Preying for Keeps

by Mel Odom

Duran nodded. “Trojan horses have been around for a long time. It should have worked, if that’s what they were doing. You and Archangel checked the freighter out and it looked like a nice prize to you.”

  “And to the yaks.” Wheeler pointed out.

  Skater looked at the scenario and put a further spin on it. “We got there before them, making it a double Trojan horse. We go for the files and get them, and the yaks think we made off with them, not knowing what we have isn't worth drek.”

  “No one told the ship’s crew or the people guarding the computer either.” Elvis said. “Those sailors stood their ground hard. We didn’t kill anyone, but the yaks sure fragging did.”

  “You think the real files have already reached Seattle.” Duran said.

  “If they did,” Skater asked, “then why are the elves chasing us so hard?”

  “Keeping up the smoke screen.” the ork replied. “Possible. But why go after Maddock?”

  The big mercenary shrugged. “Same reason, maybe.” Skater shook his head. “Now we’re getting too many maybes. Finesse is best when used least. How did the elves know about Maddock?”

  “Brynna could have given you up to the elves after you left her.”

  Skater considered the supposition briefly, then rejected it. “I think she was on the level. It’s possible Tone and Maddock are connected, but what would Tone be doing with an elven corp?” He glanced at Archangel. “Where did you get with those diplomatic plates?”

  “As yet, nowhere.” she said. “I’ve got a browser program running, and maybe it’ll turn up something. But from everything I’ve seen in the files I’ve accessed, I’d be willing to bet those plates belonged to cars used by Tir representatives. If I can’t get in through plate identification, I’ve got some capture programs standing by to access the car-pool maintenance files. At least one of those vehicles was seriously damaged, if not destroyed. When a replacement or an order for repairs comes through maintenance, I’ll know.”

  “Good job.” Skater said. “Do you have that copy of the news report I recorded tonight?”

  Archangel nodded.

  “Would you run it?”

  She tapped a few keys on the keyboard.

  Skater called for Duran. They watched it five times. At the end of the last showing, Skater knew they weren’t going to find any more elves from the raiding party than the two he’d already identified.

  “Run them through immigration,” Skater told Archangel, “visitor’s visa files and Seattle Port Authority. Those jokers didn’t just appear over here from the Tir.”

  Archangel cut and pasted the first face, moving it into its own file. “I can set up a cross-reference for the rest of the people in this footage at the same places. It’ll take time.”

  Skater left her with it and walked back to the security setup Wheeler had installed. “Duran, you need some rack time. So do the rest of you. Elvis, you’ve got first watch. It’s eleven now. That gives us seven hours before dawn. If nothing’s jumping by then, maybe we can all catch a few. Elvis, set up the rotation for every hour and a half.”

  Wheeler volunteered for the next watch, claiming it wouldn’t be so bad because he’d managed a few winks that evening after disposing of the body and setting up the security system.

  As Skater watched them, he was amazed at how quickly everything came together. On a shadowrun, they worked as a unit for only a few hours, each one returning to his or her own life shortly after. He’d never imagined any of them spending much time together. They were too different, too adamant about liking their privacy.

  But he had to reconsider that, thinking maybe he’d let his own preferences color his perceptions. He didn’t like the thought of getting close to anyone. Larisa had been the only one. Leaning on others was weak; his mother had hammered that into his brain, and most of the people he’d known in the Council lands seemed to shun his company.

  Thinking of Larisa made him think of the baby. She was alone out there somewhere—if she was still alive, he reminded himself—and that could be a cruel world waiting. For a heartbeat, he felt that if he could find the child and touch it, it would be like touching Larisa again.

  “Jack.”

  He looked at Archangel and shelved the thoughts, making himself concentrate on survival. He needed sleep. The stimulants he’d been taking to keep going were taxing his reserves. “Yeah?”

  “I may have something.”

  Skater joined her at the deck. “What?”

