by Mel Odom
Acknowledgments
For Loren Coleman and John Helfers,
who invited me back into the shadows and made me welcome.
DEDICATION
For my son Chandler, who ran the deep shadows of Hong Kong with me!
CHAPTER ONE
“You don’t talk a lot.”
Mr. Johnson’s voice was tight. Mr. Johnson wasn’t his name, of course. Every corp contact or person that hired a shadow-runner used that cover name, or one similarly innocuous.
Hawke looked at the man. “Compared to whom?”
Mr. Johnson stared at him for a moment. “For someone in your business. I just thought you’d talk more.”
Hawke sighed and shifted on the booth seat. He was nearly two meters tall barefoot and weighed about 120 kilos. The legroom in Tang’s Rice and Noodle Bar hadn’t been designed with him in mind, but he was better off than the trolls. Hawke shaved his head and kept his face clean. Rangy and athletic, he stood out in a street full of skells, but his hooded duster blunted the hard lines and shadowed his face. His swarthy skin color came from his Cuban mother, but his green eyes were a gift from his Irish father.
Mr. Johnson was a typical youngblood corp exec. He was in his thirties, which meant he’d never rise much above his current station, and one day he’d be cannon fodder for the megacorp he served. He didn’t have any kind of edge to him, and seemed more defensive than proactive. He had a good manicure, but he’d ragged his nails recently. Crusty blood lined the nail beds of the index and middle fingers on his left hand.
The man’s smooth-shaven face and gelled black hair reflected the neon gleam penetrating the front window of Tang’s in Santa Fe’s Old Town District. His stylish suit was well cared for, but it was heavy with body armor and hung wrong as he sat in the booth. It had been cut to conceal the protection while standing, further marking him as disposable. A guy didn’t pull down the big cred while standing—unless he had a pistol in his fist.
Tang’s was a low-rent place, but had plenty of space for its clientele to spread out among the booths and tables. Security was at a minimum, but the hidden high-tech and the experienced wait staff could sniff out a Lone Star SWAT team a mile away. By the time the cops arrived, every runner in the place would have vanished in the maze of alleys around the joint.
Southwest turquoises and yellows warred with Japanese reds and blacks in the color scheme, barely holding back the dark night outside the window overlooking the street. Two female bartenders kept drinks flowing, along with endless chatter, but Hawke knew both women were heavily cybered. They moved like they were articulated with ball bearings. The vidcams were equipped with Saeder-Krupp 20mm miniguns. Seasoned fragrances rolled from the kitchen in the back of the house.
The high menu prices included the security, and were well worth the investment.
“Despite this.” Hawke tapped the innocuous Mitsuhama Computer Technologies white noise generator sitting on the table. “We’re not here to talk. You’re here to offer me a run. I’m here to decide whether I want it. If there’s not enough cred involved, I walk away. If I don’t like the run, I walk away. If the run is something I don’t think I can do, I walk away.”
In the darkness slashed by neon, Mr. Johnson hung on every word.
“If I think you’re setting me up,” Hawke said in that same flat, matter-of-fact voice, “I kill you and I walk away.”
Mr. Johnson leaned back.
“Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?” Hawke asked.
“Not really,” Mr. Johnson said, then shook his head. “No.”
“Okay.”
Mr. Johnson reached into his jacket too fast, caught himself, and moved slower. “I’ve got a credstick I was instructed to give you.”
“Sure.” Hawke kept the Raecor Sting holdout pistol concealed in his big hand. The small weapon fired flechettes that could destroy the man’s face or throat across the table.
His hand trembling slightly, showing how new he was to the assignment, Mr. Johnson laid the credstick on the table. “It’s got five thousand nuyen on it. Just for listening to me. Like we agreed.”
“All right.” The upfront payment was one of the main reasons Hawke had agreed to the meet. Showing up and walking away for that much cred was a null-brainer.
“Don’t you want to check it?” Mr. Johnson waved at the slot set up in the table.
