Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (24 page)

Huang was the first through the outer door. He had already stripped away his cap and mask and was trying to stuff them into a pocket. His mind, as usual, was on other things, and the objects fell to the floor.

". . . for a whole hour. It's not like she didn't know there were going to be late nights on this project."

"Even wives don't like being stood up, Sherman," Cliber said.

"It was just a little dinner party. Nobody important was there." Huang shrugged. "She'll get over it. She always does."

"Perhaps if you took some time off," Hutten suggested.

"Time?" Huang was clearly affronted. "That's exactly the issue. Everybody wants my time. I don't have enough for the project now that it's reached this crucial stage. If they'd just leave us alone." His eyes fixed on something only he could see and the muscles around them relaxed from their habitual squint. "Just a little more time and we'll show them."

He reached down and spun a monitor to face him.

"Hah! Just what I thought. Take a look at this."

The other two peered over his shoulder. Cliber uttered a meditative "hmm." Hutten said nothing but reached past Huang to tap keys on the console.

"Good thought, Konrad." Huang nodded in approval. "That configuration should maximize throughput in the beta cycle."

"An obvious extrapolation from the modulator parameters," Hutten observed.

In her business, Crenshaw was sometimes pleased and relieved to be treated as part of the furniture. The lack of attention could even be a valuable asset. This was not one of those times. Deciding that the green coats were going to ignore her until she intruded on their attention, she stepped up and spoke.

"President Huang?"

All three looked at her in unison. Cliber's face immediately settled into its habitual glare of contempt. The other two wore expressions of mild curiosity.

"Yes?"

"Alice Crenshaw, sir. Security division."

Huang's brown furrowed, but Crenshaw noted his fugitive flash of concern. Like a child caught looking at dirty pictures.

"There's no problem, sir. I'm on assignment with
Kansayaku
Sato. He sent me to convey his apologies and regrets that your dinner meeting must be postponed by half an hour."

"Is that tonight?" Huang asked absently.

"Seven-thirty," Hutten offered. "Now eight."

"Well, I guess we'll be there. With all the bells and whistles." Huang laughed nervously.

Crenshaw groaned inwardly. They had invented the term nerd for this man. She gave him a polite smile "The
Kansayaku
is looking forward to meeting your team leaders this evening."

Cliber flashed her companions an anticipatory grin. "I'm looking forward to it, too. I've got a few things I'd like to drop into Mr. Kansa-whatever's ears." She turned on Crenshaw. "He's sure enough taken his time getting around to us. The grapevine's been buzzing about how he's in such an all-fired hurry to get the project moving. How come he's waited so long to talk to us?"

"The corporation has a lot more interests than your AI project, Doctor Cliber.
Kansayaku
Sato must concern himself with them all. He has been looking around, getting a feel for the operation here in Seattle. He has told me that he thought it best not to disturb your important work on the project more than necessary."

"No more than—," Cliber sputtered. "The personnel changes he ordered were hardly necessary. And they were very disturbing."

"As I said, doctor, no more than necessary."

"What does he know about what is necessary? You people are all alike. You have no idea of what we are doing here, but you still think that you can shove people in and out, make schedule changes at whim, and I don't know what all else. Then you expect us to dump results in your laps on order."

"Calm yourself, doctor."

"Calm myself." Cliber's face was flushed. "I haven't gotten started yet."

"I suggest you reevaluate your attitude in light of the
Kansayaku
's mandate," Crenshaw stated coldly. "He might find your attitude nonproductive."

"Nonproductive!" Cliber tugged her cap from her head, loosing her honey-blonde hair from the pins that had bound it up. She slammed the green cap to the floor. "Sherman!"

Huang looked up confusedly from the monitor he had gone back to studying. "Hmmm?"

Crenshaw spoke before Cliber could launch her tirade. "I was just suggesting to Doctor Cliber that she place some curbs on her . . . enthusiasm. Cooperation with
Kansayaku
Sato is the fastest way to get your project moving."

