by Mel Odom
“The power line’s right here.” Wheeler tapped a metal sheathed conduit next to the exhaust duct. “Say the word and it’s history.” A gel-sealed ring of white phosphorus explosive was wrapped around the fifteen-centimeter trunkline.
Skater shoved his head inside the duct. The filtering system above and below was sealed. The sweet smell of burned flesh pervaded the air locked up in the duct. If his plan didn’t work, they ran the chance of being trapped like rats in the crawlspace between the ninth and tenth floors.
He pulled back out of the hole and gave Wheeler a thumb’s-up. “Burn it.”
Wheeler touched an electronic detonator clipped to his shirt.
Skater tucked his face into the crook of his arm as the white phosphorus caught, throwing out a blinding amount of light and heat. The die was cast, and it waited to be seen if Lady Luck came up a seven or snake-eyes.
9
“Control has managed ID through a database search of the area around your present twenty,” Fishbein said over the tacticom. “Stand by for target ping.”
Aboard the Airstar, Luppas checked the helo’s navcomp and watched the funeral home’s twenty appear in the databanks as a glowing blue dot displayed on the monitor. Magnification increased automatically, till the streets and cross-streets were legible.
“One confirms, Control.” Luppas watched the Tacoma sprawl glide past under the helo’s belly. His eyes flicked to another panel and checked the time: 2:11:41 a.m. “We may also have competition for that corpse. How soon can you set up a satellite array over that building?”
“Minutes,” Fishbein responded.
“I’ll also need specs on that building. Floor plans. A who’s-who. Sec systems. Anything that could be pertinent to our infiltration.”
“It’s already been assembled. We’re downloading that information into your vehicle’s portable deck now.”
Luppas glanced at the deck slung under the Airstar’s console. Lights flickered across its sleek surface, letting him know the drives were copying the datastream along the satlink. One quick tug, and the deck would be with his team’s decker. Since the files logged into the deck as memory, the decker wouldn’t have to jack into the Matrix to receive them. Information would be available on the fly.
“And you might think about letting me in on what exactly it is we’re supposed to be looking for out here,” Luppas said. Recovering the body still gnawed at him. Every minute spent on the op at this point was leading to a possible shakedown by the Star if they crossed swords.
“Negative. One. This whole op is strictly need-to-know.”
Luppas quelled the angry frustration seething inside him. There was every possibility that Fishbein herself didn’t know what was at stake and was deliberately needling him. Their working relationship had never been easy. Pleasant was completely out of the datapic.
When he’d signed on for the corp checks, he’d known he wouldn’t always be kept in the loop. It made him long for the days when he was strictly free-lance, able to pick and choose the battles he faced. Drifting in the shadows, even the huge ones cast by the megacorps, still left a fighting man in enemy territory because he couldn’t see the fragging lines of demarcation.
Luppas moved back into the cargo hold, leaning heavily against the walls as the Airstar bucked and vibrated beneath the slamming force of the rotor.
Two members of the team shoved the troll prisoners against the bulkhead with the door. The dead littered the floor space in front of them. Both trolls glared up at Luppas angrily.
“Gonna be bad for you guys when the rest of the Spike Wheels find out who you are,” one of them threatened.
“It’s already bad for you,” Luppas replied with a cold smile.
The troll glowered but didn’t say anything.
“Open the door,” Luppas ordered.
The secman standing next to the Airstar’s door opened it with difficulty because of the airstream. Wind rushed in, slipping through all of their clothing with quick, deft fingers.
Luppas leveled a forefinger at the troll nearest the door. “Pull him in front of the opening.”
“Frag you!” the troll exploded. “You ain’t about to do any kind of drek like that! That’s just dandelion-talk!” He struggled and fought the two secmen who grabbed hold of him, stopping quick when one of them slid a long, serrated combat blade up under his heavy chin. After that, he went along slowly, but quietly.
“The Mariah Building is two minutes away,” the pilot called out over the tacticom.
