Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  “The others?”

  “I really doubt it.”

  Skater’s anger returned. “Talking to you is getting to be about as much fun as having a root canal.”

  Duran waited a beat, then nodded agreeably, which didn’t help Skater’s mood at all. “I can see how you’d feel that way, kid.”

  A blue and white Americar slid to a stop at the corner and picked up one of the painted women hustling barely covered temptations at the traffic light. The driver was moving along again before the woman had the door shut.

  “If she’s dealing with her own problems, you’d think she’d cut me some slack,” Skater said.

  “Yeah,” Duran said, “unless she was waiting on you to figure yours out so she could figure out what to do with hers.”

  “That,” Skater replied, “doesn’t make any sense at all.” Duran reached out a paw and dropped it onto Skater’s shoulder. “You’re probably right, kid. Let’s just let it go there. This conversation’s giving me a fragging headache. Concentrate on the biz. That’s where you shine.”

  Before Skater could respond to that, the telecom beeped. He walked back to it and hit the Connect.

  33

  Kestrel didn’t key in the vid at the other end of the telecom connection and Skater returned the favor. He said hello, then added a few comments about the weather. The fixer’s electronic spies at the other end would verify his voice pattern. “Hey, chummer,” Kestrel said, “keeping your hoop intact?”

  “So far,” Skater said. “Did you turn up anything?” He’d requested the fixer to check into the rumors about the corp extractions with Coleman January’s name tagged to them.

  “At first it was a whisper, not even real street buzz,” Kestrel answered. “Figured maybe you’d spent good nuyen for nada, omae, then I scanned a factoid or two and, with a little more work—that got really creative I don’t mind telling you—confirmed three extractions.”

  “With the Coleman January name attached to them?”

  “Yeah. And they’re carrying some weight too—in the person of a UCAS federal investigator named Quentin Strapp.”

  “He’s after the execs who were extracted?”

  “Only as a byproduct. The way I scan it, he’s only scratching around for them hoping to turn up Coleman January.”

  Running the fed’s name through his memory, Skater came up empty. “I’ve never heard of Strapp.”

  “Most people haven’t,” Kestrel said. “He works way back off the books, omae. I used up a healthy dose of the credstick you gave me to get information concerning Strapp. Figured you’d want it. He had a long career working the shadows around government. He was retired. Definitely someone who avoided the spotlight but who could make the breaks on the big cases. Usually worked out of the Washington DC area. The way I scan it right now, he was brought out of retirement to work Dunkelzahn’s assassination on the QT.”

  Skater cursed silently, not knowing how the corpse the team had stolen could lead back to the great dragon’s murder. But in a way it made sense. When ripples hit the shadows, it was hard to tell where they were coming from. The fallout from Dunkelzahn’s death was only beginning and would last for years. “What’s Strapp’s angle here in Seattle?”

  “Haven’t scanned it yet, chummer,” Kestrel said. “When I do, you’ll be the next to know.”

  “Can you get me a jacket on Strapp?”

  “Slot a blank chip when we finish our chat and I’ll download it to you.”

  “Good enough. What about the extractions?”

  “Of the three I confirmed, two were from Fuchi. Whoever Coleman January is, the joker must have a pipeline direct to the corps. The scan I get is that he brokered both of those people out of there in less than a month. They were all in the R&D end of corp ops from what I understand. Those guys always go expensive.”

  Skater memorized all three names in short order. “What about jackets for them?”

  “Not me,” Kestrel replied. “You want those, you’re going to have to get them yourself. Fuchi’s looking for two of them and Aztechnology is looking for the third. You can bet both corps have their files sealed up tight and protected by the best ice money can buy.”

  “Are the names legit?”

  “I think so, omae, but this is shadow biz. The extractions are real, but the lies could have already started concerning who they really were.”

  Skater knew that was true. The corps would be the first to start the lies, toning down the loss of the execs and what they were actually worth as well as what they were working on. “When did those extractions go down?”

