Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  “Common sense says she’s an independent programmer of some sort,” Archangel said.

  Skater reached up and flipped down the visor, using the vanity mirror on the inside of it to meet the decker’s gaze. “Why?”

  “If she’d been working for Fuchi, they would already have had access to whatever software designs she’d created. Prototypes, if not the finished product. And they’d have spent their time looking for her in her usual haunts, not hunting us.”

  “Woulda been the same for any other cop,” Duran said. “Yes. But it was Fuchi.”

  “Meaning Fuchi’s probably the only one who tumbled to the software so far,” the ork said.

  Skater seized on the ideas, running them through and playing the angles, bouncing them around until he had something he could play with that made sense. “Caber knew.”

  “He was working for Fuchi,” Archangel pointed out. Her hands rested comfortably in her lap, her face expressionless, her eyes masked. “Obviously, Caber thought he could cut a better deal for himself by not telling Fuchi everything. Or the woman.” Some of the angles were starting to fall into place in Skater’s head. He felt his mind flex around them, spinning them into position so they fit with other truths he knew or could guess at. He was barely conscious of the highway humming along under the synthrubber tires or the sprawl uncoiling around them. “What did Caber have to offer the woman that would make her work with him?”

  Duran swapped looks with Archangel in the rearview mirror. “If you got something, kid, spit it out so we can have a look at it too. Fragging chron’s ticking away faster than a dying snake twitches.”

  Skater felt excitement thrill through him as he put it together. “Caber got onto the woman somehow while he was working for Fuchi. We can all agree on that. But let’s take a look at Caber’s usual field of operations.”

  “The megacorps,” Archangel said.

  “Right. One way or another, by blackmail or subterfuge, Caber found his way into the other corps over the years and stole secrets. Secrets that could be turned into heavy profits for Fuchi. We got that information from different sources, but they were in agreement. If the woman had come from another corp, we know one thing for certain.”

  “Fuchi wouldn’t have been the only fragging corp in the scene,” Duran growled. “The original corp would have been hustling to recover their lost tech too.”

  Skater nodded. A lot of the joints between his ideas appeared seamless as he smoothed them out. Despite the exhaustion slamming into him from the frenetic activity of the night before and the day-long schedule of running and fighting, his mind had slid into that twilight of clear-headedness independent of physical body. “Somebody else—Renraku, Yamatetsu, Mitsuhama—some-fragging-body would have been tripping all over this piece of biz with Fuchi.”

  “Don’t forget Quentin Strapp,” Archangel said. “He represents the UCAS’ interest in this.”

  “Whatever interest they have,” Duran said.

  “The woman,” Skater said with certainty.

  “Why?” Archangel asked.

  “Fuchi was in place in Seattle. Caber was in place in his position.” Skater stared through the windshield in front of him without really seeing it. “The only thing that changed was the woman.”

  “How?”

  Skater shook his head. “I don’t know. But it was her movement that started the chain of events.”

  “That’s a stretch, kid.” Duran peered over at Skater. “Check this,” Skater said, feeling that he was on the right path but not knowing exactly where it was taking him. “We’ve been told Caber was under deep cover for months. Probably working this software development. Let’s say this woman has been developing the software for a time, was getting close to completing it. If she was working with one of the major corps, she’d have had a whole staff that would have known what she was doing.”

  “Caber woulda been able to take any one of them,” Duran said. “Get behind her back. Maybe even geek her and be done with it.”

  “Yeah. So why go to the woman?” Skater asked.

  “Because she was the only one who had access to the software tech,” Archangel replied. “So she wasn’t part of a corporation.”

  “No. Probably she was with an independent research facility.” Some of the team’s own runs had been against such small agencies. The problem with a thinktank was that a runner never knew if he was going to get anything worth fencing. Or for certain what kind of security was going to be guarding the place. Several developers who leased workspace in a thinktank also provided their own security in addition to what was already operational.

  “Okay, kid, the controllability factor of the software makes the case for the non-megacorp sphere of operations, but what makes you think she had some kind of development deal with an independent research facility?” Duran demanded.

  “She’d have needed access to different passcoded deltaware designs,” Archangel said, instantly following along.

  Skater looked at her with approval. This was the Archangel he was familiar and comfortable with.

  “If she designed a program that would erase all the protective codes in only one scenario,” Archangel went on, “she wouldn’t have created much.”

  “You think this is what the woman was trying to invent?” Duran asked.

  “Don’t know. We’d have to talk to her to know that.” Skater paused, reassembling his thoughts. “She created this software, and she had to know what the applications would be. The corps only passcode-protect higher-level execs. She might not have even seen it for what it was.”

  “I doubt that,” Archangel said. “Perhaps she took another path to get to it, but she knew.”

  “Which brings us back to Caber’s part in it for her,” Skater said. “Working as he did throughout the megacorps, knowing who he could buy and knowing where all the dirty laundry was hidden so he could leverage passcodes and information, Caber also learned a lot of other things.”

  A slow grin spread across Duran’s face. He scratched his whisker-stubbled chin with a black-taloned thumb. “Who was ready to jump ship at which megacorp and who was ready to take them on.”