  “The Sapphire Seahawk went down in international waters.” Archangel said as she stroked the keyboard. “I guessed that she would be carrying insurance, so I sent some sleaze fingers to snoop out civil data about the freighter and learned that a carrier in Seattle covered the trip once the freighter crossed the Tir Taimgire border. The loss was filed with the carrier this morning so a credstick could be issued within the next ten days. It didn’t take long to find the carrier, because not that many of them are willing to handle foreign accounts, especially for that much.”

  A form file appeared on the monitor. Skater leaned in, struggling to read the fine print.

  “Cutting to the bone,” Archangel said, “the agreement lists the responsibilities of both parties.”

  “The carrier.” Skater prompted.

  “Wilcoxin Controlled Risk, Inc. And the insured party . . .” Archangel paused and pointed at the screen. “An outfit calling itself NuGene Inc.”

  The name rang a bell in Skater’s mind. “Tell me more.”

  “I just found them.” Archangel said. “On the surface, they’re a biomedical research and development corporation.”

  “Yeah.” Skater said, remembering the tridcast he’d seen. “In the Tir.”

  “Portland.” Archangel hit more keys and a gridded map appeared on the monitor screen. “The address shows that it’s on Southwest Terwilliger Boulevard, somewhere near Tir Taimgire Medical Center. I’m working up other data, but from what I’ve seen so far, the decision by the Council of Princes to use Seattle as a port created some serious economic problems for the corporation.”

  “That happened to a lot of businesses in Portland then.” Skater said. “Dig into it a little and see what you get.” Archangel nodded, and Skater walked over to the telecom Wheeler had rigged up with cut-outs that would make it very difficult to trace back to the apartment. Even with the security measures built in, he didn’t plan on calling any numbers that were at risk.

  He tapped in the number for the message drop he was using to contact Kestrel and checked in. He was informed there was a message for him. He keyed in the four-digit play sequence.

  “I picked up some new biz hustling through the streets.” Kestrel’s voice said. “There’s a guy wants to meet with you about the run. Says he has a deal. Name’s Conrad McKenzie. You’ve probably heard of him. If not, call me and I’ll give you the score. He left a number.”

  Skater memorized the number, then tapped the Disconnect key. He was familiar with the name, and it sent a cold, electric spike of premonition through his spine.

  “What’s wrong?” Archangel asked.

  “My chummer passed along some buzz on the streets.” Skater said. “Conrad McKenzie wants to talk with us about the biz on the freighter.”

  “Conrad McKenzie?” Wheeler stepped out of the kitchen with a fresh cup of soykaf in his hand. “Joker’s one of the biggest Mafia bosses in the sprawl. What does he want?”

  “He didn’t say.” Skater replied as he pushed himself out of the chair. “But he left a number.”

  19

  “Give me your number and I’ll have Mr. McKenzie get back to you when it’s convenient.” the woman said, her voice as prim as her pinched expression on the telecom screen.

  “No.” Skater replied. “I’ll get back to you so you can give me a number where I can reach him. I wait more than ten minutes and you can tell him it’s no longer convenient for me.” He broke the connection and looked around the group. Archangel was at her deck, managing the relocate and decep
tion programs that would mask the telecom’s signature through the regional telecommunications grids. Wheeler was monitoring the feedback, ready to cut off the power if something nasty started whispering up the lines at them.

  At the end of ten minutes, he called the LTG number McKenzie had left again.

  “Do you have that number?” he asked without preamble.

  “Yes.” She read it off and didn’t look or sound happy about doing it.

  “Slotting high-headed bastard.” she said. Abruptly the line clicked dead at the other end.

  Skater listened intently to discern any other noises that might suggest someone or something else was on the line. There was nothing. A few seconds later white noise filled his ear. He glanced at Wheeler.

  “We’re green.”

