Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (31 page)

"What's wrong?" Sam asked.

"Genomics. As the name might suggest, the corporation is a cutting-edge biotechnology firm with a specialty in genetic manipulations. As such, one would also expect a cutting-edge security system. I checked with some runners who have reason to know about their ice, and it sounds like only a lengthy siege could get at their corporate architecture from the Matrix. The only way to get the information quickly is if we can get physically inside and then use a corporate machine within the intrusion shield to get the data. Even if we had the force for an assault, without a Matrix overwatch, it could be too risky."

"But an accredited cyberterminal user could take a side trip and deck into the files."

"Most likely. But that does not surmount the other difficulty. The firm is headquartered in Quebec."

"Guess I'm going to Quebec, then."

Dodger sighed. "What will you do there? You no longer exist, remember? When you were reported dead, your System Information Number was frozen. Without a SIN, you are a nonentity in the corporate world. No air travel to get there. No passport to get in. No cushy corporate job from which to subvert their data."

Sam would not let this lead escape. "You've survived for years outside the corporate structure. That means you've found some way around the problem. False identities or fake SINs. Something that gets you past checkpoints."

" 'Tis a necessity."

"Then I'll need one set up for a researcher. That's the work I did for Renraku. A busy company like Genomics will always be on the lookout for good researchers."

"An identity patched together on short notice will not withstand much scrutiny."

"It won't have to. Background checks on low-level workers can't be that thorough, even in Quebec. A day or two to get system codes. Then once inside the IC, I'll deck into Wilson's files, get what I can and leave. With what you've shown me, I shouldn't need more than a week."

"
Parlez-vous francais?
"

"Good point. I'll need a language chip, too."

"
Incroyable!
" Dodger shook his head in amazement. "Pray tell, Sir Corporate Spy, how are you planning to get there? The free and proud Dominion of Quebec is almost as sensitive about its borders as the Tir."

"You're the hot shadowrunner, Dodger. You make the arrangements."

"Your faith is greater than your bankroll, Sir Mastermind."

"Then I'll have to owe somebody some favors."

"A few days ago, you were bemoaning unknown debts. Today you profess yourself eager to plunge into more."

Sam tossed their forgotten meal onto the table. He was no longer hungry. "This feels right, Dodger. I just know that Genomics is part of this mess. I'll get something there that will make sense of what has happened."

"A premonition? How mystical."

Sam grimaced. "It's nothing like that. It's just a hunch."

"Then we shall play it out."

Dodger started to get up, but Sam reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. "No. Not we. After you make the travel arrangements, I want you out of it. I owe you enough already."

Dodger continued to stand against the pressure of Sam's hand. He stood erect and looked down at Sam, his eyes glittering with emotion. "Sir Twist, you wound me. I am not a shylock to count each penny. You will need me to do the decking."

"I'll have to manage. Genomics won't hire both of us, so there's no need for both of us to risk our necks." Dodger started to object again, but Sam cut him off. "Besides, there's another line to be traced. Drake's got enough money or backing to hire expensive mercs like Hart, while we've only got ourselves. The longer we take finding out what we need to know, the more likely Drake will squirm beyond our reach. If I go to Quebec, I'll be tied up checking out Genomics. Somebody has to keep on trying to learn some hard facts about Drake."

"Why then do you not do it? You have named him as your foe, after all."

"If Drake's not based in Seattle, he's at least working this operation from there. I can slot a chip that will let me speak French, but nothing can make me know the shadows of Seattle like you do. You're the best man for that job."

The Elf relaxed his belligerent stance, and a new light entered his eyes. "You trust me to do that work for you?"

"I trust you."

"Ah, the fierce faith of necessity."

Sam couldn't tell how much of Dodger's comment was companionable jest and how much mocking irony. He didn't care. He knew the Elf wouldn't betray him to Drake; Dodger was too committed to the underdog. Sam wanted to believe that their time together had forged a real bond and that the Elf was a friend. His own growing affection for the rogue was real enough. Before this was over, Sam knew, he was going to need all the friends he could get.

