Who Hunts the Hunter

by Nyx Smith

  To really fix the resource-tracking system Amy may have to convince Vernon Janasova to replace a lot of machines and a lot of software, which, in general terms, will take a great deal of money. Unfortunately, she hasn’t had time to do a proper evaluation and estimate. She hasn’t had time to make more than a few pages of notes on how, ultimately, she would like the fully upgraded/replaced system to work. And until she gets those jobs done, she’s stuck. They’re all stuck with what they’ve got.

  Would the people in Tokyo like to donate the money to fix things up right? That’s one idea she’ll have to wave in Kurushima’s face when she gives him his answers.

  Getting the auditor his answers will take some time. The first step is jacking in. Amy’s palmtop does what it couldn’t have done from her office at New Bronx Plaza: establish itself as a priority terminal with unlimited access to the System 80’s resources, including its many terminals, scattered throughout the building. The Metascience Group computer net utilizes an unusual technique to defend against unauthorized intrusions: complete isolation. No comm lines in or out of the network. A prospective datathief, or accomplice, would have to physically enter the building before a theft could be attempted from the group’s proprietary data.

  Step two is initializing a data-sifting program called Sniffer that will search the entire system for references to the list of 148 items she’s compiled from Kurushima’s list of things purchased but apparently never used. Has she done this kind of thing before? Yes, she has. Her special search prog was written by one of Hurley-Cooper’s software gurus. It will do what the RCC prog on the net doesn’t do right all the time, and much, much more. It will likely return with a few megapulses worth of references for her to review. A distinctly unsatisfactory case of more being less, since she’ll have to sort through the references manually, but that’s life. That’s when the real fun will begin.

  But the thing that keeps her mood in a positive mode is the thought of giving a definitive answer to every last one of Kurushima Jussai’s inquiries.

  That she’s going to enjoy.

  18

  The moment the rain begins, Tikki knows she’s somewhere near Boston. The smell of the sprawl comes through clearly with every drop. It reminds her of her first visit to a two-leg city, the smells from that night so long ago when she walked into Seoul with her mother. She thought the smells of the plex must be the most exciting scent in the world. She lusted for it. Even when she quietly stalked through the shadows of Hong Kong, and, later, in Seattle, she relished it. She’s since grown weary of the reek.

  It’s become a smell that tastes of scag, two-leg machinery, chemicals, and waste. Of guileful predators in high towers pointing fingers and making bad things happen. Of razorguys and every form of animal fighting and dying in dark alleys and rotting in gutters. Most of all it tastes of two-legs and their monstrous magic and their inevitable treachery. It reminds her that the two-leg world is a lie, and that human or metahuman, elf, ork, or troll, they are all cheats, deceptions, betrayals just waiting to happen.

  Almost all. A rare few rise above the standard set by the rest of the herd. Tikki can count them on the fingers of one hand. One of them will shortly aid her in her hunt.

  Dawn is an hour past and the sky is nearly as dark as night. Lightning flashes in the distance. Thunder rumbles. The hairs on the back of her neck are constantly rising. Tingling with the power in the air. It reminds her of magic. The two powers on earth that cannot be touched by fang and claw, the powers of nature and of magic. Tikki mistrusts them both, resents them. Such power should not exist. It makes her nervous. It brings questions and doubts back to mind. It makes her wonder if her place in the world, in the hierarchy of creatures, is quite as high as she’s often supposed.

  The dark rain splatters against the windshield. The wipers smear the plas with dust and dirt till some foamy stuff sprays from the wiper arms and washes it all away.

  Finally, an exit appears. Tikki ignores the sign and turns down the ramp. It’s time to make a call.

  She’s now driving a multifuel Jackrabbit running on petrochem. Nearly every third or fourth car on the road is a Jackrabbit. That is its advantage. It’s good cover, good camouflage.

  Two kilometers further on, she finds a NewPac station. The credstick she took from the Amerind back in Maine buys her food and fuel and time on a telecom. The attendants in the store and at the pumps sit in armored booths. She’s near the sprawl, all right. Very near.

