by Mel Odom
"Yes." Not many people knew that most of the major corps own funeral-home chains throughout the plexes. Corp vengeance was quick as a striking deathrattle, but there was no getting around the habeas corpus writs the courts still handed down. However, if an ex-employee who'd been terminated was shipped to a corp-owned funeral home, that corp controlled the listing of the cause of death. Corp-owned on-site medical facilities could also generate a past medical record on the spot that would show the deceased's history of congenital heart failure and documented unwillingness to have a transplant or a cyber-organ installed. They had a menu of pre-existing conditions an employee could exhibit before flat-lining on the job.
"And if I find any." Peg asked, "what am I looking for then?"
"If any of Andi's people have been shipped to a funeral home that Ironaxe or VaulTek own, see if the family made arrangements with the funeral home for the body." Sometimes a corp made those arrangements, too. But Iron-axe and Nakatomi would have been working hurriedly. Maybe they'd made mistakes Peg could find. I released the Pause button on the telecom.
"We haven't made it out of the Pueblo Corporate Council lands." Andi said. "But you know me: never go into any place without someplace else to run to. I cut a deal with the Underground Awakened in Pueblo-Under to put us up for a few days. It helped that three of my surviving team are metas. With Nakatomi, Ironaxe, and Villiers all turning over rocks in the area, though, we're going to wear our welcome out slotting quick."
I knew only a little about the Underground Awakened. The Goblinization that helped remake the world when, magic returned hadn't rested easily in the ranks of the Amerind cultures. Many of them ostracized children and adults that suddenly transformed into trolls and orks sometime around adolescence. In their own way they were as xenophobic as the Humanis Policlubs.
Mary Hawkmoon ran the Underground Awakened as tribal chief. Her father had been an influential subchief in Pueblo, but that hadn't kept her from being banned by the tribe when she'd morphed into a troll.
The little I did know about Mary Hawkmoon and her tribe of outcasts came from a report Brynnmawr had put together years back, and from sources in the shadows. At one point, Hawkmoon's assassination had been deemed necessary because the tribe was suspected of trafficking in BTL chips and Brynnmawr had been tentatively contracted to handle the wetwork.
Had it gone through, I would have been the point man on the op. Back then I wasn't asking as many questions, and Hawkmoon would have gone down. But back then I didn't know how much of the BTL trade Brynnmawr's employers controlled—for financial as well as other reasons.
"If you choose to take this on." Andi said, "you need to know everything you're up against. I've got eight people in hiding, counting myself. Only four of them are physically able to move unaided. The other four are practically gurney cases that we'll need to med-evac to a shadow hospital ASAP. I'm not going to leave any of these people behind."
It was good to know that some of Andi's basics hadn't changed. Neither one of us had ever left a man behind.
"Besides ducking the combined forces searching for us, we'll also need to retrieve the DNA samples Asian Fuchi's mageslaves have." Andi said. "The nuyen's there in the account, so I guess it's up to you to decide if it's worth the risk." She gave me the location of the Underground Awakened safe house where she and her crew would be staying. When she finished, her hand filled the viewing area on the chip. Then it backed away and I saw the tears on her dust-covered cheeks.
Her emotion shook me, nearly toppling the control I stubbornly held onto. Even with all the death and hurt we'd experienced and dealt ourselves, I could count the number of times I'd seen Andi Sencio cry on one hand and have fingers left over.
"I hate to ask this, Argent." she said in a soft, ragged voice, "because I know you won't walk away from this. At least, the man I remember wouldn't. But I don't want to be stuck here thinking I got you geeked."
Her hand came down and broke the connection, ending the recorded segment. The telecom monitor turned black as death.
UPLOAD TO CONTINUE
31
[Chip file: Argent
Security access: ******—02:21:43/10-11-60]
UPLOAD CONTINUED Location: CalFree Safehouse
I played the chip three more times, but nothing new came to my attention. When I was finished, I stored it back in the hidden compartment in my arm.