  Skater punched in the number and waited to play it out. Conrad McKenzie was no lightweight on the Seattle crime scene. As brutal as he was cold-blooded, he’d carved a grim empire out for himself and his Family. Duran had added to their store of knowledge, recounting the time McKenzie had killed a yak opponent who’d been trying to muscle into a territory McKenzie had operated when younger. McKenzie had found out everything he could about the man, then tracked down his family and slaughtered them. Then he’d crippled the yak himself, destroying bone joints that took months to rebuild and burning the man with a blowtorch so he had to spend more months in tissue vats. At the end of that time, when the yak was almost recovered enough to walk by himself, McKenzie had him murdered outright. The message was clear. Animosity between the Mafia and yaks in Seattle ran deep and strong, but McKenzie apparently wanted to prove he wasn’t a man to slot over.

  Elvis had overheard some street buzz that McKenzie was semi-retired of late, having set himself up in a kind of judiciary position, settling disputes between lesser crime bosses. If McKenzie had dealt himself a hand in the freighter deal, the stakes were scraping the ozone.

  “Skater?” The voice that answered was deep and whiskey-roughened, devoid of feeling.

  “Run it down for me.” Skater said. “The clock’s ticking and I’m not going to stay on the line long enough for you to trace the call.”

  McKenzie laughed, a harsh sound. “I’ve been contacted by a certain party who would like to buy back the goods you liberated from them. I have no interest. I’m merely the go-between.”

  “Why would they come to you?” Skater asked.

  “Because I have a reputation in this city as a man who can deliver what I promise. They are without many resources here in Seattle. I, however, am not.”

  “And you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart.”

  “Wrong.” McKenzie seemed not to notice the sarcasm.

  “I’m in this for a percentage, which I intend to collect from you and the elves.”

  “If you’re doing the brokering,” Skater pointed out, “you should take your cut from them.”

  “I am. But I’m nicking you for another ten percent they don’t know about.”

  “No.”

  “No?” The harsh laugh sounded again. “Listen, nitbrain, you don’t have a lot of choices at the moment.”

  “I don’t have to sell the files to the elves.”

  “I guess not. You could hang on to them and keep running till they catch you. And they will, I promise you that, because we’ve already negotiated a finder’s fee if I have to help them. You scan?”

  “We’ve made it this far.”

  “You’ve been lucky so far, that’s all. And the trouble with luck is that it runs out. You’ve got the elves after you, the yakuza, Lone Star, and from what I hear, some other smalltime losers. Do you really want to add me to the list?”

  “Maybe you’re already there.” Skater said.

  “I was there,” McKenzie promised, “I’d be pissing on your corpse right now.”

  “How much are the elves offering?”

  “Three million nuyen.”

  “Bump them.” Skater said. “Double it.”

  “Done.” McKenzie sounded happy. “I don’t mind taking twenty percent of six million nuyen instead of three. They may balk, but they don’t really have a choice. My finder’s fee would run them more than that. You might have jam enough to stay out of my people’s hands for a few days more, but don’t count on more than that.”

  Skater didn’t argue.

  “But for a percentage both ways,” McKenzie said, “and zero sweat involved, I’m willing to be a go-between.”

  “Why should I believe that you could leverage the elves off me and my team once the deal goes down?”

  “You shouldn’t.” McKenzie said. “Get your nuyen up front and start running like hell.”

  “Doesn’t sound all that enticing.”

  “Do you have any options here? I was you, that’s the way I’d handle it. Face it, you’re in way over your heads. And the drek’s just getting deeper. I’m offering you a way out.” Skater ignored the comment, trying to regain some momentum of his own in the conversation. Time was running out. “How’d you get my drop number?”

  “Let that be a lesson to you.” McKenzie said. “I know more about you than you think. So, do we have a deal?”

  “I’ll call you,” Skater replied, “and let you know.” McKenzie gave a dry chuckle. “You’ve got cojones. I’ll give you that. And you better call me soon, Skater, or don’t bother.” The connection broke, becoming a steady buzz of static.

  “Doesn’t sound like he gives a good slot one way or the other.” Wheeler commented.

  “No. he doesn’t.” The man left Skater with a chill and a tightness in his stomach that wasn’t going to go away. He felt like he was being asked to stick his head into the mouth of a dragon.

