Shadowrun 44 - Drops of Corruption

by Jason M Hardy (epub)

  Kross nonchalantly waved his hand. “I was mostly along as an observer. I didn’t take his actions personally.”

  Bannickburn whistled. “Damn, they must pay you well. Blind loyalty like that doesn’t come cheap.”

  Kross dropped his casual posture, and stood stiffly in front of Bannickburn.

  “You’re not in a good position to be making any insults,” he said coldly.

  “Right. Habits are hard to break. Anyway, tell your boss I said congratulations and go to hell.”

  A cold voice sounded from behind Bannickburn. “You don’t want me angry with you, do you, Robert?”

  Jackie and Bannickburn both whirled, furious. “You little—” Bannickburn started.

  Shivers raised his hands appeasingly. “Robert, Robert, please.” he said. “Let’s not start on unpleasant footing. We’re not enemies.”

  “Really?” Jackie said. “Your attempt to ambush and kill us kind of left another impression.”

  “Business is business,” Shivers said. He, unlike Kross, bore some marks from the previous night. His arm was in a sling, he had a bandage over his cheek, and he moved his torso awkwardly. “The water bottle was business. I was sent down to correct a situation that my superiors thought was unstable.”

  “You were sent down?” Bannickburn said. “By Martel?”

  “Of course. Not many other people knew about it.” “Why did Martel send you? We had it under control.” “That’s not what Sottocapo Martel thought. He became quite worried when he heard Kader had received leaked information about the mission, as well as about your identity. He believed Bailey had been careless with information, so he sent me to ensure things were done correctly.”

  “You were sent to counteract Kader? But you sided with him!”

  Shivers just shrugged. “Seemingly,” he said. Bannickburn shook his head, wondering. But then he thought about everything he had seen, everything Jimmy had done, and what he knew about the man. And it started to make sense.

  “You leaked the information about me to Kader,” Bannickburn said slowly. “I know Martel had it. You put him on Bailey’s tail. Then, when Martel found out what happened, he blamed Bailey instead of you, and sent you to save the day.”

  Shivers smirked. “Which I did. I kept the water out of Kader’s hands and kept you, our precious operative, alive.”

  “You had nothing to do with either of those things!”

  “That may be your story. Martel’s heard quite a different account, and that’s now what he believes.”

  “And for your heroism, he promoted you to caporegime.”

  “That seems to be the case.”

  “So you set Bailey up. Either way, he was screwed— either Kader or Martel would get him. And no matter what happened, you’d fill Martel’s head with lies that made you look good. As long as you survived, of course.”

  “That’s something I’m good at.”

  “Why? Why go after Bailey?”

  “Because he wasn’t as funny as he thought he was,” Shivers said bluntly. “And I could do his job better than him.”

  Bannickburn could only shake his head. He couldn’t believe he’d dived into this snake pit and survived.

  “So why are you here?” he asked. “To gloat?”

  “Not at all,” Shivers said. “To work out an agreement.”

  “Which is?”

  “You never try to tell Martel about what you think is true. Allow him to believe what he believes right now.” “And what do I get in return?”

  “You remain, in Murson Kader’s mind, a forgotten man. The evidence implicating you in the Gates con is buried. No one, including me, will have cause to hunt you down and kill you.”

  Well, no one I’ve dealt with recently, Bannickburn thought. Then he nodded wearily. “Fine. But Kader’s still going to be looking for revenge.”

  “I don’t think so. He received a very kind letter from the Gates Casino, apologizing for the mishap of the other night. They’ve invited him back as a regular customer.”

  Bannickburn gaped. “And how did you manage that?" “Ah, Robert,” Shivers said. “That would be telling. Be well.” He motioned to Kross, and the two of them walked away.

  Bannickburn finally remembered to close his mouth, which had been hanging open, when they were out of sight. Then he dropped his chin to his chest.

  “My dear,” he said, “you have earned the right to say ‘I told you so’ repeatedly over the next year or so.” “Don’t think I won’t take advantage of it,” she said. “Come on, let’s go back inside.”

  Jackie wheeled Bannickburn back toward the warehouse. He sat still, a blanket on his lap, feeling pain when the chair so much as bumped over a pebble. He felt like an old man.

  A thought struck him as they traveled back to her doss.

  “That chemical analysis you did,” he said. “How long did it take?”

  She shrugged. “Not long. A few minutes at most.” “And that gave you the chemical composition of the Laes?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “When the Finnigan people picked up the water in the Tir,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be the first thing they did? So they’d have the data no matter what?”

  Her eyes widened a little. “Yeah. Probably.”

  “Could they have sent the data to Seattle?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But Tir networks are tough to crack. They might not have been able to send out the data. And when you left The Finnigan toughs lying in the woods after you took the bottle, that might have been the end of any data they had.”

  “You said ‘might’ a couple of times,” Bannickburn said. “That leaves the possibility that they got the data out.”

  Jackie tilted her head. “It’s possible.”

  “So everything we did to keep the bottle out of Finnigan hands . . .”

  She patted his shoulder. “Shhh. This isn’t the time to think about it. Shivers told you no one’s coming to kill you for the time being. That should be enough.”

  He supposed it was. He sat back in the chair. The conversation had taken what little energy he had, and he was ready to sleep for another day or so. He closed his eyes, and immediately started drifting away.

  As he crept toward dreaming, he remembered the fight last night. He thought of the look in Kader’s eyes when he felt the first traces of paralysis, then eventually became frozen—the slow drops of each touch from Ban-nickburn gathering into an unstoppable wave of rigidity. He hadn't understood what was happening to him, and beneath his cold metal face he must have felt traces of fear.

  Bannickburn hadn’t scared anyone big and powerful like that in a long, long time. It almost made the whole mess worthwhile.