"The safest thing to do would be to walk away from this." Peg told me.
"Yes."
She hesitated, putting it into words since I wouldn't. "But you're not going to, are you?"
"Not till after I've looked into it." I answered. I at least had to do that.
"Then give me a game plan." Peg said. "Something I can work with."
"Run the names you've gotten tonight." I told her. "Get all the data you can. Dig into Nakatomi's and Villiers' current operations. The shadow boards will be filled with truth, lies, and speculations. See if there's anything there that applies to the current problem."
"What are you going to do?"
"Make a few calls." I said. "If you call back soon, I'll be out for a little while."
Peg's silence told me she didn't like the idea. I knew she was worried about me, and she had every right to be. We'd worked together so long that we'd left traces on each other. There was a good chance that if I went down in a nasty piece of biz, anyone looking too close might be able to tie her with me.
I shut the telecom down. I wanted the solitude the doss offered. Forcing myself up from the bed, I went to the fresher and showered. When I emerged a few minutes later I wasn't feeling at my tiptop form, but I felt better than I had.
I took a pair of creased slacks and a loose printed shirt from my duffel, then got dressed. Leaving the tails of the shirt out gave me enough cover to tuck the Savalette Guardian at the back of my waist. I dropped spare magazines into the deep pockets of the slacks, fitting them into the specially tailored bands inside the pockets to hold them in place. I added a couple of CarbEnergy Bars rather than risk boosting some stuffers. I eat healthy when I can.
Then I buzzed Nolly, asked her to open the door, and left.
I walked fourteen blocks south, then another eight to the east till I reached a Stuffer Shack that had a working public telecom.
The first number I entered was to a cut-out I kept in a warehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, in which I had an investment under another name. The warehouse barely broke even, but having the cut-out available was worth it. I'd designed the system myself. There were things I had in place that even Peg, Toshi, and Hawk hadn't known about. The system was antiquated next to anything Peg could put together, but it had a lock-down that flushed automatically if anyone tried a trace-back.
Once I had the North Carolina number up, I worked through its system and punched in an LTG I knew from memory. I didn't worry about the time; Rottstein was always up.
"Yeah." a phlegmatic voice answered.
I told him who I was.
"Just a minute." Rottstein turned away from the telecom—I could tell because the sound of hacking and coughing receded somewhat. After much spitting and wheezing, he came back on the line. "Time for a new set of fragging lungs, omae."
He wasn't kidding about the lungs. He's had four transplants in the time that I'd known him. Rottstein had been one of the groundpounders I'd worked with in the Desert Wars, but he'd been in the nastiest part of the firefights toward the end. His entire unit had been hosed with a bacterial bug that concentrated in the respiratory system. Even the transplants didn't remove the bac-agent; it had started on his lungs again immediately, deteriorating them day by day.
"Sencio's between a rock and a hard place." I said. "She asked me to dig her out."
"You want my advice, omae? She made her bed, let her lie in it."
Rottstein had known both of us from the old days. "Can't."
His sigh of disgust broke into a painful fit of coughing. "I know. I was just hoping you'd listen. I don't have that many
friends as it is. Can't afford to lose one. What do you need from me?"
"I'm running too hot down here to try to set up anything in the shadows. Peg's up against the wall, too. I need to recruit for the op."
Rottstein was a fixer, a joker who could get whatever someone needed—for a price. He networked between Mr. Johnsons and shadowrunners, arranged buyers for boosted data and physical swag. And he could get in touch with the people I wanted to work with.
"Who?" he asked.
I gave him the list I'd worked up in my mind on the way over to the Stuffer Shack.
"Give me till noon tomorrow."
I didn't like the time frame, but I didn't tell him. Gathering the runners was going to take time, too.
"I'll shave time off where I can." Rottstein promised, "but you're talking about an up-scale crew here.
What kind of contract price should I mention?"
"Fifty thousand nuyen." I said. "It'll be paid up front. You can mention that there's a chance we'll turn another profit along the way if we can grab some of the data involved."
