He kept talking, but Sly had stopped listening.
What the frag am I going to do? she asked herself again and again.
14
0515 hours, November 14, 2053
Falcon ate like a starving man, which was exactly what he was. The woman, Sly, had said to get enough food to feed them all. The black elf—Modal, Falcon thought his name was—had gone a little overboard. Three burgers— real beef, not soy filler—pasta salad, bread, cheese, salad . . . more food for the three of them than Falcon would have picked out for six of his gang chummers. He scoped out the hotel room. Of course, anybody who could afford this kind of doss wasn’t going to skimp on food.
No skin off my butt anyway, he thought, and no cred off my stick. With that established, he set to with a will.
By the time he’d polished off a burger, two cheese sandwiches, an apple, and some strange star-shaped fruit he didn’t recognize, Falcon was starting to feel a little better. Modal was sprawled on the bed watching him. The elf had polished off his own burger quick enough, and now he was sucking on a beer he’d pulled from the room’s minibar.
Thinking that a beer would go down just wiz, Falcon glanced at the elf, at the beer in his hand, raised an eyebrow questioningly. Modal’s expression and body language didn’t change. He’d still rather see me flatlined. Falcon thought. Which means he’s not likely to offer me a drink. He hesitated, then crossed to the minibar and fished out his own beer. An import, he saw, in a real glass bottle. Modal was scowling fiercely, but at least he hadn’t shot him. Falcon twisted off the top, sprawled back in his chair, and gave the brew the attention it deserved.
A few minutes later, the door to the adjoining room swung open. Falcon had heard Sly carrying on a phone conversation, but the door’s sound insulation was enough to keep him from making out any of her words. It must have been bad news, he thought. She looked like hell, face pinched and white, eyes haunted.
Modal sat up, put his beer down. “Bad news?” he asked in his weird accent.
Sly nodded, slumped down on the bed next to the elf. Modal handed over his can of beer. The dark-haired woman took a healthy pull on it, smiled her thanks.
“Things are definitely . . . what you said earlier, fugazi,” she told the elf. Then she interrupted herself. “What does that mean, anyway?”
“Totally fragged up,” the elf explained. “It’s slang from the Smoke.” He paused. “It’s happening?”
“Looks like it,” Sly admitted unwillingly, then went on to discuss something about the Concord of Zurich-Orbital. Apparently there was more to it than Nightwalker had told Falcon—or perhaps more than Nightwalker had known. The young ganger didn’t understand all the strange corporate maneuvering and backstabbing Sly described, but he did understand the bottom line. It’s like the gangs, he thought. As long as a truce benefits everyone, there’s peace. But when somebody sees an advantage, there’s a turf war. Apparently the megacorps worked on the same principle, and were now readying for their own kind of war. Though he couldn’t see how a corp war could hurt him personally—or the two runners, either—their sour expressions told him they thought it was serious drek. And they understand this high-level stuff better than I do, he had to remind himself.
“So what did the man suggest?” Modal asked. “Nothing concrete,” Sly said. “Good concepts, but no suggestions about what to do.”
“I’ve got a suggestion if you want to hear it,” the elf put in. “Just get on your fragging bike and go. Hit the Caribbean League or anywhere else that strikes your fancy.” He shrugged. “Okay, I know you don’t have the credit to come into the light completely, but why not take your retirement in bloody installments? Let the corps bugger each other blind, and serves them right. When everything’s settled down, you can get back into the biz.
“I’m bloody serious,” he pressed, as Sly shook her head. “Just toddle off into the sunset. It’s better than getting splattered—which is what'll happen if you stick around; you know that, Sly. Travel light, get rid of all liabilities”—the elf glared at Falcon, and the young Amerindian knew exactly what he was getting at—“and go.” Sly was silent for a moment. Watching her eyes, Falcon could almost see the thoughts moving behind them as she considered Modal’s suggestions. “Maybe,” she mused softly.
