and pushed himself out of his seat, calling out orders immediately. “Strike team Alpha, you are to disengage!” The dull roar of the explosion still echoed over the tacticom, punctuated by small-arms fire.

“Sir,” a man’s voice replied. “Withdrawal at this time—”

“Will be done immediately or I’ll have your head as a paperweight,” Luppas shouted. “You people were to identify and close off possible retreat within that structure, not engage.”

“Sir, they took us by surprise. They knew we were—”

“Cut comm,” Luppas ordered. He strode through the Ares Master, signaling to the two men who held Deja Chilson.

The two mercs stood up at once, dragging the female ork with them. They’d captured her easily at her doss, but she’d fought. Her clothing was disheveled and torn, and one eye was halfway closed where a rifle butt had been used to put her down.

“Speedball Two, this is One.” Luppas dropped through the truck’s door onto the pavement, knowing the residents in the dosses around them were probably already hitting their PANICBUTTONS to call for Lone Star.

“Go, One,” Octavius responded.

“Bring your team into the underground parking garage, Two, and let’s take them down inside.”

“Affirmative.” Octavius cleared the channel.

Carrying an assault rifle, Luppas ran across Overlake Drive West, closing on the underground garage. It was minded by a dog-brained security monitor. Turning, he spotted the demolitions man among his group and waved the man forward.

Luppas stood behind the man as he slapped shaped charges on the door and the dog-brain housing. “Speedball Three, this is One. Turn that virus program loose.”

“Yes sir,” Kossuth replied.

Luppas had known that the chances were slim of taking Skater and his crew quietly. He hadn’t planned on an all-out skirmish taking place, either. But calls to Lone Star had been taken into account. The virus program Kossuth was unleashing into the PANICBUTTON system through the LTGs even now would light up several districts of Bellevue at one time. Instead of having one target to respond to, Lone Star would be trying to answer the call of dozens. That wouldn’t stop the calls going through, but the program would at least thin the numbers that Lone Star could answer with.

“Sir,” the demolitions man said, “I’m ready here.”

Luppas reached out and slapped the man on the helmet, giving him the go-ahead.

The demolitions man yelled, “Fire in the hole!” a heartbeat ahead of the explosion that peeled the doors from the underground garage and sent them spinning away inside.

Luppas let his point man go through first, gave the man three paces, then followed in his wake, leading the rest of the team. Like the others, Luppas wore heavy black armor, looking insectoid in the shadows. He reached up and pulled down the visor of his helmet, then activated the infrared circuitry.

Klaxons screamed inside the garage, reverberating within the enclosed space. Security lights flared to life along the walls, creating pools of bright light that cut holes in the shadows filling the area.

Three elevators led down into the underground parking area. In seconds, his team had divided up, surrounding the closed doors of the elevators, taking cover where they could while they trained their weapons on the entrances.

“Speedball Three, have you accessed the tower’s surveillance programming?” Luppas stood beside a Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit only a few meters from one of the main support pillars. The men holding Deja Chilson stood behind him.

The ork woman was in full frenzy, struggling against her captors.

“If she doesn’t settle down,” Luppas said calmly, “shoot off one of her fingers.”

Deja Chilson stopped her struggles, eyes rolling whites and her nose flaring. Blood streaked down one side of her mouth. “I didn’t do anything to you,” she said. “I don’t even know who you are or what this is all about.”

“Shut up,” Luppas said, “or I’ll have your tongue cut out.” He watched the doors intently.

“Speedball One, this is Three. I have the tower’s surveillance systems operational. I have a parasitic hold on them, but I can’t influence anything they do.”

“Understood, Three. Do you have the targets on-screen?”

“Affirmative.”

“Where are they?”

“The seventh floor.”

“How many are operational?”

There was a brief hesitation. “It’s hard to say, sir, with all the smoke in the area. And there seems to be some kind of interference that won’t let the infrared systems operate properly.”

“Keep me apprised,” Luppas said, staring at the elevators. “They don’t have anywhere to go.”

* * *

Skater thought he saw a shimmering in the air along the empty space of the hallway that reminded him of magic spells being cast. The same kind of optical effects were usually visible.

“Trey,” he called over the link.

“He’s there with you somewhere, omae,” came Elvis’s voice. “He’s not here.” Elvis sounded tense, not used to being sidelined.

Using the door to the doss as cover, Skater raised the Predator and put three rounds into one of the mercs. The rounds dropped the man instantly.

The other mercs, instead of pressing the advantage of their sheer numbers, drew back.

There was no reason to come after him, Skater realized as his heart thumped leadenly in his chest. They had him trapped right where he was. His left hand ached as he maintained the grip on the canister. He thought about Emma, remembering that he hadn’t said goodbye, remembering that he hadn’t parted on good terms with Larisa either, and he hadn’t been there when his grandfather died. So many missed opportunities. And he had to wonder how many of the team he was going to lead to their deaths, the way he’d led Shiva.

The outside people should be able to get away clean. The only risk was Cullen Trey, who’d stubbornly returned to bring the attack to Kylar Luppas on the astral plane. With Luppas’s foci and fetishes, even if the elf merc stayed on the physical plane, Trey had explained that he might be able to attack through an active spell lock or focus. It was a slim chance, but one worth taking, Trey had said tersely.

But Duran . . .

Skater looked at the smoke curling from the hole blasted into the wall beside the closed elevator shaft. Fraggit, he’d killed them both, brought them here partly out of his own guilt for what had happened to Larisa and gambling on the small chance they’d be able to squeak through the battle alive.

He turned around and looked at Falkenhayne, wondering if there was anything he could say. She, at least, was no worse off than before he found her. It was cold comfort at best.

“Kid.” The voice sounded weak and shaken over the commlink.

“Duran?” Skater whirled back to look at the elevator, not believing his ears.

“You plan on pitching a tent in there, or are we gonna buzz turbo?”

A flash of edged metal appeared between the two warped elevator doors. A second later, Duran’s gloved hand shoved through after the knife and forced the doors back.

“Move it!” Duran growled.

The elevator cage was locked into position halfway down, revealing the empty shaft and the thick plasteel cable above it. The ork, bloody and listing badly as he stood, slammed the knife down in front of one of the doors, preventing them from closing.

Skater felt some of the doubt inside him shift, not quite making the long distance back to hope, but there was a stubbornness in him that refused to just lay down and die. He stepped around the corner and threw the canister toward the gathered mercs at the end of the hallway.

The canister bounced as it went, hardly making a noise as it struck the white carpet, then started spewing smoke from the top in thick gouts. The smoke was laced with sizzling-hot sparks that hung in the air and totally fragged over infrared and thermographic vision. Even metas with better than average night vision usually had their sight spotted with black holes as a result.

Two mercs moved forward, hosing the hallway down with bullets.

Duran caught one of them with a burst, and Skater sent the other one spinning away with a round into the shoulder. The falling mercs got in the way of the other men behind them, and all of them vanished from Skater’s view as the spewing smoke filled the hallway.

“Move!” he told Falkenhayne, grabbing her wrist. She hesitated for only a moment, then ran out into the hallway with him.

Keeping one hand on the woman’s wrist and the other tight on the Predator, Skater guided them toward the barely visible elevator cage, keeping his body between Falkenhayne and the mercs. A heavy-caliber bullet caught him in the side, not penetrating his armor beneath the coveralls but hitting hard enough to take his breath away and throw him off-stride.

