Shadowboxer

by Nicholas Pollotta

  “Data is gold. Say, why’d you take these?” Two Bears asked, nudging a stack of loaded clips. “Nice, but we don’t have any iron to fit them.”

  “Hey, less toys in the hands of the unfit. Besides, I know some folks we can sell them to for a few extra nuyen.” Thumbs gave a wink.

  “Flash move, omae.” Two Bears was impressed. “You ever miss a chance to make a profit?”

  “Gimme a doubloon and I’ll tell ya.”

  Chuckling at the touristy reference to nuyen, Two Bears wiped the silicon off his hands with a napkin and bit into a steaming golden burrito lying on a sheet of waxed paper. “This is good,” he said, munching happily. “Father John’s?” Thumbs dry-fired a pistol next to his ear, listening to the works. “A little tight. Gotta reset the ejector. Where’s the tools?”

  “Here. Father John’s?”

  “Course. Is there any other burrito stand in town fit for a chummer to eat at?”

  “Not unless you got a taste for devil rat.” Two Bears wolfed down the rest, then cleaned the grease off his hands, and then started checking the next weapon, a lovely Crusader with silencer. “This one’s for me.”

  “Done and done. Check the trigger action. It felt sloppy when I pried it out of the guy’s grip.”

  “Yeah, it is loose. Good call. Hex wrench?”

  “Here. Damn, we’re out of bushing. Pass the silicon spray.”

  The can was relayed again. “Once the fragging decker gets here we’ll do a search on the limo that showed up after you blew up the telecom. Maybe it’s from IronHell.”

  “Gonna be tough.”

  “ ’Cause of the way IronHell zapped Sister Wizard so fast?” Two Bears shook his head. “That’s got to be some serious IC protecting whatever file she got to.”

  “Nyah, it’s going to be tough because I didn’t get a registration.”

  Two Bears grunted, both hands busy gently adjusting the tension on the bolt spring. “Drek. Any special markings?”

  “What?” asked Thumbs, assembling the mechanical works of a pistol without looking at it. “You mean something like a nice big neon sign saying, ‘This is a covert operations limousine. Please do not notice the men with guns.’? Sorry, but no.”

  Two Bears plunged a wirebrush down the barrel of the Crusader, and carbon deposits sprinkled down like black snow. “Too bad,” he sighed. “Woulda been nice.”

  “Lock. Morons are easy to outwit.” Thumbs reached for another gun, but the pile was gone, so he took one of the unbent knifes from the fight and started stropping the military blade on a whetstone from his vest. “By the way, chief,” he said. “What’s with this tent inside a building? The roof leak that bad?”

  “Low-level stealth tech. The fabric masks our heat signature to hide our numbers,” answered Two Bears, stuffing clips for the Crusader into his pockets. He slung the chatter-gun over one shoulder, and it hung to his knees. “Norms,” he muttered. He removed the weapon and adjusted the strap length. “Plus it effectively muffles conversation against masers bounced off the windows.”

  “Yeah, I noticed they’re painted. Does that help?”

  “Some, but not much,” he admitted. “This was an old meeting spot for the local gangs, neutral territory available for anybody’s use.”

  A rueful grin. “But that didn’t mean the chummers wouldn’t snoop on one another every now and then.”

  Testing the edge of the knife on one of his spare thumbs, Thumbs looked around again. “Tox, I’ve slept in worse dosses. And this is toff compared to my little visit to the Citadel.”

  “Yar, but no protective wards,” said Two Bears, the Crusader now hanging at his waist. “Without magical defense, we’re sitting naked in a glass house.”

  “A chill thrill, most anti-arctic.”

  Sweeping the tools into a plastic box, Two Bears latched the lid shut and laid the box on the floor. “Agreed. We need a decker, fast, and after that, the best damn mage we can find.”

  “But none of your usual support,” mused Thumbs, working the metal with a steady rhythm. “You sure ’bout that?”

  “Definite.” Two Bears picked up a container of soykaf, snapped open the cap, and took a sip. “Gak, this is awful! Tastes like the solvent.”

  Sheathing the blade in his boot, Thumbs kept a straight face. “That is the solvent. What you been soaking the guns in?”

