Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  More gunfire interrupted his inspection of the damaged vehicle. He took shelter behind the bulk of the car and kept scanning the contents.

  “Speedball One, this is Two.”

  “One copies, Two.” Luppas knelt inside the car. For it to be properly gone over, techs would have to be called in.

  “The last target has been put down, One. Definitely inoperative.”

  “Affirmative, Two. Confirm prisoners?” Luppas scanned the slashed seats and the glove compartment missing its door. The fire had easily reached the flash point for paper. Only a few sheets of ash remained intact. He didn’t touch them. They would be Fishbein’s forensics team’s problem. “A pair of them, One. Dumb and Dumber.”

  Luppas took off a glove and touched the charred steering wheel with caution. A lot of residual heat remained in it, primarily in the composite plastics oozing slowly from the metal frame. He stood beside the Honda-GM and waited, wondering where Norris Caber had gone while outside the surveillance loop Fuchi had put into play in Seattle before sending for Luppas and his team.

  He watched the recovery ops through the soot-stained windshield. His team worked three men to a corpse, piling the bodies into the cargo area of the Airstar while the helo skids hovered only centimeters from the pavement.

  “Speedball One, this is Control. Lone Star will be at your twenty in two minutes or less.”

  Gazing back down the line of cars in all directions, Luppas spotted the flashing red and blue light bars of the Lone Star vehicles. “Has any headway been made with them?”

  “A deal’s on the table,” Fishbein replied.

  “Keep me apprised.” Luppas gripped the steering wheel and slipped into the astral plane, dropping his physical senses.

  For the last two days, the watcher spirits he’d conjured had been scouring Seattle for Caber in shifts, turning up nothing. All of which had been an incredible expense on Fuchi. The corp handled their cost easily, but for Luppas it had been a serious drain on his Art. A lesser mage wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. According to Fishbein’s sources, Seattle was where Caber was expected to be. Now that Luppas knew Caber was definitely in the Tacoma sprawl, he called on some watchers he’d had on stand-by.

  They came to him in astral space, as mindless as puppies wanting to please their master, bodiless things that barely left an astral signature in their wake. They already had Caber’s image, so all he had to do was redefine the area of search. He sent them scurrying with a word, then checked back into the physical world.

  Gunther Octavius had come up while he was dealing with the watchers. His second was dressed all in black, with a deep violet band around his upper left arm to identify him visually to the rest of the team. The GPS array would track him as well, but trigger fingers often worked by line of sight first.

  “Watch over me, omae,” Luppas told Octavius. “I’ll be gone for a bit.” His meat body would, of course, be totally vulnerable while he was in the astral. Trusting Gunther implicitly, Luppas folded his arms around his drawn-up knees.

  “I’ll be here,” Octavius promised. He had a face shaped like a trenching tool, hard and chiseled. He was broad and squat for a human, with iron-gray hair that bristled along the fringe under his helmet.

  With a brief, practiced effort, Luppas slipped into astral space.

  * * *

  Luppas was aware of his astral self pulling free of his physical body. Floating high over the combat zone, he saw a watcher rush toward him.

  “Master,” it croaked, “I have found the one you seek.”

  Assensing other astral beings working around him far off in the nether distances of the wide-openness of the astral plane, Luppas made certain no one was interested in challenging him or was paying too much attention to what he was doing. He followed the watcher, sliding along as smoothly as the monorail circled downtown Seattle.

  Buildings flew by beneath him as he increased speed. The geography seemed familiar, but he was unable to read street signs or even the neon advertising scaling the buildings. The astral plane re-interpreted the world, and literacy was a total loss. Only the emotions trickled through, all of them an artificial, shouting excitement.

  The watcher took Luppas to the ninth floor of a building. He took in what he could of the outside of the structure, memorizing its lines so that he would know it again when he saw it from the helo’s co-pilot seat as he planned.

  Certain he would remember it, he slipped into the building through one of the windows, oozing effortlessly through the material. Still floating, he followed the watcher past a number of office doors, until it stabbed into a thick wooden one that he assensed as having a heavy macroplast center.

