Headhunters

by Mel Odom

53

  Skater and Duran took the point position on the recovery of Ripley Falkenhayne. At 17:31:18, they parked the Ford Americar XE in the underground lot beneath the Kerriger apartment tower where Falkenhayne was staying under a false name and false SIN she’d purchased. The SIN, as Archangel had discovered after a brief search through the Matrix by jacking into a public telecom, was flimsy and not worth the nuyen the woman had paid for it. But Falkenhayne hadn’t been in the shadows enough to know.

  The six-year-old Americar XE Skater and Duran climbed out of was Ford’s sports package, complete with a bored out engine and rack and pinion handling. It wasn’t a Eurocar West-wind 2000, but the rigger Wheeler had bought it from that afternoon at Skater’s request had guaranteed the workmanship and the performance. The identification on the car would pass a superficial examination. He didn’t intend to have it long enough for it to become a family heirloom.

  Inside the elevator, Skater punched the seventh-floor button. The doors closed. He accessed the commlink. “Archangel.”

  “Here.” Her voice sounded a long way off, but at least the communications gear was working through the building. There’d been some concerns because white-noise generators designed to thwart eavesdroppers and private investigators could block the transmissions, and a number of Bellevue residents were paranoid enough and rich enough to install them in their dosses as readily as they installed a trid.

  “How am I coming through on that end?” Skater glanced across the elevator cage at Duran. Like himself, the big ork was dressed in a dark blue coverall bearing a BugSlammers Pest Control emblem across the back. The coverall was loose enough to disguise the body armor and weapons they had on underneath. The coverall’s prominent emblem guaranteed distance from the apartment tower residents. In Bellevue—nobody wanted to be seen talking to a bug man because of possible social repercussions. Both of them carried silver spray canisters that had been tricked out to deliver noxious fumes instead of pesticide. It was all equipment they’d successfully used on a previous run.

  “Distant, but I read you well enough.”

  Wheeler was with Archangel, out on Overlake Drive West a few blocks east of Eight-first Avenue NE where the Kerriger apartment tower was. The rigger was jacked into the Tsarina, riding heavy armor in case they needed it.

  “Elvis,” Skater called as the digital readout on the floor levels read a crimson 5.

  “Here, omae. Trey’s in the astral, watching your back.” Elvis and Cullen Trey were further along Overlake Drive West in another vehicle, where the street took a forty-five degree turn south and ran alongside Lake Washington till it reached Groat Point and the small marina there. That was the path Skater had chosen to take Falkenhayne out of the area and make the meet with Strapp.

  The floor level display hit 7, then the bell binged to announce the stop.

  Skater took a deep breath, pumping his lungs full of oxygen, keying up the boosted reflexes. He reached through the slit pocket of the baggy coveralls and fisted the butt of the Predator holstered on his hip. He nudged the safety off with his forefinger.

  Duran drifted soundlessly into place behind him.

  The corridor ran clean and lean, with only a few paintings to break the length of aquamarine hallway. All of the paintings appeared to be of Amerind influence with elven overtones, probably to pander to the Salish-Shidhe Council representatives who slummed occasionally from the embassy on Council Island in Lake Washington, due south of the Bellevue area. One of the regular ferry lines to the island ran between Groat Point in Bellevue and Calkins Point on the island.

  The short-shag white carpet looked and felt like sand beneath their feet, muffling sounds. An elevator further down the hallway pinged loudly and sent Skater’s nerves jangling. He had to will himself to keep walking as the door separated in front of him.

  A young ork couple dressed in evening wear stepped into the hallway. They were laughing and talking, and gave Skater and Duran only a cursory glance, making sure the BugSlammers men weren’t bearing down on their apartment.

  Skater came to a stop in front of 716. He sat his canister down and rapped his knuckles on the door. It was part of his cover. He’d noticed most people who worked door-to-door didn’t trust doorbells, but when flesh pounded against a surface, it made noise. He kept his fist tight around the Predator.

