by Nyx Smith
They pile out. Axle keeps the van running in case they should have to stage a quick extraction. Hammer motions Mickey and Dog Bite to the left of the black metal door and takes the right side for himself. Dana steps up, standing directly in front of the door.
She lifts her hands before her face as if to pray, then begins doing things with her fingers, linking them together, folding, unfolding, forming pyramids, triangles, circles, complex knottings that rush from one configuration to the next. She calls it the emblemology of power, these finger-signs she makes. Hammer doesn’t much care about that. All he knows or cares about is that whatever she does, however she does it, it works.
The dark space between Dana and the door begins to blur and waver like hot summer air shimmering above a road. The door takes on a waxy sheen. The sheen begins to run, flowing, cascading down like a shower of water, only the water is the substance of the door. The next moment there is no door, just a puddle of something black and wet oozing into the alley.
Dana sways, visibly draws a deep breath, then thrusts her hair back from her face. Turning things to ooze costs her a lot. What remains for her to do is far less taxing.
Hammer points at the dark opening of the doorway.
Dana nods, makes more finger-signs.
The music, the flaring lights, the calamitous babble of voices—screaming, shouting, swearing—begins at once. Hammer can’t see or hear any of it thanks to the goggles and headset, but he knows what it’s like. A thousand high-intensity lights all flashing and glaring into your eyes. A thousand maniacs screaming into your head. You can’t think, you can’t fight, you can’t tell what the frag’s going on. Hammer gestures with the Ingram smartgun. Mickey darts into the doorway and the darkness beyond. Hammer follows. Dog Bite and Dana bring up the rear.
The doorway leads into a corridor that immediately turns and ends at a stairway, heading down. Three razorguys with heavy artillery—heavy-caliber SMGs—stagger around on the stairs and in the corridor at the bottom of the stairs. A few quick bursts from Mickey’s AK-97 SMG and Hammer’s smartgun take care of them.
The passage at the bottom of the stairs leads past two doors, both on the right. Dog Bite and Mickey take the first one; Hammer takes the other. The doors aren’t even locked. Hammer enters a room outfitted like a bedroom. A pair of hot, red-tinted bodies twist and writhe on the bed, hands uplifted as if to cover their ears. Even as Hammer opens fire, one of the two bodies slips from the end of the bed and staggers around like a machine with blown circuits, before jerking spasmodically and falling. A pair of quick bursts is all it takes.
“One clear,” Hammer says.
A gasp of static, then Dog Bite replies, “Two clear. We’re all clear. Check this out.”
Hammer lowers his goggles. A long rectangular pane in the wall opposite the foot of the bed gives a view into the other room. Hammer tries the communicating door, which lets him into some kind of control room, now showing the generous damage of automatic weapons fire. Three more bodies lay sprawled amid the debris. The focus of the room is the long gray console that runs along the wall beneath the large window. It looks like the kind of equipment used for professional music recordings, only this isn’t a recording studio and the console isn’t just for sound.
“Look at this skiz,” Dog Bite says. “Man oh man, we could make some fine change selling this stuff.”
Hammer takes a look. What Dog Bite says is true. The case in Dog Bite’s hand contains about twenty silicon chips, and plenty more are scattered about. Sex-chip BTL always sells. Like the name promises, it is better than real-life sex in some ways. No mess, no fuss, no need for a cooperative partner or partners.
Hammer wonders why their Mr. Johnson wanted some dinky BTL lab in northeast Philly wasted, along with everyone in it.
Who knows?
“Set the charges,” Hammer says. “Torch all of it.”
Dog Bite looks at him. “You sure?”
“We got a contract.”
“Who’s to know?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Hey! Stupid’s my middle name!”
Mickey starts to laugh; Dog Bite, too. Hammer’s heard the joke too often to be amused.
Five minutes later. Dog Bite’s explosives go off. Axle spots the flames by remote. The entire building is soon engulfed. Mr. Johnson should be pleased.
14
The night rumbles with the sounds of traffic and the massed machinery of more than a million human beings.
Neon flickers, chrome gleams.
Voices echo through the alley.