  Just then, the elevator at the end of the room gave a musical ding and the doors parted. Both men sat upright with loaded weapons in hands as they watched through the opening. A woman emerged and hesitated a moment before approaching the tent. She wore a jumpsuit with matching vest, and carried a tan shoulder bag large enough to hide a medium-sized space shuttle. Her hair was jet black, and her skin was nicely tanned.

  “She looks like a tourist,” said Two Bears incredulously, screwing the silencer tighter on the Crusader.

  “Yeah, but that bag’s big enough to carry a deck or even a machine gun.” Thumbs eased the safety off the Predator and put it out of sight below the table.

  “Small gun in the waist holster.”

  “Right side. Check. And no highlights in the hair.”

  “A dye job. She might be the mage. Or have a bomb.”

  “You think?”

  “Dunno. But if the hammer drops, go for a head-shot so she can’t cast a spell. Just in case.”

  “Will that work?” asked Thumbs. He knew little or nothing about magic.

  “Dunno. But at least it’s a plan.”

  The woman stopped outside the tent and paused once more, maybe wondering if she was in the right place. Inside, Two Bears and Thumbs calmly waited to see what she would do next.

  * * *

  A tent inside a doss? thought Laura Redbird. Then she berated herself. Silver, the name is Silver now, chica! And don’t forget it. Or else she’d say it out loud and blow her cover.

  Nervously, she shifted the strap of her shoulder bag to a more comfortable position. Calling in some favors and borrowing a few hundred nuyen from an elf shyster whom she occasionally cleared of municipal tax problems, Laura . . . Silver had been able to parlay her old obsolete deck into a hot Fuchi 8. Not a Fairlight by any means, or even a Fuchi 9, but then, she wasn’t one of Babbet’s Bastards, the rogue gang of wildhoop deckers who cut more IC everyday than a professional figure skater. An eight would do fine.

  “Hoi, Two Bears?” she called out.

  There was an awkward minute of silence.

  “Come in,” said a soft voice.

  “Slowly,” added a deeper gruffer one.

  She entered without stooping. The inside of the large tent was spacious and well lit, with clusters of Everbrights hanging from the central pole. A poker table was off to one side, with an elderly dwarf and a fragging huge troll covered with tattoos sitting side by side. She didn’t know either one—strangers, thank the gods. There were some food wrappers on the table, the air pungent with the distinct smell of gun lubricants, metacrab burritos, and cheap soykaf. A pile of busted weapons filled a macroplas box in a corner. Housecleaning?

  “Good afternoon,” she said, staying where they could both see her. The opening ceremonies of a first meet were always critical. She was dressed in tourist casual, her Amerind hair dyed solid black, trying to appear Latino. It was a classic mirror ploy. If a person naturally had, say, black hair, and she dyed it black, then any trained observer would spot the lack of natural highlights and deduce that black was not your natural color, but a dye job, which perfectly hid the fact that black was the original color. A double reverse, or in street parlance, a mirror. The trick often worked against the truly paranoid, or fools. Which gave it a wide range of success in Miami. However, Silver was nervous with the disguise, and a good, dependable handgun would have gone far to making her feel better, but it had boosted all of her creds to obtain the used deck in her bag. Besides, she had the Colt .38, though the cold weight of the crude mechanical wheelgun wasn’t very comforting on her hip.

  “Sit,” commanded the d
warf, laying his hands openly on the table. The big troll did not, however, and she tagged him as a street samurai. Chromed? Possibly. And those marks on his arms looked just like Blackjack’s. The street sam was, of course, a razorboy. Dangerous.

  “Roger sent you?” the troll probed without any preamble.

  Silver paused in the act of taking a seat. “No. Fat Jake called me. Sorry. Do I have the wrong address?”

  The dwarf smiled and waved her back down. “That’s the correct name. Just checking.”

  “Null perspiration. Kings,” she said, and waited.

  The dwarf blinked in surprise.