Huang blinked, looking from his clearly incensed colleague to the calm security officer and back again. "Vanessa, I'm afraid Ms. Crenshaw is right. You do let your temper get the better of you occasionally and we must be careful around Mr. Sato. If he's satisfied with what he finds and no one antagonizes him, he'll go away and we can all get back to our work. You know how close we are." He gave Cliber a weak smile that seemed to calm her a little.

Then he mumbled, "I do hate all this bureaucratic nonsense."

"Hardly nonsense, President Huang." Crenshaw chided. Cliber snorted, but Crenshaw continued. "But I understand how professionals like your team may find it bothersome to abide by the necessary formalities of operating in a businesslike manner.
Kansayaku
Sato is only looking out for Renraku's interests. He wishes all departments to work at peak efficiency."

"Then why hasn't he approved our requests for more help?"

"As a matter of fact, he has." Crenshaw produced a chip carrier from her jacket pocket and tossed it on the desk. "These are the files and transfer orders for twelve of your requested personnel. I'm sure you will want to express your thanks to the
Kansayaku
at dinner tonight. Until then."

Enjoying the stunned looks on Huang's and Cliber's faces, Crenshaw turned and strode for the door. On her way, she noticed that Hutten had seated himself at a cyberterminal and continued to work through all the uproar. A realistic and professional attitude. She liked that in a man.

Sam awoke as his muscles locked into a brief spasm. After a moment of startled disorientation, he lay back, confused. He was indoors and in a bed whose soft quilt lay heavily on his naked skin. The room was dark, lit only fitfully by indirect glow from what seemed to be a fire in the next room. He was surrounded by a vaguely familiar scent at once comforting and strange.

He couldn't remember how he had come to be here. Last he knew he had been in the forest, running for his life from the Tir Tairngire border guards. And there had been a pair of wolves.

The memory was confused, one thing blending into another.

Images of the place where Hanae had died dominated his memories. Flash-lit shards from the attack, tranquil images of the scene as they had bedded down with the shadowrunners, washed-out visions of Elves wandering among the destruction. It all dissolved into whirling impressions of the dark forest and his haunted run through the dark.

Sam remembered falling and hitting his head. A cautious exploratory hand confirmed that memory. He had a very large bump on the back of his head, but he felt curiously little discomfort on touching it. In fact, none of the scrapes and bruises from his run bothered him. They were still there, though, evidence that the nightmare in the forest had been real. His mysterious benefactors must have given him something for the pain.

Faces came to mind. One was a haughty and disdainful male, the other a concerned but faintly confused female. Both were long and thin with slightly slanted eyes. Their ears had just the hint of a point. They could almost be the faces of Elves, but they weren't, they couldn't be. It was Elves that had tried to kill him. Why would they save him? It didn't make sense. He couldn't remember clearly, but Sam was sure that hands belonging to those faces had helped him from the forest, seen to his wounds, and installed him in this bed.

Not knowing where he was or who were his benefactors made him nervous. His state of undress only exaggerated the feeling of exposure. As he sat up to look around the room, a steely glint in one corner caught his eye. Chin Lee's assault rifle leaned against the wall. Whoever had brought him here felt comfortable enough to leave him armed. Or had they?

He crept from the bed and checked the weapon as he had seen the Ork do. It was still loaded. They did trust him. Surely, then, he was not a captive of the Tir Tairngire border guards.

On a stool beside the gun was a pile of clothes. They were not his, but must have been left with the intent that he wear them. He soon found that they fit. He was pulling on the boots that had been tucked under the stool when he heard the soft murmur of voices in the next room. Lacing the footgear quickly, he moved to the doorway to listen.

The door opened onto a large chamber that ran past the bedroom. The speakers were out of his line of sight, somewhere off to his right. Distance and the muffling effect of the curtains and wall hangings made their words impossible for him to quite make out. The tones and cadences were familiar, however. He had heard these speakers before. He knew it had not been in surroundings as luxurious as this well-appointed hideaway, but he could not place them. Curious, he stepped out into the light to get a look.

Three men looked over, startled at the sight of Sam. Two of them were seated and one stood by the large windows that faced onto the forest. The standing man was totally unfamiliar, but the two men in conversation were not.