The service monitor station was cramped and smelled of old sweat, ozone, and the battling forces of mildew and disinfectant. When the aquaculture tanks it monitored had gone on line a month ago, the overwatch had transferred to the main control consoles, leaving the station virtually unused. Crenshaw jiggled the louver of the climate control vents, but the sluggish flow of air did not improve. For all its discomforts, this place offered a quiet and privacy rare anywhere in the arcology. With an active computer console, the station was useful enough to her. And Crenshaw liked it here in the dark.

The signal from the motion sensor she'd left near the elevator chimed in her ear receiver. If it was Addison, he was early. When the second sensor chimed, she was sure it was him. The corridor leading to the station would have no other traffic at this hour. The warning signals were close together; he was hurrying, moving at a quick walk.

Probably more nervous than usual.

It was his nervous tendencies that had tipped her off. She had seen his eyes when he accosted Verner at Tanaka's funeral, and she had smelled his fear when she visited his cubicle in the computer facility a week later. It was her security badge that did it, and such fear of security meant a guilty conscience. That pleased her, for Crenshaw knew she could manipulate him once she learned his secret. Addison was a slug; it hadn't taken much to find out what he was hiding.

One of Addison's cronies, a Lisa Miggs, had made unauthorized use of Jiro Tanaka's cyberdeck to take a run at the Wall. Like most deckers at Renraku, Addison and friends had no idea what lay behind the Wall. They knew any attempt to find out was a breach of security, but they tried anyway. Typical hare-brained decker stunts. Always meddling where they shouldn't. The episode hadn't resulted in anything more than a test of the AI project's defenses, but Addison didn't know that. He only knew that he and Miggs had broken rules that could get them canned. It was the man's terror of that that put him in Crenshaw's pocket.

He had become useful even though he hadn't fulfilled her hopes of linking Verner to something underhanded. At the moment, he was employed in helping her find out what the AI project team was hiding. It was a sweet irony that what he was doing for her was exactly what he feared she would expose him for doing before. But she wasn't so stupid as to send him directly up against the IC that shrouded the project and those working on it. She wanted a lever to find out what kind of breakthrough the team had made. Something that would force one of them to tell her what she wanted to know. To get that lever, she had set Addison to snooping around the Matrix for dirt. He had called her this afternoon to set up this meeting. He must have found something she could use.

The door slid open and Addison darted in, head craning to check the corridor behind him. He palmed the panel shut, then saw that the room was still dark. "Drek, she's not here."

"Wishing won't make it so, jackhead."

Addison jumped at her voice. "Drek! Don't do that, Crenshaw!"

She stepped up to him and ran her fingers under his chin. The alloy blades she wore for fingernails creased the skin but brought no blood. "You don't give orders. I do."

"Sure," he stammered. "Whatever you say."

She tapped the switch that brought the lights up. "See that you remember it. What have you got for me?"

"I'm not real sure. Let me slot it and you can decide for yourself."

He popped a chip into the console and stared expectantly at the screen, waiting for it to light up. She didn't want to wait. "Cliber?"

"Naw. The old biddy's clean as a one-room schoolmarm. She's a real ice maiden. Lives for her machines."

"Frag it. I was hoping you'd turn up something on her. It would be a pleasure to lean on the bitch."

"Better her than me," Addison muttered.

Crenshaw heard him perfectly well but decided not to let it show. "Which one then, Hutten or Huang?"

Addison flashed a brief smile, trying to hide his tension.

"Maybe both. They're both hanging onto the meat. I copped a list of the use records for the playrooms on Six. Both H's are on it, and old Huang a married man, too. Wanna bet his wife don't know?" He finally got the data he wanted on the screen and stepped aside with a magician's flourish.

Ignoring his theatrics, Crenshaw stared as the data scrolled by. She frowned. "That's not much. And it's a pretty standard pattern for a salaryman. What are the details?"

"Details?" Addison echoed. "Well, um, you can see that Huang's got a regular routine."

"A mistress, then. That might give me a hook if she's pliable. Anything else?"

"Well, maybe. But I'm not sure." Addison wilted under her glare, his voice becoming unsteady. "I think I spotted an erasure in the records."

