Night's Pawn (22 page)

"The more likely candidate, Richard's ex-wife Samantha."

"Ex-wife?"

"Uh-huh. They divorced about six years ago, but she's a card-carrying member of the corporate structure in her own right. Her background's scientific management, and she was head of the Fuchi Systems Design group out of Seattle for the last seven or so years. Then, not long ago, she was named the new vice president of Fuchi Northwest, replacing Darren Villiers, who's been transferred to Tokyo."

Freid shook her head. "I'm starting to remember why I enjoy T-bird running."

"Allegedly, Richard and his wife remained on fairly amicable terms after the divorce. They were never a particularly loving couple when I worked for them, very distant to each other. I suspect it was a political marriage, of sorts. Arranged by themselves. At least that was my take on a few oblique exchanges I happened to overhear now and then." Chase suddenly became aware of the volume and tone of his voice. He threw a quick glance toward the partially closed door.

Freid followed his gaze, then raised her hand toward the room, curling her fingers as she did. Her mouth moved, but Chase couldn't make out the words. After a moment she turned back toward him. "No, she's out. Doing some rough dreaming, but out."

"Could you tell what she was dreaming?"

"No," she laughed. "I'm not
that
good."

"Hmm," said Chase, thinking again about Cara and the source of her problems.

"Anyway," Freid prompted.

"Yeah, anyway… from the way I heard them talk on a couple of occasions, Cara must have been an unwelcome accident. Richard, I don't think, was pleased at all, but Sam wanted—Samantha insisted on carrying the baby to term."

"Did Cara know?"

"Oh, I'll bet she did. She was a smart one, even at eight."

"Did her father get over it?"

"No, not really. I'm sure Cara sensed that even if she didn't understand the reason. Samantha tried hard, very hard, to be a good mother, but it just wasn't her style. She was too much a corporate manager."

Freid glanced at the adjoining door. "What do you think are the odds that he left her some or part of the company?"

"She was number four on my list. The question would be, why?"

"Guilt?"

Chase considered that for a moment. "Guilt is not one of the emotions I associate with Richard Villiers."

She nodded. "Which basically leaves you with nothing."

"Right, just confusion that stresses the fact that I'm very unclear about who exactly the players are in this game."

"But you think they've got to be Fuchi, right?"

"No. According to Cara, the hit against Richard was supposed to be carried out by some German radical poli-clubbers. So they could be the ones after us. If we're lucky, it's them, anyway."

"Less worried about some policlubbers than a Fuchi combat team, eh?"

"Damn right. I've dealt with policlubbers before, a group very much like Cara's friends, in fact. They're full of sound and fury, and don't give a damn about anything beyond their version of the truth. Politically naive, socially deficient, morally bankrupt, psychologically unstable, and more than willing to kill the defenseless to prove their superiority. No, I'm not worried about their kind. I've handled them before."

"Sounds like it."

Chase found himself leaning forward in his chair, hands clenched into fists. When he suddenly remembered where he was, he found Fried staring at him, slightly wide-eyed, tensed and quiet.

"Damn," he said. "Sorry." He stood up and walked over to the fridge.

"Raw nerve, eh?"

He nodded, then changed his mind about the drink. He turned back to her. "Look, I've got to meet with some people and see what I can find out. In Manhattan, Cara and I were nearly ambushed by a group that practically reeked of being a combat team, but I didn't recognize any of them or their style. They could have been mercenaries, a wise move if the Fuchi security division was uncommitted, but I need to know. There are people here who might be able to discover their identities."

She nodded and stood up, too, pulling at her shirt to straighten it out. "Need back-up?"

He laughed. "No. I like you too much to inflict those people on you. I'm going into the data haven."

"
Into
the data haven? You mean into the Matrix?"

"No, I mean
into
the data haven. Me, meat-body, flesh-head. I've been there before."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Guard Cara. Watch her, don't let her out of your sight. And if she'll talk to you, see if she'll tell you anything she won't tell me. You know, 'girl to girl'."

Freid smiled. "I think I can handle that."

Chase grabbed his heavy jacket off the bed. It was warmer than the weather dictated, but he wanted the armor plating in its lining just in case. It would also conceal his Colt Manhunter and its quick-release shoulder rig. He pulled them both on.

"There's a certified credstick in my black bag that should be untraceable. Use it if you or Cara get hungry. Room service, if you can."

"Got it."

"I should be back before lunch."

Freid nodded and sat down on the bed.

He started to leave, then turned back for a moment. "Oh, and there's a Heckler and Koch submachine gun in the black bag, too. Just in case."

"I think I'm up to taking care of myself."

Chase grinned. "Yeah."

He'd just started through the doorway, when she stopped him this time.

"I guess this means I'm helping out, huh?"

He glanced back at her. "I guess," he said.

18

Chase decided to walk the seven or so blocks from the hotel to the high-speed rail link that would take him south to Colorado Springs. The night air was crisp and clear, a welcome product of the near-continual breezes that had swept the city year-round ever since the signing of the NAN treaty. Many people blamed the change in air currents and the overall warming of the local climate on Daniel Howling Coyote, founding father of the Native American Nations, and his fellow Ghost Dancers. They said that the weather changes were due to the Ghost Dancers' use of powerful weather magics during their weeks of brinkmanship with the old United States. Like most truths, however, no one knew for sure.

The maglev train line veered from its seeming attachment to Intercity 25 for a short time to make its pass through downtown Denver. Chase caught the train where it ran along Speer Street and the barely moving Cherry River. He boarded along with a band of young, raucous French-Canadians who made crude jokes about him and the other Denverites on the train, never even considering that he might understand their tongue. Twenty minutes later the brightly lit finger of Pikes Peak passing to the west told Chase that Colorado Springs was moments away. On disembarking, he thanked the young gang from Quebec for the entertainment. "It's not every day you get to see people so good at making fools of themselves," he said in French.