  An advert for Fuchi cybernetic systems plays on the telecom screen while her call goes through.

  A male voices answers."Word.”

  “Steel.”

  “Who wants him?”

  “Who asks?”

  Minutes pass. Tikki waits. She knows why the delay stretches out long, and has to work at containing her impatience. The voice that finally comes on the line is a breathy whisper, a rasp, inhumanly hoarse."You’re breaking protocols.”

  “Eat it,” Tikki snarls.

  The male at the other end of the line is known as Steel. His real name is Castillano. He was once a serious figure in the Seattle underworld. He is now serious in more places than one, and he does not like being snarled at.

  “Problem?” he rasps.

  “Your man gave me up.”

  Another silence."Then I owe you.”

  “You owe me much.” The theft of her cub will not be reconciled so easily."Something’s been taken from me. I’m taking it back. I’m hunting again. Man.”

  Yet another silence ensues. Doubtless, Castillano understands what she means by hunting. In their last conversation, she had talked about getting out of the biz. Two-legs make things too complicated, and she had things to think about: her cub, her life. What it all means. But the elves have changed that. She may be out of the biz for good once this is all over, but until then she’s in, just as far and as deep as she needs to go.

  Castillano says, “What do you want?”

  “A name. I need things.”

  “What area?”

  “Boston.”

  A name is forthcoming, a source for what she needs. Castillano says the source will be told to expect her. That is not worth even half of what he owes her, but it will do for a start.

  * * *

  Two hours later, she parks in a slum near Norwood Airport and walks through the door of a place called Vung Tau. The smell is shrimp and spices. The interior is dim, the floor worn. A counter with stools runs down the right wall, booths on the left. The ork behind the counter hardly gives Tikki a glance. The small gang of five in the booth at the rear of the place pretend to ignore her: two males, three females. They smell discontent. They’re wearing sateen and synthleather and they look Vietnamese.

  “Who’s Thuy?” Tikki asks.

  One of the females answers. The reply is brief and could be Vietnamese. The tone is aggressive. Arrogant. The female herself looks strong, willful, ready to fight. Tikki isn’t impressed.

  She tries Korean."Who’s Thuy?”

  The female says, tersely, “Who sent you?”

  “Steel.”

  “How you know Steel?”

  A very presumptuous question. This two-leg, this person, Thuy, obviously has no conception of who she is facing. She proves this a moment later by looking to one of the males, who rises and turns to Tikki. This is not to be a greeting. Tikki smells it. The male steps toward her. Cyberspurs slide out of the ends of his arms and snick softly into position. That is annoying enough to bring instinct raging to the fore. In the next instant, Tikki is pounding the male with her fists and driving her knee into his stomach.

  The male sags, falls bleeding and wheezing to the floor, and vomits.

  The others come to their feet. Tikki seizes Thuy by the throat, shoves her back into the booth against two of her friends, and leans in nose to nose."You smell bad,” Tikki growls."Maybe I tear out your throat.”

  Thuy is wide-eyed. Her smell is now like fear. The others smell like fear, too. They’re looking at her dif
ferently. Maybe they’re impressed. Maybe one or two of them saw the quick change in her hands, their size and shape, fur, claws.

  “You know Steel, you’re wiz. Primo,” Thuy yammers.

  Tikki lets the slitch feel the tip of a claw that pierces flesh like a razor, then disappears. A trickle of blood runs down the side of Thuy’s neck.

  “You want hardware?”

  Tikki lets go, steps back and nods. Thuy rises, warily, like prey, turns and walks swiftly to a door at the rear. Tikki follows. A narrow hallway turns to the top of old wooden stairs that lead down into a basement. The floor is concrete and scattered with macroplas crates. The smell is pure machine.

  “Anything you want.”

  Tikki opens a crate. What she wants is a Kang automag, heavy, powerful, simple, reliable. The closest she can get is a Merlin Viper A12, a big, heavy black gun with integral laser sighting and a silencer. As a substitute for the Kang, it’s not bad. It will select-fire two or three-round bursts. She finds ammunition and loads. She also finds a few tools that might prove useful, such as a Magna 2 electronic passkey.

