Preying for keeps s-29

by Mel Odom

  Duran shoved his way out of the plane and onto the dock, ignoring Hurley.

  "I mean, that drek with the Sapphire Seahawk was your handiwork tonight, right?" Hurley slunk back from Duran as the ork turned on him.

  Without seeming to move quickly, Duran seized the tour owner by the shirt, ripping the material in one gnarled fist. A keen blade in his hand shattered the thin moonlight. "I'd say I got me a walkaway working here tonight," the ork told him. "I slit one more throat, ain't going to matter." He pulled Hurley closer. "Not to anyone else, and damn sure not to me. You scan?"

  "Yeah." The iron drained right out of Hurley's spine. His eyes slid away. "I just don't want a blue crew knocking on my door in the morning."

  'They find us," Skater said in a hard voice, "they find you. Simple math." Hurley had been as fair and as trustworthy as could be expected, but the team had never run a profile this high before.

  The ork went into the small office, then returned moments later pushing a rolling cart. As they loaded the weapons they used aboard the Fiat-Fokker into the cart. Skater glanced around the marina. They'd chosen the place because it was berthed between two major domestic freight lines that ran "free trade" on the side and had enough grease to keep most groundhounds away.

  With all the guns stashed, Elvis handed out Shiva's body, zipped up into one of the sleeping bags,

  Skater took the weight with difficulty and forced himself not to think about what was inside. Death was a part of life; he'd learned that in the Council lands from his grandfather, but it had never become a casual thing for him in spite of everything the sprawl had taught him to the contrary. He laid the sleeping bag on top of the pile of weapons and pulled a dark sheet over everything.

  Archangel climbed out of the amphibian on her own, her eyes smudged with dark circles. She wiped a small trickle of blood from her right nostril with a handkerchief.

  "How you doing?" Skater asked.

  "I'm alive," she said. "After a run like tonight's, I'd say that's pretty good."

  Skater shook his head and looked over at the sleeping bag holding all that was left of Shiva. "Too bad Shiva can't say that."

  Archangel's face was expressionless as ever, but her voice softened. "Don't get twisted with this, Jack. You told us things could get dicey. Shiva knew that as well as the rest of us."

  Skater looked at her for a moment, but said nothing more. There was too much else to do. "You know the drill." he told them. "I'll stash our gear and weapons, then meet you back at base-"

  "I'm going with you." Callously, Duran plucked at the sleeping bag- "You got some extra baggage tonight. I want to make sure it's disposed of properly."

  'Tell you the truth," Hyde Tallow said to Skater almost an hour later as he unzipped the sleeping bag and saw the bloody red hair spill from inside, "I've kind of been expecting this."

  "Expecting what?" Skater asked. Duran stood behind him. Their voices were low and muffled by the stacks of crates and packages filling the small warehouse off Clay Street where Tallow did business. By day, the warehouse handled soy and artificial foods shipped in from the United Canadian and American States. By night. Tallow moonlighted as an organlegger for Nightingale's Body Parts when product was needed and wouldn't be too closely questioned as to the source. As long as it was good.

  "You needing to dispose of a woman's body." Tallow slipped on a pair of transparent gloves with elastic snaps. "Shine that light over here."

  Skater moved the flash beam over to Shiva's upper body.

  "Wait." Tallow took a step closer and cupped Shiva's face in his hand. The street doc was years from practicing legally, but still ran parts and pieces through the shadows. He was short and broad, but had long white fingers on hands that looked like pale spiders crawling across Shiva's corpse. "This isn't the dancer from SybreSpace."

  "No," Skater said. "It's not."

  "I figured you two was quits when I started seeing her with other guys. Though I gotta tell you they seemed even less her style than you were."

  Skater kept his face impassive, but he felt a twist of pain to think of Larisa with anyone else. It had been five months since he'd seen her, though only days since they'd talked.

  Duran shifted uneasily beside Skater. "This guy know you?"

  Skater shrugged. "Sometimes we hang at the same spots." That was how he'd first met Tallow, though he'd never used the man before, nor would he again.

