Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  “My team is working on it. The team that scammed it are professionals. They had the right gear, they had blueprints of the building, they didn’t even blink when we showed up.” Villiers looked perturbed. Reaching out, he opened his right hand suddenly. A sprinkle of crimson sparks darted out centimeters from his fingers, then swirled into a square vid-screen that hung two-dimensionally in the air.

  Luppas studied the numbers, letters, and icons that skated across the surface but couldn’t make anything of it. A glance at Fishbein left him certain she was left out in the cold as much as he was.

  Another wave of his hand and the screen was gone. Villiers stared at Luppas. “How much do they know?”

  Luppas answered in a matter-of-fact voice. “Probably more than I do.” He put his hands together. “But I do know Caber wasn’t the real target for us. He was only the bait. Knowing who our real target is would help. I could figure out what kinds of moves he has open to him, and how willing he is to make them.” Villiers hesitated only a moment, then inscribed a rectangle about the size of a playing card in the air. When it turned solid and hung at eye-level, the Fuchi exec flicked it with a fingernail and sent it tumbling toward Luppas.

  The elf caught the rectangle effortlessly, cupping it in his palm and turning it over for inspection. The digipix showed two views of a woman, front and right profile. Her classic Mediterranean features appeared hawkish and intent, muddy brown eyes narrowed almost in a semblance of distaste. Her face, angular and sharp, offered no hope of openness or intimacy. Short-cropped peroxide blond hair tinted with dark gray undertones lay over her skull like a duck’s down. Silver glinted from her features, from the datajack in her left temple to the stylized zipper piercing her left eyebrow and the three small silver hoops piercing her right nostril. Her long and slender neck hinted at a slight build and a racing metabolism. “Who is she?” Luppas asked.

  “Ripley Falkenhayne. There’s no reason you should know her,” Villiers said. “But I expect you to get to know her. Ramona will give you a copy of her file, which is not to leave your office here.”

  “Understood.” Luppas flicked the digipix into the air, not surprised at all when it disintegrated back into whatever binary bytes and electrons had formed it. “Is she connected with Fuchi?”

  “No.”

  “How many people know about Falkenhayne?” the elf asked.

  “The three of us,” Villiers said. “Neither you or Ramona were brought into the loop until now.”

  Luppas concentrated on tact. The job at Fuchi was lucrative. Finding another would be difficult at best. Getting geeked out in the field due to a lack of situation intelligence was even less appealing. “What about Miles Lanier?”

  “What about him?” Villiers appeared guarded only for an instant, then the Matrix icon of him misted and became as relaxed-looking as he ever was.

  “With something as serious as this, I’d have expected Lanier to be involved.”

  “He’s not,” Villiers said flatly.

  Further puzzled by the machinations taking shape around him, Luppas decided to concentrate on the issue at hand. “Is Falkenhayne considered the primary target of the operation at this point?”

  “No. Your focus is still on Caber’s body. The woman would be a pleasant bonus. If that changes, and it could, I’ll see that you’re informed through channels.”

  “What am I looking for on Caber’s body?”

  “There was a deck,” Villiers stated. “A state-of-the-art passcode protected deltaware grade C2 deck.”

  Luppas knew about cranial cyberdecks. Forced recoveries resulted in a mess. “What kind of resources does Falkenhayne possesses?”

  “Financially, she’s close to existing in a vacuum. As far as close friends go, there are none. She was a software developer for Dulce Tech, working on a grant from Dunkelzahn before his assassination.”

  “Did the wyrm have a buy-in on her project?” Luppas asked. He was well aware that the great dragon had his fingers in several profitable pies.

  “A percentage at best,” Villiers answered. “That’s according to the information I’ve retrieved so far. Dunkelzahn had a soft spot for independent corporations. Instead of buying them out, he often shored them up. He said it was to keep them hungry to succeed.”

  Luppas understood that. Hostile takeovers in the corporate world functioned much like military overthrows of government. The domestic people involved either ran, or they became totally dependent on winning the favor of their new overseers instead of taking care of business as usual.

