Lone Wolf (22 page)
“We’re not going to kill you,” she stales calmly. “It.
wouldn’t even be worth the cost of ammunition expended. There are enough others lined up to do the job. The Cutters. Lone Star. Timothy Telestrian’s people. One of them will get you. Soon.”
“Yeah?” I drawl. “So why tell me about this Telestrian rat-frag anyway?”
No matter how hard I try to slot her off, the elf biff refuses to be rattled. “Irrelevant,” she says crisply. “All you need to know is that tracing and elucidating the connection between Timothy Telestrian and the Cutters is the only hope you have of staying alive. Following any other course will just get you killed. Believe it, Larson. I’ve got no reason to lie to you about this.”
I don’t have to answer that, my face says it all.
There’s a click from behind me. I spin and crouch, up comes the H & K.
The door’s swinging open, revealing two figures. Tall— elves?—but bulky with the heavy armor they’re wearing. Both have machine pistols leveled at my head. I freeze, then slowly lower the H & K, opening my hand so the gun hangs from my forefinger by the trigger-guard, pivoting muzzle-down. I take it the interviews over.
Both armored goons come through the door, one sidestepping to the left, the other to the right, to flank me. They’re good—careful not to get in each other’s line of fire. And I mentally kick myself in the hoop. For a few seconds there when the door first opened, they couldn’t have fired without a very real risk of greasing the biff. Unless she’s got some kind of magical protection up, of course. I guess, on second thought, my instincts were right.
“My associates will escort you out, Mr. Larson,” she says calmly from behind me. “Please don’t force them to do something you’ll regret.”
I want to snarl some wildly improbable speculation about her ancestry and sexual proclivities, but the muzzles of the machine pistols persuade me to keep my yap shut. One of the armored slots gestures with his weapon, and I start toward the door.
“Just so you don’t think I’ve totally wasted your time,” the elf-cow says suddenly, “I’ll tell you two things for free.” My little entourage—me and the armored goons—stops. I turn back. “Oh?”
“One. Your cover with the Cutters was blown by a faction within Lone Star itself. This faction told the gang leader— Blake, I believe his name is—that you were an undercover operative and that you knew too much about some plans Blake wanted kept very quiet.” She grins wryly. “They told him you knew much more than you actually did, by the way. They also created a sense of urgency by telling him that Lone Star was calling you in for a full report within twelve hours. Do you understand that?”
I nod my head slowly. I understand what she’s saying, and it certainly makes sense. Doesn’t mean I believe a fragging word, of course. “That’s one,” I point out.
“Two,” she says crisply. “Nicholas Finnigan suggested that you contact the shadow underground for help. I second that suggestion. It might just be the best way for you to stay alive. Perhaps the best person for you to approach is someone who goes by the handle of Argent. You can contact him through a blind relay—LTG number twelve oh-six oh-three oh-four oh-nine. Do I need to repeat that?”
“No.”
“Then that’s it,” she states. “We won’t meet or communicate again.”
Don’t bet on it, sister, is what I want to say, but I don’t. One of the hard-men gestures again with his machine pistol. As calmly as I can manage, I slide the H & K back into its holster, and turn my back on the elf biff. Then I step through the door, hearing the two goons take up station behind me.
Lights are on in the hallway, letting me see where I’m going this time. I jander on down it, trying to stop the muscles of my back from cringing as I imagine the laser sights of those two machine pistols drifting over my spine. I keep telling myself they’re not going to ice me now, not after the elf slitch went to so much trouble just to give me a message, but it’s never fragging easy to turn your back on two weapons. We pass the door I came through, then continue down the hallway to where it ends with another door. This one swings open as we approach, and there’s another figure framed in it. Not armored, this one. Behind him I see the lights of the street.
I jander on by him, trying my damndest to stay frosty, but I blow it and jump a couple of meters when he suddenly pulls something out of one pocket. Then I see what it is he’s got in his hand.
It’s the pocket secretary I left on the bed of my doss. I take it from him, and it’s all I can do not to turn tail and run.