  “Got it in one,” Skater said.

  “Vankler said Caber had been moving execs in the last few weeks,” Duran said. “Joker like Caber, he wouldn’t have stood around the sprawl to see who come out hunting him.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Skater said. “He’d have set himself up a deal, sold the software to the first corp that could meet his price, and then shook the dust off his feet as far as Seattle, and maybe the UCAS, was concerned.”

  “So why didn’t he?” Archangel asked.

  “The woman,” Skater replied, feeling he was right. “She doesn’t know how biz is done. She used Caber as long as she could, used him to set up meets with the execs who wanted to haul hoop and had the credsticks to back it up.”

  “She’s after the money,” Duran said. He took the off-ramp on the highway, aiming the car down the access ramp that would coil it around the clover-leaf pattern and shunt them into the loop that would take them around downtown Everett.

  “It’s not just the money,” Archangel said. “If she wanted that, she could have sold the software. What she wants is control. She’s sitting on a huge profit potential, but she’s got no way to make it work without losing everything.”

  And that, Skater felt, was the crux of the situation for the woman.

  “So where does this Strapp joker fit in?” Duran asked.

  “I don’t know,” Skater replied honestly. “We’ll have to do some digging on him. Everything we’ve seen on the information my fixer gave me suggests he’s just what we’ve been told: a federal investigator searching for Dunkelzahn’s assassins.”

  “If Strapp is as single-minded—and honest—as we’ve been led to believe,” Archangel said, “then something about the woman or her research must lead back to Dunkelzahn.”

  “Unless Strapp’s using Caber and the woman to leverage a p
iece of biz against Fuchi,” Skater said. “Nobody knows who geeked the dragon or why. Except whoever did it.”

  “You put it like that,” Duran said in a heavy voice, “makes everything more complicated. Is Fuchi out to score some wiz piece of tech, or are they out just to cover their hoops?”

  “I don’t know,” Skater said. “The only thing I’m certain of is that that woman has got some tech that’s potentially worth millions of nuyen, and that if Luppas gets to her ahead of us, she’s roadkill.”

  45

  “Would you mind some company?”

  Sitting on a cold step in the building stairwell, Skater looked up and saw Archangel standing in the breezeway that led back to the Auburn safehouse, where they continued to stay because it was safer than lugging the corpse around. It was now 02:13:49. They’d been at the doss almost three hours since returning from Everett. Below in the streets, traffic still surged along, mostly stragglers making their way back home after the late shift or putting in an evening at their favorite watering hole.

  Archangel had changed clothes, opting for synthdenim jeans and a handknit Pueblo sweater with Southwestern colors and designs over a solid black turtleneck. She stood with a plate steaming gray vapor into the night in one hand and a glass in the other. A small loaf of sliced French bread was tucked under her arm. Her expression was defensive but hopeful.

  Skater was stunned by the offer and sat for a moment trying to figure it out.

  “Maybe not,” Archangel said, apparently misreading his face. Her nostrils flared and a pinched white spot appeared on her nose. She turned to go, her shoulders stiffly squared.

  “Archangel,” Skater called, cursing himself out silently for being so slow to react, “wait.”

  Surprisingly, she did.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You caught me while I was doing a major core-dump on the past twenty-four hours. I know I looked right at you, but you didn’t even show up on my internal screens.”

  Without turning around, she said, “I noticed you didn’t get any bread with your stew. I thought maybe you’d like some.”

  “I would.”

  She turned and placed her plate and glass on the edge of the stairwell. Her fingers worked deftly, pulling off a few slices of the short, narrow loaf.

  Skater took the slices, for a moment feeling her fingers against his. The chill of the night made him feel like electricity was in the brief touch. Then her hand retreated.

  “I don’t have to stay,” she said.

  “I’d like the company,” Skater said politely, though he wasn’t sure if he would or not. He balanced the bread on the plate’s edge and waited. All of a sudden it felt like he was sitting down to one of those tense family dinners back m the tribal lands. None of his mother’s family had liked him because he’d been half-white and bom of an unknown father. He’d sat there at the feasts, waiting to eat, the saliva always thick and dry in his mouth despite the rumbling in his belly.

  As if uncertain and uncomfortable herself, Archangel sat on the landing in front of Skater’s position on the stairwell steps. She moved the stew around on her plate without taking a bite for a time.

  “Trey’s resting much easier now.”

  Skater nodded. “That’s good.” The trip to the rat shaman hadn’t taken more than an hour, and Trey had come around briefly, sounding stronger than before. Once they’d returned to the doss, the mage had ate sparingly, then took himself off to bed.

  Wheeler and Elvis had made the run to the Stuffer Shack for the canned stew. There wasn’t much any of them could do till the next day when they planned to call the LTG the Johnson had given them. Duran occupied himself doing what he could to track Luppas’s movements. The elf mercenary had adroitly avoided both the Border Patrol and Lone Star.

  Skater tore one of the small bread slices in half and ran it through the stew’s dregs. When he had it sopping with the broth, he ate it, relishing the small amount of warmth that was left and the salty taste of it.

  As if taking his cue, Archangel began eating. She worked the spoon mechanically, feeding herself as if it was a chore.

