Shadowrun 43 - Fallen Angels

by Stephen Kenson

  14

  Kellan struggled against the grip of the tightening vines as the stone hounds stalked closer. She knew that what was happening wasn't real, just simsense piped into her brain to interpret the actions of the software in the system, but it Kellan struggled against the grip of the tightening vines as the stone hounds stalked closer. She knew that what was happening wasn't real, just simsense piped into her brain to interpret the actions of the software in the system, but it felt real. If the hounds got their teeth around her throat, it would be as real as it needed to be.

  She had to get loose, to get out of the system before the guardian ice programs reached her. They had to he scanning her now, double-checking her credentials. She fought, her cyberdeck translating her struggles to be free into commands to the system to unlock the log-off protocols. But the vines held fast, the system didn't respond: it was suspicious, it wanted confirmation first, and if it didn't like what it found . . .

  The hounds crept closer. Kellan thought she could hear them panting, but could no longer distinguish between her imagination and what was really happening to her. She managed to pull one arm free of the vines: the system was having trouble penetrating her deck's masking routines. It didn't quite know what to do with her. Kellan braced her free arm against the stone framework of the doorway, leveraging the sys-tern's momentary weakness in the hope of breaking loose. The vines held tight as she pulled, then a couple of them tore free of the doorway. She wasn't sure what to do; she wasn't sure that any of the software Jackie had loaded onto her deck could help her with this. Kellan probably had an option at this point—she just didn't know what it might be.

  One of the stone hounds growled, and she turned to see it standing close, eyes still burning. It bared sharp fangs, lips curling impossibly back. Her struggles were making it clear that Kellan didn't belong here, and the system was responding. She struggled harder, but still couldn't pull free, still mired in the security of the log-off protocols. The hound barked, a sharp sound, then it gathered itself and leapt at her.

  Suddenly the world dissolved into a chaos of gray static and noise. Kellan thrashed, hands flailing to ward off the leaping hound, senses reeling, her arms still held in a tight grip.

  "Kellan, Kellan!" a voice said. "Shhh, it's okay, it's okay, you're out."

  "Orion?" she mumbled. Her vision began to clear, dark blurs resolving themselves into recognizable shapes.

  "It's okay," came the reply again, "you're all right."

  "You've just got a little dumpshock," Midnight said. "It'll pass in a minute, but we need to get out of here. Can you stand?"

  Kellan could see her two companions crouching next to where she sat. Orion loosened his grip on her wrists and Kellan massaged them, trying to get her bearings.

  "I think so," she said. Carefully, she pushed up from the chair, wobbling a bit as she stood. Her own body felt foreign to her, but the sensation was passing quickly.

  Midnight gathered up the discarded electrode net and Kellan's cyberdeck, slipping them into the bag resting beside the chair.

  "Did you get it?" she asked, and Kellan gave her a blank look.

  "The file," Midnight said, more insistently. "Did you get it?"

  "Give her a minute to get her bearings," Orion said hotly, but Midnight kept Kellan pinned with her gaze.

  "Yeah, yeah, I got it," Kellan muttered, nodding her head, which was starting to ache. "What happened?"

  "You were thrashing around," Orion replied, "like something was attacking you. We decided to get you out of there and pulled the plug." Midnight's expression told Kellan it had been Orion who made the decision.

  "Thanks," she said. "There was some ice. . . ."

  "Just forget it for now," Midnight said crisply. "The ice probably triggered a security alert. We need to clear out."

  "But if the system is on alert—" Orion began, but Midnight silenced him with a look.

  "I've got it covered," she said. "Now let's go. Kellan?"

  "Yeah, I'm ready," she said, steadying herself against the desk.

  Midnight took a palm-sized device from her shoulder bag and tapped a control. Putting it away, she moved toward the door.

  "All right. Walk away like we finished the job and are going home," she instructed them. "You'll recognize the signal when it comes; then clear out as quickly as possible." She led them out of the office back toward the guard station. There was no one at the desk when they got there.

  "Where's—?" Kellan began, but before she could finish her question a dull boom echoed in the distance, and a vibration shook the building.

