Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  A flexible hose almost as thick in diameter as the elfs little finger dropped through a specially constructed vent in the cage ceiling. A wire mesh bulb covered the hose’s opening so it couldn’t be easily blocked.

  “Please stand back until you are otherwise directed,” the feminine voice instructed. “The hose you see above you is attached to a tank of gamma-scopolamine. Should you fail the ID, you will be rendered unconscious and turned over to Lone Star. Trespassing charges will be levied against you.” The gamma-scopolamine remained the most gentle of the cage’s defensives. The wall also held BacteriTech Bacterial Containment Grids located with aerosol canisters of FAB-1 and FAB-UV held at sub-zero temperatures. Once an unauthorized astral insertion into the building was detected by a corporate security mage, an alarm went out and the containers of fat bacteria released their contents throughout the sensitive areas of the skyscraper. Mages and other beings able to move along the astral planes were blocked from going astral by the organic matter in the FAB.

  A mage who’d left his body to take a quick astral tour of the building and happened to be caught outside of his own flesh and blood when the BCGs were triggered couldn’t reenter his body and ran the risk of dying if kept outside for too long. At the very least, he or she was completely defenseless against the sec guards who arrived.

  For those conniving enough to bring their own oxygen supply, aware of the gamma-scopolamine, the maglev cage was wired for heavy electric shock strong enough to neutralize a rampaging behemoth. From that point on, things turned decidedly deadly. Some of the sec work belonged to Luppas.

  “Voice ID first. State your name and position within Fuchi Industrial Electronics Corporation.”

  “Kylar Luppas.” His position was never mentioned.

  “Confirm. Please step forward to the ocular that will extend from the wall ahead of you.”

  A small section of the synthmahogany irised and the ocular hummed out into position. Luppas moved forward and fitted his right eye into the ocular.

  “Retinal scan confirm. Vital signs confirm. Awaiting astral scan.”

  During the pause that followed, Luppas recognized the cool kiss of an astral projection touching him from a sec-mage working somewhere in the building. He reined in the immediate reflex to strike back at the uncomfortable feeling that came as a result.

  “Astral scan confirmed,” the female voice stated. “Welcome to the upper levels, Mr. Luppas. Enjoy your stay.”

  The aperture in the synthmahogany pulled itself back together. When it finished, only unblemished synthwood remained. The cage started back up. Electric blue numbers cycled through the digital readout.

  Villiers’s private offices in the Bellevue research compound on Sixth Street SE and 112th Avenue SE occupied the whole floor two levels from the top of the skyraker. The levels above it held reactive armor built into the walls and floors. With Sea-Tac so close, the possibility of a relatively surprising launch of a Mitsubishi-GM Bandit air-to-ground missile remained a threat.

  Fuchi Industrial Electronics itself was a consortium of three powerful men: Richard Villiers, Shikei Nakatomi, and Korin Yamana. They had their prospective areas of control, but Luppas knew each constantly sought leverage over the others, especially for the corporation’s space-based Fuchi Orbital Division. Currently, Villiers held that control, but that was subject to change. That thin balance of power among the three families made the skyscraper’s security necessary.

  The maglev cage doors opened a heartbeat after the arrival bing sounded. A plastiglass sec checkpoint extended from the maglev. A secteam in Fuchi uniforms stood in a tight array around the checkpoint.

  “Mr. Luppas,” a clean-shaven young man said. “We’ll need your swipe card, please.”

  Glancing at the plastiglass-covered floor, Luppas saw the thin line of seal-gel mixing in with the carpet. He had no doubt that it contained FAT-1. Canisters marked with the substance clung to the plastiglass on the outside like truncated octopi.

  Luppas passed the swipe card through the thin slot of the locked plastiglass door. One of the other secmen took it.

  The secman with Luppas’s swipe card dropped it into a portable incinerator tucked against the wall. “Not to worry, sir,” the sergeant-major said. “We’re issuing new corporate ID cards today.” He waved at the woman covering the door and she released the locks.

  Luppas passed through and accepted the new swipe card from the sergeant-major. “What’s down?”