“Acknowledged,” Luppas responded. “Maintain a position four hundred meters from the building until I instruct you otherwise.” Holding onto the support rails welded across the top of the Airstar’s cargo space, he walked in front of the troll. “Who hired you to strip that car down?”
“Go frag yourself!” the troll bellowed.
Shifting without warning, Luppas snap-kicked the troll in the face.
Blood streamed down the go-ganger’s contorted face as he fought to maintain his balance. The battle against gravity lasted only briefly. With his hands manacled behind his back, he had little foundation from which to recover. A harsh, ragged scream ripped from his throat as he went over backward and tumbled through the open helo door, quickly falling behind the Airstar.
Luppas stepped forward and rested against the doorframe as he watched the troll hit.
Still screaming, though the sound couldn’t be heard over the whop-whop-whop of the helo’s rotor blades, the troll dropped onto a delivery truck double-parked on East Thirty-eighth Street.
Luppas had no doubts that the go-ganger hadn’t survived the experience. He stepped back and gestured for the second troll to be brought over in front of the door.
The troll fought and yelled, and nearly took the two humans with him out the door as they dragged him by force into position. When he was placed, he threw himself sideways, trying to crawl back along the floor of the cargo hold, even attempting to use his chin to gain leverage.
Luppas slipped a Cougar Fine Blade from Octavius’s combat harness and knelt in front of the go-ganger. Seizing the troll’s mohawk in one hand, he shoved the go-ganger’s head back and bared his throat. He slid the knife under the troll’s Adam’s apple and pressed hard enough to trap it on the keen edge. The go-ganger couldn’t swallow without cutting his throat.
“Believe me, trog,” Luppas grated, “when I want you out that door, out you’ll go. Scan me?”
Unable to nod his head or answer in a loud voice, the troll whispered harshly, “Yeah.”
Luppas leaned back, removing the knife. He refused to give in to the pounding headache that threatened to make his vision double. “Good. One lie, one refusal to answer, and you die. Why were you at the crash-and-dash site?”
“We got hired to be there. A salvage job. We’ve done ’em before.”
Luppas nodded encouragement. “Who hired you?”
“A woman. But I don’t know her name. I swear.”
Taking time to add to the tension and uncertainty flooding through their prisoner, Luppas glanced up at Octavius, knowing his second would fall in with the role-playing. It was something they’d done before. “Well?”
Octavius shrugged. “I believe him.”
“You think he’d risk a tangle with a blue crew for someone he didn’t even know?”
“We had nuyen up front,” the go-ganger said before Octavius could answer. He sounded desperate to be believed. “She promised us more when we delivered.”
Luppas cast a spell so he could read the truth of the troll’s statements. He detected no falsehoods. “Delivered what?”
“The guy was supposed to be carrying a deck. All we had to do was get it. She’d get in touch with us again. She was going to place an ad in the classifieds once we let her know we had it.”
It made sense to Luppas. Transmission on the telecom was instantaneous. The buy-back could have been set up within an hour or less. “What part of the classifieds?”
“Antique
s.”
The elf gestured at the dead trolls. “I don’t see a deck.”
“That’s because there wasn’t one.”
“If you’d gotten it, what kind of message were you supposed to leave in the classifieds?”
The troll tried to shrug, but the effort was wasted with the restraint put on him by the containment manacles. “Any message to Trojan from Soylent Green.”
“She gave you a spelling?”
The troll spelled the word after a brief hesitation and some serious brow-bending. “I got it written down. So did the others.”
“Sir,” the pilot cut in, “we’re in position over the target site.” Luppas looked past the troll through the open cargo door. In outline, the Mariah Building looked like the one he’d seen while astral. “Confirm target ping?”
“Target ping confirmed,” the pilot reported. “Reading five by five.”
“Hold your position and stay low.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Control,” Luppas said, “this is Speedball One. Did you scan the interview?”
“Affirmative, One.”