  “What about Dulce Tech?” he asked. “Does she have anyone there who would help her?”

  “Falkenhayne wasn’t close to anyone at Dulce Tech.” Villiers paused for a moment, then opened up another window in the Matrix. The screen held only gray smoke that shifted in organized cadence. He listened for a moment, then made a reply.

  None of the words reached Luppas’s ears so he knew Villiers had squelched the audio portion of the Matrix-driven sim office. Even knowing how it was done, and grounded as he was in the things made possible by the Arts, watching was still disconcerting.

  The screen disappeared as Villiers turned his attention back to Fishbein and Luppas. “Dulce Tech is set up as a thinktank. It’s a big facility, by independent standards, and specializes in communications. The last figures I’ve seen suggest as many as thirty-two projects are presently undergoing development at this time.”

  “In a thinktank,” Luppas said, “the needs of the developers are usually met by the corporation’s administrators. That includes housing and a monthly budget, both personal and business. Often, the administrators get a limited power of attorney as well. Has the administrator been questioned?”

  “Yes. Thoroughly. There’s nothing for you there.” Villiers looked away for a moment, then back. “I’m out of time here. Find the body, Kylar, and chances are you’ll find the woman. I want them both in one piece.” The corp exec’s image suddenly shattered into millions of pixels and dropped through the floor like sand rushing through the neck of an hourglass.

  Luppas’s stomach tightened once, trembled, then his senses went black as he jacked out.

  * * *

  Almost instantly, Luppas opened his eyes in the real world again. He stripped the hitcher rig off and dropped it to the floor. A headache rumbled threateningly at the base of his skull and he felt slightly nauseous.

  “And that concludes our broadcast,” Fishbein said.

  Luppas lifted his drink and sipped. The water tasted cool and citric. The sides of the snifter glistened with sweat and felt slippery in his fingers.

  “Tell me about Norris Caber,” he said.

  Fishbein faced him, taking time to run her fingers through her dark hair and re-affix the clips. “You know all you need to.”

  “Was he employed here?” Luppas stood, swirling his drink and making the lemon and lime chunks dance through its icy skeleton.

  Fishbein grinned coldly. “No.”

  “Would you lie to me?”

  “In a flat nanosecond,” she said. “Let me set a few things straight for you. Number one: you’re a mercenary, Luppas. Decryption: None of us here knows how much we can trust you. Number two: you’re expendable. Decryption: If you get caught, you’re not bringing us down with you. Number three: you have a problem following orders when they don’t suit you. Decryption: If you weren’t as good as you are, you wouldn’t be standing here now, much less working ops on this situation. Scan me?”

  Luppas regarded her. “I detest secrets that get in the way of an operation.”

  “Find the body. Find the woman. You’ll get a big bonus and everyone here will breathe a macro-sigh of relief.” Fishbein turned from him, letting him know the audience was over.

  Luppas finished his drink and put the empty glass in the small sink behind the wet bar. He let himself out and walked past the gillette sitting at the receptionist’s desk.

  In the maglev, watching the sec-team on the other side of thei
r barrier, he punched in the code for the underground parking area. Then he accessed his wristphone, punching in a number. “Mr. Kossuth.”

  “Captain Luppas,” a synthwhiskey-scorched voice responded as a man’s face took shape on the small screen. He was shaved bald and his features seemed immobile, shaded with a Slavic cast that had been eroded by plastic surgeries made necessary because of past injuries. The datajack in his right temple held a ferrous shine.

  “Did you get in?” Luppas asked as the floors dropped away.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The subject?”

  “Files were obtained, sir. I might mention, they were in the process of being scrubbed at the time I managed the download. There might be some fragmentation.”

  “Let’s hope not, Mr. Kossuth. I hate being disappointed.” Luppas punched off the wristphone and flipped it closed. He’d guessed that Villiers would want to talk to him personally today, and since the corp exec wasn’t in Bellevue, that meant it would be done via a secured sat-uplink to Tokyo. Most of Fuchi’s matrix ware would have been concentrated on maintaining the integrity of that link.