  “New cards, sir,” the sec commander replied. “Any other information will be passed along only on a need-to-know basis. That isn’t my area.”

  “Where’s Miles Lanier?” Luppas asked. Lanier headed up Fuchi’s IntSec branch.

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  Luppas put the card away and continued down the hall. Something was in the wind, and it bothered him. If drastic changes were necessary in Fuchi’s offices, Lanier would have been on-site overseeing them.

  A simple chromed door ended the hallway. Luppas watched his reflection change as he neared the entrance, shifting across the metal planes. The door slid open.

  A receptionist sat behind a kidney-shaped desk. Cool and competent, her hair razored short so grabbing it would be an effort, she glanced at Luppas without expression. Silver cybereyes glinted coldly.

  “Mr. Luppas, you’ve been cleared for admittance,” she said precisely in a voice that was the best nuyen could buy. Like the other receptionists, including the few males Luppas had noticed in rotation, she carried the best and heaviest cyberware available, and so much of it that the line between man and machine was blurred.

  The doors to the inner sanctum slid apart as he walked toward them. Two desks occupied the center of the large, windowless room, running parallel to each other but facing outward so that one person could man them both. The walls held various Fuchi logos that had been used over the years, as well as digipix of hardware that had been developed by the corporation since its inception.

  Ramona Fishbein wore a chic Zoé skirt-suit. The sea-foam green skirt ended nearly thirty centimeters from the center of her tanned knee, her modesty kept intact as she walked through the two desk areas only by the permanent electrostatic charge in the garment. The dark royal blue jacket secured by one button revealed an impressive cleavage. The crystallized polymer of the weave rendered a subliminal shimmer that assaulted the senses in the dim lighting prevalent in the room.

  Scalpels and tech had taken away the years from Fishbein’s face, scrubbed down to pink flesh newness with acid washes. She could have been anywhere from twenty to eighty, trim and athletic, oozing a confidence that bordered on predatory. Turquoise and silver clips worked into bird shapes that looked antique and of Amerind workmanship held her black hair up and back.

  Massaging the back of her neck, Fishbein continued talking over a pencil-mike headset, giving quick orders to various personnel. She carried a small keypad in her hand as she gazed at the trid screens surrounding her, controlling the communications as well as the trid reception. She waved Luppas to a comfortably overstuffed chair near the left desk.

  He ignored the gesture and crossed the room to the wet bar in the corner. Taking down a crimson-flecked brandy snifter that had been hand blown by dwarven glass-makers of Germany, he loaded it with cracked ice and sluiced a chilled bottle of imported Cuige Chonnacht mineral water from Tir na nOg over it. He added two wedges of lemon and a wedge of lime to the drink and gently swirled the contents as he took the seat Fishbein had offered.

  Fishbein continued her conversations. Her voice never rose, but became edged as monofilament wire.

  Luppas sipped his drink and waited. He glanced across the trids Fishbein had open to her, wondering what the woman was covering. President Kyle Haeffner, looking tired but trustworthy, stood in the White House’s oval-shaped Blue Room in front of huge paned windows overlooking the flowering gardens. A PRC-44b Yellowjacket helicopter with military markings hovered in the blue sky over the UCAS president’s right shou
lder and black armband. The message wasn’t exactly subliminal.

  On another trid, stock footage of the gathering of dragons that had taken place after Dunkelzahn’s assassination only days ago filled the screen. The dragons blew out fiery breath as they circled the prismatic manastorm that marked the spot of Dunkelzahn’s demise.

  “Time,” Fishbein declared.

  Immediately, the trids blanked out and she stripped the headset off and tossed it onto one of the desks. She too crossed to the wet bar and made herself a drink.

  “Villiers?” Luppas inquired.

  “Twenty-seven seconds and counting. He’ll be joining us by cyberlink.” Fishbein held up a hairnet-shaped hitcher rig. She smirked. “Let’s go, tortoise boy.”

  Reluctantly, Luppas donned the cybergear. He’d never relished the experience of hitching along with a decker through the Matrix. He waited for Fishbein to bring him on-line through the Fuchi Cyber-IVx she’d jacked into. His own entry was going to be through the Dir-X simsense rig she’d booted into her deck.