  Frustration chafed at him when he saw the unreadable squiggles that danced across the front of the door. If he were in his physical body, all he’d have to do was read the name of the establishment.

  Aware of the seconds ticking past him no matter how fast astral projection made him, Luppas pushed through the door and followed the watcher. He knew at once from the way the rooms were laid out, coffins arranged so carefully with mourners grouped around them in chairs or standing in small clusters, that he was in a funeral home.

  On the astral plane, the sense of mourning and loss was as sharp as razored electrical bursts. He found Norris Caber in a back room that held a wall full of stainless steel equipment. Caber was stacked on a metal pushcart next to the automated table hissing and sucking and buzzing its way into the corpse of an old ork female who had the blackened hole of a laser burned through her left eye. The woman’s limbs jerked and tossed from the force of the dog-brain-operated equipment that hung like a cybered spider from the ceiling. A slim human stood beside the table in a white coat, wheezing on a nicostick, not at all concerned.

  Caber was dead. There was no question. His head had nearly been severed just below his jaw.

  It had been 02:01:14 a.m. when he’d gone astral. Luppas left quickly, knowing he was risking his body’s health by staying gone so long. But on his way up through the building’s roof, he spotted two men in the firewell coming up toward the seventh floor. Their presence set off an instinctive alarm within him.

  One of them was human, undoubtedly of Amerind blood, and the other was a dwarf. Both were dressed in black under the DocWagon blouses they wore. They also carried weapons and backpacks filled with an interesting selection of devices.

  Neither of the two were astrally active on any level and showed only as dormant astral forms. But Luppas could sense the tension about them, and the determination to fulfill whatever mission they’d set for themselves.

  If he hadn’t already been away from his body so long, and in a weakened state at that, Luppas would have remained to see what they were after. He was concerned that he find out exactly what that was.

  He returned to his body as quickly as he could and slid back into it, banishing the watchers to conserve what little strength that he could still claim.

  * * *

  In the physical world, Luppas signaled his team and boarded the Airstar. When the last man was inside, Octavius grabbed the top and bottom doors and pulled them closed.

  Luppas made his way forward with difficulty, shoving through his men and the dead trolls. Originally, the Airstar had been outfitted with nine bucket seats offering modest comfort. He’d ordered the bucket seats ripped out and fold-out bench ones put in so he could get more people inside. On the outside, the helo looked small, but it held five dead trolls, one of them burned to a crisp, two live ones, and his eight-man team well enough after the refurbishing.

  Dropping into the co-pilot’s seat, Luppas accessed the tacticom. “Control, this is Speedball One. I found our target, but I need help retrieving him physically.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In a funeral home in a building thirteen stories tall. No more than a few blocks away. You should be able to ID it easily enough. There can’t be that many.”

  “Affirmative, One. I want the body recovered and brought
in.”

  And with those words, Luppas knew there was even more to the covert op that he hadn’t been told. “Why, Control? I’ve verified the target. He’s toast.” Usually, his word on termination was good enough. The last thing Fuchi wanted was a body floating that could be pinned to them. Caber had been taken out by someone else; there’d be no trail back to the corp.

  “Understood, One. However, you have your orders.”

  “Affirmative, Control. We’ll need some help locating the building fast. Can you ID and ping?”

  “Standby, One.”

  Luppas belted himself into the seat, caught the pilot’s eye and thumbed upward.

  The Airstar leaped into the sky, the rotor hammering the air. In seconds, the battle zone on Interstate 5 was far below them.

  8

  “Jack!” Archangel called over the commlink.

  “Go.” Skater grabbed the handrail on the eighth-level landing of the Mariah Building and hauled himself up. His legs trembled from the extended exertion of climbing all eight floors, his boosted reflexes quivering in readiness, primed by the adrenaline rush. His retinal clock showed him it was 02:03:57 a.m. They had twenty-six minutes left on their window before the Knight Errant sec overlap occurred.