Tikki waits in the shadows, a niche of brick and mortar that smells of piss and rancid liquor. A motorcycle buzzes past, one of those shiny aerodyne machines with sleek plastic cowlings, colored like the blood of prey. And this is one of the fastest, a Rapier. It comes to a halt nearby, just off to her right, engine whining, winding down. Tikki pulls the Kang heavy automatic pistol from under her jacket and steps from her hiding place.
Just a few paces up the alley is a basement-level bar called Numero Uno. Signs advertising beer and other attractions wink and flash above the stairs leading down to the entrance. It’s a gathering place for losers, fools who imagine themselves immune to injury and death. Most of them come on cycles, which is why Tikki is here now. She walks toward the newly arrived Rapier, the Kang held back behind her right hip.
As she approaches, the big hairy ork in synthleather and studs dismounts the Rapier, turning toward her with a smile. The teeth protruding like tusks from his lower jaw give the smile a feral look. “Hoi, biff,” he grunts.
Tikki sneers. She hasn’t even opened her mouth and already the ork is showing her an attitude. Orks do that a lot, behaving like they can do anything they please just because they’re big and strong. Tikki finds that irritating. It’s not only a challenge to her—her power, her position—but a challenge against Nature, the balance of power among the many predators populating the human domain. A threat she has to meet.
She brings up the Kang, points it at the ork’s face, then extends her other hand, palm-up. “Keys,” she growls. “Now.”
The ork frowns and stares, then grunts, “You gotta be skeekin’ me, geek.”
She never skeeks. “Last chance.”
The ork sneers, opens his mouth.
Tikki drops her arm and squeezes the trigger. The Kang blams. A tongue of flame strokes the shadowed air. The ork howls and falls to one knee, his face contorted with pain. He’s got a hole in his right boot, a big bloody hole, but that couldn’t be helped. That was a necessary part of the lesson. Tikki won’t be taken lightly, not by anyone. When she says something, she expects people to listen, orks included.
“Keys.”
The ork shouts and curses and hands her the keys. He’s also saying what he’s going to do to her, how she’s going to regret shooting him. Tikki doesn’t like that. It’s a bad attitude grown worse. She swings the Kang like a club against the side of his head, the impact telegraphing up her arm almost to the elbow. That’s how she knows that the blow would have laid most humans out cold. The ork’s a little too tough for that. His head jerks over sideways and he sways toward the ground, but he catches himself on one arm. Tikki swings the Kang again.
This time, the ork goes down.
Tikki points the Kang’s muzzle at his head, finger tightening on the trigger, then hesitates when she sees him going slack. A part of her wants to finish the job, dust the ork, blow his head clean off, but another, calmer part of her is saying there’s no need. For a moment, she could go either way. The one thing she’s sure of is that Adama would laugh, even call her a fool, for leaving the ork alive. That she could not stand.
Abruptly, she points the Kang and makes it roar four times in quick succession. What’s left of the ork is sufficiently dead to satisfy anyone, and that is as it should be.
That’s good, very good, she decides.
She thrusts the ork back with a shove of her foot and pulls the bike upright. Tikki knows
about bikes and is well-practiced in their use. They are very handy implements.
Too bad her mother couldn’t stand them.
Couldn’t abide the noise.
Noise is part of the machine, intrinsic. The greater the noise, the greater the bike. She jerks the Rapier’s throttle, sets the engine to wailing, the rear tire to spinning, shrieking, and with one foot planted on the ground she whips the bike around in a quick half circle. A flashy but effective way to quickly reverse direction. Tikki drops her weight onto the cushioned synthleather seat, and the cycle screams, sending her hurtling up the alley and out to the street.
Traffic around Center City is dense and sluggish. Cars and trucks jam the streets. Scooters and bicycles flood the curb lanes. Tikki winds her way through the press, wrenching the throttle on full, setting the Rapier to screaming, only to jerk the brakes and make the rear tire shriek.
The siren from a Minuteman patrol cruiser wails out, and a cop waves at her through the cruiser’s window, but there’s no way a full-sized vehicle can pursue her through the crush.
She veers around a corner.
