Shadowrun 46 - A Fistful of Data

by Stephen Dedman (v1. 0) (epub)

  “Shh,” said the ork, looking around furtively before opening his hand. “You know how Leila and I were searching Sumatra’s body? Well, I found this in one of his boots, and it seemed sort of strange. Leila thought it might be magical, and seeing as how you do all that stuff for talismongers . . .” He showed her a bar of orange metal the size of a postage stamp. “Leila thought it might be valuable, too.”

  Mish stared, then reached out to touch the fragment almost reverently. “If it’s orichalcum—and that’s what it looks like—then yes. Magnusson would know better than I would, but a piece this size would be worth a fortune. Do you want me to ask him?”

  The ork grinned. “Yeah, why not? I was just going to take it to my piercer and see if he could turn it into a couple of rings.”

  Mish blinked and looked at his face. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Please don’t tell me what you were thinking of getting pierced.”

  “You got everything you need?” 8-ball asked as he stopped at Royer Station to let Crane out.

  “I think so,” the rigger said, hauling his bags out of the back of the dwarf’s Land Rover. “Good working with you all. And thanks for the ID,” he said to Lankin.

  Lankin shrugged, mildly embarrassed. “I’ve transferred your money into the credstick, but get rid of both of them as soon as you can. And have a good trip,” he replied. The rigger had discarded almost everything that might be used to identify him, giving a few personal items to 8-ball to put into secure storage, destroying some and handing the rest over to Lankin for resale. The elf had paid him a more-than-adequate advance, but asked him not to tell anyone that he had been generous.

  “Call me if you need anything,” said Ratatosk. “And use the secure line. Even I won’t be able to tell where you are.”

  “Thanks.” Crane popped the clip out of his smartgun, putting the gun into the suitcase and emptying the bullets into his carry-on luggage. “Give my regards to the Seoulpa. And good luck.”

  “It’s orichalcum, all right,” said Magnusson wonderingly. “Where would he have gotten this?”

  “Someone stole a load of telesma meant for Mitsuhama Research Unit 13 last week,” Yoko replied. “I’ve heard it included a few grams of orichalcum. I don’t know who was involved, and I wouldn’t have thought Sumatra had the guts to do anything like that, but maybe the others took the risk and he provided magical backup. Or he lied to them about what this was worth. Or stole it from his buddies, which would explain why he was hiding in the Crypt with at least a hundred thou of magical gear hidden in his boots and his pockets. He was either waiting for a buyer, or hoarding the stuff—but I guess you can ask him when he wakes up.” She looked at the ork, who sat between them on the backseat of Beef Patty’s Superkombi. He was gagged and heavily bound, and both of them were watching him in astral, ready to respond if he cast a spell or attempted a summoning. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked, speaking in Sperethiel. “You cast a spell on the vials, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I sterilized them. I thought the stuff was too dangerous to keep. Fm not sure what to do about the data from the disk, though.”

  “Zurich gave me the original, but Ratatosk has the decrypted copy,” said Yoko. “He still wants to leak the data to the newsnets, but Fm pretty sure I can persuade him to erase it instead.”

  Magnusson smiled. “You know, after all this, the faculty meeting on Friday is going to seem even more boring than usual. I might not even bother wearing armor.”

  Kwan yawned and looked at the street samurai sleeping next to him with more envy than lust. Carla was an attractive woman, if you weren’t turned off by shaved heads, but she was more likely to inspire fear than desire among those who knew her by her Korean street name—Myondo Kal, the Razor. Kwan wondered what she’d done to get a lousy job like this: camping out in the back of a light armored van, watching over an empty warehouse in Hollywood— Komun’go turf—in the vain hope that the owner would come back to pick up his gear. On the other hand, the frag in question had been dumb enough to help steal a boat belonging to the leader of the Divine Revenge Ring, complete with its cargo of smuggled military weapons, so he obviously had more guts than brains. Kwan, who’d been aboard the boat when it was stolen, was hoping for a chance to decorate a wall, Valentine’s Day-massacre style, with the aforesaid guts and brains and maybe redeem himself in the eyes of the leadership.

