Fallen Angels

by Stephen Kenson

  G-Dogg taped the box closed and rapped a hand on the top. "That takes care of that," he said. "Anything else, Jackie?"

  The decker glanced over from where she was taking stock of the boxes, bags and furniture stacked up in the middle of the main room of the apartment. Her hair was pulled back, and instead of her usual slick street or business wear, she was dressed in a well-worn tee-shirt and jeans. She shook her head.

  "I think that’s it," she said. "Looks like we’re ready to load up this stuff."

  G-Dogg stacked the box on top of two others and crouched down to lift them all in his burly arms. "I notice Lothan didn’t come by to help you move," he grunted.

  "Lothan’s rarely around when there’s any kind of heavy lifting to be done," Jackie said with a smile, "but he is coming by my new place later to help out with some of the finishing touches."

  "Magical security?" Kellan observed, stepping through the open door of the apartment with Orion in tow. Jackie nodded in response as Orion picked up a box and followed G-Dogg downstairs to where Silver Max waited with the truck. Kellan took a look around the now almost empty apartment, stripped to the walls and ready to be cleaned.

  "Still can’t believe you’re giving up this place," she told Jackie, who only shrugged.

  "It was time for me to move on," she said. "It’s not a good idea to get too settled in this business, and my new place will keep people guessing."

  "It’s sure not as nice as this one," Kellan noted, and Jackie shrugged it off again.

  "It’s got other features that I need at the moment," was all she said, and Kellan decided not to press the matter. She got the distinct feeling that Jackie’s move involved more than just a desire for a change of scenery, but the decker didn’t volunteer any information, so Kellan didn’t ask. She was frankly appreciative of the fact that Jackie trusted her enough to help her relocate; she knew the decker liked to keep her offline life as private as possible.

  "So," Jackie asked, changing the subject, "how long before you and Orion are looking for a place?" Kellan shrugged, blushing pink. "I don’t think we’re ready for anything like that yet," she said, and the decker laughed.

  They each grabbed a box and headed down to the truck, passing G-Dogg and Orion on their way back up. The ork and elf were talking about recent conflicts between the gangs of the Seattle Barrens like any other two guys would talk sports scores. It seemed the war between the Spikes and the Ancients had heated up again, and G-Dogg was betting the Spikes were going to do some real damage this time, with Orion countering that the Ancients were probably getting help from someone of influence inside Tir Tairngire, since the elven nation had an interest in maintaining an underground pipeline into south Seattle. G-Dogg wondered if both gangs would recognize the growing threat of the Hellhounds, who claimed 405, and settle things out of mutual gain, or do enough damage to each other for the Hellhounds to make a move against one or both gangs.

  Silver Max was down curbside with the truck, though when they go there, he was in the middle of checking over the sleek racing bike parked just in front of the truck’s cab. The dwarf looked over the bike’s engine with an expert eye, nodding to himself as he followed the twists and turns of the pipes and valves.

  When G-Dogg and Orion came back down carrying Jackie’s small couch, the elf called out over his shoulder.

  "What do you think, Max? Can you fix it up?"

  "Oh yeah," the dwarf replied, a smile splitting his bearded face. "The ’59 Yamaha body is solid, you just need some new points and a tune-up, maybe an overhaul. I could probably put a nice charger in there for you, too." The rigger was clearly eager to tear into a new engine, take it apart and put it back together better than he found it. Orion grinned, helping G-Dogg heft the couch into the truck.

  "Sounds wiz," he said. "Wouldn’t mind helping you out with it."

  "You’re on."

  In fairly short order, the truck was loaded up, Jackie’s old apartment locked up, and they were on their way to her new place. Kellan and G-Dogg rode in the cab with Silver Max, following Jackie, while Orion followed close behind the truck. Along the way, they filled Max in on their adventures in Tir Tairngire, the dwarf observing that he could have gotten them through the storm over the Cascades if he had been flying the VTOL, and saying he was sorry that he missed the whole caper.

  James Telestrian had been appreciative enough to arrange passage from Tir Tairngire back to Seattle in exchange for everything the runners learned, all copies of Marc Thierault’s notes, and the promise of their silence on matters concerning Midnight and Morningstar. If the Tir government took any note of the "unusual meteorological phenomena" in the Cascade Mountains, no one chose to comment on it, leaving it as just another oddity of the Awakened world.

  * * *

  In the dim light of his study, Lothan finished entering the last of the data via the wireless keyboard, and tapped the command for the computer to encrypt and save the file to his personal datastore behind a protected password. He leaned back in his heavy chair with a creak of old leather. While he would never entirely trust computers, he had to admit they were far more secure than actually writing things down. The heavy encryption would keep the information safer than a locked box.

  He had written down everything he could remember from Marc Thierault’s ritual and experiment notes, and included his own observations of the spirit Morningstar, and, of course, its true name. Lothan had agreed to turn over the original datafile to Telestrian and to keep quiet about what he’d seen and learned during their excursion into Tir Tairngire, but he wasn’t fool enough to simply forget about it. One never knew when such information would come in handy, after all.