  What the frag was this? Silver thought. They didn’t seem to know the answering password to confirm their identity. Adrenaline flooded her stomach like ice water and her hand edged closer to the Colt. Was this a trap? Had the killer Johnson found her instead of the other way around? Gods, no . . . no, wait, consider the principals. A policlubber and some metas. Drekfire, Jake was playing a game with them! A frigging game, the bastard. Arranging a meet and not telling the Johnson what the countersign was. Fuming at the idiocy, Silver kept her face neutral as she waited for the dwarf to answer correctly, or start blasting.

  The dwarf took a breath and let it out slowly. “Morlock,” he stated calmly.

  Yes! Smiling in relief, she nodded and sat. “I’m Silver. Heard you’re looking for a decker.”

  “Two Bears,” he grumbled.

  “And I’m Thumbs,” said the troll, jerking one toward his chest.

  “Hoi. Love your tat,” Silver said, brushing a loose strand of black hair away from the chromed jack in her temple.

  “Me gang tat,” Thumbs responded, running a hand over his bald pate. “Da Slammers.”

  “Ah, the legendary Slammers. Toughest trolls in town.”

  “Dat’s right.” He puffed up with pride. “Youse knows us, eh?”

  Silver smiled nicely. “Never heard of you.”

  The two locked gazes for a tick. Thumbs laid his Predator openly on the littered table and turned to the dwarf. “She’ll do fine, Chief.”

  Ah, a minor shifting of diction there. This guy played possum and attacked from behind. Good. Silver liked that. Especially in somebody she might be running with. The smart stayed alive longer.

  “Sussed,” said Two Bears.

  “So,” she said, making herself comfortable. “What’s the run?”

  “Data hunt and retrieval. Forty kay.”

  Blast. The going rate for a standard run. Probably nothing special or the kind of run that would lead her to her prey. Still, nuyen was nuyen.

  “Accepted,” she said flatly. “What’s first on the list to do?”

  Two Bears picked through several credsticks on the table, as though only one were any good. “You gotta access my account at the CitiBank Central and drain it.”

  “Your own account?”

  “Yes.”

  She pursed her lips. “You got the access codes?”

  “Of course.”

  “Cake,” Silver replied, pulling the Fuchi deck from her bulky shoulder bag. Thumbs got up and moved some food wrappers, grenades, and guns to expose a jackport in the wall near the table. She sat down on the floor, took out her deck and set it on her lap, then jacked in. She typed in a few commands, and after a tick the indicator lights showed green. Lines were hot and tight, no interference, no static. Arctic.

  “Codes, please,” she said, slim fingers poised over the keyboard.

  Clearing his throat, Two Bears leaned close and whispered the two sequences. Closing her eyes, Silver tapped wildly on the Fuchi. “Stick,” she said a moment later. Two Bears slid across his credstick. She took it and slotted it into her deck. Soon a light changed color, and then she pulled it out again. “Done. What’s next?”

  He stared at the stick and then her. “That fast?”

  Silver gave him a cool smile of professionalism. “You gave me the primary codes,” she said. “I simply rerouted, did a backdoor, accessed under an assumed, did a dump and seize. Aced the line and left. Easy. You’ve got double your account.”

  “That’s not what I asked for,” Two Bears barked angrily. “Fragging hell! I don’t need the freaking city bank hot on my hoop along with everything else!”

  “They can’t trace the funds. I did the entry from a public telecom in the Citadel.” She gave a brief grin. “I visited a relative there once and memorized the LTG code. Then I used the main access code for your account, but not the personal one. When you’ve got the prime and the password, the rest is easy. But rather than withdraw the funds, which is always traced, I simply stole the nuyen outright. Cleaned you out for exactly that amount.”

  “Brilliant,” chortled Thumbs, impressed. “Since the nuyen was stolen, the bank will reimburse him for the loss. May not even tell him there was a security breach, to maintain the illusion they’re secure. So you got the same amount as before in your account.” Blue eyes flashing amusement, he smiled at her. “Nice scam.”

  “Thanx.”

  Two Bears pocketed the stick, saying nothing.

  “So,” prompted Silver, pleased that the troll at least appreciated the art of her maneuvering. “Are we expecting anybody else, or is this the team?”

  “Three? Hardly. I’m also waiting for a gunsel and a mage,” said Two Bears, checking the wall clock. “It’s 17:15 est. We got some twenty hours until my grace period runs out. By then we gotta be deep gone from here and with no traces. Savvy?”