  Two hours later, Viper in hand, Tikki steps into a bedroom paneled in some black shiny stuff like sateen. Little motes like stars twinkle on the ceiling. Music like an ethereal chorus plays softly from around the room. Lying asleep in the big red-hued bed is a large two-leg male with dark brown skin and black hair. His name is Clutch. He became one of Castillano’s Boston contacts only recently. He was thought to be reliable. Beside him lies a two-leg female with blue razor-cut hair and light brown skin. This female lifts her head and looks, lunges up, and, snarling, comes charging straight at Tikki.

  This is no surprise. It may be daylight outside, but the moon is waxing full. Primitive instincts are on the rise. As the two-leg female comes off the end of the bed, Tikki swings the Viper automag like a club, and the female drops.

  “What the frag!” Clutch growls, suddenly sitting up.

  The Viper thumps and bucks. Clutch twitches and shouts, and suddenly the smell of his anger turns sour with fear. There is a big black hole in the pillow beside him. He looks at that sharply and immediately looks back at Tikki, eyes going wide.

  “What the frag are you doingl”

  “On your belly.”

  “Are you crazy!”

  The Viper thumps again. This time the hole in the pillow is only a centimeter or two from Clutch’s left hand. The man shouts and jerks away, now stinking of fear.

  “Don’t do this!”

  “On your belly.”

  The male turns onto his belly. Tikki steps onto the bed and straddles his back. She grabs his left wrist and flattens his hand against the mattress. She puts the muzzle of the Viper against his small finger, where the finger meets the hand. She knows what the loss of this finger might mean to a human. When humans lose limbs, the limbs do not grow back. Humans sometimes die because they heal so slowly that all their blood leaks away. They are really very fragile.

  “Three elves came to me at the cabin.”

  Clutch shouts."I don’t know nothing about this!”

  “You are the only one who knew. You told them where to find me. You took their cred, two hundred-kay. Now you will tell me their names.”

  “I don’t—!”

  The Viper thumps. Clutch screams. The screams give way to nearly incoherent pleas for mercy. Maybe now Clutch understands that she is not playing gutterpunk games. She will do anything and everything to get the information she wants."Tell me their names.”

  “Tang!"

  And that is the third time she has heard this name, that of the male elf who helped steal her cub. The elf also known as O’Keefe."Where is Tang?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I don’t know! ”

  “How do you know him?”

  “New York connection!”

  “Give me a name.”

  “I can’t—”

  The Viper thumps again. This two-leg does not learn quickly. His screams go on long enough for Tikki to wonder if someone might get curious and come to investigate. It is unlikely that anyone in the neighborhood will summon police. It is even more unlikely, if her guess is correct, that police would actually respond to this neighborhood. It is a place where scagmen like Clutch make their dens.

  Clutch’s joygirl wakes. Her smell gives her away. She remains where she is, however, lying on the floor as if unconscious. She is a fast learner.

  “The name,” Tikki growls.

  Clutch groans, “Sabot... !”

  That smells like truth.

  Tikki asks more questions. She learns more about Sabot, such as how he might be found. That’s all Clutch has to contribute.

  As for his betrayal, there is only one just repayment.

  She seizes his throat in a hand like an enormous paw and squeezes till cartilage is snapping and her arm’s shaking with the effort. Her lips are curling and her fangs are coming out by the time the man’s eyes roll back into his head. That’s one score evened up.

  19

  “The pigeon has been aced.”

  “Any police involvement?”

  “Not as yet.”

  That’s good to hear. O’Keefe returns the handset to the heavily armored payfone, then pauses to light a Platinum Select. The first drag is smooth and flavorful, hinting of cloves, and adds substance to his sense that everything is going as it should. An interesting perception, he reflects, considering where he now stands. A quick glance around assures him that Hartford may be the only place in the world more disreputable than Newark.