  The troll mage sighed heavily as he lifted the ruined jade amulet from the table in front of him, letting it dangle by its broken chain. It looked like a toy in his massive fist. The stone was cracked and charred, and only the faintest magical aura still clung to it. After Morningstar was banished, the necklace had apparently lost all magical power, and Kellan decided she wanted to bury it in the cave where her father had fallen; her way of honoring the man she never really knew, and putting the past behind her to move on to the future. She’d asked Lothan to teach her how to enchant a new amulet, something that could be truly hers.

  She didn’t know that Lothan had unearthed the amulet when he stayed behind to seal up the cave, or that he brought it back with him to Seattle. There was no need for her to know. Lothan understood Kellan’s desire to put the past to rest, but he was too practical to allow such a potential resource to lie buried under earth and rock—not when there still might be a use for the lingering astral traces within the gold and jade.

  Sighing again, Lothan opened the small teakwood box on the table in front of him, gently depositing the amulet within, folding its chain on top. He shut the lid and waved one hand over the box, causing a faint golden glow to flicker around it for a moment. Then, with another wave of his hand, he sent the box floating through the air to slide into an empty spot on the shelves lining the walls of his study, filled with books and the accumulated trinkets of a lifetime studying magic in the shadows. The computer signaled it had completed the encryption of the file, and Lothan looked at the message window for a moment before clicking it closed and shutting down the display. That’s that. He rose from his chair, pausing for a moment in the doorway to turn off the light before closing the door, and consigning the room and its contents to the shadows.

  * * *

  Alone in her new space—actually a slightly converted warehouse—Jackie Ozone sat cross-legged in an overstuffed chair amidst a dark cityscape of boxes. Unpacking and organizing her physical space would have to wait until she had taken care of more pressing matters.

  The only light came from the faint halogen and neon glow filtering through the closed blinds, but Jackie didn't need the physical light, since her attention was focused instead on the virtual world filling her skull through the thin fiber-optic cable that snaked its way from the cyberdeck in her
lap to the chrome jack in her head.

  She built up the new virtual image slowly, layer by layer, like a sculptor working clay. The design of a new Matrix persona was slow and painstaking work. Of course, there were prefabricated templates and virtual "puppets" you could quickly copy and paste, but it was the difference between buying off the rack at a second-hand store and the custom work of a fashion designer. No decker like Jackie would be caught dead wearing a prefab persona.

  She was sorry to retire her old icon—it had served her well, and it was known throughout the Seattle shadows—but that was the problem, after all. If there was any possibility a description of her persona would find its way out of the Cross corporate system . . . well, it was better not to take chances. Her new Matrix identity would just need to be that much better than before, and she tried to look at it as a challenge rather than a setback.

  She was so engrossed in the work that she barely noticed the knocking sound coming from the real world. When she did, she put the persona design and her deck on standby, switching off the simsense feed and allowing her senses to revert back to the real world. She nearly leapt out of the chair when she did.

  Standing beside the door, knuckles rapping on the inside, was a slim Asian man dressed in a tailored leather jacket over a dark, close-fitting shirt and jeans. Gloves covered his hands and dark shades covered his eyes, so Jackie knew he must have optic enhancements to see clearly in the darkness of the room. Her first reaction was to reach for the bag sitting next to her chair where her sidearm rested in its holster.

  "Don’t," the man said firmly. "If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it already." Jackie paused. He was right about that, and, if he was armed, it was doubtful she could reach her weapon before he drew his.

  "You could use a better security system," the man observed casually. A green light burned from the tiny box set in the doorframe at shoulder height.

  "Know any good sources?" Jackie asked, and he nodded.

  "Some. I still have a few connections here and there."

  "And your skills clearly haven’t gotten rusty, Mr ?"

  That earned her a small smile. "Fox. You can call me Mr. Fox. Well, not too rusty," he countered. "I’m not here to make trouble," he reassured her. "I just came to talk."

  "You could have called ahead," she observed, "or at least knocked." He shrugged.

  "I did. You were otherwise occupied."

  "What do you want?" Jackie asked, afraid that she already knew.

  "Like I said, I still have a few connections here and there, including some inside Cross Applied Technologies. I wondered why a Seraphim ops team that had a shadowrunning team dead to rights would suddenly get recalled, and, for that matter, how they might have found out about what was going on in Tir Tairngire in the first place. So I did some checking. Rumors travel fast within a company, especially when it involves the CEO and a top-level meeting."

  "And what did you find out?" Jackie asked him, trying to keep her tone no more than idly curious.

  "That the information someone passed on to a Cross fixer here in Seattle—information Midnight stole from Nightengale’s, which showed that a certain former operative was still alive and here in the Northwest—ended up being nothing but a wild goose chase. This suggests that someone managed to alter the data, either before it was sold, to convince the fixers it was authentic when it wasn’t, or, more likely, after the fact to throw the company off the trail."

