Preying for Keeps Read online

  Setting himself with difficulty in the belowdecks room, the troll met her attack with a series of blocks and parries that were too quick for Skater to follow. Flesh slapped flesh, and three lines of blood appeared like magic over Elvis’s left eye.

  Another elf had been moving near the massive computer array against the wall, pulling the datajack out of hiding and toward his temple. Skater fired a round without warning, putting it through the elf’s thigh while Elvis and his opponent fought. Keeping the elf covered, Skater glanced back and saw that the troll was bleeding from another cut on his cheek and two on his left arm. But a cruel smile raked his lips back. Without warning, Elvis popped out of a defensive posture and backhanded the woman with a paw the size of a two-liter bottle.

  The razorgirl flew backward and struck the wall. She struggled briefly to get to her feet, then gave it up. Elvis moved in to secure her with pulse cuffs that would keep her cyberware inactive even if she woke before the team was done here.

  "Down on the floor.” Skater told the elf he’d shot. The sailor moved slowly, looking for an opening, but Skater didn’t give it to him. By the time he and Elvis had cuffed the other elves. Archangel was jacked into her deck.

  “Done.” Elvis said, breathing hard. “Fraggin’ dandelion-eater was slotting good.” He touched his bloody forehead and gazed at the wet crimson.

  Nodding, Skater moved over to join Archangel. “Any chance we simply rip out the drive and beat feet?”

  She shook her head. “It’s boosted for self-destruct if anyone tries to move it. I tripped to the sensors already, but whoever hid them really knew what they were doing.”

  “Get what you can.” Then Skater told Elvis to search their prisoners while he tossed the drawers and traveling packs. In less than two minutes he knew they weren’t going to find anything more.

  “Skater.”

  Looking up, Skater saw Quint Duran standing at the top of the companionway. The ork’s armor had fresh scratches.

  “We could be overrun any minute.” Duran said. “The elves are regrouping, getting ready to have another go. Trey’s sleep spell didn’t affect as many as we’d hoped.”

  “Stay with her.” Skater instructed Elvis as he dropped a lockbar into place over the other door in the cabin. He went up the steps at a dead run and breathing hard. His ribs ached from the impacts of the bullets, promising bruises—if he lived long enough for them to show.

  Shiva was nestled comfortably behind a Narcoject rifle, taking advantage of the cover provided at the side of the cabin. Trey was on the other side, his hands glowing, then flashing dimly.

  “The sleep spell worked fine.” Trey grumbled. “These guys came from belowdecks where I couldn’t see them.”

  “Two minutes.” Skater said. “Then we’re outta here. Archangel’s into their system.”

  “You don’t have the two minutes.” Wheeler said over the commlink. “We’ve got bogeys coming up from the east.” Skater spun, searching the wine-dark sky. Then he spotted them, a tight trio of helos aimed straight for the freighter. They were on the Sapphire Seahawk in seconds as heavy machine gun fire began smashing into the decks.

  2

  “Down there!” Skater ordered. “Move it!”

  Nobody argued. There was nowhere else to go but back down the companionway stairs. Cullen Trey went first, gliding by in his cape, followed by Shiva.

  “Go, kid.” Quint Duran growled. He lifted the SPAS-22 as the first of the helo troops hit the freighter’s deck, and took up a covering position.

  A ruby laser sight blazed across Skater’s face, sending him against the companionway for more cover. A bullet burned the air where he’d been a second before.

  The helo teams moved with clockwork precision, breaking into groups that hurried to secure the command positions aboard the freighter. Duran’s shotgun blasted twice, putting one gunner down and sparking fire from the rotorblades of the nearest helo. The pilot pulled back a few meters, then swiveled and rained hell across the companionway entrance with twin cannon.

  “Yakuza.” Duran said, following Skater as he rushed down the companionway stairs.

  “You sure?” Skater demanded, looking around the room for any means of escape.

  “You wanna go back and scan it yourself?”

  Skater shot him a look as he leaned down to grab the door that had been ripped from its frame. “Elvis, lend me a hand.”

