Who Hunts the Hunter (34 page)
He pauses near one end of the basement. From certain of the cases and crates around him come sibilant whispers and scratchings. They are like the words of the ancients, often so vague and faint as to be beyond comprehension, and yet taunting with the promise of secret knowledge. In this case, of course, the whispers only remind him of his early failures. He suppresses a sigh of sorrow and regret.
But now Vorteria draws near, rising through the basement floor, the faint shimmering of her physical presence resolving into the radiant splendor of her full physical manifestation."
Two
of
the
hunters
approach,
Master,
”
she
says
."
They
are
the
ones
called
Erin
and
Paige
."
Hallowed vessels conveying the essence of life.
Liron bends and pulls open the heavy latch crossing the trap door set into the concrete floor. Momentarily, the door rises, swinging back. One, then another, of his hunters climb through the squarish opening and straighten up, turning to face him. They are not particularly attractive, these sturdy ork women, with their brutish fangs and black leather clothing, but they are strong and enduring, and among the most conscientious of his minions.
Liron opens his cloak, and with a brief movement of his fingers reinforces the enchantment affecting both of them.
“Come, my dear.”
Erin comes forward, her smile almost girlish, coquettish. Liron envelops her with the enchantment of the cloak, an enchantment assuring privacy, and draws her mouth to his. The breath flows swift and lush from her lungs; he inhales deeply, eagerly. On the astral, she is a bright beacon of life gleaming against the dark. Her eyes burn with the light of souls uncounted. Now, the profusion of life energy she has assimilated flows to him. With it comes the essential force he requires to sustain himself, as well as the power to resist the
leprosis,
to hold any further deterioration in check.
As his reserve of energy swells, the whispers and rustlings from around the basement rise to a subtle crescendo. His failures sense the life he absorbs; they envy him his power. It is very sad. They are like Erin and Paige and the others, Changed, according to the principles of the great work of the
Roggoth’shoth,
only these early ones did not turn out so well. They are quite insane. Like the fiends of fabled Azzorloth, Bridge Between Worlds, so arcanely described by the ancient mage Penticlese in the
Roggoth’shoth
.
Erin sighs and sags. Liron releases her, then invites Paige
forward, into his embrace. His power swells. His body tingles with pleasure. Once again, his hunters have saved him time, precious time, by bringing him life, thus allowing him to continue his great work, the search for a cure to the
leprosis
.
But now he must go to his wife, dear Victoria, to feed her, sustain her, as the hunters have sustained him. Tomorrow, when he returns to the office, he will attend to Ms. Amy Berman.
Ivar turns from the dark, crowded Bronx streets of Morrisania to a lime-green door covered with black and red graffiti. Beyond the door is a stairwell, a pretty dark one, too. It goes down about two levels. At the bottom is a small dark space, the bottom of the stairwell, and a pair of ugly black-leathered dwarfs with the Trollhammer insignia tattooed onto their faces.
“What you want, squat?” one asks.
Ivar replies, “A piece of your mother’s fat ass.”
The one who spoke now grins."You’ll have to get in line. Go on in, squat.”
So much for passwords. The only door leads to a circular stairway that circles down to the floor of a big room like a natural cavern, but decorated in penthouse style, or something like that. The walls are rough-hewn stone, except for the one covered by the three-meter-wide trideo screen. The carpet looks like velvet. Soft as a pillow. Built into the corner of the room is a circular table and a curving bench seat like a booth in a restaurant. Standing next to the booth is another Trollhammer slag. Now delivering a drink to the booth is some skinny Asian biff in a smoky black bodysuit and stilt-heeled shoes. At the rear of the booth sits a dwarf in a multichrome reflective suit and matching shades, white buzzcut hair, and a matching razorslash beard. His name is Flint. He sits there stroking a rockworm, which is like a snake, but with a mouth full of grinding teeth and horny plates, not to mention corrosive spit.
“Hoi, Conan,” Flint says."What’s tox, chummer?”