Inside the steel and sterile rail-link station he found a telecom stand. He dialed, the line connected, and then he was greeted by silence.

"This is Priest. I'm here."

More silence before the reply finally came. "Come then. You are welcome at the gates." Chase shuddered again at the cold, inhuman voice he'd first heard over the satellite link. Before he could respond, the line went dead.

He was lucky. An electric autocab sat waiting near the station. Inside, he called up a datamap on the information screen and touched his finger to the destination. Instead of the usual acknowledgment and cheerful greeting, the cab refused the address. Its voice was pleasant, bland, and female.

"We're sorry, but the Spring Service Corporation cannot authorize this vehicle to enter that location. Please choose another."

Chase sighed and stabbed his finger against the screen at a point a little south of the large blank space he'd first chosen. Any nearby street would do.

"Thank you for traveling in a Spring Service cab!"

Chase grunted, and the cab pulled out into a nearly empty Colorado Avenue with an annoying electric whine. As the city passed on either side of him, Chase was pleased to see most of the old buildings still standing. The Treaty City being what it was, he was always expecting to hear that terrible violence had swept it. Denver was divided up among six governments, the United Canadian and American States, the Confederated American States, Aztlan, and the Sioux, Pueblo, and Ute Nations, each with its own laws and dancing in constant opposition to each other. Being a servant of six masters made it a sure thing that the city of Denver neither slept nor played well.

The criminal element controlled much of Denver Territory, doglegging from Boulder, through Denver proper, and then down a long stretch to Colorado Springs. They used its strategically advantageous position at the center of the Native American Nations as a base for anything and everything. Anything a body wanted, he could find it in Denver. Weapons, people, technology, information. Name it.

It was for information that Chase was now headed toward Colorado Springs. Here at the northern edge of the Pueblo-controlled sector was the most vital source of secret information in North America. It hadn't been created there, but it could be
located
from there. Built quietly on abandoned government land in the days following the fracturing of the U.S., it grew in secret to become a massive web-work of hacked computers and wild technology that no sane person could ever hope to comprehend. It became a mecca of sorts for those who preferred the dynamic, volatile world of the computer Matrix to flesh and blood. Originally formed as a techno-utopia and named the Denver Technological Cooperative by its founders, it was now more commonly known as the Nexus. In the data haven there, and the ones like it scattered about other parts of the world, data could be bought, sold, or found for any price, in any form. All you had to do was ask. It was, however, unheard-of to ask in the flesh.

Chase left the cab, and his arm sling, on Woodmen Road, the closest destination the vehicle's programming would accept. From there he walked the rest of the way, north along Intercity 25 and under the raised tracks of the maglev. He'd seen his destination—dim masses of dark buildings, quiet, open land now overgrown, and the broad streaks of a long-abandoned runway—rush past as the train had begun its deceleration into Colorado Springs.

Coming up to the smashed gates, he eyed the piles of wrecked cars and trucks just inside. The place's few defenses would be no more than a nuisance to any trained military or security force, but to date no one, not even the Pueblo Council with their billions of words on tech law, had dared pass the gates. No one wanted to risk the data haven's wrath. One worldwide computer crash was enough for a century.

He ramped up his low-light and thermographic vision and spotted a few pockets of warmth scattered among the cold metal of the cars. He guessed these to be video cameras and sensors, but he waited. The voice on the phone had said he was welcome at the gates, but nothing about once he was inside.

Finally, a small, lithe figure slowly approached from around the remains of a rusted fuel truck. By the other person's size, Chase placed him in mid-adolescence. The boy was too tall and too thin for a dwarf, which meant he could be either elven or human. Chase figured human. When the figure got close enough, Chase discovered that he'd been right about the age and the race, but wrong about the sex.

She was wearing a battered and torn technician's jump suit, but military-style boots. Her dark hair was short and cut unevenly, unprofessionally. A pair of light-amplification goggles hid her eyes but gave her the same kind of vision he obtained from his far more expensive cybernetic systems. He thought she might be Asian.

She cocked her head. "Identification?" she said, her voice flat, unemotional, and artificial. Chase heard just the faintest touch of a Japanese accent that she was strenuously trying to suppress.

"My name is Priest. I'm expected."

"Wait," she said.

And he did, for a few minutes, before a sudden flare of white light from one of the junk piles focused on him. He threw up a hand in front of his face to block the light as the systems in his eyes fought to compensate before permanent damage was done.

"Lower your hand," the girl said.

He did and stood squinting. "Got a good look yet?"

"You are confirmed," she said. "Stand by."

The light went out.

"So, where did you run away from?" he asked after a few moments.

Her head jerked slightly, but she made no reply.

"It's okay," he continued. "I'm not here to take you back. I've already got enough problems with another girl who's not much older than you."

She still said nothing, but her mouth worked slightly.

"Can I guess?"

She stared at him.

"San Francisco."

This time her whole body jerked in surprise and her mouth opened slightly. He'd guessed right. Before he could press her further, the controlled roar of a truck engine silenced him. It took a moment for the vehicle to appear as it wound its way through the maze of trash that led to the gate. When it finally arrived, roof-mounted search lights blaring, its appearance confirmed Chase's suspicions. An old, multipurpose light military transport, it had been painted flat black, with broad slabs of wood bolted to its front and rear. The Hummer ground to a stop just inside the gate, and a tall, thin figure stood up through the truck's custom sunroof. Despite the darkness, the glare, and the San Diego Padres baseball cap, Chase could tell that the man was an elf.