  A flash of color filled his simvision. Abruptly the colors swirled away. When he blinked, he saw that he was still seated in the room he and Fishbein occupied. Now, though, Richard Villiers also occupied the room with them. Fishbein was seated behind the desk, the fiber-optic cable linked to the datajack in the back of her skull and the C2 deck meshed with her brain no longer visible.

  Dark, handsome, and regal, Villiers stood in the center of the room in front of the desks and the chair Luppas had chosen. The simsense rig mimicked the images and sensations of the experience perfectly.

  “You lost your mission’s objective, Mr. Luppas,” Villiers said coldly, “and I want to know when you’re going to get it back!”

  19

  The Seattle monorail’s door opened as an automated male voice announced, “Jefferson Street Station with access to Harborview Hospital. Please exercise caution as you exit. Thank you and have a nice day.”

  Skater followed the press of the crowd out onto the station. Transit sec-guards were out in force, their Defiance Industries AZ-150 super stun batons already in hand to keep the peace.

  It was nearly noon, though the sun hadn’t burned its way through the cloud cover that had overtaken the sprawl shortly after the coming of the dawn. Skater knew lunch money would be the least of the targets chased after by the gutterkin looking to make one more day in the plex at someone else’s expense.

  He carried the Predator in shoulder leather under a lightweight black jacket advertising Ice Blue Ice, a popular elven band specializing in blues music. A dark green ball cap with a rounded bill shadowed his features.

  Passing through the turnstiles, he glanced up at the reflective surface of the polysteel framing the door that let out into the wide stairs curling down to street level four stories below. Quint Duran got off the monorail two cars behind Skater and easily fell into his backtrail. The ork was dressed for the street, blending into the press of metahumanity.

  The rumble of conversation filled the stairwell as Skater followed the landings down to street level. Most of the metas and humans in the stairwell wore hospital clothing. Two young boys, one a troll and the other an ebony-hued human, jandered down the steps together ahead of Skater, passing combat biker collector’s digipix back and forth.

  “I got it, Orren!” the troll boy said, holding up a digipix in a taloned hand. “Jonathan Winger’s rookie card, and it’s a full-motion micro-vid!”

  “Oh frag, Kyle, that’s so rad!” Orren took the card carefully by the edges and examined it. On the digicard, Winger hunkered over his bike as he shot out over a gap in the track, a chopped-down shotgun in hand.

  As Skater followed the boys along, watching them swap their cards back and forth, he wondered if he’d have felt more confident about having a child if Emma were a boy instead of a girl. He immediately felt guilty and brushed the question from his mind. Spotting the public telecom he was looking for, he stepped through the doorway.

  He slotted one of the certified credsticks he carried into the telecom payment jack. The tone came on and he punched in the LTG, then added the numbers he’d memorized.

  Out on the street, almost invisible to Skater, Duran purchased a sloppie from a street vendor. The green umbrella over the cart with its yellow daisy design looked too bright and cheery despite the fading effects of the sun.

  “Lone Star,” a curt male voice answered at the other end of the connection.

  Automatically, Skater tripped the retinal clock in his cybereye. The time/date stamp misted into his vision, clicking off ghostly sapphire numerals: 11:59:31/8-14-57, 11:59:32/ 8-14-57 . . .

  “Detective Division,” he replied.

  “One moment, please.” The telecom crackled as the connection transferred.

  “Detective Division,” a smooth feminine voice answered almost immediately. “Carella speaking. How can I help you?”

  “I need to speak to Nina Barrett,” Skater said. He deliberately kept the telecom’s vid blanked. If his face was already known, there was no reason to advertise. He had no doubt that the Star’s sec staff was already running a standard trace on the call’s LTG.

  He counted ticks of the chron, mentally giving Nina ninety seconds to pick up. The blue numbers in his field of vision kept twisting rapidly.

  “Barrett,” the troll detective answered. The vid portion of the telecom came on with a pop of explosive color. A short, precisely centered, chartreuse-tipped platinum mohawk nestled across a broad skull framed by two twisted horns polished a rich jet-black. She wore the blue and gold uniform of Lone Star.