He bumped into Falkenhayne, knocking both of them into a fumbling skid for the elevator. They slid to a stop less than a meter away.

Duran reached out and caught a fistful of the woman’s duster. With a heave, he yanked her into the elevator cage.

Skater pushed himself up and forward, going in low under the top of the suspended elevator. He dropped to the bottom and uncoiled instantly. “Thanks, Quint.”

“ ’S okay, kid. You’da done the same for me.”

Skater plucked the knife from the floor and let the doors close. Bullets smashed through the cheap plastiwood and polyfiber core of the doors. When they closed, there was no more light.

Duran switched on a penflash and played the narrow beam over the control panel. Gouges scarred the interior walls. The ork tagged the Suspend button and the cage rocked into motion again.

Skater accessed the commlink. “Wheeler.”

“Here, chummer. Luppas and his people have secured the underground garage. You should have felt the explosion.”

Skater hadn’t. He looked at Duran.

The ork nodded and touched a button for the first floor. “We knew they’d be there.”

“We knew maybe,” Skater said.

“First place they’d go to muscle us over,” Duran said. “If you or I were running the ops on this one, that’s what we’da done.”

“Only if we had to go in hard,” Skater said. He preferred finesse. Tense and nervous, watching the floors drop away on the digital read-out, he felt cold and sweaty all at the same time. Every breath he took felt shortened, tight because of the pain in his side.

55

The elevator doors opened on the apartment tower’s first floor.

Cautiously, Skater peered around the elevator door frame.

A half-dozen frightened people, two of them wearing Knight Errant uniforms, stood in the foyer amid an array of plastic trees and flowers. A mural covered the wall to the right, showing a wooded glen where a lone elven Amerind sat cross-legged on a rocky outcrop overlooking a serene lake. The clouds overhead were twisted into the shape of a gray-blue bear that looked down on the Amerind knowingly.

They all turned at the sound of the warped elevator doors shrieking back into their housing. The two Knight Errant secguards brought their weapons around. Before either of them could fire, Duran shot them in the face with DM SO pellets from a Squirt he carried in a chest holster. They’d planned for “friendly” resistance as well.

“Back away,” Skater told the four people who’d frozen into position. “There’s no need for anyone to get hurt.”

The four people faded the heat at once, leaving the foyer open and the way to the main doors of the apartment tower clear. Duran holstered the Squirt, baring the shotgun for all to see.

“One step behind me,” the big ork growled to Falkenhayne. “You stay there and I can get you out of here in one piece. Scan?”

“Yes.” The woman tried to make herself as small as possible behind Duran.

Skater moved toward the entrance at a half-run, not wanting to leave Falkenhayne behind but needing to get into position. He accessed the commlink. “Elvis.”

“Here.”

“Bring the van around when I tell you.”

“I’ll be there, omae.”

A shadow flitted against one of the nightscapes hanging onto the side of the entranceway. Skater’s combat reflexes came on-line immediately, pulling the Predator up into firing position.

“Duran!” he yelled, throwing himself behind a huge plascrete pot that held an artificial elm tree twice as tall as he was. “Get down!”

The ork went to ground at once, wrapping an arm over Falkenhayne’s shoulders and pulling her with him behind one of the overstuffed sofas crowding a little conversation area in front of the management desk.

A black-clad merc swung around the corner of the entranceway. The machine pistol in his hands rattled death.

Partially hidden behind the huge plascrete pot, Skater raised himself up on one arm and fired the Predator. He pulled through seven shots, less than half of them hitting his target due to the bad angle and his haste in shooting.

The merc jerked backward, crashing through the latticework of small, multi-colored windows, then spilling out onto the short flight of concrete steps leading into the building.

Skater reloaded his weapon, wondering where the frag Lone Star was. Lone Star would have been after them as hard as Luppas and his group, but at least the Star personnel might have wanted them alive. A quick glance at Duran and Falkenhayne assured him the ork had taken the woman to safety.

“Elvis, get that drekking van up here!”

“On my way.”

“Jack,” Wheeler called over the commlink, “the merc forces out here are mobilizing. They’ve seen Elvis.”

“Can’t be helped,” Skater said. He glanced back at the elevators, seeing the other two cages in motion, dropping toward the lobby quickly. The damaged one they’d come down in was frozen in place, held there when Duran slammed the Suspend button again. The cages, whether they were filled with concerned residents or with mercs, would arrive in seconds. Neither would be helpful.

The commlink beeped for attention in Skater’s head. He shifted frequencies and opened up the channel he’d reserved for Quentin Strapp.

“What’s going on over there, Jack?” the federal agent demanded in his rough voice.

“We got made,” Skater replied.

“Do you need help?”

“No.” Skater made his way into the blood-spattered doorway and gazed outside. Elvis left the van’s lights off as he drove the vehicle toward the apartment tower. The DocWagon markings on the side partially explained its presence, or would at least hopefully slow Luppas’s gunners from firing immediately. All of the markings were magnetic appliques, highly illegal but things they’d used before and kept in storage at one of their equipment dumps. “Can you slow Lone Star down?”

“The Star’s not going to be a problem, Jack,” the federal agent said. “Somebody let a virus loose in their systems, judging from what we’re monitoring here, and set off PANIC-BUTTON alarms for blocks in every direction. Those teams trying to respond to all the alarms are positively slotted because they won’t know whether they’ve got a legit alarm or not till they look around. If I wasn’t such a trusting soul, I’d be wondering if you had something to do with that.”

“If I did,” Skater said, “I wouldn’t have allowed this frequency to be known by you.”

“Of course, I’m not thinking maybe you could be playing satellite ricochet with the signal and not telling me about it,” Strapp replied.

Skater stepped over the dead merc as Elvis brought the van to a screeching stop in front of the apartment tower. “Trust me,” he said.

“I am. I just don’t like it.”

Duran was starting toward the van when a military helo took form overhead. The beating rotors sounded just ahead of the rapid beat of the heavy machine guns on the firmpoint spewing tracer rounds across the street.

The van wasn’t bulletproofed. They’d stolen it from a sprawl linen service that didn’t have a problem with theft or armed assaults.

“Get out of here!” Skater waved Elvis off as Duran guided Falkenhayne back to the relative safety of the apartment tower doorway.

The heavy-caliber bullets slammed against the street and cut through the van, then chewed holes into the side of the apartment tower.

“Cheshire!” Strapp called.

“Back off,” Skater replied. He pointed the Predator at the helicopter’s plastiglass nose and squeezed the trigger rapidly. The rounds didn’t penetrate the thick glass, but they lit up brief explosions that left burned marks in their wake. “I’ve got to lose this channel. I’ll get back to you.”

“I can have a team—”

“Stay back,” Skater ordered. “If you make a move before I tell you, you’ll slot this thing up good. You keep that in mind, Strapp.”

The helicopter pilot jerked sideways, the rotors missing the building on the other side of Overlake Drive West by less than five meters. He managed to recover, though, and set up again.

Elvis had the van underway, roaring east along the street.

The helicopter swerved in the air, tracking the van.

On the original commlink channel, Skater said, “Wheeler, can you take the helicopter?”

“Give me a second.” The rigger’s voice sounded calm, controlled.

Glancing down the street, Skater saw the Tsarina jockeying for position. He couldn’t see the mini-cannon popping out of its hidden recesses, but he knew it was. He hoped it was.

In the other direction, more mercs arrived in two other vehicles. Luppas hadn’t stinted on paying for additional help.

“We’re out of time, Wheeler,” Skater said.