A knock sounded on the door. “Room service,” came a muffled voice from the hallway.
At the first sound, guns had almost magically appeared in the hands of both runners. Now Falcon saw them both relax.
“Probably come to collect the plates,” Modal said. He slipped his pistol back into its holster, then smoothly swung to his feet and headed for the door.
Danger.
Who said that? For a moment, Falcon glanced around looking to see who had spoken. The voice had been so clear. . . .
But it hadn’t been a woman's voice, and it hadn't been the elf’s strange accent. It sounded more like . . .
My voice? An icy chill shot up Falcon’s spine.
Modal was almost at the door.
Shockingly, for just a split instant, Falcon’s ears seemed to ring with the crash of gunshots, the echo of screams. When neither of the others reacted, he realized the sounds were only in his mind.
Modal reached for the door handle.
“No!” Falcon shouted.
The elf froze, turned and glared at him.
“No,” the ganger said, trying to fill his voice with a control he didn’t feel. “Don’t answer it. It’s a setup.”
As he spoke the words—and only then—he knew them to be the truth.
“Oh?” The elf’s voice dripped with scorn. “And just how the bloody hell do you know that, eh?”
Falcon couldn’t say, except that he did know. The knock on the door sounded again, sharper, more insistent.
And accompanied by another sound—a sharp click of metal on metal. At first Falcon thought that was in his head as well, but then he saw Modal tense.
“Bloody hell, he might be right.” The massive pistol was back in the elf’s hand. He looked around him, apparently sizing up the tactical situation. “Get into the other room,” he ordered quietly.
Falcon had already come to the same conclusion, and was heading for the connecting door. Sly joined him in the second room, followed by Modal. The elf partially closed the connecting door, leaving a tiny gap. The two runners had their weapons at the ready. Falcon felt helpless, vulnerable, wishing for his Fichetti or even his old zip gun. Give me something.
“Do they know about the two rooms?” Sly asked quietly.
Modal shrugged. “We’ll know in a minute.” He put his back against the connecting wall, so he could watch the front door to this room and clearly hear what was happening next door. Falcon heard the metallic snicks as both runners flicked the safeties off their weapons. Then they waited.
Not for long. Another sharp rap on the door of room 1205. A few more moments of silence.
Then all drek broke loose. Somebody or something smashed into the door, tearing it off its hinges. Falcon heard the muted spits of silenced gunfire, then the dull crump of an explosion that shook the wall. Holy frag, he thought, a grenade!
Silence again. The raiders next door would know that the room was empty; their prey wasn’t there. How would they respond?
Sly and Modal didn't give them time. “Cover,” the woman whispered, as she sprinted toward the door to the hallway. Modal nodded, edged closer to the door connecting the two rooms. Falcon could see the strategy. Sly would hit them from behind, from the hallway, while Modal came at them from the front. Make them pay for their mistake, their ignorance about the two rooms.
But what the frag do I do? he thought blankly. Unarmed, without so much as a knife . . .
He didn’t have long to worry about it. Sly silently opened the door, slipped into the hall. A moment later, Falcon heard her heavy pistol crash.
On cue, Modal kicked open the connecting door, spun—inhumanly fast—around the frame, his heavy pistol already roaring a
nd bucking in his hand. Falcon heard a scream of agony, a scream that trailed off into a moan, and then a gurgle. Score one kill.
A burst of autofire chewed into the door and the frame. But Modal wasn’t there anymore. His chipped reflexes had flung him aside, darting into the cover of a heavy armchair. More screams as his pistol spat flame again. And then he was out of Falcon’s field of view.
The firefight continued, but there wasn’t anything he could do to help the runners. A wild burst of fire stitched through the connecting wall, smashing the trideo set. He threw himself to the floor, then crawled toward the connecting door. He couldn't stand not knowing what was going on, even if taking a look might cost him his life. He poked his head around the door frame.