That surprised Rottstein. "Not like you to handle a datasteal."
That was how I' d built my rep. I wasn't a conventional shadowrunner. A lot of them were thieves who broke through corp security and boosted data from personnel or research and development branches.
Industrial espionage wasn't honorable, and I'd never done it. However, if a Mr. Johnson could convince me he was entitled to a piece of data, I'd retrieved it.
"It won't be a datasteal." I replied. "But there're a number of angles to play on this op. We may be in a position to blackmail our way out of it. If we do, the price goes up."
"I'll tell them." Rottstein said. "Fifty thousand is a lot of nuyen for some of these people, but it's a drop in the bucket to others."
"Make the offer." I suggested. "We'll go from there."
"Sure, omae." Rottstein paused. "I don't want to come across sounding selfish, but where's my fifteen percent coming from? If we cut into that fifty grand apiece, we're knocking it down another seven-five."
"I'll pay the freight on this." I replied. "You'll have the nuyen slotted to one of the accounts I have access to by morning."
"That's a big handle to carry over." Rottstein said. "Unless you're taking a large cut."
"Mine's the same as theirs." I said.
"You're going in the hole ten thousand nuyen on this op?"
"I'm paying the handle." I said.
"Slot me for a sympathetic brainwipe." Rottstein sighed. "I'm not going to see you go in the hole. I'll get it connected for fifty thousand."
"You don't have to."
"I know. Maybe I don't like everything there is about Andi Sencio, but she was one of us. Capish?"
"Yeah."
"Call me tomorrow."
I broke the connection, listening to a fresh burst of gagged coughing from Rottstein. I stood in the shadows of the pay telecom shell and considered my options. Nakatomi and Ironaxe were going to be dangerous players, but I thought I knew how to leverage Villiers. Turning back to the telecom, I slotted my credstick and brought up the on-line screamsheets.
I found the note from Neon Rose in the personals of six screamsheets. The message was the same.
CASSIDAY,
WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU TO TALK OVER OLD TIMES. IT'S POSSIBLE WE STILL HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON. IF YOU THINK SO TOO, PLEASE CONTACT ME SOONEST.
—NEON ROSE
I slotted the credstick and placed the call to NovaTech. It was time to start putting the pressure back on the players.
END UPLOAD
32
Miles Lanier punched the telecom to Connect on the first warble for attention, recognizing Argent's broad features even before the pixels repainted the image properly.
"Hello, Mr. Lanier." Argent said in that calm voice he had. "Is Mr. Villiers there?"
The professional stance Argent displayed at all times was also one of his trademarks. "I’ll get him patched in." Lanier promised.
"Stop the trace-back as well." Argent warned. "If your people get too close, they're going to get hit with some black IC that could damage some of their systems. I'll also be gone before you talk to me. And you want to talk to me."
Without hesitation, Lanier opened an audlink to the dataslaves. "Break off the trace."
"What is it, Miles?" Villiers asked as the view to his telecom sliced the screen in half.
"I have Argent on the line." Lanier tapped the circuits, opening a three-way on the telecom.
"You seem to have stumbled onto a piece of my biz." Villiers accused.
"I was invited in." Argent said. "And since I plan on taking a hand, I wanted to establish some ground rules."
"You're hardly in a position to be giving—"
"I'm in exactly the position to be giving orders to you." Argent interrupted. "I've got a chip recording with a confession detailing how you attempted to breach the security at VaulTek. I also know you're trying to put a deal together with Clay Ironaxe to shore up some of NovaTech's holdings in North America. Earning the enmity of the Pueblo Corporate Council wouldn't do you any good at all."
"If you'll let me." Villiers said smoothly, "I could be of help to you. I've got men and equipment in that area. I could—"
"No." Argent's reply was cold and hard, leaving no room for argument. "You've got a different agenda than I do."
Villiers' eyes darkened with anger. "Your involvement represents a serious threat to my efforts in this arena."