Elvis was using both sides of the street, deploying an evasive pattern. The mini-cannon slung under the helicopter’s nose wiggled back and forth like an insect’s antenna, the movements growing less and less as it locked on the fleeing van.

Then a jet of liquid fire belched from the ground and streaked toward the helicopter. When it connected, the helicopter turned into a mass of whirling orange and black flames that seemed intent on devouring itself. Pieces of the craft rained down across the street, bounced off the surrounding buildings. The explosion was almost deafening.

The heat of the blast swirled in on Skater, making him slit his eyes. He glanced at Duran. The ork looked battered, his face bloodied. “Can you make it?” Skater asked.

Elvis had braked the van nearly a hundred meters away, but the flaming debris made backing the vehicle up an unwise decision.

“I’ll make it, kid,” Duran said. “I haven’t not made it yet.”

Falkenhayne stood in the ork’s shadow, her face blanched white and bleeding from a wound on her forehead.

“Take her to Elvis,” Skater said. “I’ll hold things down long enough for the two of you to get a lead.”

Duran looked like he wanted to argue.

“A few steps, Quint,” Skater said, “that’s all. If somebody comes through those doors”—he nodded at the entrances near the elevator bays—“and steps out behind us, they’ll cut us down.”

Duran nodded, then offered his shotgun. “Gonna need more than that little peashooter you got.” He unbuckled an ammo belt and passed it across as well. “See you on the other side.”

“I’ll be there,” Skater promised.

The ork threw a protective arm across Falkenhayne’s shoulders and headed her toward the van.

“Hold up, Elvis,” Skater said over the commlink. “They’re on their way.”

“I’ve got it, omae.”

“Wheeler,” Skater said, peering at the ragged line of mercs in the street and at the two newly arrived vehicles that were starting into motion, “can you take out the hounds?”

“I’m there, chummer.”

A heartbeat later, another round from the Tsarina slammed into the lead car at nearly ground level. The car came rearing up off the pavement and overturned onto the one behind it. Out of control, the rear car veered into the side of the building and smashed into the wall, rending metal and shredding plascrete in long screams.

Skater put the shotgun to shoulder and fired into the mercs near the underground parking garage entrance sixty meters away. They were lit up by the flaming debris of the helicopter and the twisted wreckage of the two vehicles.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Duran and Falkenhayne had covered almost a third of the distance separating them from Elvis and the van. Then an electronic voice screamed in his ear.

“Skater!”

He looked up, bringing the shotgun around automatically. In the upper corner of the entranceway, a security monitor, its screen fractured in the earlier exchange of gunfire, gazed down on him.

Kylar Luppas looked at him from the screen. Below it was a camera pod. Skater figured the elf had rigged the apartment tower’s sec systems.

“What do you want?” Skater asked. “I was just on my way out.”

“I think you’ll reconsider.” The camera view suddenly pulled back, revealing the feminine form beside him.

It took Skater the length of a drawn breath to recognize Deja Chilson. Larisa Hartsinger’s step-sister and Emma’s aunt. His blood ran cold when he saw the merc standing behind her with his hand knotted in her hair and a knife blade tucked under her chin.

“One word from me,” Luppas promised, “and the blood of this woman is on your hands.”

Skater made himself look at Luppas. “What do you want?”

“The woman, of course. And the program.”

“Don’t, Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink. Skater was running his end of the operation inside the apartment tower over an open mike. That way the outside teams would know everything that was happening without needing Cullen Trey to pass information along. “Luppas is lying. He’ll get you and he’ll kill you right along with her.”

“I can’t let him kill her,” Skater replied subvocally.

“Don’t be ditbrained,” Archangel said. “You don’t owe her anything.”

“She’s Emma’s family.”

“She was using Emma against you.” Archangel paused. “Jack, please—”

“I can’t, Angel,” he said softly. “She’s Emma’s family.” He stared into the monitor screen, knowing the camera was picking him up. “Okay, Luppas, you win.” He reached into his pocket and took out the computer chips Falkenhayne had given him. “I’ve got the program right here. Do you want to come up or do you want me to come down?”

“Come down, Skater,” Luppas said. “You’ve got too many friends topside who might decide they’re luckier than they are. And bring the woman.”

“I can’t,” Skater said. “She’s already gone.”

“Then you’ve signed this woman’s death warrant.” Luppas raised a hand.

A cold taloned claw twisted in Skater’s guts. He closed his fist over the chips. “And you lose the program.”

The merc standing behind Deja Chilson yanked her head back farther, baring her throat. The woman screamed in fear and closed her eyes, launching into a prayer when she was almost out of breath.

“Jack,” Trey said over the commlink, “Luppas has a spell lock active that I can work through. If I can break past the spell lock’s defenses, I can attack him from astral space and maybe buy you a little time.”

“Okay, chummer,” Skater replied subvocally.

“Just let me know when.”

“I’m coming, Luppas,” Skater said so the sec monitor could pick him up. He walked out of the entranceway, headed for the elevators.

“Jack—” Archangel said.

“You know what to do,” Skater said subvocally over the commlink as he stepped inside the elevator cage. “Get it done. It’s the last chance we’re going to have.”

56

Archangel flew through the gridlines of the Matrix. Cyberspace rendered the Bellevue sprawl in ebonies and emeralds, all hard-edged lines. She aimed herself at the glowing blue Fuchi Research icon, located on Sixth Street SE and 112th Avenue SE in Bellevue, and spread the feathered wings of her icon.

She cut through the distance, then hovered in front of the tall structure. In her Matrix-linked sight, Fuchi Research looked like a sword thrust into the ground, the blade fanning out in a sharp-edged octagon.

Choosing her point of egress, she selected one of the PR channels the corporation kept open to prospective employees, stock brokers, and government representatives, giving soy-pabulum downloads and no easy access to sensitive data. She flew through the curving hallway lit by a soft pink neon radiance and landed perfectly in front of the dataslave working the front desk.

The dataslave looked like a Greek god seated behind an obsidian desk, tall, bronze, with dark hair in tight curls. The Fuchi logo was emblazoned on a blue and white marble wall behind the dataslave.

“May I help you?” the dataslave asked.

“I want to talk to Ramona Fishbein,” Archangel said. Inside she was shaking, mad at Skater and fearful for him all at the same time. She understood his reasons for walking back into the trap Kylar Luppas set probably far better than he did himself, but she still begrudged him his decision. It was the stupidest thing he could do under the circumstances. Going after Falkenhayne had left common sense behind as well. But they’d all gone with him for the chance of clearing themselves completely of the situation. Desperation had pushed them to that, but Jack was operating out of guilt now. And that, she knew, was the worst thing to deal with. She knew.

Most of all, though, she was mad at herself. Mad at the way she felt about Jack. Mad at Jack because he obviously didn’t feel the same way. And mad at the whole situation that had changed their relationship even though she hadn’t wanted it changed. The only person she wasn’t mad at was Emma.

And Skater’s little girl had been the catalyst that had changed it all.

“Who may I say is calling?” the dataslave inquired unctuously.

“Ripley Falkenhayne.”

“Just a moment,” the dataslave said, “and I’ll see if Ms. Fishbein is available.”

From his tone, Archangel knew the dataslave was putting her off, following a preset laundry list of orders that would impress but not satisfy. He didn’t know what the Falkenhayne name represented. She accessed the utilities she had at her disposal.