  The DocWagon jackets had gotten them into the building and provided a simple camouflage from the Knight Errant security manning the closed-circuit monitors throughout the entrance and exit areas. Archangel had sleazed her way past the emergency stairwell IC and set up doppler imaging on those cams to show the same empty stairwells over and over on Knight Errant’s monitors. Neither Skater nor Wheeler showed up on any of the screens except Archangel’s.

  “The helicopter at the scene of the crash-and-dash has just lifted and appears on its way to this building,” Archangel reported.

  “You’re sure?” Skater reached the second eighth-floor landing switchback at full speed. Sweat drenched his clothing.

  “I’m tracking it through a vidscreen display I’ve got that’s linked into a KSTS news flash transmission from a snoop equipped with a Sony HB500 portacam. She’s attempting to follow the helicopter by car.”

  Spotting the yellow numbers marking the ninth floor, Skater pulled up short. The infrared circuitry in his eyes had already turned night into day in the firewell.

  He peered through the heavy wire mesh in the safety glass. Halfway down the corridor a half-dozen people, mostly orks, were going out the front door of Shastakovich’s Funeral Home. All of them shook hands with one of the Shastakovich reps wearing a dark suit and somber expression.

  Skater held a hand up to Wheeler, freezing the dwarf rigger into place. “How far out is the helicopter?”

  “Only minutes,” Archangel answered.

  Skater swapped looks with Wheeler as the dwarf pulled a battery-operated plascrete circular saw from his backpack. He checked the power read-out, which glowed full green. They were on the second level of stairs leading up to the tenth floor. “We need the aud systems cut in the stairwell,” Skater said. The fire-escape route contained a vibration-detection system Archangel had found when she’d reviewed the Knight Errant records she’d broken into before the run. Two microphones were placed on each level, all of them set up to disregard normal voices, overflow from the halls, and the thunder of jets passing overhead on their way to Sea-Tac Airport, as well as storms themselves. They would pick up screams for help, shouts, the cracks of gunfire, and the sound of Wheeler’s plascrete saw.

  Wheeler used a measuring tape and a graphite pencil to mark off the square he intended to cut while Archangel jacked back into the Matrix. Then he put his tools away, pulled a paper mask over his lower face, bared the rough blade and set it against the wall. Beyond it was the air/heat ductwork they’d located and intended to use to get into Shastakovich’s.

  Skater slipped on a mask as well, instinctively rebelling against it because it cut down on his oxygen flow when his system was riding out an adrenaline high. But it was much better than trying to breath the plascrete dust that would fill the stairwell in seconds. He accessed the commlink. “Duran.”

  “Here, kid.”

  “Knight Errant?”

  The ork was stationed near the main Knight Errant security outpost on the fourth floor, ready to lay down a trail of confusion if it was needed. “Just logging another shift. When they’re not watching the monitors, they’re checking out the action on Arise Humanity! on a portable trid.”

  “Tonight’s feature,” Elvis growled sarcastically, “ ‘Fifty Ways To Geek Unwanted Meta Neighbors And How To Get Away with It.’ ”

  “I’ve got the vibration-detection system closed off,” Archangel reported. “You might want to be careful when you vent the integrity of that wall.”

  “Why?” Skater asked.

  “The vibration-detection system had white IC like I was expecting, but someone had logged a secondary perimeter into the logic circuits that had a gray IC tar baby umbilical tied into it.” The elf decker sounded jazzed. “If I hadn’t been on my toes, the tar baby would have crashed the deception utility I used against the access IC and sounded an alarm.”

  “An alarm to Knight Errant or someone else?” Skater asked. “Someone else.”

  “Could you trace the secondary alarm system?”

  “Not without crashing the system.”

  “Probably just some chummer not really wanting to rely solely on building sec,” Wheeler said, still holding the plascrete saw poised.

  Skater nodded, figuring it the same way. They’d know soon enough. But it increased the chances of something nasty on the other side. “Both systems are down?”

  “Yes,” Archangel replied.

