Lone Wolf (24 page)

The bartender’s down the bar, smearing the macroplast surface with a grimy rag. An ork, she’s seen better decades, it looks like. Her left cheek’s deeply scarred, and in the dim light of a holo beer sign, her left eye glints unnaturally. Cheap replacement, I guess. She sneers, baring chipped and yellowing fangs, and makes no move to come toward me.

I shrug. Whatever. I can play the chill game too. I wait, and eventually she puts down here cloth and stomps over to me. “Well?” she snaps.

“Draft,” I reply. “And tell our mutual friend that Wolf’s here.” That’s the code, such as it is, that Argent told me to use. Internally I cringe a little—it could well translate to “Cack me now,” for all I know, but I don’t let anything show in my face or posture.

The ork doesn’t respond at all until she’s drawn my beer, put the glass down in front of me, and slotted the credstick I hand her. Then she gestures toward the back of the tavern with a jerk of her scraggly, whiskered jaw. “Back room,” she grunts. “He’s waiting for you.”

I nod my thanks, retrieve my credstick, pick up my beer, and jander back into the deeper shadows. There are three unmarked doors in the back wall. By the smell I identify two as cans. I take a pull on the beer—sharp tang of chemicals on my tongue—and push open the center one.

A short hallway, a closed door to my right, and a partially open one directly ahead. I step forward, and push the door open.

I’m looking into a small, cramped office—a couple of chairs, a desk with an archaic telecom, and a portable trideo box. Light comes from a single fluorescent tube mounted in a three-tube fixture in the center of the ceiling.

But I give the office itself only the briefest of scans. All my attention is drawn to the figure sitting behind the desk. Argent. It has to be.

I had no preconceived notions about this slag, but apparently I’ve got some about shadowrunners in general. A weasel, that’s what I would have expected—a sly, sneaking drek who looks more like a rodent than a human. Dirty and ill-kempt, no charisma or what you’d like to think of as personality, the kind of slot you wouldn’t turn your back on for fear he’d stick a knife into it. Maybe it’s an image I picked up from the trid, then modified and filtered through my own preconceptions until it’s become so deeply ingrained I didn’t even know it was there until it got overturned.

And overturned it certainly is. Argent’s a big man, no weasel. At a guess, I’d say he stands taller than two meters and masses ninety-five kilos, with the only fat in his body from the hamburger he ate for lunch. Broad shoulders, deep chest. Handsome, in a hard, chiseled kind of way, with short-cropped dark hair speckled with gray. Calm expression, steady, cold gray eyes that glint sharply in the light. Lying palm-down on the desktop, his hands are empty, presumably to reassure me, but it does just the opposite.

Argent’s hands are both cyber—angular metal things, brutal and absolutely lethal-looking, with a smooth matte-black finish. Terrifying. I try to keep the reaction out of my face, out of my eyes, but I know I don’t manage it.

The runner sees my reaction, that’s for sure. Odds are he doesn’t miss much, but he merely nods at me, and says, “Close the door and take a seat, Wolf.”

I shut the door, but I don’t sit down. I’m uncomfortable, and when I’m uncomfortable I’ve got to be free to pace. “Wolf,” I repeat. “What’s this drek about Wolf?”

His lips quirk up in a wry smile. “You need a street handle,” he says calmly. “Never use your own name if you can avoid it.”

“So why Wolf?”

“Haven’t you ever read any books?” he asks quietly. “Jack London? Wolf Larson . . .” He shakes his head. “Forget it.” He interlinks his fingers, and metal clicks on metal. I shiver. “You’ve got your meet, Wolf,” he says calmly. “Now what do you want to do with it?”

“Did you scope out the missile attack like I told you?” I ask.

“An associate looked into it for me,” he says, and I know he means a decker.

“And?”

The runner pauses for a long moment, his cold eyes steady on my face. “Interesting,” he says at last. “Tell me again what you told me on the phone.”

“What the frag do you need to hear again?” I ask him sharply. “Lone Star FRT set up on the rooftops. AVM into the car. I’m blown clear, the driver cooks. Need anything else, drekhead?”

Again he doesn’t answer at once, just looks at me with those slightly unnatural eyes. Then he shakes his head. “That’ll do,” he says calmly.

I force myself to calm down—with minimal success. Will I ever be able to talk about the ambush without hearing Cat’s screams in my head? “So what did your decker find?” I want to know.

“A media clamp-down and evidence of a cover-up,” he tells me. “The official story is that terrorists were using the car to carry explosives, and the charge went up prematurely. That’s what the Star told the media . . . then told them they couldn’t broadcast it.” He shrugs. “Standard Lone Star procedure, as I’m sure you’re aware. Under the surface, though, things are much different. There’s a lot of drek going down—personnel reassignments, increased security on communication logs, that kind of thing. Just what you’d expect if the Star was trying to cover up their involvement.”

I nod slowly. Yeah, just what you’d expect if they were trying to cover up the fact that they’d lost control of their comm channels . . .

“You think Lone Star’s put you out of sanction?” Argent wants to know.

I’m still not sure I should give up on the possibility someone outside the organization’s orchestrating everything through the Star’s compromised data fortress, but Argent doesn’t have to know that, not yet. So, “Yes,” I tell him.

He smiles humorlessly. “Then you’re dead, chummer,” he states. “It’s just a matter of time.”

I raise my eyebrows at that. “Oh? Why?”

“The corporation’s got a tissue sample on deposit for you, omae,” he says patiently. “Standard Lone Star procedure, part of the recruitment process, isn’t it?”

“How’d you know that?”