The attack utility she used against the dataslave tossed him out of the corp Matrix representation. Somewhere the dataslave was waking up in his meat body with a severe case of dump shock. His loss of control over the Matrix area immediately triggered barrier IC that closed her off from other parts of the corp.

That was fine with Archangel. The operation Skater wanted here hadn’t required any kind of finesse. All she had to do at this point was jack out and be gone.

She opened a small window, checking how long she’d been in the Matrix. And how many deaths Jack could have died already. She cursed, then got angry with herself for being angry. Control was always the centerpoint of her life; it was what had given her a life.

A wave of electronic data static shimmered in the air in front of her. Fuchi wouldn’t be able to easily use black IC in a public forum in the Matrix. Not even one they’d established. And before anything really harmful could happen to her, she was certain she’d be able to jack out.

The electronic datastream solidified in front of her, becoming a woman.

Archangel didn’t recognize her.

“I’m Ramona Fishbein,” the woman said.

Archangel’s finely tuned cybernetic senses and her indigenous talent for intuition warned her that the Fuchi decker was gathering nasty surprises around her even now in the form of combat utilities as Fishbein confronted her. “You’re looking for a woman named Ripley Falkenhayne and a man named Kylar Luppas.”

The porcelain face never flickered.

Archangel sensed she’d scored a direct hit. “If you want them,” she said, “come to the Chester Apartment Tower on Overlake Drive. I hope you can find it before Luppas gets away with Falkenhayne.” Then she opened her escape from the Matrix, making a red button appear in mid-air. She tagged the button and flipped out as the first of Fishbein’s attack utilities reached for her.

* * *

Archangel came back into the physical world with a rush. Her breathing was labored, her heart hammering against her ribs as she peered across the flaming debris scattered in the street.

“Are you okay?” Wheeler’s voice came not from his physical body inside the Tsarina, but from the commlink.

The dwarf rigger’s body was cocooned in the seat behind her, totally immersed in the vehicle, drawing feedback from the physical world through metal and circuitry rather than flesh and blood.

“I’m fine,” she replied, unstrapping herself from the seat.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to help Jack,” Archangel said.

“Don’t leave the car.”

Archangel tried the hatch, but the locks were engaged. When she tried to release them, they defied her.

“Jack wouldn’t want you out there.”

“Jack is willing to die for that woman,” Archangel said, “because she’s maybe related by blood or past or whatever the hell he thinks he knows to Emma. She tried to use him, and would have if she’d gotten the opportunity.” She slid a dagger free of her boot. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

“We were told what to do. Did you contact Fuchi?”

“Yes.” Archangel turned in the seat, the blade held before her. She knew Wheeler’s internal monitors were picking up visuals on her. The knife gleamed in her fist. “Fuchi will be down on this spot in seconds. Wheeler, I know you’re aware that I treasure you as a friend, but I swear by everything you hold holy that if you don’t pop that hatch and let me out, I’m going to unman you while you’re lying in the cocoon and let you worry about getting a transplant or a vatjob regrowth some time in the future.” Wheeler didn’t respond.

“No jokes.” Archangel kept her mind numb, trying hard not to think about how long Skater had been down in the underground parking area with Luppas. “I’m not going to let him face that butcher on his own. Elvis has got to drive the van. Duran’s been hurt. You’ve got to run back-up on the over-the-road hump of this run. Cullen’s—” She cocked her head and opened the commlink. “Cullen.”

“He’s checked out,” Elvis replied in a low voice that let her know he wasn’t happy with Skater turning himself over either.

“Cullen’s already there,” Archangel finished up. “Now pop that fragging latch or sing soprano for the next couple months!”

The latch popped.

Archangel clambered out of the Tsarina on the side nearest the building. Two vehicles carrying Luppas’s mercs shrilled by, rattling off a string of machine-gun fire at the Tsarina that sparked from the armored hide.

Glancing up the street, Archangel saw that Elvis had already gotten underway. The van followed Overlake Drive West, avoiding the traffic that had stalled around the scene where the wreckage of the helicopter and the vehicles blocked the way. Groat Point and hopefully safety were only minutes away for Elvis, Duran, Trey, and Falkenhayne.

If Trey didn’t get his astral hoop flamed off by Luppas or one of the combat spellworms.

Archangel reached back into the Tsarina and grabbed the assault rifle Duran had outfitted her with. “Take care of them,

Wheeler,” she said, knowing the car’s audio receptors would pick up her voice even though she didn’t use the commlink.

“Good luck,” Wheeler said. “Get him out of there if you can, and get your hoops down lakeside fragging quick.”

“Buzz turbo, Wheeler.” Archangel turned her attention from the dwarf and ran for the apartment tower. There were enough people on the street and peering through windows and doors that she managed to get across without getting noticed by Luppas’s people. The mercs were also busy replacing their totaled transportation, small groups of them checking the cars parked along the street.

According to the building maps she’d accessed, besides the elevators and the public stairwells leading down into the underground parking garage, there was also one used exclusively by maintenance personnel. She gained the entranceway of the apartment tower, slamming her visor down and keying in the infrared function, and aimed herself for the maintenance area, seconds slithering painfully by in her mind.

* * *

It felt good knowing Trey was there with him, Skater decided. Even though he couldn’t talk to him. He kept his left hand tightly closed behind his back.

He took the elevator down to the parking garage, listening to Elvis tell him they were underway with Falkenhayne and listening to Wheeler tell him he was rolling behind the others, set to take out the opposition they’d picked up. It was something. Skater had always known—that there’d come a run he couldn’t finish if he didn’t get out of the biz, a run where he’d end up a step short when the final cards hit the table down and dirty.

And he didn’t fool himself about being able to save Deja Chilson. They were both dead if that was the way Luppas wanted to play it; both waiting for the time to make it official. He just hadn’t been able to walk away and let her die by herself because she’d been on the periphery of his life. Because of Emma, because of those ties to Larisa that he still hadn’t resolved for himself, as well as the sense of responsibility. After all these months, he still didn’t know where the responsibility for Larisa’s death began or where it ended.

The elevator bobbed to a stop. The doors opened. He wished he could flex his left hand; he was already getting a cramp in it.

Kylar Luppas stood in front of him, a mocking smile on his elven face. “The programs, drekker.”

Deja Chilson stood in front of a merc nearby, the knife still poised at her throat.

“Let the woman go first,” Skater said.

Luppas scowled. “I can have you shot and have someone take them off your corpse.”

“It would be interesting to see if any of your men could put them back together,” Skater said. “Let her go and give me a show of faith. As a professional, I know you don’t have to kill me to get what you want. All you’ve got to do is position me where I don’t have a choice.” He made a show of looking around the underground garage. “In my professional opinion, I’m there.”

“Maybe some of this has become personal for me,” Luppas said.

Skater gave the man a crooked smile, then lifted the hand he’d kept out of sight behind his back, revealing the grenade there. “Your call, Luppas, but it’s on my terms.”

Luppas met his gaze stone-faced, measure for measure. “You really want me to believe you’re brave enough to sacrifice yourself like this?”

Skater shook his head. “Not brave enough. Scared enough. You fixed it so we’re both all out of choices.” He paused. “If you let the woman go, I’ll let one of your men get close enough to take the chips out of my pocket. Otherwise, I’ll let you shoot her, then I’ll just open my fist. If you’re going to let her go, now’s the time.”

Luppas held his decision for a time, then waved at the man with the knife at her throat.

The merc dropped his blade, then pushed Deja Chilson roughly forward.