“No.” Slotting the credstick might confirm the available balance, but it might also alert any neighborhood chipheads looking for their next Better-Than-Life download that he had an open credstick on him, not one attached to a System Identification Number. Since he didn’t have an official SIN, most of Hawke’s work tended to be cred and carry.
“You trust me.”
“No. If the cred’s not there, I find you again. And then we don’t have a nice meeting.”
Mr. Johnson hooked a finger into his shirt collar and pulled.
“The run,” Hawke reminded him. He was growing restless. Any meeting with a Mr. Johnson that took longer than two minutes was a minute and a half too long. They hooked up just to swap info and cred, not life stories.
“There’s someone down in Aztlan we’d like you to . . . recruit,” Mr. Johnson said.
“This person willing to be recruited?”
“I don’t know.”
“Snatching someone against their will costs more.” Hawke had “liberated” corp assets in the past. Often those assets were human or metahuman. Some wanted to change corps, others didn’t. Hawke tried to stay away from the “recruitments” involving unwilling participants, because handling outside pressure was hard enough without dealing with internal pressure as well.
Mr. Johnson slid a datachip in a protective case across the tabletop to Hawke. “Everything you need to know is there.”
Hawke made no move to take it. “Is the recruit corp-connected?”
“My understanding is that the recruit is subcontracted and working on a special project somewhere in Aztlan. I don’t know the exact location.”
“How special is the project?”
“The corp the recruit is working for has no idea of the project’s real worth.” Mr. Johnson let out a tense breath. “That’s all I know.”
Hawke believed the man. A disposable Mr. Johnson wouldn’t be given any substantial information. Hawke picked up the datachip and snugged it into a special case designed to negate GPS tracking and RFID pings. For all intents and purposes, to anyone following the datachip through the Matrix, it had just dropped into a black hole.
Unless they had better Matrix-ware than he did.
“Are you taking the assignment?” Mr. Johnson asked.
Hawke slipped the case into his pocket and rose, towering over the smaller man. “Is there a comm address where I can reach you in the data?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then I’ll let you know.” Movement reflected in the window alerted Hawke that three men were converging on him. Recognizing one of them immediately, he knew he was looking at trouble.
CHAPTER TWO
Slowly, Hawke turned to face the three new arrivals.
“Hoi, Hawke,” Deckard said with a cold smile. The expression pulled his broad face into a grim rictus that exposed the huge canine teeth jutting up from his massive lower jaw. “Long time, no see.”
Standing nearly two and a half meters tall, Deckard was huge. Corded muscle coiled over his broad troll body and his cyber additions on his arms and face picked up the neon gleam. Silver hoops hung from his pointed ears. His massive horns curved back over his head, flanking the scarlet mohawk between them. His beard was scarlet now as well. Natural dermal bone deposits created a bumpy landscape on his harsh face.
He wore a tight,
sleeveless, armored leather jacket to show off his bulging biceps and his cyberware. Ridged armored pants encased his legs and slid down into heavy combat boots. He carried a matched set of Ares Predator IVs holstered at his hips like an Old West gunslinger.
Two other similarly clad and equipped trolls stood on either side of Deckard.
“Do we have biz?” Hawke asked in a quiet voice.
“Not you and me,” Deckard replied, looming over him. “The biz we had between us is over. You made that clear.”
Hawke waited, because the troll made no move to stand aside.
“I came to make you a deal, Mr. Johnson,” Deckard said, still focusing on Hawke.
“I—I don’t know you.” Mr. Johnson looked sick and nervous. He cowered back in his seat.
Deckard grinned. “No reason you should. Hawke don’t give a lot of credit to the chummers he works with. Claims all the glory for himself. But he ain’t always the one that gets things done.”
The glory Hawke recognized was staying alive in the shadows without hitting too many megacorp radars. There were jobs a runner claimed, and there were ones that he walked away from if he didn’t want to get skragged. Deckard didn’t understand that concept. For the troll, it was all about the cred. Greed overrode good sense too often.