Ivar forces a smile, and says, “Heh.”
“We looking for some dosspay?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Flint taps a remote. A small panel in the tabletop opens. A slim cylinder rises. A panel in the cylinder opens and a datachip comes into view."You wanna cut some ice? Scan this.”
“What’s it pay?”
“It’s negotiable,
omae
.”
“Ain’t it always?”
“This especially. Pick up tonight, download tomorrow. Silicon swift. Right up your jack.”
“Sure, whatever.” Ivar takes the chip and slots it into the datascanner on his belt and jacks the scanner into his head. A virtual protocol scrolls past his eyes.
The job Flint’s offering looks pretty standard—deck into the Matrix, snatch some data, deep research—till Ivar catches some of the names involved. The first name is Phalen, the second is Hill. A few others look familiar too and all of a sudden he realizes he’s scanning a run proposal involving Hurley-Cooper folks, various slags from HC’s Metascience Group.
It starts him thinking, just a bit feverishly. Pixelated
squat
! Amy Berman must’ve set this up! She didn’t want to risk him blowing his parole, so she passed the job through some shadowlink to a handy fixer, our slag Flint. That means Ivar’s guess was right:
the
problem’s
serious
! Ole HC is in trouble somehow. Maybe because of the effing auditors. Maybe not. Who knows? What matters is that Berman needs help, HC’s in trouble, and Ivar’s the slag for the job.
He jacks out."Time to talk nuyen.”
Flint grins."Six fine.”
“Double it.”
Seven’s as high as it goes.”
“You mean eight.”
“Give the halfer a cigar.”
The Asian biff sashays over and hands Ivar a big fat smogger. Ivar accepts it just to be polite.
“Delivery in twenty-four hours.”
Flint grins."No liner.”
“Heh.”
It’s a quick walk back to the street. Ivar catches the subway and rides the thundering tram back to the Pelham Bay Projects. The lift shoots him upstairs. In his apartment, Novangeline’s sitting on the black neovuelite sofa, watching him as he comes through the door.
“How come you’re so late?” she asks.
“Got a little work, that’s all.”
“What work? For that Ms. Berman?”
“Nah, it’s got nothing to do with her.”
“Then what’s it got to do with?”
“Heh. Making a little extra money.”
“In the Matrix?”
“Do I look like a BTL trader?”
That was supposed to be kind of a joke, but it doesn’t go over. It flops. Novangeline gets to her feet, meets him beside his SoloFendi recliner and leans right into his face."Ivar, you’re on parole! You can’t run the Matrix. They’ll put you back in prison!”
“Have to catch me first.”
“Ivar!” And suddenly Novangeline’s eyes are spilling over with tears."What—what are you doing this for? Are you glitched?”
Ivar hesitates, then blurts, “You want a kid, don’t you?” Stupid. Shouldn’t have said that. Suddenly, Novangeline’s face is all twisted up and she’s sobbing."That’s not... you can’t ...”
“Go take a nap or something.”
Hey, he’s reformed,
all
right
? He wouldn’t be taking cred for a Matrix run if it wasn’t important, and this is a special case. They
need
the money! Novangeline’s got this problem getting foggled. She needs some kinda nova gene therapy. Not covered by the health plan. Eight fine’ll cover it nice.
That HC and Berman’re involved is an added incentive. In a manner of speaking.
Ten minutes later, he’s sizzling with electrolytes and blasting down the datalines in the gleaming rainbow cockpit of his virtual Boeing-Federated Death Eagle 2, the
Iron
Dog
. He flicks on the afterburners and slams like rocket-assisted lightning out across the glaring starlit night of the LTG. Heh. As usual, quite a rush.
To start with, this slag named Hill. Where did he get all this money he’s got cozied up in the UCAS Bank? Ivar steps through a portal into a blazing red node and comes face-to-face with the massively muscled icon of a Fuchi Centurion combat utility. That’s chill, though, because Ivar tosses his flaming yellow barbarian hair and engages a special sleaze of a utility.