  * * *

  “I don’t know enough of the science involved to tell if it’s a design for a virus.” Archangel said. “I got into the files with a couple of homegrown decode utilities I got from a chummer. I’ve never tried anything like this before, but he said he uses them to reconstruct scrambled files from crashed disks. By cracking the IC with a high-octane deception program that makes me act like a System Access Node and challenges the files as they follow the sleazes, they identify themselves long enough for my browser to log on and reassemble the bits and pieces I get.”

  Skater was hunkered down beside her, staring hard at the confusion of chemical symbols and esoteric terms that had surfaced from the files they’d taken off the elven freighter. The rest of the team ringed them. With the turn of events, sleep was no longer an option.

  “Whatever it really is,” Archangel said, “it’s a hybrid.” Another image surfaced on the monitor, showing a stylish though modest building deep in the heart of a metropolitan area that had seen better days.

  “Portland.” Elvis said. “I’ve done some biz there. Back when the place was a boom town.”

  “These are the corporate headquarters of NuGene.” Archangel told them. “Their primary field of interest, as we’ve already seen, is in biomed research and development.”

  “What type of biotech?” Wheeler asked.

  “Well,” Archangel said over her shoulder, “they started out developing biomed facilities, but after 2052 turned strictly R&D. They haven’t come out with any major commercial products yet, but basically they specialize in wetware—transplants, gene therapy, tissue tech, and regeneration. Repairing cellular damage. Mostly muscle tissue, tendons. Ultimately, they’d like to induce damaged tissue to renew itself organically.” Archangel turned back to the screen. “But no one knows what they’ve accomplished. They’ve operated solely in the Tir, never gone beyond its borders.”

  “Until now.” Skater shifted, stretching out the bruises and aches he’d collected over the last two days.

  “NuGene teetered on the verge of financial collapse when the Council of Princes switched to Seattle as the Tir’s primary port of call in ’52.” Archangel explained. “Like I said, they were the first to pioneer biomed facilities in Tir Taimgire. Up till the time Portland went bust, they wer
e raking in the nuyen.”

  “I’ll bet that slotted off a lot of shareholders.” Trey said. Archangel nodded. “According to newsfaxes I accessed from Portland’s public databanks, the CEO decided to reinvest in his corporation rather than let it go down the tubes. As the stocks dropped in value, he spent a fortune buying them back up, hoping to prevent a takeover. For awhile, Saeder-Krupp seemed to be trying for a buyout, but gradually this guy accumulated ownership of fifty-seven percent of NuGene.”

  “Brave soul.” Trey commented. “Fifty-seven percent of nothing, though, is the equivalent of one percent of nothing. And a drekking lot harder to afford.”

  “He didn’t see it that way. I’ve read some watered-down versions of his corporate statement and mission plans. If he couldn’t compete with Seattle, he’d regain what he’d lost by coming up with a product no one else could provide.”

  “Did he say what that was?” Wheeler asked.

  “No. But he promised it for years.”

  “Then nobody knows if he was just blowing smoke.”

  “Torin Silverstaff didn’t have that reputation.” Archangel said.

  The name rang a bell in Skater’s mind. “Who?”

  The elven decker repeated herself.

  “Got a datapic?”

  “Yes.” Archangel typed in some new commands and the screen shifted to a white-haired elf at some elegant social function. “This was taken at a ball given in Lugh Surehand’s honor three years ago, a year after NuGene almost went belly up. Torin Silverstaff was a reluctant guest according to the reports I’ve read, but he’d never given up hope of seeing Portland reinstated as the major port city for the Tir.”

  Torin Silverstaff looked familiar to Skater. The features were classic elven and proud. “Any relation to Tavis Silverstaff?” He suddenly remembered the name from the interview with Perri Twyst.

  “Torin was his father.”

  “Was?” Skater asked.

  “Torin was murdered in a mugging in Portland three years ago, shortly after this pic was taken. The killer was never found.”

  “So his son is the heir apparent.”

  “Yes. There was rumor of a stipulation in the inheritance. Tavis Silverstaff has three younger sisters, and his mother is still alive. To inherit the controlling interest in NuGene, Silverstaff has to provide for all of them, including their families.”