Minutes later, she’s into the underground, the sublevel parking garage beneath KFK plaza. The platinum towers above provide office space for the Philadelphia branch of the city’s leading yakuza clan, the Honjowara-gumi.
Tikki’s biz tonight involves that very group—that is, a particular member of that group.
The garage ceiling is low, spanned by massive concrete struts and further supported by concrete columns. Arrays of florescent lamps affixed to the ceiling between the struts cast a stark illumination. Aisle after aisle of waiting automobiles march off into the distance. Tikki stops the Rapier, pulls a small knapsack off her shoulders. She takes out a Toshiba SC-701 graphic transceiver, and turns it on with the touch of a finger. The display comes to life with colored geometries, giving her a detailed schematic map of her current location. The entire city is chipped into the transceiver’s memory. The little red blip on the display shows the location of a particular car, a heavy Nissan Ultima V limousine, used by a member of the local yakuza. Tikki has previously attached a Toshiba SCA-7234 transponder to the car, which now communicates directly with the transceiver in her hand.
She likes to be prepared.
Soon, her target arrives via elevator with a pair of male companions. Tikki watches them through the rows of parked cars. They glance around idly, but give no indication they suspect that a hunter is watching, gauging their movements. Waiting for the moment to strike.
Taking human animals in the city is little different from taking other kinds of animals in the wild. The successful predator chooses her moment with care. A strike that fails to kill is worse than no strike at all because it alerts the prey to the hunter’s presence. The prey must remain unaware until the final moment, when death comes crashing down with jaws of steel to crush and snap its neck.
The Nissan rumbles to life and rolls toward the garage exits. Tikki starts the Rapier and follows.
The moment of death draws near.
* * *
The limo takes the Franklin Bridge over the Delaware into Camden, Inc., where the night burns in garish neon and simmers with flashing strobes. The procession of dazzling megawatt façades begins. The names of the casinos and nightclubs rise up five, ten, fifteen, twenty stories: Polichrome Palace, Ritz Royale, Dragon’s Loft, Rage of Mages, Four Aces, Glistening Underling, Silk Refuge. The streets widen into boulevards. Laserdis adverts arch out over the streets. Econocars vanish among a tide of gleaming limousines and posh executive sedans. Crowds in glittering Prestigewear and the mirrored fashions of NeoMonochrome flow ceaselessly along the sidewalks and through fantastic entrance ways of glaring, flickering light.
Police are rarely seen. Yakuza run the city corporation and yakuza provide security. Standing on every corner, strolling along every block, are two or more of their kobun in special red, orange, or yellow jackets. Heavily armed back-up waits in marked security vans on various side streets. The ordinary citizen is treated with a respect usually accorded only to kings and queens, while disruptive individuals are dealt with immediately and without reference to any court. Incidents of violent crime are generally few and far between. All this makes Camden an interesting place to be. Especially interesting for a hunter.
The Nissan pulls up at the Gingko Club. Tikki’s target comes here once or twice a week. She’s scoped the layout previously. The name of the place refers to the nut-bearing gingko tree with fan-like leaves. The tree is Chinese, the name Japanese. The club is owned and operated by the local branch of the Honjowara-gumi yakuza. No surprise.
This is where it will happen.
The main entrance is closely guarded. The doormen use a Fuchi SecTech-7 scanning system to catch weapons on the way in. Tikki knows ways past such things. In fact, she’s got a black box from a specialist in San Francisco that would probably walk her straight through, hardware and all. She’s got other options, however, that offer higher probabilities of success.
The moon rises full and white and brilliant against the dark canopy of the night. Tikki grins just to see it. There’s something about a full moon that makes her feel wild and free and even a little crazy. It’s a hunter’s moon, a moon to kill by.
She steers the Rapier into the dark of an alley.
The rear door of the Gingko Club is solid metal and faces a small parking lot lit by orange spots. Tikki waits for a parking valet to head up toward the front of the club, then steps up to the back door and pounds on it with her fist.
Not a security cam in sight.
The intercom beside the door squeals. “What you want!” a male voice demands.
“Red Bullets!” Tikki says, giving the name of the local yakuza patrol. “Open up!”