"Mr. Villiers." Argent said, "that was the path you chose when you assigned Andi Sencio to this shadowrun. If I'm successful, Ironaxe will never know you crashed his computer systems. If you don't do as I say, I'm going to see to it personally that Ironaxe gets a copy of that chip file."
"What about the rest of the data Sencio was supposed to send out of there?"
"We'll see." Argent replied. "But I don't want your people cluttering up the field. Pull them now." He broke the connection.
Lanier watched as the half-screen faded to black. A tick more and Villiers' face filled the screen again.
Villiers smiled and placed the fingertips of both hands against each other. "This isn't exactly how I'd intended it." he said, "but this is going to work out nicely."
"He could trade the information he has to Ironaxe." Lanier pointed out.
"Then he'd lose the leverage he has over me. I'd have Sencio geeked for it, and he knows that as well."
Villiers shook his head. "No, he's as trapped by these circumstances as we are. And that's how we're going to keep him."
33
The telecom in the safehouse buzzed for attention the next morning. Argent woke quickly, his body responding to the move-by-wire system. Sitting up on the edge of the bed, he tabbed the telecom, knowing it could only be one person.
"Are you awake?" Peg asked.
"I am now."
"Get dressed." Peg said. "There's someone I want you to meet."
"Who?"
"If you intend to go after Sencio, you're going to need a decker because I can't physically go with you. I can cover you from outside, but if you run into systems and can't patch a commlink into them that I can work through, you're going to need someone who can handle the scutwork."
Argent considered that. He'd worked with Peg so long that he hadn't thought about that possibility. But every contract he'd taken before had allowed him work an angle that allowed Peg to piggyback into the systems they went up against. "You've got someone?"
"I recruited the best I know. We're just drekking lucky she was available. Get moving."
"Sure." Argent tabbed the telecom off and headed for the fresher.
The decker was elven. For her to have come to El Infierno in the heartland of gangers, yakuza, Seoulpa Rings, and the dregs of metahumanity was a big statement of how much nerve she had.
Seated at a back table of the Chinese restaurant, she stood out like a flower in a snowfield. Her complexion was a milky white without flaw that A
rgent could see even with his enhanced vision.
Wraparound Whitelaw sunglasses covered her eyes as she turned to look at him. Her platinum blond hair was pulled back from her heart-shaped face in a style that was attractive and served to keep it from being loose enough to be grabbed by a prospective attacker. Metal glimmered at her right temple, advertising the datajack there. She wore a mid-thigh-length jade green jacket over a lighter green blouse and matching skirt that ended well above the knee. An Armanto briefcase occupied the seat beside her.
Argent stopped at the counter and ordered two waters that matched the brand on the table in front of the elven decker. Before he could finish slotting his credstick, one of the trio of roller-blade gangers near the front door wheeled over to her table.
The ganger was young and Hispanic, his hair buzzed and the color of watermelon taffy. Gold necklaces dangled around his neck. "Hey, hermana." the ganger said, "my amigos and I were wondering."
Argent stayed by the counter, watching the exchange. He adjusted his hearing to pick up the conversation.
The elf said nothing, regarding the ganger from behind her sunglasses.
Her lack of response seemed to throw the ganger off. He shrugged, getting himself back on track. "We were wondering what a beautiful woman like you is doing down here?"
She remained silent, but one of her hands dropped down to her lap.
"Mis amigos." the ganger said, "they tell me you must be some kind of corp exec come down to El Infierno to check out some of the corp housing. But me, I say you're a joy girl here to do some biz."
If she was offended at being mistaken for a prostitute, the elf didn't show it. "What's your name?" she asked in a soft voice.
The ganger rolled on his blades till he was snug up against the table, within arm's reach of the elf. He smiled, flashing gold-capped teeth. "I am called Luis."
"Well, Luis, why don't you roll back over to your muchachos and tell them you were wrong." the elf said.
Still smiling, Luis leaned forward on the table, placing both hands on the tabletop. "How do I know that I am wrong?"