Room 1205 looked like it had been decorated in Early War Zone, the grenade having blown the drek out of everything. Small fires were burning where hot shrapnel had lodged in flammable material, and Modal and the others were making short work of whatever had survived the blast. Near the connecting door one of the attackers was down, and decidedly dead. He wore what looked like a high-tone corp suit, probably armored, though it hadn’t done him any good. Modal’s bullets had blown away most of his head. The figure still clutched a tiny, lethal-looking machine pistol in its lifeless hand.
There was matching carnage in the rest of the room.
Three more attackers—a man and two women, all wearing corp fashions—were sprawled here and there, in various states of disassembly. Blood and tissue were everywhere, and the room smelled like a slaughterhouse. Falcon swallowed hard, trying to keep his stomach where it belonged.
Modal was in the doorway, firing out into the hall. Probably taking out stragglers, Falcon surmised. The elf’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in what looked like a smile of inhuman glee.
He’ll kill me, too. The thought struck Falcon with an impact like a bullet-train. He thinks I’m a liability, he’s said it often enough. He wants to get rid of me.
And what better time than now? One shot, and all Modal had to tell the woman was that Falcon had stopped a round fired by one of the attackers. No more liability. No more Dennis Falk.
The young ganger looked at the machine pistol in the hand of the nearest corpse. It works both ways, he thought fiercely. I can kill him before he kills me, and blame it on the raiders.
If he was going to do it, he had to do it fast. The sounds of the firefight were dying down in the hall outside. He pried the dead man’s fingers from the weapon. Rose to a crouch, leveled the weapon at the elf’s back. Started to squeeze the trigger, then froze in midmovement.
What was he doing? He wasn’t a murderer. Sure, he’d killed—first the slag in Denny Park, then Slick at Pier 42. But both of them had been trying to kill him. It had been pure self-defense, him or them. But now? He couldn’t shoot Modal in the back. He couldn’t.
He lowered the gun.
Modal turned, as if sensing something behind him. Looked back over his shoulder.
Falcon had the machine pistol still gripped in both hands, the barrel pointing at the floor behind the elf.
Their eyes met for a moment.
And Falcon knew—knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt—that Modal realized what had almost happened. For a moment the elf stood, stock-still. Then his lips twisted in a wry half-smile.
“Let’s get the frag out of here,” he said. “And bring your toy along.”
15
0531 hours, November 14, 2053
“Who the hell were they?” Sly said.
They were driving along in another car, one stolen from the Sheraton’s underground parking lot. They’d sprinted down the fire stairs from the twelfth floor before the hotel’s security response—probably massive, considering the mayhem that had broken loose—could arrive on the scene. Modal wanted to grab the same car they’d had earlier (his Ingram and the AK-97 were still in the trunk) but Sly convinced him that risking the security in the Washington Athletic Club garage was too much of a gamble. Besides, the Sheraton lot was such easy pickings that it took him only a minute to bust into and hot-wire the ignition of a sleek Saab Dynamit. Now they were cruising south on I-5, out of the downtown core.
“Who?” Sly asked again.
Modal pulled something out of his pocket, tossed it into her lap. “Here,” he said, “the previous owner doesn’t need it anymore.”
Sly flipped on the map light, examined the item. It was a synthleather wallet that was once light tan but now was stained dark with its owner’s blood. She flipped it open, glanced through the contents. Laminated hard-copy printouts of the personal drek found on anybody’s credstick—driver’s license, DocWagon contract, gun license, etcetera drek etcetera—all in the name of Lisa Steinbergen. Probably an alias, Sly thought.
But then she found something that changed her mind. A corporate ID card, with a small holo showing a petite redhead about Sly’s own age. (She remembered spotting the small woman, seeing her go down as one of Modal’s shots punched through her throat.) If the name on that card was not an alias, what did that mean?
She put that thought aside for later consideration. In the upper-left corner of the card was a full-color holo of a corporate logo—a stylized Y.