  Kestrel paused. In the background Skater heard a note-puter’s keys clacking. “I don’t have specific dates on any of them except the second Fuchi extraction three days ago. The other two were taken within the last thirty days.”

  “Were the extractions managed by a shadow team?”

  “No. One day the execs just didn’t show up for work anymore.”

  “No violence?”

  “None.”

  Skater considered that. Many extractions turned bloody. “Whoever’s doing this,” Kestrel said, “has got a wiz biz set up. I wouldn’t mind having a piece of it.”

  Skater silently agreed. On the surface, it looked like easy profit. As long as a chummer didn’t mind being hunted by most of the corps and any individual talent out combing the sprawl for a get-rich-quick scheme. “Any clue as to how big Coleman January’s operation was?”

  “Small,” Kestrel said. “Otherwise I’d have heard more about it.”

  “If you hear anything definite, let me know.”

  “You got it. You just keep your head low out there.” Skater echoed the sentiment and punched the Disconnect. He slotted a blank chip and accessed the download waiting on him. Inside the telecom’s plasteel housing, the drive unit whined for a few seconds. The green light beside the slot flared to life, signaling that the download was finished. He pressed the Eject key and caught the chip in his fist.

  * * *

  Emma was still sleeping when Skater returned to the safe-house twenty minutes later. Thankfully, Archangel seemed to be back to her usual cool, dispassionate self.

  She was working on Norris Caber’s corpse with carefully measured movements. Wheeler stood at her side, offering support physically as well as verbally. A shop droplight hung from the ceiling, throwing out a bright incandescence.

  Archangel wore disposable gloves that reached up past her elbows. Blood stained them almost their entire length. Her blood-shot almond eyes above the surgeon’s mask flicked to Skater and Duran briefly, then returned to her work.

  Skater was glad he’d finished the ham and cheese roll he’d liberated from the doss’s refrigerator before entering the room. Still, his stomach rolled threateningly as the stench of old death filled his nostrils.

  Someone had taken the closet door from its hinges and converted it to a temporary operating table across the bed. The end stuck out from the edge of the bed almost half a meter, allowing Archangel easy access to the head. A small end table beside her held a battery-powered rotary saw with telescoping arm and a half-dozen attachments. A plastifoam rectangular pan held several liters of blood-stained water and an accumulation of stainless plasteel knives and other utensils.

  The corpse’s head had been shaved. A long incision bisected the naked scalp, revealing a thin layer of grayish-white fat under the bluing flesh. Chromed metal gleamed under the thin layer of dark blood. One of the dead man’s eyes stared blankly at the ceiling and moved slightly as Archangel worked.

  “I couldn’t access anything from the datajack when I hooked up the diagnostics,” Archangel said in a neutral voice. “So I’m taking the more direct route.” She took a gear-driven surgical spreader from Wheeler, then directed the dwarf to hold the dead man’s chin. After Wheeler locked onto the corpse’s face, Archangel turned the spreader’s wheel.

  The flesh made sucking noises as it parted. The dead eye roved with even more agitation.

>   Archangel reached both hands forward, a battery-powered pincer cutter in one hand. “From what I learned from the diagnostics, the C2 deck is intact and operational. I’m just locked out of it. If I can get past its defenses and jack into a more direct interface, I may be able to salvage something.”

  Skater was prepared to hear anger in her voice as she spoke to him. Instead, it was as if nothing had ever been said between them. He found that even more disconcerting than the anger. If it wasn’t worth saying, why did she even bring it up?

  “We got a new kink,” Duran growled. He worked the flesh off a turkey drumstick, chewing with obvious relish as he watched Archangel work. “Jack’s information specialist turned up a UCAS fed investigator named Quentin Strapp who’s evidently in the sprawl now.”

  Archangel left the spreader in place, then sank a handful of fingers into the dead man’s skull.

  Skater tried to ignore the squishing and sucking noises that accompanied her efforts. The muscles in her forearm corded as she strained.