  Kossuth was deadly when it came to a datasnatch. During the Desert Wars, the man’s skills had been invaluable.

  Before the maglev touched bottom, Luppas was already examining the possibilities in his mind, wondering how big was the prize he was searching for.

  The one hard and fast rule he’d learned from the corp scene was that whoever controlled the product or access to it could write their own ticket. Maybe this was going to be his chance to hit the big-time.

  21

  Gracie’s For Ribs was located on Olive Street and Belmont Avenue in downtown Seattle. The restaurant rocked with the sound of dozens of voices calling out orders to the harried waitresses piloting huge plates of ribs, chicken, sausages, and salmon between the narrow runways left between the tables.

  At 12:19:43 a.m., Skater stepped into the flow of hungry traffic and navigated his way around to the small alcove that led to the freshers and the pay telecoms.

  Business cards covered a polyfoam bulletin board between the two telecoms, held in place by thumbtacks, pushpins, twisted paper clips, and electrostatic charges. LTG numbers written by previous telecom users created a numeric chaos on the wall.

  After punching in the LTG number he wanted to reach, Skater leaned back into the wall to keep a watchful eye on anyone who came toward him.

  “KSAF news desk. Petyr Banacek here. Talk to me, hot-shot. Time is nuyen.”

  KSAF’s reputation as a muckraker scored high, even in Seattle. Every rumor that jandered their way, they nailed down and made news out of. Skater intended to use the resources the station carried to put heat on Luppas and Fuchi.

  “Is Joann Conolly available?” Skater asked.

  “Hey, hotshot, let me give you the scoop on the biz because I’m feeling like such a nice chummer today. Joann’s this station’s star attraction right now. You can’t just call up here and ask to speak to her, scan me?”

  “You get the chance,” Skater said, “ask her if she’d like to get the chip-truth about the raid Fuchi ordered on Shastakovich’s Funeral Home last night.”

  “Whoa, bucko, you can’t just lob that baby nuke into my lap, then pull a fade.” Banacek sounded decidedly more interested.

  The vid connection at the other end of the telecom opened up. In the small square, a young-looking elf peered intently from the screen, a mop of unruly blue-dyed hair twisting in thick curls in every direction. His almond-shaped eyes held bloodshot lines.

  Skater moved in closer, hunching up a shoulder to cover the telecom vidscreen.

  “C’mon, muchacho,” Banacek pleaded, “give me a vidfeed and let’s kick this around.” He tapped a forefinger against the vidscreen at his end.

  “Time is nuyen,” Skater said, repeating the news desk guy’s own phrase. “And I’ve got an agenda.”

  “Give me something.”

  “I’ve got an LTG,” Skater said. Archangel’s expertise made the LTG hook-up possible. “When I disconnect, call it up and download the trid waiting at the other end. If you try to trace the LTG, you’ll trip some nasty white IC and fry the file and you won’t have it. Once you download the file, the copy at the other end will self-destruct. You get one shot.” He read off the LTG.

  “Wait,” Banacek said. “Scan me in to what this scam is all about.”

  “Corp shadow biz,” Skater said. “As many people as Fuchi killed last night, I figured your team would be better at putting a public quiz together.” He tapped the Disconnect button and watched the colors in the vidscreen go back to gray.

  Slotting the certified credstick again, Skater placed another call, this one to Kestrel at one of the numerous drops the fixer maintained. “Jack,” he said when the telecom at the other end keyed open.

  “How you doing, omae?” Kestrel said.

  “On the go and staying low.” Skater watched through the alcove as Duran casually began a conversation with another ork. “What have you got for me?”

  “Scan’s skinny on both the Coleman January name and the Norris Caber one. If I was a betting man, which I’m not, I’d think the January handle was a re-tag and Caber was the righteous name. My guy went pretty deep into the Matrix through legitimate sources, but got stone-walled by IC he thinks he traced back to Fuchi.”

  Kestrel kept a number of people on his payroll, some of them living the straight life and doing small favors for a healthy nuyen donation. Usually the work related to background checks, building permits and blueprints, and stock analysis.

