Just Compensation

by Robert N. Charrette

  But something about the place bothered him. Besides the smoke upstairs that had made him cough, of course. If he knew about the place, so did a lot of other people. He said as much to Markowitz.

  “Ever hear of a Wild West place called Hole-in-the-Wall?” Markowitz asked.

  “No.” Andy replied.

  “Place used as a hideout by nineteenth-century runners and other outlaws. Lots of people knew about it, at least in general, but the Law never busted it—because it was too much trouble. The payback wasn’t worth it, and John Law don’t like busting his hoop for nothing. Worse, he don’t like getting his hoop busted for what he does.

  “Well, they tried putting Mr. Crick out of business back in ’44, just after Nell’s opened. But John Law ran into a nest full of hornets he couldn’t do anything about because as soon as he turned one way, he’d get his butt stung, and by the time he turned back, the bug was ghosted and gone. John Law don’t like it when his life is uncomfortable. He learned his lesson and went back to his doughnuts and soykaf, looking the other way and letting life go on. Doesn’t hurt that Mr. Crick buys the occasional dozen of doughnuts, either. This place is a hole in the wall of society, kid. Be thankful it’s here for us to bolt through.”

  “I am.”

  “Good.” Markowitz said absently, as he began to check out the machines sitting on a table in the center of the small room. All Andy had eyes for was the cyberdeck. It had a Fuchi Cyber-6 case, but whether it boasted the power and software Markowitz had specified remained to be checked out. Andy did that while Markowitz used the telecom.

  The cyberdeck was fancier than anything Andy had ever used, far hairier than his deck that had been confiscated by the soldiers. The mods he’d been able to afford and hack together looked primitive next to this set-up, technomanced to an ultrakeen edge. The muscle of the utilities was impressive. And the master persona control program—what a hunk! “You could bust into Renraku or even Fuchi itself with this.”

  “Not on today’s hit list, kid. Just do what we talked about and start working on those files.”

  It was a shame not to use this wiz hardware to go Matrix surfing, but Andy understood the necessity of taking care of business at home first. He jacked in and fed the data files down from his headware into the cyberdeck. Manipulating copies on the machine would protect the originals if something happened to the data while he was trying to crack them. As he dumped, he felt a relief as if he had gotten over a head cold and was finally able to breathe freely again. He knew that the space in his skull hadn’t changed, but it felt like it nonetheless. The file icons glistened before his virtual eyes, offering him a choice between the files he’d taken himself from the Telestrian matrix, and copies of those recovered from what Yates had stuffed into Andy’s headware. They were all armored in encryption and none offered any easier entry than any other. Picking one at random, he marshaled his cutter software and went at it, trying to break through the protective shells.

  When Andy popped out for a break, he saw Markowitz slumped in his chair, staring at the blanked telecom over steepled fingers. He looked as though someone had clubbed his pet pooch.

  “Whuzappening?” Andy asked.

  “Beatty’s dead.”

  Andy felt like drek for having such frivolous thoughts about Markowitz’s expression. “How?”

  “Same thing that almost happened to Shamgar. Guess it’s an advert for cyberizing. Shamgar popped the two muscle boys who came after him. Those toughs are in Fairfax Hospital as John Does, but our chromed friend is still healthy. He plans to continue that way. Accordingly, he’s leaving on a vacation, to visit a cousin out Seattle way.”

  The two orks had been muscle for Markowitz’s run against Telestrian. Someone was targeting more than just Markowitz, which meant they were all in danger. “Any word from Kit?”

  “Kit’s okay, or at least she was two hours ago. I left a message for her to come here.”

  That was good, wasn’t it? But two hours could be a long time, a lot could happen.

  “Rags is okay, too.” Markowitz said, reminding Andy that there was yet another member of the runner team. Andy felt bad again; he’d liked the troll, sort of. It didn’t seem right to have forgotten him, even if he was worried about Kit. “He was already on vacation, and left town before the drek hit. I’ve sent him word to stay clear till this blows over.”

  “So we’re on our own?”

  Markowitz nodded. “That’s the bad news.”

  The three of them—assuming Kit made it back—against the Confed intelligence network. Bad news, indeed. “Is there any good news?”

  “Depends on how you look at it. Way I figure it, if they only sent two after Shamgar, the bad guys don’t really have the goods on us. They may have names and numbers, but they don’t have specs. If they did, they’d have piled more muscle on Shamgar. All of which means we can still surprise them. At least, we could if we knew who to surprise.”

  “That’s the good news?”

  “You take what you can get in this business.” Markowitz shrugged. “Speaking of getting. You get anything we can use out of that data?”

  He hadn’t; that was why he’d jacked out for a while. “The decoder is still working. It’s good, but whoever locked up that data was good too.”

  Markowitz slammed his fist against the table. “Damn, I hate having nothing but smoke to work with! What are the fragging connections?”

  “Do we even know that everything’s connected?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Well, no, actually.”