"What's the connection?"

"It was one of Huang's regular nights and there ain't no record of him paying a visit that night."

"And our president is certainly skilled enough in the Matrix to arrange his own erasures. Was Hutten there that night?"

"Naw. His visits started about a week later. Every three or four days after that, but no regular night."

"You've checked the visual records?"

"Frag it, Crenshaw. There's tight ice on those files."

"You're supposed to be an expert," she sneered. Crenshaw knew it was too much to expect him to act on his own initiative; he didn't have the guts.

"Even I can only do so much. I don't like this stuff, Crenshaw. You're messing with important people. Any one of them could get me fired. And, drek, messing with Huang. He's the fragging president."

She stared at him, letting him squirm. "Addison, you have a lot more to worry about from me. They're too busy to notice a third-rate electron jockey like you. So just do what I tell you and you won't have any trouble."

Addison backed away. "Sure, Crenshaw. Whatever you say." When he bumped into the console, he seemed to remember the program he had running. Terminating it, he popped the chip. His every motion was hesitant.

"I can see you've got something else on your mind. Spit it out." She was tired of the slug's spinelessness.

"It's that Werner guy."

"Verner."

"Yeah, him. He was terminated, wasn't he?"

"Dismissed. Two weeks ago."

"Yeah, I thought so. Well, I was checking on some of the strange stuff in the Matrix. You know, the stuff that we think is AI. There was a log of his icon in one of the nodes where the fuzz had been real strong. Just that one node, though. Real weird."

"You didn't report it?"

"Drek, no! I wasn't supposed to be there, either."

"Good."

So, Verner had sneaked back into the Renraku architecture and was sniffing around the AI project. What a fragging snake! She had known that little drekhead was trouble the minute he'd thrown in with Tsung's gang during the hijacking. But nobody would listen to her. Marushige said Verner was a nothing. Sato said that he wasn't important enough to waste resources on. Well, Verner may have fooled them, but she had the punk's passcode. From what Addison said, was obvious he hadn't been able to take whatever he wanted when he bolted the arcology. If that slime was stupid enough to come back, she'd have his balls. To think that she'd almost started to believe he was harmless.

"I want you to forget the playroom records for now. Check out the system around that node where you found Verner's icon logged in. I want to know of anything unusual.
Anything
. You just report it to me; don't try to interpret it. Got that?"

Addison's eyes were wide and he swallowed convulsively a couple of times before nodding. The slime mold was as afraid of her as ever. But his fear was good; it meant he'd do her work.

"Never been up close to one before?"

Sam jumped. He hadn't heard the man approach, but, even at idle, the noise of the hulking panzer drowned out anything less than a shout.

The speaker was an Amerindian, but his clothing was pure Anglo. He was broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with the skin on his bare chest so brown from the sun that his muscles seemed carved from teak. The grime under his fingernails was at odds with the shiny rigger sockets in his palms and wrists and the jacks on his temple.

"You Twist?"

Sam nodded.

The man smiled and stuck out his hand. His grip was firm and the induction pad in his palm rasped Sam's palm as they shook. "Cog said you were green. Name's Josh Begay, late of the Dineh."

"You're Navaho? You're a long way from home."

Begay's eyes hooded and the smile faded into a hard expanse of wrinkles. "Smart boy. Stay smart and stick to polite conversation."

From the snap in the Navaho's voice, he was obviously sensitive about his origins. If Sam was going to be spending several days in company with the rigger, he'd best stay on the man's good side. The panzer should be a safe topic; most riggers were more interested in the machines they controlled than they were in people. "I've only seen tanks like this on the trid," Sam said appreciatively.

Begay relaxed a fraction, and Sam knew he had taken the right tack.

"This one's a little different from the beasts they run in the corp wars. They want flash and intimidation; it's better for the ratings. I got more need for stealth. The
Thunderbird
's engines are baffled and she's got a lot of extra ECM. The baffling cuts the speed some, but I'll take the quiet at the cost of a little KPH.
T-bird
's as quiet as they come."