One man was seated almost full-faced toward Sam, and he stopped speaking in mid-sentence. Sam had only spoken with this man once, but the man's pock-marked skin and heavy, almost continuous brows were fixed in his memory. It was Castillano, the enigmatic denizen of the Seattle underworld whom Sam had met during his misadventure with Tsung's shadowrunners.

The other sat not quite in profile. Sam could see his pointed Elven ears and the capped studs of a datajack and a pair of chipjacks on his depilated left temple. Even before the Elf turned, the white shock of hair and familiar black leathers told Sam that it was Dodger, Tsung's decker.

Another man entered from a side room along the same wall that held Sam's room. No name came to mind, but Sam recognized him as the male from his recent memories. A wolf trotted at the man's side. The animal seemed quite at home and unconcerned that its claws clacked on wood rather than scraping on the loam of the forest floor. It noticed Sam in the doorway and padded over. He bent to meet the animal on its own level, recognizing her, too.

"Freya?"

The wolf tossed her head at the sound of her name and licked his face.

"She bites," said the unnamed man with the familiar face.

"It's all right. She won't bite me."

As if she understood his words, Freya pulled away from his hands and nipped at them before submitting again to his petting. The others in the room watched without a word. When Sam at last looked up, he met their eyes. Castillano's stare was grim, but Dodger's eyes lit with pleasure. The others were indifferent.

"Sir Corp," Dodger said. "I am glad to see you awake and refreshed from your slumber. We feared that you had taken serious harm. Come sit by the fire and tell us the tale of how you wandered so far from your home."

Sam gave Freya a last pat and strolled over, taking a vacant chair. The wolf followed behind and curled up near his feet, back to the fire. He looked down at her, trying to buy time. He wasn't sure what to say. These people had presumably saved his life, so he owed them something. But he had no idea of where he stood.

"Whyever were you running aimlessly through the forest?" Dodger prompted.

"I left Renraku. Now they're trying to kill me."

"What?"

"The border patrol. They called me a renegade."

"You are still muddled from your ordeal and present your explanation poorly, Sir Corp. You were never a member of the patrol so you could not be a renegade."

"No. The corporation."

Dodger laughed in disbelief. "Corporations do not levy the death sentence on simple runaways. 'Tis a penalty far too harsh. And to chase you here into the Tir . . . it is unbelievable."

Castillano tapped his hands on the arm of his chair. "What else you into?"

"Nothing," Sam said, bewildered by the question.

"A lie. Too much fuss."

"Indeed, a great fuss has been raised and your tale makes no accounting for it. There must be more involved. Sir Corp, you had best tell us who is out to kill you."

Sam shook his head. "I don't really know."

"Mayhaps you best take the tale of how you come to be so far from home and tell it whole."

Sam nodded. It might be best to get it straight. Telling these people might make it easier for him to settle it in his own mind. Haltingly at first, he began with the growing dissatisfaction with Renraku and the frustrated desire to trace his sister that led to his decision to leave the arcology and the corporation behind. He recounted the extraction and its disastrous end, but omitted the names of all participants save Hanae. "So you see," he concluded, "I really don't know what is going on. But I'm not so far from home; I don't
have
a home anymore."

"A most lamentable tale," Dodger said sympathetically.

"Smoke and fog," Castillano judged.

The Elf gave the man a look of annoyance. "Methinks your verdict harsh. Is it your intent to speak ill of your guest?"

Castillano shrugged.

Dodger turned to Sam. "I have had reliable word from friends in the shadows of Portland. They tell the tale of a Renraku reward for the capture or elimination, preferably the latter, of a pair of renegade employees who stole some valuable company technical secrets."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Sam protested.

" 'Tis said that these renegades were extracted by a handful of shadowrunners and driven south. They were alleged to be planning on illegally crossing the Tir Tairngire border." The Elf paused for a moment. " 'Tis but a tiny step to match the descriptions of these renegades to you and your ladyfriend."

"That doesn't make any sense. We didn't take anything but personal property." Sam shook his head perplexedly. "Maybe the other guy took something."