  “He couldn’t scan how Caber might have been tied up with Fuchi?”

  “Omae, that’s as close as he got. And, Jack, I’m running up some debt here in your name.”

  Skater grinned in spite of the tension that filled him. Some things never changed. “I’ve got a certified credstick tucked away at Mama Kameyo’s. She’s holding it for you now. If it’s not enough, let me know. Thanks, chummer.” Mama Kameyo’s was a small Korean restaurant in the sprawl they did third-person biz through.

  “Keep your head and neck together, omae.”

  * * *

  Nine minutes later, Skater placed the call to the Johnson from a pay telecom at the corner of Denny Way and Tenth Avenue. Aztechnology’s Northwest Complex stood out from the other buildings surrounding it. Modeled on the religious structures of ancient Mexico, all of the complex’s housing looked unique and mysterious, and a little foreboding. Dwarfing it all, the pyramidal main structure crouched among the smaller buildings. Huge friezes lined the walls, carved from half-meter thick artificially grown quartz crystals into the shapes of ancient Aztec and Mayan gods. By day, the eighty carved slabs looked gray, but at night white and alabaster lights brought the friezes to stunning life.

  The LTG connected almost immediately. “Yes,” the Johnson’s deep, masculine voice answered.

  “I’ve got your package,” Skater said.

  “Why the slot have you waited so fragging long to contact me?” The joker sounded as bent as he was scared.

  “If you’ve seen any trid at all,” Skater said, “you’d know that making the extraction last night drew a fragging heat wave. The deal was for an easy-in, easy-out ops. Not the slotting bone-up we faced last night.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” the Johnson said. “I didn’t know it would go down like that.”

  “How did you think it would go down?” Skater demanded. “I figured it would be a piece of cake. You and your team would take the body, frag the funeral home’s computers to show no bodies were missing, and be out of there in minutes.”

  “That’s what we agreed on when we set the price.” Skater stared into the blank vidscreen. From what Archangel had dug up about the LTG, it broadcast from a portacom, making it both expensive and hard to trace.

  “Meaning?”

  “The price has gone up for delivery,” Skater said.

  “That’s slotting blackmail!”

  Skater kept
his voice hard. “It’s a fair recompensation for nearly getting geeked last night on your behalf. Either that, or we take our chances and cut a deal with Fuchi.”

  “Slot it, Skater, way it was told to me, you were an upfront slag when it came to a run. A chummer could expect you to play within the boundaries.”

  “You should have checked the addendum that came with that: I’m upfront when I’ve been dealt with fairly. This dirty piece of biz, you slotted me and my team over six ways from Sunday. I’m in it now for the nuyen. Either yours or Fuchi’s. I don’t give a ratfrag anymore. The longer I hold onto this body, the more likely I am to get totally slotted over, lose the nuyen I’ve got coming, and probably get geeked in the process. Now, do you want to try to tell me again how to run my biz?”

  “No. I can meet you tonight outside Matchstick’s. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yeah,” Skater said, “I know where it is. But we’re not going to meet there. Have you ever been out to Everett?”

  The Johnson sounded hesitant “A few times. That’s kind of an in-your-face district.”

  “That’s right,” Skater agreed, and it was where he felt safest conducting the deal. “At the north end of I-5 where it crosses over into Salish lands, there’ll be a nightclub. It’s called Neon Sunsets. Be there at nine p.m. I’ll give you ten minutes if you’re late, then I breeze and you’re out the package.” He hit the Disconnect before the man on the other end could say another word.

  22

  After the conversation with the Johnson, Skater had hailed a gypsy cab on out of there. He and Duran rode together, clearing the area immediately in case the Johnson managed to trace the call. Now that he’d taken care of that piece of biz, the worries about Emma began to intrude again into his thoughts.

  “Kid, your mind isn’t focused,” Duran said.

  Skater gazed out the cab’s dirt-streaked windows. The elven cab driver lounged on his seat on the other side of the soundproof plastiglass, but it didn’t mean there were no bugs in the back seat. Both he and Duran took care not to mention names or places, using shadowspeak.