  For a dozen seconds, he held his breath, waiting, thinking about the presence Archangel had sensed in the Matrix with her, someone who she hadn’t been able to identify. He wondered if they were already too late, then felt guilty because he almost wished they were.

  If Kylar Luppas and his team had arrived before them and taken the woman, the team would have no choice but to give up. Ripley Falkenhayne would be dead before anyone saw her again.

  He started to rap again, just to be sure. If all else failed, they could bypass the maglock. Duran had the tools they’d need.

  Then the door pulled back inside.

  Ripley Falkenhayne had dressed casual, wearing a Vashon Island jacket and slacks with a lightweight duster that hung heavily enough that Skater knew at a glance it was armored.

  She’d made the attempt to comb her hair and straighten her face, but she still looked worn and disheveled.

  She peered at Skater over the short barrel of a Fichetti Tiffani Needler, her lower lip trembling, both hands locked on the pistol.

  “Ripley,” Skater said quietly, noticing the way her hands shook, “everything’s going to be okay. Do you hear me?” He moved slowly, spreading his hands out from his body.

  “I hear—hear you,” she stammered. She didn’t, however, lower the needler.

  “I’m here to help you,” Skater coaxed. “I need you to put the gun down.” He motioned with his hand, slowly. “Before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Help me,” she said in a thin, tight voice.

  “She’s locked, kid,” Duran said softly over the commlink. “You’re gonna have to take the fragging gun away from her.”

  Falkenhayne’s knuckles were white as her hands shook. The needler stayed more or less centered on Skater’s chest.

  Even with the bulletproof armor he had on under the coverall, Skater knew the Fichetti was deadly even though it only hit the scales at half a kilo.

  “Ripley,” he said, more quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to move toward you, okay? Just going to get the gun out of your hands so we can get you out of here?” Skater eased forward, tense as a coiled spring. He wanted to keep her mind busy so it wouldn’t trip the primitive instincts that would make her fire the needler. “You don’t have a bag or a suitcase. Is there anything else you’re going to need when we go?”

  “No. Nothing. I don’t have any—”

  Skater slipped his hand over hers, jamming his thumb into the trigger guard under her forefinger so she couldn’t pull through. It took considerable effort to rip the pistol from her grip. He let out a sigh of relief when he slipped the safety back on and shoved it into a pocket of the coveralls.

  He peered beyond her into the doss. The lights were out. Everything was dark. Debris from Stuffer Shacks littered the floor and the coffee table in the center of the living room. It didn’t look like the woman had been out of the place for days.

  “You don’t have anything to take?” Skater asked.

  “No.” She shook her head, her arms automatically going around her upper body to hold herself.

  “Your files?”

  “I’ve got them tucked away in a database, so heavily encrypted and hidden so far back no one could ever find them.”

  “Your deck?”

  “I turned it into kludge after I got off the telecom.”

  “Then you’re ready.” Skater gave her a smile that he had to force, but knew she would take some comfort from it.

  She ran a hand through her blonde hair. “Frag, yes, I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s go.” Skater took her by the arm and started to usher her out the door. Maybe they were going to ma
ke it after all.

  “Wait,” she said, “I forgot something.” She pulled from his grip and went back into the room.

  “I got an elevator, kid,” Duran called over the commlink.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Skater saw the ork standing in an elevator cage, leaning against the doors and preventing closure.

  “Ripley,” Skater said, “we’ve got to go now.” He took a step toward her, then she was running toward him, her face tight with fear.

  “I almost forgot these,” she said, holding out three chips. “They’re some of the degradable copies of my program. Since you and your team do extractions and I couldn’t pay you the balance of what I owe you, I thought maybe this would square things between us.” She hesitated, blinking back tears. “I’m sorry. It’s all I have. Please don’t leave me here.”

  Skater took her hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay. I didn’t come here looking for money. I came here looking for you.”

  “Still.” Falkenhayne shoved the chips out at him.

