“Sit,” commanded the dwarf, laying his hands openly on the table. The big troll did not, however, and she tagged him as a street samurai. Chromed? Possibly. And those marks on his arms looked just like Blackjack’s. The street sam was, of course, a razorboy. Dangerous.
“Roger sent you?” the troll probed without any preamble.
Silver paused in the act of taking a seat. “No. Fat Jake called me. Sorry. Do I have the wrong address?”
The dwarf smiled and waved her back down. “That’s the correct name. Just checking.”
“Null perspiration. Kings,” she said, and waited.
The dwarf blinked in surprise.
What the frag was this? Silver thought. They didn’t seem to know the answering password to confirm their identity. Adrenaline flooded her stomach like ice water and her hand edged closer to the Colt. Was this a trap? Had the killer Johnson found her instead of the other way around? Gods, no . . . no, wait, consider the principals. A policlubber and some metas. Drekfire, Jake was playing a game with them! A frigging game, the bastard. Arranging a meet and not telling the Johnson what the countersign was. Fuming at the idiocy, Silver kept her face neutral as she waited for the dwarf to answer correctly, or start blasting.
The dwarf took a breath and let it out slowly. “Morlock,” he stated calmly.
Yes! Smiling in relief, she nodded and sat. “I’m Silver. Heard you’re looking for a decker.”
“Two Bears,” he grumbled.
“And I’m Thumbs,” said the troll, jerking one toward his chest.
“Hoi. Love your tat,” Silver said, brushing a loose strand of black hair away from the chromed jack in her temple.
“Me gang tat,” Thumbs responded, running a hand over his bald pate. “Da Slammers.”
“Ah, the legendary Slammers. Toughest trolls in town.”
“Dat’s right.” He puffed up with pride. “Youse knows us, eh?”
Silver smiled nicely. “Never heard of you.”
The two locked gazes for a tick. Thumbs laid his Predator openly on the littered table and turned to the dwarf. “She’ll do fine, Chief.”
Ah, a minor shifting of diction there. This guy played possum and attacked from behind. Good. Silver liked that. Especially in somebody she might be running with. The smart stayed alive longer.
“Sussed,” said Two Bears.
“So,” she said, making herself comfortable. “What’s the run?”
“Data hunt and retrieval. Forty kay.”
Blast. The going rate for a standard run. Probably nothing special or the kind of run that would lead her to her prey. Still, nuyen was nuyen.
“Accepted,” she said flatly. “What’s first on the list to do?”
Two Bears picked through several credsticks on the table, as though only one were any good. “You gotta access my account at the CitiBank Central and drain it.”
“Your own account?”
“Yes.”
She pursed her lips. “You got the access codes?”
“Of course.”
“Cake,” Silver replied, pulling the Fuchi deck from her bulky shoulder bag. Thumbs got up and moved some food wrappers, grenades, and guns to expose a jackport in the wall near the table. She sat down on the floor, took out her deck and set it on her lap, then jacked in. She typed in a few commands, and after a tick the indicator lights showed green. Lines were hot and tight, no interference, no static. Arctic.
“Codes, please,” she said, slim fingers poised over the
keyboard.
Clearing his throat, Two Bears leaned close and whispered the two sequences. Closing her eyes, Silver tapped wildly on the Fuchi. “Stick,” she said a moment later. Two Bears slid across his credstick. She took it and slotted it into her deck. Soon a light changed color, and then she pulled it out again. “Done. What’s next?”
He stared at the stick and then her. “That fast?”
Silver gave him a cool smile of professionalism. “You gave me the primary codes,” she said. “I simply rerouted, did a backdoor, accessed under an assumed, did a dump and seize. Aced the line and left. Easy. You’ve got double your account.”
“That’s not what I asked for,” Two Bears barked angrily. “Fragging hell! I don’t need the freaking city bank hot on my hoop along with everything else!”
“They can’t trace the funds. I did the entry from a public telecom in the Citadel.” She gave a brief grin. “I visited a relative there once and memorized the LTG code. Then I used the main access code for your account, but not the personal one. When you’ve got the prime and the password, the rest is easy. But rather than withdraw the funds, which is always traced, I simply stole the nuyen outright. Cleaned you out for exactly that amount.”