The woman stumbled, a hand over her stomach as she struggled not to be sick.

“Get on the elevator,” Skater said. “Find someone you can stay with until Lone Star reaches you.”

“Jack, I—”

“Go!” Skater never took his eyes from Luppas. Deja Chilson wasn’t feeling sorry or apologetic; she was scared and hurt.

The ork woman breezed on by him.

Even then, Skater didn’t quite trust her not to be somehow working with Luppas. He kept her in his peripheral vision till the doors closed behind her and the floor indicator showed that she was rising.

“Now,” Luppas said, “the programs.”

* * *

The inside of the maintenance tunnel was narrow, but it was clean. The dark, however, was so thick that even the infrared capability of Archangel’s visor was sorely tested.

She ran the schematics back through her head as she trailed a hand around one wall of the tunnel. She needed that to keep herself oriented because the infrared vision didn’t strip all the shadows away.

Six more steps, then seven, eight, nine, till she lost count again thinking about Jack and where he might be. She made herself remain calm, angry that she’d let so much of her self-control become lost. She was a fool to think she could just walk in and save him, like some animated hero on the trid.

But it hadn’t been like that, she realized. She just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him there by himself. The door appeared around the next right turn, just where the blueprints said it would be.

Taking a fresh grip on the assault rifle, Archangel tried the door. It was unlocked. Twisting the handle gently, she opened it and peered out.

Luppas and his group of mercenaries stood confronting Jack only seventy meters away, dim and distant in the shadows twisting through the building. She counted maybe twenty men, surely no more than thirty, strung out in a halfmoon around Jack, their weapons drawn.

She raised the assault rifle to her shoulder and trained the open sights on Luppas. Of all the mercs, Luppas was the most dangerous.

“Archangel,” Cullen called over the commlink, “be patient. Let’s make the most of our energies and whatever opportunities may come our way. Fuchi has sec-crews already en route from the research compound. They’ve been on standby.”

The next voice she heard was Skater’s, also over the commlink. “What the slot are you here, Angel? You’re supposed to be clear.”

“There’s been a slight change in plans, Jack,” she said softly.

“No,” Skater said.

“Steady, Jack,” Archangel said. “Don’t blow this chance. You’ve walked into the dragon’s mouth, let’s see if we can walk you back out, chummer. I’ll be right there with you.”

Archangel felt for Trey’s presence, but evidently the mage had only returned to his meat body long enough to establish the communication. She waited, feeling more tense, more ragged, than she had in years. Control was everything, and she was on the verge of losing it. Emotions were fragged. She couldn’t have them and be herself, be the person others could depend on. She knew that, dammit, she knew that.

She made herself wait.

* * *

Skater held himself steady as one of Luppas’s mercs moved forward.

“Wait,” Luppas ordered the man.

The merc froze, less than two meters from Skater. His face looked tense.

“Give your weapons up before you get near him,” Luppas commanded.

The merc stripped his rifle and pistol off and tossed them to a man behind him.

His stomach churning with fear, barely able to restrain the boosted reflexes, Skater watched. His hand holding the grenade shook with the effort it took to keep it closed. He kept his eyes riveted on Luppas, but couldn’t help thinking about Archangel somewhere out there in the parking area.

Just as the merc put his hands on Skater, a knot of mercs came swarming in from the street, setting up in a defensive parameter. Skater couldn’t hear everything they were saying over the sudden din of helicopter rotors beating down out in the street, but he did hear Fuchi’s name being called several times. Evidently the megacorp had struck without hesitation.

Gunfire picked up out in the street, becoming a backdrop that unleashed a living thing of noise into the parking area.

“Now, Trey!” Skater said, knowing the mage couldn’t hear him over the commlink because he wasn’t in his meat body. But he was counting on Trey being able to read his intent in the astral.

A shimmering took form around Luppas, spreading out from the elf merc in concentric waves that swept his men from their feet. Luppas himself staggered back, appearing dazed from whatever spell Cullen Trey had cast at them.

Skater exploded into action, lobbing his grenade he held toward the mercs. Luppas saw him, and the elf drew back, a shimmering taking place around him that clashed with the shimmering from Trey’s casting. One of the mercs dove for the grenade.

Concentrating on the man in front of him, Skater dodged away, feeling the merc’s fingers graze across the front of the coveralls. The material tore, giving his attacker no purchase to work with.

Wheeling into a spinning side kick, Skater lashed his foot into the man’s head. Pain splintered through Skater’s leg at the impact, but he forced himself to ignore it and retain his balance.

Everything in the underground parking garage had turned to chaos. Over half of Luppas’s force had been downed by the spell Trey had cast.

“Jack!” Archangel yelled over the commlink. “I’m at ten o’clock of your position, at the far end of the garage!”

Moving, breaking into a run, dodging another merc, Skater saw her come running from the maintenance door at the back of the garage. Then the grenade went off, slapping him to the ground.

57

“Jack!”

Skater was cut and bloodied from the explosion, feeling weak as a kitten. He considered it a miracle that he was still breathing. He made himself get to his feet and somehow lurched into a staggering run.

A glance at the merc ranks told him they’d been reduced even further by the grenade. Then a gush of blood occluded his cybereye. He took a fresh grip on the Predator and used cars and the support pillars for cover as Luppas screamed orders behind him. He fired the Predator at everything before him that looked hostile. Skater spotted the Americar he and Duran had parked earlier. “The car,” he called to Archangel over the commlink.

“I see it.”

“Get there.”

Squeezing through on the pistol’s trigger again, Skater found he’d emptied it. He pulled up short behind a support pillar and changed magazines. He thumbed the slide release and sent it scooting forward, stripping the top round from the magazine and thrusting it home.

Archangel fired round after round at Luppas and the group of mercs. The bullets didn’t penetrate the magical barrier the elf had erected around himself, but they played bloody frag with his troops.

Skater pushed off the pillar and ran for the Americar XE. He was vaguely aware of the Fuchi helicopter landing out on Overlake Drive West in front of the apartment tower.

Archangel beat him to the car, sliding alongside it and using it for cover as she slipped a fresh magazine into the assault rifle. She fired again as soon as it was ready, knocking a merc from his feet.

“Get in,” Skater said, pulling the driver’s-side door open and dropping into the bucket seat. Archangel followed him in, firing a final burst at a merc less than twenty meters away and closing from the protection afforded by a line of cars. The bullets hammered vehicles and merc as well, busting out glass, ripping through bodywork, and tossing the man over a low-slung Runabout.

Skater reached under the seat and grabbed the key from where he and Duran had left it. When he turned the ignition, he breathed a short sigh of relief when the engine caught with a throaty roar. He slammed the stick into first gear and popped the clutch.

The XE sports package came with an old-style rear-wheel drive. Skater’s reflexes took the performance all wrong for a moment and nearly piled them into the side of a massive Landrover before he corrected. He pulled back hard on the wheel, let off on the accelerator, and muscled the car back into line with the entrance letting out onto the street with skill and luck.

The ramp leading up to Overlake Drive West was filled with the Fuchi helicopter and secmen. None of them wore identifying uniforms, and there were no markings on the aircraft. To Skater, they were all dangerous.

Using Fuchi against Luppas had been the wildest card in the deck he’d set up for the night’s run. And now it looked like it would be one of the most effective. If it didn’t kill them first.

“Stay down,” he told Archangel.