  Tallow turned to him and smiled. His gloves were already coated with Shiva's blood. "Don't have to worry about me," the street doc said. "Without guys like you, I'd be out combing the alleys looking for skells the Halloweeners or some other street gang might have iced and left for ratmeat." He patted Shiva's dead cheek. "At least this way, I get some healthy merch to deal. And well within the ischemic time of tissue survival for resale. Wouldn't do much good trying to sell dead organs. Bring her over here."

  Skater and Duran grabbed the sides of the sleeping bag and followed the street doc into a barren office in the back. A nameplate announced that the office belonged to D. Madden Congealed blood matted the material of the sleeping bag. They put the corpse on a desk Tailow cleared off. Talking to himself, the street doc opened a concealed vault hidden in the wall and removed a tray of medical instruments, all gleaming and sharp. The room had no windows, so when he switched on the high-intensity lamp over the desk after screwing in another bulb, the light died before leaving the room.

  Tallow pushed Shiva's arms toward Skater. "Hold her.

  I've got to cut her out of these clothes." A scalpel gleamed in his hand as it whisked through the clothing. In seconds, the corpse was naked.

  Skater tried not to react. His grandfather had always insisted a new life awaited after the physical one was spent. He hoped it was so, and he hoped Shiva wasn't looking in on him as he helped cut up what remained of her.

  Tallow switched on the laser saw and opened up the corpse's chest, then used a chest spreader that looked like a praying mantis to pull it apart. He talked [o himself as he listed the organs that appeared to be in good shape. There wasn't much blood, and Skater was glad of it. By morning, what had once been Shiva would be scattered over the city as black-market organs and bone.

  "So how'd Romeo happen to lose his fair Juliet?" Tallow lifted the undamaged heart from the chest cavity. He plopped it into a freon-chilled chamber that had come from the vault as well.

  Face hard, tight with the effort to bottle up all the emotions of the moment as well as from memories of the past. Skater said, "She was afraid I'd end up on your table some night."

  Duran leaned in, intimidating with his size and black synthleather. "More chopping," he said, "and less fragging yap."

  'I don't know exactly what I snatched, but it was well-guarded," Archangel told them, seated in the rented room deep in the Ork Underground a couple of hours later. "I downloaded everything I could, but I still don't know what I got."

  Skater stood behind Wheeler Iron-Nerve and beside Elvis, scanning the monitor as Archangel scrolled through the files. Figures and symbols raced across the screen, moving vertically and horizontally in random colors.

  "It's coded." Skater said.

  Archangel nodded. "If I had more time, maybe I'd be able to break it."

  "The one thing we don't have is time," Duran muttered. He stood in one comer, dark and brooding, arms folded across his broad chest. "The yaks are combing the streets looking for the team that hit the Sapphire Seahawk tonight."

  A cruel smile twisted Elvis's lips in the shadows of his tusks. "You mean they're giving us all the credit?" The room was small, nearly filled to bursting by the 225-kilogram troll himself. Wooden casks of cheap wine and beer were stacked against the back wall. The Bloody Rosebud of Phelia, named after the ork warrior-woman who died defending her charges at a children's hospital during the Night of Rage, didn't have many customers at one a.m. of a Wednesday morning. A few cheap fuel-oil lanterns with the bar's logo primed on them filled a few handmade wooden shelves on the wall. C
ullen Trey sat in a straight-backed chair, paging through a dusty book that had been painstakingly reassembled.

  Duran nodded without mirth and ran a hand through his ork's thick mane. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

  "What are we going to do with the load?" Archangel asked. "We don't have a buyer, and we're not even sure of what we've got to sell." As always, she looked like she was under zero-sweat.

  "Can you copy it?" Skater asked.

  "I copied it from the freighter's system, didn't I?"

  "Then make four more copies," Skater said. "Give them to everyone else in the room. Not me."

  "Why everyone else and not you?" Elvis demanded.

  "Because," Wheeler said, "if he already had a buyer, he could cut us out of the loop in a heartbeat. Jack's trying to play square with us. This way he has nothing to sell without us.”

  "Maybe," Duran said, maintaining his icy expression. "And maybe copies of those files are a way to target the rest of the team."