  The troll grabbed the door and helped Skater shove it roughly back into position. Skater pointed at the bed.

  Quickly, the troll ripped the bed into pieces and brought the two long metal support struts over, wedging them between the floor and the door. “Not gonna hold much if they decide to play rough.” Elvis said.

  “You sure you don’t know what’s in that system?” Shiva asked, checking the loads on her Ares Crusader machine pistol.

  Skater looked at her sharply. “I’m sure.” he said coolly.

  Shiva looked up just as sharply, but her expression was unreadable.

  "I really don’t think this is something we’ve got time for at the moment.” Cullen Trey said dryly.

  The first handful of bullets peppered the wedged door, causing it to vibrate. Shiva turned her attention there.

  Skater accessed the Commlink IV. “Wheeler, talk to me.”

  “Yaks.” the dwarf said. “Thick as ants at a fragging picnic.”

  “Can you home in on us?” Skater dropped to his knees and checked the flooring. It was wood, thick and gnarled, with scuff marks from years of use.

  “Got you on the screen now, chummer,”

  “Stay with us, then,” Skater said, “because we’re getting the frag out of here.”

  “How?” Shiva demanded. “You figured out how to walk through walls and let bullets pass through you in the last couple minutes?”

  “We go down.” With a smooth motion, Skater drew the monofilament sword and used it to hack a large triangle in the center of the room’s floor. It took two tries to kick the section of flooring away.

  Just then a massive impact staggered the wedged door, forcing it back and leaving it listing open a few more centimeters than before. Smoke curled snarling tendrils around the door and reached into the room.

  Thrusting the SPAS-22 through on his side of the door, Duran squeezed the trigger. The harsh baloom of the shotgun was near deafening in the confined space, but not loud enough to drown out Archangel’s sudden screams of pain.

  Skater whirled as she spilled from the chair onto the floor. As he rushed over, her eyes rolled back up in her head, her lids flickering like juiced Korean advertisements scaling buildings in downtown Seattle. She wasn’t breathing.

  “Dump shock.” Trey said, joining Skater. “Whatever she ran into, the IC must have been rather nasty.” The corps weren’t shy about packing their systems with ever more vicious Intrusion Countermeasures, and no matter how good the decker, any Matrix run could be her last.

  Skater silently agreed. Tilting Archangel’s head back to make sure her breathing passages were clear, Skater clamped his lips to hers and started artificial respiration. Another few breaths and she was breathing on her own, though still unconscious.

  “Stay with her.” Skater told Trey.

  “You got it.” Trey said, stooping down to cradle the decker’s head and shoulders gently.

  Skater moved. Any time a decker rode a flaming board down, there was the chance of permanent neural damage. He’d met burned-out cowboy deckers who were worse than paraplegics.

  Hunkering down beside the hole he’d cut into the floor, he palmed a flash from a pocket and pointed the hard yellow beam down into the bowels of the freighter. Support struts crisscrossed in a maze below him.

  “Elvis.” Skater said. “You take Archangel.”

  “Sure.” Elvis slipped an arm almost tenderly under the unconscious elf. “Going to be some climbing, eh?”

  “And that’s the easy part.” Skater admitted. It took another two slashes with the monofilament sword to make
the hole big enough for the troll and the elf together. “Cullen, take the lead with your flash. Go all the way to the bottom and forward. Till you can’t go anymore.”

  Trey dropped without a word, sinking through the maze of crisscrossed struts. Elvis followed, Archangel draped over one huge shoulder.

  Taking out his Predator and checking that its magazine was full, Skater raced to the door blocking the companionway. Duran fired two rounds, then withdrew his shotgun long enough to thumb fresh shells into it.

  “Go.” Skater told Shiva.

  “So we can take a chance on drowning?” she demanded. Blood seeped from scratches along her right cheek.

  “Up to you if you want to live long enough to get out of here.”

  “You think you can pull this one off?” The harshness had gone out of her voice.

  Skater had never quite gotten used to the mercurial changes in Shiva’s temperament. “I’ve got a plan.”