“I worked with Hawke,” Deckard said. “Provided firepower on some of the runs he took on. Pulled his fat out of the fire on a few occasions. Fact is, I’m better than him. Whoever you’re representing, you’re better off hiring me.”
Hawke felt Mr. Johnson’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn around. Deckard was dangerous.
“I’m not authorized to talk with anyone else regarding this matter,” Mr. Johnson said. “Hawke was mentioned by name. My employers want him.”
Deckard scowled at that. “Good thing you gave Hawke that open credstick and the datachip then, isn’t it? I have those, we’re in biz. You can tell your corp overseers that you upgraded the service, maybe get yourself a promotion. We’ll renegotiate the price when I’m ready.”
Hawke smiled at that and brought his wired reflexes online. The neural boosters and adrenaline stimulators implanted throughout his body ignited, and the world around him suddenly slowed down.
“Hawke?” Mr. Johnson asked, his voice echoing a little strangely now that it sounded so slow, and Hawke could hear the distinct intonations. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Deckard’s trying to hijack my run,” Hawke said. “We worked together a few times.”
“We were partners,” the troll growled.
“I don’t do partners.” Hawke had to work hard to keep his speech slowed to normal speed. His fight or flight instinct was on full alert, hammering at his mind and body. He was so jacked up now he could barely stay on top of it. He was chaos incarnate, just waiting to explode.
“Hawke dissed me,” Deckard said. “Thought he could use me and lose me like a joytoy after the ride was over.” He glared at the big man. “Well, we see how that worked out, don’t we?”
“Our biz was finished,” Hawke said. “We could have done more biz in the future.”
“Really? Were you planning on pulling me into this?”
“I don’t know what this is.” Hawke knew he should have departed Santa Fe after finishing the runs with Deckard. The troll had gotten too proprietary, wanted to lead instead of be led. Hawke had no intention of letting that happen.
“What this is,” Deckard said, “is mine. Hand over the credstick and the datachip. I’ll let you walk away.”
“You can’t do that,” Mr. Johnson said, rising from the table to stand by Hawke.
Hawke didn’t respond, but he was surprised and a little respectful of the guy’s reaction. It also meant whoever was employing him was powerful—and cutthroat.
Mr. Johnson frowned at the troll. “The corp I represent won’t do biz like that. They’ll scuttle this assignment.”
Deckard shrugged. “Don’t make any difference to me. I get the info on that datachip, I bet there’s another corp out there willing to pay to play. Or maybe just to find out what’s on that chip.”
Several of Tang’s patrons had stealthily slipped away from them. Hawke knew the miniguns were trained on their table, too.
“Or maybe,” Hawke said quietly, “the corp behind Mr. Johnson will put a contract out on you and your little buddies.”
The two trolls backing Deckard looked at each other. Street samurai weren’t always the brightest in the bunch, tending to deal in brawn and more brawn. Just like Deckard. Only Deckard had a few conniving bones and some larcenous marrow thrown in as well.
“Biz is biz,” Deckard said. “They want it, they’ll deal with me.”
And that probably was the bottom line. A corp needed someone to run through the shadows, and they couldn’t get caught with dirty hands. The corp might just walk away from the whole thing, and the datachip didn’t have anything on it to tie them to the run.
Everyone could possibly get away clean.
Except for Hawke. Deckard would let people know that he’d backed down, and word would get out. And the shadows carried word—rumor, truth, whatever—at cybersonic speed.
“Give me the datachip,” Deckard demanded.
Hawke reached into his jacket with his left hand, taking out the datachip with his forefinger and thumb. He still held the palmed Raecor Sting in his left hand as well, and manipulated the chip with practiced dexterity. Deckard saw the protective case and focused on it.
Hawke squeezed the Sting, and tiny, razor-sharp flechettes pinged out through the abbreviated barrel between his second and third fingers.
CHAPTER THREE
The initial burst of metal slivers destroyed Deckard’s right eye. That one was—had been—still organic. The razored shards reduced the orb to a gelatinous mass of blood and ocular fluids that streamed down the troll’s uneven cheek.