  Skater took them, buttoning them into a pocket of the armor he wore under the coverall. “Thank you.” With three extractions involving little risk, the team could end up turning a tidy little profit that would keep them flush until another good run came along. Even at Cullen Trey’s standards.

  He took her upper arm again, moving her out into the hallway. Trey’s voice came over the commlink in a burst.

  “Watch out, Jack, Duran.” Trey sounded winded. “I just found Luppas in the astral plane nearby. He’s been keeping me distracted. There’s a team already inside the building. They may be on top of you now.”

  Before Skater could cross the hallway to Duran, a half-dozen armed men erupted from the fire escape at the far end of the hallway. He pulled Falkenhayne behind him, forcing her back into the doss they’d just quit. He felt her weight against his back, heard her screams suddenly fill his ears.

  “Bloody frag,” Duran growled. Braced against the side of the elevator car, he had partial cover from the gunfire that suddenly ripped up the wall beside him. He ripped the coverall away with his big hands, stripping himself down to the black synthleathered armor. With a jerk, he freed the Franchi SPAS-22 combat shotgun from where it had been secured down his right leg under the coveralls. He leaned around the door and touched off four rounds as quickly as he could squeeze the trigger.

  Wearing heavy-weave ballistic armor, Luppas’s shock troops hadn’t expected to take much damage. The two men leading the pack were surprised—only for a very short moment, probably—by the explosive rounds Duran used in the SPAS-22.

  The four shotgun blasts caught them chest high, the rounds ripping through the bulletproof armor and setting off the miniature explosive heads. The dead bodies flew backwards, bringing the advance literally to a dead stop.

  By the time Luppas’s mercenaries had recovered, Skater had shoved Falkenhayne to momentary safety back inside the door to her room. He brought the Predator up, adrenaline firing his system, letting the boosted reflexes go into macro-overdrive. Against Luppas, there was going to be no holding back, no quarter given. The man was too dangerous, too professional, and he too was being hunted right now.

  Like Skater, Luppas had walked into an all or nothing situation. The shadowrunner understood that. Losing wasn’t an alternative.

  In the hallway, a merc tried to move around the bodies, jockeying for position.

  Skater placed two rounds through his plastiglass facemask. Inside the impact-resistant helmet, the merc’s head exploded. Almost decapitated, the corpse slumped to its knees, holding the assault rifle automatically at present arms.

  In the elevator cage, Duran was thumbing fresh shells into the shotgun’s breach.

  “Trey,” Skater called over the commlink. He reached down for the canister he’d carried as part of his pesticide disguise.

  “Here, chummer.”

  “I need a read on what we’re up against here.” Skater activated the three-second delay timer secreted in the canister’s handle. He glanced at Duran.

  “Do it,” the ork called out.

  Before Skater could release the timer switch, an explosive warhead from a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher slammed into the hallway floor only a few centimeters from the elevator doorway.

  Duran was slapped away. An instant later, the door closed as the elevator cage started down.

  Skater had no choice but to watch it go, listening to Falkenhayne praying out loud behind him.

  54

  Kylar Luppas’s astral self soared over Overlake Drive West, his attention drawn to the apartment tower. Trey had fled from the astral field, but not before mounting a cunning offensive. Luppas knew better than to think he’d beaten the other mage, nor was he fool enough to blithely chase after him in astral space.

  He scanned the streets, knowing Trey’s meat body had to be stashed somewhere in a nearby vehicle. The shadowrunners wouldn’t lug the unconscious man around, and if he was going to be effective on both the physical and astral planes, Trey would be mobile in either event.

  Luppas called three watchers to him, put Trey’s features in their simple minds, and sent them winging on their way. Their search parameters started at the apartment tower, spreading out from there. The underground parking garage was a logical choice.

  Satisfied, he peered down Overlake Drive West and saw the Ares Master carrying his own physical self arrive only blocks down, turning off Evergreen Point. He checked around himself again, looking for signs of Trey. He knew he hadn’t defeated the mage in their brief swap of spells, though neither of them had fought with anything less than their best.