“It’s a little late for warnings,” she said, giving him a look. “And a little late for taking chances, don’t you think?” Skater didn’t reply, focusing his attention on driving. The XE powered up the ramp, scattering Fuchi men and drawing fire from before and behind all at the same time. Two men were too slow to get out of the way. The Americar bowled them over, one of them going down under the wheels and the other going high, slamming onto the hood for an instant before being tossed off.

Cutting the wheels sharply, Skater narrowly avoided the waspish shape of the attack helicopter sitting in the street as he turned east. He touched the brake briefly when he saw pedestrians on the sidewalk ahead of him, then laid on the horn. The shrill bleat and the sparks of gunfire bouncing from the vehicle sent the onlookers scattering. He held the course with difficulty.

A moment later he was through, shoving his foot down on the accelerator. The high-performance sports engine responded like a thoroughbred, barreling down the street.

“What the frag were you doing there?” he demanded.

“Keeping you from getting killed.” She didn’t look at him, her beautiful face masked tight and hard. Her almond eyes searched the street behind him. “We’re being followed. While we were back there, I saw Luppas getting into—that!" She pointed.

Skater checked his rearview mirrors, picking up the deep sepia-colored Australian-made Brumby roaring after them at once. “I could have made it out of there just fine.”

“Fraggit, Jack,” Archangel said, “you still did, you dit-brained moron.”

“You didn’t have to come back there.”

“You didn’t have to jander down there when Luppas had Deja Chilson either. But you did.”

“You were supposed to stay clear,” Skater said. “You weren’t even supposed to be near the real risk.” He turned the corner hard, following Overlake Drive West as it jogged south toward Groat Point.

“We’re clear now.”

Skater had no argument for that, but he was surprised at the anger in Archangel’s voice. Fear or concern, he’d have understood. Those things were natural. But the anger was out of place, not stemming from their current situation. He pushed it out of his mind. There were too many other variables to keep track of. He keyed up the commlink. “Okay, chummers, now we get down and dirty. Make the shift over to beta frequency.” He switched over himself. “Cheshire Two, do you copy?”

“Cheshire Two copies,” Duran replied.

“Where are you?” Skater laid on the horn again and shot through the intersection at Eighty-fourth Avenue NE and Overlake Drive West against a red light. Cars squealed to a halt on either side of the intersection. A light truck skidded out far enough to make brief contact with the XE’s driver’s side.

Skater fought the wheels as the car rocked, watching sparks flare up in his window as metal scraped metal. Then he had control again and the intersection was behind him.

“Coming up on the intersection where Overlake Drive West meets Overlake Drive East,” Duran replied. “We’re almost out of running room, kid.”

“Cheshire Five,” Skater called, checking his review mirror, “are you ready?”

More acclimated to the run and gun conditions of fleeing through the streets, the Brumby was closing the distance between itself and the XE.

“Yes.” Cullen Trey sounded completely beat. “Don’t worry, chummer, for the rest of the night’s activities, I’ve got help.” Trey had explained about the water elemental that he’d summoned up. The creature had been put in his service over a year ago and still had a debt to pay off to Trey, though the mage never said what that debt was. All the team members had their secrets, though.

“Cheshire Six,” Skater called, thinking he recognized the Tsarina ahead of him.

“I’m here, chummer,” Wheeler replied. “Taking care of biz. They’ve got two on their hoop.”

Closer now, Skater saw the bursts of autofire blazing at the Tsarina. Some of them struck the vehicle, igniting brief comets immediately sucked away in the crush of wind rushing over the speeding vehicle. The mini-cannon mounted on Wheeler’s vehicle belched flame.

Unerringly, the rocket smashed into the rear of the car less than forty meters ahead of the Tsarina. Propelled by the blast, the car flipped end over end, coming to rest on its side against a squat building that advertised boat rentals and repairs. Flames licked out around it, then consumed it in a rush.

The Brumby suddenly slammed against the rear of the XE. “Frag,” Skater cursed softly, recovering control over the car with difficulty. He glanced at the next intersection, a three-way that led off to NE Second Street. They were almost on top of Groat Point, closing faster than he’d wanted to.

The Brumby rushed forward again, assault rifle fire hammering the rear of the XE. The glass in the rear window emptied and the front seat puffed out plastifoam stuffing as the bullets ripped through the covering.

Archangel grunted in pain.

Skater looked over at her quickly. “Angel—?”

“I’m all right,” she said. “The armor stopped a round from going through, but it didn’t stop it from hurting like drek.”

“Cheshire!” Quentin Strapp called over the commlink. “Here,” Skater said.

“There are more unidentified aircraft pursuing your extraction path,” the federal agent said. “Advise me as to the situation.”

“They’re from Fuchi,” Skater said, checking the mirrors, hunkering down so he could scan the sky behind him. Sure enough, there were at least two helicopters in the air, closing in rapidly and hugging the ground just above the tops of the nearby buildings. “You’re getting them gift-wrapped and at no extra charge.”

“We’re moving in,” Strapp said. “I’m not waiting any longer.”

“Now,” Skater said, whipping the XE to the side as the Brumby driver tried to ram him again, “now’s the time.”

The Brumby crossed bumpers with the XE, almost spinning it out of control again.

Ahead of them, not more than sixty meters away, Wheeler fired at the last pursuit car dogging Elvis’s van. The round struck the pursuit car squarely and blew it off the street, turning it into a rolling mass of fire and wreckage.

“There.” Archangel pointed.

Following the last curving turn of Overlake Drive West down to the Groat Point marinas, warehouses, and docks, Skater looked up and spotted the black mass that was Lake Washington. On the other side of it, what looked like a spun confection of lights rose into the air.

Skater knew the lights were from the aircraft Quentin Strapp had put into position. None of the pilots and federal agents aboard them had known what their mission objective would be until the last few minutes.

“Home free, omae,” Elvis called over the commlink. The van pulled off Overlake Drive and hurtled down one of the many small side streets leading into the docks and wharves. It didn’t stop until it reached a transport barge tied up at a loading dock. The barge rocked under the sudden weight of the van as it skidded to a halt only a few meters from the end.

Elvis and Duran erupted from the doors and set about casting off. The man they’d hired to keep the motors running abandoned the barge at the sight of the Brumby still firing guns at the XE.

The lights streaking across Lake Washington were more defined now, taking shape as being part of a phalanx of combat helicopters with UCAS government markings.

Wheeler’s Tsarina sped up the ramp and braked on the barge as well, coming around gracefully to face the oncoming traffic with the mini-cannon, millimeters to spare on one side before it would drop off into the lake.

Skater struggled with the wheel as the Brumby bashed into him again. “Strapp, it’s your show now.” A glance in the rearview mirror showed him that the Brumby hadn’t come alone. Skater didn’t know if the other vehicles were filled with Luppas’s mercs or with Fuchi secmen, but he did know that either one spelled trouble for himself and his team. “Cheshire Two, cut away.”

“You’re not here, kid.”

“Fraggit, if you wait till I’m there, everybody else is going to be on top of you too.”

“Kid—”

“Do it,” Skater ordered, “do it now!”

Out on the lake, part of the loading ramp braced against the barge suddenly dropped into the water as the barge started pulling away.

The Brumby accelerated again.

This time Skater held his ground and stomped on the brakes. The collision nearly swept away his senses, an overwhelming barrage of lights and force and noise. He thought for a moment that his head had snapped off his shoulders.

“Strap in,” he croaked, having to force his arms and legs to work.

“I already have,” Archangel said. She reached across and worked his safety straps as well, belting him in tightly.