  "What the frag?" Orion exclaimed as a high, whining alarm sounded in the hallway.

  "That's the signal," Midnight said. "Let's go."

  In the main corridors of the complex, uniformed guards were quick-timing it toward the exit doors, and Telestrian employees were scrambling to get out of their way. To Kellan's surprise, rather than trying to get out of the way, Midnight grabbed a passing guard by the arm.

  "What's happening?" she asked with a note of real concern in her voice. "Was it a bomb?"

  "Miss, you must clear the area immediately," the hard-faced elf replied curtly. "Clear the area for your own safety." Then he turned and hurried to catch up with his unit.

  "You heard the man," Midnight told Kellan and Orion with a sly smile. "We should clear the area, right now."

  No one stopped them from leaving the building in a group with a number of other visitors and employees, joining the milling crowd outside. Telestrian guards kept people back from the building and Kellan heard sirens as Tir Peace Force vehicles closed in on the habitat. On the far side of the complex, a dark column of smoke rose into the sky.

  "Keep walking," Midnight told Kellan when she looked back, and they headed away from the habi-iat at a brisk pace. It seemed to take them no time at all to reach their car, parked several blocks away, and Midnight pulled out onto the street, cruising away from the habitat back toward their safe house.

  "What was that all about?" Orion asked, once they were in the car and on their way.

  "A fail-safe," Midnight replied. "A small remote explosive and a prerecorded threat call to Telestrian. The company has had occasional trouble from the Ri-nelle, after all, so they have to take every threat seriously."

  "They'll assume there's a second bomb," Orion said, and Midnight nodded.

  "Or several more. They'll continue to evacuate the facility as they search, and no one is going to be paying attention to a low-level alert from the computer system. If we're lucky, the high alert will override the lower-priority alert we set off, and it'll be at least a couple of hours before they even notice it."

  "Nice," he said with a satisfied nod. "Looks like we're in the clear."

  "Kellan, once we get back to the safe house, I want to check the file and make sure it's all there before we set up the meeting with our principal to conclude our business," Midnight said. Kellan nodded.

  "No problem. So . . . that's it?"

  "Just about. We just need to close the deal and turn over the goods," Midnight said. "Why, looking to spend some more time enjoying the sights of Tir Tairngire?"

  Kellan shook her head. "Not so much," she said. "I'm just wondering if things have cooled off back home."

  "I'm sure you have nothing to worry about," Midnight replied.

  Business was business, Jackie Ozone believed. She didn't double-cross a client who didn't cross her first. She had no ties to Toshiro Akimura, and didn't care one way or another about the relationship between him and Cross Applied Technologies. Whatever beef Cross had with Akimura, or vice versa, Jackie's only concern was how she could profit from it. And at the moment, it looked like she stood a good chance to make a very handsome profit off the information she passed along to Cross. So why did she have a bad feeling about the whole thing?

  Because Akimura's not the only one involved, she told herself, drumming her fingers nervously on her desk. Whatever was going on, whatever the fixer wanted, it
involved Kellan, and now it involved Lothan, too. It was one thing if Cross decided to have it out with Akimura, but the chances were now increasing that someone else—someone else she knew— would get caught in the cross fire.

  What if this turns out to be another Zhade? Jackie wondered. She had provided information to Eve on a previous job that had brought Kellan into conflict with a toxic shaman who wanted to poison the whole Seattle Metroplex. Given the dangerousness of the circumstances and the difficulty of regaining control over the situation, Jackie would have cut her losses. But not Kellan. She chose to go after a shaman who was armed with a deadly toxin in an attempt to correct her own mistake.

  Jackie chewed her lower lip nervously as she thought. Her dealings with Eve had always been fair, but she knew the Cross company woman had ambitions. Everyone in the corporate world did, especially in positions like hers, or they didn't get into jobs like hers. Eve definitely saw the information about Akimura as an opportunity—but an opportunity for what?