  “Look, kid. As complicated as some of these shadow scams are, it’s actually simpler when there are connections. Random events do happen, but counting on them for explanations will get you dead, like Beatty. If I’d caught on sooner, he might not be. There was more than one reason for the drek to come down on our heads on the delivery, just like there was more than one reason for Sammy Locksley to get whacked. It’s not like none of us have made any enemies. But there was a connection. If I’d seen it sooner . ..”

  Andy didn’t see how Markowitz could blame himself for what had happened to Beatty or the other rigger. “How could you have known?”

  “Does it matter? It’s plain now. Beatty went down just about the same time they hit Shamgar. Same time my place got trashed. It was a coordinated op. Sammy was just their first shot. We’ve got bad boys on our tails.”

  “Too bad we don’t know who. We might be able to make a deal.”

  “Sometimes you can deal, but you’ve got to have something to deal with. We’re still sucking smoke.”

  “Yeah.” It was pretty scary. Virtual runs had been so much cleaner. So much safer. Andy decided he didn’t like having people trying to kill him. “We don’t even know who’s after us.”

  “We’ve got angles, we just need to sight along them. Given what Kit told us about the guys who did my office, I’d say we’re looking at a Confederated undercover squad. Marine Ferrets, or maybe vanilla S.I.A. Numbers are right for a Ferret team, but the style’s a little more like the spooks.”

  “A combined operation?” Andy suggested.

  “They’ve got the same bosses, more or less, but working together? As likely as cats and dogs hunting dinner together.” Markowitz shook his head dismissively, then stopped suddenly and looked thoughtful. “But you know, you may have the seed of something there. The timing on the strikes was real tight. A little too tight for either one, though, especially for an outcountry op.”

  “But if they’re the ones who got Sammy Locksley, why didn’t they go for the whole team then?”

  “Good question.” Markowitz frowned. “There must be shadow connections. Telestrian must have some kind of interest in this—beyond the usual proprietary concern about stolen data.”

  Making such an assumption about Telestrian seemed a little paranoid to Andy. “How do you figure that?”

  “I don’t. It’s one of my hunches, okay? Humor me a little and massage those files wi
th ‘CAS’ and ‘Confederated’ as hunt codes. Try ‘Richmond’ and ‘Atlanta,’ too.”

  Hunt codes offered the decoder software points of reference against which to match possible data combinations.

  Enough of the right kind of codes could offer the leverage necessary to unravel an encryption. It had always seemed odd to Andy that you needed to know what something was about to find out what something was about, but using hunt codes could cut decryption times to fractions of what they would otherwise be.

  Andy tried them and when he saw that Markowitz’s suggestions seemed to be working, he dropped out of full Matrix interface into a user interface that let him have a fuller awareness of his meat environment. He pointed at data scrolling across the cyberdeck’s screen. It was one of the Montjoy files Yates had grabbed. “Look. Here and here. These are credit transfers, but they go through a lot of unnecessary steps, like someone is trying to launder the money. If you follow them back, it looks like a lot of the funding for the Montjoy project has been coming from CAS contracts.”

  “Yeah, I see. Maybe that’s why the Army wanted a look-see.”

  Another file held a contract with an unspecified “contractor” for the Montjoy cybernetic control system. The contract had a clause requiring confidentiality under the threat of substantial financial forfeiture. “The Confeds wouldn’t like having their secrets stolen, but with Telestrian’s promises of exclusivity blown, the corp stood to lose a lot of money. So maybe it wasn’t the Army after you guys, or even the Confeds. It might have been Telestrian. Doesn’t it make sense that they’d want to whack anybody who stole Montjoy from them?”

  Markowitz shook his head. “Data steals happen all the time. You don’t geek everybody who dips you and hikes off with your wallet. Hell, even the Azzies aren’t that kill-crazy. Business is business, and those failure-of-confidentiality clauses usually can’t be enforced anyway. Not the compromised corp’s fault, don’t you know. Has to be that way or there isn’t any business.”

  “So you still think the Army were the ones after us?”

  “After me and the team.” Markowitz corrected.

  “What about the orks who beat me up? Someone sent them after me. Someone’s after me, too.” Andy rattled the bracelet Markowitz had put on him before their run in the Concordia. “You thought it was just a cover to get you to trust me.”

  “You were beat up too badly for that.” Markowitz said.

  “That’s not what you—”

  “I know what I said.” snapped Markowitz. “That kind of ganger hit isn’t an unusual corp response to a runaway who knows too much. Sometimes they want to scare the runaway back into the fold, sometimes they just want to close the account book. Since you were ‘dead,’ it was probably the latter. If the beating was a direct connect to this other stuff, they would have hit me at the same time.”

  Markowitz seemed very sure about that. “Maybe you were next, and the soldiers scared them away.”

  “Street orks and Confed hit teams working together? I don’t think so. Somebody at Telestrian wanted you gone, that’s all.”

  “If that’s what you thought all along, why did you put this explosive on me.” Andy held up the arm with the bracelet. “There isn’t any explosive.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said. It’s not going to hurt you, okay? Just forget about it.”

  “But—”

  Markowitz grabbed his arm and ripped off the bracelet. Andy winced, but nothing happened. No boom. Markowitz threw the bracelet on the floor.