The shadowrunner shrugs. “I heard it from a Johnson—a friend, actually—who used to be in the Star himself. Anyway, eventually they drag up that sample, they hire a mage or shaman, and they slam a ritual sending into you wherever you happen to be hiding at the time. End of story, Wolf. Nothing I can do about that.”

I chuckle quietly. Argent knows more about the way the Star works than I’m really comfortable with, but at least he’s wrong on this one. “No sample, Argent,” I tell him.

“Did you crack in and purge it?” he asks.

“The Star purged it,” I correct him. “Standard procedure for deep-cover ops, but I guess you didn’t know that.” I shrug lightly. “Some drek about somebody on the outside being able to take a skin sample or something from the op, then magically assensing if there’s a ‘contiguous’ sample in the Lone Star vaults. Doesn’t make much sense to me, but that’s SOP. So, no sample.”

“You think,” he says softly.

That stops me for a moment. “I think,” I have to allow. “But I’ve got to work on that assumption.”

He nods his acceptance of that. “Your call,” he says equably.

He spreads his metal hands. “So you’ve got your meet and the
meter’s running, Wolf. What is it you want with me?”

I take a deep breath. I’ve been cogitating this for the past couple of hours, and I think I’ve got it refined as tight as I can. “Deep research,” I tell him. “I need a decker to dig up some deep background on a corp in the Tir.”

Argent smiles. “That’s all?”

“It’s a start,” I snap back.

“You’re taking some big chances coming to me if all you want’s some database search done, omae,” he says quietly. “There are some runners out there who’d geek a Star op—or even an ex-Star op—just on principle.”

“And you wouldn’t?” I say sarcastically.

“I haven’t yet,” he points out quietly, “and I’ve never been knee-jerk about that kind of thing anyway. You’ve got your job to do, I’ve got mine. Stay out of each other’s way and we should have no quarrel with each other.”

“Your job?” I sneer. “Feathering your own nest by fragging people over?” The words are out of my mouth before I even realize it.

The chromed shadowrunner looks at me, a speculative expression on his face. I expect some kind of justification, or an angry retort. Instead he just says quietly, “You don’t know me.” Nor do I fragging want to, but this time I manage to keep my yap shut.

Argent glances down at his hands, and I can almost hear the intensity of his thoughts. After maybe half a minute, he looks back up at me. “Data search,” he muses. “Why?"

"My biz.”

“Actually, no,” he comes back immediately. “You want me to make it my biz. Why should I?”

“I’ll pay you.”

“How?” He smiles grimly. “If you’re really beyond salvage, the Star's frozen your contingency fund accounts, maybe your cover accounts too.”

“I’ll pay you when it all shakes out,” I growl.

His smile grows broader, but no less ironic, as he shakes his head. “My people don’t work on spec.”

Fragging mercenary drek-eater. Why did I expect anything else from a fragging shadowrunner? I bite back hard on my anger. He could still geek me if I push him too far. “Then I guess we don’t have anything else to talk about,” I say coldly.

“I suppose not.” I start to turn away, but his voice calls me back. “Unless ...”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you fragging open up on this, Wolf,” he says, a
real hard and frosty edge to his voice. “Tell me what it’s
about and give me a fragging reason why I might want to do it. You got me, omae?”

I just stare at him.

“Come on, slot and run,” he says impatiently. “Why not just start at the beginning?”

19

So, what the hell, that’s just what I do. I begin right from the fragging start, from the first moment I set eyes on that slag calling himself Nemo. All the way up to the elf biff’s suggestion about contacting the shadowrunner.

Argent nods slowly at that last bit. “I wondered how you got the number,” he says quietly. Then his lips twist in a faint smile. “That elf certainly danced you around, didn’t she?”

I grind my teeth. “Yeah.” I grate. “She certainly did.”

His grin fades. “No kick against you. Wolf,” he says. “I’m just admiring a pro’s moves, scan?”

I nod curtly. Frag, I wish he wouldn’t do that—act like a decent human being, I mean, with any kind of concern for my feelings. He did it when I repeated, in detail, the events of the Lone Star ambush and Cat’s death, and he’s doing it again now. What the frag right does he have?

But I push my feelings out of my consciousness. No time for them now. “Got everything?” I ask him harshly.

He raises an eyebrow at my tone, but all he says’is, “I’ve got enough for a first pass.” He leans back, and the chair creaks “So, what do we know?”

“Squat!”

“Not quite We do know there’s some connection—of some kind, to some degree—between a corp in the Tir and
the Seattle Cutters. That came out before the drek hit the
pot, so I think we can accept it at face value.”

I nod grudgingly.

“We also know that someone in the Star’s put you out of sanction.”

I shake my head at that. “Not necessarily,” I correct him. “If somebody’s penetrated the Star’s data fortress—this Telestrian corp, maybe—they might be the one who ordered the ambush and who posted my personnel file in a less secure database.”

Argent shakes his head, unconvinced.

“Why the frag not?” I demand.

He sighs faintiy, and clasps his hands behind his head. “Maybe I can accept the ambush,” he says. “Subject to confirmation, of course. That fits with the heavy-duty cover-up. But your personnel jacket?” He shakes his head again. “I can see somebody posting it there initially. But why hasn’t the Star deleted it by now? And why haven’t they found some way to bring you in? No,” he goes on thoughtfully, “maybe Lone Star didn’t put you beyond salvage initially—maybe that was Telestrian or whoever. But they certainly haven’t done anything to reverse it, to repair the situation, have they?” He doesn’t wait for an answer—not that he has to, he can probably see it on my face. “The only way I read it is that your superiors have decided it might be better all around to color you dead as well.”