  "And why tell me this?"

  Fox shrugged again. "Professional courtesy," he said. "I figured a decker of your reputation—someone who has worked closely with Lothan and Kellan before—enough for Lothan to engage you in digging up information on that former corporate operative, would appreciate the kind of effort necessary to pull off a job like that."

  "Couldn’t have been easy," Jackie observed.

  "No, I’m sure it wasn’t. So you can understand how a fixer might appreciate finding someone willing to go to such lengths, regardless of their motivation. Somebody like that would be a valuable asset—one that bears watching, don’t you think?"

  "No doubt."

  "I’m glad you agree. Here," he took small card from the inside pocket of his jacket and set it down on a nearby stack of boxes. "You might be interested in this. I’ll be in touch about your security system real soon."

  Jackie smiled tightly. "I guess you’ll know how to find me."

  Fox returned the smile in equal measure. "Count on it," he said, before silently opening the door and stepping out into the dimly lit hall. The door quietly clicked shut behind him, the light on the monitor box changing from green to red.

  Jackie set aside her deck and unfolded from the chair, going over to pick up the card he left behind. She glanced over the few lines of neat type, nodding slowly.

  * * *

  Kellan and Orion arrived at Dante’s Inferno together, and Newt the bouncer admitted them past the growing line of club-kids and other hopefuls, to the usual chorus of complaints and catcalls.

  Purgatory, beneath the main levels of the club, was laid out with Dante’s signature opulence, including a sideboard laden with indulgent hors d’oeuvres, chilled bottles of champagne, and a sinful selection of sweets. Sitting on the far side of an octagonal table was Toshiro Akimura, dressed in a finely cut dark suit, with an iridescent blue and gold silk tie highlighted with a trace of Japanese kanji. Lothan stood nearby talking quietly with the fixer, the Staff of Candor-Brie leaning against a chair. The troll mage was wearing his symbol-decorated overcoat, but also a fine dark tunic and newly polished boots.

  "Come in," Akimura said, waving them toward the table. "Help yourselves to something."

  Not long after, several others arrived: G-Dogg looked sharp in a pin-striped suit and dark vest, complete with watch fob and chain; Liada wore a dark green cloak over a short-sleeved top and black slacks; the dwarf Silver Max even changed out of his usual grease-stained overalls into a trim coat worn over a collarless shirt and neatly cuffed trousers. Kellan was only a little surprised to see Jackie Ozone arrive; according to her clients, the decker preferred to attend meetings and get-togethers virtually. But Kellan understood that her friends saw her in the flesh much more often.

  "How’s the new place coming?" Kellan asked Jackie.

  "Settling in," she said. "I just got a new security system that’s better even than the one at my old place. Gotta keep an eye on the neighbors," she added with a wink, and Kellan laughed.

  They turned their attention to Akimura as he stood and pushed back his chair.

  "You all know me," he said, once he had their attention. "Some of you better than others," he added, glancing in Kellan’s direction. She gave him a tiny smile in return. "But you all know that I’ve been in the biz for a long time."

  "By some people’s standards . . ." Lothan muttered, just loud enough for everyone to hear, drawing some chuckles.

  "After recent events," the fixer continued, "I find myself looking to cut some old ties and reestablish myself in the shadows. So Mr. Fox is opening up shop in Seattle. Even though I’ve been out of circulation for a while, I assure you that I can still put together a deal. Liquidating my old assets gives me material resources to work with: What I need to find is people I can rely on—professionals who know their business and get the job done, who want to take an opportunity and make something of it, on their own terms."

  A loud pop caught everyone’s attention as G-Dogg opened a bottle of champagne. Kellan smiled at the way hands reached for weapons that were all checked in the Inferno’s cloakroom or else simply left at home. The ork simply offered a tusky grin in response to startling a few people, and started passing out glasses and pouring.

  "So," Akimura said, taking a glass and holding it up. "If you are interested, I’d like to be able to consider all of you as potential resources in this new enterprise, the core of a pool of talent I can rely upon to get the job done. Naturally, you are also free to simply enjoy the evening and leave it at that.. .. What do you say
?"

  Before anyone else could answer, Kellan cleared her throat, and suddenly all eyes in the room were on her.

  "I just wanted to say, I’ve made my share of mistakes since I got to Seattle," she said, pausing and swallowing, looking at the faces gathered around the table, "but I’ve been lucky to have friends willing to back me up, even when I mess up, willing to do more than just get the job done. I came to Seattle to find out more about my family and to make a name for myself in the shadows, and I hope"—she glanced at Orion, who smiled—"I think that I’ve found both family and opportunity here—not just professionals I can work with, but people I can trust."

  Akimura raised his glass in acknowledgment, and everyone else quickly followed suit.

  "To trust and honor among the shadows," he said, and everyone clinked glasses in response.

  "I’ll drink to that," Jackie said, just loud enough for Kellan to hear. She caught the decker’s eye, nodded, and the two of them touched glasses with a ringing chime.