  Wheeler's face grew dark, but before he could respond. Skater told Archangel. "Give me a copy, too." He faced Duran. "You can trust me or not."

  Archangel passed the duplicate chips out among them.

  "What would you think?" the ork demanded. "You come to us out of the blue with this scam a few weeks ago. You're not sure exactly what we're after, but the buzz is it's worth a few million nuyen to the runners who can nick it and find a buyer. We've been doing well enough. We got plenty of Mr. Johnsons with biz for us. We didn't need this."

  "No," Trey said agreeably. "But you didn't bat an eye when Jack laid it out, did you?"

  "Stay out of this," Duran snarled.

  "I would"-the combat mage smiled affably-"except that I'm already neck deep in it, chummer. Same chopping block as you. Your own greed pushed you into this, not Jack."

  Skater let the silence fill the room, stilling his impulse to say something in his own defense.

  "So what's the plan?" Wheeler asked him. "We separate and lay low till we find out how deep this goes. Then we try turn it around for ourselves. If we can." "No matter what happens," Trey said, pushing himself up out of his chair and adjusting his cape, "no one can say these past three years haven't been a good run." He held out his hand to Skater. "If I don't see you again, chummer, it's been a slice." His smile seemed genuine.

  In their own ways. Wheeler and Elvis echoed Trey's sentiments and offered their hands as well.

  Archangel met Skater's glance full on, but didn't give him her hand. Skater knew it was her way. "This isn't over, Jack," she said softly. "Take care of yourself."

  Skater didn't think it was over either, but he nodded. "It was no coincidence the yakuza snowed up almost at the same time we did," Duran said.

  Skater knew it was true. With all the shipping in and out of Seattle, the Sapphire Seahawk would have been hard to identify without some kind of tracking device or foreknowledge of its route.

  "That tells me that somebody crossed either us or the yakuza-or both." The ork's gaze hardened. "Any idea who that might be?"

  "No," Skater said.

  "Right." The sarcasm was as sharp as a monofilament edge. Without another word, Duran turned and walked through the door, and the others quickly trailed after him.

  Skater grabbed one of the chairs and sat, waiting to be sure Duran and the rest were long gone before he took his own departure. He wouldn't let himself think about how he felt. The members of the team could never be called friends, but as runners they were all chummers, and there was no question they'd have laid down their lives for each other on a run. They'd already done it more than once over the past three years.

  His grandfather had died when Skater was twelve, which was why he'd left the Council lands to live with his mother in Seattle. She'd been a fixer, surviving on the dirty edge of the shadows, and Skater had learned early not to trust the men she brought around. They were rough and uncaring, quick to swat when he didn't move fast enough.

  For the past three years the team had been the closest Skater had ever come to feeling like he belonged somewhere. The closest to something he could call family, even though each one lived with his or her own secrets.

  He couldn't remember the last time he'd considered the possibility of one of them betraying him or each other.

  Now they were gone.

  And his last words to them had been a lie. because Skater had a very good idea who'd set them up, even though he couldn'l even begin to guess why. By rights he should have come clean and confessed his suspicions.

  The only problem was. Skater was still in love with the woman.

  4

  "Cutting and running, eh?" the driver of the gypsy cab asked him maybe thirty minutes later.

  For a moment Skater froze, halfway into the vehicle parked at the curbside. The trickers hustling the corner under a working street light only a few meters away took his indecision as possible interest. Dressed in a variety of street synthleathers and revealing lingerie, both sexes came at him, some entreating and some abrasive in their challenges.

  "Get in, chummer," Kestrel said. "No big sweat that I know part of the score."

  Skater dropped into the cab's vinyl-covered back seat only a step ahead of the most aggressive of the street hustlers.

  A thin girl with spiky blond hair who'd found expression through synthleather and piercing pushed her palms and face against the window streaked with road grit. She leaned forward, spilling meaty breasts out of her white top, and dragged her tongue across the glass, leaving a twisting path of gleaming saliva that picked up the rainbow of colors from the neon advertising on the buildings. The earring piercing the tip of her tongue clicked hollowly against the glass.