  Kwan blinked as he saw a small convoy pull up outside the warehouse: a Land Rover, a Superkombi, a Nomad, and a Saab Dynamit. A redheaded elf in a long coat emerged from the Land Rover and jacked into the security system, while a bald dwarf and a tall hooded figure stood guard. The dwarf was carrying a submachine gun; the other didn’t seem to be armed at all. Kwan turned and grabbed Carla’s wrist, careful to avoid her spurs. “Wake up!” he hissed. “We’ve—”

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” said an unfamiliar voice behind him. Kwan spun around and saw a young elf woman standing inside the van, cut off at midshin by the floor.

  “Who the frag are—”

  “Shh,” said the elf. “The man you’re looking for? Crane? He’s left town—probably the country, too, by this point. You’re wasting your time here.”

  Carla opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder. “What’s—”

  “We’ve had a very bad day,” the elf continued. “You have ten seconds to drive away. Miss that deadline, and you’ll have to walk back to your own turf. If you’re still here in thirty seconds, you can either crawl away, or spend the rest of your lives here—which will be another thirty seconds, if you’re extremely lucky. So ka?”

  “Do you know who we are?” demanded the street samurai.

  Kwan glanced forward through the tinted window, and his jaw dropped. The elf had managed to get the door open in a few seconds—a job that had taken their best cracksman more than ten minutes. The hooded figure stepped inside, and Kwan waited to hear the clatter of the automatic-weapons fire that had greeted their thieves. And waited. And waited.

  Silence.

  “Five seconds,” said the elf politely.

  The doors of the other vehicles opened, and another six people stepped out; orks, humans, and an elf almost as tall as a troll. Three of them wore military-issue helmets. One carried an assault cannon. Kwan started the car.

  “Is Crane there?” asked Carla.

  “Crane has left Seattle,” the elf woman repeated. “Two seconds.”

  The street samurai opened the door and leaped out of the van just as it pulled away. Kwan stopped, and Carla drew her smartgun and ran into the street, firing a burst at the ork with the assault cannon, then shooting at everyone who seemed roughly the right size to be the elusive Crane.

  Yoko stood inside the garage, looking first at the autonomous gun system mounted on the ceiling, then at the other hardware stored there. Crane had warned them that he’d rigged the entire security system, and that several of the drones had their weapons fully loaded and were connected to the main power and the backup solar cells in the roof. Some high-velocity blood spatter on the floor near the doorway bore this out. Yoko took another step toward the sentry gun, but it neither tracked her nor fired, and she smiled. She’d volunteered to go in first because she was protected by a quickened deflection spell that Boanerges and Joji had tattooed onto her back, but it was good to know that Crane had given Ratatosk the right codes. “It’s safe—” she began, then flinched as she heard shots. An instant later, she realized they were coming from outside the room, not inside, and ran back toward the doorway.

  An Asian-looking woman with a shaved head was running across the street, a smartgun in one hand, a spur extended from the other. Yoko reached into the pocket of her armor jacket, grabbed the first object to come to hand, and threw it like a shuriken. The tarot card sliced off the top centimeter of the razorgirl’s left ear before embedding itself in the side of the van stopped in the middle of the street.

  The woman ducked, touche
d her wounded ear, and turned to see what had done the damage—giving Yoko enough time to look around and see what had happened to the rest of her team. Ratatosk was lying on the ground, protecting his head with his hands and his deck with his body. Pierce was crouching on the other side of the doorway, fumbling with his Roomsweeper. Lankin, Magnusson, Leila and Lori had ducked behind the cars. She couldn’t see Wallace or Griffin, but she didn’t have time to worry about them. The street samurai fired a burst at Yoko’s chest, and stared as the adept stood there, unharmed, without even flinching.

  “Drop the gun!” Yoko shouted, reaching into her pocket again and grabbing the first object she touched—a data disk. She knew that it would take her nearly a second to get close enough to the street samurai for a kick, and that would give the razorgirl enough time to shoot someone who didn’t have the benefit of a protective spell.