  Akimura appeared to have it in for Kellan, so Kellan would probably be glad if Cross decided to take him out; theoretically, problem solved. But from what Lothan had told her, there was more going on here. Akimura claimed he wasn't after Kellan, but that someone else was. Akimura could be lying, but what if he wasn't? What if a third party, like Cross, upset a delicate situation? It shouldn't matter, Jackie told herself. It was only business, but . . .

  "Oh, fraggit," Jackie muttered. She flopped down into the padded swivel chair and picked up her cyberdeck, settling it on her lap. There was only one way to figure this out. Taking the optical cable from the deck's spool, she plugged it into the jack at her temple and powered up the deck.

  Ready or not, here I come, she thought, and hit the go button.

  By the time they got back to the safe house, Kellan had shaken off the worst of the dumpshock, but a mild headache and a lingering feeling of unease still nagged at her. Despite her frightening brush with the security software, the whole run just seemed too easy. She supposed she could credit Midnight's skill for preplanning, and the help of her contacts inside Telestrian for the low level of challenge, but Kellan's gut instinct told her something was off. Unfortunately, she had no access to additional information to help pinpoint the source of her worries, and so she had no choice but to push her concerns to the back burner.

  She turned her thoughts to the file she had saved to her cyberdeck. She'd been told it was important in a power struggle within Telestrian Industries. What could be so valuable about it? If it was the key to someone's downfall, why wasn't it better protected, instead of being tucked away in an obscure part of the system?

  Kellan slumped gratefully onto a cot once they got inside their room. Orion grabbed a bottle of water for himself and one for Kellan, and Midnight began changing out of her corporate clothes and into her working gear.

  "Burn that data onto a chip," she said briskly to Kellan. "I'm going to let the client know that we're ready to meet and hand over the goods."

  "Hey," Orion said, "give her a minute to rest, will ya?"

  Midnight shot him a hard look. "Every minute we delay is another minute closer to Telestrian taking action. Whatever they do will almost certainly knock down the value of what we've got. The sooner we hand off the goods and get paid, the sooner we can drop out of sight. We can rest when we've got the cred, but the job isn't over until then."

  "She's right. It's okay," Kellan said. She sighed and pushed herself up off the cot, pulling off her sweater and tossing it on the floor. Orion gave her a concerned glance.

  "You all right?" he asked in a low voice.

  "Yeah, just tired. I just want to get this over with."

  He nodded and went to gather his own gear as Kellan sat down at the table, got out her deck, slipped on the trode net and pulled up the Morningstar file. She glanced over the file information floating on the virtual screen superimposed over her vision. As she had suspected, it was a pretty small file, probably text-only, maybe a few graphics; certainly no video, sim-sense or other complicated data. Maybe it was e-mail or some other kind of correspondence. Kellan looked over at Midnight, getting suited up to go out again, and commanded her deck to run a decryption program on the file.

  It only took a few moments. Apparently the data encryption was old. So was the file, in fact. Kellan noted the date stamp and realized the file was last modified nearly twenty years ago! With another glance at Midnight's back, Kellan opened the file, and the first page scrolled up in the air in front of her. She'd guessed right—it was a text file.

  Project Morningstar, Kellan read, Dr. Marc Thierault, ThD, Supervisor. A study on advanced applications in conjuring for—

  "How's that file coming?" Midnight asked from behind Kellan's chair. Kellan nearly jumped to her feet, her head turning so fast that she almost dislodged the trode net.

  "Fine! Um, fine," she replied, fumbling to slot a blank optical chip into the deck's port. She closed the file with a blink, then ordered the deck to burn a copy to the chip.

  "Good. I'm going to make a call. I'll be back in a minute." Midnight stepped out of the room, phone in hand, and Kellan pulled the chip from the deck. As the door closed, she stared at it for a moment, then slotted another chip into the port. Orion came over and sat opposite her.

  "So?" he asked quietly, one eyebrow raised.

  "So what?" Kellan replied, not looking away from the virtual display.

  "So what's in the file?"

  Kellan didn't bother to deny opening it. "I didn't get much of a look," she said in a low voice. "Something about advanced applications in conjuring."