The rear wheels spun for a moment, trying to get up enough speed to tear free from the Brumby. The collision between the two vehicles had temporarily locked them up. It hadn’t stopped the forward momentum, though.

The Brumby’s driving wheels and greater mass and weight kept them moving forward. The XE’s presence did frag up the steering, however, and the bigger vehicle listed heavily to the right, driving them at a rack of rental canoes.

Skater popped the clutch again, sending the XE surging forward till it unhooked from the Brumby, then he pulled it back on track, approaching the loading dock. The Brumby smashed through the canoe rack, splintering the boats and scattering beachcombers who’d taken cover when Wheeler and Elvis had blown through.

Even though he’d prepared for it, he almost thought his eyes were telling him the truth when he saw the barge still tied up and waiting at the end of the loading dock.

“Cheshire Five,” he called over the commlink.

“Don’t believe what you’re seeing, chummer,” Trey said in a fatigued voice. “With the help I’m getting from my friend, you and they have very little choice about seeing exactly what I wish for you to see.” As Trey had explained, water elementals were one of the best resources in making and maintaining illusions. Their basic natures contributed to diffraction and misperception.

Skater’s gut clenched as he barreled down the home stretch. He kept the accelerator pinned to the floor as the barge swelled closer and closer into view. He wanted to scream but he didn’t dare, afraid that the effort might cause him to take his foot from the accelerator.

The barge wasn’t there, he told himself. It was really meters away and gaining distance. All he was seeing was the illusion Trey was projecting with the help of the water elemental. Then he noticed the absence of the UCAS federal crafts’ lights in the sky above. They hadn’t thought to include them in the image Trey would be projecting. Even the smallest details could be forgotten during a planning session and show up big-time during the execution of a run.

His fear that he would smash into the barge and the parked cars subsided, replaced immediately with one that Luppas would somehow see through the illusion. They’d counted on the man pursuing them, not bringing weapons to bear on them as they sailed along on the slow-moving barge.

Then there was no more time. The XE hit the end of the ramp and went flying out over the lake. Skater knew that at once from the way contact with the ground went away and the engine suddenly raced. Moving with the speed of his boosted reflexes, he switched the engine off, decreasing the chances of a ruptured gas line and an explosion when they hit.

Before he’d completed that, the illusion around him went to pieces, the magic weaving it together dispelled back into a dying shimmer because he’d gone through it. All around them were the black lake waters. Overhead, the search lights of the UCAS aircraft burned holes in the night.

The car’s trajectory fragmented. It wasn’t built to be aerodynamic. Caught in the wind, out of momentum, it turned nose down.

Skater hit the manual airbag deployment, wishing Archangel hadn’t been along for the ride. The plastimesh airbags swelled in front of them immediately, blotting out any view through the windshield of the water waiting to drink them down just beyond. The airbags were larger than normal by design, installed by the rigger who’d done the work on the car. Giant pillows that actually pressed them back into their seats. Still, the impact when they hit the water almost knocked Skater out.

Dazed, he barely felt the cold water streaming in the broken and open windows as the car sank. He made himself move, afraid the lethargy would keep him down. Every second he stayed in the XE drew him further down into the thirsty black of the lake.

He concentrated on Emma, on holding her again, on just taking time with her during a day that didn’t involve the imminent threat of death. For a moment he thought he was going to be trapped by the airbag, then he reached down and managed to slip his dagger from his boot.

He cut a large hole in the side of the bag. The air gurgled out in one long bubble that fractured and divided on its way up, somehow managing to turn silvery along the edges in spite of the darkness. The pull of the water lifted from him, but he could feel the car drifting further down.

Seeing Archangel still trapped by her airbag, he cut it open too, then grabbed her wrist because she was unconscious. It took him two tries to get the broken windshield out of the way. He pushed through, bringing her with him. He stroked for the surface, pulling Archangel along after him.

For a moment he was lost, not knowing if he had enough air in his lungs to reach the surface. Then his hand was through. A second later, he pulled Archangel into the air with him, holding her tight. He looked down at her face, checking for any injuries that might have been life-threatening.

Without warning, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. She grew stiff in his arms and pushed away.

Skater let her go, stroking only hard enough to keep himself afloat. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replied.

Skater turned in the water, looking back where the illusion had been. Only the Brumby and the first vehicle after it had driven off the wharf into the lake. The Brumby floated, mostly, but it was being pulled down.

In an eyeblink, an incredible surge of twisting water jetted up from the lake surface, then slammed back down across the vehicles in its liquid embrace. They were engulfed at once, dragged under and disappearing completely. Skater knew it was the water elemental serving Cullen Trey. Still, the breakers that washed over him gave him chills. It wasn’t good to think about dying that way after they’d come so close to it themselves.

Mercs along the lakeside fired out into the water and at the barge almost eighty meters distant. Only a few of the rounds came near Skater and Archangel. But it was enough to let Skater know Luppas had planned on a water getaway as well. It was why the elf had been so willing to follow them to the lake, thinking all the time that the shadowrunners were going to fall into the trap he’d laid.

“Cheshire,” Quentin Strapp called over the commlink. Even with the sound relayed inside Skater’s head, the rotorwash almost drowned his voice out.

“Here,” Skater replied. He looked up, watching the tide of UCAS helicopters screaming toward the beaches. Autofire from heavy machine guns mounted to firmpoints under the bellies of the craft spiked into the mercs, knocking them down. The merc offensive held for as long as it took to draw a breath, then it buckled and broke.

The Fuchi helicopters broke off the pursuit immediately. Lone Star CityMaster units rolled in to secure the ground areas, their light bars splashing color across the streets and the warehouses.

“Thought maybe we’d lost you for a short time,” Strapp said. “What about the woman?”

Skater looked at the barge and saw his team standing behind cover. “She’s safe. What about you, Strapp? Is what they say about you true? Do you honor your agreements?”

“As long as this old heart beats, Jack,” Strapp said, “I’ll be the most bankable guy you’ll ever meet.” There was a smile in his voice. “And what the frag is it gonna matter that I let a handful of no-talent shadowrunners go free when I bring in the woman who can give the UCAS the ability—no matter how transitory—to take a peek at what the megacorps are doing? Hell, getting that feather in my cap may even erase some of my past sins.” And despite the tension surrounding the moment, Jack Skater had to smile.

Epilogue

Skater was sitting on the stairwell at the safehouse two days later when Duran found him. Emma was in Skater’s lap, asleep in the late afternoon breeze that was starting to turn a bit cool, her stomach finally full. He had her wrapped in a light blanket, holding her carefully.

Archangel’s hand-written note was between his feet, fluttering occasionally as the wind caught it, lying on top of the envelope that simply bore his name.

“How you doing, kid?” the big ork asked. He looked uncomfortable.

Skater supposed Duran was. “Okay. How long did you know?”

Duran shrugged, looking out over the sprawl. The early afternoon traffic noises clanged and honked and shrilled down in the street. “Awhile.”

“Did she tell you?”

Duran shook his head. “She didn’t even tell me at the end.”

“But you knew?”

“A blind man woulda known, kid.”

“I didn’t.”

Duran nodded. “You’re the only one that wouldn’t have. You had a lot on your plate.” He looked at Emma. “Have had for awhile, I guess.”