  She recharged her weapon, then patted him on the cheek. “I fragging love it when you say that.”

  “Move.”

  Shiva dropped through the hole in a heartbeat.

  Duran blasted another target, then ducked back. A renewed fusillade struck the door, making it quiver and jump. “You figure you can cowboy your way out of this one?” Duran asked.

  “Won’t know till we try.” Skater said. He moved to the deck and quickly rigged a shaped explosive behind it that would create a blast of shrapnel when detonated. He accessed the Commlink IV. “Trey, use that tube of phosphorus and lay down a circle against the outer hull big enough that we can get through.”

  “The water pressure’ll push it back in on us if we bum out a section.” Trey said. “We won’t be able to get out.”

  “Trust me on this one.”

  “Bad news.” Duran said, pulling back from the door. “Looks like the yaks have got a shaman in one of the helos, and I don’t think he’s catching up on his t’ai chi.”

  Skater peered through the door and spotted the Japanese mage in the open cargo hold of a helo hovering out of range of either the shotgun or his pistol. The willowy movements of the man’s arms and hands were careful and measured.

  Suddenly the air in front of him rippled, disturbed by something even more fierce than the storm.

  “Some kind of drekking spirit.” Duran snarled.

  The spirit whirled and twisted like a kite caught in the wind, then started for the companionway.

  “Go!” Skater shouted, grabbing the ork and shoving him roughly toward the hole cut into the floor.

  Duran scrambled between the struts, dropping toward the bottom of the ship.

  Skater followed him, his boots slipping on the narrow steel beams. Before he could duck below the floor, a lightning bolt flared outside, visible through the uneven seams. Then the door jerked like it just got hit by a big Ford-Canada Bison running a full load. Reduced to smoking scraps of metal, it offered no barrier to the black thundercloud that flew into the room, internal lightnings flickering like pulsebeats. Then it disappeared as the first of the yakuza reached the opening it had made.

  Skater dropped through the struts, Skater working his way aft while Duran joined up with the others at the opposite end of the freighter. He played his flash over the bulkhead, trying to figure the stress points.

  In the end, there was no time for finesse. He simply shoved the shaped plastic explosive charges onto the bulkhead toward the center, flicking the detonators to stagger them only a second or two apart, and fled back through the ankle-deep water sitting at the bottom of the hull. The others were almost thirty meters away, taking defensive positions.

  “Trey.” Skater transmitted. “Have you got that phosphorus circle ready?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Detonate it when I tell you.” Skater struggled through the maze of struts, catching his shin painfully against one that his flash didn’t pick up in time. He tripped the first detonator switch via his commlink.

  Sounding like basso drumbeats, the explosions ripped the stern right out of the Sapphire Seahawk. Roiling sea water spilled into the hull and raced the length of the ship, drinking it down. The stem dropped dramatically, throwing their yakuza pursuers off balance.

  None of them had expected this run to turn out like this. “Wait, Trey.” Skater said. The water around his boots got even deeper, then became a raging flood.

  The torrent ripped the yakuza from the lattice-work of struts.

  “Wheeler.” Skater called. “What about those helos?”

  “They’re going in for emergency rescue, but they’re playing hell with the elves now that most of them have recovered from the sleep spell.”

  “Works in our favor. We’ll set off a smoke grenade once we’re off the ship. We need you—fast.”

  “Won’t be easy.” the rigger said. “One of the deck guns just flamed a helo. The yaks have more problems than they thought, but we’re a target, too.”

  Skater struggled through another tight spot. The water was swirling around his waist now, and he suddenly found himself pushing up a growing incline. He could see Trey up ahead, the water up to his knees. Skater also felt the air pressure thickening. The water slowed because of it, choked off by the huge air pocket that had formed.

  “Okay, Trey.” Skater transmitted. “Set the phosphorus off.” He was still eight meters away, sweating from his exertions in spite of the water.

  He saw Trey perform an intricate series of gestures, then platinum fire jetted from his fingers. The phosphorus ignited at once, adding its sorcerous heat to the chemical’s. The metal grew violently orange and red as a hole was sliced into it.