“Brilliant,” chortled Thumbs, impressed. “Since the nuyen was stolen, the bank will reimburse him for the loss. May not even tell him there was a security breach, to maintain the illusion they’re secure. So you got the same amount as before in your account.” Blue eyes flashing amusement, he smiled at her. “Nice scam.”
“Thanx.”
Two Bears pocketed the stick, saying nothing.
“So,” prompted Silver, pleased that the troll at least appreciated the art of her maneuvering. “Are we expecting anybody else, or is this the team?”
“Three? Hardly. I’m also waiting for a gunsel and a mage,” said Two Bears, checking the wall clock. “It’s 17:15 est. We got some twenty hours until my grace period runs out. By then we gotta be deep gone from here and with no traces. Savvy?”
“Savvy.”
Reclining in his wooden chair, Two Bears reached for his soykaf, then pushed the container aside. “Here’s the down. I was hired this morning by some Johnson to discover who or what the frag something called IronHell is. I went to the public datanets first and got squat. Then I hired a chummer of mine, Sister Wizard, to browse the Matrix, see what she might find in the less public databanks.”
“Know her,” said Silver. “She’s very very slick.”
“Was,” corrected Two Bears sternly. “Now she’s very, very geeked. Don’t know where she went for the scan on IronHell, but she got brainfried faster than jackspit.”
“You think it was IronHell geeked her?” repeated Thumbs.
Eloquently, Two Bears raised his palms to the ceiling.
“IronHell,” murmured Silver, chewing her lip. “IronHell, IronHell. Where have I heard that name before?”
They both turned toward her.
“You know something?” asked Thumbs curiously. The canvas walls of the tent wavered in the gentle filtered currents of the building’s enviro-system.
“Yeah,” she whispered thoughtfully. “I do believe I do.”
“So, spill it?” demanded Two Bears of the decker. “What do you know about IronHell?”
Silver pulled the datacord from her deck, her forehead wrinkling in thought. “Something ..she demurred. “I have a ... ahem, a cousin, who works on the docks as a night guard. He lets me, uh, visit, the warehouses every month or so. Souvenir-hunting. You know.”
Understanding nods from both males.
“Do the same thing myself in the trucking trade. Those remote-controlled semis often have stuff fall out the back,” said Thumbs, grinning widely.
A roguish smile. “Cousins are always useful.”
“Got a few myself at airport Customs,” put in Two Bears. “But this one on the dock told you what?”
Silver ran her fingertips over the deck, struggling to remember exactly. “He only mentioned it once, and pretended he hadn’t afterward, which is what made me remember it. I think IronHell is sailor slang for something to do with .. . pirates? Yes, pirates.”
“Pirates?” echoed Two Bears, clenching the edge of the table. “That’s what Louie said!” The last was spoken half to himself.
“Louie who?” asked Thumbs.
Two Bears shook his head, angry at himself for not listening to the champ. “Old chummer soft in the noggin who
works for me. But I guess he still might have a few synapses connected. Who’da thought?”
“Don’t wanna tango with no pirates,” stated Thumbs flatly, crossing his herculean arms across his bare chest. “Those motherfraggers don’t care what they do or who they scrag to get what they want. When they’re done with you, the only person could love you is an organlegger. Atlantic Security, the local corps—there ain’t nobody been able to get to them. You can stuff that into your stick.”
“And the megacorps don’t care,” sneered Two Bears, “
’cause the pirates are too fragging smart to try looting those ships!”
“You got that right,
omae
. Some megacorp versus the pirates of the Caribbean.” Thumbs exposed both tusks. “Now, there’s a fight I would truly love to see.”
“From a great distance. Like deep space.”
“Def,” said Thumbs with a slight laugh. “But I wouldn’t know which side to root for.”
“Okay, so it’s something to do with pirates,” said Two Bears. “Jesus, Buddah, and Zeus, what does that tell us? A pirate
what,
and
where
?” He turned to Silver. “A ship, chief buccaneer, their supply depot, main base, arch-enemy?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Honestly, don’t recall. But it’s something to do with pirates.”