  Skater noticed the time coming up on the full minute mark. He’d met Nina and her partner Paulson a few months ago. They’d been investigating Larisa Hartsinger’s murder; he’d been their prime suspect. He tapped the telecom’s keypad and brought the vid on-line so she could see him.

  “Remember me?” Skater asked.

  “How could I forget?” Honest amusement flickered in her eyes. “People around here still talk about the way you disappeared from slam during the middle of the night.”

  “This isn’t about that,” Skater said.

  “Didn’t figure it was, Otto. Or should I call you Jack? Personally, I like Jack. Feels closer to the truth.”

  Skater ignored the statement. “I know you’re tracing the call, so we don’t have much time. You heard about the smash-and-grab at Shastakovich’s Funeral Home last night?”

  “Sure. I watch the trid. The whole operation looked like a righteous frag-up.”

  “The trid snoops didn’t mention the missing corpse,” Skater said.

  On the telecom vidscreen, the Lone Star detective quickly accessed a manual deck. “I don’t show any missing corpses,” she said, looking up after entering a few commands.

  The ease with which she accessed the information let Skater know that Lone Star had already opened its own file. “Check with DocWagon. There was a victim at a crash-and-dash out on I-5 last night. Find out where that body is. If you can.”

  “I’ve got a full plate right now,” Nina said. “Why should I bother with this?”

  “Because it could be big,” Skater replied.

  “Give me a for-instance.”

  Skater checked the retinal clock. He only had seconds left before he went over his safety margin for the call. “For instance Fuchi is involved. They had a black ops team at the funeral home. They geeked the sec-guards when they scrambled inside the Mariah Building. The team was headed up by a guy named Kylar Luppas.” He spelled it. “Luppas is an elf. Mercenary. Straight out of the Desert Wars a few years back. He may be in Seattle under an alias backed up by Fuchi.”

  Nina tapped the noteputer’s keys. “I show nothing on anyone named Kylar Luppas.”

  “Should tell you how high up he’s juiced. Nobody’s wearing their proper name on this gig.”

  The big troll detective looked at Skater and raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

  “The corpse you’re looking for was register
ed with Shastakovich’s as Coleman January. DocWagon answered a wristband call at the crash-and-dash on I-5 and the client’s name was Norris Caber. Caber’s med premiums came straight from Fuchi’s credsticks.”

  “And you just happened to feel curious enough to dig into this drek?”

  The retinal clock display showed Skater he was nine seconds short of his goal time for ending the conversation before a trace could be completed. “The vid the trid stations got at the funeral home were all boned. None of them show Luppas or his people. Check your personal deck drop at the Star. You’ll find a copy of vid that shows Luppas there. I’m sending it to you. Don’t bother trying to trace the upload through the Matrix. The effort would cost the Star some big nuyen for deck repairs and overtime to get systems operational again.” Archangel had encrypted a white IC package that would nuke the file if it was tampered with and prevent a trace.

  “You think you’re that good?”

  “Not me. But I know someone who is. I’ve got to buzz turbo. Your deckers should be closing in on this LTG now.”

  “Jack, what about the baby you were looking for?” Nina asked. “Larisa Hartsinger’s baby.”

  When Skater had been locked up in the Star’s slammer during his last run, Nina had shown sympathy. He hesitated only for a second. “I found her.”

  “She’s okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks for asking.” He tagged the Disconnect button, and Nina Barrett’s face winked off the screen.

  20

  In the Matrix version of the Fuchi offices, Kyle Luppas felt a momentary spark of anger and resentment at Villiers’s accusation that he had hosed up the assignment, but quickly quashed it. Emotions weren’t for professionals, especially when dealing with an employer.

  “It would be more accurate to say that so far I’ve been unable to recover the property I’ve been assigned to bring in,” Luppas said.

  Villiers’s image broke up suddenly as the man paced, then reassembled itself a step or two ahead of where it had been. “Not all of this is your fault, and I realize that. Have you got a lead on who took the corpse?”