Skater looked down into his daughter’s face. The pain and bruises from the battle at the end of the run almost forty-eight hours ago had started to fade and retreat into memory. Quentin Strapp had been as good as his word that night, letting all of them go. Ripley Falkenhayne had quietly disappeared with the federal agent. Strapp was still following up on leads regarding Dunkelzahn’s assassination, according to Nina Barrett, who’d been properly hosed off about not being in on the kill.

Fuchi was running quietly, and evidently UCAS didn’t want the megacorp to release news of what Falkenhayne’s program could do to passcode-protected deltaware because they weren’t pressing their advantage. Obviously, Fuchi would try to cut down on any chances of key extractions by the UCAS government with whatever means they found.

Kylar Luppas’s body hadn’t been found, but it was possible the lake had claimed it as one of the secrets it would keep for years or decades. And there was the possibility that the elf merc had survived even the water elemental’s attack and escaped the dragnet of both UCAS and Lone Star forces. Neither of those entities, however, had been too interested in finding him. After all, Falkenhayne and her programming were the bottom line.

Strapp had even taken Norris Caber’s body and made it quietly disappear.

With the three degradable chips, the team would be all right with cash flow for the next few months doing extraction work. The rumor of Coleman January’s magic passcode program was still circling. It already had a name on the street: Absolution. Anyone who had a utility that would erase the passcode protection without requiring all the cyberware replacements could still demand and get a large bounty.

Skater stared at the folded note at his feet. Even though it was closed, folded in the simple, neat tri-fold Archangel had left it in, he could still see the elegant handwriting and read what it said.

Jack—

It wasn’t you, it was me. Things changed, my feelings toward you changed. I didn’t know how to tell you. I couldn’t tell you.

The truth is, I don’t think I’m ready for something nearly as heavy as a relationship. With you, or with anyone else. And I don’t think you’re ready, either. Someday, I think you will be. You can reach out to people when you let yourself. And you should. You’re not as jaded as you think, nor as jaded as so many runners in this biz are.

You’re a good man, Jack, and no matter how you see yourself, you’re going to be a good father to Emma. Take care of her, because she’ll make you take care of yourself. You’ve been given a wonderful gift, Jack, and in time you’ll see that.

Archangel

Skater looked up at Duran. “You knew her before I did.”

Duran nodded. “I knew her before a lot of people.”

“Did she leave any kind of note with you?”

“No. She knew I knew, we just didn’t talk about it.”

Skater stared out over the sprawl. “I’m really confused, Quint. I didn’t do anything or say anything to encourage any—”

“I know.” The ork shifted, pulling at an adhesive bandage that covered one of the severe lacerations he’d gotten when the rocket exploded so close to the elevator cage. “Can I ask you a question?”

Skater smiled crookedly. “Not like you to ask permission.”

“No, but this ain’t exactly my biz either, kid. If I didn’t like you, didn’t like Archangel, I wouldn’t even consider asking. Much less put it into words.”

“Sure.”

“Do you know how you feel about her?” Duran hurried on before Skater could speak. “Now, kid, I want you to notice I didn’t ask you how you felt. I asked you if you knew.”

Skater shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m slotted when it comes to relationships, Quint. I always seem to do the wrong thing.”

Duran gestured toward Emma. “Looks to me like you’re doing okay now.”

“It’s a lot of work, a lot of responsibility.” Skater tightened his hold on Emma, drawing her a little closer. “I don’t know if I would have picked this for myself.”

“Because you didn’t want her, Jack?” Quint asked softly. “Or because you didn’t trust yourself?”

Skater’s throat grew tight as he considered the implications of the ork’s words. “There was never a time,” he said, “from the moment I saw her, saw Larisa in her, that I didn’t want her. Not where it mattered.”

“Then maybe that’s how you ought to look at it.”

The silence stretched out between them for a time, and Skater knew they were both letting it. Finally, he broke it. “Archangel didn’t have to leave.”

“She was losing herself, Jack,” Duran said. “And the one true thing I know about Archangel is that she has got to have herself.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“No. I’ve got a drop where I can leave her messages, but she’ll only answer if she wants to.”

Skater thought about that, feeling the nameless void inside that had been there since he’d read the elven decker’s letter. For three years, the team had been all he really had. There’d also been Larisa, for a time, but at the center of everything it had been the team. Even when he didn’t admit it to himself. Now Archangel was gone, and perhaps things would never be the same again. “Maybe if I left a message for her.”

“Can’t give the drop up to you, kid. Part of the deal I made with Archangel a long time ago. What I can do, though, is leave her a message myself.” Duran looked at him, his gaze softening. “Anything you want to pass along, you just let me know.”

“I appreciate that.” Skater shifted, growing cold in the breeze despite Emma’s warmth cuddled inside his. He could only stay outside a few moments longer. And true dark was reaching out into the sprawl, taking everything down into that no-man’s land that lasted till dawn.

“I know this ain’t the time, kid,” Duran said, “but there ain’t gonna be no good time. We’re gonna have to find another decker to replace Archangel. We’d be flying blind if we don’t have one, and I don’t want to just take anybody.”

“Give me a week or two,” Skater said, “then we’ll shop around.”

“No prob.” Duran turned and started to walk away.

Skater tried to keep the question to himself, but it was too big and he knew it would only prey on his mind. “Do you think we’ll see her again?”

Duran hesitated long enough that Skater wasn’t sure if the ork chose to lie or just not voice all of the truth. “We run in the shadows, kid, and anything can happen there. Frag, it usually does when you least expect it.”

And Skater knew that was all the answer he was going to get.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mel Odom is the author of over fifty books in the SF, action-adventure, horror, and gaming fields and makes his home in Moore, Oklahoma. He writes books, watches his kids play baseball, cheering them on with his wife Sherry, spends time with friends, and traveling whenever he can. His books have been published in Russia and Germany. In 1996, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Professional Writer’s Hall of Fame. He can be reached on-line at Denim Byte@aol.com.

Dedication

For Keith Birdsong.

Thanks for the friendship over these last years, buddyro. You’re always there with a smile and a positive outlook on things, and some of the worst jokes that have ever been inflicted on mankind. Being with you is always a trip. Cruising the wild streets of Dallas during Fourth of July with madman David Cherry at the wheel. Playing transporter in the elevator cage (my son has never quite forgiven you). The way you incited the Klingons to go two-stepping in the redneck bar here in Oklahoma, leaving me certain we were all going to get killed. And I even let you beat my ass at the Addams Family pinball machine. Of course, any time you’re ready for a rematch...

Life can sometimes be one really big stressful knot, and I have to thank Donna Ippolito for support during the writing of this book and for helping me keep it together when I got pulled in about fourteen million directions at one time. Donna, I really appreciate the time you took to talk and stick in there with me. This is a tough business, and can be impersonal. I’m glad I’ve gotten to know you, and it’s nice being part of your team.

Also, thanks go out to Lou Prospero, Mike Mulvihill, Stephen Kenson, and Jak Koke for the time they spent during the preparation of this novel. They helped it be both fun and accurate.

And I’d like to thank Annalise Raziq for all the help and insight through the copy-editing phase of this book. And for giving me the term ADDer which I’d never heard before.

And to all you fans of Shadowrun, the ones I’ve gotten to meet at GenCon, and the ones who took time to fill out the questionnaire about my writing. Beware of the shadows, chummers, they’ve only gotten deeper and darker and decidedly deadlier!

Copyright

ROC

Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

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First published by Roc, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

First Printing, October, 1997 1098765432 I

Copyright © FAS A Corporation, 1997 All rights reserved

Series Editor Donna Ippolito Cover: Les Dorschide

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