“Can we ask this Louie guy?” inquired Thumbs. He smacked a huge fist into an equally huge palm. “Maybe we encourage his memory a bit?”
“
Ichi
, he’s a chummer,” said Two Bears angrily. Then relented, “Besides, he’s so near the edge, he forgets where he lives sometimes. A simple kick in the hoop might scramble his internal software forever. And if they traced my call to Sister Wizard, they might know who I am and be watching my place.”
“Telecom?” squeaked Silver, staring at them. “And all this happened this morning?”
“Yes,” said Two Bears slowly. Thumbs just stared at her. “You did catch somebody’s attention,” she said. “I was in the matrix myself then and saw some deckers from someplace rush to a public telecom node.”
“Frag!”
Two Bears rubbed a hand over his face and asked, “Who was it? Lone Star?”
“No, I never saw anything like them before,” said Silver. “True. Anybody who could fry Sister like that had to be some corp bastards. Probably Atlantic Security—they write their own programs and their deckers are real burners. Top flash.”
“Yeah,” drawled Silver. “Nova hot and their codes even hotter.”
“Atlantic also imports major bangbangs from the Confederated American States,” added Thumbs, eyeing the pile of guns they’d just finished cleaning.
“So, what do you scan? Think it was AtSec, or even Gunderson itself that hit Sister?” asked Two Bears.
“Null program,” said Silver. “Gunderson does own Atlantic Security, but I don’t think the good Sister was enough of a zerobrain to try a Matrix run on the mainframes of TGC without major protection. That’s not something you do off the fragging cuff or on a freaking whim. I’d want three, four deckers to back me up, and one drekload of whitehot programs to even try.”
“Yeah, guess you’re right about that.” Thumbs opened a cold container of some takeout soykaf they’d brought with them and gulped it down. “Maybe it’s one of the megacorps trying to put Gunderson in their place cause they’re getting big ideas?”
“All multinationals wanna be megacorps. What’s new about that?”
Thumbs crumpled the container and tossed it across the tent into a macroplas box serving as a dumpster. “So maybe Gunderson found a way to do it.”
“Battle the big boys?” Two Bears snorted sardonically. “Earth to Thumbs, try again, please.”
“If this IronHell thing does have to do with pirates,”
insisted Thumbs, rubbing his chin with the sound of sandpaper, “then who would know more than Atlantic Security? That’s what they do, hunt pirates.” Atlantic Security had contracts with many of Miami’s private corps and local sectors, but their ships also patrolled the seas around the sprawl.
“Or is the big secret that they really are the pirates?” asked Silver quietly.
“And are working both sides of the fence?” finished Thumbs for her. “IronHell being their codename for the covert op? Slot me like a surfer, lady, but I do not like the way you think.”
Two Bears sucked air in through his teeth. “God’s blood, but if that’s what’s really going on. ...” His thoughts were interrupted by the elevator sounding a ding and the doors sliding open wide. Nobody was visible inside the cage.
“Get hard,” snapped Two Bears, pulling the chattergun
in front of him and working the selector from single to full auto.
Thumbs closed his ballistic vest, then lifted the Predator into view, snicking off the safety.
Colt in hand, Silver studied the elevator. Tilted off-angle, the corner security mirror showed only the tiled ceiling. Then a tall norm stepped into view from the area behind the door normally shown on the mirror. Dark hair, dark eyes, sideburns, and moustache. He was wearing a tropical synth-cotton suit, loose and easy-fitting. A large dull black gun was tucked into a crossdraw holster on his left hip. The metal was totally non-reflective, the window light seeming to fall into the ebony finish and vanish. Something ceramic hung around his neck on a thin woven band but was hidden under his soft linen shirt.
Slowly and steadily, the norm approached the tent as if he was dead sure that everybody knew who the frag he was and stayed awake at night worrying about it. Without so much as a pause, he entered the tent and stood unblinking in the strong light of the EverBrights. He ignored the collection of death-dealers lying openly on the table, but instead looked at each of the three people sitting there, moving his neck stiffly with a slight mechanical jerk like some robotic drone locating their positions to the exact millimeter.