  “Strapp’s reportedly looking for Coleman January,” Duran said. “His main direction is supposed to be finding Dunkelzahn’s murderers.”

  “And Strapp thinks he’s going to find an answer to that here in Seattle?” Archangel stopped working and gave them a look of incredulity.

  “Somebody does,” Skater said, “or the guy wouldn’t be here.”

  Archangel turned her attention back to the corpse. Her arm flexed again. The sucking sound increased. A moment later, her arm jerked spasmodically and the internal deck came loose in her hand.

  Wheeler extended a towel and took the deck onto it. After another pass by Archangel with the pincers, the dwarf rigger wrapped up the feed deck. The chrome may have integrated fully with the flesh at one time, but the surface repelled the blood now.

  “The angle Strapp’s working may not just be Coleman January or Norris Caber,” Archangel said. “The Caber identity may lead back to Fuchi. The corp may be his real target.” Skater had already considered that. “Maybe. He’s definitely looking at the extractions.” He checked his retinal chron. It was 19:41:22 p.m. Little over an hour remained before the meet with the Johnson.

  Archangel shoved the pieces of scalp back together and used a medi-stapler to stitch them in place. The effect was crude but managed to close the gaping wound. “Is the meet still on with the Johnson?”

  “Strapp’s another variable in the mix,” Skater said, “but I don’t think his involvement is going to change things on our op. Evidently he’s not as close to the truth as we are.”

  “If we are.” Archangel turned the C2 deck over in her gloved hands, eyes narrowed in concentration. The unit was larger in surface than her hand, but was only slightly more than a centimeter thick. Made of gleaming alloy that showed through the blood, the cranial computer was shaped in a horseshoe that fit over both temples and surrounded the back of the brain, scooped delicately into the skull for a form fit. Tiny synaptic relays sprouted from the top of it, looking like an inverted jellyfish. The bottom booted into a rectangular interface with the spinal column.

  “We’re getting there,” Duran growled. “And we’re ahead of the biz. We got Strapp IDed before he blindsided us.”

  “It gives us some working room,” Skater said. He glanced at the dead man. “And the fact of the matter is we’re still holding the prize everyone else seems to be looking for. We can bargain at any time. Having Strapp and the UCAS government involved gives us access to one more angle.”

  “This is the UCAS government we’re talking about here,” Wheeler said. “They’d just as soon fragging geek you as anyone else if it came down to that.”

  “Then I guess the trick is to not let it come down to that,” Skater said. He was irritated at Archangel and he didn’t like it. But if she’d felt compelled to push him earlier, she should have still been showing signs of it, not dismissing the entire matter.

  If the elven decker heard any of the irritation in his voice, she didn’t acknowledge it. Rotating the C2 deck in her hands, she attached wires with alligator clips to three different points.

  Skater recognized the audio-visual leads that ran from Archangel’s deck to the internal deck.

  She tapped the keyboard in quick syncopation, watching the datastreams appear on the attached monitor screen. After a few minutes, she shook her head. “I can’t find any files in there that are intact.” Her fingers continued flying across the keys. “None of them. Not even the slaved programs juicing the subsystem interface modules are on-line. His whole cybernetic nervous system’s been fragged.” She unhooked the internal deck from her own, then peeled off the bloody gloves and dropped them into the small trash can beside the bed.

  “That leaves the Johnson,” Skater said.

  Duran pulled at a hoop earring. “Gives the joker more leverage than I’d want him to have.”

  “Maybe,” Skater said, turning from the room. “But if he didn’t still need what we have, he wouldn’t be willing to deal with us. Not all the leverage is his. We’re going to bring that to his attention and see how it shakes out.”

  34

  In the hours since they’d been given images of Ripley Falkenhayne, the watcher spirits had turned up nothing. It led Kylar Luppas to believe the woman was hiding out under magical defenses of some kind. He was certain it wasn’t anything that could stand up to his mastery of the Arts, but he had to locate his target first.