I hear the door shut behind me, and I’m alone on the street in front of Fi nes Que t.
* * *
Frag, these guys are chill!
I’ve managed to hold it together long enough to walk a few blocks from Fi nes Que t, boost another car, and make tracks out of Tarislar. Now I’m sitting behind the wheel of a hot Ford Americar, stopped in the parking lot of a Stuffer Shack in downtown Sumner—probably an oxymoron—and I’ve got the shakes, big-time. Like, it’s been too many shocks piled one on top of another for the past few days. To finish it off, there’s the slick and frosty way the elf biff and her yobos danced me around, letting me know at just about every fragging step that they could have blown my guts out without my so much as being able to return fire. All so calm, so pro, so fragging urbane, all the way to the topper, giving me my drek-sucking pocket secretary back. If this is the level of professionalism you get from corp security assets, I’ll stick with the fragging gangs. Like the lady said—or at least implied—I’m out of my league.
I drag a hand across my forehead, brush the hair back out of my eyes. My hand comes back wet. Not from the rain; I’ve been inside the car long enough for it to dry off. It’s sweat, priyatel, fragging cold sweat.
It’s not just that I was waltzed around like some greenie on the streets, though that’s a big drek-eating part of it, let me tell you. A lot of it’s what the elf biff said, and what she knew. She knew about Finnigan, she knew about Blake. She hinted at some really nasty fragging drek—that it was the fragging Star that blew my cover, for one thing. But who at the Star? Drummond and crew. If so, then I was on the money with my suspicions about the ambush, about Cat’s death. It would have been the unholy fragging trinity of Drummond, McMartin, and Layton who geeked Cat.
But is that possible? Maybe the elf biff doesn’t know about the data penetration and isn’t distinguishing between official Star orders/operations and drek that’s being driven by the slags who’ve cracked the system. Or maybe she was just lying through her chops about the whole thing, all the better to manipulate me. For all I know, it could have been she who ratted me out to the Cutters. And, for that matter, she might be the one who’s got her hooks deep into the Star’s computer system.
No, that doesn’t make sense. Why rat me out and almost
get me assassinated, then draw me into a “white contact”
like the one at Fi nes Que t? Unless the circumstances have really changed, and I’ve suddenly assumed a lot more importance somehow . . .
Frag! I shake my head, wipe my face with my hands again. I’m just not down for this drek. Too many possibilities, too many options, too many wheels within fragging wheels for my poor little brain. Simplify things as much as possible. Either the elf biff was telling the truth or she was lying. Binary solution set, as simple as it gets. If she was feeding me a line of drek, she knew how to make it appetizing enough so I’d eat it, which implies a frag of a lot of good intelligence. So I’ll assume she’s on the level until something happens to indicate otherwise, but I won’t put so much trust in that assumption that I’ll take any chances.
Okay, that’s better. As a working assumption, then, accept the existence of a connection between some slag called Timothy Telestrian—presumably the head honcho at TIC—and the Cutters. Since I’ve got nothing else more likely to lead to paydata, why not follow up on that?
Then comes the even bigger question of how?
Well, frag, it seems like everyone I’ve talked to recently has got an opinion about that. For the second time in half an hour, somebody’s suggested I should try to contact some shadow-scum. First Finnigan, then the elf.
Suddenly edgy at being in the same place too long, I fire up the Americar and start cruising again.
It’s been one of those days, and looks like it’s not over yet.
Well, we all knew I’d do it eventually, didn’t we?
The sun’s coming up, a sullen glow to the east, off over the Barrens, and I’m cruising slowly north on Highway 5. My stolen Americar’s got a fairly sophisticated autopilot, the kind that’s supposed to be able to synch up so well with the traffic-control grids in the roads that it can follow a set course and not slam into anything on the way. Now’s as good a time as any for a test run. While keeping my eyes on the road and at least one hand within easy grabbing range of the wheel, I’m also trying to monitor the tech and place a phone call using the pocket secretary so considerately returned a few hours ago.