A moment passes. Something inside the door clangs. An Asian man smelling of fish and wearing a stained white apron pushes the door open and looks at Tikki, first frowning as if annoyed, then going wide-eyed, and with good reason. The muzzle of her Kang automatic is right in his face. She has goaded him into error, just as planned. Only three nights ago she saw a Red Bullet patrol stop here for a quick bite to eat. Bang, shout, and the door opens.
Tikki motions with a finger: Out, step out.
The man obeys. She motions him to her left as if to walk him away from the door, then slams the barrel of the Kang across the rear of his head. The man crumbles.
Good prey.
Very good.
* * *
A short hallway takes her to a red door. She steps through and into the rear of the club. The music is loud and asynchronous, led by a bamboo flute and a geisha’s keening intonations. Simulated rice-paper screens divide the place into squarish spaces for dancing and broad corridors lined with silk-curtained alcoves. Laserdis ideograms, swords, flowers, and other images of feudal Japan wax and wane, blossom into view and then fade like phantoms throughout the shadowy space.
Trid screens everywhere provide a murmuring undertone that extols the many virtues of the Honjowara-gumi. Yaks are very big on image. Many maintain official offices, publish brochures and newsletters, hold press conferences, produce their own cable shows, and even own banks. Kambu atsukai, the lower-ranked executives, have been known to invite local citizens to their offices for tea merely to encourage a favorable public image.
Triad bosses rarely attempt to seem so benign.
In search of her prey, Tikki moves through a crowd of dancers. Those who notice give her odd looks. She isn’t dressed to the mode. Neither is she wearing her usual streetside costume. She’s dressed for a hit. Mirrorshades conceal her eyes. A strip of black silk covers the lower half of her face. A long dark-blue duster obscures the rest, all but her soft-soled black boots.
She works her way toward the front of the club, but somehow misses her mark. The place is like a maze, with people constantly moving, changing places. She’s certain her target must still be here. He stayed for hours any time he’s ever come here in the past. She backtracks, co
vering old ground, and abruptly sees him coming right at her, approaching through a swirl of dancers. The man is a heavyset Asian male named Saigo Jozen, the next yakuza sub-boss targeted for assassination. Moving with him through the crowd is a group of two males and three females. The males all wear the lapel pin of the Honjowara-gumi. Emerging from the press of a dance space, the group forms into three couples.
Tikki slips a pair of fleshtone ear plugs into her ears, then opens her long duster and brings up the twin SCK-100 submachine guns slung from her shoulders. Saigo never sees what’s coming. One moment he’s grinning at the woman on his arm, laughing with his companions, and in the next he’s twitching and jerking under the massed assault of Tikki’s SMGs.
The distinctive staccato clattering of the SCKs slashes through the music and the noise like razor-tipped claws. As Saigo’s face and chest turn into a mass of blood and gore, Tikki widens her field of fire. The five people nearest Saigo jerk and crumble. Blood sprays the air and spatters over the floor. People scream and fall. Saigo is lying in a puddle of blood and gore but still is not dead, not quite. He’s making feeble efforts to crawl away over the body of a dead woman. Tikki gives him another burst, but the man keeps moving. She empties the SMGs into him.
That finishes him.
Adama will be pleased.
She tugs at the strap slung from her left shoulder and drops one of the SMGs to the floor, rams a fresh clip into the other one and snaps the bolt. People are fighting to get away from her now, struggling against the press of the herd to escape the deadly menace of the hunter. It’s good, very good—not quite as close and personal as she likes it but very good all the same. Good and bloody. The screams of the prey echo in her ears, and the scents of terror and death swarm lush and hot into her nose.
A door opens in the red wall between two alcoves. Tikki points the SMG and fires. Even before the man in the dark suit can pass through the doorway, he staggers back and falls. Tikki dips into her duster pocket and pulls out a compact grenade. Concussion effects can be deadly at close range. She pulls the pin and lobs the grenade up the corridor paneled in mock rice paper. Two more men, fighting against the crowd and coming toward her from that direction fall flat to the floor in the wake of the detonation, along with others.