  Everywhere, traffic rumbles, from the elevated lanes of the interstate, barely a block away, as well as from the street immediately before him. Trucks and buses rumble; motorcycles whine and blare. Everyone is on the move and none of them are stopping here. He can understand that. The street is lined with garbage, some of it burning. The buildings rising five and six stories into the dirty sienna glow of the morning look like burned-out derelicts, well beyond salvaging. At one end of the block, synthleather-clad orks are beating on someone whose shrill screams briefly rise above the rapid thudding of fists and clubs. At the street’s other end, a Lone Star special tactics team lines gangers up against a wall, and, when one steps out of place, opens fire with autoweapons.

  O’Keefe turns and heads into an alley cluttered with garbage and junk. Devil rats peer at him from dark corners. A pair of troll-sized legs protrudes from under the rusted remains of a stripped-down refrigerator. O’Keefe slides one hand through the pocket of his black duster to the butt of the Luger SPv3 holstered at his hip. The weight of the parabellum is as reassuring as the Kelmar Tech utility vest covering his chest. When real trouble comes, and it is already on the way, he will be ready.

  Three blocks further on is the Kuritomo Motel. It’s the kind of streeter hole where joyboys and girls jack their clients, then leave them to die. O’Keefe is not worried about the pair of biffs he left waiting here. They can handle most common sorts of trouble. That is why he uses them.

  O’Keefe crosses the narrow strip of parking lot to his rented Leyland-Rover van, grabs his duffel, and goes to find room 12 and his “partners.”

  The room is a moderately squalid rectangle of stained wallcoverings, scratched and mismatched plastic furnishings, and worn carpeting. There are two narrow beds and one chair. In the chair sits Shaver, cleaning her Ingram 20t SMG. On one of the beds sits Whistle, watching her wrist-watch. Beside her, in a large gray case made of a macroplast composite, lies about seventy kilograms of bait, now slumped, prone, unmoving.

  “You fed it first?” O’Keefe asks.

  Whistle nods, then whistles to confirm it. Keeping the bait well-fed is essential to delivering it intact. Testing the effectiveness of tranquilizers on it is essential to events soon to come.

  “I don’t like sharing space with Weres,” Shaver grumbles.

  “You’ll adjust,” O’Keefe replies.

  Shaver is a former Sister Sinis
ter. She knows many deceitful little tricks that turn a female’s natural deficiencies into edges as deadly as any gun, and she is deadly with guns. She conceives of herself as enticingly voluptuous and dresses in tight-fitting black synthleather, though now stripped down to underwear, revealing her many tattoos and scars. Whistle always dresses in white. She’s young for a mage and has only a limited repertoire of spells, but she comes from the streets and has a temperament as solid as granite. No sniveling suburban slitches, either one of them, though they do complain. They are a team unto themselves. For the moment, they make advantageous allies.

  Whistle the White and Shaver the Black.

  Curious ... a curious pair.

  But, O’Keefe understands Shaver’s sentiment. Having a

  Were, even a young one in the room only recalls the risks they face, and hunting creatures like Weres is about as risky as it gets. They’re unpredictable, some little more than animals with the power to assume a human form. They’re difficult to snare because they recover so quickly from almost any sort of injury. O’Keefe’s tried fifty different brands of tranquilizers, with dosages strong enough to bring down a behemoth, yet the best results tranqs ever yield is a fleeting stillness, perhaps as little as a minute or so of unconsciousness. Repeat exposures sometimes yield no effect whatsoever, as if the body, once exposed, immediately develops a natural tolerance.

  And snaring them is just part of the problem. Holding them can be even more difficult. Ordinary chains and manacles are not always effective. Nor are cages and cells. The beasts can be slippery. For one thing, they’re not limited by metahumanal preconceptions about how the world should work, and therefore how it “must” work. They’re quick to make use of an opportunity a metahuman might not notice. The classic story of the beast that gnaws through its own leg to escape a trap is just the beginning, as far as Weres are concerned.

  “You better have this zoned out frozen,” Shaver says.

  “Things seem to be evolving properly.”