  “Do it,” Skater told the dwarf rigger.

  Wheeler triggered the plascrete saw and the blade bit into the wall with a shower of bright sparks and a cloud of white-gray dust. The roar was incredible. Fine powder poured down onto the dwarf’s big feet as he cut.

  Stepping back to the fire-escape door letting out onto the ninth-floor hallway, Skater peered outside again. Evidently the soundproofing in the Mariah Building was up to spec because no one came running at the door with weapon in hand to check out the sudden noise.

  Another twenty seconds and Wheeler had cut through the section. Using a pair of thin steel hooks, he reached behind the block and hauled it out. Skater pulled off the DocWagon jacket and used it to handle the rectangle of plascrete and lower it to the floor so it wouldn’t thud and cause vibrations to run through the nearer offices on the ninth level. The edges of the block where the saw had scored it remained hot enough to burn the jacket material.

  Darkness filled the area beyond the fresh-cut hole. Only a few pinpricks of light made glowing mushroom forms against the acoustic tiles on the bottom. With the cloud of plascrete dust filling the space, conventional flashlights and infrared vision were both nearly as useless.

  Skater shrugged out of his backpack and brought it around over his chest. The crawlspace between floors was literally that. He pushed himself through the opening, took a moment to guess at his bearings, and started forward on his hands and knees.

  Wheeler followed at once.

  Movement across the floor of the crawlspace was tricky. Primarily constructed to maintain a decorative atmosphere in the building, providing a means to hang the acoustic ceiling low enough to cover the various power, water, and disposal trunklines, it wasn’t designed to sustain the weight of two people crawling over it.

  Shastakovich’s Funeral Home boasted late-model cryo-chambers to keep the dead until all the details of a funeral could be worked out, a full line of caskets and services, and an on-site crematorium. When Skater had first seen the crematorium’s rooftop outlet duct in the blueprints, seen that it was nearly two meters across, he’d known how he was going to make the run.

  The duct ran uninterrupted from the ceiling of the ninth floor all the way to the rooftop. Two filtering systems were inside, designed to remove all the illegal impurities from the smoke of the burnings. Th
e duct at the rooftop was covered by a heavy protective screen, but was located well away from the two rooftop accesses.

  When he reached the crematorium exhaust, Skater put a hand against it. It was still warm from recent use, but not too hot for what he had in mind. Even if it had been hot, there’d have been a way around that as well.

  Wheeler took a monofilament file knife from his pack and bent to the task. He was short enough to work on his knees, taking a two-handed grip on the knife and digging in.

  Skater accessed the commlink. “We’re in position and beginning our entry.”

  “Work quickly,” Cullen Trey urged. “I’ve spotted the fragging helicopters myself. It’s got at least one cannon mounted underneath.”

  “Lone Star also has ground units moving in,” Archangel added.

  “Where’s the helicopter?” Skater asked.

  “Hovering,” Archangel replied.

  “The team’s sizing up the building,” Duran said. “Downloading whatever they can about the sec stats. It’s what I would do before I put soldiers into the battle zone. Terrain can be a good friend or your worst enemy. Your best investment is getting to know it.”

  The thought of the helicopter hovering up there in the night sky and waiting to dispose troops into the building kept Skater’s heart racing. Even from the beginning, he’d known the run hinged on timing: quick in, quick out. Now there could be no false moves.

  “Jack,” Wheeler called.

  Skater looked over as the dwarf removed the cut-out section of the exhaust duct.

  “We’re go,” the dwarf rigger said.

  “Did you locate the main power line to the funeral home?” Skater reached into his backpack, shifted aside the thin coils of climbing cable, pitons, and pneumatic-powered shaft hammer, and took out the bulky electromagnetic gloves. They had pads in the palms and on the fingers, with plates capable of adhering to anything with enough ferrous trace elements. He put on the strap-on kneepads first, then tugged on the gloves. He jacked the power wires into the slits in the backpack that had been made to allow access to the micro-battery system sewn into the bottom.