“Can you get a message onto the classifieds section of the telecom programming?”
“I’ll have to get approval.”
Luppas made his voice hard. “Then get your fragging approval and get electronic copy out there, Control, before that lead goes dead. Let me know when you have it.” Fishbein didn’t reply.
“Have you got sat-scans in place on the target area?” Luppas asked.
“Affirmative.” Fishbein remained short.
That was fine with Luppas. He only needed her intelligence support, not a personality. “Can you get into the building’s sec sys through emergency Matrix overrides?” On most public buildings where there was a risk to the civilian populace, fire department and Lone Star had satlink access to publicly ported sec systems so they could search the building room by room if necessary for survivors and to scan how bad a situation was while they were enroute. Corp buildings didn’t have a public jack that the emergency squads could use, but they had them for their own people.
“I tried as soon as we were able to ping the building. Those systems appear to be off-line.”
“Let me know if you get in.”
“Affirmative, One.”
Luppas turned his attention back to the go-ganger. “How’d you know where your target would be?”
“She told us.”
“She told you that he’d be involved in a crash-and-dash?”
“No. She just told us to look for his car. We knew what it looked like, and we knew where it would be. We figured we were gonna have to force him off the road. Nothing wiz for us. We were standing by, couldn’t believe it when we saw the crash-and-dash happen right in front of us. The guy kept the pedal to the metal, hauling faster going than he did coming.”
“He?”
The troll seemed unsure. “I think so.”
“You rolled up to the car?”
“After we made sure the slotting thing wasn’t gonna blow up, sure.”
“Then you couldn’t find the deck?”
The troll shook his head.
The elf looked up at the nearest secman. “Tranq him.”
The troll shrugged, trying to avoid the patch the secman shoved at his neck.
“Be still, you bozo,” the secman said. “If the man had wanted you dead, we’d have shoved your hoop out the door.”
Tensely, the Spiker accepted the patch, took a deep breath, then slumped to the floor of the cargo hold, eyes rolling up in his big head.
“Keep him safe,” Luppas instructed. “I’m going to need him later.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pilot,” Luppas called over the tacticom.
“Sir?”
“Take us onto the rooftop. When we unload, stay close for a possible fast evac.”
“Yes, sir.” Immediately, the Airstar banked and began the approach to the Mariah Building.
Luppas stepped back and let Octavius’s chosen point men take the doorway. He reached back for the Colt M-23 assault rifle his second held out to him, then made the weapon ready, his hands moving automatically. The fatigue from using his Art swirled around him, threatening to claim him, and his body was drenched with sweat. Magic took its toll, and he was running on empty.
The point men were out the door before the skids touched the rooftop. After a quick breath, Luppas was hot on their heels. No matter who the people were that were after what Norris Caber had on his body, there were only two ways of egress: the rooftop or street level. From the rooftop, Luppas knew his team would be able to cover both.
The elf wasn’t content to let them come to him, though. If Caber’s secret had to do with software that could be transmitted, there were plenty of decks inside the building that could offload the programming. The elf knew he was still jamming against the clock.
A heavy Ares Type II maglock secured the rooftop access door.
Luppas hand-signaled Octavius, who in turn signaled to another secman.
The secman who approached the maglock turned out to be very female when she removed her helmet. Bronze hair cascaded out in a ponytail. Without a word, she popped the maglock’s casing and attached a sequencer directly onto the maglock’s wiring with alligator clips. A dozen seconds passed, Luppas counting every tick, then the sequencer ran a green series indicating that the lock had been bypassed.
The metallic snick sounded faintly to Luppas’s sharp ears. When he tried the door, it opened easily.
The point man went through and down the metal stairs, his boots ringing on every third or fourth step. Luppas followed him into the bowels of the building, knowing the enemy was still somewhere inside, the prize yet to be claimed.