  “Savvy.”

  Reclining in his wooden chair, Two Bears reached for his soykaf, then pushed the container aside. “Here’s the down. I was hired this morning by some Johnson to discover who or what the frag something called IronHell is. I went to the public datanets first and got squat. Then I hired a chummer of mine, Sister Wizard, to browse the Matrix, see what she might find in the less public databanks.”

  “Know her,” said Silver. “She’s very very slick.”

  “Was,” corrected Two Bears sternly. “Now she’s very, very geeked. Don’t know where she went for the scan on IronHell, but she got brainfried faster than jackspit.”

  “You think it was IronHell geeked her?” repeated Thumbs.

  Eloquently, Two Bears raised his palms to the ceiling.

  “IronHell,” murmured Silver, chewing her lip. “IronHell, IronHell. Where have I heard that name before?”

  They both turned toward her.

  “You know something?” asked Thumbs curiously. The canvas walls of the tent wavered in the gentle filtered currents of the building’s enviro-system.

  “Yeah,” she whispered thoughtfully. “I do believe I do.”

  8

  “So, spill it?” demanded Two Bears of the decker. “What do you know about IronHell?”

  Silver pulled the datacord from her deck, her forehead wrinkling in thought. “Something ..she demurred. “I have a ... ahem, a cousin, who works on the docks as a night guard. He lets me, uh, visit, the warehouses every month or so. Souvenir-hunting. You know.”

  Understanding nods from both males.

  “Do the same thing myself in the trucking trade. Those remote-controlled semis often have stuff fall out the back,” said Thumbs, grinning widely.

  A roguish smile. “Cousins are always useful.”

  “Got a few myself at airport Customs,” put in Two Bears. “But this one on the dock told you what?”

  Silver ran her fingertips over the deck, struggling to remember exactly. “He only mentioned it once, and pretended he hadn’t afterward, which is what made me remember it. I think IronHell is sailor slang for something to do with .. . pirates? Yes, pirates.”

  “Pirates?” echoed Two Bears, clenching the edge of the table. “That’s what Louie said!” The last was spoken half to himself.

  “Louie who?” asked Thumbs.

  Two Bears shook his head, angry at himself for not listening to the champ. “Old chummer soft in the noggin who works for me. But I guess he still might have a few synapses connected.
Who’da thought?”

  “Don’t wanna tango with no pirates,” stated Thumbs flatly, crossing his herculean arms across his bare chest. “Those motherfraggers don’t care what they do or who they scrag to get what they want. When they’re done with you, the only person could love you is an organlegger. Atlantic Security, the local corps—there ain’t nobody been able to get to them. You can stuff that into your stick.”

  “And the megacorps don’t care,” sneered Two Bears, “ ’cause the pirates are too fragging smart to try looting those ships!”

  “You got that right, omae. Some megacorp versus the pirates of the Caribbean.” Thumbs exposed both tusks. “Now, there’s a fight I would truly love to see.”

  “From a great distance. Like deep space.”

  “Def,” said Thumbs with a slight laugh. “But I wouldn’t know which side to root for.”

  “Okay, so it’s something to do with pirates,” said Two Bears. “Jesus, Buddah, and Zeus, what does that tell us? A pirate what, and where?” He turned to Silver. “A ship, chief buccaneer, their supply depot, main base, arch-enemy?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Honestly, don’t recall. But it’s something to do with pirates.”

  “Can we ask this Louie guy?” inquired Thumbs. He smacked a huge fist into an equally huge palm. “Maybe we encourage his memory a bit?”

  “Ichi, he’s a chummer,” said Two Bears angrily. Then relented, “Besides, he’s so near the edge, he forgets where he lives sometimes. A simple kick in the hoop might scramble his internal software forever. And if they traced my call to Sister Wizard, they might know who I am and be watching my place.”

  “Telecom?” squeaked Silver, staring at them. “And all this happened this morning?”

  “Yes,” said Two Bears slowly. Thumbs just stared at her. “You did catch somebody’s attention,” she said. “I was in the matrix myself then and saw some deckers from someplace rush to a public telecom node.”