  The street samurai glared at her, then lowered her gun and fired a burst at Griffin, who was lying on the near side of the Nomad. Yoko threw the disk, aiming at the woman’s throat. It tore through her carotid, jugular and windpipe before being stopped by her reinforced spine. She fell backward onto the street, the smartgun continuing to fire until the clip was empty.

  The razorgirl’s partner watched in horror through the window of the van, then drove away, keeping his foot on the accelerator until he could no longer hear shooting. Magnusson picked himself up from the sidewalk and began examining their wounded, while Yoko and Ratatosk walked over to the street samurai’s body. The decker plucked the disk—the one with the data on GNX-IV—from her throat, and glanced at the adept.

  “You were right,” he said softly. “This thing is dangerous.”

  19

  Lankin returned to the warehouse late in the afternoon, by which time the windows had been covered with metal foil to keep the interior dark and Mish had already begun reassembling her medicine lodge in one corner. The makeshift Boanerges Memorial Hospital already had its first three patients—Griffin, Wallace and Mute, who were still unconscious despite the best efforts of Czarnecki and the magicians. Lori had rescheduled her flight to enable her to stay in Seattle and continue treating them until they were well enough to travel, and was resting on a nearby cot. Mute seemed unlikely to recover in time for Lankin’s run against Federated-Boeing, but he’d decided not to replace her: the original plan had called for a team of four, and while it was riskier, it also meant there were fewer people to share the money.

  Lankin opened the unlocked door cautiously, and stepped into a vestibule of improvised blackout curtains. He pushed these aside, walked into a large open space and stared at the people sleeping among the chaotic array of high-tech vehicles and old gear salvaged from the Crypt. Pierce glanced up from his MRE, muttered, “Hoi,” and returned his attention to the soy spaghetti.

  Lankin shook his head. “Haven’t you even posted a guard? And where is everybody?”

  “Gone home, most of ’em who have homes. The rest’re still at the Y,” said Pierce. “I guess they’ll show up when their money runs out, but the beds are better there, and we only got one shower. Which is where Yoko is, if you were wondering.”

  “As for the guards,” said Yoko, emerging from the bathroom wrapped in a damp towel, “this place is meant to be a hospital and a school, not a fortress.”

  “What about the Seoulpa?”

  “They’re too scared of her,” said Pierce, jerking his head at Yoko and grinning. “They know what she did to that Divine Revenge razorgirl, and what she’s done to yaks—” “-—and they think the enemy of their enemy is a potential ally,” said Yoko with a shrug. “They don’t have friends, and they’re not good at gratitude, but I think we’ve come to an understanding . . . and they know that if anything happens to me, the coven will avenge me. Isn’t that how you work?”

  Lankin nodded stiffly. “I’ve been talking to some fixers. No one of them had enough money to buy all of the salvage, but I’ve got an offer of fifty thousand for the orichal-cum, and Crane’s fixer thinks he can find buyers for all the vehicles.”

  “Not all the vehicles,” said Ratatosk, emerging from the bathroom, also clad in a towel. Lankin did a double take, and gritted his teeth. “At least, not immediately. We need the Nomad.”

  “What for?” asked Lankin, his tone sour.

  “It has Aztechnology registration chips; it’ll make it into the Pyramid without being stopped or searched.”

  “They’ll have listed it as stolen,” Lankin pointed out. “That’ll set off the alarms.”

  “Easy to cancel; give me three seconds in their system, and it’s done,” said the decker. “Creating a fake registration from scratch takes minutes and is much more difficult to hide—much more likely to be discovered before you can get out.”

  “Why’re you going into the Pyramid?”

  “Because that’s where the Hatter is.”

  “You’re going to kill him?”

  “I’m going to find out who was giving the orders. Whether it was the Hatter, or someone higher up, I’m going to make him wish he’d listened when Boanerges told him to stay away from the Crypt. Then I’m going to make him very sorry he sent toxics in to kill us. After that, I may kill him: I haven’t decided.”

  “Revenge doesn’t pay the bills,” said Lankin.

  “He has a Toyota Elite and shops at Lacy’s.”

  Lankin considered this for a moment, then looked at Yoko. “What do you think?”