10
Skater waved the acrid smoke from his face, choking down. Then the ninth-floor exhaust duct in the Mariah Building shivered into a full-throated vibration against his back. Blinking back smoky tears that trailed down his face, Skater surveyed the power trunk line.
The phosphorus had amputated it, leaving a tangled mass of sparking wires in the jagged edged metal-ceramic composite pipe. The section of the trunk line leading in to Shastakovich’s Funeral Home remained inert, dead.
“Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink. “The bogey team has broken through the north rooftop door and is in the stairwell.”
Skater moved into the two-meter wide exhaust duct, his electromagnetic gloves and knee pads adhering to the metal sides even through the layers of soot. He went down from the tenth floor to the ninth floor, where the funeral home was. Wheeler came down behind him, following closely. The filtering systems above and below had drawn back into the recessed areas designed to hold them during semi-annual cleaning. The exhaust duct was clear all the way to the rooftop.
He pictured the Mariah Building in his head again. Access doors from the rooftop were located at the north and south ends of the building, leading down to the stairwells that corresponded at either end of the structure. The north end was furthest from their present position. Evidently the arriving bogey team didn’t have their exact location. It gave them a precious few seconds more. “Set off one of the audible alarms on the eleventh floor and make sure the security pads in that stairwell show it.”
“Done.”
Above him, resonating through the exhaust duct, Skater heard the strident whoop-whoop of a klaxon. “Duran, what about Knight Errant?”
“I dropped a couple of flash-bangs on them,” the ork answered. “They’re mobilizing just like you figured, spreading out to seal the ground floor.”
KER-THUNK!
The solid slam of metal against metal told Skater that Wheeler was already in the duct and hard at work. He disengaged the electromagnetism in his right glove by butting his chin against the forearm control. Once his hand was free, he slid the pneumatic hammer from the backpack, set a magazine filled with pitons into the chamber, and fitted the end against the duct wall with as much weight behind it as he coul
d manage before squeezing the trigger. Even then the force of the piton sinking into the duct wall almost tore him from his position.
“Archangel, set off a screamer in the south side stairwell,” Skater instructed as he crawled further down. “Knight Errant will move into a confrontation with the unidentified crew.”
“Done.”
Skated hoped it would buy some more time. All they needed was minutes. And some luck. Luck was never a bad thing as long as it broke the right way.
At the bottom of the duct, light filtered in from the emergency systems.
“Knight Errant has just engaged the other team in the north-side stairwell,” Archangel reported.
Skater set the last piton into the duct wall and put the pneumatic hammer away. There was no sense in taking chances with Knight Errant’s mages using whatever residue he left on it to track him down. “What about progress in the north-side stairwell?”
“Halted at the eleventh floor.”
“The helicopter’s still waiting overhead,” Elvis said.
“Trey,” Skater said, “I hadn’t counted on an armed helicopter this soon.”
“Not to worry, chummer,” Trey said. “When the time comes, I’ll see if I can’t distract it.”
Skater’s neck hurt when he craned it back up to check on Wheeler.
The dwarf clung to the top of the exhaust duct. Behind him was a neat row of pitons. He used the pneumatic hammer to start the support bolts for the micro-block and tackle.
Cutting power to the remaining electromagnetic glove and the knee pads, Skater dropped into the crematorium vault. The same preventative circuitry that had opened the filters had also unsealed the vault doors and extinguished the gas-powered heating units.
Even with the infrared circuitry juicing his normal eyesight to the max, Skater had a hard time seeing in the vault. He got a brief impression of the ash-coated, composite glazed walls in the three-meter-wide cube, then he concentrated on the light lining the vault door as he moved forward.
The room beyond the vault doors of the crematorium unit held three sheet-covered bodies on rolling metal beds. To the right, a chromed ball embedded in the ceiling with articulated arms had been in the middle of prepping a corpse. Liquid noises slurped and gurgled from the equipment working on the corpse even over the passive warning tweets of the emergency illumination boxes set high on two of the walls. The illumination boxes had come on-line automatically when the power had been cut.