“Yamatetsu,” she said flatly.
“I knew they were corp,” Modal remarked. “I guess they expected to take us without any problem.”
Sly nodded. Why else carry your ID to a job?
Unless it was some kind of trick to make them think it was Yamatetsu, when it was actually someone else. . . .
But that didn’t hold together. For the theory to make sense, the bosses who'd sent the team would have expected Sly and her chummers to dice up the hitters. By all rights, she. Modal, and the Amerindian kid should be either dead or captured. The corp team had come in smart. Sure, they’d made one big mistake—they didn’t know that Sly and crew had two rooms—but even so, it had been a close call. If not for the kid . . .
She glanced back over her shoulder. Falcon was sitting in the back seat of the Dynamit. Lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t said a word since they left the Sheraton.
It surprised her to see him toying idly with the machine pistol he’d taken from one of the dead hit men. She didn’t know why Modal had let the Amerindian keep the weapon. Then again, there was some kind of weird dynamic going on between the elf and the kid, something she didn’t understand.
“How did you know?” she asked.
Falcon looked up, startled. “Huh?”
“How did you know?" Sly repeated. “We’d have opened the door. We’d have got ourselves scragged but good. You knew it was a setup. How?”
The ganger didn't answer right away. Sly saw his eyes go blank as he retreated back into memory. “I don’t know,” he said at last.
“You heard something?” she pressed. “Saw something?”
He started to shake his head, then hesitated.
“You heard something?” she repeated.
“I heard ...” His voice trailed off.
“You heard what?”
“Nothing.” Those sharp black eyes were seeing something, something that confused him or scared him. But she knew right then that he wasn't going to talk to her about it. Not now, maybe not ever.
She shrugged. “You saved our lives,” she said. “You've got our thanks for that.” She let him sink back into his silent study, turned to face the front again. There was little traffic on I-5. That would change in the next half-hour, but for the moment the roads were as clear as they ever got.
But to take advantage of clear roads, she thought, you’ve got to know where you’re going.
As if overhearing her thoughts, Modal spoke up. “So, what now?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’ve got to do something."
“Why not do what I suggested?” the elf said. “Drop out of sight. Slip the border, and just keep your head down till the drek stops flying.”
It was an attractive idea, but . . . She shook her head.”I can’t.”
She sighed. “That’s part of it,” she admitted, “but just a small part. You say I should take my retirement in installments, right? Well, what kind of retirement is running for my life? Knowing that every fragging megacorp in Seattle—and the rest of the world as well—wants to wring my brain out? No matter how low a profile I keep, no matter how good my security, how soon before somebody scores? What are the odds I'll last a month? Two months? A year? Sooner or later my luck will just run out." She shook her head. “I couldn’t handle just waiting for it. Could you?”
Sly could see Modal still wanted to argue, but he didn’t have a logical comeback. He drove in silence for a few minutes. Then, “So what did the toff have to say?” he asked. “Argybargy, or whoever?”
“Agarwal.”
“Whoever.”
“He said I’ve got two choices,” Sly explained. “One is to destroy the file—”
“Sounds good to me,” Modal cut in.
“—and prove to everyone that I destroyed it,” she finished. “Doesn’t sound so good anymore, does it?”
“Not bloody likely,” the elf conceded. “How do you prove something like that? What’s the second choice?”
“Disseminate it, make sure everyone gets the information. That way nobody gets an advantage. There’s nothing to go to war about and no percentage in scragging us.”
Modal nodded slowly as he thought it over. “I like that one better,” he mused. “Did he say how?”
She shook her head. “Any ideas?” she asked him with a wry smile.
“Hmmm.” Again Modal was silent for a time. “You’ve got to make sure everyone gets the data at the same time,” he said finally, thinking out loud. “If you tell corp A before you tell corp B, it’s a bloody certainty corp A will try to geek you before you can tell anybody else.
Shadowplay Page 17