  “I think if we want justice for Boanerges and everyone else who was killed in the Crypt, we’ll have to arrange it ourselves,” she replied. “No one else is going to take on Aztechnology for their sake. Taking on corps is what we do. And I think we’re still alive because we have a reputation for avenging our dead. If it gives us money to build a hospital and a school, so much the better. So I’m in. And we have the support of the rest of the coven—except for Sumatra, of course.”

  Lankin looked around. “What’ve you done with him?” “Magnusson took him somewhere where he could probe his mind. It just confirmed what we already suspected— he’d betrayed us to the Hatter, he robbed the rest of his team after they stole that shipment of Mitsuhama’s magical gear, he betrayed Mandy Mandelbrot and Mercedes Benzene to Brackhaven . . .”

  “You should’ve let me interrogate him.”

  “What would you have found out that Magnusson didn’t?”

  “Nothing, probably,” Lankin admitted. “But it would have been much more painful. Is he dead?”

  “No. He would be if he’d been in on it from the beginning and was responsible for killing Boanerges . . . but he wasn’t. And Sumatra was a member of the Coven, and we all swore an oath of fraternity. We stripped him of his membership, but we’ve kept material links that will enable us to find him at anytime.”

  “On the other hand, 8-ball and I would be happy to kill him,” said Ratatosk conversationally. “We’re not members of the coven, so not bound by any oath. And Mute probably feels the same. And there’s the last team that he ripped off, which I hear included Genocide George.”

  Lankin winced. You didn’t work the Seattle shadows for long without hearing at least one story of the outrageous, consistently vicious behavior of Genocide George.

  “And Mercy Benzene was a former member of the Blood Rumblers, so they’re after him too. If Maggie does decide to let him go, he’ll probably go hide and wait for one of those many groups to catch him. I doubt he’ll enjoy the rest of his life very much.”

  “And if he calls the Hatter and tells him we have the virus? Does he know where you are?”

  “He might have worked it out,” Ratatosk admitted, “but I don’t think that the Hatter will believe him even if he has told him. I borrowed Sumatra’s phone. As far as I know, they only communicated by text messages, so whether or not the Hatter knows the sound of Sumatra’s voice, he should recognize the number. And I’ve sent him a few messages telling him where we hid the vials. First, it was Forever Tacoma’s grease pit. Then it was the Rat’s Nest. T
hen the Ultra Club, then the arcology, then a few more places, just in case he wasn’t exhausted from all the running around. It’s probably time I called him again. You have a voice modulator, don’t you? Do you think you can do Sumatra?”

  Lankin smiled. “Yeah,” he grunted, using his cyberware voice modulator to create a near-perfect imitation of the ork’s accent. “Where you want me to send the fragger? I know this farm and lab up in Snohomish where they’re trying to cross hellhounds with barghests. Give me the phone.”

  The Hatter stood on the pile of concrete and rubble in the middle of the abandoned ruins of the Monolith warehouse, and stared at the stacked containers, his fists clenched so tight that his manicured nails dug into his palms. The entire underground storage container had been exposed by a couple of trolls armed with jackhammers, and each compartment emptied. The Hatter had sent the trolls away and examined all the containers twice. None bore the ORO Corporation logo; all apparently came from local hospitals. “They took the damn thing,” he muttered.

  Hare shrugged. “Or it was never here,” he suggested. “It was always a long shot. If long shots paid off every time, what would we do for fun?”

  “Sumatra told me they’d found it. They must have gotten it past the meres ... or maybe they were in on it, too . . .” “Or maybe Sumatra was lying,” Hare replied. “Look at their dossiers, and you tell me which is more likely. If it was Sumatra.”

  The Hatter glowered at him, but didn’t argue the point. “Nguyen told us he’d brought the stuff here.”

  “Doesn’t prove it was still here when the vault was sealed. Unless we can find out who was working for Monolith at the time, and find some of them still alive, I guess we’ll never know what happened. What’re you going to do now?”

  “Get somebody in to level this place,” the Hatter replied savagely. “A few shape-charges around those support pillars should bring the roof down and fill in this hole. Then start covering up that lost equipment. Can you edit the vehicle sign-out sheets?”