  "So, spirits and stuff?"

  Kellan pulled the second chip from the port, took off the trode net, and powered down her deck. "Yeah. I don't know how advanced it can really be, though, since the file is twenty years old. Anything in it has got to be pretty out-of-date by now."

  Orion's eyebrows shot up. "Doesn't sound to me like dirt to embarrass a company rival."

  Kellan shrugged, running a hand through her hair. She stashed her cyberdeck back in her bag, grabbed her armor-lined jacket and pulled it on over her tee-shirt. "Maybe it has some skeletons in it that Daddy Telestrian wants covered up from back in the day. Who knows?"

  Orion shook his head slowly. "I can't wait to get out of here," he muttered.

  "Yeah, me, too." She glanced down at the chip she was still holding in her hand, then took Orion's hand and pressed the chip into it.

  "What's this for?"

  "Insurance," she said simply. "I don't know what it is about this place, but it gives me the creeps. I've been on edge ever since we left Seattle."

  "I don't think it's Tir Tairngire," the elf replied. "I think it's—"

  Midnight opened the door and stepped back into the room, tucking her phone away. Her glance at their clasped hands and the faintest hint of a smile said she was surprised not to have caught Kellan and Orion in an embrace like before. Orion slipped the hand holding the datachip into his pocket.

  "It's on," she said. "Let's go, Kellan."

  "I'm ready," Orion replied, but Midnight shook her head.

  "They wanted me to come alone. I was able to talk them into two of us, but no more."

  "Then you should take Orion," Kellan said. "He'll watch your back."

  "It's much more important to have magical backup," Midnight countered.

  "Kel, go," Orion said as Kellan started to protest. "Let's just get this over with."

  Midnight nodded in agreement. "Listen to him. We don't have time to argue."

  Hacking into Eve's e-mail was the easy part. Jackie knew some of the system's vulnerabilities—she'd made a point of studying the Cross system when it became clear that her relationship to Eve was going to develop beyond a casual one. But she'd had no need to exploit those weaknesses until now. Decrypting the correspondence took a bit more work, but it turned out to be well worth the effort.

  "Drek," the decker muttered as she finished reading the e-mail. This didn
't look good at all. Not only had Eve been in contact with Cross' head office more times in the past couple of days than most employees at her level were in the average month, she'd also made arrangements to fly to Quebec immediately for a high-level meeting, promising to present an extremely important document upon her arrival.

  Jackie had poked around in Eve's e-mail before, and she knew that Eve invariably created a draft file of information she planned to present to any level of management. The draft and the final file she created resided together on her personal node at the Cross branch office in Seattle, and Eve would also carry a copy of the file on her pocket secretary. Jackie had no trouble finding the file she wanted. Eve had done a serviceable job of protecting the file, but her efforts were no match for Jackie's skill and determination.

  What Jackie found in the file made her very glad she'd decided to ignore her reservations against crossing her client. The file contained all the intelligence Jackie had provided to Eve, linked to company information identifying Akimura as a former agent of the Seraphim. Jackie had only heard rumors of the top-secret division of Cross corporate security; professional black ops, full-time shadowrunners working for the company, so she didn't recognize a lot of the organization Eve was outlining. One thing was certain, though: megacorps like Cross didn't let go of their agents easily, if at all.

  Eve's file laid out a plan for sanctioning Akimura in such a way as to neatly tie up any loose ends involving him and some "unfinished project" in Tir Tairngire. So there is a connection, Jackie thought, continuing to read. Eve planned to present the whole package to her superiors as a fait accompli, probably working under the assumption that it was easier to ask forgiveness than wait for permission, and possibly lose the credit to some other corporate climber.

  No wonder Eve was acting like I'd just handed her the find of the year, Jackie thought. She had underestimated the fixer's reaction. She thought Eve had tried and failed to cover some small excitement over the intel about Akimura. Now it looked more like she had done well not doing cartwheels. This could be a coup to make her career: bringing down a rogue company agent who'd managed to avoid retribution for years, and fixing whatever dust-up he'd been involved with all those years ago.