Placing a call through the cel system from a moving car is the best way to avoid anyone locating me. Sure, someone decked into the phone system might be able to figure out I’m heading north on Highway 5 near such-and-such exit. But with the morning rush-hour traffic starting to build around me, I figure the resolution of any locator circuit in the phone won't be good enough to select one car from many. (Frag, I wish I'd thought of this last night . . .)
That’s part of the reason. The other is that I’m heartily sick of public phones.
So who am I calling? Like I said, priyatel, we all knew I'd do it eventually. Place the call to the LTG number the elf gave me last night, I mean. The one to the blind relay that should get me in touch with the shadowrunner who calls himself Argent.
I chewed on it for most of the night, the advice I got from both Finnigan—a friend—and the elf biff—most definitely not a friend, but maybe not an enemy either. On reflection, I can see that the idea makes sense. Shadowrunners have resources that I don’t—not anymore, not now that I’m cut off from the Star. They’ve got freedom of action, and they’ve got no love or loyalty for any established organization— Lone Star, the Cutters, or Telestrian Industries Corporation. They’re used to navigating the nooks and crannies of society, staying out of the light, and keeping one step ahead of all the factions that’d like to see their guts ripped out. Sort of like me at the moment. But—
But shadowrunners are the bad guys, that’s what’s bothering me. And no one whose gone through any kind of police training can escape that line of thought. To a cop’s mind all people can be lumped into three simple categories: cops, civilians, and scumbags. A simple breakdown, with no exceptions. Oh sure, the “civilian” classification tends to drift a bit. When a cadet first leaves the Academy, all fired up and eager, naive and green, he might tend to rate civilians as right up there, almost as admirable and worthy of attention as cops. That doesn’t last long, though, and soon civilians drop way down the scale to rest only a few notches above scumbags. Some cops—the real hard-bitten and cynical ones—don’t even bother making the distinction. If you ain’t a cop, you ain’t drek, and that’s all she wrote.
And there’s never any doubt where shadowrunners fit into the grand scheme. Scumbags, all of them. In fact, they represent what I most hate about the scumbag category—amorality. Not immorality—that I can live with. Frag, who hasn’t gone through one or two immoral phases in his own life?
No, it’s the amoral route I can’t handle. The amoral just opt out of (meta)human society, totally refuse to play by any rules. Opt out of all laws, all standards, all conventions of conduct. Refuse to accept that there’s anything more important than individual wants, desires, and impulses. Refuse to accept that some conventions—some laws, some standards, some social mores—are valuable to the development and advancement of society as a whole. Sure, there are some laws I don't agree with, even some I choose not to obey and not
to enforce. But laws in general are important. I’ve always
believed that, and I always will. It’s the same belief that led me to the Lone Star Academy.
And it’s because shadowrunners don’t share that belief that they’re scumbags in my book. End of story.
Yet here I am riding along Highway 5 trying to get hold of one by phone. It’s a weird fragging world, priyatel, let me tell you.
The pocket secretary warbles on the seat next to me, telling me it’s registered with the cel network and is now dialing LTG number 1206 (03-0409), the blind relay. (I’m not sure what the frag that is, but it’s probably something like the scam I pulled with the pay phone when I called Finnigan—though a lot more sophisticated.) As if to confirm that, the ringing tone from the secretary is interrupted three times by clicks and faint electronic beeps—almost certainly transfers to different lines. Finally comes one click louder than the others, then silence excepl for the ghost voices of channel cross-talk. Disconnected? Frag, typical. Probably one of the clicks represented some kind of notification to the elf biff that I was calling the fake number she gave me, so she could start laughing her hoop off at me.
I reach out angrily to shut off the phone, but freeze with my finger a millimeter from the End key. There’s another ring tone, this one half an octave higher than the standard cellular net tone. A private phone system? A PBX at “Shadowrunners R Us”? Who the frag knows?
With an almost musical click, the final connection is made, and a voice says, “Yes?” Male, well-modulated, not harsh. Not particularly welcoming, either. Not that I expected it would be.