  He floated weightlessly in the astral plane, his meat body back in the high-rise doss where he lived. He sent the last watcher back to its assigned task and wheeled high over the sprawl.

  He liked being free.

  The present situation at Fuchi was shifting to the gravely uncertain, and the probability that he and his crew might get sacrificed to find Ripley Falkenhayne had greatly increased. Finding the missing woman might be his only way to remain as free as he wanted.

  On his way up through the ranks as a mercenary, he hadn’t been shackled. When he’d learned of his ability in the Arts, he’d invested every scrap of nuyen he could earn, barter, or steal to get the training he thought would further his career. That had been the beginning of bigger things for him, and also for the loss of autonomy.

  The more he learned about spells and spellcasting, the more vulnerable he realized he was. His aura, he was assured, was strong enough that most mages would consider him a threat. So he’d learned to mask aura and his ability. And he’d continued to learn. It had all cost.

  The martial skills he’d acquired as second nature living off the streets. When he’d left San Antonio fleeing a murder beef and enlisted as a mercenary for Aztlan, he’d adapted easily to the military life, the rough-and-tumble techniques mere additions to those he already knew.

  Promotions came quickly after that; he was good and attrition took its toll on those who couldn’t hack the grade. Even before the stint in the Desert Wars, he’d acquired a taste for the good life from his success in Aztlan. He’d lived without it at times, and been willing to.

  That was no longer the case. The last few years with Fuchi had become addictive. Learning was one thing, but power was something else again.

  Luppas knew he was prepared to die reaching for it before he would allow anyone to push him back down in the feeding chain. More relaxed and more focused, he let himself be pulled back to his body in the doss.

  * * *

  Luppas opened his eyes, narrowing them immediately against the unaccustomed brightness of the room.

  Octavius was crossing from the kitchen to a desk in the living room where Kossuth was writing with mechanical precision on a clean sheet of paper. The pen flew across the page, spilling out characters and numerals.

  “I think I’ve got something,” the decker said. “Remember the telecom we recovered at the scene of the crash-and dash?” Octavius twisted the cap off a fresh beer. “Sure. We went through the memory. All the files had been corrupted. Turned out to be a fragging dead end.”

  “Sure,” Kossuth agre
ed. “But the account wasn’t corrupted.”

  “You’ve got LTG numbers?” Luppas asked, shifting in the chair and drawing the attention of both other men.

  “No,” Kossuth said. “The ice was too heavy, too dangerous to get into without a guide or someone who’d been through that system before. But I was able to tag a trace utility on each of the LTG numbers that had contacted the portable telecom Caber was using.”

  “You’re sure the telecom belonged to Caber?” Octavius asked as he sat.

  Kossuth dipped his chin once in a nod. “Yes. It was registered in the Coleman January name.”

  “For how long?”

  “Almost two years, according to the phone records I found.” The decker reviewed the sheet of numerals and letters in front of him.

  “Then the telecom had a history,” Luppas said. “A number of people had the LTG.”

  “I came up with seventeen other LTGs,” Kossuth confirmed. “As I said, the search was time-consuming. Many of the LTGs I discovered were for portable units. I managed to get all of them pegged to their owners fairly easily. Except three.”

  “Three portacoms,” Octavius repeated, cocking an eyebrow. “Say he was working the extraction racket like we think, maybe he’d want telecoms he could place in the hands of the people he was moving, to be sure they could stay in constant contact. Something he’d know wouldn’t track back to him easily.”

  “He’d have put them under other false SINs,” Luppas said. It made sense.

  “That’s exactly what he did,” Kossuth said. “And the names he used—”

  “Were ex-employees of Fuchi who’ve long since disappeared,” Luppas said.

  Kossuth looked only mildly disappointed. “Correct.”

  “And that tells us we’re pretty much on the drekking nose when we figured Caber,” Octavius stated. “He’d know which bodies were buried and wouldn’t be around to object to his using their SINs, and would be able to block notice of them in the Fuchi mainframes. Villiers was operating from a blind spot looking for this joker.”