Deckard screamed and clapped a hand to his ruined eye. He staggered back a couple steps, bumping into the trolls behind him. Both of them already had weapons in their fists.
Hawke spun and grabbed Mr. Johnson by his jacket lapels. Hoisting the man off his feet, he threw him through the transplas window. Hawke followed as the miniguns inside the restaurant opened fire on the table.
His cloaked duster was guaranteed up to 20mm rounds, but that just prevented penetration. The hydrostatic shock—the impact of bullets actually striking an organic target—still passed through and could damage flesh. Bone could break as well.
Mr. Johnson hit the sidewalk in front of Tang’s and immediately tried to get up. Cursing the man’s stupidity, Hawke pushed off the windowsill toward him, scattering more glass shards. At least one of the minigun rounds or a bullet from an Ares Predator IV slammed between his shoulder blades as he leaped forward, knocking the wind out of him.
Hawke landed on Mr. Johnson, hammering the man to the ground, and croaked with his remaining breath, “Stay down or they’ll kill you!” He hoped Deckard and the trolls had gotten caught in the minigun crossfire.
The street in front of Tang’s emptied quickly. Some of the pedestrians had weapons, but none wanted to buy into a three-troll gunfight. Hawke was thankful for that.
Deckard and a remaining troll leaped through the smashed window and rolled to safety. Both of them got to their knees and raised large handguns. Hawke yanked Mr. Johnson to his feet as both trolls took aim. Time worked against all of them now. Lone Star had undoubtedly been alerted, and cruisers were en route.
Everything around Hawke moved as though mired in quicksand. Mr. Johnson wasn’t able to keep up with his rapid steps that kept them just ahead of Deckard and the other troll’s marksmanship. Hawke half-carried the man, shoving him forward and helping him stay on his feet as well.
They turned the corner and plunged into the relative safety of the dark alley. Hawke shoved Mr. Johnson forward. “Go!”
Terrified, the man ran for his life down the alley.
Hawke paused just inside the entrance, out of s
ight of Deckard and his partner. The trolls’ feet slammed heavily against the sidewalk. At full wired speed now, Hawke reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small flash-bang grenade, armed it, and curled it inside the crook of his left pinkie.
Reaching behind him, Hawke freed the two katars he wore holstered across his back. The punching daggers elongated as sections guided by electronic memory clicked into place. Both weapons had H-patterned handgrips and were forty centimeters long when extended. The punching end came to an armor-piercing needle point and the base flared out to eleven centimeters wide. The gleaming monofilament edges sliced easily through flesh, bone, and most armor. Opponents bled out rapidly when he sank a dagger in to the hilt and withdrew it.
Mr. Johnson’s receding footsteps drummed rapidly against the alley floor, but a trained ear would notice there was only one person running away now. Hawke would have realized that immediately, and known an ambush was waiting. He hoped Deckard and his companion, fearing their big score was getting away, wouldn’t be so attentive.
Deckard rounded the corner first and had both pistols in front of him. Moonlight silvered his cybered eye as he tracked Mr. Johnson, but he seemed slow compared to Hawke.
With a quick flick of his wrist, Hawke tossed the flash-bang against the opposite alley wall. As the second troll joined Deckard, both of them registered the movement through the air and opened fire.
Although Hawke had planned on the impact with the wall to set off the flash-bang, one of the trolls’ bullets did the job instead. The grenade went off prematurely, and he hadn’t quite managed to turn away. The blinding strobes and thunderous detonation partially robbed him of his vision and most of his hearing.
Deckard and his companion got pole-axed by the maelstrom of light and sound. Evidently both had cybered hearing and vision. For a frozen moment, they stood in paralyzed agony.
Hawke shot forward, intending to take Deckard out of the action first. Instead, the second troll caught a glimpse or a sound of him approaching and started shooting again. The rapid-fire explosions echoed through the narrow alley.