Two thousand iconic salarymen all wearing UCAS Bank ident codes come slamming into the node. The Centurion combat utility backs to the nearest wall and freezes. Gleep! Overload.
Ivar slips on by.
Somewhere back along the datalines, his stubby fingers are rapping touch-sensitive keys with silicon speed, but he’s got no time for that now.
In another nanosecond or so, he’s into the bank’s datastore archives. He initializes his scanner: Kamik the Mystic. A hacked-up version of some Hacker House scanner prog that needed some custom upgrading. A burning chrome-spangled window opens. Kamik rises like a puff of smoke out of his multicolored bottle, extends a jeweled hand into the swirling streams of passing hexadecimal code, and removes a burning pink envelope winking with the logo:
And
The
Answer
Is
....
I
“Newark Interbank Credit Corp,” Kamik says.
“Where did Hill’s nuyen come from?” Ivar intones, because it’s traditional.
At his left, a burning pink window opens. A fat Irishman chuckles. The window vanishes. Thank you, Hacker House.
Ivar blasts through the regional telecommunications grid and goes streaming down into the Newark LTG, straight into the Vaux Hall Pirate Net. The node flashes around him. He’s back in his barbarian persona, standing atop the quarterdeck of a Man-O-War flying the Jolly Roger high overhead and pitching and rolling through a smoke-shrouded sea. Iconic cannons roar. A shimmering silver Captain Blood goes swinging down from the yardarms to lead a party of iconic pirates boarding a nearby ship. Ivar turns to the slag at the wheel, the one with the knife clenched between his iconic teeth, and says, “I need to sleaze the Newark Interbank Credit Corp.”
“ARRR, me hearty!” quirks the glaring green parrot on the slag’s shoulder."You’d be needing a code-red masking utility straight from Davy Jones’ locker!”
Ivar flexes his massive barbarian biceps, and nods.
A nano or two later, he’s into the Newark bank’s archives and Kamik draws a burning pink envelope from the streams of hexidecimals.
And
The
Answer
Is
....
!
“First Corporate Trust of New York.”
“Where did the money come from,” Ivar intones, it’s traditional, “that went into Hill’s UCAS account?”
“Hurley-Cooper Corporation Materials and Supplies account.”
“What specific account did the money come out of?”
The fat Irishman chuckles.
Heh.
So this slag named Hill got his three million nuyen, indirectly, from Hurley-Cooper bank accounts. Ivar wonders if that means anything. Who in hell is Hill anyway? Some lab-coat, maybe.
He blasts back across the datalines.
A dozen more names to go.
The room is very much like the chamber where Striper is confined: dull gray walls, no windows. Furnishings are limited to a trio of cots, a table with chairs, and a large trideo-equipped telecom on a cart. The lone door is open, providing a view of the prep room and the door to the lab control room, as well as the door to Striper’s room.
Whistle lies supine on her cot, drawing pictures in the air with her fingers. Shaver readies her weapons. O’Keefe keeps a wary eye on Shaver. Her experience with Striper and the trolls left her bruised, how badly is hard to discern, but O’Keefe suspects that the worst of the bruises show only very discreetly. She spends every spare moment working on her weapons. She mutters in her sleep. O’Keefe has little doubt that Striper figures prominently in Shaver’s dreams.
Sitting at the table, O’Keefe looks back to the telecom.
Modern
Merc
fades from the screen, replaced by a view of a troop of six-wheeled armored scout vehicles rolling through the hilly country of southeast Turkey, raising dust along some unimproved dirt road. The man standing before the road, looking right out of the screen, in urban gray camo no less, is Duke Baader, formerly a ranking commander with Germany’s MET 2000 mercenary corp. This is the man who derailed the Russian offensive on Fortress Berlin back in 2032, and who later orchestrated the lightning assault on Castle Sofia. Now he hosts trideo shows for the Arms and Armor Network. O’Keefe resists a sigh.