  Elvis turned and held Archangel in both arms against his chest, shielding her. Duran and Shiva braced themselves to meet the falling oval of metal while Trey prepared another spell.

  Instead, the cut piece was shoved outward. Skater grinned as he forced himself to a faster pace. The internal air pressure had increased enough to be a telling factor even though the hole he’d cut through the deck flooring in the stern had let some of the water and air pressures equalize.

  The downside, however, was that the water pouring in through the holed stem had reached tidal wave proportions now, following the air bubble out. The water was up to Skater’s chest and rising fast, knocking him off balance.

  “Go!” he yelled.

  Shiva hesitated only long enough to take the mini-scuba mask from Archangel’s pocket and then seal it to the decker’s lower face. Then she slipped her own mask into place and led the way through the hole in the side of the freighter. Elvis followed, stepping into one of the large bubbles spilling out of the ship.

  Then the water level swelled up over Skater, turning everything black. He clapped his own mini-scuba to his face and sealed it to his skin. The mini-scubas were only good for about ten minutes of air at normal use. With the way his adrenaline was flowing, and the demands for oxygen his body was already making on his lungs, he knew he’d be lucky to get five minutes.

  Then his hand found the semi-smooth edge of the cut hull. He pulled himself through, scraping a shoulder hard enough to rip his shirt and abrade the flesh beneath.

  Despite the mini-scuba, Skater’s lungs were aching for air by the time he reached the surface. Duran was only a short distance away, stubbornly treading water while holding onto the SPAS-22.

  “You've got a smoke grenade.” Skater said. “Set it off and let’s fade.”

  “Done.” Duran peeled the activation tab on the smoke grenade, then tossed it away. The grenade landed on the ocean surface and floated for a heartbeat. Then the contents ignited, spewing a dark lavender cloud across the water. Also visible were hot particles that obscured infrared detection the dwarf rigger could use to spot them.

  Skater looked back at the Sapphire Seahawk. The freighter was definitely going down, dropping centimeters at a time while it shifted and rolled over on its port side. Fiery remnants of a yakuza helo lay scattered nearby.

  “I see you.” Whee
ler radioed. “I’m on my way.”

  The amphibian heeled overhead like a gull spotting prey, and streaked for the ocean surface, pulling up sharply before dipping its pontoons into the water. Combined with the stiff traction of the sea, full flaps stopped the craft in short order.

  A yellow floodlight suddenly raked the ocean surface ahead of Skater.

  “We’ve been spotted.” Shiva called out.

  “Swim for it.” Skater said. There was no other choice. He looked over his shoulder briefly, seeing the helo suddenly pull away from the floundering ship.

  Trey reached the amphibian first, pulling himself up onto the pontoon and managing the door. He helped Elvis with Archangel, getting her up into the craft, then he pointed and shouted something.

  Ten meters out from the amphibian, Skater couldn’t hear or see what had set Trey off. But before he had time to think about it, a long, white tentacle with dark blue mottling snaked out of the water and lashed around Shiva as she clambered aboard the amphibian. It yanked once, pulling her beneath the surface before she had time to scream.

  Skater swam, intending to call out to Duran, then coils of rubbery hard muscle closed around his chest and sucked him down.

  3

  His vision blurred by the depth, Skater saw the reflected lights of the yakuza helo slide by overhead on the ocean surface. His chest felt like it was being crushed, and black spots orbited before his eyes.

  “Kraken!” he heard Duran shout over the headlink.

  “Jack.” Elvis called. “Trey says the fragging thing is shaman-controlled. He’s working on it.”

  Skater tried to answer, but there wasn’t enough air left in his lungs. He thought he could see the bulbous head of the kraken somewhere in the darkness further down and ahead of him, but he wasn’t sure.

  Sluggishly, his fingers found the haft of the sword and he pulled it free, then he somehow twisted and struggled enough to slice the monofilament edge straight through the tentacle. Blood clouded out of the stump, muddying the water, and the amputated coils of meat came bumping against his chest.