  “There. See? No explosive.” Markowitz sighed. “Get your brain in gear, kid. We’ve got other more important problems.”

  Andy stared at the bracelet. No explosive?

  “The Army did have my name on their pickup list.” Markowitz mused. “But that don’t add up.”

  Andy didn’t see why not. “You convinced me they came after us with the Yellowjacket. If you’re right about simpler conspiracies, they must be the ones who hit your office, and got Beatty and Sammy, and went after Shamgar.”

  “You’re forgetting what Kit told us about them being foreigners, but not.”

  “I’m getting confused.”

  “No drek, kid. It’s a confusing situation.”

  “Wait a minute. If the Army wanted you dead, why did Colonel Jordan let you go? If they knew about the datasteal, they had reason to hold you. Tom’s argument about questioning you wouldn’t apply.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that right off. The run against Telestrian has gotten us tangled in a lot more than the Montjoy Project.”

  “Like what?”

  “Do I look like Sherlock Holmes? I haven’t got it scanned yet. Let’s take another look at your decodes. There’s still some files we haven’t got unlocked.”

  Andy pulled down the latest. They had more fragments, but the pieces still didn’t add up to anything that made much sense.

  “Add another couple of hunt codes.” Markowitz said. “I’m pushing my active memory as it is.”

  “So pull down some floating memory and reallocate. Mr. Crick will front the resources. Just do it.”

  “Okay.” Andy did it. It wasn’t his cred that was burning here. “What codes?”

  ‘“North Virginia’ and ‘Fredericksburg.’” Markowitz nodded solemnly as the decoder chuckled to itself while the machine worked through with the new input. “That string. Try ‘Jefferson’ on it.” Markowitz suggested.

  Like the other words Markowitz suggested, Jefferson was a name long associated with Virginia, but Andy didn’t see a connection. All Virginia, but why? How was it going to help? He tapped it in.

  The decoder digested the new instruction and spit out a new, improved possibility almost immediately. Thirty percent of the file was still unknown, mostly financials, but the best fit to the hunt-code possibilities had ninety-percent confidence for the text portions of the files. That meant there were hundreds of pages of theoretically decoded information, ready to read and try to make sense of. Andy dumped a copy to the telecom for Markowitz and jacked in to do his own search. Eventually a joggling of his meat body intruded on his cruising. He slid back and popped the jack.

  Kit, looking no worse for her travails, had joined them in their little refuge. Andy was glad to see her safe. He was also glad to see food on the table: a plate of salad and cheese wedges and a bowl of fried, breaded somethings surrounded by bowls of dipping sauces. His stomach growled.

  “Eat, then we’ll talk.” Markowitz said, talking around a mouthful of cheese. He didn’t wait, though. He filled Kit in on his speculations while he stuffed his face. Nibbling on one of the breaded dippers, she listened with a rapt expression on her face.

  “Some of these are blackmail files.” Markowitz concluded. “Nice careful notes of credit transfers and a fine selection of ‘gifts’ to Governor Jefferson from supporters. Normal graft, till you look a little deeper. It seems that all of his most generous supporters except one—our good friends at Telestrian—have their home addresses in the Confederated States; suggesting that the honorable Mr. Jefferson is in the southerners’ pockets, which explains a lot of his recent posturing.”

  “But why is Telestrian holding that information on Jefferson?” Kit asked.

  “Yeah.” The connection evaded Andy too. “It’s not like it’s a patriotic thing. They’re not based in the Confederated States. Their home is in Tir Tairngire. What’s in it for them?”

  “Money.” Markowitz shrugged. “It’s the usual answer when you’re dealing with a corp. Elves aren’t any different than norms when it comes to a desire for the almighty nuyen.”

  Andy was still a little lost. “So both Telestrian and the Confeds are linked to Governor Jefferson, and Telestrian and the Confeds are in bed together on Montjoy. What’s the connection between a bought politician and a new cybernetic control system?”

  “I’m still working on that, but there’s got to be some kind of convergent interest.”

  “Because you don’t w
ant to believe in coincidence.”

  “Right.”

  “So where does the Army fit into this?”

  “I’m still working on that, too. But it was their damn Yellowjacket that was trying to fry our tails. I’m sure of that.”

  “Right.” Andy said, just a little skeptically.

  “I had a friend check out the wreck.” Markowitz said defensively. “It was Army, and not stolen. It’s currently listed as lost in an accidental crash during a training exercise on the day of the attack. The only surprise about the thing is that they didn’t blame the wreck on the Comp Army. That would have been an easy fix, considering the situation at the time.”

  “We’ve got to tell Tom about this.” Andy said.

  “Tell him what? We haven’t got anything.”

  “We’ve got the blackmail files on the governor, and his connection to the Confeds. We’ve got the connection between Telestrian and the Confeds. He said he needed evidence.”

  “Nothing we’ve got has anything to do with General Trahn or with the rioting. What does he care about Jefferson or Telestrian? He can’t use it. But if we contact Rocquette, we’ll be touching the military net and it will give Jemal a chance to track us down. That boy likes to hold a grudge. Besides, what makes you think Rocquette sticking up for us was anything more than a good-cop, bad-cop routine?”