  Skater let the silence between them build, feeling it was the only safe thing to do. Despite the street noises and the snippets of disembodied voices coming from other dosses and from below, the silence was the most noticeable thing between them.

  They scraped their plates and mopped them clean with bread, then cut the aftertaste from their mouths with the remnants of their beer. When they finished, Skater sat there, his hoop cold against the plastistone surface of the stair step. “It’s hard for me,” Archangel said without looking at him. Skater had no idea what she was talking about. He just nodded understandingly, and not too agreeably with that. “Apologizing,” she said.

  “There’s no need to—”

  “Shut up, Jack,” she said harshly. “Apologies aren’t centered around whether or not a person feels he or she is owed one. They come because the person giving them decides he or she owes one to someone. If I didn’t feel the need, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Fine,” Skater said in annoyance. “Apology accepted.” Skater wished for something to do with his hands while he sat there and waited.

  “I’m apologizing for the lack of professionalism I’ve been exhibiting on this run,” she said. “I owe apologies to the others as well, but I wanted to start with you.”

  Skater remained silent.

  She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “This is the part where you say ‘apology accepted.’ ”

  “It is,” Skater said. “Though I feel I owe—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “Jack, you’ve had a lot on your plate. I should have cut you more slack. Having Emma is a big responsibility, but what really got me slotted off was the way you put yourself down about what you’re doing with her.”

  “It’s hard knowing exactly what it is I’m supposed to do,” he said. “I never planned on being here, and I fragging sure didn’t plan on having this career while I raised a child.”

  “I know. And I knew that when I was busy busting your hump over it.”

  “The run’s been kind of—”

  “It’s not the run.” Archangel took a deep breath. “For me to blame my behavior on the run would be copping out. What’s been bothering me is something I have to deal with. Something I hadn’t planned on having to deal with either.” She laughed again, and this time it sounded more bitter, but internally directed.

  Responding to the vulnerability of the feelings being expressed, but uncomfortable himself, Skater said, “Maybe I can help.”

  She looked at him, pinned him with her direct gaze. “Jack, you offering that lets me know you’re the last person I need helping me.”

  Skater felt like he’d been slapped. He started to say something—he wasn’t sure what, only that it was going to be heated—but she cut him off.

  “That wasn’t meant in a mean way,” she said, “so please don’t take it that way. This is just something I’ve got to see through myself.” She pushed herself to her feet and gathered her plate and glass and the remnant of the French bread. “Take the apology. I’m going to see this run to the end, and you can rely on me to be every bit as pro as I’ve ever been. I just felt you deserved to know that.”

  Before Skater could make up his mind to be angry or supportive, or to just say thanks, she left him sitting there in the shadow-steeped stairwell. As the door to the doss closed behind her, the headache that he’d almost beaten into submission with analgesics was back in full force.

  46

  Kylar Luppas sat in the back seat of the Toyota Elite limousine opposite his second-in-command. He stared through the one-way window at the public telecom across the street at the side of the Stuffer Shack. They’d followed Kossuth’s directions to this spot as the decker made his way through the Matrix, tracing the LTG number Luppas had scanned from the Johnson in the van at Neon Sunsets. Luppas was hoping to find more than a public-access area. And to set up a security team o
ver the area if he deemed it a worthwhile pursuit.

  The telecom was third in a row of six. A woman in revealing attire that left no questions about what she was doing there at that time of the morning talked animatedly on the fifth telecom in the row.

  “There has to be a cut-out on the telecom,” Luppas said, settling heavily back into the limo’s padded seat. The Elite was from one of the Fuchi garages, but he’d had Deeda, one of the unit’s riggers, remove all the tracing equipment the megacorp had installed. For the moment, they were off Fuchi’s tracking-screens, working on borrowed time.

  “Kossuth is searching for it now,” Octavius said. The decker was holed up in the Greenwoods Inn, a hotel Luppas had selected for the night, making his way through the Matrix and the files of the LTG grid in particular.

  Immediately following the escape from the bar and even as the Border Patrol and Lone Star’s Everett branch were trying to close him in their nets, Luppas had called a ladyfriend he sometimes shared a bed with and paid her to remove some of the damage he’d suffered from overuse of his Art. As a mage, she was very expensive, and very good at what she did.

  “The woman we’re looking for is a software developer,” Luppas said. “Whatever utilities she’s using to forward any contact will be highly sophisticated. Be sure and tell Mr. Kossuth that he’ll probably be looking for the subtle, not the obvious.”

  Octavius nodded and relayed the message over the tacticom.

  Luppas scanned the street corner. This location in the Bellevue District guaranteed security by proximity alone. Even the Stuffer Shack had wiz surveillance and intruder alerts if a guy knew where to look, and Luppas did.

  “Do you think she’s here in Bellevue?” Octavius asked.

  Luppas shook his head. “I don’t know. Hiding here is possible. She’s surely put aside some money from the extractions she and Caber carried out. And there’s not a better place in the Seattle area to negotiate in-country security. If she’d bought security and attempted to stay somewhere else, she’d have drawn attention to herself by the simple fact of possessing it.”