  Trey had prepared himself well for this fight; Luppas had assensed numerous fetishes and two very strong foci on him. Either one of those foci would have led Luppas directly to Trey had he wanted to track down the power emanating from them.

  That wasn’t his intention. Doing that would have left him exposed. The only thing that mattered was the woman.

  He flew toward the apartment tower, finding he couldn’t get in through the FAB-1-treated walls of the individual dosses. Such a feature wasn’t uncommon in the Bellevue District. Security there was rated near the top of the list by Lone Star. He found a window on the fifth floor that hadn’t been treated, hurrying now.

  Inside, he found himself in a hallway. There’d been an uncomfortable chance that he’d entered into an FAB-l-treated doss and wouldn’t be able to get past the front door. Assuming he didn’t trip some astral detection spell that might have been anchored to the area and end up with magical security breathing up his hoop on the astral plane, he was free to run. In the upscale districts of the sprawl, percentages ran higher regarding the presence of magically active secmen.

  The dosses were stacked linearly, which was good. He blasted up through the floors, finding that none of them had been FAB-1 treated, which stood to reason because the tower needed access for the mages working in close cover.

  He zipped up to the seventh floor, coming up behind his team of mercenaries who were already engaging the shadowrunner team. He identified Falkenhayne with Skater immediately, watching as the shadowrunner pushed the woman back into her doss.

  Luppas stood beside the two advancing men, thinking he should return to his meat body and reiterate his orders to make sure the woman was taken alive. One of the men stepped through his astral form just as Quint Duran slipped around the corner by the elevator cage in front of them. Duran leveled the shotgun in his hands.

  “Get down, you ditbrain!” Luppas snarled. But the man, of course, couldn’t hear him from the astral.

  The shotgun blasts caught the two mercenaries, pitching them backward.

  Ice-cold fire touched Luppas at the center of his being. In disbelief, he looked at his chest, wondering if somehow the blasts had managed to strike his astral form.

  Instead, he saw a rainbow-colored harpy gnawing into his chest. The bat-like wings fluttered with serious intent as the back feet clawed viciously.<
br />
  The ice-cold fire in Luppas’s chest spread as he started feeling incredibly sleepy. He staggered back, nearly going to his knees. The attack was powerful and totally unexpected.

  “Hello again.”

  Luppas looked up, concentrating to break the effects of the sleep spell. Cullen Trey stood at the other end of the hallway. Bright crystalline colors gathered in the mage’s right hand as he drew it back to throw.

  “Frag you, Trey,” Luppas shouted, “if you think a sleep spell is going to bring me down.” He closed his hand over the miniature harpy that was the shape of the spell. He felt its bones crunching in his grip. When he opened his hand, only ash and bits of burned bone tumbled out, disappearing before they even touched the blood-stained white carpet in the hallway.

  Trey threw another spell. The crystalline bits of color hardened and developed jagged edges.

  Fast as they were, Luppas heightened assenses only assured him the shape was some kind of draco-form. It also told that it was a mana bolt.

  Drawing on the power of his foci, Luppas put his hand out. The sword icon took shape in his fist. All his reflexes came on line as the heal spell he cast over himself repaired some of the damage he’d taken from Trey’s earlier attack. He swept the sword toward the streaking draco-form. He felt the connection, as solid as any physical thing he’d ever touched, then the draco-form sailed backward, shorn cleanly in two.

  Where a living creature would have died, the spell spun around its two halves, then reformed under Trey’s direction. The mage hung at the end of the hallway, a mocking smile on his lips. He gestured, and the draco-form streaked for Luppas again.

  Luppas stepped aside, dodging and unleashing a manaball that flew toward the shadowrunner mage. Trey’s staff appeared in his hand, but he used the long cape as a defense.

  As the draco-form came back on the attack, Luppas met It with the flat of his blade. The effort required felt like it tore the muscles in his neck and shoulders. But at the moment of impact, the spell was defeated, vanishing back into a mass of crystalline bits that evaporated as quickly as snowflakes in a summer’s heat.