  "She's not shy, is she?" Kestrel said.

  "No." Skater's hand circled the Predator's butt. "She's not." He kept watch on the pack of sleazers, ignoring the wet kisses the blond mouthed at him. Others wore neon body paint and looked like glimmering pools of perversion moving in the distance.

  "Hang on." Kestrel warned. The big powerplant roared under the hood and he swerved the vehicle out into the street, cutting off a midnight blue Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit. A horn screeched loudly in their wake, and the blond tricker gave Skater the finger and a string of obscenities.

  Skater tried to relax. It was no use. The cab's back seat was cramped and stank of urine. Smashed fast-food containers covered with days old muddy footprints decorated the floorboard. A bulletproof and bombproof sheet of plastic separated him from Kestrel.

  The cab knifed expertly through the traffic. "You didn't answer my question." Kestrel said through the speaker.

  Skater grinned without humor. "I'm running."

  "You got a funny way of showing it, chummer." Kestrel indicated the sprawl all around them. "You show up smack dab in the middle of Seattle with a lot of muscleboys looking to frag your hoop. For the nuyen you're paying me I'd have met you in Hell's Kitchen."

  "You heard?"

  "About the elf crate?" Kestrel nodded. "You didn't know the yaks had bought into the action?"

  "No."

  "Surprise."

  "No drek." Skater shifted slightly in the seat, tensing. Kestrel was a street fixer, buried so deep in the web of crime and clout that most people didn't know about him-unless he wanted someone to.

  Kestrel was dark and thin with hooded eyes. An angular scar, turned gray-white with age, lay like a private's chevron across the bridge of his hooked nose and leaked down onto both cheeks. His face was long, forgettable. He wore a baseball cap advertising the Seattle Timber Wolves combat bike team and a maroon tee shirt.

  "So what's the plan?" Kestrel asked.

  "Run," Skater said, "and don't look back."

  "Then why you still here, chummer?”

  Skater ignored the question. "What else have you heard about that elven freighter?"

  Kestrel shrugged. "Scan's pretty tight on that. People are looking for you, omae, and spreading a lot of nuyen around while they're at it."

  "Like who
?"

  "Word I get is they're working for Masaru Doyukai."

  Skater ran the name through his mind. "Never heard of him."

  "New boy in town," Kestrel replied. "Straight from the heart of Japan. Looking to make his way up quick. One of Shotozumi's godsons or some drek like that."

  The name of Hanzo Shotozumi was known to every runner on the street, and it was one feared by all. He was numero uno crime boss of Seattle, the man who'd forged the yakuza into the biggest, strongest, and deadliest crime organization in the sprawl.

  "You don't know for sure?"

  "No reason to. You want, I'll look him up. After tonight's action and the way he's leaning so heavy on everybody, I'll know him by morning anyway."

  "I'll be long gone by then."

  Kestrel nodded. "Good plan, kid. I always said you had a head on your shoulders. Nice to hear you're thinking of keeping it there."

  "Why would Shotozumi be interested in an elven freighter?" Skater asked.

  "No vendettas that I know of. Only thing I scan is that they were after some prize it carried." Kestrel glanced into the mirror. "What were you doing there?" Skater met the man's gaze but said nothing. Shaking his head. Kestrel reached for the pack on the dashboard and knocked a cigarette loose. He jammed it between his lips, gaze locked on the street ahead as he drove. "Kid, look… Much as I hate to admit it, I owe you. The day those Disassemblers hit your mom's place and killed her, they damn near killed me, too. If you hadn't gotten there, maybe they would have. You hear what I'm saying?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then, when you went after those trogs and evened the score, who helped you when you almost bought it?"

  "You." The fixer had also worked out financial arrangements with the street docs who'd put Skater back together, this time with the addition of some wiz cybernetic enhancements. Revenge hadn't come easily, or without cost.

  "Damn straight." Kestrel gave the accelerator a tap. "I'm not your nursemaid or even close to any kind of guardian angel, but I owe you. I'll nose around a little, do some digging, maybe find something out. You can call one of my message drops time to time and I'll let you know what kind of heat you're facing here."